WINDOWS GROWTH IN US IN Q1 2013

US Market OS % Share of Smartphone Sales - 3 months ending March 2013
3 months ending Mar 13
3 months ending Mar 12
iOS
Android
Windows
RIM
Other
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Network % Share of Smartphone Sales
AT&T
Verizon
Other
SprintNextel
T-Mobile
3 months ending March 2013
49.3% Android share of US smartphone sales
43.7% iOS share of US smartphone sales
KANTAR WORLD

BRANDZ

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While Android and iOS remain the top contenders, Windows steadily moves upwards

As iOS and Android continue to battle it out for top selling smartphone OS, Windows has grown steadily over the past year and is now at its highest sales share figure so far.

While accounting for just 5.6% of smartphone sales in the first quarter of 2013, Windows gained 1.9% compared to the same period last year, according to US smartphone sales data by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

With nearly half (49.3%) of smartphone sales, Android remains the top selling operating system, but saw only slight growth compared to the same period last year, and is down versus the 3 months ending February 2013 (-1.9%). iOS remains in second place with 43.7% of smartphone sales, down throughout Q1 2013.

Windows strength appears to be the ability to attract first time smartphone buyers, upgrading from a featurephone. Of those who changed their phone over the last year to a Windows smartphone, 52% had previously owned a featurephone. Comparatively, the majority of iOS and Android new customers were repeat smartphone buyers, with 55% of new iOS customers, and 51% of new Android customers coming from another smartphone. While the differences between these figures are small, with over half of the US market still owning a featurephone, it's likely that many will upgrade over the coming year, which will ultimately contribute to more growth for the Windows brand.

Little movement is seen among the top smartphone carriers in the U.S market. Verizon continues to lead smartphone sales with 37.2% of smartphones sold in the 3 months ending March 2013. AT&T remains in second place at 27.9%, and Sprint in third place with 12.3%. T-Mobile is the only carrier to decline this period, seeing a 3.2% loss versus the same period a year ago, down to 9.5% of smartphones sold.

Source: Kantar Worldpanel

The AT&T Galaxy S4 has a locked bootloader

Yep, it's confirmed. The AT&T S4 authenticates the recovery and boot images before executing them.

I can't see what AT&T has to possibly gain from this. GSM and LTE aren't magical, tethering is controllable on the server side, and theft-of-services is not possible from the application processor side (or even from the modem side as far as I know). The same device is available on every carrier, so it's not an exclusivity issue either. The modem processor has always been locked, and the casual user doesn't want to mess with that part anyway. Samsung has always been developer-friendly, so I am guessing their hand was forced.

The only outcome I see here is stacks of bricked devices being sent back for warranty replacement due to the ease of causing a permanent boot failure, especially since the device is trivially rootable.

The arms race continues. News flash: MILLIONS of people run custom firmware (and I have the STATS to prove it). This is just a stupid move that will cost you customers and money.

I would not recommend buying this device on AT&T if you want to run CyanogenMod or another custom ROM, or if you are a developer and need to work with or debug the lower layers.

US variants of Galaxy S4 ship with locked bootloaders

US variants of Galaxy S4 ship with locked bootloaders https://twitter.com/nerdtalker/status/329112230895431680 https://twitter.com/nerdtalker/status/329113273679093762 http://www.gsmarena.com/us_variants_of_galaxy_s4_ship_with_locked_bootloaders-news-5944.php