Global sales of 4G phones to double to 500 million

CCS Insight reports, in its Mobile Phone forecast - April 2014 (thanks to article in Mobile News article), sales of 4G phones are set to double this year and rise to 1.2 billion in 2018, accounting for over half of the 2.4 billion phones sold in that year.

It is anticipated that the key driver [for that adoption] will be the cost of 4G phones falling below €€100 in the second half of this year, with most operators removing any premium for using the services.

Globally, CCS Insight is predicting unit sales will grow from 1.95 billion in 2014 to 2.29 billion in 2018. Smartphone sales will make up 64 per cent of sales this year and 82 per cent in four years time.

From this, the proportion of 4G-enabled sales will almost double from 26 per cent to 51 per cent, with 56 per cent of phones sold in Western-Europe this year being 4G-enabled.

Across the board, the analyst also expects the average selling price (ASP) of mobiles to fall this year from $168 this year (£100) to $154 (£92) in 2018.

The forecast predicts that Android’s, which accounted for 79 per cent of the one billion smartphones sold last year, will see its dominance continue. Despite doubts over the commitment from manufacturers to Windows Phone, it said its ability to compete at lower price points and taking advantage of BlackBerry’s recent decline will enable it to benefit.

Windows 8 - what's the driver for adoption

Last week, I read two articles about Windows 8, one article from Cambridge Network said:

Unless you are looking to take advantage of Windows 8 for some specific feature, we suggest that you wait until Windows 8 SP1 before looking at Windows 8 seriously. If you are switching from Windows XP and Office 2007, then your learning curve will be very steep. Windows 7 and Office 2010 users will have less of a learning curve.

The other, from the Register, takes a different perspective:

the software giant has apparently elected to take a much riskier, and gutsier, approach: turn Windows 8 into a serious gaming platform.

Not exactly compelling to the business user (and to a lesser extent the consumer), is it?

Ubuntu targets disgruntled Windows users

I mentioned Linux Mint in a blog post a couple of months ago, Linux Mint - Desktop OS that should have Microsoft a little worried.

Ubuntu - the operating system on which Mint is built on - has released version 11.04 (code named 'Natty Narwhal'). See Ubuntu's What's New.

Canonical marketing manager Gerry Carr says
"We focus on people who are likely to switch to Ubuntu," he said. "We think it's people who are moderately tech-aware, who – presented with an alternative – are likely to use an Android phone rather than an iPhone, [who are] more likely to use the challenger brand rather than the main brand. The majority of these people haven't just not heard of Ubuntu, but haven't considered an alternative to Windows outside of Mac."

Source: The Register: Ubuntu seeks Android-packin' Windows deserters

Note that the Reg slammed the beta of this release, Worst Ubuntu beta ever
Bugs aside, the reviewer did NOT like the new Unity interface which replaces GNOME.

The real problem is that Unity can't do half of what GNOME can do.

On the surface Unity looks good. In fact, Unity will most likely one day trump GNOME in many ways - it's noticeably snappier than GNOME, works well at just about any screen resolution and even appears to be designed with touch-based devices in mind. Eventually, come Ubuntu 13.04 or so, Unity will seem like a brilliant move, but the transition is going to be bumpy.

Linux Mint - Desktop OS that should have Microsoft a little worried

In June this year, I acquired (courtesy of my sister-in-law winning an iPad in a golf competition) a Acer Aspire One netbook (awful flash website). As shipped from Acer, it used a Linpus operating system - and Acer have goofed with it somewhat. The end result is absolutely desperate - clumsy and inoperable.

In searching for alternatives, I have installed various versions of Linux Mint on my Acer. I'm delighted to say that Mint 10 (released in November this year) is a significant step up from Mint 9 (released in August this year) and Mint 8.

LinuxMint is developed on top of Ubuntu which itself is developed on top of Debian. Its selling point over the hundreds of other Linux distributions is:

• friendly desktop 
• wide range of useful applications pre-installed with the OS (Open Office, Firefox, PDF viewer, Pidgin (instant messenger client), Thunderbird (Mozilla's email client), etc, etc, etc. Once installed, the result is a fully operational device.
• friendly and easy-to-use software manager which very simply allows you to install additional software

Being Linux, it's all for free. Linux Mint claims to be the fourth most popularly installed OS in the world (see footnote on Wikipedia's entry on Linux Mint). For the enquiring mind, the top three are: Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS and Ubuntu.

In using the previous versions of Linux Mint (and of course Linpus), it makes me credit and applaud Microsoft for its Windows OS on account of its ease of use and for creating a flexible platform on which a vast diversity of applications can run on.

Linux Mint can not be in the considered to be in the same division as Windows (yet), but it is rapidly becoming a low-end challenger. As a keen student of  Clayton Christensen's theories of disruptive innovation, Microsoft needn't be overly worried at the moment, BUT it should definitely be on the radar as having the very real prospect of stealing its WIn7 revenues on low end devices, depressing Microsoft's share price.