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Americans use smartphones more than computers, and other news for Feb. 12, 2014
Steve Jobs' famous prediction that we are moving into a Post-PC era has come to pass according to a report from Nielsen [via Engadget]. In its most recent Digital Consumer Report, the research group found that a whopping 65 percent of Americans owned a smartphone in 2013 and that smartphones are now more common than games consoles and digital cable TV, at 46 percent and 54 percent adoption, respectively. Furthermore, Americans now spend an average of 34 hours per month using mobile apps and mobile web browsers, but only 27 hours a month getting online with their PCs. Other interesting stats from the report reveal that 29 percent of Americans own a tablet -- up from just 5 percent two years ago -- and the average American owns four tech devices. In other news: Thirty years ago, Jobs buried a Lisa mouse in a time capsule at the Aspen International Design Conference in 1983. It has now been dug up. Cnet has video of the dig. Mac (and PC) Firefox users could soon see ads in the browser. Mozilla is thinking of adding sponsored tiles on its new tab page. The sponsored tiles would be a source of revenue for the nonprofit and would only be shown to new users until they have browsed enough to populate the tabs page with tiles that are relevant to them based on their browsing history.
If an iPad's a computer, then Apple is the world's PC shipment leader
Is an iPad a portable media device? A tablet computer? Something entirely "post-PC"? The answer, of course, is "it depends who you ask." Let's go ahead and define the parent category for iPads (and other tablets like the Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy Tab and Google Nexus) as "mobile screens that run a touch-centric OS, don't ship with a hardware keyboard, are larger than a mainstream smartphone and don't offer telephony as a core feature." Call that a tablet, or a "pad" if you must to distinguish it from legacy tablet PCs and the potential fridge toasters of Microsoft's Surface devices. If that's the bucket we're talking about, some reasonable sales comparisons are available. The fourth quarter of 2012 saw Samsung ship 7.6 million pads, and Amazon shipped 4.6 million, according to a report released today by research firm Canalys. With Apple's reported sales of 22.9 million iPads, it's pretty clear who's leading the category. Canalys's report doesn't leave it at that, however. With a wave of the marketshare wand, the report combines 22.9 million iPads with Apple's reported sales of 4.1 million Macs in the quarter. Accordingly, the firm puts Apple's total PC sales at 27 million for the quarter, handily crushing second-place HP's 15 million units shipped. In fact, if you admit the iPad to the PC club, Apple's quarter put it above 20 percent of the global PC share for the first time. From October 1 to December 31, in that 13-week quarter -- given the looser, flatter, touchable definition of a PC that Canalys is proposing -- one out of every six PCs sold worldwide was actually an iPad. I wish to take nothing away from Apple's achievements with the iPad. Selling 23 million of anything is really rather tough, and a jar of salsa's a far cry from a device with an average selling price $150 higher than a ticket from New York to LA. But just because consumers may be choosing the iPad as an alternative to buying a laptop or a computer doesn't necessarily mean they should be counted as members of the same taxon. Both by form and function, the iPad and its fellow "pad" products should really be considered post-PC devices distinct from PCs and also from smartphones -- they don't require a keyboard or mouse, they don't run legacy Win32 or Mac apps, they don't usually make phone calls. And they surely don't sell the way PCs do. [via NYT Bits]
Apple sold 645,000 devices per day in the 2nd quarter
Blogger Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZDNet did the math and came up with some staggering statistics about Apple's hardware sales during the last quarter. As we heard during the Q2 2012 earnings call yesterday, Apple sold 35.1 million iPhones, 11.8 million iPads, 7.7 million iPods and 4 million Macs. That total of 58.6 million pieces of hardware, divided by the 91 days in the financial quarter ending March 31, 2012, means that Apple sold an average of 645,000 devices per day. Of those 645,000 units, over 385,000 of them were iPhones and about 130,000 of them were iPads. Kingsley-Hughes also played off the announcement during yesterday's call when Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that the company has sold 67 million iPads so far, and that it took Apple 24 years to sell that many Macs. In 42 quarters, notes Kingsley-Hughes, Apple has sold 344.3 million iPods, but in half that time the company has sold 218.1 million iPhones. It's also obvious from Kingsley-Hughes's almost-obsessive charting of cumulative and quarterly sales of Apple's devices that Apple has "undoubtedly made the transition to being a true post-PC company." As he notes when discussing the chart below, "If we add Macs into the equation, they are barely a blip on the post-PC landscape." It's a fascinating visual look at the changing product mix at Apple and how it is has completely moved away from dependence on the Mac as a primary revenue source.
Andy Ihnatko on the iPad as his main mobile computer
Andy Ihnatko wrote an article for Macworld UK in which he talks about living in a post-PC world with the iPad as his main computing device. He discusses how the iPad has changed from a content consumption to a content creation device, thanks to some bold developers willing to push the iPad to its limits. His most salient point comes at the end when he questions the future of Apple and the 11-MacBook Air, which is almost the same size and does almost the same things as the iPad. He writes, "I don't see doom for the 11-inch MacBook. But I do think whatever Apple does to this Mac will tell us a lot about how the company wishes to define computing in general, and Mac OS specifically, for the next five years." [Via Daring Fireball]
Canalys: Apple leading PC maker in Q4 2011, if you count iPads
Best quarter in Apple's history? Check. Retaking the smartphone crown from Samsung? Check. How about becoming the world's largest PC manufacturer? If you're Canalys and you factor iPads into the equation, then yes, another check. Per the research firm, "client PCs" (which include "desktops, netbooks, notebooks and tabs") grew by 16 percent to hit 120 million in Q4, from which Apple's 20 million units (15 million iPads + 5 million Macs) grabbed the leading 17 percent share. Cupertino's followed by HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer in that order -- all of whom, save for Lenovo, saw their piece of the PC pie shrink. Not only did their slices shrink, but without slates the entire tart was .4 percent smaller than last year -- meaning that all of the growth in "client PC" segment was due to tablets. With that kind of statistical precedence Windows 8 can't come soon enough, right Stevie B?
Netbooks slip under tablet shipments, achieve has-bEeen status
Still unconvinced we're headed towards a post-PC future? We can at least conclusively say we've entered a post-netbook present, as Q2 2011 marks the first time their numbers have been eclipsed by tablets, according to ABI Research. 13.6 million slates were shipped in the quarter, besting the 7.3 million the diminutive laptops were able to clock in. When compared to the prior quarter, that works out to 112 percent or 7.2 million increase (!) for the former, and a 1.1 million decline for the latter. Cost apparently isn't a driving factor, as the firm notes that tablets pack an average price of $600 -- nearly double that of their trackpad-toting brethren. Oh, and in case you were wondering, 68 percent of tablets shipped were of Cupertino's flavor. More cold hard facts await you in the PR after the break.
IBM exec says PC is 'going the way of the typewriter,' kills our birthday buzz
Well, this is awkward. As the IBM PC celebrates its 30th birthday today, one of its original designers is already mulling the end of its reign. In a blog post penned this week, Mark Dean, IBM's CTO for the Middle East and Africa, reflected on the dawn of the desktop era and looked forward to its seemingly inevitable demise. "When I helped design the PC, I didn't think I'd live long enough to witness its decline. But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they're no longer at the leading edge of computing. They're going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs." Dean added that he's glad his company sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2005, as part of a move that, according to him, allowed IBM to position itself at the forefront of the "post-PC" era. No word yet on when the funeral rites will be held, but you can read the full post at the source link, below.
Apple turns iOS 'PC Free' with OTA updates and wireless sync
Love your iPhone, but hate all of the PC-based tethering it entails? Apple has some good news: the company is taking its "post-PC" stance a step further, letting you activate your smartphone straight out of the box without syncing it to a computer. Also big news is the addition of over-the-air updates, which will let you receive changes without plugging the handset in. And some big news for music fans: users will be able to sync their iTunes libraries over WiFi connections with the update. %Gallery-125446%
Google preps Android for its corporate interview, adds new encryption and security measures
With over 300,000 devices activated per day, Android's clearly firing on all cylinders from a consumer standpoint, but much like the famed Cheez-It wheel, some would argue that the OS isn't quite mature enough for unabashed enterprise use. Being a corporation itself, El Goog's obviously been toiling around the clock to change that, and it's taking three major strides today. An updated version of its Google Apps Device Policy enables employees to secure a lost or stolen Android 2.2+ device by locating it on a map, ringing the device, and resetting the device PIN or password remotely via the new My Devices website. Furthermore, Apps admins now have an option in the control panel to "Encrypt Data on Device," which will now include requiring encrypted storage on Android 3.0 tablets. Finally, Google Apps Lookup is acting as a type of internal blackbook, allowing users to easily sift through colleagues and contact them through one form or another. So... hired?
MS exec says tablet computing may not be 'persistent'
Microsoft's view of computing in the post-pc era is quite different than Apple's. Apple anticipates the tablet will temporarily fill the void between the smartphone and the computer. Eventually, it will replace the computer for many users. Microsoft, on the other hand, questions the longevity of the tablet market and is slow to embrace this emerging market after its earlier, failed UMPC Origami project. Speaking at a luncheon in Sydney, Australia, Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, said "Today you can see tablets and pads and other things that are starting to live in the space in between (a PC and a smartphone). Personally, I don't know whether that space will be a persistent one or not." The future for Microsoft lies in connectivity of devices that does not tie to you a computer sitting on a desk. The computer will be "in the room" and controlled by a wireless controller similar to the Kinect. This wait-and-see attitude towards the tablet is further evident in Microsoft's current tablet strategy. The Redmond company pushed HP's Windows 7-powered slate in 2010, but the device failed to attract customers. Future tablets will be based on Windows 8 and will not debut until 2012 at the earliest. While Microsoft waits until 2012 to release a tablet competitor, Apple will have sold over 30 million iPads in 2011 alone.
Departing Microsoft software architect warns of post-PC world
After announcing last week that he would be stepping down as Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie has posted an essay where he warns that the end is near for the Redmond company's way of doing business. Despite all of the businesses that Microsoft has gotten into over the past two decades, only two account for the bulk of the company's enormous profits: Windows and Office. According to Ozzie, these platforms are getting too complex to build and use. This is likely to spur both to move toward simpler, more appliance-like systems, such as mobile phones and tablets. While Ozzie praises the progress that Microsoft has made with online services like Live, Office 365, SharePoint and others, he warns that many opportunities have been squandered, especially in mobile. Ozzie highlights the success of other companies in agile innovation in a rapidly changing marketplace. While Apple, Facebook, and Google are never mentioned by name, those are clearly the examples that Ozzie thinks Microsoft should be following. [via Electronista]
