AppleInsider Staff
Gartner: Weak 2009 for mobile phones
Though it could have been worse, research firm Gartner said Tuesday that overall mobile phone sales in 2009 will end up down 0.67 percent at 1.214 billion units. That's an improvement over September, when the firm had projected the year would see a 3.7 percent decline.
The situation has improved due to stronger than expected sales in Western Europe. But reduced sales in Eastern Europe, Japan, Latin America and Africa will bring overall sales down from 2008's 1.222 billion.
2010 is predicted to improve, as Gartner has forecast growth of 9 percent. That would amount to 1.322 billion sales for the calendar year.
Smartphones will represent 14 percent of the market in 2009, nearly a 25 percent increase over 2008. That growth was partially driven by the blockbuster success of Apple's iPhone, which sold a record 7.4 million handsets last quarter.
But smartphone growth may not be all good for the industry, Gartner said. Because most devices like the iPhone are accompanied by expensive data plans, it could increase the total cost of ownership beyond the levels of mass-market acceptance.
Android reaches 20,000 apps
The Android Market now has more than 20,000 applications available for devices that run Google's mobile operating system. According to AndroLib, more than 60 percent of those are free, while more than three-quarters of the software available on the iPhone App Store are paid.
Android's total, reached just over one year into its existence, is nowhere near the 100,000 milestone achieved by Apple's App Store in early November, or the 50,000 it had by year one.
For more on the App Store and Android Market, view AppleInsider's in-depth coverage with Inside Google Android and Apple's iPhone OS as software markets.
Google Chrome ekes by Apple Safari
The latest Net Applications data shows that the beta release of Chrome for Mac has pushed the Google browser barely beyond Apple's Safari in terms of total market share. Last week, Google took the No. 3 spot with a 4.4 percent market share, an increase of 0.4 percent. For the period of Dec. 6-12, Safari had a 4.37 percent share.
A week ago, Chrome for Mac was finally released as a beta, more than a year after its Windows counterpart first debuted. Net Applications' tracking of 40,000 Web sites found that the browser accounted for 1.3 percent of all Mac OS X users. Prior to its beta release, Chrome accounted for 0.32 percent of Mac users.
Both remain well behind the leader, Internet Explorer (which carries more than 60 percent of the browser share), and second-place option, Firefox (which has about 25 percent).
Soon after its release, a speed test of Google Chrome found it to be slightly slower than Apple's Safari. Safari was also found to be twice as fast as Firefox and over ten times faster than Opera in SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks.
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48 Comments
Hey, good for Chrome. Anything that eats into IE's share is fine by me.
"Soon after its release, a speed test of Google Chrome found it to be slightly slower than Apple's Safari. Safari was also found to be twice as fast as Firefox and over ten times faster than Opera in SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks."
It should be clarified that it was the Mac version of Chrome that was slower than Safari. Also, let's not forget it's still in beta--it'll be interesting to see if anything changes upon its public release.
— I don’t think the drop in handset market was due to the economy so much as people holding onto their phones longer because they are buying nicer phones and waiting to see what else is coming down the pipes for future releases. I have several anecdotal stories about people waiting for the iPhone, Droid, Pre and other devices while in the past they simply would have gotten an available phone from a carrier. I look forward to seeing how much the handset market has changed over calendar years 2008 and 2009.— Good for Android. With more app types than Apple offers with their more closed system and the shear number of devices that will adopt Android I doubt it will take more than 2 years for Android Marketplace to overtake the App Store in number of available apps. They are at risk with some serious foundation issues but hopefully they’re working on a fix.
My biggest concern is the number of free apps. If developers can’t make money then the good ones will push their wares on platforms that can make them money.
1/4 of 100,000 > 3/5 of 20,000
"Soon after its release, a speed test of Google Chrome found it to be slightly slower than Apple's Safari. Safari was also found to be twice as fast as Firefox and over ten times faster than Opera in SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks."
It should be clarified that it was the Mac version of Chrome that was slower than Safari. Also, let's not forget it's still in beta--it'll be interesting to see if anything changes upon its public release.
Have you benchmarked Chrome for Windows and compared it to Safari for Windows? My Safari still comes out ahead on a 64-bit version of Win7.
Once Chrome for Mac goes 64-bit I expect that we?ll see some speed increase the way that Safari running in 32-bit mode is considerably slower than the 64-bit version.
All-in-all, both are close enough and faster enough that the speed really doesn?t matter. Plus, it?s just for JS rendering, not for the anything else. It?s really down to user preference. I prefer Safari for Mac and IE8 for Windows with Crhome Frame set to default in IE. I like browsers than integrate well and Firefox and Chrome don?t do that.