Credit: Priceonomics

Priceonomics, which keeps track of the resale value of items like cars, bikes and gadgets, published a report Wednesday that shows how the value of iPhones, Android devices and BlackBerrys hold up over time. Short answer: iPhones, even years-old models, retain their value the longest, which means iPhone owners can recoup the most money when they go to resell their phones.

Here’s the method they  used:

We measure depreciation by comparing a phone’s current used price to its new price (without a contract) the day it was released. We examined all iPhone models and the 70 most popular Androids and 30 most popular BlackBerry models. We split phones into five different cohorts (newly released, 1, 2, 3, and 4 year-old phones). We then calculated which phones had the best resale by cohort, as well as which platforms in aggregate tended to retain their value the most.

The highest quality phones should have the best resale values over time and crappier phones should depreciate the fastest. The evidence is clear – the winner is the iPhone.

After crunching the data they came up with a series of charts, like one that shows that after owning a smartphone for 18 months, iPhone owners can resell theirs for 53 percent of the original price, Android owners for 42 percent and BlackBerry owners for 41 percent of the original price.

That part won’t be news to people who make a habit of reselling their old iPhone before or right after buying a new one a new one. There are sites like Gazelle.com, eBay and NextWorth.com that regularly buy used iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android phones in order to resell them. The iPhone is always the easiest to resell and will go for a decently high price if you time it right.

But all is not lost for penny-pinching Android owners. One caveat to the data that Priceonomics found is that less expensive Android phones sold by prepaid operators do hold their value much better than their pricier Google-powered brethren, probably because those phones are highly subsidized by the operators. Specifically, the Motorola Triumph, HTC Wildfire and Samsung Exhibit 4G on average keep up to 86 percent of the original value.

Be sure to check out the original post for more interesting data.

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Seventy-four percent of survey respondents said they were “Very Satisfied” with the iPad in an earlier November survey, while only 54 percent said they were “Very Satisfied” with the Kindle Fire in the January survey. The average of Very Satisfied customers for all other tablet devices combined was 49 percent. Why the 20-point gap between the iPad and Fire? It came down to what many users seemed to feel were missing features, according to ChangeWave.

The major dislikes that survey respondents listed for the Kindle Fire included the lack of a hardware volume button, the absence of a camera, short battery life, a lack of cellular connectivity and the size of the Fire’s app library. Cost and screen were favorite features among Kindle Fire owners.

Apple’s focus on user experience seems clearly to be better at winning the admiration of users post-purchase, while Amazon’s focus on offering a low-cost device seems to ultimately leave customers feeling like there’s something missing. That strategy appears to have worked well in the short term. One analyst said earlier this week that Amazon may have shipped as many as 6 million Fires during the last quarter of 2011. But long-term, Apple may have been right when it suggested in December that strong Kindle tablet sales might eventually help boost iPad demand.

Consider that the features tablet users indicated a desire for in expressing their dissatisfaction with the Kindle Fire are all features the iPad currently offers; there’s a clear path of where to get what they want out of a tablet already in place. And if Apple does decide to keep the iPad 2 around as a lower-cost offering when it unveils the iPad 3, the Fire’s No. 1 selling feature won’t seem nearly as much of a marked advantage.

On the flip side, Amazon could also address those deficiencies in future iterations of the Kindle Fire, should it find cost-effective ways of doing so. But Apple will continue to push the experiential envelope at the same time, and so far whatever it provides seems to set the standard in terms of tablet buyer expectations. Pleased customers are loyal customers — as ChangeWave says, it’s found that satisfaction is highly linked to future sales, so Apple’s big lead here is definitely a key measure of success.

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Like the iPhone SJ concept before it, De Rosa’s iWatch 2 (which is itself a refresh of an older iWatch design) looks like something that you could easily imagine gracing the desk of Apple design guru Jony Ive at this very moment: It has the aluminum and glass appeal of the iPhone 4 and 4S, along with an on-screen UI that looks convincingly iOS inspired.

De Rosa says the watch’s imaginary specs include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the latter to provide a steady feed of data from a connected iPhone or iPad, along with a standalone RSS reader and front-facing camera. He also adds an LCD projector to the list, because why not?

While I don’t expect to see anything quite so feature-rich come out of Cupertino, I do think De Rosa is on the right track; an Apple-created connected watch would no doubt have similar good looks, a minimum of buttons and the ability to connect to iOS devices to grab and display information feeds. But Apple also is notorious for keeping its product lines tight, so such a device, which would admittedly probably have limited appeal initially (will iPhone buyers really want to spend an additional $200+ for what’s essentially a secondary display?) likely isn’t a top priority.

Regardless of what Apple actually has planned in the way of wearable wrist-top computing, I still want this concept to fly out of my dreams and on to my wrist. What about you?

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Apple CEO Tim Cook said during his company’s recent earnings call that iPad sales haven’t really been affected by the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is no doubt contributing heavily to the success of Android tablets. It’s also likely the Barnes & Noble Nook Color and Nook Tablet are included in the Android figures. Instead, Cook admitted the iPad has had some cannibalization effect on sales of Macs, and he predicted that one day, the tablet market will be larger in volume than the PC market.

Compared to Android, Apple still has a dominant position in the tablet market, with a 57.6-percent share compared to Android’s 39.1 percent, according to Strategy Analytics’ most recent numbers. In terms of year-over-year growth, the tablet space has grown by 150 percent between the end of 2010 and 2011. In other words, even if shares were more evenly split, the iPad would still be seeing big gains in unit sales.

The PC market, on the other hand, contracted by around six percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to research firm Gartner. That’s despite 20 percent growth by Apple’s own Mac line of computers. Kevin Tofel recently pointed out here on GigaOM that half of computing device sales are now mobile. If the trend of growing tablet and smartphone sales continue, and PC sales continue to decline, we’ll soon be in a position where mobiles are considered a primary device by the majority of users.

Apple will continue to sell iPads. A new refresh expected in the coming months might even help it turn the tide of slipping market share, since while the low-cost Kindle Fire may be a success, other Android tablet makers still seem to be having a hard time putting out a product consumers can get genuinely excited about. Kevin wrote last week about how Android 4.0, while it improves the Android tablet experience, still has a lot of glaring pain points. Also, Android’s tablet-specific app library lags considerably behind Apple’s, and isn’t catching up anywhere near as fast as the market on the smartphone side.

The companies putting out Android tablets that fail to achieve the Kindle Fire’s level of success are the same ones being hurt by the slowing PC market, and they’re the ones that stand to lose the most. Amazon’s Kindle fire has reportedly sold as many as 6 million units through the end of 2011, according to estimates, which would make it the world’s best-selling Android tablet.

Apple continues to appeal to a steadily growing audience of tablet users, but Amazon is answering the call of those who were happier buying bargain-priced netbooks for their basic computing needs, rather than spending more on an iPad. That’s the market PC makers should have been trying to retain with their own tablet efforts, and also the one Amazon has positioned itself best to appeal to.

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Both Android and iPhone devices had best-ever quarters, according to AT&T, but the launch of the 4S clearly helped Apple’s push ahead. In fact, AT&T’s iPhone sales alone during the quarter represent a higher number than AT&T’s previous quarterly record of 6.1 million for total combined smartphone sales across all types of devices.

AT&T attributes the success of the iPhone on its network to its faster data network, since it is the only U.S. carrier that offers HSPA+ speeds for the iPhone 4S. It definitely did post more sales than Verizon, which reported earlier that it sold 4.2 million iPhones during its fourth quarter. Whatever the reason, the success of the device on AT&T’s network definitely contributed significantly to Apple’s total of 37 million iPhones during its most recent quarter.

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Enterprise mobile security provider Good Technology on Wednesday released its quarterly 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 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 will 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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The ITC’s initial ruling, which was handed downDec. 19, found HTC devices running Android  infringed on an Apple patent related to how data in notes and other documents, including emails and phone numbers, are automatically linked to other relevant external apps. HTC quickly responded to the decision, saying it had a software tweak in place that would allow it to avoid the ban entirely.

The specifics of Apple’s appeal, which FOSS Patents’ Florian Mueller discovered after Apple referenced it in a filing related to its ongoing case against Motorola, seems to involve U.S. patent No. 6,343,262, which details “a real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.” Mueller has described it as one that’s likely “extremely hard to work around.” The ITC initially denied that patent’s inclusion in its import ban, but in Apple’s filing in the Motorola case Tuesday, it seems likely Apple is trying to get it included in the scope of the decision via the appeal. Mueller suggests the appeal may also address other issues, including additional patents and the terms of the ban.

Mueller says ITC decisions appealed to the CAFC take some time to resolve, so it might be a while before we see any ruling. One thing is certain however; Apple’s nearly $100 billion cash pile means it’s likely in no real rush to settle its ongoing legal disputes.

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Demand for the iPhone 4S helped Apple’s U.S. share of the smartphone market climb to 44.9 percent in the last quarter of 2011, Kantar said, doubling from the same period a year ago and gaining a very slight edge over Google’s platform. Android slipped to 44.8 percent from 50 percent during the quarter.

Apple’s success isn’t isolated to the U.S., either. Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar’s global consumer insight director told Reuters, ”overall, Apple sales are now growing faster than Android across the nine countries we cover,” which include the U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil and Mexico, among others.

Other research firms have recently released data suggesting that iOS was rapidly closing the distance with its Android smartphone rivals. The NPD Group and Nielsen  both released their own studies earlier this month that showed iOS trailing Android slightly in the U.S. smartphone race, but Kantar’s is the first to put Apple on top.

In the U.K., Apple grew its share from 34 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to 22 percent for the same period in 2010. And while Apple grew most quickly in the countries covered, Kantar is quick to point out smartphones are experiencing strong growth in all the areas tested, meaning while Android may have dropped market share in some locations, that doesn’t necessarily translate to a drop in sales.

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Here’s why Wu says he thinks the iPad will continue to be a hot-seller in 2012:

We believe this significant refresh will likely help drive higher iPad sales and help further differentiate from arguably the only real competitor in the market, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, and not to mention the myriad of Android offerings out there. We are currently modeling 48 million iPad shipments for calendar 2012.

DisplaySearch has already said it estimates 48 million iPad display panels were shipped in 2011. Now, display shipments doesn’t necessarily equal iPad shipments (owing to repairs, replacements, defective stock, etc.) but Apple’s own reported numbers put its iPad sales for its financial year in 2011 at around 32.4 million. An increase of 16 million would certainly be in line with the iPad’s sales growth between 2010, when it sold 14.8 million worldwide, and 2011, but if Apple’s quarterly sales continue to gain steam the way they did in 2011, we could indeed see much bigger increases, especially if the iPad 2 remains available as a low-cost option.

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Video calling service Tango’s new paid features have experienced two million subscribers on both Android and iOS since their introduction, Tango founder and CTO Eric Setton told the New York Times on Monday. But those using Apple’s platform convert from the app’s free basic service to paid add-ons four times as often as do Android users. Setton thinks there is a very simple reason why that is, one that doesn’t have to do with app quality or platform user demographics:

It comes from years of collecting credit card numbers on iTunes. People can use their stored credit card numbers and purchase things easily. Punching in a credit card number on Android is more work.

Of course, you can add and store credit cards on the Android Market, too, but that’s an additional step on Google’s OS that isn’t required on Apple’s for most, since credit cards will already be on file, thanks to previous iTunes music or movie purchases. Also, iTunes allows multiple payment methods; you can tie it to iTunes gift cards or preapproved spending limits automatically, making it more flexible overall.

People are also slow to adopt new online payment methods, which is why it is so crucial that the App Store doesn’t require one; users simply have to continue using the same system they have already embraced for purchasing digital music online for nearly a decade. The iTunes Store has been the No. 1 music retailer since 2008, so it has had plenty of time to win the trust of a large number of users. Google, on the other hand, traditionally hasn’t asked its users to pay a dime for pretty much anything.

The good news for Google is that the barrier to entry for users new to any and all online purchasing is roughly the same for both platforms, meaning eventually users should be just as comfortable with paying on one OS vs. the other. The good news for Apple, though, is that for the time being, it remains the trusted vendor of choice for online purchases, particularly among the generation that cut its teeth on iPods and the iTunes Store.

So far, that role has led to increased consumer activity on Apple’s digital stores and devices, but Apple’s recently introduced EasyPay system indicates its effects could bleed over into real-world transactions, too. Google may have gotten Wallet out into the wild early, but trust could trump speed when it comes to long-term mobile commerce adoption.

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Whalen said that the company has been “talking to everybody” about Medfield and that the company first “took a conscious decision to focus on Android,” since “at the moment [Intel's] customers are asking for Android” but that iOS remains a consideration as it continues to grow. But Apple has little reason to want to open its arms to Intel’s mobile processors and plenty of reason to keep them closed, in fact.

It’s not that Intel’s efforts aren’t praiseworthy: The company needs a strong mobile platform, and Medfield looks strong. It’s an SoC that seems like it can hold its own with ARM’s latest, and there is even good reason to believe it will have a strong foothold in the Android market a year from now, not the least of which is Motorola’s endorsement of the platform.

But don’t expect to see Apple’s mobile devices rush to embrace x86 architecture anytime soon. Cupertino has done a lot to make sure that it maintains total control over its chip designs, which are based on licensed ARM architecture. It has acquired two chip-making firms and no doubt worked out extensive, high-volume fabrication contracts with chip-making partners like Samsung to ensure that it can deliver an SoC that is carefully tailored to work with its mobile software and hardware. That affords it advantages when it comes to system performance, power consumption and more; so much of an advantage, in fact, that an analyst recently said Apple had a leg up on Intel when it came to mobile chips.

Apple may have switched to Intel from PowerPC, a tech it helped create, for its Mac line of computers, but the mobile market is not the PC market. Intel still has plenty to prove when it comes to its ability to operate in the realm of smartphones and tablets, and for now, Apple has invested years of development time and huge amounts of money in making ARM-based designs that perfectly suit its software and hardware.

Apple’s recent acquisition of Anobit shows that it wants more, not less control over its product components. That desire for control combined with Whalen’s caginess when talking about Apple specifically lead me to believe it will still be a long time (if ever) before we see Intel architecture in an iOS device.

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It is a trend that already appears to be in motion: Ryan Kim wrote about how, according to the latest NPD numbers, Apple’s iOS mobile platform made big strides in closing the gap between itself and Android in recent months. The Yankee Group survey anticipates that this will continue: While a quarter of those it surveyed already own an iPhone, 35 percent said they planned on getting one within six months’ time. The Yankee Group’s study echoes results from ChangeWave that we wrote about earlier, but it covers a wider user base, time period and focus on platforms instead of individual handset makers.

Android is and will remain strong in terms of consumer interest, according to the survey, but it won’t put any more distance between it and Apple. Nearly 40 percent of respondents indicated that they already own an Android device, but just the same amount said they planned on getting one within the next six months; in other words, Android won’t drop share to Apple if people stay true to their buying plans, but it won’t expand its current reach in the U.S.

The real losers, however, are the smartphone platforms that account for less than 20 percent of today’s market share, since, according to the survey, their percentage will only continue to slide. Yankee Group predicts that only 12 percent of respondents intend to buy a BlackBerry in the next six months, despite that 20 percent of those surveyed already own one. Interest in Windows Phone devices similarly drops from a current high of 14 percent to only 9 percent’s intending to purchase one within six months’ time. Of course, this is based on consumer perception of the field as it stands: New devices, changes to software and pricing could always alter buying plans.

Overall, Yankee Group predicts that smartphone ownership should increase, since only 47 percent of those polled currently own one but 58 percent indicated intent to purchase one within the next six months. Yankee Group expects the smartphone market to surge to 175 million devices in the U.S. by 2015, up from 91.4 million as of Nov. 2011.

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Apple's A5, manufactured by Samsung.

Apple might have quad-core iPhone and iPad devices coming in 2012, according to some code discovered deep in Apple’s iOS 5.1 pre-release software on Friday. We’ve been hearing a lot about the possibility of a quad-core A6, successor to the A5 processor that currently powers iPhone 4S and iPad 2 devices, but now there’s reason to believe those new processors are being actively tested.

The iOS 5.1 beta contains references to quad-core chips in a hidden system panel that describes core configurations supported by iOS software, according to 9t05Mac. In the latest beta, it’s been updated to include a reference to “/cores/core.3″, which follows “/cores/core.0″ and /cores/core.1″,  references to single and dual-core devices, respectively. A “core.2″ designation is skipped, which would represent a triple-core processor according to the naming system.

Apple is thought to be testing the iPad 3 and possibly a next-gen iPhone on the iOS 5.1 beta, which could mean those devices are packing a quad-core processor, although it’s also possible these references are related to a much more distant release. But since Android phones with quad-core processors are already making their debuts, and quad-core Android tablets have already hit the market, it does seem likely Apple would want to anticipate the wider uptake of that tech in its 2012 mobile lineup.

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That’s a heck of a lot of smartphones, and it shows Samsung’s momentum in this area is only increasing, as customers are responding to the company’s Galaxy lineup of phones. As I wrote back in August, it’s very clear that the battle for mobile supremacy is still very much a match between just two players: Samsung and Apple. Now that we have a rough idea of how Samsung fared in smartphone sales this year, it’s a good time to tally up total smartphones sold by Samsung and total iPhones sold by Apple in 2011.

First a quick note on the math: To make the numbers line up accurately, we will count Apple’s second, third and fourth fiscal quarters, which cover Jan. through Oct. 31, 2011. That will line up on the calendar with Samsung’s first, second and third quarters, which cover the same time period. Numbers for Apple’s fiscal first quarter of 2012 — which corresponds to Samsung’s fiscal fourth quarter — won’t be released until Jan. 24.

• January through March, Apple sold 18.65 million smartphones; Samsung sold 12.6 million.
• April through June, Apple sold 20.34 million smartphones; Samsung sold an estimated 19 million.
• July through September, Apple sold 17.07 million smartphones; Samsung sold somewhere between 24 and 28 million.
• October through December, Apple hasn’t officially told us yet, while it is being estimated that Samsung sold between 32 and 35 million smartphones.

So that means that Samsung has sold somewhere between 87.6 million and 94.6 million smartphones in the calendar year 2011, though those are estimates, because halfway through the year Samsung stopped reporting exact figures for smartphones sold. Estimates for Apple’s October through December sales have been fluctuating since the iPhone 4S debuted in mid-October. The most recent analyst estimates say Apple may have sold anywhere between 30 million and 43.6 million iPhones during the quarter. Doing the math, that means Apple may have sold anywhere between 86.06 million and 99.66 million iPhones during the calendar year. In other words, it’s going to be very close.

Apple execs have already said to expect a monster quarter for the iPhone when the company reports its results in a few weeks. Whether Apple ekes out a victory over Samsung in smartphones sold for the year probably isn’t high on the company’s list of priorities, as long as the company keeps adding billions to its cash pile every quarter.

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The iPhone 4S has the highest downlink data volumes of any phone measured in Arieso’s study, which covers over 1 million subsribers on a single European network, and comes in just shy of the Android-powered HTC Desire S when it comes to uplink volume. Data consumption isn’t evenly distributed among users, however; Arieso reveals 1 percent of mobile subscribers now account for half of all downloaded data; in other words, power users are pushing those consumption numbers sky high.

What accounts for the change? Bloomberg cites Siri as a culprit, quoting Arieso’s CTO Michael Flanigan as saying, “Voice is the ultimate human interface.” A recent study conducted by Ars Technica, however, finds Siri shouldn’t add that much data usage to a user’s monthly total, even with very frequent use.

The iPhone 4S may have been among the top data consumers, but it wasn’t alone. Many Android devices also ranked as much more data-hungry than their predecessors. In that light, Siri alone isn’t a logical culprit for the iPhone 4S’s data gulping; instead, better mobile network infrastructure, more apps with higher data demands (and consumers becoming more comfortable using them) as well as higher-resolution (and therefore larger) image and video being shared to and from mobile devices probably accounts for most of the increase.

For consumers, this could mean there’s a need for increased vigilance in light of mobile network data caps, and for mobile providers, it means scaling quickly to deal with increased demand, whether through Wi-Fi offloading or building ever-more resilient networks.

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The study found the iPad represented 19 percent of total App Store downloads since the device’s launch, and the iPad reached the 3 billion mark around six months faster than the iPhone, which took two years to register that many app downloads. The iPad outperformed its internal competition, but it obliterated external challengers: ABIresearch says Android tablet devices have only seen around 400 million downloads to date.

ABI associate Lim Shiyang belives that Android’s significant deficit when it comes to dedicated tablet app downloads is at least in part attributable to OS fragmentation. According to Shiyang:

Many Android tablets in the market are still using older versions of Android, which disadvantages users from enjoying the better effects of apps produced from more advanced software development kits.

More choice and better quality overall also contribute to Apple’s advantage, ABI says, pointing out that during the third quarter of 2011, there were 120,000 apps published specifically for the iPad platform. Compare that to 400,000 total titles available on the Android Market for both smartphone and tablet devices, according to figures released Wednesday.

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