When Apple unveiled the iPad in 2010, smartphone vendors were caught off guard and they rushed to launch similar tablets to take advantage of the new market that had been created. Their early efforts were absolutely awful, however. Android slates have gotten much, much better since those early days and now Android vendors’ combined tablet market share looks ready to pass Apple’s share. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company isn’t done setting trends though, and its iPad mini is the latest device Android vendors will look to base their new models on moving forward. More →
With the PC industry in decidedly bad shape lately, PC vendors have been looking for alternative ways to generate revenues in a computer market that’s increasingly tilted toward mobile devices. IDG News, via PCWorld, reports that Asus plans to release its first Chromebook in the second half of 2013 while hoping to continue the success it’s had so far in shipping Android tablets. Asus has no illusions that Chromebooks will be mass consumer products, but Asus CEO Jerry Shen tells IDG News that the “Chromebook is good, not on the consumer side, but it’s good in the education and government side, and some for the commercial side.” IDG notes that Asus shipped 3 million Android tablets in the first quarter of 2013, so it’s clear that the company is more than willing to look beyond Microsoft for operating systems for its devices.
The latest U.S. smartphone market share data from comScore shows an interesting twist compared to global data. Fast growth in emerging markets has sent Apple’s global market share plummeting, but the big-money U.S. smartphone market is still very much driven by high-end handsets. According to comScore’s latest data, Apple’s share of the U.S. smartphone market climbed to 39% in Q1 2013 from 36.3% in the fourth quarter last year. Over the same period of time, Android’s share of the U.S. market slid from 53.4% to 52%. Perhaps even more interesting than the figures themselves, however, is the trend among mobile operating systems in the U.S. — Android is still the nation’s top smartphone platform by a healthy margin, but its remarkable growth stopped the iPhone from enjoying impressive growth as well. More →
Slowly but surely, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is inching its way toward overtaking the two-and-a-half year old Gingerbread as the dominant platform version of Android. The latest numbers from the Android Developers website show that Jelly Bean now holds a 28.4% share of the Android device market, marking the first time it has had a larger share than Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which now has a sits at 27.5%. All that said, Jelly Bean still has a ways to go before it catches up with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the operating system that was released all the way back in December 2010, which still clings to a 38.5% share of the Android market. In other words, it looks like Gingerbread will still be the most widely used version of Android as Google announces yet another new version of the platform, Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, which may be coming at Google I/O later this month.
A new report suggests that LG and Google will be teaming up to produce several new products including another smartphone and an OLED TV set. According to the Korea Times, Google CEO Larry Page met with LG’s chief executive Koo Bon-joon on a recent visit to South Korea. The two executives reportedly spoke for more than an hour and discussed ways to improve their business partnership, including more deals between the two companies. LG is now said to be working on a second Nexus-branded smartphone and is reportedly in talks to launch “an LG-Google OLED TV,” in addition to its current lineup of Google TV products. LG previously partnered with Google to release the popular Nexus 4 smartphone last fall.
LG has continued to make inroads in the lucrative mobile market that in recent years has become dominated by its South Korean rival Samsung. The company has taken an aggressive approach against Samsung and even attempted to steal the thunder away from its Galaxy S4 event earlier this year. LG’s original Optimus G smartphone was well received by critics and LG hopes its sequel will find even more success. But can the Optimus G Pro hold its own in a Galaxy controlled by Samsung? More →
HTC was once the top-selling smartphone vendor in the United States. It wasn’t even that long ago. The Taiwan-based vendor reported six consecutive months of record revenue in 2011 before it ran into a brick wall known as the iPhone 4S. Since then, things have been tumbling downhill for HTC, culminating in the company’s worst-ever quarterly performance that saw profits plummet 98% in Q1 2013. Fierce competition from Apple is one reason HTC has seen its profits evaporate over the past year and a half, but another company has likely caused even more trouble for the struggling smartphone vendor: Samsung. More →
Rumors were getting pretty ridiculous leading up to this year’s Google I/O conference. Among the products and software that have been rumored to be announced at Google I/O this year are Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, Google’s new Babble messaging service, the Nexus 7.7 tablet, the Nexus 5 smartphone, the Motorola “X Phone,” an upgraded Nexus 4 in lieu of the Nexus 5 and X Phone, new Google Glass details and more. While some of the aforementioned rumors have since changed, it turns out we really are in store for an action-packed show at this year’s I/O conference. Google on Tuesday evening posted the session schedule for I/O and among the sessions listed is the company’s customary opening keynote — only this year, it’s three hours long. The Google I/O 2013 keynote kicks off at 9:00 a.m. EDT on May 15th, so be ready for tons of announcements to be stuffed into the three hours that follow.
Google unlawfully used technology from Oracle, Microsoft and others when creating its Android and Chrome operating systems, leaving its vendor partners exposed. Rather than engaging in expensive and often drawn out lawsuits, a majority of Android vendors have signed licensing agreements with patent holders. Microsoft has already signed licensing agreements with more than 20 Android manufacturers, including big-name players such as HTC, Samsung and LG. The company claims that 80% of Android smartphones sold in the U.S. and most devices sold throughout the world are now covered under its various agreements. More →
Perhaps the most fascinating trend in App Annie’s new March statistics is the transformation of the Google Play Android app store into a messaging app distributor. No fewer than three out of four biggest revenue generators in the non-game app chart are now messaging apps; LINE at No.1, WhatsApp at No.3 and KakaoTalk at No.4. The iPhone’s non-game revenue chart is a bit lighter on messaging app but still features LINE at No.1 and WhatsApp at No.8. More →
In the wake of grim PC sales, HP may be preparing to release a high-end Android tablet in the coming months. A listing on the AnTuTu benchmark network, per TabTech, revealed a new tablet known as the HP SlateBook 10 X2. The slate is equipped with a 10.1-inch display, a new quad-core Tegra 4 processor clocked at 1.8GHz and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. HP recently entered the Android tablet market with the mid-range Slate 7 that’s selling for only $169.99. The affordable tablet is equipped with a 7-inch 1024 x 600 pixel resolution display, a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, 8GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, Beats Audio, a microSD card and a 3-megapixel rear camera.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform has slowly increased its market share since being released last October. The latest numbers from Kantar Worldpanel found that the operating system accounted for 5.6% of sales in the United States in the first quarter of 2013, up 1.9 percentage points from the same period in 2012. Android smartphones continue to dominate the market, increasing 1.4 percentage points and accounting for 49.3% of all smartphone sales, compared to the iPhone’s market share, which fell from 44.6% in Q1 2012 to 43.7% last quarter. More →
