The more interesting data comes from the research into smartphone platforms (operating systems). About 61 million US citizens owned a smartphone in October, representing about 1 in 4 of all mobile subscribers. The leading smartphone platform still belongs to RIM, whose Blackberry holds 35.8% share of the smartphone market. In second place is Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), with 24.6% of the market.

 
RIM’s share has fallen -3.5% since July, and Apple’s share has risen 0.8%. The big gainer though is Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Google’s Android operating system has gained 6.5% more of the market since July, finishing October with 23.5% of the total smartphone market.

 
Since the RIM platform is headed in the wrong direction and the growth in iPhone use has slowed to a trickle, it’s a virtual certainty that the next comScore survey will have Google passing Apple and threatening RIM.

 
The comScore report is consistent with what’s been happening in the market for months now. Android usage is picking up speed.
In July, Android platforms grew by 4%, down slightly from 5.2% growth in comScore’s April report. Since April, which reported platform usage through February 2010, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has declined from 15.1% of the market to 9.7% share, well behind Android.

 
Apple’s 25.4% share in April has declined to this report’s 24.6%, and RIM’s share has dropped from 42.1% to 35.8%. Android’s share has bloomed from 9% in April to 23.5%.

 
Exactly how Google is making money on the adoption of Android remains somewhat mysterious, but the company’s CEO said some time ago that Google was earning about $1 billion in revenue from Android. That number is only going to go up.

 
Paul Ausick

New research shows why RIMM should be unsettled.

Crowd Science recently released a new survey which shows that the Blackberry still dominates that market for smartphones used for business though that market may not be large enough to support RIM’s rapid growth.

When Blackberry users were asked what kind of handset they would buy next, about a quarter said the iPhone and a third selected an Android-based product.

In some ways, the research is just as bad for Apple as it is for RIMM. The iPhone is a fairly “old” product that has been in the market for three years. Its appeal is supported by its huge App Store which has 150,000 software products which can only be used on the iPhone. The Android OS has only been available for a year, but smartphone users seem to like handsets with its features and functions as much as they like the iPhone. RIM and other smartphone operators that use operating systems other than the Apple or Android OSs have a problem. And, Apple has unexpected competition.

Douglas A. McIntyre   douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com

Among the public companies in the handset business which trade on US exchanges, Nokia  (NOK) has performed the most poorly over the last year. The firm’s shares are up a little over 30% while the DJIA is higher by 50%. Apple (AAPL), RIM (RIMM), and Motorola (MOT) have performed much better over the period. Until a month ago, so had failed smartphone company Palm (PALM).

Nokia’s performance is particularly disappointing since it is the largest handset company in the world with a market share of 38%.

Nokia could have had an insurmountable lead in both the smartphone and mobile operating systems sectors. It let RIM take a commanding position at the top of the enterprise handset industry and let Apple move into the upper tier of consumer smartphones. More recently, Google (GOOG) has captured a breathtakingly large part of the wireless operating system business with its Android product which is still adding new handset customers.

Apple now controls the wireless software application download business and its iTunes store is likely to hold its position as the primary conduit of mobile broadband content distribution.

Nokia did not take advantage of any of the opportunities that it had by being in first place. It failed to leverage its partnerships with carriers, manufacturers, software developers, and content companies. And, at this point, it is not likely to catch its smaller competitors in the most profitable and strategically important parts of the industry.

Douglas A. McIntyre

R-I-M now expects its fourth-quarter revenue to come in at or near the mid-point of its previously disclosed range, yet its earnings per share will be at the low end of its forecasts.  Margin targets are also being taken down.

First Call consensus were $0.86 and about $3.4 billion in revenue.  R-I-M also now expects BlackBerry net subscriber account additions to be more than 20% higher than the 2.9 million net subscriber account additions forecasted on Dec. 18.

R-I-M apparently had record a level of net subscriber account additions in December and it has seen strong continued orders.  This is what was surprising to us.  We had expected this to remain soft as unemployment continues to climb.

The retail smartphone market has become crowded.  On the corporate side, R-I-M’s Blackberry is still by far the device of choice from what we have seen.

R-I-M shares are down almost 12% at $50.25 in very active pre-market trading.  The company’s stock was still up over the last five days despite its big drop yesterday with the market.

In no way can we say that this is good news, but frankly this looks better than what we expected.

Jon C. Ogg
February 11, 2009

RIMM shares closed up over 5% at $94.47 today, although shares are down almost 1.5% at $93.17 in after-hours trading.

It sure looks like Steve Jobs just got a new opportunity to talk about the benefits of the iPhone, although we would caution that outages in the past have not created any major customer exodus in the past.  This may give that recent survey in favor of the iPhone one more leg up.

Jon C. Ogg
February 11, 2008

T-Mobile USA has been selected to be the first carrier to provide the new software application to its customers.

Mike Lazaridis, founder of Research In Motion, will join Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, to formally unveil and demonstrate the Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones application today at the CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment show in San Francisco. This application will be available for download today.

Facebook users can wirelessly send and view messages, photos, pokes and Wall posts. The rich, native application goes beyond browser-based access, automatically pushing notifications to the user’s BlackBerry smartphone as friends and colleagues send notes, Wall posts or pokes. The application allows users to take a photo, upload it to the site with captions and tags; quickly and easily invite friends; manage events; manage photo albums; and manage their status while on the go.

This does have some business applications depending upon your business, but it may just end up being another time hog.  The take from 24/7 Wall St. on this is that the announcement will be a harbinger for many more similar announcements regarding other social networking sites with phone makers and with carriers.  This trend has already started as social networking has already started going mobile (MySpace-Helio and others).  Free weekly email sign-ups can be accessed here. 

Now the question comes down to whether this and other deals make a rumored and long-speculated investment from Google or Microsoft come with a higher price tag.

Jon C. Ogg
October 24, 2007

Jon Ogg is the editor of the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter; he does not own securities in the companies he covers. 

We just noted this one as one of the huge Window Dressing Stocks that was a large beneficiary of fund buying.  Based upon a $98.00 mid-morning price, since the June 29 date shares are up 47%; but if you go merely one day before the end of the last calendar quarter shares are up a monster 77%.

It is never easy standing against the crowd and it is never easy saying hi-flyers have run too much.  It is possible to stand against the crowd, but stocks have shown time after time how sometimes they will keep rising despite performance and despite valuations.  But it is hard to imagine that there isn’t going to be some profit taking.  RBC Capital Markets just downgraded this Monday saying R-I-M was hard to see higher prices for the time being.  The average target is roughly $100 now, although there are higher targets.   Jim Cramer said recently that he expects some profit taking in these names that are up big, mostly from his "New Four Horsemen of Tech" stocks.

The BlackBerry is still more business-focused, but what we are rally trying to look at is how large the global total is that the company can take.  It has leaped over the Palm Treo from Palm Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) and the iPhone, for now at least, has been less of a business focus and is still in the the very early stages of its 20 million unit target where R-I-M is trying to counter the advance.

We would expect some profit taking as the obvious move, but we aren’t going to try stand in front of a freight train.  This one has just had way too many gap-ups on earnings before.   With new versions of its PDA smartphones having hit the market, we aren’t going to try to outguess the guestimates for shipments and subscribers.  We are still trying to factor in a longer-term estimate of the total global market opportunity for R-I-M and we aren’t alone. 

The $55 Billion market cap sounds giant, but it depends upon how you view its global opportunity in the years ahead.  Another wild card today will be the impact that the weak US Dollar had.  Research in Motion is based in Canada, derives much of its sales in the U.S., and now has global sales with most major global wireless carriers.

Jon C. Ogg
October 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and does not own securities in the companies he covers. 

• Palm posted $0.08 EPS & roughly $361 million in revenues, both slightly above the estimate of $0.08 EPS & $359+ million revenues.  It also sold 689,000 units, a gain of over 20% and in-line with estimates.  But the guidance is what is acting as a load on the shares: next quarter guidance is $0.06 to $0.08 EPS versus roughly $0.10 estimates; revenues are now expected $370 to $380 million, under the $400+ million expectation. 

Shares closed down 1.6% at $16.00 today, and that is in the middle of the $13.41 to $19.50 52-week trading range.  Its recent $100.00 Centro smart(er) phone is likely going to carry less profit per unit, but now the company is going for more volume in the lower-end phone sales were none of the smart phones participate.  This new focus is a market where Research-in-Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) has somewhat stayed out of, although sometimes certain contract signings and promotions allow competition there.  The new iPhone from Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been a threat as well.

The investment and recapitalization is all but finalized with Elevation Partners and it seems the market is somewhat waiting to see how the company performs after that.  Shares are down 4% at $15.35 after-hours trading, but this is actually a pretty good reaction when you consider its position compared to BlackBerry and iPhone now.  The news might not sound great, but it may be deemed as at least a partial win because it could have been far worse.  Now the company will just have to prove it can get this back to its prominence over a long-term horizon.

• Here was the guidance of last week;
• Here was the "Foleo is History!";
• Here was losing the Cisco sales-rep smartphone exclusivity, although Cisco’s communications department did clarify that it wasn’t a total loss as they do still offer to reps;
• Old PALM Buyout rumors and here is what we thought they would have to pay to win the company over;
• and here was Research-in-Motion clearly winning out at last earnings.

Jon C. Ogg
October 1, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he produces the 24/7 Wall St. Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

What is happening is that as part of the mobile workforce plan, Cisco is offering a variety of smartphone devices to choose from.  This is after a one and a half to two year upgrade after first noticing Cisco’s mobile workforce in summer of 2005 with Palm Treos attached.  Cisco users in this latest upgrade cycle were offered a choice of the Nokia E61i (not the regular Nokia E61 as stated in prior article), Motorola’s Q phone, Samsung’s BlackJack and i600, RIM Blackberry and the Treo 650.   

So the Palm Treo is not completely out of the picture.  Research-in-Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) is in there after all, and that makes sense considering the deployments that have worked on a cross-over basis with both companies and the related networks for some time.  Discussions with contacts inside Cisco did not indicate that Blackberry was a choice initially.  A communication from Molly Ford, one of Cisco’s PR managers, did indicate that Cisco IT continues to talk to a widerange of handset manufacturers about their future roadmaps and test devices foraddition to the internal certified range of devices, including Apple, HP, HTC,Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Samsung and RIM.   

Molly Ford also indicated that Palm worked very hard over the last couple of years to provide Cisco IT with support for its fleet and that Cisco would have no problem in picking a Palm device in the future.  So it appears the good news is that Palm is not being canned entirely.  But the choices in smartphones have increased. 

While it is not public what percentage of employees are changing devices, personal contacts have noted that it isn’t just a few here and there.  If this was the brand of a ballpoint pen or which personal ISP was being used, it wouldn’t even be a discussion. These smartphone devices are such a topic of conversation among business people and random airport travelers that any new device introductions can matter.  If this was Acme Router Co. making this change it would not be an issue.  But this is Cisco, and the company indirectly influences many technology decisions and directions outside of its own efforts.  This can create some added ripples that otherwise would not have come up.

Neither of the above points would be noted if it wasn’t for seeing this directly and hearing about it so frequently from personal and professional contacts.  Wall Street and all of its minions have become techies whether they like it or not, and this carries over into almost every field with mobile sales and support staff.  Almost on every business (or pleasure) trip from New York to Chicago to California it seems the latest smartphones are a topic of conversation.   I won’t bore you with other such examples and references that have been shared by my contact base, but that’s more than just conjecture.

Jon C. Ogg
September 11, 2007

Jon Ogg produces the 24/7 Wall St. SPECIAL SITUATION INVESTING NEWSLETTER; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

This was an open source notebook with an ‘instant-on’ feature that was not really a full notebook.  But the company was hoping on a device that might replace your notebook if you are just going on a short vacation or quick business trip and didn’t need full access outside of basic web use and emails.  The answer is, wish in one hand and…. you know the rest.  Palm has been falling further behind as Research-in-Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) has been winning more PDA-phone market share and as the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone has garnered so much press.

Frankly, there is still a gadget market out there.  The problem is that the gadget market is seeming as though it is BECOMING your phone or PDA.  The demand just appears to not be there as much for devices that work through your PDA phone like this now dead Foleo device.  The company is going to focus exclusively on the next generation software platform for delivering its next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market. 

Interestingly enough, this may indirectly affect Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) down the road; but that depends on how you interpret what the company says and if you think this goes farther than it is leading on.  Palm’s release said it will continue to deliver products in partnership with Microsoft on the Windows Mobile platform, but from an internal platform development perspective, it will focus on only one.  So there is room for interpretation based on that, depending on if you believe the company (read the full release below).

There are some other strange things going on inside Palm, which we will be posting Wednesday.

Jon C. Ogg
September 4, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he produces the Special Situation Investing Newsletter and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

BELOW IS THE FULL EMAIL ON PAGE 2…..

As many of you are aware, we are in the process of building our next generation software platform. We are very excited about how this is coming together. It has a modern, flexible UI, instant performance, and an incredibly simple and elegant development environment. We are working hard on this platform and on the first smartphones that will take advantage of it.

President & CEO
Palm, Inc.