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Posts tagged market
Gartner: Android continues its reign as king of the smartphone market, now controls 75%
07 days
by J
Technology research firm Gartner has released its report on world smartphone sales for the first quarter of 2013. The report puts both Android and Samsung as leaders in their respective markets, with Android accounting for 74.4% of all smartphone units sold and Samsung controlling 30.8% of the smartphone market.
Android has continued its stratospheric rise to prominence, with its market share increasing 17.5% year on year. Every other major smartphone operating system suffered losses, except for Microsoft’s Windows Phone, although the improvement from 1.9% to 2.9% probably isn’t the result Redmond was hoping for.
Google’s nearest competitor, Apple’s iOS dropped from 22.5% to 18.2%, continuing its slow decline. Blackberry’s (formerly known as Research In Motion) marketshare was cut in half and Samsung’s ill-fated Bada OS and Nokia’s decaying Symbian, both continued their trip to the operating system graveyard, as they couldn’t even muster a single percent each.
Smartphone sales increased from 147 million units sold in Q1 2012 to 210 million, however, interestingly all smartphone markets declined, with the exception of the Asia/Pacific region, which grew 6.4% year on year. Total handset sales reached 426 million in Q1 2013, an 0.7% increase compared with the same period last year.
Samsung continued its growth, albeit not as record-breaking as we have grown accustomed to, with it now controlling 30.8% of the market. Apple came in second with 18.2% of the market and LG, on the back of its successes with the Nexus 4, Optimus G and Optimus G Pro, rounded out the top 3.
Chinese manufacturers ZTE and Huawei completed the top 5, with device makers Nokia, HTC, Lenovo, Sony and Co. making up the “others” section. Gartner also claims that budding operating systems Tizen, Firefox OS and Ubuntu will not affect the smartphone market in any great manner.
Both Android and Samsung are at the top of their respective food chains right now and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon. Samsung has recently released its flagship smartphone in the Galaxy S4 and Android will be bolstered by the introduction of the S4 as well as the launch of the HTC One, meaning it would not come as a surprise if Google and Samsung can muster up even bigger numbers in the upcoming quarters.
Do you think Android can grow even larger than it is now? Will new operating systems affect the market?
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Samsung dominated Indian smartphone market in 2012
050 days
by J
Samsung has jumped to the number one slot in most major markets around the world, so it’s no surprise that the company is at the top in an emerging market like India as well. The company’s dominance is evident in the latest market share numbers released by CMR (Cyber Media Research) as a part of their India Mobile Handsets Market Review 2012.
Around 221.6 million mobile handsets were shipped in India in 2012, registering an overall growth of 20.8% from the previous year. Of course, while that number is very impressive, 206.4 million devices out of that are feature phones, which are still extremely popular in a budget-oriented market like India.
That being said, in the past year, smartphone shipments have seen a growth of 35.7% to 15.2 million smartphones compared to 2011, and a whopping 75.2% growth in the second half of the year compared to H1 2012. This stunning growth is, in part, because of the increasing number of smartphones that fall in the 0-0 available from local manufacturers such as Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, and more.
As expected, out of the 15.2 million, 43.1% of the devices were from Samsung, with Nokia a very distant second with 13.3%. With its very popular low-end to mid-range offerings that the company released in India in 2012, Sony managed to push out Blackberry for the third spot, with an 8.2% share of the market.
It’s also important to note that these numbers don’t include any smartphone with a display size bigger than 5 inches, which CMR considers to fall in the “phablet” category, which leaves out the very popular Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2 from consideration. While the distinction can be made for devices shipped in 2012, a year in which the “phablet” was still a niche category, things will certainly have to change in 2013, with every device manufacturer, whether internationally-renowned or local, release smartphones with display sizes larger than 5 inches.
With smartphones becoming more and more budget-friendly, the report also states that there could possibly be a 100% growth in smartphone shipments this year, and while feature phones would still dominate, the numbers would fall significantly. With the standard of devices rising, and the competition between manufacturers heating up, 2013 is going to be a great year for the smartphone scene in India!
The post Samsung dominated Indian smartphone market in 2012 appeared first on Android Authority.
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OUYA to be “best Tegra 3 device on the market” as a result of strong NVIDIA support
096 days
by J
Was there any possible way we could get more excited about OUYA, the upcoming Android-based console, after hearing about the incredible Kickstarter support and after having that unbelievably low price point confirmed?
Sure there was. Just take a look at the obscenely long list of games supposedly supported by the console. And now, just to bump the hype with one extra level, we have OUYA’s CEO, Julie Uhrman, making some very bold claims.
According to Uhrman, the first-gen console will be “the best Tegra 3 device on the market”. Now, it’s obvious the game industry veteran is not exactly the most objective person to evaluate her baby’s power and potential, but her claims don’t exactly come out of thin air.
Instead, she is basing that on the very tight partnership between her company and NVIDIA. The Tegra 3 makers have apparently had “multiple people on their team dedicated to OUYA’s account”, which should have definitely helped in pushing the limits of the quad-core chip.
As a reminder, the console is set to use a 1.7 GHz Tegra 3 T33 SoC, but, unlike regular phones or tablets powered by the same platform, it won’t have to worry about battery life. That will obviously allow the joint team of OUYA and NVIDIA developers to squeeze out a lot of extra oomph from the chip, which can only make us that more excited about the device.
Before wrapping up, we have to give it up to NVIDIA one more time for this extended support to the project, seeing as the Santa Clara-based company has its own Android-based console in the works. Granted, Shield will most likely step things up a notch compared with the gaming device (both in performance and pricing), but a less visionary company might have still seen OUYA as the enemy.
