Android's growth stalling?

Android's Andy Rubin has blogged his update to the platform's status, and it's more of the same really. Maybe...

It's difficult to imagine the sheer scale of Android's growth even when the numbers are presented - there are now more than 850,000 new activations each day, up from 700,000 announced on December 20 last year. Yet that doesn't include those thousands of Android powered devices that don't use Google Services and make no mistake, that's a lot of uncounted phones and tablets. Like the Kindle Fire, for example, the best selling Android tablet with nearly 10% of the tablet market. Or basically any Android device sold in China, a bigger mobile market than the US now. Which could mean in reality that the daily total is a massive 15% larger than reported, or North of 970,000.

Android eats into iPad sales in 2011

According to iSuppli, Apple's market-defining media tablet suffered a market share setback in 2011, dipping from the spectacular 87% share it held in 2010, down to 62% in 2011, a 29% drop year on year. This will probably come as a surprise to nobody since the iPad was the tablet market for all intents in 2010, Apple having reinvented the category much as it did with the iPhone.

Android grabs a bigger chunk of the tablet market

iPad share shrinks as Android looks on

Strategy Analytics is reporting that tablet market leader, once seemingly omnipotent Apple, has again lost share to Android in the latest quarter, consecutive quarters indicating that it's now a trend. After a slow start in the tablet space, Android has picked up some real momentum, fueled by a variety of consumer targeted devices from many manufacturers offering the buyer something previously lacking, choice.

While Android's tablet share sat at 29% at the close of 2010, that number has increased to 39% at the end of 2011. In contrast, Apple's share has fallen from 68% to 58% over the same period and you don't need to be a mathematician to work out where the iPad's market went.

Lenovo IdeaTab S2: ASUS Transformer form factor, 20 hour battery life

Sexy!

CES 2012 is on right now in the US of A, and the first piece of news that has caught my eye is the announcement of Lenovo's IdeaTab S2. As The Verge describes it, the IdeaTab is "a 10.1-inch, dual-core Android 4.0 tablet with keyboard dock attachment." While Lenovo is a relative unknown here in New Zealand, this caught my eye - Read on for the breakdown.

Samsung's Mobile Products Fuel Record-Setting Earnings...

Helping fuel Samsung's current
mobile domination!

Samsung, Asia's most valuable technology company and the world's biggest technology firm by revenue, has hit an all-time high in earnings based on the success of its smartphone business.

Shipments are expected to reach a record 35 million in Q4, 22% better than the previous three months when it powered past Apple as the top smartphone maker on the planet. Yet despite this record setting exploit, during 2012 Samsung will likely ship 170 million smartphones, up from 95 million in 2011.

A truly spectacular achievement by a company which only began making smartphones in 2010, and a performance that dwarfs even Apple's much-lauded smartphone accomplishment.

Samsung's new Galaxy Note phablet has had a very successful launch in Europe and Asia during the holiday season which raises expectations for the upcoming US launch. A success in the world's second largest smartphone market (China has overtaken the US) will extend Samsung's lead over all its rivals in the mobile field, none of the competition having an equivalent device and Apple unlikely to follow its Korean rival into the phablet space.

As Kim Yun-sang, fund manager at IBK Asset Management notes... "As expectations for Apple to continue its innovation trail [are] receding a bit, this will be the year when Samsung solidifies its commanding lead in the smartphone market".*

So far though, Samsung's entry into the emerging tablet market has been tempered by ongoing patent battles with arch-nemesis Apple, the iPad maker attempting to have sales of Samsung's tablets banned in various major markets across the globe.

However, Apple has only succeeded in slowing Samsung's process thus far. It's widely expected that new Samsung models will circumvent future patent suit attempts by its Cupertino based foe and Apple will be forced to switch tactics to attacks on the Android OS instead.

*Caveat - IBK Asset Management owns Samsung stock. It's not known if they own any Apple stock.

Source: Reuters

Spectacular Android Mobile Device Growth Continues…

For the whole of 2011, Android nearly doubled its global share of the smartphone market versus 2010, according to Canaccord Genuity, with the Little Green Robot taking 43% compared to 22.6% previously. That compares extremely well with Apple's iOS, Android's main competitor. The Cupertino-based iPhone maker's unit sales performance showed only a weak two percentage point increase over the previous 12 month period.

Fire Kindles blazing holiday sales

While Amazon famously refuses to provide specific sales numbers for its Kindle range of readers and tablets, it has confirmed that it sold "well over" a million units a week for the whole four week period leading up to Christmas.

Research analyst company Morgan Keegan has predicted around 5 million Kindle Fires were sold which, if correct, would easily make it the largest-selling Android tablet so far. The secret to its success is its price, selling in the 'States for $200 which handily undercuts all other tablets including Apple's iPad and even RIM's heavily discounted PlayBook.

Android's share of the tablet market, initially lackluster, has begun to accelerate with a number of brands and models gaining traction, but ominously for competitors, the Kindle Fire has demonstrated that a good price point will be attractive to the buying public. So much so, in fact, that the market dominant iPad has likely suffered a significant drop in its own market share. Morgan Keegan are expecting the iPad's sales to have been affected by as many as 2 million units by the Fire alone, with their estimate for the December quarter down from 16 million units to 13 million.

The iPad sold 11.2 million units in the previous quarter, which suggests a growth in the December quarter of nearly 2 million, but this rate of growth is significantly slower than previously and notably weak in what has always been Apple's best quarter for all its products. On the other hand, the Android tablet share has been demonstrating an increased growth rate even prior to the Fire's launch. So the figures for the tablet wars are likely to show the iPad as having suffered a dramatic loss of market share when all the Q4 research is reported.

Source: Morgan Keegan

NPD research shows tablet users avoiding cellular data connection

At least in the Yoo Ess of Eh, the proportion of cellular-connected tablets, already a minority, is trending even lower.

Between April and October this year, the percentage of "WiFi-only" tablet connections increased from 60% to 65%, at the expense of the "WiFi plus cellular" and "cellular-only" segments. As you'd expect with a device that relies on connectivity to function as intended, the percentage of "no connectivity" users basically halved - although you have to wonder what on earth that latter group actually uses their tablet for at all.

Graphic courtesy of NPD

ASUS Transformer: the future of computing, today?

Image courtesy of Tony McNeil at FlickR

First off, I'd like to say thanks to Dr. Murray Winiata, the creator and Editor-in-Chief of AndroidNZ. I have previously written for the TelecomTech blog at Geekzone.co.nz, and a very small amount on my own personal blog.

My most recent post was several months ago and shared some of my ideas on where I think we are headed with computing in this supposedly "post-PC" era. Since that post, I have actually purchased an Asus Transformer tablet, along with the keyboard dock. I have been using it at work for the past few weeks and intend to continue using it in the future. While tablets have so far been relegated to being media and web-consumption devices, I believe that that is going to change.