AT&T announced its financial results for the second quarter of 2012 today, and yet again the iPhone driving the company’s sales. Of the 5.1 million smartphones the carrier sold, a whopping 72.5% were iPhones.
Apple has been a major force in the BYOD movement. You can even argue that Apple ignited the BYOD flame with the release of the iPhone and iPad. While there have a number of studies looking at how companies in the U.S. are reacting to the trend, numbers haven’t readily been available from other markets.
That changed today with a new study that looks at BYOD in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) business and institutions. The results show Apple devices as a clear preference in these markets, somewhat more limited BYOD adoption, and many of the same security concerns discussed by U.S. firms.
Nielsen, global leader in measurement and information, takes a look back at the State Of Appnation and how much has changed over the past year. Since Nielsen’s 2011 summary, the number of U.S. smartphone users has increased by 12.4%, with one in two mobile subscribers now owning a smartphone. With the rise in smartphone users, comes a rise in the number of apps being downloaded, as well as the amount of time users spend engaged with them.
In addition to promoting its unfinished BlackBerry 10 mobile OS at BlackBerry World in Florida, RIM also made an effort to hype the success of its current BlackBerry 7 OS in developing markets, including Nigeria and Indonesia.
It isn’t surprising to see RIM trying to prove that it’s still a competitor in the global marketplace by highlighting the platforms use in developing countries. During RIM’s latest financials call, the first one for its new CEO Thorsten Heins, the company acknowledged that markets in the developing world accounted for much of the company’s revenue.
According to the latest report from the International Data Corporation, Samsung has ousted both Apple and Nokia to aquire the top spot in both smartphone and total mobile phone shipments for the first quarter of 2012. This marks the first time since the inception of IDC’s Mobile Phone Tracker that Nokia did not lead the global market in total mobile phone shipments. That’s quite a testament to Samsung’s tremendous growth over the past year, which according to the IDC, was nearly triple in the smartphone category.
According to a new report RIM’s former co-CEO Jim Balsillie was attempting to reinvent the company as a network services provider before he and RIM’s other former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis were forced to step down earlier this year. Balsillie envisioned RIM partnering with mobile carriers to offer basic smartphone messaging and social network service plans at a fraction of the cost of traditional data plans. The most surprising part of this revelation is that Balsillie planned to offer these services on devices made by other manufacturers.
As with many of RIM’s moves over the past couple of years, this highlights the identity crisis that developed within the company as its market share dwindled after the release of the iPhone and Android.
Despite promising that it would provide its rivals with royalty-free licenses for its nano-SIM technology, Nokia still isn’t convinced by Apple’s proposal for the next-generation of miniaturized SIM cards. The Finnish company has already spoken out against the tiny SIM, but following Apple’s offer of free licensing yesterday, it has labelled the plan nothing more than an attempt to devalue the intellectual property of its rivals.
It’s rare to see government agencies at the front of the technology curve, but it’s becoming more common with U.S. federal agencies after U.S. CIO Steven VanRoekel declared at CES that 2012 the year of mobile for the federal government. While most agencies have pushed to reevaluate their mobile technology option during the past few months, the Environmental Protection Agency seems to leading the government charge to mobile.
The EPA announced earlier this week that the agency has adopted a new “mobile first” policy. Under the policy, it is a setting forward-thinking IT mandate than even the most tech-savvy companies have yet to consider or embrace: develop solutions for mobile devices first and then re-work those solutions to function on the desktop.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Fujitsu’s made the first Android phone that I, as an iPhone lover, found myself drooling over… which makes it a doubly good thing that the phone in question is waterproof. And not just waterproof! As thin and light and as perfect in the hand as a dream.
The only problems? Because of Fujitsu’s bizarre way of selling their devices, this phone, which has been on sale in Japan for months, doesn’t even have a set name. And forget about getting one Stateside. How does a company make a phone this beautiful and then have no idea how to market it?
Mobile World Congress is undoubtebly one of the premiere places to see smartphones, but how about 3,500 smartphones fashioned to metal rods to create a 19-foot tall mythical winged horse? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find guarding this year’s MWC thanks to Huawei and London’s Machine Shop.
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