News tagged ‘Google’

New reports made by Mac Stories and PadGadget reveal new data on App Store. Here are the most interesting facts:

1. Over 2,100 titles in the Apple's App Store are iPad games;
2. 78% of all iPad apps are paid (which is almost equal to 80% value of previous Moblix report);
3. Almost 75% of all 225,000 iPhone apps are also paid;
4. 2,5 months needed for iPad apps library to reach the 10,000 milestone (For comparison, it took five months for iPhone apps and 11 months for Google's Android Market to get the same result).
5. Currently iPad apps store is the third biggest after iPhone and official Android apps store.
6. RIM's BlackBerry App World, Nokia's Symbian platform and HP's Palm/webOS have less than 7,000 apps.

It is important to note that Google currently forbids putting Android Market on non-smartphone devices, so there is no opportunity to compare the actual numbers of Android and iPad apps.

As you remember, this Monday Apple unveiled iPhone 4 and its new feature, which allows Wi-Fi video chatting via iPhone's cameras. It's called FaceTime and the company is going to make it an open industry standard to allow communicating with other devices and services.

This news made major online chat providers like Skype and Google to express interest in the new technology, but at the moment they decided to take wait-and-see strategy.

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Hacker msftguy created unofficial PwnageTool which allows to upgrade to the pre-release of iOS 4.0 GM while keeping your jailbreak and old baseband.

This is not an official release by Devteam, so we recommend to wait for the final versions of both iOS 4.0 and PwnageTool.

For the advanced users who want to experiment here is a link.

Msftguy also provided a video:

Nielsen revealed the results of a new poll of 11,734 U.S. users that claims Apple is the No.2 smartphone maker with 28% market share of mobile devices, thus gaining 2% in compare with the previous quarter. The biggest share belongs to Research In Motion, which has 35% with its Blackberries. Other smartphone makers are showed on the pictures below.

It is interesting that study reveals most of the Android and iPhone users are male, and Android users are younger, less educated and less wealthy. If only 28% of Android users earn $100,000 every year, there are 40% of iPhone users that have the same income. 34% of all smartphone users have six-figure salaries.

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Starting from today Google allows looking for iPhone apps on its mobile search page. The feature was announced on its official Mobile Blog. The idea, according to software engineers Paul Hadfield and Milena Nikolic, was to help users quickly download a necessary application while searching information about it.

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In this video Steve talks about Apple's relationship with Google.

If you want to install Android on your iPhone 2G/3G it is now very easy. Site FunkySpaceMonkey shows us how to do it.

You will need:

• Jailbroken iPhone 2G or iPhone 3G running firmware 3.1.2 (NOT 3.1.3).
• The device should be jailbroken with PwnageTool, RedSn0w or Blackra1n. Won’t work with Spirit.
• OpenSSH installed with default password (alpine)
• Macfuse installed on your Mac
• iPhodroid

How to:

• Download iPhodroid and extract
• Install Macfuse
• Run iPhodroid and hit run – the process should take around 5 minutes

Yesterday Digitimes posted an interesting interview with its own senior analyst Ming-Chi Kuo who disproved many rumors about upcoming iPhone.

He told that Apple once considered using OLED display in iPhone 3GS, but it was found to be unsuitable for displaying text, and now this is a key direction in which Apple is improving its iPhone since the company promotes iBookstore for it. Moreover, in February scientists unveiled that Apple iPhone 3GS' LCD display is much better than the OLED screen in Google Nexus One, because the latter doesn't reproduce colors accurately and has lots of artifacts.

Ming-Chi Kuo also revealed that the work on iPhone 4G was started at the end of 2008. Its codename is N90, and not many people knew about this, but Gizmodo found exactly the N90 prototype. There is another iPhone with codename N91 that is a lesser upgrade that must be used «in case there are major delays [of components] due to significant modifications.

With regard to the iPhone 4G's processor Ming-Chi Kuo told:

"Since the launch schedule of the Cortex A9 processor is estimated for year's end and iPhone 4.0 is not ready to fully utilize a multi-core processor, the A4 is the most likely candidate".

This is not the first words of Ming-Chi Kuo about iPhone 4G, previously we posted another information revealed by him, you can read it here.

Because of Apple and Google success on a mobile device market Microsoft is going to conduct "major organizational changes" in its Entertainment and Devices Division that is currently responsible for Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone. It looks like first step has been already taken - the work on the dual-screen tablet named Courier had been canned. This allegedly caused its main developer J Allard to leave the company. Further changes will affect on the team that develops Windows Phone 7 mobile OS. The latter must be introduced this fall.

Nick Wingfield from the Wall Street Journal wrote Microsoft lose its positions mainly because of its Windows Mobile OS that had been criticized much for years.

Microsoft's division of Entertainment and Devices also develops portable media players named Zune. The latest Zune HD received many positive reviews but couldn't rival with tremendously popular iPod touch.

Yesterday Dell officially announced its first 5-inch Android tablet. The announcement was made on the company's official blog.

So the device is now called the Streak. Previously it was shown at Consumer Electronics Show 2010 as a concept and called the Mini 5. The tablet has a 800x480 pixel capacitive multitouch screen, 1GHz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm, VGA front-facing camera for video chatting, 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, removable battery, 3.5mm headphone jack, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and MicroSD-card support. The Streak runs a customized version of Android OS with multitouch support and "Dell UI enhancements".  The system allows accessing to 40,000  apps in the Android Market, navigation with Google Maps, support for Google Voice and Microsoft Exchange Connectivity.

Blogger from the Round Rock company in Texas Lionel Menchasa thinks the Streak may be very perspective:

"I've been at Dell for 16 years, and I don't think there's ever been more buzz around a single Dell product than this. In my view, that's for good reason. Hardware and design-wise, this thing impresses. Add the ever-increasing capability that Android brings to the equation, and you've got a mobile device that offers a ton of flexibility while looking cool in the process."

The device will be shipped to the UK on June 4 and will be exclusive to the O2 network. Still there is no information on prices, data plans and American partners, but Menсhasa said everything will be soon announced.

In a video above one of the device developers Kevin Andrew tells and shows how useful the Streak may be in the everyday use.

If you are an active Google Reader user and also have an iPad, then you should be waiting for Reeder release for an iPad. But guys from MacStories have already obtained its first beta version somehow. They say it's pretty fast and beautiful with an original user interface. Here are its first screenshots.

Recently Billboard published a report that reveals new information on Apple's share on music sales market. When the first generation iPhone was presented, iTunes had only 12,7% of American music market. In 2008 Apple almost doubled it and made 21,4%. 2009 reveals five percentage points increase - now iTunes has 26,7% of music sales.

Such mobile providers as AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless on the contrary lose their positions, downing from 6,6% to 4,9% in 2009. Partly it is explained by lower priced ringtones in iTunes and its free tools for making custom ringtones. Both of these factors eventually attracted more people.

Physical media music in turn loses its popularity from year to year. Numbers reveal its share fell from 57,5% in 2008 to 49,3% in 2009. That means that iTunes actually makes a half of all digital music downloads overall.

iTunes' closest rival Amazon also increased its sales. But in digital MP3 sales the company's share grew from 0,8% in 2008 to 1,3% in 2009, which is not even close to Apple's 26,7% share. Such results, according to Billboard, were "still well short of where major labels had hoped Amazon's download store would be by now, dimming earlier expectations that it will be able to significantly reduce the labels' heavy dependence on iTunes for digital sales."

It is interesting to look forward for Google which recently acquired Simplify Media to expectedly turn it into iTunes rival for Android users. But for now the company's subsidiary AdMob reveals the amount of media bought or even downloaded by Android users is still so small that it cannot be compared with iTunes success.

Here are the latest news from Google I/O conference: Tablet based on Android operating system. This one is 8.9 inch widescreen from NVIDIA that runs a multicore ARM Cortex A9 processor and has a front facing camera and two USB ports. The video below shows it running the football. However this is only a demo at a tradeshow, not an actual shipping product.

This Friday Judge Clifford Cretan from San Mateo County in California unsealed the affidavit of the lost iPhone prototype case. Cnet was first who studied the document and concluded that Steve Jobs personally called Gizmodo editor Brian Lam to return iPhone:

"Jobs requested that Lam return the phone to Apple. Lam responded via the e-mail address...that he would return the iPhone on the condition that Apple provided him with a letter stating the iPhone belonged to Apple."

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According to a new report revealed by Silicon Alley Insider on Wednesday iPhone OS 4 may possibly have built-in integration with Facebook.  The feature will probably be presented on June 7 at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference conducted by Apple.

An author of the report Dan Frommer says he doesn't have any details on how it works.

"...We also hear that Apple could be integrating Facebook Connect directly into its software developers kit so programmers can more easily add Facebook 'social' features to their apps".

There is also information about bringing Facebook messaging features to the upcoming versions of iPhone OS making it possible to send messages via Facebook Chat as easy as sending an SMS.

An idea of integration with Facebook was already implemented by Google in its OS Android 2.0. Windows Phone 7 is also expected to support strong Facebook connectivity.