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It's official: iOS now has more marketshare than Android. Reuters reports that Apple completely erased Android's marketshare lead, confirming earlier reports by both Nielsen and NPD. Over 150 Android smartphones couldn't outcompete the iPhone 4S.

The clock is ticking, Fandroids.

It's official: iOS now has more marketshare than Android. Reuters reports that Apple now has more marketshare than Android, confirming earlier reports by both Neilsen and NPD.

The clock is ticking, Fandroids.

More to the point, there is no guarantee of a repeat next quarter, far from it.

Nothing's guaranteed. But look at the trend on Neilson's market share estimates.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/smartphone-recent.png

I think I can guess why this is happening. People on contracts generally get to change their phone every couple of years. Increasingly people are replacing a smartphone with another, rather than buying their first smartphone. And so satisfaction with their existing smartphone plays a big part of the decision. And that's bad news for everyone but Apple.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/01/09/iphone-satisfaction-at-75-closest-competitor-at-47/

The people chosen to be surveyed have been picked from a pool from an online survey company.

It is true that they conduct the survey online, and like all surveys you should be wary of the results (especially when they are conducted for an organisation with an angle). But in this case it is run by a large, established market research company. This is not just a backyard operator extrapolating results from just 50 respondents. The participants come from the same pool of people who take part in their offline market research.

A 8 year increase in the average age of a gamer in 6 years?

Given the huge explosion of gaming capable being owned by traditionally non-gaming people (eg. smartphones, tablets), I don't think that it is too unusual that we should see the average age increase. The report showed the proportion of households with gaming devices increased dramatically over the 6 year period. Consider that back in 2005, most people with children would have already had some gaming device, so the bulk of the increase of households must have come from the older generation. Hence, the average age goes up.

and now both NPD and Nielsen are saying that iOS has erased the market share lead that Android had.

Oh are you talking about this submission from bonch?

bonch writes
  "A Nielsen report states that the launch of the iPhone 4S helped Apple close the marketshare gap with Android, raising them to 44.5% compared to Android's 46.3% in December, coinciding with an earlier study by the NPD group. Apple sold 35 million iPhones last quarter, with the iPhone 4S making up 57% of those sales. RIM continued its decline but still outsold Windows Phone 7, which came in at a measly 1.6%."
  Link to Original Source

Come on bonch, we know it's you, there's no need to post anonymously.

and now both NPD and Nielsen are saying that iOS has erased the market share lead that Android had.

Oh are you talking about this submission from bonch?

bonch writes
  "A Nielsen report states that the launch of the iPhone 4S helped Apple close the marketshare gap with Android, raising them to 44.5% compared to Android's 46.3% in December, coinciding with an earlier study by the NPD group. Apple sold 35 million iPhones last quarter, with the iPhone 4S making up 57% of those sales. RIM continued its decline but still outsold Windows Phone 7, which came in at a measly 1.6%."
  Link to Original Source

Come on bonch, we know it's you, there's no need to post anonymously.

This isn't rocket science. It is offered, I don't like it, I don't watch it. It's not like it's the ONLY thing on. Not even the most prominent.

The ratings at the moment are a bit screwy because of the holidays, but...
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/top10s/television.html
Top 10 broadcast shows:
Football, football, 60 minutes, football, NCIS, Criminal Minds, New Year's Rockin Eve, Big Bang Theory, CSI, NCIS.

Sports, news, and scripted shows. Been that way for decades.

Here's a random list from a couple weeks earlier. Very little in the way of reality shows.

Like anything else, the noisy stuff gets attention. Shows like Jersey Shore get a lot of press but no one realizes that the majority of people are quietly watching sitcoms and dramas.

How does the 'Free Market' (TM) work with financial organizations that are 'Too Big To Fail'?

Answer: The only way corporations can become "too big to fail" is when the government removes their competition.

Internet search is just about the only immediate, simple example of a "free market" around -- consumers can switch freely between providers, there are no barriers (and virtually no costs) to businesses starting a new search provider, and no governing body can claim regulatory power. Google is the biggest provider in this market, with approximately 2/3rds of all search done via their service. You can be sure that if Google stopped being the most convenient and accurate provider, their lead would vanish like morning fog and no harm would be done to the market, even if they had a lead of 99%. They must maintain this lead -- or grow further -- by always providing a better service than any competitor.

US banks, however, do not have to worry about the services provided by "competitors" of any size. Interest rates for all banks are centrally set by the Federal Reserve, thus removing the market's primary competitive differentiation. It is only when Bank of America is guaranteed that the brand new First Podunkington Bank must offer the same rates, that they can grow "too big to fail". With fair competition on interest and lending rates, the bigger banks would not be able to grow to such sizes that the market will "fail" when they contract in size.

Looks like the Nokia guy is right, the iPhone is only #3 on America's youths' wishlists - after iPad and iPod Touch. Non-iPhone smartphone is at #10 right after TV set (aren't they supposed to be dead too?).

Despite the use of the word "device" in the title of the chart, that analysis is only of smartphones, and doesn't include iPad or iPod touch, which are both iOS devices.

Here's the primary source.
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/in-u-s-market-new-smartphone-buyers-increasingly-embracing-android/

I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.

313M US Population (July 2011 est.) US CIA World Factbook
286M US cell phones (as of 2009), US CIA World Factbook, approx 240M unique users (source eMarketer and
96.7% of U.S. homes have a TV (2012 estimate) Nielsen May 2011 estimates
Almost 99% of video content watched in the U.S. is on traditional television (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
The average American watches 31.5 hrs of TV per week (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. www.pewinternet.org

So it appears neither broadcast TV nor cell phones captures the entire population but both are good options to reach a substantial portion of the population.

I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.

313M US Population (July 2011 est.) US CIA World Factbook
286M US cell phones (as of 2009), US CIA World Factbook, approx 240M unique users (source eMarketer and
96.7% of U.S. homes have a TV (2012 estimate) Nielsen May 2011 estimates
Almost 99% of video content watched in the U.S. is on traditional television (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
The average American watches 31.5 hrs of TV per week (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. www.pewinternet.org

So it appears neither broadcast TV nor cell phones captures the entire population but both are good options to reach a substantial portion of the population.

I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.

313M US Population (July 2011 est.) US CIA World Factbook
286M US cell phones (as of 2009), US CIA World Factbook, approx 240M unique users (source eMarketer and
96.7% of U.S. homes have a TV (2012 estimate) Nielsen May 2011 estimates
Almost 99% of video content watched in the U.S. is on traditional television (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
The average American watches 31.5 hrs of TV per week (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. www.pewinternet.org

So it appears neither broadcast TV nor cell phones captures the entire population but both are good options to reach a substantial portion of the population.

Its been out long enough to become the most popular smartphone OS on the planet, that's how long.

Phones in general are a mature market dominated by entrenched players that are not Apple.

If you are talking US smartphone market, that's just not true.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/june-2011-smartphone-share.png

Apple has the single largest share by company. Android as a platform is larger, but it's not like those companies using Android aren't still competing against each other. Certainly there is no entrenched player dominating.

Or 10% of American smartphone users....

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=28516

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=28237

US, handsets by units.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=28237

if they had a sub-1GB plan for less money, i would be pretty excited

as it stands, AT&T's 200MB plan is still the best value for the majority of cellular data users, even compared to unlimited plans

Actually, the data gathering was in part carried out by the Nielson Company (was in the original ESA subscriber newsletter), but they did fail to list ALL of their sources within the document. However, next to the Baby Boomers, "Generation X" is the 2nd largest demographic of people in the USA and it does make rather obvious sense in what the ESA is saying. As I posted in another comment, the ESA's official public review of the data can be found here if you are interested.

Only for now, and only if you're one of the people that hasn't cut cable TV service from their budgets. The average American watches 153 hours of TV every month. Netflix HD streams eat up approximately 2GB every hour (source: Netflix themselves and verified by watching my own router traffic while watching HD Netflix streams).

Some simple arithmetic leads us to 153 hours * 2GB/hr = 306GB per month for an average American who gets their TV fix from Netflix streaming or another comparable service. And this is assuming that there's either only one person in the household, or at least that every person in the household is watching the same thing all of the time. Have a roommate who has completely different taste in television? Boom, 612GB/month. Household or family of four? Of six? Happen to lie on the upper half of the Bell curve? You're screwed. Nevermind the traffic used by, you know, actual internet usage.

I'm sure there will be some replies saying "People should go outside or read a book", but the fact remains that they don't. Still think 150GB or even 250GB a month is all that generous?

"Viewers watched an average of three hours and 45 minutes of television a day in 2009, 3% more than in 2004, according to research published today by the media regulator Ofcom"

If there was some generational effect going on (the article does note that the elderly watch more than the average) it would be somewhat mitigated by the Economist's finding that

"In December 2009, Nielsen estimated that 34% of internet users had the television on while surfing the net. But when tuning in for a programme, television-watchers used the internet only about 3% of the time"

US numbers show a similar trend -

"the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2% increase from last year"

Those who are interested should check out the American Time Use Survey - it has some rather interesting content (for instance: 15 to 19 read for an average of 5 minutes per weekend day while spending 1.0 hour playing games or using a computer for leisure. )
Taking the two pieces together it would seem we're watching more TV in general, and when we're online we have the TV on anyway. Hardly seems worth pounding the drums of the apocalypse over.

Apple is doing so much better than its competition, this article is delusional. Apple has always maintained the look and feel of their products as something unique to them. They created it, why should other companies be allowed to copy them? They can come up with their own unique designs. This lawsuit fits perfectly with this idea. No need to project some sort of desperation scenario.

Also, the article is factually incorrect when it states Android is surging past iOS in market share (iOS maintains a significant lead over Android, and always has, although on Slashdot ignorance is bliss, so I fully expect some replies from people ignorantly claiming this isn't true), and Apple's market share is increasing, and their revenues are increasing, and their profits are increasing. They are the most financially successful cell phone maker on the planet. They do not fear Google's business model. Why would they when their own is working so well? Not just working well, but working significantly better than that of anyone else?

This article is just the same old uninformed nonsense you expect from people who don't understand that the reason people make money is to buy things. Just because something is free (or "less than free") does not mean people will want it, nor does it mean that people won't pay more for something else. Store shelves wouldn't contain name brands if people always chose the cheapest option.

iOS far outsells Android, yet clearly Apple's business model is doomed? Brilliant!

Forgive my ignorance, but when I did a quick Google search for "ios vs android market share", the most recent result showed Android ahead of iPhone in smart phones. Am I missing something? http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/who-is-winning-the-u-s-smartphone-battle/

I am aware, as I think most people, that even if Apple has less market share, their revenue and profit far outweighs anyone else on the market.

Even if Apple still has greater market share, you are wrong to say they don't fear Android. iOs had over a year head start - and the numbers are already scary. Your logic - that because they are doing well, they must not fear Google's business model, is flawed. You can both be 'winning' and fear the competition.

Also, the article was stating the lawsuit is doomed. Not the company's business model.

The point of the article, that Apple's strategy here is to give Android a price via lawsuits, still seems pretty valid to me.

For general use, dedicated calculators have gone the way of dedicated mp3 players or feaure phones.

Funny that you should use those as comparison examples; I 'still' have and use all three, and I am not the only one.

A quick search reveals the following article, which says that feature phones and smartphones currently have approximately equal market share. And how many people do you see still buying mp3-only players, such as the iPod Shuffle? They are extremely popular.

Another example: e-reader vs. full-featured tablet (eg. kindle vs ipad). More Kindles will be sold in 2011 than iPads.

The reason is that purpose-built appliances can still be simpler to use (think ergonomics, dedicated task buttons), cheaper, and have orders of magnitude better battery life than a general use device.

I think 300 million Americans spend more than 20 minutes watching ads (each) in a weekend.

(from 2009) The average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home.

So that should probably say "watching advertising on TV in a single day.

do beat the crap out of Apple *in market share* across all different markets --including music players and phones-

Wait, what? Pray tell, which manufacturer is beating Apple in *market share* in the music player market?

Also, please enlighten us: which which manufacturers - other than RIM, who follow a similar model to Apple, in controlling both their own hardware & software - are beating Apple in *market share* in the smartphone market? When considering your answer, bear in mind that "Android" is not a manufacturer, it's a platform used by MANY manufacturers. Here's some pretty pictures to help you formulate your answer.

A bit offtopic, but I believe that is what they do for radio still, is it not?

Also, I don't believe the 'Nielsen box' has gone away.

Even Droid is barely keeping up with iPhones

Android is doing really well against iOS in the US smartphone arena. After months of steady growth they have surpassed RIM for the #1 spot, leaving Apple in third-place.

If you're curious to see how the Android market breaks down by manufacturer, check out the lastest Nielsen report

White Male Victim Alert!

Note: Just because you feel aggrieved does not mean that your perceived grievances are at all reflected in reality.

Look at the narrative TV shows on from the Neilson ratings for shows this week:

• MENTALIST, THE
• TWO AND A HALF MEN
• CSI
• BIG BANG THEORY
• DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
• MIKE & MOLLY

Of the 6 narrative shows that made on the list, three of them (Mentalist, CSI, Big Bang Theory) explicitly feature intelligent white men in starring roles. The rest star white male characters of above average intelligence. Intelligent white males are all over TV, even if there are a few prominent exceptions in cartoon comedies. If anything, intelligent males are way over represented on TV given how many white male dipshits we have in USA.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/apple-leads-smartphone-race-while-android-attracts-most-recent-customers/

Obviously, someone is wrong on the Internet!

I guess it depends on who you ask

"The fragmentation issue is honestly just marketing nonsense."

Android fragmentation is real. Even the ever-so-popular Angry Birds had "severe performance issues" due to fragmentation and had to create a second Angry Birds game for low-end Android devices.

Droid has no less than 8 different versions, from 1.1 to 2.3, in addition to whatever custom wrapper or branding the manufacture or carrier added, and dozens of different kinds of handsets, all with different cpus, gpus and memory. iOS has at most 2 versions, 3.x and 4.x, (1.x and 2.x is used by less than 3% of iPhones) and at most 4 handsets, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.

So if you're developing an iPhone app you only have to test on 4 or 5 devices, iPhone 4 running iOS4, 3GS running 3.x and 4.x, and 3G running 3.x and 4.x, and iPhone running 3.1.3. If you're developing a Droid app you have dozens of devices with different software configurations you must test on or risk angry customers, and every time you want to update or Google pushes out a new version of Droid you again have to do testing on dozens of devices.

I know Android is the most popular smartphone OS but honestly I think it's going to self-implode, customers will eventually get tired of fragmentation issues, with apps not working and frustrated developers, and they'll either give up on smartphones entirely or turn to Blackberry or iOS.

women: 30.9% iOS, 22.8% Android

men: 28.6% iOS, 32.6% Android

Clearly a 2% preference for iOS means it represents the entire female gender! /s

Source: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/us-smartphone-battle-heats-up/

My suggestion would to be to

1) Estimate how much the average person spends per year on the type of entertainment infringed on as a percentage of income.

5.4% of income is spent on entertainment, and 3.4% of entertainment budget is on music. So 5.4*3.4 = .2% of total income is spent on music.

http://www.visualeconomics.com/how-the-average-us-consumer-spends-their-paycheck/
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/video-games-score-5-of-u-s-household-entertainment-budget/

Then take that number times the individuals income. So say 25,000 for the average individual.
25,000*.002= 50$

So that is the base amount for that individual. Now that can be multiplied times a penalty factor for willful infringement, etc.

We're going to get our asses kicked by Android in the mobile market, so we're going to use our vast resources to try to destroy yet another superior product.

Except Microsoft leads Android. Microsoft is third in the market with RIM in first and Apple in second. Androids are fourth, behind MS, though growing. Both Androids and iPhones are growing where RIM and Windows Mobile are declining.

Falcon

I would assume that the catch is that Wal Mart gets unlimited access to all of those texts for data mining.

According to Nielsen it's those punk kids who are doing all of the texting - when they're not running on my lawn that is. So what better place to get up-to-the-minute data on a key marketing demographic than from their very own text messages?

I'm all for the FTC cracking down on online advertising and tracking. Who are we kidding though? Have you seen some of the stuff that happens offline? Has anyone taken a look at what Nielsen is up to? They have insane levels of demographic data available on EVERYONE. Every single one of us has already been pigeon holed and stereotyped based on our buying habits, where we live, what kind of car we drive, etc.

Take a look at this.

http://en-us.nielsen.com/content/nielsen/en_us/product_families/nielsen_claritas/prizm.html

Emphasis mine.

"PRIZM defines every U.S. household in terms of 66 demographically and behaviorally distinct types, or "segments," to help marketers discern consumer behavior: their likes, dislikes, lifestyles, purchase behaviors and media preferences. Used by thousands of marketers within Fortune 500 companies, PRIZM provides the "lingua franca" for marketing in an increasingly diverse and complex American marketplace. Because PRIZM is linked to the surveys and panels of most major marketing databases in the U.S., the segmentation system enables you to target on virtually any purchase and media behavior."

The "masses of people who held off and are going to buy an iPhone in Q3" theory is a popular one amongst fans of the platform.
However, market analysts disagree:

From http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/20/strong_quarter_expected_but_apples_antennagate_could_hurt_iphone_sales.html

"Analyst Yair Reiner has reduced his projected iPhone sales for the next quarter to 8.5 million, down from 11 million, citing well publicized signal drops that can be replicated with the iPhone 4 in weak signal areas. He expects others on Wall Street, which average predictions between 11 million and 11.5 million, will also reduce their estimates."

From http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/06/apple_struggles_to_meet_iphone_4_demand_as_ipad_availability_improves.html

"But in the September quarter, Wu has slightly increased his forecast of iPhone sales to 10.5 million, up from 10.4 million. He said checks with overseas suppliers have indicated that availability will improve in the August timeframe, offset by about a million of remaining channel inventory that is expected to be drawn down. Wu still expects Apple to ship 40 million iPhones in calendar 2010."

If Apple sells 10.5 million units in Q3, they'll be a little past where Android was in Q2 (roughly 500k units, but it's difficult to get very precise). If they sell only 8.5, as Reiner predicts, they will be simply maintaining the pre iPhone 4 rate of sales. Even the most favorable estimates do not put iPhone sales on pace with Android in Q3 or for the year.

In a market that is rapidly expanding, maintaining your units shipped per quarter is actually losing ground, as easily seen in the graph from the Nielson report: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mobile-OS-share-recent-2010.png

Notice that Apple declined from 34% of all sales in 2009 Q4 to only 23% in 2010 Q2, despite having sales of approximately the same volume in both Q1 and Q2 of this year.

Or, to make a long story short: No, iPhone sales are not going to catch up with Android sales, regardless of any "lurking hordes" who were waiting for the iPhone 4.

IN THE QUARTER. In the quarter. It's the biggest platform IN THE QUARTER.

Rather than admonishing other people to read your links, please read the story that you're talking about. They haven't caught up to anyone yet, they're just selling faster.

Ignore the 851% figure because it's meaningless. If I sell 1 phone in my first quarter and TEN phones in my second quarter, that's a growth of 1000% per quarter! All it tells us is that Android didn't have much market penetration before and it's up now.

In the end, this isn't news. There are MANY manufacturers using Android as a platform and only Apple using iOS as a platform. Apple is tied to the most hated major network in America, and Android isn't. The actual question is 'what took them so dang long?'

While, just glancing at the math, your statement may seem to be true, the simple fact is, it is not quite that simple. While Android only had 9% of the market share in Q1 2010, they had as much marketshare as Symbian, Palm and Linux phones combined. On top of that, NPD claims that Android phones outsold iPhones in Q1 2010 as well.

BUT the statistics are different elsewhere. Gartner says there were 8.36 million iPhones sold in Q1, while there were 5.21 million Android phones sold in Q1. So, even taking that more conservative estimate, it means Android phones were doing very well in Q1 - and simply, even better now.

It does make the 800+% growth figure though seem absurd - unless it's over Q2 2009.

So let's play some numbers game.

According to Nielsen, Android market share in 2010 Q1 was 9%.

If 20% of the overall smartphone market wants to buy an Android phone next, then it means that:

20/9 = 222% of Android users will buy another Android phone!

Take that, Apple! Your 77% is nothing!

p.s. no, I don't believe in any way that this is correct way of looking at these numbers.

It is at least as "correct" as their way. But if you read carefully, they include the iPhone users in the "smartphone" category. Two can play this game -- we can do some "math" too.

Assuming iPhone in the study is represented roughly same as the market share (28%), this would really skew the numbers in its favor. Lets un-skew. This means that of 34% Smartphone users that would buy iPhone as their next phone, 22% (28%*0.77) are already iPhone users - meaning that only 12% (34%-22%) of the users would switch to iPhone from another Smartphone while 23% (100%-77%) of existing iPhone users that would switch away from iPhone.

So, the real story - almost twice as many people would switch away from iPhone as would switch to it. ;-)

-Em

According to Nielsen, Android market share in 2010 Q1 was 9%.

If 20% of the overall smartphone market wants to buy an Android phone next, then it means that:

20/9 = 222% of Android users will buy another Android phone!

Take that, Apple! Your 77% is nothing!

p.s. no, I don't believe in any way that this is correct way of looking at these numbers.

As far as I can tell that's just sales for a specific time frame. Not all-time sales. Also consider that iPod Touch devices are capable of running the same applications - expanding the platform considerably.

Here are some actual US marketshare numbers from 2010: Nielsen.

You realise this story is actually about apps, rather than phones, right? They might have "only" 28% of the smartphone market (I say only because it seems a small figure but it's currently second only to RIM/Blackberry at the moment, and they're having their pie eaten at an alarming rate), but they control a disproportionately high share of the app market (the most recent figures I can find are a year old, unfornately, but I doubt they've shifted in anyone else's favour too much in that time). 79% market share when your nearest competitor has only 15% share sounds like it might be a big enough advantage to constitute a monopoly.

I said...For the majority of the market, meaning the majority of the smart phone market, the iPhone is a great product. I even capitalized the smartphone part of that sentence. I didn't say it was the end-all be-all of phones. I merely don't understand slashdot's group-hate towards what is, in my opinion, a great product. I think the majority of "the haters" only hate it because they see others hating on it and think it would be nice to be a part of that group, for whatever reason. I really don't care that some developers "can't" develop for it (even though that's a flat out lie) or that everything has to run through the app store. I don't care about any of these things because I'm not a developer. When it comes to phones, I am a standard end-user, and for me, the iPhone (or Droid, it has some cool features too) does everything I want it to.

Anyway, based off your link, I went and looked up a few things myself. Does everyone who buys a cell phone buy a smart phone? No, obviously not. Of the smartphone market, Nokia has the largest marketshare, at 44%. Android is a distant fourth, behind RIM and Apple. Are they gaining ground? Sure. But between blackberries, Droid phones and iPhones, Nokia has decided to get out of the market completely.

http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/smartphones-to-overtake-feature-phones-in-u-s-by-2011/ --This link is for when smartphones are expected to over-take "regular" cell phones.

http://gizmodo.com/5418797/nokia-to-halve-smartphone-production-in-2010-official-suicide-watch-starts-now --Nokia getting out of the smartphone market?

I went to look for percentages in the US just to see what was what. I gotta say, I was rather intrigued by the results:

http://www.androidguys.com/2010/05/10/android-edges-apple-smart-phone-market-share/

Relevant quote: The Android train keeps gathering steam as evidenced by the latest report from The NPD Group. According to their estimates, Android has eclipsed Apple for second place in the United States in market share, behind Research in Motion. Android sits at a 28 percent share while RIM commands 36 percent. Apple trails in third with 21 percent.

Everything I was basing this off of is that of all the people I know, and the phones I've seen them with, exactly 1 guy uses an Android phone. Everyone else either uses a non-smart phone or a blackberry or iPhone.

Anyway, thanks for the links and whatnot.

P.S.: I expect, when Android gets a huge marketshare, for slashdot posters to start hating on those smartphones too, because that's the "cool kids" thing to do. Apple used to be "a great little company" that built quality computers and devices. Now, since they've had such huge successes, it's suddenly cool to hate on them. It gets old. I'm suspecting the majority of slashdot posters can't code Hello World properly and wouldn't know vi from emacs if emacs pimp-slapped them. (FTR, I am not referring to you in the above response, merely saying in general)
 

There's a new API to fetch data from Facebook more easily, which sounds great, if only I could figure out why I'd want to do that.

It seems pretty obvious to me. Facebook is making it easier to data mine user information. The blogger who wrote the comment might not see a use for it, but I assure you that Zygna, the three letter agencies, and a whole slew of other organizations get all warm and fuzzy every time Facebook makes it easier to fetch data from the service.

Keep in mind, Facebook is getting ready for an IPO (no matter what Mark says). 90% of everything they do from here on out will be focused on making their offering more attractive to investors, marketers and the like.

The amount of data that is available through services that aren't Facebook is mind boggling. I work for a non-profit and some of the information being offered to us in the guise of "donor research" makes me uncomfortable. I don't like telemarketing. I don't like being approached by people who seem to know more about me than I'd ever volunteer on my own.

I hadn't even heard about "PRIZM" until a week or so ago.

http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product_families/nielsen_claritas/prizm

It seems to me that at the end of the day it comes down to consumerism. If a person feels comfortable with being marketed to, and enjoys consumerism and spending money and being up to date with information about new products, then that person won't really care if Facebook or anyone else makes it easy to market to them. On the other hand if a person enjoys a modicium of privacy and does not particularly enjoy being classified and analyzed and pigeon-holed by people they've never met, then the activities of sites like Facebook upset them.

Personally, I don't care too much. About a decade ago I read a book titled "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion". It was written by a professor at the University of Arizona and is a great guide that covers the methodolies used by marketers, salespeople, and so on. Once the mind becomes aware of the underlying mechanisms by which decisions are influenced, it becomes fairly simple to automatically avoid attempts at manipulation.

here is your "poll"

I wondered about this myself, but I think it ultimately comes down to trust. Why should advertisers trust Hulu to provide accurate numbers on viewing when they have a clear incentive to bump up their figures? The value of Nielsen is its impartiality.

Now if there were a way for a third-party to manage the logging of web visits, that might pose an alternative to Nielsen, if the advertisers and agencies would take the service provider seriously. So far, web measurement seems to rely on recruited panels like Alexa uses. Measuring web traffic at the servers themselves doesn't seem to be very common as of yet. Of course the web is incredibly decentralized which makes server-based measurements very difficult to manage. Still, a large number of consumers probably visit a fairly small number of sites (a few hundred sites probably constitute a large fraction of all visits in the US), so installing a server-based measurement technique at these sites could be quite effective.

There's a lot more to Nielsen than television ratings, too. They also measure sales data and correlate exposures with product sales. From the linked article:

Nielsen measures product sales, market share, distribution, price and merchandising conditions in tens of thousands of retail outlets such as grocery stores, drug stores, mass merchandisers and convenience stores. Reporting periods can be as short as a single day for selected electronic point-of-sale (POS) information or up to bimonthly for manual field audits. Data-collection methods will vary by country and type of outlet being reported.

Nielsen also measures the purchasing behavior of more than 250,000 households in 27 countries through our industry-leading consumer panels. Our US panel is the largest and most representative static sample in the country.

That total you see in the image in the article is for Microsoft Sites. This number includes searches from ALL of Microsoft's search boxes: Bing, Live, microsoft.com, etc etc.

If you look at the Nielsen report here: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/nielsen-reports-december-u-s-search-rankings/

You'll see that they list Microsofts search sites as "MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search", which is a bit more explanatory I would say.

And if you check Hitwise, where they list searches BY domain name, www.bing.com LOST 4%. (http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/search-enginedec2009/)

3.29 minutes per day.

Some numbers. On TV watching alone americans are averaging 153 hours/month. About 5 hours/day. Say an hour a day of that is advertising though it's probably more. Average hourly wage is about $20/hour. Total US population is about 300 million. So 300 million hours, the equivalent of 6 billion dollars, is being wasted on TV advertising every day in the US alone (100 billion hours/year).

And that's not even including product placement, junk mail, web, billboard, shop and newspaper advertising. Advertising costs us as a society a staggering amount.

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The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".

I think you're looking at the wrong group. "...more than 90 percent of popular Twitter client Tweetdeck's audience is over 25. Furthermore, Twitter.com's reach is 6.6 percent for kids, teens and young adults, whereas it is 12.1 percent for those over 25; implying that adults are trying Twitter at nearly double the rate." Teens Don't Tweet