Daily Bits

iphone

TechCrunch Claiming iPhone to Verizon in January – What if?

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There’s an interesting post up on TechCrunch that makes a pretty bold claim. From the site:

Smartphones like the iPhone are built from a collection of components, which are sourced individually from suppliers—e.g. the iPhone 4’s cellular baseband (the core chipset used in mobile phones to handle voice and data communications) comes from Infineon and its GPS chipset from Broadcom.

Component purchases and manufacturing starts don’t typically reveal strong links to individual handset OEMs. But in some cases components have a DNA which is traceable through the supply chain. For example, iPad rumors became much more concrete when we knew Apple was procuring large LCD screens.

[Read more…] about TechCrunch Claiming iPhone to Verizon in January – What if?

iPhone Bows to Android Phones

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It seems that predictions by some experts in the past are coming to life. According to statistics released by Nielsen, smartphones using the Android OS are being used by more people than iPhones. They released the following graphs, which were published by The New York Times yesterday.

As you can see, for quarter two of this year, the number Android OS users has surpassed the number of iPhone users. Indeed, the numbers have been steadily going up since quarter four of 2009, but it was only in the second quarter of this year that the tide truly turned. More from the report:

By the end of 2011, there could be more smartphones in the United States than the less advanced feature phones, according to a report released Monday by the Nielsen Company, a market trends monitor.

The report also notes that the Google Android platform continues to show rapid growth and over the past six months has edged past the Apple iPhone platform with new subscribers.

As the report said, though, in spite of these numbers, it seems that the iPhone is still more sought after than any other kind of mobile phone in the market. The brand and the hype look to be stronger assets than any other set of features out there. Indeed, other stats point to more people switching to the iPhone in the future. However, the fact that this handset is tied to a single carrier just might contribute to declining sales.

Do you think this is the beginning of the end for the iPhone? Are Android phones really better?

Free Lonely Planet Euro cities iPhone guides, but watch those data charges

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Iceland’s volcanic eruption has caused a huge headache for those stranded away from home, and while the big problems of finding alternative transport are yet to be resolved, iPhone users could at least find a little joy with Lonely Planet’s free guides to European cities.

Stranded or not, you need to be quick to get hold of them, as the offer ends this coming Thursday, 22nd April.

Grab city guides for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna.

Beware, though, because it might be cheaper to get a train, boat or taxi home than incur hideous roaming data charges. If you’re near a Wi-Fi hotspot, though (or are in your home country with free data), head over to the iTunes store and search for Lonely Planet City Guides.

Nexus One, iPhone, Motorola Droid Sales Compared

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Mobile analytics company Flurry has published an interesting report. A comparison actually of the sales figures of the first generation iPhone, Motorola Droid and Google Nexus One during the first 74 days since these phones were first released. And guess what? The report found out that sales of the Nexus is nowhere near the outstanding sales achieved by both Droid and iPhone.

Apple managed to post its 1 million units sold on its 74th day of being released. This is the reason why Flurry decided to measure the same for the Nexus One to see how far its sales went after 74 days. Unfortunately, Google’s first major venture into the mobile phone market is an epic fail with the Nexus One managing to get only around 0.135 million units sold.

Interestingly, the Motorola DROID managed to post the most number of units sold during its first 74 days of becoming available in the market with 1.05 million units sold.

Can we now conclude that Google’s first venture into the selling and marketing of mobile handset is an epic fail? Before we do so, we might want to consider first how these three phones were made available. For all we know this might have affected the Nexus One’s sales performance.

Apple has its brick and mortar stores scattered across the states which helped Apple in selling the iPhone. This is in addition to its online store. For Motorola Droid, this was distributed by Verizon Wireless. While the Nexus was only made available for purchase online through Google’s web store. Even if it was released under T-Mobile contract plan, Google did not allow T-Mobile to distribute the phone on their own. [Read more…] about Nexus One, iPhone, Motorola Droid Sales Compared

BlackBerry Users Ready to Ditch Their Phones for the iPhone, and Android Too

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I was about to write a post about a different topic but decided not to when I chanced upon this article currently running on Ars Technica saying that 40% of BlackBerry users are willing to trade their current phone for  an  iPhone.  This has caught my attention since I recently got a BlackBerry Bold 9700, but I did not ditch my iPhone 3GS for it.

The report was citing the study conducted by market research Crowd Science. According to the study, two in five BlackBerry owners are said to be planning on swapping their current phone for an iPhone as soon as its time for them to upgrade.  And among the reasons suggested by the study is the fact that RIM may not be keeping up with consumer demand in its effort to fight the encroachment from the iPhone and even Android devices more particularly Google Nexus One.

This is quite interesting since RIM holds a pretty strong reputation in the smartphone market although this was slightly rocked by the iPhone’s rapid growth last year.

CrowdScience also suggested that this development can also be attributed to the fact that many smartphone users are now using their units for both personal and business use and not for business purposes alone anymore. And since the iPhone is both personal and business oriented it is no wonder that it is threatening BlackBerry’s stronghold in the business mobile phone market as well.

Aside from the iPhone, current BlackBerry users are also eyeing to replace their units with an Android-based phones, more particularly with the Google Nexus One phone. 32% of the surveyed BlackBerry users says they are ready to exchange their phone with a Nexus One.

Crowd Science CEO John Martin said that BlackBerry users are getting restless with the BlackBerry brand and are getting enticed by the allure of iPhone.

“Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn’t garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems,” said Mr. Martin.

Now, here’s the best part. About 90% of current iPhone and Android users are not planning to swap their current phones with another model.

iPhone, iPod Market Distribution – Japan is Catching Up Fast!

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Admob iPhone users

With 78 million units reportedly shipped by Apple, have you ever wondered where those iPhones and iPods are located right now? Mobile advertising company knows their geographic distribution and they just released a report showing this.

According to the report, obviously most of the iPhones and iPods shipped by Apple are with U.S. consumers, 50% of the 78 million in fact. Now for the rest of the other 50% of the 78 million units shipped, majority of those are Japan, France, Australia and Canada.  These countries are showing tremendous growth in terms of iPhone and iPod units being shipped and sold to consumers.

Interestingly, according to the AdMob data from Jan-Nov 2009, iPhone and iPod userbase growth in Japan surged to more than 300%.  It looks like our friends in Japan are starting to love the iPhone and iPod music players this year.

Other highlights of the AdMob study are the following:

  • 23 countries got more than 100,000 unique Apple visitors
  • unique Apple users  located outside of the U.S. increased to 50% from 39% in January
  • 71% of unique Apple users in November were for iPhone while 29% were for iPod

With reports that the Motorola Droid is catching up with iPhone sales, AdMob’s data just prove one thing – the Droid is still has a long way to go before it reaches the iPhone’s status.