News tagged ‘Android’

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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According to official twitter of Samsung South Africa and Korea Times, the device is called Samsung Galaxy Tab (previously known more as S-Pad). It will have a 7-inch multitouch display with “high resolution” and 5 mega pixel camera. Moreover, 9to5mac also found the dimensions of the device - 64.2X122.4X9.9mm and only 118 grams of weight. Among other features:

• runs Android with TouchWiz user interface;
• has a front-facing camera;
• has 3G;
• has “Phone” icon, which means it may make calls;
• has 3,5mm headphone jack.

What most interesting, according to Fortune, Samsung Galaxy Tab will use Intrinsity-built Hummingbird S5PC110, which is the same processor as the one used in the iPhone 4G and iPad.

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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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

Mashable reports about new Chinese iPad clone and this time it's called very originally - the iPed. Its price is only $105, and it runs Android OS. With Intel chip, 16 GB of storage space and 128 MB of RAM the iPed is available only in China. Let's watch this cute video with people describing the device on a Chinese language:

Recently AdMob revealed a new metrics report that studied the numbers of iPhone OS and Adroid devices throughout the world. The company emphasized it was looking only at the devices that were at least once connected to the AdMob network:

"These unique device numbers are from the AdMob network only and reflect the adoption of our products and business operation. We don’t know what percentage of the total universe of iPhone and Android devices AdMob reaches. However we believe the data is useful on a relative basis given the large sample size of devices in our network."

So here are the main facts and conclusions along with figures:

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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.

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.

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.

Recently The Wall Street Journal had reported that Verizon collaborates with Google to create new tablet device that will compete with the iPad. The information was confirmed by Lowell McAdam, who is a Verizon CEO, in his interview to the paper.

"What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are? We're working on tablets together, for example. We're looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience."

Still there were no information revealed about the device's hardware and its manufacturers. McAdam said that collaboration with Google has already led to success in company's efforts to combat the iPhone with Android-based handsets, so he's looking forward for the same result in creating new tablet device.

Verizon CEO also told that the company now will close the gap with AT&T which offers exclusive only 3G data plans for the iPad in the USA. In early 2011 Verizon will present 4G-capable device along with its new high-speed network, which by the end of 2010 will cover 25 to 30 cities. It is planned that there will be more price plans for every selling device, and it may be more expensive than current offers of other carriers who have 3G network.

AT&T seems to not support such policy (at least the company have been repeatedly denying such information), though its CEO Randall Stephenson thinks the industry will be proposing variable pricing once.

"For the industry, we will progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing. The heavy consumers will pay different than the lower consumers."

Yesterday we posted information about smartphone sales in the last quarter 2010, and as you remember Android-based phones become more popular than iPhones. Now it became known that Apple's spokespeople commented on this data.

In its research NPD group studied over 150,000 completed surveys, that were undertaken online every month in America. Apple's representative Natalie Harrison thinks it is not enough data to make precise conclusions:

"This is a very limited report on 150,000 U.S. consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide."

It is unknown why Harrison mentioned iPod touch when discussion was about smartphones market, but according to Reunters last week Harrison had referred to the IDC research. The latter also reveals that Apple losing its positions, but this time worldwide, with Nokia and BlackBerry sales ahead in first and second spots respectively.

NPD Group had recently revealed their new study, which shows that iPhone OS became the second most selling OS last quarter in US. To be precise 28% of all handsets sold were Android phones, and iPhones made only 21%. Research In Motion's Blackberries hold 36 percent of market.

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According to a report by Marketwatch (which in turn refers to a figures revealed by Strategy Analytics), smartphones now take 18% share on the market of all mobile phones.

"Sales are driven by healthy operator subsidies, competition between vendors, and a rising number of cheaper models built around operating systems such as Google Inc's Android and Nokia Corp's key smartphone platform Symbian."

It is interesting that different smartphone makers sometimes compete on different markets. Strategy Analytics reveals that Nokia shows good results in India and China while Motorola focuses more on US.

As we wrote before, Motorola raised up its profits after producing its Android-based Droid/Milestone, which is frequently called the closest rival to Apple's iPhone.

Nokia's purpose is to gain the leadership on the markets that are only emerging. In the first quarter the company has 21.5 million smartphones sold, but these are mostly cheap models that were shipped primarily to South America and China. North America remains a "problem child" for Nokia. The company's sales make 40% of all the sales in this quarter.

RIM has 10.6 million BlackBerries sold and takes second place with its 19.7% share.

Globally Apple has 16,4% market share in selling smartphones in this quarter and became a mobile vendor number one in the US. The company made record 8.8 million iPhone sales. Among all mobile phone makers Apple hold 3% global market share.

This spring quarter Motorola had reportedly sold 8.5 million phones, which makes it the second biggest US phone maker after Apple that sold 8.8 million iPhones in the same period.

According to a Forbes report, one year ago Motorola had better results - 14,7 million phones sold. But the profit this year is down only by 9% because the company had changed its strategy and now successfully sells more sophisticated smartphones instead of cheap phones.

Motorola had best selling results four years ago when it was selling Razr model. In 2006 it was releasing 46 million phones per quarter. But these days mobile providers push companies to deliver cheap phones and because of it Motorola's profits are falling down.

The company  had big plans on its Milestone/Droid device which ships with Android OS. It was heavily promoted by Motorola and Verizon as the best Android phone available, but the company sold only 2.3 million devices in the spring quarter, which is only 27% of the total phones sold.