If you’re a smartphone manufacturer who’s name isn’t Apple or Samsung, condlences on your March quarter. Because according to new research from Canaccord Genuity, it was a massive, will-crushing disappointment. In the first quarter of the year, Apple captured 57 percent of global smartphone industry profits. That left 43 percent for the taking. And Samsung, says Canaccord Genuity, took all of it — leaving nothing for BlackBerry, Nokia, or anyone else competing for the currently mythical title of “third smartphone platform.” Ugly news for would be smartphone players, but not quite as ugly as it could have been. For them, the first quarter of 2013 is actually an improvement over last quarter when Apple and Samsung captured 103 percent of handset industry profits — a milestone achievement made possible by only by their heroic operating loss sacrifice. “Due to operating losses from smaller scale competitors trying to compete, Apple and Samsung’s combined share of industry profits have exceeded 100 percent in previous quarters,” Canaccord Genuity T. Michael Walkley explained. “While Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the share of industry profits, improving cost structures and results from other OEMs have reduced Apple and Samsung’s combined share to 100 percent from levels above 100 percent the past several quarters.” Progress! Japes aside, it is worth noting that even as Apple and Samsung continue to utterly dominate the handset market’s operating profits, there are shifts occuring in their duopoly. A year ago, Apple’s share topped out at 74 percent and Samsung’s at 23 percent. So clearly, the operating profit balance between the two companies is changing. * Indeed, Canaccord Genuity figures Samsung is on track to surpass Apple to claim the largest share of handset industry profits, perhaps within the next few months. Said Walkley, “During the June quarter, we believe softer iPhone sales combined strong Samsung Galaxy S4 sales could result in Samsung surpassing Apple for the top share of handset industry profits.” Certainly possible given the trend in Canaccord Genuity’s numbers — but for how long? Samsung’s ascension hinges on softening iPhone sales, and iPhone sales typically only soften ahead of the launch of a new iPhone which will inevitably spike Apple’s handset sales and its share of the industry’s profits. * Caveat: According to Canaccord Genuity “some Android OEMs such as Samsung and HTC include tablet sales in reported smartphone sales and profits,” so there’s a wildcard to consider here
Read MoreReaders who are nostalgic for the “good ol’ days” of videogames may have heard about Pixel Press around the Web last week. The in-development app, which lets users make their own platformer games by hand-drawing them on a special paper grid — no code required — is now live on Kickstarter , where creator Robin Rath is asking for a whopping $100,000. Rath told AllThingsD that he is “highly focused on education,” since Pixel Press teaches everyone from children to “thirtysomething geeks who played Mario” the mental skills of game design and testing the playability of what they make.
Read MoreCrest Financial, the Clearwire shareholder looking to scuttle Sprint’s buyout , said Monday that it has hired noted litigation firm Quinn Emanuel to pursue its trial in the matter. Crest, Clearwire’s largest minority shareholder, also said it has mailed its proxy as it seeks to defeat the deal in a vote of shareholders. Crest argues that Clearwire’s board is breaching its duties in approving a deal to sell the company to Sprint, which already owns a controlling interest in Clearwire. Sprint has offered $2.97 per share, an amount that Crest maintains undervalues the company. “Sprint owes fiduciary duties — duties of loyalty and trust — which require it to protect the interests of the company’s minority stockholders,” Quinn said in a statement. “But instead of acting consistent with those duties, Sprint is thumbing its nose at the other stockholders and seeking to force a sale of Clearwire at a grossly inadequate price. Clearwire directors are doing Sprint’s bidding.” Quinn is known for representing a wide range of tech firms in litigation, including his recent role on behalf of Samsung in its patent trial against Apple. Four other minority shareholders joined Crest last week in opposing the deal.
Read MoreCourtesy 2K Games When you think of mobile games, you probably think of titles like Angry Birds, Temple Run or Fruit Ninja — not the sort of micromanaging strategy games for which Sid Meier is best known. And yet the creator of the hit Civilization franchise and his company, Firaxis Games (owned by Take-Two Interactive), are moving more troops into mobile after testing the waters with ported games like Pirates! and Civilization Revolution. Rather than just producing, Meier himself was one of three programmers on a new mobile-first Firaxis game, Ace Patrol. Although the WWII dogfighting game — scheduled to launch on May 9 — will be iOS-only, Meier acknowledged that “there’s certainly a logic into looking into other platforms and seeing what the possibilities are.” He caught up with AllThingsD on the phone recently to talk about how he sees the changing landscape of games. CC BY-SA 2.0 Antonio Fucito AllThingsD: Your name is in many ways synonymous with a breed of strategy games, mainly on the PC, that demand an investment of time and concentration. How do you look at mobile games, which today are often short and relatively simple? Sid Meier : The very early console games were very simple, twitchy hand-eye coordination games. And then, over time, strategy became okay to do on console. I think we’re going to go through a similar evolution with mobile, where initially the games are pretty casual and simple, but that’s not because of any restrictions in the platform or anything, it’s just that the market is gonna evolve and the audience is gonna evolve. There’s definitely a role for more strategy-oriented games on mobile. And do you think that’ll go mainstream, or will that be a niche audience? I think [strategy] is probably not going to be the predominant genre on mobile, but it will grow in the same way it’s grown in the PC market and the console market. In a lot of ways, it’s more suitable to mobile than console because, on mobile, you could potentially be distracted, so you want a game that’s played at the player’s pace, and not at a pace that’s driven by the game itself — something you can start and stop, and put away for a while. What abut multiplayer? Depending on whom you ask, the future of multiplayer games could be asynchronous and turn-based, or all about playing live, either in the same room or on different devices anywhere in the world. Do you have a dog in the fight? Since our game is turn-based, we chose to support two of those modes. One is the asynchronous mode, where you can have 10 games going on at the same time with 10 different people. The other mode, which we’re calling “hot-pad” mode, is where you’re playing on the same machine with the same player
Read MoreNow that Google’s Glass Explorer Program is in full effect, the specs can be spotted anywhere with a high concentration of geekery. Naturally, this has spawned more than a few parodies, including a tumblr called “ White Men Wearing Google Glass .” And in a spot-on send-up of the new technology’s awkwardness, Fred Armisen returned to “Saturday Night Live” last night as tech blogger Randall Meeks, who brought his brand-new Glass to Weekend Update to show host Seth Myers how “discreetly” they can be used in regular conversation. Instead, his attempts to demo Glass’s head gestures and voice commands ended up demonstrating a kind of tech-induced Tourette’s Syndrome.
Read MoreUniversity of Michigan graduate Dick Costolo came back to school today to give the commencement address. If you only have time to read a single tweet from the event, here’s the one you want: .@ dickc : “When I was your age, we didn’t have the Internet in our pants. We didn’t even have the Internet not in our pants.” — The Michigan Daily (@michigandaily) May 4, 2013 And if you have time for two tweets, you want to see the photo the Twitter CEO took at the beginning of his speech, then Tweeted out: Commencement @ umich My view twitter.com/dickc/status/3… — dick costolo (@dickc) May 4, 2013
Read MoreSamsung and BlackBerry are good enough for government work. Late Thursday, the U.S. Department of Defense granted security approvals to BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 devices — the Z10 and Q10, and to a version of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 that’s outfitted with Knox, the company’s new security software. Though DOD approval won’t result in immediate product orders for either company, it does clear the way for orders to be placed in the future. Good news, since the Pentagon currently has some 600,000 mobile device users.
Read MoreIn yesterday’s world, we went about our offline lives and selected pictures of moments we wanted to share that projected how we wanted other people to perceive us — the pretty sunsets, the contorted angles to make us look skinny, the smiling family posed for a group portrait. In tomorrow’s world, we’ll already be living online all the time, so the notion of “sharing” may change. And you can already see that future on Snapchat , the mobile app where millions of young people send disappearing images, taken in the moment and then deleted within 10 seconds of being viewed. “We think it captures a broader use case,” said Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, contrasting Snapchat with Facebook and Instagram in an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile . “It’s less about ‘I’m cool, I look really good,’ and it’s a lot more about communicating where you are, what you’re doing, how you feel. It’s more about chatting and messaging than putting yourself on display.” Wait, what? Is he arguing that this weird niche-y notion of impermanent photos is actually a bigger opportunity than regular photos? He is. Broadly speaking: Communicating with photos is potentially a bigger market than scrapbooking. Spiegel pointed to daily upload numbers that show that Snapchat is already bigger than Instagram, at least by one metric: Users upload 150 million Snaps per day , versus 40 million daily photos on Instagram. Said Spiegel, “I think there’s definitely a place for permanence; we’re not anti-permanence by any means. We just believe ephemeral should be the default.” Here’s the full video of the interview with Spiegel, in which he also discusses norms for teenagers in social media, potential Snapchat business models (a.k.a. ads) and the virtues of running a startup from Los Angeles: [ See post to watch video ]
Read MoreApple said on Thursday that it is approaching 50 billion downloads from its App Store. As has become customary for such events, Apple is prepping a giveaway for whoever downloads the milestone app — in this case, a $10,000 gift card to the App Store. The next 50 customers will get a $500 App Store gift card. Cheapskates (and Android users) can even enter without downloading an app by going here . Apps, meanwhile, have become big business for Apple and Google , generating billions in revenue. Software sales, meanwhile, have helped transform iTunes from a near-break-even business to a significant profit generator . Apple has also paid out more than $7 billion to app developers
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