iPhone 5 Tops U.S. Smart Phone Sales, Android Leads Elsewhere

The latest smart phone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech shows that strong uptake of the iPhone 5 over the past 12 weeks ending in October 2012 has boosted iOS back to the number one spot in the U.S. market. 

Apple now has a 48.1 percent share of U.S. smartphone sales compared with Android which has 46.7 percent.

Android leads in other markets, though. In Europe, Android has the lead, accounting for 73.9 percent of sales in Germany and 81.7 percent in Spain.

The majority of US iPhone 5 sales, 62 percent, have come from existing Apple owners upgrading to the new device.

Apple Maintains Lead in Tablets but Market Share Down 14% in 3Q 2012

Apple had 55 percent share of the tablet market in the third quarter of 2012, says ABI Research. But competition from tablets powered by Google’s Android OS continue to eat away at Apple’s share. 

“With the introduction of a smaller, lower-cost iPad mini, Apple has acknowledged Android’s beachhead of 7-inch-class tablets,” says ABI Research senior practice director Jeff Orr.

If this continues, we will have the answer to the question of whether can create an MP-3 style market, where it completely dominates market share, or whether a pattern somewhat more akin to the smart phone or notebook markets will ultimately develop. So far, it appears Apple will not be able to sustain an MP-3 style lock on the market. 

So the market perhaps already has changed. Where early on one might have argued there was an "iPad market" and then a "tablet market," it seems that a unified "tablet" market is developing. For some, the additional question is whether we might see replay, in the tablet space, of the older Microsoft-Apple story, with Android taking the place of Microsoft. 

More Carrier Over the Top Services Launching

A few more European mobile service providers are jumping into the over the top voice and messaging app business.  In Spain, Movistar, Orange and Vodafone, Spain's three leading mobile service providers, have launched "Rich Communication Services" using the "joyn" brand.

That makes Spain the first country in the world to offer a fully interoperable carrier-owned over the top voice and messaging app, meaning that any customers of any of the mobile service providers can communicate with each other. 

In Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone both support joyn. 

The idea is that joyn will allow mobile service provides to create a very large community of users, with access to "rich" voice and messaging ("rich" generally implies support for video) features. So both "scale" and "feature richness" are viewed as part of the strategy. 

There are about three or four different ways mobile service providers globally can react. About half the options are hostile or unfriendly to the consumer. Carriers can block use of over the top apps, or charge extra fees for people who use the generally free apps. Neither of those approaches are especially desirable in competitive markets where another provider will avoid blocking or charging.

There are two approaches that are less surly ways of approaching the problem. Joyn is one way of competing with a carrier-owned alternative intended from the start to be a "third party" brand. 

In other cases, carriers have created their own branded OTT apps. The level of competition in a given market tends to suggest whether mobile service providers should offer their own OTT apps, or avoid doing so.

In markets where voice and messaging revenue already is sharply declining, competing might be the only choice. In other markets, where there is less pressure, service providers generally will resist jumping into branded OTT voice and messaging apps, to avoid cannibalizing carrier voice and messaging.

In other cases, as with Verizon Wireless, carriers simply offer unlimited domestic calling and texting as a basic network access fee, to undercut the value proposition of the "free" OTT apps.   That arguably works best where there is a very-large internal calling market. 


But third party developers aren't stopping. A newer trend is use of the "WebRTC" platform to create rnd audio communications from inside the context of a browser. Vidtel, for example,  now support the built-in ability to connect WebRTC-enabled browsers to enterprise video conferencing infrastructure. 

Vidtel says it iis the first to bridge WebRTC browsers with 3rd party video conferencing infrastructure such as Cisco, Polycom, or Vidtel’s own MeetMe service without the need for plugins.





 

European Broadband Access: DSL and Satellite Rule

Despite the seeming reality presented by media and analyst reports, change comes relatively slowly in the access business. 

"Despite all the publicity, FTTP doesn’t offer the main route to digital heaven, at least not for the time being. So far FTTP covers only 12 percent of homes," says Tim Johnson, Point Topic chief analyst. 

By way of contrast, cable operators can reach about 37 percent of homes with the Docsis 3.0 network, generally capable of providing faster speeds than digital subscriber line. 

In rural areas, only DSL and satellite networks are ubiquitous. 

Click image for larger version of infographic

Rural coverage by technology for each country in 2011
Countries	DSL	VDSL	FTTP	WiMAX	Standard cable	Docsis 3 cable	HSPA	LTE	Satellite
France	96.3%	0%	0.3%	0%	39.9%	28.2%	87%	0%	100%
Germany	51.4%	0%	0%	11.5%	2%	2%	30.7%	41%	100%
Spain	90.1%	12.6%	0.4%	7%	0.4%	0.4%	88%	0%	100%
Sweden	84.4%	7.2%	9.4%	0.1%	1.7%	1%	98.8%	13.9%	0%
United Kingdom	100%	17.4%	0%	0%	2%	2%	88.5%	0%	100%

Globally, Satellite TV Subs will Surpass Cable TV Subs in 2016

On a global basis, there will be more satellite subscription TV customers than cable TV customers by about 2016, Infonetics Research now predicts. 

Half of all Mobiles Will Use 3G, 4G networks by 2017

About half of all mobile devices in use in 2017 will use either 3G or 4G networks according to Wireless Intelligence. About 40 percent of connections will use 3G. About half will use 2G. Fourth generation networks will support about 10 percent of connections. 

U.K. Mobile Operator Three Launches M2M Platform

m2m revenue forecast worldwide in billion EUR

U.K. mobile operator Three has launched a wholesale machine-to-machine (M2M) platform designed to bring down setup costs and speed time to market for M2M retailers.

Ericsson is providing the platform, said to enable MVNOs launching M2M services to do so in just two weeks time.

Three partners get their own branded portal, the ability to activate and deactivate their own connections, apply data caps and track data usage.

Most researchers believe M2M will be a big market for mobile service providers.