This is share of sales in the last 3 months, not share of devices in the wild. It's no surprise that iPhone's sales share plummeted the last quarter before the 5S release.
I think it is the Nokia Lumia 1020/EOS, which I've heard is more of a sham than marketing would lead you to believe. I have to admit when I've seen the commercials, I wanted one also.
I actually switched from my iPhone 4 and bought a Lumia 1020 to give Windows Phone a try. I can't speak to the technical camera jargon as I'm not much of a camera nerd (yet), but what I can tell you is that the camera is phenomenal compared to what I've used previously.
Of the two pics it takes, the 5MP oversampled pics look great, but still look like cameraphone pics. The 34MP pictures though are a different beast. I took a picture of some work colleagues in the office the other day and was able to zoom in and read the place names on a map pinned to the wall a few feet behind them. I took a picture of a crowd that was gathered across the street and was able to zoom in later and crop out some decent (slightly grainy - but not awful) looking photos of people chatting as if I were stood a few feet away. The detail really is amazing compared to anything (phone based) that I've seen before.
I have no idea what half the options on my 1020's camera do, but having the option of a manual focus slider is great too. The 1020 isn't a DSLR or even probably a decent point and shoot, but it's definitely not a sham. I wouldn't carry a dedicated camera around with me, and in my experience having the 1020's camera has been great so far (I've only had it a week).
5MP downsample, resolution falls well short of what a 38MP camera should (theoretically) be capable of, runs windows phone 8 (fewer apps), phone has awkward shape not shown in commercials, low screen resolution, and as the following review puts it:
"You might think that despite all of these negatives, at least the Lumia 1020 blows all other phones out of the water when it comes to the camera. You’d be wrong. There’s a noticeable lag when between taking a picture, saving it, and being able to take another picture. The Lumia 1020 comes with three different camera apps, each with their own function, so good luck figuring out what does what. Annoyingly, every photo you take has an on-screen caption that reminds you which app took the photo, but at least it doesn't show up in the picture itself"
The 1020 uses silicon and software to compensate for the physical limitations of a short focal length and small aperture. Instead, a huge sensor captures many more pixels than you need, and then software algorithms distil this down to a five-megapixel image of great richness and detail.
The sensor is 41 megapixels, creating as a first step a 34 megapixel image; the other pixels being put to good use interpolating the image. For a technical explanation, see [1]. The phone actually keeps a master copy of the image at full resolution, and presents the five-megapixel image to you right away for editing and sharing.
I've been playing around with a 1020 for a few days, that article is really lame.
That first picture is showing it with the weird camera case accessory, you wouldn't normally carry the phone around with that attached. It looks just like it does in the ads in person. It fits my pocket fine (less awkward than the 'chin' on some Androids) and the weight and balance are comfortable for reading and making phone calls. I never got on the "shitty screens with crazy high DPI" bandwagon so I'm satisfied with 330ppi OLED. I'm not gonna give up OLED to get another 200ppi.
The slow cycle time is annoying but I've gotten used to it as a standard issue with cameraphones, it's not much worse than others I've used. There's a burst mode app so the lag doesn't affect your ability to do action photos. The 5MP downsample is a feature, you wouldn't normally use a photo bigger than that for small-screen display, and the non-downsampled image is still saved for printing or crops (there is a nice in-camera crop tool that adjusts the area the image is cropped from).
Honestly the biggest issue I had was that there isn't a light meter or exposure preview so it's hard to do manual exposure control when taking flash-less photos in very dark settings that have lights in the background. The multiple camera apps are an odd choice but not actually an issue in practice.
Slow cycle time is not standard issue. Cycle-time is non-existent on my iPhone 5. Low-cycle time became a key selling point in DSLRs and P&S cameras 5+ years ago. It's jarring to experience it in 2013.
It does have fewer apps.
No instagram, vine, youtube, dropbox, G+ hangouts (really important for a lot of software engineers), tripadvisor offline city guides, starbucks app, airline check-in from many carriers (United surprisingly does have)...
That was just going through the main homescreens on my Android.
> I actually only use three "apps" that aren't built in on my WP8 device.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here... You can't use apps that don't exist, so it's not surprising at all to me that you "only use three apps" that aren't built into the device...
My WP homescreen has several Nokia HERE apps: Drive, Commute, Transit, Maps, City Lens. You'll have a hard time finding anything that good on iOS or Android.
Then there are clone apps for allmost all the apps you mention (Instagram, Vine, Youtube, Dropbox, Starbucks, Hangouts). Probably not as good [1], but they work and often there's a native way to accomplish the same thing, making an app redundant (i.e. install Filters and share from the Pictures Hub instead of using Instagram).
I have a Win 8 tablet and the app store is a complete joke. I don't think the "use the browser" argument really holds any water. Lots of UX features are only really available when you go the native route, i.e the new "picture in picture" feature in the Android Youtube app.
>Lots of UX features are only really available when you go the native route, i.e the new "picture in picture" feature in the Android Youtube app.
Could you think of a less worthless feature to demonstrate with though? The YouTube app is getting so bad (certainly on iOS, I assume with Android too) that it's getting where the website will have a better UX than the native app shortly.
Seriously? As i said below there is a web browser too.
None of those have any real value for me personally so I can understand where Android might be more suitable but I really don't need an app for any of those.
As for trip advisor city guides, Nokia Here Maps does the same stuff offline (and a load more!)
The only missing point from above is that YouTube works fine in the browser. The press are full of shit about interoperability there. Not only that there are a multitude of quality youtube apps but you don't need them.
Yes it means something when phone is the only device you use and you don't have the app for your banks or airlines or insurance company. A lot of whats there on the windows app store is also shoddy.
It is not an poor excuse. When I use my bank site via a browser or try to book an airline ticket, there are lots of distractions or offers etc. The app is more usable with minimal distraction and often can retain information offline. I travel extensively and use booking.com app to book all the time. The app stores my hotel booking offline so if I show up in a country where I have not had time to buy a local data SIM, I can still access my booking. As someone who is always converting money, I could use something like xe.com but try using that site on a mobile browser, it is not a good experience and certainly not something you can do with one hand (you are in a cross border town and your other hand is holding your bags or maps etc). Compare that to this new app I am using called Converted. The developers must have really spend time understanding the situations where someone is changing money and the importance of doing your calculation with one hand. And yes Google Play has shoddy apps but Windows is more terrible. Try finding a half decent podcast player on Windows.
Bank site? Mine doesn't have apps as far as I'm aware for any platform (HSBC). They require two factor auth which makes the app idea pretty pointless as you have to carry two things around with you.
I travel without a smartphone. It's not hard and at least if you lose it (which has happened to me), you're not totally fucked. I really couldn't possibly depend on something like that for anything critical. So many horror stories from colleagues on that front as well. I carry a USB stick with truecrypt encrypted documents on it only.
As for conversion, it's not hard. Any old calculator app (even the s40 calculator) is usable for this. Even a pencil and paper is good enough. The base rate+commission is easy to calculate and is always available on hand. You don't need an app for that. Plus if you want to argue with them and barter which you can do in some places, it works better without a smartphone. In fact its fucking rude to whip one out on half of the planet.
It just sounds like you're justifying the use of a smartphone for these functions rather than specifying a platform advantage when the greatest advantage is gained from not using one.
Oh please. << insert this isn't reddit/Slashdot >>
It isn't Microsoft's job to write the damn apps, even though they did write a lot to start with themselves to get a good value proposition to start with.
And let's apply your flawed logic to other things:
"It's really ironic that Windows is being bailed out on its lack of apps by the web".
The irony I was pointing out is that while at one time, Microsoft's Windows ecosystem had a huge advantage in number and quality of apps, now they are the ones relying on the web to fill in gaps where 3rd party software exists on other platforms but has not been written for their minority OS.
What I'm saying is that the web transcends all platforms so writing an app isn't necessary. Microsoft actually do get this hence the focus on IE and Windows Azure recently. They probably have the best web offering on the cloudy space as well.
Microsoft do everything literally.
as for embrace, extend, extinguish, what you say is true but they got stuffed by the EU so had to start making open specification documents which are now available on MSDN so they have been defanged there.
I'm quite sure you can carefully select the market your research covers as to make any given platform lead. For instance, Windows Phone is the absolute leader in phones whose brands start with "N" and end with "okia".
That said I could believe the sales growth as Nokia are know for making great quality low end devices so there could be traction gained here as the allure of flagship phones is not as appealing/affordable for all as base technology improves.
IMO the best thing WM could do is create a phone that works more as a mobile base station for all your computing in the way Ubuntu Touch are attempting. The latter launching in a couple of weeks. Can't wait to try it out!
This is consistent with product launches... Blackberry released the Z10 smartphone in May 2013. The Statcounter data tracks usage, which would plausibly go up quite a bit with new users on a phone with more fully-featured internet access.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Z10
True, but the smartphone market could be considered as a leading indicator for the whole mobile one. What caught my attention is that MS is/was being considered as a dead horse in this race by a lot. Well, dead they are not.
Those statistics are for usage instead of devices, include tablets and not just phones, and sidestep people who don't have a data plan (a more common situation for low end smartphone buyers in europe vs the US).
The stats are sales over the last 3 months, not install base. However, Statcounter tries to measure usage, not unique devices. Netmarketshare tries to measure individual browsers/devices.
For example, if you browse 10 sites in a day on an Android phone, but your neighbor browses 990 sites a day on her iPhone, the Statcounter numbers with just you both being counted will be 1% Android and 99% iPhone even though the install base is 50% each.
This is the reason that Statcounter and Netmarketshare browser share numbers are so different from each other, with Statcounter showing Chrome in the lead and Netmarketshare showing IE in the lead.
I've got the feeling the iPhone lost its cool here in the Netherlands. Suddenly the buzz is all about Nokia and HTC while Samsung and Apple are becoming less popular.
And I think I can understand why. The Nokia 520 is a great device for under € 170. And the HTC has a great screen, stereo sound and a very smooth designed Android version.
I'm thinking that perhaps the temporary (but lengthy) period in which the iPhone was the most popular phone was, for the most part, an aberration.
Apple generally just does it's thing where it doesn't go for the largest market share, but because they were unusually innovative/lucky with the iPhone, they had a period of popularity. The fact that the iPhone 5C isn't the cheap phone we expected seems to confirm this.
It seems quite possible that things are 'normalizing' again, and Apple will end up comfortably occupying a big chunk of the high-end space. Maybe they're trying to come up with another killer product category to dominate in, but I wouldn't be surprised if internally this isn't and hasn't ever been their goal.
Now, investors might feel different, of course, and I find that interesting to observe.
What's amazing to me is how apple has resisted the temptation to go for market share with the iphone. That said, apple got and sustained a dominant share of the music player business against everyone's expectations and without compromising on quality (although i don't see apple doing an iphone shuffle).
It might be that microsoft's success with windows was the aberration. After all DOS and then windows were inferior products that achieved critical mass and widespread success because IBM got them into the enterprise and apple was asleep at the wheel.
Hmm. I think much of Microsoft's success has more to do with the fact that Apple's emphasis on simplicity in design, ease of use, and computer-as-a-lifestyle-product has only recently started paying off, as computers have become more mainstream and provide 'lifestyle value'.
I remember growing up a really shoddy looking computer in the house, but nobody cared or wanted better because it was in my dad's office and mostly used for work (and only occasionally for a game or two).
Shouldn't be such a surprise to anyone. Nokia has always done well in Europe. It's a trusted, recognized brand, with lots of credibility, and they had actually just started to deliver again (Lumia 1020 & amazing lower end phones). The road-map for windows phone looks good too.
I will admit--I have owned Windows Phones (now a 1020) only because of Nokia, and I am content with them. Sure the 1020 doesn't have all the bells and whistles from a software perspective, but the hardware is amazing and WP8 has been out for only a year. Really interesting to see how things will go with the Microsoft buy-out in the next 1-2 years. Some key people leaving, etc.
PS. I have grown up with the legend of the "indestructible Nokia" that cannot be killed. Let's see if Microsoft can do it.
Agreed. Nokia always had a nice reputation in Europe – like Samsung has in S.Korea – and it just wasn't justified at all during the Symbian era. But trust from customers is still there.
Almost all the stories about "Windows Phone" doing well in various markets, suggest that it's actually Nokia's brand that's doing all the work. A brand that Microsoft won't be allowed to use on future smartphones if the purchase goes through. That's got to be a worry.
So WP seems to be taking market share from which seems to be almost exclusively from "Other" (presumably Win Mobile and BB).
iOS and Android are largely either growing or holding steady (varies by country - Android could be seen as flat lining but then you look at China where it had 9% growth which suggests that might be a bit of a premature accusation).
So, we seem to have a market place with three players - Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
The question is can the market support that or will there be a drive to a single platform?
Personally it feels I can do most of what I do without worrying what device I have in front of me or what it's running and I don't think twice what device someone else has before e-mailing them, sending them a document or whatever. The days of having to use something similar to someone else to be able to interact seem long gone.
So it seems to come down to whether any particular platform can remain profitable for it's owner, for device makers and for software developers. Right now the answer to that seems to be yes for Android and iOS and maybe for WP, but it doesn't feel like there's any reason to believe that there's any inevitability about any of them dying out.
Customer: "Our global market share is a pimple on the ass of our competitors. Are there any numbers ANYWHERE that can make us look like, at the least, a full-blown cyst?"
Marketing Exec: "Sure, let's look at the numbers. US...no. EU...no. Asia...no. Africa...no. Middle East...no. Austral--"
Customer: "Stop. Just stop."
Marketing Exec: "It's okay, getting your message and name out there is far more important than the actual numbers. Plus, we'll find positive numbers and trends that we'll plaster in the occasional release. We also still have the stats on individual countries to go through."
Customer: "Okay, let's go down the list and pick some. We've got our astroturfing contractor waiting."
A less misleading headline would probably be "Windows Phone sales in the last 3 months double in Europe. Share of new sales trails iPhone by only 1% in Germany"
This must be bullshit. Not that I have scientific evidence, but as a app developer I got quite good at identifying a device type just by having a quick glance at it and that's what I usually do to keep me busy in public transport and other places.
What I see is about 50% iPhones, the majority being iPhone 4, not so many 4S, but also quite a few iPhone 5. Next up are Samsung phones of all kinds, with the prevalent being S3, S2 and low budget ones like the Ace. Not so many S4 though yet. HTC and everything else are kind of the underdog. And very rarely someone pulls out a BlackBerry.
But Windows Phone? I think I've seen one so far. I don't doubt there are out there, but comparing the share with the iPhone is ridiculous.
Your average Starbucks in London, UK over the last month seems to have the following market share: couple of ipads, single iphone, couple of Samsung android handsets and a lot of windows phones, all Lumia. To be honest I'm quite surprised myself even as a WP user. You see chromebooks a lot as well. Not seen a single surface (yet).
As a side point, I get a lot of people ask me what to buy after they threw £450 on a 4S and broke it (I'm the local informal tech advice guy for the school my kids go to's population of parents). The iphone doesn't have a great reputation in the UK after the first purchase from experience: it's expensive, unreliable (icloud is a piece of crap) and breaks easily and every repair place is dodgy including the apple stores here. This makes it a really bad investment. I don't suggest a solution in particular but people come back with Lumia handsets over new iPhones as they are much cheaper and are functionally equivalent. Either that or they buy a shit android and hate it.
All of my friends have yachts, so everyone in the world must have one or two. All statistics are bullshit, personal experiences are always valid though.
Not in France. I don't have a car so I take the bus and the regional train a lot. Most people there have either a dumb phone or an old & cheap Android or Blackberry. At my driver's license courses, I was surprised that at least 3 people had a Windows Phone (the cheaper models). iPhones are for rich people.
In countries where people buy their phone without a contract attached, there is a real market for a <100€ device. The cheaper the better.
Not to be "single data-point guy", but including mine, there are 3 in the technology group at work. And maybe 3 iPhones, with 5 or more Androids rounding it out.
The phone has a few nits (the single volume control being #1 on my list) but on the whole I like it. Partly because I got a little burned out on iDevices (3 iPhones over the years) and wanted something different, but also because of the camera (I have a 928, which I got like 2 weeks before the 1020 was announced - bad timing). I took some photos at a backyard party the other night, and the low light performance is excellent.
I like the look of the phone, and I'm hoping that Microsoft turns some of the Nokia designers & engineers loose on the Surface, and give it some style.
I guess "trails Android by only 70% in Germany" wasn't considered a catchy enough headline.
A 5 point increase from last year is certainly positive, but I think Microsoft is going to spend a lot of money to sustain that, and it's only going to get harder when they stop using the Nokia brand for smartphones.
Whatever Nokia was asking for those rights, Microsoft should probably have paid.
Still, getting close to 10% of market share is really a "massive achievement". I did not expect that. I wonder what was the main reason for people to buy it. I mean, if you're not a programmer/developer and you enter the store and see Lumia, SGS4 and iPhone4/5, how does the average customer select?
Weird way of reporting the stats (as others in this thread seem to imply) or not, just walking around in Germany is enough to realize that Windows Phone is comparatively popular there. It's very present both in real users' hands and advertising. I wonder if focusing on ROTW markets is Microsoft's strategy.
Then Facebook and Skype do count as apps, I guess. (Unless I uninstalled Facebook without ever launching it and it came preinstalled. I may not remember.)
It would be sad if the only thing giving them even that share is the Nokia brand and perception that it's European. MS may have killed off the only thing Windows Phone actually had going for it in europe.
It's because Europeans are a bunch of idiots. They're dumb enough to let gays ruin their society and their dumb enough to use Windows Phone instead of the vastly superior iPhone.
C'mon Topsteed, if you're going to live like a Neanderthal (no offence to Neanderthals), may as well get rid of all your technology and leave HN (and the internet) alone.
Who calls themselves Topsteed?... oh, that's too easy, just go get therapy.
Well, anybody can register for an account and no community is immune from trolls. They don't last long here though and there's some pretty decent moderation that happens both by the mods and the community itself.
