Just when you thought the smartphone industry couldn’t get any more soap-operatic, everybody’s favorite pair of aging drama queens – Microsoft and Nokia – may be at it again. There’s a rumor, from a gossip with a good track record, that Microsoft intends to buy Nokia’s Smartphone division.
Category: Technology
The Smartphone Wars: a bit of Christmas cheer
On Google+, Andy Rubin reports: “There were 3.7M Android activations on 12/24 and 12/25.” That’s a 170% spike over the 700K activations per-day Rubin announced on 20 Dec. I’ve previously observed that only about 1 in 10 of Android activations show up in the smartphone statistics for the U.S. so Android is probably looking at… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: a bit of Christmas cheer
The Smartphone Wars: Andy Rubin brings the news
Over on Google+, Andy Rubin says: There are now over 700,000 Android devices activated every day…and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don’t count re-sold devices), and “activations” means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service. This does… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Andy Rubin brings the news
SOPA and the oblivious
A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything away from you – including your Internet freedom. That’s the thought that keeps running through my head as I contemplate the full-scale panic going on right now about SOPA, the “Stop Internet Piracy Act”.
The Smartphone Wars: A Night in the Lonesome December
The December comScore results are out, covering up to October 2011. I’ve updated my page on smartphone marketshare statistics.
The Smartphone Wars: Samsung Busts a Move?
Well, now, this is interesting. Cyanogen hints via Twitter that we may get a 4.0 Cyanogen ROM in two months. The news coverage I’ve seen so far misses what I think is the most important bit of context – that Cyanogen’s eponymous founder and lead developer got hired by Samsung a few months back. Samsung… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Samsung Busts a Move?
The Smartphone Wars: Signs and Portents
The September comScore numbers are out, and the market transition hinted at by the June numbers seems to be under way. Growth in the U.S. smartphone market is slowing, and the flavor of the competitive game is about to change.
The pros and cons of tethering
Until Tuesday (2011-11-01), I am sort of half-cut-off from the Internet. I can browse, I can blog, and I can push commits to my project repos, but I can’t do IRC or mail. This is a heads-up for my GPSD and other collaborators; I’m still here. How this happened is a case study in 21st-century… Continue reading The pros and cons of tethering
The Smartphone Wars: Sprint Doubles Down on Dumb
One of my regular commenters points out an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, Sprint Could Yet Strike Out With iPhone. “SPQR” interprets it as follows: The article states that Sprint’s cost to run the iPhone is $15.5 billion over four years. Unclear to me what that “cost” means from the article. The iPhone… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Sprint Doubles Down on Dumb
On Steve Jobs’s passing
I had been planning to defer commenting on the death of Steve Jobs long enough to give its impact time to cool a little, but Against Nostalgia puts the case I would have made so well and so publicly that it has changed my mind. I met Steve Jobs once in 1999 when I was… Continue reading On Steve Jobs’s passing
The Smartphone Wars: How are the mighty fallen
HP replaces the hapless Leo Apotheker in a manner not very well calculated to reassure anyone that HP has a bright future. Granted, Apotheker’s performance – typified by the now-it’s-dead-oh-maybe-not fumbling around the TouchPad – was dismal. But the new CEO’s first move was to reassure everyone that Apotheker’s cunning plan to turn HP into… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: How are the mighty fallen
The Smartphone Wars: Short Takes
No grand unifying theme in this installment of our smartphone-wars coverage, but a bunch of short takes.
The Smartphone Wars: Alarums and Mergers
Running a cellphone network is a brutally capital-intensive business with thin profit margins, and subject to heavy regulation. Any economist will tell you that all three of these factors favor size – capital concentration confers a stronger advantage, thin margins can only yield a decent profit at high volume, and larger organizations can better afford… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Alarums and Mergers
The Smartphone Wars: Exit Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple yesterday, handing the reins to designated successor Tim Cook. It could hardly happen at a more difficult juncture – for though Apple’s cash reserves and quarterly profits are eye-popping, the company faces serious challenges in the near future. Its strategic position rests on premises that are now in… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Exit Steve Jobs
The Smartphone Wars: WebOS, we hardly knew ye
The business press is abuzz today with the news that HP is pulling the plug on its WebOS smartphone and tablet lines. This won’t be any huge surprise to people who’ve been following the discussions on Armed & Dangerous; WebOS has looked terminal to us for a long time. Still…WebOS didn’t suck, technically speaking. It… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: WebOS, we hardly knew ye
The Smartphone Wars: Google Buys Motorola
This morning came the news that Google has agreed to buy Motorola Mobile for $12 billion. I was half-asleep when A&D regular Jay Maynard phoned me with a heads-up, but not surprised for a second; as I told him, I’ve been expecting this for weeks. We’ll see a lot of silly talk about Google getting… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Google Buys Motorola
The Smartphone Wars: 48% and rising
There’s been a lot of talk in the trade press over the last month by people who believe – or want to believe, or want us to think they believe – that Android’s momentum is slowing, and in particular that the multicarrier release of the Apple iPhone was a game-changer that will eventually pull Apple… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: 48% and rising
Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?
There I was, within earshot of the smoker’s bench outside the front entrance of the hotel hosting the World Boardgaming Championships, when I overheard the word “Android” from the three college students sitting on and around it, who I mentally tagged the Guy, the Gamer-Girl, and the Hottie. I moved a bit closer, to polite… Continue reading Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?
The Smartphone Wars: Expectation and Surprise
If style is truly the contrast of expectation and surprise, it’s been a very stylin’ couple of weeks in the smartphone world while I’ve been on vacation.
The Smartphone Wars: Not the expected surprise
I have plotted the May 2011 comScore data. There are two conspicuous things to notice about it. One is that recent rumors of an Android stallout seem utterly bogus, and the other is that Apple appears to be actually gaining some share rather than simply bouncing around 25% in a random way.