[caption id="attachment_36725" align="alignright" width="324"] The Pebble[/caption] Consumers have only recently gotten used to smartphones and barely integrated tablets into their routines. Soon they'll be presented with yet another mobile device: wearable computers (watches) from both Apple and Samsung. There are other companies offering or developing versions of a "smartwatch" as well. One such device is the Pebble smartwatch (pictured at right), which raised a record $10 million through kickstarter. It integrates with the iPhone and Android smartphones. The anticipated Apple iWatc [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Apple: Siri | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Google: Android | Google: Glass | Google: Mobile | Mobile Marketing

At a Broadway-style premiere this evening at New York's Radio City Musical Hall, Samsung unveiled its heavily anticipated Galaxy S4 handset. The event had the hype and production values of an Apple product launch. But, what barely seemed in attendance was any idea that the S4 is an Android phone or contains Google services. Samsung obviously spent a great deal of money on the show. Parts of it were awkward and many of the scripted jokes fell flat. But, the phone is sure to be a hit. The new S4 looks very much like the Galaxy S III (I watched the live stream and haven't held it in my hand [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Local | Gadgets | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Maps | Google: Mobile | Google: Nexus | Samsung | Top News

Apple's iOS 6.1.2 -- to correct a bug that reduced battery life and increased network activity for some users -- made its way into the hands of consumers on February 19th, 2013. Adoption of iOS 6.1.2 took off, and within a week, it was the most used version of iOS. According to a recent report by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Apple's iOS claimed the majority of smartphone OS sales in the U.S. in Q4 2012, standing at 51.2%. Given the popularity of the iPhone and iOS in North America, Chitika Insights conducted a research study analyzing iOS version click through rate (CTR) to help quantify the [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Apple | Channel: Analytics

The tablet is becoming the device of choice in the air. According to Gogo, 35 percent of in-flight Internet usage happens on tablets, 32 percent on smartphones. The remaining 33 percent is on laptops. It's easy to see why tablets are becoming the preferred in-flight work and entertainment device. Economy travelers are often unable to open their laptops when the seats in front of them recline. (As an aside, here's an aggressive response to that problem.) The majority of in-flight mobile devices running on Gogo are on iOS (84 percent), while 16 percent are Android, which has grown from [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPad | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

The US smartphone story has been pretty consistent for well over a year: Android is now on more than 50 percent of US smartphones, followed by iOS. All others are losing share. Samsung and Apple continue to battle for the top two OEM positions in the market (and around the world). January data from comScore largely repeat and affirm this story line. According to comScore's survey data Android had a 52.3 percent market share in January. However the Google operating system slipped a bit (1.3 points) as the iPhone gained. Apple’s share grew 3.5 percent to 37.8 percent. The US is proba [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

While Google's PC search market share may be hovering below 5 percent, Android is the overwhelmingly dominant smartphone operating system in the world's largest mobile market. As a result China may be preparing to take some sort of regulatory action against it. According to a Reuters report the Chinese government released a white paper, through its state-controlled China Academy of Telecommunication Research, that expresses concern about Android's domestic market share. According to figures cited by Reuters Android is on about 90 percent of Chinese smartphones, while iOS has less than 5 [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Critics | Google: Mobile | Legal: Antitrust | Mobile Marketing | Social Media Marketing | Top News

According to ad network Chitika's latest traffic study, Samsung's Galaxy S3 has caught the iPhone 5 in terms of the amount of Internet traffic it generates. The findings are drawn from "tens of millions of U.S. and Canadian smartphone mobile ad impressions" this month. Chitika said that in October 2012, Apple's latest iPhone enjoyed an 8-point lead in Web traffic share over Samsung's Galaxy. Now, it's down to one point, according to the ad network. The chart below reflects the comparative shares of the Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5 when looking only at traffic coming from the two devices. [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Samsung | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage

Woe be to any mobile phone maker that isn't named Apple or Samsung. Numbers out today from IDC show the two combining for a staggering 87.6 percent of all smartphones "shipped" in 2012 on a global basis. In Q4, according to IDC, the two companies' products constituted 91 percent of all smartphones shipped. Shipped is actually a false market share metric. That's because shipments don't always equal sales or usage. However, in the case of Apple and Samsung these data are a reasonable proxy for actual sales. According to IDC, Samsung controlled 42 percent "of all Android smartphone shipment [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Samsung | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Dan Nolan, an app developer, is concerned that Google Play giving email addresses of app purchasers to developers is a privacy blunder. As an app developer myself, I could not disagree more! How Developers Sell In Google Play Vs. iTunes The way the Google Play market works and has worked since it launched on October 23, 2008 is as follows. A developer who charges for their apps has to set up a Google Wallet account. The Google Wallet account makes the developer the merchant on record in the Google Play store. When someone buys your app from the Google Play store, that transaction, along [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Google: Google Play

People are starting to shun conventional mobile phones also known as "feature phones." But sales of smartphones continue to grow. According to sales data compiled by Gartner, global mobile handset sales in 2012 hit 1.75 billion units. However that was a nearly 2 percent (1.7 percent) drop from the previous year. According to the firm, "Demand for feature phones remained weak in 2012 and in the fourth quarter." Indeed, feature phone sales were off over 19 percent in Q4. By contrast demand for smartphones continues. As already widely documented Samsung and Apple were the two dominant smartpho [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Microsoft: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

This afternoon comScore released data on December US smartphone market share. The story is the same as in previous months. Android and iOS are up and almost all others are down. Apple and Samsung gained share, while others besides LG lost share. LG produced the wildly popular, perpetually sold out Nexus 4 handset. Apple was the single top smartphone OEM, while Android was the top platform with 53.4 percent of the market. Increasingly, however, Samsung is the hardware maker synonymous with Android, although Samsung rarely promotes the "Android brand." It markets Galaxy rather than And [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Google: Mobile | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

Last week Apple announced quarterly earnings: $54 billion revenue, $13 billion in profit. Despite their size, investors started dumping the stock, worried that its growth and glory days were over. Then the "Has Apple lost its cool to Samsung?" articles started appearing. Around the world, Samsung and Android have solidly claimed the top spot in sales. But in the United States, that's not true. According to Strategy Analytics, Apple is the "number one mobile phone vendor for the first time ever." This is based on shipments, a metric I don't like. However, for Apple, shipments and sales a [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Features & Analysis | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Research firm IDC has released a preliminary global estimate of tablet market share for Q4. The figures are all based on shipments, which are typically not the same as device sales to end users although in some cases shipments do predict sales. According to these numbers, Apple's dominant position in the market declined from 51.7 percent to 43.6 percent. Samsung lead the Android tablet makers with 15.1 percent market share, followed by Amazon's Kindle Fire, with 11.5 percent of the market in Q4. Source: IDC (1/13) Last week Apple reported that it sold roughly 23 million iPads in Q [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iPad | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

For a time, it looked like Apple's $1 billion patent infringement verdict against Samsung would would rock the smartphone world. However, in the months since the landmark decision was handed down, it has proven to be little more than a symbolic victory. Courts and the US International Trade Commission have been loath to ban the import of Android devices regardless of infringement findings. Apple is thus left with its damages and the dubious, symbolic argument that its claims were vindicated by the courts. None of that means anything to the smartphone buying public. By duplicating the "tr [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Legal: Patents | Samsung

Microsoft Corp announced quarterly revenues this afternoon. Investors received the news with a mixed reaction (the stock is down in after hours trading). The company posted growth in most areas but offered little visibility on the success of Surface or Windows Phones. Microsoft said it made $6.38 billion in net income on revenue of $21.46 billion. Like Apple this week, revenues missed expectations. However earnings per share beat analysts' consensus estimates. As reflected immediately above, the following are the divisional revenue results: Windows Division: $5.88 billion (24 per [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Windows | Top News

In what is widely being seen as a miss (except for profit), Apple reported quarterly revenues of $54.5 billion this afternoon. That was slightly below consensus revenue expectations. The company posted higher profits ($13.1 billion) and earnings per share than expected. Even though they were "record results" according to Apple, analysts' expectations were extremely high. Accordingly each sales category came in just under anticipated unit sales figures. For example most analysts expected 50 million iPhones to have been sold in the previous quarter. However the company "only" sold 47.8 m [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iOS | Apple: iPad | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Top News

Facebook can thank Apple for helping making it the top overall mobile app in the U.S. in 2012, according to new numbers out today from the comScore Mobile Metrix service. ComScore says Facebook ended the year with more than 85 million unique adult visitors -- that's on both Android and iOS. It's about 11 million more unique visitors than Google Maps. After Facebook, Google apps hold down the next five spots. Facebook and Google Maps were pretty much neck-and-neck for several months last year, but comScore says Google Maps usage saw a significant decline after Apple dumped it from iOS [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Local | Facebook: Mobile | Facebook: Statistics | Features & Analysis | Google: Android | Google: Maps | Google: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

A report appearing in the Wall Street Journal asserting that Apple cut production orders on components for the iPhone amid weak demand sent nervous investors into a frenzy and sent Apple stock down this week. (The WSJ may have been "used" by people trying to manipulate Apple's stock price.) We'll find out about how stable iPhone demand is next week when Apple reports earnings. What appears to be very stable over the past six months, however, is the amount of traffic that iOS devices are driving compared with Android. According to ad network Chitika Apple devices continue to generate nearly [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Strategy | Google: Android | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Uncategorized

As the Wall Street Journal explains, there have been rumors of a cheaper, lower-end iPhone for some time. But the publication now says that a less-expensive iPhone is probably real and may come out later this year: While Apple has explored such a device for years, the plan has been progressing and a less expensive version of its flagship device could launch as soon as later this year, one of the people said. The cheaper phone could resemble the standard iPhone, with a different, less-expensive body, one of the people said. One possibility Apple has considered is lowering the cost of the de [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iPhone | Channel: Mobile Marketing

This morning Apple issued a press release announcing that the iTunes App Store had reached 40 billion app downloads. It also said in the release that nearly half of those had come in 2012: Apple today announced that customers have downloaded over 40 billion apps, with nearly 20 billion in 2012 alone. The App Store has over 500 million active accounts and had a record-breaking December with over two billion downloads during the month. Apple’s incredible developer community has created over 775,000 apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users worldwide, and developers have been paid over seven [...]

Related Topics: Apple | Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News