2009 world handset sales ranked, iPhone OS eats WinMo

23 February, 2010
GSM Arena

Technology researchers from Gartner have come up with their annual report on mobile phone sales, 2009 edition. And it's an interesting read.

In short, 2009 phones sales have remained flat despite the economic imbalances but there are some pretty interesting market share shifts.

Unless you've lived in a cave for the past twelve months, you won't be surprised to learn that Motorola and Sony Ericsson took the biggest hits this year, while Apple, Samsung, LG and RIM had one hell of a year.

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Handset Sales to End Users in 2009 (thousands of units)

Company	2009 Sales	2009 Market Share (%)	2008 Sales	2008 Market share (%)
Nokia	440,881.6	36.4	472,314.9	38.6
Samsung	235,772.0	19.5	199,324.3	16.3
LG	122,055.3	10.1	102,789.1	8.4
Motorola	58,475.2	4.8	106,522.4	8.7
Sony Ericsson	54,873.4	4.5	93,106.1	7.6
Others	299,179.2	24.7	248,196.1	20.3
Total	1,211,236.6	100.0	1,222,252.9	100.0

Source: Gartner (February 2010)

Nokia also took a dive, dropping two percent of total market share (and 5.5 percent of smartphone market) but their market leadership remains pretty safe. They shipped 440 million handsets - a volume that almost totals that of all other companies from the Top Five (470 million). Things are even more convincing in smartphone terms where Symbian accounts to 47 percent of all sales globally.

However Apple have managed to double their market share, shipping 25 million iPhones, compared to 11 million in the previous year. RIM also noted a healthy 48 percent increase pushing the number of sold handsets to 34 million.

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2009 (thousands of units)

Company	2009 Units	2009 Market Share (%)	2008 Units	2008 Market Share (%)
Symbian	80,878.6	46.9	72,933.5	52.4
Research In Motion	34,346.6	19.9	23,149.0	16.6
iPhone OS	24,889.8	14.4	11,417.5	8.2
Microsoft Windows Mobile	15,027.6	8.7	16,498.1	11.8
Linux	8,126.5	4.7	10,622.4	7.6
Android	6,798.4	3.9	640.5	0.5
WebOS	1,193.2	0.7	NA	NA
Other OSs	1,112.4	0.6	4,026.9	2.9
Total	172,373.1	100.0	139,287.9	100.0

Source: Gartner (February 2010)

When it comes to smartphone platforms, the open-source Android has the biggest market share growth shipping on nearly 6.8 million devices in 2009. That's more than 10 times better than the 0.6 million in 2008. Another year like that and they might just take the second spot (or even first if Symbian doesn't up its game urgently).

An interesting trend is that the iPhone OS managed to reach a wider user base in 2009 than all the various versions and reincarnations of Windows Mobile. Now that should tell you something Microsoft, you better get your back into Windows Phone 7. We're waiting...

Tim Cook Talks IPad, Apple

Philip Michaels, Macworld.com, Feb 24, 2010 5:50 am

PCWORLD

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook sang the praises of the forthcoming iPad, outlined the company's plans for retail expansion, and gave an overview of the company's other products during a wide-ranging talk before investors at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The Apple COO didn't have anything new to announce during his half-hour-long conversation with Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey. But Cook's comments do offer some insight into Apple's approach as it enjoys record revenue and sales.

Just a month ago, Apple reported its best-ever quarterly performance, thanks to record Mac and iPhone sales. On Tuesday, Cook was particularly effusive in his praise of the iMac, which he called "very key, and we think it will continue to be very key."

The iMac is just one of the products that's helped the Mac outgrow the overall PC market in 20 of the last 21 quarters. Cook noted that market research firm IDC puts the PC market at about 300 million units and compared that to the 10 million Macs Apple sold during its 2009 fiscal year.

"The ceiling [for Apple] is still far off," he said.

Apple is also enjoying strong growth with the iPhone and iPod touch. The latter handheld, in particular, saw its sales double year-over-year in 2009.

"That helps fuel more app sales, which helps fuel more developers, which helps make the [iPhone OS] platform stronger," Cook said.

In talking about Apple's success, Cook focused on the company's efforts to recruit top talent as well as its focus on core products. "This is the most focused company I know of, am aware of, or have any knowledge of," Cook said. "We say no to good ideas every day" so that the company can keep its focus on a small number of areas. Cook took note of the tables conference attendees were sitting at, and pointed out that most of Apple's product line could fit on those tables. "And we had revenue last year of $40 billion," he added...see more

Hungarian electric car splits into two smaller cars

By Mico Tatalovic |24 February 2010
WIRED

Central and Eastern Europe might not be the first places you think of when it comes to electric cars. In fact, you're probably more likely to think of bad cars, such as the infamous Yugo, dubbed the worst car in history.

But times have changed. A few European car enthusiasts have been pushing for clean vehicles made in their own country, addressing the dearth of clean, home-made vehicles in the region.

One such company is Hungary's Antro, which is developing a car that splits into two smaller cars, and plans to take it/them to market by 2012, assuming the Mayan prophecies fall through.

The environmentally-conscious company started research back in 2002 and, with backing from various local sponsors, has invested 1.5 million euros in market research and development of a working prototype.

The Antro Solo concept (pictured above) is a three-passenger car, with a hybrid drive and solar cells on its roof that the company says could generate enough electricity for up to 20km a day at city speeds.

Futuristic looking in itself, the grander plan for the car is much more audacious: Antro intends to allow users to be able to connect two Antro Solos to form a six-passenger Antro Duo. Or perhaps more interesting still, owners of a Duo could split the car into two smaller Solos should Mum have different weekend plans to Dad. Or if they divorce.

The current prototype looks interesting, but I can't believe its chances of ever making it to past the prototype stage are much above slim.

Also worth a mention, just across the border to the south of Hungary, is a Croatian company called Dok-ing. It specialises in making landmine clearance machines, and sports the company motto: "Don't send a man to do a machine's job." But it, too, has launched its own project for a small electric city car called Dok-ing XD -- a fully electric three-seater that promises to travel 155 miles on a single two-hour charge.

The project was disclosed in 2009 after four years of development. But like Antro, Dok-ing XD sounds and looks good, but the likelihood of it hitting mass production are low. Local media hype followed announcement of the project last summer, but there has been no news since. The working prototype was expected to be on roads by the end of last year, which led to mass production being optimistically scheduled for middle of 2010.

Apple to launch an 'explicit' category for rude apps?

By Andrew Lim on Wednesday, 24th February 2010
RECOMBU

Cult of Mac has just been informed by a developer that a new section has appeared in iTunes Connect. When a developer submits an app they need to select a category and it looks like Apple may be getting ready to launch an 'explicit' category. This potentially means that all the rude apps which were recently removed, could be put back into the app store in a different section. An explicit section hasn't appeared in the front end yet so it might not amount to anything but it's very interesting. We asked a developer friend to double check that the new section existed and it does, as you can see from the screen-shot below.

US Unable To Win a Cyber War

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday February 24, @11:30AM
SLASHDOT

"The inability to deflect even a simulated cyber attack or mitigate its effects shown in the exercise that took place some six days ago at Washington's Mandarin Oriental Hotel doesn't bode well for the US. Mike McConnell, the former Director of National Intelligence, said to the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee yesterday that if the US got involved in a cyber war at this moment, they would surely lose. 'We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose,' he stated. Three years ago, McConnell referred to cybersecurity as the 'soft underbelly of this country' and it's clear that he thinks things haven't changed much since then."...

Browse Browser's Trends

Denise Dubie, Network World, Feb 23, 2010 5:47 pm

Recent market share statistics deliver good and bad news for Microsoft. The company saw its Internet Explorer browser lose more ground, seemingly to Google Desktop and Chrome, while its Windows 7 operating system quickly gained market acceptance.

Beware the rogue Wi-Fi access points in Windows 7

"The last six months have been a mixed bag for Microsoft," said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, in a press statement. The research firm points out in its February 2010 Browser and Operating System Market Share Study that Microsoft IE market share has dipped by more than 12% since February 2007, mostly due to interest in competitive offerings from Firefox and Google.

Beware the rogue Wi-Fi access points in Windows 7

"Firefox and Google have been the main recipients of this change in market share," the report reads. "Google's Desktop and Chrome are new entrants into the browser market; however, interest in both products has dropped with the recent release of IE 8."

According to Janco Associates, Microsoft IE continues to lead the pack of browsers, but Microsoft did lose some 6% in the past 12 months and now holds a bit less than 65% of the total browser market, compared to more than 80% in February 2007). Firefox market share remained mostly flat, declining less than 1% to more than 17%. At the same time, market share for Google's browser grew more than 2% to close to 6% while Safari saw a nearly 1% increase to 1.39%. Janco also uses this report to declare Netscape as "officially dead."...

the US Federal Communications Commission will soon announce a national broadband plan

Jared Newman, PCWorld, Feb 23, 2010 7:42 pm
PC WORLD

With the United States falling behind other nations in broadband adoption, the Federal Communications Commission will soon announce a national broadband plan aimed at getting more people online at faster speeds. A new survey by the FCC shows why 93 million Americans don't get broadband -- a combination of high costs, poor understanding, and a general apathy for the Internet -- highlighting how difficult implementing a national broadband plan will be.

Here are four things I hope will come of the FCC's proposal, which will be submitted to Congress on March 17:

100 Mbps: Affordable, Not Just Available

A key goal for the FCC is to bring 100-megabit-per-second broadband to 100 million homes by 2020, but the current market shows that the speed you get isn't necessarily the fastest possible. Many Internet service providers offer a few speed tiers, with cheaper plans for casual Web browsers and pricey turbo speeds for power users. This will have to change for 100 Mbps Internet to be adopted on a grand scale...

Study: Android, IPhone Fastest-growing Smartphone Platforms

Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service, Feb 23, 2010 6:20 pm
PC WORLD

Android and Apple's iPhone OS were the fastest-growing smartphone platforms in 2009, with sales of the iPhone OS overtaking those of Windows Mobile, research company Gartner said Tuesday. Symbian and Research In Motion's BlackBerry still lead the market, it said.

Worldwide sales of smartphones running Symbian totaled 80.9 million in 2009, up from 72.9 million a year earlier. Because total smartphone sales grew faster, to 172.4 million from 139.3 million a year earlier, Symbian's market share declined to 46.9 percent, Gartner said. Second-place RIM's market share rose to 19.9 percent from 16.6 percent in 2008.

Apple's smartphone OS took third place. Apple sold 24.9 million iPhones in 2009, compared to 11.4 million in 2008, taking its share of the market to 14.4 percent.

Microsoft's smartphone OS dropped to the fourth spot as its market share fell from 11.8 percent to 8.7 percent, and sales dropped by about 1.5 million phones. The launch of a new version, Windows Phones 7 Series, appears to make it a more competitive platform, but as phones based on the rewritten OS won't show up until late this year, sales will continue to struggle during most of 2010, according to Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner...

As Apple Gets Into Mobile Ads, Rivals Suit Up For A Tough Battle

Dan Frommer | Feb. 23, 2010, 10:25 AM
BUSINESS INSIDER

Another deal in the fast-consolidating mobile ad/metrics industry: Baltimore-based mobile ad firm Millennial Media has acquired Tapmetrics, a San Francisco-based mobile analytics firm.

The deal -- terms not disclosed -- is all about getting more analytics and data to mobile app developers, which represent an increasing percentage of Millennial's ad customers.

The next battlefront for mobile ad networks like Millennial will be competing with the platform makers themselves: Apple is now getting into the mobile advertising game itself, and Google is expanding its mobile ad efforts. This means that companies like Millennial must somehow continue to keep an edge with app publishers, either through tools, services, or better ad revenue. So expect to see more deals like this.

Millennial has been the subject of acquisition rumors itself, with industry chatter suggesting that Microsoft will eventually acquire it. Recently, Google paid $750 million for AdMob -- a deal that has not yet closed as the Feds review it. And Apple paid a reported $275 million for Quattro Wireless, whose CEO Andy Miller is now Apple's head of mobile advertising, reporting directly to Steve Jobs.

Xerox Sues Google, Yahoo Over Patented Search

Lauren Streib | Feb. 23, 2010, 10:27 AM
BUSINESS INSIDER

Xerox filed suit against Google and Yahoo! last Friday claiming that some of their search technology infringes on Xerox's patented tech.

According to Bloomberg, they are seeking unspecified monetary compensation and an order preventing the companies from using their inventions without permission.

Bloomberg: One patent, issued in 2004, is for a way to automatically generate a query based on keyword searches. Xerox claims that Google’s AdSense and AdWords software, and Yahoo’s Search Marketing, Publishing Network and Y!Q Contextual Search software are infringing that patent.

The second patent, issued in 2001, is for a way of updating pages based on user reviews. Google Maps, Google Video, the YouTube service and Yahoo Shopping all use that patented technique, Xerox contends.

Not shocking: Google's senior litigation counsel calls the claims "without merit."

Exclusive: How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web

By Steven Levy , February 22, 2010, 12:00 pm | Wired March 2010

Want to know how Google is about to change your life? Stop by the Ouagadougou conference room on a Thursday morning. It is here, at the Mountain View, California, headquarters of the world’s most powerful Internet company, that a room filled with three dozen engineers, product managers, and executives figure out how to make their search engine even smarter. This year, Google will introduce 550 or so improvements to its fabled algorithm, and each will be determined at a gathering just like this one. The decisions made at the weekly Search Quality Launch Meeting will wind up affecting the results you get when you use Google’s search engine to look for anything — “Samsung SF-755p printer,” “Ed Hardy MySpace layouts,” or maybe even “capital Burkina Faso,” which just happens to share its name with this conference room. Udi Manber, Google’s head of search since 2006, leads the proceedings. One by one, potential modifications are introduced, along with the results of months of testing in various countries and multiple languages. A screen displays side-by-side results of sample queries before and after the change. Following one example — a search for “guitar center wah-wah” — Manber cries out, “I did that search!”

You might think that after a solid decade of search-market dominance, Google could relax. After all, it holds a commanding 65 percent market share and is still the only company whose name is synonymous with the verb search. But just as Google isn’t ready to rest on its laurels, its competitors aren’t ready to concede defeat. For years, the Silicon Valley monolith has used its mysterious, seemingly omniscient algorithm to, as its mission statement puts it, “organize the world’s information.” But over the past five years, a slew of companies have challenged Google’s central premise: that a single search engine, through technological wizardry and constant refinement, can satisfy any possible query. Facebook launched an early attack with its implication that some people would rather get information from their friends than from an anonymous formula. Twitter’s ability to parse its constant stream of updates introduced the concept of real-time search, a way of tapping into the latest chatter and conversation as it unfolds. Yelp helps people find restaurants, dry cleaners, and babysitters by crowdsourcing the ratings. None of these upstarts individually presents much of a threat, but together they hint at a wide-open, messier future of search — one that isn’t dominated by a single engine but rather incorporates a grab bag of services.

Still, the biggest threat to Google can be found 850 miles to the north: Bing. Microsoft’s revamped and rebranded search engine — with a name that evokes discovery, a famous crooner, or Tony Soprano’s strip joint — launched last June to surprisingly upbeat reviews. (The Wall Street Journal called it “more inviting than Google.”) The new look, along with a $100 million ad campaign, helped boost Microsoft’s share of the US search market from 8 percent to about 11 — a number that will more than double once regulators approve a deal to make Bing the search provider for Yahoo...

Smartbooks Expected to Prove Popular by 2015

Lexton Snol, PC Advisor, Feb 23, 2010 5:27 pm

source

A new research study estimates that 163 million "smartbooks" will ship worldwide in 2015 - a significant rate of growth given that the very first models only appeared in 2008.

According to ABI Research senior analyst Jeff Orr: "As ABI Research defines it, a smartbook is a low-powered device running a mobile operating system that is always connected, either via Wi-Fi or (more often) using cellular or mobile broadband.

"Smartbooks can take many different shapes. They are a subset of MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and netbooks, and address the same potential users, usage, pricing, and market needs. The difference is that they don't use x86 processors."

(German company Smartbook AG is selling Smartbook-branded laptops, and holds a trademark for the word Smartbook in a number of countries, although not in large markets such as the US, China, Japan or India. More information here.)

Qualcomm and Freescale have been the largest promoters of the smartbook concept. Other chipmakers such as TI and NVIDIA that are producing ARM-based processors are active in this market as well...

Microsoft about to offer Windows users a browser choice screen

Posted by Jack Schofield Sunday 21 February 2010 19.11 GMT
source


Some European Windows users could soon see the "browser ballot" screen that makes it easier for them to choose an alternative browser, as a result of an agreement that helped settle an anti-trust case brought by the European Commission.

Microsoft is about to start offering Windows users a "Web browser choice screen" as required by a settlement agreed with the European Commission's competition department last year. As part of the testing process, some users in the UK, Belgium and France will see it next week. It will be rolled out in 30 European countries next month, but not worldwide.

The browser choice screen was preferred over Microsoft's earlier decision to ship boxed copies of Windows 7 without a browser at all.

In a bog post, Dave Heiner, Microsoft's Deputy General Counsel, said: "Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now. We'll begin a limited roll-out externally next week, and expect that a full scale roll-out will begin around March 1, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule."