IPhone

From Sony Japan comes news of Sony’s latest and most impressive Android tablets. Apparently, the Tablet Z wasn’t quite ready for CES earlier this month, but it is, at 6.9mm thin, svelter than Apple’s iPad mini while using a “Bravia”, “Retina” 1080P display. Also a high point for a tablet, Sony will incorporate an 8-megapixel CMOS sensor.

The Z is no slouch in the CPU department, with a quad-core 1.5GHz processor and 2GB of RAM, and it will somehow support NFC and LTE within its 6.9mm thick constraints.

It will also come with Android 4.1, but hopefully Sony gets more serious about updating its Android devices here. Prices and shipping times are still not determined.

Update: Look already a spy video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Mne8ddOmyAQ]

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Google has announced that it plans to report Q4 2012 earnings on Jan. 22 at 4:30 p.m. EST. The press release typically goes up a few minutes early, with a conference call taking place over on Google’s investor hub with top executives. As it does every quarter, the report gives us a look into how the folks in Mountain View are performing. Let’s just hope they don’t report earnings a little too early this time. Stay tuned!
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Google made some announcements today regarding its work with the Quickoffice team since acquiring the company in June. On top of noting work to take advantage of Quickoffice conversion technology in Google Docs, Google launched a free version of the QuickOffice iPad app exclusively for Google Apps for Business customers today. There are also free iPhone and Android versions of the app for creating and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files coming to Apps customers in the near future:

Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the easiest way to share and work together, but perhaps not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. To complement what you can do with Google documents, we’re also making it easier for you to make quick edits to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files without conversion. Starting today, the Quickoffice iPad app is available for free to all Apps for Business customers, and iPhone and Android versions are on the way.

Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh welcomed the announcement on his Twitter account: “Customers can now get Quickoffice for free. No need to license microsoft for your ipad.”

[tweet https://twitter.com/aksingh77/status/281531037249581056]
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I (and, to be honest, more my kids) have used the Kindle Fire HD for over a month, and I thought I’d share some thoughts from an iPad/Android user’s perspective.

The hardware is excellent and a significant upgrade from the original Fire. It feels extremely solid and the 1,280-by-720 HD display looks great. The speakers are better than either the iPad Mini or the Nexus 7 and not barely — by a long shot. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are “stereo speakers” (it is a 7-inch device obviously and there is little separation), but they are both louder and clearer than the competition. The HD is also noticeably thinner than the original Kindle Fire, but that comes at the expense of bigger bezels that give it a bigger footprint than the same-screened Nexus 7 and similar size to the bigger-screened iPad Mini. This is unfortunate because one of the nicest things about the size of a 7-inch tablet is either it can squeeze into a back pocket or, more likely, a coat pocket…and those inches count. Neither the iPad Mini nor the Kindle HD fit in my jacket pocket as well as the much more slender Nexus 7.

But, that’s not the biggest problem…

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HTC looked to make a mark on the world with the arrival of the HTC One X in the spring. The device provided a new look into Android devices that veered away from its previous bulkier and heavier line of otherwise solid products. The One X was arguably one of the best, most designed Android devices we saw out of 2012’s Mobile World Conference, but it didn’t fare well against the Samsung Galaxy S3 line once the two went head-to-head.

Maybe that is why we were a little surprised with the announcement of the HTC One X+ in early October. Everything looked to be the same on the outside, but the internals packed some serious upgrades. The HTC One X+ went on sale at AT&T yesterday for $199 and Amazon for $139. We have spent the better part of a month testing the One X+ to answer the simple question: Is this your next handset? First, let’s get started with the overall design.

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TL;DR: This is the first Chromebook effort that fulfills the ChromeOS mission: good quality, excellent (MacBook Air-like) design, low cost and functional, and easy to use. It won’t replace a mid-high end machine, but, for people with basic needs or who want an inexpensive second computer, this is a no brainer at $250.

Background:

Google’s Android and ChromeOS  represent two different visions of the future of computing from inside the same company. The Android vision is a touch-enabled platform with apps that has been in vogue since the iPhone was released in 2007. The ChromeOS is the realization of the decades-old network client computer—which is just a browser as a user interface for a bunch of cloud services.

Android has clearly been popular on both phones and now tablets, but Chrome sales have been pretty lackluster until now. From my point of view, that’s due to a couple of reasons. For one, the devices, made by Samsung and Asus, were lackluster in speed compared to the Windows and Mac counterparts. ChromeOS devices should be faster than comparably equipped Macs and PCs because there is no overhead—it is just a browser. Yet the CR-48 and again with the second-generation Chromebooks weren’t noticeably faster than cheap netbooks. That’s the other problem: Chromebooks weren’t cheap – compared to similarly specced PCs, anyway. Often, you’d be able to find a cheaper Windows PC on sale that otherwise was the same or better.

So, to break it down: Chromebooks were overpriced and slow (and the design wasn’t very inspired).

Then came the third generation…

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Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q12

Gartner is out with its quarterly report for worldwide mobile device sales by vendor and OS for the third quarter. While reporting an overall 3 percent decline in mobile phone sales, the smartphone category hit 169.2 million units in Q3, a 47 percent increase from the year-ago quarter. While Apple is still third to Samsung and Nokia for total mobile device sales, Samsung and Apple remain the top smartphone vendors collectively, capturing 46.5-percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia slipped from No. 3 smartphone vendor in Q2 to No. 7 in Q3. This made room for RIM and HTC behind Apple and Samsung in the third and fourth positions.

With sales of 23.6 million units in the third quarter for Apple (up 36.2-percent year-on-year), Gartner reported Samsung has widened its lead on Apple with almost 55 million smartphones in the quarter and strong demand for its Galaxy line. Samsung once again takes the top vendor position for smartphones with 32.5-percent of the market:

Samsung’s mobile phones sales continued to accelerate, totaling almost 98 million units in the third quarter of 2012 (see Table 1), up 18.6 percent year-on-year. Samsung saw strong demand for Galaxy smartphones across different price points, and it further widened the gap with Apple in the smartphone market, selling 55 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2012. It commanded 32.5 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2012.

As for the race between Android and iOS, Gartner’s numbers show Android increased its marketshare nearly 20 percentage points in the quarter to 72.4-percent of the market, up from just 52.5-percent in the year-ago quarter. In comparison, Apple now accounts for 13.9-percent of the market, down from 15 percent last year, but Gartner expects that to change in Q4 thanks to the continuing iPhone 5 roll out:
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Honestly, when I heard the Nexus 4, the long-rumored LG entrant into the Google-phone legacy, was going to come sans LTE, I almost threw in the towel. After all, the last version, the Galaxy Nexus, is equipped with LTE in its Verizon and Sprint incarnations. Is this a step back?

In my experience, not at all. This is the best Android phone ever made. And, for many purposes, it is the best phone I’ve ever used. It is almost a no-brainer to hit the buy button once you add that it only costs $299 for 8GB or $349 for 16GB.

But, before you do, let’s talk hardware:

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IDC is out with its latest report that covers the top six smartphone operating systems by shipments and market share during Q3 2012. In the study, IDC found Android on nearly 75 percent of all smartphones shipped during the quarter, giving Android 136 million units of the 181.1 million total smartphones shipped during Q3 2012. That accounts for 91.5-percent year-over-year growth, beating out 57.3- percent year-over-year growth for Apple, and an average market growth of 46.4-percent. Apple shipped 26.9 million iPhones, in comparison, giving the company 14.9-percent of the market in the third quarter. Samsung is once again the top Android vendor:

Android, having topped the 100 million unit mark last quarter, reached a new record level in a single quarter. By comparison, Android’s total volumes for the quarter were greater than the total number of smartphones shipped in 2007, the year that Android was officially announced. Samsung once again led all vendors in this space, but saw its market share decline as numerous smaller vendors increased their production.

iOS was a distant second place to Android, but was the only other mobile operating system to amass double-digit market share for the quarter. The late quarter launch of the iPhone 5 and lower prices on older models prevented total shipment volumes from slipping to 3Q11 levels. But without a splashy new OS-driven feature like Siri in 2011 and FaceTime in 2010, the iPhone 5 relied on its larger, but not wider, screen and LTE connectivity to drive growth.

In December, we heard reports that the Pentagon had officially certified an Android device and Android 2.2 for use on Defense Department networks. According to a report from The Washington Post, citing a recent document posted by the Defense Department, the Pentagon is hiring contractors to securely manage a combination of at least 162,500 iOS and Android devices. The document also noted the project could expand up to 8 million mobile devices:

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BusinessInsider pointed us to an interesting update to the Google Wallet website today: Google is now advertising “the next version” of its mobile wallet app and providing a link a to request an invite. The website has a link to “Request an invite” for when the new version is ready, but even more interesting is what happens after users do so. After clicking the link, Google asks users to select the type of mobile device they use. The three options include: Android, iOS, and Other.

There is no details regarding what might be included in the next generation of the Wallet service, but many are speculating Google might have plans to extend some portion of the Google Wallet app to iOS and possibly other devices. An iPhone version of Google Wallet would of course not include the NFC capabilities that have limited the service to select Android devices, but perhaps it could provide some type of integration with Apple’s Passbook feature on iOS? We have requested an invite to the new version of Wallet, and we will keep you updated when we learn more.

Google also announced today that Google Wallet is now available to Galaxy S III users on MetroPCS:

[tweet https://twitter.com/googlewallet/status/260476513567256576]

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Verizon held its Q3 2012 earnings call this morning and —aside from announcing $29 billion in total operating revenue— revealed Android smartphones were 79 percent of its total smartphone activations for the quarter.

The nation’s second-largest carrier also said operating revenue experienced a 3.9-percent gain over last year, while noting a third consecutive quarter of “double-digit percentage growth.” As for mobile device activations, 4G LTE smartphone penetration increased from “just below 50 percent last quarter to more than 53 percent.”

The company further disclosed that it activated 6.8 million smartphone in Q3, and 3.4 million of those activations were Android-powered devices. Three million were also specifically 4G LTE Android. In terms of iPhone activations, for comparison’s sake, Verizon activated 3.1 million with only 21 percent of the iPhones supporting 4G LTE.

The carrier then gave more information on its aggressive LTE rollout across the United States (via Yahoo Finance | Earnings Call Transcript):

[sic] In terms of 4G LTE coverage we are by far the market leader. Our 4G LTE service is currently available in 419 markets covering more than 250 million tops roughly 80% of the U.S. population. As our TV commercial say, we have more 4G LTE coverage than all of our competitors networks combined. We will continue expanding our 4G LTE network with a goal of having a nationwide foot print similar to our 3G network next year.

Visit Verizon’s Investor Relations page for more specifics.

The press release is below.

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We know Apple has had a lot of success pushing iPads in education, and during Apple’s Q3 conference call, CEO Tim Cook said the company would continue to be “very aggressive”. Apple’s iPad 2 sales in the K-12 market doubled y-o-y in Q3 thanks to a price drop to $399. In Q2, Apple said it sold about a million iPad units to the United States education market. With Apple’s upcoming iPad mini announcement possibly bringing an even lower price point for iPads in education, Amazon is announcing its plans today to get Kindle tablets into schools.

Reuters reported today that Amazon is launching a service, called “Whispercast”, aimed at allowing schools to easily deploy and manage multiple kindle devices:

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This is not the first time we heard major Android vendors are aiming to hit lower price points in the months to come. With iPad mini expected to eat into a large chunk of the 7-inch tablet market, and recent price drops and refreshes to the Kindle lineups, it makes sense Google and other Android manufacturers are aiming to offer an even better value following its launch. Digitimes, despite not having the best track record, stated confidently in September, while citing its usual supply chain sources, that Google is planning a $99 Nexus 7 tablet. It also claimed an upgraded model would take over the $200 price point. This would seem to make sense with rumors of a 32GB Nexus 7 landing for under $250. Leaked retail inventory listings and even a unit that accidentally shipped have backed up those rumors.

Digitimes is once again claiming today that Google’s $99 Nexus tablet is real, adding that Taiwan-based manufacturers have confirmed it will launch in the fourth quarter of this year. Where this leaves the rest of the Nexus line is unclear. If the $99 tablet and 32GB Nexus for $250 are real, it could mean the $99 tablet comes with 8GB or 16 GB. There is also a chance Google keeps a tablet at the $199 price point. This would seem to point to a 8GB model at $99, 16GB model at $199, and 32GB model at $250. However, we are not quite buying the idea tht Google will offer an extra 16GB for only $50 more than a $199 16GB model…

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Henrique De Castro

A new report from tech website AllThingsD suggested Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is currently ramping up efforts to poach a key Google advertising executive, Henrique De Castro, for either a COO or lead ad role.

AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, who cited “sources close to the situation” and “numerous sources,” noted De Castro’s silence to his staff on the matter is an indication that her reporting is spot-on:

In fact, after reports surfaced several months ago here and elsewhere that Mayer was interested in him, De Castro told his staff at Google that he was not leaving.

That does appear to be the case now, according to numerous sources.

This past week, De Castro canceled a major off-site for his employees and several attendees who know him well said he was not present at the company’s first night of its annual Zeitgeist event for advertising and publishing clients. The suave De Castro is usually a more noticeable fixture at such gatherings.

When reached last night, De Castro said he would be attending Zeitgeist, but declined to comment further.

While Mayer has not been very successful at luring executives from various tech companies, the report further mentioned Yahoo’s current revenue guru and former Googler, Michael Barret, is reportedly not planning to stay with his search company for the long term. De Castro and Barrett also allegedly do not have the best coworker relationship…

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