August 23rd, 2010
Senior Vice-President and Head of the Devices Hardware Engineering Department of Apple, Mark Papermaster, left the company, reported the New York Times.
Mr Papermaster came to Apple from IBM in 2008. In the new place he was responsible for iPod and iPhone development.
According to some observers, the reason of Mr Papermaster’s resign was the notorious problem with the iPhone 4 antenna, which made Apple start giving away free cases for this smartphone.
The former Vice-President didn’t comment his resign. The speaker from Apple, Steve Dowling, confirmed Mark Papermaster’s resign having mentioned that his duties passed to Bob Mansfield, Senior Vice-President and Head of the Mac Hardware Engineering Department.
By the way, Mr Papermaster didn’t take part in the conference dedicated to the ‘case distribution’. Steve Jobs, Bob Mansfield and the main operation director Tim Cook carry his can.
By the way, iPhone application development is probably the most rapidly developing trend in the sphere of mobile application development at present. So any change in the management may influence it.
Tags: Apple, application development, iPhone, iPod, Steve Dowling
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August 16th, 2010
In 2012 Android will become more popular than iPhone. The main reasons for this are its attractiveness among other manufacturers and the model
of distribution.
According to the analytics from iSuppli, the number of Android smartphones will exceed the number of Apple smartphones by 2012. iSuppi predicts that by the end of the year 2012 the market share of Android will be 19.4% on the world’s market of smartphones in comparison with 2.7% in 2009. The market share of iOS from Apple will increase from 13.8% to 15.9% for the same period. By 2014 the Android sjare market will increase to 22.8% and the iOS share will reduce to 15.3%.
The future domination of Android is due to the different model of the platform distribution. iOS is a proprietary solution unavailable for third party producers. Android is an open OS available for everybody. By now it has been supported by NTS, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Acer, Samsung, LG and other companies while iPhones are produced only by Apple.
By 2014 the high quality content and mobile application will bring more than $100 bln. It’s a very promising and profitable market not only for smartphone producers but also for mobile apps developers who create apps for Android.
Tags: Android, Apple, iPhone, Motorola, Samsung, Smartphone
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August 9th, 2010
On October 11, 2010 the UAE authorities will suspend the usage of some services in Blackberry phones. This decision was taken in the context of national security, informs Reuters. The thing is that the government can’t control the information transferred via these devices as the UAE doesn’t have the corresponding code.
This action is expected to touch about 500,000 users. The limitation will be valid till Blackberry doesn’t work out ‘the good-enough solution’, admitted the General Director of the Telecommunication Department Mohammed Al-Ghanim. According to the official, only Blackberry services will be put under a ban. Al-Ghanim says smartphones Nokia and iPhone won’t be touched by this limitation so iphone application developers can relax.
The negotiations between the Department and the manufacturer of smartphones Research In Motion have been carried since 2007. The UAE authorities inform that the compromise in using Blackberry Messenger, e-mail 
and Internet access services hasn’t been reached.
Earlier the dissatisfaction of data coding in Blackberry Messenger has been expressed in other countries as well. Thus, last week the government of India informed that such data could be used for conducting acts of terrorism. Despite this news, BlackBerry apps developers continue creating products for this device which is considered the most popular one in the market at present.
Tags: apps developers, BlackBerry, Blackberry Messenger, Blackberry phones, Nokia, Research In Motion
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August 4th, 2010
According to the AndroLib site, the users of the online apps store Android Market have downloaded from the store various applications more than a billion times. The counter situated on the site shows that every single moment about one hundred applications are downloaded from the catalogue.
Now more than 93,000 apps for Android are on the Android Market servers. Till the end of the year the number of applications for the mobile platform from Google in the Android Market will exceed 100,000 items. Only in June the range of products in the Android Market increased by 15,000 positions and following the results of July this figure reached 20,000 apps.
Android apps developers from 9 countries intensively add products to the store and according to the present day tendency mobile phone applications development will only grow.
Tags: Android, Android Market, application development, Google, mobile apps
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July 29th, 2010
Apple presented its quarterly report for the third financial quarter ended at the end of June, which was so expected by specialists. As it was expected, the report turned out to be positive due to high sales of iPhone 4 smartphones and new iPad devices (at the same time, the demand for products from iPad application developers has also increased). Moreover, the company stated that PC and laptop users have started purchasing new products from Mac more actively.
In the third quarter the net profit of Apple reached 3.25 bln dollars or 3.51 dollars in comparison with 1.83 bln dollars or 2.01 dollars for a share a year before. On average the experts were expecting the net profit of Apple at the level of 3.11 bln dollars.
According to the head of the company Steve Jobs, till the end of this year Apple will concentrate on the mobile developments with low marginality in order to expand its users’ base. Jobs noted that now all key products including Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod are sold either at the expected level or a bit higher. Also the head of the company promised a few more product innovations till the end of the year.
In the reporting period the proceeds of the company increased by 61% and reached the all time high level of 15.7 bln dollars having exceeded the expectations of analytics at 14.7 bln dollars. According to Apple, the quarterly proceeds at 15.7 bln dollars are the highest result for the whole 30-year period of their presence at the market.
Tags: Apple, iPad, iPhone, Mac
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July 20th, 2010
Once again Google shared the statistics of the growing popularity of the Google Android platform. According to it, 160,000 devices pass daily activation (4.8 mln a month).
Activation means the input of user’s data from the Google services after which the regular Android OS service clients start working (synchronization of the address book, calendar, letters, Android Market and so on). This figure has increased by 60%.
The amount of software offered by Android apps developers is also growing – from 50,000 up to 65,000 applications as of the end of June. According to the Google’s management, the given dynamics can be considered positive and shows that the platform is welcomed by users. Moreover, Google is sure that the Android OS will become the top mobile OS and will probably replace Windows if we compare it with the PC market.
It should be noted that Android communicators are really sold very actively – now quarterly about 15 mln of them are sold and for the first quarter of 2010 were sold about 54 mln devices, according to the analytics from Gartner. Against this growth, the success of Apple is very illustrative – thus, according to some statistics, the number of people wishing to buy iPhone 4 on the first day reached 600,000 people.
Tags: Android, Apple, Google, iPhone
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July 9th, 2010
Android’s market share of free applications stands out against the competitors’ one: about 57% of applications at the Android Market can be obtained for free. At the App Store the number of such applications is 28%, at the BlackBerry Apps World – 26%. But the users of Windows Mobile devices have to pay more often than others – only 22% of available applications at the Windows Marketplace are free.
According to the research done by Distimo, more than 50% of applications in any existing store cost no more than $2. Besides, the biggest part of applications at the App Store is less than $1. It may be one of the reasons for such stunning sales, according to Apple; so far applications have been downloaded more than 5 bln times.
The big part of free soft at the Android Market is a positive moment for the users of smartphones based on the open platform. However, from the point of view of monetization, placing applications at the App Store is more profitable for mobile apps developers. The additional benefit is the Apple iAd platform which allows Apple apps developers to place advertising modules into their products and earn additionally at demonstration.
Tags: Android Market, Apple iAd, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile
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July 6th, 2010
In the nearest future the producers of smartphones RIM and Nokia will face the problem of changing their positions at the market. The reason of this will become the actions of Apple and Google. The analytics from Goldman Sachs’ warned about this after analyzing the state of retail sales of smartphones in the US.
According to their data, the RIM Blackberry devices stopped being best-sellers at the mobile operators (apart from AT&T) because of a rapidly growing interest to the latest Android based communicators and the corresponding demand for them at consumers. However, despite all this, RIM will be able to realize about 11 mln smartphones by the end of the year, which will be a good result in comparison with the previous period ended with 11.2 mln devices sold.
The situation at the Finnish producer is even more tragic than at the Canadian company. Nokia itself is expecting the decrease of sales at the end of the spring sales – up to $8.3 bln or even lower due to a high competition at the market of highly technological devices.
While the market share of Nokia is still big, the share of Apple with its best-sellers iPhone and Google Android is growing rapidly thanks to launching new devices. The players of the mobile application market take advantage of the situation and actively place orders for mobile application development for Android. Numerous iPhone apps developers are trying to keep up with them.
Tags: Android, iPhone, iPhone apps developers, Nokia
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June 28th, 2010
The QR code is a popular two dimensional barcode which has already stepped over the trade market boarders and has become actively used in everyday life. Mobile phones equipped with cameras capable of scanning and decoding a 2D barcode as successfully as specialized scanners. The popularity of such mobile phones began in Japan and then spread to other continents and countries and together with this popularity the fashion for QR-code has spread as well.
The QR code first appeared in magazines, on bus stops, business cards and simply on any object about which you may need information. A barcode is only coded information. It can be about everything and not only about goods at the market. The maximum volume of QR code data is about 3 Kb, which allows coding of small images. Mobile software specially developed for QR codes decoding will easily reflect the corresponding image.
It is not surprising that the first who started using the QR code were quirky marketing specialists. They used it in advertising where an address, phone number and other information about a company were coded. For example, a simple situation: the advertising billboard with the QR code square. Inspired by the advertisement and wishing to buy the product or service of this company, the consumer simply focuses the camera of his mobile phone on the barcode, the gadget decodes it and the phone numbers and other requisites are automatically saved into the address book. The user needs just press the green button on the phone and he doesn’t have to dial the number himself.
There is one more example. The barcode can be used for meeting the opposite sex. You need to place the QR code with your personal information somewhere on the foreground. And then the interested person can focus his mobile phone on your barcode and get all the necessary information for further relationships.
Recently the usage of the QR code has been acquiring more and more global and cultural character. Mobile phones a re becoming the most common tool for getting the access to the Internet, which opens new horizons of using barcodes on mobile phones as the so-called ‘physical hyperlinks’.
Together with the web the QR code can easily contain the data for searching the information on the Web, i.e. having decoded the content of the barcode, the mobile phone uses this information for Google searching, Google Maps or various social networks. In this way, the QR code turns to a special hyperlink connecting the real object with the information about it on the Net.
The practical example of barcode usage as a hyperlink from real objects to the internet resources can be the project www.semapedia.org. This project deals with connecting the articles in Wikipedia with the places in the real world. In fact, the QR code usage is limited only by imagination. Thus, all you need is new business ideas on using the QR barcode and mobile apps developers who will be able to help you with the technical issues.
Tags: mobile ads, mobile apps, mobile software development, QR code
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June 21st, 2010
After starting taking preliminary orders for iPhone 4, Apple and AT&T encountered some technical problems on their websites because of the boom from the side of buyers, reported Reuters. Apple even had to disconnect the hotline because of the excessive number of phone calls.
Many buyers who were trying to place an order for a new iPhone which is going to be on sale from June 24 got the error about the impossibility to execute the operation at the given moment with the request to try later. By the evening the AT&T site gave the information that the whole volume of iPhone 4 reserved for preliminary orders for June 24 had been realized. Now the operator is accepting orders for the next days after the official launch of sales.
The desire to become one of the first owners of iPhone 4 was so strong that some users who hadn’t managed to place a preliminary order online rushed to the AT&T store and subscribed manually. Among the customers, there were professionals who specialize in iPhone programming, because they will have to work actively with the new device. The company announced that it is the result of ‘incredible interest’ to the new smartphone and added that for its whole history they hadn’t seen such a demand.
Last year the sales of iPhone 3GS reached 1 mln items in the first 3 days. iPhone 4 is expected to reach this mark even earlier since the number of preliminary orders made at AT&T is much higher in comparison with the smartphones of the previous generations. The price of the smartphone in the USA is $199 for the version with 16 Gb memory and $299 with the version with 32 Gb
Tags: Apple, AT&T, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone programming
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