The number of activations of Android devices has hit 700,000 per day, though some commentators believe that the latest milestone is evidence that the explosive growth in the Google OS.
Google VP Andy Rubin, the firm’s most senior Android exec, tweeted the 700,000 figure recently and also gave some detail on how the firm defines an ‘activation’ via the Google+ social network. ‘Activations’ for Google means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.
In June 2011, Rubin tweeted that there were 500,000 Android activations happening per day, and that the figure was increasing by 4.4 percent a week. A month later (July), in an earnings call, Google said that the daily figure had increased to 550,000.
However, while Rubin gave no indication of the weekly growth figure this time round, it is thought that growth has slowed.
Either way, the new 700,000 figure equates to 21 million a month, or 250 million a year.
This stacks up against estimates which suggest iPhone will sell around 105m and iPad 40m this year. But then that's just two devices against dozens of Androids - and iOS users are far more active and spend more on their devices.
Google said in a blog that it has looked at how consumers engage with ads on tablets, and concluded that "they have higher expectations of ads on tablets, believing they should be more interactive and touch screen friendly."\
So it came up with Rich Media Designs for Mobile, which lets advertisers create rich media banner ads using existing assets.
And in search it has put Media Ads in beta this week. Media Ads bring video content directly into an ad on the search results page.
Mobile commerce is thriving! Record numbers of consumers turned to their smartphones and tablets during this year's Black Friday holiday shopping frenzy, with digital retail services provider GSI Commerce reporting a 254% increase in U.S. mobile sales compared to year-ago totals.
eBay-owned PayPal experienced a 516% year-over-year increase in global mobile payment volume. The number of consumers shopping via PayPal mobile services grew 371% from Black Friday 2010 and jumped 148% compared with the average Friday.
Shoppers in the U.S. purchased more than 2.5 times as many items via eBay Mobile on Black Friday 2011 compared to a year earlier.
Consumers shopped eBay Mobile for shoes, computers, consumer electronics, sporting goods and jewelry. In terms of sold items, shoppers in New York City made the most eBay Mobile purchases, trailed by Houston and Chicago.
If you are retail or online commerce, get into the space NOW where ever you are located. With smartphone adoption at all time high, it will be a disaster if you do not have a mobile commerce strategy in place.
89% of ad-enabled Android apps use its SDK. App search firm Xyologic says half of the top 1000 downloaded Android apps in October have had an SDK from a mobile ad or network.
The study also found that 22% of the top 1000 downloaded apps on Android in October have two or more mobile ad network SDKs.
And it revealed that, even after all these years, the original mobile ad network AdMob is still way ahead of the other big networks.
Its 89% share dwarfs Millennial Media at 34%, Inmobi at 22%, AdWhirl by Admob at 19% and Mobclix at 15%.
The remaining 15% include AdMarvel, Smaato, Burstly, Mopub, Nexage, Fiksu, and Jumptap who each make up less than 3% each of the overall market share. However, together, apps with their SDKs apps represent 26% of all downloads in October among the top downloaded apps with mobile advertising.
China is now the world's biggest smartphone market by volume, having taken the crown from the US in Q3 according to Strategy Analytics.
Smartphone shipments in China grew 58% sequentially during the quarter to a record 23.9 million units compared to a 7% slump in US sales to 23.3 million units. The strong growth to operators' aggressive handset subsidy strategies, as well as the increasing availability of low-cost Android phones from ZTE and other Chinese brands.
Nokia is the leading smartphone vendor in China, having shipped 6.8 million units during the quarter. Samsung is second, with 4.2 million units. In the US, HTC leads the pack, while Apple is the chief contender.
China is in a pole position of the worldwide mobile computing boom. It has become a large and growing smartphone market that no hardware vendor, component maker or content developer can afford to ignore. Beyond being the largest smartphone market, the acceleration in adoption and growth in the use of mobile internet had made this an important media that most marketers must take note. A strategy on mobile is a MUST for any organizations moving forward.
A new report by mobile analytics firm Distimo says 91 per cent of the top 100 brands now has a presence in at least one of the major mobile app stores. The rate stood at 51 per cent 18 months ago.
Distimo defines its top brands as those contained in the Interbrand 2011 Best Brands report such as Coca-Cola, BMW, Disney and IBM.
The report reveals the average number of apps published at a massive 24. Pretty remarkable. But dig down and you see that the figure is skewed by the output of firms like Disney (636) and Sony (285).
The primary driver for this activity seems to be brand awareness as only 27 per cent of the brands have released paid apps: the rest go free.
Apple’s App Store is unsurprisingly the primary destination of these brands. Indeed, 86 per cent have a presence in iTunes, actually you'd think it would be all of them.
Meanwhile 66 per cent are on iPad, 59 per cent in Android Market, 26 per cent in BlackBerry’s App World and nine per cent on Ovi.
Among the top brands, it's media companies that are the busiest, with an average of 247 apps each, followed by software firms (36 apps per company), business services (31 per cent) and automotive (29 per cent).
The report says 2,343 branded apps are available from companies on Interbrand's Top 100 list.
Shipments grow 44 per cent to give it 23.8 per cent of the market.
The firm sold 27.8 million units in Q3, up nearly four times from a year ago, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
That helped the Korean firm's smartphone profit double to $2.2bn.
The 44 per cent growth is almost four times as much as last year, and is attributable to the great success of its Galaxy range and, to a lesser extent, its Wave bada devices.
And the growth also takes Samsung ahead of Apple, which saw iPhone sales fall by 16 per cent to 17.1 million units in Q3, according to the report.
Apple’s sluggish numbers have been put down to consumers choosing to wait for the iPhone 4S, so in theory Q4 should see a rise in Apple sales. It was certainly off to a good start selling four million units in its opening weekend. Apple and Samsung will continue to dominate the market in the fourth quarter.
To all the big fans of Google's Android, Samsung Electronics will begin shipping its new Galaxy Nexus Android smartphone Nov. 17. The device is the first to run Google's long-awaited Android 4.0 ("Ice Cream Sandwich") operating system overhaul.
A Samsung Mobile tweet confirms the manufacturer will begin rolling out the Galaxy Nexus to European consumers on Nov. 17. Mashable reports the smartphone is slated for a November release in the U.S., Canada and Asia as well.
Android 4.0 delivers the tablet-optimized innovations introduced in Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb update to all devices in an effort to reduce platform fragmentation. Google first confirmed Ice Cream Sandwich's forthcoming launch during its annual I/O developer conference in May. The company promised, at that time, that moving forward, the same version of Android will run across all devices, regardless of screen size.
Highlights of Android 4.0 include an evolved user interface making common actions more visible, enabling users to navigate using simplified, more intuitive gestures. A new typeface optimized for high-resolution screens touts enhanced readability and new animations and feedback support for more compelling interactions. Android 4.0 also touts new System Bar virtual buttons bringing instant navigation to Back, Home and Recent Apps, as well as more visual multitasking and more interactive notifications.
Android dominates 43.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market according to data issued earlier this month by research firm comScore. Android-powered tablets lag far behind Apple's
pacesetting iPad, however: Researcher IDC reports that Apple's iOS commands 68.3 percent of the worldwide tablet market as of the second quarter of 2011, with Android trailing at 26.8 percent
Google confirmed in its recent Q3 earning that its ad revenues via mobile devices had grown by two-and-half times over the last year and was on track to hit US$2.5 billion per annum. This is up from the US$1 billion figure Google cited a year ago, which was the first time it had attributed a dollar value to its mobile business.
190 million devices had now been activated globally and Google is upbeat on the platform’s future roadmap. Revenue growth continues to accelerate driven primarily by mobile search. This growth is driven both by the underlying expansion of Android devices and tablets.
In Q3, Google reported that total revenues grew by a third year-on-year to US$9.7 billion, while net profit was up by a quarter to US$2.7 billion. The results were above most analysts’ expectations. Google also used its earnings to announce that its Google+ social network had passed 40 million users.
Apple's iOS operating system now accounts for 54.65 percent of worldwide mobile web traffic, more than three times Google's Android, according to new data published by Net Applications. In fact, at 16.26 percent global market share across mobile phones and tablets, Android net traffic even trails Java ME (18.52 percent). Symbian follows at 6.12 percent, trailed by Research In Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry at 3.29 percent.
The iOS platform's dominance over the mobile net landscape is somewhat surprising given that Android controls 48 percent of the worldwide smartphone market according to recent Canalys data, far ahead of iOS at 19 percent.
Apple's iPad continues to own the worldwide tablet market, increasing to 68.3 percent global market share during the second quarter, up from 65.7 percent a quarter ago. At the same time, Android's tablet market share slipped from 34.0 percent in the first quarter to 26.8 percent, due both to Apple's dominance and the introduction of RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, which captured 4.9 percent market share.
By 2015, more U.S. Internet users will access the web via mobile devices than PCs or other wireline channels according to a forecast issued last month by research firm IDC. The number of mobile net users is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.6 percent between 2010 and 2015, thanks to the increasing smartphone penetration and sales of tablets like the iPad. IDC had predicted that PC-based web access across the U.S. will first stagnate then slowly decline, with Western Europe and Japan following the same trend.
Today is the passing of Steve Jobs, a great visionary who brought us the world largest company, Apple, the most powerful mobile devices, iPhone and iPad. He will always be remembered the Father of Mobility. RIP.
This is a powerful video to honor him. Its a speech by Steve at Stanford Uni in 2005 and the most powerful speech that i had watched over and over again. It sure did inspire me and changed the way i looked at life, i am sure you will find it inspiring. You got to figure out what you love and do what you love.
Advertisers are on pace to spend close to $1.23 billion on mobile campaigns in 2011, up from $743 million a year ago (65% year on year growth), according to a new forecast published by eMarketer. Mobile ad spending which includes display ads (e.g., banners, rich media and video), search and messaging-based campaigns and encompasses promotions viewed on both mobile phones and tablets is expected to climb to almost $4.4 billion a year by 2015, thanks to the increased smartphone penetration and surging mobile web access.
Messaging-based formats remain the primary vehicle for mobile ad campaigns, representing 36.1 percent ($442.6 million) of spending this year. As of 2012, banners and rich media efforts will pull even with search, with each bringing in 33 percent of spending (or $594.8 million), while messaging slips to 28.2 percent. By 2015, search will lead with 40.2 percent of mobile ad spending, followed by banners/rich media (36.4 percent), messaging (14.4 percent) and video (9 percent).
Video is the fastest-growing mobile ad format but comes from the smallest base, eMarketer notes. Mobile video ads will account for 4.7 percent of spending in 2011, or $57.6 million. Video is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 69 percent between 2010 and 2015, with advertiser spending set to reach $395.6 million by the middle of the decade.
Its the news that many of you been waiting for but unfortunately the news came short with the launch of only an iPhone 4S. The new iPhone will go on sale on Oct 14 and with only minor improvements, I dont expect overnight campers to stay up all night to get their hands on a brand new iPhone 4S.
On a brighter note, the new iPhone 4S still pack a punch. It will boast a dual core A5 processor that will allow for 7X faster graphics, an 8 MP camera that will work in conjunction with the new iOS 5 features to capture pictures faster, and enhanced battery life.
The device will also support GSM and CDMA networks, making it a true world phone for the first time ever allowing many of you who are on on CDMA network to keep your existing numbers and upgrade to a new iPhone.
In addition to these features the unit also has a voice assistant that will allow users to enter commands into the phone simply by talking. The “Siri” assistant was developed by a company acquired by Apply earlier this year, and will enable more intuitive control over all aspects of your device.
What was interesting was the announcement with the continuation of the iPhone 3GS, which is now available for free on contract with many carriers, and which now represents Apple’s low-cost strategy for emerging markets and smartphone laggards. Rather than making a new lower-functionality, lower cost device for such markets, Apple simply continues to sell a more than two-year old device which was market-leading at the time it launched.
For a company which prides itself on the quality of its products, this strategy has always made more sense than producing a new, sub-standard device for such markets. The strategy should also keep iPhone shipment numbers growing as ever more first-time iPhone users join the back of the ranks while more savvy and trendy users will always be chasing for the latest models.
What CEO Tim Cook and others showed the press during the 95-minute presentation this morning is very symbolic of what Apple is trying to do to keep standing out ie, pay very close attention to the little things, which help make a product great. Dont be deceived by the same physical look as many had expected a whole new new look and feel to the new iPhone. The iPhone 4 is a great phone and people are still buying by the truck loads even though the iphone is more than a year old so it’s not like Apple had to go back to the drawing board or do a major overhaul. Dont forget, its not how it looks but how it performs!
Amazon dramatically increased the stakes in its ongoing battle with Apple for digital media supremacy, officially launching its long-awaited, Android-powered tablet device as well as new Kindle e-reader devices.
The Amazon tablet, dubbed the Kindle Fire and priced at $199 (compared to $499 for Apple's cheapest iPad), effectively gives consumers a single, portable point of access to digital media initiatives including the Kindle e-book catalog, Amazon Appstore for Android, Amazon Instant Video and Amazon MP3, with all content backed up in the cloud.
The Kindle Fire integrates with the Amazon Web Services platform and enables consumers to leverage free media offerings included within Amazon Prime, the $79 annual service that also offers unlimited two-day shipping on all products sold and processed by the e-commerce giant, excluding items offered by third-party sellers.
Unlike Apple, which relies on content from its iTunes digital media storefront and App Store to boost sales of hardware like the iPhone and iPad, Amazon is looking to the Kindle Fire to stoke consumer interest in its premium digital media ambitions.
"For 15 years we've been building our media business and it's become a $15 billion a year business," said Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos during Wednesday's media event, stating that the company now offers more than 100 million feature films and television programs available to buy or rent.
In addition, the Amazon MP3 storefront touts more than 17 million songs, some priced as low at 69 cents.
Kindle Fire also heralds the launch of Amazon Silk, a new browser promising to accelerate the mobile web user experience by caching and compressing data and images. Living both on the tablet and Amazon's own EC2 servers, Silk promises to consume less bandwidth than other tablet browsers, translating to faster page and multimedia load times. The Kindle Fire does not feature 3G network access, instead relying exclusively on Wi-Fi connectivity.
Apple eat your heart out... The $199 pricing is certainly a killer price and it will definitely eat into Apple's market dominance on the tablet segment. With the Amazon content bundled in, its definitely a great offering and more importantly affordable.
Apple has finally ended speculation about the unveiling of its much-anticipated new iPhone model, sending out invites yesterday for an event on 4 October taking place at its HQ in Cupertino, California. However, while Apple’s invitation offered an opportunity to “talk iPhone” it did not explicitly mention the new iPhone 5.
Apple may not unveil a new model, but several new versions of the current one (iPhone 4), possibly one designed for the Chinese market or a new low-cost version.
On the hardware side, the new iphone is expected to feature incremental upgrades in processing power, camera quality and very possibility a slightly larger screen size.
It will run surely be running Apple’s new iOS5 software, which includes new cloud and messaging features. I reckon shipping will begin within a few weeks after the announcement.
According to a latest stats provided by Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, its the younger people who are playing most on freemium games but its the older guys who are paying for them.
Flurry's stats are based on tracking 20 million players across more than 1.4 billion sessions in these games. It found that 13-17 year-olds account for 22% of the time playing freemium games, but only 5% of the spending. Meanwhile, 18-24 year-olds take 32% of the time but 16% of the spending.
Who's stumping up for all these virtual items then? That'll be older gamers. 25-34 year-olds account for 29% of the time spent playing these freemium mobile games, but 49% of the spending. Meanwhile, 35-54 year-olds take 14% of the time but 28% of the spending.
These dynamics are actually pretty logical, as Flurry explains. If you play many of these games a lot, you are less likely to need to pay, since you can earn rewards and advancement through the gameplay itself (for example, virtual coins in a game like Tiny Tower). Younger people with time to play are therefore less likely to need to pay.
And older folk? 24 – 35 year olds presumably have more disposal income, but less time, due to work and family demands. This combination makes them less tolerant to engaging in 'the grind' but also better positioned to buy their way out of it. They play less often, but make quicker progress by simply spending."
In not such a surprising move Samsung is preparing to expand its tablet-computer lineup by using a new version of Windows OS as its products built around Google's Android OS has come under legal attack from Apple Inc. On top of that it makes commercial sense for Samsung to hedge its business with Google's recent acquisition of Motorola.
The move is expected to be announced at a Microsoft developers conference in California next week though representatives from both Samsung and Microsoft declined to comment. The development was reported earlier by the Korea Economic Daily newspaper.
Tablets are a relatively tiny business for Samsung. Analysts estimate that Samsung shipped about two million tablets in the first half in comparison to a total 140 million shipped on handsets. Apple shipped 13.9 million iPads in the half.
A double betting for Samsung is commercially sound than relying solely on Android, this will give them a greater bargaining power over Google's Android and the smaller market share Window's mobile OS and of course expose them to a broader group of customers.
Chinese search engine Baidu has launched its long-anticipated mobile OS, revealing it to be a heavily modified Android version. The search-centric OS, Baidu Yi, replaces many of Android's in-built Google services with Baidu app alternatives.
Baidu will supply its own maps, reader and music apps, and provide its Shen Bian service to stand in for Google Places. The music app will likely integrate with Baidu's Ting licensed music download service.
As with the competing platform launched by Alibaba last month, Baidu's OS utilizes cloud storage, backup and sharing capabilities. It will also provide single sign-in integration with Baidu accounts, and come complete with its own app store.
Baidu had been rumored to be planning the OS and to be using a modified version of Android for some time, but had refused to provide confirmation.
Apple's Safari dominates worldwide mobile/tablet browser market share according to the latest data published by web analytics firm NetApplications.
Safari, the default browser on all devices running Apple's iOS powers 52.99 percent of mobile browsing as of August 2011, more than double its nearest competitor, Opera Mini, at 20.77 percent. Google's Android browser follows at 15.73 percent, trailed by Symbian (5.83 percent), BlackBerry (2.90 percent) and Opera Mobile (0.58 percent).
Although Android far outpaces iOS in regards to worldwide smartphone market share, controlling 48 percent of the global market compared to iOS's 19 percent according to Canalys data published last month, NetApplications' research examines both smartphone and tablet web activity, giving Apple a major edge.
Guohe Ad, a local chinese mobile ad mediation player had just released its first report and infographics for China mobile ad market. Launched in January 2011, Guohe Ad has now integrated 11 leading mobile ads platform in China, serving over 1000 popular apps across iOS and Android system, and its ads has been displayed over 600M times on 5M mobile devices.
Below are some highlights of the report :
80% of ads impressions came from 10 provinces in China, and Beijing is leading the pack followed by Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jiangsu and Zhejiang;
Larger iOS impressions over Android 58:42
More attention on a smaller screen resulting in higher CTR (click through rate).
Apart from Apple devices, HTC, Samsung and Moto are the top 3 brands producing better ads impressions;
iPad is dominating the tablet market in China, accounting for over 98% of total ads impressions on tablet devices.
Source : technode (Check out the site for the infographics provided by Guohe Ad)
Just days after widespread rumours of poor sales for HP's TouchPad tablet, HP has announced that it's canning the webOS software and the devices that it runs on. WebOS became a HP property when it acquired Palm for $1.2 billion in April 2010, and the company had talked up its ambitions for the software not just on smartphones and tablets, but on a range of other devices too.
Those ambitions appear to have gone up in smoke. Earlier this week, reports suggested that US retailers were sitting on piles o f unsold TouchPads, after sales failed to match positive reviews of the company's first tablet.
Ironically, it was only recently that was reported the TouchPad being the second most desirable tablet behind Apple's iPad in a US survey although with only 10.3% of respondents interested in buying it versus 94.5% for iPad.
iPad is by far a runaway success and looking at the momentum generated, its unlikely in the short term that anybody can rival the success of Apple. Expect more casualties in this segment unless anybody could come up with something out of the box. It was only quite recently that Dell had also officially discontinued its 5" Streak.
Both firms had just confirmed that Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The official release says the deal will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing.
In other words, don't panic all you other OEMs. But you have to wonder how this might affects the giving out of Android platform goodies.
In the past, Google has been careful to share evenly first dibs on new OSs. HTC, Samsung and Moto have all taken their turns to be first to rush out devices based on an updated platform.
Will Google be so even-handed now?
The deal has to be great for Moto though, which endured a hideous period post-Razr and has been partly rehabilitated by Android in its native US, but less so in the rest of the world.
Android dominates U.S. smartphone ownership, representing 39 percent of the market as of June 2011 according to the latest Nielsen data. More than 150 million Android devices are active worldwide, with Android products available from 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers across 123 countries.
Motorola went all out on Android in 2008, embracing the platform as its sole operating system. The company now ships 11 percent of Android smartphones in Q2, but still made a loss.
Having been outbid in the recent sell-off of Nortel’s patent portfolio, Google was clearly willing to look elsewhere to build up its arsenal of IP and in the light of the growing number of IP legal disputes in the smartphone market; this move will put Google in a stronger position competitively.
Three important points to this deal :
1. Apple. This means war! Don’t doubt for a minute that Google is going after Apple’s lunch, directly competing with the iPhone with this move into hardware.
2. Patents. Google now has access to Motorola’s 17,000+ wireless-related patents. The word “patent” came up more than 25 times in this morning’s call, underscoring how much this deal helps Google protect itself from legal challenges from competitors.
3. Mobile computing. The buyout makes Google the owner of some of the most popular Droid smartphones, giving it a direct way to monetize it’s popular Android operating system.
Android accounted for 48% of all smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2011, according to the latest figures from analyst firm Canalys.
Canalys estimates that 107.7 million smartphones shipped globally in Q2, up 73% year-on-year, split between Asia Pacific (39.8m), Europe, the Middle East and Africa (35m) and the Americas (32.9m).
But it's that Android growth that stands out from Canalys' figures. 51.9 million Android smartphones shipped in Q2, up 379% year-on-year thanks to the efforts of manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei.
APAC is particularly strong for Google, with Android taking an estimated 85% share of the market in South Korea, thanks to strong backing from the local manufacturers.
iOS in second place globally with 20.3 million shipments giving iPhone a 19% market share, overtaking Symbian for the first time. The company thinks that less than 1.5 million Windows Phones shipped during Q2, however, giving Microsoft just 1% of the global market.
Strategy Analytics had confirmed Nokia’s dramatic collapse in smartphone market share, with the Finnish vendor falling behind both Apple and Samsung in shipments in Q2. According to the firm, total global smartphone shipments grew by 76 percent year-on-year to reach a record 110 million units in the quarter.
However, Nokia’s smartphone shipments fell from a market-leading 23.8 million a year ago to just 16.7 million. Apple took the top spot on 20.3 million, followed by Samsung on 19.2 million.
Total handset shipments incl. smartphones reached 361 million units in Q2 2011, rising 13 percent from 320 million units a year earlier. Nokia hung on to its overall device lead by shipping 88.5 million handsets worldwide, but saw its market share drop sharply to 25 percent (from 35 percent), its lowest level since 1999.
Samsung was second on 74 million units, followed by LG on 24.8 million. Apple’s 20.3 million iPhone sales cemented its position in fourth place. Though with only 6% market share, Apple made more profits than all the handset manufacturers combined. Gone were the days where the larger you ship, the more money you make. Such was unthinkable 4 years ago before the rise of iPhone and totally impossible to see anybody unseat Nokia who had such a commanding market share. As the saying goes, whatever that goes up must come down. Its hard to reach the top and its even more harder to continue staying at the top. I wonder who will be able to take on the commanding position Apple is in now..... maybe Google?? What do you think??
This is a really smart and intelligent e-commerce integration using the power of smartphones. At the click of a button, the QR code taken will automatically drop the product you are buying into the shopping cart ready to be purchased. Once you complete the purchase, the product will be on its way to your home. This would save many of us a lot of time and no longer need to make the long queue at the hypermarkets.
Another stunning quarter for Apple recording a massive increase in profits thanks to the dominance of Apple's iPhone. Sales for its fiscal 2011 third quarter, ended 25 June 2011, increased 82 percent year-on-year to US$28.57 billion and profit was up 125 percent to US$7.31 billion. Apple sold 20.34 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
Sales of the iPhone mean that Apple will almost certainly have passed the formerly dominant Nokia and will be battling Samsung for the title of the world's largest smartphone vendor by volume. Gartner believes that Apple could overtake LG by the next quarter and become the third largest mobile phone vendor worldwide.
Its a phenomena growth to the top for Apple with just one device where as other manufacturers had to spend so much effort coming up with with various designs and models. Its a game-changer and iPhone had definitely turn the table for the industry and at the present moment its a huge catch up game for many and I dont reckon this is going to change for the short to mid-term. With iPhone 5's launch not too far away, its definitely going to be another record breaking year for Apple.
A new report by Canaccord Genuity has predicted that Google’s mobile ad revenue will reach US$14 billion by 2015 driven by smartphone uptake, growth of Android, and new services offered by Google.
This figure represents nearly half the US$29 billion Google generated from online ad sales last year and shows that the mobile platform is closing the gap on web based platforms.
This report is in line with the prediction that mobile will eventually draw level with online platforms before overtaking them due to changing consumer behaviour.
According to the report Google already brings in 2.5 billion from Mobile Ads with much of this coming from search and display ads that Google serves on Apple devices. But their dominance will only increase thanks to all the new products that they are releasing and as the consumer uptake for these services continues to grow.
550k daily device activations, and more than 135 million having been sold so far according to Google. Google has announced its latest set of quarterly financials, revealing revenues of $9.03 billion for the second quarter of 2011, and net income of $2.51 billion.
So far, more than 135 million Android devices have been activated in total, catching up steadily with Apple's 200 million iOS devices. More than 400 different Android devices are now available, and Android Market has generated more than six billion app downloads, too.
The milestones came after Google introduced new features to its Android Market app, including editorial picks, e-books and video rentals.
Although Google is now activating 500,000 new Android devices each day, research firm Nielsen reports that Android smartphone sales to U.S. subscribers have flattened over the last three months. Android phones made up 27 percent of U.S. smartphone purchases between Mar. 1 and May 31, Android also accounted for 27 percent of new smartphones during the Dec. 1, 2010 to Feb. 28, 2011 period.
Apple's iPhone is now driving U.S. smartphone sales, representing 17 percent of smartphone purchases during the most recent three-month period, up from 10 percent during the previous three-month segment. RIM's BlackBerry continues to nosedive, sliding to 6 percent of smartphone sales from 11 percent during the previous three-month block. Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone 7 has remained consistent over the last six months, generating just 1 percent of U.S. smartphone sales.
Fifty-five percent of U.S. consumers who purchased a new mobile handset during the last three months opted for a smartphone over a feature phone, the first time smartphone sales set the pace in the American market, Nielsen reports. Just a year ago, smartphones made up 34 percent of U.S. handset purchases.
Smartphones now make up 38 percent of the addressable U.S. mobile market. Android remains the dominant platform, representing 38 percent of the overall U.S. smartphone market. iOS is next with 27 percent market share, followed byBlackBerry at 21 percent. Windows Phone 7 makes up 19 percent, and Microsoft's legacy Windows Mobile accounts for 9 percent.
Global mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $3.3 billion in 2011, more than double the $1.6 billion generated in 2010, according to Gartner, Inc. Its expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2015, but not all types of mobile advertising will generate the same opportunity. Search and maps will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015.
As the adoption of smartphones and media tablets extends to more consumers, the audience for mobile advertising will increase and become easier to segment and target, driving the growth of mobile advertising spend for brands and advertisers.
North America and Western Europe are the regions where mobile advertising budgets will grow most, representing 28 percent and 25 percent of the global market by 2015 (refer to the table above). However, Asia/Pacific and Japan will remain the leading market throughout the forecast period. Asia/Pacific and Japan is forecast to account for 49.2 percent of mobile advertising in 2011, and 33.6 percent of the global market in 2015.
Samsung will become the world’s leading smartphone vendor this quarter, taking a 15-year crown from Finland’s Nokia according to Investment bank Nomura and to worsen matter, Nokia is expected to lose the number two spot to Apple in the next quarter. Although research firms such as IDC, Canalys and Gartner have forecast falling share for Nokia in the smartphone space over the next few quarters, Nomura’s reported prediction is the most damning for the Finnish company to date.
Despite the negative forecasts, Nokia remains the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer due to its strong position in basic devices and its wider distribution network in emerging countries but this may change at some point as Nokia is up against so many low end manufacturers from China.
Nokia is hoping things would change with the roll out of Windows Phone platform by end of the year. And frankly I m not sure whether the new product launch will change anything for Nokia as they are way far behind and had lost a great deal of branding over the past years and unlikely customers will jump on a Windows platform Nokia devices. The odds are definitely stacked against them as I could never understand why Nokia had picked up just Windows OS as they should had just picked whichever platform that works and built the best device with great user experience. My prediction by next year around this time, they will realized the mistakes of relying on just one platform and start kicking themselves for not being realistic and pragmatic. By then, its going to be a steep mountain to scale and almost game over for Nokia.
Or I may be entirely wrong on this as Nokia will beat all odds and surpass everybody expectation to continue dominating the mobile devices market. IDC had predicted that Windows platform will be the 2nd most popular smartphone platform in 2015. It expects Microsoft's platform overtaking Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS in the next three years to take a 20.3% share of global smartphone shipments in 2015. Google's Android will remain top dog, with a 38.9% share of global shipments in 2011 rising to 43.8% in 2015.
Apple had just launched iCloud and iOS 5, the latest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, and released a beta version to iOS Developer Program members. The iOS 5 beta release includes over 200 new features that will be available to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users this fall.
With iOS 5 and iCloud, you just enter your Apple ID and password and iCloud will seamlessly integrate with your apps to automatically and wirelessly keep all of your mail, contacts, calendars, photos, apps, books, music and more, up-to-date across all your devices without having to plug into your PC.
Before going into the details of the new features, lets look at some of the impressive stats that were released :
- 200 million iOS devices shipped out so far;
- 25 million iPad 1 & 2 sold
- 15 billion songs sold on iTunes
- 130 million books downloaded
- 14 billion apps downloaded from App Store
- 425,000 apps available on App Store and 90,000 only for iPad
- 225 million registered credit cards on iTunes
- paid $2.5 billion to developers building on iOS
- 54 million active Macs out there
Here are some of the groundbreaking iOS 5 new features :
Notification Center
This new feature will provide users with an innovative way to easily access all notifications―text messages, missed calls, calendar alerts, app alerts and more, all in one place, from anywhere in iOS 5. When they arrive, notifications appear briefly at the top of the screen without interrupting what you’re doing. With one swipe you can see all your notifications, and a simple tap will take you right to its app for more detail. Notifications also appear on the lock screen, with the ability to be taken to the notifying app with just one swipe.
Newsstand
Newsstand is a beautiful, easy-to-organize bookshelf displaying the covers of all your newspaper and magazine subscriptions in one place. A new section of the App Store™ features just subscription titles, and allows users to quickly find the most popular newspapers and magazines in the world. If subscribed to, new issues appear in the Newsstand and are updated automatically in the background so you always have the latest issue and the most recent cover art.
Safari New features include Safari Reader, which gets all the clutter out of the way and sets the right font size on a web page, so you can easily scroll and read through a story; Reading List, so you can save articles to read later and they automatically show up on all your iOS devices; and Tabbed Browsing, which makes it easy to flip between multiple web pages on iPad.
Twitter integration Big boost for Twitter as the new iOS 5 includes built-in Twitter integration, so you can sign in once and then tweet directly from all your Twitter-enabled apps, including Photos, Camera, Safari, YouTube and Maps with a single tap. New APIs give third party developers the ability to take advantage of the single sign-on capability for their own iOS 5 apps.
iMessage iMessage in iOS 5 brings the functionality of iPhone messaging to all of your iOS devices ie, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Built right into the Messages app, iMessage allows you to easily send text messages, photos, videos or contact information to a person or a group on other iOS 5 devices over Wi-Fi or 3G. iMessage also features delivery and read receipts, typing indication and secure end-to-end encryption. Clearly a nightmare for the mobile operators as this will surely takes a chunk away of their profitable sms revenue. The Operators had been ripping us off for so many years and its high time for them to re-think their messaging strategy-all you can eat sms??
Camera New features in the Camera and Photos apps give you instant access to the camera right from the lock screen, and you can use the volume-up button to quickly snap a photo. Optional grid lines help line up your shot and a simple tap locks focus and exposure on one subject. The new Photos app lets you crop, rotate, enhance and remove red-eye, and organize your photos into albums right on your device to share them on the go.
PC Free feature With the new PC Free feature, iOS 5 users can activate and set up their iOS device right out of the box with no computer required, and iOS software updates are delivered over the air and installed with just a tap. Wi-Fi Sync in iOS 5 transfers and backs up your content securely over SSL and wirelessly syncs purchased content from your device to your iTunes® library.
The iOS 5 beta software and SDK are available immediately for iOS Developer Program members at developer.apple.com. iOS 5 will be available as a free software update for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, iPod touch (fourth generation) and iPod touch (third generation) this fall.
The new iCloud service will be offered for FREE and for those who had paid recently for the MobileMe service will get a refund. MobileMe service will gradually be taken over by iCloud.
Want to watch the whole keynote where these things were announced? Head on over to Apple.
You can also check out the Apple's iOS 5 video below :
Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m and will unveil iOS 5 and its new iCloud service at its WWDC show in San Francisco next week according to Apple.
At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering."
iCloud has been the subject of constant rumours in recent months. The service is expected to build on Apple's existing MobileMe offering, but may also include streaming access to people's music and video collections.
Earlier today BGR reported that Microsoft is buying Nokia’s mobile business for around $19 billion. While I usually don’t listen to hear-say and rumors, I think this deal is very likely to happen taking into consideration that Microsoft had picked up Skype for $8 billion earlier and $19 billion for Nokia will surely seem like a bargain. It would make a lot of sense strategically to add Skype to the largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world.
Nokia will surely be a good fit for Microsoft as they have been playing behind the scene for years and perhaps this would be the best way for them to get in front of the game. And owning Nokia will allow Microsoft to embed Windows OS on all their future devices instead of begging the other device manufacturers to embed them.
While its a great fit for Microsoft, i m not too sure whether the deal will pan out positively at the end as its going to take a lot of pursuasion to Nokia shareholders to give up their crown jewel mobile business. Even if the shareholders were to agree, its going to be fascinating to see whether other bodies like the US government, Finnish government, and the internal staff of Nokia will give the support and approval.
Good luck to Microsoft and Nokia and as for us, lets enjoy the show.
Fresh from rumors that Nokia would be selling off its handset division to Microsoft, new numbers from Gartner reveal that Nokia’s current market share is at its lowest since 1997. And things could only worsen while preparing to launch devices running on Windows OS.
While mobile devices growth has been astounding jumping 19% year on year, Nokia has lost 5.5%, Android took 36% of the pie and Apple doubled its number of iPhone sales. Nobody could had ever imagined that this would happened 4 years ago. Not only that, there are 3 chinese companies occupying the top 10 ie, ZTE, Huawei and HTC (to be more accurate, HTC is a Taiwanese company).
Google kicked off its annual I/O conference last night with some headline stats about the growth of its Android platform.
100 million Android devices have now been activated, with another 400,000 being activated every day. There are now 200,000 free and paid apps available in the Android Market store, which has generated more than 4.5 billion downloads so far.
Google's Android product management director Hugo Barra revealed the figures in a blog post published shortly after they were announced at I/O. He also revealed that there are now more than 310 individual Android devices available to buy.
So what's new with Android? Google talked about the next version of the OS, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich. "Our goal with Ice Cream Sandwich is to deliver one operating system that works everywhere, regardless of device," writes Barra. That means it will run across Android smartphones and tablets, in the same way that Apple's iOS 4.2 did for iPhone and iPad.
Android smartphone owners will get features including holographic UI, better multi-tasking, a new launcher and richer widgets that have so far been restricted to the Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS on tablets.
One big criticism of Android in recent months has been the time it takes for OS updates to be rolled out by operators and handset makers. As we reported yesterday, only 4% of Android handsets are running the latest smartphone version of the OS, 2.3 Gingerbread.
Google has now taken steps to speed things along though. It has created a 'founding team' of operators and handset makers including Verizon, HTC, Samsung, Sprint, Sony Ericsson, LG, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Motorola and AT&T to banish these update delays.
"We're jointly announcing that new devices from participating partners will receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after the device is first released, as long as the hardware allows," writes Barra. "And that's just the beginning."
More news at I/O included the launch of movie rentals in the Android Market, with thousands of films available from $1.99 that are watchable on tablets and smartphones, as well as online. The Motorola Xoom tablet on Verizon will be first to get an update to the Android Market client to enable these films to be watched, with other devices following in the coming weeks.
Asia-Pacific has become the world’s largest smartphone region, according to new figures from Canalys. Smartphone shipments in the region reached 37.3 million in the first quarter, a year-on-year growth rate of 98 percent, putting it ahead of EMEA for the first time since Q3 2007.
Asia-Pacific growth was driven by countries such as China, South Korea and India, which all recorded triple-digit growth. Overall, worldwide smartphone shipments grew 83 percent to 101.0 million units. Though its market share shrank from 39 percent a year ago to 24 percent in Q1 2011, Nokia held onto its worldwide leadership position with 24.2 million units shipped – a 13 percent year-on-year rise.
Asia-Pacific became the largest region for Nokia, accounting for 53 percent of its overall shipments, overtaking EMEA by more than 3 million units. Canalys’ country-level data shows that the vendor remains number one in 28 countries, including mainland China.
At the platform level, Google’s Android OS led the market for the second quarter running with 35.7 million units shipped, increasing its share to 35 percent driven by HTC, Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, with each vendor shipping well over 3 million devices.
Its a crazy quarter for Apple almost doubling its profit to $6 billion thanks to 3 main drivers, iPhone, MacBooks and China. The iPhone now makes up half of Apple’s revenues, or $12.3 billion in the quarter. Sales grew 126 percent in dollar terms, with unit sales up 113 percent. Its amazing taking into account this revenue was non existent 4 years ago and all this was created through just 1 device is simply astounding.
Greater China's sales which makes up of P.R. China, Hong Kong and Taiwan grew 250%, very soon the Asia Pac region will rank the 2nd largest market for Apple.
iPad sales were below the 6 million expectation coming in at 4.69 million presumably due to short of supply and possibly many buyers were waiting for the launch of iPad 2. The following quarter should reflect a much higher iPad sales thanks to the launch of the new iPad 2.
The current stock price for Apple seems so appetizing even though it has gone up so much in comparison to 2 years ago.
Such would not had been easily comprehended a few years ago. How can a giant like Nokia be smaller than a tiny Taiwanese handset manufacturer (HTC) who had almost negligible market share. As of today, HTC's market capitalisation had over taken global handset market leader Nokia, in a development that was seen to reflect HTC’s strength in the booming smartphone sector where Nokia is losing ground rapidly according to Bloomberg.
A 5.3% increase in HTC’s share price yesterday took its value to US$33.8 billion, ahead of Nokia’s US$33.6 billion. The value of HTC’s shares have tripled in the past year, as its smartphone growth outpaced the market, while Nokia has seen its value slide with a significant drop-off after it announcement of its alliance with Microsoft in February 2011.
While Nokia is still the bigger of the two in terms of operating profits and revenue, it is expected that Nokia will struggle from its current Symbian OS platform to Windows Phone, a process that is expected to take several years.
The bulk of Nokia’s volumes also come from low price, low margin devices, which means its operating margin is pressured. In contrast, HTC is focused on the more lucrative premium device sector, without the burdens associated with delivering a mass-market handset portfolio meaning it has healthier operating margins.
The position for Nokia is just going to get worst before it gets better. The road ahead is definitely going to be more than just bumpy.
Google's Android OS continues to go from strength to strength in the US, with a third of smartphone owners now having an Android handset according to comScore's latest stats.
Android's share of US smartphone owners climbed from 26% in November 2010 to 33% in February 2011, overtaking BlackBerry, which fell from 33.5% to 28.9% in the same period. Apple's iOS is holding its own, with a 25.2% share in February 2011.
Microsoft's Windows Mobile and Windows Phone combined share fell from 9% to 7.7% in the same period, while webOS' share declined from 3.9% to 2.8%. Overall, 69.5 million Americans now own smartphones, according to comScore's MobiLens data.
The growth in smartphones continues to affect content usage among US mobile users as a whole. 36.6% of all US mobile subscribers used downloaded apps in February - up from 33.4% in November. 24.6% played games (up from 22.6%) and 26.8% used social networking services from their phones (up from 23.5%).
Overall market share by handset maker in the US with Samsung in the lead taking a 24.8% share of all US mobile subscribers in February, followed by LG (20.9%), Motorola (16.1%), Research In Motion (8.6%) and Apple (7.5%).
Google is putting more control over its open-source Android mobile operating system in a bid to halt ecosystem fragmentation, informing operator and manufacturer partners it must now approve all significant tweaks to the platform. About a dozen executives from firms including LG, Toshiba and Samsung told Bloomberg Businessweek that Google has stated it will no longer tolerate random changes to the Android OS nor will it accept Android-related partnerships forged outside of its domain.
Sources say that in recent months, Google has demanded that Android licensees adhere to "non-fragmentation clauses" that award the company final approval over new user interface tweaks and service additions. Although Google has always included these clauses in its Android license but many had cracked down on its policies.
Android smartphone shipments topped 33.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, translating to a 32.9 percent share of the global smartphone market, research firm Canalys reported in January a year earlier, Android shipments represented just 8.7 percent of the worldwide market, a 615.1 percent annual leap. Google's choice to make Android available as an open-source platform is arguably the most decisive factor behind the operating system's staggering growth, with smartphones now available from a host of manufacturers and carriers both in the U.S. and abroad.
Last week, Google said it has temporarily restricted access to the new Android 3.0, the first version of the OS designed from the ground up, for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets.
More than 250 million people are now accessing Facebook from their mobile phones according to Facebook. That represents rapid growth, since in February 2010 it passed the 100 million mark.
Alongside the new mobile milestone, Facebook has relaunched its mobile web presence, merging its two sites m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com. The former was for feature phones, while the latter was for touchscreen smartphones.
Now they will use the same framework, but Facebook will automatically serve the best version of the site for each device that visits it, according to what features they have or don't have.
