Apple and Samsung are the only two smartphone manufacturers currently seeing any growth in the United States. The pair are slowly eating away at the market share held by their rivals, including LG, Motorola, Research in Motion, and HTC. In the three months leading up to November 2012, Samsung increased its market share from 25.7% to 26.9%, but Apple is catching up with the Cupertino company enjoying slightly more growth.
Android’s market share continues to grow throughout the world, but one country where Google’s platform is having its biggest impact is in China. It’s now the largest single Android market in the world, with one third of all Android devices sold there during 2012. The iPhone, on the other hand, is struggling there.
The future of Microsoft’s SkyDrive service on iOS looks bleak today as the company appears to have entered into a fight with Apple over its 30% cut of App Store revenues. Microsoft recently gave iOS users the ability to upgrade their SkyDrive subscriptions from their iPhones and iPads, but until the company agrees to give Apple a 30% cut of the in-app purchases, it won’t get any future updates approved.
A critical bug fix that prevents the app from crashing has now had to be placed on hold. Should Apple’s rules be a little more flexible in certain cases?
When you combine all the titles in Apple’s App Store with those in Google Play, you have a catalog of more than 1.4 million apps from hundreds of thousands of developers. But incredibly, more than 50% of the revenue made by these stores in the United States goes to just 25 app developers.
The International Data Corporation has published its most recent mobile market forecast and unsurprisingly, they’re predicting Android to maintain its strong market share lead over the next four years. In fact, there’s really not much surprising about the report at all.
Samsung has once again taken the top spot for mobile market share in the United States after attracting more than a quarter of mobile subscribers. The Korean company claimed 26.3% of the market as of October 2012, but rival Apple is quickly catching up. The iPhone maker saw the highest level of growth among cellphone manufacturers, and managed to overtake LG to take second place.
Following its acquisition of Instagram earlier this year, Facebook is said to be eyeing up another popular service. Cross-platform messenger WhatsApp could be the next item on the social network’s shopping list as the company looks to extend its mobile presence, according to sources close to the matter.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was at the Churchill Club in Santa Clara this week to be interviewed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. One of the most interesting subjects he talked about was Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, and how it compares to its two main rivals, Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android.
As you might expect, he didn’t have many good things to say about his competitors. In fact, he called Android “wild” and “uncontrolled,” before saying the iPhone is too expensive and too controlled. Windows Phone, he feels, sits in a sweet spot between the two.
One of iOS’s most limiting aspects is its icon-driven interface. iOS’s default interface, the homescreen, it simply a grid of equally sized icons, and while these icons are pretty, they all look pretty much the same. Worse, they are dumb: they can’t do anything cleverer than pin a badge to themselves to convey information.
Compare that to the way Android or Windows Phone handles the homescreen. In Android, you can pin intelligent widgets along with apps to the homescreen; in Windows Phone, the tiles operate not just as app icons, but as smart widgets that can convey to the user changes that are happening within the app, even when it’s not as open.
iOS users have been clammoring for Apple to figure out a way to make the iOS homescreen smarter for quite a long time, and this concept video describes one possible interpretation, which mixes up the iOS homescreen with Android’s widgets and Windows Phone’s Live Tiles.
Weather On is a weather forecasting app for iOS that is remarkable for one thing: its very obvious nods to Microsoft’s mobile operating system.
Open it up, and you’ll see a selection of square and rectangular tiles that look and behave just like the tiles you’ve seen on the latest smartphones running Windows Phone.
There’s been plenty of debate over whether or not Microsoft will ever bring its Office productivity suite to Android and iOS devices. Many reports have claimed it will, while Microsoft itself has denied the rumors. But now product manager Petr Bobek has confirmed that it will happen next year.
Today, Apple made official the eagerly-awaited latest version of the world’s most popular smartphone, the iPhone 5. Apple has historically been a trendsetter when it comes to building smartphones, using cutting-edge technology and top-of-the-line materials, but over the past few months, the competition — Samsung, Motorola, Nokia and HTC — have started catching up.
So, spec-by-spec, how does the iPhone 5 stack up? We have compared the specs of the iPhone 5 with the iPhone 4S, Nokia Lumia 820, Nokia Lumia 920, Motorola DROID RAZR HD, Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX HD, Motorola DROID RAZR M, Samsung Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X. To see how the iPhone 5 fares, check out the comprehensive table below.
Apple’s strict approach to iOS software means that spyware very rarely makes its way onto our iPhones or iPads. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t at risk. A piece of mobile spyware called FinFisher, developed by U.K.-based Gamma Group, is capable of making its way onto your iPhone and recording your every move without you knowing it.
The software can secretly turn on your handset’s microphone to listen to your conversations, it can track your location, and even monitor your emails, text messages, and calls.
The iPhone has been an incredible success for Apple. So much more of a success than we all predicted when it was unveiled back in 2007. It’s the hottest smartphone on the planet, and at five years old, it’s now bigger than Microsoft’s entire business put together. With $22.7 billion in sales last quarter, the smartphone outsold everything Apple’s biggest rival has to offer.
The perception of the BlackBerry as the most secure and manageable mobile platform seems to be faltering. According to a new report, senior IT administrators now consider Apple’s iOS to be the most secure and manageable platform – despite the fact that RIM offers ten times the number of security and device management policies that Apple provides in iOS.
Walk into your local AT&T, Verizon or Sprint store and ask to look at the latest and greatest smartphone. A store employee will show you the Samsung Galaxy lll and other Android phones from the likes of HTC and Motorola. You may be shown a Windows Phone like the Nokia Lumia 900. At Verizon, you’re definitely going to be shown about the Motorola DROID RAZR 4G.
You won’t get pitched the iPhone as easily. In fact, many walk into a store with the plan of buying an iPhone and come out with the latest Android phone in hand.
Why? Employees and customers we’ve spoken to agree that sales reps from all three big carriers discriminate against the iPhone on the store floor, but it’s not a conspiracy: profit margins and device-specific incentives pressure employees to intentionally steer customers away.
When AT&T reported last month that their iPhone activations only grew by 3% compared to the last quarter, a few analysts were scratching their heads at first but decided people probably weren’t buying as many new iPhones because of iPhone 5 rumors.
But what if there was a more sinister hand at play in the slumping iPhone sales? According to a new report, that’s exactly what’s happening as AT&T Regional Retail Sales Managers have instructed store managers to stop trying to sell the iPhone.
Mozilla is working on a new smartphone operating system called Firefox OS that hopes to compete with Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. The project was first announced back in 2011, and earlier this month, it was reported that Mozilla had made TCL Corporation its hardware partner.
It’s still early days for Firefox OS, but if you’d like to see what Mozilla has in store, you can now run the platform on your Mac using a Boot2Gecko (B2G) “nightly” build.
Apple has been granted what has been described as “the mother of all software patents,” which covers a whole host of features that Apple pioneered with the iPhone. Not only is this huge for Apple in its fight against copycats, but it could have a significant affect on almost every single device that rivals the iPhone or the iPad.
After landing on Android and iOS yesterday, Rovio has confirmed that Amazing Alex will be making its way to Mac and PC. The new physics-based puzzler is Rovio’s first break away from the hugely successful Angry Birds series, and it’s already gotten off to a great start, rocketing up to the number one spot in the App Store’s paid charts in several countries.
U.K. Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) chairman Andy Payne has revealed that Activision’s new studio in Leeds is working to bring a new Call of Duty game to iOS. The hugely successful first-person shooter already has its name in the App Store, but the existing titles only provide access to the game’s “Zombies” element.
On average, iOS is the most expensive mobile platform for developers. It’s the second most profitable mobile platform overall behind RIM’s BlackBerry. One in three mobile developers can’t earn enough money to living from the apps that they produce.
Those are some of the details contained in a new report from mobile analyst and strategy company VisionMobile. The report delves into the heart of the so-called app economy and provides a range of information and statistics about app development, its costs, and the income potential that comes from being an iOS, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone developer. If you’re considering a career as a mobile developer, this is must-read report. For the rest of us, it’s a fascinating sneak peek into the experience of app developers around the world.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.
SOTI provides an interesting mix of mobile device and PC management solutions. On the desktop, it offers Windows PC management as well as remote access and screen sharing tools useful to many help desks. From a mobile perspective, it provides a range features including device and app management. Its on-device software and SDK support a range of useful features for iOS devices including two-way chat with users and remote access options. MobiControl SDK also includes a file sync solution for managing content and internal enterprise app data on iPhones and iPads.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.
Absolute Manage MDM provides all the major mobile management capabilities. In addition device and app management, Absolute Manage MDM offers a secure on-device file store option called AbsoluteSafe that can be used to deliver files directly to user devices. AbsoluteSafe includes the ability to automate access to files by policies or schedule in addition to on-demand file deployment, removal, or access rights adjustments. The suite integrates with the company’s Absolute desktop client management (Mac and Windows) and deployment suite, together they can provide complete IT and lifecycle management features mobile devices, Macs, PCs, and software.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.
Zenprise focuses on the complete lifecycle management of mobile devices in enterprise environments. The company provides the core set of device and app management needs and offers integration with enterprise systems. Zenprise puts a particular emphasis mobile device inventory for both company-owned and BYOD devices.
