Apple's U.S. smartphone installed base has surpassed Microsoft's for the first time

Click to enlarge. Source: comScore

Given that the iPhone has been outselling Windows Mobile devices in the U.S. for nearly two years, it comes as something of a surprise that Apple (AAPL) has only now caught up to Microsoft (MSFT) in terms of active smartphone users.

But that's what the latest data from comScore show. The bar graph at right, drawn from numbers obtained by FierceDeveloper, shows that the installed base of iPhone users in the U.S. overtook Windows Mobile's sometime between July and October 2009.

Microsoft had a big head start, of course, but its market share has been stagnating lately. Research in Motion (RIMM), by contrast, enjoys both a head start and a growing market share. According to comScore, about 40% of the smartphones still in use in America are BlackBerries, while less than 25% are iPhones.

A copy of comScore's report can be purchased at the compay's site for $4,995.

Below the fold: A full-size version of the chart.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Source: comScore

The iPhone leads the pack, Android is gaining, everybody else is losing share

Click to enlarge. Source: AdMob

It's been a year since Google (GOOG) released Android OS, the open-source smartphone operating system widely perceived as the most likely to overtake Apple's (AAPL) iPhone in the long run.

As it happens, Google this month also purchased AdMob, the world's largest purveyor of mobile phone advertising. So this seemed as good a time as any to take a snapshot of the changing smartphone marketplace, as measured by ad requests to AdMob's network.

We reviewed a year's worth of AdMob data — including the October numbers released Monday — and charted it on the graph at right (reproduced full-size below the fold).

There's a bias in the data, since AdMob ads run better on iPhone OS and Android devices than on, say, Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerries. But the trends are clear.

Over the past year, Nokia's (NOK) Symbian has lost the largest raw market share, down to 25% last month from 59% the same month a year earlier. In percentage terms, Windows Mobile (MSFT) is the biggest loser, down 70% in 12 months, with Symbian, Palm's (PALM) Web OS and BlackBerry OS close behind.

These numbers are based on worldwide ad requests. Apple's lead is even greater when AdMob zeroes in on the U.S. and U.K. markets. For a look at how the iPhone's share of the U.S. and worldwide markets have grown, see the chart prepared by MacRumors' Erik Slivka here.

Below the fold: A full-size fever chart of AdMob's worldwide data for all the major smartphone operating systems.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Source: AdMob

Touchscreen phones are on fire, comScore reports, and Apple is leading the pack. For now.

Three months ending Aug. 2009. Source: comScore MobiLens

There's a thundering herd of imitators behind it, but Apple's (AAPL) iPhone still dominates that fastest-growing segment of the U.S. smartphone market, according to a comScore report issued Tuesday.

Touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the U.S. grew at a breakneck 159% rate last year, comScore reports, easily outpacing the 63% growth of the broader smartphone market.

By last August, nearly 34 million Americans were carrying smartphones, 23.8 million of them touchscreen devices. And of those touchscreen phones, 32.9% were iPhones.

“The iPhone clearly set the trend in the industry for touchscreen devices, so it’s no surprise that it has the largest share of the market,” said comScore VP Mark Donovan. “But as other players have entered the touchscreen market with compelling devices, competition is clearly heating up.”

Donovan mentioned Google's (GOOG) Android platform in particular, although the closest Android contender in August was the T-Mobile (DT) G1 running a distant seventh after two proprietary LG phones, the BlackBerry (RIMM) Storm, the Palm (PALM) Pre and the Samsung Instinct.

Below the fold, comScore's spreadsheets, including one that shows preference by age group. (The smartphone sweet spot seems to be ages 24 to 34.)

IT departments are finally starting to buy Apple's smartphone, says a Deutsche Bank report

Click to enlarge. Source: Deutsche Bank

"There is growing evidence that the iPhone is making inroads into the Enterprise," writes Deutsche Bank research analyst Chris Whitmore in a report to clients Monday.

According to his estimates, Apple (AAPL) by the end of the year will have shipped about 2 million iPhones into corporate accounts through various routes, including internal IT department purchases and formal reimbursement policies.

That would give Apple about a 7% share of the enterprise smartphone market this year, up from 2% in 2008.

IT departments were famously resistant to the iPhone when it was launched two years ago. That resistance has begun to melt, writes Whitmore, for several reasons:

• User satisfaction. He cites the recent J.D. Power survey that named the iPhone "best in class" for both the consumer and enterprise markets
• Virtual keyboard. The initial perception that physical keyboards are critical for enterprise users has proved to be a "fallacy," says Whitmore.
• Enterprise applications. Among the 95,000 apps available for the iPhone, Whitmore estimates that 6,000 are enterprise-related, illustrating what he calls the "accelerating utility of the platform."
• Sluggish competition. The incumbents, Research in Motion (RIMM) and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Mobile, with >60% and 20% enterprise share, respectively, "are years behind Apple," he writes, "and appear to be losing ground in Developer support / Application development."

See also:

• J.D. Power: iPhone is No. 1, again
• Top 10 reasons IT won't support the iPhone
• Forrester: Top 4 reasons IT should support the iPhone

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Apple gains, RIM drifts, Palm holds steady in the latest ChangeWave survey

Source: ChangeWave

Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, with a 40% share, is still the most popular smartphone among the 4,255 owners who responded to a ChangeWave survey in September. But Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is gaining fast, according to research director Paul Carton.

"Apple (30%) has seen a huge market share jump since the previous survey," he writes in a release issued Tuesday. "Not only has the iPhone 3GS release enabled them to gain 5-pts overall — for the first time it has also placed them within striking distance of the number one spot in the consumer market."

Palm (PALM) remains far behind at 7%, Carton notes, but adds that "this is the first survey in nearly two years where their share hasn’t fallen – and that’s a clearly encouraging sign."

ChangeWave surveys are often dismissed as unrepresentative — which they are. But in this case, the so-called ChangeWave Alliances' 20,000 professionals "who spend their everyday lives on the frontline of technological change," according to its website, represent the sweet spot of RIM's and Palm's target market.

For more results — good and bad — from the survey, see the charts below the fold.

Apple continues to lead on the customer satisfaction front, with 74% of iPhone owners describing themselves as "very satisfied."

Source: ChangeWave

However, when asked whether they were planning to buy an iPhone, BlackBerry or Pre in the next 90 days, the BlackBerry gained, the Pre held steady and the iPhone fell sharply in comparison with a similar survey conducted in June.

Source: ChangeWave

Carton attributes the fall in iPhone purchase plans as a natural "settl[ing] back" after the "huge spike of excitement" that accompanied the iPhone 3GS launch in June. He notes that the 8-pt drop between June and September (from 44% to 36%) is a lot less than the 22-pt drop he picked up a year ago after the July 2008 launch of the iPhone 3G.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]

Consumers and business users alike prefer it over the BlackBerry

Photo: J.D. Power

Here's a bullet point you can expect to see at Steve Jobs' next keynote.

Apple's (AAPL)  iPhone has once again come in first in J.D. Power's semi-annual customer satisfaction study, despite a battery that continues to disappoint.

Apple increased its score in both the consumer and business user portions of the survey.

Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry was No. 2 among business users and No. 3, after Apple and LG, among consumers.

More broadly, the survey found:

• Smartphone owners are happier: Consumer satisfaction is up 14 index points (on a scale of 1,000) from six months ago; business owners are 43 points more satisfied than they were in 2008.
• Traditional cellphone owners are less happy: Their satisfaction is down 6 points from last April, "likely as a result, according to J.D. Power, "of heightened awareness among traditional mobile phone owners of advanced features available on smartphones."

The smartphone survey was conducted between January and June 2009 among  3,221 smartphone owners who have used their current mobile phone for less than two years.

In a separate survey of 12,595 traditional mobile phone owners, LG was No. 1

Below: the smartphone consumer results. For more on the survey, click here.

See also:

• J.D. Power survey: iPhone tops in all but battery
• J.D. Power: iPhone beats BlackBerry

Source: J.D. Power

Daniel Eran Dilger finds anti-Apple bias in Gartner's research

"Looking into its crystal ball, Gartner Group has predicted that Google’s Android will become the second largest smartphone platform by 2012," writes Daniel Eran Dilger in the one-man blog he grandly calls Roughly Drafted Magazine. "Problem is, nobody’s talking about how terrible Gartner is at predicting things, or that Gartner’s 'research' has historically been paid for by special interests."

So begins Dilger's reaction to an interview with Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney that appeared Tuesday in Computerworld and was picked up uncritically by more than half a dozen tech websites.

Drawing on historical records and making generous use of internal Microsoft documents made public during antitrust proceedings, Dilger attacks not only Dulaney's numbers, but the credibility of the entire Gartner research group.

The result is a 1,700-word screed that may be the most thorough take-down of a tech industry analyst — and his employer — since Eliot Spitzer went after Henry Blodget.

At issue is Dulaney's forecast that has the major smartphone operating systems divvying up the 2012 market as follows:

• Nokia's (NOK) Symbian: 203 million devices (39% market share)
• Google's (GOOG) Android: 76 million (14.5%)
• Apple's (AAPL) iPhone: 71.5 million (13.7%)
• Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile: 66.8 million (12.8%)
• Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry: 65.25 million (12.58%)
• Miscellaneous Linux devices: 28 million (5.4%)
• Palm's (PALM) WebOS: 11 million (2.1%)

Dilger finds it hard to believe that Android market share will grow 400% while the iPhone's stands still, but he is hardly a disinterested observer. He pens a pseudonymous column for AppleInsider and has written a book about Mac OS X Snow Leopard to be published next month by Wiley. His blood runs Apple red.

But he knows his stuff, and he has mined those Microsoft documents for some pure gold. He points to evidence, for example, that Microsoft paid Gartner — along with IDC and Forrester — to tilt results and publish reports putting Microsoft products in a favorable light.

One document, according to Dilger, shows that Microsoft spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort that “successfully lobbied and changed the Gartner Group TCO [Total Cost of Ownership] model to show Windows as providing the lowest overall TCO [in comparison to so-called Network Computers].”

Now, Dilger claims, Microsoft's support for Windows Mobile is running dry and Gartner is looking for a new customer with equally deep pockets. Someone like Google.

The best quote in the piece, taken from Microsoft’s manuals on evangelism (and not necessarily directed at Gartner in particular):

"Analysts sell out – that’s their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with."

You can read the Roughly Drafted piece in its entirety here.

Gartner has not yet returned a request for comment.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @ philiped]

Company wants to make its Flash technology available everywhere — and that means penetrating mobile devices.

Flash is coming to most mobile phones - except the one that starts with "i." Image: Adobe

Flash is finally coming to your smartphone—and so is Adobe (ADBE). With today's launch of the newest version its software, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, the San Jose-based company is making an aggressive push to get its product onto any gadget that allows for web browsing–Blackberry devices, netbooks, increasingly even TVs.

Crucially, Adobe has signed on a number of key launch partners for the product including Google (GOOG) and Research in Motion (RIMM). By the first half of next year, consumers can expect Flash on nearly every smartphone operating system including Google’s Android, Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian, Palm’s (PALM) webOS and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile.

This is great for developers, who have long had to use different software to make their applications work on different devices. And it’s even better for consumers, for whom web browsing will get faster and more consistent regardless of the device.

Flash is the graphics-rich software responsible for many of our most alluring web experiences. Three-quarters of online videos are delivered in Flash. Nearly as many of the web games we play are created using it. And it’s also responsible for some of the best graphics online. One tech analyst who enjoys the Washington Redskins is constantly annoyed that he can’t read Washington Post coverage of the team on his ‘berry because parts of the paper's online version, washingtonpost.com, are delivered in Flash.

Until now, Adobe has offered separate products for the personal computers and mobiles. Developers had to rely on Adobe Lite, a dumbed down version that didn’t allow for the rich experience of the web.

The new version of Flash has been in the works since Adobe launched its Open Screen Project in May 2008. Started with 25 partners, the project now has more than 50 that include everyone from chipmakers like Qualcomm (QCOM) to content providers like MTV networks.

With this move, Adobe hopes to transform Flash from a simple developer’s tool to a platform in and of itself. “Instead of writing for tv or phone or computer, developers can write in Flash across multiple screens and locations,” says Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with market research firm Interpret.

But just because an application will run on any device doesn’t mean it will be optimized for every device. There is still much work to be done before developers can truly create and deliver one application for any platform. And there is one Flash holdout, a company that has managed to deliver great video experiences and superb graphics on its phones so far without Adobe’s help: Apple. (AAPL)

Source: AdMob

Apple (AAPL) now has a substantial — if not the largest — share of the smartphone market in every region of the world except Asia and Africa, according to a report issued Wednesday by AdMob.

Overall, the iPhone's worldwide share grew to 40% from 33% over the last six months. In North America, its share of the smartphone market is 52%, as measured by hits on AdMob's ads.

AdMob, which bills itself as the world's largest mobile advertising marketplace, delivers ads displayed on smartphone screens, so its statistics tends to favor phones heavily used for Web surfing. "AdMob does not claim that this information will be necessarily representative of the mobile Web as a whole or of any particular country market," it warns at the bottom of the report. "AdMob’s traffic is driven by publisher relationships and may be influenced accordingly."

Among the report's other findings:

• Although its marketshare has been declining, Nokia (NOK) continues to hold 12 of the top 20 smartphone devices in AdMob’s network. Nokia’s N97 and 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen devices were the fourth and fifth most popular smartphones in the UK in August.
• Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry share declined only slightly over the last 6 months. There are 7 RIM models in the top 20 smartphones in North America.
• Google's (GOOG) Android is growing rapidly in North America and Western Europe. The HTC Magic (my Touch) is a Top 10 smartphone in both North America and Western Europe.
• Palm's (PALM) Pre also had a strong month due to the addition of new publishers to the AdMob network.

To read AdMob's report, click here. For an analysis of why it may unrepresent Apple's competitors, see Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer here.

Below: AdMob's graphs showing the changes in worldwide OS share and the distribution of that share by region.