Mobile/Insights/2011 Week27

• Dolphin HD reached 8 million users
• Alibaba launching its own Android version
• In the Q2 smartphone market, HTC, Samsung, Huawei and ZTE have experienced strong growth, while Nokia and RIM have been losing marketshare
• 3D screens are becoming more popular among smartphones and Japan is getting an Android powered waterproof TV
• The Asia-Pacific region will see extreme growth in the tablet segment, which will continue to be dominated by Apple

Dolphin HD has announced that it has reached 8 million users. The browser is currently at v5.1, and 6.0 beta, following a very active release schedule since its launch in 2010. It has 4.5 stars out of 5 in the Android Market and it has proven to be popular among early adopters. Read More

Also this week, Dolphin has leaked thousands of beta tester emails due to a mistake in using the CC and BCC fields when sending a newsletter. The browser apologized publicly for the faux pas. Read More

After Baidu announced last week to be soon launching its own Android version, Alibaba, China's biggest ecommerce platform, is rumoured to be working on its own version of the OS, too, with the release date in Q3 of 2011. One of the strategic reasons behind this decision is supposed to be the ability to integrate its cloud-based services into the OS. Read More

Early estimates of Q2 smartphone results say that the marketshare for RIM has fallen to 13% and HTC is growing by 1% since last quarter, having sold 11 M devices in Q2, which gives them a 11% marketshare. Samsung has also seen strong growth, having set a new record for fastest sales of a new Samsung model, the Samsung Galaxy S2, which was already sold to more than 4 million people. Nokia, on the other hand, announced price cuts of up to 15% across its whole range of smartphones in order to increase revenues. Two Chinese OEMs, Huawei and ZTE are also reporting growing sales, with Huawei on track to ship 12 million smartphones this year. Read More

The 3D screens are starting to become more frequent in the smartphone market, as now HTC, after Sharp and LG, has announced the launch of a device with 3D display and dual cameras for stereoscopy 3D capture, the HTC Evo 3D. Read More

HP has stated that it is in early talks with OEMs to be licensing its platform, with Samsung to be one of the rumoured conversation partners. Read More

More rumours about the next iPhone are coming out and this time they are reporting September this year as the ship date for the device. Apple is supposed to have ordered 15 million of the next generation iPhones from a Taiwanese manufacturer. Other reports speak about 2 versions of the new iPhone generation: a premium and a lower-end version, aimed at the emerging markets. Reported specs for the high-end version are: dual-core A5 processor, 8 MP camera, 3.7-3.8 inch screen, CDMA and GSM dual-mode. Read More

In Europe, the European Commission announced plans to increase competition in order to lower roaming prices by allowing European citizens to select an alternative mobile provider solely for use when abroad. Thus, operators would be forced to allow other companies to provide roaming services to their customers. In the same time, planned price limitations are supposed to help further lower prices. The proposal still needs to go through approval processes. Read More

Panasonic launched an Android powered portable TV in Japan. The TV is the Panasonic SV-ME970 and it runs Android 2.1 Eclair. The waterproof device has a 7 inch display, with a 800x480 pixel resolution, 4 GB memory, USB input and WiFi. Read More

Games are the most popular app category on mobile devices, followed by weather, social networking and maps/navigation and search apps, reported a Nielsen study. Other findings say that iOS gamers spend almost twice as much time playing as the average mobile gamer. Read More

Shipped tablets in the Asia-Pacific area will reach 21 million units by 2015, thus multiplying nearly 10 times from the 2 million units shipped in 2010. This device segment is expected to be growing at a compound annual growth rate of 54% in the 5 year period, reveals a study by IDC. The market continues to be dominated by Apple. Read More

In the US smartphone market, Android is continuing its growth, reaching a 38.1% marketshare, as well as iOS, who experienced a smaller bump and arrived 26.6% of the market. On the other hand, RIM has been dropping a 1 point to 24.7%, as well as Microsoft's share of the market, which has a total of 5.8% for Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. Read More