Thanks to a reminder from WebProNews, it's instructive to look again at the smartphone world via StatCounter, a pro service embedded on many web sites which tracks the browser and OS used to access them. And, reflecting the still enormous installed base of Symbian-powered smartphones across the world, Symbian still (for web access, at least) still dominates the world, at 31%.
The counter-intuitive nature of the chart, i.e. that Symbian still dominates despite Android and iOS activations reportedly running very high through 2011, is explained by the difference between sales marketshare and installed base 'share'. Earlier this year, actual sales of Android-powered smartphones per quarter overtook Symbian. But the 300 million or so active Symbian users across the world - regardless of whether they're using a three year old Nokia 5800 or even an older N95 - is a statistic that can't be ignored for actual use. You may remember that I've talked before about not underestimating the inertia behind Symbian's installed base - the numbers boggle the mind.
Added to the huge installed base of Symbian smartphones is the factor of the rise and rise of affordable data, even on pay as you go SIM cards, across the world. In other words, just about everyone is now getting online. In StatCounter's eyes, web access is web access." via allaboutsymbian.com

"As Android and Apple continue to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, RIM and other smartphone manufacturers have made moves to reclaim lost market share.
PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, December 13, 2011 - According to The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Android's operating system (OS) share of smartphone sales grew to command more than half of the U.S. smartphone market (53 percent) from January through October 2011, as Apple's iOS share grew to reach 29 percent of the market, and RIM's OS share declined to 11 percent. RIM and other companies that were formerly on top of NPD's smartphone rankings, however, have made critical business decisions this past year in a quest to shore up their U.S. smartphone businesses." Read more inside..

"Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module (SIM) devices.
Sales into the channel reached 460 million units. Gartner analysts said this increase was because of inventory build-up in the channel partly because of the shipping of new devices late in the quarter but mostly to prepare the channel for the holiday season. Gartner expects most of the build-up to be sold by the first quarter of 2012." Read more inside..

"It's the end of an era as Adobe has confirmed that it will no longer be developing its Flash Player for mobile devices. Instead Adobe will be focusing on HTML5 and Adobe-AIR native apps for the major mobile platforms. Adobe's VP Danny Winokur explained the decision:
Our future work with Flash onmobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash develoeprs to package native apps with Adobe-AIR for all major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations. " via mobile-review.com

"Nielsenhave just published their figures for the third quarter in the American market and the results are predictablyin keeping with previous trends. Google's Android platform continues to advance its dominance of the market at the expense of both Microsodt and RIM. Android finds itself sitting atop 43% of the market, which is an increase from the 39% it held in quarter two this year.  That comes about as Microsoft sees its combined platforms (Windows Phoneand Windows Mobile)  sliding from 9% in quarter two to 7% this quarter. RIM also lost marketshare to Android, falling from 20% to 18% over the same time period. Apple's iOS didn't make any gains, but then it didn't loose anything either, staying constant on a 28% share of the market. It's important to note that these figures won't have taken into account the launch of the iPhone 4S yet so expect tosee iOS nudge up a tad in the next set of results and Apple was yet again the number one smartphone vendor in the U.S." via mobile-review.com

"Whilst Android was busy racing past iOS in the mobile download stakes it was also extending its lead in the advertising stakes too. Millenial have just released new data for their network, which shows continued growth for Android and a very healthy lead over iOS.Android accounted for 56% of impressions by the end of the September quarter, which was double iOS, which had 28%. Even if iOS is trailing Android it is still way out in front of third placed RIM, which could only muster up 13% of impressions. Windows Phone is barely worth mentioning, having just 1% (and that's after being combined with Windows Mobile)." Read more inside..

 

 

"We have been waiting for 18 months just to get our hands-on the iPhone 4S. Now, the device is available all around the world. As the result of the long waited, 1 million pre-order was placed on the device and expected weekend sales of over 3m iPhone 4S smartphones. American network has claimed that all pre-order stock had been depleted. While in UK, they said new orders will be delivered in 1-2 weeks. We’ll see how well the iPhone 4S work." via slashphone.com

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, has died at the of 56 the company announced.In a statement Apple said "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundations of Apple".Jobs had been ill for some time, first announcing that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer in 2004. In recent years speculation over his health had mounted with Jobs appearing increasingly gaunt during public appearances.Bill Gates joined those offerring tribute to Jobs "For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him it's been an insanely great honour. I will miss Steve immensely".Jobs' deaths comes just one day after Apple announce its latest batch of products, including the next generation of the iconic iPhone that Jobs first launched back in 2007. Jobs' role in the company took a backseat to his medical condition when he handed over the running of the company to Tim Cook to take a medical leave of absence, before finally resigning in August, making Tim Cook the new CEO.Jobs was undoutedly the face of Apple and the company will be forver linked to him. His leadership helped turn Apple into one of the most successful companies in the world and it was often to Jobs that consumers looked to see what the next big thing would be.All of us here at Mobile-Review send our thoughts and prayers to Steve Jobss family and friends at this time. The world may have lost a great man, but it is all the better for having had him in it, even for just a short while.

"The big news of the day/week/month/year (depending on your level of fanboyism) is of course the announcement at long last of the new iPhone. Contrary to what many had expected the new device is not called the iPhone 5, it is in fact called the iPhone 4S. Before we get into the nitty gritty let's take a quick peek at some of the changes in this new iPhone. First up is the design, which isn't actually a change at all. It looks the same as the iPhone 4 and has the same screen dimensions. However, as Phil Schiller, was keen to stress, inside the iPhone 4S is where we see the new tech. Leading the charge is a new A5 dual-core processor, which Apple are saying is a good x2 faster than that found in the iPhone 4. The graphics performance is better than its predecessor too, clocking in at x7 the performance of the iPhone 4. To highlight this new capability they showed off a demo of the iPhone 4S running Infinity Blade 2 today and the accepted wisdom was that it looked pretty damned good. The camera has also seen an upgrade with a new 8 MP sensor in the iPhone 4S. This new sensor, Apple claims, traps 73% more light than the iPhone 4's sensor. Speed has been enhanced too with the iPhone 4S apparently being able to take its first picture in just 1.1s and thereafter its second picture just 0.5s later. That's pretty impressive stuff for a cameraphone in anyone's book. One of the biggest complaints surrounding the iPhone 4 was of course the 'antennagate' debacle whereby the handset would suddenly loose signal and drop calls. Well Apple have been at work designing a new antenna system that 'intelligently' switches between masts to improve call performance. It's all worth noting that the antenna design in the iPhone 4S seems to be the same setup as that used in the CDMA version of the iPhone. That leads me onto my next point, which is that the iPhone 4S is a true world phone. It supports GSM, UMTS, HSPA+ as well as CDMA. One phone for all networks then, assuming Apple wants to give it to them. Mind you it looks like American network Sprint will be getting its hands on the iPhone 4S so Apple might be loosening the restraints a bit in that respect. By far the biggest wow moment, if there could be said to be any such moments in a sea of recaps today, was the unveiling and demoing of Siri. I'll be going into more detail on Siri in another post, but for now suffice it to say that it acts as a personal assistant and responds to voice commands. If that sounds a bit dry well it isn't. In terms of availability we're looking at 14th October for the first batch of countries, which are the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan. More countries will be added on the 28th October and by the end of the year there should be 70 countries in total able to get their hands on an iPhone 4S." via mobile-review.com

"Crads on the table folks, RIM hasn't been doing too well lately and their recent earnings report for Q2 only added to their decline. Some quick numbers first: BlackBerry subscribers did in fact rise 40% to 70 million or so, which is the highest level ever. However, it's pretty much all downhill from there; net income dropped by a colossal 60%; average selling price dropped too, and operating margin fell from 21% to just 13%. That looks pretty bad for RIM, but there's worse to come I'm afraid. An independent analyst, Horace Dediu, noted that RIM's global marketshare may have slipped into single digits during the past quarter. RIM managed to ship a total of 10.6 million devices, which is short of their own estimate of between 11 million and 12.5 million. It's even short of some very conservative estimates for RIM's performance. Dediu states:
In terms of the competition, 10.6 million units is less than half what Apple or Samsung sold in its prior quarter. It's also less than what HTC sold. RIM's volume rank will likely go to fifth place as a smartphone vendor.
To be clear the actual figures for global rankings will not be available for another month or so, but Dediu points out that with the general market trend of growing at 77% these sort of figures from RIM indicate that a single digit marketshare globally could very well be on the cards." via mobile-review.com