Is Google ready to give up on Android and make the Chrome platform its new priority? That’s the question posed by AppleInsider’s Daniel Eran Dilger in a new report that suggests the search giant is looking to distance itself from the world’s biggest mobile operating system and all of the intellectual property issues that come with it.
But I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Android’s not going anywhere.
Samsung has overtaken Apple and Nokia to become the global leader in mobile web traffic, according to the latest figures from web analytics company StatCounter. It’s the first time the South Korean company has taken the lead in Internet usage, but Apple isn’t far behind.
Apple is stil the top smartphone maker in the U.S. according to the latest quarterly report from comScore. While HTC, Motorola, and LTG continued to lose marketshare in the U.S. over the last three months, Apple and Samsung have continued to outpace the competition.
As of May 2013, comScore found that the iPhone now accounts for 39.2% of the U.S. smartphone marketshare. Even though Apple has the lead in hardware, Android is still the top ranking smartphone platform in the U.S. with 52.4 percent market share.
Here’s how Apple stacks up against the competition:
Motorola Mobility, Google’s gadget making sub-company, has just unveiled a new logo that embraces flat design elements: the Motorola badge has been surrounded by a ring of colors, and there’s a new proclamation of Motorola being “A Google company” underneath everything.
Killian thinks it looks a bit like Motorola was aping Jony Ive’s iOS 7 redesign, but I have to say, between the busy-ness of the design, the atrocious font choice, and Motorola’s existing (terrible) logo, I think he’d do a spit-take looking at this. What do you think?
Remember Motorola Mobility? Google bought it for $12.5 billion in 2011, and the smartphone maker hasn’t released one new device since. Now Motorola is ready to unveil several new Android phones between now and October. The upcoming flagship device from Motorola will be called the Moto X, and it will be assembled in Texas.
The news was just announced onstage by CEO Dennis Woodside at the D11 conference.
Even though we love the HTC One, there are really only two smartphone manufacturers in the world right now that matter: Apple and Samsung. The two companies have been fighting for every square inch of the global smartphone market, and have managed to take all of the profits in the process.
A new report from Canaccord Genuity shows that while some manufacturers made improvements in the March quarter of 2013, Apple and Samsung still account for 100% of the industry’s profits, with Apple taking 57% and Samsung snatching up the remaining 43%.
The iPad has earned first place in the J.D. Power and Associates customer satisfaction survey for the second year in a row, just a month after Apple’s iPhone secured the award for the ninth time. The popular slate scored 836 out of a possible 1,000 points having been rated on performance, ease of operation, styling and design, features, and cost.
iCloud push services could soon resume in Germany more than a year after they were killed after a high court stayed Motorola’s patent trial against Apple on Wednesday. Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court issued a press release that said both Apple and Google — which now owns Motorola — agreed to the stay, which has called into question the validity of Motorola’s patent.
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has officially ruled in favor of Apple against Google’s Motorola Mobility in a patent case that began in 2010. The last patent Motorola was using to sue Apple for infringement has been ruled invalid by the ITC.
Motorola sued Apple for allegedly violating six of its patents three years ago, and today’s patent was the last of six patents to be thrown out of court. If Motorola would have proven Apple’s infringement of this particular patent, the ITC could have possibly blocked sales of certain iPhone models.
U.S. District Judge Robert Scola believes Apple and Google-owned Motorola are more interested in using litigation as a business strategy than they are in resolving patent disputes. Both companies accused each other of infringing patents related to wireless technologies back in 2010, and today the case is still on going.
“The parties have no interest in efficiently and expeditiously resolving this dispute; they instead are using this and similar litigation worldwide as a business strategy that appears to have no end,” said Judge Scola in an order dated yesterday. “That is not a proper use of this court.”
One of the biggest complaints about Android, is that Google will announce a new version of Android, but then it takes over six months for that software to actually get on your phone. What gives?
The guys over at Gizmodo decided to talk to both manufacturers and wireless carriers to find out what’s the hold up. It seems like a software update would be a pretty straightforward process, but what they found was a myriad of problems that can take months to answer before your Android phone gets an update.
In the competition between iOS and Android, Google’s Android operating system has been growing in the U.S. much faster than iOS until now. For the first time, Android actually lost some of its U.S. marketshare in 2013 while iOS gained a few points.
comScore just released its report on the U.S. smartphone market and had some very encouraging news for Apple. While most other manufacturers are slumping, Apple is increasing its lead on Samsung, HTC, Motorola and LG in the U.S.
Teardown specialists iFixit have published a new tablet repairability guide that quickly tells you how difficult it’s going to be to mend your broken Android, iOS, or Windows 8 slate. The guide features 18 popular tablets, which have been given a repairability score between one and ten. The higher the score, the easier they are to repair.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s iPads are some of the hardest tablets to fix, second only to the Microsoft Surface Pro — the only tablet with a score of one. Amazon’s Kindle Fire’s, on the other hand, are relatively easy to repair, as are Dell’s devices.
Guy Kawasaki was one of Apple’s most famous evangelists. He’s the guy who helped Steve Jobs market the hell out of the original Macintosh back in 1984 to really put Apple on the map.
Guy left his post as Chief Evangelist of Apple in 1987 and has reclined into a life of venture capitalism along with running his popular blog, but now he’s gearing up to help Google do battle with Apple by advising for Google-owned Motorola.
Why should you buy an iPhone 5 over a Samsung Galaxy S III? Well, besides the fact that the S III is for jerkfaces, the iPhone 5 is nearly 300% more reliable and less likely to break than your average Samsung phone. Ouch!
Here’s an illuminating chart by Horace Dediu. Check out how big Apple’s iTunes and iPhone accessory revenues are, compared to the entire mobile phone revenue of pretty much every smartphone manufacturer except Samsung. It easily dwarves them. Maybe these guys should stop making smartphones and start making iPhone accessories?
Source: Asymco
How happy are you with your smartphone? According to a survey of 92,825 smartphone user in the United States, the Motorola Atrix HD delivers the most satisfaction with an impressive 8.57 out of ten. Another Motorola device, the Droid RAZR M, is ranked second with 8.5 out of ten, while the iPhone 5 is ranked fifth with just 8.23 out of ten.
Google just announced its earnings for Q4 2012, and guess what? They made a ton of money. We’re shocked.
Actually, Q4 2012 was really great for Google. The company earned $14.4 billion in revenue, which is 36% better than what they did last year. While we tend to think of Google as an American company, only $5.99 billion of that revenue came from the U.S. while the rest was made in international markets.
Just a few weeks ago, we reported that Samsung and Apple were the only two smartphone manufacturers seeing growth in the United States, and that the pair were slowly eating away at their rivals’ market share. But when you take old-fashioned feature phones into account, the situation looks a little different.
New data from Counterpoint Research suggests that strong December sales have helped LG overtake Apple to claim the second-largest stake of the U.S. phone market. As you might expect, Samsung is still way ahead in first.
Apple is one of just two smartphone makers currently seeing any kind of growth in the United States at the moment, and together with Samsung the company is slowly but surely clawing away at the market share held by the likes of LG, Motorola, and HTC. One analyst believes, however, that the Cupertino must make big changes if it wants that growth to continue.
Apple’s either has to dramatically reduce its iPhone profit margins and make the handset cheaper, or face losing valuable market share to cheaper smartphones.
Apple and Samsung are the only two smartphone manufacturers currently seeing any growth in the United States. The pair are slowly eating away at the market share held by their rivals, including LG, Motorola, Research in Motion, and HTC. In the three months leading up to November 2012, Samsung increased its market share from 25.7% to 26.9%, but Apple is catching up with the Cupertino company enjoying slightly more growth.
Apple and Samsung have been raging a legal war against each other across the globe. While Apple won a $1 billion lawsuit against Samsung in the U.S. earlier this year, the two giants have exchanged blows in Europe as well, but neither side has come out on top yet.
However, a new report claims that Samsung might be facing a serious blow from the European commission that is seeking to impose some huge fines on Samsung for trying to get Apple products banned in Europe.
Back in August, Google-owned Motorola Mobility sued Apple for violating 7 of its software patents. Motorola accused Apple of infringing on patents relating to everything from location-based reminders to email notifications.
Now The International Trade Commission (ITC) has thrown out Motorola’s claim that the iPhone violates a patent on “a sensor that prevents accidental hang-ups,” according to Bloomberg. Motorola’s proximity sensor patent has been deemed invalid by the ITC for the second time, and it looks like Motorola won’t have much luck at appealing the decision.
Strong sales of the iPhone 5 have helped Apple grab more than a quarter of the global LTE device market last quarter, despite the handset’s short time on sale. The Cupertino company now commands 27% of the market share, while arch rival Samsung’s 40% share means it maintains the top spot for the seventh quarter in a row.
However, increasing competition from its rivals means Samsung’s share has quickly slipped by more than 10% from 50.9% in the previous quarter.
Google is gearing up to offload Motorola’s set-top box business as it looks to concentrate its efforts on competing with Apple’s iPhone. The company has been trying to sell Motorola Home Business, which supplies set-top boxes to cable television providers, for around $2 billion, and it has reportedly received multiple offers already. Once it’s gone, Google will focus on high-end smartphones.
