Hasta La Gadget!

10 million freaking smartphones. Who thought, when Samsung put that number forward as its 2010 Galaxy S sales goal two months ago, that it was actually going to happen? Well, with just over a week left in the calendar year, the Korean giant has racked up 9.3 million sales of its Android superphone globally and actually expects to sneak past the mythical 10 million mark just before the champagne glasses start clinking. The Galaxy S has also scored a win in its home market of South Korea, where its two million units sold so far leads the 1.8 million iPhones sold since the series debuted in November 2009. Hearty congratulations are due to the crew in Seoul, such success doesn’t happen by chance, but let’s keep working on those Froyo (and Gingerbread!) software updates as well, eh chaps?

Update: This article has been update to reflect Chosunibo’s claim that 1.8 million iPhone series devices were sold — not just iPhone 4 handsets.

Samsung sells 9.3 million Galaxy S devices, within reaching distance of its lofty goal originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 19:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has decided to finally dish out some sales figures for its new Windows Phone 7 platform, but alas, these are not the sales figures we are looking for. Instead of giving us the juicy number of actual devices sold to end users, the Redmond crew has provided a neatly rounded figure of 1.5 million sales to mobile operators and retailers. That tells us that the mobile industry is cautiously buying into Microsoft’s new OS, and it’d be foolish not to, but it doesn’t really educate us on the relative success of the platform’s launch — 1.5 million units is a tiny, tiny number when you consider the platform launched on 10 devices on over 60 carriers in over 30 countries. All that Microsoft’s Achim Berg would say is that early sales have been “in line” with expectations.

Microsoft: over 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 devices sold to carriers and retailers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Dec 2010 09:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been mostly bad news about content blocks for Google TV since the platform launched in late October, but it sounds like Sony’s staying optimistic: Hiroshi Yoshioka, head of the company’s TV division, told the New York Times that Sony’s Google TV sales have been “in line with expectations,” and that “it might take a little longer for users to really start having fun” with the new platform. What’s more, Yoshioka also said Sony’s TV group and Google collaborate more on Google TV devices than Sony Ericsson and Google do on Android phones, which sounds insane to us — but perhaps not entirely surprising, given that the Xperia X8 is only just getting Android 2.1.

Of course, all this cheerleading from Sony comes against the backdrop of Google asking TV manufacturers to delay several planned CES Google TV product introductions while it reworks the software and tries to negotiate with the networks on continued content blocks, so “expectations” could mean almost anything, really — especially since Yoshioka didn’t provide any hard Google TV sales numbers and later said that Sony’s TV business would fail to meet its targets and struggle to become profitable this year. Ouch. We’ve got a feeling we’ll be hearing more about all this at CES one way or another — stay tuned.

Sony says Google TV sales meeting expectations, TV division working more closely with Google than cellphone group originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Do you “have enterprise sales experience and an existing knowledge of the mobile market and the technologies that support it?” Do you “have strong IT knowledge in the areas of enterprise messaging and collaboration, VPN, WiFi and enterprise security technologies?” And most importantly, do you “possess the ability to work without direct supervision or detailed direction?” If so, you might just be suitable for Apple’s latest and greatest job listing. The HR team in Cupertino is apparently looking for a Verizon iPad system engineer, primarily to work with Apple’s sales team and legions of business partners in order to “drive the adoption of iPad in enterprise accounts.” What’s interesting is the Verizon angle; if Apple simply wanted nondescript iPads in Corporate America, why hire someone familiar with Big Red? Moreover, this certainly says something about Apple’s relationship with Verizon — namely, that it’s growing, and we’re guessing that the pleasantries will eventually extend far beyond a tablet. So yeah, it’s no real shocker that Apple and Verizon are in cahoots on some level, but this kind of invitation usually comes with one or two undercover intentions. Any upstanding gentleman attached to his better half would understand.

Apple job listing calls for Verizon iPad engineer, hints at a lot more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our supply checks say that 10 out of 10 analysts are insanely bullish about tablets — despite the fact that there are only 2.5 competitive products on the market, and one of them only came out a month ago. So, naturally, it isn’t difficult to scrounge up sales predictions that show the tablet rocketing into the stratosphere, cutting into PC market share, while also expanding the market outright to accommodate its post-PC ways. Gartner‘s guess is 55 million tablets next year, while IDC has a more conservative estimate of 42 million, but both predict a sharp, exponential rise in the following years, and IDC takes it one step further: 18 months from now, combined smartphone and tablet sales will eclipse the PC, it claims, with both categories hovering in the mid-400 million range.

Now, that number is mostly smartphones, which isn’t an unprecedented shift in and of itself — the PC took a major hit in popularity in Japan once the kids got ahold of these newfangled phone things — but overall it represents a shift from the open-ended, flexible, and powerful PC to the narrow, task-specific, app-driven nature of the iOS and Android kind. Or you could spin it the completely opposite way: people need phones, so they buy a nice phone. No PC death knell in that behavior, and the tablet is still a very niche product with some good PR. Either way, we’ll be much more impressed with this sort of market battle when it’s the tablet (perhaps with a little help from the smartbook or netbook-lite category) going up against the Windows and Mac PC head-on, without smartphones shouldering most of the load.

Combined sales of smartphones and tablets to surpass the humble PC in 18 months, says IDC originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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