Here are some interesting stats for the smartphone market.
Smartphones account for 25% of the mobile phone market.
RIM owns 33% of the smartphone market
Nokia saw a 41% increase in sales
But Android saw a 886% increase in sales
I’m very bearish on Nokia, Microsoft, and Blackberry at the moment but hopefully RIM launches a successful new update on it’s OS for 6.0 (gigaom)
Given that the U.S. currently has the largest smartphone user base — Canalys estimates 14.7 million smartphones were purchased in the U.S. last quarter — it’s easy to overlook the current king of smartphone sales globally: Nokia. In the second quarter of 2010, the Finnish phone-maker sold 23.8 million handsets. Nokia saw a 41 percent growth rate over the prior year’s second quarter sales, which sounds positive, but when compared to Android’s 886 percent gain, Nokia’s growth pales in comparison. The overall smartphone market is growing, which is lifting sales of nearly all. But some — like Android — are clearly growing far faster than others.
News android, blackberry, iphone os4, marketshare, microsoft, nokia, rim, smartphone market
Bad news for blackberry users, good news for UAE’s spying division. I didn’t know this but I guess you can’t read blackberry messages because of their automatic encryption. Good job RIM! Too bad all those secret meetings and trade information is going to be leaked to the UAE. No privacy laws currently exist in the UAE.
At the heart of the battle is access to the data transmitted by BlackBerrys. RIM processes the information through a handful of secure Network Operations Centers around the world, meaning that most governments can’t access the data easily on their own.
Read more about it at the WSJ.
Blackberry, News blackberry, encryption, privacy, UAE
With Apple’s resounding success in their App Store, major carriers and phone manufacturers are jumping on the app store bandwagon to avoid being a “dump pipe” or just another hardware manufacturer. With loads of new app stores and new ways to download applications, this is by far a better user experience than in the past than having to browse from a clunky interface on the web and syncing it on the phone or downloading it from unfamiliar and risky 3rd party sites.
Now with everyone and their mother implementing an app store, developers are the last piece of the puzzle to develop and fill up their catalog. But what carriers and new app store promoters don’t realize in the resounding success of Apple’s App Store is that it was on a narrow target of mobile phones and operating systems. This alone cuts down on the difficulty of the developer to develop and maintain a stable and worthwhile experience of applications so that the end-user aka customer can enjoy and return for more. With Windows Mobile, Symbian, Brew, Java, Android, Apple, Blackberry, and other OS’s, it gets pretty overwhelming to maintain and update across all these different operating systems. Let’s say you narrowly focus on two or three OS’s, Apple, WM, and Android, you not only cut yourself off from 50% of the market but you also expand the number of phones and screen sizes to develop for. Apple’s success was that it was a homogeneous product of devices (iPhone and iTouch) with little deviation between the two.
My advice to these new app stores, don’t try to preload every phone with access to the app store. Only preserve it for the higher end phones that can handle this and narrow down the hardware that it can work universally without having to pressure developers to program specifically around for a particular phone.
News android, app store, application, blackberry, brew, iphone, itouch, java, mobile, ovi store, windows mobile
Way to jump on the band wagon and get on board to compete with Apple and Android. Now with three platforms for consumers and developers to go crazy for, what’s not to love another “I am Rich” app for the BlackBerry side.
“Coming soon! Find tons of great applications designed for your BlackBerry® smartphone in one convenient place – BlackBerry App World™. Personalize your BlackBerry smartphone with games, social networks, personal productivity applications and so much more. Message your best friend, track the stock market, or channel your inner rock god. Sign up for BlackBerry App World today and discover how to put more of your life on your BlackBerry smartphone.”
Guess what? You need a PayPal account to buy any application… Lame
Blackberry, News android, android marketplace, app store, apple, apple app store, blackberry, blackberry app world, paypal, smartphone
Talk about mobile, print from your Blackberry to Bluetooth enabled printers on the fly. With a special little app called Cortado, you can have your Blackberry print just about anything you toss at it. If it’s your boss’s email, notes from school, or embarrassing photos of your Friday night party, it gets the job done. Sad thing about this app is that it will set you back a hefty $40
Blackberry, Devices blackberry, bluetooth, contado, mobile, printer