Another month, another analysis, and another winner. Krusell, the Swedish case manufacturer has released it’s top 10 phones list for the month of December 2011. And the winners are

1. (1) Apple iPhone 4/4S

2. (2) Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II

3. (3) Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc/Arc S

4. (4) Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

5. (-) Samsung Galaxy Nexus

6. (5) Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray

7. (6) Nokia 3720 Classic

8. (-) Samsung GT-B2710 / Xcover 271

9. (10) HTC Titan

10. (8) HTC Sensation

() = Last month’s position.

Ulf Sandberg, Managing Director at Krusell said

Samsung have thru the whole year, giving them a fight with a number of phones making its way up the list. Notable is that Sony Ericsson’s upgraded Arc S has made it to keep third place during the Christmas period, and that the new Galaxy Nexus made it to fifth place during its first month on the market.

As our esteemed readers know that the lists above is based on the number of pieces of custom made mobile-, smartphone cases ordered from Krusell during December 2011. Krusell’s list is unique due to the fact that it reflects the sales of phones on six continents and in more than 70 countries around the globe.

I have always thought that there is no correlation between screen diagonals and click through rates – what impact should the screen size have on user behavior?

InnerActive has now sent us the following diagram, which shows a clear correlation:
advertising screen dialogs On screen sizes and ad conversion rates

Any ideas?

When it comes to deciding which countries to target during localization, knowing more about the habits of the inhabitants of the land is very useful.

The folks from ComScore now bring us the following table:

Overview of European Internet Usage by Country
Ranked by Total Unique Visitors (000)
October 2011
Total Europe Audience, Age 15+, Home and Work Locations
Source: comScore Media Metrix

Total Internet
Total Unique Visitors (000)

Average Hours per Visitor Average Pages per Visitor
World-Wide

1,431,939 24.6 2,402

Europe 376,644 27.8

3,013
Russian Federation 51,641 24.4 2,664
Germany 50,704 25.4 2,967
France 42,520 28.3 2,957
United Kingdom 37,404 37.5 3,510
Italy 23,986 19.1 2,132
Turkey 23,234 33.4 4,017
Spain 21,382 28.3 2,475
Poland 18,193 26.7 3,189
Netherlands 11,987 35.5 3,562
Sweden 6,219 26.5 2,761
Belgium 6,047 20.4 2,282
Switzerland 4,764 19.5 2,121
Austria 4,733 15.0 1,720
Portugal 4,263 21.6 2,240
Denmark 3,676 23.5 2,483
Finland 3,381 26.2 2,633
Norway 3,264 29.2 2,703
Ireland 2,349 21.4 2,139

Not much to add here…

Being an ESD in the current time is difficult – with Apple, Samsung et al all having their own app stores, even traditional ESDs like MobiHand are now in more and more financial trouble.

ResearchToGuidance has now sent us the following chart looking at the future of ESDs:
niche app stores Niche ESDs become more popular

In addition, it looks like Hutchison once again took the role of market leader with its operator store:

Broadly speaking, there are 3 types of niche stores:

Platform-oriented: Provides apps for a special OS platform e.g. AndroidPIT, Crackberry.
Target group-oriented: Provides apps for a specific segment of app users e.g. business or adults.
Carve outs: Niche store with a full catalogue store e.g. MNOs having their own app store within the Android Market Place or “@work” by Apple.

The growth of niche app stores – particular target group-oriented stores – has been partially fueled by back-end service providers. These service providers enable white label app stores for any company which would like to run its own app store and monetize, for example, the website’s traffic.

What do you think?

2016 is the year when the health and fitness apps will cross the $400 million mark, as per ABI research. ABI has further predicted that there will be 1 billion health related apps downloads by 2016. Interestingly, the wearable fitness devices are the ones which would be pushing the segment’s growth.

The Press Release from ABI Research is as follows

PRESS RELEASE — The sports and health mobile application market will grow to over $400 million in 2016 – up from just $120 million in 2010. Much of that growth will be spurred by the ability of mobile handsets to easily connect to wearable devices that in turn can deliver new functionality, accuracy, and appeal to sports and fitness applications.

As the mobile handset adds new ways to access and support healthcare applications, it will become increasingly important within the healthcare market, including home monitoring systems for aging users, personal emergency response services, and remote healthcare monitoring applications. However, sports and fitness will dominate the mobile health application market.

“Downloadable apps are moving the sports tracking device market from proprietary devices to mobile phones, but adoption has been limited by the data they can collect. However, with the connectivity that Bluetooth Smart will embed in mobile handsets, wearable devices will bring greater detail to mobile handsets,” says Jonathan Collins, principal analyst.

Handset connectivity to wearable devices brings a new dynamic to the sports monitoring market. Athletic equipment players have already moved to support handset applications by either using proprietary or battery-draining traditional Bluetooth wireless. Meanwhile, traditional players such as Garmin, who recently launched its first handset application for this market, and Polar have delivered high-end specialist systems. Over the next five years, these players will increasingly have to compete directly with the mobile handset. They will also face a slew of start-ups and new entrants offering applications, online communities, and wearable devices offering a range of applications and services.

“As applications increasingly become part of a bundle that ships with wearable devices, revenues from mobile applications will lag behind the growth in app downloads. Mobile application downloads will actually grow at nearly twice the rate of revenues between 2010 and 2016, with more than a billion downloads annually by 2016,” says Collins.

Apple surely has a brand loyalty that every CEO yearns for. According to a research published by GfK,

Some 84 percent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 percent of consumers who use smartphones running Google’s Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.

Only 48 percent of people using Research In Motion’s cellphones said they would stay loyal to their BlackBerrys, the study showed.

While Apple is the leader at present, the current development on Android, RIM’s BBX and Windows Phones from Nokia are all set to give Apple a tough challenge, according to the report.

The scope for brands to lure customers from rivals has diminished and the richest rewards will go to those providers that can create the most harmonious user experience and develop this brand loyalty

What is noteworthy here that 70 percent of consumers said they would stick with their phones due to their seamless integration of features and access to content. The present and future undoubtedly belongs to the Apps and Internet.

Though the firm interviewed around 4500 people in various countries, it never mentions anything about Symbian or Windows Phones. This is quite surprising as a certain percentage of these 4500 people must be carrying Symbian and Windows phones, which the report fails to mention.

Source

Apple surely has a brand loyalty that every CEO yearns for. According to a research published by GfK,

Some 84 percent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 percent of consumers who use smartphones running Google’s Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.

Only 48 percent of people using Research In Motion’s cellphones said they would stay loyal to their BlackBerrys, the study showed.

While Apple is the leader at present, the current development on Android, RIM’s BBX and Windows Phones from Nokia are all set to give Apple a tough challenge, according to the report.

The scope for brands to lure customers from rivals has diminished and the richest rewards will go to those providers that can create the most harmonious user experience and develop this brand loyalty

What is noteworthy here that 70 percent of consumers said they would stick with their phones due to their seamless integration of features and access to content. The present and future undoubtedly belongs to the Apps and Internet.

Though the firm interviewed around 4500 people in various countries, it never mentions anything about Symbian or Windows Phones. This is quite surprising as a certain percentage of these 4500 people must be carrying Symbian and Windows phones, which the report fails to mention.

Source

The folks at comScore’s have provided us with all kinds of interesting data in the past – for September 2011, we get charts courtesy of Asymco.

First (and most importantly), the phone market as whole. One can clearly see that there is still a huge space for J2ME:
0 comScore on the US phone market   September 2011

Next up, the same chart for smartphones:
1 comScore on the US phone market   September 2011

Finally, the net gains / losses per platform:
2 comScore on the US phone market   September 2011

What do you think?

Images scitexed by asymco

Enter the dragon. China has moved to number two spot in app sessions. According to  the app research firm Flurry

…for app developers, who more traditionally look at North America and Europe, China is a market too compelling to ignore. A new market has emerged, and China is the new mobile app dragon.

China has grabbed the number two spot and is soon to become the numero uno in app sessions if the growth continues at this pace. Quite surprisingly, it was at number 10 earlier this year.

flurry1 thumb China witnessing astronomical app growth

While the absolute number of iOS and Android sessions Flurry tracked in the US market doubled between January and October 2011, its share of total sessions decreased to 47 percent from 55 percent.

In contrast, the balance of the top 10 countries – UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China – saw a 2.7 times collective increase in sessions, increasing their share of the total to 31 percent from 28 percent.

The rest of the total comes from the “others” group, which Flurry says includes 217 more countries where it tracks sessions. This block has seen its share of the market increase to 22 percent from 17 percent. The same can be seen in the above chart.

China sees the sharpest growth here, with session numbers increasing by 870 percent in the January–October 2011 period. This was ahead of the 570 percent seen for Argentina, and 427 percent growth for Israel.

flurry2 thumb China witnessing astronomical app growth

According to  Mobile Briefing

Most impressively, China started the year in tenth place, climbing to fifth by April. If both China and the US continue their current growth paths, China could overtake its rival by the end of 2013, with both having around 23 percent share of the app market.

In addition to its growing usage, China is also becoming an increasingly important market for new app downloads – its share of the market has increased from 1.2 percent to 12 percent during the course of 2011.

From the above numbers, the dragon surely seems hungry for more..!!!

Source

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech has conducted a research on smartphone platforms in the UK and have found out that around half of the UK smartphones have Android of one kind or the other on them.

MBB reports

Android’s share has increased from 29 percent a year ago to 49.9 percent. HTC is leading the way for phone manufacturers using the OS, with 45 percent of Android-based phone sales in the 12 weeks prior to 2 October. Samsung took 38 percent of Android sales with Sony Ericsson contributing 8.5 percent, down from 20.5 percent a year ago.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS is the next most popular smartphone OS, present on 22.5 percent of UK smartphones while Apple’s iOS has 18.5 percent market share, down from 33 percent a year ago. Kantar’s figures were taken before Apple announced the iPhone 4S, a period during which Apple CEO Tim Cook said there had been a significant slowdown of iPhone sales.

While Nokia plummeted from 20 percent last year to 6 percent this year, It’s hopes to gain momentum through the Windows Phone is bleak as Windows Phone managed to bad only a measly 1.4 percent share.

The “bad news for featurephones” is that under half of the UK population (44 percent) owns smartphones, with the growth in sales quickly accelerating. Smartphones made up 69 percent of mobile phone sales during the period.

Krusell, the Swedish manufacturer of elegant cases for mobiles has provided us with the ever important data of top ten phones for October 2011.

1. (1) Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II

2. (2) Apple iPhone 4

3. (9) Samsung GT-B2710 / Xcover 271

4. (4) Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray

5. (-) Apple iPhone 4S

6. (3) Nokia 3720 Classic

7. (7) Sony Ericsson Arc S

8. (6) HTC Sensation

9. (-) Nokia C2-01

10. (-) Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo

() = Last month’s position.

While the Galaxy S2 maintains the numero uno position, as predicted by their MD, Ulf Sandberg some time ago, we do see competition ahead with the iPhone 4S entry.

What is nice is that there are 5 brands in this list for this October 2011. Ulf Sandberg quotes

It’s a good sign to see that the volumes are divided on multiple brands even if LG and RIM are out, and HTC only have one model this month. For the coming month, I forecast that iPhone 4S will climb and so will Sony Ericsson Arc S.

For those of you who don’t know, this list is based on the number of pieces of custom made mobile and smartphone cases ordered from Krusell during October 2011. Krusell’s list is unique due to the fact that it reflects the sales of phones on six continents and in more than 70 countries around the globe.

IDC has reveled the numbers for the Q3 mobile phone shipments. And as unexpected by few, Nokia is still numero uno.

According to the report

Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors

Nokia reversed a global market share on a sequential basis last quarter thanks to stronger feature phone sales in key regions as well as the clearing of inventory backlogs in traditional strongholds, namely China and Europe, which led to a sharp year-over-year shipment and share decline last quarter. Nokia’s smartphone fortunes could improve in quarters to come now that it has introduced the Nokia Lumia devices, powered by Windows Phone 7, to markets where its brand is still relatively strong and in areas where the company has lost share over the past two years.

Samsung registered double-digit growth compared to the third quarter a year ago and also outpaced the market. The company’s growth was again driven by smartphone sales, such as the Galaxy S2. Smartphone sales were notably higher in emerging markets including China. Samsung outpaced the feature phone market as well in terms of growth. The vendor didn’t close the market share gap on Nokia for the top mobile phone position, but it remains within striking distance.

LG Electronics maintained its position as the number 3 mobile vendor worldwide for the twelfth quarter in a row, but continued soft demand for both its feature phones and smartphones led to volume levels not seen since 2Q 2007. With only a few new devices launched and an aging feature phone portfolio, LG’s warnings of lower year-over-year shipment volume appears to have come to fruition. By the end of the year, LG’s grasp on the number 3 position may be loosened as Apple’s aggressive smartphone campaign takes hold in 4Q 2011.

ZTE jumped into the number 4 position thanks to momentum carried into 3Q 2011 with key devices shipping into strategic regions. In China, ZTE has nearly doubled its smartphone volumes from the previous quarter, while within North America, ZTE’s entry-level voice-centric phones at AT&T have gained greater depth. At the same time, ZTE’s target of 12 million smartphone shipments worldwide in 2011 became more of a reality with the introduction of two new Android-powered smartphones for the North American market.

Apple gained share and posted the third-highest growth rate of any Top 5 vendor but dropped to the number 5 position globally. Global iPhone shipments declined sequentially during the same quarter that company founder Steve Jobs handed the CEO reins to Tim Cook. The decline, not coincidentally, happened as Apple readied itself for the 4S launch, which many waited for. Apple’s ability to upgrade 3GS users to the 4S, for example, and make continued inroads into developing economies, where it has been less successful, will help dictate the company’s smartphone fortunes in the future.

The numbers speak for themselves. What should be noted in the chart below is that while LG is the biggest loser, the Biggest winner is ZTE,  thanks to it’s featurephones sales. If featurephones are removed, then the champ would be Samsung, thanks to its baffling smartphone sales.

IDC q3 stats thumb Q3 worldwide mobile phone numbers, Nokia still rules

Source

Sammy, aka Samsung, has been able to pull out the rabbit out of the hat. After burying Nokia under a pile of dirt, it has toppled Apple from the numero uno spot of smartphone manufacturers.

According to the research firm Strategy Analytics,

Samsung shipped 28 million smartphones in Q3 for a 24 percent market share, ahead of both Apple (17.1 million, 15 percent) and Nokia (16.8 million, 14 percent). Total global smartphone shipments grew 44 percent annually to reach a record 117 million. However, that growth is almost half that of a year ago, when smartphone growth during Q3 2010 was recorded at 78 percent.

image thumb Samsung confirmed as number one smartphone manufacturer

shipment share thumb Samsung confirmed as number one smartphone manufacturer

Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics said

Apple’s global smartphone growth rate slowed to just 21 percent annually in Q3 2011, its lowest level for two years.

We believe Apple’s growth during the third quarter was affected by consumers and operators awaiting the launch of the new iPhone 4S in the fourth quarter, volatile economic conditions in several key countries, and tougher competition from Samsung’s popular Galaxy S2 model.

It is, however, interesting to  know that despite of getting it’s butt whipped by other players, Nokia is still the undisputed king of phones.

The top three overall spots belong to Nokia (106.6 million, 27% market share), Samsung (88 million, 23%) and LG (21.1 million, 5.4%).

Since the unveiling of Windows Phones, let us see what the “quarters” have up in their sleeves for Nokia.

If you can recall, Ericsson caused a stir two years ago when it predicted that the total size of the "connected devices" market could hit 50 billion by 2020. That definitely meant a lot of devices. Maybe more than the entire population of the human race.

But a new study conducted by GSMA claims that the number of M2M-capable “connected devices” will hit 24 billion in 2020, fuelling a boom that has the potential to create an extra US$1.2 trillion in revenue for mobile operators – a sevenfold increase over expected revenues in 2011.

According to Mobile Business Briefing,

The new study – a collaboration between the GSMA, AT&T, Deutsche Bank, KT, Telenor Connexion and Vodafone, and citing data from Machina Research – forecasts that the number of connected devices will rise from about 9 billion today. Of the 24 billion by 2020, “mobile connected devices” are expected to account for 12 billion, up from 6 billion today.

The study defines "mobile connected devices" as those that can connect directly to a mobile network, usually via a SIM. The wider "connected devices" market also includes so-called "short range devices" (for example, those that are Wi-Fi only), which includes devices such as remote sensor and monitoring devices, PCs, laptops and tablets, and femto cells and routers.

The GSMA pointed that the US$1.2 trillion figure is the “addressable revenue that a pure-play mobile network operator (MNO) could potentially compete for a share of,” in the form of mobile device sales, data traffic, applications, system integration, installation, and – most significantly – specific service revenue.

The addressable opportunity for MNOs that have access to fixed infrastructure and systems integration capabilities is clearly going to be greater.

The consumer electronics industry is expected to account for the lion’s share of this revenue opportunity by 2020 (US$445 billion), followed by automotive (US$202 billion), healthcare (US$69 billion) and utilities (US$36 billion). On a regional basis, Asia-Pacific is forecast to account for the majority of the US$1.2 trillion (US$447 billion), followed by Europe (US$305 billion), North America (US$241 billion), Latin America (US$92 billion), and the Middle East & Africa (US$87 billion).

Whoa, that’s a lot of money to be made.

© 2012 TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha