May 26
By Joe Wilcox, Betanews For weeks, pundits predicted what happened today: Apple’s value exceeded Microsoft’s. While writing post “The Windows era is over” early this afternoon, Apple’s market capitalization was $227.95 billion and Microsoft’s $228.47 billion, or just $520 million separating them. By the time I posted, at 2:56 pm, Apple’s market cap was $225.98 billion and Microsoft’s was $225.32 billion.In the 20 minutes after, the two companies went on a roller coaster ride of sorts, with Microsoft failing to near $221 billion and Apple rising above $228 billion.For Apple, there has been dramatic change since stock markets collapsed in autumn 2008. Apple’s market cap was $88.68 billion on Oct. 2, 2008 and Microsoft’s was $228.35 billion on Sept. 29, 2008. Mmmm, do you see a difference? Microsoft hasn’t much changed, while Apple, boasted by surging share price, has rapidly gone up. About six weeks before the crash, on Aug. 13, 2008, Apple’s market cap was $158.84 billion compared to $254.83 billion for Microsoft.From one perspective, market valuation doesn’t mean much. It’s mitigated by several factors, including the number of shares publicly traded. But its symbolic significance cannot be understated, particularly considering the long rivalry between Apple and Microsoft and Apple’s near-death experience during the mid 1990s.Something else: Apple and Microsoft were founded about the same time and both companies played important roles launching the mainstream PC industry in the 1980s. But since 2000, Microsoft’s stock has been moribund. Apple shares started a slow surge around 2003, which the September 2008 financial collapse reversed. But throughout 2009, Apple shares rose and rose and rose. Apple shares closed at $100.10 on Oct. 28, 2008. As I write, Apple is trading at $248.15.A more meaningful comparison of the companies — at least as rivals — is revenue and profit. During first calendar quarter, [From Apple market capitalization tops Microsoft]
That’s symbolic. Remember when Apple first passed Dell? Now it could buy Dell with spare change 
May 19
Get ready to rumble, the latest Gartner and IDC smartphone numbers are out to give us a pretty good idea of how things shape up globally. Remember, IDC measures vendor shipments while Gartner measures actual handset sales to end users. So what does the data tell us? Well, to start with, in terms of smartphone devices, Gartner claims a 48.7% increase in smartphone sales of 54.3 million units in Q1 2010 compared to Q1 2009 — IDC pegs growth at 56.7% on 54.7 million units for the same period. Both estimates easily outpace the 17% or 21.7% growth in worldwide units of mobile phones moved according to Gartner and IDC, respectively.
IDC’s list of top 5 smartphone device makers (pictured above) has Nokia at the number one spot repeating its 39.3% share as it did in Q1 of 2009 while RIM is down slightly from 20.9% in 2009 to a 19.4% market share in 2010. Apple (up from 10.9% to 16.1%) more than doubled its device shipments in the last year as HTC (up from 4.3% to 4.8%) and Motorola (up from 3.4% to 4.2%) all managed to increase their shares on higher volumes.
Regarding smartphone OS market share, Android’s global numbers echo its success in the US jumping from a 1.6% market share to 9.6% in just one year. Gartner claims that sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year to displace Windows Mobile in the top 5 for the first time. Apple’s iPhone OS also saw growth from 10.5% in 1Q09 to 15.4% in 1Q10 as both RIM (down from 20.1% to 19.4%) and Symbian (down from 48.8% to 44.3%) dropped. See the OS numbers broken down into a no-nonsense table after the break.Continue reading IDC and Gartner award smartphone growth prizes to Apple and GoogleIDC and Gartner award smartphone growth prizes to Apple and Google originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 04:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | | Email this | Comments [From IDC and Gartner award smartphone growth prizes to Apple and Google]
It’s pretty clear who’s not doing well anyway. Faster growth is always possible from a small base so let’s see how Android grows now that it is in the same market share range as the other main contenders. Nokia has the most to lose.
May 14
In this guest opinion piece, Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps argues that the introduction of the iPad ushers in a whole new era in personal computing, one with less choice, but more relevance. There is something very significant about the iPad beyond how many units it will sell: it’s changing how we think about the PC. The iPad creates a use case for a device that doesn’t do everything your laptop does, targeted at a consumer that uses devices more for consumption than production. The iPad ushers in a new era of personal computing that we call “Curated Computing”—a mode of computing where choice is constrained to deliver less complex, more relevant experiences. Let me repeat that, because it’s the essence of the Curated Computing experience: less choice; more relevance. Consider this: consumers can do a wide variety of things with a Windows PC or Mac, like run commands, install robust software, connect easily to external devices, and save files locally. But the iPad does things differently. Its operating system runs more like a jukebox than a desktop, asking consumers to choose (and often pay for) applications from a predetermined set list. Each of these applications is in itself also curated, since the publisher selects content and functionality that’s appropriate to the form factor, just as a museum curator selects artwork from a larger collection to exhibit in a particular gallery space.
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[From Curated computing: what's next for devices in a post-iPad world]
An interesting viewpoint. I agree with some of it, but of course it isn’t either/or. Many (most?) people will prefer the curated experience but some will want greater control. I reckon they’ll be the minority, like Linux on the desktop.
May 07
A British engineer travels to Washington to explain his new idea. Oh boy, is this ever going to change things. [From May 7, 1952: The Integrated Circuit ... What a Concept!]
I hadn’t heard of this guy before.
May 04
In less than one month, Apple has already sold more than 1 million iPads. The company has announced that it reached the milestone on Friday after the launch of the iPad WiFi + 3G in the US.
“One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. “Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers.”
Supply is indeed tight—many Apple Stores were out of stock of 3G-enabled iPads by Saturday afternoon, though Best Buy locations outside major population centers still had some stock left. Shortly after launch, tight supply and greater than expected demand caused Apple to push the international launch of the iPad back about one month to late May.
Apple also noted that, in the last month, iPad users have downloaded more than 12 million apps from the App Store and over 1.5 million e-books from the iBookstore. There are now over 5,000 apps designed specifically for the iPad among the over 200,000 currently on offer in the App Store.
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[From iPad sales hit the 1 million mark in less than a month]
That seems fairly successful. The naysayers will need to spin that a bit.
Apr 30
There has been some … interesting news from the tech sector this week.
Firstly, the Apple vs. Adobe vendetta gets even nastier, with a public letter from Steve Jobs explaining why Adobe’s Flash multimedia format will not ever be allowed into the garden of pure ideology that is the iPhone/iPad fork of OSX.
Secondly, Hewlett-Packard are buying Palm, apparently for Palm’s WebOS — with rumours of plans to deploy a range of WebOS tablets to rival the iPad — at the same time, they’re killing their forthcoming Windows 7 slate, just as Microsoft are killing the Courier tablet project.
Finally, gizmodo (not, perhaps, an unbiased source in this regard given current events) have a fun essay discussing Apple’s Worldwide Loyalty Team, the internal unit tasked with hunting down and stopping leaks.
It’s probably no exaggeration to say that Apple’s draconian security policies are among the tightest of any company operating purely in the private sector, with a focus on secrecy that rivals that of military contractors. But even so, the control freak obsessiveness which Steve Jobs is bringing to bear on the iPad — and the desperate flailing around evident among Apple’s competitors — bears some examination. What’s going on?
I’ve got a theory, and it’s this: Steve Jobs believes he’s gambling Apple’s future — the future of a corporation with a market cap well over US $200Bn — on an all-or-nothing push into a new market. HP have woken up and smelled the forest fire, two or three years late; Microsoft are mired in a tar pit, unable to grasp that the inferno heading towards them is going to burn down the entire ecosystem in which they exist. There is the smell of panic in the air, and here’s why …
[From The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash]
Interesting analysis from SF and former tech writer Charles Stross. He may be onto something.
Apr 29
Steve Jobs has taken a break from his iPad e-mailing spree to post another long, open letter to Apple’s website, this time about Flash. The letter goes into detail as to why Apple chooses not to allow Adobe’s Flash technology on the iPhone and iPad, claiming that the decision isn’t as business-driven as Adobe would like to believe.
Jobs’ opening remark is about Flash’s openness, or lack thereof. “While Adobe’s Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe,” writes Jobs. He acknowledges that Apple has closed products as well—namely the iPhone, iPod, and iPad—but that the company believes that all standards on the Web should be open. Naturally, this leads into Apple’s support of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, not to mention Apple’s support for the open source WebKit.
Jobs also believes that Flash isn’t quite as dominant on the Web as Adobe claims, noting that “almost all” video that is available in Flash is also available in H.264. YouTube is among the most successful apps on the iPhone OS, Jobs points out, and there are numerous other apps that support video streaming available for the iPad (Netflix, ABC, NPR, New York Times, and more). Again, Jobs makes the concession that iPhone OS users won’t be able to play Flash games, but says that there are plenty of other games on the App Store. (Someone let me know when there’s a version of Winterbells for iPhone.)
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[From Poll Technica: Steve Jobs' letter on Flash]
It seems most readers agree with Steve Jobs so far, according to the poll.
Apr 28
So the rumor is true, and Apple has indeed bought Intrinsity. Apple confirmed to The New York Times today what Linkedin profile updates have already indicated, with Intrinsity’s employees naming Apple as their new employer. As for the price, NYT cites MPR’s Tom Halfhill, who claims that the purchase price was $121 million. Halfhill has been around the processor scene since forever, and he has great sources, so this number is probably in the ballpark.
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[From Apple purchase of Intrinsity confirmed]
It’ll be a while before these moves result in products.
Apr 22
Interesting. Apple has responded publicly to Adobe’s Mike Chambers’s claim that Flash is an open platform:
“Someone has it backwards — it is HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and H.264
(all supported by the iPhone and iPad) that are open and standard,
while Adobe’s Flash is closed and proprietary,” said spokeswoman
Trudy Miller in a statement.
Spot-on.
★
[From ‘Someone Has It Backwards’]
It’s nice to have a little clarity in these matters.
