iOS, Android, Windows Phone: Top three for mobile apps in 2015
Which mobile platform is best for monetising apps? Apple's iOS will remain the dominant force until 2015, according to analyst Berg Insight, followed by Google's Android platform.
But snatching bronze as the third best way to turn apps into cash in 2015 will be Microsoft's Windows Phone OS, only launched last year.
Apple's iOS will remain the best platform to monetise apps until 2015, predicts Berg InsightPhoto: Cristiano Betta
Last year Apple's App Store generated revenues of €1.33bn - compared to the €80m generated by the Android platform. The analyst predicts Apple's App Store revenues will rise to €4.4bn in 2015, while Android's will swell to almost €1.5bn that year.
The Berg research report, entitled The Mobile Applications Market, notes that app downloads continue to soar: there were around 10 billion app downloads last year across all the mobile platforms - and it predicts this figure will reach 98 billion by 2015. Read more...
Hero Ordnance Surveyors dodge bullets, tweet as they map
Surveyors for Ordnance Survey maps have taken to Twitter to help the public understand what they are doing, with a Twittermap of the UK plotting their thoughts and observations as they roam the country, looking at roads and measuring things. The OS Mastermap receives 5,000 changes every day, as houses are taken down, roads are built or streets are renamed.
The Twittermap pulls in location-anchored tweets from 14 surveyors letting you see what they're doing every day as they go about tweaking the maps. It is the first time the OS has asked them to tweet about their experiences.
Apparently they've got into it: "Yes. They're very keen," Paul Beauchamp of the Ordinance Survey team said, choosing diplomatic words.
"There were a few individuals who needed to be convinced. But they've been tweeting for a while now and it's useful for them to help people understand better the role they play." Read more...
Carriers step up to help businesses adapt to workers’ smartphones
The nation's leading wireless carriers are making more products and services available to businesses to integrate and support their workers using wireless smartphones and tablets.
Verizon Wireless made two announcements Monday, while AT&T made a separate announcement of a service called Toggle that allows enterprise apps to run on any Android phone a user chooses. Separately, Verizon announced the Private Applications Store for Business that allows companies to run in-house or third-party apps on any smartphone or tablet on any network. It will be offered later this year, with pricing set on a per-user/per-month basis, although Verizon didn't specify how much. Read more...
RIM shows off tap-to-share feature for NFC BlackBerrys
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie has demoed a contactless content-sharing system running on NFC-enabled BlackBerry smartphones.
NFC, or near-field communications, is a short-range wireless technology that enables a device to transmit data to a reader. Uses for NFC include contactless ticketing and payments.
RIM's contactless sharing system, called BlackBerry Tag, will be rolled out with the next OS update to its BlackBerry 7 OS, the company said. It has not given a specific launch date - noting only that the update is "coming soon". Read more...
Android Marketplace blocked by Great Firewall of China
China appears to have tightened up its Great Firewall, interfering with Google services in what appears to be a reprisal against the Chocolate Factory playing politics.
Access to the Android Marketplace has been blocked entirely from within China as The Next Web reports, but locals are also complaining that Android handsets are having a hard time getting onto the Gmail service. The Gmail block isn't being applied to IMAP connections, which means iPhones and similar are working well, lending weight to the idea that this is a political, rather than a security, issue.
The absolute block on android.com started over the weekend, just after Google announced it would be helping the Dalai Lama to (virtually) visit South Africa. That might be coincidence, but it's not the first time that China has been accused of using restrictions on internet access as a political tool. Read more...
This Dianamania is a slur on Jobs
Steve Jobs was a remarkable and fascinating businessman, and by some distance the most interesting and accomplished personality operating in an important corner of the economy. He had a respect for the intelligence of human beings and their ambition, and potential – showing an optimism which is rare in a cynical industry. And Jobs left us far too early.
But we knew what was coming, didn’t we? In the media, a race to the top of Mount Hyperbole, that was easily won by Stephen Fry, with President Obama close behind. And public, showy and stagey displays of public emotion. (Why? Did no one tell you he was ill?).
I actually find all this disrespectful, and as distasteful as any sick joke.
Nobody could be more scathing about mindless technology worship than Steve Jobs. My favourite interview with him was by Gary Wolf, when Jobs was 39, and had realised the utopianism of his generation was shallow, empty and a giant diversion. The web would augment the world, not change it. Far more important, he stressed, was education. Read more...
Thunderbolt vs. SuperSpeed USB 3.0
Intel will tell you its new high-speed interconnect technology, Thunderbolt, is not in competition with Universal Serial Bus (USB), the ubiquitous standard for connecting computers with other devices.
Apple has gone all in with Thunderbolt-enabled products, and there are a dozen or so manufacturers ready to ship Thunderbolt-enabled systems next year, according to an Intel spokesman. At the Intel Developer Forum in September, a dozen new products were displayed with Thunderbolt ports.
"You can look forward to seeing Windows-based systems with Thunderbolt in market in the first half of 2012," said Intel spokesman Dave Salvator. Microsoft has also already demonstrated Windows 8 support for Thunderbolt.
Thunderbolt, announced earlier this year, offers twice the performance of the latest SuperSpeed USB (3.0) interconnect. So there is reason to believe it could someday overtake USB, the most ubiquitous external I/O technology ever created.
Salvator said Intel sees Thunderbolt as "complementary" to the USB protocol, which Intel also co-developed, but it is serving the needs of devices with higher performance requirements. Read more...
T-Mobile unveils Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in U.S., braving Apple lawsuit
T-Mobile USA unveiled the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 to U.S. buyers on Monday, just days ahead of a court hearing at which Apple will seek a preliminary injunction to prevent sales of the device in the U.S.
T-Mobile didn't say how much the tablet will cost, nor when it will go on sale, but did say the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and another tablet, the 7-inch T-Mobile Springboard with Google, will be available "in time for the holidays" at T-Mobile retail stores and through its web store.
The court hearing on the preliminary injunction sought by Apple is scheduled for Oct. 13. T-Mobile asked the court on Sept. 28 for leave to submit a brief of amicus curiae ("friend of the court") to prevent the injunction, as it would affect its holiday sales this year.
T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking if the company had a contingency plan should Apple obtain a preliminary injunction. Read more...
Those high-security swipe cards that secure your front door may be no good
The physical security of your company and its data just got less secure if your company is one of millions that use a particular kind of smart card designed to give commuters, corporate wage slaves, and security specialists quick passage through security gates and down the invisible elevator that takes them to the secret headquarters underneath the streets of Cardiff.
A team of German scientists have demonstrated a hack that lets them make a perfect clone of the kind of magnetic security card used to give workers in corporate or government buildings -- including NASA -- and as a daily ticket replacement on busses and subways. The same team broke a previous version of contactless-ID cards from Mifare in 2008, prompting the company to upgrade its security, creating a card able to be programmed only once and which contained a unique identifying number that could be checked against the programmed content on the card for extra security. Read more...
Survey: Java losing popularity among developers
Despite the recent release of a major upgrade to the platform, Java is losing popularity based on the latest monthly assessment of programming languages by Tiobe Software.
The October edition of the Tiobe Programming Community Index, released Sunday, Oct. 9, found that Java lost popularity in September, with an estimated 17.9 percent of developers using it as opposed to 18.8 percent in the previous month's index. Java still finished as the top language, but if the downward trend continues, the C language, ranked second with 17.7 percent of users, will be No.1 next month, Tiobe said. Read more...
Verizon, VMware team on dual-persona phone software
Verizon Wireless will announce dual-persona software with partner EMC VMware later this week, closely following AT&T in unveiling a way to separate mobile handsets into business and personal segments.
Verizon's dual-persona system will be available for more than one major mobile operating system and will complement the carrier's Private Applications Store for Business, announced on Monday.
Offering both will give enterprises more options for securing the applications and data that their employees use, said Janet Schijns, vice president of Verizon's Business Solutions Group.
Dual-persona systems have been gaining traction slowly but appear ready to make a leap forward this week as the U.S. mobile industry gathers for the CTIA Enterprise & Applications trade show in San Diego. VMware tapped into its enterprise virtualization expertise to announce a mobile hypervisor late last year. On Monday, AT&T announced a service called Toggle, based on technology from Enterproid, which will set up dual personas on mobile devices running Version 2.2 and later of the Google Android OS. It is scheduled to be available by the end of this year. Read more...