Guy Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees behind the legendary marketing of its 1984 Macintosh, and he’s well known among the Apple community for being a former evangelist of the Cupertino company. You might think, then, that when Kawasaki’s phone rings, it’s an iPhone he pulls out of his pocket.
Well that couldn’t be further from the truth. Kawasaki’s a diehard Android fan, and he has been for about a year. He no longer uses any iOS products at all — not even an iPad.
Strong sales of the iPhone 5 have helped Apple grab more than a quarter of the global LTE device market last quarter, despite the handset’s short time on sale. The Cupertino company now commands 27% of the market share, while arch rival Samsung’s 40% share means it maintains the top spot for the seventh quarter in a row.
However, increasing competition from its rivals means Samsung’s share has quickly slipped by more than 10% from 50.9% in the previous quarter.
Google doesn’t have time to focus on products like this. It has an iPhone to beat.
Google is gearing up to offload Motorola’s set-top box business as it looks to concentrate its efforts on competing with Apple’s iPhone. The company has been trying to sell Motorola Home Business, which supplies set-top boxes to cable television providers, for around $2 billion, and it has reportedly received multiple offers already. Once it’s gone, Google will focus on high-end smartphones.
Research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has revealed that “smart connected device” shipments — which includes computers, smartphones, and tablets — reached a record high during the third quarter of 2012, largely thanks to Apple and Samsung. The pair’s hugely popular devices helped the market grow 27.1% year-on-year as it reached a record 303.6 million shipments valued at over $140 billion.
Samsung kept us waiting a long, long time for the Galaxy S III. We expected it to arrive at CES 2012 back in January, and when that didn’t happen, we hoped for a release at Mobile World Congress the following month (which Samsung didn’t bother turning up to). As it turns out, the Korean company’s flagship smartphone didn’t get its grand unveiling until May.
We may not be in for the same wait next time around, however. Samsung is already teasing “something new” for CES 2013, sparking speculation that the Galaxy S IV will be arriving as early as next month.
