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!]