4th
Republishing Tech Data (By the way, Android and iOS are killing it)
Trading Alpha tends to be a wonky tech news source. TechCrunch is more mainstream.
Interesting things happen when the mainstream provider picks up news originated by the wonk. Case in point:
TechCrunch shows a graph reflecting the downward sloping smartphone handset sales curve of Windows Mobile and BlackBerry at the hands of Google (Android) and Apple (iOS). For purposes of this graph, Apple and Google were combined into a single group (the blue wedge).
But the chart was originated by Seeking Alpha, which included another, more provocative chart that wasn’t republished by TechCrunch. In this second chart, Apple and Google are broken out separately. What’s clear is that Google’s recent sales growth is much stronger than Apple’s (which is not shabby, either). At the current rate of growth, Android handsets will soon outstrip iOS units by a factor of 2-to-1.
But wait. Actually, this wasn’t originated by Seeking Alpha at all. They republished it, too, although the real source of the primary research, comSource, showed this data in boring tables nestled in a yawning press release instead of pretty graphs.
But here’s a comSource morsel that hasn’t been widely reported: in only three months, the percentage of mobile users that downloaded an app to their mobile device grew by 3.3 percent, or an annualized rate of 13.2 percent.
That’s a big deal, too.
With thanks to colleague Bill Annibell for pointing me in an interesting direction.
