Mobile App Usage Increases In 2014, As Mobile Web Surfing Declines | TechCrunch

December 11, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

New data from app analytics provider Flurry released today states that native app usage on smartphones is continuing to grow at the expense of the mobile web. The company claims that users are now spending 2 hours and 42 minutes per day on mobile devices as of March 2014, up from 2 hours, 38 minutes as of a year ago. Meanwhile, mobile app usage accounts for 2 hours and 19 minutes of that time spent, while mobile web usage has dropped from 20% of the U.S. consumer’s time in 2013 to just 14% – or 22 minutes per day – as of last month. Says Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf, the changes indicate that the mobile browser has become just “a single application swimming in a sea of apps.”

Is the iPad doomed? | CnnMoney.com

July 31, 2014 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tablet sales are “crashing,” says Best Buy’s CEO! IPad sales are sinking fast! Is this the beginning of the end for the tablet?

Easy, there, tiger. Tablets are still popular and sales are growing — 11% last quarter, to be precise, according to tech consultancy IDC. Still, that’s a far cry from two years ago, when tablets were growing at a 60% clip. Meanwhile, the iPad has been in the doldrums, posting a 9% sales decline last quarter, which was preceded by a 16% slump the quarter before that.

So what’s going wrong? There are three big obstacles facing the market that are impacting demand for tablets: Smartphones are getting bigger, tablets last a while and businesses aren’t buying them.

Smartphones are getting bigger. Like, seriously huge. Samsung’s popular Galaxy S5 has a 5.1-inch screen. Its Galaxy Note smartphone has a 5.5-inch screen, and Apple is expected to release an iPhone 6 of the same size this fall. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is just 1.5 inches bigger.

Google Android Now Powers 3 in 4 Smartphones | searchenginewatch.com

November 12, 2012 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Google’s Android platform has reached record worldwide sales numbers, according to analysts. Research firm IDC said that the Google mobile OS is the first to surpass 100 million quarterly shipments in a single quarter.

The platform powered some 136 million handsets, giving Android a 75 percent market share of all shipments. The company noted that Android also saw its shipments rise by 91.5 percent over the previous year’s quarter, a growth rate roughly double that of the smartphone market as a whole.

Analysts credit the soaring sales in part to Google’s ability to build and maintain a large ecosystem for the platform.

“Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio. Many of its competitors, with weaker tie-ins to the mobile OS, do not,” explained IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo. “This factor and others have led to loss of share for competitors with few exceptions.”

Second in the quarter was Apple’s iPhone.

E-mails Show How Google Uses Android to Make Phone Companies ‘Do Things We Want’ | Daily Intel

May 10, 2011 ~ CBPS ~ Leave a comment

On the one hand, Google has to maintain quality control and consistency to make sure Android can sync up with hardware and software made by other companies. On the other hand, getting other players to “do what we want” sounds like a monopoly in the making.

Read Article.