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AMD bridges Android and PC gap

Oct 052012

The computer processor company AMD has announced an app store to bridge the prevalent gap in smooth running of the Android apps on the computer. This store will showcase how the apps will be optimized for its processors. With this, we will be able to download and run popular Android apps on AMD based PC running Windows. The joint efforts of Blue Stack and AMD have enabled the AMS AppZone Player which in turn has led to such possibilities.

amdlogo AMD bridges Android and PC gap

This is expected to be a big leap to bridge the gap and enabling the Android apps to be run on AMD-powered devices. With this collaboration, the software developers will now be able to easily tap AMD’s products and keep the great expectations of the users satisfied. Manju Hegde, corporate VP of heterogeneous applications and developer solutions at AMD confirmed the news.

Further, users will be able to download featured apps directly from the AppZone Player or search for the AppZone store. This collaboration is a success already and they are now planning and working with leading OEMs to preload the player on the upcoming AMD-powered devices.

We are waiting fingers crossed for more surprises. Thanks to AMD for the good news!

Tablet users to shape the future mobile app market

Metrics Maid No Responses »

May 212012

Tablets are the future of tomorrow, so predicts Research2guidance, the analytical firm. According to a report published by them,

The number of new tablet app consumers increased by 58 million. As a result, tablet owners now constitute 8.6% of the installed app consumer base.

While in 2011,

apps in the Apple App Store for iPad grew 180% to more than 140,000 apps by the end of Q4 2011. While this cannot be easily quantified for Android as tablet apps are not separated out, the growth of niche stores and niche store categories focusing on Android tablets reflects their growing presence. For example, Archos Appslib focuses completely on Android tablet apps, while other stores like Android Tapp has a dedicated category.

During 2011, apps in the Apple App Store for iPad grew 180% to more than 140,000 apps by the end of Q4 2011. While this cannot be easily quantified for Android as tablet apps are not separated out, the growth of niche stores and niche store categories focusing on Android tablets reflects their growing presence. For example, Archos Appslib focuses completely on Android tablet apps, while other stores like Android Tapp has a dedicated category.

Also

Several studies have shown that tablet users exhibit different behavior towards app downloading/usage and mobile browsing than smartphone users. Based on the breadth of use cases for gaming, ecommerce, digital publishing and the enterprise – tablet user growth is likely to have a marked effect on consumption in these areas.

In the enterprise, for example, tablets have already been largely implemented at upper levels of management and are quickly working their way throughout organizations – according to Apple’s CEO Tim Cook in 2012, 92% of Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPads. As more and more use cases are developed and penetration increases, so too will the number of apps being developed for enterprise tablet users. While Apple has already carved out a niche section for iPad and iPhone Business users called “@Work”, other players like Lenovo and Cisco are trying to do the same for Android Business users.

But what about the likes of Galaxy note? The Phablet device which is quickly gaining momentum as the choice of device for user who want a tablet with smartphone functionality and vice versa…!!

Necessitas alpha 3 update 3

Development No Responses »

Jan 182012

So we received this email from android Qt team on behalf of BogDan Vatra which clearly mentions that the final update of the alpha 3.

> Hello folks,
> >
> > Today we push the last update of alpha 3 release, this update
> > should fix a few issues of new keyboard implementation [1].
> >
> > Regarding alpha4 and beta1 schedules, I can’t tell you much today,
> > because it depends *IF* more people will join me or not, to finish the
> > style plugin and the menus integration. Both of them are very
> > important for all applications, so alpha4 release depends by this
> > features.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > BogDan.
> >
> > [1] https://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/tickets/132/

You can visit the above link for more info. Nothing much to add here except that we wait impatiently for the alpha4 release. Stay tuned…!!!

Windows Phone interface beats iPhone interface, hailed as New world order

Editorials No Responses »

Nov 292011

When CNET got their hands on Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 800 to be precise), they were simply awestruck by the balance the platform had to offer. The UI was, well, slick, but was a lot less clunky, as per CNET.

According to the article:

The king is dead

Until not so long ago, that meant Apple. But something insane has happened. Something that we simply wouldn’t have countenanced just three short years ago.

One company makes a beautiful, intuitive, elegant interface, and the other makes a dated, clunky interface. But now it’s Microsoft showing off the thing of beauty, and Apple that’s behind the times. Microsoft is the underdog and Apple is the monolithic, restrictive monopoly. Has the world gone mad?

Sure, the iPhone and iPad interface is still slick and simple. But the shine is gone — iOS 5 looks almost exactly the same as iOS 4. Android showed what you can do when you can truly customise the look and feel of your phone, with its flexible home screens, handy widgets placing information right at your fingertips, and the capacity to alter any feature you like.

I seem to recall an old story, when the only smartphone OS of the time, Symbian, was bashed by everyone. People wanted behemoths of phones. They worshipped a large screen and a powerful processor, only to realise that the duo would eat battery faster. They demanded an app store like no other, only to trial a few apps and then delete them and move on to the next.

Nokia was undeniably the game setter, Apple was the game changer, Android was the turmoil that uprooted everyone, and yet RIM et al were wondering what just happened. This proves the age old proverb – The only thing which is constant is change.

Source

Apple still leads when it comes to mobile loyalty, followed by Android and RIM

Metrics Maid No Responses »

Nov 262011

Apple surely has a brand loyalty that every CEO yearns for. According to a research published by GfK,

Some 84 percent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 percent of consumers who use smartphones running Google’s Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.

Only 48 percent of people using Research In Motion’s cellphones said they would stay loyal to their BlackBerrys, the study showed.

While Apple is the leader at present, the current development on Android, RIM’s BBX and Windows Phones from Nokia are all set to give Apple a tough challenge, according to the report.

The scope for brands to lure customers from rivals has diminished and the richest rewards will go to those providers that can create the most harmonious user experience and develop this brand loyalty

What is noteworthy here that 70 percent of consumers said they would stick with their phones due to their seamless integration of features and access to content. The present and future undoubtedly belongs to the Apps and Internet.

Though the firm interviewed around 4500 people in various countries, it never mentions anything about Symbian or Windows Phones. This is quite surprising as a certain percentage of these 4500 people must be carrying Symbian and Windows phones, which the report fails to mention.

Source

Half of UK smartphones are powered by Android, RIM holds number two spot.

Metrics Maid No Responses »

Nov 012011

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech has conducted a research on smartphone platforms in the UK and have found out that around half of the UK smartphones have Android of one kind or the other on them.

MBB reports

Android’s share has increased from 29 percent a year ago to 49.9 percent. HTC is leading the way for phone manufacturers using the OS, with 45 percent of Android-based phone sales in the 12 weeks prior to 2 October. Samsung took 38 percent of Android sales with Sony Ericsson contributing 8.5 percent, down from 20.5 percent a year ago.

RIM’s BlackBerry OS is the next most popular smartphone OS, present on 22.5 percent of UK smartphones while Apple’s iOS has 18.5 percent market share, down from 33 percent a year ago. Kantar’s figures were taken before Apple announced the iPhone 4S, a period during which Apple CEO Tim Cook said there had been a significant slowdown of iPhone sales.

While Nokia plummeted from 20 percent last year to 6 percent this year, It’s hopes to gain momentum through the Windows Phone is bleak as Windows Phone managed to bad only a measly 1.4 percent share.

The “bad news for featurephones” is that under half of the UK population (44 percent) owns smartphones, with the growth in sales quickly accelerating. Smartphones made up 69 percent of mobile phone sales during the period.

More than 30 percent apps pulled down from Android Market, Windows Marketplace continues to be exploited

Metrics Maid No Responses »

Oct 252011

Analyst firm research2guidance has a published a report according to which, while the number of apps submitted to Android Market has passed the 500,000 mark, compared with 600,000 for Apple’s App Store, more than 37 percent of these have subsequently been removed – compared with just 24 percent removed from the App Store.

The report is as follows

The actual total number of applications published on the Android Market leapt to over 500,000 in September 2011. In the meantime, the Apple App Store stands at just over 600,000 successful submissions: just 20% more. But over 37% of the applications published were later removed from the Android Market for various reasons, whereas the Apple App Store has removed just 24% of published apps in comparison, as of the end of September.

Although Apple regularly cleans up its store from inappropriate or outdated content, its active application share still exceeds that of Android. It is likely that the more rigid application submission requirements prevent developers from publishing multiple trial or low quality applications whereas publishers in the Android Market place a lot of market testing, trials, demo and malware content. Over 78% of the apps removed from the Android Market were free, which could mean that publishers put more effort into the applications they place with the pay-per-download business model, thus ensuring that it is kept longer in store.

Android developers are significantly more productive than Apple’s. The average publisher on Android has placed more than 6 applications in the Market since launch, compared to just over 4 apps on average that have been published by iOS developers.

Over the past few months, the Android Market has been maintaining an exponential growth, but is still lagging behind the app store market leader, Apple. In Q3 of 2011, the number of active mobile applications in the Android Market stood at 319,161 compared to 459,589 in Apple App store.

Regarding the Windows Marketplace, the report stated

The share of deactivated apps in the WP7 Marketplace today stands at just 13%. However WP7 Marketplace is a comparably young store and many publishers are still exploring its potential. Fifteen months after its launch (comparable to the WP7 store now), the Android Market similarly had 86% of its apps active and a significant application store clean-up didn’t get started until the end of 2010.

Though there is no mention of the Nokia Store (previously known as the OVI STORE), we can assure you that there are a lot of useless/rogue/low quality apps in it, and the removal percentage of apps from the Nokia Store is very less, when compared to Windows Marketplace.

The App market trends are changing, says Distimo

Metrics Maid No Responses »

Oct 112011

App store content leaders of today are not those of tomorrow, is what the research firm Distimo believes. According to DIstimo

…within this year, Android Market will overtake Apple’s App Store for iPhone to become the largest content market – while both will see growth, Android Market currently has the momentum. There is also a significant shift underway among the smaller stores, with Nokia’s Ovi Store set to slip from fourth place to sixth place, while Microsoft’s WP7 Marketplace will move from sixth to fourth.

Apple’s App Store for iPad is currently holding its third place, while RIM’s BlackBerry App World is holding station in fifth.

Noticeably, 4 percent of products on the App Store for iPhone feature in-app purchases, these account for 76 percent of revenue. Free apps with in-app purchases account for 52 percent of the total revenue, with paid apps with in-app purchasing accounting for 24 percent. The remaining 24 percent is generated by traditional paid apps.

Android is not far behind in this model. Android in-app purchases were only introduced in March 2011. 76 percent of the top-25 grossing US apps are free titles monetised through in-app purchases.

The growth of tablets meant that the content has to be suited to the tablet form factor. Though the featurephones will never be extinct, the smartphone use is inarguably on the rise, and so is the number of apps downloaded. The research pointed that North America, Europe and Asia are now “almost equal in size” in download terms.

Mobile app downloads to reach 98 billion by 2015

News No Responses »

Oct 102011

Research firm Berg Insight has claimed that the number of apps downloaded globally will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 56.6 percent between 2010 and 2015, taking the total to 98 billion at the end of the period.

….revenues from paid applications, in-app purchases and subscription services – so called direct revenues – reached € 1.6 billion in 2010.

…direct app store revenues to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 40.7 percent to reach € 8.8 billion in 2015.

Apple’s App Store is forecast to remain at the Numero Uno spot during this period, followed by Android and Windows Phone.

Johan Svanberg, Senior Analyst quoted

Even though the download numbers will increase during the forecast period, most apps are free to download and app monetisation will be a challenge for developers.

Free to download monetisation strategies such as in-app advertising and in-app purchasing will be increasingly important. This is especially true in the APAC region, which will account for over 40 percent of all mobile app downloads in 2015.

He said that the future belongs to new web technologies such as HTML5, which would replace the native apps. Developers should not see the web and native technologies as “mutual exclusives” and should target the web and mobile platforms logically and strategically.

India Launches Android based Aakash tablet computer at $35

News 1 Response »

Oct 062011

India has hit the nail on the head by launching the cheapest tablet computer ever. At $35, Aakash, which means sky in Hindi, is the cheapest computer out there.

Whats more shocking (pun intended) is that the Government off India wants to bring down the price of Aakash to $10.

According to The Economic Times

..priced at $35 (Rs 1,750) for students pursuing graduation and said that the government aimed to increase production to bring down the cost of the tablet to less than $10 (Rs 500). The government is sourcing the tablet from UK-based Datawind at Rs 2,256 – inclusive of all taxes, levies, freight and insurance charges, servicing and documentation.

Aakash costs a fraction of the iPad and other tablets out there. It runs Android 2.2, has Wi-Fi, 3g, has a 7 inch screen, 2 USB ports, resistive touchscreen, 256MB RAM and memory expandable upto 32GB via memory cards. Though there are plans to upgrade the overall specs in the near future.

According to Kapil Sibal,

Our ultimate aim is that in the coming years this tablet should cost less than $10. Datawind has said that if an order of one million units is placed the cost of the tablet (to the government) would be Rs 1,750 ($35), on which the government will offer a 50% subsidy (while giving it to students)

Stay tuned for more….!!

Source

Video Credit : Al Jazeera Youtube Channel

Android user base surges up, dwarfs iPhone user base by 2:1

News No Responses »

Sep 262011

The research firm Nielsen have recently revealed their numbers concerning the smartphone world. The results are not at all surprising.

Evidently, for every one iPhone user, there are two Android users. While the growth of iPhone has been stalled, there is a 13% increase in the Android user base.

RIM’s share is dropping. We hope that the new gen QNX phones might be able to save it. What is interesting here is that the iPhone 5 will be released soon. So these numbers will be changed in the next report.

Source: Nielsen

Gartner lowers forecast for Android tablets shipments

News No Responses »

Sep 252011

Gartner, the analyst firm, has lowered it’s forecast for the number of Android tablets shipped since it’s last prediction in the previous quarter. The projection has been lowered by as much as 28%.

The global media tablet sales to end users are to amount to 63.6 million units this year, which is a staggering 261.4% increase from 2010 sales of 17.6 million.

Android tablets are forecast to ship 11 million units in 2011, accounting for 17.3 percent of total sales – up only slightly from Android’s 2010 market share of 14.3 percent.

According to Gartner’s Carolina Milanesi

Google will address the fragmentation of Android across smartphone and tablet form factors within the next Android release [the Ice Cream Sandwich], which we expect to see in the fourth quarter of 2011…

…“Android can count on strong support from key OEMs, and has a sizeable developer community.

She also commented on the holistic picture

…We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014…

…This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal.

The data released by Gartner is as follows.

Worldwide Sales of Media Tablets to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units, September 2011)

The demand for MeeGo anad webOS is clearly out of proportions (pun intended). And QNX is also predicted not to sell well, adding to the woes of the already troubled RIM.

Since the demand for the tablets is very high, this makes me think about the future of laptops, netbooks and desktops.

Source: Gartner

Smartphone sales surpass featurephone sales in West Europe says IDC

News No Responses »

Sep 102011

The world is moving at the smartphone world at an amazing pace. Seems that featurephones would be the next extinct species, at least in the Europe.

For the first time in Q2 this year, as IDC reports,

…Feature phone shipments in the region were down 29 percent to 20.4 million units in 2Q11, while smartphone shipments increased 48 percent to 21.8 million units from a year ago.

…Smartphones now account for 52 percent of total mobile phone shipments in the region. The total Western European mobile phone market, however, declined 3 percent year-on-year to 42.2 million units in the quarter

…Feature phones are becoming a niche segment driven by the very-low-end devices targeted at users who only need a device for voice and texts…

Android is the biggest winner in the smartphone-featurephone war. With Android phones, recording a massive growth of 352% YoY, accounted for 48.5% of the total smartphone sales. Samsung has bolstered Android’s success by being the biggest manufacturer of Android Smartphones, thanks to the Galaxy devices.

The biggest loser here is Nokia. with a drop of 60% in it’s sales. The cause is undoubtedly the move from EU’s OS, Symbian.

Even the troubled RIM has managed to record a 15% growth.

Not much to add here as the sales figures speak out loud enough.

Ovi Store passes 9 million downloads a day

News No Responses »

Aug 162011

Who said Symbian is dying? The Ovi Store numbers are quite surprising (and joyous too). Rafe Blandford at AAS has published a nice article about the growth of the number of apps downloaded from Ovi Store.

What comes as a pleasant surprise is that the number of downloads per month are growing exponentially.

A few weeks ago Ovi Store passed the 7 million download mark. And that was shortly after hitting the 6.5M mark.

The numbers in this chart are based on Apple’s press release for its 15 billion milestone, Google’s reaching 4.5 billion downloads, and an extrapolation of numbers cited at the this years Blackberry World.

What is great here is the fact the Ovi store downloads are nearly half that of Android Market, but the number of apps on the Ovi store match nowhere to that on the Android Market.

Interesting…eh…!!

Source

GetJar tells us where the developers’ interests head to

Development, News No Responses »

Aug 162011

GetJar, the very first app store of the mobile world, asked developers about their current and future development interests.

The results were quite surprising. The polls figure said:

80 percent of respondents stated that they are developing for iOS for iPhone/iPod Touch today, which declines to 55.6 percent who are planning to develop for this platform in six months time. The same trend is seen in iOS for tablets, which sees developer backing decreasing from 59 percent to 52 percent.

In short, the popularity of app developers towards Apple is taking a hit.

Android for smartphone currently has 51.2 percent support, which will increase to 58 percent six months from now. And Android for tablets currently has 20.5 percent, which will more than double to 47 percent.

That means that the Android folks will not quit their remarkable exponential growth. The same will be reflected in six months’ time.

Interestingly,

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform is set to be more popular with developers than web apps, BlackBerry for smartphones and tablets, and HP’s webOS. Some 24 percent of developers intend developing for the MS platform in the future, compared to less than 9 percent today. While that is still less than half of the interest in Android, GetJar said that “given Windows’ small base it looks like there is some optimism for the Nokia/Windows alliance.”

Unsurprisingly, the survey noted a continued fall in support for Symbian OS, with less than 7 percent of developers stating they will be supporting the platform in six months time. Fewer than 20 percent of developers think the OS will be around in “the next couple of years.”

RIM’s BlackBerry OS also faces challenges, with less than 15 percent of developers interested in developing for the platform in the next six months. Less than half of the developers believe the platform will survive the next five years.

While presently, around 80% of current developer junta is targeting iOS, around 44.4% of devs are targeting towards Android. The scales will indeed be tipped in Android’s favor in six months from now, if the poll is to be believed, with over 70% devs developing for android.

The news is surely bad for already troubled RIM and HP, Symbian fans will be equally annoyed by this poll outcome.

But for Nokia-MSFT alliance, this sure is the silver lining of the clouds. Bad news for Apple though.

Stay tuned for more…!!!!