Category: Market

Market data & competition.

Gartner: as a Media Tablet, iPad deserves to be ignored in PC rankings

“Media tablet hype around devices such as the iPad has also affected consumer notebook growth by delaying some PC purchases, especially in the U.S. consumer market. Media tablets don’t replace primary PCs, but they affect PC purchases in many ways,” Ms. Kitagawa said. “At this stage, hype around media tablets has led consumers and the channels to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to buying a new device.”

Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Grew 7.6 Percent in Third Quarter of 2010.

Fascinating. I’d love to hear more about the non-iPad “media tablets” that delayed PC purchases last quarter. Maybe I don’t get out enough.

But more to the point, let’s combine the data from Gartner and the forecast for iPad.

I show below the impact of the iPad on PC vendor sales. I’m using my own estimates of world-wide PC sales (you can see other estimates here (Apple 2.0))

The world-wide PC units shipped without and with iPad:

Continue reading “Gartner: as a Media Tablet, iPad deserves to be ignored in PC rankings”

What did Andy Rubin mean by saying WP7 was created for political reasons?

In an interview with PCMag, Rubin said,

“Look, the world doesn’t need another platform. Android is free and open; I think the only reason you create another platform is for political reasons. Why doesn’t the whole world run with [Android]? They don’t like the people who developed, or “not invented here [NIH]”

I note some irony Continue reading “What did Andy Rubin mean by saying WP7 was created for political reasons?”

Adding CDMA increases iPhone addressable market by 16 percent

Now that NYT and WSJ were both tipped off about the coming of a CDMA iPhone, I think it’s a safe bet. Is this significant? What is the CDMA addressable market?

Here is a chart showing  for the “CDMA 3G” subscribers (source: CDMA Development Group.) Continue reading “Adding CDMA increases iPhone addressable market by 16 percent”

How many iPads next year? Analyst Sees 45 Million IPads In 2011

The contact, says [Ticonderoga’s] White, shipped more than 6 million parts to Apple during the third quarter of the year and expects to ship 7 million more in the fourth quarter.

Since Apple uses one unit of this particular component in each iPad, that adds up to shipments of 13 million iPads in the second half of 2010. For 2011, the contact believes Apple will sell as many as 45 million iPads

via Analyst Sees 45 Million IPads In 2011, Next Gen IPad Launching Soon – Elizabeth Woyke – Mobilized – Forbes.

These numbers are not unreasonable. I expect about 35 million next year, though that could go up considerably depending on what we hear about last quarter.  We only really have one data point so far meaning the data set is to double in a few days.

iOS users are ten times more likely to download apps than Symbian users

With the number of active Nokia service users now reaching 140 million worldwide, the company today announced that more than 200,000 people are currently signing up daily to Ovi, and that Ovi Store has reached the milestone of 2.3 million downloads per day. Available in more than 190 countries,

via Nokia Ovi Services Continue to Grow.

Nokia updated its tally of download rates so we can put the numbers side-by-side with Apple’s iTunes. Continue reading “iOS users are ten times more likely to download apps than Symbian users”

NYT blames yet another culprit: Nokia’s Culture of Complacency

“I am sure there are things we could have done better and innovations we missed,” Ms. Suominen added. “But that happens to all companies. We have been very successful with some other innovations.”

She cited Nokia’s large patent portfolio and its 770 Internet Tablet, a compact, flat-screen device without a phone, released in 2005. It worked with a pen stylus and was made for Internet browsing but is no longer sold.

via Nokia’s New Chief Faces a Culture of Complacency – NYTimes.com.

If I may suggest a better list of innovations for Nokia to stand behind:

  1. The first GSM call in 1991 was made on a Nokia phone and a Nokia network
  2. The first mass-market smartphone, the Communicator in 1998
  3. First compact smartphone, the 7650 in 2002.

While these innovations and “firsts” happened many years ago, Nokia’s ability to innovate is just as important at the low end. Nokia was the first company to address the lowest tiers of the market with over a billion customers served. This was no small feat and many observers faulted the strategy when it began in the middle of the decade.

I would not discount the difficulty and determination required in reaching those customers. Engineering a profitable low end product is as hard if not harder than engineering a high end superphone. More importantly, you have to find a way to distribute to these hard-to-reach customers and find ways to make the product useful, usable and affordable. Were it not for these efforts, the company would be facing collapse today, similar to the fate of Motorola or Ericsson: squeezed in the mid-range.

Blaming “culture” is nothing more than suggesting bad management. The culture of Nokia did not change between the few years when it was successful and the years when it was not.

The challenge Nokia faces is not complacency. It’s that the business model for selling voice-oriented phones is diametrically opposed to the business model for selling data-oriented phones. In one case you cooperate with and sustain operators, in the other you compete with and disrupt them.  It looks damn near impossible to do both with the same organization. Everything must be done differently. The real problem is that Nokia has not realized this and therefore can’t build its own replacement.

Facebook to Enter Mobile Phone Market in 2011

Despite being based on Android, a Facebook phone would be competition for Google as much as it is for Apple. Google benefits from ad revenue tied to their search and other services which would likely be supplanted by Facebook services on a Facebook-based phone.

Facebook to Enter Mobile Phone Market in 2011 – Mac Rumors.
I wonder if Facebook devices, or Verizon Bing devices will be counted by Google as Android activations.

See also: asymco | Is a Facebook phone destined to be a Vanity smartphone?

US Population by Phone Operating System

Since wireless subscriptions in the US are running at about 100% penetration, it’s possible to classify the wireless subscribers as representative of the entire population. So it’s safe to categorize the population of the US by the phone OS they carry.

The left part of the chart shows data from Nielsen that breaks up the population by the OS to date. The right part of the chart shows my estimate for how the platform shares will evolve by this time next year. The non-OS share will still be above 50% but it looks like it might shrink even more rapidly after reaching a tipping point of half the market. (Note these charts do not show quarterly sales but installed base of each OS).

My hypothesis remains that smartphone user bases will be balanced (or fragmented, depending on your point of view) by operator portfolio decisions and chronic constraints on distribution.

Nielsen: Nearly 25 percent of US adults use smartphones

Nearly all U.S. adults have cell phones, and 1 in 4 uses a smart phone, compared with about 16 percent last year, Carson said.

Nielsen, which surveyed 4,000 mobile-phone subscribers in August, predicts that the majority of mobile subscribers in the United States will have smart phones by the end of 2011.

via AppNation opens to sound of cha-ching.

Nielsen surveys are sound.

The last survey in June showed 20 percent penetration for smartphones in the US.

asymco | 20% of American subs have a smartphone with 1.2 million switching every month