Mobile Market Wrap-up for February 5, 2010
Posted by Devesh Khare on February 8th, 2010
Welcome to the latest installment of my weekly mobile summary. To our loyal readers, I’m trying a little experiment and will be releasing the weekly wrap-ups on Mondays instead of Fridays as usual. I personally like getting summaries on Monday mornings to set the tone for my week, so if you agree or if you don’t like the change, please leave a comment below.
The big story last week was the latest smartphone handset numbers released by Strategy Analaytics. According to the report, 53 million smartphones were sold globally in Q4 2009 which represents a 30% increase from the year before. Overall, 173.8 million smartphones were sold during 2009. No surprise that Nokia topped the charts with 39% of the marketshare with RIM and Apple gaining marketshare to 19.8% (up 4.3%) and 14.1% (up 5.3%) respectively.
The other entertaining story was more Google vs. Apple cat fighting (you should expect it by now). These two companies have turned the mobile market into a soap opera that includes name calling, product bashing and sometimes personal attacks. Last week Google released their Google Voice webapp which circumvents iPhone’s “ban” on the Google Voice downloadable app. And now this week, Google added Multitouch support to the Nexus One. I’m not aware of any changes in Apple’s multitouch patent, so my best guess is that Google just decided to release the new feature to tell Apple “no more Mr. nice guy, we’re ready to rumble”. Both companies seem to be mirroring each other with features (e.g. multitouch), acquisitions (e.g. mobile advertising – Google/AdMod and Apple/Quattro), and messaging (e.g. mobile is our future). This should be an exciting week/month/year as these two companies battle without any playground rules.
As always, here is the mobile handset news I found from last week:
- Sony Ericsson Aspen caught on video, loving life with WinMo 6.5.3
- Nokia’s mid-tier ‘Mystic’ to be dubbed C6, will hit stores in May or June?
- Motorola Milestone looks set for February 18 launch on Telus; AT&Ters, get your unlocking pants on
- Google sells just 80,000 Nexus One smartphones in first month
- HTC patent shows a new, spring-loaded clamshell design
- Vodafone UK to offer Android powered Sony Ericsson X10
- Samsung aims to triple global smartphone shipments in 2010
- Judge rules RIM did not infringe on Motorola patent
- Nokia E72 video review – part 1 of 2
- Gigabyte will have an Android handset, but it’s not the one you saw
- Verizon comes clean and announces the Android-powered Motorola DEVOUR with MOTOBLUR
- Why wait for the Nexus One Android OTA update when you can have it now?
- HTC Trophy details leaked in full [Updated]
- iPhone Firmware Update 3.1.3 Out Now, Fixes Minor Bugs
- iPhone SDK Reveals New iPhone 4 Codename
To finish this week’s summary, here is a quick list of articles I found interesting during last week and want to share with you:
- RIM’s BIS 3.0 email features apparently leaked, finally does Gmail justice
- Why marketers need mobile metrics in 2010
- Cell phone has built in cigarette lighter. In other news, I have officially seen it all.
- Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Outlook 2010
- Symbian goes open source, releases code to developers
- Deutsche Telekom preparing for possible T-Mobile USA IPO or spinoff?
- Free Nokia Ovi Maps application surpasses 1.4 million downloads
- Potentially nasty new iPhone security flaw discovered
- Google adds multi-SMS support to Google Voice
- Hulu planning to offer mobile app?
- Apple Bans Location-based iPhone Ads
- Mobile web may beat out mobile apps in the long run
See or hear anything else interesting in mobile. Let us know by leaving a comment below.










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