Smartphone sales jump 50%, Apple 3rd largest vendor globally

Global sales of smartphones surged by 50%, growing from 35.9 million units in the year ago quarter to 54 million units in the first quarter of 2010, the strongest growth rate in several years.

A report by MarketWatch cited figures released by Strategy Analytics, which said smartphones now make up 18% of all mobile phone sales.

Strong sales of smartphones are "driven by healthy operator subsidies, competition between vendors, and a rising number of cheaper models," the report noted, citing Android and Symbian specifically as operating system platforms fueling growth in low cost handsets.

Smartphone makers are not all competing in the same markets however. Strategy Analytics said that "some smartphone vendors, such as Nokia, will chase growing mid-tier volumes in emerging markets such as China and India," while "brands, such as Motorola will focus on mature markets like the US."

Motorola has returned to profitability after giving up high volumes of mobile phone sales to focus on higher-end smartphones like the Android-based Droid/Milestone, which is often described as the closest rival to Apple's iPhone.

Meanwhile, Nokia is struggling to retain its leadership position by focusing on emerging markets. The company sold a record 21.5 million smartphones in the first quarter, but it largely sold cheaper models "in regions including China and South America, while North America remained a 'problem child' for the company," the report stated.

Behind Nokia, RIM sold 10.6 million BlackBerries, keeping Apple in third place globally with its record 8.8 million iPhone sales for the quarter. Apple's share of smartphone sales for the quarter, at 16.4%, is up from the 14.4% share it earned in general during 2009 and up from 10.6% in the year ago quarter.

Apple's growth in the first quarter made it the number one mobile vendor among all US phone makers. Globally, Apple reached a record high of 3% global market shareamong all mobile phone makers.

RIM's second-place share, at 19.7%, remained relatively static, falling slightly from its 20.3% of the smartphone market in the year ago quarter. Nokia's smartphone sales are up from 38.2% in the year ago quarter to 40% this year. Nokia's definition of smartphones includes a variety of simple, low cost phones that mostly run Symbian.

Yahoo CEO Takes Google Home Page At Face Value

In an interview with the BBC, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had some words of advice for those simplistic up-and-comers at Google: diversify! That sound you hear? It's everyone on the internet scratching their heads at the same time.

The interview elicited a few weirdly confident remarks from Yahoo's CEO, in which she forecasted trouble for her fellow search engineers:

Google is going to have a problem because Google is only known for search...It is only half our business; it's 99.9% of their business. They've got to find other things to do...Google has to grow a company the size of Yahoo every year to be interesting.

Thankfully, Nick Bilton of the New York Times just recently put together a handy chart that makes comparing the big tech empires easy, and at a glance it shows that Google does indeed have its fingers in as many pies as Yahoo does. They just don't link to all of them on their homepage.

Still, Bartz might be right when she says that Yahoo's expansive portfolio will serve it well in the long run. It's just that it will take some serious reorganization to make it anything more than just "interesting." [BBC]

Microsoft weighs in: 'the future of the web is HTML5'

Where Steve Jobs leads, Microsoft follows -- how's that for shaking up the hornet's nest? It's said in jest, of course, but we've just come across a post from the General Manager for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, and the perspective expressed by him on the subject of web content delivery broadly agrees with the essay penned by Jobs yesterday on the very same subject. Echoing the Apple CEO's words, Hachamovitch describes HTML5 as "the future of the web," praising it for allowing content to be played without the need for plug-ins and with native hardware acceleration (in both Windows 7 and Mac OS X). He goes on to identify H.264 as the best video codec for the job -- so much so that it'll be the only one supported in IE9's HTML5 implementation -- before turning to the dreaded subject of Flash.

This is where it gets good, because he literally repeats one of Jobs' six pillars of Flash hate: "reliability, security, and performance" are not as good as Microsoft would like them. Where Hachamovitch diverges from Apple's messiah, however, is in describing Flash as an important part of "a good consumer experience on today's web," primarily because it's difficult for the typical consumer to access Flash-free content. Still, it's got to be depressing for Adobe's crew when the best thing either of the two biggest players in tech has to say about your wares is that they're ubiquitous. Wonder how Shantanu Narayen is gonna try and spin this one.

P.S. : it's notable that in multiple paragraphs of discussing "the future," Microsoft's IE general fails to once mention the fabled Silverlight, itself a rich media browser plug-in. Given Silverlight's featured role in the Windows Phone 7 infrastructure and other things like Netflix, we doubt it's on the outs, but there are sure to be some sour faces greeting Hachamovitch this morning.

Adobe to Apple: If Mac OS X Crashes, It's Not Flash, It's Your Fault

The poop slinging continues, as Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen accuses Steve Jobs of being a liar. You can see him being grilled and responding to Jobs' harsh words on Flash in this interview with the Wall Street Journal:

I don't know who is at fault, Shantanu or Steve, but I wish my Flash plug-in didn't crash every day while watching a simple YouTube video. [WSJ]

Adobe Gives Up On Flash For Apple

After Steve Jobs announced that he thinks Flash sucks, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch replied with a blog post that we're interpreting as "Yeah? Well, we're taking our ball and going home!" Of course, he called it "moving forward" instead:

Moving Forward

This morning Apple posted some thoughts about Flash on their web site.
The primary issue at hand is that Apple is choosing to block Adobe's
widely used runtimes as well as a variety of technologies from other
providers.

Clearly, a lot of people are passionate about both Apple and Adobe and
our technologies. We feel confident that were Apple and Adobe to work
together as we are with a number of other partners, we could provide a
terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

However, as we posted last week, given the legal terms Apple has
imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away
from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to
bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the
mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP),
Microsoft, Nokia and others.

We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android
smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a
general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number
and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which
we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.

That's what happens when Apple doesn't want to play. [Adobe—Thanks, Marc!]

Steve Jobs publishes some 'thoughts on Flash'... many, many thoughts on Flash

188diggsdiggSteve Jobs just posted an open letter of sorts explaining Apple's position on Flash, going back to his company's long history with Adobe and expounding upon six main points of why he thinks Flash is wrong for mobile devices. HTML5 naturally comes up, along with a few reasons you might not expect. Here's the breakdown:

• It's not open. "While Adobe's Flash products are widely available, this does not mean they are open, since they are controlled entirely by Adobe and available only from Adobe. By almost any definition, Flash is a closed system." Man, that's some strong irony you're brewing, Steve. Still, we get the point -- HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript are open web standards.
• The "full web." Steve hits back at Adobe's claim of Apple devices missing out on "the full web," with an age-old argument (YouTube) aided by the numerous new sources that have started providing video to the iPhone and iPad in HTML5 or app form like CBS, Netflix, and Facebook. Oh, and as for flash games? "50,000 games and entertainment titles on the App Store, and many of them are free." If we were keeping score we'd still call this a point for Adobe.
• Reliability, security and performance. Steve hits on the usual "Flash is the number one reason Macs crash," but adds another great point on top of this: "We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it." You've got us there, Steve, but surely your magical A4 chip could solve all this?
• Battery life. "The video on almost all Flash websites currently requires an older generation decoder that is not implemented in mobile chips and must be run in software." Steve Jobs is of course H.264's #1 fan, and it's hard to blame him, since he cites 10 hours of H.264 playback but only 5 hours with software decode on the iPhone. Still, those "older generation" sites that haven't moved to H.264 yet are pretty much the exact same sites that aren't viewable with HTML5, which means we're being restricted in the content we can access just because some of it doesn't perform as well.
• Touch. Steve hits hard against one of the web's greatest hidden evils: rollovers. Basically, Flash UIs are built around the idea of mouse input, and would need to be "rewritten" to work well on touch devices. "If developers need to rewrite their Flash websites, why not use modern technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript?" That doesn't really address the Flash-as-app scenario (that's point #6), but it's also a pretty silly sounding solution to a developer: your website doesn't support this one UI paradigm exactly right, so why not rewrite it entirely?
• The most important reason. Steve finally addresses the third party development tools situation, but it's really along the lines of what we were hearing already: "If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features." We doubt this will end all debate, but it's clear Apple has a line in the sand.

He concludes in saying that "Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice." Basically, it's for the olds. And you don't want to be old, do you? Follow after the break for the whole thing in brilliant prose form.

Microsoft Cancels Innovative Courier Tablet Project

According to sources familiar with the matter, Microsoft has cancelled Courier, the folding, two-screen prototype tablet that was first uncovered by Gizmodo.

We're told that on Wednesday, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported. Courier had never been publicly announced or acknowledged as a Microsoft product.

It appeared from the leaked information last year that a Courier prototype was probably near to completion. The combination of both touch- and pen-based computing was compelling. Perhaps the strong launch of Apple's iPad, currently the only available "mobile tablet" from a major vendor, caused Ballmer to reassess the commitment of Microsoft in a soon-to-be-crowded market.

We contacted Microsoft, who confirmed that Courier will not go into production. Microsoft Corporate VP of Communications Frank Shaw told us:

At any given time, we're looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them. It's in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.

It is a pity. Courier was one of the most innovative concepts out of Redmond in quite some time. But what we loved about Courier was the interface and the thinking behind it—not necessarily its custom operating system.

In fact, it makes sense for Microsoft to continue to trim away splinter versions of its core operating systems and focus on Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 unity across all its devices. Hopefully some of the smart thinking we have seen in Courier will find its way into Microsoft's tablets, whether they're powered by Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7.

If we hear anything more, we'll let you know. As always, feel free to contact me if you have additional details.

Does Lala's Shut Down Mean Streaming iTunes Launch?

Reader Aaron Vader has sent us an email announcing that Lala.com will shut down on May 31. If you are a Lala user, your credits will be converted to iTunes credits. Does that mean that streaming iTunes.com would launch soon?

It's hard to say. WWDC 2010 comes right after Lala's shutdown, but it's unlikely that Apple would make such a consumer-oriented announcement in an Apple developers conference. Especially when iTunes coming into the streaming arena is something that definitely needs a show-n-tell presentation by Steve Jobs, explaining why their strong commitment to the idea of "owning the music" is compatible with the idea of just streaming it.

Or perhaps Lala would just shut down, and that will be the end of it. Or maybe it would get incorporated into the iPhone and iPad product lines, as an exclusive app. Anything is possible.

For now, however, we only know that, on May 31, Lala is dead, baby. Lala is dead.