AppInsider runs with a rumor that I do not believe:

A new report claims Apple's iPhone comprised 66 percent of all device sales at AT&T's corporate retail stores in December, while Android is said to have taken an 8.5 percent share.

The Mac Observer cited a source inside AT&T on Friday as indicating that the company's stores sold 981,000 iPhones between Dec. 1 and Dec. 27. By comparison, 126,000 Android devices were reportedly sold during the same period.

Basic feature phones apparently performed better than Android at the stores, as 128,000 units were sold during December. Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices continued to languish, with just 74,000 sold this month. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 fared even worse.

Thoughts?

Thoughts...

I don't believe it. Even with the caveat of AT&T corporate stores and month of December. If true, than when coupled with the datapoint showing Android's slowing *growth* than not only is my long-ago prediction of Android peaking at 50% market going to ring true, but the economy, my guess, is putting a hard stop on *new* smartphone sales -- with Android sales about to come to a screeching halt.

Except, I don't believe this. 

I've been in multiple AT&T stores in at least 2-3 different states. There's a semi-prominent (?) iPhone display, and a vast array of Android devices at various price points and styles. 

With the occasional Blackberry or Windows Phone, like the proverbial cheese, standing alone.

That set-up, unless AT&T doesn't know what they're doing, does not suggest that everyone's buying iPhones and feature phones. Still, will be interesting when we get confirmed numbers.

Bonus thoughts!

Yes, I was the *first* to tell you that part of the reason for Google's giant Motorola acquisition was to build a 'new' Android and start pumping out feature phones in the US and around the world. 

This rumor suggests that at the very least, I'm sniffing around the right spot...

Give Brian some sugar...

Who's been telling you since the start of this site that...the smartphone is the computer!

That the mobile web is the web.  

That the smartphone is the primary access point to the global web and that the *app* is the primary access point to the smartphone!

Yep, me.

And not only am I continually proven correct, I am proven correct far sooner than I expect (really, my only failing).

Those who say that HTML5 or some sort will eclipse the app are wrong. Those that suggest that the smartphone is but one device revolving around the sun that is the PC are way wrong.

If there is a center to our digital universe, it is the smartphone. If there is a center to our smartphone, it is the app.

Analysts continue to not understand this. Execs at PC-world companies continue to not understand this. 

For those that remain in denial, or are unable to shift -- as Google has so smartly done in embracing the iOS model, well, it's a hard rain gonna fall...

Via Gary Kim, a holiday reminder that smartphones are the new boss.

I sure hope you didn't get a PC for Christmas:

Flurry compares how daily interactive consumption has changed over the last 12 months between the web (both desktop and mobile web) and mobile native apps.  For Internet consumption, we built a model using publicly available data from comScore and Alexa.  For mobile application usage, we used Flurry Analytics data, now exceeding 500 million aggregated, anonymous use sessions per day across more than 85,000 applications.  We estimate this accounts for approximately one third of all mobile application activity, which we scaled-up accordingly for this analysis.

Our analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption.  This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms.  Let’s take a look at the numbers.

With Android chief Andy Rubin taking to Twitter for his bi-annual (if that means twice yearly) rah-rah tweet about Android activations, we know now that there are more than 700,000 Android activations per day.

Before you go gettin your Android hate on, reader Chuck Falzone (Boy Android), passes on Rubin's pre-emptive, if very catty, strike:

...and for those wondering, we count each device only once (ie, we don't count re-sold devices), and "activations" means you go into a store, buy a device, put it on the network by subscribing to a wireless service.

I've written before how much good I think Google has done by copying Apple at every turn, by using its billions and billions in monopoly profits from PC search to buy market share, even if it winds up killing great companies like RIM and Nokia. Likewise, I've written that despite any positives from Android, I've used too many Android devices for too many activities to know that the platform *comparatively* sucks.

So that's not what this post is about.

What this post is about is not iPhone vs Android or stupid shit like OMG IPHONE WILL DIE. 

Rather, it's about how we are witnessing the complete and permanent transformation of the computing industry, the world wide web, and the transformation of conent creation and distribution, particularly for movies, music, books, magazines and television. At minimum. In my view, nearly every industry and every activity associated with work, play and learning will be altered thanks to the smarpthone.

With Android and iPhone alone, more than 1 million smartphones are being activated per day. 

Wake up tomorrow, and another 1 million people will have a smartphone. 

Yes, I realize some of the numbers are redundant, there's attrition, switching, multiple phones per single person, but when you add up new Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Badu and other activations, it's probably over 1 million net per day.

What other market is offering up such incredible potential?

This is a multi-trillion dollar market that is touching, then changing, everything. Right now, Apple and Google are leading the charge, and taking the market share and profits. But Amazon, Facebook, those companies in China that make our smartphones and tablets, and many others are out front. However, as with all completely new, massively popular, high-growth, global markets -- and perhaps this is the only one -- expect an entire new crop of companies, industries, services and platforms to emerge. And don't be surprised if those we long ago came to admire, respect and/or fear, such as a Dell, a Microsoft, an ATT, to become marginalized.

Although we should at least continue to ask, given that we expect so many players to be marginalized, will Google be one of them? Is Android bad for Google? After all, with the Moto purchase, they're on the hook for a cool $20 billion or so for Android.

Why? 

They make no money off Android, only on ads. And right now, despite the incredible growth of Android, despite the market share it's gobbling up in chunks, nearly all Google's money comes from ads on PCs. Not Android phones. More problematic, I'd say, is that despite it's clear lead, not only are most mobile Google searches coming from iPhone users -- and we know Apple is working on workarounds to Google search, including Siri, partnerships with Wolfram Alpha and others -- but more shocking still, is that most mobile *traffic* is via iPhone, not Android.

The iPhone is a better gaming console. The Apple ecosystem for media is clearly superior. There are more and better apps for iPhone. At minimum, you should expect that the (mobile) web to be dominated by Google Android.

This is simply not the case. 

Via Mobify:

Everyone knows there are two dominant players in the smartphone race – iPhone and Android – and since Mobify powers a network of over 18,000 mobile sites, we wanted to see the level of their dominance.

So we did a little number crunching.

We started with mobile traffic in May, 2011 and compared it to mobile traffic six months later in November, 2011. With the reach and scale of the Mobify network, this comparison feels like a better representation of the mobile web reality as it’s built on real world mobile traffic.

Here’s what we found.

iPhone and Android make up 44% and 37% of all visits respectively, combining for a total of 81% of all visits.

BlackBerry, once a major driver of mobile traffic, now accounts for only 2.78% of visits.

Seems odd, doesn't it, that Android's share of mobile web traffic would be so much less than its share of smartphones, which is estimated to be at least 53%?

Which begs the question: when will Google *ever* get its money back on Android.

Actually, it begs a different question: what the hell are Android users doing with their Android phones? 

I've said it many times: the smartphone is the primary interface to the global web and the app is the primary interface to the smartphone. This will remain (primarily) so at least through this decade.

TechCrunch does a solid job of highlighting the core takeaways in the latest Distmo report on apps, app markets and what it may mean for app developers and users.

Chairman Schmidt's suggestions aside, Apple is unlikely to lose its crown as the leading platform for apps -- because, that's where the money is. Android may be activating 700,000 devices a day but aint nobody wanting to pay for shit. Which is kind of a problem.

On the web, about 99.5% of publishers, I'm guessing, cannot make enough to live on. What Google offers, our free content and labor in exchange for "relevant ads" that almost no one ever clicks on and on the rare times they do generates little more than a ha' penny is a bargain most accept because most of (not me, of course) can fool ourselves into thinking that maybe, just maybe, we can make enough money to live on if we hand over all our content for free. Plus, it's pretty damn easy. I mean, shit, just get yourself a free Wordpress blog or Tumblr page.

Not so with apps. They still require work, time, development, support. And discovery is even more problematic.

The Google model of free to start but we all make it up on ads, especially them, continues to flounder when it comes to Android apps. Perhaps in a couple years or so, Google will fix this, though I have my doubts. They were built atop takig other's content for free and presenting it to others for free, along with their ads. It's hard to fit a bunch of ads, relevant or not, on a smartphone screen, inside an app. 

From TechCrunch:

There are now over a million mobile applications available across the top seven major app stores, according to mobile analytics firm Distimo in its year-end report for 2011. And, not surprisingly, the iTunes App Store is still the one to beat, especially if you’re a developer looking to make a profit.

The iPhone App Store generates about four times the revenue that is generated by the Google Android Market, the report finds, in terms of total revenue generated by the 200 highest grossing apps. Meanwhile, the App Store for iPad generates more than double the revenue of the Android Market.

These figures are all that more impressive, considering the dramatic increases in apps using freemium business models as well as free apps supported by in-app purchases. Half of the revenue of the 200 top grossing apps are now freemium apps in the iPhone App Store, says Distimo. In the Android Market, that figure is even higher: 65% are freemium.

And now for possibly the least helpful chart you will see in 2011:

Should auld smartphones be forgot and never brought to mind...

5 October 2011

Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple dies. One of the last to enter the smartphone wars, his product and ecosystem and vertically integrated company quickly came to dominate the market.

800

The Nokia Lumia 800, a hobbled MeeGo device, designed to be both savior of Nokia and the Windows Phone platform. As we close out 2011, it is neither. 

This will never change.

10,000,000,000 - 18,000,000,000

The humble app has transformed the smartphone industry, publishing, social media, gaming and the world wide web. The smartphone is the primary interface to the global web and the app is the primary interface to the smartphone. Late this year, Google Android announced 10 billion app downloads from the Android Market. Apple announced 18 billion app downloads from the App Store.

7.04B

As the year closes, $RIMM is at $13.44. RIM/Blackberry, once the young Mike Tyson of the smartphone industry, is now worth a paltry $7.04 billion. Which is *half* of the value of iTunes, which is effectively a loss leader for Apple.

10 

The new Blackberry OS. Now delayed into 2012. Except not really. It will never see the light of day.

$4.68

That is the current price of $NOK.  

13,000

The word count of Tomi Ahonen's latest screed on Stephen Elop, accusing him essentially of corporate terrorism.

3,417

The average number of texts teens in the US send out -- each month. According to Nielsen, it's more precisely, 3,952 per month for girls and a shockingly high 2,815 per month for boys.

4S

The iPhone 4S is both the best selling smartphone and the best. Sort of like if a, er, Mercedes was the world's top selling automobile.

4

The number of smartphones Apple has released since 2008.

7 inches

The approximate size of all the tablets that have failed utterly in the marketplace and the approximate size of the tablet all pundits ssay Apple should build -- now.

$12.5 billion

The price Google will pay (once approved) for Motorola Mobility, a 63% premium over the company's share price on the day of the announcement (12 August 2011), and proof that Google desperately wanted to keep Moto from jumping ship to Windows Phone and keep Moto from suing other Android handset makers for patent violations and use Moto to become more like Apple, offering a vertically integrated company that offers smartphones, set-top boxes, possibly Chromebooks and more. Oh, and as a direct assault upon all things Microsoft, as JLG explains in his latest MondayNote. 

2008/2009/2010/2011

The year of NFC.

53%

The US market share for Android smartphones. 

9.5%

The US market share for Blackberry smartphones. 

1.6%

The US market share for Windows Phone smartphones. And the sinle most important number Steve Ballmer looked at when shit-canning Andy Lees. The fact is, Microsoft is so far behind in smartphones -- the present and future of personal computing -- that I believe their future, come no later than 2016, is to become an enterprise services company, offering a variety of productivity, security and collaborative technologies. IBM will get the last laugh.

8

The next great Windows operating system to power PCs, laptops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones. Maybe.

115,000

The minimum number of people that have read my "Google are Pussies" rant this year, on this site only.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about PC analyst firm, Strategy Analytics, and what I considered was their *deliberate* effort to not count iPhone sales -- by focusing on "superphone" sales which, mysteriously, did not include iPhone. (Nor any non-Android device, if memory serves.)

I followed this up last week with a post entitled "The conspiracy to not count iPhone sales."

Apparently, this is not confined to iPhone sales only, but to iPad sales as well. Gruber writes today about a deliberate effort to not count iPad when counting, you know, tablet sales:

What makes this whole presentation so contorted is the notion of “non-Apple tablets” as a separate product category, without any context as to where these tablets stand when the iPad is included.

Over the course of 2-3 weeks you have myself and Gruber pointing out where well-paid "analysts" are going out of their way to not count iPhone sales or iPad sales.

Why?

Is it because Google and Microsoft are paying these firms for these reports?

Can't say.

My gut tells me that it's because Google and Microsoft are paying *a lot of money* to these firms.

Tomi Ahonen breaks down the numbers by vendor. Samsung and Apple are kicking ass. Samsung's strategy of adopting Android and copying Apple has paid off handsomely, at least in terms of market share. 

Yesterday I mocked the good folks at Google for crafting a new Nexus commercial that looked like it was created by the line director of an Apple ad. I can mock them for a lack of creativity or self-respect, but no doubt it will work. Now if they could somehow actually copy the build quality, usability, functionality and supply chain advantages Apple currently holds, that would be a hell of a trick! 

Anyway, Tomi's numbers:

For those who just want to see the table without the analysis, here is the big picture and top 10 smartphone manufacturer brands for Q3 or the quarter from July to September:

1 (2)     Samsung       25.1 Million    21%  (17%)

2 (1)     Apple            17.1 Million    15%   (19%)

3 (3)     Nokia            16.8 Million    14%   (16%)

4 (5)     HTC              13.2 Million    11%   (11%)

5 (4)     RIM              10.6 Million      9%   (12%)

6 (7)     SonyEricsson  7.6 Million      7%   ( 5%)

7 (6)     LG                  5.9 Million      5%   ( 5%)

8 (8)     Motorola          4.8 Million      4%   ( 4%)

9 (9)     Huawei            4.4 Million      4%   ( 4%)

10 (10)  ZTE                3.1 Million      3%   ( 3%)

(others                       9.1 Million)

TOTAL                    117.7 Million

[Now by platform]

1. (1.)    Android (Google)                   56.4 Million    48% (40%)

2. (3.)    Symbian (Nokia)                   18.1 Million    15% (17%)

3. (2.)    iOS (Apple)                           17.1 Million     15% (19%)

4. (4.)    Blackberry OS                      10.7 Million       9% (12%)

5. (5.)    bada (Samsung)                     2.6 Million       2%  ( 2%)

6. (7.)    Windows Phone 7 (Microsoft)  1.3 Million       1%  ( 1%)

7. (6.)    Windows Mobile (Microsoft)     0.4 Million       0%  ( 1%)

(others 11.1 Million)

TOTAL        117.7 Million

Note the others includes all other smartphone operating systems including Palm/WebOS, Maemo, MeeGo, LiMo (Linux Mobile) and a multitude of unlicenced variants of Android. No other OS reaches 1%.

Now, back to Brian:

Firstly, please don't suggest that OMG ANDROID WILL BECOME THE STANDARD AND APPLE WILL DIE JUST AS BEFORE WHEN IT WAS WINDOWS VS MAC. Aside from the fact that you're using bad history and do not understand the dynamics of the smartphone market, which is not the same as the PC market, remember this:

Apple (iOS) is making *the vast chunk* of the smartphone money. Back in the days of the Microsoft horror was Microsoft *losing* money on most of its sales of Windows?

Thank you. Now please shut the hell up about PCs = smartphones all over again.

Except, OMG look at these numbers!

How is it even possible for Symbian to have fallen so far so fast? Look, I realize Tomi and others will say that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop poisoned the market for Symbian devices (maybe deliberately so), but I think they are missing the larger picture. Even if Elop deliberately wanted Symbian to fall the way it has nothing he could do, short of literally stop selling them, could possibly lead to the platform's utter global collapse. That was going to happen. Period. Maybe if you work for the company or own $NOK that is cold comfort. Still, if Elop spent most of his time and effort and did his very best to support Symbian, he would have extended its life, as a viable platform, a few months, at best. iPhone at the top end, and Android at the top and everywhere else, meant the death of Symbian.

Elop's strategy to abandon Symbian, if poorly executed, was absolutely correct.

Likewise, thought not revealed in Tomi's numbers, is the fact that it is damn hard to make money selling Android devices. Samsung, as has been noted elsewhere, does quite well at it, but almost no one else. Certainly, not the kind of money that Nokia wants and not the kind of money Nokia needs to continue being, well, Nokia. Whether or not they succeed as a Windows Phone shop remains to be seen. Looking at those Windows numbers, I suppose there's comfort in knowing that the sky is the limit. I have a feeling that I could create a homebrew smartphone platform at this point and sell as many devices as there are Windows Phones.

Also, Blackberry fell below 10%. This probably means something beyond just the pain of market contraction. None of it good. At less than 10%, can they attract developers? Get enough love from carriers? Market themselves well enough to be heard over the constant iPhone and Android messages? These are dark days for RIM. I would still rather control my own platform then be part of Android, living off Google's crumbs. Blackberry may have no other choice, however, as it appears they are no longer in total control of their own destiny.

Follow-up to an earlier post. The Wall Street Journal's "MarketWatch" outlet runs the Strategy Analytics press release on "superphone" sales numbers.

Which are, I say, a lie by omission. The full release (emphasis mine):

BOSTON, Nov 11, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, superphones will be the world's fastest growing sub-category of wireless handsets this year. Global superphone sales will grow 200 percent in 2011, driven by popular models such as the Samsung Galaxy S2.

Alex Spektor, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, "Superphones are a relatively new sub-category of wireless handsets that first appeared on the global market in 2009. Superphones integrate high-level operating systems with supersized displays of at least 4 inches and superfast processors of at least 1GHz. Popular superphone models available today include the Samsung Galaxy S2 and HTC Sensation. We forecast global superphone sales to grow an impressive 200 percent in 2011, increasing fifteen times faster than the overall handset market's growth rate of 13 percent. Superphones will be the world's fastest growing sub-category of wireless handsets this year."

Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, "Superphones are driving super growth. Consumers and operators like the richer experience of larger screens and faster processing speeds that can be delivered by superphones. Samsung is currently the world's leading superphone vendor due to the success of its Android-powered Galaxy S2 model, and Samsung has been aggressively leveraging this leadership to attack rivals with much weaker superphone portfolios such as Nokia, Blackberry and even Apple."

The full report, Handset Sales Forecast by Type: Superphone, Smartphone, Feature Phone & Basic Phone, is published by the Strategy Analytics Wireless Device Strategies (WDS) service, details of which can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/cues633 .

About Strategy Analytics:

Strategy Analytics is a global, independent research and consulting firm. The company is headquartered in Boston, USA, with offices in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and China. Visit www.strategyanalytics.com for more information.

Independent?

Does that mean 'open for business'?

We have to ask: who is paying Strategy Analytics for this "research"? Who is paying Strategy Analytics to push these numbers? Because *nowhere* is the iPhone listed? The message is clear: SUPERPHONES ARE SELLING! SUPERPHONES ARE DRIVING GROWTH!

And...

SUPERPHONES ARE SAMSUNG AND HTC AND, well, only Android phones. Odd given that the rigged definition includes "high-level operating systems". Oh, and a minimum 4-inch screen. Guess the iPhone, or the Lumia, or the Bold don't have "high level operating systems" or a "richer experience" that consumers are demanding? As for "weaker" superphone platforms, if Apple, Blackberry and Nokia's superphone numbers are "weaker" then show them? 

No, they don't even fucking count them. These are *absolutely fucking bogus numbers*.

You are being lied to, boys and girls. 

Android may be open. Let's find out if Strategy Analytics is open. Who is paying them for these "superphone" reports?