Euro iPhone News

A new report from ComScore shows that Nokia still has a commanding share of the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) Smart Phone market.

During the 3 month average ending November 2011, nearly 30 million smartphone owners used Nokia devices, making it the top smartphone manufacturer in the EU5.  Nokia was the leading with a 29.7 percent of all smartphones in use, but  saw a decline of 17 percentage points in their market share over the last year.

Apple accounted for 20 percent of the smartphone device market share making it the second most popular model. Amongst the top 5, Samsung was the fastest growing smartphone handset manufacturer, increasing their market share by 9.5 percentage points to 17.5 percent in November 2011.

RIM is still struggling to remain relevant.

Judging by observations on the Tube and British Rail – iPhone continues to be the leader in London.

Apple just released the new that over the launch week end they sold 4M iPhones 4S handsets. That is a lot of phones.

According to Apple senior vice president for worldwide product marketing, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, “iPhone 4S is off to a great start with more than four million sold in its first weekend—the most ever for a phone and more than double the iPhone 4 launch during its first three days. iPhone 4S is a hit with customers around the world, and together with iOS 5 and iCloud, is the best iPhone ever.”

Last year, Apple announced that it sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 units in the smartphone’s first weekend of availability. This year the iPhone is available with many more carriers than the launch last year. In the US you can pick one up from all the major cell providers: AT&T, Verizon and now Sprint.

The Apple campus event introduces the iPhone 4S a super new iPhone that looks identical to the existing iPhone 4 but with totallt revised inside. Yes Apple has ripped the guts out of the iPhone 4 and replaced it with a new CPU and radio chips and will launch on Oct 14 with iOS 5 as the iPhone 4S.

This in some way confirms up belief that Apple is at heart a Software Company that happens to make the greatest devices the world has ever known.

As widely expected Apple has just emailed invitations for a media event next Tuesday Oct 4th. The event to be held on the Apple campus rather than down-town is billed as ‘Lets Talk”. This dove tales with the rumours of extensive voice activation and control on the iPhone 5.

One of the big questions is what is the split of the market for handsets in the US and how has the introduction by Verizon of the iPhone changed the playing field given that Verizon is a dominant player with the largest number of subscribers.

One recent report published by Nielsen shows Apple US market share growing over Android during the last few months.  The Nielsen’s May survey reports that 38% of the US  market now own smartphones compared to dumb phones. The more important message is that 55% of those who acquired  a handset during the last 3 months selected a smart device.

Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent month.

The two charts tell the story.

These charts based on data from Mobile insighs show smartphone share at 55% of all devices and that iPhone has grown from 10% to 17% over the last 3 months and that Android is static at 27% but RIM has been crushed.

As the Apple iPhone continues to expand its reach and number of users, more and more diverse applications are appearing. The range of apps seems permanently expanding. And as the knowledge base on how to develop for iPhone grow,s more and more small developers are bring their unique focus to the party.

One such company is ACCL a data cabling outfit in the UK. This fills a niche on how to calculate and cost data cabling requirements. They have cloned their consultancy team to bring a cost calculator to the iPhone. With just a few clicks you can enter your specifications and the ACCL app shows you the cost estimates.

It’s clean and easy to use and what’s more its smart enough to sort out the logistics of comms room speak such as backbone, fiber and copper as well as racks and equipment.

In the press release Wayne Connors says “For the first time any business can easily and realistically work out their own data cabling budget anywhere, any time.  No need to waste time and money on consultancy fees and expensive tender documents.  The power is literally at your fingertips – and it’s free! What could be better than that?”.

The Cabling Cost Estimator app is available for free from ACCL and the Apple iPhone App store. Enjoy.

At WWDC in San Francisco Jobs and his team announced a string of new products and services to be launched later this year. The names where known before hand but not all the details.

First the next version of the Mac OS or Lion will be available in July and cost $29.99 and it will be available from the Mac App Store. This means an on-line purchase of an OS upgrade. Quite a bold step giving up on DVD distribution, but makes a lot of sense. What do you get ? Well Apple claim 250 new features. The ones that caught my eye: Gestures to make the Mac more like an iPad. As most Macs are laptops with a fancy integrated mouse you can already do some fancy gestures, Lion gives you more. Second if more Apps working in Full Screen. This gives you more real estate and less clutter, very Apple. And we like the sound of Resume, when you restart your Mac Loads all the apps that you had open. Very neat.

Second is the mobile OS or iOS 5. This is the software that drives the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch and in total that is a lot of devices. Again a whole bunch of new features and APIs for developers, 200 in total. This release will ship in the fall. Seems to combine lots of clever or small updates and enhancements that will make using an iOS device a neater experience. Key ones are better notifications and reminders, messaging for the iPad, more wi-fi integration and now the option not to have to sync to a PC.

The big news and the least known about – The launch of iCloud. Apple has had Mobile Me for some time, a system with a love hate relationship with users and Apple. iCloud takes it much, much further and is the first combined cloud service to be offered by the mainstream players. First is the price – Free for Apple users. Secondly is the scope, this is not just a service, its built into the key Apple apps. Now you can synch contacts, mail and calendars with all you devices. Then you can add in documents, like an integrated Sharepoint. Add in photos so no longer any need to synch devices to each other to update the photo library and then the big one, Music. Not only will Apple now synch you iTunes purchases between your devices but it will also store all your music and convert you non iTunes purchases into iTunes music. – That’s clever. And all this for free, apart from Music Matching as compared to $99 / year for mobile Me.

After many months of waiting the white version is now available in many countries. Apple issued a press release announcing availability on April 28th.

Now there are rumours that that the white device is 0.2 mm deeper than the black version.

With the recent Nokia and Microsoft announcement it is worth spending a little tile looking at the smart phone market and the differences in vendors between US and Europe. The Smart Phone market and the share of that market is very revealing. A recent report by Comscore nicely displays the market share and a great deal of other information on users, markets and trends and the differences between US and Europe.

These two graphs shows vendor market share: The striking points are in the US – Nokia and Symbian are virtually irrelevant with a tiny market share, as have Palm and Microsoft. It also shows the rise of Android and how it has taken share away from Apple and RIM. Of course this is market share rather than units shipped.

While in Europe. Nokia have a much, much larger starting point with close to 50% of the market. That’s a huge difference. Apple has a smaller share that in the US and Android is way down. Strangely Microsoft has a larger share in Europe than its home turf.

One key point is the outlets for iPhone and Android in the states and EU are vastly different. And in some way the EU has a more level playing field as the iPhone is available from at least two carriers in every region and the droid devices are likewise available from multiple outlets. In the UK for example iPhone is available from the original launch partner O2 that has been joined by Vodafone, Orange, 3 and T Mobile. That’s pretty much the whole market. So what ever carriers you are with you have access to an iPhone. This is in stark contrast with the US where until a week or so if you wanted an iPhone you had to be or become an AT&T subscriber.

Likewise with the Android devices they are available from so many vendors it is hard to keep to keep track of the devices and carriers, sufficient to say that both are numerous. In some ways this is different from the US where the non AT&T carriers have had to push Android as a competitor to iPhone.

With Verizon now on board this will be interesting to see that happens to market share for droids. And of course if Nokia / Microsoft can make inroads into the US and retain EU market share.

2011 will be a compelling year for the mobile industry.

Our friends at Engadget report on the Verizon press release that they are sold out. Stripped clean of iPhones.

It took Verizon only two hours of having the iPhone 4 available for pre-order to break its all-time record for first day sales of a single device. That’s in spite of the fact it only opened up pre-orders to its own subscribers and did so at the dead of night. To be clear, between 3AM and 5AM yesterday morning, more people ordered up the iPhone 4 than Verizon has been able to get through its doors on any full product launch day.

There are no hard numbers but to be more that any other device at launch. Seems like a large number.

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VERIZON WIRELESS HAS RECORD SALES ON FIRST DAY OF iPHONE 4

Available to General Public on Feb.10

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – At 8:10 p.m. EST yesterday, Verizon Wireless ceased online orders of iPhone 4 to existing customers and ended the most successful first day sales in the history of the company.

“This was an exciting day,” said Dan Mead, president and chief executive officer for Verizon Wireless. “In just our first two hours, we had already sold more phones than any first day launch in our history. And, when you consider these initial orders were placed between the hours of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., it is an incredible success story. It is gratifying to know that our customers responded so enthusiastically to this exclusive offer — designed to reward them for their loyalty.

The general market launch of the iPhone 4 on the Verizon Wireless network will occur on February 10. The company will open its more than 2000 Verizon Wireless Stores at 7 a.m. It will also be available at all Apple store locations, Best Buy, select Wal-Mart stores, and on-line at verizonwireless.com and apple.com.