Samsung coming from behind?

Samsung has sold 5 million units of F480 TouchWiz
from Mobilewhack.com by DaX

Those who thought anything but touch would be the future of cell phones must be feeling pretty stupid right now, as Samsung has got the right numbers to prove them wrong.  The Korean manufacturer has recently announced that it has now sold over 5 million units of its popular touchscreen cellphone, the F480 TouchWiz, worldwide and is still shipping out almost 500,000 of these finger favorites every month.  It looks like the TouchWiz UI turned out to be a huge success for Samsung and let’s not forget the fact that the F480 was the first handset to sport it.

We will have to wait and see what kind of figures Samsung will come up with once it starts selling smartphones with that sweet combination of Android and touch we like.

Global Smartphone Sales Growth Slows ...

Global Smartphone Sales Growth Slows To 3.7% In 4Q - Gartner

Wednesday March 11st, 2009 / 11h04

STOCKHOLM -(Dow Jones)- Worldwide smartphone sales grew 3.7% on the year to 38.1 million units in the fourth quarter 2008, research firm Gartner said Wednesday.
Gartner research director Roberta Cozza said growth slowed in the fourth quarter due to fewer compelling new products and the worsened economic climate.
As a proportion of all mobile device sales, smartphones remained relatively stable at 12% in the fourth quarter, compared to 11% a year earlier.
Nokia Corp. (NOK) maintained its market-leading position in the quarter. However, its market share fell to 40.8% from 50.9%, and its smartphone sales declined 17% to 15.6 million units.
Research In Motion (RIMM), the maker of Blackberry smartphones, increased its market share to 19.5% from 10.9%, as its sales grew 85% to 7.4 million units.
Apple's (AAPL) market share increased to 10.7% from 5.2%, as its sales more than doubled, to 4.1 million units from 1.9 million.
HTC's (2498.TW) market share grew to 4.3% from 3.7%. Its sales were up 20% at 1.6 million units.
Samsung (005930.SE) had a market share of 4.2% in the fourth quarter, up from 1.8% a year earlier, as its sales increased 138% to 1.6 million units.
Company Web site: www.gartner.com

Facebook Photos

10 BILLION FACEBOOK PHOTOS
Paul Worthington

Who would have thought that Facebook would store more images than many dedicated photo sharing sites?

The community-oriented Web company says it now stores 10 billion photographs uploaded by its members -- and, as it stores each photo in four different sizes, it actually has 40 billion image files.

Facebook adds that:2-3 Terabytes of photos are uploaded each day;

It has more than one petabyte of photo storage;

It serves more than 15 billion photo images per day;

Photo traffic peaks at more than 300,000 images served per second.

October 17. 2008

Olympus exec declares "twelve megapixels is enough"

Olympus exec declares "twelve megapixels is enough"

via Engadget by Donald Melanson on 3/9/09

The megapixel race has been declared over plenty of times before, but we're guessing that there will be more folks than ever in agreement with Olympus exec Akira Watanabe's recent statement that twelve megapixels is "enough for covering most applications most customers need." In addition to that blanket declaration, Watanabe said that Olympus has "no intention to compete in the megapixel wars for E-System" (its line of DSLRs), adding that it would instead focus on other features like dynamic range, color reproduction, and a better ISO range for low-light shooting. On that latter front, Watanabe predicts that autofocus could be one of the big areas of innovation in DSLRs, with current "phase detect" systems giving way to new and improved image sensor-based autofocus systems. So, what do you think? Is twelve enough, or is the more megapixels the merrier? Sound off in comments.

[Via Ars Technica]
Filed under: Digital Cameras

Olympus exec declares "twelve megapixels is enough" originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

FACEBOOK IS FOREMOST PHOTO SITE

According to comScore data, the social networking site Facebook is still the largest photo site on the Web: Facebook now has more than 10 billion photos.

Also: 69 percent of Facebook's monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos.

It claims more unique visitors than Photobucket or Flickr: 33.6 million as compared to 22.8 and 21.9 million.

Paul Worthington [pworthington@futureimage.com]

3G - Success yet?

3G - the power of the Ethernet....
Available for Consulting
Alan Moore

If we measure how high is the 3G penetration rate per capita, not the 3G migration per total subscrber base - then we get a very different view... Italy has already 48% 3G phones per capita. So there is a 3G phone for almost half of all Italians. Now 3G is clearly a success. Note this is higher as a penetration rate for Italy, than personal computer penetration, or fixed internet penetration (per capita, not per household).
So, I wanted to give our readers a look at how 3G is doing. Here are the world's leading countries, not by how many of their subscribers have upgraded to 3G, but rather, by national penetration rate of 3G per capita, ie per all human beings:

South Korea 67%
Japan 67%
Singapore 61%
Australia 53%
Italy 48%
Austria 47%
Sweden 43%
Taiwan 43%
Finland 42%
Portugal 41%
Israel 39%
Norway 38%
Spain 38%

Thats the baker's dozen leading countries. All around the world. 13 countries where there is a 3G phone subscription for over a third of the population and very smoothly up the curve up to two thirds of the population. Is there any doubt that 3G is happening? That 3G is a success? That 3G will happen everywhere? (for those looking for the USA, it is at 20% - remember this is per capita, and USA lags the Industrialized World still so much, that they have not even reached the 100% national mobile phone penetration rates yet. Germany is ahead at 23%, the UK is at 32%).

The above stats from several sources including the Netsize Guide 2009, the ITU 2008 and Tomi Ahonen Almanac 2009. But yes, its been a long time coming, but the world's biggest infrastrructure investment, - and the world's biggest economic gamble - have panned out. 3G is well on its way to being a major success. But of who will end up winners and losers?

It is no longer a technology game. Like I've said for years already, the winners in 3G will be determined by services and marketing. Some of the past giants have been very slow to grasp that... And for anyone who would like to read a 2 page summary of the major stats on this industry, remember I have my free Thought Piece on Mobile in 2009. I'll be happy to send it to you, if you send me an email to tomi (at) tomiahonen (dot) com.

Smartphones to the Rescue?

Mobile Industry Pins Hopes on Smartphones
By Matt Richtel
February 10, 2009 7:27AM

Over all, these devices make up about 10 percent of the U.S. cell phone market and are considered likely to grow in popularity, driving people to upgrade and pay for more data to do things like download songs and send text messages. In the fourth quarter, for example, AT&T's data revenue for each subscriber rose 27 percent, to $16.30 from about $12 a year earlier.

Smartphones notwithstanding, the number of handsets sold around the world has been falling in important regions -- even before the recession. In Western Europe, there were around 191 million mobile phones sold in 2007, a figure that fell to 171 million in 2008 and is projected at 165 million in 2009, according to Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with the research firm Gartner.

In the United States, people bought 176 million handsets in 2007, and 184 million in 2008. That number will probably remain flat this year, the Gartner analyst said. She said that Europe might provide some indication of where the United States was headed because, as highly populated as America is with phones, it is still slightly behind Europe. In the fourth quarter, Nokia sold 113 million handsets, down about 15 percent from a year earlier. Samsung Electronics said worldwide cell phone demand might be down 10 percent in 2009.