iPhone News Updated

Nielsen: iPhone Experiences Temporary Boost Against Android in United States

According to the market researchers at Nielsen, it’s still a two-horse race in the US smartphone market. But thanks to a massive splash with its latest iPhone, the Android horde has been temporarily slowed, and Apple nearly caught up to the smartphone platform that is otherwise defeating it at every turn. Unfortunately for the iPhone, however, this turnaround seems to be temporary and there’s already evidence that the iPhone 4S sales surge is over.

“The high-profile launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S in the Fall had an enormous impact on the proportion of smartphone owners [in the United States] who chose an Apple iPhone,” Nielsen reports. “Among recent acquirers, meaning those who said they got a new device within the past three months, 44.5 percent of those surveyed in December said they chose an iPhone, compared with just 25.1 percent [right before the iPhone 4S launch]. Furthermore, 57 percent of new iPhone owners surveyed in December said they got an iPhone 4S.”

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‘Portlandia’ recap: ‘Cool Wedding’ — iPhone love, courteous drivers and insufferable alt-couples

This week’s field research in the ongoing “Portlandia” study of urban phenomena, circa-2012, included analysis of insufferable couples who feel the need to constantly remind everyone how alternative they are; a fetishistic reverie on the iPhone; and that ultra-Portland ritual, graciously letting the other driver go first at a 4-way stop.

As with the first two episodes, “Cool Wedding” offers more proof that the “Portlandia” crew paid attention to what worked — and what needed work — in season 1 episodes. The sketches this season are shorter, more sharply edited, and structured to not only start with a clever premise, but take it a few steps further and finish with a joke that takes it to an even more logically comic extreme. It’s classic comedy sketch structure, and a welcome addition to the show’s signature whimsy and love of absurdity.

In the pre-credit bit, Carrie Brownstein is getting ready to load her cloth shopping bags (more on them later) into her car, when tragedy strikes — she drops her iPhone. In a cleverly edited back-and-forth, we see the phone falling in excruciating slo-mo, intercut with Carrie’s moments of iPhone bliss. She happily waits in line to buy it, she looks for an answer at pub trivia night, she kisses it good night, and she uses it to photograph a weed-eating goat (yes, non-Portlanders, we did have goats deputized to eat weeds in a vacant lot, and a goat-napping crime story).

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