Author: Horace Dediu

Tavis McCourt of Morgan Keegan Predicts iPhone Sales

At the event, CEO Steve Jobs noted that iPhone sales to date now tops 50 million units. Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt points out in a research note that as of the end of December, sales to date were 41.8 million. Ergo, the company sold at least 8.2 million in the March quarter, he concludes.

Source: Barrons

How can you count on these guys for forecasts about the future when they can’t get the past right?  Total iPhones sold as announced by Apple: 42.484 million.  A more reasonable estimate is here.

iAd adds up to a lot of cash

“The average user spends over 30 minutes every day using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’s 10 ads per device per day. That would be 1b ad opportunities per day.”

This is going to take some time to sink in over at the Googleplex.  By pushing Android, Google removed themselves from this opportunity.  Jobs continues:

“We do not have any plans to become a worldwide ad agency. We tried to buy a company called AdMob, and Google came in and snatched them from us. We bought Quattro instead. They’re teaching us and we’re learning as fast as we can.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I did suggest iAd was coming on Dec. 30 of last year:

I think it’s a certainty that Apple will introduce an ad serving platform for the iPhone (and any tablet) in 2010. This will amount to a checkbox that developers will check when submitting their app to the store. Doing so will allow Apple to place ads on the app in return for a check in the mail to the developer for the impressions.

Apple sells 450,000 iPads in 5 days, users download 3.5 million apps

Apple said Thursday that it has shipped over 450,000 iPads since the device went on sale this past Saturday, spurring 3.5 million app downloads for the new tablet device by its earliest adopters.

via AppleInsider | Apple sells 450,000 iPads in 5 days, users download 3.5 million apps.

Jobs also updated with 600,000 downloads of iBooks.  The first day sales of books was 250k, so it’s keeping a bit above 1 book per device.  First day apps was 1 million, so the app attach rate is now 7.8, well above the 3 from day one.  Keep in mind that the iPhone attach rate grew to over 50 so it’s early days to see how iPhone compares to iPad as an app magnet.

One billion apps downloaded in 93 days

A bit less than one year ago, on April 23rd 2009, Apple reported 1 billion apps downloaded.

158 days later, on September 28th 2009, Apple reported 2 billion apps downloaded.

99 days later, on January 5th 2010, Apple reported 3 billion apps downloaded.

93 days later, on April 8th 2010, Apple reported 4 billion apps downloaded.

The download rate for the past 93 days was 10.7 million apps per day.

Given 85 million iPhones and iPod touches sold, the 4 billion app downloads amount to 47 per device.  (Although that number is likely to be considerably higher due to many iPhones/iPods having gone out of use–an attach rate of well over 50 seems like a good estimate).

Apple pre-announces at least 7.5 million iPhones sold in Q1

Today Steve Jobs stated that 50 million iPhones were sold to date.  According to SEC filings, since about 42.5 million sold as of end of 2009, it follows that about 7.5 million units shipped in the first quarter.

That number represents a 98% y/y increase in units.

Another revolution: a new priority in the BOM

“Conventional notebook PCs are ‘motherboard-centric,’ with all the other functions in the system—-such as the display, the keyboard and audio—-peripheral to the central microprocessor and the main printed circuit board at the core,” Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager for iSuppli, said Wednesday. “With the iPad, this is reversed.”

User interface components total 44% of the total bill of materials (BOM).  The display is 26% and the touch assembly is 12%.  Memory is 11% (16G variant), processor is 10%, and case a 4%.  Batteries make up a large part of the rest (37%).

Nokia Tablet?

“Getting a strong Intel backing here could be an important advantage,” says MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen, who sees the Nokia tablet as part of an array of mobile computers.

via Nokia Aims a Tablet at Apple: Exclusive | Technology | Financial Articles & Investing News | TheStreet.com.

No doubt Nokia’s tablet plans preceded the launch of the iPad–product cycles being what they are.  And the relationship with Intel is certainly a big part of this push (vs. on the handset side where Intel has no cards to play).

However, the elephant in the room is what software will run on this Tablet.  Any discussion on competitive potential of iPad competitors must include a view on the software/platform and ecosystem that tablet will rest on.

This is not a hardware business.  In fact, the hardware is designed to get out of the way.

The hardware is so understated — it’s just a screen, really — and because you manipulate objects and interface elements so smoothly and directly on the screen, the fact that you’re using an iPad falls away. You’re using the app, whatever it may be, and while you’re doing so, the iPad is that app. Switch to another app and the iPad becomes that app. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

source: http://db.tidbits.com/article/11152

The Mobile Web vs. the Objective-C Web

At one point in time, J2ME (now Java ME) and WAP were the starting points for a discussion on mobile strategy and the web. Then, for a brief period of time, you talked about HTML/CSS. Now, for a growing majority of mobile strategies that don’t require a global presence on widely varying devices, the discussion begins with iPhone. Smart client is now iPhone app, and in many cases, the app is primary to the experience, not secondary to the browser. And iPad app may soon replace iPhone app as the starting point.

Frankly, as the adoption rate of iPhone increases and if iPad follows suit, it will become increasingly difficult to argue in favor of a starting point other than iPhone OS. The NPR iPad app, for one, provides a much more pleasant user experience than NPR.org.

via Cameron Moll: Designer, Speaker, Author The Mobile Web vs. the Objective-C Web.