Android Sells the Smartphones; Apple Makes the Money
Android really is winning, no sarcasm, for HTC and Samsung. But they’re fighting over the remaining scraps of profit left by Apple.
Android really is winning, no sarcasm, for HTC and Samsung. But they’re fighting over the remaining scraps of profit left by Apple.
Digital content distribution has disrupted several notable industries. With the original iPod media player and iTunes Store, Apple changed the face of the music industry. And the Internet, in particular, has played a role in commoditizing news. All told, digital distribution of media has starkly impacted news, magazines, books, television, music, film and more.
Recently, no industry has been more impacted by digital distribution than video games. Leading the disruption are iOS and Android devices, whose free and inexpensive games, distributed across a massive installed base of powerful and networked tablet and mobile phone form factors, have already disrupted billions of dollars of game revenue. In this blog post, Flurry focuses on how mobile devices have severely altered the shape and flow of revenue in the multi-billion dollar portable game category.
Portable gaming, played primarily on Nintendo DS and Sony PSP devices, has been dominated by these two companies for over two decades. In this model, at retail, consumers pay around $200 for the gaming device and up to $40 for popular game cartridges. Because of the similar form factor, overlap in consumer base (especially younger players on iPod touch) and the casual nature of game content, Flurry combines iOS and Android devices with traditional portable devices to form the category. With the inclusion of smartphone game revenue into the category, shifts taking place in market share become clearer.
We've been working on our Kindle Fire review over the weekend but I thought I'd break out a particularly interesting section of the review for release a bit early. At its launch Amazon introduced a new web browser called Silk.
Silk is yet-another-webkit based browser with all of the usual features: tabbed browsing, Flash support, integrated search/URL bar, etc... What makes Silk unique is its ability to funnel your web requests through Amazon's Web Services (AWS) cloud. A typical load of AnandTech.com pulls content from thirteen different hosts. Each host is contacted, the request acknowledged and then data is exchanged between it and your browser.
Microsoft's Imagine Cup issues two new challenges for the 2012 competition - one being sponsored by Nokia.
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iOS and Android still lead the pack when it comes to luring mobile developers, but Windows Phone has solidified its status as the third most attractive smartphone OS ahead of BlackBerry, according to a new survey by IDC and mobile app development vendor Appcelerator. Not surprisingly, 91 percent of developers are "very interested" in developing for the iPhone and 83 percent are very interested in developing for Android phones. Windows Phone, by comparison, merits that level of attention from just 38 percent of survey respondents. But that is a rise of 8 percentage points since June and, coupled with RIM dropping 7 points to 21 percent, Windows is now the clear third choice.
"When asked why developers are more interested in Windows Phone 7 now than a year ago, a plurality (48 percent) said it was the Microsoft/Nokia partnership," the IDC/Appcelerator report states. "Nokia also received high marks from its new Lumia Windows Phone 7 smartphone announcement last month, with 28 percent of developers saying they are ‘very interested’ in developing for the device."
Nokia might have only just produced its first two Windows Phone devices, but it sounds like CEO Stephen Elop knows they won't do any good unless people buy them and developers write apps: he told investors at a Morgan Stanley conference yesterday that the Lumia 800 and 710 are priced lower than usual so they'll move "a good volume." Elop also said that Nokia's primary competitors are "other ecosystems," and that his first goal is to demonstrate high volume shipments at low prices to convince developers to get on board and boost consumer interest, and then follow up with premium devices at higher profit margins. Elop also said once again that Nokia would "aggressively" enter the US next year, and that "multiple" US carriers are on...
Researchers are using innovative tools to perform psychological experiments a lot faster than they used to. |
Nokia releases a new phone concept – Gem – which “revolutionizes mobile design by turning the entire handset into a touchscreen”.#more Launched on the 25th anniversary of the Nokia Research Centre, the GEM device changes appearance from camera to phone or map according to the function selected by the user. It could even display advertising messages on the back of the phone. The back and front are also interactive, making it possible to pinch and zoom the rear of the phone while getting a constant clear view of the image on the front. Read announcement (with concept video) |
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Recon Instruments stopped by our office today to show off the MOD Live, which puts a tiny Android-powered telemetry display inside the goggles of extreme skiers everywhere. When wearing MOD (or Micro Optics Display) goggles, you'll be able to see where you are, how far and fast you've traveled, the outside temperature, and more. You can also see how high and far you jump, so you can figure out if your epic fifty foot jump really was as cool as it felt. It's a small display in the bottom right corner of your goggles, but it's not distracting — you can glance over for information but have it out of the way the rest of the time. There's a separate Bluetooth remote that can attach to your goggles or strap to your arm, which you use to...
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It's been a long road since Kal-El's debut at MWC this February, but Nvidia's quad-core system-on-chip for mobile devices is finally ready for launch. The superhero codename is being replaced by the more logical Tegra 3 branding and the first host device has now been announced as Asus' Eee Pad Transformer Prime.
Tegra 3 promises to quintuple the performance of Tegra 2 with its four-core Cortex A9 arrangement while also tripling its graphical capabilities with a new 12-core graphics processor. That's a great deal of power for when you need it, but Nvidia has also added a fifth, low-power "companion core," whose role will be to keep things running during standby and other low-intensity modes. That core reaches a maximum speed of 500MHz...
Adobe just officially announced that it's killing Flash Player for Android and the BlackBerry Playbook, following a ZDNet report of the decision late last night. The company will still develop and support Flash for the PC, but says that HTML5 is the "best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms." Adobe will also continue to support AIR on mobile so developers can package Flash content as mobile apps, and Flash Player 11.1 for Android and Playbook is still on track to be released — and Adobe will continue to ship bug fixes and security updates, as well.
Measuring by shipments to retailers and carriers—rather than by sales to end users—HTC shipped more than 5.7 million smartphones in the United States in the third quarter of 2011, giving it nearly a quarter of the market, Canalys said. Next in line, “Samsung pushed Apple into third place in the US market, with shipments of its own brand devices reaching 4.9 million units,” the research firm reports. “Apple’s US smartphone shipments totaled 4.6 million in the quarter and it was affected around the world by consumers waiting for the launch of the next-generation iPhone.” Canalys credited HTC’s success, which comes largely in the United States, to “compelling and differentiated products” across the major carriers, including a strong range of 4G Android phones.
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I had the chance to sit down with Nokia CEO Stephen Elop after the launch of its first series of Windows Phone products — the Lumia 800 and 710 — in London. These are devices that Stephen likes to call "the first real Windows Phones." The reveal is only a small but important step, he assured me, on a journey to reinvent Nokia.
The former Microsoft exec turned Nokia CEO shared his thoughts in his customary honest, deliberate, and eloquent manner. He’s clearly a master of the material and his enthusiasm is infectious — he’s impossible not to like in person.
Stephen covered a wide range of topics including Nokia’s intent to introduce a "portfolio of products" into the US in early 2012. He’s clear that it’s not just carrier negotiations holding back the US launch but a confluence of other factors including a need to ramp up factories, supply lines, and support; localized customizations; and the technologies and services required by the US consumer. Nokia wants to introduce quality devices around the world as smoothly as possible, he insists, with a focus on delivering a premium user experience.
The straight-talking CEO also responded to recent criticisms from Android chief, Andy Rubin. Last week, Rubin said that Windows Phone could be "very dangerous for Microsoft" with Redmond’s hardware partners — including Nokia — on a path to repeat history as the modern equivalents of the commodified beige box. Stephen’s response was swift and critical, highlighting the fact that Microsoft doesn’t dominate the phone business as it did PCs, so it relies upon its hardware partners for innovation. He then commented on the Android user experience:
"In terms of [Windows Phone] doesn’t allow for the Sense UI or whatever, I would suggest that one of the biggest challenges facing that particular ecosystem is the fact that there is more and more of that going on. And when I go into the store and look at what that brand was supposed to stand for, I’m not quite seeing it — it’s just unclear what the standard is for the user experience."
When responding to a question about the prospects of a Nokia tablet and whether we should start thinking of Nokia as a "consumer electronics company," Stephen clarified that the "ecosystem" Nokia has joined extends well beyond phones. "There is a broader opportunity here," he told me. "The user experience of Windows 8 is es...
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HTC and Samsung's Android attack is having a significant effect on the marketplace — research firm Canalys estimates that HTC has overtaken all challengers and shipped the most smartphones in the US in Q3. While shipped certainly does not equal sold, this does align with the good news we heard earlier in the week when HTC announced its Q3 2011 results. As for Samsung, it managed to edge out Apple for second place in terms of units shipped in the US and reigns supreme as the overall top smartphone vendor on the globe.
Apple's year-over-year decline in Q3 was not unexpected; without a new iPhone to sell, many Apple fans likely put off purchasing until Q4. RIM had an especially tough quarter, though; US BlackBerry shipments declined from 24% of all smartphones in Q3 2010 to only 9% one year later. For RIM, BBX can't come soon enough.