Apple’s iOS reached 20.3 percent share of the market for the first quarter of 2015 in Europe’s big five countries of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, according to a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, said that on average, in Europe, 32.4 percent of Apple’s new customers switched to iOS from Android. Across Europe, Android’s share declined 3.1 percent, but remains high at 68.4 percent market share.
It should come as no surprise that price was a big factor for those people who purchased an Android phone.
“Thirty-five percent of consumers who bought an Android smartphone in 1Q15 said their decision was driven by receiving a good price on the phone,” said Milanesi. “Another 29% said that getting a good deal on the tariff/contract was a factor in their purchase.”
In the US, Android has a 58.1 percent share of the market, but sales of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are doing very well.
“Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus already represent 18% of all iPhones in use in the U.S., and 64% of the iPhone installed base is an iPhone 5 or newer—good news for the Apple Watch that interacts only with these newer models.”
In China, the news couldn’t be much better for Apple:
“In urban China, Apple consolidated its leadership in smartphones, growing its share to 26.1%, up from 17.9% for the same period in 2014,” said Tamsin Timpson, strategic insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech Asia. “Thirty-eight percent of iPhone buyers were recommended an Apple device by someone they know, while 23% recall seeing an ad.”
Timpson also noted that China is now driving more volume for Apple than the U.S., as the Cupertino company reaches beyond the more affluent buyers. In 1Q15, Apple represented 25% of smartphone sales in urban China’s 2,000 to 4,000 RMBs income bracket—a 10.1 percentage point increase from the same period in 2014, according to Timpson.
US phablet market
Phablet sales in the US rose to 21 percent from 6 percent in the same period last year, according to Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. The iPhone 6 Plus took 44 percent of this market, with a large number of people noting screen size as the main reason for the purchase.
Android customers made up 11.4 percent of Apple’s new customers, which is actually down a bit over last year. Only 5.9 percent of iOS users switched to Android during the same period.
Microsoft grew little around the world and was merely a footnote in the overall report. BlackBerry wasn’t mentioned at all, probably because nobody is sure if they’re still in business.
Clearly, the larger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were, and continue to be, big sellers for Apple around the world. Apple’s strategy in China has worked well for them and all indications are this is going to continue to be a growth market for the company.
One of the big factors in purchasing decisions is clearly price. Apple has never been a company to cater to a lower-end market with free give-aways or cheap products, and they shouldn’t start. There will always be a segment of the market that will take advantage of a two-for-one offer and that’s where Android phones will continue to sell. That doesn’t hurt Apple’s core business one bit.
One of the things that makes Reddit so great is the idea that you can easily build a community dedicated to a specific issue or cause. In this case, the new community is called Lonely Heartbeats, and it offers solo Apple Watch owners an easy way to share heartbeats with other likeminded people.
Whether you are single and looking for a simple connection, or an early adopter with the only Apple Watch in your circle of friends, Lonely Heartbeats has you covered.
Antonio Regalado, writing for MIT Technology Review:
Apple is collaborating with U.S. researchers to launch apps that would offer some iPhone owners the chance to get their DNA tested, many of them for the first time, according to people familiar with the plans.
The apps are based on ResearchKit, a software platform Apple introduced in March that helps hospitals or scientists run medical studies on iPhones by collecting data from the devices’ sensors or through surveys.
And:
Nudging iPhone owners to submit DNA samples to researchers would thrust Apple’s devices into the center of a widening battle for genetic information. Universities, large technology companies like Google (see Google Wants to Store Your Genome), direct-to-consumer labs, and even the U.S. government (see U.S. to Develop DNA Study of One Million People) are all trying to amass mega-databases of gene information to uncover clues about the causes of disease (see Internet of DNA).
And:
In two initial studies planned, Apple isn’t going to directly collect or test DNA itself. That will be done by academic partners. The data would be maintained by scientists in a computing cloud, but certain findings could appear directly on consumers’ iPhones as well. Eventually, it’s even possible consumers might swipe to share “my genes” as easily as they do their location.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. But one person with knowledge of the plans said the company’s eventual aim is to “enable the individual to show and share” DNA information with different recipients, including organizers of scientific studies. This person, like others with knowledge of the research, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the company’s insistence on secrecy.
Lots at stake here. Tricky waters to navigate. One key is the phrase “enable the individual to show and share DNA information”. As long as I get to limit who has access to my DNA. Unlike survey results that share habits or personal preferences, as far as I know, there is no way to anonymize DNA data.
On a side note, this article answers the question, “Are identical twins 100% genetically identical?”
“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.”
Not a “long read” but a 90 minute documentary on the making of what many, myself included, consider the greatest film of all time. If you get a chance to grab a DVD of it, make sure you get the one with the commentary tracks – one by Roger Ebert and the other with Peter Bogdanovich. It will give you a new and greater appreciation of this magnificent film.
Neil Cybart, writing for Above Avalon, takes you through Apple’s R&D numbers. In a nutshell, he starts by looking at Apple’s annual R&D spending, year after year. Next comes those same numbers as a percentage of annual revenue (a more meaningful number, since a simple increase in R&D expenditures is obvious given Apple’s incredible growth).
Finally, he digs into Apple’s year over year R&D spending:
A more relevant and informative way to analyze Apple’s R&D spend is to look at the actual dollar increase from year to year. This method is more sensible because Apple has a functional organizational structure with a culture based on placing few, but extremely large, product bets. There is little evidence to suggest that Apple has altered the way it approaches new product development and R&D expenditures. In the past, the bulk of Apple’s R&D program has been focused on specific projects and goals. This stands at contrast with a strategy of setting up a number of R&D labs with no clear directive other than to find future products. If Apple is spending R&D, it is a good bet they have a specific goal in mind for those dollars.
If this is all gobbledygook to you, just follow the link and check out Exhibit 3. You’ll see 3 modest curve bumps over the years, which represent the development of the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. These are followed by a more recent bulge in the year over year spending increase, much bigger than those earlier gentle bumps.
Something big is coming. Read the article for details, but love the analysis.
Federico Viticci came up some a list of things he would like to see in the next version of iOS. As you might expect, some of the things on the list are fixes for the current operating system, but it’s an interesting read.
Interestingly, one of Home Depot’s biggest competitors, Lowes, is on the list of MCX merchants. I can’t imagine this is not a topic that will come up at the next Lowes Board of Directors meeting. Especially if some of those board members walk in with a brand new Apple Watch.
Update: Some people are questioning Home Depot being considered a large retailer (and questioning is always good!) To clarify this, large in the retailer universe is generally a revenue issue, not a number of locations issue. Here’s a link to a Forbes list of largest retailers in the world, which ranks Walmart as number one, CVS as number two, and Home Depot number three. Notice that Walmart and CVS are both on the MCX merchants.
Swedish music streamer Spotify has more to lose from Apple’s anticipated Beats Music revamp than its competition, according to new usage data, as iOS accounts for a majority of Spotify’s active users.
Apple really has to do this right. We’ve seen music services do big, splashy relaunches and users really don’t care—I really don’t care. There are some key points that Apple needs to take care of to beat out Spotify—if they don’t, it’s going to be a tough road ahead for them. Music is very important to Apple, there is no doubt about that, but they have to keep the focus and intensity on this that they’ve shown for their other products.
In America Cinco de Mayo has evolved to become one of the country’s largest drinking holidays. In 2013, over $600 million dollars worth of beer was sold, according to Nielsen data, which is more beer than is sold for St. Patrick’s Day or the Super Bowl, two holidays where beer consumption is the primary focal point. And most of that beer is Mexican in origin, which has also meant that the Mexican beer sector, thanks to Cinco de Mayo, has continued to grow and thrive north of the border, experiencing the best sector growth in the American market according to EuroMonitor data, second only to the rapid growth of American craft beer.
Suffice it to say, Cinco de Mayo is a behemoth when it comes to selling booze, but how did a holiday that isn’t really even celebrated in Mexico – Mother’s Day, which occurs around the same time, is a much bigger deal – become not only the most powerful U.S. holiday when it comes to selling alcohol, but also the only connection most Americans have to our largest immigrant group? You can thank Texas distributors of Corona in the 1980s.
Yet another completely made up “holiday” created in the service of marketing.
I started reporting these issues early in the Yosemite beta release and provided tons of documentation to Apple engineering. It was frustrating to have a Mac that lost its network connection every few days because the network interfaces were disabled while waking from sleep (and there was no way to disable this new “feature”.)
Marco Arment and many others are having similar issues.
It was a busy weekend in Torbay, as the first iceberg of the season arrived in eastern Newfoundland just off the coastline near Tapper’s Cove.People flocked to the area over the weekend to take advantage of the site.
The Canadian Coast Guard says there’s currently more than 100 icebergs off the province’s coastlines, so it’s just the beginning of iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador.
This is how cool Canada is – we have icebergs, baby! By the way, if you ever want a fun vacation, visit Newfoundland. Starkly beautiful province and wonderful people.
When Apple introduces its new TV box this summer, the remote control will gain a touch pad and also be slightly thicker than the current version, according to an employee briefed on the product, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the device was confidential. The touch pad can be used for scrolling around and there will also be two physical buttons, the person said. The remote’s thicker size is comparable to the remote control for Amazon’s wireless speaker, the Echo, the person added.
And:
Adding a touch pad to the Apple TV remote would bring it in line with Apple’s other accessories. Apple’s wireless mouse, the Magic Mouse, and Apple’s Magic Trackpad both have touch controls.
Touch Pianist is simple, addictive, and strangely satisfying.
Start at the Touch Pianist web site. To get started, just start hitting your space bar in a regular rhythm. Easy peasy. Beautiful, no?
That first song (Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata) is straight quarter notes in 3/4 time. Tap-tap-tap tap-tap-tap. Every so often, you’ll encounter a dot that is just a little out of phase with the others. It’s telling you to add an extra tap to accommodate an extra note in the sequence. If you know the piece, you’ll hear it when it comes around.
There’s a Touch Pianist app that brings this touch piano playing to your phone or iPad. The web site and the app are free. They make money with in-app purchases of various music packs.
How to send a text hands-free with Siri on Apple Watch:
Step 1: Invoke Siri using Hey Siri Step 2: Say something like “Send a message to Sebastien Page, hey man, how’s it going?” Step 3: When the New Message interface pops up with the Cancel and Send buttons, say “Hey Siri, send.” Step 4: The message will be sent without having to lift a finger
Jump to the article for more examples and a video showing this in action. Nice tip.
The latest update to Windows 10, the forthcoming operating system for its phones and personal computers, includes support for the middle finger emoji, according to Emojipedia. That makes Microsoft the first big tech company to allow the profane emoji onto its platform.
The Unicode Consortium, which dictates the official language of emoji, added “reversed hand with middle finger extended” in the middle of last year. But it’s up to companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, and others to actually allow their users to type and view each emoji.
I like it. Still not enough to make me switch, though.
Mark Gurman, writing for 9to5mac, put together this gem-filled article, all about Apple’s new Creating Bands for Apple Watch web page. The page is filled with links to specs and guidelines for 3rd party watch band creators. The drawings are beautiful, especially the blueprints in this doc.
By far my favorite part of Mark’s article is the video below, which shows you how to disassemble the special loops that come with Apple’s leather Apple Watch strap. These loops are perfectly suited for many 3rd part watch straps.
The only tool you will need is a pentalobe screwdriver, which comes in a variety of computer toolkits. Here’s a pretty inexpensive model that should do the trick.
Another Apple Watch review. As per the review we highlighted yesterday, Jason Cipriani from Fortune loves his watch but found this as his major negative:
Although the watch’s apps are an amazing added feature they were far from perfect; third-party applications were unpredictably slow and I was often forced to wait for them (or Glances) to load during my first week with the product. Sometimes an app would launch in seconds ready for use, while other times I was left waiting upwards of a minute. Apple’s own native applications (such as Mail, Stocks, or Weather) always launched almost instantly.
As I said yesterday, a big part of this is the 3rd party app developer learning curve. Apps will get better, faster, more responsive as developers learn the tricks of the trade.
Also interesting:
The first few alerts pushed to my watch left me a bit perplexed. My iPhone screen was no longer lighting up as each message arrived, nor was there any sort of audible alert coming from my phone. It wasn’t until I unlocked my screen that notifications begin to pop up and I realized that instead of the iPhone and Apple Watch competing for your attention, alerts are only sent to the device you’re using at the time.
Makes sense.
So far, most reviews I’ve read come to the same conclusion: There are shortcomings (e.g., slow 3rd party apps), but the Apple Watch is beautifully designed and fun to use, makes the iPhone better.
To mark Star Wars Day, as May the 4th has come to be known, the carillon bells inside the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill rang out the Imperial March music for Star Wars, among other space-related tunes.
It was part of a 15-minute carillon concert with a space theme that began at noon.
The concert included the Star Wars theme by John Williams, arranged by Janet Dundore; Princess Leia’s Theme, arranged by Janet Dundore and Andrea McCrady; and The Imperial March, arranged by Andrea McCrady.
There’s nerdy and there’s cool. Rarely do the two intersect but this is definitely Nerd Cool.
When an app isn’t responding or working correctly, it might use more of the processor (CPU) than it should, even when the app doesn’t seem to be doing anything. As the CPU gets busier, it uses more energy, which reduces the length of time that your Mac can run on battery power. It also generates heat, which can cause the fans in your Mac to spin faster.
I’ve used this from time to time to see if an app was dragging the system down.
A new and exciting website has recently been launched for web designers and developers.
You likely spend hours every morning browsing through hundreds of posts on your RSS feeds, hoping to stumble across relevant stories. Designer News was built to provide web designers and developers with a single location to discover the latest and most significant stories on the Web.
They search through hundreds of posts on blogs, social media, and news channels, to deliver the most essential stories of the day. The content covers quality news, fresh tools and apps, case studies, code demos, inspiration posts, videos and more.
With frequent updates throughout the day, you’ll always find something interesting and fun to read.
Luke Wroblewski explores a foundational lesson in interface design. In app layout, out of sight is out of mind. And that’s not a good thing. Great read.
There’s been a lot written this morning about Reserve Strap, an Apple Watch strap designed to plug into the diagnostic port on the watch and serve as a reserve battery.
I love this idea. In fact, if you go back a few weeks, I even proposed such an idea in this post.
But I digress.
Reserve Strap’s clever is the way it overcomes a built in limitation. When you change any strap on your Apple Watch, you have to press a release button, then slide your strap to the side.
Problem is, any strap that wants to connect to the diagnostic port has to have a plug that juts out, which would prevent a strap trying to plug into that port from doing the side-to-side slide.
Reserve Strap proposes to resolve this problem with buttons on either side of the strap that compress the connector, pulling it into the body of the strap. Compress the connector, slide the strap on, release the buttons to allow the connector to jut back out and connect with the diagnostic port. Super clever.
I hope this idea succeeds. If so, it will pave the way for a wave of clever, powered Apple Watch straps.
Note that this is a product in the works. You can preorder on the web site, but there’s no guarantee that they can clear all the hurdles this product faces. And at a price of $249, that’s going to require a lot of faith.
Susie Ochs, Executive Editor for Macworld, gives her take on life with an Apple Watch. In her case, there’s plenty to like, but this is from the Things I hate about it section:
That brings me to my main complaint with the Apple Watch: Its poky performance. Since the lion’s share of the data it presents comes from your iPhone, be prepared for lags. Even scrolling around its face, the refresh rate seems a little laggy compared to what I’m used to (and spoiled with) on the iPhone and iPad. Location-based apps, like Maps and Weather, seem the slowest, as well as using third-party apps that pull data from apps I haven’t used on my iPhone for a while. The lagginess isn’t a deal-breaker, but it is a bummer. The watch is definitely the slowest Apple product I’ve used in years.
Poky performance will definitely get better as developers learn the subtleties of programming for a device that offloads much of its processing to, and gets much of its data from, the iPhone in your pocket.
I’ve spoken to a number of developers whose Apple Watch apps were incredibly slow, until they figured out the various techniques to speed performance and responsiveness. Developers who were lucky enough to get a chance to visit Apple’s Apple Watch lab and test their app on a real device, inevitably came away with some real insights and, more importantly, with a vastly improved app.
The point, early adopters, is this. The Apple Watch experience is going to improve, and pretty quickly. The performance problems pointed out in this review are software issues, not hardware issues. Meaning your Apple Watch will just get better over time, as developers learn the ins and outs of this new frontier.
Matt Gemmell noticed that his local Apple Store did not have any in-store seminars teaching blind or visually impaired people how to use Apple devices. The fix? He wrote this letter:
Hi there,
My name is Matt Gemmell, and I live about a mile from the Edinburgh (Princes St) Apple Store.
I’m a sighted person with an interest in accessibility technology for visually impaired people. I’ve given presentations at many conferences around the world on a variety of topics, including the VoiceOver screen-reader technology built into Macs, iOS devices, and now the Apple Watch.
I notice that you don’t seem to have any in-store seminars on how blind or visually impaired people can use Apple devices. I’m interested in presenting such a seminar, for anyone who wishes to attend, in the Princes St store. I’d create and present the seminar personally. You’d advertise it alongside your usual free workshops, let people sign up, and provide me with a place in the store to use for the presentation.
It would be solely about Apple devices and VoiceOver. I’d do it for free. No mention of any competing or third-party products or technologies, and no sales pitch from me. Just an opportunity for visually impaired people in the local community to learn how they can use these devices to increase their independence and participation.
Is that a possibility? And if so, what arrangements would need to be made?
Best, -Matt
Where to send it? Turns out, every Apple Store has its own email address. As Matt notes in this tweet, you can pick up the address from any receipt you’ve gotten from that particular store.
I think this is a great idea. And Matt has given you the template in case you want to do this exact same thing (or a variant) yourself.
This is one idea that is definitely worth sharing. Nice job, Matt.
This is simply a fantastic read. Two people talking about fashion, but really talking about the things that make us human.
A few quotes, just to give you a taste. First, on what inspired Brunello to run his company the way he does, giving away 20% of all profits to charity, and paying his workers significantly more than the industry average:
From the teary eyes of my father. When we were living in the countryside, the atmosphere, the ambiance — life was good. We were just farmers, nothing special. Then he went to work in a factory. He was being humiliated and offended, and he was doing a hard job. He would not complain about the hardship or the tiny wages he received, but what he did say was, “What have I done evil to God to be subject to such humiliation?”Basically, what is human dignity made of? If we work together, say, and, even with one look, I make you understand that you are worth nothing and I look down on you, I have killed you. But if I give you regards and respect — out of esteem, responsibility is spawned. Then out of responsibility comes creativity, because every human being has an amount of genius in them. Man needs dignity even more than he needs bread.
And:
In this company, you cannot send emails after 5:30 PM, when the company closes for the evening. The day after, when you turn up for work, what are you like? You are a still person. You are better.I do not want to be liable for intruding into your private life. Saint Benedict said, “You should look after your mind to study every day, then your soul through praise,” which is basically speaking to yourself, praying. “Then work, through work.” But the abbot is the one who basically assigns all the work; he is responsible for you even after your death. I do not want to assign work to you where I feel responsible for ruining or altering your private life.
And:
My daughter refused to buy a pair of trousers for €19. Beautiful trousers. I said, “Why didn’t you buy them?” She said, “How much money do they think the worker actually made or was paid for that?”
Cable network Showtime is running a documentary called Elvis Costello: Mystery Dance. If you are at all an Elvis fan, this is worth watching. It’s not a classic documentary, in that it doesn’t tell Costello’s story as much as it assembles a lot of images, interviews, and performance clips, all of them enjoyable.
But there’s a lot of digging deep here, too. There’s a lot of Elvis sharing his feelings about music. There are some magic moments with musicians Costello admires, including some terrific scenes with Paul McCartney, who did some notable writing with Costello, including my absolute favorite, So Like Candy.
More importantly (at least to me), here’s a video of Elvis Costello performing So Like Candy on Saturday Night Live. This is some powerful songwriting. Listen for the excellent basswork by the sublime, and now sadly gone, T-Bone Wolk. Enjoy.
