Apple Overtakes Samsung...

According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung’s 23.5% share. In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped during the same time. However, notes Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, “while Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20% global share during 2011.” Apple’s annual share, meanwhile, was 19%. In other words, Apple won the quarter, not the year. Smartphone global shipments reached nearly half a billion units in 2011 (488.5 million units), the firm found, turning the smartphone battle into a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung in terms of units shipped. Nokia, the one-time smartphone leader, is still holding onto a top spot, in position #3, with 19.6 million units shipped during Q4 and 77.3 million shipped during 2011. But Nokia’s global share has been halved from 33% in 2010 to just 16% in 2011, indicating its ongoing decline. Although Strategy’s numbers paint the Samsung vs. Apple battle as a tight race between mobile giants, there’s a big difference between the numbers being reported here. As MacRumors points out, Samsung no longer reports its mobile phone sales numbers, while Apple discloses its units sold each quarter. That means analysts are estimating Samsung’s numbers, but Apple’s numbers are provided by the company itself. It could be that Apple’s lead is even greater than what’s seen here. Update : A report from the analysts at Canalys has just come in, and confirms the same thing – it’s an Apple vs. Samsung battle. According to the firm’s latest findings, Apple’s record shipment of 37 million iPhones shipped in Q4 beat the previous record held by Nokia of 28.3 million phones shipped in Q4 2010. Another shocking figure: the huge volume of iPhones shipped exceeded the size of the entire market of 4 years ago, when 35.5 million smartphones shipped globally. The firm also noted Nokia’s shipment of 19.6 million phones, calling it “a decent performance given its current transitional state.” However, Canalys stopped short of estimating Samsung’s phone shipments at this time, saying that the company doesn’t disclose these numbers publicly. They did say that Samsung’s quarterly smartphone growth was around 30% and mobile phone shipments were up 10%, though. Says Canalys Vice President and Principal Analyst Chris Jones, “the numbers are still coming in, but our early take on the state of the smartphone market is that, while Apple and Samsung clearly saw phenomenal performances, many other vendors have struggled. The full impact of this difficult quarter on hardware and software vendors will become clearer over the next week, when final results from the likes HTC, LG, Huawei and ZTE are announced, and Canalys publishes its full Q4 2011 worldwide country-level databases.”

It’s About Time: HTC To...

HTC has gotten to be remarkably good at churning out phone after phone these days, but it’s gotten to feel like each new release is too little too soon. Thankfully, the godfather of Android hardware has come to its senses, as revealed by Mobile Today . According to HTC UK head Phil Roberson, 2012 is going to be all about giving their customers “something special.” To that end, HTC plans to focus on a smaller number of “hero” smartphones and dial back their presence in the tablet market. “We have to get back to focusing on what made us great – amazing hardware and a great customer experience,” Roberson said. “We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. HTC’s philosophy as of late seems to have been about continually chasing the bleeding edge by pushing out new hardware before its predecessors have gotten the chance to breathe. It’s refreshing to hear (err, read) that someone at HTC feels the same way, because the dearth of options ultimately becomes a big problem for consumers. Chris Ziegler at The Verge noted that the here in the States, T-Mobile’s high-end HTC Amaze 4G debuted only 120 days after the carrier’s previous flagship Android phone hit sales channels. It’s no secret that technological advances come at a blistering pace, but to push out a new flagship device in four months could easily come as a kick in the gut for customers who splurged on the previous model in an attempt to future-proof themselves a bit. Being on the bleeding edge is great, except for when your customers are the ones who get hurt. HTC isn’t exactly alone when it comes to this sort of behavior — Samsung’s LTE-packing Skyrocket overshadowed their original Galaxy S II model, and Motorola’s Droid RAZR Maxx trades a few millimeters for some outstanding battery life while leaving original Droid RAZR owners lamenting their luck. Still, while Samsung’s market saturating plans are doing them well, Motorola has already announced their intention to trim down their smartphone offerings for 2012. Meanwhile, the revelation of their tablet plans (or lack thereof) doesn’t come as a huge shock. The Taiwanese company released two actual tablets in 2011, with a handful of carrier-specific variants thrown in for good measure. Alas, the tablet market has become an ever tougher nut to crack, and while HTC won’t be abandoning it completely, they’ll be spending more time and resources on their main moneymaker: smartphones. HTC has been on shakier financial ground than it’s used to recently, and at the time they cited “increased competition” in the mobile space as one of the reasons their most recent quarterly earnings ended their six-quarter growth streak . This new move is a drastic one, but it’s worth a shot considering that their once-solid approach doesn’t seem so solid anymore. With Mobile World Congress right around the corner it shouldn’t be long before we get a better glimpse at HTC’s new strategy, though whether it actually works is another story entirely.

Lookout’s New App Visua...

Lookout, a company that offers security services for a number of smartphone platforms, is debuting a new Android app that lets you see mobile threats as they are detected around the world. Launched from Lookout Labs, the new app basically visualizes what’s happening in the mobile landscape and also shares details on top weekly threats & distribution of malware vs. spyware. For background, Lookout’s web-based, cloud-connected applications for Android, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and most recently iOS devices help users from losing their phones and identifies and block threats on a consumer’s phone. Users simply download the software to a device, and it will act as a tracking application, data backup and a virus protector much like security software downloaded to a computer. Lookout collects data from its Mobile Threat Network, a cloud-based network which constantly analyzes global threat data to identify and quickly block new threats with over-the-air app updates. The network includes more than one million apps and 15 million user devices worldwide. With the Lookout Mobile Threat Tracker, you can now see the thousands of threats that Lookout identifies and catches every day via the network. Within the Mobile Threat Tracker you can quickly see the top three trending threats. For example, if you tap on the name in the app, you can learn more about each threat. For example, this week’s top threat, RuPaidMarket masquerades as a useful app, but actually sends premium SMS messages without allowing you to opt out, or letting you know that you will be charged. The data is updated hourly so you can see mobile threats appear and disappear overtime.The app shows the top three mobile threats for the past week are RuPaidMarket, Legacy and Depositmobi. And the current distribution of malware vs. spyware is 60 percent malware and 40 percent spyware. While the app may not be one for a daily check, the newest Lookout offering could be a useful way to routinely see what the possible threats are for your Android phone at any given time. Lookout predicts that malware, spyware and other mobile security risks will only increase in 2012, so users will have to be more vigilant about protecting their smartphones in the coming year.

Research: Smartphone Ad...

According to new research from mobile advertising network InMobi, global smartphone ad impressions grew an impressive 488% in 2011.  Even more impressive, global impressions stemming from tablet devices grew a whopping 771% in 2011. Looking at mobile ad impressions broken down by operating system, InMobi found that Android took the lead in 2011, with a 21% share of mobile impressions on the company’s network.  Still, Apple contributed to 17% of impressions, although the firm’s impression share spiked to 23.4% in North America, mainly spurred by the release of the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. More on InMobi’s report is available here .  Or, check out this post on Mobile Marketing Watch .

ARROWS μ F-07D: Fujitsu...

The Infobar C01 from yesterday was a bit too much for you? Not to worry, Japan still produces “ordinary” Android phones: Fujitsu’s ARROWS μ F-07D [JP], which mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to start selling this Friday, is the newest example. It doesn’t look as unique as the Infobar, but the list of specs is long and pretty impressive: Android 2.3 4-inch OLED with 480×800 resolution (Gorilla Glass) 5MP CMOS camera waterproof body that’s just 6.7mm thick (iPhone 4: 9.3mm) MSM8255 Snapdragon processor (1.4GHz) 512MB RAM 1GB ROM DLNA/DTCP-IP support e-wallet function (NFC) infrared connection digital TV tuner microSDHC slot 1,400mAh battery Bluetooth 2.1+EDR Wi-Fi (tethering for up to 8 devices) size: 127×64×6.7mm, weight: 105g NTT Docomo will be offering the handset in “Sapphire Black” only.