Android phone sales have overtaken the iPhone in the North American market for the first time, Gartner found today. Thanks to a 906 percent surge in shipments worldwide to 5.21 million phones, Google's mobile OS outpaced Apple's in North America and the US in particular. The analysts didn't readily provide numbers, but it suggests that the majority of Android phones were sold in the US as Apple sold 2.7 million US iPhones....
Android phone sales have overtaken the iPhone in the North American market for the first time, Gartner found today. Thanks to a 906 percent surge in shipments worldwide to 5.21 million phones, Google's mobile OS outpaced Apple's in North America and the US in particular. The analysts didn't readily provide numbers, but it suggests that the majority of Android phones were sold in the US as Apple sold 2.7 million US iPhones....
AT&T's wireless chief Ralph de la Vega today dismissed talk of a Verizon iPhone triggering a rush of defections to the rival carrier. He explained at a JP Morgan conference that 70 percent of all of AT&T's customers are on family plans, which are difficult to transition wholesale to another carrier due to multiple devices. About 40 percent of subscribers have corporate plans that employers wouldn't necessarily be willing to switch over to another carrier....
The Verizon iPhone may be capable of supporting both voice and data like its AT&T cousin, a tip today says. Verizon is reportedly planning to add Voice over Revision A (VoRA) to its network that would use its EVDO Rev A 3G network to handle voice calls as well as data. Unlike usual CDMA networks, which cuts off 3G when a call comes in, VoRA would behave more like HSPA on phone networks and allow both to run at the same time....
The new WebM codec shown at the Google I/O day 1 keynote may run afoul of patents, according to an early analysis. Although pitched as a royalty-free HTML5 video standard using a combination of VP8 video and Ogg Vorbis, x264 developer Jason Garrett-Glaser notes that some of the implementations in the now Google-supported format are copied not just from On2's original creation but appear to be directly patterned after H.264, making it entirely possible that WebM violates patents. It resembles an only slightly improved version of the H.264 Baseline Profile and so cou...
Hanvon took a dig at Apple on Wednesday at the Beijing launch of its first tablet, the B10. The company's CEO and a fellow executive smashed an apple-shaped ice block in confidence that its Windows 7 tablet would improve on the iPad. The B10 shares the roughly 10-inch display size but is counting on the use of a desktop OS to draw customers away from grey market imports into Hanvon's native China....
Final Cut Pro will remain aimed at professionals, in spite of reports to the contrary, claims Apple spokesman Bill Evans. "Final Cut Pro is the first choice for professional video editors, and we've never been more excited about its future," according to Evans. "The next version of Final Cut is going to be awesome, and our pro customers are going to love it."...
Direct downloads make up just a sliver of the music actually loaded on phones, comScore discovered today. About 24 percent of all phones are used to play music, but just two percent actually obtained that music from a store found on the phone itself. The remaining 22 percent of phone owners sideloaded the music from a computer either manually or through a sync app like iTunes....
An undercover reporter from the Chinese liberal newspaper Southern Weekly has taken a closer look at the working conditions inside Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, China. The investigation exposed grim working conditions in the factory that has seen nine suicide attempts, with seven confirmed deaths, in less than six months....
Google co-founder Larry Page, speaking at the company's I/O developer conference, suggested that there is "something wrong" if an Android handset cannot get through a full day without recharging the battery. The executive was responding to a question regarding the company's plans to address battery life issues on the mobile platform....
A federal judge has decided to toss out a lawsuit filed by Leslie Carr, a paranoid MacBook user who claimed Apple was spying on her when she attempted to browse the Internet. The case, which was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, sought $60 million in damages, as Carr claimed the harassment prevented her from publishing on the web....
NVIDIA tonight showed a reference tablet design that it hows shows the potential of its dual-core Tegra 250 chipset. The design, made by Foxconn, should be a "generation ahead" of the iPad as it runs at the same 1GHz clock speed but uses a newer ARM Cortex-A9 architecture that's theoretically 25 percent more powerful per core than the iPad's Cortex-A8. The design has about 1GB of RAM, or four times as much as Apple's tablet....
Apple in a surprise move tonight reversed its no-cash policy for iPad sales. Responding to a TV news story of Diane Campbell being unable to pay for the tablet after saving up cash, the California company said it would allow cash at any of its stores as long as customers agreed to setup their Apple IDs at the store. Senior VP for retail Ron Johnson said he called Campbell personally and promised to have Apple deliver an iPad for free, with a case, in exchange for her trouble....
iPad sales are extremely strong at the moment, says RBC Capital Markets' Mike Abramsky. Citing checks, the analyst claims that figures are currently over 200,000 units per week, easily beating the 110,000 Macs Apple is estimated to be selling. The iPad is doing so well in fact that it is within range of the iPhone 3GS, which was estimated to be selling about 246,000 units per week in the US during the first quarter....
The iPad is already making a significant impact on the US e-reader market, a new ChangeWave survey suggests. Of 245 people identified as owning an e-reader, 16 percent say they own an iPad, despite the fact that the device has only been available since April 3rd. Still in control of the market is the Amazon Kindle, with about 62 percent of owners....
Android was created precisely to prevent the kind of mobile future Apple is trying to make, Google said in its day 2 I/O conference keynote. The company's Vic Gundotra said Android was necessary as, without it, too much control would be put into the hands of Steve Jobs and the iPhone platform. Gundotra didn't mention Jobs by name but left little mystery that he was being blamed for creating a dystopic mobile environment not unlike the "1984" Apple once criticized....
The FCC today criticized the US cellular industry in its Annual Report on Wireless Competition (PDF). Officials warned that the industry was rapidly consolidating around just two carriers, AT&T and Verizon, while even larger rivals like Sprint and T-Mobile were struggling. Combined, the top two have over 60 percent of subscribers and income where the third and fourth places were either losing subscribers or gaining relatively few....
Apple chief Steve Jobs signaled his own doubts about using the new WebM format for HTML5 video. When asked about his thoughts by UK developer Kris Bloe, Jobs simply posted a link to a recent teardown of WebM that challenged not just its features but its legality. WebM's VP8 video codec bears a strong resemblance to H.264 and may violate multiple patents....
Amid the flurry of coverage surrounding Google's Android 2.2 announcement, the search giant's mobile OS appears to be catching up to the iPhone in web traffic, according to numbers gathered by the ad network Millennial Media. Although the iPhone still dominates the smartphone mix, representing 62 percent of all ad impressions in the month of April, Android now sits at the third spot with 10 percent of the overall impression share....
In politics, some say the Republican party has become the 'Party of No.' Rather than find solutions to issues, its critics say, the GOP has instead decided to strike down anything and everything that the Democrats support. That technique, while somewhat effective, is being panned by pundits. The same might be said for Apple. Although the company is currently a leader in the mobile market, it has decided that it would rather say "no" to strategies that companies like Google offer in their mobile platforms than acquiesce to market demand....
HP's Windows 7 slate could now ship as late as October, HP's Taiwan PC group VP Monty Wong said today. Although it has often been pegged for June, the tablet is now only officially set to show by the end of HP's fiscal year five months in the future. Wong didn't mention to DigiTimes if the slate had been delayed or if there had been any firm schedule in the past....
