Researchers from Kaspersky Lab have released a description of a new malware delivery platform capable of spreading itself and its payload to Windows, Mac OS X, VMWare virtual machines, and Windows Mobile devices. The "Crisis" trojan is capable of intercepting emails and instant messages, with a module to keep track of websites visited by the infected computer.
LG isn't looking to produce another Windows Phone in the near future, a spokesman said Monday. While there would still be development, the representative wanted to minimize expectations of anything imminent when asked by the Korea Herald. The Microsoft platform's low market share was put at fault as likely making it difficult to justify going beyond Android.
Apple had considered one of three core ideas for the iPhone, one of which included a hardware keyboard, former Apple executive and now Nest founder Tony Fadell revealed Friday. Speaking in an evening session with The Verge, he mentioned that the all-touch design that eventually shipped first had come after he wanted to try a virtual keyboard before resorting to the hardware option. The key iPod architect had understood the potential of an on-screen keyboard, which has infinite customization and can disappear when not needed, but didn't rule out physical keys at first.
The total mobile user base is significantly less oriented towards Android than phone market share would suggest, according to research. An InMobi study saw iOS extend a slight lead in North America based on ad impressions, going from an 0.6-point lead at 33.1 percent in the fall to a 2.7-point gap at 36.8 percent in the winter. It had Apple, not Google, growing faster for at least the past several months.
LG's mobile division lead Jong-seok Park in commentary Tuesday was hopeful of much stronger smartphone performance in 2012. He saw LG shipping 35 million smartphones this year, a 50 percent hike over 2011. Much of the push outlined to the Korea Times would come from eight million LTE-ready smartphones like the Optimus Vu.
Chris Blizzard served his last day as Mozilla's director of Web platform this past Friday, March 16, he revealed on his blog. He will move on to a "very small startup" based in Palo Alto, though didn't go on to name it. Blizzard would only say the work involves the intersection of systems, compilers, and web-scale problems.
The Windows Mobile 6 Marketplace will close on May 9, Microsoft is informing users with a letter, embedded below. The move shouldn't come as a surprise, as developers were no longer able to post new apps since July 15. For all intents and purposes, Windows Phone has replaced Windows Mobile as Microsoft's only mobile OS, despite promises at first to keep Windows Mobile as an adjunct.
More Americans now own smartphones than basic cellphones, Pew Internet deduced on Thursday. By looking at those who either said they had a smartphone or mentioned it using a smartphone platform, the study found that 53 percent of American cellphone owners had a smartphone as of February. With 88 percent of the entire adult American population using a cellphone, that translated to 46 percent of all adults owning a smartphone.
Samsung's AV product lead Chris Moseley in an interview Monday was dismissive of the threat posed by a possible Apple TV set. In the chat with Pocket-lint, he insisted that image quality was the primary factor and that Apple wouldn't have the image scaling or "world-renowned" picture quality. He downplayed the interface and software features, normally the highlight of Apple's devices, as backseat elements.
Dashwire gave warning late this week that its mobile sync service was ending February 15. The Windows Mobile-oriented service was recommending that users download and otherwise back up any content they had in cloud storage before servers were shut down and wiped. Despite active updates to the service having stopped years earlier, some users were still online, the company said in an e-mail.
The sustained effect of the iPhone 4S launch has kept the iPhone growing at the same pace as Android in the US. Google's platform grew a collective 2.5 points over the fall to 47.3 percent, but Apple nearly matched it with a 2.2 percent hike to 29.6 percent. As with much of the past year, the two were only really drawing from other platforms, with the BlackBerry down nearly three points to 16 percent.
A new study from Check Point on Wednesday hints that iOS use may have pushed past the BlackBerry in at least one metric for corporate use. Among the device types connecting to 768 IT pros' networks in the US, 30 percent said the most common was one of Apple's mobile types at 30 percent. Just slightly less, 29 percent, pointed to the BlackBerry as the most common, while only 21 percent were pointing to Android.
The sustained effect of the iPhone 4S is triggering a decline in Android's US market share, Nielsen showed Wednesday. Although Android had an average 51.7 percent share for the fall among recent buyers, a month-by-month breakdown by the researchers showed that its share among recent buyers dropped from 61.6 percent in October to 48.7 percent in November as iPhone sales traffic picked up. By December, Android and iOS were near even, at 46.9 and 44.5 percent each.
Microsoft's Customer Experience GM Eric Hautala updated Windows Phone owners with word that the company would go dark on detailed Windows Phone updates. Despite what it had done for much of 2011, it would no longer tell customers which carriers, countries, and phones were getting a new OS revision. No explanation was given as to the sudden silence.
Nielsen in a look back at late summer not only broke down market share for the period but revealed that Android had a consistent appeal across ages. Android was up to 44.2 percent of US smartphones between August and October but also had a more even balance than the primarily younger audiences of before. About 47 percent of those both in the 18-24 and 25-34 groups with smartphones had Android, while even the 65-plus group still saw 39 percent pick Google.
Microsoft's decision to move Andy Lees to a new position was his punishment for Windows Phone 7's failure in the market, leaked details may have uncovered. The vague role he was given of creating "maximum impact" for WP7 and Windows 8 was described by The Verge's source as a sign that "he's been benched." Lees' public portrayal of how soon Windows Phone would get share versus real results was reportedly causing angst within the company.
An NPD Group look back at most of 2011 has shown the sheer change in the smartphone business in the past year. Android was now the majority, having climbed from 42 percent in all of 2010 to 53 percent from the start of 2011 through October. Despite the pressure, though, Apple too grew share the entire year and actually grew at a faster relative rate, bouncing back from a dip to 21 percent in 2010 to a new high of 29 percent by this October.
Sony Ericsson executive marketing VP Kristian Tear confirmed a roadmap for when the company's separation from Ericsson would be visible to the public. He told The Times of India to expect smartphones branded just under Sony's name by sometime in mid-2012. It would lead to more spending on marketing to get the name change out, but the company now expected to take advantage of Sony's ownership to get more than it could in the earlier 50-50 deal.
New comScore data has shown that the iPhone 4S launch helped keep Apple's smartphone share growing in the US despite Android. Although Android grew 4.4 points to a new high of 46.3 percent in the US between July and October, the iPhone grew a point by itself to 28.1 percent. As usual, all of Android's gains were at others' expense, with the BlackBerry dropping as much as Google gained to sink to 17.2 percent.
Android has managed to cut into the once unassailable positions of the BlackBerry and iPhone in Canada, comScore said in a regional breakdown. Having been at 19 percent in spring, Google's platform was up to 25 percent of smartphones sold during the summer. Most of that came at RIM's expense, as even its home country advantage didn't stop the BlackBerry's fall from 38 percent to 35.8.
Android's share of the US smartphone market started leveling off in the summer, Nielsen said Tuesday. With Android at 42.8 percent, its overall summer share was the same as what it managed in August. Apple was also unaffected and held the iPhone firm at 28.3 percent.
Russian search and advertising company Yandex, which has 62.7 percent of the country's web search market and beats Google, has now revealed that it purchased mobile apps developer SPB Software. The deal is said by TechCrunch to be worth about $38 million from close, unnamed sources. SPB, founded in 1999, has a home in Russia, Taiwan and Thailand.
Despite common perception, iOS still has the absolute lead in its total installed base in the US, comScore found Monday. Helped by Apple's wide majority in the tablet space, the iPad, iPhone, and oPod touch combined made up 43.1 percent of American use this past August. Android, almost exclusively led by smartphones, was at 34.1 percent.
Motorola has brought out a new, ruggedized seven-inch tablet targeted squarely at pro users. The ET1 Enterprise Tablet is built for rough handling and includes special features such as Corning Gorilla Glass, which the company claims is 30 percent thicker than conventional home tablet displays. The tablet will run Android 2.3 instead of the latest Android release, Honeycomb (3.0), but has incorporated several enterprise-specific apps and features.
Android is still growing in the US, but is taking all its share from non-iPhone rivals, Nielsen found on Monday. Google was up from 40 percent in July to 43 percent in August, but Apple was still at the 28 percent it has held since June. Most of that decline came from Microsoft, which took the "other" category down from 13 percent to 11 percent.
Android is now just past the iPhone in European smartphone market share, comScore determined in a Tuesday breakdown. In the five biggest European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, Android more than tripled its share from a year ago to hit 22.2 percent in July and just pass the iPhone. Apple was still up, however, and had climbed from 19 percent last year to 20.3 percent.
New Nielsen data Thursday reinforced views that Android had still gained US share in July, but not at Apple's expense. Google was up one point to 40 percent, but Apple was steady with the iPhone holding its 28 percent share. RIM appeared to be the direct victim as the BlackBerry lost a point to settle at 19 percent.
Android and the iPhone are still the only two smartphone platforms growing in the US, comScore found Tuesday. In July, Google's OS was up to a new high of 41.8 percent share in the US. Apple was nonetheless still growing and moved up exactly one point to 27 percent.
Android made up more than half of smartphones shipped in the US during the spring, according to new NPD data. Google accounted for 52 percent of sales in the period. None of that was at Apple's expense, however, as Apple kept gaining share and reached 29 percent in the same period.
Microsoft on Monday quietly said it would end its Reader app within a year. Stores carrying the LIT format will pull the format on November 8 of this year, while the app would no longer be available to download after August 30, 2012. The app and any downloaded books will continue to work after the cutoff point.
Apple is now the fourth-largest cellphone maker in the world, Gartner said in its own roundup of mobile market share figures. The iPhone's market share of real, end-user sales shot up almost 92 percent from year to year to give it 4.6 percent, moving it ahead of not just RIM but Motorola and Sony Ericsson, all three of which lost share. Apple's rise also widened its leads over ZTE, HTC, and Huawei, who despite their gains weren't growing as quickly.
Android has crossed a threshold by passing 40.1 percent of smartphone share in the US, comScore found Thursday. The gain of 5.4 points in June from just three months earlier was slower than in the past several months but enough to extend its control of the American field. Apple was still gaining, however, and moved up just over a point itself to 26.6 percent.
An investigation into Microsoft's SEC filing for its fiscal year has revealed that the company made very little on its mobile platforms for the entire year. Of the nearly $8.72 billion in revenue from the company's Entertainment and Devices group between July 2010 and last month, just $613 million belonged to something other than the Xbox 360, the Seattle PI found. The figure left Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile making no more than the amount combined.
LG showed some signs of turning around its long-struggling phone business with spring results that saw it climb back up. The company still took a $49.8 million loss on its mobile group but had cut that nearly in half from the winter. Its new emphasis on smartphones saw the section's revenue climb back up by 11.6 percent to $3 billion.
Apple has orchestrated a symbolic changing of the guard in the UK as new comScore data gave it the lead in the country. A 46 percent spike in ownership over the past year made the iPhone the single largest smartphone platform in the country as of this past May, with about 5.5 million users. Symbian's user base dropped 10 percent over the same space of time and left it with about 4.5 million predominantly Nokia-based users.
A new study of US smartphone adopters by ChangeWave on Monday has fueled views that iPhone momentum is outpacing Android. Of those expecting to get a smartphone in the next 90 days, 46 percent planned to get an iPhone where 32 percent expected to pick Android. The split was the widest outside of an iPhone launch since September 2009, before the Motorola Droid took off and gave Android its original relevance.
Pew Internet in a new study on Monday revealed that a full quarter of American smartphone owners use the device as their main Internet source. The tally leaves 10 percent of all US cellphone owners more dependent on their phones than a computer to get online. About a third of those have no home broadband at all, leaving them either partly or completely dependent on the phone to get online.
LG at a media briefing drastically lowered its cellphone targets as its smartphone sales failed to break through. Its overall target for cellphones in 2011 was dropping 24 percent from 150 million down to just 114 million. Smartphone aims were also going down even as they became more important, dropping a fifth from 30 million to 24 million.
Virgin Media has signed a deal with Spotify to add streaming music to its cable content offering in the UK. Virgin's subscribers will be able to buy a bundle which includes access to Spotify's 13 million tracks. Although Spotify does offer a free, ad-supported streaming service, Virgin's subscribers will have to pay a subscription for their songs.
HP on Monday ramped up pre-orders for the TouchPad. The first ever webOS tablet is up for sale at Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Staples, HP itself. Every store is so far selling at the official $500 price for a 16GB model and $600 for 32GB.
A breakdown on Friday showed that iTunes was not only growing quickly even over seven years but faster than some longstanding platforms. At 225 million accounts, it was still growing at a logarithmic scale, Asymco saw. The Xbox 360, Windows Mobile, and Symbian had tapered off either at the same seven-year mark or earlier.
Microsoft said it was shutting down its My Phone service for Windows Mobile 6.x phone users starting in August. The company wants to migrate existing customers over to their Windows Live SkyDrive Service instead. Microsoft believes that cloud-based SkyDrive is is the best way to continue providing its customers with archiving services.
Dissent around Microsoft's leadership became more public Wednesday with a speech from Greenlight Capital manager David Einhorn. The hedge fund operator told those at the Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had to "give someone else a chance" at the top spot. He considered the early Microsoft executive the "biggest overhang" on Microsoft's stock because he was mired in traditional behavior.
Microsoft sped up the end to Windows Mobile 6 this week with notice that it would stop taking new apps for the platform in the Windows Marketplace on July 15. Existing titles could still sell but would have to sell with the same versions, prices, and listings after the cutoff date. Sales data would also keep going.
A breakdown of phone share in early 2011 by Gartner has given Android another large leap in share while providing a rare direct estimate of Microsoft's actual Windows Phone sales. About 36.27 million Android devices shipped in the first quarter of 2011 and hit 36 percent, more than triple its share at the start of 2010. Microsoft meanwhile collapsed from 6.8 percent share a year ago to 3.6 percent as Windows Phone did little to offset a slight dip in phones to 3.66 million, just 1.6 million of which were modern Windows Phone devices.
Apple is still far ahead in corporate adoption compared to Google, Intermedia found in a study late Thursday. Despite Android's inroads at home, iPhones made up 61 percent of those using Exchange on Intermedia's global hosting service. Only 17 percent of devices were Android, making the group smaller than the 22 percent "other" category including minority platforms like Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, HP's webOS, and Symbian.
Android has reached a new high in US market share but almost entirely at the BlackBerry's expense, Nielsen said on Tuesday. Google was now up to 37 percent share from 29 percent just in the fall. All of that came from RIM supporters defecting to the platform, though, as BlackBerry use fell five points to 22 percent while the iPhone remained steady at 27 percent.
Magellan has brought back a GIS (geographic information system)-capable portable GPS product in the form of the eXplorist Pro 10 GPS receiver. It runs an open platform on Windows Mobile 6.5 for compatibility with other GIS-based data collection programs. The device is rugged, waterproof and uses two AA batteries to more easily stayed
HTC reached a milestone on Wednesday as it passed Nokia in market capitalization. Its total share value reached $33.8 billion, passing Nokia's $32.84 billion. The Taiwan phone maker had already passed RIM's $28.5 billion.
An investigation into Microsoft's high-profile mobile failures has blamed much of the company's poor market share on an endemic culture that resists anything not part of Windows. CEO Steve Ballmer is said to be over-proud and overprotective of the Windows legacy he inherited from Bill Gates. The company's Windows and Office teams often get first say over anything, Forbes was told, and were likened earlier by James Whittaker to a Mafia that killed Courier, Kin, or any project that would threaten Windows' internal hegemony.
