News tagged ‘platforms’

Research firm Gartner has published sales forecasts for the tablet market, stating that a lack of momentum from competitors will allow iPad to be absolute leader during the holiday shopping season. Looking further ahead, Gartner predicts that Apple will maintain more than 50 percent share of this market segment through 2014 even as Research in Motion’s QNX and Microsoft's Windows 8 platforms are expected to build up some momentum. Research vice president at Gartner Carolina Milanesi explains:

“This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal. Apple had the foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen”.

Gartner has lowered its estimates for sales of Android tablets in 2011 by 28% over second quarter’s projections, noting very weak adoption due to its interface issues, high prices and limited app availability.

The company expects that Android will see growth as Google releases its next-generation Android’s "Ice Cream Sandwich" and addresses fragmentation across the Android ecosystem. However, according to Gartner's sales forecasts, Android tablets will not catch up the iPad by the end of projection period of 2015.

Today Adobe announced in a blog that it will add new features to its AIR platform and Flash Player allowing for use of 3D-accelerated graphics in mobile and desktop devices. Also the company notes in a press release:

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wanted to run your iOS applications on your Mac, Windows or Android device? Creator of iEmu, new Kickstarter project, want to raise funds to make this possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to Bloomberg’s report, Nintendo’s investors are urging the company to produce titles for iOS devices. Alternatively, Tokyo-based Stats Investment Management Co considers that Nintendo should try to either develop something absolutely new or buy its way into smartphone market. Bloomberg wrote:

Read the rest of this entry »

It is well known that iPad is a fine gaming device. And it looks like Apple is going to improve iPad’s entertainment capabilities as it is a new trend nowadays. Some well-known publishers pay most attention to gaming aspect of the iPad as consumers gradually lose interest in gaming on traditional consoles. Console’s long upgrade cycle, expensive software and hardware for them and allure of touch gaming devices are main contributing factors to the decline of the console business.  Recently The Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said IndustryGamers:

Read the rest of this entry »

This morning Adobe announced a large number of software updates to the Flex Framework and Flash Builder that will make it possible for developers to create projects for BlackBerry PlayBook, iPhone and iPad, besides Android support that was implemented in April.

Now version 4.5 of Flex and Flash are added to Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium and Master Collection, but also they can be bought separately (Flash Builder Standard for 249$, Premium for 669$). In a blog post Adobe’s Puneed Goel gave praises to the release:

Read the rest of this entry »

Today Yahoo! revealed new tools that can help in seeking apps for your iOS device. It's a dedicated search engine Yahoo! App Search and iOS app called Yahoo! App Spot.

Besides using standard app descriptors the tools also introduce and utilize rich categories, personalized recommendations, user reviews on the web, different ratings and so on.

Read the rest of this entry »

comScore has released the results of its April survey (comScore surveyed over 30,000 mobile phone subscribers.) of mobile phone usage in the United States. Surpassing Research in Motion, Apple took the solid second place among smartphone platforms and now iOS holds 26.0% of market. Google’s Android leads the pack with 36.4% of the market, an increase of 5.2 percentage points over the three month period. Research in Motion's BlackBerry operating system has slipped to 25.7%. When looking at mobile phone manufacturers overall, Apple is now the fourth largest vendor with a share of 8.3% of the US market. Samsung remains number one with 24.5% of the market, followed by LG and Motorola.

By now everyone seems to know that Microsoft has acquired online communication giant Skype for a huge 8.5 billion dollars. Mac and iOS users immediately questioned the acquisition as a way for Microsoft to turn Skype into an exclusive service for Windows Live-connected devices and other Microsoft products such as the Xbox, Windows 7 and the new Windows Phone 7 OS. Steve Ballmer, however, was quick to reassure everyone that Skype will continue working on the Mac, iOS and all the other platforms it currently runs on (including RIM’s BlackBerry and Symbian). Microsoft, of course, takes Apple as one of the major rivals, though it has a full version of Office 2011 available for Macs, and many apps for iPhones and iPads. The question, however, is whether Skype will ever release a native iPad app as promised last year, and if the new owner will also bring some welcome interface changes to the Mac app.

Apple is rumored to be negotiating with Nuance Communications, the speech recognition company behind the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine that powers a number of popular applications for Mac OS X, iOS, and other platforms.

Apple has been negotiating a deal with Nuance in recent months, we've heard from multiple sources. What does that mean? Well, it could mean an acquisition, but that is looking fairly unlikely at this point, we hear. More likely, it means a partnership that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently Apple has made changes to its app policy and focused on making the iOS App Store the most attractive rather than simply the biggest.

Lately the company has banned the idea of "incentivized app installs", which was used by certain game developers to prompt players to install other apps if they want to continue playing. Because of the incentives some apps become artificially popular and don’t reflect the actual situation in top games chart, for instance.

Read the rest of this entry »

A massive survey conducted by Hunch. com that provides visitors with personalized recommendations for just about everything,  shows that Mac people are young, vegetarian city-dwellers who like modern art, liberal politics, and independent films. Meanwhile, Windows supporters tend to be older, more conservative, and more likely to compare talking about computers to "struggling with a foreign language." Between March 2009 and April 2011, Hunch asked 388,315 of its visitors about their preferred computing platforms. Among the respondents 52% identified themselves as PC people while 25% said they preferred Mac.

Market research firm comScore released details of the smartphone market share for the November 2010 – February 2011 period. The company surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found out that Samsung the top cellphone manufacturer with a 24.8% market share.  Apple ranked 5th place with a 7.5% share in February, up 0.9% from November 2010. As comScore notes Apple saw the “strongest gain” thanks to the release of the Verizon iPhone 4, which was the “most acquired handset in the month of February” in the United States. Though, among the mobile operating platforms Google’s Android system demonstrates the strongest growth.

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

This week Mike Abramsky from RBC Capital Markets released another note to investors, where he said that partnership between Microsoft and Nokia can "inadvertently help" Google Android, Apple and possibly RIM.

This Friday, at conference in London Stephen Elop, who was a Microsoft's Business Division head and now is a CEO at Nokia, along with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the strategic alliance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users in 2010 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2011)

Today Gartner revealed the results of another research, where it was found that Apple's achievements in 2010 had led to the situation when the company's competitors experienced reduced sales and eventually lost significant market shares.

Read the rest of this entry »