Mobile Network Comparison

It’s been a few months since Apple’s release of its new mobile phones, the flagship iPhone 5S and the “budget” option, the iPhone 5C. It’s fair to say that the sales figures have been very impressive – within just days of the launch in September, Apple had shifted almost ten million iPhones making it a new sales record for the Cupertino company.

However, industry analysts have not failed to notice that Apple did not reveal the split in sales between the two devices. And, in actual fact, it turns out that there’s a fairly significant difference. The actual disparity is far bigger than most people were previously predicting.

We’ve seen the latest report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech which suggests that the more expensive iPhone 5S is outselling the 5C by a threefold factor. Kantar Worldpanel is a well-established market research company that has been headquartered in London since 1997. Their latest research report looked at data from UK sales up until the end of October.

Following the initial announcement announcement of the phone, the lacklustre specs of the 5C combined with the relatively high price led many to predict it would suffer from poor sales. However, almost no one expected the discrepancy to be quite so significant.

It is tempting to see the relatively poor sales of the iPhone 5C to be a failure. After all, Apple has been dogged by reports that have been artificially-constricting the supply of the 5S in order to try and shift more units of the less desirable 5C. Factually, it is certainly the case that the 5S has been barely able to keep up with demand. And it has also been reported that Apple’s Chinese factories are shifting production away from the 5C to produce five best handsets at a faster rate.

However, despite having a much higher price then almost any other handset on the market, evidence does suggest that the iPhone 5C is making some inroads into its target market of poorer households, especially in richer Western nations. Twice the proportion of iPhone 5C owners have lower incomes when compared to owners of the iPhone 5S.

Most encouraging for Apple is the fact that the 5C is drawing customers away from their big rivals; Samsung in particular. While the vast majority of iPhone 5S owners were already Apple converts and had upgraded from a previous iteration of the iOS smartphone, the iPhone 5C seems to be winning over new customers with about 50% of the buyers coming from competing brands. Certainly its lower price point has a huge part to play in that.

One mustn’t be too hasty to declare the 5C success, though. Arguably the cost is out of reach of the majority of consumers and, despite an aggressive marketing campaign, only older and cheaper models of the iPhone have any chance of making substantial inroads into emerging markets around the world.

Indeed, Apple’s market share overall is still in decline. So while the iPhone is shifting boxes at a frenetic pace, Android and Windows Phone are taking ever-increasing bites out of Apple’s share of the smartphone market. In fact, the latest figures show that Google’s Android is by far the most popular mobile platform in Britain largely due to the widescale availability of lower-priced handsets running the operating system.

With the entrance of cut-price Chinese manufacturers such as Lenovo, Zopo and Star into European markets, we predict that this trend will only continue into 2014. It’s likely that android we running on more and more people’s phones over the coming few years especially if Apple refuses to be competitive in the lower income price ranges.

Smartphones are now truly mass-market devices – almost every new mobile phone sold nowadays in Britain is a touchscreen smartphone. Already, Android is on more than seven out of every ten mobile phones in Europe and dominates more than half the market in the UK. Meanwhile, Apple’s lingering behind but less than 30% of the market and BlackBerry has been almost entirely squeezed out with less than 3% according to the latest figures and this year.

So, what you make of these figures and the report that the iPhone 5S is outselling the iPhone 5C by three to one? Does this latest new surprise you at all or is it what you’ve come to expect from the latest iPhone launch? And how do you see the battle between Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS continuing over the course of next year? Please let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

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Alexandra Zagury has been named as the new managing director of the UK and Ireland branch of BlackBerry, formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM). Struggling smartphone manufacturer is made the move following Rob Orr’s defection to up-and-coming rival Samsung back in June.

In the meantime, the MD or the whole Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, Robert Bose, had been taking on the job an interim basis. There has been a lot of speculation that Zagury would takeover but it has only recently been confirmed that she will step into the position. Replacing Zagury in her previous post will be former Yudi Moodley who was previously the business management director for the Middle East and Africa.

Alexandra Zagury is a graduate of the London School of Economics in London and has been with the company for several years now. Ahe spent much of that time – total of about 18 months – working as a director for the South Africa, Southern Africa of BlackBerry.

During this period, she relocated to BlackBerry’s offices in Johannesburg. She is also hold a position as the MD of the Turkey branch in Istanbul as well as working in many senior roles for BlackBerry in the UK.

Despite her wealth of experience, there is no doubt at all at that her job will be a very tough one as she desperately aims to alter the fortunes of struggling BlackBerry. In recent years, and especially following the tough competition from Apple and Google, profits are income have been falling at BlackBerry and there’s little doubt in industry that the BlackBerry 10 platform has been all but a failure according to adoption figures.

Dispute this, Alexandra Zagury has strongly suggested that the BlackBerry 10 platform – running on QNX – is obsolete positions allow BlackBerry to lead the way mobile phones to mobile computers. She has claimed that the experience offered by this operating system means that user experience will not be, might as phones become more and more powerful.

Alexandra Zagury will also be aware that the UK market is much more competitive and a tougher nut to crack than Africa. She recently tweeted that BlackBerry drives 14% of Internet traffic in Africa but this is mainly due to the fact that older BlackBerry devices are available for much lower cost and the latest android and Apple smart phones. It’s also not certain whether they’ll be to keep up this trend as smart phone manufacturers target developing regions with cut-price android offerings.

#BlackBerry drives 14% of internet traffic in Africa – The Washington Post http://t.co/OdTmi18Vkx

— Alexandra Zagury (@alexza) November 15, 2013

It is also telling that, despite BlackBerry accounting for 14% of aggregate Internet traffic in Africa, major competitors to is BBM messaging platform such as what’s up and Skype are fast rising rivals. Dated protocol WAP is also third in the list behind BlackBerry suggesting that when high-speed mobile Internet becomes more common, the more traditional offerings allowing smart phones to connect a regular mobile networks will become more popular as they have done in more established markets. Mobile Internet access is still rather in its infancy in Africa and as it matures, BlackBerry will have a tough time trying to hold onto its portion.

What you make of this news? Does Alexandra Zagury have what it takes to turn around BlackBerry’s fortunes in the UK market? Or is it simply too late for the struggling company already? Please let us know your thoughts and opinions.

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Up-and-coming Chinese mobile phone manufacturer Zopo have just dropped a bombshell – in just a few days time, they’re about to launch the world’s first true octa-core mobile phone. The new handset is going to be called the Zopo ZP700 and the official launch date will be 21 November.

Zopo are a relatively new mobile phone manufacturer and are currently pretty much unknown outside of China – after all, they have only been around for less than a year now and they are only marketing themselves in East Asia. However, they are already starting to make a name for themselves in the Chinese market and are already one of the most popular brands in the region.

Zopo also caught the eye of us with their recently-released and very impressive Zopo ZP980 Android smartphone which got out highest-so-far handset score in our comprehensive video review last month.

The newly-announced ZP700 model will be a significant step up from the ZP980. Like almost all Chinese Android smartphones, it will be based on a chipset from Taiwanese company MediaTek – the MT6592. This is the world’s first true octa-core system on a chip and will be able to leverage increased parallelisation in order to provide greater power efficiency and blazingly-fast processing speeds.

Existing smartphones on the market with octa-core CPUs can actually only activate half of their cores at once. In comparison, the MediaTek True Octa-Core allows for all eight of its cores to run simultaneously. In combination with the new 28nm die size, this will offer the ultimate combination of performance and power-efficiency.

The exact clock speed of the ZP700’s processor has not yet been announced, but we can’t wait to see the performance of this new chipset. We do know that the chipset is capable of running between about 1.7GHz and 2GHz per core – pretty impressive speeds we’re sure you’ll agree.

Not only will it come with that beastly eight-core CPU, but the new ZP700 phone will come with a complete set of technical specifications to die for. The latest rumours are suggesting that the device will have a screen larger than 5 inches with a 1080p full-HD resolution. The chipset will also likely boast ramped-up graphical capabilities as we have exclusive information that the graphics chip will be upgraded from the PowerVR SGX544MP to a much more powerful ARM Mali-450 MP GPU. Certainly great news for all you gamers out there 🙂

The other specs that we expect to see on the new phone will be a full 2GB of RAM and 32GB ROM as the internal SD card. Of course, it’ll have dual cameras including a stunning 13 megapixel main camera and, of course, dual-SIM capability. We also are hoping for an even higher-capacity battery to keep the phone running for days and days.

As for the design and form factor for the ZP700, it looks like Zopo will be aiming to take a leaf out of Apple’s book. The handset has a very iPhone 5C-type feel to it with a colourful pastel-shaded battery cover and a stylish and unobtrusive look to the whole phone.

How much difference do you think having a true eight core processor will make to the ZP700? Well Zopo finally break into the Western mainstream with the release of this phone? How much do you think it will cost, what scores do you think it will get on benchmarking software and how will it compare in real-world usage to current top-end smart phones like the HTC One, iPhone 5S and Samsung Galaxy S4? Stick around as we report all the latest view following the launch event on 21 November.

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