Toronto-based startup Sciencescape came about because of a problem that was significant enough to lure co-founder Sam Molyneux away from a bourgeoning career as a cancer researcher, and into a new venture that wants to tackle the bigger picture issue of fixing the entire system of academic, medical and scientific research. It’s a system that’s incredibly outdated, the Sciencescape team believes… → Read More
Android has convincingly overtaken Apple as the most popular OS in the smartphone industry both in terms of sales and overall penetration. But when it comes to how much wireless devices are actually used on cellular networks, those who own Apple handsets are disproportionately the biggest users of apps and the mobile web — a clear sign of why developers continue to make iOS a major focus. → Read More
IDC today was the latest to publish its numbers on smartphone market shares after the major handset makers released Q1 earnings, and like Gartner, Strategy Analytics and the rest, it underscores the power of Google’s Android platform at the moment: Android OEMs shipped 162.1 million handsets in the quarter, giving the platform a 75% share of total worldwide shipments, while Apple’s 37.4 million… → Read More
Gartner has just released its Q1 figures for mobile handset sales, and the key takeaway is that Android continues to steal the show, led by handset maker Samsung. Google’s mobile platform now accounts for nearly 75% of all handset sales, a jump of almost 20 percentage points on a year ago, and equating to 156 million devices sold in the three-month period. Smartphones sales grew by 63 million… → Read More
Most people may not yet be using smartphones to pay for goods when they are out shopping, but that doesn’t mean that they are not glued to their handsets anyway. Some research out today from Google indicates that among smartphone owners, some 79% can be classified as “mobile shoppers,” using their devices for some aspect of the shopping experience, from finding store locations through to finding… → Read More
Google’s mobile OS Android continues to power ahead as the world’s most popular smartphone platform, according to figures out today from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, the WPP-owned market research company that tracks sales of handsets across key markets on a 12-week rolling cycle. In the nine markets surveyed by Kantar — Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and the U.S., all… → Read More
IDC is the first of the big analyst companies to come out with quarterly mobile device shipment numbers that indicate Q1 as the first quarter where smartphones have outnumbered more basic feature phones in worldwide shipments: in a total market of 418.6 million devices, 216.2 (51.6%) were smartphones. But it is was a kind of tipping point of another sort, too: it is a sign of how Apple is not the… → Read More
The growth in smartphone usage — supported by ever-faster mobile network speeds — is also giving rise to a much more competitive landscape among carriers, handset makers and other phone retailers targeting consumers on the hunt for new devices. Google today is releasing a report it compiled in partnership with Compete to show how that is playing out in one market in particular, the U.S. It shows… → Read More
Gartner has just released its annual projections on worldwide IT spend over the next two years — arguably the analyst house’s most wide-ranging report covering sales in hardware, software, enterprise and telecoms. The overall trends continue to point up: globally we will see $3.8 trillion spent across all categories, a rise of 4.1% on 2012. That’s a sign of slight recovery on a year ago: growth… → Read More
Google Research just launched its Wikilinks corpus, a massive new data set for developers and researchers that could make it easier to add smart disambiguation and cross-referencing to their applications. The data could, for example, make it easier to find out if two web sites are talking about the same person or concept, Google says. In total, the corpus features 40 million disambiguated mentions… → Read More
The PC market is fast shifting into a touchscreen world, and Apple is leading the charge. Some new numbers from the analysts at Canalys note that in Q4 of 2012, one in every three PCs shipped was a tablet, that Apple’s iPad accounted for about half of them, or one in every six of PCs. By combining PC and tablet figures — a logical thing to do, given that many are substituting tablet purchases and… → Read More
InfoArmy — a startup built on the “Data 2.0″ concept of crowdsourced competitive intelligence — has today sent out a letter, printed in full below, to its researchers informing them that it is pulling the plug on its current business model after failing to find enough sales for the research reports, and being unable to sustain the quality of the work that was being produced. As a result, it will… → Read More
ABI Research has put out its latest projections on the lay of the land for smartphones and tablets worldwide in 2013: it says that there will be 1.4 billion smartphones, and 268 million tablets in active use this year, with Android keeping its lead in handsets and iOS continuing to dominate in tablets. Microsoft and BlackBerry will continue to remain in the game in smartphones with small shares of… → Read More
Android tablets have nearly caught up to iPad devices as the world’s most popular tablet platform, and some project that they may even overtake iPads later this year. According to new research from app analytics company Localytics, the U.S., and specifically Amazon, should take the most credit for that trend: some 59% of all Android tablet usage came from the U.S., with over half of that… → Read More
When it comes to developing for mobile platforms, Android and iOS — the top two mobile platforms by device sales worldwide — are also first in the mind of app makers. But surprisingly, beleaguered BlackBerry isn’t so far behind: an indication that, if RIM really connects on BB10, it could have a shot at some kind of comeback, or at least the support of developers to make sure it has the content… → Read More
Forrester is predicting big growth for the mobile payments market in a new report out today, spanning 2013 to 2017. The market research firm is anticipating that the U.S. mobile payment market will see $90 billion spent in 2017, an incredible 48 percent compounded annual growth rate over the $12.8 billion that was spent in 2012. → Read More
If the huge profusion of mobile handsets, phablets and tablets on display at CES weren’t enough of an indicator, we now have some numbers from Gartner that spell out how the PC industry continues to decline in the face of smaller, cheaper, more portable, and more popular computing devices. Total worldwide PC shipments for Q4 totalled 90.3 million units, a decline of 4.9% over Q4 2011′s 95 million… → Read More
The smartphone boom is continuing apace, but with growth comes mutation: new figures out from Deloitte estimate that 2013 will be the first year that the industry collectively ships 1 billion smartphones worldwide, taking the total installed base of smartphones to nearly 2 billion. However, at the same time, the definition of “smartphone” is changing, perhaps in some surprising ways. → Read More
Attention dumbphones, point-and-shoot cameras and music players: sorry to tell you this, but it looks like your days may be numbered. According to a new survey out from Accenture (embedded below and released to coincide with the CES show), consumers are moving away from buying “single-use” devices and opting instead for those that offer the ability to do many things, with smartphones (at 41% of… → Read More
By one account Apple is having a very strong quarter in the U.S. in smartphone sales on the strength of the iPhone 5, but overall, Android and specifically Samsung are continuing to dominate the market. According to figures out today from comScore, there are 123.3 million people in the U.S. using smartphones as of November 2012, and Android represents 53.7 of them. Among all mobile users —… → Read More
The mobile app economy continued to power ahead last year, with 43.6 billion downloads worldwide in the 12 months ending September 2012. And while first-mover Apple may have today had a setback in its attempts to fight off competitors with trademark complaints over the very use of the phrase “app store”, it continues to lead the market in the category, according to figures out today from ABI… → Read More
We’re still waiting to hear from specific companies like Amazon with their latest (non-)numbers on how well their Kindle line of devices has sold over this holiday period, and from the various analysts that track overall device sales and shipments. In the meantime, some research out today from the Pew on e-reading sheds some light on how the U.S. market is moving: specifically, ownership of… → Read More
Apple’s shares, as you may have seen, have been sliding in the market on the back of strong competition from Android device makers. Today, some new figures on recent smartphone sales will give investors both encouraging and discouraging food for thought on that matter as we dive into the final weekend of sales before Christmas. → Read More
Forrester Research just published its annual “State of Consumers and Technology” report. As usual, it’s chock-full of interesting statistics about how U.S. consumers use the Internet, but the most interesting statistic is probably that the overall online penetration rate in the U.S. has stabilized at 79 percent (the same number Forrester found in 2011). That’s the percentage of U.S. adults that go… → Read More
Europe’s mobile market has reached a tipping point: the top-five markets in the region collectively now have a majority of consumers using smartphones, according to the latest numbers from comScore. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are now collectively reporting a 55% smartphone penetration, according to comScore’s MobiLens research — an online survey of “nationally representative”… → Read More
The Pew Center has been running a long-term study on U.S. consumer habits on the Internet and other digital media (you can read about past findings here); today it’s releasing a new set of data that looks at the wider global state of affairs, as part of Pew’s Global Attitudes Project, specifically covering social media and Internet and mobile usage. → Read More
Microsoft earlier this week made a point of noting that there have been 40 million downloads of Windows 8 since it launched a month ago, putting it ahead of where Windows 7 was at the same point in its sales cycle. But according to figures out today from NPD, in the midst of an overall slowdown in PC sales, this is not translating into robust hardware sales in the influential U.S. market. → Read More
Samsung may be be the world’s most popular smartphone brand, but in the influential U.S. market, Apple has climbed back to the top of the pack on the strength of its iPhone 5 sales. According to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the WPP market research subsidiary, Apple’s newest smartphone accounted for just over 48% of all smartphone sales in the country, letting it get past… → Read More
With Apple just ending its conference call for its quarterly results, Strategy Analytics has published its numbers on global tablet sales for the quarter. Apple and the iPad remain in the lead with 57% of all shipments, but just as Apple missed sales expectations on the iPad, it also is losing some market share in the tablet market overall, with Android picking up the slack to reach an all-time… → Read More
We are just getting into reporting season, where some (but not all) handset makers tell us how many handsets they’ve sold in the last three months, but Strategy Analytics has taken a punt to say that Q3 will be the quarter that we have hit a major milestone: there are now more than 1 billion smartphones in use worldwide — 1.038 billion, to be exact. It’s taken 16 years to pass 1 billion, but the… → Read More
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