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Apple and Google’s Android OS were best performers in 2009’s mobile phone and smartphone markets, says Gartner. While phone sales slipped slightly over the year, the fourth quarter finished strong, leading to projections of double-digit growth for 2010.

The worldwide mobile phone market finished 2009 strong, with sales to end users exceeding 340 million units in the fourth quarter, for a growth of 8.3 percent over the final quarter of 2008, Gartner said in a Feb. 23 report.
 
The research firm added that the best performers of 2009 — in which overall worldwide sales slipped 0.9 percent from 2008, totaling 1.211 billion units — were Apple and Google’s Android operating system, with each growing its market share.
 
“The mobile devices market finished on a very positive note, driven by growth in smartphones and low-end devices,” Carolina Milanesi, a research director at Gartner, said in a statement.

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Apple stands ready to challenge Google in the cloud computing wars with the new iPad, Gartner analysts say. The iPad is geared to provide the most compelling mobile Internet experience users have seen to date, but Google later in 2010 is expected to bring its own vision for mobile Web consumption in the form of netbooks based on its Chrome Operating System.

Apple’s iPad is positioned to challenge Google’s plans for cloud computing if the tablet PC catches on, analysts believe.

The iPad aims to provide the most compelling Internet experience users have seen to date, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs proclaiming that holding the tablet is like “holding the Internet in your hand.”

The 9.7-inch IPS screen displays crisp high-definition video, as well other content such as games, e-books and e-mail for users to consume from the Web or the cloud. Author Nicholas Carr, who watches the cloud computing space closely, summed up the iPad:

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Worldwide mobile application revenue is expected to reach $6.8 million in 2010, before soaring to $29.5 million in 2013, Gartner said in a new report. Advertising profits are also expected to climb, even as eight out of 10 downloaded apps will be free to end users.

Mobile application stores will continue to draw in customers and drive up profits, according to new report from Gartner.

The firm expects that in 2010, consumers will spend $6.2 billion in mobile application stores, while advertising revenue in app stores is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide.

“As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” said Stephanie Baghdassarian, a Gartner research director, in a Jan. 18 statement on the report.

“Games remain the [No. 1] application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money,” Baghdassarian continued.

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New research from Gartner indicates that the mobile Web–as in cell phones and smartphones–will overtake PCs as the most common devices used for Web access sometime during the next three years.

MediaPost reports that it’s a more aggressive projection than the one Morgan Stanley issued, which had forecast five years as the time frame.

To put some numbers on the whole thing, Gartner is estimating that the combined installed base of mobile devices (including feature phones and smartphones, but not netbooks or laptops) will exceed 1.82 billion units by 2013, just ahead of the projected 1.78 billion total for desktop and laptop PCs.

The report also cautions that many sites still aren’t optimized for the mobile Web, even as cell phone users respond to surveys saying that they expect fewer clicks, not more clicks, on their phones than when using a PC.

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HP, Dell and Acer outpace Apple as low-priced mini-notebooks and netbooks find favor in place of pricey Macs.

Worldwide PC shipments surpassed 90 million units in the fourth quarter of 2009, a 22.1 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2008, according to preliminary results by technology research and analysis firm Gartner, Inc. It was the strongest quarter over quarter growth rate the worldwide PC market has experienced in the last seven years. HP surpassed Dell as the top vendor in the U.S. based on PC shipments in the fourth quarter of 2009 as HP became more competitive on pricing, and teamed up successfully with large retailers. Apple sales, while rising 7.5 percent in the fourth quarter 2009, slipped one place overall to fifth, behind HP, Dell, Acer and Toshiba.
 

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Gartner reports that worldwide external disk storage revenue totaled more than $3.9 billion in the third quarter of 2009, a 7.3 percent decline from the same period in 2008. But that’s much better than negative double-digit numbers from the first two quarters of the year.

Business may be looking up for 2010 in a good portion of the enterprise data storage business, following the nasty global economic downturn of 2008-09.

IT researcher Gartner reported Dec. 3 that worldwide external controller-based (ECB) disk storage revenue totaled more than $3.9 billion in the third quarter of 2009, a 7.3 percent decline from the same period in 2008.

Eighteen months after it quietly released them into the market for testing and production use, IBM announced at the Gartner Data Center Conference that it now has made available standalone portable data centers in industry-standard shipping containers.

IBM has added portable modular data centers to its long list of products and services.

Eighteen months after it quietly released them into the market for testing and production use, IBM announced Dec. 2 at the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas that it now has made generally available portable data centers in industry-standard shipping containers. They come in three sizes: 8 feet wide by 20 feet, 40 feet or 53 feet long.

An IBM Portable Modular Data Center (PMDC) provides a complete physical infrastructure, including power and cooling systems and remote monitoring, Steven Sams, Vice President of Site and Facilities for IBM Global Technology Services, told eWEEK.

“It also has all the elements of the secure operating environments found in traditional ‘raised-floor‘ data centers, including protection from fire, smoke, humidity, condensation and temperature changes,” Sams said. “The PMDC can support multiple vendors and systems in an industry-standard rack environment and enables complete access to both the front and rear of the IT equipment from within a physically and environmentally secure container.”

After hitting bottom in the second quarter, the worldwide server market began to rebound in the third quarter, according to IDC. Intel’s release of its Nehalem EP processor and AMD’s new “Istanbul” Opteron chip helped fuel the recovery in the x86 server space, a key driver in the overall systems market, IDC said.

The worldwide server market, hammered by the global economic recession, began to stabilize in the third quarter and promises to continue to rebound in the fourth quarter and into next year, according to research firm IDC.

In quarterly numbers released Dec. 2, IDC said that while global server revenue and shipments declined 17.3 percent and 17.9 percent, respectively, over the third quarter in 2008, both grew significantly over the second quarter of this year.

“[The server market] hit bottom in Q2, and in Q3 rebounded,” IDC analyst Daniel Harrington said in an interview. “The stabilization of the market is really the story here.”

IDC’s findings mirror those of analyst firm Gartner, which released its quarterly server numbers Dec. Nov. 30. Gartner also found that year-over-year numbers were still behind last year’s results, but jumped from the second quarter.

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Nokia plans to install Linux software on just one new smartphone next year, a source told Reuters on Monday, dampening prospects of a quick makeover of the Finnish group’s struggling product line-up.

The Finnish firm has started to invest more in Internet services in recent years, seeking to counter falling handset prices and increased competition in smartphones from the likes of Apple and Blackberry-maker RIM.

The Linux Maemo operating system is seen as key for Nokia in its rivalry with Apple Inc’s iPhone, and many analysts and industry players have been expecting the firm to roll out numerous Linux models already next year.

“This is not necessarily worrying, but they need a hit product. It has to be a winning one and Nokia needs to continue to work on Symbian in the meantime,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Nokia started to sell its first Linux phone, the top-of-the-range N900 model, this month.

All top 5 server vendors globally saw declines in revenue and shipment in the third quarter of 2009, with Sun Microsystems registering the biggest fall, according to latest figures from Gartner.

In a report released Monday, the research firm noted that Sun Microsystems saw its server revenue drop 32.3 percent and unit shipment dip 38 .1 percent in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.

IBM experienced 12.3 percent decline in revenue growth, though it clocked the highest revenue in the market for the quarter at US$3.4 billion. Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu saw their revenue decline 15.1 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively. Dell Computer was the only vendor with a single-digit revenue decline of 5.1 percent among the top 5 vendors, Gartner said.

Compared to the same quarter last year, overall server revenue worldwide dropped 15.5 percent while shipment dipped 17.1 percent in the third quarter.

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