HOLY SMOKES!! The app market is huge, but this is simply astonishing. Check it out, from my favourite guys over at the Business Insider: Apple's iPhone Platform Still Ahead, But Android Is Growing Fast.
See that chart at the bottom? In the middle of last year there were only 50 thousand apps for the iPhone. Now there are 285 thousand. The android operating system, which is not handset dependant like the iPhone, went from 5 thousand apps in June 2009 to around 100 thousand apps now. The Blackberry has experienced pedestrian growth, 1000 apps in June 2009 to only 10 thousand now. And Windows 7 is a brand new entrant to all of this, only 1000 apps exist at the launch a few weeks ago. I am sorry to say but this really worries me about Microsoft. Something I have been conveying to my colleagues for a long time here in the office.
77.1 million smartphones were shipped in the third quarter of this year. 26.5 million Nokia's, 14.1 million Apples and 12.4 million Blackberry's were snapped up, Nokia down, but the other two sharply up. Overall the market grew nearly 80 percent. But Microsoft isn't even in the top three. Question, if you could buy any phone right now, which one would it be? Take this very short survey and I will let you know what the results are: Smartphone survey.
Session end the Dow had risen 31 to 11164, the nerds of NASDAQ had added nearly half a percent to 2490, up 11.5 points. The S&P 500 added 2.5 points to close up shop at 1185. Ah yes, key technical levels.