Android rules rest of world - www.gadget.co.za

14 Aug 2012 by Editor | Filed in Mobile

Recent research by Gartner has revealed that although the worldwide sales of mobile phones declined by 2.3% in the second quarter of 2012, smartphones sales increased by 42.7%, with Android extending its lead over iOS.

Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users reached 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, a 2.3 per cent decline from the second quarter of 2011, according to Gartner. Smartphone sales accounted for 36.7 per cent of total mobile phone sales and grew 42.7 per cent in the second quarter of 2012.

"Demand slowed further in the second quarter of 2012," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "The challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets. Demand of feature phones continued to decline, significantly weakening the overall mobile phone market.

"High-profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chinese manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major device launches in the second half of 2012, will drive the smartphone market upward. However, feature phones will continue to see pressure," Mr Gupta said.

In the second quarter of 2012, Samsung's mobile phone sales remained very strong — up 29.5 per cent from the second quarter of 2011 (see Table 1), and managed to extend its lead over both Apple and Nokia quarter-on-quarter. This quarter's growth was driven by record sales of Galaxy smartphones, meaning smartphones now account for 50.4 per cent of all Samsung mobile devices, or 45.6 million units. Demand for the new Galaxy S3 was particularly strong, exceeding Samsung's own expectations, with a reported 10 million units reached in the two months after its release. The Galaxy S3 was the best-selling Android product in the quarter and could have been higher but for product shortages.

In the second quarter of 2012, consumer demand for the Apple iPhone weakened as sales fell 12.6 per cent from the first quarter of 2012, but grew 47.4 per cent year-on-year. Depending on the exact launch date of the new iPhone, Apple might experience another weaker-than-usual quarter in the third quarter of 2012, while Apple will be ready to take advantage of the strong holiday sales in North America and Western Europe that have historically remained immune to economic pressure.

"Samsung and Apple continued to dominate the smartphone market, together taking about half the market share, and widening the gap to other manufacturers. No other smartphone vendors had share close to 10 per cent," Mr Anshul said. "In the race to be top smartphone manufacturer in 2012, Samsung has consistently increased its lead over Apple, and its open OS market share increased to one-and-a-half times that of Apple in the second quarter of 2012."

Table 1

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)

Company	2Q12 Units	2Q12 Market Share (%)	2Q11 Units	2Q11 Market Share (%)
Samsung	90,432.1	21.6	69,827.6	16.3
Nokia	83,420.1	19.9	97,869.3	22.8
Apple	28,935.0	6.9	19,628.8	4.6
ZTE	17,936.4	4.3	13,070.2	3.0
LG Electronics	14,345.4	3.4	24,420.8	5.7
Huawei Device	10,894.2	2.6	9,026.1	2.1
TCL Communications	9,355.7	2.2	7,938.9	1.9
HTC	9,301.2	2.2	11,016.1	2.6
Motorola	9,163.2	2.2	10,221.4	2.4
Research In Motion	7,991.2	1.9	12,652.3	3.0
Others	137,233.4	32.8	152,989.70	35.7
Total	419,007.90	100.0	428,661.15	100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2012)

Nokia's mobile phone sales declined 14.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2012. Nokia is battling fiercely with white-box and new emerging device manufacturers to defend its feature phones sales. Nokia succeeded, to a certain extent, in winning feature phone market share as its sales grew quarter-on-quarter. While posting sequential growth in the feature phone market, Nokia's Lumia devices continue to struggle to find a place in consumers' minds as a replacement for Android.

"Declining smartphone sales is worsening Nokia's overall position, as it had already lost the No. 1 position to Samsung in the previous quarter and is facing reduced profitability due to continuous declining sales of premium smartphones," said Mr Gupta.

In the smartphone OS market, Android extended its lead with an increase of 20.7 percentage points in market share in the second quarter of 2012 (see Table 2). While Apple's iOS market share slightly grew year over year (0.6 per cent), it declined 3.7 percentage points quarter-on-quarter, as users postponed their upgrade decisions in most markets ahead of the upcoming launch of the iPhone 5.

Gartner analysts said the arrival of the iPhone 5 should provide the greatest upgrade opportunity yet as the expected new design with a larger screen and likely other stylistic changes to the form factor will certainly make a strong case for iPhone 4 users to upgrade.

Table 2

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 2Q12 (Thousands of Units)

Operating System	2Q12 Units	2Q12 Market Share (%)	2Q11 Units	2Q11 Market Share (%)
Android	98,529.3	64.1	46,775.9	43.4
iOS	28,935.0	18.8	19,628.8	18.2
Symbian	9,071.5	5.9	23,853.2	22.1
Research In Motion	7,991.2	5.2	12,652.3	11.7
Bada	4,208.8	2.7	2,055.8	1.9
Microsoft	4,087.0	2.7	1,723.8	1.6
Others	863.3	0.6	1,050.6	1.0
Total	153,686.1	100.0	107,740.4	100.0

Source: Gartner (August 2012)

Gadget Web Site - The eee Pad has landed

The WiFI version of the Asus eee Pad Transformer sneaked into South African stores in July with little fanfare. But the high-end 3G unit arrives this month, and Asus expects it to shake up the market. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK assesses its chances.

Four years ago, Asus was one of the earliest and most aggressive players in the Netbook market with its Eee PC. It practically invented the format.

So, when Apple redefined portability with the iPad in 2010, Asus was expected to be one of the first challengers. And, indeed, it hit the market mere weeks after the iPad, confusingly announcing an e-reader it called a Tablet, and a tablet it called a Pad. The fact that Apple didn’t immediately take them to court may well have been an indication that these devices posed little challenge to the iPad at the time. Fast-forward a year, and Asus has a device on the market that goes beyond the iPad.

It’s called the eee Pad Transformer, a 10.1” tablet running Android 3.0 or Honeycomb, and offers an optional docking keyboard that also boosts battery life from 9 hours to 16 hours. Well-priced at $399, its first production runs – estimated at about 100,000 – reportedly sold out immediately in some markets, and in June it shipped a further 300,000 units.

That it remained in short supply is an indication that, with more aggressive and courageous marketing, it could join the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 as the main challenger to the iPad.

The first version of the eee Pad (pronounced “e-pad”) was WiFi only, and that’s the version that arrived quietly in South Africa in early July. September sees the 3G version arrive in South Africa, around mid-month.

“We have some significant retail developments to be announced in September which will boost our unit sales,” says Tyrone Grüner, Asus product manager at Platinum Micro.

He points out that the Asus eee Pad Transformer has quickly become the number one-selling “open” tablet in a number of international markets. Its success, he says, is a design which delivers against the demands of a market spoilt for choice.

“While a number of Android tablets are emerging, the eee Pad is winning market share owing to its battery life, performance and design. It is on these criteria that it is unbeatable,” he says.

Asus also makes much of the fact that, in July, it was reported that Asus has assumed the mantle of the world’s biggest non-iPad tablet maker.

“This is significant,” says Grüner, “as there is no shortage of competition in this segment of the market. With over 400 000 units shipped, and with the Asus device listed as the number one selling tablet on Amazon.com in April this year, consumer demand is strong.”

It’s not the tablet alone that is selling, he adds.

“What is particularly noteworthy is that the bundle including the keyboard is the top-selling configuration. This tells us that tablet users want more than touchscreen input from their device. That’s especially true as the tablet is seen not as a ‘play’ device, but one which is at home in the office or after-hours.”

In the light of criticism that Sony’s newly unveiled Tablet P is “plasticky”, it is also significant that the eee Pad uses high-quality materials that include brushed aluminum. It takes on the iPad with dual front and rear cameras, the Galaxy Tab with an SD and MicroSD card slot, and delivers on the now standard tablet expectations of embedded GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity.

Since it uses the Google Android operating system, says Grüner, “it represents an ecosystem which is delivering hundreds of thousands of apps to the user. Easy interoperability with compatible mobile phones is assured, which, when tethered, create a WiFi hotspot. With support for Flash and supplied with the Polaris Office suite, the versatility of the device is clear.”

At $399 in the USA, the eee Pad is the most affordable Android Honeycomb tablet on the market. However, this price advantage is not carried over to South Africa. The official prices announced in June start at R4499 for the 16GB version, which at first site appears to compare directly with the iPad 2’s R4 399 for its own 16GB version.

But comparing Apples with Asuses, this is plain poor strategy. The comparable US prices being $399 and $499 for the Pad and iPad respectively, the South African cost for the eee Pad should be around R3600. That would make it far and away the cheapest major name brand large format tablet in South Africa (with only Huawei’s 7” Slim at the same price point), and give it an unbeatable advantage in this market.

Perhaps we will see more competitive pricing when the 3G version arrives in bulk. Meanwhile, the reseller channel – Hirsch’s, Look & Listen, Computer Mania and Chaos are lined up to stock the device – should expect customers to demand that it be better than the iPad if they are expected to pay the same price.

Grüner is confident the customer will make the right choice: “Consumer demand is there; it’s hard to describe the appeal of this product without seeing it for yourself, so we believe that as word of mouth gains momentum, there will be plenty of people who are looking for the advantages of great hardware design combined with Android’s appeal who will choose the Asus tablet above any other. We’ve seen it internationally; we’ll see it in South Africa, too.”

* Pricing for the Asus eee Pad Transformer is estimated at R4499 (16GB), R5499 (32GB) and R6499 (32GB dock bundle). Final pricing is reseller-determined. For more, including specifications and demonstrations, view: http://www.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101. For more information on Platinum Micro, visit www.platinummicro.co.za

* Follow Arthur on Twitter on @art2gee

Android on your iPhone | TechCentral

[By Craig Wilson]

There’s less and less separating mobile handsets from one another when it comes to the hardware that powers them. So, what happens when users can decide for themselves what operating system software they want to run on their phones?

Just looking at the latest smartphone offerings from Motorola, Samsung, HTC and other device manufacturers, high-end phone hardware is looking increasingly similar: dual-core processors, 1GB of RAM and screens with at least 900 pixels on the long side are now standard smartphone qualities, regardless of brand.

Despite minor differences in screen resolution, dozens of phones from different manufacturers all run Android pretty much out the box. What separates them is a user interface overlay of some sort — Samsung’s TouchWiz, HTC’s Sense or Motorola’s Motoblur.

And that’s really the point: as devices look more and more like one another, there’s less emphasis on hardware differentiators and more on the little tweaks and user interface alterations made by manufacturers.
And then there’s the iPhone. Unlike Android, Apple’s iOS software doesn’t even pretend to be “open”. But that hasn’t stopped people from finding ways around this. The iPhone can be “jailbroken” and then the possible alterations are only limited by the user’s imagination and abilities.

Apple tried to argue that “jailbreaking” a device violated end user agreements. But US courts disagreed, saying that once you as a consumer have bought a device, it’s yours to do with as you wish.

So what if you love iOS but can’t afford an iPhone, or you can but you’d love the LED-flash and higher resolution camera a competitor’s device has to offer? Just as some people run Windows on Apple Macs, and vice versa, it’s surely only a matter of time before you choose your device, and then your operating system, rather than the other way around.

Of course, manufacturers hate the idea. They spend fortunes on user interface design and operating system development, in part so that they can try and be the first to offer something a competitor doesn’t. Where devices are becoming more homogeneous, software is a great place to differentiate.

But the disapproval of manufacturers isn’t going to stop resourceful consumers from figuring out how to make their devices operate exactly as they’d like them to, even if that means replacing the software that powers them.

Android users are already well known for overhauling the software shipped with their devices through a process called “rooting” — not to be confused with the Australian use of the same term which means something decidedly less technical. By rooting an Android device, users can make big or minor alterations, from choosing to store applications on an SD card rather than the device’s internal memory to installing a heavily customised operating system.

Steven Ambrose, MD of SA consulting firm Strategy Worx and a serial device dabbler, says that as hardware gets more and more generic, it’s possible consumers will start installing different operating systems on their phones, much like they’d choose to install Linux on a PC instead of Windows.

“A perfect example is the HTC HD7,” Ambrose tells me. “That phone has been released running Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows MobilePhone 7 and Android. The devices have had slightly different names, but all run the same hardware.”


He says with the forthcoming iOS 5 from Apple no longer requiring a desktop or laptop to set up, this may be the final step required to move the ideas of the Hackintosh to the world of mobile devices. The Hackintosh community creates hacks that allow users to install Apple’s Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.

Though the majority of consumers are quite happy to use their devices as the manufacturers intended, there are a growing number of power users who want to eke the most out of the hardware and make it conform to their expectations rather than the other way around.

iOS users might ask why anyone would want Android on an iPhone, and Android users might ask the same of iOS users, but consumers have different demands.

Recently, a woman approached me in a coffee shop and asked me to help her connect to the Internet. She put her MacBook Pro in front of me and my jaw dropped when I saw it was running Windows 7. I asked her why she’d ditched Mac OS X and she said it was because her company used software that didn’t run on the Apple operating system.

Like it or not, we’re still bound by the whims of those who make the smartphones we use and, despite the enormous capabilities inherent in their devices, we remain constrained by the artificial walls created by manufacturers. Those walls may be about to come tumbling down.

Apple vs Android vs Blackberry: Smartphone and tablet PC trends in SA « Gadgets « MyBroadband Tech and IT News

August 3, 2011

BMI-T recently revealed the results of their study in smartphone and tablet PC trends in SA

BMI-T recently conducted an online survey on MyBroadband.co.za in order to gauge tablet PC and smartphone trends among South African early adopters.

Ryan Smit, digital consumer unit head at BMI-T, explained that MyBroadband’s demographic includes highly technologically minded people which represent the early adopters of technology rather than the main stream mass market.

The survey had 1,500 respondents, BMI-T said, adding that the trends among early adopters are not necessarily indicative of what will happen in the mass market.

Ryan Smit, digital consumer unit head at BMI-T, described early adopters as the “tip of the wave” and explained that their perceptions are fairly fickle.

How likely are you to get a tablet PC?

BMI-T asked respondents how many already have tablet PCs, and whether they are looking at getting tablet PCs in the next few months.

Among the respondents, 13.1% said they have tablet PC now, with 24.1% saying they plan to get a tablet in 3 months, 36.3% in 6 months, 53.6% in 12 months, and 71.6% in 24 months.

Smartphone vendors rated

Respondents were also asked how highly they rate smartphone vendors. Unsurprisingly, Apple came out on top. The ranking was as follows:

1. Apple – 65.4%
2. HTC – 55.7%
3. BlackBerry – 44.3%
4. Samsung – 41.3%
5. Nokia – 26.5%
6. Motorola – 10.4%
7. LG – 5.2%

Service provider smartphone offerings

The smartphone offerings of South Africa’s service providers were also rated. Vodacom received the highest rating at 54.8%, followed by MTN at 48.4%. The ratings then take a sharp drop with Cell C at 23.3%, Nashua Mobile at 19.4%, Autopage at 14.8%, and other service providers steadily getting lower ratings thereafter.

Smit said that 8ta wasn’t included in the survey as the new operator wasn’t around when they developed the survey.

Past, present, future handset choices

BMI-T also asked the respondents which handset they used previously, which they use currently, and which they plan to use in the future.

Here their findings correlate with those which World Wide Worx released earlier this year (2011), with Nokia’s market share amongst early adopters declining and BlackBerry, Apple, and Android manufacturers’ market share increasing.

Manufacturer	Previous	Current	Future
Nokia	40.70%	23.40%	6.90%
Samsung	14.80%	11.80%	16.20%
Motorola	3.50%	1.50%	1.60%
Sony	14.80%	5.80%	2.90%
HTC	10.50%	15.10%	17.50%
BlackBerry	6%	23.60%	20.20%
Apple	6.30%	16.20%	30.80%
LG	1.90%	1.30%	1.00%
Other	1.40%	1.30%	2.80%

Interestingly, the current sentiment among early adopters seems to indicate a slight decline in the favour BlackBerry has enjoyed in South Africa, while the aspiration to Apple’s iPhone is quite high among the respondents.