Research

Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine runs on over 500 million devices

via AppleInsider | Apple releases Safari 5 with extensions, expanded HTML5 support.

Safari's installed base includes Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad as well as the number of Windows versions.  Assuming 45 million Macs, there are probably around 50 million PCs using Safari.

WebKit includes all iOS devices as well all Android and Symbian/S60 and Palm Pre.

Apple's announcement of $60 million booked revenues for iAd, of which 60% is meant for developers implies $24 million operating profit for the second half of 2010.  Assuming this rate doubles $100 million for 2011, it becomes clear that the acquisition of Quattro for $250 million is reasonable (2.5x gross earnings) and that the AdMob price of $750 million seems expensive.

Now Google may have justification for the $750 million along the lines of income from non-Apple platforms, but the CPMs for Admob are a fraction (perhaps 10%) of what iAd is able to obtain.  Therefore, it's a pretty fair conclusion that Google did not get a bargain.

The data shows how growth is accelerating with the daily add rates for the periods above increasing from 46k/day to 191k/day.

Credit to Turley Muller via MacObserver.com Finance Board.

My prediction is that sometime next year Apple will announce the 100 millionth iPhone OS device sold, making the iPhone the fastest selling platform in history. The iPhone will have been on the market for three years.

via asymco | One Hundred Million.

Steve Jobs today: "This month we will sell the 100 millionth iOS device."

JP Morgan is cited as sizing the US mobile display ad market at $250 million.  This gives Apple 48% market share of the mobile ad market for second half of 2010.

The download rate has just shot up.  It's gone way above the song daily download rate.

Total sales: $1.43 billion
Amount to developers: $1 billion
Apps sold: 5 billion
ASP: $0.29

My expectation was 4.9 billion by June 1. Apple is about on target.

Six months ago IDC predicted 300k apps before end of 2010.

Here is a quick mid-year check: As of today there are around 215k available, with 250k likely approved by the end of WWDC.

These are the stats from three app store tracking spiders:

Apple's WWDC banners proclaim 200k apps which was the last public count stated at the April iPhone OS 4.0 launch event.

Looks like IDC's forecast will not be a stretch especially as the new iPhone will create a new wave of apps.

Also noteworthy is the nearly 10k iPad apps available in less than 3 months.  The original iPhone reached 10k apps in about six months.

8:50 am: Walt circles back, notes that Ballmer uses the term PC to include things that most people don’t think of as PCs. Is the iPad a PC?

Ballmer: Of course it is. What do you do on it? Answer email….A guy tried to take notes on it at a meeting I was at yesterday–that was interesting [chuckles from the audience]. He suggests that the positioning of devices like the iPad as something beyond the PC is just a marketing tactic.

via Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie at D8 Conference: on Competitors, Tablets, Future of Computing and much more | Microsoft | ithinkdifferent.

If only the analysts would add the 2+ million iPads shipped this quarter to Apple's Mac units and declare that Apple's market share doubled(*).  If only things were so simple.

At least on this I agree with Ballmer.

(*) The iPad is already outselling the Mac on a weekly run-rate.

Data tracking firm Nielsen Co.’s quarterly survey found that, in the U.S. the iPhone added two percentage points for a 28% market share in the three months ended in late March compared to the previous quarter. RIM still had the biggest market share at 35% but it lost two percentage points in that period.

Phones that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system also gained two percentage points for a market share of 9% over the same period, while Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile phones lost two percentage points for a 19% share.

via Appetite for IPhone Continues Undiminished - Digits - WSJ.

Although Android is often considered in competition with the iPhone, as we've shown in the past, the two are seldom competing for the same purchase decision.  From a distribution and business model point of view, the platforms are mostly non-overlapping.

The installed base data above shows that in their respective areas of competition: in the US, with the current operator channel, the iPhone is taking share from a similarly positioned platform (RIM) while Android is taking share from a similarly licensed alternative (Windows Mobile).

"And I think i've been quite public about the fact that I chose to make a set of leadership changes in the team of people building and executing on our Windows Phone software.

"We had to do a little cleanup, change things around," Ballmer said

via AppleInsider | Microsoft CEO hopes to reenter phone market, disputes PC shift.

"I chose to make leadership changes" and Robbie Bach the ultimate leader of Windows Phone "retiring".  Did he jump or was he pushed?