We’ve been hearing a lot about Apple’s first mixed reality headset, which is expected to be introduced sometime next year. But while that day hasn’t come, Lenovo has announced its newest AR glasses “T1,” which, surprisingly, work with iPhone, iPad, and even Mac.
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The smallest-ever Assistant Smart Display was announced by Lenovo in 2019, and it’s now getting a successor with the Smart Clock 2 that adds an optional wireless charging dock.
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Lenovo announced today a new line of accessories called Lenovo Go, which includes chargers, mice and keyboards, and audio products designed for a “hybrid workforce.” One of the products that caught everybody’s eyes is the new Lenovo Go Wireless Multi-Device Mouse that charges wirelessly.
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Lenovo has unveiled three new upcoming USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 accessories coming early next year including the ThinkPad Thunderbolt 3 Dock. Apple’s new MacBook Pro relies on USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 for all I/O, and Lenovo’s upcoming Thunderbolt 3 Dock is joining a still small market of similar accessories.
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Apple’s iPad continues to lead the tablet market, according to new data from IDC, but its marketshare has dropped a few points year-over-year, and the overall market for tablets saw negative growth, based on units shipped globally. That’s according to second quarter 2015 unit shipments and marketshare over the same quarter a year ago, as Apple shipped 10.9 million units versus 13.3 million units during the second quarter of 2014. While the iPad continues to lead in the tablet space, IDC’s data shows Apple’s market share dropping nearly 3 points from 27.7% to 24.5% …
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Apple reported the largest profit ever recorded by a public company in the holiday quarter, mostly driven by sales of 74 million iPhones with an average selling price of $687. According to Cannacord, this meant Apple captured 93% of handset smartphone profits. Perhaps more staggering is that it claims Apple dominated on similar levels across the entire of 2014 — with 79% of mobile device profits.
The analyst expects continued growth for the iPhone for the next few users, with an estimated 650 million iPhone users by the end of 2018.
Following on the heels of a record-breaking quarter for Apple, Strategy Analytics has crunched the numbers and crowned Apple the king of the smartphone vendors for Q4 2014—or rather, one of the kings. It seems the Cupertino company managed to tie rival Samsung for the title.
Both companies shipped 74.5 million handsets during the quarter, though Samsung still outsold Apple in terms of the annual total by a hefty margin. Those quarterly sales gave both companies an equal marketshare of 19.6%.
IDC has finalized the preliminary PC shipment numbers released last month, confirming that the Mac hit its highest ever share of the U.S. market at 13%. Apple regained the place in lost to Lenovo back in April, moving back into third place behind HP at 28% and Dell with 24%.
Apple reported year-on-year growth of more than 20% in its Q4 earnings report, with Mac sales of 5.52M. In a subsequent interview with the WSJ, Tim Cook asked:
Would you rather own the Mac business or any of the Windows OEMs?
We learned recently that Apple’s share of the worldwide tablet market fell markedly from 29.2% last year to 22.8% this year, thanks to both falling sales and an increase in the number of competitor tablets, especially at the low end. The news was not all bad, however, with U.S. data showing that the iPad continues to dominate web usage, accounting for almost 80% of North American tablet traffic on the web, leaving its three largest competitors all down in single digits.
If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, then the designers at Lenovo must adore the iPhone 6.
Samsung has caught a lot of flak for—and been taken to court over—some of its iPhone-like smartphone design choices, but nothing the Korean company has ever produced comes close to the shamelessly derivative Lenovo S90. Not only does the S90 seem to take more than a few design cues from Apple’s latest smartphone, but its entire advertising campaign seems to be a carbon copy of Apple’s own.
Take, for example, the image above (found on Weibo, via PhoneArena). If it looks a little familiar to you, that might be because it’s the exact same thing you’ll find on Apple’s iPhone webpage. There are about ten of these images total, and nearly all of them look like they were ripped right from Apple’s website.
Following releasing its second quarter data for tablet shipments worldwide, IDC today released its Q2 2014 report for smartphone shipments during the three month period that ended in June. The numbers line up with Apple’s fiscal Q3 earnings call that took place earlier this month where the company reported iPhone sales of 35.1 million units for the quarter. With 295.3 million units shipped total during Q2, and consumers anticipating a new iPhone this fall, IDC notes that both Samsung and Apple lost share to the smaller Chinese manufacturers:
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Lenovo’s $2.91 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google is still pending regulatory approval, however it looks like the company is already mapping out a new strategy. Despite being one of the world’s largest PC makers, Lenovo is halting the development of Windows tablets under 10 inches in size and migrating its remaining inventory to markets like Brazil, China and Japan where there’s more of a need for low-cost slates.
Apple, in turn, has had a huge success with the 7.9-inch iPad Mini which quickly became one of its best sellers after its introduction almost 2 years ago.
Photo: ibtimes.com
After warning earlier this month that Q2 didn’t “look too good,” Samsung today released its earnings preview for the second quarter of 2014. The South Korean company reported an operating profit of $7.1 billion (7.2 trillion won), missing analyst estimates of $8 billion (8.1 trillion won). This comes out to a 24 percent drop year over year (via Bloomberg).
Both Samsung and Apple have slipped in smartphone marketshare globally during the first quarter of 2014 according to the latest numbers from research firm Strategy Analytics. While global smartphone shipments grew 33 percent to 285 million units in Q1 compared to 213.9 million in the same quarter last year, Apple and Samsung collectively dropped from over 50 percent of the market to 47 percent. The report cites strong growth of “second-tier smartphone brands” such as Huwaei and Lenovo and lack of entry-level devices in markets abroad from Apple as the main contributors to slowed growth for Samsung and Apple. As for Apple on its own:
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PC shipment estimates for the first quarter of 2014 are out from both IDC and Gartner, and as usual the two companies disagree. IDC shows Apple falling to 4th place in the U.S., behind Lenovo, while Gartner has the company remaining in 3rd place just ahead of Lenovo.
Both agree, however, that Apple’s U.S. market share has fallen somewhat year-on-year, IDC showing a drop from 11 to 10.3 percent, while Gartner’s numbers show a decline from 11.5 to 10.8 percent. The differences are relatively small, however, with both sets of numbers show that around 1.5 million Macs were sold in the first quarter of the year.
Apple’s share of the global PC market has mostly climbed year-on-year over the past decade.
Figures released today by Gartner show that the iPad remained the best-selling tablet of 2013, selling more than the combined sales of the four runners-up.
Apple’s strong fourth quarter helped it to maintain the top position in the market in 2013 […]
Apple’s tablets remain strong in the higher end of the market and, Apple’s approach will continue to force vendors to compete with full ecosystem offerings, even in the smaller-screen market as the iPad mini sees a greater share …
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Strategy Analytics reported its tablet figures for 2013 and unsurprisingly, iPad remains in first place with 33.9% marketshare. Marketshare growth has dipped slightly, however, year-on-year as iPad accounted for 35.7% of tablet sales in Q4 2012.
In terms of unit growth, Apple rose 14% compared with the year-ago quarter. The second-place position goes to Samsung, with 17.7% marketshare (although this means annual growth was more than 80%). Apple sold just under double Samsung’s shipments for the period, so even though Apple’s growth has slowed, there is still a significant gap between first and second place.
Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang spoke to CNNMoney about his company’s recent acquisition of Motorola from Google today. In the interview, Yang was asked if his goal for Lenovo was to eventually catch up with more established competitors in the mobile space, such as Apple and Samsung.
With Motorola, Lenovo will be the No. 3 smartphone maker worldwide. Do you think your company can catch up with Apple or Samsung, who are still far ahead of you? And how long will it take?
Definitely, over time. Our mission is to surpass them.
Yang says that Lenovo’s smartphones will probably be released under the Motorola banner, a smart branding decision given Motorola’s existing name recognition and popularity in the U.S. and other countries.
The branding choice combined with the infrastructure and personnel from the Moto buyout could help propel the company to the top of the market, but it will be a hard road to the level of success that Yang is after—especially with Apple and Samsung already locked in a fierce, years-long battle for the top spot.
Throughout the interview, Yang continued to note that several decisions still need to be made with regards to how phones will be branded in certain countries and whether the Lenovo name will be associated with Motorola at all. It will certainly be interesting to see how Yang uses the Motorola brand to push Lenovo forward.
With the new Mac Pro capable of powering three 4k displays, new MacBook Pros with Thunderbolt 2 and 4K HDMI 1.4 in many hands and Apple taking its sweet time to release its own monitor, an affordable 4k display is something many people are searching out right now. ASUS, at the Consumer Electronics Show, has just unveiled a new 28-inch 4k monitor that will retail for just $799. Currently, ASUS’ 31.5-inch 4k offering comes in at over $3,000, and while the price difference between the two is major, there doesn’t appear to be a gap in features (via Engadget).
ASUS’s 28-inch 4k monitor will pack a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160, just like its larger sibling. As far as ports go, we’re looking at one DisplayPort and one MHL-capable HDMI port. The monitor has a fully rotatable design, as well as a quick 1ms response time.
Be sure to follow 9to5Toys to keep up with the best gear and deals on the web: Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+. Also, check out our updated Daily Deals page (for iPad/iPhone) featuring the day’s best deals from across major US retailers.
Today’s can’t miss deals:
Cord cutters: Winegard FlatWave Thin HDTV Indoor Antenna w/ Built-In Amplifier: $23 shipped
Fitbit Flex wireless activity and sleep tracker as low as $68 (Reg. $100)
Sennheiser Around Ear Headphone $50, Audio-Technica Noise-Canceling Headphones $44 shipped
Lenovo Enhanced Multimedia Remote with backlit keyboard N5902: $26 shipped
Other great deals from today:
The best deals that are still alive:
Total revenue from all Android tablets combined has for the first time exceeded Apple’s revenue for its iPad sales, according to IDC data crunched by Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty.
“For the first time,” she wrote in a note to clients Friday, “Android devices accounted for a greater share of the market in revenue terms than iOS. Android revenue share reached 46.2% in 3Q13, for the first time exceeding iPad share of 45.6%. Android’s unit share grew to 66.7% from 58.5% a year ago, largely driven by Samsung and Lenovo, while iPad share declined to 29.7% from 40.2%” …
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Actor Ashton Kutcher has joined Lenovo as a product engineer. Kutcher’s experience in engineering includes… basically nothing, although he did play Steve Jobs in the 2013 biopic Jobs, so that has to count for something, right? Right?
Kutcher’s first job at Lenovo will be using his celebrity status to market the company’s new “Yoga” tablet—an obvious first step for any aspiring product engineer (or, you know, celebrity endorser). The tablet, which Kutcher presumably had some “engineering” input on, is a flat aluminum enclosure with a rounded base that houses the power button. The Yoga is an attempt at an original body design, and it certainly wins points in that category as long as you only compare it to other tablets. When compared to other electronics, however, the originality quickly fades. The thing basically looks like an upside-down Apple Wireless Keyboard.
Clearly Kutcher’s time as Steve Jobs informed his sense of product design and influenced the hard work he did “engineering” the Yoga. We look forward to seeing what other innovative and original ideas Kutcher “engineers” during his time at Lenovo.
IDC is out today with its latest report tracking worldwide tablet shipments, reporting that total shipments have experienced a sequential decline during Q2 at the expense of Apple and the iPad. Apple already announced that it had sold 14.6 million iPads during the quarter, a significant drop from the 17 million it sold in the year ago quarter, but today IDC gives us some insight into where that puts Apple in its lead over Samsung as the top tablet vendor.
Apple was able to pick up 32.4% of the market during Q2, continuing its lead as the top tablet manufacturer, but dropping from the 60.3% of the market it had in Q2 last year. While Apple’s tablet shipments are clearly suffering from lack of new product announcements this year, it’s also losing share to Samsung and others. IDC reports 277% year over year growth for Samsung, giving it 18% of the market with 8.1 million units shipped during Q2. All of the top 3 vendors– Apple, Samsung, and ASUS– experienced a drop compared to Q1 2013, but the Android tablet makers have experienced significant growth compared to Apple since last year.
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The New York Post claims that Ashton Kutcher, who plays Steve Jobs in the biopic Jobs, is close to signing a $10M deal to appear in a series of ads for … Windows PC maker Lenovo.
Jobs, which will apparently be promoted by a rather psychedelic poster, is due to open on August 16th.
