News tagged ‘mobile’
Facebook Is Planning To Launch iPad App Update With Timeline Feature In Late January
Recently Facebook introduced a new functionality for profiles called Timeline, which, as shown on the company’s promotional video above, places all you interactions, photos, status updates and more on a timeline starting from the opening of your Facebook account.
iOS, Android activations surge 353% on record setting Christmas Day
In the first 20 days of December, mobile device activations tracked by analytics firm Flurry were around 1.5 million each day. As for December 25, it indicated that devices running Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms saw a huge spike in activations, growing 353 percent from average totals earlier in December. The previous record tracked by Flurry belongs to Christmas Day in 2010. On December 25, 2010 the users activated 2.8 million devices.
Flurry's statistics come from the company's analytics software, which is found in more than 140,000 applications. Peter Farago, vice president of marketing with Flurry, claimed that his company's statistics detect "roughly" 100 percent of new iOS and Android devices activated each day. Application downloads on both iOS and Android also grew by 125 percent on Christmas Day, reaching 242 million. For the first 20 days of December, downloads averaged 108 million.
Flurry expects that by the end of the year 2011 Apple's App Store will exceed 10 billion application downloads. Moreover, iOS applications rake in 300 percent more revenue than their Android counterparts. During Apple’s last quarterly earnings conference call Apple has not revealed daily iOS activations in over a year, but announced that more than 250 million iOS devices had been sold during the quarter.
iOS dominates mobile shopping with 92% of market
A study by retail analysis firm RichRelevance released on Friday notes that Apple's iOS dominated mobile online shopping in 2011, holding just over 92 percent of the market, reports Market Watch. iOS users spend 19 percent more than those using Google's platform on mobile purchases.
The study has analyzed 3.4 billion shopping sessions between April and December 2011. The iOS devices share in mobile sales grew from 88 percent in April to over 92 percent in December. This proves that Apple's iOS growth continues to lead the market in many ways including online browsing.
“The numbers across our retailing partners sites demonstrate just how powerful the iOS platform is enabling mobile web shopping and, while still below 5 percent in total conversion, mobile traffic’s doubling in eight months is a trend we only see accelerating,” said Rich Relevance CEO David Selinger.
Dominant U.S. App Store may be surpassed by China in 2012
According to a new study released by market research firm Distimo, despite the proliferation of handsets running Google's Android OS, which now accounts for 53 percent of the mobile smartphone market, Apple's U.S. App Store remains the top marketplace for mobile downloads. But Chinese App Store sales continue to grow and may even bypass Apple's U.S. App Store numbers in 2012.
Over the course of 2011, Apple's iPhone app sales saw a steady decline month-to month, though Distimo blames the lull on the later than usual release of the iPhone 4S. The lowest point of the year occurred in September when anticipation for the 4S was highest, and was followed by a spike upon the handset's debut. Peak revenue for the U.S. App Store came a little over a month after the newest version of Apple's smartphone was released. The same "anticipation effect" was seen in app sales for the iPad, as downloads declined in January and February only to pick up steam after the iPad 2 was released in March.
China now demonstrates a strong increase in downloads through 2011 and may surpass the U.S. App Store in 2012.
Apple looking to expand iCloud with new applications
According to a new job application published by Apple this week and discovered by AppleInsider, the company is looking to hire someone for the position of iCloud Application Developer. That means that the company is already looking to improve iCloud service with new applications for the iPhone and iPad. The iCloud umbrella of services was launched in October to replace Apple's previous cloud-based option, MobileMe.
"The iCloud team is looking for a proactive, creative-minded (engineer) to build the next generation of cocoa-based client applications that integrate tightly with a set of cloud based services," the listing reads.
The position requires someone who will develop both new and existing iPhone and iPad applications for iCloud services. Though it offers no indication of what those applications might be, it notes that employees will "build products that people want to use every day."
Apple is expected to add in iCloud a proprietary mapping service from Apple. Moreover, there are a lot of rumors concerning that Apple is building its own mapping and location services for iOS.
iPhone leads competition in UK holiday smartphone sales
Citing findings by research firm GfK, the Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple’s iPhone 4S accounted for nearly one out of every four smartphone sales in the UK during the lead up to the holiday season and retains the best-selling smartphone in the UK.
During the first week of December, five versions of Apple's handset, including the two and a half year old 3GS, ranked as one of the top 15 smartphones sold and took over 37 percent of a smartphone market that nearly doubled in size between Feb. 2010 and Aug. 2011. According to figures from Ofcom, the U.K.'s government-approved regulatory authority for telecommunications, 46 percent of all mobile users are now smartphone owners.
Apple’s rivals are also showing significant grown in sales. The second best-selling smartphone in the UK is Samsung's Galaxy S II and three versions of RIM's BlackBerry Curve all landing in the top ten. Noticeably absent from the top-selling handsets was Nokia. The company's new partnership with Microsoft has yet to bear fruit. The Windows Phone 7-based Lumia line failed to crack the top ten handsets sold in the UK after.
RIM now worth less than Apple's App Store alone
Research in Motion is struggling now for its share of the mobile market. But the price of its stocks is getting lower and lower, so the company is worth less than the estimated value of just Apple's App Store. An analysis from Trefis' Brian S. Hall notes that at a price of $13.44, RIMM stock finished last week at a total value of just $7.04 billion, less than the $7.08 billion that Apple's App Store is estimated to be worth. As for the whole Apple company, AAPL stock has a market cap of $354 billion, or more than 50 times greater than RIMM.
"The App Store is probably worth more than BlackBerry," Hall wrote. "All of BlackBerry. Just the App Store. Nothing else. Not the iPhone or iPod. Not Mac. Just the App Store."
App Store is now one of the key components of Apple’s success. Just a year of Apple's iTunes Store and App Store’s operation costs Apple $1.3 billion, but last year only developers received $2.5 billion in payments in the App Store. According to a last week report, iOS applications bring in 300 percent more revenue than their Android counterparts.
RIM's stock has been showing decline in the price since the company announced last week that BlackBerry shipments reduced year over year while the company managed to ship just 150,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter. Moreover the company delayed the release of its next-generation smartphone operating system, BlackBerry 10, until the second half of 2012.
Apple's Mac App Store downloads top 100 million
On Monday Apple revealed that over 100 million downloads were made via its Mac App Store in less than one year of availability.
"In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world."
There are now more than 500,000 applications in App Stores for iOS and the Mac that were downloaded more than 18 billion times. More than one billion applications are downloaded per month there. Noteworthy, Apple Stores helped developers achieved success with their applications. Here some comments from the developers whose applications are now available in the Mac App Store.
"The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle," said Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team. "Offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition."
Flight Control and Mirror's Edge for iPhone and iPad are free today
Today EA Mobile is offering both Flight Control and Mirror's Edge ($9.99) for free. Both regular (iPod/iPhone) and HD (iPad) versions are free. Hurry up. This is the first time that both of these iOS games have been free.
Here are the direct iTunes links:
Take a look at games videos:
Cloud Gaming Company OnLive Releases Its App For Tablets And Mobile Platforms
The pioneer of cloud gaming
Ivy Bridge to Bring Triple Display Support to MacBook Air
Intel intends to launch its mobile Ivy Bridge processors in April and May of next year. The report posted yesterday ttracts special attention to the fact that the Ivy Bridge platform, both mobile and desktop, will provide support up to three independent displays. Noteworthy, one of those displays will be an internal one.
While we're talking about graphics, as with the desktop Ivy Bridge processors, the mobile processors also support up to three independent displays, although one of these will be the built in display in the notebook, but hopefully we'll see notebooks with a DisplayPort connector as standard come next year.
The current Sandy Bridge platform supports only two independent displays. For example, the 13-inch MacBook Pro can only drive two external displays by turning off its internal display. More powerful MacBook Pro models can currently drive two external displays in addition to the internal one. But Ivy Bridge opens door to a direct support of three displays. Users of the MacBook Air will be able to connect to two external displays.
Logging Software From Carrier IQ Is Found On Many Mobile Phones
During the last several days, there have been many reports on the findings of
Apple still No. 1 manufacturer in growing US smartphone market
According to findings released on Tuesday by Nielsen, Apple remained the largest smartphone manufacture in the Unites States in the third quarter. While smartphones sales continue to grow in the U.S., accounting for 56 percent of all cellphone sales in the prior quarter, Apple’s market share has reached 30%. Apple's third quarter performance was followed by HTC with a 20.3% share.
As for mobile platforms, Android and iOS dominate with a 71.1% share, holding 42.8% and 28.3% respectively. About a half of all mobile users in the United States owns a smartphone. During the prior quarter 56% of all handsets purchases were smartphones. The third place still belongs to RIM's BlackBerry platform with 17.8% that was followed by Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform, HP's Palm/webOS, Symbian and the fledgling Windows Phone.
App downloads in the third quarter saw that Google and Apple have the largest share. 83% of all downloads were made through Android and iOS devices. But Google has recently expressed dissatisfaction by the situation with app downloads, and hinted at upcoming changes that would bring its online store more in line with Apple's.
Hitachi and Sony working with Apple on 4-inch iOS device
Hitachi and Sony are reportedly working together to supply Apple with 4-inch LCD displays for an unspecified iOS device that is expected to be launched in 2012. Apple is said to be working on a fundamentally new display technology for the iPad 4. Some sources claim that Hitachi Displays, Ltd. and Sony Mobile Display Corporation have already begun supplying Apple with 4-inch LCD panels for unknown iOS device. Moreover, in 2012 spring the two companies will merge with Toshiba Mobile Display Co., Ltd. to form "Japan Display."
Earlier this week, we reported that Apple chose Sharp as a manufacture of panels for the iPad 3. The company even invested in a Sharp’s factory to ensure that Sharp will be able to satisfy Apple’s display needs and support Sharp's production capacity for IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) LCD panels for the next iPhone and iPad.
"The IGZO technology is perfect in that it offers near-OLED power consumption while having a lower cost and thinness that is only 25% greater than OLED, based on our checks," said Jeffries analyst Peter Misek.
Motorola Is Likely To Win German Injunction Against iCloud In February
According to FOSS Patent’s