Sonos has issued an update to its Sonos System Software today which adds a number of exciting new features that promise to enhance your Sonos experience. In addition to support for Slacker Radio in the U.S. and Canada, and new Spotify features, the update adds support for Android tablets, and a ‘Sonos Labs’ beta.
Early reviews of Amazon’s Kindle Fire haven’t been kind, but I like the device. It’s a versatile and enjoyable little media tablet.
It doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not (a general-purpose tab), and though not as polished as Apple’s products, its a good first try.
The trouble is that everyone is comparing the Kindle Fire to the iPad, and it will always come up short. The Kindle Fire is actually closer to the iPod touch, but it’s not that either. It’s a well-made, well-designed window into Amazon’s media ecosystem, and on that score, it succeeds very well.
Research giant Gartner had a quick lesson for Apple: don’t let off the iPhone accelerator — if you do, you’ll pay. The latest price for delaying until October its new smartphone: iOS dipped to 15 percent of sales while Android-based handsets skyrocketed to 52.5 percent of the market.
The Kindle Fire tablet and e-books will play a larger role in Amazon’s overall revenue, reaching 14 percent of the Internet retail giant’s 2013 income, an analyst said Monday. But Apple still doesn’t have much to worry about.
Amazon is reportedly increasing its orders for its Kindle Fire tablet to 5 million units following continued “strong” early demand for the 7-inch device. But could greater demand for the iPad rival actually backfire on the e-bookseller?
Although the iPhone 4S might be dismissed as nothing but a spec bump phone, it does have one distinctive advantage over every other smartphone out there: Siri. Anyone who wants to compete with the iPhone 4S (and, presumably, the future iPad 3) will have to come up with their own answer to Siri, or be lost.
Well, what do you know. The hunt by Apple’s competition to find small voice recognition startups and absorb them has already begun with the revelation that Amazon has already picked up a company in the hopes of launching their own would-be Siri-like speech recognition service.
After briefly being seen as an ally of Apple’s goal towards crushing Android, Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet is back to threatening iPad sales. A Wall Street analyst now says 26 percent of people considering buying the Fire are putting on hold purchasing the Cupertino, Calif. tech giant’s tablet. What’s more, consumers are more likely to buy the Amazon tablet than the iPad.
After making headlines in 2010 by yanking its recommendation of the iPhone 4, the advocacy group Consumer Reports is now picking Android smartphones as a better buy than the iconic Apple handset. A review pointing to larger screens and faster 4G networks seems to run counter to record-breaking sales of the iPhone 4S.
Remember HP’s fiasco with the Slate, then the TouchPad? You’d think the company would run from the tablet market like a Silicon Valley investor with his hair on fire — but you’d be wrong.
The Kindle Fire may be shaping up to be the first real device to challenge the iPad’s share of the tablet market but it’s not going to go unchallenged: book retailing giant Barnes & Noble have just announced the next generation of their own Android-based reading tablet, and unlike the Kindle Fire, its specs match and even exceed the iPad 2’s for half the price.
Six weeks before it officially goes on sale, Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire is shaping up to be the biggest tablet launch ever… and Cult of Android has the numbers to prove it.
A verified source within the Seattle based online retail giant has provided Cult of Android with exclusive screenshots of Amazon’s internal inventory management system Alaska (Availability Lookup and SKU Aggregator).
These leaked shoots show that orders for Amazon’s Android-based tablet are racking up at an average rate of over 2,000 units per hour, or over 50,000 per day.
In the five days since Amazon put the Kindle Fire up on their official site, over 250,000 tablets have been preordered. If this level of consumer demand for the Kindle Fire continues, Amazon will have 2.5 million preorders for the device before it officially goes on sale on November 15th.
Those numbers make the Kindle Fire’s launch likely to be the biggest tablet launch in history, beating both the iPad and iPad 2 in first month sales.
Depending on where you stand, a recent mobile advertising study was good news for Apple or Android. While Apple’s iPad and iPhone were the most connected devices for advertising, Google’s Android was the leading smartphone operating system, according to the report.
Its first generation Kindle Fire hasn’t even launched hit store shelves yet, but already Amazon has the Foxconn factory in China knocking up its successor, the Kindle Fire 2, with plans to ship the device during the first half of 2012.
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The Swiss are known for their neutrality, so who better to try to negotiate a peace deal between Android and the iPhone? The result: this cute little video by the folks at Swiss broadcasting corp Swissinfo, which references movies as wide-ranging as Transformers, Braveheart, The Phantom Menace, Titanic, Ghost and The Bodyguard to urge the Android Army and the iPhone iPhalanx to put aside their silly differences and make love, not war.
[via AppAdvice]
What many analysts earlier presumed to be a shot across Apple’s bow, after Wednesday’s unveiling of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, could actually torpedo the chances of inexpensive Android devices to challenge the iPad. Android tablets, unable to match the iPad’s features and design were hoping to undercut Apple’s pricing — that is until news of the Fire’s $199 price tag.
More than 75 percent of the handsets T-Mobile sells are smartphones, the carrier told a gathering at this week’s Mobilize 2011 forum held in San Francisco. What’s more, 90 percent of those smartphones are powered by the Android operating system.
Although much of the tech news bandwidth has been consumed with chatter about the Apple iPhone 5, Samsung has shipped 10 million Android-powered Galaxy S IIs smartphones — before touching foot on U.S. soil. Many expect the Samsung v. Apple battle to be the cage fight of cellular titans.
If you’re looking forward to Motorola’s second-generation Xoom tablet, then feast your eyes on these leaked images that show the device in all its glory.
It’s the first day of fall in the U.S. and already the forecast is turning gloomy on whether the current batch of Android tablets can overcome Apple’s lead. Amazon, perhaps with the best chance to rival the iPad, may have already stumbled by putting up a 7-inch device against Apple’s larger alternative, industry experts warned Friday.
Android smartphones will quickly dominate as home media hubs, beating out Apple’s AirPlay, one market research firm predicts.
