HTC has seen its smartphone shipments and market share drop steadily over the past couple of years. The company had pinned its hopes on the HTC One, but production problems derailed the launch. This has led to a mass employee exodus, which has put the future of the company in peril. Most people think that this was a direct result of Samsung's deep pockets and vertical integration. However, HTC's own strategic missteps may have caused its decline and this could make them a potentially attractive acquisition target for regional smartphone OEMs.

The tech media has long been obsessed with the semantic differences between smartphone shipments and sales. In reality, all figures announced by companies, and those announced by IDC, are shipments (also known as channel sales or sell-in). Gartner is the only research house that tracks sales to end users (also known as sell-through). Comparing data from IDC and Gartner can give us good insight into channel inventory patterns across different smartphone platforms. This data suggests that Nokia & Windows Phone may be in for some trouble in the next few quarters.

It's time again for my quarterly review of smartphone market share trends around the globe. While I initially considered doing this semi-annually, I've been requested to make it a quarterly feature. As always, Q1 2013 data is sourced from Gartner and Kantar Worldpanel reports and complemented with reports from other research houses as and when available.

Microsoft recently unveiled that the Windows Phone Store has about 145,000 apps available. Based on this figure, app growth for the Windows Phone platform seems to be slowing. Windows Phone 8 was supposed to help drive developer interest, but has done nothing to stem this slowdown after being on the market for 6+ months.

Over the last few years, mobile platforms like Android & iOS have gained market share in computing systems at the expense of legacy WinTel-based devices, i.e. traditional PCs. The chart above gives us a great snapshot of the impact of Post-PC platforms. We can also use this data to compare how platform market share concentration changed over time in the PC industry and contrast it with the first few years of the mobile revolution.

IDC has just released their tablet market estimates and their figures are quite a bit off from my original Q1 estimate, but eerily similar to my revised estimate based on NPD's figures. Android tablets seem to have permanently stolen the tablet market crown from the iPad, while Windows tablets have continued to struggle. Let's take a deeper look at the figures.

With Google shipping early explorer editions of Glass to early adopters, the buzz around the product has reached a fever pitch. Of course, this excitement is currently limited to Silicon Valley investors and tech enthusiasts, but it is unprecedented for a product that is still a prototype. Let's take a look at the future of Google Glass.

Apple announced results for its fiscal Q2 2013 on Tuesday. The company posted its first QoQ profit decline in years, amid slowing growth. iPhone shipments totaled 37.4 million and iPad shipments totaled 19.5 million for the quarter. Let's look at sales growth and ASP trends to benchmark our previous estimates regarding iPhone growth and iPad Mini cannibalization.

Microsoft announced their fiscal Q3 (calendar Q1) results last week, and the figures were surprisingly stable given the steep decline in PC shipments this quarter. Microsoft announced Q3 revenue of $20.49 billion and an operating income of $7.61 billion. The Windows division revenue was flat sequentially, at $5.7 billion. However, a deeper look at the numbers show some worrying signs.