smartphone

Nielsen: iPhone & Android own 71% of U.S. smartphone market

83% of the apps downloaded in the past month were for a Google or Apple phone

The U.S. smartphone market is starting to look like a two-horse race, judging from data scheduled to be released Wednesday by a Nielsen general manager at AppNation III in San Francisco. Among the new findings:

44% of all U.S. mobile subscribers now own a smartphone
56% of the mobile phones purchased in the past three months were MORE

The amazin' elastic iPhone 3GS

Who gets hurt most by Apple's entry into the $250-$400 mobile phone market?

In a 36-page report to clients issued Monday, a Credit Suisse team led by Kulbinder Garcha took a close look at the iPhone's price elasticity -- Econ 101 jargon for the question: "If I lower the price of my widget, how many more will I sell?"

Garcha et al.'s focus is the iPhone 3GS, which Apple (AAPL) last month began MORE

Android's malware problem is growing exponentially

Reports of trojans, spyware and other malicious programs are up 472% since July

Several warnings have been issued over the past year about the growing problem of malware on Google (GOOG) Android smartphones (see here, here and here), but none as dire or as sharply worded as the report issued Wednesday by Juniper Network's Global Threat Center.

Not only did Juniper's annual threat report see a 400% increase in Android malware between 2009 and the MORE

Apple's smartphone share dropped to 15% in weak Q3

But Gartner expects it to bounce back in Q4 after "strongest ever" orders for iPhone 4S

The slowdown in iPhone sales in advance of the October release of iPhone 4S is reflected in the report on mobile phone shipments for the third quarter of 2011 issued Tuesday by Gartner, Inc.

Apple (AAPL) shipped 17 million iPhones in the quarter -- up 21% year over year but down nearly 3 million units from the MORE

Nielsen: Android's U.S. share steady at 43%, iPhone at 28%

But adoption varies greatly by age. Most Americans under 44 already carry a smartphone

In the rapidly growing U.S. smartphone market, Google's (GOOG) Android and Apple's (AAPL) iPhone seem to have reached a steady state.

According to the third quarter Nielsen survey of the market, issued Thursday, 43% of Americans now own smartphones, up 5 percentage points in the past six months. Within that 43%, according to Nielsen, Android has 43% of the MORE

Smartphone shipments tripled since '08. Dumb phones are flat

The latest graphic from Asmyco shows an ocean of opportunity

Horace Dediu summarized three years of mobile phone data Monday in another striking color-coded chart. This view of the market offers three key take-home messages:

Most of the growth in mobile phone shipments has been in smartphones, which have tripled in the past three years (from 40 million to about 120 million) while non-smartphones barely increased (from 258 million to 272 million).
Most MORE

Samsung overtakes Apple in smartphones, trails in profits

Even with 40% fewer unit sales, the iPhone generated 3 times more profit

Apple's (AAPL) reign as the world's No. 1 maker of smartphones, it turns out, was like the life of a grasshopper: It overtook Nokia (NOK) in June and was overtaken by Samsung in September.

Strategy Analytics reported Friday that Samsung either shipped or sold (accounts differ) 27.8 million smartphones last quarter, easily outpacing the 17.07 million iPhones that Apple sold in MORE

Nielsen: Android share of U.S. smartphone market hits 43%

Of those purchased in last 3 months, 56% were Androids. iPhone holds steady at 28%. 

The results of a Nielsen survey conducted in August and released Monday reinforced several ongoing trends:

The smartphone pie is getting bigger. While 43% of all mobile subscribers in the U.S. had a smartphone as of August, according to Nielsen, 58% of those who bought a new mobile phone in the last 3 months chose a smartphone over a feature MORE

What the BlackBerry guys said as Apple ate their lunch

A collection of delusional quotations, courtesy of Business Insider's Jay Yarow

Touchscreen smartphones have finally taken their toll on the venerable BlackBerry. As the Asmyco chart at right shows, BlackBerry shipments (green line) hit a wall in early 2011 and have been headed south ever since.

Did Mike Lazaridis and Jim Basille, Research in Motion's (RIMM) co-founders, underestimate the threat posed by Apple (AAPL)?

You bet they did -- loudly, repeatedly and at times MORE

Battle of the top 10 lists

IBTimes plays for page views by playing both sides of the iPhone vs. Android divide

The International Business Times, a thinly-staffed online "newspaper" based in New York City, has hit on the perfect formula for covering the smartphone wars.

On Wednesday, under the byline IB Times Staff Reporter, it published 10 Reasons Why iPhone 5 will be Beaten by Samsung Galaxy S2, pegged to Sprint's scheduled launch Friday of Samsung's bestselling smartphone.

Two MORE