News tagged ‘research’

Professor Gert Frølund Pedersen probably has a new catch-phrase these days – “I told you so”. The expert from Denmark's Aalborg University actually predicted Apple’s signal loss problems 2 weeks before the iPhone 4 was even released! In his interview recorded on June 10^th the Danish professor said that he wasn’t too impressed by Steve Jobs’ claims that the new device would have better reception, and predicted that the contact with flesh would lead to undesirable consequences in the signal quality. Here’s the quote:

The human tissue will in any event have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of antenna energy becomes heat and lost.

Research results from Aalborg University have already proven that more than 90% of any antenna signal can be easily blocked by holding it in a certain place, and direct skin contact might only make matters worse. The best solution is to have 2 antennae in different parts of the phone so that when one of them is blocked, the other can still pick up the signal.

The prices for the iPhone 4, Droid Incredible, Evo 4G and Nexus One are very similar. But in this chart you can see how much you’ll have to spend on each of the devices during a 2-year period.

The results for the iPhone 4 are quite encouraging, especially in the Minimum Plan Total Cost category. However, you should remember that nowadays AT&T is the only carrier that offers tiered data. This means that for $2,000 you can only enjoy 200 MB a month, which doesn’t exactly compare to the unlimited plans of the other 3 devices. With the “unlimited” plan you’ll be able to use 2GB, which is enough in most cases. If it isn’t, be ready to spill out an extra $10 per 1GB each month.

Still, the performances of all the 4 devices are really very close, so you can do some research while waiting for the iPhone 4 to come into the market.

According to a recent Piper Jaffray's  research, out of 4 billion applications downloaded onto iPads, iPods and iPhones, 81% are free and the cost of the other 19% is averagely $1.49.

These numbers mean that Apple’s profit from apps since the opening of the App Store is $428 million, about 29 cents per application, while the company spent approximately $81 million to distribute the apps themselves.

It sounds like a huge sum of money at first, until you understand that it makes up just 1% of Apple’s total gross profit of $33.7 billion over the same period.

After yesterday's introduction of iPhone 4 most of the Wall Street analytics expressed their opinions about new device. Everybody is satisfied and certain about new handset's upcoming popularity and that it will boost sales for Apple again. Here are the words of people to whom we are referring frequently.

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Nielsen revealed the results of a new poll of 11,734 U.S. users that claims Apple is the No.2 smartphone maker with 28% market share of mobile devices, thus gaining 2% in compare with the previous quarter. The biggest share belongs to Research In Motion, which has 35% with its Blackberries. Other smartphone makers are showed on the pictures below.

It is interesting that study reveals most of the Android and iPhone users are male, and Android users are younger, less educated and less wealthy. If only 28% of Android users earn $100,000 every year, there are 40% of iPhone users that have the same income. 34% of all smartphone users have six-figure salaries.

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Yesterday we posted information about smartphone sales in the last quarter 2010, and as you remember Android-based phones become more popular than iPhones. Now it became known that Apple's spokespeople commented on this data.

In its research NPD group studied over 150,000 completed surveys, that were undertaken online every month in America. Apple's representative Natalie Harrison thinks it is not enough data to make precise conclusions:

"This is a very limited report on 150,000 U.S. consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide."

It is unknown why Harrison mentioned iPod touch when discussion was about smartphones market, but according to Reunters last week Harrison had referred to the IDC research. The latter also reveals that Apple losing its positions, but this time worldwide, with Nokia and BlackBerry sales ahead in first and second spots respectively.

NPD Group had recently revealed their new study, which shows that iPhone OS became the second most selling OS last quarter in US. To be precise 28% of all handsets sold were Android phones, and iPhones made only 21%. Research In Motion's Blackberries hold 36 percent of market.

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New forecast published by iSuppli on Friday revealed that approximately 14.4 million iPads will be sold in 2011 and 20.1 million - in 2012. This year won't make a sales record because most of the consumers will buy it for its unique touch-screen. By 2011-2012 the device will become more popular with the increasing number of App Store applications, declining prices and improved functionality, so people will more clearly understand its possible purposes.

But iSuppli claims the research to be "conservative", because it doesn't take into account unforeseen features that Apple can quickly add to iPad to boost sales (for example, integrating Adobe Flash support). However the numbers rely on a patented multi-touch technology that will mainly define the popularity of a new device.

iSuppli director of monitor research Rhoda Alexander admires iPad:

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PadGadget did some research of the the iTunes database last night and found that Apple has already approved and listed several iPad apps in the AppStore. The names use HD (High Definition) in the title to signify the bigger 9.7 inch, 1024×768 pixel iPad display. Here is a quick list of what was found:

• Ammoin HD
• Azkend HD
• Flight Control HD
• Grind HD
• HD Recovery
• Labyrinth 2 HD
• NBA Hotshot HD
• Numba HD
• Plants vs. Zombie HD
• Sparkle HD
• Worms HD

You won’t find any of these iPad titles using your standard iTunes browser, you need to use Apple’s more recent web interface to find the new titles mixed in with the thousands of regular iPhone and Touch titles.

UPDATE: Apple has corrected the iTunes Preview site and HD iPad titles are no longer listed.

In a week after the story about the lawsuit Oppenheimer analyst Yal Reiner wrote a research note, where it is said that Apple started warning Motorola and HTC in as early as January 2009. The Cupertino's company was not so happy to see that rivals' new products look like iPhone (or at least use the same concepts).

Apple COO Tim Cook even commented on this situation:

"Apple will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons that we have at our disposal".

The words were presumably about Samsung, LG and Nokia (Palm is not mentioned as its sales numbers are not so considerable).

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Hell has returned! Prepare yourself for DOOM II RPG for the iPhone and iPod Touch, the sequel to id Software’s hit mobile game Doom RPG. The forces of Hell have invaded our dimension once again, and you're the one to stop them from conquering the Earth!
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19 percent of all game developers are writing for the iPhone and iPod Touch, according to a new study from Game Developer Research. It is more than twice as high as for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS and results in 3/4 of all mobile game developers writing for Apple’s gadgets.

Developers claim their choices of platform dictated by the level of market influence and ease of writing code. The cost of development and the ability to port code are important too.

The transition to the iPhone is evident through the number of ports. While many companies are producing original titles, games like Civilization Revolution and Assassin’s Creed series are actually Nintendo DS versions modified to use the touchscreen and the better performance of Apple’s devices.

[via]

Media research firm Nielsen released its lists of top U.S. mobile phones, sites, and brands for the first ten months of 2009. The iPhone 3G took the top spot among mobile phones with 4.0% of the market. The iPhone placed slightly ahead of Research in Motion's BlackBerry 8300 series at 3.7%, and well ahead of the remainder of the pack, which was led by Motorola's RAZR V3 series at 2.3%.

Apple also made an appearance on Nielsen's list of top ten brands accessed via mobile networks for the January-September 2009 timeframe, taking tenth place on a list topped by Yahoo! and Google.

Here are the results:

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According to research conducted by Chitika, nearly 45% of users still have the old iPod Touch firmware 2.0 installed and have not upgraded to the 3.0.

The reasons are numerous and starts from the need to pay for the upgrade - $10 could be an issue. However the main reason is the lack of motivation for upgrading. Unless you want to play with copy/paste, the 3.0 update doesn’t bring much to the iPod Touch - Push notifications are useless on Wi-Fi and many games still run on 2.0.

Who knows, maybe Apple will decide to make the next update to version 4.0 free just to encourage upgrades. Updates are free for iPhone users nad wee see that almost 95% of users have updated to 3.x.

Generator Research says that Nokia's smartphone marketshare will plummet from over 40 percent today to only 20 percent by 2013. They predict that Apple, on the other hand, will hit 33 percent marketshare by that point, matching Nokia sometime in 2011—just two years away—with 77 million phones.

That scenario, though, depends on some awesome conditions for Apple (think about 77 million iPhones!) on top of some truly horrific ignorance from Nokia, letting the smartphone market go almost entirely with a half-assed defense of its position as it focuses on profits from its mass volume low-cost wares in developing countries. Probably Nokia will stop making smartphones like the N97 some day and will create something nice.

via gizmodo