Verizon iPhone 4S outsells all Verizon Android phones combined in Q4

by Bill Palmer

Official quarterly numbers reveal that the iPhone 4S accounted for 55% or 4.3 million out of the 7.7 million smartphones Verizon sold in the fourth quarter of 2011, meaning that the Verizon iPhone 4S outsold all of Verizon’s Android based phones combined. The revelation comes at a time when Verizon’s Droid lineup had been expanded to include the Droid RAZR, a smartphone iteration of Motorola’s once-iconic super thin RAZR cellphone lineup, as well as Verizon’s attempts at expanding its Android options beyond its own Droid line with products like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Despite these additions, the iPhone 4S still ruled the day. For the first several years of the iPhone’s existence, Verizon had been shut out to rival AT&T and subsequently launched its Droid lineup in an attempt to combat AT&T’s iPhone juggernaut. In early 2011 Verizon gained the iPhone 4, which had already been on AT&T for more than half a year and saw middling initial sales on Verizon. But the iPhone 4S has been a different story with Verizon customers, having become more popular with them than all of Verizon’s Android offerings combined despite the fact that the iPhone 4S wasn’t on the market for the entire quarter…

For Apple, the news brings vindication for its current smartphone strategy along with a stinging reminder of what could have been. It turns out all Apple had to do was to free the iPhone from AT&T exclusivity and also put it in the hands of rival carriers like Verizon and Sprint in order for the iPhone to reverse market losses to the rival Android platform. Recent numbers from Nielsen revealed that iPhone sales nearly doubled from the third quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter. But these impressive surges suggest that Apple could have majority smartphone marketshare from the start if it had launched the iPhone concurrently on all major carriers back in 2007 instead of tying it to one carrier per nation; AT&T in particular is rated poorly in studies and is despised by many users who claimed they would never buy an iPhone until it came to their preferred carrier. But these latest iPhone 4S numbers show that with Apple having finally offers a choice of iPhone carriers, consumers are in fact doing precisely what they said. The iPhone 4S represented the first time a new iPhone generation launched at the same time on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, and the numbers reveal that customers of the latter two are eating it up.

iPhone 5 release date follows iPhone 4S marketshare boost over Android

by Bill Palmer

Nielsen says the iPhone 4S is doing just fine, even as Apple gears up for a 2012 release date for the iPhone 5. In December 2011, 44% of U.S. smartphone sales went to the iPhone as opposed to 25% a few months before. That boost in sales can be explained partially by those who were simply waiting for the iPhone 4S to come to market, which was launched in mid October and was supply-constrained into November. But the largest chunk of the iPhone’s gains came at the expense of the rival Android platform, which Nielsen says saw a drop from 61% of the market to 46% during that same time period. Still trying to get into the game is Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, which despite significant marketing and some degree of positive press is still hovering about one percent of sales. Apple’s challenge now is to sustain iPhone growth for the remainder of the iPhone 4S era, as by now a significant portion of consumers are aware that an iPhone 5 is expected this year…

The depressed iPhone sales numbers prior to the release of the iPhone 4S were largely a result of consumer expectation that a new iPhone would be released in the summer, as established by Apple’s precedent of having done so every previous summer going back to 2007. But as the summer of 2011 came and went and no new iPhone showed, consumers increasingly opted to put off buying a new iPhone (or buying their first one) due to their preference to wait for whatever the new model eventually brought. Apple eventually released the iPhone 4S, which some observers predicted would see muted sales because it offered the same external hardware design as the previous iPhone 4 and because it simply wasn’t an iPhone 5. However these latest Nielsen numbers (reported by ComputerWorld) reveal that the iPhone 4S, which launched on three U.S. carriers this year (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint) as opposed Apple’s usual one carrier, paired with a sub-$100 iPhone 4 and a free-with-contract iPhone 3GS, are seeing significant marketshare growth – and that’s at a time when Android, which had long been claiming unprecedented growth, finds itself rapidly losing marketshare…

Can Apple keep this up for the perhaps six to nine months remaining until the iPhone 5 finally sees its release date? Has the iPhone’s carrier expansion turned the tables such that the iPhone will continue growing while Android will continue losing marketshare? Or will Apple need to get the iPhone 5 out the door swiftly in order to capitalize on the current trends before iPhone 4S excitement dries up? Stay tuned. Here’s more on the iPhone 4S. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

iPhone 4S signals ends of Android growth; carriers restore the balance

by Bill Palmer

The Android platform gained marketshare ahead of the release of the iPhone 4S, a fact which Android aficionados will be tempted to celebrate. Not so fast. That Android growth came in the form of a single percentage point, meaning that the platform’s growth has slowed significantly. Moreover, that small sliver of growth came at a time when iPhone sales were artificially and temporarily slowed due to fact that most potential iPhone buyers knew Apple would release a new model before the start of the holiday season. If not for Apple’s unusual decision to push the latest iPhone launch back from the summer to the fall, Android would have lost marketshare in the quarter rather than gaining a single point. While hard marketshare numbers aren’t yet available for the current quarter which would include iPhone 4S sales, there’s little doubt that record-breaking 4S sales have shaken things up to where the iPhone’s iOS platform is growing while the Android platform is losing share. From the addition of the iPhone to carriers like Verizon and Sprint to other factors, here’s a look at why iOS is now winning the battle over Android…

Carriers: This is the gimme. With the exception of those geeks too blinded by their fervor for Android’s hackability, it seemed obvious to any impartial observer that most Android phone sales were a direct result of the iPhone remaining locked to one carrier per nation for its first several years on the market, most notably the hated AT&T in the United States. Grab a typical (non-geek) Android phone user off the street and ask them why they have an Android phone, and the answer is never anything positive regarding Android. Instead, the answer is typically “Because I’m on Sprint” or “Because I hate AT&T.” Now that the days of iPhone exclusivity are ending, the iPhone is exploding on new carriers like Sprint and the popularity of Android phones on those carriers is falling accordingly. Contrast the rise of Android phones with the Android tablet market, which has been a litany of flops. Tablets aren’t directly tied to carriers, and with that factor removed, the iPad has been burying Android tablet sales all along. Now, with those restraints removed from the iPhone, smartphone marketshare will shift to something more akin to tablet marketshare. But carriers aren’t the only factor in play here…

Waning geek influence: One need look no further than the way in which most geeks are now hiding in seclusion on the ghost town social network known as Google+ to understand their desperation to continue feeling relevant in an era in which consumers are increasingly making their own buying decisions – or asking the advice of non-geek peers with the same skill levels – and ignoring what the geeks have to say about consumer tech products. Even as the mainstream congregates on Facebook in an increasingly social fashion, the geeks hide on Google+ where they’re away from the mainstream and can pretend they’re still the center of the tech universe. The result? The geekiest one percent, who almost uniformly champion hackable products like Android and hate Apple’s more polished, curated approach, are now preaching to each other in an echo chamber where no one from the mainstream 99% of tech users can hear them.

Experience: Salesgeeks swore up and down to their mainstream prey that Android would be “just like iPhone but better” – and plenty of them fell for it. But outside influence fades once consumers have their own hands-on experiences from which to make decisions. After a year or two of using an Android phone for themselves and seeing that it’s most definitely not like an iPhone, particularly after seeing their iPhone-using friends being able to run circles around them in terms of ease of use and quality of apps, those first-time Android buyers won’t be buying a second one – particularly with the iPhone 4S arriving on their carrier.

iPhone 4S Siri knockoff “Iris” for Android doesn’t know what 12+3 is

by Bill Palmer

With the rise of Siri on the iPhone 4S, it was a matter of time before an Android response surfaced. It’s come quickly, it’s even more of a blatant copycat than expected, and it doesn’t work. Carrying the name “Iris” (yes, that’s “Siri” spelled backwards), the app is a free download in the Android Market. The intentionally copycatted name might imply that Iris is on a level with Siri in terms of functionality, but recent tests by Techland confirmed that while the level of artificial intelligence found in Siri is still being debated, Iris is clearly brain dead. It doesn’t know what 12+3 is; so much for being smarter than a fifth grader. It can’t convert currency, and it doesn’t know what you’re talking about when you tell it to open any given website. And here we thought copycats were supposed to actually work right.

Despite being unfinished to the point of being unusable, Iris is available to Android users now. Not that being in pre-beta condition has ever stopped other Android apps from launching in the past; whereas Apple hand-tests every iPhone and iPad app submitted to its App Store (ninety-something percent are approved), Google allows anything into its Android Market without testing it or verifying its usability or safety. Junk like Iris is the result. At least there’s no price tag on it.

Then again, with its name intentionally spelled backwards, perhaps we’re just missing the point. Maybe you just have to speak to Iris in reverse for it to be able to understand you.

iPhone 4S lands Android switchers due to iOS 5, Siri, Sprint, Verizon

by Bill Palmer

Here come the iPhone 4S switchers from Android. Independent studies showed that nearly half of Android users (42%) claimed they would move from their current platform to the iPhone 5 when it was released. But with Apple having released less ambitious new iPhone hardware this month in the form of the 4S instead, would the switcher army still show up? The hard numbers remain to be seen. The iPhone 4S has been an overwhelming initial success, with more than a million online preorders in less than a day and a retail launch which appears to have set sales records as well. But it’s not yet been determined what percentage of 4S buyers are new to the platform as compared to replacing an existing iPhone, nor is it clear what percentage of buyers are landing on each platform. However, anecdotal evidence is beginning to pour in that factors ranging from iOS 5 and Siri to the addition of carriers like Sprint and Verizon have motivated Android users to begin migrating to the iPhone 4S. Interestingly enough, while it’s long been a given that mainstream users who aimlessly ended up on Android by default as a placeholder until the iPhone arrived on their carrier would eventually move to iPhone once their carrier nabbed it, even some geeks who intentionally chose Android for its hacker-friendliness have switched to the iPhone 4S…

Much as the tech geek community recoils at the notion, most current Android users will admit up front that they’ve never had any allegiance to the platform and that they only bought it because the iPhone was tied to AT&T for its first four years and they had no intention of leaving their preferred carrier. Android was, after all, created specifically to fill the vacuum created on carriers like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile (and their equivalents worldwide) which had been shut out of the iPhone by Apple. While all Android phones have sold quite well combined, none of the individual carriers has been able to use its in-house Android lineup to compete with the iPhone in terms of growth. Verizon’s internal data showed its Droid was being outsold by the iPhone by a ratio of 2.5 to 1, prompting the carrier to jump on board with the iPhone 4 the moment the exclusivity deal ended in order to stop the bleeding. But most Verizon customers stated their preference to wait for the next iPhone, which would be the first to arrive on Verizon at launch, rather than settle for what was by then an aging iPhone 4. Sprint followed suit this month by giving up hope that its EVO Android line could rescue it and instead opted to bet the company on a pricey iPhone deal with Apple. Meanwhile AT&T is the only U.S. carrier showing any real growth over the past few years, and that’s thanks almost entirely to the fact that it had the iPhone all to itself; that growth is now in danger as its iPhone customers have the option of leaving…

But even as current iPhone users reload with the iPhone 4S this week while longtime iPhone fans on Sprint and Verizon load up with their first iPhone, the minority of Android users who actually believe in Android may be the ones to watch. Those types tend to be significantly removed from mainstream society (even though the same group tends to control most of the tech headlines written, even in mainstream publications). Walk down the street and perform a headcount of visible iPhone and Android phones in use, and you’ll conclude that the iPhone has majority marketshare. But enter an insulated geek conclave like Google+ and you’ll find it’s dominated by Android worshippers, too busy quoting Android activation numbers to bother realizing they have little to no correlation to actual device sales or marketshare. Point out that Android devices only account for about a third as much web traffic as iPhone devices, and they’ll respond back with either bizarre counter-arguments or in some cases flat-out threats of violence. But while the more insulated and deluded among the Android geek army might rather jump off a cliff than switch to an Apple product, some among the more rational Android geeks appear to be leaning toward the iPhone 4S.

There’s the tech writer at the Huffington Post who’s geeky enough that he’s using the “Ice Cream Sandwich” code words in reference to Android (a phrase which no one among the mainstream 99% of Android users has ever, ever heard). And yet he just switched from Android, which he still likes, to the iPhone 4S. His reasons? The new iOS 5 operating system, iCloud, and specifically Siri. Search around the web and you’ll find more tech geeks announcing that they’re moving from Android to the iPhone this week, each of them touting some of the same reasons.

For mainstream users who value ease of use and understandability of features as their primary (and in many cases only real) decision making factor when it comes to picking a smartphone, the iPhone has long been hands-down the only choice. The only thing the iPhone 4S changes in that regard is that it’s now on Sprint and Verizon as well as AT&T (and equivalent carrier expansion around the world), meaning that the iPhone goes from being the non-option they’ve always wanted to now being an option and a nearly automatic sale for Apple. But for the tech geeks who’ve long favored Android because it has infinite theoretical features whether they do anything or not, because they can hack it and make system-level coding modifications and write their own homebrew apps and do all the things that geek would rather do than use it for anything practical, the notion that at least some percentage of them are now switching to the comparatively unhackable iPhone 4S is a sign that perhaps Android doesn’t have a permanent lock on the geeks after all -or maybe some of them are just tired of using their smartphone as a tinker toy instead of a smartphone. Here’s more on the iPhone 4S.

Updated with additional information on iPhone switcher data

iPhone 5 arrives as Android activation vs marketshare reveals 200% gap

by Bill Palmer

Here’s one that’ll set Android fanatics’ hair on fire: as the iPhone 5 arrives, the latest data shows that only sixteen percent of mobile traffic comes from Android devices even as Apple’s combined iPhone-iPad lineup accounts for slightly more than half of all mobile traffic. So much for the claims that Android devices have forty-eight percent of the mobile market. The study conducted by Net Applications is the latest statistical broadside fired into claims on the part of Google that Android device “activations” are an adequate substitute for actual device sales numbers, and casts further skepticism as to whether the meteoric rise of the Android platform is in fact real.

Android smartphones have sold well and are easy enough to spot in multitudes in public. But it’s been difficult from the start to get a handle on the true popularity of the devices for two reasons. One is that among tech journalists and publications, who account for the bulk of Android platform reporting, the majority of them are the kind of geeks who greatly prefer Android and its open-source Linux underpinnings on a personal level. The reporting coming from these outlets regarding Android OS has long been skewed overly favorable. For reference, these are the same outlets claiming that the new Google+ has already overtaken Facebook in overall popularity, even as hard data shows Facebook still has greater than ten times as many users. But the skewed reporting has only been half the battle, as “activation numbers” have ruled the day in place of actual marketshare. So what does this have to do with the impending iPhone 5 launch? We’ll get to that…

Google is perhaps justified in reporting its Android OS progress in terms of device activations rather than device sales, as Google is only responsible for the Android OS and for the most part is hands-off in terms of device sales (although that’s soon to change in the aftermath of Google’s acquisition of Droid manufacturer Motorola Mobility). But the activation numbers reported have always seemed pie in the sky in comparison to a simple glance-around and headcount in public (so long as you’re not a geek tech conference). Apple and others have accused Google of counting multiple activations per user; each time an Android user installs an OS update, it’s technically another activation, and other factors such as prepaid disposable Android phones could be further skewing the activations numbers. But perhaps consciously or unconsciously, Android-leaning tech reporters and publications have largely allowed Google to skate by with nary an editorial challenge to these activation claims. As such, the public has largely swallowed the editorial claims that “Android is taking over” despite that notion being based on nothing more than Google’s sketchy activation claims and the tech media’s willingness to not only blindly trust those numbers but turn around and misrepresent them as if they were marketshare numbers instead.

Today’s web usage study would seem to throw down the gauntlet. If Android activation numbers are indeed an accurate representation of actual Android devices in use, then it means that iPhone users do three times as much web surfing as their Android counterparts. How’s that possible? The short answer is that it’s not…

There could be some degree of mitigating explanation which would explain away a portion of the discrepancy. For instance, while most iPhone users have an iPhone because they wanted one, most Android users (tech geeks aside) are on Android because their carrier didn’t have the iPhone at the time. Here’s the part where the iPhone 5 launch plays directly into this: other studies have shown that anywhere from 27% to 42% of current Android users plan to switch to the iPhone 5 once it arrives. That alone is evidence that most Android buyers are either disappointed in their purchase or have never had any allegiance to the device to begin with, viewing it as a placeholder until the iPhone arrived on their carrier. As such, disgruntled and disinterested Android users could in fact be surfing the web less because they’ve either given up on the device or they’ve struggled with its geek-leaning interface from the start and don’t find mobile web surfing worth the frustration.

But even as such, that’s not enough to explain why Android users would only be reaching for their devices one-third as often as iPhone users. The more logical answer is that Android internet usage is only a fraction of what Android activation numbers would suggest because those activation numbers are simply, in a word, bullshit. Just don’t expect Android-leaning tech publications to admit to as much as they report on this latest study (in fact two major publications have attempted to use the iPod touch to explain away the difference, despite the wifi-only touch seeing far less internet usage per device than a smartphone would). It won’t be the first time they’ve overlooked glaring evidence that Android activation numbers have no correlation to actual Android usage, nor the last. But for those who can do the math, it’s more clear than ever that Android sales are only a fraction of what Android cheerleaders would have you believe.

Updated 8:15pm PST with additional information on iOS and the iPod touch

iPhone 5 release date has up to 42% of Android users switching, not 4S

by Timmy Falcon

The iPhone 5 release date, if it comes this year, will nab a fourth to nearly a half of all current Android users as they become switchers, depending on whose study you choose to believe. If Apple disappoints with an iPhone 4S instead, however, those numbers drop precipitously. A recent survey from InMobi showed that twenty-seven percent of Android users plan to move to the iPhone 5 once it arrives, with more than half of BlackBerry users doing the same. Another survey from a competing research firm showed those numbers to be forty-two percent of Android users and sixty-seven percent of BlackBerry users. The differing numbers can be assigned to differently chosen participants or the way the questions were phrased. But both sets of numbers reveal the same future: the iPhone is set to finally turn years of trickling BlackBerry switchers into a tidal wave, and iPhone is set to turn the tide back against Android marketshare growth after a couple years of seeing its primary competitor explode. All Apple has to do, of course, is deliver a real next-gen iPhone and not another warmed over iPhone 4. But the eagerness with which users of competing platforms are eyeing the iPhone 5 is explainable by a number of factors…

BlackBerry fatigue is more universally understandable. RIM’s smartphones were pioneering a decade ago, but haven’t evolved significantly since and are now considered significantly outdated technology. Those still clinging to their BlackBerry phones are often laughed at these days as if they were using AOL. Many BlackBerry users openly express frustration with their device, but tend to point to one specific reason or another as a reason to stand pat for another generation. Some have pointed to BlackBerry Messenger as the feature which keeps them on the RIM platform. Apple’s new iMessage feature in iOS 5 for the iPhone 5 changes that. The other oft cited reason for sticking with BlackBerry is that the iPhone hasn’t been available on the customer’s preferred carrier, which of course leads to the topic of Android…

The iPhone spent its first several years glued to one carrier per nation for the most part, and Apple paid the price dearly as a result. Non-iPhone carriers like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile jumped on the Android OS when it surfaced because it was free for them an they could slap it on any phone hardware, and they needed something to try to keep their customers from switching away from them to get an iPhone. For every customer who switched to AT&T to get the iPhone, another bought an Android under the promise that it was “like an iPhone” and remained with their existing carrier; Apple lost a potential iPhone sale in the process. Apple has recently begun to correct this liability in a gradual manner. The Verizon iPhone 4, which arrived in the second half of the iPhone 4 era, was a warning shot. Now comes the iPhone 5 on Verizon and AT&T from the start, with Sprint customers believing they’ll be included as well. With it disappears the primary reason most Android buyers went with Android in the first place, although T-Mobile will remain married to Android for the remainder of 2011 as it has announced it won’t have the iPhone 5 this year. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, however, will have the iPhone 5 front and center as their (official or unofficial) flagship smartphone, as all three carriers believe it’s the key to their growth potential.

Geeks and tech enthusiasts will cry foul, as many of them prefer Android for what the mainstream would call hackability (although geeks prefer propaganda-laden terms like “open” and “customizable” which in all cases comes down to being able to hack and re-code the device, something mainstream consumers wouldn’t be interested in one way or the other). But aside from the geekiest fraction of the population, iPhone and its iOS platform have long been explicitly more aimed at mainstream consumers even as Android and its Linux underpinnings and unsupervised amateur-driven app store are clearly meant to appeal to ones inner geek. For the typical consumer, combine a year of disappointing Android experiences (the second survey above shows the majority of Android users plan to leave the Android platform with their next purchase whether there’s an iPhone 5 or not) with the fact that the iPhone 5 will be available on most major carriers nationwide and worldwide, and it’s not a surprise to see so many Android users ready to give up the ghost. Expect the Android geeks, however, to be shocked when this plays out; most of them are under the false impression that Android sales have been high among the mainstream because people actually like it. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

Updated 9:15pm PST with additional information on T-Mobile and Android

Amazon Kindle Fire: $199 tablet targets TouchPad fans, no iPad threat

by Bill Palmer

Amazon’s new Kindle Fire places tablet technology in the hands of cheapskates who don’t want to pay much more than they did for a Kindle book reader, and while it’ll carve out significant share within the Android portion of the tablet market, it represents no threat to the current market leader the iPad 2 or its successor the iPad 3. The $199 Kindle Fire marks an inflection point in tablet pricing: when Apple’s iPad first debuted a year and a half ago, its $499 and up price tag was far less than expected and was considered to be aggressive pricing. Most of the iPad’s competitors including the Samsung, HTC, and Motorola Android tablets subsequently surfaced with similar pricing ranges (or in some cases more expensive), and have each found varying degrees of modest success. The HP TouchPad did the same, but after flopping and being quickly discontinued, was fire-saled briefly at $99 and created a new market: tablets for cheapskates. While the $499 TouchPad was thoroughly rejected by the public for its webOS operating system, lack of apps, and copycat hardware, the $99 TouchPad made clear that there was potential for an uber-cheap tablet, even if its particulars were far from what the public was looking for. Amazon now seeks to take advantage of that market sliver with the Kindle Fire. The key difference is that while the $99 TouchPad was a full-featured tablet selling at a loss (and still would have sold at a loss at $199), the Kindle Fire is a bare-bones tablet which can be sold profitably at $199. But the people looking at the Kindle Fire are largely the same people who would never have bought an iPad anyway. Here are the groups at whom the Kindle Fire is aimed…

Cheapskates: The iPad 2 starts at $499. That’s less than half the price of a Mac computer, and cheaper than all but the most incompetent of bargain priced Windows PC. But there’s the “I don’t really want a tablet and I don’t know what I’ll do with it but I’ll take one at $199″ crowd, along with those whose tight budgets simply don’t allow for a $499 tablet purchase. Currently, tablets are mostly purchased to supplement ones current computer usage. Apple believes that’ll change in the future, and the iPad will replace most home computers. Amazon’s skimpy Kindle Fire can’t come close to doing that, but Amazon is positioning its tablet as a cheap computer sidekick anyway. That’s not the crowd Apple is targeting with the iPad 2, and it won’t be the case with the iPad 3 either. Worth noting is that Amazon is taking the “inexpensive” theme and running with it with the rest of the Kindle lineup. The basic Kindle is $79, and the “Kindle Touch” is $99.

Geeks and Apple haters: Those who ruled out the iPad because it’s either A) too consumer-oriented and not geeky/hackable enough, or B) simply based on the Apple logo on the front, have already decided they’re going to end up with an Android based tablet because it’s essentially the only competing tablet platform (Windows 8 Tablet is a “maybe” for the future and, despite the claims of its biggest supporters, the TouchPad’s webOS is clearly in the past-tense). In those instances, the Kindle Fire will be competing with its fellow Android-based tablets. Those buyers can decide whether they want a $199 Fire or a $499 Galaxy Tab, but either way the iPad was never in the running for those folks to begin with. The Fire may also benefit from being the only Android tablet remaining on the shelf in those regions where Samsung and HTC tablets are being yanked for patent violation reasons…

Existing Kindle users: Those who’ve already been through a Kindle generation or two and are comfortable with it as an eReader may view the Kindle Fire as merely the next-generation Kindle, with the tablet functionality merely an add-on. For those who’ve stuck with a Kindle this long, even in the face of a year and a half of overwhelming iPad and iPad 2 sales, Amazon is going to be able to hang onto this crowd until they let them down. How easily those users transition from the current Kindle interface to the Android-based Kindle Fire will dictate how popular the Fire is among the existing Kindle crowd. But these folks were going to stick with the Kindle brand for some time anyway.

So what is Apple’s response to the Kindle Fire? Nothing, for now. The Fire will steal away some measure of tablet sales which were never going to be iPad sales to begin with. That leaves Apple to continue on its current path of trying to position the iPad 2 as a full-featured eventual computer replacement, even as Amazon goes for the lowball crowd. In other words, don’t expect the iPad 3 to suddenly morph into a $199 tablet simply because Apple’s new competitor is going after the cheapskates. Here’s more on the iPad 3.

Updated 5:55pm with additional information on the full Kindle late 2011 lineup, as provided by Amazon

iPhone 5 launch ban: battle expands as Samsung goes for Apple jugular

by Bill Palmer

Samsung goes for the jugular in seeking to block the sale of the iPhone 5 in retaliation for Apple’s patent suit against Samsung’s iPad copycat known as the Galaxy Tab and iPhone copycat known as the Galaxy S2. Apple has successfully gotten the Tab banned from store shelves in various nations amid accusations that the Tab’s hardware is little more than an intentionally similar design to the iPad aimed at confusing customers into believing that they’re buying a “Samsung iPad” or some such. Now Samsung, citing Motorola patents which it doesn’t even own, will seek to get the iPhone 5 banned from the marketplace. The move won’t work, just as Samsung’s previous legal attempt to force Apple to unveil the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 secret prototypes to Samsung executives for inspection fell flat on its face. But this latest move, which sees an Android vendor attempting to keep consumers from having the opportunity to get their hands on the iPhone 5, is part of a larger, more societal picture: Android class warfare…

Unlike economic class warfare, a term which various political entities have used to describe clashes between the rich and poor, “class warfare” in consumer technology terms has a different meaning. The battle, as it were, has long been between the mainstream consumers who account for most of the consumer technology expenditure dollars and the geeks who develop the products. For as long as the market existed, geeks have designed products largely suitable only for themselves, out of either vanity or a self-insulated lack of awareness that the non-geek mainstream so much as exists. Consumers were expected to merely swallow whatever the geeks cooked up, no matter how mainstream-inappropriate their geek concoctions might be, and for a generation that’s exactly what happened. But in the past decade-plus, a gradual change has seen that equilibrium shift…

Products like the iPod and the Kindle, while concocted by geeks, had been clearly refined into consumer-centric devices ahead of their launch. The geek community lined up to warn the public not to buy these products, but those cries were ignored. The same thing happened with next-gen consumer centric products such as the iPhone and then the iPad. The geeks ramped up their intensity by predicting the end of humanity as we know it if products like the iPad were allowed to succeed. For the most part those geeks were written off as ranting lunatics, while the iPhone and iPad went on to find massive mainstream success. But then something happened: the geek computer operating system known as Linux, which had been a consumer failure despite geek predictions that it would take over the world, was converted into a mobile touchscreen product called Android. Google acquired it and offered it for free to any smartphone or tablet vendor who wanted it, giving them a headstart in their attempts to compete with the iPhone and iPad. Geeks latched onto Android as if their way of life depended on it, not just for themselves, but also as a product to be actively foisted upon the mainstream by any means necessary. That meant everything from libelous negative headlines about the iPhone from geek headline writers, to lies told to retail consumers about the iPhone on the part of salesgeeks looking to sell them an Android product instead. And now Samsung, an Android vendor who’s been caught red handed stealing Apple’s product designs, is trying to take the iPhone 5 away from consumers entirely…

The move comes even as data shows current Android users voicing enough displeasure with the platform that a slight majority of them say they’re abandoning it with their next purchase. That next purchase, then, is set to be an iPhone 5, a product which Samsung is literally attempting to keep them from being able to buy. When Samsung’s Android products began disappearing from shelves, no one but the geeks cared. With the Tab and S2 representing little more than attempts to trick consumers into buying an iPad or iPhone knockoff (and get them onto Android in the process), most consumers aren’t even aware that anything has changed with the Samsung products gone. But if Samsung manages to get the iPhone 5 delayed, even for a day, the mainstream public will jump to attention – marking the first time in which consumers will become fully aware of the consumer tech class warfare which has long been tacitly waged against them. Samsung’s attempt to block the iPhone 5 won’t work, because its legal angle is every bit as laugh-out-loud ludicrous as its earlier attempt to get its hands on iPhone 5 secret designs. But if Samsung does find an unlikely way to succeed in keeping the iPhone 5 from coming to market, the consumer tech cold war could suddenly shift into a real one. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

Sprint iPhone 5 sidesteps $200 of Android frustration, delivers 4G

Phajej chimes in with his thoughts on what the Sprint iPhone 5 release date means (along with what he thinks it’ll really be called), and why it means avoiding “$200 worth of frustration” when it comes to Sprint’s current Android based phones….

Sprint has commented in the past that their current 4G lineup will support future 4G LTE upgrades.  I am pretty sure this iPhone will support 4G.  What’s the point anyways for keeping so tight lipped about it?  Its probably going to be called iPhone 4G b/c it supports 4G.  I couldn’t believe how naive iPhone 4 users were that told me their iPhone was had 4G just because of the “4″ in iPhone 4 name.  We should all know how this game is played; Apple will not release any major upgrades until it fixes all the kinks and wrinkles in the iPhone 4…

Plus, why not push 4G technology on a company that is falling apart, what is there to lose.  If 4G fails on Sprint, then the iPhone 5 will fix that when it is released on the other carriers, thus leaving Sprint customers in the dark.  Sprint loves to do this to its customers too, i.e. Palm Pre. Sorry iOSers your iOS only supports specific devices, whereas Android supports any device you can tweak it too.  Don’t stand on the other side of the fence bragging when your OS is limited to iPod Touch, iPhone 2, 3G, 3GS, 4 and iPad 1 and 2…

On some of the older Apple products you can’t even upgrade pass a certain OS without it running like crap.  Don’t forget the people that jailbroke their Apple products too, they show me cool things that are native on Android devices.  Android has their issues; most common is a restart every 3-4 hours, battery life issues, free apps, and no OS support from our carriers.  LOL! We should all feel stupid for buying their devices for such handsome figures so we can deal with the frustration they comes with it.”YOU JUST BOUGHT $200 WORTH OF FRUSTRATION!”

Want to see your words highlighted on Beatweek.com? Share your detailed thoughts on the iPhone 5 release date or a related topic in the comments section below, and if it’s worth passing along to fellow Beatweek readers, we’ll highlight it in a future news item…

Android shakeup: HTC defecting amid Motorola merger, Samsung lawsuits

by Timmy Falcon

In Animal Farm, some animals eventually became more equal than others. In 2011, are some Android vendors about to see the same fate? As Apple takes nearly every Android phone and tablet hardware manufacturer to court over patent infringement claims and Google responds by gobbling up the one major Android vendor which hasn’t yet been hauled before a judge, another Android vendor says it’s on the verge of calling it quits. The Apple lawsuits against Samsung and HTC have been gradually turning in Apple’s favor, with products like the Galaxy Tab being banned from sale in various nations. HTC, facing a similar fate in the courtroom, says it’s considering bailing on Android altogether, possibly in favor of webOS, last seen in the recently discontinued HP TouchPad and Palm Pre. It’s not immediately clear whether HTC is looking to bail out in spite of, or because of, Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Suddenly, the once-level Android playing field is one big soap opera…

HTC’s strategy of publicly threatening to walk away from manufacturing Android OS devices could come from any of a variety of motivations. It could be a warning shot at Google. The message: “Don’t even think about playing favorites with Motorola products when it comes to Android updates and availability, or we’ll find another OS.” HTC could be looking to turn the tide of opinion against Apple in the patent wars, motivating Android fans to fight harder in the perception department (not that geek headline writers and geek retail store reps could be fighting any harder to turn the public against the iPhone and iPad in favor of their pet Android platform than they already are, but I digress). Or HTC could simply be speaking at face value: tired of being sued by Apple, unsure of what to make of the Google-Motorola deal, it wants to shift to a platform which doesn’t involve the headaches or the drama. That would be a remarkable turn of events, considering the Motorola deal was ostensibly designed to help HTC…

The widespread assumption regarding Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility was that it was so Motorola’s patents could be shared with companies like HTC and Samsung in their ongoing legal battles with Apple, although many legal experts have pointed out that those patents may be irrelevant. However, Google exec Eric Schmidt has since quipped that he looks forward to seeing what new Android hardware Google-Motorola can come up with, suggesting that Google intends to (eventually if not immediately) be hands-on with Motorola’s Android device development. If so, that would make Motorola product lines like the Droid and Xoom the de facto “in house” Android devices, putting HTC on the outside of the platform looking in, pragmatically if not officially…

That also raises the issue of spreading sentiment: if HTC bails on Android and survives with another OS, Samsung may ultimately do the same. That would leave current users of those devices facing the choice of switching to another brand of Android hardware with their next purchase (presumably from Motorola), switching to a different OS when buying their next phone or tablet from HTC or Samsung, or moving to a third option such as Apple’s iPhone or iPad. Even if Google’s intentions with Motorola are pure and the company does in fact attempt to protect third party Android vendors in the courtroom while allowing them to remain true equals to its own Motorola products, that may not be enough to keep Samsung or HTC from defecting anyway. Although the lawsuits are based on hardware, there’s some sentiment (borne out of Apple’s decision not to sue HP over the TouchPad) that Apple might be more willing to settle the patent suits favorably if vendors are willing to ditch Android OS, which Apple feels an in-house copycat job by Schmidt, who sat on Apple’s board of directors at the time the iPhone was coming to fruition even as Google was putting together its Android plans. If a company like HTC can make all its legal problems go away by merely switching from one geek OS to another, the prospect might simply be too tempting. How many device sales HTC would lose in the process, if any, is another matter.

Samsung Galaxy Tab, HP TouchPad disappear as iPad 3 gains elbow room

by Johnny Major

In the same month the HP TouchPad goes down in flames, Apple has successfully gotten the Samsung Galaxy Tab banned permanently in Germany, setting a precedent which could see an exodus of iPad copycats worldwide. That puts Apple on course to seemingly have the only tablet left on the market by the time it launches the iPad 3 in the spring of 2012 or perhaps later this year. The patent wars between Apple and those Android tablet makers who borrowed liberally from the iPad’s hardware design had seen a number of temporary bans around the world, but the Germany ruling is significant for two reasons.

One is that it’s a permanent ban: there will be Galaxy Tab for sale in the nation, ever, unless Samsung can go back and come up with an original design. Secondly, the recent attempt on the part of Android OS maker Google to come to the rescue of Android hardware manufacturers by acquiring Motorola’s patents was of no use here. That sets an early precedent for the Motorola intellectual property, considered superfluous to the iPad-Android lawsuits at best, not being enough to save Samsung, HTC, or any other copycats Apple goes after. This all comes amid HP yanking its TouchPad from shelves due to lack of interest, meaning that whatever competitors the iPad 3 faces, it could be an entirely different crop of tablets than is on sale now…

Little is known about the iPad 3 as of yet, including whether its release date will be this year or next. It’ll run some iteration of the new iOS 5 operating system, and may see a screen resolution boost to Retina Display quality. It’ll almost certainly offer an improved rear-facing camera over that of the current iPad 2. But even as Apple works to protecting its tablet marketshare lead by releasing an iPad 3 in the near or mid term future, it’s also working to eradicate copycat competitors in advance…

HTC fired back this week by filing suit against Apple using the patents Google acquired from Motorola, but the fact that those patents were ignored in the Samsung ruling points to murky waters on that front. Amazon is reportedly ready to launch an Android based tablet of its own, one which (for once) isn’t a hardware copycat of the iPad. So as Samsung and HTC presumably get yanked from markets worldwide and the TouchPad dies of its own accord, Amazon could be in position to be the leading tablet competitor to the iPad by the time the iPad 3 arrives. Then again, Google with its acquisition of Motorola’s tablet lineup may have something to say about that, if Google itself can avoid Apple’s legal wrath.

Former Google CEO says he “couldn’t stand” Steve Jobs’ Apple Board

by Johnny Major

Google exec Eric Schmidt did more this week than intimate that his company’s acquisition of Android manufacturer Motorola is more than merely about patent protection. He also divulged that he “couldn’t stand” being on Apple’s board of directors while he was a part of it, a group which consists of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Genentech CEO Art Levinson, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, and others (new Apple CEO Tim Cook was on Apple’s executive team at the time but not yet on the board). Schmidt’s remark offers the first instance of first-hand insight into the ostensibly awkward period in which Google’s then-CEO was also sitting on Apple’s board, at a time when Apple was launching the iPhone while Google was secretly prepping its competing Android OS.

The Schmidt quote from PC Magazine is open to interpretation out of context. Is it that he personally couldn’t stand the likes of Jobs and company, or the way in which Apple’s board operated on a corporate level? Or is that he couldn’t stand being torn between the two partners as they gradually dissolved into mobile rivals. Perhaps he couldn’t stand being racked with guilt over having seemingly two-timed Apple, hanging around during the iPhone development era and then taking that information back to Google. The old Sean Connery quote “You’re playing both sides” comes to mind. But while it’s not clear just what Schmidt was referring to with his quote, it’s not the first time a rival has managed to penetrate Apple’s secrecy cloak in broad daylight…

The Schmidt-Apple saga has distinct overtones of a generation ago when Bill Gates from scrappy upstart Microsoft managed to get Jobs to give him Macintosh prototype units under the guise of developing Microsoft apps for them. Gates delivered on that promise, but he also delivered his own Windows computer operating system, whose ideas were stolen rather blatantly from those Mac prototypes. A spurned Apple sued Microsoft, but after internal struggles Jobs was gone from Apple soon thereafter anyway, and a limp Apple failed in its legal efforts along with its market efforts for the next decade. While Jobs appears to have been burned by Schmidt and Google in a similar fashion inasmuch as Android was crafted at a time when Schmidt was privy to sensitive iPhone development information, this time Apple’s response was quite different…

Rather than suing Google, Apple opted to boot Eric Schmidt off its board of directors. When the lawsuits began, rather than going after Google for what might have been a harder to prove case, Apple instead sued most of the major Android hardware manufacturers – not for using the Android OS, but for hardware designs which looked shockingly similar to Apple’s own iPad and iPhone hardware with the screen turned off. Apple may well have gone after these companies regardless. But the fact that Apple has succeeded in getting Android-based products banned from store shelves in one nation after another must be giving Jobs and company some measure of satisfaction whether the lawsuits were inspired by revenge motivation or not. And that’s true even if, by his own admission, Schmidt couldn’t stand being a part of Apple in the first place. Here’s more on Schmidt’s comments.

Transition: HP TouchPad morphing into Android tablet is dicey move

by Johnny Major

The demise of the HP TouchPad, such a flop that it garnered more headlines for being almost literally given away after discontinuation than it did at any point when it was an active product line, sees Hewlett Packard looking for a tablet strategy going forward after the TouchPad was drubbed in a no-contest bout by Apple’s iPad. HP is dumping its line of Windows PCs, sensing that computers will give way to tablets in popularity eventually anyway. But for the company to remain permanently out of the tablet arena would for it to be little more than a printer company in consumer terms, a fall from grace which shareholders may find unacceptable. And while geeks are clamoring for HP to launch an Android based tablet to take the TouchPad’s place, the Android tablet market is crowded with products which are collectively being clobbered by the iPad 2. The answer for HP, then, is to take a page from its past in the near future: license the iPad 3 from Apple. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Nearly a decade ago, when Apple was initially trying to get the iPod off the ground and its brand was not widely trusted among PC users, it made a deal: HP would scrap plans for its in-house MP3 player and would instead sell a licensed Apple iPod with the HP brand name on it. As it turned out, the “HP iPod” was a flop because Apple was already getting its hooks into mainstream PC users; they opted for the Apple iPod instead of the HP iPod. So why would HP want to employ a strategy which failed the first time? Because unlike the iPod a decade ago, the iPad has actual competition. And while Apple is winning, it could use the help. And HP could use anything to get it past the embarrassment of the TouchPad flop. Here’s what such a landscape would look like…

First, there would be no loss for Apple: those who are going to buy the Apple iPad 3 are going to buy the Apple iPad 3. But there are those who are, for reasons ranging from undue geek influence to old habit, simply uneasy about buying an Apple-branded product. Currently, some of those folks are ending up with the Android-based Galaxy Tab 10.1, which Samsung designed as a nearly physically identical copycat aimed at scooping up customers uneasy with Apple (or who fell victim to undue influence on the part of the Android-championing salesgeek in the store). If there were an HP-branded iPad for sale in stores like Best Buy and Radio Shack where the salesgeeks will literally say or do anything to steer customers away from Apple products, then customers might end up with the HP iPad instead of the Samsung iPad knockoff. That would be a win for both Apple and Hewlett Packard. Of course Apple and HP both had different CEOs back when that deal was made…

But despite the personnel changes, both companies still have battles to fight on the tablet side. HP can’t go forward without a tablet strategy for long, and it if it launches an Android-based iPad copycat, Apple will sue it out of existence in the same manner Apple is currently doing with Samsung and HTC. HP could instead get itself on board with the world’s most popular tablet at a research and development cost of zero. And Apple could gain an ally in the ongoing battle against the Best Buy salesgeeks, whose villainy is responsible for the majority of Android tablet sales. Such a deal would require a leap of faith on both the part of Apple and Hewlett Packard, but it makes too much sense not to at least consider it. Here’s more on the death of the HP TouchPad.

HP TouchPad $99 tablet sale gambit amid iPad 2 ease, Android geekery

by Timmy Falcon

The failure of the HP TouchPad, notoriously on its way out the door amidst a loss-leading $99 fire sale, comes as the Palm-derived tablet found itself between a rock and a hard place during its short seven week lifespan. The third horse in a two-horse race, the TouchPad and its geek-leaning webOS simply never had a base to sell to. In the pole position there’s the iPad 2, Apple’s consumer-friendly tablet with an interface any user can immediately grasp regardless of skill level, along with a cleanly curated App Store ripe for the easy picking. And then in the outside lane there’s the disconnected collection of tablets running the Android OS. And while the iPad is the clear leader in the tablet market and will remain as such, it’s actually Android which kept HP’s TouchPad from having a chance.

In any one-horse race, a Brand B will invariably emerge as a minority of buyers will reject Brand B for a litany of reasons. Even as the iPad continues to dominate in the tablet marketshare category, Android based tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 have jumped to the forefront of the second tier due to three primary factors. One is the fact that geeks generally despise the iPad, and don’t hesitate to use their waning-but-still-there influence over the mainstream to steer them away from the iPad and toward any geekier product available. Two is that, due to the majority of cellphone carriers in the U.S. and worldwide not having had the iPhone until recently, those carriers have been promoting Android-based phones so heavily that it’s given the platform a high level of recognition among the mainstream; even though multiple studies indicate that mainstream satisfaction with Android phones is stunningly low, it’s still an easier sell than a product like the TouchPad which ran an operating system like webOS which no one outside the geekdom had ever heard of. And the third is that Android tablets have one thing which HP couldn’t keep up with…

And that’s an operating system which comes with zero effort or cost. Companies like Samsung and HTC could never pull off coding their own in-house tablet operating system, and are only in the tablet business because they were able to nab Google’s Android operating system and use it for free. Contrast that with the fact that Hewlett Packard, whose consumer offerings consist of printers and scanners along with PCs whose operating system is licensed from Microsoft, was suddenly trying to maintain the TouchPad’s webOS operating system in-house. Sure, it inherited former Apple exec Jon Rubinstein and the webOS engineering team when it bought Palm. But HP’s corporate identity was at odds with the notion of an in-house OS, and so webOS under HP never developed any further than it had at Palm. It also never left the purview of Palm’s geeks, who had designed webOS as a for the geeks, by the geeks operating system with no potential for the mainstream to identify with it. Then again, the Android OS fits the same description, except that the above reasons have set up Android to be a successful Brand B tablet platform nonetheless. But there’s only room for one of those, and so the equally geek-oriented TouchPad never stood a chance…

In the end, even those geeks who personally favored the HP TouchPad and webOS ultimately ended up going with Android tablets due to the fact that it actually has an app store with apps available, in contrast to the TouchPad’s barren app wasteland. And those same geeks ended up pushing Android tablets on their mainstream counterparts because they knew their attempts had a better chance of success. At the end of the day, all most geeks really care about is that A) they don’t have to use Apple products, and B) they can steer as many members of the mainstream away from Apple products as possible. And while that may sound utterly bizarre to the ninety-nine percent of the public who aren’t a part of the geekdom, it’s a way of life for geeks in general. As such, the HP TouchPad was thrown under the bus by the geeks themselves, despite having often been their first choice, because keeping sales away from Apple’s consumer-leaning iPad has long been their real goal when it comes to tablets. Here’s more on the HP TouchPad.

HP TouchPad up in smoke: iPad marches on as geeky webOS platform flops

by Timmy Falcon

The HP TouchPad flopped because it was too expensive, claims one geek-penned headline. It flopped because the public isn’t ready to embrace tablet computing after all, posits another geek headline. The TouchPad was doomed because its webOS operating system wasn’t enough like the Android operating system, pleads another geek-written headline on yet another tech page. This during a week in which Hewlett Packard discontinued its short-lived tablet after a startlingly brief time on the market due to non-existent sales. Just how low was interest in the product? Best Buy was seen blowing out remaining TouchPad inventory for $99 a pop today. And yet the week’s worth of headlines conveniently and collectively makes one glaring omission: the fact that even as the TouchPad goes down in flames, sales of the competing iPad 2 are through the roof. Why? The geeks who write most of the tech headlines don’t want you buying Apple products, plain and simple.

Dating all the way back to the days when HP’s webOS was in the hands of Palm, long before the word “Android” referred to anything but Star Trek, geeks championed webOS as being the ideal mobile computing platform on devices like the Palm Pre (which HP also just killed off). But the reasons why the geeks liked webOS were the same reasons the mainstream thoroughly rejected the platform: whether by design or by delusion, it was designed from the ground up to be for the geeks, of the geeks, by the geeks. The Pre, then, was supposed to deliver the geeks some measure of revenge after Apple’s blatantly non-geeky iPhone went and made a major splash. That never happened, of course, and a dying Palm was bought up by HP for reasons which still aren’t clear in hindsight. The geeks did eventually get some measure of revenge through Android, although not for the reasons they believe. But with the death of webOS and its Pre and TouchPad offspring this week, the geeks took the opportunity to elegantly eulogize the failed product while simultaneously attempting to paint an alternate universe in which the iPad doesn’t exist…

It’s all, of course, quite predictable. As the Android platform has made major marketshare gains in the smartphone market over the past two years, geek headline writers have championed it as being the next best thing to their beloved webOS – to the point of embarrassment. Rather than admitting the obvious, which was that Android was popular on carriers which didn’t have the iPhone for the specific reason that those carriers didn’t have the iPhone, the headline writers proposed the absurd notion that mainstream folks were buying a geek-oriented Linux-based product like an Android phone because they wanted one. In reality, those sales were a combination of carriers like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile (and equivalents around the world) steering their subscribers toward Android-based phones like the Droid and EVO because they couldn’t give subscribers the iPhone they were asking for. The proof, of course, comes in the fact that studies show Android users to have a less than fifty percent planned retention rate…

But you wouldn’t know it by the geek-penned headlines, which gloss over this fact while blindly parroting Google’s Android activation claims instead of questioning why the company is using something as suspect as activation numbers instead of the comparatively un-riggable hardware sales numbers. None of that mattered this week, however, as geek headline writers ran the gamut from lamenting the death of webOS and the TouchPad (despite the fact that absolutely no one outside of the geekiest one percent of the population wanted either one), trying to make a case for why it’s still a good idea to buy a TouchPad even though the product and its operating system have just been killed off, and more comically, claiming that the demise of the TouchPad means that the public just isn’t ready for tablets. Nevermind that even while HP was repeatedly cutting prices on the TouchPad, Apple was busy selling thirty million iPads in a year and a half. And nevermind that HP couldn’t convince anyone to buy the TouchPad even after it went and stole the iPad’s hardware design so thoroughly that one might suspect HP had been hoping to confuse would-be iPad buyers into going home with what they might have though was an “HP iPad” or some such.

Suffice it to say that there’s a reason why Apple didn’t bother to sue Hewlett Packard for stealing the iPad’s hardware design even as Apple is busy suing the pants off other copycats like Samsung and HTC. The difference is that while Samsung and HTC have had modest success in selling iPad knockoffs, HP has had none. And this is the product which geek headline writers have been living and dying by? The one which HP couldn’t sell even by trying to make it look like a fake iPad? This is the product which the geeks thought would slay the iPad because the iPad just wasn’t geeky enough for their tastes? But I digress.

Speaking of Android-based tablets like the ones from HTC and Samsung, while they’re doing okay in the sales department, they’re still getting collectively crushed by the iPad in terms of marketshare. The fact that Android-based phones (which were being over-promoted by every non-iPhone carrier in every nation) have sold so well while Android-based tablets (a market in which carriers have little influence) have done so much worse should make it clear that the majority of the success Android phones have found can be directly attributed to Apple’s ill-fated long term iPhone exclusivity contracts around the world, most of which the company has only managed to finally worm its way out of this year. But again, you won’t see any geek headline writers stating the obvious about the discrepancies between Android phone sales and Android tablet sales, along with the obvious reasons for it. Instead they’re too busy eulogizing one geek platform which no one outside the geekdom ever cared about, while stating their hope that another geek platform will dominate despite the fact that the majority of the mainstream who’ve tried it have already decided to abandon it. Here’s more on the end of the HP TouchPad.

Samsung Galaxy S2 copycats iPhone 4 even more than Tab 10.1 does iPad

by Timmy Falcon

It’s a Samsung smartphone. No, it’s the iPhone 4. No wait, maybe it’s a Samsung iPhone. As it turns out, you had it right the first time when it comes to the new Samsung Galaxy S2, although your eyes (and courts around the world) will tell you it looks too much like an Apple product to be bearing the Samsung logo. The release date for the Galaxy S2 marks the most blatant infringement on Apple products yet on the part of Samsung, which is already in deep dark hot water over its Galaxy Tab lineup. Even as Samsung was manufacturing components for Apple’s iPad, it was simultaneously designing its own Android-based tablet which, from more than a foot away with the screen turned off, was all but undistinguishable from Apple’s iPad design. The lawsuits began swiftly, but have taken this long to play out. The verdict: so far, courts are ruling that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 must be yanked from shelves while Samsung either redesigns the product with an original design or exits the tablet market entirely. But now here comes the Galaxy S2, and all you need to do is glance at Samsung’s splash screen for the product in order to figure out what the courts will end up doing with the S2.

But Samsung (along with other Android-based manufacturers like HTC) appears to be playing the game of selling as many blatant copycat units as it can before the legal process brings hell to pay, taking advantage of consumer confusion over nearly identical-looking products in the mean time. “Hey look, Samsung makes the iPad too, look at this model! And it’s a bit cheaper as well!” Not until consumers get the product home and find that it’s instead running a mobile variant of the geek hobbyist platform Linux known as Android, with no access to Apple’s consumer-leaning iTunes or overwhelmingly popular App Store, do they realize that they’ve been bait and switched. But even as Apple is finally succeeding in getting the stolen Galaxy Tab products removed from the market (after millions of consumers mistakenly thought they were buying an iPad), the company is now preparing to do the same with its new Galaxy S2 phone. Short of the “Samsung” logo at the top and the rounded rectangular “home” button near the bottom as opposed to Apple’s circular home button, the S2 is essentially indistinguishable from the iPhone 4 in photographs. And what’s shocking is that Samsung appears to be trying to flaunt it…

If Samsung were simply looking to quietly float the Galaxy S2 out there in the hopes of selling millions of units to confused would-be iPhone 4 buyers before the legal system gets it yanked from shelves, it could be playing down the differences. Instead the photography on Samsung’s site appears to be trying to make the S2 look as much like the iPhone 4 as possible. Rather than turning the S2 sideways a bit so that its slightly different sides could be accentuated, making it clear that the S2 is its own product, Samsung instead has the product positioned so that it looks exactly like the iPhone 4 in pictures.

This kind of flaunting behavior won’t go over well with the courts. But Samsung is apparently gambling that that won’t happen until 2012 or 2013, by which time it’ll have stolen millions of sales using a stolen design, cheating millions of duped consumers out of the product they thought they were buying in the process. Hey, it worked with the Galaxy Tab. It’s no wonder, then, that reports reveal some Android-based products to have as high as thirty to forty percent return rates, as customers quickly figure out the “Samsung iPhone” or “Samsung iPad” they just bought wasn’t what they were led to believe. Other data shows that more than half of all current Android users plan to buy something else next time around, with the vast majority of the defectors specifically identifying Apple’s next iPhone, due out this fall, as their next phone. If time spent on a “fake iPhone” or “fake iPad” is driving that many disgusted Samsung customers to become former Samsung customers, with them deciding that this time they’ll make sure they buy the real thing instead, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing for Apple after all. But that hasn’t stopped Apple from attempting to drop the hammer on these thieves in courts around the world. Samsung’s stolen tablet line is in danger of vanishing from existence. Now it’s a waiting game to see how swiftly its stolen phone product known as the Galaxy S2 suffers the same fate…

In the mean time, Android OS developer Google has purchased Motorola, the only major Android hardware vendor which hasn’t (yet) been sued by Apple for hardware design theft, in order to ensure that at least one brand of Android-based phones and tablets remains on the market. After a couple years of stealing hardware designs and waiting for the law to catch up with it, Samsung (and HTC with it) is now seeing its biggest ally moving on with in-house hardware designs. Without that ally, it begs the question of just how much longer Samsung will want to play the cat-and-mouse game of stealing Apple hardware designs and loading them up with the Android OS instead. The extent of the punitive damages finally levied on Samsung by courts and governments around the world may ultimately be the deciding factor as the vendor must choose whether it’s a scam worth continuing to execute.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 pulled from stores amid Android legal problems

by Timmy Falcon

The Samsung line of Android based Galaxy Tab products are disappearing from store shelves in some nations, and it’s not because they’re selling out, but rather jammed up. Those in Europe and Australia are already finding that they can’t find themselves a Galaxy Tab 10.1, because legal woes have prevented the product from launching in the latter and are about to get it banned from the market in the former. This places Samsung in the trickiest of positions as it gears up to launch its next gen S2 line.

It all started when Apple decided that Samsung’s mobile products looked and felt way too much like Apple’s iPad and iPhone, to the point that Apple began fighting a (so far successful) legal battle around the world. The courts have thus far been agreeing that Samsung’s products like the Galaxy Tab are an infringement on Apple’s patents and designs, and now various government agencies have taken it upon themselves to prove the issue themselves. No less than the U.S. International Trade Commission is looking into the matter, which means that the disappearance of some Samsung products in Europe could ultimately follow with a banishment in the United States…

This doesn’t mean the end of the Galaxy line of products, as Samsung could always go back and redesign the hardware from the ground up using original ideas which don’t steal from Apple; the Android operating system would still be the driving force behind these redesigned products. And it doesn’t mean the end of Samsung either, unless Apple can successfully sue the company for so much money that it either agrees to bail on its Android products as part of a settlement, or financial woes from the lawsuits doom the company. The latter isn’t out of the question, as similar legal action against fellow Android-based hardware infringer HTC have resulted in such crushing legal rulings that HTC went so far as to initiate a stock buyback program in an attempt to convince shareholders that it wasn’t about to go out of business as a result of the ruling…

So what does this mean for upcoming Samsung products like the Galaxy S2? Anything goes at this point. It could be argued that nearly every Android based phone and tablet on the market has borrowed from Apple’s iPad and iPhone designs to varying extents, which means Apple can continue to go after these companies unless and until they scrap their current designs and come up with ones which don’t look quite so much like a fake iPad clone as they do now. That would of course lead to questions of whether the mainstream public would then continue to buy Android based products at all…

It’s been widely documented that aside from geeks who like the idea of a “wild west” mobile platform based on Linux which they can easily hack and re-code themselves, most among the mainstream public end up with an Android phone because they wanted an iPhone but their carrier didn’t offer it (or the salesgeek at the retailer was philosophically opposed to allowing anyone to buy one) and so the customer was convinced that the Android phone was “just like the iPhone” but better. The highly similar look and feel of the hardware played a big part in what many Android users now consider to have been a bait and switch game, with as many as forty-two percent of Android phone users having already decided that their next smartphone will be a real iPhone instead of an imitator. If Android phones suddenly start looking like vastly different hardware products instead of iPhone clones, this could serve to push that number even higher…


And that’s to say nothing of the Android tablet line, where products like the Galaxy Tab have had far less success against the iPad (naturally, with non-iPhone carrier influence removed from the equation). Change these products up so that they don’t look like a “Brand B iPad” and suddenly Android tablets may end up having even less success against the iPad. So while Apple may not succeed in getting Android based tablets and phones permanently banned from store shelves, its goal may simply be to ensure that the next generation of Android products looks so noticeably different from the iPad and iPhone that consumers will decide they have to buy the real Apple product in order to get the Apple experience they’re looking for. In the mean time, those Apple products may be sitting next to some empty shelves in the adjacent Android section.

Game over: iPhone 5 release date sees third to half of public in line

by Timmy Falcon

A third to a half of the entire U.S. population says they’ll buy an iPhone 5 once its release date arrives, a move which screams “game over” in the ongoing iPhone-Android wars if the stats turn out to be true. Statistics are like cosmetics in that you can always ones which make your argument appear to look better than it really does, but a pair of independently conducted studies reveal that either a little more than a third or a little more than a half of Americans surveyed plan to make the iPhone 5 theirs. If words equal actions in this case, it’ll represent a significant shift in the current marketshare ratio between the iPhone/iOS and Android platforms, the latter of which has been growing faster even as the former retains the lead. So how is the iPhone 5, which hasn’t even been revealed yet and only exists in terms of being “whatever new iPhone Apple brings out to replace the iPhone 4″ already gobbling up so many customers? It’s arguably the same mindshare the iPhone has had all along, and the iPhone 5 just now finally represents the point at which mindshare becomes marketshare.

These numbers are not a representation of how what percentage of current iPhone users plan to upgrade, or how many current users of other smartphones plan to switch. This is out of the entire population, which is notable in that as many people still have yet to buy their first smartphone as already have. One third to one half of the population buying an iPhone 5 would suddenly dwarf the current marketshare of Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone 7 combined. It would give the iPhone 5 the kind of overwhelmingly dominating marketshare which Apple’s other iProducts like the iPad, iPod, and iTunes Store already enjoy. And therein lies the explanation as to what’s really going on here: the iPhone should have had majority marketshare all along, and has been primarily held back by certain key issues which will be resolved by the time of the iPhone 5 / iOS 5 era.

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First and foremost is the iPhone 5 arriving on Verizon and AT&T on the same release date. The Verizon iPhone 4 was a low-key, late-arriving bandaid a few months ago designed to keep Verizon customers from defecting to AT&T to get the iPhone; the move was all about saving Verizon from losing marketshare which was why Verizon handled the introduction and the bulk of the marketing. But now it’s Apple’s turn to benefit from the Verizon-Apple partnership, as the iPhone 5 arrives in position to scoop up all those loyal Verizon customers who bought a Droid last year because it was all Verizon offered, have since realized it’s not a suitable iPhone alternative, and are now back to wanting the iPhone they’ve wanted all along. The iPhone 5 is the first “new” iPhone to hit Verizon, and represents the jumping off point at which weary Droid users see themselves finally joining the pack. Verizon also hopes that the Verizon iPhone 5 will be the point at which T-Mobile and Sprint customers who’ve grown tired of waiting for the iPhone to come to them, or who’ve soured on their carriers’ in-house Android phones, decide to jump to Verizon for the iPhone 5.

There’s still no official word as to whether Apple will make that last part moot by bringing the iPhone 5 to Sprint and T-Mobile, although the expansion to Verizon made it clear that Apple no longer views carrier exclusivity as a good thing. Regardless, however, the iPhone 5 will have one thing which the iPhone 4 didn’t: a clean slate at launch. Even before the iPhone 4 was introduced, the public had already seen a prototype out of context with no chance for Apple to explain what it was all about. And within days of launch, Apple-hating geeks had conspired to concoct an “iPhone 4 antenna issue” which didn’t really exist and was instead merely an exploit of the minor pressure points which all cellphones have. Nonetheless, an unsuspecting public was tricked into believing the iPhone 4 had an “antenna problem” and many of them opted to skip it out of fear, despite the fact that everyone who owns an iPhone 4 knows there is no antenna issue and never was. Regardless, the result is that a significant chunk of the population who would have made the iPhone 4 their first iPhone instead decided to wait for the one which came after, which means that the iPhone 5 has another segment of those who will buy sight unseen beyond just those who’ve been holding out for carrier reasons.

Are there other reasons why the iPhone 5 is already so popular even before it officially exists? Sure. Yet another study from last year showed that the Android platform had a planned twenty-eight percent retention rate, with the other seventy-two percent planning to get something different for their next phone. As such, the overall consumer dissatisfaction with Android has the iPhone benefiting once again, as it’s the other mainstream smartphone platform. And with the iPhone 5 seeing release date within a month or two, it’ll be the specific beneficiary. This is all, of course, before Apple even introduces the new iPhone. If its features, specs, and design are appealing, those planned buyer numbers could climb even higher. Apple has been handed a golden opportunity with the iPhone 5, and must simply not blow it. Here’s more on the iPhone 5.

Android: top five reasons you’re stuck using the Windows of smartphones

Android marketshare keeps growing, despite the fact that even most Android users don’t seem to care about their platform. The iPhone is the more suitable choice for nearly every mainstream consumer out there, and yet Android continues to grow even as the iPhone expands to more carriers. So what gives? There are five possibilities as to why you’re using an Android phone, and most of them aren’t good. In no particular order:

You’re a geek: Actually, there’s no shame in this one. While the Android OS is unsuitably geeky for mainstream users, it is in fact tailored specifically to geeks who value hackability and infinite theoretical functionality over actual practical usage. If that’s you, no worries. You bought the right phone. But you’re the only one.

A geek tricked you into buying one: Here’s where things start to take a dark turn. For some geeks, it’s not enough that they themselves are using a geekphone. They want everyone around them, from their friends to their family to their coworkers, to also be using an Android geek phone as well. So they use whatever leverage they have, from offers of technical support to flat-out lies about the iPhone, in order to con everyone around them into buying an unsuitably geeky product.

Your carrier owns you: Your carrier literally owns you in the form of a contract, and you’re just playing out the string until it ends and you can get an iPhone. Or your carrier owns you figuratively, as you’ve come to believe that your carrier’s network is so vastly superior to the others that you’ll settle for any phone said carrier throws at you; you’ll only buy an iPhone when it comes to your carrier.

You hate Apple: You know the Mac is the superior computing platform, but you settle for Windows for one simple reason: you hate Apple. You hate its users. You hate Steve Jobs. You identify yourself so strongly as being an anti-Apple person that you’d literally give up computing before you’d buy a Mac – and this despite the fact that you openly admit that you know the Mac is the better platform. For that same reason, you use an Android phone instead of an iPhone. We hear there’s mental help available for this condition.

You have no taste: You simply could care less about the quality of your smartphone experience, and so you ended up with whatever the (geek) salesman pointed you toward. It’s not that you have no taste in life. You simply have no taste when it comes to the smartphone experience and will settle for anything that’s shoveled at you.

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