Mobile/Insights/2011 Week21

Opera had a full week: released an Opera Mobile 11 and an Opera Mobile Emulator update, as well as Opera Mini 6 for iPhones and iPads. They have announced 3 partnerships in China, Malaysia and Bulgaria and have released a new edition of the State of the Mobile Web

Microsoft previewed the WP7 "Mango" update, which brings IE 9 to mobile devices. IE 9 is based on Trident 5.0 and Chakra, supports SVG, HTML5, CSS 3. Several OEMs (besides Nokia) including HTC, Samsung, ZTE have promised to build devices with the OS when Mango comes out this fall.

Mobile phone numbers: Smartphones accounted for 23.6 percent of overall mobile phone sales by volume in the first quarter of 2011, but Apple, HTC and RIM accounted for 75% of profits and only 16% of volumes. Nokia remained the top phone OEM worldwide in terms of sales by volume, with Samsung on 2nd place, LG in 3rd, Apple in 4th and RIM in 5th.

Accessing the Internet is the second most popular activity on mobile devices in the SE Asia region with 50% penetration, the first being SMS with 92%.

MeeGo has traction with Chinese hardware and software vendors, backed by Intel.

Opera released updates to its mobile products:

• Opera Mobile 11 update 4 for Android was released, featuring stability improvements and bug fixes, as well as an ARM5 build
• the Opera Mobile Emulator, a testing client for Web content, was updated to support Opera Mobile 11
• Opera Mini 6 for iOS was released for both iPhones and iPads. Improvements include share buttons for My Opera, Facebook, Twitter and vKontakte, as well as a redesigned skin and menus

Opera announced a series of partnerships:

• with Spreadtrum, a Chinese fabless semiconductor company to include Opera Mini and Mobile on all of their mobile chipsets.
• with Maxis, one of the leading Malaysian mobile operators to create the Maxis Opera Mini browser for the carrier's devices. Maxis currently has 7 million mobile online users out of 14 million customers. Maxis also operates in India and Indonesia.
• with Mobitel Bulgaria to offer a customized version of the Opera Mini browser to the carriers' customers. The partnership is facilitated by Opera's global agreement with Vodafone that enables Vodafone and its local partners to roll out a customized Opera Mini client, which is called Vodafone Internet by Opera Mini.

Opera released a new edition of State of the Mobile Web:

• Facebook page views in Opera Mini account for more than half of all page views in S. Africa, Indonesia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Turkey, Mexico and the Philippines.
• Popularity in terms of usage is not always associated with very high page views. In Russia, for example, Vkontakte is used by 47% of mobile users but only accounts for 15.5% of all page views in Russia in Opera Mini.
• In April 2011, Opera Mini saw increases in unique users and data consumed. In all, 107.1 million people used Opera Mini in April, 57.9 billion pages were served, and 8.8 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users. 1

Smartphones accounted for 23.6 percent of overall mobile phone sales in the first quarter of 2011, an increase of 85 percent year-on-year. Nokia remained the top phone OEM worldwide in terms of sales, with Samsung on 2nd place, LG in 3rd, Apple in 4th and RIM in 5th. In the smartphone market, Android remained the top OS with 36% of sales worldwide, followed by Symbian with 24%, iOS with 17%, RIM with 13% and Microsoft with 3.6% a Gartner report revealed. 2

Apple, RIM and HTC account for 75% of total profits of the mobile device industry while accounting for 16% of volumes shipped for Q1 2011. 3

Accessing the Internet is the second most popular activity on mobile devices in the SE Asia region with 50% penetration, the first being SMS with 92%. Almost half of online consumers in Southeast Asian countries who say they do not own a smartphone, say they plan on buying a smartphone in 2011 according to a recent global online survey from The Nielsen Company. About a quarter (24%) of survey respondents said they already own a smartphone, up from 21 percent at the start of 2010. Singapore led the region, with 46 percent of those surveyed saying they owned a smartphone, while Thailand and Malaysia posted the most aggressive growth in the sector, 47 percent and 35 percent, respectively. In terms of OS preference, Nokia is the 1st with 58%, followed by iOS with 37%, BB OS with 20%, Microsoft with 15% and Android with 16%. 4

Microsoft announced details on the upcoming "Mango" update for Windows Phone 7 and released the beta version of the SDK. Several OEMs, besides Nokia, have announced to produce devices with the new version: HTC, Samsung, LG, Acer, Fujitsu, ZTE, Dell.

Mango brings IE 9 to Windows Phone devices, which means:

• Trident 5.0 engine (significantly update from Trident 3.1 bundled in the original WP7)
• support for SVG, HTML5, CSS 3
• Chakra, Microsoft's JIT JS compiler
• redesigned UI, bringing the URL bar to the bottom of the screen
• ability to pin pages to the home screen (the equivalent of the "Pinned Tab" feature on the desktop version)
• screenshots and emulator video at: 5

Other updates to the OS include voice recognition services: text to speech and speech to text, an area where Android is also developing,Twitter, LinkedIn and Windows Live integration into the communications interface, Facebook facial recognition and location data, as well as a new set of APIs available to apps and multitasking improvements. Microsoft's search engine, Bing, also sees a deeper integration into the OS. The Windows Phone Marketplace also got a Web-based interface.

Several Chinese hardware and software vendors, together with Intel have said to be producing devices running on the platform during this week's MeeGo conference. Its application is to go beyond smartphones, to tablets and embedded devices. 6

Google is expected to announce today its "Google Wallet" product, a NFC payment system developed in collaboration with Sprint in the US. The service will probably be deployed in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A and Washington DC. 7

A survey on tablet use in the US revealed that more people use tablets and smartphones in front of the TV than in bed, while doing the reverse for eReaders. More details at 8

Apple expected to be following Amazon and Google very soon in having a cloud service to allow people to upload and store their music on the Web and listen to it on different devices. Apple's 200 million iTunes users will be the start user base for the service. 9