Qualcomm has dealt a blow to Apple with Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court banning the sale of selected iPhone models in China. The move was for the violation of two Qualcomm patents. Continue reading “China bans some Apple iPhone models”
Worldwide shipment of wearable devices will touch 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018, according to Gartner. Continue reading “Global wearable market to grow 26% in 2019”
For the first time, the smartphone market is on par with the feature phone market in India, according to IDC. Overall, the India market reached 42.6 million units for a 9.1 percent year-on-year growth in Q3.
Continue reading “Smartphone and feature phone neck-to-neck in India”
Smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units in Q3, down six percent from the corresponding quarter last year, according to preliminary estimates by IDC. This is the fourth straight quarter of year-on-year decline.
Continue reading “Global smartphone shipment slides 6% in Q3”
UPDATE: Catch the launch live on Youtube at 11pm Singapore time.
OnePlus has brought forward its OnePlus 6T launch to October 29 to avoid a clash with Apple’s iPad Pro and Mac event the next day. The China smartphone maker had been first off the block with the October 30 date but Apple threw a curveball by announcing that its launch event will be on the same day in the same city.
Supermicro has become infamous overnight following an expose by Bloomberg quoting unnamed sources. According to the report, “the attack by Chinese spies reached almost 30 US companies, including Amazon and Apple, by compromising America’s technology supply chain.”
The legal tussle between Qualcomm and Apple has hit another level with the chipmaker accusing the smartphone giant of passing trade secrets to Intel. An earlier court battle, Qualcomm said that Apple breached an agreement for it to audit Apple’s use of Qualcomm’s source code.
The rumour mills are spinning at top speed as smartphone launch season gets ready to kick off. With Samsung having announced the Note 9, and Apple expected to respond with a new iPhone next month, Google looks to be getting into the act too with the Pixel 3 slated for an October 9 introduction, according to Bloomberg.
The ongoing spat between China and the US seem to have claimed another victim. Apple has removed 25,000 gaming-related apps from its China app store. This move follows hard on the heels of the US ban on Huawei and ZTE technology from being used by the US government and government contractors yesterday.
Continue reading “Apple pulls out 25,000 apps from China app store”
Global traditional PC shipment posted the strongest growth in more than six years during the past quarter, according to IDC. Total shipment was 62.3 million units, which translates to a 2.7 percent year-on-year growth.
Taiwan smartphone maker HTC is making a cut of the most painful kind — by slicing 20 percent of its workforce. The decision to swallow the bitter pill comes in the wake of heavy losses and strong competition.
Epicentre Holdings has sold its Apple business in Singapore — both online and retail stores — to competitor Elush (T3), marking the end of an era. Continue reading “Epicentre exits Apple business in Singapore”
The worldwide wearables market is adjusting as smartwatches continue to come to the forefront. In the coming years, smartwatches will encompass more features and functionalities.
Continue reading “Smartwatch market heading towards steady growth”
Twenty-two days. It took relatively unknown smartphone maker OnePlus just that amount of time to sell one million units of OnePlus 6, its latest smartphone.
China smartphone makers Huawei and Xiaomi grew strongest as the market recovered in Q1, according to Gartner.
Continue reading “Huawei and Xiaomi lead smartphone growth in Q1”
Online game distributor Steam’s attempt to release the free Steam Link app for iPhones has hit a roadblock from Apple.
Continue reading “Apple douses Steam’s plan to put app into iPhone”
Amazon and Google went head to head in the smart speaker market last year and the battle is expected to be more intense in the coming days with more players joining the fray.
Apple has apologised for slowing down the performance of older iPhone models to prevent accidental shutdowns due to aging batteries.
The names Benjamin Lazarus, Jeffrey Aberman, Stephen Margolis, Sandy Brodsky, and Victoria Childs are probably unfamiliar to most. But inthe days to come, they may become more popular.
The launch of the iPhone 8 and drop of prices of older models have helped Apple turn in a sterling quarter in China, with shipment rising 40 percent to 11 million units this Q3.
Even though the X in the newly announced iPhone X is supposed to be pronounced as “10”, it can be interpreted as eXpensive. At S$1,648 for the 64GB version and S$1,888 for the 256GB iteration, the new iPhone X is a costly device, bringing it right into the price range of notebook computers.
Apple seems to be pushing the price ceiling on how much consumers are willing to pay for a high-end smartphone. It may even cause some die-hard fans to consider if it’s really worthwhile upgrading to this new rendition. The iPhone X comes with a six-core A11 Bionic processor, GPU, a bezelless super retina display, wireless charging, dual 12-megapixel rear cameras with optical image stabilisation, and Face ID. Most of these are already available in other high-end smartphones without such a hefty price tag.
Face ID, which lets users unlock and pay with the device, is probably the most unique value proposition but is this enough to justify the high price?
Guess the answer will be known when the iPhone X becomes available in Singapore on November 3.
Consumer and enterprise PC purchases are driving growth in the Australia PC market, which includes desktop, notebook and workstation.
The consumer segment grew 8.6 percent year over year (YoY) in Q2, according to IDC.
“The retail channel was negatively impacted by Dick Smith’s exit last year. This year however, promotional events such as Modern PC program run by Harvey Norman spiked growth in the consumer space. AMD’s new Ryzen series launch and EOFY sales further fuelled growth in this segment,” said Sagar Raghavendra, Client Devices Analyst of IDC Australia.
Continue reading “Australia PC market bucks global trend by inching up 3.3%”
New Android mobile phone launches spurred growth in Australia, leading to year-on-year growth of 18.4 percent to 2.16 million units, exceeding expectations in Q2, according to IDC.
Smartphones accounted for nearly all of the shipped phones — totalling 2.06 million.
Android returned to being the most popular smartphone OS in Australia. Recently, iOS had overtaken Android as the most popular smartphone OS in Q4 2016 as it held over 54 percent of the market compared to 47 percent for Android.
Continue reading “New Android devices boost Australia smartphone market in Q2”
Huawei has taken top spot again in China’s smartphone market, edging past Oppo after two quarters of trailing in second place. According to Canalys, the Chinese smartphone giant, which launched the P10 and P10 Plus during MWC, shipped close to 21 million units to secure an 18 percent market share in Q1.
Despite strong annual growth of 55 percent, Oppo fell to second place with shipments of just under 20 million units. Third-placed Vivo had the lowest annual growth of the top three, capturing a 15 percent share with its shipment of 17 million units.
“China’s smartphone market continues to grow, with shipments increasing by over nine percent year on year this quarter. But there is a clear indication that the market is consolidating. The top three vendors are pulling away at the head of the market, accounting for more than 50 percent of shipments for the first time this quarter,” said Lucio Chen, Research Analyst of Canalys.
Everybody knows China is big but with nearly half a billion smartphones shipped last year, the market is massive — that’s one smartphone for every three person in the world’s most populous country.
According to Canalys estimates, China reached 476.5 million unit shipment, growing year on year at 11.4 percent, far exceeding the annual growth rate of 1.9 percent in 2015. China shipment reached 131.6 million units in Q4, which is the highest single quarter total in history, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide shipment.
Huawei took the top spot in the market with 76.2 million shipment, a small lead ahead of runner-up Oppo with 73.2 million units, followed by Vivo in third place at 63.2 million units.
Worldwide combined shipments for devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) are expected to drop three percent in 2016, according to Gartner.
This will mark the second consecutive year of decline as the global devices market fell by 0.75 percent in 2015. And the immediate future remains bleak for this market.
“The global devices market is not on pace to return to single-digit growth soon,” said Ranjit Atwal, Research Director of Gartner.
Continue reading “Global devices market continue to shrink for second year”
It’s almost unthinkable but the smartphone market has dipped for the first time in its history.
According to Canalys, worldwide smartphone shipment fell from 324 million units in Q1 2015 to 321 million units in Q1 2016. The top two vendors both posted shipment declines, with Apple the worse hit.
Excluding Apple and Samsung, smartphone shipment grew five percent despite some of the big named international vendors outside the top five also faring badly. LG, Lenovo and TCL-Alcatel posted significant declines, while Sony plummeted by around 57 percent.
Smartphone sale hit a record 117.3 million in China in Q4. This represents an eight percent growth compared to the same period last year.
The phenomenal increase was partly driven by China’s annual singles day online shopping festival in November and Huawei’s strong shipments in the quarter. China’s Q4 growth boosted the calendar year 2015 growth to three percent.
“Xiaomi, Huawei and Apple are the top smartphone players in 2015. This is a stark contrast to the top players in 2013, which was Samsung, Lenovo and Coolpad – with Samsung clearly dominating other players. With operators reducing smartphone subsidy and given the volatility of consumers’ brand preference in the market, the smartphone scene has changed significantly since then,” said Tay Xiaohan, Senior Market Analyst of IDC Asia/Pacific’s Client Devices team.
Continue reading “China smartphone sale hit record high in Q4”
The year’s looking bad for tablets as worldwide demand is expected to slide 8.1-percent to just 211.3 million units, according to IDC.
The new forecast follows three consecutive quarters of declining worldwide tablet shipments in 2015. Despite the challenges facing the overall market, IDC expects detachable tablets will continue to represent a growing portion of total shipments.
“We’re witnessing a real market transition as end users shift their demand towards detachables and more broadly towards a productivity-based value proposition. The proliferation of detachable offerings from hardware vendors continues to help drive this switch. We’re starting to see the impact of competition within this space as the major platform vendors – Apple, Google and Microsoft – now have physical product offerings. With attractive price points, including the introduction of sub-US$100 detachables, and platform innovation being driven by competition, IDC is confident that the detachables segment will nearly double in size in the next year, recording more than 75 percent growth compared to 2015,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard , Research Director, Tablets, IDC.
