Android top operating system in the US, Apple top manufacturer

According to the latest research by Nielsen conducted in the month of June, Android has again come out as the top smartphone operating system with 39 percent market share. Meanwhile, Apple with its iOS has gained a market share of 28 percent, also managing to become the top smartphone manufacturer in the US.

HTC on the other hand managed to acquire 20 percent of the market, with 14 percent of it being due to Android phones and the remaining 6 percent due to Windows Mobile/Windows Phone sales and became the second largest manufacturer in the US after Apple. Samsung came third with 8 percent of Android sales and 2 percent through Windows Mobile/Windows Phone. Motorola is still holding onto an impressive 11 percent thanks to all the Droids.

Others are not doing so well. RIM share dropped down to 20 percent whereas the combined share of the old Windows Mobile and the new Windows Phone is still just 9 percent. webOS and Symbian brought up the rear with a lowly 2 percent each.

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Apple and Samsung outstrip Nokia as top smartphone vendors in Q2

Q2 of 2011 is now almost over and the results are in for the smartphone shipments volumes. Just a week ago it became certain that Apple has surpassed Nokia in smartphone shipments for Q2 but nowSamsung and HTC have released their numbers. Strategy Analytics confirm that Apple has come out on top with 20.3M iPhones shipped, Samsung is a whisker away with 19.2M in second place, whilst Nokia is the only Top 3 manufacturer to report a decline in year-to-year numbers with 16.7M (Q2 of 2010 - 23.8). Interestingly enough, HTC is probably in the fourth spot with 12.1M smartphones shipped between April and June.

The only thing that stands between a certain fourth spot and HTC are LG's smartphone shipment results for Q2 2011. Since the manufacturer decided not to disclose the numbers and went with total phone shipments, all we're left with is a guessing game. Still, some estimates point out that LG plans to ship a little over that 20M smartphones for the whole year so it couldn't have shipped more than HTC this quarter alone. We can't know for sure though. You can find HTC's detailed report here.

With the way the tides have turned in the last year, the smartphone market share has grown by 76.3%, which was reported by Alex Spektor, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics. The trend is that year after year smartphones will carve themselves a more important role in our lives.

Judging by the intense rumors of a September 6 iPhone announcement we could be looking at even more impressive Apple results in Q3.

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Samsung takes the wraps off the Galaxy R smartphone

Samsung has finally officially announced the Galaxy R smartphone. The phone had leaked a while back, known as the Galaxy Z back then and we even managed to do a hands-on with it but it’s only now that Samsung has come clean with it.

The specifications are same as before. It will have a 4.2-inch Super Clear LCD, unlike the Super AMOLED Plus on the Galaxy S II. It will also be running on a dual-core processor. Although Samsung does not specifically mention which processor it is we know for a fact that it is the Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset, which may not be as good as the Exynos but still packs a punch. It retains the 1GB RAM from the Galaxy S II and will have 8GB of internal memory that can be expanded up to 32GB using micro SD cards.

The camera has also been downgraded and can now capture 5 megapixel still images and 720p videos but the Galaxy R can still play 1080p videos. Connectivity includes HSPA+, Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0 support. The Samsung Galaxy R runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and is powered by a 1650mAh Li-Ion battery.

No exact date has been mentioned regarding the launch but Samsung says the Galaxy R will be released in Europe by the end of July and will eventually be rolled out globally.

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The Nokia 500 is Nokia's first 1GHz Symbian smartphone

The Nokia 500 has just been announced as Nokia latest Symbian Anna smartphone. The new phone is based on the Nokia C5-03 specs-wise but refreshes some of the key features, retaining the reportedly affordable price tag.

   
The Nokia 500

The Nokia 500 has a 3.2-inch capacitive screen with 640 x 360 pixel resolution and there's a 5 megapixel camera on the back. Connectivity is covered by 14.4Mbps HSDPA and 5.8Mbps HSUPA speeds, Wi-Fi (no N support here), GPS, a charging microUSB port and a 3.5mm standard audio jack. There's 2GB of internal memory and a microSD slot for adding more storage.

   
The Nokia 500

The Nokia 500 comes with exchangeable back covers in different colors (two extra supplied with the phone). Much like with the Nokia N79 back in the day, the Nokia 500 changes its wallpaper automatically to match the color of the back cover you put on it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the 1GHz CPU has improved the performance much. If you scrub to 1:31 m in the video, you will see the presenter scrolling the News Feed in the Facebook app. Well, we can clearly see some stuttering in the scrolling action.

  
The Nokia 500

The Nokia 500 will launch in black in Q3 with a white version coming in Q4 too. There will be six differently colored back panels at the launch in Q3. It's supposed to cost ˆ150 before taxes and subsidies. Sounds affordable for a smartphone alright.

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Nokia and Microsoft holding an event on August 17

It seems August 17 could be the day we see an official announcement regarding the first Nokia Windows Phone. Microsoft and Nokia are handing out invites to an event being held in Cologne on the said date, which does not go into the specifics of the event (apart from the fact that there will be a live act and a great DJ) although we do have reasons to believe Nokia will be announcing their new handset, particularly one running Windows Phone 7 Mango.

There will also be a raffle at the event, where the winners can get three of the Xbox 360 250GB consoles with Kinect and more importantly (for us, at least), three of the upcoming Nokia Windows Phone handsets as soon as they are available. This makes us even more confident in our assumption that there will in fact be a new Nokia Windows Phone announced that night. They say they will make it an evening to remember. We shall see.

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Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and Xperia PLAY get software update

Sony Ericsson is pushing out an update for the Xperia Arc and the Xperia PLAY. It's a minor update, the Android version is still 2.3.3, but it brings a few useful changes like stereo sound in videos, landscape mode in the homescreen and a few others.

The homescreens of the Xperia Arc and the Xperia PLAY will both work in landscape mode after the update and there's a selection of new themes available as well. The other big change is the sound in videos - both switch from mono to stereo sound (other parameters of the videos are unchanged).

Next up is DLNA support so you can play media from DLNA-enabled devices. Finally, there's xLoud, which improves the performance of the loudspeaker when playing music.

The availability of the update depends on the market and your operator - to check for the update, you can go to Settings > About > Software update. Or you can use Sony Ericsson's PC Companion to update your Arc or Play.

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24 percent of Android users now on Gingerbread

According to Google’s latest report based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market within a 14-day period till August 1, 24.3 percent of Android users are now running on Gingerbread-based devices. Froyo, however, continues to have the majority of the stake, with 55.9 percent of the total Android users. Although the adoption to Gingerbread by OEMs happened a lot faster compared to the previous versions it seems it’s not fast enough as a lot of users are still stuck on the older version.

Looking at the historical distribution from February 2011 to August 2011, we can see that Gingerbread user base only started picking up around May 2011. However, the Froyo user base remains almost identical to what it was in February, it’s just that the usage of the older versions such as 2.1 has dropped significantly.

Meanwhile, Android Honeycomb-based devices aren’t doing so well. With only 1.3 percent of the total Android users who access the Market there clearly aren’t enough Android Honeycomb-based tablets out there, despite being in existence for almost six months now.

Another interesting statistic is the number of Android users with a specific display size/pixel density. According to the data collected in a 7-day period ending August 1, of users who accessed the Android Market, 74.5 percent of them are using a device with Normal / hdpi display. According to Google, Normal can be a display ranging from 3.0 – 5.0-inch in size and hdpi is anywhere between 180 to 280 dpi. This is not unexpected due to the popularity of phones with around 4-inch displays and 800 x 480 resolution. The second highest user base is for Normal / mdpi, which is 16.9 percent. mdpi is between 130 to 180 dpi, which will mostly include phones with around 3.2 - 3.5-inch display sizes with HVGA resolution. Once again we can see devices with xlarge displays (7 – 10-inch) are only 1.2 percent.

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Apple largest smartphone manufacturer in the world

According to the latest report by the International Data Corporation Apple is now the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer.

Apple shipped 20.3 million iPhones by Q2, 2011, up by 141.1 percent from last year’s 8.4 million and its international market share now stands at 19.1 percent compared to 13 percent last year. Samsung, meanwhile, showed the most progress, with shipments reaching 17.3 million, a staggering 380.6 percent leap from last year’s 3.6 million and now commands 16.2 percent of the market.

Both of them ousted Nokia and RIM from their number one and two positions, with the former recording a 30% drop in shipment, dropping down to number three and RIM, despite shipping slightly more units than last year, not able to keep up with the others and falling down to number four.

HTC did rather well too but had to settle for the number five position. The second most popular smartphone maker in the US managed to ship 11.7 million units worldwide, up by a healthy 165.9 percent, with 11 percent of the total market share. Brands such as LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson along with several others occupy the remaining 26.4 percent of the market.

This again proves that although Android is the most popular OS, Apple is still the most popular smartphone manufacturer. However with the rate at which Samsung is growing, Apple with its lone iPhone, won’t be able to keep up for long.

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