Displaying items by tag: Sales

If Microsoft was hoping for Windows 8 to pour out of the stores like water they might be in for a big surprise. According to initial retail store estimates the sales of Windows 8, while better than Windows 7 during the same time frame, are not as good as Microsoft would have liked. Most analysts are showing stores meeting expectation in Windows 8 OS and hardware sales, but nothing extraordinary. What makes this very interesting is that many devices are out of stock including Microsoft’s ARM –Based Surface tablet. From a logistical standpoint this would not appear to make much sense unless these products were not seeded heavily.

The Position of the best-selling smartphone in the world in the last quarter now belongs to the Samsung Galaxy S III, according to Strategy Analytics. During the quarter Samsung has delivered a total of 18 million units. “The Galaxy S3 captured an impressive 11 per cent share of all smartphones shipped globally and it has become the world's bestselling smartphone model for the first time ever" said Strategy Analytics' Neil Shah.

In May of this year Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S III smartphone, which has so far sold 30 million copies! By comparison, during the same period in 2011, the previous model Galaxy S II sold over ten million copies. Obviously it's no coincidence that many techies and common users like to give it the title of the best smartphone available.

Verizon has published their results for Q3 2013 and they are doing pretty good. They managed to sell 6.8 million smartphones, which means that now more than 53% of Verizon users are smartphone owners. These sales brought them a 7.5% year-on-year rise and around 1.8 million new customers; which is the most in the last 4 years. In only three months they made $16.2 billion in revenue and the average amount of money spent on their services per account has also increased by 6.5% making it $145.42 monthly.

For about the last four months we have been talking about the decline of Apple. We are not saying that they are going to die, or go bankrupt or anything like that, but we are saying that they are no longer going to be the company that they once were. There are many reasons for this that we have covered including a lack of real innovation, a closed eco system, and one of the biggest ones; Tim Cook as CEO. To many this one may come as a surprise, but it is not that much of one really. Tim Cook is a businessman first and foremost. He was the one that proposed moving production and warehousing outside the US. He also has been instrumental in making other very business oriented decisions. However, while Tim Cook is good at running the day-to-day operations of a company, he is not the guy you want in charge at a place like Apple.

As expected HTC presented their Windows Phone 8 devices yesterday. Windows Phone 8X and 8S will both be branded as Microsoft Signature Windows Phones. The 8X model will feature a 4.3-inch Super LCD II display with 720p resolution, a 1.5 GHz dual core Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM. As with most smartphones these days the 8x will have an 8 Mpix rear camera with BSI sensor and LED flash, while the front will be 2.1 Mpix with the ability to record 1080p HD video. A nice thing to know is that unlike Nokia's new phones the 8X can record video with stereo sound. The 8x will also have Gorilla Glass and optical lamination touchscreen. Storage capacity is 16GB which cannot be expanded with microSD cards. NFC, WiFi a/b/g/n and LTE (NA only) or HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (EMEA) are also supported. To take care of sound they brought in Beats Audio that gives the phone decent multimedia boost.

Today Apple announced that they have received over 2 million preorders for the iPhone 5 in just 24 hours. This is twice as many as for the iPhone 4S. Apple's expectations were not so big so the preorders exceeded the initial supply. The first batch of devices will be delivered on September 21, while rest will be shipped in October. It looks like their promotions are giving fruit as this is a new preorder record for Apple. Since the first iPhone hit the market, their preorder were constantly increasing with every new model.

Apple is claiming that the new iPhone is sold out stating that preorders were “incredible”. The event happened an hour after preorders started which would seem to be a rather big deal for the new phone… well except for that nagging little fact that before the launch Sharp had already stated that they were not going to be able to meet production numbers of screens for Apple’s new phone. This problem was talked about all over the internet as having the potential to hurt Apple after the launch.  We took a slightly different track and felt that Apple would spin the incident at launch which is what they have done.

Sony decided not to make the same move Nintendo made when their 3DS sales were going bad.  Instead of cutting their prices they will try to attract people to the Vita with cheap bundles, “At a certain point in the future we would like to address the pricing issue for some of the people who are waiting. But this year we are trying to add value by creating different types of bundles. We announced we will provide LittleBigPlanet PS Vita bundle pack. That’s affordable for people who are looking for a good deal.“ Sony Wordlwide Studioes president Shuhei Yoshida said.

Yesterday Apple reported their earnings for Q3 2012, asked an Australian court for $2.5 Billion in damages, and were granted a patent for technology that has (again) been on the market for a few years. Although each of these could probably fill an entire article we decided to lump them into one today so we can get to some real news after we wrap things up here. So let’s kick things off with the Q3 earnings call which fell short of expectations almost across the board.