In the fourth quarter, rivals such as Amazon and Barnes and Nobles have launched their own tablets. iSuppli report claims that more than 3.9 million Amazon Kindle Fire have been sold during the quarter. Barnes and Nobles tablet have sold for 1.9 million. Amazon Kindle Fire accounts for 14% of the global market and Barnes and Nobles accounts for 7% of the global market.

About 2.1 millions units of Samsung Galaxy Tab had been sold. The total number of units of Samsung Galaxy Tab sold in the 2011 year is 6 million units.

More than 15.4 million shipments of the Apple iPads have been made. This is an increase of 11.1 million units of iPad sold in the third quarter. iSuppli said that Apple did not lose to Amazon and Barnes and Nobles although they have some shares in the market. iSuppli speculates that Apple will beat the competitors when the new iPhone is launched.

According to Rhoda Alexander, a senior manager at IHS said that the launching of the iPhone 4S in the month of October have put competition in the disposable income of the customers. Many customers have decided to buy iPhone 4S instead of buying the iPad. The iPad 4S has done more to limit the competition growth of Kindle Fire and tablets from other media.

The sales statistic of the fourth quarter is 37 million units of iPhones.

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple had discussed about this issue at the Goldman Sachs conference. The iPad sales have reduced the sales of Mac computer. However, Apple did not want to worry about the buying trend of the customers. Apple prefers customers to change their preference to another Apple product rather than moving on to other brand name alternatives.

Cook said that he did not want to stop the production of the iPhone even though its sales have affected the sales of other Apple products. Cook said that they just want the customers to keep on buying the Apple stuff.

Cook said that Amazon is a different competitor. He said that Amazon had sold a lot of units of the Kindle Fire. Cook said that he knew the Amazon Kindle Fire will continue to sell well. However, he pointed out that he will not make limited functionality product like the Amazon Kindle as customers won’t be satisfied with that.

The profits in the tablet market have caused Amazon and Barnes and Nobles to gain profit.

Alexander from iSuppli said that the increment in the sales of iPad alternatives were done through reducing the capital costs so that the price reductions of the tablets were made possible. Many retailers have promoted iPad alternatives tablets by giving away the actual products.

The more profitable alternative are Windows 8 tablets and tablets based on ARM which will be launched in the late 2012 and 2013.

Apple is going to release the new iPad in March. Alexander speculates that apple will improve its performance in the tablet market with the release of the new iPad.

A research conducted by FixYa.com discovered the complaints of customers regarding iPad. The problem of connectivity issue is the top complaint. Kindle Fire and iPad 2 also cause problem for the sales of the iPad.

Security issue is one of the problems of Kindle Fire. Many people don’t like to type in password when they shop at the online store. There are problems in making connection to the internet. The lack of parental control is another problem in Kindle Fire. Other complaints of Kindle Fire are difficulty for making the computer recognizing Amazon Kindle Fire and precision issue in the touch screen. Apple iPad clams that there are problem with the Wi-Fi connectivity. Some of the complaints of Apple iPad are bleeding of the backlight loq microphone quality and poor USB connectivity.

According to Yaniv Bensadon, the CEO of FixYa, although Apple is popular in the market, many consumers recognize the issues with it.

The iPhone hype gets stronger when a survey conducted by the All Things D, found that 43% of customers on a contract actually broke it, in order to get their hands on the device.

“An amazing 19 percent of all iPhone buyers upgraded from the iPhone 4, a phone barely a year old at the time of the launch,” said CIRP co-founder Mike Levin. “Forty-two percent of iPhone buyers broke existing carrier contracts to get the new iPhone 4S. And 19 percent of these iPhone 4S buyers sold their old iPhone in the secondary market. Early upgrades, broken contracts, and selling used phones — all allow buyers to purchase the new iPhone 4S, when conventional wisdom suggests that these users would follow the two-year contract cycle, or at least purchase the cheaper models.”

Walkey predicts the iOS will rank second in the mobile operating system usage at around 18 percent, trailing behind Google’s Android which will account for 52 percent on a sales of 335.5 million handsets in 2012. 30.5 million iPhones were predicted to fly of shelves worldwide during the holiday season. Apple will confirm this figure when they release holiday sales figures on January 24.

Early estimations show over 12 million iPhone units were sold in the United States alone during the December quarter. In Australia, the estimated iPhones sold is conservatively placed at 800,000 units during the same period. This includes Australian’s buying the iPhones outright or joining a mobile plan contract.

The iPhone 4s was the best selling handset during the December quarter, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S2 and the iPhone 4.

With the iPhone 4s expected to be launched in the coming weeks in China, it is expected to boast Apple’s iPhone revenue by 20%. Russia and Brazil have welcomed the iPhone 4s and sales are extremely strong. The demand for the iPhone doesn’t seem to be losing any steam.

The technology is said to use hydrogen fuel cells that converts oxygen and hydrogen into water, heat and electricity.  The hydrogen fuel cells isn’t a new technology and have been used by Honda powered cars.  Honda has found numerous issues with the technology, such as making it portable and cost effective which from a smartphone and portable device perspective is highly important.

Recently, Apple Inc. filed 2 patents to the US Patent & Trademark Office relating to battery improvements.   One of the patent dubbed, ‘Fuel Cell System coupled to a Portable computing device’ could be a solution to the cost effective and portability issue.  In a brief detail of the patent it describes it as, “provides power to and receiving power from a rechargeable battery in a portable computing device.  This eliminates the need for a bulk and heavy battery within the fuel cell system, which can significantly reduce the size, weight and cost of the fuel cell system.”

If the technology/solution does work, Apple believes it could improve battery life of their products by up to ‘days or even weeks’ without recharging.  It is quite hard to believe with the recent iPhone 4/S iOS 5 issue where battery life performance has dropped considerably.  In most cases, with minimum usage such as leaving your iphone turned on during an 8 hour sleep, 20% of the battery life has been drained.  Still with the latest December 16^th iOS 5 update, the battery issue has not been fixed.

If Apple’s latest research and development does succeed, it will likely improve the demand for Apple products.

A research survey conducted in Australia shows that the iPhone buyers of the 4S model were mostly women. They accounted for 75 percent of the total sales. Out of this, most of them were women below the age of 35 years.

The selections made by men accounted for the purchase of the android operating system phones made by Google and the Blackberry phones.

An iPhone buyer, Kristy Dowle stated that the operating system of iPhone was simple and easy to use. She also said that the iPhone was her love and she knew where everything was and thus, found it easy to use it.

Her friend, Donnie Varcoe who is 33 years old also favored the iPhone. He said that he liked to read the news and the sports update on the phone. However, the Blackberry was a practical choice than the iPhone or the android phones. He stated that the huge size of his fingers would not allow him to use touch screens with ease and thus, he prefers the type phones to send emails and text messages.

If you are one among the people who have not yet inserted yourselves into the debate of what HE uses and what SHE uses with respect to Smartphone’s, this Christmas is the season where these devices will dominate.

The sales records show that the previous month saw a sale of 498,000 units of these devices. This is a record when compared to the sale records of the previous year, which had 15,000 fewer units sold around the same time.

This time seems to be the exit time for all the non-Smartphones. The sales records again show that there were hardly 188,000 unites of these type phones sold last month. This figure, which has 100,000 units less, when compared to the sales results of the previous year. This research survey shows the clear demand of smart phones over the other phones.

However, there is steep competition between the android and the apple phones in the market of today.

The recent discovering from security firm, Trend Micro has stated that these new phishsing attacks have resulted in the duping of buyers to give out their online credit information to cyber criminals.

Fake sub domain such as /www.ebay.com.au/ ie. www.domainn.com.au/www.ebay.com.au/ was used to trick buyers in believing it was from the real ebay website.   These links will be re-directed to a legitimate eBay listing page.  The ‘Buy It Now’ button is where the real phishing begins.  This leads to a fake login page which asks for the victims details.

This is not the method in which transactions happen in eBay which the company confirms it is a scam which is done by cyber criminals to get the personal information and the credit information of the victims. This is a result to the demand for iPhone 4S which has sold over 14 million units world-wide since its October 6^th release.

Trend Micro also says that this is only one among the many frauds, which are prevailing while online shopping. This is because of the advantage that the cyber criminals take of the holiday seasons and the amount of shopping done during the time.

Although purchasing through eBay could allow you to receive your iphone much earlier and possibly cheaper, it is important for iphone fanatics to consider the downside from purchasing through eBay.

Hopes were high when Apple released the new updated version of the iOS 5 version 4.4.4 on December 15^th.  From reports, many iphone 4s users still maintain the updated version did not fix the battery issue.

iOS Application developers also mentioned under the updated notes, there was no mention of a battery fix.  A prominent app develop has trailed the new iOS on their iphone for 4 days and found no improvements to battery life.   Jacky from OMGOSH Studios said, ‘I had high hopes that Apple would finally fix this issue, but when the release notes made no mention of a battery fix, I started having doubts. Having had it installed for over a day on a 4 and a 4S, I’m seeing no improvement in battery life.’

Apple has maintained they will be working on a fix in the near future, but the December 16 release does not seem to resolve this issue.  iPhone users will surely be angered with the latest iOS release but that has not slowed the demand for iPhone’s with over 300,000 4S’s been sold in Australia since the October release.

The Android OS’s are used by in mobile devices such as the Samsung Galaxy 2, HTC desires and more.  Apple has fallen behind, commanding second place at 36% of the market share.  It is important to note, these statistics does not take account the recent release of the iPhone 4s.

With the next ANZ Quarterly Mobile Device Tracker 2011 due in mid January, many analyst predict Apple’s OS market share to increase significantly to at least 45% and overtaking the Android in the Australian market.

During the 3rd quarter, there was a drop in mobile phone shipments/purchases, possibly due to people waiting for the iPhone 4s, which has reportedly sold over 30 million units world wide since it’s October debut.

Apple started the legal process in April by accusing Samsung for copying the designs of iPhone and iPad. However, Samsung has focused on its own lawsuits on the technology patents and not the design. Samsung, the South Korean giant has now received two of the legal boosts this month. However, on 9^th of December, the high court of Australia cleared Samsung’s way for selling the Galaxy 10.1 tablet. Samsung can now sell the latest version Galaxy 10.1 in Australia during Christmas. Moreover, the court also dismissed the bid of Apple for banning.

In the starting of this month, the request of Apple for a preliminary injunction was denied by a federal court judge of San Jose, California. The request was for banning three Smartphone models and a tablet computer model of Samsung in United States.

The spokesman of Samsung also told Reuters that the claims made from the company, which was filed with Mannheim Regional Court included two claims related to the utility patents as well as two claims related to the WCDMA 3G. According to the reports of Wall Street Journal, the utility patent complaints will be covering the use of technology and emoticons related output data that are displayed on the devices like iPhone 4, 4S as well as iPad 2.

The spokesman also told Reuters that the high court would be considering the new claims made by Samsung separately from the first patent case claimed against Apple in Germany, which was made in the month of April. Mannheim court also held a hearing of the April case in the previous week where the spokesman of Samsung said that the ruling would be conducted on 2^nd of March.

Samsung was also able to win many decisions against the Apple recently. This also included the lift of an Australian high court against the ban of Galaxy tablet computer. However, it was not just Samsung. A court in Paris turned downed the initial bid of Samsung that stated that blocking the iPhone 4S of Apple in France. The court is also continuing for reviewing the case. Samsung also said that it would be releasing the modified edition of Galaxy tablet. However, this will be done following the decision of court to bar the selling of Galaxy Tab 10.1. This is because of its close similarity to the iPad of Apple.