The Consumerization of IT
There's no doubt, BYOD is a disruptive trend and...
Bring Your Own Device eGuide
As more and more CIOs are beginning to see...
The Consumerization of IT
There's no doubt, BYOD is a disruptive trend and...
An Interactive Guide: Bring Your Own Device
As more and more enterprises begin to see...
Bring Your Own Device eGuide
As more and more CIOs are beginning to see...
An Interactive Guide: Bring Your Own Device
As more and more enterprises begin to see...
The Consumerization of IT
There's no doubt, BYOD is a disruptive trend and...
Bring Your Own Device eGuide
As more and more CIOs are beginning to see...
The Consumerization of IT
There's no doubt, BYOD is a disruptive trend and...
Bring Your Own Device eGuide
As more and more CIOs are beginning to see...
Global sales of mobile phones actually dropped in 2012, according to Gartner -- something that hasn't happened since the economic downturn of 2009.
The main culprit was falling sales of feature phones, which were down 20% in the fourth quarter of 2012 compared with a year ago. Meanwhile, smartphone sales were up nearly 40% in the same period.
This suggests that the mobile phone market is approaching saturation. Instead of selling to global consumers who are buying their first cell phone, an increasing proportion of sales will be replacement phones, as users swap out feature phones for smartphones.
Surprising Legal Facts About BYOD - Searches, Seizures, And More
CITE Goes Live! Register for the CITE Conference & Expo, June 2-4, in San Francisco.
One might think that the main beneficiaries of this shift will be low-cost Android manufacturers with a global footprint. Indeed, Huawei became one of the top-three smartphone vendors for the first time in Q4 2012.
But if you look at overall mobile phone sales, the biggest gainer from 2011 to 2012 was was Apple. It sold more than 130 million phones in 2012, up 46%. Nobody else was even close in terms of percentages, and only Samsung beat Apple in terms of absolute unit growth.
| Company | Unit sales, 2012 (1000s) | Unit sales, 2011 (1000s) | Growth (1000s) | Growth (%) |
| Samsung | 384,361 | 315,052 | 69,579 | 22% |
| Nokia | 333,938 | 422,478 | (88,540) | -21% |
| Apple | 130,133 | 89,263 | 40,870 | 46% |
| ZTE | 67,344 | 56,882 | 10,463 | 18% |
| LG | 58,016 | 86,371 | (28,355) | -33% |
| Huawei | 47,288 | 40,663 | 6,625 | 16% |
| TCL | 37,177 | 34,038 | 3,139 | 9% |
| RIM | 34,210 | 51,542 | (17,332) | -34% |
| Motorola | 33,916 | 40,269 | (6,353) | -16% |
| HTC | 32,122 | 43,267 | (11,145) | -26% |
| Others | 587,400 | 595,887 | (8,487) | -1% |
| Total | 1,746,176 | 1,775,712 | (29,356) | -2% |
In other words, Apple's premium platform strategy seems to be working perfectly well. By maintaining control over the platform, Apple has so far avoided the cutthroat "race to the bottom" competition between Android vendors -- for every Samsung or Huawei who wins, there's an LG or HTC who loses. But Apple has also lowered prices fast enough on older phones to appeal to some cost-conscious consumers.
Matt Rosoff is the editorial director of CITEworld. Read Matt's bio
The open-source Arduino platform has helped tinkers make robots and controllers. At the Maker Faire last weekend, Arduino leader Massimo Banzi unveiled a new effort to help connect Arduino devices to the Internet.
Microsoft said its updated Kinect will be available for use with Windows some time next year.
Social channels give companies unprecedented access to customers, and they can help you build better products that meet their needs. But sometimes it's your job to innovate and come up with products your customers never imagined needing.
A mobile app is as much a marketing tool as it is a product or link to a service. It needs to be just as flawless and well-designed as any other piece of marketing -- website, brochures, signs, stationary, and so on.
