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Shipments of Windows Phone devices have overtaken those of BlackBerry phones for the first time, according to a report. Numbers from IDC places the Microsoft mobile operating system in third place, still a considerable away behind iOS and Android shipments, which are said to make up 92.3-percent of all shipments when combined.
Technology industry trend tracker IDC has revealed that the holiday season sales of personal computers dropped for the first time in half a decade. The poor results continued a year of losses for PC manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, and Toshiba -- who all saw the first year of sales losses in over ten years. Apple gained market share on most of the industry, but still contracted 0.2 percent in the holiday quarter.
Both Gartner and IDC provided early estimates of winter 2012 market share that showed Apple making big strides in the US. The two gave the Mac a tentative share of 10 or 10.6 percent, in either case enough to put it in third place. Both saw rapidly falling Acer and Toshiba below Apple in share.
A shift towards the mobile world could see Android overtake Windows for sheer market share, IDC put out in a long-term estimate. Putting mobile and desktop platforms in a single smart device category, it had Windows slipping from 35.9 percent as of 2011 to 25.1 percent in 2016. Android would only slightly move in share, from 29.4 percent to 31.1 percent, but would move enough to claim the top computing platform.
IDC painted an optimistic picture of traditional PCs in a Tuesday long-term estimate of their shipments. Researchers expected PC shipments to grow just five percent year-on-year in 2012, but pinned most of this sluggishness on the first half, as the iPad and other tablets were a "powerful distraction," IDC VP Bob O'Donnell said. However, a mix of the Windows 8 launch and ultrabooks was assumed to be creating "excitement" that would see a bounce back.
China is expected to outpace the US in domestic smartphone shipments before the end of the year, according to a report issued by research firm IDC. Users located throughout China are expected to account for 20.7 percent of global smartphone share, while the US is projected to slip slightly behind with 20.6-percent share.
IDC on Tuesday gave its own breakdown of world tablet share from this fall and painted an optimistic look at Android's position in the market. Going higher than others' estimates, the research team believed that Amazon shipped 4.7 million Kindle Fires, or enough to stake out 16.8 percent of tablets worldwide. Along with a slight gain from Samsung to 5.8 percent, the prediction would have knocked Apple down from 61.5 percent last summer to 54.7 percent in the last few months of 2011.
Apple now has the top-selling cellphone of any kind in Japan, IDC Japan determined late Thursday. The iPhone 4S launch helped Apple claim 26.6 percent of all cellphone shipments in the country this fall. It may have been the first non-Japanese company to top local ranks, ending a longstanding emphasis on local makers.
Chitika highlighted what it saw as a possible tidal shift in the computing industry based on its web tracking. Windows' share of the web dropped by 10 percent of its relative value in the past six months, down from 78.3 percent in August to 71.4 percent in February. An unusually sharp drop came in January, where it lost 4.2 percent of relative (3.2 percent absolute) share in a matter of weeks.
As part of a larger study, comScore has shown that e-mail is making a large shift away from the web. Among teens and those aged 18 to 24, webmail use dropped by about a third in December from where it was one year earlier. Declines also appeared among the 35 to 44 set (down one point) and 55 to 64 (by seven points).
Lenovo as part of record results for its fall quarter clinched the top spots in key parts of the PC business. While it wouldn't give exact numbers, it mostly sided with IDC rankings that saw it claim 14 percent of the computer market worldwide, or second place. It was now large enough that it was the leader for shipments in work PCs of any kind as well as in home desktops.
New IDC data has shown Apple's 37 million iPhone sales making it the third-largest cellphone maker in the world. More than doubling its shipments, in tandem with LG nearly cutting its shipments in half to 17.7 million, saw it move up a spot and stake out 8.7 percent of the entire cellphone space. The change in position carried through for all of 2011, with Apple's 93.2 million iPhones putting it at six percent of all phones sold that year while LG was down to 5.7 percent, or 88.1 million.
Fall 2011 was the worst season for PC growth in the US in a decade, IDC found in preliminary results. The overall PC field shrank 6.7 percent compared to what it had in late 2010, based partly on hard drive shortages triggered by Thailand flooding. However, the iPad and other tablets like it, combined with a tough economy, meant many didn't want PCs, particularly in the "difficult competitive landscape" of the US as well as Western Europe.
Amazon's Kindle Fire could cut Apple's share of the tablet market to under 60 percent for the first time, IDC estimated Thursday. Android would climb from 32.4 percent to get a collective 40.3 percent through the Fire which, along with some help from the Nook Tablet, would push the iPad down from 61.5 percent this summer to 59 percent of tablets. The BlackBerry PlayBook would lose some ground as well, down from 1.1 percent to 0.7 percent, while the HP TouchPad's final exit would give up five percent.
The hard drive shortages triggered by Thai flooding might be resolved as soon as December. Resellers claimed Wednesday to Digitimes that they hadn't seen as much scarcity as expected and even had an oversupply. They reportedly plan to drop prices next month to clear out stock.
The lingering effects of flooded drive factories in Thailand could significantly bog down traditional PC builders, IDC estimated. It expected as much as a 10 percent drop in PC shipments for the fall. While relatively modest, it warned that the situation could get much worse as the full effects are felt in early 2012, when shipments could drop by more than 20 percent.
Apple gained enough market share to stay one of the top cellphone makers in the world, IDC said Friday. While not as strong as the spring, the iPhone still gained share from year to year and, at 17.07 million, was in fifth place among all cellphones at 4.3 percent. It was helped partly by Nokia's continued fall, which while still keeping it on top lowered it to 27.1 percent, at 106.6 million phones.
IDC early estimates showed a major shakeup underway in the US PC market headed by Apple. While not as aggressive as Gartner, it saw Apple being the only top computer maker outside of HP to gain share, growing nearly a point to hit 11.3 percent this summer. Toshiba was also reversing its years of gains and was down to exactly eight percent, giving Apple a comfortable third place.
More smartphones and tablets will be on the Internet in the US than PCs by 2015, IDC estimated Monday. It predicted that use of devices like the iPad, iPhone, and Android phones would grow at a compound average of 16.6 percent per year to become the most popular ways of getting online just four years from now. PC use would flatten and eventually decline, "especially" in the wake of tablets.
Smartphones crossed an important threshhold Thursday after IDC data showed them outselling basic cellphones in Western Europe for the first time. Owed mostly to Apple's iPhone and multiple Android models, smartphones grew 48 percent year-to-year this past spring to hit 52 percent of European phones, or 21.8 million devices. Simple phones dropped 29 percent over the same period to 20.4 million and now made them a minority.
The first batch of ultrabooks attempting to take on the MacBook Air might be produced with intentionally low production numbers to test the market, notebook industry insiders purported late Monday. Systems like the Acer Aspire S3, Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and Toshiba Portege Z830 may all ship in early production runs under 50,000. The move Digitimes understood would be for "testing the water" to see if a market exists for non-Mac versions of the ultraportables.
New IDC research showed that China has just managed to outgrow the US to become the world's largest PC market. The US will hold on to the lead for all of 2011, but China this spring just pushed past the US to claim 22 percent of all PCs shipped, 18.5 million, to the 21 percent (17.7 million) going to Americans. In the long term, researches saw China getting 21.8 percent for all of 2012 where the US would slip to 19.6 percent.
Microsoft's Corporate Communications VP Frank Shaw maintained his defense of Windows again with a response to the upheaval of the past few weeks. Trying once more to downplay "post-PC" talk, he argued that PCs not only had some core features that only they could do but that devices like the iPad were losing the advantage. Tablets were just "companions," and computers were "rapidly and dramatically" improving on what these and other mobile devices were doing, Shaw said.
Microsoft's Corporate Communications VP Frank Shaw in a commentary on the 30th anniversary of the original IBM PC dismissed the talk of a post-PC era. He preferred to characterize it as a "PC-plus era," since there would be an estimated 400 million PCs sold around the world in 2011. Microsoft's response would be to largely stay the course, though he hinted at tighter hardware and software integration going on.
New research from IDC has backed up earlier assertions that Apple is the top smartphone maker worldwide. The iPhone creator in its data claimed 19.1 percent of teh smartphone market, or enough to keep out of Galaxy S II maker Samsung's 16.2 percent. Nokia's drop wasn't as steep as in Strategy Analytics' research, but it still saw the one-time leader lose more than half its share and sink to third place, with 15.7 percent.
Apple achieved a goal it has likely been aiming to reach for four years on Friday as Strategy Analytics confirmed Apple was now the largest smartphone maker in the world. Its 20.34 million iPhones in spring gave it the lead with 18.5 percent of the market. Samsung, which confirmed just Friday that it shipped 19.2 million smartphones, grew rapidly but was denied the lead at 17.5 percent share.
Apple has managed get almost 11 percent of computer market share in the US, IDC said in a preliminary estimate on Wednesday. Mac shipments shot up nearly 15 percent year-to-year in the spring to put Apple at third place in the US with 10.7 percent and 1.92 million Macs. Much of that growth came at Acer's expense, as the Taiwan company's overdependence on netbooks and failure to cope with the iPad saw its shipments drop by more than a quarter, sinking it from third place a year ago to fifth place, with 8.5 percent.
IDC in a study took apart the tablet and e-reader markets early this year. The tablet market saw an early 28 percent drop in the first quarter of 2011 to 7.2 million units. Just over 65 percent of those were iPads while the rest were dominated by Android's 34 percent and a small amount of Windows tablets. Most of the drop was pinned on Apple being constrained by supply, where iPad 2 backlight issues and a slow production ramp prevented it from delivering more.
Mobile app downloads should grow 17 times larger in the next few years, IDC says in a new prediction (pay-only) on Tuesday. Apps for Android, iOS and other platforms is estimated to grow from 10.7 billion downloads for all of 2010 to 182.7 billion in 2015. Researchers aren't willing to predict which platform will lead that group, although iOS remains in front so far at 425,000 apps.
A rumor floated on Friday claimed that Apple would be shipping no less than eight million new MacBook Air systems in the summer. It also alleged that four million Airs will have shipped in the spring. Unfortunately, that's just not true, and we'll show why -- along with what Digitimes likely actually meant.
IDC in a long-term prediction Thursday expected Android to stay in front in market share over the next four years but also that Windows Phone would claim second place. Google would move from 38.9 percent to 43.8 percent by 2015. Nokia's deal with Microsoft, however, would see all Windows phone platforms grow from just 3.8 percent today to 20.3 percent, just slightly under what the outgoing Symbian platform had this year.
Research firm IDC has revised its PC sales forecast for 2011, reducing the expected yearly growth from 7.1 percent down to just 4.2 percent. The significant cut was blamed on market saturation in Western Europe, North America and Japan, as the surge in netbook and notebook sales has lost its momentum from a peak in 2008 and 2009.
Apple produced a symbolic win late Thursday after an IDC study revealed that it had beaten Nokia for smartphone market share in Nokia's core market of Western Europe. The iPhone slipped from 24.6 percent share a year ago to 20.8 percent, but Nokia's market share collapsed from 40.6 percent to just 19.6 percent in one year, giving Apple the top spot. Apple shipped 49 percent more iPhones to the region to hit 4.4 million where Nokia saw its shipments drop from 4.9 million to 4.2 million.
Apple is now a large enough smartphone maker that it could soon overtake Nokia for the top spot, IDC said Wednesday. The 18.65 million iPhones it shipped in the winter were enough to give it 18.7 percent of the smartphone sphere just as Nokia's relatively stale growth, to 24.2 million, saw its share drop down to 24.3 percent from a much higher 38.8 percent just a year ago. RIM's quarters don't overlap with most of the industry, but IDC believed that RIM shipped 13.9 million BlackBerrys, leading to a drop from 19.1 percent of the field in early 2010 to just 14 percent.
Intel posted record results on Tuesday that also cast doubt on claims of tablets hurting the market. Its revenue was up 25 percent to $12.8 billion and its net profit up by 29 percent to $3.3 billion. Most of that growth came from its datacenter chip team, whose revenue was up 32 percent, but it still saw its core PC chip group's revenue up by 17 percent as the second-generation Core (Sandy Bridge) take off.
New NPD data in a research note later on Monday from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster suggested that the new MacBook Pro may have pushed Apple well ahead in growth in the computer market. March sales in the US were estimated to be up 47 percent compared to a year earlier following the much faster line's introduction in late February. The growth came after more modest but still healthy 20 percent and 12 percent year-to-year increases in January and February.
Gartner on Wednesday published a preliminary estimate for winter in sharp contrast to IDC's results that nonetheless shared a view that the iPad was shrinking PC sales, especially those of Acer. It saw Acer still holding on to third place in the US, but the system designer's share dropped 24.9 percent from year-to-year to put it at 11.3 percent of the US. Apple was at fifth place with 9.3 percent, but its market share grew a rapid 18.9 percent and made it the fastest-growing of the group.
Acer's refusal to acknowledge the iPad's competition before its refocus on mobile cost it dearly in the winter, IDC said in a preliminary market share breakdown on Wednesday. The Taiwan PC builder's shipments to the US dropped a steep 42.1 percent versus a year ago to hit just 1.33 million, or 8.3 percent. Apple stayed in fourth place, but its success with the Mac and Acer's failure led it to jump from seven percent in early 2010 to 8.5 percent, or about 1.38 million Macs.
ABI Research in a long-term prediction gave Android the top spot in market share in the future but came to very different conclusions about other platforms than a rival IDC study. Google would get 45 percent share by 2016, but Microsoft would have to get "incredible success" with its Nokia deal to get more than seven percent share for Windows Phone 7, ABI said. The platform's growth would be slow enough that it would be overtaken by Samsung Bada, an essentially Samsung-only OS intended for low- to mid-range phones, with 10 percent.
IDC predicted on Tuesday both that Android would keep its lead until 2015 but that Windows Phone would overtake the iPhone for second place. Android would take 39.5 percent this year but gain only slightly to hit 45.4 percent four years later. Nokia's Windows Phone switch would end up reversing its situation and Symbian's predicted 20.9 percent share in 2011 over to Windows Phone by 2015.
Steve Jobs' claims of Apple having 90 percent of the tablet market in 2010 weren't far off, IDC found on Thursday. It gave the iPad 83 percent of the tablet market in 2010. Apple's share was down to 73 percent in the fall, but only because of the then-new Galaxy Tab carving out 17 percent during its initial run.
Android and the iPhone are making deep inroads into European cellphone market share at Nokia's expense, IDC found in a new study. Apple overtook Sony Ericsson this fall to become the third-largest phone maker in Western Europe with nine percent, or about 5.2 million phones. Although it lost share in smartphones at 20 percent, Apple's 66 percent spike in shipments from year to year widened the gap with third-place RIM, whose BlackBerry sank to 15 percent and 3.8 million phones.
Apple may have wrested the top spot from HP in portable computing if its surging iPad sales are factored in, DisplaySearch said in an estimate. The combination of the tablet and Macs saw Apple ship 10.2 million portables of some kind in the fall to claim 17.2 percent of the market. HP's clinging to traditional Windows notebooks PCs would have dropped it to second place at 9.3 million, or 15.6 percent.
Apple managed to claim 87.4 percent of the tablet market before the Galaxy Tab came into play, IDC found in a rare study of tablet share. As most companies were caught off-guard, Apple claimed a near-monopoly of the tablet market last summer. Analysts further expected 17 million tablets to have shipped by the end of the year, almost all of which would still have been iPads.
Apple is hoping to ship three million MacBooks this fall, tips from the PC industry said on Friday. Its shipments should reach about one million per month, 20 to 25 percent of which would be the new MacBook Air. The range would see at least 600,000 and as many as 750,000 of the ultraportables ship at the same time, based on the data culled by Digitimes' sources.
Apple is now large enough to be the fourth largest phone manufacturer of any kind, IDC found tonight. A near doubling to14.1 million iPhones was enough to push it to 4.1 percent of the entire market, both ahead of RIM's BlackBerry but also long established phone makers like Motorola and Sony Ericsson, both of whom were now out of the top five. The figures included an adjustment to make sure RIM's phone sales included covered the same period to dispel RIM's doubts that Apple was being honest in saying it had outperformed its Canadian rival.
The iPad could be Apple's key to outselling much of the portable computing market, DisplaySearch said in its latest report. Opting to include the iPad the same category as notebooks, the group expects Apple to ship nine million tablets in the second half of the year and to immediately vault over ASUS, Lenovo and Toshiba to become the fourth-largest portable computer seller in the world. Going Mac-only has previously kept Apple stuck between sixth and eighth place.
Apple achieved a rare feat and outsold Acer in the US this summer, new IDC estimates showed today. The company is estimated to have shipped almost exactly 2 million Macs just to the US in the quarter, beating out the combined Acer and Gateway's 1.95 million. Apple grew more than twice as quickly as any other US vendor, reaching 10.6 percent of the market after it shipped about 24.1 percent more Macs over the same time last year.
Apple's share in the smartphone will settle down over the next few years while Android makes a fast rise, IDC predicted today. Researchers expect the iPhone to drop from 14.7 percent today to 10.9 percent by 2014. Android would account for most of the switch, as it would overtake the BlackBerry and claim second place with 24.6 percent.
Nokia is still continuing its long decline in world market share, IDC determined today. The one-time unquestioned leader still has its edge but has dropped to exactly 35 percent from 37.2 percent a year ago. It shipped more phones than last year, but with a poor smartphone lineup and a focus on the declining basic phone business, it lost ground to companies like RIM that have been thriving on the BlackBerry and other smartphones.
