Friday, July 22, 2011

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

The iPhone 5 News Blog News Feed

Android To Overtake iOS? – Don’t Bet The Farm, At Least Not Yet

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 10:41 AM PDT


It’s conventional wisdom in some circles that Android will eventually surpass Apple’s iOS handily in market share. Perhaps that will come to pass in the fullness of time, but there’s little scientific indication of it so far.

Good Technology, a secure and managed enterprise mobility provider for iPhone, iPad, Android and other leading smartphone platforms, has just released its quarterly data report detailing the changing landscape of IT and mobile enterprise technology, noting that the trend of personal smartphones and tablets infiltrating the workplace is being led by both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android smartphone platforms, but in Q2 of 2011, iOS extended its rally from Q1, increasing in that time from just under seventy percent to just under eighty percent of total device activations, and of course that’s all without any iPhone 5 revision.

The report notes that in Q2 of 2011 iPhone represented a solid 2/3 of all smartphone activations while Android smartphones represented 1/3 of all activations. When tablets and smartphones are both included in this breakdown, iOS drove 75 percent of all activations, with Android at 25 percent for the quarter. Together iPad 2 and iPad activations outnumbered all Android device activations as Good customers heavily deployed the iPad 2 tablet to their workforces in Q2 after its initial release in March.

With new iPhones from Apple expected in Q3 2011, Good Technology says they expect iOS to finish the year as strong as it started, and while they previously predicted that Android activations would overtake iPhone activations in the smartphone category in 2011, they no longer predict that will happen this year, given Apple’s recent and planned product releases, and observing that Android smartphones represented nearly 33 percent of all smartphone (non tablet) activations compared to iPhone’s 66 percent, despite Android’s overall market share growth.

Meanwhile Apple’s iOS platform drove the majority of activations for the period from April 1 through June 30, 2011. The iPhone 4 was the most popular device, with a steadily growing activation rate averaging 22 percent for the quarter.

To download the full Good Technology report, which includes the methodology for the findings, visit:
http://www.good.com/resources/Good_Data_Q2_2011.pdf

Apple Dominates Mobile App Space with Content while Android Aims for Numbers

A new Strategy Analytics report, “Apps, Apps Everywhere: The Billion Dollar Industry,” says the app economy is strong and getting stronger, with paid downloads expected to drive nearly $2 billion per quarter by the end of 2012, and predicts that Apple will remain king of the app economy at least through 2012.

They do anticipate that the Android Market is poised to overtake the Apple App Store in quarterly volume by the end of 2012, but observe that the battle between Google and Apple is only one subtext in a market that will continue grow exponentially for the next six quarters.

For more information on the report, “Apps, Apps Everywhere: The Billion Dollar Industry”, click here:
http://bit.ly/nuSocz

Verizon CEO’s Claim That “We don’t know when the next [iPhone] is going to come out” Bollocks

Posted: 22 Jul 2011 10:11 AM PDT


Truism #1: politicians lie. Truism #2: so do CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations.

Want proof? Just read through the transcript of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s conference call that seeks to outline Verizon’s “positive” financials in the smartphone market for 2011. On the call, McAdams said the following:

“We are probably what I would view as maybe a quarter behind what we had talked about in January , primarily because we expected an iPhone 5 refresh sometime this summer. We don't know when the next one is going to come out. You will have to ask Apple that. But we expect that probably sometime in the fall, and I think you will see a significant jump there when we get to that point.”

Rather than simply taking Lowell McAdam’s word for it, let’s step back a moment, and observe the confounding nature of this quotation from several angles.

First off, what is McAdam talking about when when he says that Verizon “expected an iPhone 5 refresh?” How is it in any way responsible for the Verizon CEO to publicly speculate on the next iPhone being called the “iPhone 5,” and that it would be a “refresh,” especially considering that in the same breath he also tells us that Verizon doesn’t “know when the next one is going to come out. You will have to ask Apple that”?

Huh?

Perhaps you, dear reader, think I’m being a bit obstinate in my reading of mr McAdam’s quote due to my belief that the iPhone 5′s release was delayed precisely because Verizon wanted more time to sell their version of the iPhone 4, but wouldn’t you have to admit that the above-quoted comment is a contradiction in terms?

I believe that we should take George Costanza from Seinfeld‘s approach to looking at what the Verizon CEO had to say in his conference call to investors, and instead believe the opposite of everything he stated.

Let’s start with the obvious: does Mr. McAdams expect us, the average iPhone user, to believe that Verizon (and AT&T, by extension) have no idea about the next iPhone? That even today, on July 22nd, with every indication that Apple is imminently preparing to launch the next iPhone, that AT&T and Verizon (and whoever may peddle the next iPhone in the U.S.) is completely in the dark about what the next iPhone will be, what it will look like, and when it will be released? Should we assume, then, that the way it works is that a fleet of trucks just appear at AT&T and Verizon’s distribution centers one morning and dump 15 million boxes of iPhones for them to sell, completely unannounced?

Forget turnips — Mr. McAdams must think that we just fell off of those fictional Apple trucks.

But McAdams doesn’t stop there. He compounds his iPhone yarn by saying, “Given the delay of the iPhone 5 is more than a quarter, I think we have actually performed quite well.” This, I believe, is the lynchpin of the fib, and why Verizon wants to perpetuate the sense that they have no idea about the whereabouts or the whenabouts of the iPhone 5. It’s all about fiscal quarters: particularly the third quarter, which will ostensibly be a bad one for Verizon.

In spite of McAdams’ characterization that Verizon has had a fruitful second quarter of iPhone 4 sales, financial media outlets are reporting that Verizon has done little to penetrate AT&T’s market share of the iPhone. Reuters is reporting today that, in spite of all the positive bluster on Verizon’s investor conference call, “Verizon Communications (VZ.N) failed to gain market share against AT&T Inc (T.N) in iPhone sales in its first full quarter selling Apple Inc’s device, sending shares down as much as 3 percent,” and that they only activated 2.3 million iPhones, as compared to AT&T, who activated 3.6 million.

So, Verizon is trying to essentially damage control this news. And Reuters is even parroting the spin when they say: “Verizon Wireless expects to sell a new version of the iPhone sometime in the autumn, which is roughly a financial quarter later than it previously expected. As a result, it will take that much longer than expected to achieve its goal of having half of its subscribers using smartphones, which generate more revenue.” This rationale by Verizon tells me that they are trying to blame Apple for failing to meet investors’ expectations on iPhone sales. To me, it is very clear and obvious.

And chances are, Q3 Verizon earnings for the iPhone 4 are going to be abysmal, since we already know that iPhone 4 sales have dropped across the board in Q3. This is precisely why the new Verizon CEO is saying, “”We expect [the new iPhone] probably sometime in the fall. I think you’ll see a significant jump there.” Talk about groveling to investors, pleading that they don’t jump ship on Verizon stock and leave the company in the lurch from a cash flow standpoint, just when the next iPhone is due out.

But truth be told, I don’t really care about all of that.

If Lowell McAdams needs to spin the data and jump through flaming hoops to keep his bigtime investors happy, more power to him. Those guys play their little games, and we just watch from the sidelines. I get that.

What I do not appreciate, however, is Verizon’s characterization of its business relationship with Apple — that they have no idea about the next iPhone, and that Apple has somehow let down Verizon, investors, and the iPhone community its delay in the iPhone 5, especially when Verizon may very well be the prime reason why the iPhone 5 was delayed in the first place. If the iPhone 4 had launched to a resounding success for Verizon to the extent that they cut deeply into AT&T’s entrenched market share of iPhone 5 sales, we may have even heard Mr. McAdams boasting of the delay so as to allow Verizon more time in developing its market share of the iPhone 4.

However, what this speaks to is the possibility of a failed scheme for Verizon, and one wonders if the succession of the CEO position at Verizon from Ivan Seidenberg to Lowell McAdams had anything to do with missteps as far as the iPhone 4 is concerned. We’ll never really know, but perhaps if Verizon had waited and simply released the iPhone 5 in June, maybe Verizon, Apple, and even all of us would have been a lot happier about the iPhone here on a hot July 22nd?