Market trends

LTE smartphones to make up about 5% of 2012 global handset shipments

LTE-enabled smartphones could account for as much as 5% of all global handset shipments in 2012. With nearly 50 carriers across the world having launched the technology, the number of LTE-enabled devices being offered is growing quickly. Digitimes “industry sources” expect that between 25 and 30 million LTE-enabled smartphones will ship this year. Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Pantech and HTC […]

Is the love affair with SMS over?

Could the love affair that people have with SMS be coming to an end? Tero Kuittinen, a senior analyst at M.G.I. Research, found that text-messaging declined in a number of markets during the Christmas period when compared to last year. Depending on the market, Christmas and New Year’s Eve are typically the busiest days for text messages. In Finland, at […]

Android and iOS continue to gain market share in Q1 2011

Gartner earlier this week released its Q1 2011 “Market Share Analysis: Mobile Devices, Worldwide” report. Smartphones continued to outpace the overall mobile communication market which saw shipments of nearly 428 million devices. “Smartphones accounted for 23.6 percent of overall sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85 percent year-on-year,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. […]

Poor BlackBerry PlayBook sales denied by RIM

While Best Buy has indicated that RIM BlackBerry PlayBook tablet sales have exceeded expectations, another is reportedly painting a very different picture. According to BGR.com, a “trusted source from a major big box retailer” reports sales have fallen significantly short of expectations and up to 90% short of internal sales targets. The source adds that returns are also much higher, […]

Amazon eBooks now outselling all print books combined

Amazon today announced that it is now selling more Kindle books than hardcover and paperback print books combined. “Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly – we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for […]

RIM sells 50,000 PlayBooks on first day?

Initial estimates suggest that Research In Motion sold about 50,000 BlackBerry PlayBooks on launch day, a figure that includes pre-orders. While RIM has yet to provide any numbers, RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky came up with the estimate by checking with about 70 retail locations. While these figures are a pale comparison to Apple iPad 2 sales, Abramsky notes […]