On a related note, Lees is also announcing that we’ll be seeing the first volley of Windows Phone 7 devices in five languages — English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish — and that Windows Phone Marketplace (the Windows Phone 7 version of it, presumably) will be available in 17 countries out of the gate. That’s not what we’d call global domination, of course, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

Windows Phone Live to offer remote wipe, location, and sync for your Windows Phone 7 device originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Get ready to rumble, the latest Gartner and IDC smartphone numbers are out to give us a pretty good idea of how things shape up globally. Remember, IDC measures vendor shipments while Gartner measures actual handset sales to end users. So what does the data tell us? Well, to start with, in terms of smartphone devices, Gartner claims a 48.7% increase in smartphone sales of 54.3 million units in Q1 2010 compared to Q1 2009 — IDC pegs growth at 56.7% on 54.7 million units for the same period. Both estimates easily outpace the 17% or 21.7% growth in worldwide units of mobile phones moved according to Gartner and IDC, respectively.

IDC’s list of top 5 smartphone device makers (pictured above) has Nokia at the number one spot repeating its 39.3% share as it did in Q1 of 2009 while RIM is down slightly from 20.9% in 2009 to a 19.4% market share in 2010. Apple (up from 10.9% to 16.1%) more than doubled its device shipments in the last year as HTC (up from 4.3% to 4.8%) and Motorola (up from 3.4% to 4.2%) all managed to increase their shares on higher volumes.

Regarding smartphone OS market share, Android’s global numbers echo its success in the US jumping from a 1.6% market share to 9.6% in just one year. Gartner claims that sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year to displace Windows Mobile in the top 5 for the first time. Apple’s iPhone OS also saw growth from 10.5% in 1Q09 to 15.4% in 1Q10 as both RIM (down from 20.1% to 19.4%) and Symbian (down from 48.8% to 44.3%) dropped. See the OS numbers broken down into a no-nonsense table after the break.

Continue reading IDC and Gartner award smartphone growth prizes to Apple and Google

IDC and Gartner award smartphone growth prizes to Apple and Google originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 May 2010 04:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And the good Froyo news just keep flowing in. TechCrunch have flexed their exclusive muscle this morning in revealing their discovery that Android 2.2 will come with built-in tethering and WiFi hotspot support. That means you’ll be able to use your phone’s 3G internet connection to hook your laptop up to the worldwide webosphere, with a choice of wired or wireless methods. Of course, this dreamy scenario will be subject to the big bad network operators permitting — or at least not forbidding — you to do such awesome things with your hardware, but at least we know the goods are being baked into this forthcoming release from Google. Frozen yogurt for all!

Android 2.2 ‘Froyo’ to include USB tethering, WiFi hotspot functionality originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 May 2010 05:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide. IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

The factual accuracy of Apple’s words here can’t really be disputed, but as Paczkowski notes, the context can: lumping the iPod touch into this equation isn’t really fair, since NPD’s report is about smartphones, not mobile operating systems (which would’ve let devices like non-phone Android MIDs into the picture). Besides, this is about the US market in the first quarter of 2010, not global sales, nor is it about Apple’s development pipeline. In other words, Apple’s not disputing NPD’s report here — rather, they’re simply trying to change the subject, as any properly-trained PR department would. There’s no question Android still has an uphill battle to dominate market (and mind) share the world over, but the odds that it outsold the iPhone in the US in Q1 remain very real.

Apple brushes off NPD’s smartphone report, says it sees ‘no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 May 2010 14:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sure, you might hear the words “Worldwide Developers Conference” and start to yawn, but in Apple parlance we’re looking at a likely announcement of a new iPhone (the 3GS was shown at last year’s event) and maybe a sneak peak at a new version of OS X. Whatever else Apple might have in store for all of us is anyone’s guess, but suffice it to say that we expect to be bringing you the meat from the opening keynote just like always, though specifics on that keynote have yet to be announced. PR is after the break, full of non-revelatory software development topics that will be covered at the conference.

Continue reading Apple’s WWDC kicks off on June 7th this year

Apple’s WWDC kicks off on June 7th this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gartner just released its annual numbers for worldwide mobile phone sales to end users in the year known as two thousand nine. Looking at smartphone OS market share alone, Gartner shows the iPhone OS, Android, and RIM making the biggest gains (up 6.2%, 3.4%, and 3.3% from 2008, respectively) at the expense of Windows Mobile (down 3.1%) and Symbian (down 5.5%). Although Gartner says that Symbian “has become uncompetitive in recent years,” (ouch) it concedes that market share is still strong especially for Nokia; something backed up by Nokia’s Q4 financials and reported quarterly smartphone growth of 5%. Regarding total handsets of all classifications sold, Nokia continues to dominate with 36.4% of all sales to end users (down from 38.6% in 2008) while Samsung and LG continue to climb at the expense of Motorola (dropping from 7.6% to 4.5% of worldwide sales in 2009) and Sony Ericsson. See that table after the break or hit up the source for the full report.

Continue reading Gartner: Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate

Gartner: Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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