A new series of studies out of OKCupid’s data-crunching love labs reveal daily Twitter users have shorter relationships than those who don’t—five to ten percent shorter. This makes sense. Twitter might turn us into more annoying, vain mates. More »
Let’s face it — smartphones (namely, iOS and Android devices) are slowly chipping away at the portable gaming market. If you recall, Apple took a nice slice of the market-share pie — and as you’ll notice in the picture above, we’re seeing the same trend this time around. According to data from Flurry and NPD Group, iOS and Android are earning a sizable chunk of the revenue in the portable gaming software sphere, with the Nintendo DS’s dominant market share dropping from 70 percent in 2009 to just 57 percent in 2010 to accommodate the newcomers. We may be seeing the decrease in relative revenue because the PSP and DS are on the way out to make room for the NGP and 3DS — however, this chart speaks only of the current-gen portables. But hey, it’s easy for almost anyone to spend a single buck on a full-fledged game, right? Head past the break for some more videogame revenue stats, if you please.
iOS and Android continue chipping away at mobile gaming market, consoles remain strong originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 Apr 2011 04:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We got to feeling a bit curious about how exactly HTC’s latest Android superphone, the Sensation 4G, stacks up against its fellow dual-core competition, so we did what every geek does in such situations, we compiled a chart. Included in this list are the finest and brightest Android handsets from each of the major manufacturers that have gone dual-core so far: the Galaxy S II, the Atrix 4G, the Optimus 2X / G2X, and HTC’s own EVO 3D. As it turns out, there are quite a few commonalities among these phones (besides the benchmark-crushing performance). They all boast screens of either 4 or 4.3 inches in size, the minimum amount of RAM among them is 512MB, the smallest battery is 1500mAh, and yes, they all have front-facing video cameras. Basically, it’s the future of smartphones, reduced to a stat sheet. As such, it must also come with the warning that specs aren’t everything, and user experience will most often depend on the software available on each device and on the preferences of the human holding it. With that proviso fully digested, join us after the break for the data.
HTC Sensation versus the rest of the dual-core world: smartphone spec sheet smackdown originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 09:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony has a couple of sweet, sweet numbers to report with regard to sales of its gaming hardware. The PlayStation 3, that venerable old powerhouse of console gaming, has surpassed 50 million units shipped around the globe, while the PS Move controller introduced late last year has also kept pace and rounded its own milestone with eight million units shipped. We say “shipped” in spite of Sony calling these sales, because what Sony reports are sales to retailers, not end users (the company calls ’em “sell-in numbers“), so they’re not directly comparable with retail sales of the competition. Still, numbers are numbers, and these are pretty big ones. Full PR after the break.
Continue reading Sony ships 50 million PlayStation 3s, eight million Move controllers worldwide
Sony ships 50 million PlayStation 3s, eight million Move controllers worldwide originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 06:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Now we’re talking. After Nintendo slyly told us that the 3DS set a day-one US sales record for its handheld division, it has now been more forthright and actually disclosed some cold hard numbers. 400,000 3DS units were shifted in the month of March, says Nintendo of America chief Reggie Fils-Aime, which amounts to just one working week’s worth of sales when you consider the portable console launched on March 27th. That was still enough time for it to threaten the DS’ overall March tally of 460,000, however, and extrapolated over a full 30 days would total a whopping 2.4 million transactions. Of course, sales rarely sustain such a roaring pace after launch, but Reggie foresees good things for the 3DS with a marquee Legend of Zelda game, the launch of the E-Shop, and Netflix integration all coming over the summer. So the future’s bright, we just wish it didn’t have to be turquoise.
Nintendo 3DS clocks up 400,000 US sales in opening week, nearly matches month-long total for DS originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Apr 2011 04:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Gianfranco Lanci’s departure from Acer last month came as a bit of a surprise, but looking at some fresh PC shipment data from the IDC, we can now understand why it had to happen. In Q1 of 2011, Acer suffered a precipitous 42.1 percent drop in PC shipments to the United States, falling from 2.3 million units in the first quarter of 2010 to 1.3 million in the first three months of this year. That’s matched by a global downturn of 15.8 percent for the company’s computer business, taking its market share from 12.9 percent down to 11.2. A percentage point and a half might not seem like much, but in the high stakes business of selling high volumes of devices with low profit margins, that can clearly make the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying (as a CEO). On a happier note, Lenovo surged upwards by 16.3 percent globally amid a market that shrunk a little overall. The IDC — whose numbers are considered preliminary until companies confirm them in their quarterly financial reports — identifies Acer’s exposure to the shrinking interest in netbooks as the chief reason why it’s now having to reorganize itself. That overhaul is already underway with a new logo and some attractively priced tablets, but it’s likely to be a while before Acer gets back to challenging HP for world domination.
Update: Gartner has dropped its figures for the first quarter as well, and while it doesn’t see Acer losing out quite so badly in the US (minus 24.9 percent year-on-year), it agrees on its worldwide market struggles, placing its decrease in shipments at 12.2 percent.
IDC and Gartner’s latest PC shipment stats show why Acer needed to make a strategic change originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The first benchmarks of Samsung’s 1.2GHz Galaxy S II — we saw the 1GHz variant tested previously — are rolling in, and it’s fast. Almost suspiciously so. Its speedy dual-core Exynos CPU pulled off a 3,053 in Quadrant and scored double what the similarly specced HTC Sensation did in Smartbench2011. Those scores also represent a more than threefold improvement over the original Galaxy S. Of course, these are purely synthetic benchmarks and may not translate into an equally improved experience in day to day use. We’ll know for sure when we get our hands on one for a proper review in the coming weeks. Full benchmarks are after the break.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Continue reading Galaxy S II benchmarked, makes other phones cry in shame
Galaxy S II benchmarked, makes other phones cry in shame originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 19:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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As recently as a year ago, Windows XP was the kingpin of PCs in the US with 43.1 percent market share. But that’s rapidly changing. StatCounter shows that while Mac OS X is creeping up slightly and Windows Vista continues its death march, Windows 7 is on the rise, steadily closing the gap with trusty ole’ XP. Last month, XP’s share sank to 32.17 percent, while Windows 7’s edged up to 30.84 percent, leaving the latter poised to overtake XP — something the much-maligned Vista never did. And if early numbers are to be believed, it’s already happened: StatCounter says that for the first week in April Windows 7’s share (among desktops, at least) totaled 31.71 percent, compared with XP’s 31.56. Either way, it seems Microsoft has convinced consumers that it’s finally safe to upgrade.
Windows 7 closes gap with XP, is poised to steal top market share this month originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The internet is a mighty big place that’s only growing larger each day. That makes it a perfectly unwieldy thing to measure, but the traffic it generates has nonetheless been subjected to a rigorous estimation project by a group of UC San Diego academics. Their findings, published online this month, reveal that in 2008 some 9.57 zettabytes made their way in and out of servers across the globe. Some data bits, such as an email passing through multiple servers, might be counted more than once in their accounting, but the overall result is still considered an under-estimation because it doesn’t address privately built servers, such as those Google, Microsoft and others run in their backyards. On a per-worker basis (using a 3.18 billion human workforce number), all this data consumption amounts to 12GB daily or around 3TB per year. So it seems that while we might not have yet reached the bliss of the paperless office, we’re guzzling down data as if we were. Check out the report below for fuller details on the study and its methodology.
Our annual data consumption estimated at 9.57 zettabytes or 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink PhysOrg | UC San Diego (PDF) | Email this | Comments
The internet is a mighty big place that’s only growing larger each day. That makes it a perfectly unwieldy thing to measure, but the traffic it generates has nonetheless been subjected to a rigorous estimation project by a group of UC San Diego academics. Their findings, published online this month, reveal that in 2008 some 9.57 zettabytes made their way in and out of servers across the globe. Some data bits, such as an email passing through multiple servers, might be counted more than once in their accounting, but the overall result is still considered an under-estimation because it doesn’t address privately built servers, such as those Google, Microsoft and others run in their backyards. On a per-worker basis (using a 3.18 billion human workforce number), all this data consumption amounts to 12GB daily or around 3TB per year. So it seems that while we might not have yet reached the bliss of the paperless office, we’re guzzling down data as if we were. Check out the report below for fuller details on the study and its methodology.
Our annual data consumption estimated at 9.57 zettabytes or 11,298,261,800,000,000,000,000 bytes originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 04:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink PhysOrg | UC San Diego (PDF) | Email this | Comments
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