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
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
Apple’s trajectory in the U.S. smartphone market over the past little while has been an upwards one, with the company gaining more and more iPhone subscribers every month. During the three month period covering November 2012 to February 2013, Apple added 8.9 million new iPhone subscribers, while Android as a platform in total added only 2.9 million. That means Apple’s share of the total smartphone… → Read More
Gartner has published its latest report with smart devices projections for smartphones, tablets, ultramobiles and PCs from 2012 to 2017. The numbers make unhappy reading for Microsoft — the company with the most to lose as the old empire of the PC continues its slow decline, trumped by the price, simplicity and convenience of Android and iOS-powered mobile computing devices. → Read More
The big winners in the three-month period ending in February in terms of smartphone share globally and in the U.S. were Android and Windows Phone, according to Kantar Worldpanel, with BlackBerry experiencing significant declines in consumer interest and iOS remaining fairly level in most markets. The bad news for BlackBerry is that it saw its smartphone OS share decline even in the U.K., where it… → Read More
Strong growth in tablet sales is helping to drive overall growth in the global smart connected device market, according to analyst IDC. The analyst notes that market expansion last year was “largely driven” by 78.4% year-over-year growth in tablet shipments — which exceeded 128 million units. It expects tablet shipments to surpass desktop PCs in 2013, and portable PCs in 2014. → Read More
Mozilla has announced a new workshop series designed to help spark interest in app development for the forthcoming Firefox OS, with the first three to take place in Madrid, Spain on April 20; Bogotá, Colombia on May 18; and Warsaw, Poland on June 1. Potential applicants have to submit an application to attend, in which they’re asked to demo their web development expertise and experience. In… → Read More
In Larry Page’s note moments ago about Andy Rubin stepping down as head of Android to be replaced by Sundar Pichai, he also provided an update on Android device activations: there are now 750 million of them, across smartphones and tablets from 60 hardware makers. This an update on the 500 million figure noted in September 2012. → Read More
Chinese Android-based phone maker Xiaomi said it will produce 15 million handsets for this year, and expects no overstock. This is double the 7.19 million units that were sold in 2012, which netted the firm 12.6 billion RMB ($2 billion) in revenue after tax. Its CEO and founder, Lei Jun, said that the firm is going to produce as many handsets as it expects to sell, because it doesn’t intend to… → Read More
The proportion of web traffic coming from tablets has pushed past smartphones for the first time, according to Adobe’s latest Digital Index which looks at more than 100 billion visits to 1,000+ websites worldwide to compare which device types are driving the most page views. Tablets accounted for 8% of the measured page views vs smartphones’ 7%. → Read More
Is it because Android is the most popular smartphone platform in the world right now, or is it because it’s just fundamentally easier to attack? In any case, Google’s mobile juggernaut Android continues to be the world’s biggest magnet for mobile malware. According to a report out today from security specialists F-Secure, Android accounted for 79% of all malware in 2012, up from 66.7% in 2011 and… → Read More
The new HTC One unveiled last month is increasingly feeling like last-chance saloon for the troubled Taiwan handset maker. Today HTC noted that its sales for the month of February fell by nearly 44% to 11.37 billion Taiwan dollars ($384 million), from NT$20.3 billion for the same month one year ago, down nearly 44%, Looking at the bigger picture, that NT$11.37 billion is barely higher than what… → Read More
China’s technology Ministry has criticised the dominance of Google’s Android platform, according to Reuters. “Our country’s mobile operating system research and development is too dependent on Android. While the Android system is open source, the core technology and technology roadmap is strictly controlled by Google,” a Ministry whitepaper states. → Read More
There are a number of ways to measure a mobile platform’s relative success, but if you’re looking at the number of mobile app downloads as the metric of choice, then the analysts at ABI Research have just predicted that Android will win it in 2013. According to the firm’s latest forecasts, 58 percent of smartphone app downloads this year will be Android apps, while iOS will come in at just 33… → Read More
Smartphones have been getting more affordable but to connect the “next billions” of users they need to get more affordable still. Speaking at Mobile World Congress today Manoj Kohli, CEO of carrier Bharti Airtel – which operates in India and Africa — said the price of smartphones needs to come down to $30, and mobile data dongles to $10, to break down the affordability barrier. → Read More
Firefox OS, the new, HTML5-friendly mobile OS from Mozilla, is today taking a big step forward in its strategy to become a viable third player in the smartphone landscape currently dominated by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Mozilla is announcing that 18 carriers have now committed to its Open Web HTML5 device push; the launch of the Firefox Marketplace app store to aggregate content for the… → Read More
In a new report from mobile ad platform Millennial Media, the company compiles its data on mobile device share across its network for all of 2012, revealing that tablets in particular accounted for a rising percentage of impressions, with Android devices stepping up their game considerably. The Kindle Fire and Samsung tablets were the big share winners, helping Android slates grab a considerable… → Read More
Analyst Forrester is predicting tablet ownership in Western Europe will quadruple by 2017 — with the percentage of online adults owning a slate projected to increase markedly from less than a fifth (14 per cent) last year to more than half (55 per cent) in 2017. In 2011 the tablet-owner figure stood at just 7 per cent, underlining how quickly digitally connected consumers are adopting slates. → Read More
Apple’s iPhone 5 became the best selling smartphone globally in Q4, pushing past Samsung’s flagship Galaxy SIII, according to research by Strategy Analytics. It’s the first time the iPhone 5 sales have topped Galaxy SIII shipments. According to the analyst, a “rich touchscreen, extensive distribution and generous operator subsidies have propelled the iPhone 5 to the top spot”. → Read More
It was exactly a year ago that news began to surface of Fujitsu’s intention to come to Europe with its Android-based smartphones. Now the Japanese company is finally coming good on those reports: on Tuesday, Fujitsu is launching its first device in Europe, marking its first “extensive foray into the smartphone market outside Japan.” → Read More
HP is looking into getting back into the mobile hardware game, according to a new report from ReadWrite which the Verge says is being confirmed from their own sources. HP famously bought webOS and then brought a tablet to market based on that Palm-developed platform, the TouchPad, which ended up being a dismal failure that the company shut down very quickly. → Read More
Canalys just published its final mobile phone shipment estimates, which show that although Samsung is still on top of the global smart phone market, three Chinese manufacturers-Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo-all climbed into the top five for the first time, thanks to domestic success as well as sales in overseas markets. → Read More
Apple took the title of largest mobile maker by volume in the U.S. in Q4 2012, according to Strategy Analytics, which said Cupertino rose to the top of the U.S. phone maker charts for the first time ever — taking a record 34 per cent marketshare, and shipping 17.7 million iPhones in the quarter. Samsung came second, with a 32.3 per cent share, shipping an estimated 16.8 million smartphones. → 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
No more RIM-shots allowed if you are among those who like to joke about the trials and tribulations of the Canadian handset manufacturer. Today the company said that it was dropping its Research In Motion name and would from today be known as BlackBerry only. It finally aligns its branding with company name. → Read More
China’s ZTE is planning to ship more high end smartphones this year in a bid to boost its profit margins and revenue. In an interview with Reuters, Lv Qianhao, head of ZTE’s handset strategy, said making affordable phones has taken its toll on the company’s bottom line. “We would like to raise the percentage of mid- to high-range smartphones. That’s the direction we’re heading,” he said. → Read More
NVIDIA is hoping to win back mobile processor marketshare with a plan that involves building its own smartphone and tablet hardware designs and offering them white label to OEMs in Russia and China, according to a new report. The idea is that by doing that, NVIDIA gets complete control over hardware performance, while also undercutting the competition on price and hopefully flooding the market… → Read More
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