Hasta La Gadget!

Like any two technology behemoths, Adobe and Microsoft have certainly had their ups and downs. But now that Google and Apple are looming over them in a number of ways, it seems as if the two may be courting one another in order to help re-level the playing field. According to a New York Times report — which was crafted after collecting reports from “employees and consultants to the companies who were involved in the discussions that took place” — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen recently met at the latter’s headquarters for a closed-door meeting. Purportedly, the meeting went on for over an hour and covered a variety of topics, with one of ’em being Apple and its newfound dominance in the mobile market. Shockingly enough, a “possible acquisition of Adobe by Microsoft were among the options” of stopping the skyrocketing growth. The report accurately notes that such a deal makes entirely more sense now that Redmond isn’t exactly the 800 pound gorilla that it was before Android and iOS hit the mainstream, though details beyond these assumptions were few and far betwixt. Whatever happens, no one can blame Steve Jobs for not giving Adobe every possible reason to hit Apple with everything it’s got — even if that involves buddying up with Ballmer and co.

Microsoft and Adobe CEOs meet, purportedly plan world domination originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh, IE, it pains us to do this to you. You who once so mightily won in the battle against Netscape Navigator now seem to be losing your war against a battalion of upstarts, relatively fresh faces like Firefox and Chrome. According to StatCounter, IE’s global usage stats have fallen to 49.87 percent, a fraction of a tick beneath half. Firefox makes up the lion share of the rest, at 31.5 percent, while Chrome usage tripled since last year, up to 11.54 percent. Two years ago IE had two thirds of the global market locked down, and even if Internet Explorer 9 is the best thing since ActiveX, well, we just don’t see the tide of this battle turning without MS calling in some serious reinforcements.

Update: If you needed more proof of Chrome’s increasing popularity, we got a tip on this report from Softpedia confirming that Chrome is the fastest growing browser of the moment. Firefox is more or less flat and, well, you know all about how IE is faring.

Continue reading Internet Explorer falls below 50 percent global marketshare, Chrome usage triples

Internet Explorer falls below 50 percent global marketshare, Chrome usage triples originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s terribly difficult to get reliable statistics, as numbers tend to vary drastically depending upon whom you ask, but if you’re inclined to believe that Android is mopping up Apple and RIM’s declining mobile mindshare in the US, you’ll find nothing but corroboration from Quantcast. The analytics firm reckons a full one-quarter of mobile web traffic stateside comes from devices running Google’s OS, though it’s important to know that the iOS tallies apparently don’t include the web-friendly iPad. You also might want to note that this is mobile web traffic here — these days, we spend an increasing amount of our internet time in apps — and since we’re on a roll with the disclaimers, let’s just add that these numbers have nothing to do with a company’s financial success. Nokia can attest to that.

Android accounts for one-quarter of mobile web traffic, says Quantcast originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Last quarter we reported on some pretty stellar growth numbers for Android in the global smartphone marketplace. Back then, Google’s OS had a 9.6 percent slice of the pie, but today that’s ballooned to a robust 17.2 percent, meaning that in terms of end-user sales over the last three months, Android has nearly matched RIM’s BlackBerry sales. That’s quite the feat when you consider that a year ago the latter was shifting ten times more units than the former. This extraordinary growth rate has narrowed down Symbian’s lead at the top, in spite of Nokia’s favorite OS actually shipping on more phones this year, while the big loser of the quarter has to be Windows Mobile, which contracted both in terms of market share and actual shipments.

Overall, smartphone sales were up by 50 percent year-on-year, according to both Gartner and IDC, while Gartner adds that mobile devices as a whole grew at a tamer 13.3 percent pace. In terms of phone manufacturers’ global share, Nokia and Samsung have held on to their top positions, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have experienced some uncomfortable shrinkage, and HTC, RIM and Apple have capitalized to expand their portions. Looking over to IDC’s smartphone share data shows, again, that all smartphone makers are growing remarkably well, but it does highlight HTC (129 percent) and Samsung (173 percent) as really improving their presence in the sector. The reason? Android, Android, Android.

Continue reading Gartner and IDC agree: the Android invasion’s accelerating around the world

Gartner and IDC agree: the Android invasion’s accelerating around the world originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Aug 2010 07:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nielsen has its own angle on the smartphone numbers game out today, and the results vaguely resemble the numbers from Canalys. Perhaps more interesting than the ever present market share tug-of-war (Nielsen pegs Google, RIM, and Apple at 27 percent, 33 percent, and 23 percent in sales to new smartphone subscribers, respectively) a note on brand loyalty turns out ugly for BlackBerry: while 89 percent of iPhone owners plan on getting another iPhone, and 71 percent of Android buyers plan to re-up, only 42 percent of BlackBerry owners plan to stick around. The defectors are pretty evenly split, with 29 percent planning to go iPhone, and 21 percent to go Android. That compares to 2 and 3 percent in the iPhone and Android camps planning a move to BlackBerry. We’ll see if BlackBerry 6 can solve this little problem for RIM, but the few tweaks we’ve seen so far seem hardly capable of stemming the flow.

BlackBerry users running out of loyalty: 50 percent plan to defect to iPhone or Android originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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