Ed Sutherland

iPhone sales quadruple in India, but gap remains

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 8, 2013

When it comes to Apple's push to enter emerging markets like China, India's huge pool of consumers has largely been overlooked. Indeed, one of that country's leading newspapers charged Apple has "ignored" India, until recently.

From adopting the Indian rupee in the App Store to including local musicians in iTunes, the company has increased sales by up to 400 percent in four months. However, Apple still faces a large gap: only ten percent of India's residents own a smartphone and rival Samsung is the clear leader, researchers say...

Sprint sold record 2.2M iPhones during the holiday quarter

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

U.S. carrier Sprint, the latest wireless provider to offer the Apple iPhone, announced Thursday it sold a record 2.2 million during the holiday fourth-quarter. A total of 6.6 million iPhones were sold for all of 2012, according to the company. Despite complaints of losses due to high subsidies, the iPhone has improved Sprint's ability to attract new customers.

The company said 38 percent of iPhone buyers during the fourth quarter were new subscribers. That's just slightly below the 40 percent of iPhones purchased by new customers throughout the entire year, according to the firm...

Canalys: iPad accounted for 1 in 6 PCs in Q4 2012

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

Apple's iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple's fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.

Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry...

Apple, Samsung took 103% of 2012 handset profits

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

We have often written how the handset market is essentially a duopoly of operating systems - iOS and Android - as well as brands: Apple and Samsung. Yesterday came even another way the two are dominating the mobile world - profits. Apple and Samsung accounted for 103 percent of handset profits in 2013, a figure made possible by the zero or negative growth by six of the eight leading handset makers. Apple held 69 percent of handset profits earned in all of 2012, more than double that of the South Korean Samsung, which hauled in 34 percent of phone profits last year, according to Canaccord Genuity...

Chitika: iPad recovers from post-Christmas dip, now back to 81% share

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Apple's iPad appears to have recovered from its post-Christmas slump. The tablet now enjoys an 81 percent share after falling from a high of 89 percent to 79 percent between December 25-27, 2012. Online advertising network Chitika Tuesday released the chart for the U.S. and Canada which proves the iPad recovered some of the ground lost to cheaper tablets.

The latest data obtained from millions of devices participating in Chitika's ad network shows Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet having the second-highest January 2013 market share. Although a distant runner-up to the iPad, the Amazon tablet scored a 7.7 percent tablet share, while Samsung's family of Galaxy tablets reached 3.9 percent...

iPhone snares global web usage crown from Nokia

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Apple yet again became the beneficiary of Nokia's seemingly never-ending swan song, becoming the most-used mobile brand on the Internet in January. This despite Apple actually losing nearly three percent of mobile online usage. That the Finnish-based Nokia collapsed by more than fifteen points, dropping it out of first place to the third spot, also helped.

According to the independent website analytics company StatCounter, Apple had a nice 25.86 percent of mobile Internet usage in January 2013. Although that was a decline of 2.81 percent compared to the same month in 2012, Nokia's share in the same period fell from 37.67 percent to 22.15 percent, a significant decline...

Gartner: more than half of mobile apps will be HTML5/native hybrids by 2016

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

A convergence of mobile trends is setting the stage for a day when more than half of the applications will support both HTML5 and native iOS/Android environments. That's the word from research giant Gartner, who predicts companies must support multiple platforms as well as native features, such as mapping, cameras and location-based services. Additionally, the researcher forecasts brand-name smartphone makers could be pushed out of the low-cost market as countries such as China and India produce home-grown alternatives priced as low as $50...

Android market share falls 13 percent amid Apple increase

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

We have long believed that many Android devices wind up in desk drawers, gathering dust, while Apple gadgets go bopping around on the web. That suspicion was confirmed Friday morning by new browser data showing Android usage is down 13 percent while iOS use is up. The figures by Net Applications once more illustrate the many ways to pick winners and losers.

According to Net Applications, an Internet measurement firm that tracks browser usage, the percent of mobile browser using Android has fallen 13 percent after peaking at 28 percent in November 2012. By contrast, browsers on iOS rose since October 2012 following Apple introducing the iPhone 5 and iPad mini...

FTC issues app privacy guidelines, proposes ‘Do Not Track’ for mobile

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated November 9, 2023

A patchwork of online privacy measures should be standardized to form a 'Do Not Track' list for mobile app users. In guidelines issued Friday, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission says mobile devices such as Apple's iPhone "facilitate unprecedented amounts of data collection."

Both devices and app developers should obtain users' consent before obtaining personal information such as location, photos or contacts. The set of guidelines accompanied Path's $800,000 settlement with the FTC over grabbing iOS users' personal address books without their consent...

Holiday quarter Surface RT sales barely half the shipments

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 31, 2013

Although Microsoft's Surface RT is not yet in the bargain bin of tablets, a fire sale could appear any day. That's the impression from a report that the software giant turned tablet player is selling as few as 55 percent of Surface's shipped. But wait, there's more bad news: A "very high" rate of the Surface RT tablets are being returned to stores.

If true, Microsoft sold between 680,000 and 750,000 of the 1.25 million Surface RT tablets shipped during the fourth quarter of 2012. Little wonder, then that production of the first Surface has likely halted, according to one hardware research firm Thursday...

iOS 6.1 gains 22% adoption in under 2 days

Ed Sutherland ∙ January 31, 2013

Apple's recent update to iOS 6.1 may be important more for what it says about users and the never-ending competition with Android than what new features were added to the software running iPhones, iPods and and iPads. Released earlier this week, iOS 6.1 could become the most-quickly adopted version of Apple's mobile software. Nearly 22 percent of iOS users have installed the update in less than 48 hours, one developer claims.

Apple's iPhone users were the fastest to adopt iOS 6.1 with nearly 24 percent installing the updated software in less than one day. Tablet users were only a bit slower with one-fifth of iPad owners installing 6.1 by the 20-hour mark. By comparison, it took a week for 44 percent of users to update to iOS 6...

iPad sales up 8M units in Q4, market share down 8 percent

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

New research shows number one tablet maker Apple shipped more iPads while also losing market share during the 2012 holiday fourth quarter. The company shipped nearly 23 million tablets during the period, a dramatic increase from the same time in 2011, when 15.1 million Apple tablets shipped.

At the same time, Apple's overall share of the tablet market fell for the second quarter in a row, slipping to 43.6 percent from 46.4 percent during the third quarter of last year - and down from 51.7 percent a year ago, according to IDC.

Apple ended the year with 48.1 percent year-over-year growth while number two tablet rival Samsung saw its growth more than double. A combination of Android and Windows-based tablet sales helped push the South Korean firm's share of the tablet market to 15.1 percent, up from 7.3 percent in 2011...