Well, actually, Samsung is better than that, since they had nothing to do with it. It turns out the stunt was staged by, of all companies, RIM – as uncovered by Macworld. And RIM fessed up once it was uncovered:

UPDATE: RIM Australia issued a statement this morning, May 1 9:20 AM AEST, with Richelle Gillett, Account Director from Spectrum Communications for Blackberry confirming:

“We can confirm that the Australian ‘Wake Up’ campaign, which involves a series of experiential activities taking place across Sydney and Melbourne, was created by RIM Australia. A reveal will take place on May 7th that will aim to provoke conversation on what ‘being in business’ means to Australians.”

I don’t know what is sadder – the idiotic stunt itself, all of the free publicity RIM effectively bought for Samsung (with more to come as updates, like this one, get posted), or that it seems RIM wasn’t even considered as a possible culprit in the PR stunt. When you think of companies staging social media stunts, RIM just isn’t the company that comes to mind. They just aren’t considered ‘cool’.

It reminds me of the old OS/2 Warp ads in which IBM tried so desperately to seem cool. As my best friend once put it some years ago: “It’s like watching your grandfather breakdance, seeing a company like Honda or IBM try to Get Down Verbally. You don’t know whether to be mortified or just afraid he’ll break a hip.”

Way to go RIM.

Good work by Macworld and MacTalk in finding the real culprit behind the idiotic stunt.

But that’s not all; if you buy a phone with mobile hotspot capabilities and you actually activate them, Amazon will give you a $100 Amazon Gift Card.

The catch? All of this is for new activations only. The official word:

For a limited time only, all phones from Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T with a new line of service are on sale for a penny and include standard FREE Two-Day Shipping. Offer valid between midnight PDT November 21, 2011, through 11:59 p.m. PDT November 28, 2011, while supplies last. Plus, if you buy an eligible hotspot-ready smartphone and activate the hotspot feature, you’ll get a $100 Amazon.com Gift Card

There are 97 different devices to choose from. Mostly Android, unsurprisingly, but also WebOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and even non-smartphones. But why would you get a non-smartphone with this deal? You have one week, start shopping.

Looking at a graph of market share by smartphone vendor, the precipitous decline of Nokia is painfully obvious, and it looks like RIM isn’t doing so well either. On the other hand, you can see the rapid rise of Samsung. Samsung has claimed 26% of the global smartphone market, becoming the largest vendor. Apple slipped from 19% to close to 14%, but that could be due to anticipation of the iPhone 4S (the figures are from before the launch). Nokia has toppled from the top of the heap to under 14% in roughly a year. HTC overtook RIM with 11% to 9% as the former continues to gain market share and the latter loses it. Sony has approximately 6%, LG 5%, and Motorola 4%.

Unsurprisingly the units shipped by vendor closely aligns with the market share of each vendor. The sheer number of devices being shipped is really impressive.

Via Droid Life.

What about the rest? Windows came in a distant, distant third with 2.4% of the market on 400,000 units shipped. Which double’s RIM’s 200,000 Playbooks shipped. 500,000 other tablets shipped, many of those likely WebOS TouchPads HP dumped on the market.

With the TouchPad out of the market and the Playbook stagnant, and Windows 8 tablets still a ways off, iOS and Android should take even more of the market this quarter. And Android should take more market share from iOS as more Android tablets hit the shelves, not the least of which will be the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire. Well, if you can really call it an Android tablet given how heavily customized it is.

Via The Register.

The real loser continues to be RIM and the catch-all ‘Other’ which would cover Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, WebOS, Symbian, etc. While 18% of all smartphone users use a Blackberry, and 11% use one of the other platforms, in the past three months only 9% of new smartphone sales have been Blackberrys and only 6% are other platforms, which are pretty much Windows Phone 7 and WebOS in today’s market.

Also significant, the smartphone user base continues to grow. While only 43% of US cellular subscribers have a smartphone, in the past three months 56% of new activations were smartphones instead of feature phones or basic models. These figures are even more significant in that the three month recent subscribers numbers are a fairly reliable predictor of the market as a whole. The share of recent adoptions using smartphones historically leads the market share as a whole by around 15%. So the pool of smartphone users in the US is showing healthy growth.

The pie is getting bigger, and iPhone and Android are taking the lions share of it. Heading into the fall and the holiday buying season things look good for iPhone (especially if the iPhone 5 launches), positively great for Android, and pretty much abysmal for everyone else. RIM needs to pull a rabbit out of their hat soon, and Blackberry OS 7 sure isn’t it. As corporate IT departments increasingly offer a choice of Blackberry, iPhone, or Android devices, instead of mandating Blackberry, RIM’s traditional stronghold is crumbling.

Via Nielsen Wire.

The smartphone market is really well on its way to being a duopoly of Android and iOS. Blackberry is up there right now, but while the two leaders have been growing their market share, Blackberry has been losing it. That should continue and the two leaders will increasingly open their lead over Blackberry.

Looking at consumers who plan to buy a new smartphone in the next year, 31% said they want their next phone to be an iPhone while 34% say they want it to run Android. Bad news for RIM, only 7% say they want a Blackberry. That’s especially when 5% say they want Windows Phone 7, and it’s barely broken into the market at this point. So much for Blackberry’s vaunted customer loyalty. Still, they have a chance, 2% say they want ‘Other’, and with WebOS and Symbian Gone they’re really up for grabs, as are the 18% who are undecided.

If these numbers play out, things are looking very good for Android and iPhone – but not very good for anyone else. Blackberry looks to remain in a serious slide unless they can do something drastic to turn things around.

Apple is the HW vendor with the largest single share, as they’re the sole maker of iPhones an thus claim 28% of the market in HW. HTC and RIM are tied for the second spot with 20% apiece. HTC’s 20% is split – 14% from Android and 6% from Windows phones. If the trends continue HTC will probably push RIM into the 3rd slot in HW very soon, if they haven’t already. Motorola claimed 11% of the HW market, and Samsung 10% – split 8% Android, 2% Windows.

As RIM continues to decline this is really turning into a two horse race between Android and iOS, with Android continuing to grow at a faster pace. It may be a while before any single Android HW maker overtakes Apple though, if it happens.

Nielsen via Engadget Mobile.

As you can see in the graph from comScore Data Mine, Google’s Android operating system had astounding growth from May 2010 through May 2011 – 634%! In the past year Symbian has fallen from the top spot in the UK market to #3, behind Apple’s iOS and Android, dropping 10% to 22.5% of the market. Google’s Android, at 26.7% remains a hair behind Apple’s 27.1%, but is increasing as a much faster rate – 634% growth to 46% – and Android should be in the #1 spot soon, if not already. RIM, which has been taking a beating in the US market, surprisingly grew their share by 59% over the year, and if the trends continue RIM could knock Symbian into fourth place.

As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, and the UK smartphone market overall is experiencing significant growth. A year ago 27% of mobile users used a smartphone, in 2011 that figure was 42%. Which helps explain how Android alone could add 4.7 million users in one year without gutting the other players. And also helps explain RIM’s growth, I’d think.

Microsoft, knocked from fourth to fifth place by the Android explosion, is not doing well, losing 32% of their share in a year. This is surely due to the decline in Windows Mobile use and the lackluster response to Windows Phone 7 to date.

Via Engadget.

How things can change in a year.

For the second quarter of 2011 the iPad’s share of the market dropped to 61.3%, while Android tablets had clawed their way up to claim 30% of tablet sales. You might’ve noticed that, jointly, they claimed 91.3% this year – but 96.9% last year. So where did the rest go? Well, coming in at number three, Windows tablets claimed 4.6%. Yes, Windows tablets. What about RIM’s PlayBook, which launched during the quarter? It managed a measly 3.3%. These figures are according to a study by market research firm Strategy Analytics.

We’ll have to see how they all fair this quarter, and we have a new entrant in the fight, the HP WebOS Touchpad. But the wave of Android tablets also continues to build. The best selling Android tablet, and second best selling tablet overall, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer could’ve sold even more if not for supply issues. Asus seems to have ironed out the issues, and the supply of Transformers has already begun ramping up and will continue to do so. The T-Mobile G-Slate (aka LG Optimus Pad) shipped just before the end of the last quarter. The Toshiba Thrive has just launched.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 is slated to launch next month, sliding in between the 7 and 10.1 inch models, giving consumers more choice. Lenovo has just announced the IdeaPad K1, aimed at consumers, and the ThinkPad Tablet, which is aimed more toward business users – right at the RIM PlayBook. The delayed Cisco Cius, also aimed at businesses, will ship at the end of the month. Archos has a couple of models pending, Vizio has their tablet, etc.

The reality seems very different from the impression you’d get reading articles about the tablet market. From the articles you’d think that everyone wants an iPad and no one is buying anything else. Sales of Android tablets have been weak, makers are even considering pulling out of the market, it is all doom and gloom. Android Honeycomb, the first version of Android optimized for tablets, only released in late February with the Motorola Xoom. That’s when the Android tablet market kicked off for real.

Remember how dismissive articles about Android phones were in 2009 – right up until the Motorola Droid hit the streets with Android 2.0? In the year and a half since then which mobile OS has taken the top spot in sales? It’s been less than five months since Honeycomb hit the streets. 30% of the global tablet market. Let’s see what things look like at the end of the year, by which time Ice Cream Sandwich will be out too.

Report figures via Boy Genius Report.

RIM was the dominant force in mobile devices for corporate users, and an early leader in smartphones in general – until iPhone and Android started eating their lunch… and breakfast… and dinner… and snacks… you get the picture. RIM has been steadily and consistently losing market share to the benefit of Apple’s iPhone and the Android Army. The recently launched PlayBook has been widely panned in reviews. They’ve pushed the Blackberry Bold 9900 back from the summer to the fall. They apparently cancelled the planned 10-inch PlayBook to speed up moving their phones from the legacy Blackberry OS to the QNX-based OS of the PlayBook. And employees have started publishing open letters critical of the company.

Boy Genius Report has an exclusive look inside RIM, which highlights the roots of their troubles. It sounds like the issue is really that Mike Lazaridis, one of the co-founders and co-CEO, while brilliant, doesn’t really understand the changes in the market and what consumers really want – and too much of the control of RIM rests solely with him. It is an interesting article, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of RIM’s future prospects. I recommend checking it out.

Yes, that’s me doing my day job.

We’ve been looking forward to SlingPlayer Mobile for the iPhone since Sling showed an early prototype to Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) attendees last year. SlingPlayer Mobile promises to put our home television experience in the palm of our hands, with full support for changing channels on your home set-top box, viewing and pausing recorded content on a TiVo or other DVR, and select new programs to record. The company says they’ll submit a finished version to Apple for release in the online App Store later this quarter, and pricing is yet to be determined.

For Mac users, Sling will be showing off the new SlingPlayer for Mac HD, a web-based version of SlingPlayer that will be available on sling.com. The player will support Safari and Firefox web browsers on the Mac OS X platform when it’s released later this quarter as part of sling.com, and will support streaming HD content to a Mac desktop or laptop computer from Slingbox PRO-HD hardware.

These Apple-centric announcements follow the recent release of a new SlingPlayer Mobile for Windows Mobile Professional and Standard devices, with support for fifteen new handsets and four new screen resolutions. The software is $29.95 for U.S. users, and is available as a free 30-day trial for those who wish to try before they buy. Last week, Sliing also posted a public beta version of SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry handhelds, officially supporting several BlackBerry Bold, Curve, and Pearl models with 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity. The company says users may also find BlackBerry smartphones with slower connectivity such as AT&T’s EDGE Network will stream video successfully, but Sling will only officially support 3G and Wi-Fi connections.

We’re expecting more news from Sling Media at CES later this week, and we’ll keep you posted.

Going into this CES I’m not sure what the big deal is going to be this year, if there is one. The economy is down and I haven’t really felt any particular buzz about any given area of the market. HDTVs get bigger while getting thinner and faster (refresh rates). We may see some interesting 3D technologies which will start to enter homes in the next few years. Palm is expected to announce Nova and new hardware, but I’m not excited. I was a die-hard Palm OS user for many years, since 1998, and still carry a Treo 680. But after five or more years of waiting for Palm OS 6 Cobalt Nova I just don’t feel that inspired. I’m already focused on Android as my next likely platform, and it would take a lot for Palm to sway me. Even if they produce an incredible OS, they have an uphill battle ahead to win over developers. I don’t think they have a real chance at this point to gain significant market share. And without that the developers won’t come – and the apps really make the platform.

Going forward I think the mobile market will effectively be, in no particular order, Windows Mobile Professional, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, iPhone, and Android. The original Palm OS is the walking dead, and I don’t see Nova/Palm OS II carving out enough market share to be viable. Symbian UIQ is effectively dead as SonyEricsson and Motorola have pulled out and the Symbian world is focused on the S60-based open source effort. Windows Mobile Standard (aka Smartphone) is rapidly dying as Professional-based touch screen devices move into the lower end of the market where Standard used to focus. I expect Android, which is basically just coming into the market, to post the biggest gains as more devices land. I think the LiMo/LIPS effort will falter and expect to see some of the vendors who have been working on it switch to Android. I think those five platforms will provide the bulk of the smartphone market, anything else will be a small niche.

We’ll probably see more tru2way devices on display from a number of vendors this year, but I don’t know that we’ll see anything revolutionary in that market. I’m hoping TiVo may be showing off their ‘Series4′ tru2way-enabled model, which they’re believed to have been working on for a while. And they may be showing their new DirecTV software, which I expect will be running on the HR20/21/22 DirecTV DVR Plus hardware. I’m not expecting anything else major, maybe some new content partnership announcements and perhaps plans to bring TiVo to more countries. (I’m surprised they haven’t re-launched in the UK yet with the DVB-T model actually.)

The past couple of years the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD fight provided some interest. But that was effectively over with CES2008, and officially ended when Toshiba threw in the towel in February. There aren’t likely to be any big announcements in the Blu-ray world, aside from more content partnerships like LG adding CinemaNow and YouTube to Netflix on their players. Maybe someone will be showing off higher density disc or 3D content concepts.

I’m hoping to be surprised by something at the show, something just unexpected. If you know of something I should be on the look out for, do let me know. And if you’re going to CES drop by the Sling Media booth and say hello. I believe I’m on the afternoons of Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Friday morning. I’m also scheduled to present for Sling Media at CntrStg on Saturday. Frankly I’m nervous as hell about that. It has been years since I’ve done a presentation or talk at a tradeshow and never at anything as big as CES.

OK, off to finish packing.

Finally: the home television aspect of the “four converged screens” example.

“The trickiest part of the four screens is the sync between home video content and the mobile,” Balsillie said. “I believe the key enabler here is TiVo.”

RIM announced a new partnership with TiVo at CTIA, and the companies plan to release an application that will enable users to users to access television content via mobile device.

“(BlackBerrys) now work with TiVo desktop software that allows you to put (TV) shows on your BlackBerry, so that you can literally have your shows as a cache.”

It sounds like it is simply TiVoToGo supporting the Blackberry for video transfers. Which is what most of the speculation has been.

Personally I’d love to see TiVo exploit the XMPP support they’ve added to the units since the Verizon application launched and support real real-time scheduling on the unit and not the store-and-forward system used by TiVo Central Online web-based scheduling, which is what the Verizon system goes through.

Past the initial scheduling capability, the future sounds interesting:

The new relationship brings TiVo and RIM together to develop a variety of mobile entertainment services that marry RIM’s leading BlackBerry® smartphones with the content delivered to consumers through the Emmy-winning TiVo® service. Initially, BlackBerry smartphone users will gain the convenience of being able to discover what shows are on and schedule television recordings while away from the living room and on the go. Future collaboration between the companies will focus on software applications that further simplify mobile access to video content.

The first interpretation people are likely to make is place-shifting of content from the TiVo to the Blackberry. However, the current TiVo hardware doesn’t have the transcoding capabilities to support this, to the best of my knowledge. And improved TiVoToGo support doesn’t sound like it would fit with ‘mobile access’ – not to me anyway. Pre-synced content is not ‘mobile access’. TiVo is developing content partnerships for TiVoCast, maybe it is access to that kind of content through a TiVo-ish client? I don’t know, but I’m certainly curious.

It sounds like it’ll be a while before we find out. The first software to arise out of this partnership will be available later this year. See the press release for more details.

SlingPlayer Mobile is currently available for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Windows Mobile Professional/PPC, and Symbian S60. Symbian UIQ is in beta now and will be out soon, and Blackberry support is in development, expected later this year. The license works for any of the SlingPlayer mobile platforms.

Disclaimer: I work for Sling Media.