Decide what to buy: the Reevoo.com blog

Apple has just released their most recent set of earnings figures, detailing how the MP3 player, phone and computer manufacturer performed over the Christmas season. The answer? Strikingly well. In the middle of a global financial meltdown, Apple managed to turn in record breaking revenues ($10bn) and profits ($1.6bn).

Reevoo’s own figures back up Apple’s success story. Reevoo measured traffic to all Apple products across 61 British retailers’ websites, and saw Apple’s share of the market increase dramatically during the Christmas peak, from 1.3% in September to 3.0% in December.

This has everyone wondering whether Apple can continue to thrive selling high-end electronics while lesser manufacturers fight to survive in a race to the bottom of falling margins and lower sales. Of course, what’s driven Apple’s success over the past few years has been its continuing innovation - think of the iPhone, the iMac or the iPod Nano. So some pundits are asking whether this pace of innovation can continue or whether Apple will soon be running out of ideas.

A closer look at Reevoo’s numbers suggests that it might not be wise to bank on Apple performing as well in future. For one thing, the company’s market share has been pretty flat throughout the year, slipping back through the summer after popularity increased in the spring with the release of new iMac models.

This time around, it looks like Apple has gained most of its increase from the one area where it is truely king: MP3 players.

No-one needs to be told that by far the most popular range of MP3 players is Apple’s distinctive iPods, but amazingly Apple has managed to increase iPod popularity from 60% of MP3 players through the year to 80% during November and December, leaving all other manufacturers to share just 20% of the market over the Christmas peak. Apple released a highly-praised refresh of its bestselling Nano during September and a smaller update of the iPod Touch. Shoppers responded with a thumbs up, giving the new Nano a rating of 9.1 out of 10. But popularity only really rocketed in November, perhaps highlighting their appeal as Christmas gifts.

In addition to their overwhelming popularity, Apple also manage to sell iPods at a premium - only Portable Media Player specialist Archos has a higher average cost per MP3 player sold.

Putting this together suggests that Apple has benefited from a strong run on its impressive MP3 players this Christmas, putting it in position to report those eye-popping revenue revenue figures.

So why the caution? There are two worries about iPods for 2009.

The first is that other manufacturers are improving their products. Samsung and Creative, in particular, saw much-increased ratings from shoppers over Christmas. So if you’re looking for a new MP3 player, it would be a good idea to keep your eye on what these two brands have to offer.

The second worry is that the number of people looking for a new MP3 player seems certain to decrease as smartphones improve and start to reproduce more and more features of MP3 players. With only 4.4m iPhones sold in the last quarter compared to 23m iPods, Apple will have to do a lot of work to make sure iPod fans stick with the brand.

Well, it’s 2009 and there are a load of exciting phones due to be released this year. We thought we’d concentrate on three that you can get your hands on pretty soon:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (formerly known as the Tube), will be the first Nokia touchscreen and is due for release on Friday.

It has a 3.2″ screen, 3.2 megapixel camera , full HTML access to the web, 8.8 hour talk time, weighs in at 109g but is still a little chubby at 15.5mm thick. As you’d expect, it’s built for music and you get an 8GB SD card (expandable up to 16GB) for all your tracks, photos and videos. It’s capable of 35 hour music playback  and 5.2 hour video playback and the video playback has been praised by the guys over at TechRadar who say it’s a “a viable alternative to an iPod touch”.

And if you hate grubby fingerprints all over your screens, Nokia has provided a stylus and the more trendy plectrum for all your pointing pleasure.

Texting is even more fun with a normal keyboard, full QWERTY keyboard, mini QWERTY or handwriting recognition.

You can also pick your top four contacts to follow/stalk on your home screen by getting RSS feeds on their social network activity, all your conversations and photos.

Get down to the Nokia Store on Regent Street on Friday for some extra freebees, including Guitar Rock Tour and Benicassim tickets.

Sim-free handsets will be £249 but look for the deals on various networks. For more info, check out the Nokia website.

Palm Pre

You’ve probably heard that the folks over at Palm HQ have been busy bees trying to bring themselves back into the smartphone game. Their offering, the Palm Pre, is also coming soon.

It’s been dubbed as an iPhone-G1-INQ1 fusion which impresses with its 3.1″ touchscreen, 320×480 resolution HVGA display, 3MP camera, Wi-Fi, 3G, GPS and 8GB storage. But where it really blows the socks off established stars like the iPhone, is with its multiple application viewing. Each app just sits like a deck of cards on the screen so that you can scroll between them and not have to lose things you’re working on to view something else.

It’s curved glass screen adds style and other nice touches are the hidden, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 360 degree accelerometer and all your contact with your friends and family can be viewed, chat-style.

You can pretty much sync-up your life with this phone with everything from Google, Outlook and Facebook.

We also like the look of its stylish charging dock, the Palm Touchstone. Just place the Pre onto the Touchstone and magnets “quickly align your phone in the correct position for charging”.

The Pre will be out later this year but check out this video for more info on how it’ll work:

Nokia N97

We can also look forward to the Nokia N97. Complete with 3.5″ touchscreen, 5MP camera (with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens) and flash, a huge 32GB of storage with an extra 16GB via the Micro SD slot, GPS with built-in compass and Wi-Fi, will make it a pretty hard-hitting release.

And if you get fed up of having to keep charging up your phone, the N97 has 400 hours of standby time! Along with 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video playback.

Add to that a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, fully customisable home screen, Symbian S60 software, N-Gage games and all the syncing you expect from Nokia and you’ve got an impressive piece of kit.

According to Play.com, the N97 will be available at the end of March for £479.99.

Happy 2009!

Hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

Let’s kick off 2009 with a time and space saving gadget. There have been lots of rumours about the Powermat but at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Association), we’ve finally heard that they will be in stores this year.

What are they? They’re mats that can be plugged in and will simultaneously charge a whole heap of gadgets, all at the same time, wirelessly.

That’s no more chargers cluttering up your house, no more tangled wires and no need to use multiple plugs when you need to charge up more than one thing at the same time.

The Powermat uses magnetic induction and, according to the website, “When a Powermat-enabled device is placed on the mat, a “handshake” process synchronizes the mat with the receiver and electric power is generated to meet the specific energy needs of the device.”They’ll then monitor the power in the device and disconnect power to each device once they’ve finished charging.

Powermats will also be able to be used in cars with their universal, window mount car charger for hand-held devices.

At the moment, you can use the Powermat with mobile phones, laptops, iPods, digital cameras, handheld games consoles and sat navs.

Pretty exciting stuff but we still have no word on prices. So we’ll wait and see about the price tags on these things before we go ahead and liberate our chargers.

For more info, check out the website.

We’ve come across a few strange ones in our time but this little gadget is as strange as it is genius. For years we’ve been telling the time in the same, boring way but now, John Maushammer has a new take on the humble wrist watch.

The Pong watch tells the time by totting up the outcome of an ongoing game of ping pong. The hours and minutes change depending on which side wins the current game.

The watch took Maushammer two years to complete. You can see his progress in the video below:

Did you realise that you can get money for you old mobile? Not just a little bit either- you would be surprised how much cash you can get back for your old phone, even if it’s not working! Reevoo have partnered with a number of recycling companies to offer you a choice of reasons for recycling or trading in your phone for cash and for a good cause.

The process is simple- you register your phone online, and get an instant quote for its value. Next you just send off your old handset, either in a pre-paid envelope, or to a freepost address, and then simply sit back and wait for a cheque or money transfer. You can even exchange your phone for nectar points or Tesco Clubcard points. It really is that easy!

So what happens to your old phone? Your phone is either refurbished and sold in developing economies, or it is ecologically disposed of. Gone are the days of endless phones in landfill sites, now the parts are re-used, or the handsets are smelted for energy production. The companies involved are all concerned with the environment, sustainable development and elevating poverty, so help others whilst getting some cash in your own pocket. Greener Solutions Group for example, a leading owner of various mobile recycling companies, are concerned with sustainable development.  Since its launch in 2001, more than £10 million has been raised by its charity partners.

It seems to us here at Reevoo, that it’s a no-brainer- just free post your old phone in, and get some more cash to go and spend on some Christmas presents! For example:

How much is my old phone worth?

Original iPhone - £125!

Nokia 5310 - £35

Samsung D900 - £20

Obviously you can’t expect to get cash back for a phone that is in pieces. The various companies have different guidelines on prices depending on the state of the phone, but here are a few outlines. Best prices will be paid for phones that are in one piece, have little cosmetic damage and switch on when charged up. Scratches and cracks are not big problems, but even phones that don’t work might be eligible for cash. Have a look at the individual website for more details, but even sending it off to them for a few quid in return is better for you and then environment!

So- don’t leave your old phones lying around gathering dust- they could be worth a lot, and could contribute to a great Christmas in this tough financial climate! Visit our Mobile Recycling Page and see how easy it is to get cash yourself!

Just in time for Christmas, Reevoo has launched its own iPhone web application. This means that all you lucky folks who own iPhones will be able to take Reevoo with you to the shops. If you’re looking to buy an MP3 player, camera, laptop or any other product that is available on Reevoo.com, you can check out what people have said about it before you buy. Not only that, but you will also be able to see how much it is online! Very useful for saving some valuable pounds over Christmas.

If you’d like to have price comparison and helpful reviews in your pocket this Christmas, just follow these three simple steps and Reevoo will guide you through all your Christmas shopping.

To add the Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just take your iPhone:
1. Open Safari
2. Go to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

And to use it:
1. Simply tap on the Reevoo icon on your home screen

2. Tap search and enter the product name - you’ll get a list of search results with scores and the cheapest price available online from over 100 retailers

3. Tap on the product itself and you’ll be taken through to read the 10 most useful reviews (as voted by our community) on the product.

We’d love to hear your feedback on this app. If there’s anything else you’d like to be able to access or if you’d like to see something done differently, just let us know at feedback@reevoo.com.

Mums can be tricky customers when it comes to Christmas presents. It’s very easy to find them gifts that they’ll need but will they be something they actually want?

We’ve come up with a few suggestions to help you out on your quest to find Christmas presents for Mums:

For Mums who like to look their best - These Babyliss 2099U straighters (£28) have great reviews and they’re pretty cheap too. One reviewer even claims “i have tried expensive straightners..such as ghds and since trying the babyliss, i will never go back to any others”.

For DIY mums - Let’s face it, some Dads are useless at DIY so in some households, it will be Mum who does all the handy work. Make it a little more fun with this Rolson 25 Piece Pink Tool Kit (£20).

For Mums who love to cook - they can create hundreds of different types of breads and cakes in this Morphy Richards 48245 (£50) bread maker. It’ll save them loads of time as it mixes and does all the kneading too - that leaves more time for extra cakes in my book!

For Mums who love to take photos - Get this Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3 (£87) compact digital camera. It’s not too expensive, has great reviews and owners say it’s especially easy to use. So even if your Mum isn’t a tech whizz, she shouldn’t have many problems with this.

For Mums who need a break - All that housework can be such a bore. Treat your Mum to this Domotec Roomba 560 Robot Vacuum Cleaner. It’s a little pricy at £199 but it will single handedly tackle all the rooms in your house, switch from carpets to hard floor mode and even take itself back to its charger to be charged up before getting back on the case again!

For Mums who love pink - If your Mum is still girly at heart, there are loads of pink gifts from pink laptops and MP3 players to pink mobile phones and cushions. Find them all here: www.reevoo.com/pink

For Mums on the go - Get them a mobile so that you can always keep in contact. With all the free minutes deals around at the moment, you could even talk for free. This Nokia 2630 phone is not only stylish but it’s also user-friendly (prices vary according to contract). One reviewer says, “Everything is easy to use and the design is very nice and compact”.

For Mums who like to be organised - Why not invest in this family calendar (£8)? There are five columns which can be used for different members of the family so she’ll never have to miss a football or music class again.

For healthy Mums - All Mums want to make sure their families eat healthily. With this Philips HR 1861 juicer (£63), she can make tasty juices and ensure everyone gets their daily intake of fruit and veg. This juicer has great reviews too. One reads, “Best juicer around for the money. Powerful motor and large feeding tube. Looks great on your worktop…Highly recommended.”

Presents on a budget - Everyone likes music, get her a CD that she’ll love. At the moment, the Mamma Mia Movie Soundtrack is particularly popular and it’s a bargain at £7.

Right, hopefully that’s helped you out a little bit. If anyone else has any other ideas, just leave a comment.

Following on from our Christmas present guides, we’ve decided to focus on a popular gift - mobile phones. There are so many on the market these days that it can be a nightmare to read up on each one. But don’t worry, we’ve done it all for you.

We’ve read all the reviews for over 200 mobiles and picked out the most popular - the ones people are looking at in the run-up to Christmas, and the most highly rated phones of 2008 - focusing on what people think after they have bought and tried out their phones. We’ve also got our recommendation for the best value for money mobile.

So, I bet a lot of you will be thinking that the iPhone must be a key player in this year’s favourite mobiles but surprisingly, it’s not in the top 10. Problems with application crashes and battery life meant that people rated this year’s 3G iPhone lower than you might have expected. It gets a score of 8.2/10 which is even beaten by its predecessor, the original iPhone, which scores 8.3/10.

The UK’s favourite phone of 2008 is actually the BlackBerry Bold 9000. Here’s what some reviewers had to say:

+ Great keyboard for e-mailing and texting. Cracking screen which is nice and bright and videos look lovely on it. The sound from the internal speaker is really good. Just a great phone overall.

- Out of the box battery life is bad but gets better with regular charges.

+ The Bold is undoubtedly the most impressive Blackberry yet. One of its greatest advantages is that in spite of many new features, it feels very familiar. Web browsing is almost broadband speed.

But what about the most popular phone? The phone that everyone’s looking at in the run-up to Christmas this year is the Nokia N96. But although it’s created a lot of hype, it actually gets marked down by reviewers for poor battery life and software problems. It’s also a little expensive at around £500 for Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) customers, but it does do the business with its design and features. One reviewer writes “great picture and video quality, very easy to find your way around, fantastic features…looks good”.

So let’s take a look at the most popular phones, which are getting lots of atention, and those that actually get rated the highest when consumers take them home:

TOP TEN MOST POPULAR MOBILE PHONES IN LAST 30 DAYS:

1. Nokia N96

2. Samsung F480 Tocco

3. Blackberry Storm

4. Sony Ericsson C902

5. Samsung Omnia

6. Samsung J700

7. Samsung Soul U900

8. BlackBerry Bold 9000

9. Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

10. LG KF750 Secret

TOP TEN HIGHEST RATED MOBILE PHONES OF 2008:

1. BlackBerry Bold 9000

2. Sony Ericsson W980i

3. Apple iPhone 3G 8/16GB

4. Samsung F480 Tocco

5. Sony Ericsson K660i

6. Fly SL600

7. Sagem my411C

8. Samsung J700

9. Samsung Steel

10. Sagem my300C

If you had your heart set on buying someone, or yourself, a stylish yet affordable phone this Christmas, we think the Samsung F480 Tocco is the one to go for. Whilst other phones with similar features tend to get poor scores for battery life, the Tocco impresses with 7.7/10. Here’s what some other phones score for battery life:

Nokia N96 - 5.8

iPhone original - 6.8

iPhone 3G - 5.6

BlackBerry Bold 9000 - 6.3

The Tocco also impresses with its design and features and is £150 for PAYG customers or free on some contracts.

If you’re bored of the iPhone already, be a little different and get your hands on a BlackBerry Storm. You can pre-order one from Phones4U from tomorrow and they’re officially released on Friday, exclusively on Vodafone. But if you really want one, just beware of the potential crowds you might encounter on Friday because it’s rumored that newly crowned champion, Lewis Hamilton, will be making an appearance.

If you’ve forgotten what the BlackBerry Storm is all about, check out the details:

For more info, check out the BlackBerry website

Read other BlackBerry reviews

It’s time for another installment in our What to buy series. We looked at What to buy Dads last week and this week it’s the turn of another tricky customer…the teenage boy.

If you need inspiration, just take a look at these:

For the music lover - Everyone loves music. Get them an MP3 player and they can take music with them wherever they go. The top rated MP3 player on Reevoo at the moment is the 8GB iPod Touch. It’s currently around £100. If you were looking to spend a little less than that, the second highest rated player is the £70 Sony NWZA816 4GB. And for a complete bargain buy, grab some CDs. Prices start from as little at £2.

For the gamer - Why not go for a games console like the PlayStation 3 (£289)? If they already have a console, they might like a gaming chair (£100). It’s comfortable for extended gaming sessions and you can feel the action through it. It can also be used to listen to music and watch films. There are also lots of console accessories, like this PS3 charging station for £15. For smaller gifts, you could go for a video game (prices start at £2).

For Mr Sociable - A mobile phone so that they can keep in contact with all their mates. For a phone packed full of features, how about the Nokia N95 or N96? Or for a more classy option, how about the Samsung Tocco or the new iPhone? (All phone prices vary according to contract)

For the sporty ones - Some tickets to a football or rugby match will make a great gift. For something more original, why not try this Garmin Forerunner 405 (£169) GPS-enabled sport watch, which tracks your training and sends the data to your computer or for trips to the coast this fishing starter kit (£32)?

For gadgety types - A Wind-Up Torch with Mobile Phone Charger (£7) or some travel speakers for your iPod (£9).

And for the boy that has everything? - Give them this Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock (£24) - guaranteed to wake the laziest of teenagers.

All done. Pretty painless, just as shopping should be.

If you’re purchasing online, follow our top tips for online shopping this Christmas.