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?
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...
A new report is out this afternoon, claiming the US Department of Defense is going to grant security approvals for Samsung's Galaxy smartphones, as well as Apple's iPhones and iPads running iOS 6 in the coming weeks.
The move is separate from the mobile device implementation plan that the Pentagon announced back in February, and could pave the way for Apple to gain more notable influence in the hard-to-reach government sector...
Lugging around all the charts and papers required by commercial pilots can be a pain - literally. Now comes word Apple's iPad is taking a load off pilots of one airline, replacing 40-pound flight bags with a 1.5-pound tablet. By the end of May, 8,600 American Airlines pilots will swap the heavy bags of charts, maps and manuals for the iPad, easing one of the industry's largest sources of injuries...
The nation's second-largest carrier, AT&T, on Wednesday upgraded its cell phone trade-in program at its brick-and-mortar retail stores. The new terms incentivize customers to trade-in their old smartphone for one of the latest models and receive a $100 credit on-the-spot, which can be immediately redeemed against any AT&T smartphone or accessory purchase.
If you have an old iPhone or an Android phone that is less than three years old, the $100 trade-in credit lets you purchase a brand new iPhone 5 for just $99. Or, you could settle with an iPhone 4S wit zero bucks in upfront payment. By comparison, the entry-level 16GB iPhone 4S/5 normally sets you back $99/$199 after a two-year contract...
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...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19vR1GldRI
Despite the massive marketing blitz, Microsoft's Windows Phone platform has managed to regain but a fraction of market share lost to iOS and Android in years past. Figuring it could take a page from Samsung's marketing handbook, Microsoft on Monday published on its YouTube channel a new Windows Phone commercial which takes a mandatory jab at Apple's iPhone and its Siri digital personal assistant while also poking fun of Gorilla-sized Android devices from Samsung. The funny ad is aimed at boosting Microsoft's and Nokia's stagnant sales of Lumia handsets in the United States...
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...
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...
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...
Let the post-mortem begin. It is a ritual on Wall Street: forecast Apple's quarterly numbers, then afterwards dissect the data the iPad maker releases. And once more, the coverage conflates shipment with usage to determine the status of Apple or Android.
Although Apple Tuesday announced selling 19.5 million iPads during the first quarter of 2013 - an improvement from 11.8 million tablets sold during the same three-month period in 2012 - the focus Wednesday was on the iPad shedding market share to Android. But do unit sales trump actual usage?
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....