Smartphone Statistics by Manufacrtuer and OS

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Growth Slowing

Posted By: Ryan Kairer on Thursday, December 04, 2008 10:26:35 AM

http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/7223/worldwide-smartphone-sales-growth-slowing/

3.4 Billion Mobile Phones - A marketing incentive?

Trillion with a T, the Newest Giant Industry has Arrived: the Money and Meaning of Mobile



"We have the newest Trillion dollar baby, and it is growing really fast. In this blog posting I only focused on the big picture items, and didn't even touch upon the content and services that are in this space. I'll do that in a separate blog posting soon. But yes, now the numbers to remember for 2009 - there are four billion mobile phone subscribers on the planet. That means 3 billion unique mobile phone owners, who carry around 3.4 billion mobile phone handsets everywhere they go.'

"The industry sells 1.2 billion new mobile phones every year. The phone in your pocket is as powerful as a supercomputer only 20 years ago or the laptop that is 5 years old, and the capabilities and functions grow at breathtaking speed, partly because the replacement cycle globally is down to 15 months. There are 1.9 billion cameraphones in use today.'

For the first time now, the majority of internet access is from a mobile phone, no longer from a personal computer. Also for the first time, MMS multimedia messaging, or known as "picture messaging" has more users than the total users of email.

"Meanwhile, SMS text messaging continues its climb as the biggest data application in the world, used now by 3 billion people.'

"Mobile messaging is worth about 130 billion dollars. Mobile voice is worth about 600 billion dollars. The mobile data and content industries are worth about 70 billion dollars. The total mobile services industry is worth about 800 billion dollars. The handsets business is worth about 150 billion, and the network hardware rounds out the remainder, a bit under 50 billion, to bring our total to one Trillion (1,000 Billion) dollars."



"This year 2008, Nokia became the world's largest supplier of GPS devices. Its only an added feature on premium Nokia phones, and not every user even cares to use the positioning technology. Yet its there on the phone. But when the industry ships 1.2 billion new phones - yes, 3 million new phones ship every single day, Saturdays, Sundays and all holidays included - that gives it an enormous momentum and the ability to devour almost anything it wants. Oh, how about cameras you ask? Yes that too. The first mass market cameraphones were introduced in Japan in 2001, and Nokia has been the world's most common digital camera brand since 2004. Today the phone industry has shipped a cumulative 3 billion cameraphones, and the current installed base is 1.9 billion cameraphones. 57% of all mobile phones in use on the planet are cameraphones already. Oh, the stand-alone camera industry still lumbers along, selling now a little over 100 million stand-alone cameras but did you notice, since cameraphones appeared, two of the four camera giants have quit the camera business altogether. Minolta and Konica, no more in the camera biz. Shame. My first SLR was a Konica, they made great 35 mm film-based cameras - three decades ago.."

GeoTagging GPS Accuracy

GPS Performance Standard Document Updated - GPS World

The National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) has released an updated civil GPS Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard, committing the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to an improved level of GPS accuracy for civilian signals.

It is the fourth revision of the standard positioning service (SPS) performance standards document, and the first update since October 2001. In addition to specifying GPS minimum performance commitments, the SPS performance standard serves as a technical document designed to complement the GPS Signal in Space (SIS) Interface Specification.

The most significant change in the updated SPS standards is a 33 percent improvement in the minimum level of SIS range accuracy, from 6 meters root mean square (rms) accuracy to 4 meters rms (7.8 meters, 95 percent), according to the document, which is drafted by the DoD and released through the PNT committee.

While the stated dedication to improvement is notable, it has a built-in conservative margin for minimum performance; as the documents authors note in the executive summary: "with current (2007) SIS accuracy, well designed GPS receivers have been achieving horizontal accuracy of 3 meters or better and vertical accuracy of 5 meters or better, 95 percent of the time."

The full SPS document can be found on the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing website.

Geotagging Accuracy Nikon and Nokia

Lots of interesting stuff going on concerning geotagging on the new Nikon P6000 . Also given that Nokia is churning out on the order of two to five million geo-smartphones a month, accuracy of the GPS tagged images is becoming topical. Richard's Tech Reviews while not exhaustive is a great start to at least address GPS qualities...?

Nikon CoolPix 6000 Geo-tagging Solution

This newest Coolpix camera from Nikon has a built-in GPS and Nelso's blog reviews the GPS functionality. Read the Great article on Nikon's Coolpix 6000 GPS qualities - Nelso Blog. He does a pretty good job but I believe he confuses normal GPS start-up lags as being related to the Nikon implementation when the noted lags are essentially present in all single channel GPS devices... The entry of the $500 CoolPix 6000 makes Nikon the alternate offering to Ricoh's geo-cameras. GO NIKON!



An explaining comment for Nelso's article...

Just a comment on what I believe is your disappointment regarding out-of-the-box initial turn-on to first sat lock in the Nikon CoolPix 6000.

All GPS units require two reference tables to be current and if not they must updated by un-disrupted listening to “a” satellite for a period of time. The larger table, the almanac, requires upwards of 10 minutes of uninterrupted lock on a satellite. The second, the ephermic table, needs a minute or three before precise satellite lock to be achieved. A bit of explanation -

The almanac is essentially the bus schedule that provides the essential “coarse” schedule for all satellites. Generally it must be no older than a week or three and if older it must be updated. Absence or presence of a stale almanac requires the update of this table which requires around 10 minutes of “constant lock to one satellite” to be fully loaded at the bit rates in the carrier code. Break the lock and it must reacquire and initiate refreshing of the almanac all over. So if you store your unit for more than a couple of weeks – expect 10 or more minutes minimally to regain a proper "almanac" table.

The next step to getting the "best" positional solution is the updating of the ephermic table. This is the very fine hour-to-hour resolution on the coarse almanac and accounts for things like tidal effects, day/night, and other fine tunings on the satellites’ paths. This information can be updated several times in an hour. The ephermic table is also the reason why cold starts with current almanacs can require upwards of a minute or three to properly lock and for accuracy to stabilize. This is where the a-GPS advantage can be found in certain geo-smartphones to improve time to navigating lock. These phones will hunt the ephermic table first from the carrier gaining this update via the mobile web feature… also allows the carrier to keep you locked to them as well?

Lastly, accuracy can be further improved by a differential correction that is know as WAAS. Its not available everywhere as it is broadcast from fix-position satellites - Europe and the US are covered. If present and if the GPS chip set can utilize this "very-fine" correction, GPS accuracy can be held to under three meters.. better chips-sets can be within a meter 95 percent of the time. This is really the fine tune and accounts for radio delay due to atmospheric density and other delays that vary minute to minute.

So the Almanac gets you to the bus stop. The ephermic tells you if the bus is going to be a bit early or late and the differential suggests delays due to making change or getting a long line properly to their seats.

Lastly, your point on moving a GPS several hundred miles from its last known position when almanac and ephermic are current can also confuse your unit. This lag is a result of GPS unit believing it is in the same area when it was turned off. It looks into the almanac, its clock, and then hunts for the predicted satellites based on its last known position. If it can not find those most likely satellites it falls into a search and find solution… for at least two or more satellites for a hint; this too delays the locked navigation. Giving the unit a hint can speed this up significantly… geo-smartphones use the local area code for the hint.

MidNight Mapper

Smartphones killing PDNs?

RIM beats Microsoft Mobile - Symbian looses 10 percent

Mobilewack

Isn’t this some good news? RIM surpasses Windows Mobile in market share for the second quarter of the year. RIM comes second after Symbian which dropped significantly from the same time last year. Amazingly Windows Mobile lost the second position although they have about the same market share they did last year.

BlackBerry is up to 17.4% from last year’s 8.9%. They have almost doubled their market share in a year. Apple went from 1% to almost 3% during the same period. The biggest looser seems to be Symbian which has lost about 10% from 65.6% to 57.1%.

Americans and their cellphones, new numbers

 

 

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Americans and their cellphones, new numbers

via Communities Dominate Brands by Tomi T Ahonen on 28/08/08

And continuing from my miscellaneous articles picked up during the vacation..

I read the September issue of PC Today magazine and it had some mobile telecoms stats from America. The Nielsen Company reports that the American cellphone penetration rate per capita is now 85% (still lagging almost all industrialized countries where leading countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan, Italy and Israel have per capita rates of 135%-140%). But the PC Today article gave good comparisons of how other technologies fare in America. DVD players are nearly as prevalent with 84% penetration rate per capita.  PCs are only at 80%, digital cameras at 69% and MP3 players only at 40%. Hopefully this helps wake up those who might still be asleep in America about the 7th of the Mass Media - the world's most prevalent technology is the cellphone.

There was another stat in the issue as well. The USA National Center for Health Statistics reported that 15.8% of American households has already cut the cord and have no fixed landlines, but use only cellphones for their telecoms needs. Again, this may seem like a big number (almost one in six homes in America) but of course, this also lags the leading countries quite massively. Finland has already passed the half-point with more homes relying only on cellphones than those that have a fixed landline.

 

 

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