iOS and Android gamers spend 3X as much as handheld console owners

By Christian Zibreg on May 17, 2013

I still remember vividly how industry heavy-weights Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft initially laughed off gaming on the iPhone. It was right after Apple slashed the iPod touch to the sweet $199 price point that it became clear to me that gaming on high-end smartphones and tablets would eventually outgrow that on dedicated handheld consoles such as Sony’s PSP and Nintendo’s DS family.

Enter a new report by research firm IDC and analytics service App Annie which reveals just how far along mobile gaming has come. According to the study, users of smartphones and tablets spend nearly three times as much purchasing games on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store as handheld device owners.

If these numbers are anything to go by, smart mobile devices will soon relegate dedicated handheld consoles to a niche market, if not eventually kill the category altogether… Read More

 

IDC: Apple, Android own 92% smartphone volume, Windows Phone beats BlackBerry

By Ed Sutherland on May 16, 2013

Just days after rival research firm Gartner released quarterly sales for iOS and Android, rival IDC today announced similar numbers for shipments of smartphones. Combined, iOS and Android maintained their stranglehold on the smartphone market, accounting for more than an astounding 92 percent of shipments during the first quarter of 2013.

In a surprising move, shipments of the Windows Phone smartphone operating system surpassed the BlackBerry OS, putting Microsoft in third place behind Android and iOS. I bet you didn’t see that one coming… Read More

 

Apple’s China sales neared 7M as iPhone 4 fuels demand

By Ed Sutherland on May 15, 2013

When seeking increased sales of mobile phones, observers need to look east. That’s the word from one large analyst firm, noting more than half of all mobile phones sold during the first quarter of 2013 were in the Asia/Pacific market. For Apple, its sales in mainland China alone neared seven million units during the period, largely credited to the lower-priced iPhone 4. Worldwide, the California-based smartphone maker saw its share of mobile phone sales rise… Read More

 

Canalys: one in five smart devices are Apple

By Ed Sutherland on May 9, 2013

Research firm Canalys Thursday offered data on first-quarter smart mobile device shipments, with an estimated 300+ million new units for a 37.4 percent year-over-year growth. Google’s Android powered 59 percent and Apple’s iOS powered a little over nineteen percent of these devices, according to researchers. Key takeaways: Android leads the smartphone race, Apple is holding onto the tablet market and laptop demand continues falling.

Pay attention to Canalys’s parlance because ‘smart mobile devices’ include smartphones, tablets and laptops. Another important caveat: Canalys stats don’t divulge shipped vs sold units. This is an important distinction as a device shipped into a channel does not automatically result in a device sold to a consumer… Read More

 

Behind the data: iPad market share fell below 40 percent, or did it?

By Ed Sutherland on May 2, 2013

In the latest lesson on how to be a smart tech news consumer, we focus on why research pointing to Apple gains somehow is trumpeted as losses for the iPad maker.

Wednesday, research firm IDC announced Apple’s tablet saw a 65 percent year-over-year gain in first-quarter shipments.

Yet several news outlets blared headlines of the iPad’s market share falling below 40 percent. How was Apple’s strong growth spun into an Android win? Read More

 

Despite Android’s gains, iPhone and iPad still account for 59% of mobile web usage

By Christian Zibreg on May 2, 2013

Despite Apple’s iPad growing 65.3 percent year over year, the company’s share of the total tablet market dropped from the 58.1 percent a year ago to an IDC-estimated 39.6 percent during the first quarter of this year, largely thanks to Apple not participating in the sub-$300 segment.

The rise of these cheap tablets improved Google platform’s web usage share, with Android smartphones and tablets now owning 26 percent of all web traffic, a 35 percent annual gain as measured by research firm NetApplications.

In other words, one out of each four mobile devices used on the web are Android-branded, though Apple’s iPhone and iPad still account for a commanding 59.4 percent of the Internet’s traffic generated by mobile devices… Read More

 

Trust Twitter and Google, not Apple, to protect you from government data demands

By Christian Zibreg on May 1, 2013

Well, this is certainly noteworthy. According to the third annual report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) titled “Who Has Your Back?”, gadget giant Apple along with carriers AT&T and Verizon, Google’s rival Yahoo and the forgotten social network MySpace all are very likely to give in to Uncle Sam’s data demands.

Specifically, Apple and Yahoo scored one out of six possible stars, with Verizon and Yahoo rather ingloriously earning zero stars each. These companies’ weak safeguard implementation does little to circumvent data demands and protect your private information from the government’s prying eyes.

Whereas Apple and Yahoo only fight for users’ privacy rights in Congress, companies like Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Dropbox go to great lengths to ensure privacy of your data, earning four out of six stars each… Read More

 

Consumer Reports again rates Apple best in tech support

By Ed Sutherland on May 1, 2013

Apple once again is rated best at providing technical support to consumers, according to Consumer Reports, an influential American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union since 1936. This year’s overall score of 86 out of 100 topped Apple’s 2012 rating, the publication announced.

Additionally, Apple’s retail Geek Bar solved nearly 90 percent of tech problems, higher than Best Buy’s lookalike Geek Squad bars. The iPhone maker produced the highest survey results, outstripping its nearest competitor, Lenovo, which scored 63. Apple’s success was due to a number of factors, according to the Consumer Reports survey… Read More

 

Chart: Android owns two-thirds of smartphone sales – or does it?

By Ed Sutherland on May 1, 2013

Some intriguing numbers were released Monday on how one research firm views the smartphone race between iOS and Android. According to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Google’s Android averages a 64 percent unit share of the smartphone market across ten countries.

Apple leads in Japan while Android’s doing its best in Spain, where the mobile software owns an astounding 93 percent of the smartphone market.

In the U.S., the race is much tighter, with Android holding 49.3 percent and Apple owning 43.7 percent of the domestic market. But the rivals might be even closer as observers question how accurate Kantar is, given recent iPhone sales reports by U.S. carriers… Read More

 

Post-PC news: China zooms past US in PC sales, netbooks on life support

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 30, 2013

For US PC buyers accustom to receiving items from China, here’s a switch: new research indicates more computers are being shipped into China than America. After China became the largest PC market in terms of buyers, the country is now also the world’s top market when it comes to shipping.

According to IHS iSuppli, in 2012 69 million PCs were shipped into China, compared to 66 million units headed for the United States. Despite its size, China still has some catching-up to do with the rest of the world. For instance, while most countries have moved on from desktop computers, a full half of PCs shipped to China are desktops.

That’s just one of many intriguing differences in the world’s largest PC market… Read More

 

iPad tops JD Power’s satisfaction scores for second time

By Christian Zibreg on Apr 29, 2013

After topping J.D. Power and Associates’ customer satisfaction rankings for smartphones for the ninth consecutive study, Apple’s iPad has now emerged victorious in JD Power’s February 2013 tablet rankings. Specifically, the iPad recorded a score of 836 on JD Power’s overall TabletIndex Rankings.

The index is based on a 1,000-point scale. Amazon’s tablet scored 829 versus the study average of 828 points. The third and fourth-ranked Samsung and Asus tablets received respective scores of 822 and 818 while Acer came in fifth with a score of 782.

Despite Apple’s relatively modest lead in TabletIndex rankings, the iPad fared far better in consumer ratings, another important metric of the JD Power study. Consumers rated the Apple tablet ‘Among the Best,’ giving it a score of five out of five. Interestingly enough, no other tablet was rated about ‘Above Average’ (four out of five) while Acer received the lowest ranking of 2 out of 5 denoting ‘The Rest’… Read More

 

If Apple loyalty holds up, iPhone will surpass Android in U.S. market share by 2015

By Christian Zibreg on Apr 26, 2013

Whenever I stumble upon a survey predicting that Apple’s iPhone will loose traction to not just Android, but Windows Phone as well, my blood starts to boil in my veins.

And just like clockwork, you can count on the likes of IDC and Gartner to come out of the woodwork every now and then with wild predictions of the iPhone’s demise by 2015, 2016 or 2017.

History has taught me to take such long-term predictions with a healthy dose of skepticism, even more so if data comes from big name firms whose crystal ball peering is based on “polls” that sample a few hundred random people, at best.

With that in mind, here’s a survey that paints a rather rosy future for the Apple smartphone. Noting that Android is actually losing one out of every six customers to other phone vendors, Yankee Group ran their spreadsheets and determined that Apple will surpass Android in U.S. market share by 2015, provided Apple brand loyalty numbers hold up in the coming years… Read More

 

A first: smartphone shipments outnumber feature phones

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 26, 2013

For some time, the mobile phone industry has been shifting toward more powerful smartphones and away from basic mobile phones. Now comes word that smartphones outnumber feature phones for the first time. The line was crossed in the first quarter of 2013 with 216.1 million smartphones shipping, accounting for 51.6 percent of all handsets sold. Smartphone shipments grew 41.6 percent during the quarter, up from 152.7 million units shipped during the same period in 2012, one industry research firm announced Thursday… Read More

 

Flurry: US app audience nearly equals online laptops and desktops

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 25, 2013

Apps (whether iOS or Android) are attracting huge audiences in the United States. Indeed, during a recent month apps attracted nearly the same number of people as used laptop and desktop to go online. What’s more, for a prime-time period during the week apps attract 52 million users, equivalent to the circulation of the top 200 weekend U.S. newspapers and three television shows, according to numbers released by a mobile analytics firm Thursday…

Read More

 

Chitika: iPad usage kept rising in March

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 24, 2013

One day after Apple announced selling 19.5 million iPads during the second quarter, new numbers show the tablet dominated online traffic as late as last month. The device held the market in a stranglehold, controlling 81.9 percent of tablet web traffic in the US and Canada, according to an online advertising network. According to the Chitika Ad Network, the 1.4 percent increase is the first month-on-month advance in the iPad’s share of web traffic since December 2012…. Read More

 

Employees give Apple’s Cook approval rating just shy of Jobs

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 24, 2013

Wall Street has often questioned whether Apple CEO Tim Cook could ever fill the managerial shoes left by co-founder Steve Jobs. What’s more, some anti-Apple analysts like Rob Enderle in an article titled “The impossible task of fixing Apple” opines the board should fire Cook over the recent stock slide.

Despite those doubts, employees of the iPhone maker give Cook an approval rating just shy of Jobs, according to a new survey.

Cook – who oversaw one of Apple’s rockiest financial periods – gets a 93 percent approval rating from company employees, Glassdoor announced. The web site is similar to Yelp, but posts anonymous ratings of corporate management rather than businesses… Read More

 

One in five would buy iWatch, study finds

By Christian Zibreg on Apr 19, 2013

Apple’s rumored smartwatch, dubbed by the media iWatch, is a gadget nearly one in five people would buy, a study by ChangeWave Research has it.

With five percent respondents ‘Very Likely’ to buy an iWatch if and when it becomes available and an additional fourteen percent ‘Likely’ to purchase it, a total of nineteen percent of the 1,713 surveyed North Americans would consider a purchase.

Data bodes well for Apple as Gartner thinks the market for wearable smart electronics could be worth ten billion dollars by 2016. And if you ask analyst Katy Huberty, the iWatch could drive an incremental $10-$15 billion in revenue each year, assuming annual sales of 50 million units and an average selling price between $200 and $300… Read More

 

Apple choice of 58% enterprises, Android choice of 97% malware

By Ed Sutherland on Apr 17, 2013

A pair of reports issued yesterday really put the growth of mobile in perspective. Currently, the mobile landscape is dominated by two players – Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

While Apple is increasingly favored by companies big and small, Android has become the go-to vector for mobile malware, it seems.

Attacks involving mobile devices has risen dramatically in the space of just one year, skyrocketing to more than 36,000 instances in 2012, up from only 792 cases, according to a security research firm.

Meanwhile, large companies are adopting Apple devices at a faster clip than Android, according to another report… Read More

 

Four Apple execs dominate best-paid corporate jobs in America

By Christian Zibreg on Apr 15, 2013

Although Apple compensated its CEO Tim Cook for the calendar year 2012 with a $1.36 million base salary and $2.8 million in compensation related to incentive plans, he didn’t made the top five highest-rewarded corporate executives list in Standard & Poor’s top 500 companies. Instead, per Bloomberg’s report filed Monday, four members of the Apple leadership dominate that list.

To be clear, these numbers count both base salaries and stock options companies usually give to their top dogs as sort of a retainer. Specifically, Bob Mansfield, Peter Oppenheimer, Bruce Sewell and Jeffrey Williams all made the top five highest-paid execs list, according to fiscal 2012 compensation figures for top earners filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission… Read More

 

Apple widens U.S. lead over Samsung, makes ground on Google

By Christian Zibreg on Apr 4, 2013

OMG, Apple is screwed! In another data point proving Apple doomsayers need to re-run their spreadsheets, research firm comScore reported Thursday its latest survey of the United States market for smartphones has found Apple’s iPhone widening its lead over second-ranked Samsung, which has gone up one percentage point to grab a 21.3 percent share of US-owned smartphones during the three month average period ending February 2013.

During the same timeframe, Apple’s slice of the pie has gone up from 35.9 percent in November 2012 to 38.9 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers in February 2013, an increase of 3.9 percentage points. The good news doesn’t stop here: Apple’s iOS has increased 3.9 percentage points to 38.9 percent, matching Apple’s aforementioned smartphone share.

Google’s Android platform, available on numerous devices from dozens of manufacturers, still ranked as the top smartphone platform with a healthy 51.7 percent market share in February 2013, but it has dropped two percentage points from the November 20121 53.7 percent share… Read More

 
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