Smartphones Market by the numbers: iPhone is king again

Following the crazy sales results by Apple last quarter, there is a huge buzz all over the world wide web, with all sorts of amazing numbers, facts, and other statistics about Apple's momentum.

Here's some of the interesting stuff I found:

Who Buys iPhone 4S?

According to a new research, 36% of the people who bought iPhone 4S switched from another platform (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Android), while 64% upgraded from an older iPhone model. Not only that, over 20% of them purchased the most expensive model (64G). Talk about customers loyalty.

Apple is now making iPhones at a rate that exceeds the amount of babies that humans produce on earth every day.

During its' quarterly earnings, Apple announced that it had sold 37 million iPhones in Q4 2011. Those are higher numbers than any other manufacturer around the globe, but more interestingly, might be higher than the world’s average birth rate.

Read more in here.

What about Android?

Last time we checked, Android was doing great with 700,000 activations per day. Time to check how the Android devices manufacturers are dealing with this iOS dizzying success:

• Motorola Mobility posted an $80 million loss in the fourth quarter. Motorola sold 5.3 million smartphones and 200,000 tablets. Motorola sold 18.7 millions smartphones throughout all of 2011. That's half of what Apple did in one quarter…
• Nokia was rumored to sell the new Windows Phone smartphones quite nicely: over 1 million WP7 based Lumia smartphones over the last quarter. That didn't help a lot in terms of numbers the company posted losses of $1.2 billion last quarter, selling 19.6 million smartphones. A decrease of 31% year over year.
• Samsung, the most successful Android manufacturer announced its' best ever smartphones sales in 1 quarter. Samsung shipped more smartphones in 2011 than Apple did for iPhones (although the trend changed in Q4), selling a record 300 million handsets (number includes both smartphones and feature-phones).
• Read about HTC in here: What's wrong with HTC?

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Who wins the US Market?

According to Ed Bott from ZDNet, it's Apple. Here’s how complete the domination is among this country’s top two carriers, that hold around 70% of the U.S. mobile carrier market:

According to Ed Bott: "Google still has an edge in other parts of the developed world, but it’s eroding. A report last week from Kantar Worldwide Tech said “Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover.” The list includes Great Britain, where iPhone’s share is up nearly 10% in a single year, to 30.9%. (Germany is a bedrock of Android strength at 61%.)"

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Mobile in the enterprise – Infographic by ClickSoftware

Check out ClickSoftware's latest infographic about workforce preferences, ROI statistics, and more than a dozen other facts about mobility in the enterprise.

How strong is the BYOD trend? What are the top 3 barriers to BYOD? Is Laptop still considered to be a mobile device? Mobility in the cloud, the role of tablets and much more – all included in this beautiful Infographic (click on the image to see the entire set).

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10 useful iPhone tips you may or may not know about

I was sitting with some friends the other day, comparing smartphones (you know the "My Android is OPEN" vs. "my iPhone LOOKS BETTER" kind of pointless discussions), when it occurred to me that most of the iPhone owners were not aware of some cool hidden tricks that were recently added.

I decided to summarize some of the things I know of, I'm sure there are more, but hey, we need to start with something, right?

So here are 10 useful iPhone tips & tricks you may of may not know about:

Do more with your iPhone Calendar:

Tip #1: Switch to landscape mode and get a weekly calendar view

Yep, I bet you didn't know about this one; Open your calendar, rotate your phone to landscape mode, and you will be able to view 3-4 days in one snapshot. Oh, and BTW, you can also use finger gestures to navigate between days in case you haven't found this one yet.

Tip #2: Create new calendar events quickly using a long finger touch

I always hated the way iPhone's calendar lets you add new meetings: you need to click on the plus button, then select the date, time, details, it's painful.

Recently I discovered (and maybe it was there all along) that if I touch a certain time slot for more than 2 seconds – it creates an event on the fly. You can even drag & drop it all over your calendar, resize, change day. This is the fastest way to create new meetings, events, or reminders using the calendar. Great stuff isn't it?

 

Few cool tricks to do more with your camera and pictures

Tip 3#: Open your camera without unlocking your iPhone

Yep, that's now doable with iOS5: just double click your home button and you will see a small camera button. Click it, and you will get into the camera. This one is a basic one I'm sure most of you are already familiar with.

Tip #4: Use the 'Volume Up' button to take a picture

Clicking the camera's virtual shutter button in the middle of the screen is hard, especially when you are trying to focus on the moment you are trying to document without moving… I always hated the fact there is no real physical button for the iPhone camera.

Well, now there is; the Volume Up button acts as the camera shutter. It makes the entire experience of taking pictures with your iPhone feel much more… well… normal (as it should have been 3 years ago to be honest).

Tip #5: Slide right to switch from camera to pictures

When using the camera, you can now easily slide your finger to the right in order to skip directly to your pictures folders.

Tip #6: Do more with your pictures

The default pictures app was kind of basic in the past. This is why there are so many pictures apps in the AppStore. In iOS 5, there's a collection of nice improvements added to the pictures app: you can now create folders on the fly, directly from your iPhone, and multiple copy images from one folder to another.

More importantly; you can modify existing pictures (rotate them, cancel red-eyes, crop your pictures, etc.) without having to download 3rd party apps for that.

Other tricks worth mentioning

Tip #7: Modify the phone volume directly from the lock-screen

iOS 5 added some new capabilities to the iPhone lock-screen: notifications, quick access to the camera, and one additional thing not many people are aware of:

When you double click your home button – it shows the lock screen with two additional elements: camera button (opens the camera directly, without unlocking the phone), and volume bar. The volume bar is there in order to allow easy, accessible way to change the volume without unlocking the phone. You can use either the volume buttons on the left side or slide your finger in the slider. Either ways it means you do not need to unlock your iPhone to tune the volume.

Tip #8: Place a folder with your favorite apps in the iPhone's dock

Folders are great, but what most people need is a way to have more apps accessible from everywhere (meaning: from the dock panel in the bottom of each page). If you try to drag one app onto another app located in the bottom dock area (where those fixed shortcuts are located) you will notice you can't create a folder over there in the same manner you can create them in other places.

It's as if Apple blocked the way to place folders in the dock area. The good thing is that there's a workaround for this limitation: you can create your folder somewhere else and then drag the entire folder to the dock area. The end result is that you can create folders and place them in the dock area, where they will be accessible all the time and from any page.

Is that cool, sexy, shocking, eye-opening, all at the same time or what?

Tip #9: Deleting a single SMS message without deleting the entire thread

Let's say your wife or girlfriend sends you messages with some dirty stuff (never had it). And let's say your phone is used for work, ending up reaching the wrong hands at the wrong time (say, even your boss. Not that I ever experienced this situation). You want to delete some messages, but you don't want to remove the entire thread (it's nice to have it in your recent threads as a shortcut). With iOS 5 you can now click the 'Edit' button (when inside the thread) and select the messages you wish to delete.

No no, don't thank me… this is what I'm here for. If I won't do it – who will?
Oh, you insist? in that case – go up, retweet this article and show us some love!

Tip #10: Type faster using your own shortcuts

Typing email addresses (when you register or log-in to apps or sites) is a pain. With iOS new custom shortcuts you can now make this process much more simple using your own shortcuts.

Suffer from a long email address like I do (try 'Gil.Bouhnick'… it's long!)? Now you can create a shortcut so that typing 'gil.b' will auto-complete the entire email address.

Of course you can use shortcuts for other phrases as well and not just emails and url's, which makes this feature great for faster typing from your phone.

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That's it for this one. If you have any additional tip you believe most people haven't discovered yet – please share it with the rest of us. More tips coming soon.

Technorati Tags: iOS,iOS 5,iPhone,iPhone Tweak

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DraftCraft - an elegant app for blogging from your iPad

Hello everybody!
This is a test done by an app I just purchased called DraftCraft.

It's a clean, elegant blogging app that allows you to easily manage your drafts, review and rate them, and update them on the move.

I've been looking for a blogging app for a long while now. Non of them work for me when I'm with my iPad. This one looks better although I already found that the spellcheck feature doesn't work here (just the auto-correct).

The app allows you to add your tags and labels, place images, and save your drafts locally or publish them once they are ready. Lovely!

Capabilities:
Ok, so first of all, you can set a text to be bold... As I just did.
Secondly, you can place an image.




Modifying the images is not yet supported. Hopefully this feature will be added soon.

What about links? Well, as this is my first post with this app, how about we give it a try?
http://www.mobilespoon.net/
Working? Well, you tell me...
There is also a way to mark some text as a link. Let's try it out: the mobile spoon.
Cool!

One thing I already noticed is that the app crashes too frequent. 4-5 times already is a lot. After all, I'm just writing this sort post as a test, nothing more... The good thing, though, is that most changes are saved even if the app shuts down.

Well, that's it for this short review. Cute app, it costs $3.99, and still misses some basic stuff, but definitely has a great potential. I think I will keep it. (well, i already paid for it...)

Posted via DraftCraft app

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5 reasons why you shouldn't be checking your emails all day long

Emails have become an integral part of both our work and personal life. We respond to emails no matter where we are or what we are doing; shopping, going out, shepherding, taking care of our kids, watching TV, working out at the gym, etc. The emails are just there, jumping all over us, waking up our sleepy smartphones, turning on the screen (or any other visual indication), playing those well-known sounds, and we simply cannot restrain ourselves from taking a peek.

A small peek, and then a short reply, nothing serious, then another one, and another one…

It's an addiction.

And most of us are addicted: 70% of employees with smartphones regularly check their emails outside of normal business hours. 43% of employees use their smartphone emails to ease their workload for the following business day.

The problem is that emails have slowly changed from memos into one giant, endless, time-wasting chat which is done with just about everyone including customers, colleagues, bosses.

Here are 5 reasons why you shouldn't read your emails when you are not working:

1. Because you deserve a real break

Sure, it's just email, it's not real work. It's short, you just finish that sentence and then you are free again. Until the next email, that is…

Emails are one of our biggest distracters during the working hours. They encourage chatty discussions over short, efficient, focused decisions. They distract our minds, they make us switch our context frequently.

THEY ARE OUR PRODUCTIVITY ENEMIES!!! (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit…)

The same goes with our personal life. Breaks are important. Spending time with the family, quality time with the kids, hanging out with our friends, neighbors, greengrocer, whatever  – those things are important and should not be distracted by an email.

The problem gets even worse when receiving an annoying email that might piss you off exactly when you are trying to have some fun. It takes a second to become upset about an incoming email. It will take minutes (or even hours) before you forget about it.

 

2. Because of the people surrounding you

They deserve better than seeing you fading away to your smartphone, trying to understand the meaning of the email you just received. It's never fun to be with a person who gets distracted every few minutes. You hate it when people are doing it to you, they hate it too…

It's bad for relationships. It's a bad example of restlessness to your kids. It's bad.

 

3. Because it's not as efficient as it seems

Reading long email is hard when it's done from a smartphone. Typing is slow (and might have embarrassing typos, especially if you do it while working out at the gym – the fingers tend to be shaky when working out…). Many attachments or links cannot be viewed properly. It can sometimes take the sting out of the bite; you know you have to do something, you know you just can't do it now, but it keeps bugging you.

Reading emails without being able to properly respond from your mobile is annoying, and many times those emails get lost in your growing inbox as you might accidently think you already handled them. After all, they are in "read" status, right?

 

4. Because of your boss

Being able to respond to incoming emails during your non-working time turns you into a working beast. Every time they need you – you are there - for the rescue! Regardless to the timezone, day of week, holidays. You might even get some positive credit for being so responsive (at first at least).

You are there, ready to add your two cents, ready to respond to a customer asking about something, ready to solve that technical problem. It's great. But it also creates expectations.

Ah… Expectations. What a great word. But a problematic one as well.

If the business you are into is global, and you are answering emails all day long, then the expectations are that you keep on doing so. Before you know it, people will start scheduling meetings during your evening, days off, etc. calling you 24/7. After all – they need you.

Oh, and if for some reason you didn't reply – they might get disappointed.

Your boss BTW, will too. After all - he is, just like you, answering his email when he is not supposed to, and as your boss, half of his emails end up becoming YOUR action items…

 

5. Because of your career

99% of the emails are tactical/operational ones: issues, red flags, questions, ongoing threads.

Dealing with emails during your free time means your brain keeps dealing with those short term issues instead of getting some rest. Most innovations come when you least expect them to, when your brain is free to think outside the box, not when you are thinking how to respond to a question asked by one of your colleagues or customers.

To innovate, and come up with fresh ideas, you need to free up some cells and clean your head from repeating distractions.

 

Convinced?

Need help getting over it?

Don't worry.

The Mobile Spoon is here for you. Stay tuned for our second part of this one, where we will try to address some useful tips to get over the emails addiction.

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MobileSpoon Recommends: Woody Woodpecker Game For iOS [iPhone, iPad]

My dad recently bought an iPad. He was never afraid of new technologies but smartphones were never something he looked for. The iPad is a different story though. The size, the internet browsing, the classic advantages. He and my mom are downloading games, apps, calling us to make FaceTime calls with the kids and it seems like they really enjoy it.

Still, every time we meet I need to teach them how to operate the emails, calendar, or relatively complicated apps they download.

This weekend, my dad showed me something for a change (how cool is that?); a really cool game he downloaded: Woody Woodpecker.

The game is a race where you need to tune your speed by jumping between valleys. It's simple, short, requires little fingers acrobatics – just the kind of games I like for my iPhone/iPad. The graphics are great, the UI is perfect. I love it!

Oh, forgot to mention you get to play with all the famous characters. Which is another plus for this game.

So head over to the iOS AppStore and look for the game: Woody Woodpecker.
The game costs $0.99 and believe me – you will like it. There's an iPhone version and iPad (HD) version as well.

 
 

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Free App Alert: Get Cheap Car Insurance

[Guest Post]

There’s nothing better than finding out a quicker way of doing something that you really don’t enjoy, especially if it can also save a bit of money in the process.
Take buying car insurance, for example. Nobody likes the annual hassle of trying to get a good deal.

Car insurance comparison sites like Moneysupermarket have made the whole process easier by allowing motorists to head to one site to get a comprehensive list of quotes from a variety of different insurance companies. And now Moneysupermarket have brought out the first car insurance comparison app to be launched in the UK.
The car insurance app is free and even though it is initially only available for iPhone users, is expected to be out for Android phones soon. The app is a doddle to use and could see drivers pocket themselves average car insurance savings of £375

Simply put in your details and then access an array of quotes within seconds. Then you can either ‘click to call’ insurers or just complete the transaction on the spot. The whole process of getting car insurance can be over and done with for another year in a matter of minutes.
“The cost of running a car has been increasing markedly over the last few years, with petrol prices on the up and car insurance a yearly necessity for all drivers,” said Moneysupermarket’s Julie Fisher.

“People are naturally keen to take action, and shop around to switch to the best possible car insurance deal.  The launch of the Moneysupermarket car insurance app has made it even easier for people to find the right car cover for the best possible price – allowing people to compare a huge range of quotes quickly and easily – anytime, anywhere.”

* Image courtesy of moneysupermarket

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How would you call your next Android phone model?

With so many Android models being released so frequent, it's really hard to keep up with the different model names.

In fact, except for Samsung, which is doing a fairly good job in promoting the Galaxy brand, all the other model names always sound similar, as if they were taken from another disappointing Transformers movie:

Incredible, Legend, Dream, Optimus, Transformer, Magic, Plus, Pro, Prime and so on. Those are all great names, but they sound the same, which is probably a bad thing for the companies who selected them.

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Here's an idea: how about calling HTC's next device: HTC FAIR?
Like saying: "it's a fair model, fair price, fair design. It's fair."

Or maybe: LG Passable?
Like saying: "Hey, it's not the Galaxy S2, but it's enough for most of you people…".

LG Marketing team, HTC Product Strategy Group – there's more where it came from – I'm easy to find.

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Back to our topic. Here's a site that took the Android phone names seriously and decided to do something to help all of those phones manufacturers in the process of picking the names for their products.

Head over to Android Phone Name Generator, and start playing with the model names that were not released yet.

Enjoy!

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