Motorola said that its newly re-envisioned Razr led its increases in total phone shipments and revenue in the fourth quarter. But considering Moto’s vastly reduced market share, those increases didn’t lead to much.

Motorola shipped only 5.3 million smartphones and 200,000 tablets in the fourth quarter. In comparison, Apple shipped 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in the same period.

Total device shipments were 10.5 million for the quarter, while for the year, the total was 42.5 million, including 18.7 million smartphones and 1 million tablets. Like other Android smartphone makers not named Samsung, Motorola continues to feel the pressure of a very crowded and competitive market.

As Om wrote earlier this month, the market is fracturing between two smartphone giants – Apple and Samsung — making it harder for any vendor without a distinguishing operating system to catch up. Nokia is hoping it can become just that challenger by embracing the upstart Windows Phone OS. Its Lumina Lumia Windows device sales were about 1 million for the fourth quarter, but the company has only begun to ramp its new smartphone line.

Despite a five-percent boost in device revenues, Motorola posted a loss of million, which the vendor attributed to reorganization and write-off costs in advance of its acquisition by Google. Whether Google plans to use its considerably resources to revive the ailing vendor or plans to simply reap its patent portfolio is still an open question. Regardless, Motorola said it expects the .5 billion deal to close early this year.

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It seems like only yesterday Apple unveiled iCloud to the world at WWDC, just a puff of vapor. Now look at it. The company has just confirmed the service has swelled to 85 million users as part of its Q1 2012 earnings call. That’s more than twice as many iPhones as it sold in the same period, but of course it’s worth noting that iCloud is, of course, free, so there’s no penalty in people sticking their head in and seeing how things feel.

iCloud climbs to 85 million users originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Travelers this holiday season are getting a welcome gift from Skype in the form of free Wi-Fi access at more than 50 U.S. airports to place voice or video calls over Skype’s service. The year-end promotion runs from Dec. 21 through Dec. 27; a time when many are hitting the skies to visit relatives and friends over the holidays.

Skype’s blog offers an interactive map showing which airports will have the free wireless access for Skype services. Most of the major airport hubs are covered, but my local area of Philadelphia isn’t getting any love for some reason. Luckily, I’ve got a data-only SIM card combined with native Android SIP support to make free or low cost calls, and Google Talk video as another supplement!

Speaking of Android, Skype WiFi isn’t supported on Google’s mobile devices. However, you can use it in conjunction with Windows PC, Mac or iOS devices, including iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.

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It’s not news that more and more businesses are allowing workers to bring their smartphones and sometimes tablets of choice to the office. But would you have guessed that two of the most highly regulated industries (finance and healthcare) would be the ones leading the charge for this BYOD (bring your own device) trend? That’s what a study undertaken by Good Technology, makers of enterprise mobile security software, found. Good’s data also shows that size of the company is not an impediment to making BYOD work, and that even when workers are paid a small stipend toward a device they bring, businesses save money overall by having more productive workers.

Good’s survey includes responses from 400 of Good’s largest customers, with 2,000 employees or more, in October. And according to the results BYOD is being very clearly embraced: 70 percent of respondents said they currently let employees bring their own smartphone (or tablet) to work, 19 percent are considering allowing it, and just 9 percent said they had no plans for BYOD programs.

Being a large company isn’t a deterrent: among those polled, 80 percent that allow BYOD have 2,000 employees or more, 60 percent have 5,000 or more and 35 percent have 10,000 or more. And of those companies, half allow employees to bring their own smartphone or tablet to work as long as they pay for all the costs, while 45 percent offer some kind of stipend for employees to use toward buying a device or a way to expense monthly costs.

BYOD is not as popular among retailers and government agencies, according the the study. But the reason that it’s finding so much success at highly regulated industries, like healthcare and finance — which have very high bars for security and compliance — is the existence of software available that allays those concerns. (Like Good’s, hence their survey.) New mobile software can be installed on personal iPhones or Android phones that “create strong separation between business data and what’s happening on the personal side of the device,” John Herrema, SVP of Corporate Strategy at Good, said in an interview. That separation helps hospitals, banks and other meet compliance standards like HIPAA, PCI data security and more.

As far as what kinds of devices these workers are bringing in when given the choice, it’s not a huge shock: “Overall, our customers are absolutely activating iOS and Android to the exclusion of everything else we support,” said Herrema. “Historically, we’ve supported Windows Mobile, Symbian, some are even on old Treo devices. Bu these days it’s all about iOS and Android all night.”

The exact breakdown among smartphones brought to work (among Good’s customers) is: 60 percent are iPhones, and 40 percent Android. In tablets, it’s not that close: 95 percent of tablets brought to work are iPads, just 5 percent are Android-powered.

For those companies or IT managers hesitant about the practice, consider this: BYOD can help you save money. It’s fairly obvious that by having employees buy their own smartphone instead of issuing them a BlackBerry you’re going to see savings in your IT budget. But even those companies giving a stipend are seeing the financial benefit.

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Apple’s iPhone 4 was the leading mobile phone in the U.S., despite being a phone launched mid-way through 2010, according to a new Nielsen report. The iPhone helped propel smartphone usage in the U.S. to new heights during the past year.

Smartphone penetration rose significantly compared to two years ago, Nielsen noted. In 2009, just 18 percent of mobile phone users were packing smart devices, while in 2011, that number had risen to 44 percent of U.S. residents, with more than half of adults between 18 and 34 counted among them. The iPhone in general has done a lot to propel that adoption.

Credit: Nielsen

Of individual device vendors, Apple is still very much on top, despite the fact that Android as a platform has eclipsed its market share on devices. Apple’s iPhones account for 28.6 percent of all postpaid smartphone subscribers, compared to 15.8 percent for BlackBerry, the next closest competitor, and 15.8 percent for HTC, the Android handset-maker with the largest manufacturer share. All together, Android devices accounted for 44.2 percent of U.S. postpaid plans between August and October 2011.

Nielsen takes its results from monthly surveys of more than 300,000 consumers, as well as data from devices belonging to users who opted into market research and data from phone bills from 65,000 volunteers.

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While US viewers continue to wait for the expat-edition Global BBC iPlayer app, BBC Worldwide has announced a new version launching December 8th specifically for iPhones and iPod Touches. Like its big brother app for the iPad, this free download lets subscribers stream or download shows for offline viewing, as well as stream video to the Apple TV via AirPlay. Whole new categories of programming are coming online soon including music, arts and culture, and radio, and now it can all fit in one’s pocket. Check the gallery for a couple more screenshots, or after the break for a press release with all the applicable pricing and regional information that’s available.

Continue reading Global BBC iPlayer app gets squeezed down to iPhone / iPod Touch size

Global BBC iPlayer app gets squeezed down to iPhone / iPod Touch size originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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