Android

Research firm Strategy Analytics has released a report today on worldwide tablet market share for Q2 2013 highlighting how Android has seen a significant increase in market share during the quarter. Not only did it manage to capture 67% of the 51.7 million units shipped (up from 51% of the market last year), its increased market share came at the expense of a decline in tablet sales year over year for Apple.

Android is now making steady progress due to hardware partners like Samsung, Amazon, Google and White-Box tablets which, despite the fact that branded OEMs are lowering price-points and putting pressure on the White-Box manufacturers, are still performing well,” King added, “Apple iOS shipments were 14.6 million iPads in Q2 2013 which declined 14 percent annually.  In the same quarter a year ago the first Retina display iPads were launched which could partly explain the decline as there were no new models in this quarter.  However, to compensate that, iPad Mini which was not available a year ago, now freely available was expected to take the figure higher than 14.6 million”

Compared to Android’s 67% of total shipments, the report puts Apple at 28.3% of the market during the quarter, down from 47.2% a year ago, and Windows at 4.5%.

As always with these reports, there are a few things to keep in mind. Stratgey Analytics tracks shipments to retailers, not sales. Its numbers above also factor in White-Box tablets– those usually inexpensive, unbranded products that we never really get real sales figures for. Remove White-Box tablets and you get around 36.2 million total units in Q2 2013, up around 47 percent since last year. That would put Apple’s 14.6 million tablets sold during the quarter at a much higher market share in Q2, around 38%.
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Hot on the heels of Google announcing early availability for the new Nexus 7, we’re getting our first discount on the brand new tablet. For the next two days (or until sold out), Staples is offering the 16GB version for $199 and 32GB for $239 when you enter coupon code 41178. Both deals include free shipping and tax is added where applicable. This deal is the only current discount available for the new Nexus 7.
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Image: technotin.com

App developers may soon be asked to tell us what data they collect, and how it is used, under a set of government proposals released today (via TNW). 

The US government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration today issued its first draft of what will be a mobile apps code of conduct intended to better protect consumers and their privacy. If made final, policy states that publishers must provide consumers with “short-form” notices in multiple languages informing them of how their data is being used […]

Just so that there’s no doubt about what “data” means, the government entity specifically says it includes biometrics, browser history, phone or text log, contacts, financial info, health, medical, or therapy info, location, and user files …

There is rather more doubt, however, about how effective the proposals might prove … 
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Google is clearly serious about its intentions to make a sizeable push into the living-room market, as Android Police spotted a small clue revealing that Android 4.3 has added support for 4k displays.

Google has added a new DPI category to Android: XXXHDPI. This is for screens with an approximate DPI of six hundred and forty. Did you think we were stopping at 1080p?

Android engineer Dianne Hackborn is quoted as confirming the intent behind this:

A typical use of this density would be 4K television screens — 3840×2160 … 
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After releasing its earnings estimates earlier this month, Samsung has just posted its full report for Q2 2013. The company reported profits of around $8.5 billion, up $2 billion over Q1′s $6.4 billion profit and about $51 billion in revenue. While both of those numbers are records for Samsung, they fell short of Wall Street expectations.

The mobile department of Samsung increased its profits nine percent in Q2, which the company attributes to sales of the Galaxy S4 and Galaxy Note 8.0. Samsung did note, however, that its mobile department may not be able to keep up that pace forever and a slight drop in growth may occur.

Going forward, Samsung plans to focus on “offering differentiated smartphone displays…including flexible display technology.” 
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Hot on the heels of the Chromecast being announced yesterday, the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Google is planning yet another entry into the living room market. The publication says that Google has been secretly working on an Android-powered set-top box, similar to the Roku and Apple TV. Googler Andy Rubin allegedly showed the device off at CES 2013 earlier this year, highlighting the Android operating system and video-chatting via Hangouts feature. In addition to the camera, the device also had a motion sensor similar to Microsoft’s Kinect.

We reported earlier this year that Google was in talks with cable companies for a new service for internet TV streaming, so it’s possible that the two rumors are related.

While similar to the Chromecast, this set-top box is supposedly much more independent and does not require another device to power it. The device will be able to run a plethora of Android apps, including Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, and the Play Store.

The people briefed on Google’s plans said the set-top box Google showed off in January had a broader set of features. One of these people said the device allowed people to stream YouTube videos, watch TV shows or movies from the Google Play digital-programming store, and access Android apps such as videogames or, potentially, digital media services such as Netflix and Pandora.

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Yesterday, Google finally announced Android 4.3, a minor update to 4.2 that included a handful of neat features, including the ability to have more than one user profile. As time has progressed, however, a few other unannounced features have been discovered.

First, Googler Evan Rapoport posted a detailed description on Google+ about the serious enhancements the Photo Sphere team made to the functionality in Android 4.3. Rapoport says that nearly all of stitching and exposure bugs and annoyances present in Android 4.2 have been fixed in the latest update.

First, alignment and stitching are much better, giving you more level horizons and fewer errors throughout the image. While environments with lots of moving things are always challenging, scenes like the one attached here with a long flat horizon are now much better.

Second, we’ve improved exposure compensation for each individual frame, producing a beautifully exposed photo sphere. You can compare this to the previous versions that produced gray areas and inconsistent coloring in areas of high contrast (near the sun, horizons, buildings against blue sky, etc.).

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Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app for Android, which previously only handled photo uploads to Amazon’s cloud storage service offering users 5GB for free, was just updated with the ability to upload and stream videos. Version 1.7 of the app will allow users to upload and download videos up to 20 minutes in length and 2GB in size, and will also stream video to any of your Android devices supporting the new video features (the iOS app equivalent is yet to be updated).

A blog post by Amazon outlining the technology behind the new video feature says the app supports more than 20 file formats and 40 video codecs:

The team wanted to allow users to upload and view almost any video. The Elastic Transcoder allows them to support more than 20 file formats and 40 video codecs, including videos captured on archaic devices and stored in obsolete formats. Because Cloud Drive already stored uploaded files in Amazon S3 (they also make heavy use of EC2, SQS, SNS, CloudFront and DynamoDB), it was easy for the team to get started. They created an initial set of transcoding pipelines, decided on the set of output formats that they wanted to support, and created Elastic Transcoding presets as needed… In order to provide a great user experience, the team set a goal of having finished videos available 15 minutes or less after they were uploaded. They were able to over-achieve on this goal and report that videos are often ready within a minute or two.

Perhaps Amazon will soon change the app’s name to better reflect its new video capabilities.

The updated app also includes a few other features, including larger preview images in landscape view. Full release notes below:
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As expected, Google finally took the wraps off its new Nexus 7 tablet yesterday during its breakfast with Chrome and Android chief Sundar Pichai. While there was no mention of a possible update to its 10-inch Nexus, it appears Pichai has since confirmed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati that a new version of the device would be arriving in the “near future”:

Expect to see new 10-inch Nexus 10 Android tablet (made by @Samsung) in the near future, Google's @sundarpichai tells me

— Amir Efrati (@amir) July 24, 2013

While we haven’t been hearing much about a new Nexus 10, which was first introduced back in October, we did recently hear that Samsung was working on an octa-core Nexus 11 alongside a new 11-inch Galaxy Tab for later this year. Pichai apparently confirmed that next-gen Nexus 10 would again be made by Samsung, and “near future” seems to indicate we’ll likely see the device shipping with the latest version of Android 4.3 sometime later this year.

KGI’s Mingchi Kuo, an analyst with a good predictive track-record, has forecast that the Moto X will do substantially better than forecast, while the new 1080P Nexus 7 will do significantly worse.

According to our survey, 2013F shipments of Moto X, to be announced August 1, should reach 5.5mn units, up 57% from the previous forecast of 3.5mn units, including 1.5mn units in 3Q13 and 4.0mn units in 4Q13.

Kuo cited a combination of supply chain sources, the positive response from U.S. operators and Google’s planned megaspend of half a billion dollars on marketing the handset as key factors for the boost in expected numbers …
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At Google’s event this morning, the company confirmed Android Jelly Bean 4.3. The new update ships with the redesigned Nexus 7, and includes various new features:

• Multi-user restricted profiles: Limit access to certain content. Good for point of sale systems and kiosks. Also works for parental controls.
• Bluetooth Low-Energy support. Can easily pair Android 4.3 with a fitness sensor.
• Open GL-ES 3.0. Much improved graphics for games, for example. Complex 3D objects rendering well. Renders natively in 1080p. On stage demos will be available in the Play Store.
• New DRM APIs: Hardware-based encryption.
• New Netflix app with 1080P streaming. Nexus 7 is first to support.
• Notification access — “Your apps can now access and interact with the stream of status bar notifications as they are posted. You can display them in any way you want, including routing them to nearby Bluetooth devices, and you can update and dismiss notifications as needed.” (From the Android Blogspot)
• Easier text input
• New languages

Available today for Nexus devices. Google Play Edition HTC One and GS4 updates coming “very soon.” Gallery of announcement images below:

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Live from Google’s Android and Chrome event this morning, Google’s Sundar Pichai just provided an update on some of the company’s stats for tablet activations and Google Play content downloads. While noting that revenue per user on Google Play has increased 2.5X over the last year, Google announced that it now has 70 million tablet activations, up from around 10 million last year. It also announced it is now at 1 million apps on Google Play with over 50 billion app downloads.

A run-down of the announced statistics:

-70M tablet activations

-1 in 2 tablets is android

-now 50B+ app downloads, up from 20B last year

-Revenue per user up 2.5x over last year

-1 million apps in Google Play

-revenue increased by 2.5X for devs in last 12 months

-Nexus 7 is over 10% of Android tablets

-in Japan during holidays 45% of Android tablets in Japan were Nexus 7

Image: malaysiaitfair.com.my

A preview of Android 4.3 by Pocketnow suggests huge improvements to battery-life, with the site reporting 25 hours of heavy usage.

On Android 4.2 I can typically expect 4-6 hours of use before I need to recharge. As a reminder, I use my phones quite a bit more than the average user, so my battery life is expectedly lower than what most should expect to get. On Android 4.3, without changing my usage habits, I was surprised to see the phone last all day, all evening, and still had charge enough to get me to work the next morning. I was able to eek out 25+ hours and still had 1% battery life remaining. That’s impressive! … 
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GZzS6BxHEns

Later this morning, Google is holding a breakfast event with Chrome/Google head Sundar Pichai where it is expected to announce the new Nexus 7 and maybe even a new “Chromecast” device. Ahead of the event, Google has just published a live stream of the press conference for those of us not able to attend.

You can watch the stream right up above, but be sure to stay tuned, as we will be bringing you everything you need to know from the event, which is set to kick off at 9:00AM PT / 12:00 PM ET. 
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