After months of companies, like Motorola and HTC, pushing their Android phones in sales and marketing, Android has finally passed Apple’s iPhone in US market share, according to the NPD group. The results were determined by a survey of smartphone owners, which put Android’s 28% share behind RIM’s BlackBerry with a high, but falling, 36% market share. Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, said, “As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share. In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”
Android’s leap forward wasn’t the only thing mentioned in the report. The results showed that AT&T barely beat Verizon, 32% to 30%, for the largest American cellular network and T-Mobile edging out Sprint for the number three spot at 17% and 15% respectively.
After much rumor and speculation that Google would bring its popular (and free) turn-by-turn GPS to the iPhone, Google shot down the rumor today by saying that they have no current plans to bring the application to the iPhone – at least for now. Google, however, did say that they would bring the app to other platforms. Click the jump for the full statement by a Google spokeperson to PCWorld. Read the rest of this entry →
There’s no denying that the number of complaints about the Nexus One’s 3G have been numerous. Now, after several updates, Google says “we are no longer investigating further engineering improvements”. Google feels that the patch they supplied took care of most of the problems, and you’re stuck with whatever bug you have now. In short: Google isn’t fixing your Nexus One connectivity problems anymore.
I’ve seen some recent speculation on this thread about an OTA to improve 3G connectivity and I want to give you an update on the situation. While we are continuing to monitor user feedback regarding the 3G performance on the Nexus One, we are no longer investigating further engineering improvements at this time.
If you are still experiencing 3G issues, we recommend that you try changing your location or even the orientation of your phone, as this may help in areas with weaker coverage.
Original iPhone adopters may have felt left out when Apple confirmed that there will be no more support for their model, including no iPhone OS 4, but those very same users can rejoice knowing that Android in all its goodness has come to the original iPhone. Using OpeniBoot, it allows users choose to load between the standard iPhone OS or Android. It’s not perfect, but kinks will soon get flattened out and there’s also hope that it will soon be implemented in the iPhone 3G and 3GS.
The Senior VP of Spotify, the popular online music streaming app in Europe, recently announced that Spotify has plans to come to the United States in Q3 2010. Last reports said that Spotify would launch stateside in late 2009, but that promise was broken quite sometime ago. Spotify has over seven million users all across Europe, with over 300,000 of them paying for the $15 premium service that features mobile support and no ads. Spotify’s move means is that anyone can listen to any song from any artist for free, on desktop or mobile phone – a sure way to upset any record label.
If you’re too impatient to wait for Spotify to come to the United States, you can use a clever method of applying for use with a UK proxy that TechCrunch pointed out last year:
Invite yourself from anywhere:
1) go to http://www.daveproxy.co.uk/
2) enter the following URL: https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
3) Create your account, for UK postcode – check http://www.postcodesearch.org.uk/
It’s also worth noting that Spotify has passed Apple’s App Store limbo and is available to EU countries that already support Spotify.
Let’s face it, the Nexus One is a beautiful phone we would all like to use. The phone is already out for AT&T and T-Mobile networks and coming soon to Verizon, but it has no word for Sprint. That’s about to change. Just a little past a day after the announcement that the phone would work over AT&T’s 3G bands comes word from Sprint that they will be carrying the phone, and that a release date would be announced “soon”. Verizon still has to get their CDMA version of the Nexus One, but now we known that every major US carrier will sport the phone (probably at the same price) sometime this year.
Google launched a social networking tool today, taking on the same market as Twitter, called Buzz. Google Buzz can be described social networking service also integrating your other social network updates into its own wing, built right into Gmail and the entire Google ecosystem.
Buzz has four notable features, including:
A friend list created automatically based on the people you email the most often from Gmail.
Other social networks and media sharing sites, such as Flickr, Twitter, and Picasa are combined with file sharing for status updates.
Private or public sharing (equivalent of Twitter and email, respectively).
A recommended buzz, similar to when you see tweets retweeted by your followers on Twitter.
One thing not left out were cellphones. Buzz is also designed to work with the iPhone and Android browsers, so you can “buzz on the go”. Buzz can also change your stream to places around you like restaurants, businesses, among others using your current locations, which you can manually update (with location-aware disabled iPhones) or find automatically.
Google Buzz will slowly roll out to Gmail users, so don’t expect to use it right away.
Verizon announced the Motorola DEVOUR, the Droid’s little brother, today with a press statement. The DEVOUR is essentially a lighter Droid and being Verizon’s first Android phone with Motoblur. Other delicious specs include Bluetooth, 8GB microSD card preinstalled, a 3.1″ capacitive touch screen. There is no mention of multi-touch, since it only runs Android 1.6 for the time being. Look for the phone to drop in an Verizon store near you in March.
Texas Instruments has been busy making the sequel to the OMAP3 chipset, which powers the Droid and Palm Pre, among others. The sucessor is the OMAP4 chipset- which has insanely fast performance and 145 hours of battery life. TI went as far as to make a demo device with two screens, Android, pico projector, 12MP camera, and HDMI out to show the potential of the chipset. The demo device can also shoot 1080P video and universal decoding, impressive for any smartphone. The chipset will be destined to compete with the Apple A4, and Tegra 2 in the mobile category in the near future. Launch date is sometime late this year or early 2011.
And did we mention that its dual core? It sports a dual core 1Ghz processor, far better than anything on the market today. But, of course, by 2011 we’ll have advanced greatly in mobile processors. Only time will tell if it will live up to its current hype.
The T-Mobile sidekick has had it’s troubles over the past months, including all sales being suspended, and rumors have it that the Sidekick line will be eliminated all together for the introduction of the myTouch Slide, also known as myTouch 2 or HTC Expresso, seen above. This means that one of the more known texting phones will be swapped for an Android smartphone – a general “plus” for consumers.
But for those who aren’t comfortable with Android, Microsoft’s Project Pink will also be introduced. The phone(s) will also probably introduced in May.
After months of companies, like Motorola and HTC, pushing their Android phones in sales and marketing, Android has finally passed Apple’s iPhone in US market share, according to the NPD group. The results were determined by a survey of smartphone owners, which put Android’s 28% share behind RIM’s BlackBerry with a high, but falling, 36% market share. Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD, said, “As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share. In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones.”
The Senior VP of 
