Apple reported it’s earnings on Monday, and it is music to the ears of it’s shareholders.  CNN is reporting the Cupertino, Calif., company said net income for the quarter ended Dec. 31 surged 50% from a year earlier to a record $3.4 billion, or $3.67 per share, beating analysts expectations by $1.59 a share.  Apple announced an incredible 100% year-over-year rise in iPhone sales and a 33% increase in Mac sales helped drive Apple’s results. The company said it sold a record 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter. That’s up 17.6% from the 7.4 million it sold in the previous quarter and double what it sold during the same quarter a year ago. Sales were partially boosted by Apple’s introduction of the iPhone in China last quarter.  Here in Canada I witnessed a surge in the number of iPhones in my friends’ families, with many teens and tweens receiving an iPhone for Christmas, now that Telus and Bell have been added as carriers, along with the original carrier Rogers.

In the three-month holiday quarter, iPod touch sales saw a 55 percent year-over-year increase which also represented alot of Christmas presents.  Last month, one study found that use of the iPod touch was greater than the iPhone in average use. It is believed the iPod touch could transition youth to the iPhone when they grow older, which exactly predicts what I witnessed this Christmas.  The study estimated that just over 40 percent of 58 million iPhone OS devices sold worldwide through September 2009 were the iPod touch.

The only product not showing spectacular results was the iPod, which slumped 8% to a still rather respectable 21 million units last quarter.  This is really not surprising considering the iPhone is an iPod, so once people get their hot little hands on an iPhone, an iPod becomes superfluous.  Until they use up their storage capablilities in their phone, they will rely on their iPhones as their daily driver music source.  The iPod then becomes the backup storage device.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”  No Steve, it is not surprising.  And yes, we’re really excited about it too!  One more sleep!!

This is an article by the App Machine.

Nielson, a leading media and marketing research company, today posted a list of most popular handset for 2009.  Unsurprisingly the iPhone tops the list at 4% of all handset sold in the U.S.  Keep in mind this list only uses data from the first 10 months of 2009.  Thus it may not accurately reflect the number of iPhone 3GS sold in all of 2009.

The Nielson’s top handset list of 2009 also lists RIMM 8300’s series as a close second place at 3.7%.  Its Blackberry Storm series come in at 1.7% of all cell phones sold in the U.S.  Blackberry 8100’s series also sold 1.2 percent. Combined, the blackberry maker has a 6.6% share of the U.S. market if only the data on Nielson’s list are used.  Motorola RAZR has 2.3% of subscriber base and LG takes 4th and 5th place with its VX9100 and Voyager models.

This list shows that smart phones are really hitting main stream as iPhone and Blackberry take top spot among the all of the handsets in use. More people are using their cell phones as the ultimate gadget as they turn smart phones into GPS navigators, web browser, email client,  and even musical instruments.

Nielson also posted a list of the top mobile sites accessed over mobile phones.  Google search is without question, the number one mobile site among all cell phones.  It is followed by Yahoo! Mail, Google Mail, Weather Channel, and Facebook.

Nielson has given us an early glimpse of the most popular mobile handset in 2009.  However, it’s 2009 top cell phone list is still a little incomplete.  We can’t wait for the real top 2009 handset list after all of the data come in for November and December.

This is an iPhone Trend Post by the App Machine

iPhones big in Japan vator.tv

Impress R+D, a Japanese company focussing on internet development and market research has released the results of a recent survey showing the iPhone is running away with the smart phone market in Japan.  Their December 11 Book of Smartphones shows that in 2009 the outright winner is the 3G iPhone with 24.6% of the market and the more powerful 3Gs following with a 21.5%.  This gives Apple an impressive total of 46.1% market share in Japan.  The closest competition (Sharp’s Advanced Zero3) while popular in 2008, has lost out to the iPhone and has only 14.6% market share currently. Impress R+D attributes the iPhones success to its ease of use and the App store.

Apparently Apple’s  iPhone carrier in Japan, Softbank Mobile, has been hitting it right with customers with great rates and running major advertising campaigns via TV and those impressive billboards Japan is known for.   The Japanese carrier offered a free 8GB iPhone 3G (or highly discounted 16GB iPhone 3G) for those who signed up for certain two-year contracts in February 2009.

All this work by Softbank definitely has paid off big time for Apple in a country that usually preferred their proprietary gimicky phones.  All these Japanese customers will drive an increase in applications developed by and for the Japanese market.  Should make for an interesting opportunity for those of us outside of Japan to investigate their culture and language.

This is an iPhone Trend story by The Apps Machine

Amidst the worldwide recession, smart phones seem to be one of the few industries that are still growing.  Apple’s own iPhone seem to be doing even better than its competitors.  Research firm Garter recently released a report on worldwide mobile phone and smartphone sales.  While total mobile phone sales declined 6 percent, smart phone sales grew 27 percent in the second quarter of 2009 when compared to the same quarter in 2008. 

This recession hurt some of the top dogs in the cell phone business, specifically Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola.  But what even caused them more harm is their failure to gain traction in the smart phone arena.   On the other hand, traditional cell phone makers, Samsung and LG posted strong sales with their touchscreen and qwerty phones and smartphones releases.  

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users in 2Q09 (Thousands of Units)

The chart above is included in the Gartner report.  It indicates that total smart phone sales grew by 8 million units.  Even Nokia’s sales went up despite a 2.4% loss in market share.  Apple’s sales went up 37% from last year.  HTC has even a higher growth rate of 85% from last year, signaling the rise of Android based smart phones in the near future. 

Admob, the company that bring ads to mobile devices, gave their own take on worldwide smartphone market share for June 2009.  Admob records the number of requests for their ads, then categorizes them based on the device manufacturers.   From the pie chart on the top of the page, it seems that Apple brought 47% of all smartphone web traffic based on Admob’s report.  Nokia didn’t do too bad with a 33% of smart phone admob request coming from the big N.  Clearly, iPhone is still the smart phone of choice when browsing the web and using internet enabled apps. 

Admob also reported interesting geographical smart phones data.  They estimate that 58% of iPhone and iPod touch were used in North America while Western Europe and Asia has a share of 26% and 7% respectively. 

With the successful iPhone 3GS launch in July, it would be interesting to take another look at the smart phone trends and market when the data are released.  It also makes you wonder what will be the market share for the iPhone if other carriers in the U.S. are allowed to sell the iPhone. 

Ad Mob, using data collected from over 6000 publishers on thousands of mobile websites, reported surprising data on December mobile phone operating system share.  Newest data show iPhone’s web presence is approaching half all of smart phone’s combined. 

The high internet usage for iPhone is expected as people actually use their iPhone to surf the web even when they are at home.  Just look at the high percentage of iPhone users using their Wi-Fi connection when they’ve already got 3G.  Furthermore, it seemed Apple has made the iPhone Safari more stable.  Those iPhone Safari crashes are occurring at a far lower rate than they used to be. 

Worldwide,  Simbian OS still rules as Simbian dominates Asia and Africa at 90% market share there.  But iPhone is grabbing a bigger piece of the global market share by coming in second at 32%.  With more and more people in the world using iPhone as a internet device, isn’t it time for Apple to add Flash to the iPhone?

Via Ad Mobs

Changewave reported interesting smart phone trends this week. Among the 3803 people surveyed, 41% use Blackberry, 23% use iPhone, while only 9% stick with Palm. RIM’s market share stayed the same, iPhone share is still growing, while Palm is probably looking at death.

Among people who are looking to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days, 39% would buy a smart phone from Blackberry, while only 30% are looking to buy an iPhone. RIM’s broad product lines such as Bold, Storm, or Pearl from Blackberry all contributed to the increase in buying interest. Note the big interest in iPhone at the June/July iPhone 3G launch. The interest for iPhone has seemed to have waned according to this survey while Blackberry has gathered momentum.

However, not everything is bright and sunny for RIM’s Blackberry. Users seem to be less satisfied with their devices compared to iPhone. Among 66 new owners of the Blackberry Storm, only 33% of customers are very satisfied. Compare that with the 77% of the very satisfied customers of the iPhone, RIM should be a bit worried. There are 14% unsatisfied Storm customer compared to 5% of unsatisfied iPhone customers. Common reason for dissatisfaction are: lack of a QWERTY Keyboard (21%), Touch Screen Interface (20%) and Difficult to Use (20%), and Short Battery Life (21%).

How the smart phone wars will turn out has yet to be seen. Some folks want all of their favorite phones’ (Android G1, iPhone, and Blackberry) functions to be melded into one super cool device. Hopefully we will see that perfect phone one day!

Via CNN Money though Change Wave

Do you use your iPhone to surf the web via Wi-Fi? Ad mob reports about half of the traffic comes from Wi-Fi instead of 3G or Edge networks. They came up with the conclusion through their ad networks worldwide. This is an anomaly for Wi-Fi capable cell phones. Android phones only get 10 to 20% of users from Wi-Fi networks. The report also states that iPhone users spend more time on iPhone specific applications and sites rather than normal, unadapted websites.

What could this mean? This could mean most people uses their iPhone to surf the web when they are at home or in the office. Even though they already have a computer or laptop handy, iPhone is still an viable option to browse the web, especially on those iPhone specific websites. This is also a success for Apple and AT&T. Apples has successfully design the iPhone’s user interface to allow for easy Wi-fi setup, and possibly forcing Wi-Fi with its restricted access to iTunes. For AT&T, less strain on its networks means less complaints and more time to build a better 3G network.