Archive for the ‘Stats’ Category

Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3

Nintendo has just announced it plans to introduce a successor to its Wii console next year, a “playable model” of which will be shown off at the E3 gaming expo in Los Angeles coming up on June 7th. No details are available as to how the next Wii will improve on the first one, though we imagine Nintendo will be happy if it simply matches the success of its current-gen home entertainer — the brief note publicizing the new roadmap also comes with a total of Wii sales accumulated between its launch in ‘06 and the end of last month: 86.01 million. That’s said to be on a “consolidated shipment basis,” so maybe Nintendo is mixing its definitions of sales and shipments the way Sony likes to, but it’s a mighty big number either way. Bring on E3, we say!

Continue reading Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3

Nintendo confirms next Wii coming in 2012, will preview it at E3 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Apr 2011 03:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |  Nintendo [PDF]  | Email this | Comments

Stats Show iPhone Owners Get More Sex

Gadget lovers have long held to the secret belief that the right camera, smartphone or large-aperture lens will make them sexier.

Now dating site OK Cupid has proof.

According to OK Cupid’s survey of 552,000 user pictures, digital SLRs make you look more attractive, Panasonic cameras make you sexier than Nikons, while using a flash will make you look 7 years older, and large-aperture lenses make you hotter.

And iPhone users have more sexual partners than BlackBerry or Android owners. By age 30, the average male iPhone user has had about 10 partners while female iPhone users have had 12. By contrast, BlackBerry users hover around 8 partners and Android users have a mere 6.

As the blog’s author’s wryly observe: “Finally, statistical proof that iPhone users aren’t just getting fucked by Apple.”

That should give iPhone and iPad users some comfort for being considered ‘selfish elites,’ as another recent survey found.

OK Cupid has been analyzing the behavior of the site’s millions of users for some time, and has discovered many interesting tidbits: People tend to lie on their profiles, people’s political preferences change as they age, and men can increase their chances of getting a date by being open to older women. The site’s massive dataset, huge volume of activity, and interesting slicing and dicing combine to produce some keen observations on human nature.

But for gadget heads, there’s no more pertinent observation than (hard) data. The Panasonic Micro 4/3 camera will make you look far more attractive than a Canon DSLR, which in turn is better than a Nikon or Sony DSLR. And forget about cameraphones: Android, Nokia, BlackBerry and Windows phones all make you look less attractive, with Motorola phones at the absolute bottom of the list.

Similarly, the type of camera you wield makes a big difference. There’s a dramatic illustration showing how the same woman looks photographed with a cameraphone, a point-and-shoot camera, and an SLR. That makes sense: As we’ve explained before, larger image sensors give you better-quality images.

Along the same lines, a larger-aperture photo lets you put the background out of focus, increasing the apparent attractiveness of the person you’re taking a picture of.

So if you wanted an excuse to buy a fancier camera with a bigger lens, OK Cupid’s got all the rationale you need.

As for switching from Android or BlackBerry to an iPhone? Well, that’s up to you. Unlike with the photos, it’s hard to tell whether iPhone use is the cause, or the effect, of having more notches in one’s bedpost.

OkTrends, via EthanZ

Image: via OKCupid

Follow us for real-time tech news: Dylan Tweney and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Graphs and Charts Prove iPhone to Be the Most Successful Gadget Ever (Sort of) [Graphs]

These charts, from the Web 2.0 Summit, show the iPhone’s growth in both data usage and sheer sales compared to other blockbuster gadget releases—and (not without caveats, natch), it blows most of them out of the water.

Before I show these charts, created by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, I should mention the obvious: Comparing one gadget to another in a different category is messy and inconclusive. iPhone adoption is different than, say, Wii adoption for lots of reasons: The iPhone is a phone, a gadget which pretty much everybody has and needs, and it combined the capabilities of a phone with that of an established hit, the iPod. In contrast, the Wii is a videogame system, a category with a totally different demographic, requiring different kinds of software and accessories. They’re just not the same (and I only mentioned a couple reasons), and comparing unit shipments doesn’t necessarily prove anything. However, it is interesting to see exactly what an absolute blockbuster the iPhone has been over its first ten quarters, and while we can’t make any sweeping conclusions, we can say that the iPhone/iPod Touch is, as TechCrunch says, “the fastest-growing consumer electronics product of all time.”

This next chart is also inconclusive, but pretty interesting: It compares the rate of growth in mobile internet to the rate of growth in desktop internet, in the mid-90s. Caveats apply again, of course, as the adoption of mobile internet is much easier than going from no internet to desktop internet. But certainly the iPhone has introduced easy-to-use mobile internet to the masses in much the same way that Netscape and AOL brought it to the home user a decade and a half ago, and the iPhone is making way quicker work of it.

As I said repeated, these charts aren’t exactly ironclad evidence. But they do put the iPhone’s remarkable rise to the top of the smartphone game in perspective, and it’s hard to show in charts and graphs exactly how much it’s changed the game of mobile devices. Those sales records are pretty impressive, after all, and there’s no denying the impact it’s had on today’s gadget landscape. [TechCrunch via Twitter]