Android dominates iOS in Q2, study finds

Google's Android mobile operating system dominated the U.S. smartphone market last quarter, research firm NPD announced today.

According to NPD, Android was running on 52 percent of all the smartphones sold in the States last quarter, overshadowing iOS, which secured 29 percent market share. BlackBerry OS came in third in the smartphone space with 11 percent share, NPD said. Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, and WebOS all trailed with less than 5 percent market share each.

NPD's findings follow a similar report earlier this month from research firm Gartner. That company, whichanalyzed worldwide smartphone sales, said that Google's platform captured 43.4 percent of the OS market during the second quarter, up from just 17.2 percent during the same period last year. Symbian came in second in Gartner's study with 22.1 percent share, followed by iOS at 18.2 percent. RIM's BlackBerry OS tallied 11.7 percent share worldwide.

Although NPD didn't dig into each vendor's market share on the quarter, the company did discuss Motorola Mobility. The research firm said that the handset maker's overall mobile phone market share declined in the second quarter from 12 percent last year to 9 percent this year. In the smartphone space, Motorola Mobility's share dropped from 15 percent to 12 percent. Perhaps most concerning for the company, its Android market share hit 22 percent during the period, down from the 44 percent ownership it had during the second quarter of 2010.

That said, things might soon change for Motorola. Earlier this month, Google announced that it had agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The companies expect the deal to be completed by the end of this year or early next year. When that happens, NPD says, Motorola could find the reprieve it needs as it tries to keep up with a host of competitors, including Samsung and LG.

"Much as it did in the feature phone market in the RAZR era, Motorola is experiencing increased competition from Samsung and LG in the smartphone market," NPD executive director of industry analysis, Ross Rubin, said of Motorola. "Closer ties to the heart of Android can help inspire new paths to differentiation."

However, for Google, its acquisition might have more to do with patents than anything else. The search giant and its vendor partners are being targeted from all sides by competitors that are launching lawsuits against Android, thanks to their stronger mobile patent portfolios. Google is being sued by Oracle, while Microsoft and Apple aretaking aim at HTC, Samsung, Barnes & Noble, and others.

In a recent blog post, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond targeted those companies, saying that they are launching lawsuits based on "bogus patents." Those lawsuits, Drummond said, are only proving to stifle innovation in the mobile space.

"But Android's success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and other companies, waged through bogus patents," Drummond wrote in the post. "Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it."

Now, it seems, Google might soon have its own weapon to stop the patent lawsuits it takes so much issue with. Rubin said today that "Google's acquisition of Motorola shifts the balance of power in the handset-patent conflict between Google and its operating system competitors."

Aside from lawsuits, Rubin said that other Android vendors, worried that they will be hurt by Google's Motorola Mobility acquisition, shouldn't be concerned. He said that the operating system "has made for a larger pie" that allows everyone to benefit from its success.

Source : cnet

Android users prefer mobile apps over mobile Web

Android owners like to use mobile apps over the mobile Web, says a new study from Nielsen.

The average Android user in the U.S. spends 56 minutes a day surfing the Web and firing up apps on their phone. In that amount of time, two-thirds is spent using mobile apps, while only one-third is spent using mobile Web sites.

Even further, among the hundreds of thousands of apps available in the Android Market, only a small number of them are used the majority of the time.

The top ten Android apps chew up 43 percent of the time spent by Android users, while the top 50 grab 61 percent of time spent, according to Nielsen.

Estimating more than 250,000 Android apps currently available, this points to more than 249,950 that have to battle for the remaining 39 percent of an Android owner's attention.

Nielsen compiled this information from its Smartphone Analytics, a new service that looks at data from meters installed on iOS and Android smartphones.

Whether they're using apps or the Web, smartphone owners are consuming more and more data. In June, Nielsen found that the average user is grabbing 89 percent more data each month compared with last year. The amount of data used per month jumped to 435 megabytes in the first quarter, up from 230MB during the same period in 2010.

Android owners in particular eat up the most data, according to another Nielsen study from June. Specifically, Android users captured 582MB of data each month during the first quarter, compared with iPhone users, who consumed 492MB of data.

Source : cnet

Android malware masquerading as Google+ app

A new flavor of Android malware is disgusing itself as a Google+ app in an attempt to capture instant messages, GPS, location, call logs, and other sensitive data.

Uncovered by the team at Trend Micro, the new malware known as ANDROIDOS_NICKISPY.C can also automatically answer and record phone calls. To capture data, the app loads at boot-up and runs certain services that can monitor messages, phone calls, and the user's location, thereby stealing e-mail and other content.

Detailing its findings in a blog last Friday, Trend Micro discovered that the malicious app tries to trick people by installing itself under the name Google++.

But instead of providing access to Google's new social network, the app sends its stolen user data to a remote site where presumably cybercriminals can grab it. Unlike some malware that in the past masqueraded as legitimate apps through Google's Android Market, this particular one must be downloaded by an unsuspecting user from a malicious Web site and then manually installed.

And even if installed, the app can be uninstalled from an Android device by selecting Settings > Application > Manage applications, choosing Google++ and then clicking Uninstall, according to Trend Micro.

Trend Micro gives the app a low-risk rating, but it's still something that Android owners should be sure to avoid.

Android users concerned about security can learn how to better protect themselves through Trend Micro's online guide "5 Simple Steps to Secure Your Android-Based Smartphones."

Apple to face fast Android tablets

 Apple's iPad will likely have to contend this year with new Android tablets sporting the latest high-speed silicon coming off production lines in Asia.

Nvidia is on the record saying that tablets powered by its quad-core Kal-El chip are arriving this year. "Kal-El-powered tablets are coming this fall, and phones around the CES 2012 timeframe," Nvidia said in a statement to CNET on Friday.

It's safe to presume that Nvidia isn't just blowing smoke. Its processors today power all of the most popular Android Honeycomb tablets, including the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Toshiba Thrive, and Acer Iconia Tab A500. Future Sony tablets will use Tegra too.

Nvidia claims its upcoming quad-core processor will offer higher performance while being more power efficient.

(Credit: Nvidia)

And listening to Nvidia's earnings conference call on Thursday provided some more food for thought. "Our next-generation Kal-El processor had a very strong quarter of design wins," CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said. "And we have a great working relationship with [Google]. And so as soon as our next generation processor Kal-El is ready for production, we can run like the wind."

One of the more intriguing points Huang made was about Kal-El's power consumption. The seemingly logical assumption is that a quad-core processor will be more power hungry. Not necessarily, said Huang. "Kal-El is so much better performance than Tegra 2. And so much lower power. Very few people have internalized that Kal-El is lower power in every use case compared to Tegra 2," he said.

So, now that we know that high-performance Android tablets are coming, we're left to speculate on brands. Motorola is one of those most likely candidates. The company will come out with "much more aggressive form factors" for tablets later this year, CEO Sanjay Jha said when speaking at a tech conference this week. Asus is another prospect.

Texas Instruments--likely a leading chip provider for upcoming Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablets and smartphones--and Qualcomm also have plans for quad-core chips but, those aren't due until 2012 sometime.

How will Apple respond? Well, theories abound. One being that Apple will offer a premium iPad for professionals, sporting a higher resolution screen, among other tweaks. Then, of course, there are plenty of rumors about an iPad 3. But when that will land in Apple stores is a crapshoot. Apple may wait until next year when it can pack in plenty of new goodies like a quad-core A6 processor, better graphics, and a revamped design.

Ironically, despite different production schedules, Apple and Nvidia may get their silicon from the same source. Nvidia historically sources its chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC, one of the largest chip manufacturers in the world. Many industry experts believe that Apple will also consign production to TSMC of either a future version of the A5 processor or the next generation A6.

Linley Gwennap, who heads The Linley Group, a chip consulting firm, thinks Apple may turn to TSMC. "Nvidia quad-core late this year, Apple A6 early next year. So Nvidia could be out a little sooner than Apple, but not by much," said Gwennap.

As long as Apple gets the iPad 3 out reasonably soon after quad-core Android tablets begin to proliferate, most consumers probably won't care. That said, all bets are off with Windows 8 running on ARM processors like Nvidia's Kal-El.

Source: cnet

Amazon Content to Spur $249 Android Tablet: Analyst

Amazon.com's (NASDAQ:AMZN) forthcoming Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android tablet continues to be a hot topic among tech media and pundits.

One of the popular memes surrounding the machine is that the e-commerce giant could find a way to challenge Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad by severely undercutting it on price.

How severe? Perhaps by as much as half the starting price of the $500 base model iPad 2.

Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin, who has already gone on record saying Amazon could produce at least two tablets this year, did what he described as "back-of-the-envelope" math to conclude that

Bajarin said the tablet could cost $300 to make, but Amazon would discount it by $51 to entice consumers to buy it. The Amazon would expect to make up the difference in movie rentals, music downloads, Kindle book sales, other application purchases and advertising.

Amazon, using its one-click buying method as an easy-on-ramp to customers to make purchases through its Android Appstore and regular e-commerce offerings, could make back the $51 difference within 6 months and make a profit between 10 to 30 percent over the last 18 months of the device's accounting period.

"Now imagine how this could affect the other Android vendors that are making tablets. If Amazon provides a product that is sold under cost with the goal of making up the rest of the cost and profit from apps, services, and even advertising, it could give all of the other Android vendors a serious run for their money," 

"And, given Amazon’s deep ecosystem, other Android vendors would find it very difficult to compete against it. When measuring by units shipped, this method could make Amazon the king of Android tablets very quickly. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it could "own" the Android tablet market."

Notice Bajarin didn't say Amazon would own the tabket market outright. With 30 million units sold in less than 18 months, Apple's iPad owns that distinction at present, Bajarin said. The company would likely protect it lead versus any aggressive challengers by slashing prices and driving the iCloud service to consumers.  model.

Bajarin isn't the only analyst expecting a sharply discounted tablet.

Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, who ignited the Amazon Android tablet meme earlier this year, said she though Amazon would have the best chance of challenging the iPad thanks to its content distribution, channel and brand.

She also believes Amazon would likely subsidize any slate, possibly via advertising. Epps also said such devices would give Amazon the leadership position in Android tablets, still trailing well behind the iPad.

Source: eweek

Will Sony’s Android Tablets Land In Australia Next Month?

Looks like Sony will have plenty to talk about at Berlin’s big IFA electronics show in a couple of weeks. I’ve been invited to spend some quality hands-on time with a range of gear in Sydney, including: new Sony Readers and “digital imaging equipment” — could that mean new video cameras, or those leaked Alpha cameras? But what’s really got me curious is Sony’s self-described “highlight” of a “whole new product category.” Take this with a liberal helping of salt (because Sony certainly wouldn’t confirm it), but I smell tablets.

So I’m just taking a wild guess here. But fingers crossed it could be the 9.4-inch S1 and dual 5.5-inch screen S2. We’ve seen them fondled on video, and Gizmodo US has spent some time with them, too.

Both tablets run Android Honeycomb with a custom Sony UI, and have a Tegra 2 processor, Wi-Fi, 3G support, and included Sony Qriocity and PlayStation suite pre-loaded. Sony has said it wants to be the number 2 tablet maker by 2012 — do you think these bad boys will give them a shot?

Meanwhile, that leaked spring camera line up from Sony possibly includes the big A77, NEX-7, A65 and a whole supporting cast. Again, not even close to being confirmed to arrive here, but we can hope. I’ll let you know on the first of September.

Apple and Android rule the smartphone roost

LOS ANGELES - Apple and Android are taking over.

Pushing aside once-dominant players Nokia Corp. and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd., Apple Inc.'s iPhones and Google Inc.'s Android devices now account for 62 percent of smartphones sold worldwide, nearly doubling the 32 percent share the two had at this time last year, according to a report Thursday from research firm Gartner Inc.

The recent quarter also marked the first time that smartphones outsold older-generation "feature phones" in North America, said Hugues De La Vergne, the Gartner analyst who prepared the report.

In North America alone, the Apple-Android combination accounted for 83.5 percent of smartphone sales.

Android devices alone now account for 43.4 percent of the smartphones sold globally each quarter, showing the Google-powered operating system has gone from a minor player to a market force in a relatively short time. That is partly because of a growing number of phone manufacturers who are offering lower-cost Android phones, often in the $100 range.

As of the first quarter of last year, Android smartphones still made up less than 10 percent of smartphone sales, increasing to 17 percent the next quarter. A year later -- the end of the second quarter of 2011 -- Android phones accounted for 43.4 percent of unit sales.

As for Apple, nearly one in five smartphones (18.2 percent) sold around the world is now an iPhone. Unlike Google, which is responsible for the basic architecture of its Android operating system but does not itself manufacture phones, Apple builds its own phones and profits directly every time an iPhone is sold. Indeed, with more than 20 million sold last quarter, iPhone sales have propelled Apple to record profits. The company is now neck and neck with Exxon Mobil Corp. as the world's largest firm by market value.

Although Finnish phone-maker Nokia still remains in second place, the company's share of the smartphone market has dropped steeply, to 22 percent in the recent quarter from 41 percent a year earlier.

Research in Motion also dropped further behind, falling from 18.7 percent of phones sold to 11.7 percent. And despite several attempts to promote its line of smartphones, Microsoft Corp. has had trouble getting traction, slipping to 1.6 percent of smartphones sold from 4.9 percent a year earlier.

source : startribune

Harvard test: iPhone, Windows Phone easier than Android

Harvard's lab for Human Factors in Design has posted a new usability study (below) that gave Apple and Microsoft the edge in mobile OS design. The small experiment by Professor Dennis Gallatta had newcomers to smartphones try to make a phone call, add a contact, and send a text message without help. iPhone and Windows Phone users had the easiest time and typically scored well, while Android and BlackBerry trailed well behind.

Adding a contact was often the most difficult task and proved especially bad on both Android and BlackBerry devices, both of which got one star out of five. In the cases of both the contact and messaging tests, the company had to fast forward the video footage because of how long they took relative to the iPhone and Windows Phone users.

Both Apple and Microsoft might have been helped by their experiences developing desktop operating systems. Google and RIM started off developing mobile operating systems that weren't their primary businesses. It's not clear how much of the Android complication was affected by the Sense interface used on the HTC Thunderbolt used in the test. A Nexus S phone with stock Android would have removed HTC from the equation.

The study doesn't provide a complete picture of ease of use and also doesn't touch on the power of the interface once an owner is comfortable. Harvard's study may nonetheless show how discoverable features are and how well users can adapt out of instinct instead of having to train themselves

Source : onespot

Google: 'We can protect the values of Android'

John Lagerling, director of Android global partnerships at Google, said the company can work with its partners to protect the values of Android and fend off patent lawsuits.

Lagerling, speaking at a Pacific Crest investment conference, addressed the patent issue on a day where the topic was front and center. Google last week blasted Apple and Microsoft for leading a consortium that won Nortel’s mobile patent portfolio. Tech insiders have been going back and forth about Google’s response ever since. Meanwhile, Google’s court sparring over Android with Oracle looks like it may be backfiring a bit.

Also see: Software patents: Lots of whining, but reform unlikely

Here’s what Lagerling said:

Without going into too much detail, I do think that we have very strong paths that we can take to protect the values of Android that we have built through the open-source Apache 2 license with our partners. Obviously, Google doesn’t build — we don’t build phones and devices, but we had a vested interest in protecting the values of the Android ecosystem.

So when our partners are being attacked by aggressors, which we see as materially unfounded, it’s something that we join up together with our partners to resolve. And we have, I think, several options that we can take that will help protect the values of Android.

So again, we want to protect innovation. Patents were supposed to be there to enable innovation and monetization of innovation. When it’s being used in a prospective which is more to, as we see it, stifle innovation, it’s not something that is good for consumers.

Android is the only operating system, modern smart-phone operating system, that exists on devices that cost $200 or less. That is what is enabling the next billion of users of the Internet on mobile in the world. There might be players that are not so excited to see the margins and the prices go down like that and the variety that Android enables, but I think we are very convinced that we will be able to continue and create and protect the value of Android.

The big question is how Google will be able to protect those Android values and what tools the company has at its disposal.

Source : ZDNet