Tag: Samsung Page 6 of 7

Top 10 Mobile Phones in January

On 31/01/2009

Our beloved manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, enlightens us again with their top 10 list of best-selling phones for the month of January 2009 (or should that be best-selling phone holsters?).

1. (1) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia

2. (-) HTC Touch HD

3. (9) Nokia E51

4. (-) Blackberry Storm

5. (2) Nokia 6300

6. (5) Nokia 3109

7. (7) Sony Ericsson X1 Experia

8. (8) Nokia E71

9. (-) Nokia 6220

10. (10) HTC Diamond

The number in brackets is the rank from the prior month.

Now, as compared to all of 2008, the iPhone went from #1 to nowhere. I explained this before: they track phone sales by the number of model-specific accessories sold, and I am still not sure if that makes any sense. I see this more in practical terms: the “suits” carrying around their business phones do not seem to have the fashion sense to realize that specific phone cases is nothing that one does (this is also popular with taxi drivers), and therefore it seems obvious that a lot of “business-type” phones are in the list (and none of the “classic” Blackberries because they have their uber-cool faux-leather holster in the box (and, yes, that’s the piece I throw away first!).

Let me know what you think!

Photo credit: http://blogfreespringfield.com/wp-content/uploads/image/holster.jpg

Top US Handsets in Q3/2008

By Volker

On 09/01/2009

In Apple, OEM

And it still goes on, it seems: Nielsen published its (digital) media top 10 lists for Q3/2008, and the once cool Motorola V3 still rules the United States – and by a HUGE margin. A whopping 9.3% of all phones in use are RAZR‘s, more than 7 points ahead of its sibling, the KRZR. Apple’s iPhone follows on #4 with 1.5% share. And Nokia‘s call to arms with a view to the US market has as yet to materialize: its best handset is the 6101 series with a meagre 1.1% (compared to a reported global market share of the Finnish giants of close to 40%). Sony Ericsson and Samsung are both notably absent from the list.

Here’s the top 10 table then:

1 Motorola RAZR V3 series (V3, V3c, V3m, V3i, V3i DG, V3) 9.3%

2 Motorola MotoKRZR series (K1m, K1) 2.0%

3 LG VX8300 series 1.6%

4 Apple iPhone 1.5%

5 LG VX8500 series (Chocolate, VX8500, VX8550) 1.2%

5 RIM BlackBerry 8100 series (Pearl,8110, 8120, 8129) 1.2%

7 Nokia 6101 series (6101, 6102, 6102i) 1.1%

8 LG VX8350 1.0%

9 Motorola V325 series (V325, V323, V325i, V323i) 0.9%

9 Nokia 6010 series 0.9%

Source: The Nielsen Company, Q3 2008

Time for a lot of people to shake things up!

Adobe Flash Opens Screens

By Volker

On 02/05/2008

Flash maker Adobe isn’t tiring on bringing out news these days: this time it announced the “Open Screen Project”, in which it is partnering with a plethora of mobile industry giants, namely ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG, Marvell, Motorola, Nokia (see also here re Microsoft‘s Flash competitor Silverlight), NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson (see also their initiative to marry J2ME and Flash here), Toshiba and Verizon Wireless as well as major media players such as the BBC, MTV Networks and NBC Universal.

It said “the project is dedicated to driving rich Internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. Adobe said it would open access to Flash technology, accelerating the deployment of content and rich Internet applications (RIAs).” This will include:

Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
Publishing the Adobe Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

Adobe says its Flash Player reaches over 98% of Internet-enabled PCs and more than 500m mobile devices today. It now expects more than 1bn handsets to ship with Flash technology by the end of 2009 (this means a year faster than previously forecasted). Flash technology is used to deliver vector graphics, text, interactivity and application logic, video and sound over the Internet. Currently, more than 75% of broadcasters who stream video on the Web use Flash technology (YouTube will be a big contributor to that number).

Following my many posts on mobile Flash (see e.g. here and here), this now looks like a real assault on the medium. Given that Flash reduces developer cost (less porting because of vector-based graphics) means it is a likely boost to the content industry: more and richer content at lower cost. Could this be it?

Mobile Enters Upper Echolons of Culture

By Volker

On 10/12/2007

This is adequate for the more thoughtful pre-Christmas period where everyone reflects a bit more and focuses on culture a bit more: mobile phones have finally gone beyond the meagre mainstream, knocked on the doors of this most high-brow piece of (dare I say it) entertainment and gained access to the cast list of a Wagner opera no less!

It might only be a little sideline but here it is: a Samsung G800 is featuring in the latest iteration of the children’s version of Wagner’s “Nibelungenring” at the Vienna State Opera. The “world” premiere (is Vienna not part of it?) will be in Tokyo.

The SGH-G800 is a leading member of the cast, it is reported: it fulfills not only one but several roles in the play, the most important one being taking a picture of the sleeping Bruennhilde; “it” then shows the picture to Siegfried and is therefore essential for the progression of the story…

And for the cultural barbarians amongst us here’s the explanation of the director, Matthias von Stegmann: “This independent play is meant to spark children’s interest for Wagner’s world. With Samsung’s unique camera phone we’re able to give a mobile phone an active role in an opera for the first time and thus create a link from virtual mythology to today’s reality.”

Samsung of course worked “in cooperation” with the Vienna State Opera on this and is understandably proud of its achievement.

So keep your eyes open! The first to spot one in Bayreuth, perhaps even in the hands of Wagner descendant Nike will win a price…

The G-System: Google's mobile OS aka Android arrives

By Volker

On 05/11/2007

So, no GPhone — yet. Google, with quite a number of partners, today announced the already much-rumoured “Open Handset Alliance” under which a Linux-based OS, nicknamed Android has been launched (the SDK will allegedly be available in a week’s time). Here’s a video explaining the deep thoughts of the creators (be quick: YouTube has removed it already…).

The whole industry had been waiting for this, and Google seems to have come up with a black-white thing: it goes back to its roots in open source but overlays it with Java, which has caused the content community a lot of headaches (every mobile phone translates it slightly differently, so one needs a gazillion ports). However, Google has teamed up with no less than 34 partners for the launch alone, including such giants as China Mobile, KDDI, Sprint Nextel, TIM, T-Mobile, Motorola (who seem to be dancing on a lot of weddings recently: UIQ and Linux Mobile are also on their plates), Samsung, HTC, Intel and eBay.

So what does it all mean? According to the members of the alliance, it will be better, bigger, faster for everyone: open source means more applications, less bugs and less cost. According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, it is “a fresh approach to fostering innovation in the mobile industry will help shape a new computing environment that will change the way people access and share information in the future.” Commentators note that there is apparently one caveat: you’ll have to use Google for navigation. Now: does that bother anyone? Give me Internet on my phone on broadband speed and I happily surf with whoever gives it to me, I’d say. To enact a platform, supported by a lot of sector muscle, that makes the developers’ life easier should be good for everyone indeed as it will undoubtedly bring more usage. Traditionally, carriers feared for the consistency of the user experience. Apparently, Verizon and AT&T have already voiced such concerns also here although the explanation sounds defensive at best: they fear too much advertising. Would it be safe to say they rather fear loss of control?

Quite a few companies have tried to take on mobile as the next frontier and quite a few fared rather miserably on the complexities of the environment presented by the sector (Disney’s MVNO attempts, Infospace and a few others spring to mind). With Google’s might this might be about to change though. A fresh breeze and a unified development platform would, in any event, be a good thing.

Interesting though that, as in recent releases on OS-driven initiatives, Nokia is again absent. This is not promising any good in terms of unifying the landscape, it seems. However, both Linux Mobile (on which Android is apparently based) and Symbian (in which Nokia holds a huge stake and which it intends to make its platform of choice) are C++-based. And that would be easing development pains after all: much easier to deal with than the Java layers, which until now were statutory but might only be optional going forth.

UPDATE 7 Nov 2007: Nokia has said its participation in Android is “not ruled out at all”. It would work with it if it would see sense. Now, a convincing statement sounds differently but it IS noteworthy that the Finnish giant felt the need to comment on it so quickly.

Motorola loves UIQ

By Volker

On 16/10/2007

US handset maker Motorola acquired half the shares in UIQ, the smartphone software unit, from Sony Ericsson. Sony Ericsson had bought UIQ from handset OS maker Symbian last year. UIQ is essentially a graphic interface adding components to the Symbian OS. Symbian in turn is 47.9% owned by Nokia. Under UIQ, native programming can be made in C++ although the software does support the – in the mobile games space – ubiquitous J2ME standard. Motorola’s new flagship Z8 (nicknamed “MotoRzr” as in “riser”) is running on it already. The battle of the OS giants begins…

It is an interesting move since Moto has been the most active OEM for the use of Linux Mobile: it has released a whole range of phones for the open source OS featuring the penguin. It is also one of the founding fathers of the LiMo Foundation, an initiative it embarked on together with industry heavyweights NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic (and which was recently joined by LG, McAfee, Broadcom, Ericsson and others). Now, I understand that Linux and C++ work together but must admit that my knowledge is more than limited here. It is in any event noteworthy that Motorola goes with a UI based on Symbian rather than straight-forward Linux. Motorola was quick to state that UIQ would only be “one of the actions to support [a] strategy” adding more investment in multimedia product segments.

With hundreds of millions in development cost at stake, it is probably too early to tell but it certainly is a new twist in the quest to uproot Nokia‘s top position with the Symbian s60 platform. So, what’s next?

Cellcom's ad-funded game trial: the Results

By Volker

On 18/07/2007

In Games

It is probably because they read here my criticism of their somewhat cryptic information policy back in April (well they probably didn’t) but – one way or another – Cellcom, the Israeli carrier that entered into a comprehensive ad-funded mobile game trial has provided insight in the results. Kudos!

So what do we learn? Here’s some of the highlights:
* 44% click-through rate
* 19% acquisition rate
* 10x higher game downloads per user (compared to downloads prior to the trial)
* 24% of the participants had not downloaded a game in the preceding 6 months, and 54% had not done so in the preceding 3 months.
* Take-up appears to have been particularly high amongst the youngest (9-20 years). No surprise here. The sentence reporting that is a bit mumbled, so not sure if they want to tell us that 65% of the users in this segment downloaded at least one game during the trial…

A little aside I noticed was that they call advertisers – somewhat carefully – sponsors: does that mean they didn’t get any return for their money? Anyway, they advertisers/sponsors included quite a few of the biggies, e.g. Nokia, McDonalds, Diadora, Samsung, Adidas and Walt Disney. All the agency powerhouses tinkered with it, too, with McCann, Saatchi & Saatchi and BBDO all involved.

I have praised above Cellcom’s information policy but two crucial data points are (somewhat unsurprisingly) left out, namely CPM and pay-out to the game publishers. For a 1-month trial, everyone will be in for the ride, and be only to show that they are in the midst of the flavour of the month, mobile advertising. However, only if advertisers are that (and not sponsors), i.e. if CPM will be at levels comparable to other media (or better), will it work. The above click-through numbers suggest that this might well be the case, and the added value of extreme targeting (the mobile screen is a user’s most personal one: it is not shared with others to the extent the TV or computer is) will improve that further.

The question will then remain if big mobile game publishers who regularly spend hundreds of thousands dollars on a game will provide for in-game ads in these games and if licensors for such games will allow advertising that will then factually be endorsed by their brands. Finally, operators must make sure that the consumer is not charged for the data transferred to feed the ads. This can make for an incredibly complex business model, and perhaps one that will not make it worthwhile for one or more of the parties in it to participate. Much easier of course if there is no third-party licensor involved. The result could then likely be a two-fold structure: high-powered branded premium games for a price and unbranded, ad-funded games for free.