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UK insurers detail the data they'll want from driverless cars
As car makers outfit their vehicles with more autonomous features, insurance providers are carefully weighing up how to cover owners of driverless cars while figuring out exactly who should be liable in an accident. The UK government agrees it's a major priority and has already laid down a common-sense framework to guide discussions, but the Association of British Insurers (ABI) has today published a specific list of rules that providers believe will best protect everyone involved.
ABI: Apple and Samsung have over 55 percent of the smartphone space, 90 percent of its money-making
Tech finance sleuth Horace Dediu was clearly astute when he determined that it's really Apple and Samsung's smartphone world, and we just live in it. ABI Research just estimated that, combined, the iPhone and Galaxy creators were responsible for more than 90 percent of the profits in the first quarter of 2012 -- mostly through carving out more than 55 percent of the total market share for themselves. We already know that only a handful of companies, like HTC, were making any kind of profit at the same time; ABI, however, has underscored just how much of a mountain Nokia has to climb to reclaim its glory days. For Nokia to completely make up for Symbian's decline, shipments of Lumia phones will have to jump a staggering 5,000 percent this year. The Finnish phone maker is certainly hopeful, but with the 80 percent growth rate in China mostly being led by locals like Huawei and ZTE, that's no mean feat.
ABI: Galaxy Note and other phablets will ship at 208 million a year by 2015, blot out the sun
Some of us aren't convinced that phablets will last as more than a short-term success. That hasn't stopped ABI Research from predicting that enough of the size XXL smartphones will sell to block all natural sunlight. The study team sees phones like the Galaxy Note and Optimus Vu as just the start, with help from Huawei, HTC and others leading to a crescendo of 208 million phablets shipped in 2015 alone. Of course, as with many of these predictions, the estimate is based on a little bit of knowledge and a lot of speculation about the market's tastes: the researchers have a hunch that the values of navigation, reading and the web will steer us to big screens, and they're including devices just over 4.6 inches like the One X or the upcoming Galaxy S III. There's a bit of evidence to support the claims -- Samsung sold five million Notes in five months, and HTC has seen some brisk One X sales -- but that's still no guarantee that regular-sized smartphones will have to fight in the shade.
More than 70 percent of mobile users pay little for apps, big spenders make up for us cheapskates
We know smartphone and tablet owners like to buy games. But if you go by a new ABI exploration of user habits, most of us aren't buying much of anything. More than 70 percent of the crowd spends little to nothing on mobile apps, dragging down the average of $14 spent per month among paying customers to a median of $7.50 when you include the skinflints. As you might imagine, that leaves the remaining 30 percent making up for a lot of slack: three percent of downloaders represent a fifth of all the spending in the mobile app world. Researchers suggest that developers focus on a long-term strategy of freemium pricing or utility apps to get more customers buying, but we imagine that writing more games about catapulting frustrated birds might just work out on its own.
Nokia still ahead of Apple in smartphone sales, according to Gartner
Whoa there, Apple, we know you're starting to feel pretty darn good about besting Nokia and Samsung for the title of world's largest smartphone manufacturer, but hold on for just one minute. Gartner has a different idea of how the numbers game really works, and its interpretation makes all the difference in determining who earns the title. Rather than measuring the number of units each manufacturer ships out to the distributors (as IDC, ABI Research and Strategy Analytics do), Gartner gauges its numbers by how many devices were actually sold to end users instead. Thus, Nokia still keeps its title -- for one more quarter, anyways. The firm is confident Espoo won't be the top smartphone contender for much longer, thanks to the company's grim Q3 outlook as it continues to await the transition to Windows Phone. But hey, there's always Q4, right? Right? Check out the full press release after the break.
iPad held 85% market share in 2010 according to ABI Research
ABI Research's 2010 analysis of the media tablet market reveals the iPad grabbed a respectable 85 percent market share. Trailing far behind the iPad was the Samsung Galaxy Tab with an eight percent market share and the Archos Internet tablets with a mere two percent market share. There three vendors accounted for 95 percent of all media tablets sold in 2010. These figures are not surprising considering Apple's jump on the competition. Launched in early 2010, the iPad kicked off this tablet revolution and other manufacturers have struggled to catch up. According to ABI, tablets will continue to hit retail shelves in large numbers. The market research company predicts manufacturers will ship 40 to 50 million tablets worldwide in 2011. With an increase in the number of Android tablets hitting the market and the debut of a dedicated tablet version of Android, the iPad 2 will finally have some serious competition. Though Android will make inroads into the tablet market, the iPad 2 is expected to keep the #1 spot for the next few years. Hopefully, we will get a glimpse of these industry leading sales figures later today during Apple's earnings conference call.
ABI Research predicts Blu-ray players in 18% of TV owning households next year
After successfully predicting shocking trends like Blu-ray player prices heading downwards and the PS3's continued install base lead on other players, analysts at ABI Research see 62.5 million Blu-ray players shipping next year. Analyst Mike Inouye sees this as a part of the growth potential of TV-centric devices related to price declines, plus new technology arriving like larger displays, internet access and 3D. With market penetration (in TV owning households) expected to rise from 7% in 2009 to 18% next year, we're wondering what's holding the format back from even more growth. Prices are relatively low now, full featured players are easy to find, and HDTVs are rapidly taking over. Is that other 82% happy with upscaled DVDs, movies on cable or on demand, internet downloading/streaming, or are we just being impatient?
ABI Research sez set-top-box shipments to peak in 2012
Ah, the infamous 2012. The latest batch of research forecasting out to that fateful year comes from ABI, who is proudly proclaiming that global set-top-box shipments will peak in just over three years. The data includes STBs that pass along satellite, cable, or DTT signals, and the impending decrease is primarily pegged to the transition to all-digital broadcasting. To be frank, we can't say we entirely agree or even understand the logic there, but we can get along with the assertion that STB functionality is apt to become more tightly integrated in HDTVs / HTPCs in the future. Personally, we still feel that there's a lot of life left globally in the dedicated set-top-box, but we all know it's just a matter of time before we're all getting HDD implants in our skulls to log missed episodes of The Office.
Analyst sees tough going for tru2way
Despite the apparent tru2way lovefest between cable ops and electronics manufacturers, ABI Research isn't convinced. Add together the cable operator's unwillingness to forecast exact tru2way deployments, and a lack of focus on interoperability testing portend a future where customers can't be sure their equipment will work across different cable systems. Without that, electronics manufacturers could drag their feet supporting it, as has occurred with CableCard, leaving operators (and customers) with expensive and distinctly unglamorous set-top boxes. Despite all that, the report predicts half of all cable customers will have tru2way by 2013, but it won't be easy.
Analyst: PS3 to lead Blu-ray installed base until 2013
Blu-ray still has a lot of convincing to do before ABI believes it's the future, mostly because of upconverting DVD players. According to the analyst's figures, while 35% of DVD players sold today (that low?) upconvert, 60% will by 2013 (again, that low?). The state of Blu-ray hardware going forward isn't to their liking either, with principal analyst Steve Wilson stating "studios better hope that people are playing movies on their Playstations. Otherwise there's very little installed base." With PS3s accounting for 85% of Blu-ray players in 2008, ABI doesn't see things evening out until 2013, with high prices for dedicated players keeping sales volume lower than studios would like. Of course, ABI also saw combo drives as the next big thing in 2012, so we wouldn't return all of our high def discs just yet.
ABI looks in the crystal ball, sees lots of HTPCs
Break out the salt, because ABI Research is making predictions on the complexion of your HT rig in 2013. Considering how long we've been hearing about convergence of PCs and HT, the prediction of a rise in HTPCs isn't exactly going out on a limb. But give the researchers credit, as they've got the guts to put a number on the trend -- 25 million, to be exact. ABI predicts that the path of PC + extenders will need to undergo some refinement before they really take off and that full-blown custom HTPC rigs will remain a fringe market. We've felt the sting on both of those counts. We know things will get better integrated, but we think that vendors will have to deliver entire end-to-end solutions for the HTPC to really take off en masse; "mix and match" approaches that rely on conformity between vendors doesn't have a great track record, or simply leave consumers baffled. A lot of improvement can happen in five years, and we don't want to see ABI's figure to represent 25 million unhappy consumers. [Image courtesy ShamanCrystal]
Analyst predicts combo drives to account for 2/3 of PC drive sales in 2012
The only thing better than one analyst's opinion on the format war is...yet another analyst's opinion on the format war! ABI Research chimes in, expecting the currently high-priced hybrid HD DVD / Blu-ray PC drives to match price with Blu-ray-only drive in 2009, and exceed their sales in 2010. Also seen as not for long on this mortal coil: dedicated high definition decoding chipsets. ABI expects Intel and AMD's integrated chipsets to have more than enough horsepower for HD codecs in upcoming PCs. ABI has previously brought us predictions including HD DVD leading the way in 2006 and HDTV to Media Center PC connections tripling this year, so we'll wait and see how this one works out.
Micropayments look small, but are stacking up
A new study by ABI research estimates that the combined revenues of console micropayments will total more than $833 million by 2011. While $833M is a hefty pocket of change, that's really all it is; pocket change. Consider that software sales alone generated $6.5 billion just last year. So by ABI's calculations, four years from now, total micropayment transactions will have grossed less than 13% of one year's worth of software sales.Still, micropayment revenue is almost pure profit (split between distributors, publishers, and developers). The content is inexpensive to produce, and is often created pre-release (heck, EA's basically been selling "cheat codes"). So while micropayment revenue might look insignificant compared to software sales, the mechanism is still pulling the change out of our pockets (which adds up) and dropping it into the industry's hands. The exchange is quick and cheap, and likely to make a few company heads even more obscenely rich over the next four years.
Questions abound about Zune vs. iPod Survey
TUAW's nerdy (yet surprisingly well off) little sister Blogging Stocks has a great roundup of articles regarding a recent ABI Research survey that purportedly showed 58% of consumers would choose a Microsoft Zune over an iPod. In the study, people were shown an image of the Zune, and then asked how likely they would be to purchase the device over another music player. According to Blogging Stocks, ABI mentions only that it compared the picture of the Zune to "other competitive media players," with no specific mention that the iPod was actually given as an option. As soon as I saw the news about this, I was immediately suspicious. The fact that Apple essentially has control over the MP3 player market combined with early reports from multiple tech journalists that the Zune is flawed in more ways than one, led many to believe that perhaps the ABI hadn't been truly upfront when conducting their survey and reporting the results. I too would choose a Zune over, say, a Creative device; it would probably be a neat little device to hack; but that doesn't mean that I, nor likely 80% of the population would choose the brown device from Redmond over our beloved iPods.
