Mobile

Twelve Mobile Companies to Form Global App Market, Should Apple Be Afraid?

April 30, 2023 by Arnold Zafra

This could perhaps be one of the biggest, if not the biggest announcement that comes out of the Mobile World Congress. It’s big because twelve mobile operators have teamed up to form the world’s biggest, unified mobile apps market. Dubbed “Wholesale Applications Community“, this global alliance aims to establish a simple route to market for developers and give them access to customer base of over 3 billion users, forming an ecosystem based on openness and transparency for the benefit of everyone.

The Wholesale Applications Community already has the support of twelve mobile industry players who just signed a memorandum of understanding at the ongoing Mobile Web Congress. These companies include – América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, KT, Mobilkom Austria Group, MTN Group, NTT DoCoMo, Orange, Orascom Telecom, Softbank Mobile, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telenor Group, Telia Sonera, SingTel, SK Telecom, Spint, Verizon Wireless, VimpelCom, Vodafone and Wind, as well as Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson.

The alliance aims to benefit mobile phone users by providing broader choice of innovative mobile apps and services on a wider choice of mobile devices. For application developers, the alliance will provide an environment where they can flourish and create straight-forward apps. It will also provide developers with a gateway to market their apps. Additionally, the alliance will use existing technical standards such as APIs to make it easier for participants to develop useful mobile apps. This also means that developers will just need to create one version of their apps which can be used on multiple device including Android, Symbian and Others.

Interestingly, the iPhone was not mentioned. So, many are quick to react that the Wholesale Applications Community is being geared to challenge Apple’s Apps Store. Should Apple be afraid? What do you think?

iPad Frenzy is Spiking Interest to iPhone OS Anew

April 30, 2023 by Arnold Zafra

Mobile Analytics company, Flurry has released some interesting data points relating to the sudden spike in the number of iPhone developers adding their mobile tracking code to new projects. Flurry observed the sudden spike especially when the hype over the launch of the Apple iPad started to build up prior to the launch in February. The very controversial iPad if you still remember will be running on the same OS used by the iPhone.

Flurry observed that the number of developers adding their analytics tracking code to new iPhone OS apps projects increased by three-fold in January as compared to what was supposed to be a waning interest as observed in the early part of December. During that time, developers seem to have been focusing more on the Android platform.

The mobile analytics firm attributes the spike, which incidentally they claim is the biggest so far in the company’s history to the imminent arrival of the iPad. According to Flurry:

“Historically, Flurry has measured surges in new application starts within its system in anticipation of new device launches, including for the Motorola Droid and iPhone 3GS. As such, we hypothesize that excitement generated by Apple’s iPad event in January is driving this growth. For developers who get a jump on customizing their applications for the iPad, there may be an opportunity to stand out early on, and earn more downloads.”

So, are apps developers actually jumping onto the iPad bandwagon and preparing their applications in time for the release of the iPad? Well, Flurry’s data seem to show that this is happening. But, we have yet to see and March is just a couple of weeks away.

Yahoo and Microsoft React to Google Buzz

April 29, 2023 by Arnold Zafra

If you’ve been monitoring tech headlines the past couple of hours, you’d know that the hottest buzz right now is none other than Google Buzz. Credit it to Google for creating yet again another noise upon launching a significant product or service and for soliciting a much needed reaction from its rivals – Yahoo and Microsoft.

In case you’ve missed the discussion thread online, Google Buzz is purported as Google’s approach to social sharing. The main service sits right inside Gmail Inbox but you can also use the service on your iPhone or Android devices. You can read more about Google Buzz in Gmail and Google Buzz for Mobile at 901am.

So, how did Yahoo and Microsoft reacted to Google Buzz? Microsoft was a bit short and yet direct to the point, as quoted by TechCrunch.

“Busy people don’t want another social network, what they want is the convenience of aggregation. We’ve done that. Hotmail customers have benefitted from Microsoft working with Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and 75 other partners since 2008.”

While Yahoo’s reaction was more elaborate by saying that they have the same service for a year now via Yahoo! Updates. Silicon Alley Insider shares Yahoo’s email explaining that they had that same product for over a year now.

It’s been almost a year and a half since we first launched Yahoo! Updates – a social feature that lets people share their status, content and online activities and stay connected to what their friends and family are doing on Yahoo! and across the Web – and we wanted to share the latest on what’s happening with Updates…

So, what do you think? Did Google just copied existing services of its two rivals? Or did Google in fact copied the services of some other location-aware, social recommendation sites such as Yelp, Gowalla, FourSquare and others?

Update: Incidentally, Google Buzz for Mobile is now on. You may check it out by pointing your iPhone or Android phone’s browser to buzz.google.com.

As the Smartphone Market Grows, So Does iPhone’s Market Share

April 27, 2023 by Arnold Zafra

Results of IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker yield some interesting points to ponder on about the current state of the smartphone industry. And being a smartphone addict that I am (I’ve got an iPhone and Nexus One right now and I’m still planning to get a BlackBerry in a couple of days) it’s quite interesting to take a look at this report.

According to IDC’s report, a total of 54.5 million units of smartphones were shipped in Q4 2009, up by 39% from the same quarter in 2008. Total shipment for 2009 was 174.2 million units, up by 15.1% from 151.4 million units in 2008. In addition, smartphone shipments accounted for 15.4% of all mobile phone shipped in 2009, up from 12.7% in 2008.

Drilling down to the top five smartphone brands, Nokia still leads the pack with a 37.6% growth in Q4 2009 and 11.9% growth from 2008 to 2009. RIM with its BlackBerry devices follows at close second while Apple, HTC and Samsung complete the top five smartphone brands in 2009 and Motorola replacing Samsung in the top category for Q4 2009.

Now his the interesting part. Apple’s market share grew by a huge 97.7% in Q4 2009 and 81.9% from 2008 to 2009. You know why this is interesting? Apple was able to achieve this feat with only one smartphone available in the market, the iPhone 3GS. While both Nokia and RIM both got several smartphone units. Nokia has the 5800, N97, N97 mini, 5530 and other latest models, while RIM has various BlackBerry devices. [Read more…] about As the Smartphone Market Grows, So Does iPhone’s Market Share

Skype to Update its Mobile App to Support VoIP 3G

April 27, 2023 by Arnold Zafra

A couple of days ago, Fring has enabled 3G calling on its iPhone applications. Made us wonder whether Skype will follow them and update their Skype Mobile app for the iPhone. But apparently, the Skype folks are not rushing into the frenzy created by Apple’s recent ruling on allowing voice calls through 3G on the iPhone. Before internet voice calls were carried via Wi-Fi only.

So, why is Skype taking its sweet time in updating their mobile Skype app to enable the said feature? According to David Ponsford head of the Skype iPhone Team, Skype will release this update pretty soon. He also said that Skype wants to make sure that when they allow voice calls through 3G network on their mobile app, the sound quality will not suffer.

Mr. Ponsford also said that the Skype update will allow calls in wideband audio which actually translates to greater clarity and fidelity of voice calls through 3G network.

Interestingly, the Skype folks are also pretty much excited about the recent launch of the iPad. The Skype team is carefully looking into the details of the device and it looks like they might be cooking up something for iPad and Skype. Although I’m not really sure as to how this could be possible considering the fact that the iPad does not have a front-facing camera which is needed for voice chat, or a mobile phone capability.

Or maybe the Skype team is expecting something else from the iPad that we may not be aware of?