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Apple knows that the new iPhones will sell out
Apple has traditionally opened iPhone pre-orders on a Friday and then reported on how many people laid down cash the following Monday. The company issues a press release saying that it's seen unprecedented demand and that the latest device is the biggest selling iPhone ever. But that trend won't continue into 2016 because, guys, it's the iPhone, and it's gonna sell out, no matter what.
Tesco sells 35,000 Hudl tablets in first few days following launch
Wondering how your old buddy Tesco is faring with the launch of its first branded bit of hardware, the £119 Hudl tablet? Well, according to Tesco's CEO Phil Clarke, via a tweet from Retail Week's Jennifer Creevy, not too shabby: the supermarket chain has offloaded about 35,000 of the devices over the past few days. We very much doubt the likes of Google and Amazon, which have never been forthcoming with early sales figures, will be threatened by the number, but it's surely not a bad start from a retailer that knows more about selling bread and milk than tablets. Incidentally, Amazon's just dropped the price of its soon to be last-gen 7-inch Fire HD to £119, matching that of the Hudl -- if you've got no ClubCard points to secure a discount, that is. We now have one of Tesco's tabs in our possession, so look out for the review. We're assessing the display by rewatching the entirety of Game of Thrones, however, so it might take a while.
The iPhone is doomed, and it always has been
Every single version of the iPhone to ever be released has been doomed. In fact, some of them were so doomed I'm surprised we even acknowledge their existence anymore. Apple needs to just give up before the company has to start selling coffee mugs from its headquarters just to turn a profit. Wait, Apple already does that? My god, it's happening. But don't take my word for it, let's look at all of the extremely well-thought-out arguments as to why each new iPhone was going to flop... until it didn't. iPhone - 2007 It doesn't do 3G - What is this, the dark ages? It's locked to AT&T - Wow, Apple, way to kill your not-even-good smartphone idea before it even got a chance. The camera sucks - No flash? Almost zero options? What a joke. No picture messaging - My brother needs to see this burrito I'm going to eat. No removable battery - Has Apple learned nothing from criticisms of the iPod? No physical keyboard - Smartphones are supposed to have physical keyboards, that's just a fact of life. iPhone 3G - 2008 Still locked to AT&T - Apple must have sold its soul to the devil. No video recording - A brand-new iPhone, still no video recording. Is this a joke, Apple? Can't use it as a 3G modem - Once again, Apple falls behind the top-of-the-line smartphones. From metal to plastic - Why would you ever think switching from brushed aluminum to plastic was an "upgrade?" The ugliest phone on the market just got uglier. Same camera - This camera was trash in 2007, and it's even trashier trash in 2008. iPhone 3GS - 2009 Still locked to AT&T - Seriously? This is getting a little ridiculous. Videos suck - Apple finally added video, it's a shame the quality is abysmal. The name sucks - What the hell is a 3G S? And is it 3GS or 3G S or 3Gs? Confusing the customer is going to lead to lost sales, Apple, mark my words. No tethering (at launch) - We're now on our third iPhone and Apple still can't figure out a way to get tethering to work. It looks the same - When people buy a new smartphone, they want it to look different. Nobody with an iPhone 3G is even going to care about this one. iPhone 4 - 2010 Still locked to AT&T (at launch) - Someone at AT&T must have some great blackmail on Apple's bigwigs. Antenna issues - Well, that's it for the iPhone brand. Nobody is going to buy a phone when there are videos online showing that just holding the thing causes it to break. Bye bye, Apple! It's a 4, but not 4G - Apple is just trying to trick us into thinking this is a 4G phone. Don't be fooled! Boycott! The cameras still suck - They added a front-facing camera? Who even makes video calls? The rear camera is only 5 megapixels, and what's this weird green tint to my photos? Fail. The new design is horrible - Phones are supposed to be sleek, not boxy. How am I supposed to slide this into my pocket? iPhone 4s - 2011 Same old design - Apple is so far behind in the screen size game they'll never be able to catch up Siri is lame - Apple bet on the wrong virtual horse here, and Siri is going to lose. Battery life is horrible - If I can't go three days without charging my phone, I'm taking it back. Still no 4G - 3G is, like, *so* yesterday. No NFC - Near-field communication is the future, and Apple will be left behind. iPhone 5 - 2012 Screen size, again - A measly half inch? That's what you give us for waiting half a decade? That's it Apple, I'm never buying one of your phones again. Ever. Design is unchanged - It's just a taller 4S, which was just the same as the 4. I'm not buying the same phone for a 3rd time. The Lightning cable - Great, now all my old iPhone charging cords are useless. People will see through Apple's game. They'll go bankrupt for trying scam smart consumers! iPhone 5s & 5c - 2013 Two models - Splitting your market in half? Nice move, Apple, the end is surely nigh. Screen size, again - These things are puny compared to Android phones, who would even want one? Colors are dumb - The iPhone 5c is just a regular iPhone 5 with a fancy plastic back, and the iPhone 5s only gets that ugly gold color added? It's like Apple doesn't even care any more. Touch ID is pointless - Who even locks their phones these days? My phone is always in a safe plac... where'd my phone go? iOS 7 is confusing - Where'd my cute little wooden newsstand go? That's it, I'm switching to Windows Phone. See what I mean? Apple's iPhone has always been doomed. It's just a good thing that being doomed has never stopped it from selling in record numbers. Note: Just to be 100% clear (after seeing a few comments from confused readers), I know the iPhone isn't actually doomed. On today, a new iPhone launch day -- the day each year when the articles claiming "Apple's New iPhone is Crap!" hits a deafening pitch -- I wanted to point out that, according to naysayers, every single iPhone has been "doomed." [Image credit: magic_quote]
Analyzing the iPad's sales cycle
It's long been true that sales of Apple mobile products follow cycles. This started with the iPod, which, to this day, still displays a spike in sales around the holidays, and has become quite visible with the iPhone, which shows spikes in sales around every product refresh. Freelance analyst Benedict Evans has published a post about the cyclicality of the unit sales figures for all of Apple's mobile products and notes that "the iPad is now starting to become just as cyclical as the iPhone." As you can see from Evans' chart at the top of this post, and as Evans states in his article, "sales are being driven by both the calendar season and the age of the product." Yesterday's earning call pointed out that iPad sales were down, but as Evans notes, "it's now a 9-month-old product" (in reference to the fourth-generation iPad and iPad mini). The bottom line of Evans' analysis is this: "You can't really tell how Apple is doing from the mid-cycle sales numbers. So much of the revenue and the momentum is determined by the December quarter that you really have to wait." In other words, if you see any headlines this week forecasting doom for Apple, ignore them. They're probably just as accurate as the previous 62 death knells for Apple.
Nintendo moves over 300K Wii U consoles in Japan after first week
Nintendo had a so-so stateside Wii U debut, but with 300,000 units chalked up after a week in Japan, it's become the seventh best hardware launch in that country, according to Famitsu and Enterbrain. Games selling well alongside the device include evergreen Super Mario, which tagged along to the tune of 170k units, while Monster Hunter rang up 110k titles. All that is a modestly successful debut for the console at home so far, considering that its more revolutionary predecessor became a monster hit after selling a fourth-best 370,000 copies during its first week in the island nation. On the other hand, Sony's PS Vita also racked up decent early numbers, and we all know how that turned out.
Gartner: smartphone sales up 47 percent in Q3, Android's OS market share increases (updated)
Third quarter figures from Gartner are out, reporting worldwide mobile phone sales slowed again in Q3 2012. Smartphones, however, showed a 46.9 percent increase in sales over the same period last year, with 169.2 million units sold. As you would imagine, Apple and Samsung sold the most, accounting for almost half of all worldwide smartphone purchases. Nokia sales declined during the quarter, and with only 7.2 million of its smartphones filling customers' hands, its ranking in this segment plummeted from third to seventh (although Gartner expects sales of the new Lumia devices should soften the fall in Q4). In contrast, Apple had a solid quarter, with sales up 36.2 percent year-on-year, which is expected to continue into the fourth quarter as the iPhone 5 launches in more markets. Samsung didn't do too bad either, increasing sales by 18.6 percent year-on-year thanks to its Galaxy range (although it's important to note this figure is for total phone sales, not just smartphones). In the OS wars, Android continued to grow its market share up to 72.4 percent, with iOS taking the second spot with 13.9 percent. Stalwart RIM made a leap into the top three with its BlackBerry OS, as aging Symbian saw its usage decline further. If you want to pour over the figures yourself, check out the source below. Update: We've tinkered with the post to remove some confusion between total mobile phone sales and smartphone sales. None of the figures have been changed.
Google Play hits 25 billion app downloads, holds celebratory yard sale with $0.25 games
Google Play crossed a rather significant milestone this morning: something to the tune of 25 billion app downloads. While the accomplishment is weighty enough on its own -- especially given that the store also offers books, music and movies, which aren't included in this tally -- Google is celebrating in symbolic style with a number of apps and games for sale at just $0.25 over the next five days. Among the mix of discounted titles, you'll find publishers such as Gameloft, Electronic Arts, Rovio, Runtastic and Full Fat. Not to stop there, shoppers will also discover a curated collection of 25 must-own movies, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and 25 top-selling magazines. With today's announcement, it was revealed that 675,000 apps and games now live in Google Play -- a healthy increase when compared to 600,000 titles and 20 billion installs just three months ago. As you might expect, Apple still claims the largest selection with 700,000 titles in its App Store, although with such a thin separation between the two, we may see Google Play eclipse its rival in short order.
Nokia: 7 million Lumia phones sold to date in 54 countries, 4 million in the last quarter
Fresh on the heels of the much-anticipated Lumia 920 announcement, some new figures have come to light regarding its predecessors' success. According to the Finnish phone-maker, a total of 7-million Windows Phone / Lumia devices have shipped to date. The firm was also keen to point out that this number comes from 54 markets in total -- some 130 different operators. While this might seem modest, especially with only 600,000 of those sales being in the US, 4-million of those Lumia devices were sold in Q2, roughly double that of the preceding two quarters, so things are on the up. Now it just remains to see what impact any new Windows Phone 8 phones will have.
Samsung: 10 million Galaxy Notes have been sold, worldwide
Samsung's got more reasons to celebrate today than just the release of its latest pen-friendly tablet -- the company also let it be known that it has managed to sell 10 Million Galaxy Note devices, globally. The electronics giant also hit that milestone with its Galaxy S III handset a little under a month ago.
Mobile Miscellany: week of May 28th, 2012
Not all mobile news is destined for the front page, but if you're like us and really want to know what's going on, then you've come to the right place. This past week, we learned of another possible prepaid destination for the iPhone (hint: it's a subsidiary of Sprint), and Samsung announced a combined sales total of 50 million Galaxy S and Galaxy S II smartphones. These stories and more await after the break. So buy the ticket and take the ride as we explore the "best of the rest" for this week of May 28th, 2012.
Yes, people still read: e-book sales by UK publishers grew 54 percent in 2011
All hail the e-book! Seriously, if it weren't for this marvelous literary development, try saying with a straight face that you wouldn't at least take pause before adding a new title to your collection. Numbers are in from The Publisher's Association -- a group of 120 companies across the trade in the UK -- which reveals that e-book digital sales have increased 54 percent for the year 2011, and of that statistic, 13 percent of revenues came from academic and professional titles. As a sign of changing preferences, the total sales of both e-books and their traditional counterparts fell by two percent during the year -- and let's be honest, it's not hard to see which group fell short. Also reflective of the shift is the fact that average book prices fell by 1.3 percent during the year, which compares favorably to the UK's current inflation rate of 4.47 percent. Those interested in the full story will find the PR after the break.
Daily Update for April 25, 2012
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here. No Flash? Click here to listen. Subscribe via RSS
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.
Nintendo 3DS outselling four Sony devices in Japan, now has 65 percent of the market
The latest figures from Japan's Media Create are in, showing that last year's trend has been fully reversed. Now the consumers are hungry for Nintendo's 3DS, given that it shipped 121,921 units in the week ending April 1st. That put it comfortably ahead of the PlayStation 3 (23,771), PSP (18,356) and PS Vita's (12,105) sales combined. The stats reveal that the 3DS is now accounting for 65 percent of all hardware sales in the country, a marked turnaround from when the console's future looked gloomy. Meanwhile, the biggest selling game was Kingdom Hearts 3D for Nintendo's newest handheld, which managed to shift over 200,000 units in just seven days.
IDC: nearly 1 billion 'smart connected devices' shipped last year
Know that gadget you're currently using to read this article? It may be one of 916 million "smart connected devices" that shipped in 2011, with global revenue totaling some $489 billion last year. But the IDC expects that figure to jump to 1.1 billion for 2012, with a total of 1.84 billion new web-connected gadgets hitting the market in 2016. Those numbers include most devices that connect to the internet, such as tablets, smartphones and x86-compatible PCs -- the latter of which now represent 36.9 percent of the market, but will slip to a 25.1-percent share in 2016. Android's piece of the pie will grow from 29.4 percent to 31.1 percent by 2016, while iOS will make the jump from 14.6 to 17.3 percent in the same timeframe. IDC reps say that Asia will be partially responsible for increased smartphone sales, where mobile operators in China are subsidizing purchases to make devices more accessible to consumers. Do you plan to take possession of one of the 1.1 billion gadgets that IDC expects will ship this year? Jump past the break and let us know in the comments.
NPD: Hardware sales hit $144 billion in 2011, PCs lead the moneymaking pack
Canalys recently announced that smartphone shipments surpassed those of PCs for the whole of 2011. Well, NPD's just released its own set of hardware numbers, this time focused on revenue shares, and it appears PCs (that's laptops and desktops for NPD's purposes) are still far and away the biggest moneymakers around, bringing in about 19 percent (or $28 billion) of the reported $144 billion in hardware sales last year. TVs, PCs and gaming hardware each saw a decline in revenue share while smartphone and tablet sales grew -- slates and e-readers experienced a five percent increase, taking up nearly 11 percent of the hardware pie and raking in $15 billion. Unsurprisingly, Apple topped the chart for sales by manufacturer, seeing a 36 percent increase over 2010, while HP, Samsung, Sony and Dell rounded out the top five with varying levels of sales declines. For more number crunching and statistical whatnots, check out the full PR after the break.
NPD: iPhones recover market share in Q4 2011, but Android draws the first-timer crowds
According to the latest research from the NPD group, Apple has got its second wind in smartphone sales. In the same quarter that saw the iPhone 4S reinvent the wheel obey our every vocal whim, the trio of available models soaked up a total of 43 percent of the US smartphone market in Q4 2012, apparently gnawing away at Android's market share of 53 percent held during the rest of 2011. However, Google's mobile OS appears to be the debutante smartphone of choice, cornering 57 percent of new purchases, with 34 percent going for Apple. The remaining 9 percent is distributed between the smartphone also-rans, with the likes of Windows Phone and BlackBerry languishing in that anonymous grey bar at the top. The top five handsets from NPD's Mobile Phone Track service is an Apple and Samsung love-in, with iOS devices claiming the three top spots, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S II (we assume collectively) and the Galaxy S 4G. NPD's blow-by-blow commentary on this increasingly two-horse race awaits below.
EU online spending estimated to grow 16 percent, reach €232 billion in 2012
Pardon us Americans as we act surprised, but it turns out that we have one more thing in common with our Euro brethren: a growing number of us dislike shopping in stores. According to Kelkoo estimates, online spending in the European Union is projected to continue its upward trend, which is said to reach somewhere in the neighborhood of €232 billion before year's end. If the estimate holds, this would be a 16 percent increase over the €200 billion raked by e-tailers during 2011, and is naturally assumed to come at the expense of traditional brick and mortar outfits, whose growth is projected to increase by a mere 1.8 percent.The data gathered also suggest there's significant room for expansion, however, as online spending accounted for just 7.8 percent of all EU retail sales in 2011, with the UK, Germany and France being responsible for a whopping 71 percent of that tally. The 16 percent projected growth is a slight decline from 2011, which saw EU online spending grow by 18 percent -- although, Europe's growing habit for click-and-ship continues to outpace the US, which grew by only 12.8 percent in 2011. Now, since you've crammed all these numbers, why not check the funny pages?[Shopping button via Shutterstock]
Android leads US market share, iOS may have stopped growing, RIM is still falling
NPD just published its latest plotting of the great American smartphone OS rivalry, and although the report covers annual rather than quarterly trends, it's perhaps more interesting to hold it up against the previous set of figures we saw -- those for Q2 2011. Back then, Google's OS had a 52 percent share, but these new figures suggest a marginally better performance of 53 percent between January and October. Meanwhile, iOS's 29 percent share is identical to what we saw in Q2, hinting that its growth has slowed right down or even stopped. RIM's share of the pie is 10 percent, compared to 11 percent in Q2, showing that the Summer flurry of new BB7 handsets like the Bold 9930 and Torch 9810 had little immediate impact. WP7 obstinately refuses to overtake Windows Mobile, although these figures are pre-Titan, while the doomed Symbian and webOS are barely clinging to life. Aside from all that, perhaps the only stats that are genuinely still shocking are those at the top of the column for 2006. Click below for further detail's in NPD's press release.
Acer VP: 'We're never gonna give netbooks up, let them down, run around and desert them'
Acer's no stranger to netbooks: it knows the rules and so does vice president Scott Lin, who has said that a full commitment's what he's thinking of. It comes in the wake of Samsung running around and deserting baby-laptops for ultrabooks, but Acer's never gonna say goodbye. Well-off westerners might be obsessed with slates, but emerging markets like China, India and Indonesia prefer the cheaper units. The company's plan is simple -- what it doesn't make in profit on individual units, it'll make back in the sheer volume of units sold. Last quarter Acer sold one point seven million of the things, comfortably ahead of second-placed ASUS and third placed Samsung -- the latter decided it wasn't gonna play the game anymore.
