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Annual revenue per iOS user estimated at $150
We all know that Apple's iOS devices are popular. Surveys and analyst predictions place Apple at or near the top in the smartphone, tablet and media player market. That's great for headlines, but what does it mean for Apple's bottom line? Horace Dediu of Asymco did some fancy figuring and calculated that the annual revenue for each iOS owner is US$150. This is based on 180 million current iOS users with 200 million iOS devices. Given the astronomical growth of the iOS platform, this installed user base could quickly climb to 500 million users, a lofty figure that would provide Apple with $74 billion per year in recurring revenue. Mac sales are also climbing and could easily reach 100 million active users who generate $24 billion a year in revenue. Combine the Mac users with the iOS users and Apple could pull in a cool $95 billion per year in revenues from OS X and iOS devices alone. These numbers are a conservative estimate as Dediu does not factor in sales from iTunes, iPods, accessories and software. It also assumes a very generous 3.5 year life span for iOS devices and 5.5 years for Mac hardware.
Acer lowers forecast for tablet, notebook shipments, blames limping European economy
Acer had high hopes for 2011, but it looks like its expectations may have been a bit too optimistic. Today, the company issued revised forecasts for shipments of its tablet PCs, predicting to move between 2.5 and three million units by year's end -- down from the five to seven million it projected earlier. Acer chairman J.T. Wang expects current quarter notebook shipments to dip by ten percent from their Q1 levels, before stabilizing or slightly increasing during Q3. According to the new-look firm, these downward revisions are largely due to lagging economic growth in Europe, though its Asian and US markets "remain healthy." European inventories are expected to decrease to normal levels by the end of this month, which should allow the company's market share to rebound during the second half of this year. It's certainly not a dire outlook, but it's probably not the start new Corporate President Jim Wong was looking to get off to, either.
Shocker! Gamer behavior is actually quite predictable
Isn't it curious how you always crack open a beer before settling in for some GTA? Or how you tend to put an anxious hand over your wallet when logging onto PSN? No soldier, it is not curious. Not at all. But this is: Researchers at North Carolina State University claim they've found a way to predict your in-game behavior with "up to 80 percent accuracy." After analyzing the decision-making of 14,000 World of Warcraft players, they noticed that different players prefer different types of achievements. These preferred achievements clump together into statistically significant groups, known as "cliques", even if they have nothing obvious in common. So a WoW player who likes to improve their unarmed combat skills also, for some psychological reason, tends to want points for world travel. What's more, the researchers believe that clique-spotting can be exploited outside the rather specific world of WoW, in which case their method could prove lucrative to game designers, online retailers and pretty much anyone with an interest in predicting your next move. Want to know more? Then we predict you'll click the PR after the break.
Michael Dell: Android tablets will overtake iPad
Michael Dell is bullish on Android tablets [registration required]. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published today, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Dell Inc. predicted Android tablets would one day overtake Apple's iPad as the leading platform in the tablet market. Dell cited Android's success in the smartphone market to support his theory. "If you look at 18 months ago, Android phones were like, 'What is that?' And now there are more Android phones than iPhones," Dell said. "I don't see any reason why the same won't occur with Android tablets." At the moment, Android faces the Herculean task of catching up to the device that defined a new class of consumer electronic. Unlike the iPhone, which entered an already healthy mobile phone marketplace with well-established rivals, the iPad set the benchmark for tablet computing. A recent report from IDC suggests the iPad represents 83 percent of the rapidly growing tablet market. IDC expects Apple to continue its dominance by winning up to 80 percent of tablet sales in 2011. The iPad's most well-reviewed rival, the Motorola Xoom, has done little to sink Apple's staggering dominance despite its flashy marketing campaign and tablet-specific flavor of Android. One estimate from Deutsche Bank suggests Motorola has sold only 100,000 units of its flagship tablet. Similarly, Samsung has been disappointed with sales of its Galaxy Tab and its sales of about 2 million units. Dell, of course, offers its own family of tablets called the Streak. The 5- and 7-inch tablets, powered by Android, were met with generally negative reviews and are widely considered flops. Dell is expected to release its 10-inch Streak Pro, in both Windows and Android varieties, later this year. Although Dell claims to be doubling down on Android, the CEO, who also expressed being surprised by the sudden rise of the iPad, may also be hedging his bets by releasing tablets on two competing software platforms. [via CNET]
IDC fails to learn from previous mistakes, issues 2015 smartphone predictions
The stat guardians at IDC are among the most reliable sources for keeping track of the latest developments in the smartphone market, but we've got to say their forecasts haven't always benefited from the same accuracy. It's with this disclaimer that we present you the world of 2015 as seen through the IDC prism. In just four years' time, says the data, Windows Phone 7 (or whatever version it reaches by then) will have ascended to occupy a fifth of the market and second spot overall behind Android, whose leading position is expected to stabilize somewhere around the 45 percent mark. Apple and RIM are projected to hold steady with shares close to where they are today. It has to be humbling for the IDC, which predicted Symbian would continue to dominate all the way into 2013, to now have to foretell of its almost complete extinction (a mere 0.2 percent) and total irrelevance in the smartphone market. Alas, while the new prediction sounds very reasonable today, four years of unknown unknowns is a mighty long time to try and forecast through, and we have a feeling we'll be looking back and chuckling at this within a few short months -- probably (hopefully!) in the midst of a massive webOS revival.
The bloody aftermath: RuneScape's Valentine's Day Massacre in numbers
Unless you had a really bad date that ended with fire and regret, "Valentine's Day" and "massacre" are typically not paired together. Of course this doesn't apply to RuneScape, which loves to break the rules and keep us guessing. RuneScape recently hosted a Valentine's Day Massacre as a tongue-in-cheek way to celebrate both the holiday and a PvP zone called the Wilderness returning to the game, and by all accounts, it was a huge success. Jagex reports that 625,347 players met their untimely end during the event, which spanned 48 blood-soaked hours. Before the massacre began, the company ran a contest to see who could predict the kill count, and one player carried away the top prize with a guess of 623,500. For anyone else who participated in the slaughter, Jagex is selling a limited edition t-shirt commemorating the event. Available in red, white, or black in the Jagex store, the tee says "I brought the Wilderness back" and can be purchased for $13.00.
Steelers win Madden 11 Super Bowl simulation
Computers can be used to calculate all sorts of truly helpful data ... or they can be used to simulate the Super Bowl. If you're going to use processing power to predict the outcome of a sporting event, then you'd better be pretty darned accurate if you hope to maintain any semblance of a reasonable use of life (it still takes human people to run, recap and even report on -- hi there! -- the simulation). EA Sports' Madden games have at least been that, accurately calling the winner of six of the last seven Super Bowls. This year, Madden 11 sees the Pittsburgh Steelers defeating the Green Bay Packers 24-20 in Super Bowl XLV, which sounds like a good enough guess. But now, do you put money on that? (After the break, delve into the video highlights and box score ... of the simulated game.) Also vying for "reasonability" will be this Thursday's Madden Bowl XVII (wait -- there have already been sixteen of these?). The annual tournament of NFL players gamers whose seasons have been reduced to playing as themselves will be broadcast live on ESPN3 (on your Xbox Dashboard) at 9PM ET, February 3. Hey Niners fans, did you know Alex Smith* has won a record two Madden Bowls? That's the same number of Super Bowl rings that Roethlisberger has -- well, until Sunday's victory, according to Madden. [*Update: Oops! Sorry to get your hopes up San Francisco faithful -- it's Alex Smith the tight end (currently playing for the Cleveland Browns) who holds the Madden Bowl record. Alex Smith the quarterback has never participated in the event.] %Gallery-115477%
When it comes to forecasting Apple's earnings, amateurs are better than the pros
The Challenge: predict seven key metrics of Apple's fiscal success over the past quarter -- such as sales numbers, profit margins, and gross revenue -- with the highest accuracy. The Competitors: In the blue corner, a bunch of amateur finance bloggers, and in the red corner, a cabal of professional analysts making mad dough at banks and trading houses. The Conclusion: whatever you're paying for your "expert" advice on the future financial wellbeing of Apple, or any other tech stock for that matter, stop. Just... stop.
Blood Sport: Season 9 arena gameplay predictions
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Blood Sport for arena enthusiasts and The Art of War(craft) for fans of battlegrounds and world PvP. Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their women? C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more. Listening Music: Bush with Glycerine. I had a hard time picking a Bush song, so I went with a tried and true. I just got done searching for a past article I apparently never wrote. I could have sworn I predicted something about how Season 8 would pan out, but apparently, I just talked about it with my teammates instead of putting my thoughts into internet words. Oh well. I guess I get to make some fun predictions about Season 9 and then recap them later when Season 10 rolls around. That's the plan, anyway.
Samsung expects to sell a million Galaxy Tabs this year, 40 million smartphones next year
We've already heard Samsung boast that it expects to ship 10 million Galaxy Tabs by next year, and the company's now back at the prediction game yet again, with mobile biz president J.K. Shin saying he expects the company to sell a million of them this year alone -- given that the end of the year is fast approaching, that translates to a million sold in just under 60 days. As if that wasn't enough, Shin also told Nikkei that Samsung expects to sell 40 million smartphones in 2011, which is more than double its projection for this year -- of those, it obviously expects the majority to be Galaxy S phones, but it has quite a way to go from ten million it expects to sell this year. Incidentally, Shin also dropped another hint that Samsung would "soon" be releasing a 10-inch Galaxy Tab, but he doesn't seem to have provided any more details than we've heard before.
Samsung vows to ship 10 million Galaxy Tabs, grab a third of the tablet market
We may still be waiting on final word of pricing and availability for the Galaxy Tab, but it doesn't look like Samsung is wasting any time in making some pretty bold claims about it. Speaking with The Wall Street Journal, Samsung product executive Hankil Yoon said that the company expects to ship 10 million Galaxy Tabs and grab a third of the global tablet market by next year. Yoon further added that Samsung eventually plans to introduce a whole family of Galaxy Tab devices, although it's not clear if those factor into his sales projections. Anyway you slice it, however, ten million tablets is a lot of relief on the go.
Free for All: Three games to keep an eye on
There is so much to be excited about in the MMORPG world that I am always perplexed when someone claims lack of innovation in the market. I tend to think that this comes from an inability to play more than one game, or to support more than one idea in gaming, rather than from the actual state of the market. The fact is that there is so much happening in the world of gaming, and specifically free-to-play gaming, a player should feel almost overwhelmed. I wanted to point out three games now in development (or very close to release) that I believe will do very well. Think of this as a list of predictions -- in fact I am going to have some fun with it and predict just how well these games will do. I have always enjoyed testing my gut. Concerning these three games, my gut is very, very excited. So, let's get right to the list.
Bill Gates expects the web to be the best single source of education within 5 years
Bill Gates just might be the world's most famous college dropout (sorry, Kanye), but lest you think he's changed his mind about the educational establishment, he's got a few words of reassurance for you. As the closing speaker of the Techonomy 2010 conference, Bill dished out his vision of how learning will evolve over the next few years, stating his belief that no single university will be able to match the internet when it comes to providing the learning resources a student needs. Describing traditional studies as "place-based" and inefficient, he forecasts that university education will become five times less important within five years, with online lecture sources picking up the reins of enlightening our youth. In other news, Bill's pen-based tablet PC idea is going great!
Acer expects to overtake HP as world's biggest laptop vendor by year's end (updated)
Ah, the inexorable rise of a once-small Taiwanese company. Acer chairman JT Wang has told investors in a conference call this week that his company is on track to overtake HP in worldwide laptop shipments before the year is through. That assertion is backed up by Gartner's data, cited in the Wall Street Journal, which indicates that Acer shipped 9.49 million mobile computers in the first quarter of 2010, just ahead of HP's 9.47 million. Positive vibes are also being felt on the desktop front, where Acer aims to shift 10 million units this year, while a decent $15 million is being invested into "developing a smartphone platform based on Google Inc.'s Android." We'll be curious to see whether this thrifty strategy pays off against HP's ebullient $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm, but one thing's for sure: PC vendors are hungry for some of that sweet smartphone pie. Update: Gartner has corrected Acer's worldwide shipments number down to 9.12 million, placing it a close second behind HP for Q1.
Sony predicts digital content will overtake print 'within five years'
We can't say if there's an actual rule or not, but we're pretty sure that anyone in the e-reader business has to, at one point, make a prediction about when e-books will overtake actual books, and it looks like Sony has now come through with a big one of its own. That comes courtesy of Sony's Steve Haber, the man responsible for the company's digital reading business division, who says that: "within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content." Note that he says "digital content," not books, so we can presume that also includes magazines and newspapers, but it's still a fairly ambitious statement nonetheless. What's more, Habar also insists that there is a place for standalone e-readers alongside multi-function devices like the iPad, saying that, "it's just like digital imaging, where you can take pictures with a cellphone - and many people take pictures with cellphones - but if they want the best possible picture they'll use a point-and-shoot camera or a digital SLR."
30 million Windows Phone 7 devices sold by the end of 2011? Microsoft says yes (update: not exactly)
We've got to hand it to Microsoft -- when it sets a goal, it really sets a goal. As you can see in the slide above shown during a ReMix event in Paris yesterday, Microsoft is apparently expecting to sell 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices by the end of 2011, based on IDC projections. To state the obvious, that's pretty ambitious any way you slice it -- especially considering that the first Windows Phone 7 devices are still quite a few months away from hitting the market, giving Microsoft just over a year to reach that mark. Even more impressive is the fact that the figure apparently doesn't include other "Windows Phone" devices like the Kin, but maybe that'd just make 30 million a piece of cake. [Thanks, Greg] Update: Well, it looks like Microsoft may not be quite this ambitious after all. As John Paczkowski of All Things Digital reports, IDC says the numbers cited by Microsoft are actually for all Windows Mobile devices combined, not just Windows Phone 7, and even that figure is a bit off -- the actual number is 32 million. Microsoft itself has also now admitted the error, saying the slide was "inaccurate" and that it isn't providing any sales forecasts for Windows Phone.
Apple to make an HDTV within two to four years?
The famous Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, has another wacky prediction for us: within the next two years, he says, Apple will release a connected HDTV. Unlikely, to say the least -- the thinking around the virtual TUAW offices is that Munster's way off base on this one. Not only is the HDTV market pretty darn price sensitive (Apple is, of course, not one to compete on price), but Apple has always considered television "a hobby," and they're not likely to take on a whole new market unless they think they can do something different. However, we'll give Munster his chance. He says that combining "hardware, software, and content will become a key selling point for TVs" in the future, and Apple does that very, very well. He says that the natural evolution for the Apple TV is to build an all-in-one solution with a screen for about $2000, and that Apple might even offer a subscription service in order to completely oversee the producer-to-consumer relationship. Admittedly, that does sound like something Apple might want to do. Munster also says that such a service could be ported to the iPhone and iPad for a wireless solution as well, and that makes it a pretty tempting idea. Yet again, that presumes Apple wants to get involved in television, and with most of their attention already focused on bringing content to the iPad, that's a bit of a stretch. I guess we'll wait and see. Would you buy an all-in-one TV and subscription from Apple if that's what they decided to do?
AT&T CEO: iPad will be mostly used on WiFi, won't drive many new 3G subscriptions
We all know by now that AT&T has secured the rights to furnish US iPad owners with 3G connectivity, but apparently the market desire for that service won't be quite as big as we might have expected. That comes straight from Randall Stephenson himself, AT&T CEO and eternal believer in the power of i-branded devices, so it may have some legitimacy to it. Surely Randall's dearest wish would be to announce his network is about to be overwhelmed by new subscribers, and the rather cooler news has already caused a small dint in AT&T's stock price. Then again, this is hardly shocking news given that 3G on the iPad can be had on a month-by-month basis without contract, and in truth any subscriptions related to it would have to be achieved by AT&T's own ingenuity -- which, judging by its CEO's comments, won't be suffering any undue exertions any time soon. Not only that, Randall's also taken the opportunity to advise us that higher data rates are likely for intensive users of unlimited 3G data plans -- whether on the iPad or on smartphones. Way to endear yourself to the masses, dude.
Gartner forecasts phones overtaking PCs as most common web browsing device by 2013
Predictions about phones overtaking PCs at one task or another are hardly anything new, but research firm Gartner has gotten a bit more specific than most with its latest forecast -- which, among other things, foretells of a day when cellphones will be the most common device used for browsing the web. That momentous event will supposedly happen by 2013, when Gartner expects the number of browser-equipped phones to exceed 1.83 billion, compared to 1.78 billion old fashioned computers in use. According to Gartner, however, while browser-equipped phones will outnumber PCs by then, they won't actually be most folks' primary browsing device until sometime in 2015. In other prognostication news, the firm also says that fully three billion of the world's population will be able to make electronic transactions via mobile or internet technology by 2014, and that by as soon as 2012, 20% of businesses will "own no IT assets" -- meaning that employees would be using their own personal computer, and that the businesses themselves would be relying on cloud-based services.
Component shortages lead analysts to forecast rise in prices of personal electronics
As you might well know, we're not the biggest fans of analyst blather, but this piece of research by Gartner is backed by some substantial numbers. The FT reports that DRAM prices have recently risen by 23 percent, followed closely by LCD prices with a 20 percent jump, both in response to the financial crisis the whole globe seems to be suffering from. Because the effects of recently renewed investment in capacity building won't be felt for a while, we're told to prepare for higher prices throughout this year -- a significant combo breaker from the previous decade's average of around 7.8 percent drops. Oh well, let's just cling to the encouraging signs for the future and ignore this bump on the road to gadget nirvana. [Thanks, Ben W]
