Nice roundup of all the mobile share numbers by Harry McCracken.

Paul Kafasis reflects on yesterday’s events in his city.

The Boston Globe reports than an 8-year-old boy is one of those killed in the blasts in Boston.

The dead included an 8-year-old boy, according to two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation. Childrens Hospital reported that those treated there included a 9-year-old girl, a 7-year-old boy, a 12-year-old, and a 2-year-old.

I have no words for this. The kind of thinking that would lead you to believe that this is OK is unfathomable to me.

Matt Baxter-Reynolds writing for ZDNet:

If I were on Microsoft’s exec team, I’d be more worried about introducing Office for iPad than not. Not for any reasons about cannibalising sales — but rather because it puts the spotlight on whether Office is destined to become the niche specialty device that the PC is.

Because, you know, it really is.

He seems to have defined the iPad as a “play” device where as I would argue it’s actually just a simpler device, but as to his conclusion about Office, I would concur.

High school student Alex Guyot says his anecdotal evidence backs up Piper Jaffray’s study of American teens:

Android isn’t in any danger of extinction in this high school’s population, but the dominance of the iPhone is blatantly obvious. Apple would have to have a massive blunder to change the direction the iPhone’s popularity with teens is heading. In the mean time, Piper Jaffray’s study stands true.

I should clarify that my point in this post was not so much to cast doubt on the study or declare Piper Jaffray “in the tank” for Apple. It was that we need to be careful to treat these situations — situations where the firm that comes out on top in the study is a client of the firm conducting it — the same whether it’s Apple or Samsung.

The Verge’s Dante D’Orazio:

The report in question comes from Detwiler Fenton analyst Jeff Johnston, who wrote: “We believe key retail partners have seen a significant increase in Z10 returns to the point where, in several cases, returns are now exceeding sales, a phenomenon we have never seen before.” BlackBerry immediately refuted those claims yesterday in a statement, saying that its return rates in both the US and around the world “are in line with or better than our expectations.”

Seems to be a lot of chatter these days about these analysts and where they get their information. Some seem to believe it’s from their butts. Interesting, if true.

BlackBerry did not address another negative report released yesterday, by ITG analyst Joe Fersedi, who wrote that the Z10 launch “started poorly and weakened significantly as the days passed.”

So, based on BlackBerry’s responses we can estimate that sales of the Z10 are poor and weakening but returns of units purchased to date are not outpacing current sales. Good to know.

John Kirk for Techpinions:

“Android” is not a single entity. So why do we add all of the “Android” numbers together? We do it because we assume that higher numbers mean a stronger platform. We use it as a proxy for the strength of the platform. But it just ain’t so.

Nowhere is this misunderstanding more demonstrated than in this piece by Don Reisinger which says Google has already won the tablet war. While “Android” may overtake iOS in tablet market share, that doesn’t make Google a winner if a good chunk of the “Android” share is Amazon and other forks.

There’s a lot of speculation that Samsung and Facebook will make their own forks and that, in response, Google will try to tighten the reins on Android, effectively forking their own OS. If that happens, Android won’t be so much fragmented anymore as totally fractured.

That could be the next thing that makes us look back at today’s market share projections and laugh.

Guess both platforms will just have to limp along until then.