Posts by Mark . 1810 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jun 2009
Do Ipads have SD card slots? Don't get me wrong, I dislike it when devices don't include them, but that can't be the reason for Android doing less well on tablets. Especially since plenty of tablets do have SD card slots. (Sure the Google tablet doesn't, but neither do the Google phones, and Android is doing amazingly well on phones.)
They may have marketed it that way, but I disagree it's fair to place Android in the same category of Linux[*]. Android Just Works at least as well as IOS, and I've seen people having problems with simple things on IOS. I'm like "But surely you just ..." and then realise this probably doesn't work on an Apple device.
And Android hasn't failed, it's the overwhelmingly dominant mobile OS, with smartphone share approaching 70%, whilst Iphone struggles at 16% and falling. It has succeeded, and it's Apple who desperately need a USP to do better. So there's no problem with Android and usability here - people are fine with it. Whatever problem on non-phone devices must have a different explanation.
[*] GNU/Linux, for the pedants who'll tell me that Android is Linux. Indeed, your post suggests we can lump Android with GNU/Linux just because they're the same kernel, which doesn't make sense at all.
I agree that it's a shame there are missed opportunities, but Apple don't have a USP either - I think the bigger problem is that people simply aren't aware of the higher end or larger Android tablets. It's depressing to see people who love their Android smartphones, and like Android, and chose it over Apple (and it isn't simply a case of buying something cheaper) then thinking that the only choice for tablets is an Ipad. Part of the problem is that the only tablets that have previously been publicised are either cheap deals on crappy low end unknown-brand tablets, or the Kindle Fire which is only available in some markets, and can't access Google Play. Hopefully the Nexus 7 will change awareness, though that's still not a 7". Maybe Samsung with have better luck with the "Note" brandname (making it appear a 10" version of their successful phone).
"apps not optimised for tablets."
What does this mean though? Given phones now have HD resolutions, it's not clear why there's a difficulty. There's also a wide range of sizes, from 3" to 10", with everything in between, so it's not like you can solve this with just two versions. Yes it's true there's more scope for better UIs - e.g., at 10", why not have a full windowing environment rather than having to have all applications run full screen. But again, Apple don't have this either, with it being only Samsung to advance things with split screens. (Whilst I'm glad to see this progress by Samsung and MS, it does amuse me - like we're meant to be impressed by a tiled window manager that was done by computers years ago - maybe TouchWiz 5 and Windows 9 will also add overlapping windows...)
So wait, a device that has only just released, hasn't made much of a dent in years of sales of hundreds of millions of Android smartphones? Wow, I'm shocked.
Android is so overwhelmingly popular on smartphones, and smartphones in general are way more popular than tablets, that it's not surprising that the percentage of Android tablets compared to Android as a whole will be low - this doesn't mean a failing of the platform. To rate the success of the platform on tablets, we're better off looking at sales compared to other platforms (and by actual numbers, not percentages). So what are the latest sales figures for the Nexus 7?
Pwease won't somebody think of the poor shareholders!
Seriously, if you buy shares, you're in it to make money, and you do so taking a risk. Given how much doom and gloom there has been about Nokia in the press for years, despite their immense successes over that time, I hardly think shareholders have been misled in a positive direction. But if they don't like it, they're free to invest elsewhere, or maybe just open up a safe bank account like most people do.
There's explanation of this on All About Symbian / All About Windows Phone. Pureview is marketing speak for all their new camera technologies.
This kind of thing is standard when it comes to marketing/trademarks - otherwise you couldn't really market a phone with a long list of names after it, because it had more than one of those technologies... Calling it newspeak is unfair, unless you consider all marketing terms and trademarks to be newspeak. It's like pointing out that "Macs" aren't Macs at all, but are now a completely different platform, i.e., x86 PCs running OS X. Or consider the way Intel used to market CPUs by their model names, but now use umbrella marketing terms for low-end/high-end (i3/i5/i7) across multiple generations of CPU technology, and you have to look at the spec sheets to see which generation it is, or the CPU model.
Even when a WP does have the 808-style sensor, most expect they'll use a lower MP camera (say, 20MP) on a mainstream flagship device, to avoid the "bulge" it causes - would that be misleading too, because it's not as good as 41MP?
The problem would be if they'd used "Pureview" on a crap camera. Yes that would be misleading, and ultimately harm the value of that trademark. But there's no evidence on that yet. And surely it's good to see that they have more than one trick up their sleeve when it comes to interesting new camera tech, and not just that which was shown in the 808 - better that than them relying on only one single selling point (*cough*Retina*cough*). Hopefully we'll see one that has all of these (the reasons why we haven't seen a WP version of the 808 are apparently due to them still porting the driver code that did all the image processing of the 41MP image - seriously, I doubt Nokia are sitting around going "Ha, let's shaft our users by not including this technology", they're probably trying to get it working with WP ASAP).
Surely it's normal for adverts to only focus on some aspects - if they focused on the OS, you'd complain they had nothing to say about the camera. Other Nokia Lumia ads most certainly have prominently shown WP, so it's false to suggest they're hiding it.
The Samsung Galaxy phone ads don't seem to say anything about the OS. Those Apple laptop ads just go on about "Retina" without saying anything about the OS (or telling you what "Retina" is, come to that). Plenty of phone ads actually don't say much about features at all, instead just showing other marketing fluff.
Indeed this is normal for marketing - sad, yes, but it's yet another case of it's only bad publicity when Nokia do it (whilst the media are happy to ignore Nokia and focus on Apple Apple Apple, in all the years until 2011 when Symbian was outselling everything else massively).
Or possibly our expectations where just raised because the 808 videos *were* shot just on an 808 (leading some people to claim they were fake, but they were wrong).
I agree, wait for the reviews. Whilst this may not be 808-amazing-quality (which did have a bump on the phone to incorporate the camera, and is reportedly light years ahead of anything else), given Nokia's general quality with cameras (e.g., the N8), there's no reason to think this won't be a good quality camera too, whatever happened with the ads.
Few people upgrade to the new version of Windows, they get it with new PCs. Sales may not be great in a recession, but there are still nonetheless sales in the millions.
For cheap phones, for current sales you probably mean S40 rather than Symbian (plus Samsung are rather big at the low end too).
I disagree most people buy phones entirely on applications, I'd say that's one of many many considerations (with Apple still the most supported for some reason, yet it has 16% share and falling, compared to Android's rising share now approaching 70%, so clearly this isn't a major consideration for most people). Also by that argument, Android and IPhone shouldn't have bothered, as at the start they had less software than existing platforms.
As for 7th or 8th, you'd have advised Apple not to enter the phones market? And how do you define a market? The market for Windows 8 PCs is pretty new.
It may be that everyone who wants to have a tablet already has one, but if that's true, Apple and Android tablet sales will drop off too. The failure of the Surface won't matter then to MS, because people will continue buying normal PCs, 90% of which will run Windows 8. However, it's sensible to enter into new markets, in case people do continue buying those types.
Also consider that this is not an oversized phone tablet which is all we've seen before, it (especially the Surface Pro) is a full blown Windows PC. We can debate whether people want such hybrids, but it's certainly not late to the market - we've yet to have such a thing at all (at least not in such a portable fashion - previous hybrids ended up being bulkier than normal laptops, rather than smaller).
And again you spout the Zune was a flop myth. It didn't become market leader, but that doesn't make it a flop. It's all spin - when Apple get 5% of a market, they're hailed as a runaway success; when MS get 10%, it's a "flop" just because it wasn't number one. (Also consider the massively successful X Box - despite, unlike Apple who get nothing but hype, people claiming that no one would ever want to buy an MS console.)
And this spin is laughable - in the very same paragraph, we're told how the breakdown by quarter was 1 million, 2 million, 4 million - doubling every quarter.
So even if *their sales now remain constant*, that's 4 million a quarter, or 16 million. Predicting there will be growth from that doesn't seem unreasonable, especially consider the current growth rate, plus there are other manufacturers too (Samsung stayed out of the WP market this year, but have now returned with high end S3-like offerings).
I don't care about WP. I do care about accurate reporting.
"Here's some context: Samsung claims 20 million Galaxy SIIIs have been sold since its introduction three months ago. One million iPhone 4Ses were sold in the 24 hours after launch in October last year."
Here's some context: The Iphone platform took 76 days to sell one million, yet this was spun as an amazing success - even though Nokia were selling 10s of millions of Symbian phones a quarter. And it was years before the Iphone platform's sales grew to anything significant.
Compare like with like - if we're talking about the growth of a new platform, let's compare it to other platforms when they were introduced. And why criticise at all? No one criticised Apple's lack of sales in all those years, instead it just got media hype about how it would be the number one platform (even though it never did).
Also for context: Samsung and Nokia typically sell around one million phones a day all year round (though Nokia's may be less these days). Not just on the first day of a new product launch that's been hyped for months.
As for the numbers - yes, Windows phones/tablets outselling non-tablets seems unlikely. Though I think it's worth noting that we're going to see a lot of laptops with touchscreens that are convertibles/hybrids, and these so far seem to be marketed as "tablets". So we might have the odd situation where tablets do outsell non-tablets, but it's more that people continue buying laptops to use as traditional PCs, and just that it'll be standard for them to double up as tablets.
I don't see that we'll be able to cleanly divide Windows 8 sales into "PCs" and "tablets" when so many many machines will be both. All this "death of the PC" nonsense is largely spin, as I'm sure we'll continue to have conventional personal computers still, with additional features of portability and touch interfaces. What we choose to call them is matter of semantics.
Is the Galaxy Camera available yet? If not, there's still the question of who'll get to the market first. Plus whilst the Galaxy Camera might be very close to a smartphone, given how it's got the bulkiness of a full camera (and not sure you can make phone calls on it), it's a bit contrived to pass it off as a cameraphone. It's not something that will sit in people's pockets all the time, nor is it as small as one.
I'm far more concerned at the entire media claiming Apple invented no end of firsts, including smartphones as a whole - especially when the first Iphone was a dumb phone (couldn't do apps).
Google's offline mapping is pretty disappointing - I was looking forward to this feature on my Galaxy, having loved the feature in Symbian, but found that the size of each offline map is limited to a city-sized area, and worse, you can only have a handful of them downloaded at any one time. The whole idea of limiting what you can store, when there's no constraint in memory, is annoying - reminds me of the limit on text messages my feature phone had 7 years ago, even though I had loads of memory on a microSD card. Why can't I just select countries or continents at a time? There's more than enough space on the phone. Android is a good OS, and Google maps has some advantages like the public transport directions, but offline maps is still something Nokia do better (plus remember you can still get the public transport directions on Google maps for other platforms anyway, it's just the sat nav that's limited to Android I believe).
The XKCD reference is only valid when comparing different platforms/companies. For some reason, it was fine for the media to use relative growth for years, to make Apple look better than Nokia/Symbian, even though Symbian was actually not only number one, but growing faster in absolute numbers. We could have done with that XKCD reference back then.
It would be wrong to claim that WP was doing better than Android or IPhone based on relative growth, but the OP didn't do that. He simply talked about its growth, and for a new platform, the growth is reasonable. It also shows it is growing significantly due to Nokia's entrance into the WP market, and not remaining static as many here seem to assume.
Of course the big question is whether it will continue, and tail off - the OP did make some predictions that may not be true. But up until now, the growth is doing as well as what the IPhone platform did in its first couple of years, and that didn't get this constant barrage of criticism about sales, it got nothing but wall to wall hype. Selling one million in 76 days was spun as an amazing success, even though it is low as far as phone platforms go (both now, and back then), and it's also what the first Nokia Lumia managed too.
And I say this as a Samsung Android fan. Try to be objective, rather than spinning it as a fail because you don't like Windows.
"If so what are they right now?"
Second place in the market, having fallen from number one which is now Samsung.
"it'd be nice if there were three big phone OS' out there. But there aren't, there are two."
With nearly 70% share and rising, there's one - Android. There's Android dominant, with a few other OSs (IPhone, BlackBerry, WP, Bada). Putting IPhone on the same level as Android, and then saying there's nothing else, isn't really accurate.
"Windows Phone has failed."
Had IPhone failed for the first 3 years, when its market share was also small? And heaven forbid that MS spend "billions" on it, how much money do you think Apple spend? They've got almost a hundred billions saved up supposedly for the sole purpose of destroying Android, and look how that's failed. I don't get why MS spending money on this thing called "marketing" is something to ridicule when it's MS or Nokia, but not other companies.
For your last paragraph, exactly the same could have been said for Apple for years.
Personally I like Android, and I've not used WP. I'd prefer Android getting even more market share, so yes for me it's a shame Nokia don't make Android phones. But what's best for me personally isn't what's best for Nokia. Plus, I think it would be a dreadful shame if the only alternative to Android was IPhone - I'd rather WP develop as an alternative too. Choice is good.
"The Finnish firm's move onto the Windows mobile OS is something of a last ditch attempt to save itself, after sales of its once-dominant cellphones failed to keep up with those of the competition."
Nope, Symbian was number one platform until early 2011, when it was overtaken by Android; it still outsold Iphone until the WP switchover. Early 2011 was when the WP announcement was made, and they surely had it planned before then - so it's a myth that this was a reaction - let alone a "last ditch"! Also by company, Nokia were the number one company until early 2012, when they were overtaken by Samsung. They're still number two - hardly a failure.
Did the Reg take this story from the Daily Fail, which also ran with this scaremongering? I'm not sure why consumers should care about share prices. Even if it was a reliable indicator of market share, I'm not sure why that matters - people buying Iphones didn't care about its tiny market share for the first few years, nor did the media care. And there's no reason to think that people investing are experts (especially as their primary criterion would be profit, which doesn't always match up with share). Plus this isn't the whole story - what has the share price trend been generally? What happens with other companies when they do product announcements?
This reeks of "let's hand pick whatever contrived statistic that makes Nokia look bad" that the media so love (compare with hand picking whichever statistics that make Apple look good) - I thought the Register was above this.
"and Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and others are keen to get their newest gear out at the same time"
Er, I suspect the announcements are more due to the WP8 release coming soon. But don't let that fact detract from your Apple love. As for the Android announcements, Samsung make announcements of new devices all year round.
Have no problems with battery life when playing on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. (Though I still keep my separate Sansa because more battery life on a separate device is useful, not that it's particularly bad on the Galaxy; because it's tiny and quicker to pull out to change music; because on the Nexus I don't have a microSD slot, unlike my Sansa.)
The main issue seems to be that it uses Apple-style multitasking, when applications are put into a suspended state. So yes, it's a reasonable criticism, but no one seems to have this problem with Apple doing it.
Also note that on Android, applications are suspended after a while, and I've seen it take several seconds to resume some apps on my Samsung Galaxy Nexus. To be honest, the only mobile OS I've seen do multitasking properly was Symbian, which was always instant even on my now ancient Nokia 5800.
But you could say that of all phones - why should Nokia align their releases with Apple's?
The Iphone 4S is almost a year old - every week that goes by is lost sales to Samsung, HTC and Nokia (and the disasterously sliding sales over the last few months prove it - a drop of 10 million in the last quarter alone!).
Meanwhile, there won't be an update to the Galaxy S3 until mid next year.
All companies tend to do yearly upgrade cycles (though some like Samsung stagger releases of their less mainstream models throughout the year). The original Lumia release was at the end of last year, with other models following early this year, so this release looks set to follow that, one year on. What's your source for the release date anyway? The announcement said Q4 in some markets, which could still meet the WP8 launch.
As for share price, who cares. The Daily Fail scaremongered with that in its headlines too - bit sad for the BBC to stoop to that kind of reporting, though given their Apple obsession, it doesn't surprise me.
Firstly, I'm not sure how Android and Nokia WP having the same features is a down point for Nokia - let alone the idea that IOS might get something at some point in the future, 6 years after Nokia were doing it.
But Android's offline support is atrocious - you can only store a handful of city-sized regions at a time that you manually have to select, despite me having more than enough space to store the entire world. With Nokia maps, you can store countries or continents at a time. Don't get me wrong, I love my Samsung Galaxy Nexus - but the offline maps is something that Nokia got right years ago, and after waiting for ages for this on Android, I was disappointed to see how it worked. (E.g., if I'm travelling to another country on roaming fees, I want to just select the entire country, not have to worry about which blocks of the map I might visit. Or maybe I'll just store the entire world and not have to worry about it again.)
Er yes there was, Symbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures
I look forward to your definition of smartphone that includes the original Iphone, but not BlackBerry. And sure, a phone from years ago wouldn't count as a smartphone if released today, but that's true of the early Iphones and Android phones too - "smartphone" in that sense is a moving target.
More generally, smartphone is ill-defined, just a marketing term. Phones have done Internet and apps for years, but people happily bought the next ones that came out, mostly not caring about OS. Meanwhilst the original Iphone wasn't even a feature phone by any objective definition, since it didn't even do apps.
The dominator now is Android by far - so I guess we should be demanding Iphone 5 "blow the socks of", to get decent market share. I don't know, I just find it funny that market share is important when it's WP that's new, and Iphone struggles above 10% - but in all the years that Apple sales were a joke, no one seemed to mind (and indeed, the media spun it as if it was amazingly successful anyway - remember "one million sales in 76 days"? The first Lumia did that too).
IIRC the reason was that it takes more time to get low level driver code ported to WP - PureView was in development for years. Yes it's a let down they haven't done it yet, but it's absurd to call it therefore a flop - no other phones have 41MP either, but that doesn't mean they sell less than the 808. I like Symbian, but stop grinding that axe against WP.
There's far more to PureView than MP. Here's a good explanation on the 808 vs this new phone: http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/15636_Whats_in_PureView_on_the_Lumia.php - in summary, there's not much in common, but there are nonetheless new important things in this device. So it may well be better than an N8 (though even being comparable to the N8's camera isn't bad, since no phone other than the 808 has yet to beat its quality, apparently). Which phones have 12MP? Not that that necessarily makes them better - the key thing about the 808 wasn't the 41MP, but the way that was used to improve the quality of the final picture.
Plus it's good they have more tricks up their camera sleeve than just what was in the 808. Now imagine a phone that combines the 808 sensor with the new camera features in the Lumia 920...
PPI is a pointless stat - it favours phones that are *smaller* - Apple only do well because of their teeny 3.5" screen. If you took my Nexus screen and made it smaller, the PPI would go up, but I'd consider it worse. If you also reduced the resolution, but such that the PPI was still higher, that would be even worse. P/I is a useless stat, if anything, I care more about P*I. Still, given how many Apple fanatics seem to have lapped up Apple's marketing "Retina" speak, it's nice for Nokia to beat them :) And not only that, to do so at a screen size that isn't tiny.
This Nokia phone wins out on resolution - 1280x768 is a tad higher than the S3 (and only beaten by the Galaxy Note, which is perhaps too large for many people). So don't get me wrong, I agree that the Nokia resolution specs are great, and better than anything in both IOS and Android land, but it's not down to "PPI".
Carrying a separate camera around is a pain, though I still keep on for special occasions. So being able to completely replace a separate camera would certainly be an important criteria for me.
I don't think everyone who cares has already bought an 808 - the 808 isn't available in many countries, and in some is only available if you pay full price, nor has it been marketed much. Plus some people may want to run WP8 instead of Symbian. And as much as I liked the look of the 808, the specs are nowhere near what this phone has, let alone future phones - many people might want high end specs, and care about the camera.
Why? Other platforms haven't had to "blow the socks of" to get decent market share. Rather each has their pros and cons, with many people not caring about OS and going by other features. WP is a low market share atm, but it's a relatively new platform - Apple's share was low for years (until the Iphone 4, really), and the growth of the new Nokia WP phones seems to have been doing as well as Apple's when they started with their new platform, despite Nokia/MS getting none of the absurd free advertising and hype that Apple got. There's probably a fair comment to wish we should have had Symbian phones with specs like these the last couple of years, instead of the rocky transition to WP, but I don't see anything problematic about WP's performance as a new platform. (I run Android, and couldn't care less about WP btw, but let's be objective.)
Yes I'm sure they will spend billions. As do companies like Apple. I'm not sure why this thing known as "marketing" is seen as okay for everyone else to do, but a failing if Nokia or MS do it. We get nothing but constant Apple hype and reporting from the media all day long, but heaven forbid if MS try to market their products.
Rules are different for monopolies - at 90+% market share, the argument was that there was limited choice for consumers. With Iphone share at 16% and fallen, we can simply not use the locked down platform, and use more popular platforms, so it doesn't really matter if they limit the choice of browser.
With Android now approaching 70% and rising, with Apple around 16% and falling, with Apple never having been number one, with installed user base of other platforms still large, with the large number of desktop/laptop users, and with desktops, laptops and mobiles selling far more than the one 10" form factor that Apple currently do better in - who cares. Firefox will do just fine without trying to compete on a locked down feature phone. The Register quotes Apple's US figures as if they're supposed to be a lot, but how about given us the comparable total Android sales? (And should probably do it worldwide too, rather than handpicking the one market that is best - or least worst - for Apple.)
"He decided that the sub 10" form factor was too small to properly navigate and display normal web pages while still maintaining an acceptable user experience."
Whilst expecting people to do the same on a teeny 3.5" screen...
And given the number of website-wrapper "apps" companies now have to produce for Ipads, it suggests that the same issue applies to Ipads. Given that 10" laptops don't have special "apps" for them, it suggests the problem that Jobs found with IOS and web browsing isn't anything to do with how big the screen is.
My prediction:
* 4" screen (as with Samsung phones around 2010).
* Their own mapping software, so users no longer have to pay for satnav (Android and Nokia years ago).
* Contrived useless statistic handpicked to make Apple's phone look best, with a fancy trademark (as with "PPI", "Retina").
* Updated specs to rival the cutting edge of phone technology 18 months ago.
* Apple logo will now light up, to make it an even more obvious Addidas-logos-everywhere-style advertisement for Apple.
Well that's it - Apple claims to revolutionise something, and even though it's just as you say in reality, the media and Apple fans also claim it to be revolutionary.
It's true that fans didn't decide to pick on video calling, but they do so with many other examples (3G, apps, Internet, the whole idea of smartphones). And in general, given the huge media hype over Iphone 4, if "Facetime" was the flagship feature advertised by Apple, then that's rather telling.
You're right, each new release is no different to any other phone released. We just wish the media would treat it that way too.
Indeed - it's a bit depressing when a company has to try to stoke up attention with "announcement of an announcement". We've heard the media harping on about Iphone 5 for over a year, and the Ipad Mini is just speculation. (Even if they are released, they already fit the classic definition of vaporware.) Perhaps the media should focus on actual product releases, with more attention to the leading platforms, rather than Apple Apple Apple all the time (at least the Register does cover the other mobile news, unlike most the mainstream media).
I don't recall I said that Apple's sales would get lower? I said they had fallen, which is true this year - in fact, both in terms of share and absolute numbers. Though given that the next Iphone isn't out until Q4, and given how seasonal their sales are, it doesn't seem unlikely that their sales will fall yet further in Q3.
Yes, people want Android and Samsung phones - I'm relying on that thing known as "actual facts about sales in the market". I don't see why being cheaper is a problem - if Samsung can deliver what people want, *and* do so at a better price, then more credit to them. However, the success of phones like the S2 and S3 shows that people are buying at the high end too (indeed, I suspect that even with just the high end phones, Android would still outsell Iphone - but it's a poor comparison anyway, as it just rewards Apple for being expensive).
I care about usability. That's why I stayed away from Apple's feature-phone like OS.
One cake shop sells 100,001 iCakes. Another cake shop sells 100,000 of its cakes, and another 100,000 with a cherry on top.
Only an idiot would claim the former is the more popular - which is sadly what fans and the media are doing for Apple.
Combining product types is only flawed when they're different kinds of products - so yes, your example is flawed because people might buy patisserie and bread. However, as the person you replied to points out, it's ludicrous to suggest that Samsung's sales are only higher because people are out there buying multiple phones from them. (If anything, it's probably more likely to be the Apple users fanatical enough to buy every iPhone "iteration"...)
As for the OP - maybe people are buying Samsung/Android more *because* they like the choice. And we're not interested in something that's merely an "iteration" of a 5 year old phone.
That used to be a sensible definition, but the problem is it's way out of date - around 2004, most phones had the ability to have software added, but instead they were marketed as "feature" phones. Meanwhile, the original Iphone doesn't fit this definition, yet was marketed as a smartphone. And all the smartphone sales stats, such as the ones in this article, ignore the feature phones (even though these days they also have touchscreens, Wifi, GPS, etc) but include Apple.
Personally I'd be happy to include all feature phones as smartphones, and not include the original Iphone. But if instead we wanted to have a definition that distinguished feature phones from smartphones, I think it should be to do with how open and customisable (like a general computer, as with the older traditional definition) versus locked down they are - feature phones don't have the same ability to replace things like the default keyboard, as smartphones do. As the OP suggests, Apple is again the one that needs to be categorised as a feature phone for this to work.
I believe the worldwide Q2 sales for Nokia were roughly 6m Symbian, 4m WP (sites like All About Symbian have stories with links to the stats). I don't know how that relates to the European market, but yes, a surprising amount of their smartphone figures are still coming from Symbian.
Not that there isn't hope for WP - the sales have been increasing significantly since Nokia's support. The question is whether that will tail off, or grow with WP8...
Market share and profit are not the same thing. Just because one company might have a higher share of the profit, doesn't mean it must also have high market share - and it's ridiculous to try to twist the numbers to match, when they are different things.
This is an article about sales, not profits. And as a consumer, who cares about profits? The only people who benefit from the profits are the shareholders - and if you are one of those for Apple, you're a shill with a conflict of interest here. Never in the most heated Windows vs Mac/Linux/Amiga/whatever debate did a Windows fan go "But look how much money Bill Gates makes" - no one cares. We do care about sales, as it shows what people like, and how common various platforms are.
I challenge you to give me a definition of "smartphone" that includes the original Iphone (couldn't even run apps), but not the lower end Android phones? (Or indeed, feature phones, come to that - as I say below, the smartphone definition is contrived anyway.) Discounting phones because they are able to be sold at a lower price is not just spin, but nonsensical - it means you punish companies in your reporting, for delivering things at a better price!
On Android, you don't have to pay money as much, because there's so much available for free. As a user, this is better. As a developer, if you aren't able to offer better value than what people are giving away for free, then you need to rethink your business model.
The only thing I agree with you on is that I too like Symbian and Qt.
The whole smart vs feature is just how the companies choose to market the phones - Apple label 100% of their phones as "smart" (even though the original one couldn't even run apps), whilst Nokia and Samsung don't. Whilst "feature" vaguely correlates to lower end, with the low end WP and Android devices the line is blurred. There is no objective distinction between them (feature phones do all the same things smartphones do, just with a different name - they are certainly not the same kind of thing as dumb phones).
So yes, Nokia have lost out to Samsung, though they are still 2nd place. Saying that they are behind Apple, when you compare 100% of Apple sales to only a fraction of Nokia's sales is just spin...
"devices IDC classes as smartphones"
Which is itself a useless definition, although in practice I think the various statmakers just go by what terms the manufacturers themselves use.
"Android now accounts for 65 per of smartphone shipments in the region, its 71 per cent annual growth rate exceeded only by Windows Phone's 874 per cent. But colossal growth is easy when you come from next to nothing"
Indeed (as parodied in a recent XKCD) - but it's worth noting that the media gave the same kind of positive coverage for Android and Iphone. E.g., I remember a BBC article in 2010 falsely spinning it as Iphone having faster grown that Symbian, because they looked at relative growth - even though Symbian had far larger sales, and in fact was growing *faster* in absolute numbers. Nokia also got negative coverage for years due to falling market share (another misleading stat, in a growing market). So I wonder, with WP now having the explosive relative growth, and Apple's share falling, is the media spin going to favour WP over Apple? Or will they just switch the statistics they cover, so that it still benefits Apple?
As for Iphone:
"But this annual update frenzy - and the current-model sales dip that precedes it - is now a traditional feature of the smartphone business."
Except Apple's sales are now dipping all year round, with only an upspike the quarter after the release, whilst Samsung sales are holding up all year round. People are buying Android and Samsung because that's what they want.
Re the last one - so the Government should pay money so that private companies get people to work for free? Instead of having people work for "benefits", why not give them a *job* doing that same work.
Also consider the circular effect where private companies can use this unpaid labour for their work instead of having to employ people, causing more people to be out of work, causing unemployment to go up, welfare costs to go up, with no one but the private companies gaining.
It's also a pain to play files on another computer - even if you're willing to install Itunes, it's unclear whether doing so will "sync" with the new computer, which you don't want to happen. I've asked Apple users this, and they don't know the answer. So you're left with looking at the files directly, but they're all scrambled by Apple. Hopeless! It was quicker to simply download the files illegal!
On my Sansa, it just mounts as an external drive, the files are unscrambled, and it Just Works.
Indeed, and more generally, there are absolutely loads of places to buy DRM-free mp3s, and has been for years now. All the mainstream stores that sell music also seem to offer mp3s online. If people want to give their money to late-to-the-party patent trolls who have crappy terms and conditions, more fool them.
So what did you mean? The Iphone is a platform, not a single product (and comparing single products is a poor measure, as it just depends on how companies choose to categorise their devices - if one company sells 101 of a product, and another company sells 200, but split between two similar devices they label differently, only an idiot would suggest the former is leading; although it's interesting to note that even by individual models, the S3 alone is now outselling the Iphone 4S in many markets, despite it being only one of many Samsung phones, and many Android phones, compared to Apple's single phone).
Perhaps you mean that Apple lead, but sorry, that was Nokia, and now Samsung. Please try again.
I agree, but just to nitpick, which crown is it that Apple currently has? I believe latest market share figures are Android approaching 70% and increasing, Iphone around 16% and falling. Similarly:
"arguably already slipping away to Samsung in some markets"
Samsung alone now at around 2x Iphone sales, just on their smartphones. In fact, it's now at the stage where even one single model (the S3) is outselling the one single model of Iphone (where Apple only have one single model per generation, unlike Samsung, or the hundreds of Android devices) in some markets.
So yes, you're not only right with your prediction of Android dominance, but we're already long here. :) (And before that, it was Nokia/Symbian, not Apple...)
I agree entirely. It's also interesting to note how the vast amount of media Ipad hype started *before* it was even *announced* (remember the iStale, sorry iSlate?), let along after it was shipped. So this wasn't about the media reacting to a product, it was giving Apple massive free advertising and support from the outset. It's sad that even 2.5 years on, other tablets have been virtually ignored, with the exception of the recent Nexus 7 (and even then, every media coverage of that had to have the obligatory Ipad mention).
Another factor is shops - I note that loads of shops round here have Ipads, it's rare to see any other kind of tablets. People don't go into the shop and choose Apple over a range of tablets. They hear about "Ipads", go into the shop to get "an Ipad", and don't see or hear about anything else.
The media tried to do the same thing with the original Iphone, which for 5 and a half years since its announcement has got constant media hype - thankfully I think the fact that phones/smartphones were already well established, as well as with established distribution through the networks, meant Apple had less of an unfair advantage, and they failed in their attempt to outdo the leading companies like Nokia and Samsung (who are still the top two), or the leading platforms (which was Symbian until 2011, then Android). Though sadly, the media seem to have convinced many people that Apple lead, anyway.
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