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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Apple’s iPhone 4S has helped it regain ground lost to Android in consumer smartphone market share, but it’s also having a very positive effect on enterprise adoption, according to a new report. The iPad also remains virtually the only choice when it comes to tablets in business.

Enterprise mobile security provider Good Technology on Wednesday released its quarterly data data report for the fourth quarter of 2011. The report detailed the progress of iOS and Android devices in enterprise activations among its customers, which include half of the companies on the Fortune 100, among others. Apple’s iPhone 4S was the big winner of the quarter, nabbing the top spot as the most-activated device, followed by the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively.

Credit: Good Technology

The 4S represented 31 percent of all device activations counted during the quarter, nearly matching the total for all Android handsets, which accounted for 35 percent of all smartphone activations. Apple’s iPad 2 and iPad together accounted for 94 percent of all tablet activations.

Much like we’ve seen with new consumer device purchases, the release of Apple’s iPhone 4S in October began the reversal of a trend in which new Android activations were approaching Apple’s numbers, as you can see in the chart below. From October to December, Good saw a steady monthly increase in the percentage of iOS activations, matched by a decrease in Android device activations. Good says bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies likely had a strong impact on Apple’s enterprise success with the iPhone 4S.

Credit: Good Technology

A new phone from Apple was bound to incite a buying spree, but the numbers have remained strong in the months following launch. It’ll be interesting to see if the trend of growth continues, both in the consumer and enterprise markets, now that the 4S has been on the market for some time.

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Both Net Applications and StatCounter have released their figures for browser market share for 2011 and it makes for largely unsurprising reading. Internet Explorer’s full share has dropped but it still maintains the top spot — a 52 percent share according to Net Applications and 39 percent according to StatCounter. Meanwhile, second place remains tantalizingly within reach for Chrome, which has made headway catching up with Firefox, whose growth had apparently stalled during 2011. According to Net Applications, Firefox held a 21.8 percent share of browser users this month, while Chrome reached 19.1 percent, up just under 8 percent and capping off a second year of impressive growth. Meanwhile, StatCounter pegs Google’s browser at second place for the end of the year, claiming 27.3 percent versus the 25.3 percent share grabbed by its vulpine rival. Unsurprisingly, the Windows Team Blog takes a different slant on recent browsing trends, trumpeting that its latest version, Internet Explorer 9, continues to grow on Windows 7. This is, however, balanced out by a corresponding drop in the users of its predecessor, IE 8. Better luck next year, eh, Microsoft?

Internet Explorer holds onto top browser crown while Chrome and Firefox tussle over second place originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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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Despite the confident words of Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who predicted that Android would be the primary platform for developers, the current trends are still decidedly leaning toward iOS. That’s according to mobile analytics firm Flurry, which looked at developer commitments between iOS and Android over the past year.

Flurry projected that 73 percent of fourth quarter app starts will be by iOS developers compared to 27 percent for Android. That’s based on the first month of the fourth quarter. That would be slightly less than the 75 percent Apple had in the third quarter but on par with the second quarter when it also had 73 percent of app starts. Android actually had its best quarter in the first quarter, when it got 37 percent of app starts.

This data was pulled from new project starts in 2011, in which developers set up analytics for approximately 50,000 apps. Flurry said it’s used in about 25 percent of all iOS and Android apps.

On the revenue side, the comparison also favors iOS by a 3-1 ratio. Flurry found that for top apps running on both platforms, for every dollar generated on iOS, the same app will make 24 cents on Android. This is based on a sample of in-app purchases of top apps comprising millions of users on both platforms. Flurry said the big difference came down to the relatively lower penetration of Google Checkout. Compared to an iTunes account, which every iOS user needs to buy anything, not every Android user has a Google Checkout account, which adds an extra barrier to purchases of apps and in-app transactions.

Google has still a lot to crow about. As we’ve written, it’s hit 10 billion in Android app downloads and it appears to have pushed past iOS in the pace of recent downloads. Flurry estimates that 550,000 Android devices are now activated daily compared to an estimated 450,000 for iOS.

But the numbers show that it’s not just about device market share or the aggregate number of downloads. It’s about which users are more valuable to developers. There is still more of a culture of buying and spending money on iOS and that benefits Apple. Even Amazon with its Kindle Fire is proving to be a popular option for Android developers because those early tablet users appear to be open to buying a lot of things.

Google is working on this and its steps to integrate Google Checkout and Google Wallet are helpful. Also, moves to get new Android users to enter their credit card information when they set up their phone will be beneficial. And as the Android device market share continues to grow, developers can’t ignore the big opportunity there. But it looks like iOS is still very much their priority and despite the wishful thinking of Schmidt, it’s going to take a lot for Android to win the hearts of developers.

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Apple won an impressive 42.8 percent of all U.K. smartphone sales in October, based largely on the introduction of the iPhone 4S. It’s the first time since November of 2010 that Apple saw its share of the U.K. smartphone market grow, and the iPhone easily topped Android devices, which grabbed 35 percent of sales for the month.

The sales stats, gathered by research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, are perhaps most impressive because Apple really only started selling its latest iPhone halfway through the month, on Oct. 14. Apple’s big month helped it grow its market share 2.8 percent versus the previous year in the quarter leading up to the end of October, climbing to 27.8 percent mostly at the expense of Android, which was down from 49.9 to 46 percent. That helped Apple climb to a second place spot among U.K. smartphone platforms, with RIM falling to third place with a drop of 1.3 percentage points to 19.6 percent share.

Apple’s sales were mostly from inside its own camp, however, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech points out. Amazingly, 75 percent of those who purchased a new 4S in October had previously owned an iPhone device, and 14 percent were upgrading from the iPhone 4, which means that a good percentage of them were probably buying out contracts early to get the device.

While it’s good for Apple that people who use their devices like them enough to return to the iPhone time and time again, the high rate of return customers could mean that we’ll quickly see Apple’s October gains give way to Android successes on the back of devices like the new Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone packing Ice Cream Sandwich. Then again, Apple also now has a free entry-level iPhone as well as a cheaper mid-range option, so the 4S’s success may stand a better chance of being buttressed by those other options in the longer-term.

Apple’s iPhone likely isn’t done posting big sales, especially since it’s high on people’s lists in terms of ideal gifts for the holidays, but it’ll have more competition in the coming months. It’ll be interesting to see whether Apple can continue gaining back share in the face of the Android juggernaut, or whether this spike is just a one-time blip on the radar.

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