Boot up: Chromebook numbers, smart TV sales, Nadella to staff, and more

Satya Nadella, man of the moment. Photograph: Reuters

A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team

Smart TV shipments hit 76m units in 2013, about a third of flat panel TV shipments for the year:

Analyst Eric Smith added, "While Smart TV adoption is certainly gaining momentum, a true measure of its success is whether consumers are actually using the Smart functionality. Our consumer survey data show that around 50% of Smart TV owners across the USA and major European markets are currently using their TV's Internet capabilities, so vendors must continue to add compelling applications and services to entice consumers to utilize their platforms."

50% seems encouragingly high. Are those used for apps, though, or catchup, or YouTube, or what?

Jan Dawson looking at the latest ComScore data on US smartphone installed base:

First, the share of smartphones running either Android or iOS has skyrocketed over the last few years, and has now reached passed 93%. But secondly, the actual number of users with smartphones not running one of these two operating systems has dropped, not just the share. There were around 30 million users of other OSs at the peak in 2010, but there are now just over 10 million, a number which has stayed fairly stable in the last three months. As BlackBerry has dwindled, Windows Phone has barely offset the declines in recent months, so that the total number has stayed roughly the same.

The challenge for any new operating system is to answer the fundamental question Windows Phone has struggled to answer: why does anyone need a third option?

There are still 83m people in the US using a featurephone. But they're clearly not eager to have a smartphone yet.

Bob O'Donnell:

This year, my firm TECHnalysis Research predicts that the 2014 shipments of large smartphones (those with screens 5" and larger—commonly called "phablets" but perhaps better coined "mobile connected devices") will far outsell both small tablets (those with under 8" screens) and even notebook PCs. Specifically, we are forecasting that worldwide phablet unit shipments will reach approximately 240m in 2014 versus 173m notebooks and 158m small tablets. That's a seismic shift that will have profound implications on branded device vendors, component suppliers, ecosystems, applications and app development, and even regional influence. We're going to see an increasing influence on mobile operating systems, developing markets and computing devices that fit into your pants pocket or small purse.

In the US, the story isn't quite as dramatic, as large smartphones have been a little bit slower to reach mass appeal, but even by 2015 we expect large smartphones to outship notebooks in the US by a margin of 37.5m to 35.9m and by 2017 we expect them these mobile connected devices to outsell small tablets in the US (41.9m versus 41.5m).

Set the date in your smartwatches to look back on this one.

I am here for the same reason I think most people join Microsoft — to change the world through technology that empowers people to do amazing things. I know it can sound hyperbolic — and yet it's true. We have done it, we're doing it today, and we are the team that will do it again.

I believe over the next decade computing will become even more ubiquitous and intelligence will become ambient. The coevolution of software and new hardware form factors will intermediate and digitize — many of the things we do and experience in business, life and our world. This will be made possible by an ever-growing network of connected devices, incredible computing capacity from the cloud, insights from big data, and intelligence from machine learning.

This is a software-powered world.

Mazzucato is professor in science policy at the University of Sussex:

Research at the University of Sussex shows that median sales of a six-year-old firm is less than £23,000 (Storey, 2006). These firms also tend to be the least productive and least innovative (R&D spending—the best measure we have for inputs in the innovation process—in Tech City is not higher than in other parts of London or Britain). Indeed, the few high growth innovative firms (about 6% of the total SME group, Nesta, 2011)—those that really should be supported—do not directly benefit from the hype that surrounds SMEs and startups: once they get the funds these are too diluted to make a difference.

The focus on entrepreneurial ecosystems is symptomatic of the misplaced obsession with SMEs and startups in terms of their ability to generate innovation and growth.

Chitika is an online ad network:

Looking at the larger picture, Motorola devices generate about 3.5% of North American smartphone Web traffic overall, meaning that the 53.1% share equates to about 1.9% of total continental usage being driven by Droid Razr users.

While the data point to the Droid Razr lineup having been well received as a whole, the upcoming challenges for the company are exemplified when comparing the usage tallies of two of Motorola's most recent flagship product lines – the Moto X and Droid Ultra/Maxx.

The Moto X was the first phone from Motorola with Google's proverbial "fingerprints," including better language processing, changing notification behaviour based on location context, along with more co-branded marketing activities. But despite having been available on all major carriers for some time now, Moto X users generate about the same level of traffic (5.6% of all Motorola smartphone traffic) as Droid Ultra/Maxx devices (5.9% of all Motorola smartphone traffic) – two Verizon-only phones that came out around the same time.

So the Moto X wasn't a big hit. Maybe the problem is more with Motorola's brand. Would a Lenovo-branded phone do better?

The Chromebook, introduced in 2011, is still an outlier for most businesses, even as it becomes an alternative for consumers and schools. By 2017, IDC expects the Chromebook to reach about 6m shipments, or more than 2% of the PC market.

But how much progress has the Chromebook made into the enterprise? "Beyond education, it's probably virtually zero," said IDC analyst Loren Loverde.

There were 314.6m PCs shipped in 2013.

Despite this outlook, there are ample anecdotal examples of Chromebook adopters, particularly among small and mid-size firms that do most of their work in the cloud and through SaaS services.

Although the Chromebook has attracted fervent users, there are many reasons why it will have trouble in enterprises. One is Microsoft Office, which has over 90% of the productivity market, according to IDC. Another: Enterprises with an installed base of potentially hundreds of Windows applications would find such a move daunting.

Samsung is top (3.6m of 11.3m units total), but have you heard of the third-placed company? Together, two Indian manufacturers sold as many as Samsung. A sign of the coming times.

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