Android

Phil Schiller’s real testimony in the Apple v. Samsung damages trial will come later today, but he put the importance of the iPhone into perspective in his opening remarks yesterday by stating that Apple “bet the company” on it (via CNET).

There were huge risks [with the first iPhone]. We had a saying inside the company that it was a ‘bet-the-company’ product […] We were starting to do well again in iPod […] Then here we’re going to invest all these resources, financial as well as people, in creating this product … 
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Steve Jobs isn’t exactly a man known for keeping his thoughts to himself which is why excerpts from the upcoming book Dogfight found by Business Insider documenting the Google-Apple smartphone war are grabbing attention. According to the book written by Fred Vogelstein, Google was already working on its first Android-powered smartphone when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 but had to stop in its tracks…

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The headline news in the latest IDC stats might look like bad news for Apple: iOS Q3 market share dropped from 14.4 percent last year to 12.9 percent this year. But it’s a number that is unlikely to lead to too many sleepless nights in Cupertino, for four reasons.

First, Apple isn’t competing with most of the Android market, which spans all price-points, only the top end of it. Samsung has been struggling to make money from its flagship handsets, with most of its profits coming from low-end models, while HTC has been in all kinds of trouble. Looking at Apple’s market share in the smartphone market as a whole is the most academic of exercises.

Second, while market share is down, shipments are up: from 26.9M in Q3 last year to 33.8M in the same quarter this year.

Third, for most of Q3 savvy iPhone buyers were holding fire, waiting for the new models Apple launched almost at the end of that quarter. The iPhone 5s and 5c between them notched up a record 9M sales in just the opening weekend. Q4 is where it’s really at … 
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Apple’s share of the U.S. smartphone market grew by 0.7 percent in the last quarter to reach 40.6 percent, according to comScore data.

Sales of low-cost handsets mean that Android’s position as leading mobile platform is safe, with a marginal drop to 51.8 percent of the market, but Apple remained top of the vendor rankings …

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Update: See bottom of the piece for JD Power’s partial explanation

“Samsung Ranks Highest in Owner Satisfaction with Tablet Devices” was the headline on JD Power’s latest U.S. Tablet Satisfaction Survey, with the above table showing that Samsung taking the lead from Apple by two points.

Yet when you look at the ratings that make up the individual scores, as Fortune did, that isn’t what they show at all. The six scoring categories are Overall Satisfaction, Performance, Ease of Use, Physical Design, Tablet Features and Cost. Samsung beats Apple in exactly one of those categories: cost … 
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In IDC’s report released today covering worldwide tablet market for the third quarter, the research firm notes that the market as a whole continues to grow thanks to strong growth from Android tablets. Apple shipments remained steady during the quarter compared to last year at 14 million units in Q3, but its share of the market drops from 40.2% last year to just 29.6% this year as Samsung, Asus, Lenovo, and Acer all post significant growth for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year.

Samsung is up from 12.4% last year to 20.4% of the tablet market in Q3 2013 (a 123% increase), while Asus is up 53.9% to 3.5 million units, Lenovo sold 2.3m (up 420.7%), and Acer recorded 1.2M (up 346.3%):
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Update: The app is now live on the App Store.

After the BBM apps prematurely started rolling out for iPhone and Android and were abruptly pulled late last month, BlackBerry finally confirmed today that it’s officially kicking off the roll out of the apps. In a blog post, the company announced that the BBM apps will be available for both iPhone and Android within the next few hours through the App Store, Google Play, and Samsung’s App Store:

The demand for BBM on Android and BBM on iPhone continues to be amazing. About six million people signed up for information about BBM at BBM.com. As you know, in just seven hours, about one million Android users were using the unreleased version of BBM for Android. What you don’t know is that more than one million people have found creative ways to “side load” BBM on their iPhone. This is incredible.

While the app is available to download starting today, it will utilize a staggered rollout that will see users reserving a spot in line by entering their email address. BlackBerry says users that signed up previously through its website can start using the app immediately, but we’ll have to wait to see how many people sign up today in order to estimate how long the queue will be. 
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Opera MediaWorks is out today with its latest report on the state of mobile platforms for Q3 2013. The report, which gathers data from billions of ad impressions each month, notes that iOS continues the lead for mobile advertising, with around 44.4% of all ad requests and 50% of revenue on its platform. That’s compared to 31.32% for Android, but the lead for Apple is mostly thanks to gains from iPad.

Remove tablets from the equation and ad impressions on iPhone and Android smartphones fall to just 31% vs. 30.3%:

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iOS 7 has taken top billing in Pfeiffer Consulting’s annual Mobile OS User Experience Benchmarks, scoring just over 73 percent against 57 percent for Android and 47 percent for Windows Phone.

The study attempts to calculate an objective rating for the usability of a mobile OS by a typical, non-technical user by measuring four elements:

• Cognitive load
• Efficiency
• Customization
• User experience friction … 
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Don’t count BlackBerry out just yet. In spite of their buyout addition to their buyout offer from Fairfax Capital for $4.7 billion late last month, the telecommunications company today announced plans at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, Florida, to launch a new cloud-based system for managing users and applications across BlackBerry, Android, and iOS.

The cloud service ambitiously plans to address the ‘bring your own device’ movement while addressing privacy and tech support at ‘less than a cup of coffee a month,’ according to BlackBerry.

Simple and fast deployment. No server hardware or software to install, just register and go.

Administrators can easily manage and secure smartphones and tablets. The simple Web-based admin console will provide easy activation and deployment of BlackBerry, iOS and Android™ smartphones, app management, security policy configuration and compliance monitoring.

Administrators can secure, deploy and manage apps. Administrators will be able to build a catalog of public apps from the App StoreSM, Google Play and the BlackBerry World storefront, and then view app distribution and usage for all users and devices.

End-users can manage their own devices through the self-service console. End-users will be able to easily perform common management tasks such as setting up or changing device passwords and remote wipe and lock without relying on an administrator, giving them independence and saving on helpdesk calls.

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We have a long running series on 9to5Google called “Talking Schmidt” and the Chairman of Google keeps loading it up with amusing quotes on the technology industry.  Today’s comes from the Gartner Symposium where our pro/antagonist was asked by Gartner analyst David Willis about the security of Android (which has taken some hits lately to put it mildly).

To which Schmidt, without batting an eye, said:

“Not secure? It’s more secure than the iPhone.”

The comment drew laughter from the crowd, comprised largely of  CIOs and high level IT personnel. Keep in mind, this is the same quote-smith who forecasted Google TV would have taken over the market last year and called the iPad just a big iPhone.
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With former MobileMe customers losing their additional 20GB of free storage a couple of days ago, there are probably a bunch of new people eyeing the paid iCloud upgrade options and wondering whether or not to hand over their cash. So we thought it would be a useful to take a look at the other major cloud storage services out there, to see how they compare.

As none of them are trying to hide the filesystem in the way Apple does, they all essentially work in the same way: providing you with a virtual online drive that you treat just like a local folder. There are also OS X and iOS apps for each.

Let’s start with the obvious: if you want something that is totally integrated into both OS X and iOS, and which Just Works, then iCloud is king.

Although the 5GB you get free doesn’t sound like a lot, you actually get more than this in practice – because Apple doesn’t count the space used by any of your iTunes purchases (apps, music, movies/TV shows or books), nor does it count the 1000 most recent photos you get to store in Photostream. If most of the content you want to store came from Apple, and all you want to do additionally is sync your contacts, calendar, notes and so on, the free storage is probably all you need.

iCloud is also a seamless way to store documents if you use Apple’s own iWork software: Pages, Numbers and Keynote. By opting to save documents on iCloud, they are automatically available to you from your Mac(s), iPad and iPhone – as well as on the web.

But if you have a lot of documents, you can pretty soon start bumping up against that 5GB limit. Which is where iCloud’s costs and limitations start to show up … 
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