Categories
Microsoft Mobile

Smartphone Market Share : Windows Phone Vs. iOS Vs. Android

Microsoft may have been a late entrant to the Smartphone segment (not considering the popular but old fashioned Windows Mobile here) but it does look like Redmond is doing a lot of things right so far. The Windows Phone UI and functionalities are extremely slick and despite the relatively few apps available on the Windows Phone marketplace compared to the iOS AppStore or Android Market, a lot of people have started to check out their smartphones. Today, Windows Phone enjoys an encouraging, but not so great 1.9% market share. But that could apparently change in the next few years thanks to the Lumia series of phones from Nokia that run on the Windows Phone platform.

According to the latest report from IHS iSuppli, Microsoft Windows Phone could beat Apple’s iOS in market share as early as 2015. In their report, IHS claim that 2012 could be the watershed year for Microsoft as their Windows Phone grows in popularity from a market share of sub 2% levels to as much as 9%. This is good not just for Microsoft but also Nokia that has seen its popularity fizzle in recent times to the iPhone and Android handsets.

Read : Number of Windows Phones Sold To Be Higher Than iOS by 2015?

Here is how the market share of the three big Smartphone players expected to move over the next three years.

iOS
2011 : 18.0%
2012 : 18.0%
2013 : 17.3%
2014 : 16.8%
2015 : 16.6%

Android
2011 : 47.4%
2012 : 53.9%
2013 : 55.9%
2014 : 57.8%
2015 : 58.1%

Windows Phone
2011 : 1.9%
2012 : 9.0%
2013 : 15.3%
2014 : 16.1%
2015 : 16.7%

The share of the rest of the Smartphone OSes is expected to fall from 32.7% in 2011 to just 8.6% in 2015. Is RIM going to be dead by then?

Categories
Gadgets

List Of Smartphones With Best Mobile Internet Experience

With the smartphone continuing to evolve into a fantastic way to access the mobile internet, we’ve picked out three of the best handsets to help you enjoy that mobile broadband experience to the full. We’ve chosen one of each from three different manufacturers and using three different operating systems – Windows Mobile didn’t quite make the cut this time, but if you’re really after the Microsoft experience we suggest you check out the HTC HD7.

Samsung Galaxy SII

In our opinion, this is simply the loveliest smartphone on the market. Beautifully utilising version 2.3 of the popular Android operating system from Google, it has power, style and a beautiful touchscreen. For a mobile weighing just 116g and being a super-slim 8.5mm thick, under the bonnet is a dual-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A9 processor, eight-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM and up to 32GB of built-in storage.

And what a bonnet: a 4.3-inch super AMOLED Plus 480×800 pixel capacitive gorilla glass touchscreen. When you add on all the Google goodies and the plethora of apps in the Android Market, you owe it to yourself to give this a try.

Apple iPhone 4

No list would be complete without the world’s most popular smartphone, the iPhone 4. While it may not be the best in terms of phone technology (calling, reception etc), the stylish looks, crisp screen and awesome apple App Store make it a genuine contender. But it’s no slouch either. Under the 3.5-inch 640×960 pixel capacitive TFT touchscreen resides a 1GHz Cortex A8 processor, five-megapixel camera, 512MB of RAM and up to 32GB of built-in capacity for saving your files.

But what really sells the iPhone is the market leading user interface and app selection, making the iPhone 4 the leader in ease of use, social networking, gaming and general all around fun for phone and broadband combined.

BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900

Not everyone can simply afford to play on their mobile – some of us have to work too! For many of us, the BlackBerry is still king – and they don’t come more royal than the Bold touch 9900. It’s an impressive piece of hardware, with full QWERTY keyboard and 2.8-inch capacitive TFT touchscreen hiding 8GB of internal storage and 768MB or RAM. It is powered by a 1.2GHz processor, while there’s also a five-megapixel camera on board. But most important of all, all the things that make a blackberry sing are here in abundance. Sure, blackberry world doesn’t compete on apps, but when it comes to email, security, document manipulation and general messaging, BlackBerry is still impossible to beat – and Bold is best.

Categories
Mobile

Get Free Smartphone On Best Buy Mobile Through December

If you are contemplating a smartphone purchase this holiday season, don’t forget to check out this new offer from Best Buy Mobile. The mobile specialty store division of Best Buy has announced a new offer that will let you get hold of a new smartphone for free from one of the Best Buy Stores or online from the company website.

According to a media statement, Best Buy will feature a minimum of four different smartphones in this offer all through December that users can pick up for $0. Of course, this will still require you to sign up for a contract period. But if you are looking at saving those $200 odd bucks, this is definitely a good option.

Most of the devices on offer at the moment are Android phones. Best Buy makes special mention of Droid Incredible, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, LG Optimus S and LG Optimus T in their release. If you want to check out the deal for today, you can also check out their website here.

Categories
Mobile Verizon

Verizon Family Plans For Smartphone Users To See Discount

Verizon Wireless subscribers in the United States could soon see some attractive discounts offered for smartphone users. According to a report on the Wall Street Journal, the country’s biggest network could be offering discounts as much as $30 to smartphone users who subscribe to the carrier’s family plans. While the exact discount offer is not known as yet, we hear that it will be applicable to users who have signed up for the $29.99 unlimited data plans on their smartphones. These users could sign up for the family plans in the price range of $69.99 to $149.99 per month and could see massive savings.

The discount offer is expected to run from November 19th and run through the holiday season until January 7. There has been no official announcement from Verizon for the moment though.

Categories
Mobile

Wal-Mart Black Friday Deal – $100 Gift Cards With Smartphone Purchase

Are you looking at buying a smartphone for one of your near and dear ones? Then why not check out one of these devices from Wal-Mart? The popular discount store in the United States is running a new offer ahead of Thanksgiving in the country for purchase of smartphones. Starting November 17 and running till 25th, customers can walk into one of the WalMart stores in their neighborhood and buy a Blackberry, HTC, Samsung, LG or Motorola phone and win a $100 gift card. Quite a handy deal considering a number of Android devices are available at sub-$200 price points and so this is quite a deal.

In case you missed it, HTC HD7 is available on Wal-Mart as well and so that is one phone you could look at. It is not clear whether the deal, named “smart phone Hot Item 2010” is available for online customers though.

Categories
Apple Gadgets Wireless

World’s Largest Phone Manufacturers By Units Sold

The mobile phone segment is very competitive with every quarter bringing some sort of a surprise. Back in May this year, I had written about an IDC report that had listed the world’s five largest mobile phone manufacturers. Nokia, quite unsurprisingly, had the top slot while Research In Motion and Sony Ericsson had their spots in the top five secured.

Just a few months and a few launches later, there seems to be a complete revamp of the last three positions. Thanks to a robust growth in sales despite a number of reported bugs, Apple has notced a spot in the top five. LG has had a lackluster period and has seen the number of units sold drop. Sony Ericsson is out of the top five.

Here is the latest top five list along with the units sold in the quarter Q3 2010. The corresponding worldwide market share is in the brackets.

1. Nokia : 110.4 million (32.4%)
2. Samsung : 71.4 million (21.0%)
3. LG Electronics : 28.4 million (8.3%)
4. Apple : 14.1 million (4.1%)
5. RIM : 12.4 million (3.6%)
Others : 103.8 million (30.5%)
Total : 340.5 million (100%)

Categories
Mobile Verizon

Cheap Prepaid Smartphone Data Plans From Verizon & T-Mobile Launching?

As the American telecom market moves towards a state of increased smartphone adoption, carriers are actively moving away from unlimited data usage options and are instead coming up with several tiered data plans that will incentivize customers for consuming less data.

Verizon, it is learned, is rolling out a new smartphone data pricing structure come October 28 that offer data in two tiers. At $15 a month, users can sign up for a 150MB data plan that will offer data at the rate of $0.10/MB of overage. Alternately, users can sign up to a $29.99 per month plan for unlimited data usage. If you are someone who does not consume too much of data, you now have a cheaper alternative.

T-Mobile on the other hand is rumored to be coming up with a $9.99 a month plan that will offer 200 MB of data! Those looking for an unlimited plan can still sign up to the $30 monthly plan. This new data pricing is expected to launch by early November.

Categories
Mobile

Compare Smartphone Features With Compare-CellPhones

Google relaunched their Google.com/Phone website few weeks back to showcase the various Android phones in the market today. What we didn’t notice back then was that the portal conveniently ignores Android handsets like Samsung Fascinate that do not come with Google Search (Fascinate, you know, does Bing). Not really a surprise considering that the massive tech giant is still regarded a one-trick pony.

The Google Phone Gallery thus is not really a great place to go if you are looking for a serious comparison website. Compare-Cellphones is an alternative that you should probably check out – even if you are looking outside Androids. This is a recently launched website that showcases the specs and pricing of several popular (and not so popular) websites in the market today which is really a good place to check out.

According to its founder, the website offers several benefits over the Google Phone Gallery

  • Covers a huge array of phones over 2000 with more updates being done on an ongoing basis
  • Cover all the OS platforms
  • Provides intelligent feedback – focus on helping geeks to grandmas understand the SIGNIFICANT differences and not just providing a spec dump
  • Helps users understand how phones compare to their peers (vs just the comparison you’re looking at)
  • Looking to provide complete pricing/cost of ownership (still early in on this feature)
  • Lets users comment and discuss

What do you think of this service? Check out and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Categories
Software and Apps

Smartphone Platform Market Share For Europe

Smartphone adoption is growing and so is the adoption of newer smartphone platforms like iOS and Android. Not surprisingly, older platforms like Symbian and Windows Mobile are not as popular as they once were, though in market share terms, they still rule the roost. Comscore has published their results (July 2010) for the smartphone platform market share study and this is how the numbers stack up. The numbers in brackets show the change in percentage points since July 2009

Symbian : 54.4% (-14.4)
Apple : 19.2% (9)
Microsoft : 11.6% (-2.3)
RIM : 8.0% (1.6)
Google : 6.1% (5.6)

Smartphone adoption in the EU5 (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy) has grown 41 percent in the past year to 60.8 million subscribers. Currently, more than one out of every two smartphones is a Nokia manufactured device, although Nokia accounted for more than two out of every three smartphones a year ago.

Categories
Gadgets

Dell Streak Features And UK Launch Confirmed

Dell has officially announced that the company’s first ever smartphone – marketed as “ultimate portable tablet PC” – will launch exclusively on O2 in UK starting early next month. This follows verbal confirmations from Michael Dell earlier this month. Dell’s media release also notes that Dell Streak will be available in USA from “later this summer“.

This is Dell’s foray into the highly competitive smartphone segment and the company appears to be clearly testing the waters without diluting the Dell brand name that has become synonymous with portable computers. However, calling a smartphone an “ultimate portable tablet PC” may not help the company in its endeavor considering that the company may fail to communicate the message to its users that the tablet PC in this case can also actually make calls.

It will be interesting to see how the Dell Streak is received in the UK market. The features are too good for Dell to lose out. Here is a gist of what is on offer

Platform : Android 1.6 with OTA update of Froyo expected later this year
Display : 5-inch capacitive multi-touch WVGA display
Processor : 1GHz SnapDragon processor
Camera : 5 megapixel high resolution camera with an additional VGA camera on the front
Storage : 2GB expandable up to 32GB on microSD
Connectivity : 3G + WiFi + Bluetooth

Other features

  • Integrated Google Maps with turn-by-turn navigation
  • Full screen browsing experience
  • Social media integration

[via Engadget]