This is huge news for developers with an eye on emerging markets. In countries such as Indonesia, where third-party app store GetJar is used by nearly one in five of our survey respondents, traditional app marketing is clearly not the only option. These are unique markets in which different approaches are necessary to reach consumers and drive downloads. Indonesia is going to be a gigantic market.]]>
StoreDot has been developing biological semiconductors, made from naturally occurring organic compounds called peptides, or short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The technology can be used, among other things, to speed charging times, the company says.]]>
The Google Play store offers some 250 apps for downloading MP3 files to smartphones and tablets powered by its Android software. Several tout the benefit of connecting users to the sources of free music that they could find through a typical Internet search.
But, the most popular of these Android apps, Music Maniac, has been downloaded more than 10 million times — and affords free access to all 10 of the top songs listed on the current Billboard’s Hot 100 list. The Recording Industry Association of America said it has sent notices to Google requesting the app’s removal, claiming it enables song piracy. Google has thus far refused. The apps tend to have the get-out that they can legally be used to find free or uncopyrighted music.]]>
That makes sense: While Apple customers tend to be quite happy with iDevices, once someone puts down roots in the iOS ecosystem there is nowhere else to go. It’s easier for someone in the Android world to switch between, say, Samsung and HTC devices. In that light, Samsung’s 58% retention rate is a pretty good number. LG, Nokia, HTC, Sony, Motorola and BlackBerry all have retention rates ranging from 37% to 21%. Other things being equal (which they aren't, but it's a starting point), over time the brands with the stronger retention rates will see growth in users, while rivals will dwindle. That matches what's happening in the market.]]>
The latest subsidy war kicked off on Saturday when the companies announced subsidies of up to 1.2 million won ($1,100) for a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. Since the phones cost 954,000 won each, those who bought the S4 made off with a profit of 246,000 won.
The “bargain sale” went on for four days, and during that time, up to 112,000 subscribers switched telecom operators to get new smartphones, according to the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association.
The situation peaked on Tuesday ― dubbed by Korean media as a day of “smartphone chaos” ― when an online community announced that transferring to SK Telecom would yield discounts on purchases of the iPhone S5 and Galaxy Note 3. Somehow hilarious. (Via @tabdump.)]]>
Shares of Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung fell 13% since Nov. 29, losing more market capitalization than any other company worldwide. The stock will sink another 11%, said Adnaan Ahmad, an analyst at Berenberg in London whose recommendations during the past 12 months produced the best return among forecasters tracked by Bloomberg. He's forecasting that its smartphone margins will decline from 18% to 13%. Make a note in a diary and come back in a year. And note:
Most analysts still don’t recommend selling. Ahmad has one of only two such ratings on the stock, among 48 buy calls and 3 holds.]]>
They say that sales of the G2 have barely broken 600,000 units in South Korea during the product’s first four months of availability. To put that into some perspective, the company’s 2012 flagship phone, the Optimus G Pro, sold 540,000 units during the same span of time.
Moving on to international figures, the company had set itself an internal goal of selling 3m units of the G2 during the third quarter, but instead, sales were somewhere in the range of sub=2.3m. Add to this the increased marketing spend LG has committed to in order to get their name out there, and it looks like there will definitely be some management reshuffling by the time this year comes to a close.]]>
And as my lungs, eyes and nose burned with the pain of the lachrymatory agent released from multiple capsules that had fallen around me, I started cursing.
I cursed the gendered nature of tech design that has written out women from the group of legitimate users of phones as portable devices to be used on-the-go.
I cursed that what was taken for granted by the male designers and male users of modern phones was simply not available to me. As she says, she doesn't want a pink phone, or one with kittens; "I merely want a design that acknowledges that women exist, and women often have smaller hands than men."]]>
According to the new requirements, mobile terminal manufacturers applying for handset network access permits will be required to provide information about all preloaded handset software to the MIIT for vetting. As part of the new rules, handset manufacturers are prohibited from pre-installing any software that will collect or modify user information without the expressed permission of the user. Wonder who this is aimed at.]]>
The Early Adopters (the 13.5% which followed the innovators) were all using smartphones by the beginning of 2010. They were served mainly by iPhone 3GS and BlackBerries
The Early Majority were on board by October 2012, just in time for iPhone 4, Droid, Galaxy.
We are now in the Late majority which will run out by November 2015. The iPhone 5S came out about one third of the way through this period.
The next few years are shown in the following extrapolation. It's scary - but also encouraging - how well the installed base data (from ComScore) fits the logistic equation for 3.5 years of a 15-year graph. The US is a distorted market for how it prefers certain phone pricing, but undistorted in getting phones into peoples' hands.]]>
The problems with the HTC One Mini, launched in mid-July, come partly from a casing shortage arising from design difficulties, one of the sources said.
Another source said consumer and telecom demand for the One Mini could not be met at the moment, even though analysts estimate that the company plans to ship only around 200,000 of the devices each month. Asymco's Law: a handset company that falls into loss will end up bought, closed or merged within 2.5 years of its first loss. Start your clocks. ]]>
It turned out that the second-tier brand weakness was a herald of a global slowdown in phone sales, which ended up mortally wounding Ericsson’s phone unit and causing big problems for even Nokia and Motorola in the short term. The sudden summer deterioration of BlackBerry, HTC and Nokia in 2013 may thus not be a boon for their bigger rivals and Google’s Asian vendor armada. This could be a sign of an industry slowdown that will create a hairy Christmas for all players.]]>
It's crazy that a feature like this hasn't been put into place already, right? Even just with the passcode? So much effort has gone into features like Find My iPhone and Windows Phone's Find My Phone and Android Device Manager, and yet you skirt around them just by turning off the damn phone. Yes. Why hasn't anyone implemented this?]]>
The statement, from an Amazon spokesman, refutes a report from website JessicaLessin.com on Friday that the Seattle company has been exploring options to offer a smartphone free of cost.
“We have no plans to offer a phone this year,” said the spokesman in an email on Sunday. “If we were to launch a phone in the future, it would not be free.” It is the first time Amazon has responded in detail to reports about developing a smartphone. It rebutted it, not refuted it. One refutes a proof (showing it to be false through evidence); one rebuts a claim. Without letting us into Amazon's labs, this can't be a refutation.]]>
Even with the heavily discounted iPhone 4 in the mix, only 2% of Apple's unit sales so far have come from iPhones selling for less than $300. (Samsung, by contrast, gets 60% of its smartphone sales from devices that cost $300 or less.) The graph itself is quite remarkable. Nokia has the highest percentage of sub-$300 phones (because of its feature phone business). The next-biggest is a surprise, though.]]>
The second devastating setback for HTC is the Microsoft acquisition of Nokia. The buzz in Helsinki this week is that Microsoft is going to implement major price cuts of Lumia models as it prepares to fight for market share in Asia and Europe. Microsoft must cut prices on Lumia models ruthlessly because it will lose the Windows platform support of Samsung and HTC now that it is competing directly against them.]]>
The architect of this turnaround plan, Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga, has warned he would weed out any division that fails to meet a 5% operating margin goal within three years.
Tsuga told Reuters in an interview that the company's mobile division was likely to lose more than the 1.1bn yen ($11.02m) targeted loss for the financial year ending next March. Panasonic's mobile division posted an 8.1bn yen loss last year. In 2001, it was the second-largest handset maker in Japan. Now? It's all Apple and Samsung.]]>
"Android is the wild card, deserving close observation for the rest of this year and the years to come," added Llamas. Proving that hindsight is 20/20 (or 6/6).]]>
The list at the time consisted of 13 phone vendors who either merged, were liquidated or acquired after this trigger point was reached. There were no examples of vendors who recovered. Since then two more vendors reached the threshold (Nokia and RIM) and a third will do so this quarter (HTC). One vendor (LG) may be recovering but Nokia has just been acquired and RIM has put itself up for sale. Some Japanese vendors like Panasonic have also called it quits since then. So the score so far is about 18 triggers, 15 exits and three pending. Only LG, owned by a bigger conglomerate, has escaped the black hole. It's not promising for HTC or BlackBerry.]]>
Taipei prosecutors confirmed that HTC vice president of product design Thomas Chien, research and development director Wu Chien-Hung and senior manager of design and innovation Justin Huang were arrested on Friday.
Chien and Chien-Hung remain in custody, while Huang was released on bail, prosecutors office spokesman Mou Hsin Huang said.
The executives were also accused of making false commission fee claims totaling around T$10 million ($334,200). No further details about the allegations were immediately available.]]>
The Z10 is now available free on a two-year contract at several outlets such as Best Buy. And BlackBerry has started offering employees the chance to buy up to 10 Z10s, contract-free, for less than $100 each, according to a person familiar with the matter. BlackBerry said it offers its products to employees at special rates.
In Canada, BlackBerry's home turf, the Q10 was expected to sell briskly. But sales appear to have fallen flat there as well.
"I think we'd all say that the Q10, the one we all thought was going to be the savior, just hit the ground and died," an executive at a Canadian carrier said. "It didn't drive the numbers that anybody expected." BlackBerry's current quarter ends on Saturday; it reports results on 27 September.]]>
Development of the smartphone operating system is being closely monitored by HTC's Chairwoman Cher Wang, who has been in discussions with Chinese government officials, said the people. The software involves deep integration with Chinese apps like the Twitter-like microblog Weibo and is slated to launch before the end of the year, they said.
…HTC's China-specific software would play into a wider Chinese government policy to encourage the development of a unique local software ecosystem to reduce reliance on Western companies. A key question: is it Android, or something else? Google strongarmed Acer over its plans last year to offer a forked Android phone in China.]]>
While desktop web usage is still increasing, and tablet now accounts for a meaningful share, we can see that smartphone usage is the biggest driver of growth. Desktop/laptop time up 14%; smartphone used quintupled; tablet time from zero to more than one-fifth of the 2013 desktop/laptop time (and equivalent to a quarter of the 2010 figure for desktop/laptop time).]]>
I'm on holiday in a remote corner of Wales, cut off from mobile connectivity and therefore unable to check the important things going on in the outside world. Football transfer rumours for example.
I've also little idea what's going on in the mobile space, which makes it tricky for me to comment on the week's big news.
So instead, I quizzed three youngsters about their phone habits. They are Lois (16), Marnie (14) and Lucy (12). Really fascinating interview. (Not very comforting for BlackBerry though.) Be interesting to see a version interviewing boys.]]>
Smartphone vendors' move is not only changing the ecosystem of the smartphone industry, but also showing vendors' intention of seizing demand from the 7in tablet market, which is already plagued by a fierce price war.
Although vendors of 7in tablets have already launched their counterstrike by promoting the phablet concept, adding the talk function to tablet devices, their move may be unable to turn the tide. This might be the case in Asia, but it's hard to imagine large numbers of western users walking around with 6in phones.]]>
The CIRP report is the most detailed we've seen on where Apple and Samsung get their customers. Caveat: US-only.]]>
The mobile industry’s shift to smartphones has dramatically changed the fate of Japanese handset makers. Most of them have failed to expand their smartphone operations outside of the domestic market, while global brands like Apple and Samsung have gained popularity among Japanese smartphone users.
So it is no surprise that more Japanese companies may be thinking about pulling the plug on their smartphone businesses. NEC stopped last week, and Panasonic looks likely to follow. Apple is the largest smartphone vendor there (35.9% share), followed by Fujitsu (13%) and Sony (12%). It's rather like an island that's been cut off from evolution that abruptly gets visitors from overseas.]]>
The company’s mobile unit shipped 12.1m smartphones during the April-June period, the highest-ever quarterly figure throughout its history, and recorded revenue of KRW3.12try ($2.78 bn), up 34.5% from the same period a year earlier. And operating income too. LG seems to be the counterexample to the idea that you can't come back from a loss.]]>
Over the past several days the A10 has appeared in both picture and video format and seems to be a larger 5-inch smartphone with design similarities to the Z10. A new image has found its way online, this time it’s apparently from a internal presentation and reveals all the important specs. Always assuming you think the specs are what makes the difference. Empirical evidence suggests it's not.]]>
But phone trafficking is driven largely by the massive profits made by exploiting the price difference between smartphones sold in the U.S. and overseas. Americans who agree to two-year service contracts with their cell phone company can buy the latest iPhones for about $200 - a price subsidized by the carrier. In Hong Kong, an iPhone can be sold for as much as $2,000.
This equation helps explain why more than 1.6 million Americans were victims of smartphone theft last year and why thefts of mobile devices now make up 40% of all robberies in major American cities. The article looks at a store which was a nexus for stolen smartphones swapped for cash. Quite an eye-opener.]]>
Little movement is seen within the carriers, with Verizon leading smartphone sales at 34.6%, AT&T in second (29%), and Sprint in third (12.7%). Most notably, T-Mobile remains in fourth place with 10.1% of smartphone sales, down 3.4% versus the three months ending May 2012.
The data is derived from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech USA’s consumer panel, which is the largest continuous consumer research mobile phone panel of its kind in the world. Kantar emphasises that it records sales rather than "market share" - though doesn't make clear what it thinks the difference is. But: Android + iOS = 93.9%. Add in Windows Phone, and you've got just 1.5% left for BlackBerry.]]>
This was originally pointed out in a white paper (PDF) by ST-Ericsson, which notes that on the PC multicore never really caught on for a variety of reasons, and they apply even less on the smartphone.
The reason why software developers don’t parallelize their code, wrote the paper's authors, is that “For most of the PC applications it is simply not necessary or not economical to do so, with the exception of some niche markets for which performance is a compelling differentiating feature, such as for some multimedia applications, CAD and some specific professional areas."
…“Two cores make sense, four is experimental, eight is loony,” said Cameron Laird, vice president of boutique Web consultancy Phase It and frequent author on HTML5 development (including several articles here at SmartBear). He expects that smartphones will eventually be able to utilize two cores.]]>
Without giving a timeline, HP Senior Director Consumer PC and Media Tablets Asia Pacific Yam Su Yin told PTI that the company is focusing on all segments including tablet PCs, notebook PCs as well as all-in-ones (AIOs).
When asked if a smartphone is in the offing, she said: "The answer is yes but I cannot give a timetable. It would be silly if we say no. HP has to be in the game." If only there were a struggling smartphone company with a good reputation inside enterprises that HP could buy. Then again...]]>
“Consumers find no good reason to buy the S4 since it has no big difference with its predecessor,” said Oh Sang Woo, an analyst at Leading Investment & Securities in Seoul. “Chinese companies are becoming a bigger threat to Samsung than any other players.”
The Galaxy S4 - with a 5in screen, 13-megapixel camera and motion-detecting software - is one of three high-end handsets being released by Samsung this year. The device is part of the company’s plan to win customers from Apple, which was the top smartphone seller in the U.S. in the last quarter of 2012. Ben Thompson at Stratechery forecast this at the end of April.]]>
Much may be riding on when Apple debuts new phones and how appealing they are. Right now, the sizzle seems to have gone out of the phone market.]]>
"We joke that a product's not done until it's sealed in the box," a longtime HTC engineer says.
David Yoffie, a member of HTC's board and Mr. Chou's former professor at Harvard Business School, says the possibility of changing the company's chief executive has never been raised during a board meeting.
"The board has a lot of confidence in Peter, and share price is not going to drive decisions on the future of the chief executive," Mr. Yoffie says. The headline oversells it; the piece doesn't explain how HTC lost its way. (Subscription required.)]]>
The parts and components orders will be enough for production of 20-25m units of Galaxy S4 in the second quarter and 20m units in the third quarter, the sources indicated.
But this does not mean that Samsung is losing its competitiveness in the smartphone segment, but rather indicates an underlying structural change in the industry, where demand for entry-level to midrange smartphones is rising sharply in China and other emerging markets, and the market for high-end models is becoming saturated, said the sources.]]>
But once the HTC Desire was welcomed by global consumers and telecom operators at the time, Samsung "strategically declined" to supply its AMOLED displays to the smartphone maker, Tong said at a local forum on mobile broadband.
"We found that key component supply can be used as a competitive weapon," he said. Wonder what proportion of HTC components now come from Samsung. (Via Androidbeat.)]]>
"Growth in this region is primarily driven by affordable smartphones which averaged in the price range of US$100-$200," said [GfK director Gerard] Tan. "However, the rise of local brands in countries such as Philippines and Indonesia has resulted in the growing market share of those in the US$50-$100 price segment - the budget price range which bridges the transition from basic mobile phones to smartphones."
Within the smartphone segment, two specific features that are increasingly popular with buyers and often the deciding factor of which model to purchase are the display sizes and operating system. Screens 4.5in and above are 20% and rising of sales; Android is 70% of smartphone sales. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)]]>
Dediu: The question is academic. The more important question is when will mobile broadband be available to all those who own smartphones. The economics of providing bandwidth are out of sync with the economics of providing terminals that can consume it. If it continues this way, all those smartphones will not be used for mobile data and will thus be essentially dumb. This is a key point, often overlooked.]]>
For a time, running an ISP was a trendy thing. Some 150 companies presently have a license, and about 20 are operational. But many of them are finding it hard to stay afloat. Even cyber cafés, many of which are run by ISPs, are beginning to shut down. Ghana’s biggest, which had 100 connections and its own satellite connection, closed in February. One would guess that mobile broadband is a lot higher than 23% by 2013. Another unexpected consequence of the rise of the smartphone: in effect, it drives arbitrage between pricing of mobile and fixed broadband.]]>
Think of how tough this must be for Microsoft. When Nokia partnered with the Redmond giant, they HAD to know Symbian was going to disappear at the low end of the market within a few years. They had a chance to push Windows into the low end quickly, to avoid this brutal ending. But they didn’t do it. They entered the race at the top of the market, and things aren’t going well.
Sadly for Microsoft, I think we’re now seeing a story unfold where Google wins the low end, Google and Apple are winning the top end, and everyone else is fighting for a relevance, or ownership of a niche segment of the market. (Thanks @modelportfolio2003 for the link.)]]>
Against that litigious backdrop, on 4 March 2011, Apple quietly acquired Icon and 11 other Mitsubishi patents. (Presumably, Apple either paid the Japanese company for the portfolio or did an in‑kind exchange of IP, but neither firm would comment.)
Just five months later, Apple transferred those dozen patents to an entity called Cliff Island, a shell company created by Digitude Innovations. Headquartered in Alexandria, Va., Digitude describes itself as a patent acquisition and licensing company. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap?]]>
PC shipments in 2012 to China amounted to 69m units, exceeding the 66m total reached by the US. Only a year earlier in 2011, the US was the leading global destination for PCs.
Beyond its large size, China's PC market exhibits distinct characteristics that set it apart from the computer trade elsewhere, possessing a vast untapped rural market and unique consumer-purchasing patterns. While desktop shipments lagged notebooks around the world, the two PC segments were on par in China in 2012, with an even 50%-50% split.
"The equal share of shipments for desktops and notebooks in China is unusual, since consumers in most regions today tend to prefer more agile mobile PCs, rather than the bulky, stationary desktops," said Peter Lin, senior analyst for compute platforms at IHS. "The relatively large percentage of desktop shipments in China is due to huge demand in the country's rural areas, which account for a major segment of the country's 1.34bn citizens. These consumers tend to prefer the desktop form factor." Total smartphone sales in China in 2012: over 210m.]]>
In the worldwide smartphone market, vendors shipped 216.2m units in 1Q13, which marked the first time more than half (51.6%) the total phone shipments in a quarter were smartphones. The market grew 41.6% compared to the 152.7m units shipped in 1Q12, but 5.1% lower than the 227.8m units shipped in 4Q12. Samsung + Apple is 50% of the smartphone market; Samsung is 32.7% of the smartphone market on its own, more than the next four biggest vendors (Apple, LG, Huawei, ZTE) combined. Next question: should we still keep the smartphone/feature phone split?]]>
Microsoft is introducing "Switch to Windows Phone", an Android app that finds identical or replacement applications for Windows Phone 8 to replace their old Android apps.
The new application, which is being released today, is not available for iPhone.
"Switch to Windows Phone" inventories all the applications on the Android phone and sends that inventory to the Microsoft SkyDrive cloud. When customers log in to the same SkyDrive account from the Switch to Windows Phone app loaded on their Windows Phone 8, the app finds the same set of applications. If there are no exact replacements, the app recommends similar ones, according to Guru Gowrappan, executive vice president for products at application search firm Quixey. A very smart idea. Howcome no iPhone version?]]>
he thin bezel surrounding the screen made using the phone one-handed more difficult because of the ever-present hazard of inadvertently hitting the Menu button or the Back button — a mistake that tended to happen as I was trying to type an email or text message.
…Is it the best Android phone out there? No, but that shouldn't stop people from buying it if they find Samsung's additions to Android appealing. Seems to be the tenor of most of the coverage. "Kitchen sink" also gets used a lot. S-Health and the Universal Remote function are popular, though Smart Pause (you look away, video pauses) comes in for ridicule.]]>
Employees are questioning the intrusion of corporate eyes on their personal devices. Did IT turn their beloved smartphone into a spy that tracks their whereabouts? Employees are beginning to sense companies taking advantage of BYOD by intruding on personal time to get free work time.
Now they're thinking about suing.
"I anticipate a bunch of little [lawsuits], then something big will happen that'll be a class action and become headline news," says CEO John Marshall at AirWatch, an enterprise mobile device management (MDM) vendor with 6,500 customers, including Lowe's, United Airlines and Best Buy.
It has already started. A lawsuit currently winding its way in a federal court in Chicago claims that the city owes some 200 police officers millions of dollars in overtime back pay because officers were pressured into answering work-related calls and emails over department-issued BlackBerrys during off-hours.
While this particular case doesn't involve BYOD, there's no question BYOD blurs the line even more between work life and personal life. There's no actual evidence presented that lawsuits are looming - only the suspicion that things are going to get more complicated than they at first appeared. (Thanks @JohnnieGoat for the link.)]]>
This is clearly a challenge for any handset OEM, but especially for one at the high end. There are fewer and fewer new high-end buyers coming into the market and the ones you sold to in the past may increasingly be tempted by ever improving cheaper phones. So a high-end phone maker risks losing sales if it stays at the high-end, or losing margin if it makes cheaper phones, or both.
In case it isn' t obvious, this is the essence of the bear story for Apple. There's lots of froth and nonsense swirling around as well, but this is a perfectly coherent and intelligent story. It isn't that Apple is losing sales to Android (it isn't, at least not yet) - it's that the high-end market itself may be close to tapped out. This is the point where you have to figure out how the phone market is going to split.]]>
Besides, as telecom operators switched from competition for subsidies to service-based competition (e.g. free voice call payment plans), the number of people wishing to trade in their old phones slumped.]]>