idc

Sales of semiconductors staged a healthy recovery around the world last year thanks to strong demand from makers of smartphones, tablets, notebooks, e-readers, and other popular consumer devices, according to data out today from IDC.

For the year, chip sales rose by 14 percent to $282 billion, a rebound that was felt across all sectors and global regions of the market. Among the more than 100 semiconductor makers tracked by IDC, Intel was once again the top dog, bringing in total revenues of $41.9 billion last year.

Samsung took the No. 2 spot with sales of $27.6 billion, … Read more

Amazon's Android blitz continues with the launch of the Cloud Player service and a deal to preinstall its App Store onto phones. Meanwhile, in the original Android Market, app makers get a new way to monetize their wares. Also, Antuan risks bricking his new HTC Thunderbolt by attempting to installing a custom ROM during the show. Will he be left with an expensive paperweight? All of that and more on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly with Justin Eckhouse and Antuan Goodwin.

Android and Windows Phone will reign supreme in the smartphone market in the not-too-distant future, a new IDC report claims.

According to the market researcher, more than 450 million smartphones will ship in 2011, up from the 303.4 million units last year. IDC predicts that Android will account for 39.5 percent of all smartphone shipments this year, easily besting Symbian's 20.9 percent market share. Apple's iOS platform is expected to be running on 15.7 percent of the smartphones shipped in 2011. RIM's BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will round out the … Read more

Historically, users viewed IT departments as the people who ran the basic infrastructure "plumbing," were inflexible when it came to doing anything new, and generally far more of an inhibitor to the business than an enabler. That take was at least middling unfair in most cases, but it was grounded in certain realities.

For most organizations, IT was primarily focused on a fairly common--if hardly standardized--set of tasks. Functions like enterprise resource planning, financials, human resources, and e-mail all had to work. But they weren't something that especially advantaged the organization most of the time. Yes, an … Read more

The IT market staged a healthy rebound last year, with global spending on IT products and services rising 8 percent from 2009 to more than $1.5 trillion, according to IDC's Worldwide Black Book report out today.

The market research firm's 2010 numbers showed the fastest growth rate for the IT industry since 2007.

Factoring in the telecommunications segment, the overall ICT (information and communications technology) market saw spending climb to almost $3 trillion, up 6 percent from 2009. Growth was driven by the need and ability among businesses to finally spend money to refresh their hardware and … Read more

In 2010, the smartphone arena continued its shift with Apple and Android vendors grabbing a greater slice of the global market and Nokia and Research In Motion watching their shares drop, according to research firm IDC.

The year as a whole still found Nokia and BlackBerry maker RIM in first and second places, respectively, with the highest market shares and units shipped across the globe, according to IDC's latest "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker," which was released today. But Nokia saw its annual market share fall to 33.1 percent, from 39 percent in 2009, while RIM'… Read more

Though still among the top five mobile phone vendors worldwide, Apple has conceded fourth place to China's ZTE, according to the "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker" report released today by IDC.

Looking at the global market share of the top mobile phone vendors in the fourth quarter, Apple dipped from fourth to fifth place despite a record quarter for phone shipments, the report said.

The iPhone maker shipped 16.2 million units, a healthy boost from the 14.1 million units shipped in the third quarter and the 8.7 million shipped in 2009's final quarter. Apple's flagship phone sold especially well in developed countries, including North America and Western Europe.

Apple's global market share for the quarter slipped only slightly to 4 percent from 4.1 percent the prior quarter. But that combined with a surge in shipments for ZTE, which has sold mostly lower-cost feature phones, allowed the Chinese mobile phone maker to steal fourth place away from Apple.

Hitting the top five for the very first time, ZTE shipped 16.8 million units for the quarter, helping it win a 4.2 percent slice of the market.… Read more

The DOJ is sniffing around again on the topic of mandatory data retention for ISPs: our advice? If this is their canary in the coal mine, kill the canary. Not cool. Also, will the Facebook phone be huge? I say yes, Tong is skeptical. Android developer interest is nearly equal to their interest in iOS, plenty of Android tablet news, and I give the Sony Dash the full Touch My Body. --Molly

The growing wave of tablets is spurring mobile app developers to put the devices at the top of their priority lists, according to a new survey.

An IDC and Appcelerator survey of app developers (PDF) found that interest in Android tablets shot up 12 points over the past three months with 74 percent "very interested" in developing for the Google OS-based devices.

But the iPad is still king, with 87 percent of those polled "very interested" in developing for Apple's tablet. Interest in Research In Motion's upcoming BlackBerry Playbook nearly doubled to 28 percent. … Read more