Hasta La Gadget!

Alright, so Microsoft is in no danger of toppling iOS or Android anytime soon. But the analytics firm Kantar has seen significant growth for Windows Phone, largely at the expense of BlackBerry. In practically every major market WP8 has started to chip away at its competitors, growing from 6.2 percent to 6.7 percent share in the UK in just one month. Twelve months ago it was at only three percent in the country. The most dramatic ascent has taken place in Italy where it accounted for just 5.4 percent of handsets sold in February of 2012, and now makes up 13.1 percent of sales. Even in the US Windows Phone is seeing steady, if hardly eye-popping growth.

Symbian and BlackBerry are obviously the biggest losers. In Mexico, both platforms have seen double digit drops in their share of sales over the last year. While in the UK, the company formerly known as RIM has gone from a seemingly secure third place with 16.8 percent of the market to a quickly fading fourth with 5.1 percent is just 12 months. Meanwhile, Apple is sitting pretty with hardly a change to its position and Android continues its juggernaut-like assault on all markets. To see the complete global figures check out the images after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Via: WMPoweruser

Source: Kantar 1, 2

This month’s ComScore results for Smartphone Platform Market Share and Smartphone OEM Market Share show first that Apple is rising while Android falls. That much is easy to see as the three-month average ending in January of 2013 is compared to the three-month average ending in October 2012 in the Smartphone Platform arena – Apple rose 3.5 percent in the market while Google (with Android) fell 1.3 percent. Next you’ll find that in the Top Smartphone OEM list for those same two three-month periods, both Apple and Samsung grew – at the expense of HTC, Motorola, and LG.

What’s not immediately apparent is the comparison you can make between the two charts, that being the fall of Google’s Android on one hand and the continued rise of Samsung (using Android, mind you) on the other. While Samsung and HTC continue to work with Windows Phone 8 as well as, in Samsung’s case, a tiny bit of their own home-made mobile OS, it’s still Android that dominates their ranks.

So once again we’re able to pull out a conclusion that was spoken about more than once in the past few weeks: Samsung is growing at a rate that’s not dependent on Google’s Android mobile operating system. The first big blast of understanding in this came with an “interest over time” chart made by Benedict Evans run on Google search terms – it showed the brand “Galaxy” to be gaining steam at a rate much faster than Google’s Android.

And now here in this ComScore report, we’re seeing Google’s total number of smartphone subscribers in the USA moving from 53.6% to 52.3% in the two three-month periods ComScore compares – a downward trend of 1.3 percent. Apple is the only entrant in this top 5 list that’s gone up in the ranks – BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Symbian took a turn from bad to worse.

Meanwhile we see both Apple and Samsung rise in the manufacturing world, with Samsung’s Galaxy line continuing to swallow up the market as a whole as Apple does with its iPhone lineup. Meanwhile the other three of the top 5 on this list sit below 10%, with LG being the only one to rise between these two 3-month periods, and only be a measly 0.3 percent.

So is this a perfect indicator that Google should be worried about Samsung eclipsing Android with their Galaxy lineup of Android-powered smart devices? Not exactly – but it’s not beyond possible that these two trends are related. Keep your eye on these two titans through the near future to see how they continue to team up.

[via ComScore]

ComScore: Samsung rises as Android falls is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

There’s been indications that Apple staged something of a comeback in the US during the fourth quarter, owing partly to an iPhone 5-related spike. ComScore’s smartphone share data for December appears to bear that out. It estimates that the Apple claimed a 36.3 percent slice of the American market in the last month of 2012: that’s a noticeable boost from 35 percent in November, and two points up since the iPhone 5’s September arrival. Android remained on top at 53.4 percent, but it was once again unusually static, edging down from highs earlier in the year. Other platforms took their usual blows, although there’s no doubt some hopes for revival.

Just don’t anticipate looking for overall cellphone market share. ComScore has switched to focusing on smartphones, and it’s telling a different story than we’ve seen in the past. When only smartphones count, Samsung’s December share left it in second place, at 21 percent — still an increase over prior months, but not as large as Apple’s 36.3 percent. The biggest surprise is LG’s rise to 7.1 percent and fifth place, quite possibly due to the Optimus G and Nexus 4. Enough shifted that the market may be even less recognizable in 2013, for better or worse.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, LG, Blackberry

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Source: ComScore

Maybe it’s easier being green than we thought. We suspected Android would do well in smartphone market share when Strategy Analytics had Samsung surging ahead in the fourth quarter of 2012, but the firm’s newer breakdown of estimated share by OS shows an even larger jump for Google’s overall platform — from 51.3 percent in fall 2011 to 70.1 percent one year later. Apple was knocked down slightly to 22 percent, although it’s mostly other platforms that took the bruising. Collectively, BlackBerry, Symbian, Windows Phone and other platforms sank from 25.1 percent of the smartphone space in late 2011 to just 7.9 points as 2012 drew to a close. When just two companies’ platforms make up 92 percent of smartphones, it’s safe to call the result a duopoly, like Strategy Analytics does — even if others aren’t so content with the idea.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Google, RIM

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Via: TalkAndroid

Source: Strategy Analytics

You know what they say, all good things must always come to an end, and the Symbian adventure on the Nokia train is on its last legs. To put it in a nutshell, the Nokia 808 PureView will be the last Symbian-powered device from Nokia, The folks over at Nokia mentioned, “During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian. The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid-2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia.”

Things have certainly changed over time, where the Symbian operating system on Nokia devices did play an integral role in the smartphone game in the past decade, although when the touchscreen revolution began with the iPhone in 2007, that was the beginning of the end. I am quite sure that many of you did have fond memories of the Nokia 9210 Communicator, not to mention the Nokia E71 that proved to be quite the winner, being the only decent competitor against the almighty BlackBerry collection then, too.

What is your fondest memory of Symbian?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nokia Laser Could Be Verizon’s Rumored Windows Phone 8 Device, Samsung Expects To Sell 10 Million Galaxy S4 Phones Every Month After Release,