Shane writes, “Android just isn’t there yet. Sorry fans of the OS, but it’s like the best intentions of the open source community have produced an OS that has not learnt any lessons from the failings of the dated Windows Mobile OS, and along with the snazzy HTC Sense UI have actually made a number of brand new mistakes on the way.”

1. Android OS (whilst hidden behind the beauty that is HTC Sense) is an inherently geeky, inconsistent, temperamental and beta-like OS. It fails in numerous ways
2. Possibly more importantly, I have come to believe Android is not and can not be an “iPhone Killer”, nor really even a competitor

Shane writes, “Android just isn’t there yet, and the HTC Desire (or any Android handset) is no real competition for the iPhone ecosystem. Of course it’s not all about ecosystem (you need to compete vs iTunes etc) but it’s one area I don’t see anyone really focusing on and until they do I can’t see anyone really causing Apple concern.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

Millennial connects brand advertisers with the largest mobile media audience in the U.S., according to IDC. The company’s mobile advertising network reaches 83 percent of mobile users in the U.S. and it reported that its brand business grew by more than 750 percent last year, while the performance business grew almost 172 percent.

“As the largest independent mobile advertising platform in the U.S., we support every major operating system and device. In March, one out of every five ad impressions on our network were seen on a mobile connected device, and not a mobile phone,” said Erin (Mack) McKelvey, SVP of Marketing, Millennial Media, in the press release. “We have reported monthly device trends from our network for a year, but given the proliferation of smartphones and connected devices, we felt that it was now time to spotlight this data for industry-watchers who are trying to understand the role of devices and consumer behavior in the overall mobile market.”

Highlights from the March report include:

• U.S. Device impression data breakout: Smartphones (45%), Feature Phones (34%), and Connected Devices (21%).
• Apple’s OS remains the leading OS on the network with 70 percent of U.S. Smartphone impressions; Apple’s OS has maintained the leading OS position since Millennial began reporting the network’s OS mix in August 2009.
• RIM remained the second largest U.S. OS for the eighth consecutive month with a 14% share of impressions; and four devices in the Top 20 Mobile Phones list.
• amsung remained embedded as the second largest manufacturer, with four devices in the Top 20.
• Leading the U.S. Carrier Mix once again in March, Wi-Fi increased slightly for the third consecutive month with 27% share of impressions, followed by Verizon and AT&T.
• Smartphones accounted for 40% of the Top 20 Mobile Phones, with the Blackberry Tour, Palm Pixi and HTC’s MyTouch Magic new to the list.

On April 9, 2010, the company released its iPad SDK and PadMedia Creative Suite for developers. The PadMedia creatives provide increased user engagement opportunities for advertisers, and; therefore, increased monetization opportunities for developers.

More info here.

Source: MacDailyNews

iPhone

“You might have spotted some of these [features] in our thorough hands-on videos, but most of nuggets below are new discoveries,” Golijan and Rothman report.

• Cellular Data On/Off
• SMS Character Count
• SMS Search
• Home Screen Backgrounds
• Camera Zoom
• Web and Wikipedia Search
• Borderless Document View
• Streamlined “New Contact” Screen
• Events, Faces and Places in the Photo Menu
• Lyrics/Podcast Data Toggle
• Spellcheck!
• Resize Photos While Sending
• New Playlists
• Art in Album View
• App-Specific Location Services
• Game Center
• Email Threading
• Long Alpha-Numeric Passcodes
• Unified Inbox
• App Folders (with Alerts)

You can view all your emails in one spot or segregate them to separate inboxes.

Full gallery here.

Source: MacDailyNews

“Analyst Maynard Um with UBS issued a new note to investors Wednesday morning, in which he noted a recent Q-Series survey that found Apple leads the smartphone industry in both mindshare and retention rate,” Marsal reports. “Among respondents, 56 percent said they believe Apple is the best smartphone manufacturer, and the implied retention rate among a sample of 310 users is 95 percent — well beyond, Um noted, anything else seen ever in the industry.”

“‘While we believe that this retention can change rapidly, anecdotally during our survey we even received emails from three respondents asking when the next iPhone will be available,’ the analyst wrote,” Marsal reports. “A whopping 90 percent of iPhone owners think that Apple is the best handset maker on the market.”

Marsal reports, “The report also issued the first estimate from UBS on iPad sales. Um expects Apple to ship 2.1 million in its 2010 fiscal year, growing to 4.6 million in 2011.”

Source: MacDailyNews

“The iPhone OS is already capable of multitasking–technically speaking,” Bradley writes. “Certain apps and functions already multitask. You can switch to email or calendar while a voice call is still connected in the background. You can listen to music from the iPod function while continuing to use other apps on the iPhone. The multitasking is there, Apple has just restricted which apps actually have access to it.”

“To be honest, the iPhone screen only has enough real estate to display one app at a time, so multitasking is irrelevant in most cases. What is more important than literally leaving other apps open in the background, is building apps that are capable of retaining their state even when they’re not in the foreground,” Bradley writes. “In other words, I don’t need the app to run simultaneously, but as I switch from app to app I would like for the app to remember where I was so I don’t have to start over each time. Since I can only see one app at a time anyway, this sort of app memory basically achieves the same goal as true multitasking. This solution is the responsibility of the app developers rather than Apple itself, and many apps already take this approach.”

Multitasking introduces some additional issues with which Apple or iPhone users will have to contend:
1. Battery Life
2. Performance
3. Management
4. Security

Bradley writes, “While the value of multitasking on the iPhone itself may still be questionable, it would be a serious handicap to the iPad…”

Full article – recommended – here.

• Improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some instances
• Fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard

Products compatible with this software update:
• iPhone (all models)
• iPod touch (all models)

To update, select your device in iTunes and choose “Update” within the “Summary” tab.

According to our tipster, Apple will rename iPhone OS to “iOS” in order to “better reflect the diversity of devices that will run the operating system: iPhone, iPod touch, and future devices to be announced.”

A YouTube video, not from our tipster, from “artmach1″ shows “iOS” on a background that seems to closely match Apple’s special event invitation (see below) along with the text description: shaky cam grab out of some apple tablet presentation rehearsal for tomorrows brand new thing—I think any way. might have been enhanced from a pen cam or something. or hidden in a backpack or a box of equipment.

Direct link via YouTube here.

Source: MacDailyNews

The Nexus One “has just had its price slashed,” Bunker reports.

“Up until today, anyone in the US who’d wanted to upgrade to the Nexus One on T-Mobile had to pay out $379,” Bunker reports. “With the price cut in effect, this figure stands at $279… Not only that, but anyone who’s already upgraded receive a $100 refund.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews

But all of that is about to change because Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple’s blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 (currently in private beta), will include a “Packager for iPhone” apps which will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won’t run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. (Microsoft is taking a similar approach with Silverlight). This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.

Much of the focus in the Flash iPhone debate centers around the fact that Flash is the de facto video standard on the Web. For instance, whenever you encounter a Web page in your iPhone browser with a Flash video, instead of seeing it right there in the browser, the phone must open up a separate Quicktime player. Most video on the Web, including everything on YouTube, is displayed through a Flash player, so this gets to be tedious. Apple has always cited technical reasons for why it doesn’t support Flash. It’s a battery hog, it’s too slow for mobile phones, not capable enough, etc. Some of these issues are valid and Adobe has been addressing them to the point that Flash now works fine on Android.

But there is a more strategic reason Apple kept Flash off the iPhone. It wanted a chance to become ingrained with developers. In addition to video, Flash, of course, can be used to create Web apps—the kind of apps that might look good on a phone. Apple had to hold off Flash not so to control the video experience on the iPhone, but because it needed to establish its own Apple-controlled iPhone SDK. The last thing it needed was a competing developer platform getting in the way.

Once Adobe publicly releases CS5, Flash apps and video still won’t run on the iPhone. But those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. In contrast, there are only an estimated 125,000 or so iPhone developers. This will lower the barriers to making iPhone apps even more than they are today, which may or may not be a good thing. But if you thought there were a lot of iPhone apps now, just wait until the Flash floodgates are open.

Source: TechCrunch

“In the three months ending in October, Apple’s iPhone was used by nearly 9 million Americans as their primary phone, said Mark Donovan, senior analyst with Virginia-based comScore,” Keizer reports. “That compared with the almost 15 million who identified RIM as the maker of their primary smartphone in the monthly surveys comScore conducts of U.S. mobile subscribers over the age of 13. Phones powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, meanwhile, were used by an estimated 7.1 million people during the same period.”

Keizer reports, “According to comScore, approximately 36 million Americans own a smartphone, while around 196 million rely on a traditional cell phone.”

Full article here.

Source: MacDailyNews