Market research reports appear all too often, but some of them seem very different or contracting. It’s important you know what type of market share the new chart represents and what the numbers show. Some of them show market share based on last quarter alone, which is all about *new* sales market share. Others, like this one here, show how many subscribers in *total* the main platforms have, while others are simply being misleading by combining data that doesn’t make sense.

Also, some  are for US while others are for global market share, so that’s always good to recognize, too, because the US and global market shares are not always very similar, although it seems that the US and global ones for Android are pretty similar this time around, but still not identical.

So what we have here is a US market share statistic for the total number of subscribers for all these companies. So when they say Google has a 47% market share, almost double of their next competitor Apple, what they mean is that out of the almost 100 million smartphones currently being owned in US, 47 million of them are Android smartphones, 29 million are iPhones (not sure if iPod Touches are still included in these), 16 million are Blackberries, less than 5 million are Windows Mobile and WP7 phones (mostly Windows Mobile ones), and a little over 1 million are Nokia Symbian phones.

Once again, this is not about the last quarter’s sales, it’s about the total number of mobile devices in US. The only part that shows something about new sales in this table is that “change” column, which shows how many percentage points they all gained (or lost) during the September-December period.

So for now it looks like Android is still the fastest growing platform in US, and it also has a user base that is almost double that of Apple in US for smartphones. If nothing else, this should at least put developers on their toes, because many of them live in US and develop mainly for the iPhone, when Android is already on twice as many phones there.

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Remember Meego? Poor ol’ Meego has gone through a lot of transitions, from the original Maemo, to being merged with Intel’s Moblin, to now being merged once again with Samsung’s own OS, Bada, which will be made open source when it will be merged with Meego, and form Tizen. All Bada applications will work in Tizen, and if developers know how to make Bada apps, they should be able to make Tizen apps, too.

But why does Samsung want to support yet another OS? Or better yet, what are they trying to achieve by pushing Bada/Tizen even harder into the market? Samsun has at least several main reasons why it wants to do this.

Samsung wants more independence, first of all. While they have plenty of independence with Android, it’s not as much as they would like for a company of their size, which is set to overtake Nokia in all phone sales in 2012, and become world’s largest phone manufacturer (they are already smartphone king). Clearly, a company like Samsung doesn’t think any 3rd party should limit them too much.

But Android has proven extremely successful for them, so they will not give up on it anytime soon, if ever. However, they still want a strong alternative to Android. Google will have to restrict Android even more if it wants to provide a pretty unified experience to the Android users, and I’m guessing Samsung doesn’t like this too much, but there isn’t all that much they can do about it.

Bada has been reasonably successful for them, with a marketshare twice as big as all the WP7 phones put together from other manufacturers as well. But it’s still pretty small at around 4% globally. Plus, because of this they have to give WP7 a try and see how it goes, too. However, this pushes them even more towards being even more restricted by a 3rd party, which this time is Microsoft.

WP7 is far more restrictive than Android, in a sense that it allows them to do almost no customization whatsoever of the OS, and perhaps worse, it allows them to do almost no customization of the hardware components. This might not hurt them too much in the beginning when WP7′s market share is too small, and there aren’t too many WP7 competitors, but it would mean complete commodization under a bigger market share.

Tizen Software Architecture

So here we are, with Samsung trying one last push to be successful with their own OS, this time Tizen. Bada showed what I’ve been thinking since the very beginning. No “single-company proprietary OS” would’ve been successful against Apple. If you wanted to beat Apple and the iPhone, you just had to use a multi-company OS – an OS being supported and used by multiple manufacturers. Many people forget that it was hard even for Android to gain over iPhone in the beginning. A single-company OS has absolutely no chance. And it’s once again being proven by RIM and their QNX OS. That’s if we don’t even count the failures of both Palm and HP, who also tried to beat Apple with an OS that only they owned.

So Bada is a single-company proprietary OS, but Tizen will try to follow Android’s business model, of being open source, and also a multi-company OS. You would think this would hurt Android. That’s likely, but it really depends on the implementation and functionally of the OS. I have serious doubts that it can match Android in functionality in the near future. None of the mobile OS have been able to since Froyo. Android also has the huge app ecosystem, so it will be a big uphill battle there, too, which guarantees Android a lead of at least a few years, and given where Android is right now, it most likely means that lead will be permanent (read: 10-15 years until the next huge market disruption).

But what about Tizen vs WP7? I think it’s much more likely to become the #3 platform before WP7 even has a chance to pass 5% in the market. LG will definitely use it, too. They were going to use Meego as well, and we also learned a while ago that the South Korean Government wants both Samsung and LG to work on an open source OS. Well this is it. It’s Tizen. Sony will most likely use it, too, since they’ve been the only major manufacturer who hasn’t used anything but Android. That’s because they don’t like WP7 (neither does LG after their initial failure with it), and they will certainly welcome Tizen. Being open source, means other Asian companies like Huawei and ZTE or other no-name ones might give it a try, too.

Android will most likely stay at around a 50% market share globally, with iOS around 20% globally, and most of the rest 30% being taken by Tizen. Of course, these are just strategic assumptions. It still remains to be seen if Tizen will be any good, but Samsung has a pretty good software team, and my guess is this is why they’ve hired the CyanogenMod found, too. Hopefully, we get to see Tizen by the end of the year, because they still need to hurry if they want to become the #3 platform.

All they need to do is make it impressive, intuitive, add even more apps to the already existent Bada apps, and convince as many companies as possible to use it. It won’t be easy, but being open source, customizable and free will be huge advantages over WP7.

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According to data gathered by comScore, Android was able to maintain its current top spot as the number one smartphone OS in the United States. Ever since November 2011, almost 46.9% of smartphone users in the US were using Android operating systems. This is a 3.1% improvement from its earlier rating from three months before. Indeed, this goes to show that Android has overtaken the popularity of Apple’s iOS in the smartphone industry, having only 28.7%. Third on the spot was Microsoft’s Windows Phone (5.2%) and followed by Symbian (1.5%).

After device activations surging over 300% during the holidays, it can only be expected that the market share between Android and iOS will continue to rise post Christmas. As we earlier reported, there were almost 1.5 million iPhones and Android devices daily activations from Dec. 1-20. But during Christmas day, the number jumped to a shocking 6.8 million devices.

Adding to the information gathered, the title for the top smartphone manufacturer was given to Samsung for having a total of 25.6% in its U.S. market. This was followed by LG and Motorola (respectively). On the fourth spot is Apple, having only 11.2%; while the last spot belonged to RIM, having 6.5%. Earlier, Samsung reported that they were able to sell over 300 million handsets in 2011. This is a milestone for the company who was able to reach this number for the first time.

Another data collected by comScore is the most popular activity people did on their smartphones, which is texting. Out of the 30,000 individuals tallied, 72.6% reported that they used their smartphones to send text messages. The next thing people did on their devices was to download apps (44.9%) and use their browser (44.4%).

Meanwhile, the most recent version of Android, the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, has already been released along with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. There are plans being made by other handset makers to include ICS OS into their devices, however, an exact date is still in the works.

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Nokia and Blackberry jump started mobile industry advancements around a decade ago but Apple’s introduction of the iPhone easily superseded these to gain a major presence in the consumer market. Then Google came up with Android and iOS superiority was no longer a given. According to how market experts analyze it, there are three main factors that gave the Android platform its quick ascent.

1. Almost exponential increase in the number of base installations and apps developed
2. Monthly, weekly and even daily innovations that crop up in hardware and software
3. Timely support from major mobile carriers

iOS and Android may currently be the leading contenders but Nokia, Blackberry and Windows Mobile are not yet out of the fight. How the mobile OS showdown will turn out in the next few years will depend on how these platforms address the following issues.

• Further product development and support from third party application developers
• Introduction of an innovation that would significantly impact user experience
• Moving on from the consumer market to gain more footing in the enterprise market
• Additional development in cloud computing

These are the areas of opportunity in which the other mobile platforms can still make noticeable headway and get back into the conversation. Microsoft products for example already have a footing in enterprise and would do well to somehow consolidate the various services into their mobile offering. Research in Motion meanwhile has yet to surprise the public with its next line of products based on QNX.

All in all, it won’t be surprising to see more acquisitions and new partnerships form in 2012 and beyond as these platforms wrestle to gain more space in the mobile industry.

Via DailyFinance

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Disappointing launch

Although, I figured Android would continue to grow and that Microsoft was too late to the game to actually “beat” Android when Windows Phone 7 launched late last year, I still expected it to do much better than it did. Right now they have a little over 1% in global sales, which means the WP7 growth actually slowed down after launch, when it was like 2%. Even Steve Ballmer predicted in May last year that there will be 30 million new phones with either Windows Mobile or Windows Phone 7 on them by the end of 2011 (I’m guessing he was thinking more about WP7 doing that than Windows Mobile). But instead of WP7 compensating for Windows Mobile’s fall, it seems they are both in a fast decline.

What happened?

While Microsoft put a reported $500 million in promoting WP7, either in advertising or in getting developers to make apps for the platforms, and in getting manufacturers to make phones for them, things didn’t go as smoothly as they hoped they will. The WP7 is indeed quite different from iOS and Android and the other mobile operating systems out there, but does that necessarily translate into a product consumers want to buy? So far it doesn’t look like it. It may be that people go into a store, see 20 devices with icons and such, something they are familiar with, and then see the odd WP7 phone. Would they be compelled to go and try that first? Something tells me that because the OS is so different from what they know, if anything, they will save it for last, and be interested in it only if they like the hardware design.

No carrier love

Speaking of stores, apparently the carriers aren’t too excited about pushing WP7 either. They may want a 3rd alternative to Android and the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean they will risk their own money promoting a product that won’t sell. When Android launched it was different. Most of them didn’t even have the iPhone, because Apple made exclusive deals with carriers all over the world. So they desperately needed an alternative. Android offered them that alternative, and then some, with dozens of new devices coming out in the past 2 years. With so many devices to choose from, and looking different enough from each other to sway a consumer to buy one or the other, the carriers don’t feel particularly in a rush to support another OS.

Microsoft has one last chance with the launch of WP7 Mango and Nokia releasing their first WP7 phone. If that doesn’t make WP7 get back on track, it may be the end of WP7 and Microsoft playing the smartphone game.

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[via PC World]

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Acer A1 Liquid

Acer jumped head first into the smartphone market in 2009, releasing close to 10 handsets with only one, the A1 Liquid, running the Android OS. The A1′s status as Acer’s only Android handset in the midst of a a plethora of Windows Mobile handsets may soon change. According to Aymar de Lencquesaing, head of Acer’s mobile phone division, Acer will be offering a “much more balanced” portfolio in 2010, citing the momentum behind Android as the reason for this shift away from Windows Mobile. Doing the math, we can expect to see an additional 4-5 Acer-branded Android handsets in the upcoming year.

[via Slashgear]

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That’s a far cry from what we heard from the company in June, which led folks to believe that we’d see the Open Screen Project’s Flash 10 player for smartphones, including Android, this month.  Heck, now it is saying that it won’t be until next year when Android gets even a beta version of Flash 10.1 (I don’t know what happened to Flash 10.0 on smartphones, either).

This is going to really annoy many people.  Except, of course, HTC Hero users, who already enjoy good Flash support on their phones.

Adobe also announced that Google and Research In Motion have joined the Open Screen Project.

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If we back up a moment, the Touch HD is still considered a high-end device, and packs a huge 3.8’’ touch-screen display and all the higher-end connectivity options, including a 3.5mm headphone jack. However, not one to hang about, HTC are readying the Touch HD 2. According to Register Hardware, HTC told them directly at the event that the new Touch HD 2 will run the Android OS.

A separate source “familiar with HTC’s plans” also suggested that the “Touch HD 2 will be significantly faster than the original – and faster than the vast majority of HTC handsets to date.” To be more specific, the Touch HD 2 will use a 628MHz Qualcomm chip as opposed to the 528MHz Qualcomm processor that higher-end HTC devices use. To round off the rumors, the Touch HD 2 will also feature a 3.8’’ touch-screen, just like its predecessor.

All these rumors seem reasonable given HTC’s push into the Android market. However, HTC have always been a loyal Windows Mobile provider, and we shall have to wait and see whether there is any substance to the rumors that Register Hardware are spreading. We’ll do some digging ourselves and see if we can get hold of HTC so that they can comment and let you know.

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SPB TV for Android

I’ve been a fan of SPB TV on the Windows Mobile platform for some time now, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear from SPB that it has ported the application to the Android platform.

The application provides streaming access to digital TV channels from all over the world.  Not all channels, but a nice selection of channels from around the world in many different languages.  The free version has some functionality removed and fewer channels, but is certainly a worthwhile download.  The full version costs US$9.99 and offers many different channels.

The best part?  No subscription fees.

You’ll need an Android phone running 1.5 (Cupcake) and a HVGA res display, though, so it won’t work on some of the QVGA’ish devices we are expecting to see soon.

More info from SPB’s website.

You can check out a video I shot of the Windows Mobile version of the software after the jump.

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