Your wholesale cell phones news digest 07/13/12

Android accounts for more than half of all smartphones sold in U.S. and Europe


For the first time ever Android now accounts for more than half of all smartphone sales in the U.S. as well as the biggest markets in Europe and Australia, according to an analysis firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Android sales recorded over the last 12 weeks across Europe ranged from 49.6% of all smartphone sales in Italy to 84.1% of all smartphone sales in Spain, TechCrunch reported. Spain saw the largest year-over-year increase of Android sales, up 42.8%. Android sales in the United States declined year-over-year from 57% to 50.2%, however, while sales of iOS devices increased from 28.7% to 37.4%. Despite Apple’s increased legal pressure on Android in Australia, the operating system’s share of the market there grew from 36.4% to 56.9% while iOS fell from 36.9% to 30.5%. As expected, both Research in Motion and Nokia’s old Symbian OS saw sales declines in all markets covered by the study.


Kantar data shows Apple’s grip slipping as Samsung surges


The big Eastern European mobile operator MTS recently released interesting numbers about the Russian handset market. They showed Samsung’s share of Russian smartphone market revenue exploding between the first quarters of 2011 and 2012, while Apple’s share actually declined a bit. Now Kantar has come out with its latest survey tracking the smartphone market in a variety of countries, and it contains some intriguing data points. The sampling period spans 12 weeks and ends on June 10th, so it captured some of the Samsung Galaxy S III surge as well as the strong reception to cheaper new Samsung Android phones such as the Ace 2. What’s fascinating about the new Kantar data is that is seems to affirm what the European phone industry has been buzzing about this year: Apple’s grasp of the market in Germany and France seems a lot more tenuous than its grip on the United Kingdom. 


LG looks to challenge Samsung and HTC with new super phone

LG is reportedly developing a new flagship smartphone that will help the company further compete with Samsung and HTC. According to a report from The Chosunilbo, the South Korean smartphone vendor will launch a new super phone using parts manufactured by its subsidiaries LG Display, LG Chem and LG Innotek, which have long supplied parts for other companies such as Apple. The device will be equipped with a quad-core processor and will be the first LG smartphone to feature a camera with a resolution of more than 10 megapixels. The device is slated for a September release, the report claims.


Amazon is reportedly making a phone and it just poached another Windows Phone executive


The likelihood that Amazon will launch a smartphone — or a “phablet,” as the case may be — at some point in the next six to nine months seems to grow more likely each day. Bloomberg reported last week that the company is testing a smartphone with manufacturing partner Foxconn, and The Wall Street Journal would later add that the device will likely feature a display measuring between 4 and 5 inches when it launches later this year or early in 2013. Now, Richard Williams, former director of business development with Microsoft’s Windows Phone unit, has left Microsoft to join Amazon as director of the Amazon Appstore. Williams is the second Microsoft executive to leave the company’s Windows Phone division and join Amazon, following Brandon Watson, who made the switch earlier this year.

RIM CEO tones down the happy talk, says he’s ‘not satisfied’

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins has wisely decided to ditch his “there’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now” talking point. During his remarks at RIM’s 2012 Annual General Meeting today, Heins said that while he was optimistic that his company could make a comeback, he was “not satisfied” with the state of the company and acknowledged that the “next several quarters will be very challenging.” Heins also identified three key reasons for RIM’s decline in the United States: The consumer appeal of iOS and Android, the rise of bring-your-own-device policies in corporate IT departments and RIM’s own lack of an LTE-capable smartphone. He said that the release of the BlackBerry 10 operating system in early 2013 would put the company back on competitive footing in all three of these areas.

Cell phones are being monitored more than ever before

Law enforcement agencies in the United States have requested more user information than ever before, according to wireless providers. Personal text messages, locations and other information was requested more than 1.3 millions times in 2011, The New York Times reported. Wireless companies were prompted to turn over thousands of personal records each day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests. In some cases, however, carriers rejected demands that were considered “legally questionable or unjustified.” The U.S. congress requested reports from nine carriers, including Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T, in regards to law enforcement agencies’ increase use of cellphone tracking. Over the past five years, AT&T has seen normal request triple to 700 per day, 230 of which were classified as “emergencies” and allowed access to a users texts, calls and locations. Sprint reported the largest number of request in 2011 with an average of 1,500 per day. Other carriers reported annual increases of between 12% and 16% in the last five years.

Nielsen has Android near 52 percent of US smartphone share in Q2, iPhone ekes out gains

If there was doubt as to whether or not Android would soon become the majority smartphone platform in the US, that's just been erased by Nielsen. Google crossed the tipping point in the second quarter after getting close in the winter, with 51.8 percent of current smartphone users running some variant on the green robot's OS.