Tag Archives | Apple

Smartphone Sales: New Stats, and a Recap

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 4, 2010 at 10:43 am

Yet another research report shows booming sales of Android smartphones: NPD, which covers the retail market, says that 33 percent of smartphones sold in the US in the second quarter ran Google’s operating system. RIM’s BlackBerries fell to second place, at 28 percent, and Apple’s iPhones had 22 percent of the market.

NPD’s analysis covers only phones, so there are millions of Apple iOS devices–iPod Touches and iPads–that aren’t part of the tally. Except for a few niche products such as Archos’s tablets and the Nook, Android is still a phone OS, not a general-purpose one; that will change in the months to come as Android tablets (and products such as Google TV) arrive.

Each company that does this sort of number-crunching uses its own methodology, and sales patterns for the rest of the world differ wildly from those for the US. So it’s not surprising that different companies are releasing varying rankings. After the jump, a quick visual recap of some recent stats.

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Lala's Lost, But is it Missed?

Posted by Jared Newman on August 3, 2010 at 9:00 am

Over at CNet, Greg Sandoval’s inside sources say Apple’s setting low expectations for cloud music, and hasn’t yet acquired licenses to stream songs from its own servers.

In other words, the assumption that Apple acquired Lala to build its own streaming music service won’t pan out anytime soon. The Lala crew may actually be working on some sort of streaming video service instead, Sandoval’s sources say. Apple acquired Lala in December 2009, and shut it down in late May.

We’ve written about Lala quite a few times, because it took such a unique approach to digital music. In addition to selling MP3s, Lala sold streaming tracks for 10 cents each, and let you listen to any song once for free. It could also scan your entire downloaded music library and store a cloud version to be accessed anywhere. For Apple to offer any of those services, it needs more licensing from the music industry, and Apple reportedly hasn’t negotiated for that yet.

But as I look at the digital music landscape now, I don’t think Lala is really necessary. All-you-can-eat music services have emerged from Rhapsody, MOG and now Rdio, all of them offering mobile and desktop access for $10 per month, with the ability to download songs locally. That’s a lot more convenient than building a streaming library of individual tracks, and could be more economical for music junkies. If you just want to hear a song once for free, you can accomplish that with music search tools from Google and Bing.

As for the digital locker concept, how essential is it? Music doesn’t take up a lot of room, and storage capacity on mobile devices is only increasing. I’d rather see Apple focus on streaming video, because movies and TV shows are much more unwieldy to store and transfer. Although I was sad to see Lala go, I’m not desperate for it to come back.

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Hello From My iPad on a Plane

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 2, 2010 at 7:28 pm

Pay no attention to this post– okay, a little attention if you want, but it doesn’t merit much. I’m on board a Virgin America flight to New York (where I’ll cover RIM’s BlackBerry event tomorrow). And since I have Internet access via Gogo but no laptop–it ran out of juice–I’m trying blogging on my iPad.

Verdict: Doable, but slow and not terribly pleasant. Biggest problem: I’m in a middle seat…

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The Case for (Not) Jailbreaking Your iPhone

Posted by Dave Z on August 2, 2010 at 2:39 pm

The simplest and most expansive iDevice jailbreak was released last night. In the past, and prior to Spirit, most jailbreak solutions required a computer intermediary running software locally to get the job done. It wasn’t difficult, but it did require research and could be somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated. Whereas the new jailbreakme.com website offers jailbreaking to anyone who can simply navigate to a URL. But I wonder how big the need or interest in jailbreaking is these days.

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Office for Mac Coming in October…and It's Cheaper

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 2, 2010 at 11:54 am

Microsoft said Monday that it was expecting to release Office for Mac 2011 in October, while at the same time cutting the price as much as 50 percent to bring pricing in line with its Windows counterparts. Two versions of the software will be made available, one directed at academics and the other for business.

Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 will include World, Excel, Powerpoint, and Microsoft’s instant messaging application for Mac OS X. The business version will include all of the above applications plus Outlook, which will replace Entourage as Office’s e-mail client on the Mac.

Pricing for the student version ill be $119 for a single license, and $149 for a family license which allows for installation on up to three machines. This compares to a single license price of $149 for Office 2008. For Office for Mac Home and Business 2011, a single license is now $199, down from $399, and a family license $279.

At any time, a user will be able to upgrade from the Student to Business version using online upgrade functionality, Microsoft said.

A $99 version of the business suite would also be made available, but only to those in higher-education. Proof of employment or enrollment in an academic institution would likely be required to take advantage of the discount.

Those who purchase Office for Mac 2008 after Monday will be eligible to upgrade to the new version at no cost, Microsoft said. To receive the free upgrade, the purchaser must register at Microsoft’s website.

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Android Finally Outsells iPhone–Yes, Again!

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 2, 2010 at 8:41 am

JK on the Run’s Kevin C. Tofel is reporting that a new Nielsen study says that Android phones have 27 percent of the US market for smartphones, beating out Apple’s iPhone for the first time. At the same time, another report says that Android has an even heftier 34 percent of the market, making it the country’s most popular mobile OS.

Both factoids sounded familiar. Sure enough, back in May yet another firm (NPD) said that Android had 28 percent of the market to iPhone’s 21 percent. Lesson: Don’t take research reports as gospel.

Everybody agrees that Android phones are outselling iPhones in terms of units. Given how many models are on the market, and how well-marketed some of them are, it’s not surprising that it’s taken the lead–the shocker is that it took this long for such a pervasive OS to beat one that’s on only two phones from one carrier.

For consumers, the unit-sales horse race isn’t all that interesting. It’s the overall health of the competing ecosystems–as reflected in quality and quantity of third-party apps, services, and accessories–that matters. And while Android is making rapid progress here, nobody who’s trying to be even sort of objective will make the case that the Android Market is now the equal of the iPhone Store.

Android now has users in vast quantities; it’s up to Google to polish up the still-mediocre Market and do everything in its power to help developers create lots of exceptional apps.

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The Browser Wars' Odd New Equilibrium

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 29, 2010 at 10:01 am

Apple released version 5.0.1 of its Safari browser yesterday. It fixes one major security vulnerability. More pleasantly, it turns on support for extensions, which Apple is now collecting in its new Extensions Gallery. The quantity of available add-ins is skimpy compared to Chrome or (especially) Firefox, but there’s already some good stuff–I like Gmail Counter, which adds a button indicating how many e-mails have arrived since you last checked your inbox, along with a banner that rotates through recent subject lines. And Safari extensions have the most seamless installation process I’ve seen to date–one click, and you’re good to go.

Until now, when folks have asked me how the major browsers stack up, I’ve mostly praised Safari but noted that the lack of extensions made for a less customizable working environment. Now it’s got ’em. One more reason to consider using Safari, one less major distinguishing characteristic for the competition.

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Mossberg on iPhone Reception

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 29, 2010 at 8:55 am

The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg–who was the only early iPhone 4 reviewer to bring up reception as a potential problem–has written about his experiences after having used the phone for a few weeks. His verdict is similar to mine: In areas with good AT&T signal, the iPhone 4 is fine, but it (sometimes) struggles more than the 3GS when reception is poor. He still thinks it’s the best smartphone overall (and so do I).

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228,571 Floppies is a Lot of Floppies

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2010 at 11:22 pm

People–especially people who are online–like reading funny factoids that show the dizzying rate of technological progress over the years. So I wasn’t completely shocked that a tweet of mine–“An iPhone 4 has more onboard memory than all the Apple II computers in the world as of 1980 put together”–turned out to be one of the most-retweeted items on Twitter today.

For those curious how I did the math:

  • In 1981, Apple published its first annual report–available here–which said that “Nearly 180,000 Apple II systems were shipped in 1981, more than twice as many as last year, increasing the installed base of Apple II systems to well over 300,000.”
  • The “1981” Apple referred to was a fiscal year from October 1980 through September 1981, so the total number of Apple II systems sold as of December 31st, 1980 was some figure (appreciably) below 300,000.
  • Apple II systems had a minimum of 4KB of memory and a maximum of 48KB. Since we don’t know the breakdown, we can err on the side of caution by assuming they all had a roomy 48KB for the sake of this exercise.
  • One 16GB iPhone has as much storage as 333,333 48KB Apple IIs–16,000,000,000/48,000–or more than existed on the planet as of the end of 1980.
  • Yes, I know that the “16GB” in a 16GB iPhone refers to flash memory, and I’m comparing it against the Apple II’s 48KB of RAM. (The iPhone 4 also has RAM–512MB of it–which I didn’t bother to factor in.) Purists, feel free to squawk…

Similar factoid, also popular on Twitter: a 32GB thumb drive stores as much data as a stack of Apple II floppy disks as tall as the Golden Gate Bridge. (That’s 228,571 140KB floppies–750 feet of ’em–if you’re counting.)

I’ve been doing the math on new tech versus old tech for a simple reason: I was researching a story I’ve been writing for Discover Magazine‘s upcoming thirtieth anniversary issue. Fun!

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Is the White iPhone Leaky?

Posted by Harry McCracken on July 28, 2010 at 11:28 am

I’m instinctively skeptical of news reported by TheStreet.com’s Scott Moritz. (Among other things, he said that Apple was “likely” to respond to iPhone 4 antennagate by using its press event a couple of weeks ago to announce that it had a fix.) For what it’s worth, though, Moritz is saying that a source told him that the white iPhone 4’s delay stems from Apple having trouble manufacturing ones that don’t leak light from the edges of their glass cases.

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