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Thursday 19 May 2011

Gartner: Manufacturers Slide, Android & Smartphones Rise [ 19-05-2011 19:42 ]

Author: Irina Turina Source: Gartner Translation by: Paul Smith

I mentioned in an earlier post today about Gartner releasing figures for Windows Phone 7. Well it wasn't just Windows Phone 7 of course, Gartner have released data that allows us to paint a picture of the mobile industry in general during Q1 of this year. So without further ado let's get straight into those figures!

As a whole the mobile phone industry saw a 19% rise in sales year on year for a totalof 427.8 million in Q1. Smartphones, according to Gartner "... continued to outpace the rest of the market ...". Indeed smartphones made up 23.6% of all mobilephone sales during Q1, which year on year is an increase of 85%.

As for the individual manufacturers it was something of a mixed bag with the general trend being one of losing market share. Nokia, for example, saw their market share drop from 30.6% in Q1 2010 to 25.1% in Q1 2011. That was based off of sales of 110.105 million in Q1 2010 compared with 107.556 million in Q1 2011. The other major players didn't do much better though; Samsung fell from 18% to 16.1% whilst LG fell from 7.6% to 5.6%.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though as Apple bucked the trend and increased its market share from 2.3% to 3.9% and saw sales of 16.883 million in Q1 2011 comapred with 8.270 million in Q1 2010. RIM too saw an increase in handsets shipped, 13 million in Q1 2011, up from 10.752 million in Q1 2010. Unfortunately for RIM that wasn't enough of an increase to see their 3% market share increase, but at least it meant that it didn't go down either.

When we turn to smartphones we see a healthier picture though. Android's amrket share leapt up from just 9.6% in Q1 last year to 36% in Q1 this year. That was based on sales of 5.226 million last year and 36.267 million this year. Symbian, by contrast, saw its market share free fall from 44.2% to 27.4%. iOS saw a modest rise from 15.3% to 16.8% and RIM's increasingly poor receptiona mongst customers continued as it saw its share fall from 19.7% to 12.9%.

The smartphone market as a whole is increasingly being dominated by Android as it takes Symbian's place as the world's preferred platform. To a lesserextent iOS is also a major player; whilst it has less reach and market share than Android it is still showing growth whereas other platforms are either declining or making little real headway.

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Apple Signs EMI Cloud Music Deal [ 19-05-2011 19:32 ]

Author: Irina Turina Source: CNET Translation by: Paul Smith

CNET re reporting that Apple has fired the latest shot in the cloud music war by singing a deal with record label EMI. CNET cites various sources close to the industry and say that Apple is not far off signing similar deals with Sony, and Universal. Warner are already supposed to have signed an agreement with Apple; sometime last month according to an earlier CNET report.

Apple's strategy here is definitely not to be first, both Google will almost certainly beat Apple to launching first, but by getting the major labels onboard Apple is no doubt aiming for a top tier quality service that will give them much more room to play around in when it comes to offering users choice.

Google's recently unveiled Google Music service doesn't have the backing of the record labels (yet) and so, for the moment, it is basically a glorified cloud based storage service for your music. By getting the labels onboard Apple can offer that sort of service too, but can also then look to offer up new music purchases as well. Indeed Apple look to be using a service called 'scan and match', which will do pretty much what it says on the tin. You get your music scanned and instead of uploading that file to the cloud the use would be given access to a cloud based copy of the master file.

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Video: Comparing Galaxy S & Galaxy S II Screens At Sub-Pixel Level [ 19-05-2011 19:19 ]

Author: Irina Turina Source: Engadget Translation by: Paul Smith

I'm a geek. There I said it. Most of you reading this probably are too. I love technology and I love diving into the nitty gritty of it all, but even I think that perhaps comparing the screens of the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II on the sub-pixel level is taking things a bit too far. Yes I said 'sub-pixel' level.

Well that is precisely what the folks at Engadget's Spanish site have done. No doubt some of you might be into this extreme level of detail so for your viewing pleasure take a butcher's at this (skip to around 1:40 in for the sub-pixelated action):

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Video: Sony SmartAR Demos Sweet Ass AR [ 19-05-2011 19:04 ]

Author: Irina Turina Source: Sony Translation by: Paul Smith

I'm one of those people that loves the concept of AR (augmented reality), but finds the current implementation to be at best a novelty and at worst just downright useless/annoying. Sure it has oodles of promise, but most of what we see now is either a bit situational or the really cool looking stuff requires either very powerful handsets for rendering or some sort of extraneous markers for the handset to latch on to.

Well Sony have been showing off some of their SmartAR technology and admittedly I am rather impressed. The response times are sweet and there are no frikkin markers! The video is well worth a look and make sure you keep your eyes peeled for arather hot little piece of action near the end; the animated figure continuing to move merrily along even when the original anchor object is no longer in direct sight of the camera on the handset.

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Windows Mobile Outsold Windows Phone In Q1? [ 19-05-2011 18:20 ]

Author: Irina Turina Source: Gartner Translation by: Paul Smith

The Windows Phone 7 launch late last year was notably shrouded in mystery when it came to sales figures, an area Microsoft is still not keen on shedding much light on. LG famously panned the launch saying it hadn't lived up to expectations. However, now analyst firm Gartner has weighed in with an estimate of Windows Phone 7 sales for Q1. Well actually it goes a little beyond that because Gartner estimates sales for Microsoft mobile OS devices in general i.e. it includesWindows Mobile.

The estimate is some 3.6 million devices sold and of that Gartner estimates around 1.6 million were Windows Phone 7 devices. The obvious factoid here would be that the older Windows Mobile platform outsold the newer Windows Phone. Gartner aren't too impressed by these numbers and say that it demonstrates an inability to 'grow in consumer preference' or in English not many people are buying it. To be fair Gartner did predict a better picture for Windows Phone once Nokia's contribution starts to kick in.

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