IDC: Apple tablet shipments up 8 million units in Q4 2012, market share down 8% overall

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According to the latest preliminary market share numbers from IDC, Apple sold almost 23 million smartphones in the 4th quarter of 2012 which was an increase of 48%. The problem is that Samsung doubled its year ago numbers with a mix of Android and Windows tablets while Asus, and likely the Nexus 7 saw over a 4x increase over the year ago quarter.

Apple's iPad once again led the market, and the firm's shipment total of 22.9 million units was exactly in line with IDC's forecast for the period. A strong iPad mini launch, plus availability of the fourth generation full-sized iPad, led to solid 48.1% shipment growth over the same quarter last year. However, strong competition in the market led to Apple's market share declining for a second quarter in a row (down to 43.6% from 46.4% last quarter). Number two vendor Samsung experienced 263% year-on-year growth, shipping nearly 8 million combined Android and Windows 8 tablets during the quarter to grab 15.1% of the market, its same market share total from the previous quarter.

There is a lot I don't like about this study. For one the report says  "Barnes & Noble both saw their market share increase sharply as new products gained traction during the holiday season" but looking at the table shows Barnes and Noble down YOY. Also, IDC give tablet vendors with under 1 million sold (beneath B&N) 11.6M tablet sales count. That's a lot of no name brands that probably shouldn't be counted. Also Amazon never publishes numbers so IDC is guessing like everyone else.

Evasi0n: First untethered iPhone 5 jailbreak to be released Sunday; all other iOS 6.1 devices too

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With each new release of an iPhone, jailbreaking becomes just one step more difficult. Throw in constant OS updates, and it's amazing the hacker community is able to jailbreak it at all. So, it's no surprise it has taken more than four months for an official jailbreak to be released for the iPhone 5.

On Sunday, that may change. A group of jailbreakers, known as the Evad3rs, plan to release its jailbreak tool: Evasi0n. The website, which claimed the team is "Processing the GUI", has a very clean and simple layout. If all goes as planned and Evasi0n is released on Sunday, it very well may be the easiest jailbreak tool since JailBreakMe.

Evasi0n is an iOS 6.1 jailbreak said to support the iPhone 5, 4S, 4, 3GS, fourth- and fifth-generation iPod Touch, as well as the iPad mini and third- and fourth-generation iPad. Oh, and it is legal after all.