KEY POINTS:
Mobile phone sales are declining ... except for the smartphone category. Forbes reports that worldwide mobile phone shipments are expected to decline for the first time since 2001 as the emerging markets dry up. The industry will not recover until 2010, says market research firm IDC, when it
believes our economic fortunes will reverse. I hope it's the first half of 2010.
IDC predicts cellphone shipments growth will drop by 1.9 per cent, worldwide. Motorola, Nokia and Qualcomm have all had to revise 2009 guidance or adopt cost-saving measures, but there is a bright spot: Apple with the iPhone.
Not just the iPhone, mind - smartphones in general.
Forbes says US smartphone sales shipments surged 75.7 per cent in 2008. Meanwhile, traditional mobile handset sales declined 9.8 per cent. This year has seen the release of smartphones the iPhone 3G, the G1 Android phone plus new Blackberry devices from Research In Motion. IDC predicts smartphone shipments will continue to grow by 3.1 per cent through 2009, but then jump to 28.2 per cent in 2010.
Worldwide, IDC expects smartphone shipments to increase by 8.9 per cent in 2009. Meanwhile, non-smartphones will decline by 11.0 per cent in the US during 2009.
The iPhone is a significant player in smartphone sales - according to AdMob, which measures ad clicks across mobile devices in this Mobile Metrics report, Apple is now the top smartphone by internet page requests with 10 per cent of the total market, up 3 per cent.
Apple is in fifth place globally with 7.8 per cent (and still growing) of handset data requests. The iPhone model has the market lead with 6.3 per cent (AdMob includes 1.5 per cent of traffic from iPod touch devices, which can go online in wireless networks).
Apple has about 25 per cent of the smartphone handset market in the UK, gaining on market leader Nokia - but Nokia is in a pretty strong position with almost 60 per cent of the UK market.
Perhaps most interestingly, iPhones use Wi-Fi much more than other Wi-Fi enabled devices by a wide margin, a testament to the iPhones ease of switching between networks. Worldwide, iPhone requests over wireless grew 52 per cent month over month to 359 million in November, giving the iPhone a 6.3 per cent share of total requests.
US Wi-Fi requests put the iPhone at number one with 50.6 per cent, followed by the iPod Touch at 28 per cent. The next closest was Sony PlayStation Portable at 13.1 per cent ... RIM's Blackberry 8320 was at .8 per cent. This is just Wi-Fi requests, mind, not cell net requests. You have to feel sorry for Blackberry if Silicon Alley Insider is even a little bit correct with its intimation that 40-50 per cent of Storm buyers are returning them. There's good news, though - apparently the Storm has improved significantly since Verizon issued a software update.
The App Store is the iPhone's biggest advantage - Apple reported that it had exceeded 200 million App Store downloads in late October, then in December put out print ads in the US reporting that 300 million apps have been downloaded. Apple confirms that the App Store now carries over 10,000 different applications. The App Store crossed that threshold last week Wednesday with the current App count at 10,353 apps, according to AppShopper.
With strength like that, to me it seems increasingly unlikely Apple will bother releasing a Netbook. But it looks like it is working on cementing its position in the small device category for the future. 9to5 Mac reported last week that Apple turned out to be the 'mysterious investor' in Imagination Technologies.
Apple now owns a 3.6 per cent share of the firm that makes graphics controllers for small devices, among other things. This long term strategic move should solidify Apple's ability to create future iPhones, iPod touches and, it must be conceded, possible Netbooks all based on ARM's future products. Apple acquired PA Semi earlier this year, then hired Mark Papermaster from IBM (somewhat contentiously). Apple is also believed to be an ARM licensee (that's a rumour).
For you smarter smartphone devotees, Seth Weintraub of 9to5 believes Apple will deliver a new ARM Cortex Touch-based platform in 2009 with a much bigger screen and physical keyboard option that will serve as a general computing platform for the masses. I still don't see it myself, but he's much closer to the core than me. But this would be, to all intents and purposes, an Apple Netbook.
- Mark Webster mac.nz