It’s one thing to listen to the number of iPhones sold during an Apple financials call and be impressed by the sheer volume and popularity of the iPhone. It’s also easy to miss the overall impact of those incredibly high numbers without some context.
Gartner’s latest mobile device data, however, offers an excellent point of context – just under 8% of all mobile phones sold worldwide last quarter were iPhones.
With so many contrasting rumors in recent weeks, it has been hard to predict whether or not Apple will increase the size of the display for its sixth-generation iPhone. But according to sources for The Wall Street Journal, the Cupertino company is preparing to break away from its existing 3.5-inch panels in favor of a display measuring “at least 4 inches diagonally.”
The iTV. The Apple HDTV. SiriTV.
Whatever you want to call it, there’s a lot of talk out there about how Apple is going to revolutionize the living room experience by releasing their own proper television set.
There’s reason enough to be skeptical of these reports. From the industry’s notoriously low margins — Sony’s losing billions on their television business — to the fact that consumers simply don’t upgrade their TVs like they do their smartphones, does it even make sense that Apple would want to release their own television set?
Sure, Steve Jobs said he had “cracked” the TV problem before he died, but who’s to say that he wasn’t talking about Cupertino’s existing set-top box, the Apple TV, a $99 puck that anyone can afford and that slurps up streaming content from the web or the iPhones, iPads and (with Mountain Lion) Macs already in the home?
I’ll say it. The Apple TV is not enough, and Apple absolutely must release a revolutionary television set in the next two years.
Why? Because no matter how popular the Apple TV becomes, it will never be essential.
Mobile marketing and advertising firm Velti recently released its April Data report, which includes several interesting and surprising details including AT&T’s lead as U.S. iPhone provider. The most surprising piece of information in the report, however, is that adoption rates for the new iPad appear to have peaked and slowed.
Apple’s next-generation iPhone could finally put an end to fragile smartphones by adopting a flexible OLED display that can bend and twist without so much as a crack. The technology will reportedly come from Samsung — one of Apple’s biggest display partners — which claims to have already received “huge” orders from certain companies.
Apple and Samsung are neck and neck when it comes to U.S. smartphone market. In Japan, which represents roughly 5% of the global smartphone market, however, the iPhone is significantly beating Samsung’s range of Android handsets. Apple, in fact, has a more than 20% lead over Samsung in Japan – significantly higher than its current 5% lead over Samsung in America.
It’s likely this would be an entirely different story if Steve Jobs was still at Apple’s helm, but the Cupertino company has now agreed to drop a number of its infringement claims against Samsung, roughly cutting the case in half, in a bid to ensure that a trial goes ahead this summer.
Likewise, Samsung has agreed to do the same — dropping five of its 12 complaints — but both companies continue to bicker over the “copycat products” that have made Samsung the world’s number one smartphone vendor.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V25cOgGMgZM
If you’re a mobile gamer, then Gameloft is the development studio to keep your eye on over the coming months. In addition to the much-anticipated N.O.V.A. 3, the company has confirmed it is also working on the official Men in Black 3 mobile game, and Asphalt 7: Heat, the next release in its popular racing series.
In a mobile industry that’s simply booming, there’s only two phone vendors reaping the majority of the benefits: Samsung and Apple. In Q1 of 2012, Apple and Samsung combined for 99% of mobile phone vendor profits — the remaining 1% belonged to HTC. Independently, Apple holds the lion’s share of profits with an incredible 73% of operating profits thanks to carrier premiums for the iPhone 4S. Samsung, while leading in mobile phone shipments, only grabbed 26% operating profits — which isn’t really that bad considering every other carrier (other than HTC) managed to face significant losses.
Yesterday, Samsung announced their new Galaxy S III smartphone, a 4.8-inch monstrosity that doesn’t look a thing like an iPhone, but of course rips off Apple in many other particulars.
But let’s not pay attention to that. Instead, let’s ask ourselves what we can glean from the first Samsung Galaxy S III ad, especially when comparing it to a thirty-second iPhone 4S commercial.
This morning Samsung announced their newest high-end Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy S III. With a release date of May 29th, the new phone comes with a lot of crazy new features, like Smart Stay, that uses facial recognition to determine if you’re looking at it, and if not, it’ll turn the screen off. But topping the list of awesome new features is the “innovative” voice recognition feature. It’s innovative because you can say things like, “Hi Mr. Galaxy phone, what’s the weather gonna be like today?” and S Voice will pop-up a screen that looks exactly like Apple’s Siri feature does on the iPhone 4S.
Keep it up Samsung.
Source: Sebastiaan de With
Via: Rene Ritchie
While Apple saw strong sales for all its iOS devices during its post-holiday quarter, Android tablet sales slumped, giving up any gains that Android had seen as a tablet platform during the holiday shopping season.
According to IDC, overall tablet shipments were down more than the analyst firm had expected. The decline to 17.4 million units represented a 38.4% drop off from the holiday quarter shipments of 28.2 million units – a notably steeper decline than IDC’s predicted 34% decline.
While overall tablet shipments were down, Android tablets slumped significantly more than Apple’s iPad, which gained an additional 13.3% of the tablet market.
When analysts and companies compare mobile devices, the big number everyone focuses on is how much market share each platform or product has in relation to its competitors. While this makes for a good overall view of the playing field, it doesn’t always give a clear or accurate picture of which companies are doing well on a single metric as a model for success and ignores others, like whether a platform or manufacturer managed to turn a significant profit.
This is, of course, a very big point when discussing Apple’s iOS succes compared to Android as a whole or to individual manufacturers – and something that Asymco’s latest review of the mobile phone market in which Apple accounts for a small 8.8% of handsets but reaps a whopping 73% of the industry’s profits.
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.
Patent Armageddon is set to take place in less than a month thanks to dates set by Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero. The settlement talks were originally ordered by Judge Lucy Koh of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, in hopes that Samsung and Apple’s CEOs and their chief lawyers could reach an agreement to end the 50+ lawsuits filed by the two.
The term iSheep has been around for quite some time to describe those who purchase Apple products for no other reason than the fact that they’re Apple products and to denote that they all look the same. While I believe every facet of life has its “sheep,” Samsung makes an obvious reference to these iSheep in its latest Samsung Unpacked teaser video where they use sheep to depict “everyone else.”
Speaking of Wi-Fi connected cameras, Samsung’s entire new range of NX mirrorless cameras has Wi-Fi inside. This is an improvement on Nikon’s new D3200 – also announced today – which requires an awkward dongle to do the same trick.
There are three new models, the NX20 and NX210, which replace last-year’s NX10 and NX200. There is also the brand-new entry level NX1000. All share the same 20MP sensor as the old NX200.
While it may look pretty, Apple’s decision to build the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S almost entirely out of glass means that the handset isn’t really cut out for the dings and drops that our smartphones often have to endure. But the new iPhone could be a whole lot different. Built from liquidmetal, it could be one of the strongest smartphones money can buy.
Apple and Samsung have been trading body blows in their legal war-on-the-street for awhile now, suing and countersuing each other the Earth over for patent and IP violations. Now U.S. Judge Lucy Koh has ordered Apple CEO Tim Cook and Gee-Sung Choi to stop suing each other for a second and meet to try to talk it all out.
Apple has filed for all sorts of patents related to 3D technologies over the years, sparking speculation that the company will one day bring us 3D-capable Macs and iOS devices. But evidence that it’s about to get serious about 3D technology for iOS devices comes from a recent job listing on its website for a “Computer Vision specialist to strengthen its multi-view stereo research group.”
Apple’s new iPad is still selling like hot cakes, and new customers continue to face a 1-2-week shipping delay when purchasing through the Apple online store. But the company is reportedly struggling to meet demand with production constrained by Retina display supply and the recent cuts to factory worker overtime at Foxconn.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGwY70jkdY4
With its Lumia 900 set to make its much-anticipated debut in the U.S. on April 8, Nokia has kicked off a new advertising campaign called Smartphone Beta Test, in which it mocks devices like the iPhone and Android-powered rivals. Its most noticeable stab is at the iPhone’s “Death Grip,” which can be seen in the clip above.
Some might think that a flexible display is something out of a Sci-Fi film, however, they’re actually real. Samsung has already shown off its OLED flexible display, and today, we’ve gotten word that LG has now put its flexible e-ink display into mass production. Are these leading the way for a larger flexible display to land on the next iPad?
Apple and Samsung have been duking it out in court for quite sometime now, with Apple claiming that the Korean electronics giant has been “slavishly” copying its iOS products to use in Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets. In its case against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, Apple has leaned heavily on two specific patents for its defense, both having to do with the exterior of the iPad.
As if to point out the absurdity of Apple patenting the exterior of a tablet, Judge Koh, presiding over the case, notably held up both the Galaxy Tab and iPad side-by-side and asked those in the court to tell which was which from a distance. It took lawyers on both sides of the aisles a few seconds to answer the question correctly.
The judge’s point seems simple. Sure, the Galaxy Tab may look like the iPad, but Apple can’t patent that appearance… and to prove her point, she made note that in 1994, a television network portrayed the look of a tablet much before the iPad or Galaxy Tab came on the scene. If true, this could seriously destroy Apple’s case.
Ever wonder who exactly Samsung hired to test out the Galaxy Note before shipping it out to retailers across the globe? It was no easy task finding a quality assurance team that measured up to the pure magnitude of the Galaxy Note, but after interviewing nearly a dozen teams, Samsung went with lead QA Engineer Peter the elephant and his expert team of mixed mammals.