The PC market is fast shifting into a touchscreen world, and Apple is leading the charge. Some new numbers from the analysts at Canalys note that in Q4 of 2012, one in every three PCs shipped was a tablet, that Apple’s iPad accounted for about half of them, or one in every six of PCs. By combining PC and tablet figures — a logical thing to do, given that many are substituting tablet purchases and usage for PC purchases and usage — Canalys figures that worldwide PC shipments are actually on the rise — up by 12% to 134 million units. That’s in contrast to figures from Gartner, which in January noted that Q4 PC shipments were down by 5% on last year — without factoring in tablets.
Adding Apple’s iPad sales to its Mac sales gives it a leadership position among PC vendors. The company shipped 27 million units in Q4, giving it a 20.1% share of the market. Number-two vendor was HP, whose market share is based on its PC prowess. It shipped 15 million PCs, for an 11.2% share of the market. That let it edge just ahead of Lenovo, which shipped 200,000 fewer units.
Still, Android continues to make inroads. Canalys points out that this is the first quarter where Apple’s iPad has not accounted for more than 50% of all tablets shipped — it was 49%, as it happens, with Android accounting for 46%.
Apple’s savior was the iPad Mini: “‘Apple timed the launch of the iPad mini well,” writes Pin-Chen Tang, Canalys research analyst. “Its success proves there is a clear demand for pads with smaller screens at a more affordable price. Without the launch, Apple would surely have lost more ground to its competitors.” Indeed, that fact may well encourage Apple to look at more sizes and price points for its iOS devices in the future.
Overall, Canalys points out that the tablet market grew by 75% in Q4 to 46.2 million units, and that full-year shipments were 114.6 million units. Given that trend, Lenovo, which has been making some interesting hybrid models incorporating both touchscreen and keyboard features, could well pull ahead of HP if the latter doesn’t make some significant tablet inroads in the next couple of quarters.
Meanwhile, Samsung is at the other end of the spectrum: its strong performance at number four, with 11.7 million units (9% market share) is based mostly on the success of its line of Galaxy Tab tablets. It shipped 7.6 million of these in Q4, a rise of 226%.
Dell, which is hoping for a turnaround as a private company, rounded out the top five. For now it’s reputation “continues to fade,” Canalys writes, resulting in a 19% drop in shipments in the quarter. “A turnaround in fortunes is likely to take years,” they note — so just as well that Dell will not have to answer so quickly to the markets for its performance.
As other analysts have pointed out Windows 8 has so far had little impact on worldwide PC shipments, and an almost negligible impact on tablets — with only 3% of tablets shipped in the quarter based on Windows 8. That has had a knock-on effect both for Windows and for those who make devices using the OS. “Microsoft’s involvement in the Dell buyout raises eyebrows in the light of its recent aspirations to become a hardware vendor,” Canalys notes. “But it is not likely to solve Dell’s problems as even Microsoft struggles with pads.” Equally difficult was Windows RT, which failed to break even 1 million units at 720,000 shipped. “The outlook for Windows RT appears bleak,” noted Tim Coulling, Canalys senior analyst. He believes the only way out for this is for Microsoft to drastically reduce the licensing price, cutting further into its margins on the product.
Western Europe’s slow economy also continues to weigh things down.
Amazon, selling only tablets and no PCs (yet?), didn’t make the top five but still managed a substantial volume shift. Its shipments were 4.6 million units, almost mirroring Dell’s decline with growth of 18%. With the Kindle Fire now selling in more markets worldwide, it will be interesting to see if Amazon can see a big boost this year or if it will be stymied by Apple and Samsung. For now, international is doing a good enough job to offset some small declines in the U.S., where the launch of the higher-priced Kindle Fire HD not proving to be a runaway success as the initial launch of the Kindle Fire was a year ago.
Sorry, Ms. Sinatra, but the headline parody was all too obvious to ignore. As part of its mobile device Recycle program, which allows users to trade in old handsets for cash, British telco O2 has commissioned local designer Sean Miles to give discarded featurephones a new lease on life. The end result? Four footwear designs – made from the likes of Christian Louboutins, Nike Airs, Hunter Wellingtons and a classic Brogue men’s shoe — replete with a fully functional phone embedded in the sole. We know exactly what you’re thinking: Why would anyone want to hold a shoe to their face? Whether it’s for the love of the arts, a penchant for public ridicule or a closer whiff of the ground below, we can’t say for sure. What we do know is that this truly “mobile” kit(sch) will be up for auction later in March at a planned exhibition. But that won’t be the last you’ll see of Miles’ unholy meshing of tech and apparel — the artist also plans to branch out into gloves and handbags as part of the fuller O2 Recycle Collection. You paying attention, Weird Al? This one’s for you!
Filed under: Wearables
Via: The Sun
Source: PSFK
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Same here, little girl, same here.
Thanks to Rob, who doesn’t rule anything but is still trying to build an outerspace magnifying glass big enough to vaporize earth with sunlight. That…that might actually work. Let me know if you need another lens polisher.
This week Japan’s capital city welcomes gamers from around the globe for some show and tell with the country’s finest at TGS. As for us, we’re particularly anxious to see what Sony may have in store. Will we see another PS3 redesign? Perhaps some buzz about it’s next-gen console? Will we see some energized color options for the PS Vita? We’re eager to find out. Worried you’re too far away to be in the loop with the happenings here? Fret not! We’ve got you covered on all of the proceedings at Makuhari Messe, so keep your peepers locked here for all of the latest news over the next few days.
Sean Buckley contributed to this report.
Filed under: Announcements, Gaming
We’re live from Tokyo Game Show 2012 in Tokyo, Japan! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 23:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Scientists at Harvard University have created a cyborg tissue consisting of lab-grown flesh embedded with nano-wires that has the same “sensing” properties as human skin. This is all going to end very poorly. Probably with an army of cyborgs that look human.
‘Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.’
The [Harvard] Gazette notes that the researches initially worried about how the ‘skin,’ once implanted, would sense and react to chemical and electrical changes.
Normal human skin is capable of sensing oxygen, pH, and other elements in the air, and reacts to each one accordingly.
The challenge, then, was engineering skin that would do the same.
I’m sure there actually are some positive applications for this technology like aiding those who have lost limbs, but you know what? If I lose my arms I don’t want cyborg ones. I want legs. Then I could finally run on all fours and start a new life with my animal friends in the forest.
Hit the jump for a microscopic view of the stuff.
We’re just commencing Week Two of the Samsung v. Apple trial in San Jose, and Judge Lucy Koh opened the day with a joke, saying that there had been a false hope in her heart this weekend that the two would settle. But these two electronics giants are still ready to battle it out, and have brought Justin Denison, Samsung’s Chief Strategy officer, back to the stand.
After some questions about whether or not STA sells directly to consumers, and whether Galaxy phones are different from one model to the next, Samsung’s lawyer Mr. Quinn was about to actually make a point.
He mentioned that throughout the trial, there have been comments such as “Samsung is in a crisis of design” and “the difference between the iPhone and the Galaxy phones are like heaven and earth.”
Since Apple’s asserting that four of its design patents and one trade dress registration were infringed, any proof that Samsung was trying to copy either specific patented features or general Apple-esque aesthetic in its handsets would be damaging to Samsung’s case. While mention of a crisis of design don’t prove conscious copying, it could certainly push the jury to believe Samsung was letting competition from the iPhone affect design choices.
Quinn then laid out a series of questions, asking about Samsung’s general “style of communication for management to motivate employees.” Denison answered with the following:
Samsung does an excellent job of remaining very humble, self critical, and maintaining a sense of urgency within its own ranks to drive hard work and innovation. We want to change so that [Samsung] never rests on its laurels and becomes complacent. So you hear a lot of hyperbolic statements, “crisis of design,” “heaven and earth.”
Quinn then asked if there are any graphic examples of this type of communication within Samsung, which felt like a small win on the horizon when Denison brought up a famous story within Samsung. He unfortunately also mentioned that he wasn’t there for this, and had only heard about it, allowing Apple counsel to object on the basis of hearsay and have any comment on other graphic examples of hyperbolic communication overruled and thrown out.
Mr. Quinn then asked how Denison felt about Apple’s accusations that Samsung had “ripped off” Apple’s designs, a phrase Apple has hammered home since the trial’s very beginning.
I find it very offensive. At Samsung, we’re very proud of the products we produced, of all the hard work that goes into bringing a product to market. We’ve been in the mobile business for 20 years globally, been in the U.S. for 15 years, and for the last four years we’ve been number 1 in the U.S. market. What we would like to be able to do is just compete in the market and continue doing what we’re doing.
Denison listed certain features that Samsung had added to its phones before Apple, such as voice recognition/voice command capabilities, advanced screen tech (Super AMOLED), and cloud video services. Quinn asked Denison if he felt like Apple ripped off Samsung when Cupertino included these features in their own devices, to which Denison responded that he didn’t feel ripped off or outraged the same way Apple has felt during the course of this cases.
“If Apple comes out with the iPhone 5 and it has a bigger scree, more like the size of the Galaxy S II screen, will you regard that as copying?” asked Mr. Quinn. And right as rain, Denison answered no.
Then Apple’s lawyer, Mr. Lee, stood to cross-examine. He mentioned an internal Samsung investigation before the trial, and asked Denison if he’d seen any documents wherein Samsung mentions a “crisis of design” with regards to Apple’s iPhone. “I can’t recall,” said Denison. “There are many documents I see in preparation for this testimony and testimony in other cases.”
Lee then “refreshed his recollection,” bringing up a document that stated the following: “It is a crisis of design. The iPhone’s emergence means that the time we have to change our methods has arrived.”
And then Lee pointed to another internal document: “All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia and concentrated our efforts on things like Folders, Bars and Slide, yet when our UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple iPhone, the difference is truly that of heaven and earth. It’s a crisis of design.”
Denison explained again that this is a typical type of hyperbolic statement you’d hear within Samsung.
“So can you provide documents where Samsung has said the same types of things about Nokia?” asked Lee.
“I am not sure how I’d do that,” responded Denison.
“The answer is that you can’t,” said Lee. “The only mention of ‘crisis of design’ in all of Samsung’s documents is in reference to Apple after the iPhone’s introduction in 2007.”
On Friday, he went toe to toe with Apple’s lawyers who threw out internal documents that show Samsung’s purposefully trying to tweak the home screen layout of their phones to differentiate from Apple. “Remove a feeling that iPhone’s menu icons are copied by differentiating design” as one of the “directions for improvement,” it read. Denison, however, did a great job combating this once approached by Samsung counsel, explaining that rounded corners, slim bezels and fully touchscreen candy bar handsets were more of a necessity and a general direction of the industry rather than a design choice.
Canalys Q2: 68% Of All Smartphones Shipped Were Android; China’s The Biggest Market By A Wide Margin
One more analyst house, Canalys, has released its numbers on global smartphone sales in Q2, and unlike Strategy Analytics and IDC, it has focused on sales by platforms rather than OEMs. In that light, Google’s Android was the clear, all-out winner: in a market that saw 158 million smartphone shipments worldwide, Android accounted for 68% of them, with its 108 million units an increase of 110% over the same period a year ago. And given that Apple seems to actually be holding its own quite well in countries like the U.S., the strong performance of Android can be largely attributed to how well it’s playing in emerging countries, and in one in particular: the world’s largest smartphone market at the moment, China.
China had “phenomenal” growth this year, Canalys says, and that’s no understatemet. Some 42 million smartphones were shipped in China in Q2, which works out to growth of 199% over last year (and 32% over Q1). By comparison, smartphone sales worldwide grew by only 47%, says Canalys. In other words, China grew at a rate more than four times that of the rest of the world. China, it says, accounted for 27% of the world’s smartphone shipments, with number-two U.S. at 16%.
Android and forked versions of Android are leading the charge in China, accounting for 81% of all smartphone shipments. The other big trend is that domestic vendors are closing in on Samsung, the world’s biggest Android vendor at the moment. Samsung continued to remain in the lead with 17% of all shipments, but Canalys notes that in fact Samsung’s volumes were flat and ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei in strong 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions and making up about a third of all smartphone shipments. Those three also grew by a massive amount, respectively 171%, 2,665% and 252% over last year. Altogether, domestic vendors, Canalys says, shipping 25.6 million units, grew 518% over last year and made up 60% of the market. International vendors grew only by 67%, shipping 16.7 million units.
Apple, as the company itself admitted last week, had a more challenging Q2 in China. Yes, it was the fifth-largest handset player, with shipments up by 102% over last year, but they were down 37% compared to Q1.
Canalys puts the power of domestic vendors down to their “deep understanding of local consumer behaviour.” Nicole Peng, research director for China, notes that bigger players like ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei are all raising brand awareness and building stronger relationships with operators, but the smaller players are also not to be dismissed. “Tier-two vendors — the likes of Oppo, K-Touch and Gionee — have also stamped their mark, boosting smart phone shipments into tier-three and tier-four cities, predominantly through the open channels,” she writes. “As feature phone vendors, they already have established partnerships and strong brand awareness. These domestic vendors are making significant progress transitioning their portfolios and customer bases to be more focused on smart phones.”
The drive away from international brands is affecting others, too, although these are vendors that have seen declines worldwide as well, so the trend may be larger than China itself. Canalys notes that Nokia’s volumes in China were down by 47% in Q2, and Motorola also saw a decline. The only one that really did well was the Taiwanese HTC, which has been pushing models designed to be integrated tightly with local Chinese services (and price points). HTC’s shipments gew 389% to 1.8 million units.
Globally, Samsung continued to be the main driver of Android’s strength. Canalys estimates that Samsung shipped “over 45 million handsets” — not too far off Strategy Analytics’ estimate of 50.5 million. (Samsung, unhelpfully, doesn’t provide these numbers itself.) Whichever number you choose to believe, it puts Samsung at the top of the pile, and for the same reasons: a strong product portfolio covering different price points, and a savvy marketing strategy, including a key Olympics sponsorship. Canalys says that Samsung worldwide currently has a 31% share of the global smartphone market (SA by comparison put it at 34.6%; IDC at 33.6%).
Apple and Nokia followed as the second and third-largest smartphone makers, with HTC taking fourth and RIM barely scraping in at 8.5 million units in Q2.
Question by Asha J: I want to go to a 4 year college were i can learn Robotics? I’m interested in one that is in Japan ,England, or the USA. I would like to go to a college that teaches me about computers and robotics and how to becom an inventer .PLEASE HELP this is very important to me. Can someone find one in JAPAN
Best answer:
Answer by le_savoir_vivreDomo origato, mr. roboto?
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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This is a DeLorean limo with six, count them — six, gullwing doors. Unfortunately, it looks like all the seats are buckets so that’s gonna make it harder to get to second base with your prom date. Unless — UNLESS — she sits on your lap. Just make sure to share the seatbelt. Safety first, if you know what I mean. I mean WRAP THAT PEENOR UP, SON. Trust me, the last thing you wanna have to do is call the limo driver a month later asking if he can time-machine you back to prom night because you forgot to put a dong-bag on.
This has been a PSA sponsored by GW Against Teenage Pregnancy.
Thanks to Nicholas, who took a helicopter to prom. Just kidding, he took a girl with a limp.
