This was a very busy and exciting week in mobile – lots of news, rumors and earnings. I’m sure all of you heard the Apple letdown announcement, all the follow-on analysis, etc etc… so I’m not going to discuss it here. The biggest news from all the Apple hoopla was Steve Jobs claiming Apple is the “largest mobile devices company”. Hmm, that’s an interesting claim but I wonder what metric he’s using. That statement definitely got the attention of Nokia, the world’s number one handset company (for a several years). The two companies are in the midst of a nasty lawsuit battle, so there was no love lost. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, Nokia’s been on the skids lately but are starting to show positive signs again – this week they announced a 65% gain in Q4 profit and increased smartphone sales. Apple’s ego will get them into trouble. Didn’t anyone teach them not poke a sleeping bear… it’ll wake up angry and hungry.
The other big story this week was the latest handset numbers. Strategy Analytics and IDC shared that global mobile phone sales rose 10% in 2009 and 11% in Q409 alone. The top spots went to Nokia, Samsung, and LG (umm… Mr. Job’s where’s Apple?). IDC’s report went on to predict big growth for Google Android which they expect to move into the #2 OS spot by 2013 behind Symbian (Nokia’s preferred OS).
With handset shipments increasing last year, it’s no wonder 2010 seems to be starting with a lot of handset news. Here’s this week’s summary of articles:
- Motorola files complaint versus Research In Motion
- GSM Versions Of Palm Pre And Pixi Plus
- Apple Tablet: Microsoft Plans Counter Strike
- Leaked: HTC Bravo looks like a Nexus One with more Sense
- Leaked Photos of the HTC Supersonic Look Like A HD2, But Runs Android Supposedly
- Windows Mobile 7 roadmap elucidated, starts with MWC 2010 demo
- Microsoft Virtually Confirms Zune Phone
- New 16GB Nokia X6: Half the Storage, But At What Price?
- Motorola To Become Leading Android Supplier
- QWERTY FTW! T-Mobile myTouch Slide caught in the flesh
- Toshiba TG02 spotted cruising through the FCC
- What is this mysterious Motorola Android device?
- Review of Nokia’s N97 mini, a paired down QWERTY touch smartphone
- Leaked Pic of HTC Bravo and Details of HTC Legend Break Cover—Aluminum Unibody Will Turn Heads
As always, below are additional posts I found interesting and want to share with you (as I mentioned earlier, there is a lot this week):
- Apple reports fiscal Q1 2010 earnings, sells 8.7 million iPhones during last quarter
- Verizon reports Q4 2009 earnings, strong Verizon Wireless performance
- Holy wow! AT&T admits NYC/San Fran 3G service sucked
- AT&T: Wireless Is Top Investment Priority
- Ground Truth to provide weekly mobile Web stats
- All I wanna do is zooma-zoom-zoom: Overclocking the Droid
- Google Blames T-Mobile For Nexus One 3G Problem
- Google intros click-to-call in mobile ads, popular image search
- BlackBerry Presenter video review
- Does Google Voice on mobile pose a threat to carriers?
- Why carriers didn’t want to allow 3G VoIP before. And why they’re now setting it free
- Google Voice Finally Heads to iPhone, Palm Pre With HTML5 Webapp
- Motricity Files for IPO
See or hear anything else interesting in mobile. Let us know by leaving a comment below.