Category Archives: android
Apple drops YouTube app as feud with Google grows
Break out of mobile turf wars
Growing rivalry between Apple and Google will mean future iPhone and iPad users will no longer have the YouTube app pre-installed on their devices. Search engine giant Google is increasingly vying with Apple for dominance in the mobile operating theatre. Previously the two companies had a good relationship with Google chairman Eric Schmidt also sitting on Apple’s board. But he stepped down from Apple in 2009 as Google started to tread on Apple’s toes by introducing rival software and apps for the growing number of Android phones. Now Apple has retaliated by declining to renew its licence for Google’s YouTube which has featured as a core app since the iPhone debuted in 2007. Continue reading
Android is taking over the world – official
Rating: Revelation buried in Canalys’ latest figures
It appears that the Android mobile OS is continuing its inexorable rise within the smartphone sector. This revelation is buried deep in figures recently released by market watchers – Canalys concerning smartphone shipments in China. However, it has also provided figures on a global basis. These show that Android has continued to grow in significance – surpassing 100 million quarterly smartphone shipments for the first time in Q2 2012. This effectively means that two out of every three smartphones are now running Google’s mobile OS. It also explains why Nokia is fast losing any hope of retaining a large share of the smartphone market. Continue reading
Expect a flurry of M& A activity
Rating: Blog draws heavily on Opera & InnerActive research
A very interesting piece from Levi Shapiro, who is a Professor in the Media Innovation Lab at IDC, which appeared on the Jerusalem Post’s blog here. In it Shapiro speculates that 2013 will become a year of consolidation in the mobile advertising world. “Expect to see extensive M&A activity in the next few quarters,” Shapiro predicts. The guy backs his opinions with a whole range of third party research but his chief sources are mobile browser specialist, Opera and ad exchange InnerActive. GoMobile News believes that Shapiro could well be right. look at the recent announcement from inMobi here, for example. Continue reading
Interactive 3D specialist EON chooses Marmalade to take 3D to mobile
Rating: Win-win situation for both parties
Focussing on your core strengths really is the name of the game. That’s why EON Reality -which provides the software tools for creating interactive, 3D rich media (especially games) has decided to hook up with mobile specialist, Marmalade. Mobile games developers need to bring 3D to their mobile apps and 3D specialists, EON, has found a simple and comprehensive way of breaking into the mobile app market. As EON Reality says, by co-operating with Marmalade, it can focus on creating rich 3D mobile applications for their clients, without worrying about cross-platform complexities and future device compatibility. Continue reading
Sophos blames BYOD for increased interest in hacking mobiles
Rating: Established security firm now offers free anti-virus app for Android users
For a long time those with Symbian OS smartphones were genuinely safe from viruses and malware because no self-respecting hacker would gain any kudos for creating one. So the incentives basically weren’t there. The phenomenon of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is changing all of that, Sophos claims. With BYOD, the end user effectively selects which mobile device to use both at home and in workplace. The later brings corporate data into jeopardy and hackers have spotted the opportunity. Given that IT managers cannot be everywhere, all of the time, security specialist, Sophos has introduced a free lightweight anti-virus app which protects Android devices (smartphone & tablet) against malware, privacy issues and hardware loss. Perhaps, Sophos can replicate it success in the online market in the mobile world? Continue reading
The Geek Games – Friday’s Olympic story
Rating: Thinly veiled excuse for running a cartoon
It’s the official start of the Olympic Games 2012 in London today [July 27th 2012]. We couldn’t resist this Olympic themed story which is a comic cartoon from the guys at Cast. This software specialist offers a mobile app assessment tool for testing the code in Android apps and it is built into the standard CAST Highlight tool. More information here and here.
Enjoy! Continue reading
HTC set to lose out to Samsung says YouGov
Rating: Consumers struggle to differentiate amongst models
Reading between the lines of recent UK research carried out by YouGov, HTC is rapidly losing its mantle as the brand of choice amongst Android smartphone lovers. According to Russell Feldman, associate director in YouGov’s telecoms and technology team, “HTC has long been falling out of the rat race. Our research also found a small number of HTC owners considered their make and model of HTC before purchasing it – significantly lower consideration rates compared to rival brands – a worrying sign.” Who is benefitting? Answer – Samsung. “The [Samsung] brand is now the Android future choice of destination with high loyalty, consideration and expectation rates increasing year-on-year,” says YouGov. Continue reading
Guest Post: NFC payment test at Olympics will inspire mobile attackers to go for the Gold
by Jimmy Shah Mobile Security Researcher with McAfee
Visa is testing out its PayWave contactless payment service at the Summer Olympics in London. Every athlete will get a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone enabled with near-field communication (NFC) along with Visa’s payment app. Contactless payments aren’t new, and similar payments by mobile phone have been tested by Google with its Wallet app and other NFC smartphones. When we last looked at NFC phones and similar apps, there were questions of whether an attacker could go after the apps or the phone hardware and the Android OS. Since then we have seen a PIN-reset vulnerability that allowed an attacker to use the free prepaid card and the ability to crack PINs on the phone. Continue reading
Android overtakes iOS for 1st place with mobile advertisers
Rating: Findings from latest Adfonic Global AdMetrics report
For the first time Android’s share of mobile ad impressions has overtaken iOS. Android increased its share from 38 per cent in Q1 2012 to 46 per cent in Q2 2012 while iOS lost share to Android, declining from 45 per cent in Q1 to 34 per cent in Q2. Those figures are taken from Adfonic‘s Global AdMetrics Report for Q2 2012. This draws data from thousands of mobile advertising campaigns, spanning around fifteen thousand mobile sites and apps. Other key finds were that there are ‘sweet spot’ combinations of advertiser campaign verticals and publisher inventory channels and gender targeting drives improved performance. Continue reading
appMobi tackles App Store Fragmentation with free app
Rating: Unites stats for multiple leading app stores
It’s surprising how little information the big players in the app store market provide to developers. The only analytic provided by Apple’s iTunes App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market) is download count. That’s all you get! Hence HTML5 specialist, appMobi www.appMobi.com, created storeView for its own internal use. Finding it to be an invaluable tool, the company is giving it away to anyone who’s using HTML5 to create apps. This particularly applies to those using the open source PhoneGap offering. Continue reading
Bitdefender discovers that most iOS users are at risk from data leaks
Rating: Roughly 30 per cent of apps display ads, too
Ever wondered how many apps are downloading your private information without informing you? Pondered how great a risk there is of personal data leaks via apps? These questions have obviously bothered Bitdefender, the security specialist. For some reason, the company decided to look at the risk posed by iOS apps only. Which is curious because Bitdefender has an offering for Android but not for iOS at present. Anyway the company conducted a month-long study of more than 65,000 iPhone apps. Guess what? It found that most Apple iOS users are probably at risk from data leaks. Continue reading
Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary becomes available for W7 Mango
Rating: Windows Phone 7.7 version compliments existing Android and iOS versions
The Paragon Software Group,the mobile app developer, and Oxford University Press, the respected publisher, have together brought the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 8th edition to Windows Phone devices. Boasting powerful learning features, the app offers full-sentence pronunciation; thousands of colour illustrations, and help with expanding vocabulary for anyone who needs to communicate in English. Continue reading
GoMo accidentally downloads ‘exclusive’ music app to HP TouchPad
Rating: Samsung had supposedly struck exclusive content deal
An exclusive deal has supposedly been struck between leading Android handset manufacturer, Samsung and mobile music specialist MusicQubed. The first handset to come with the Official Top 40 singles chart app preloaded will be Galaxy Ace II. However, this app is also available from Google Play here. When we tried to download it to a non-Galaxy phone the server said it was incompatible with all of our devices except the Cm_tenderloin. We clicked on that and suddenly realised the app had been sent to our HP TouchPad tablet running the Cyanogenmod version of Android. And, yup, it works, folks. Continue reading
Google slowly rolling out mobile app analytics
Rating: Also releases Android version of Google Analytics
Looking through the Google Analyticsmonthly product update for June [2012], GoMobile News spotted a number of facilities which we’ve somehow missed previously. In particular, Google now offers mobile app analytics which provides end-to-end measurement of the entire customer journey within a mobile application. Plus the company finally released its Android version of its Google Analytics app. Funnily enough there’s no mention of an iOs version [tee-hee). The Android app enables access the same accounts and profiles users will see when they open Analytics from a desktop browser. However, the reports are optimized for a mobile phone. More info here. Mobile app developers could well be interested in the latest browser size analysis which enables users to find out what visitors actually see. Continue reading
More about the Firefox mobile OS
Rating: Background information on former Boot to Gecko project
The Firefox OS is based on the Boot to Gecko (B2G) project which is an open source operating system in development by Mozilla Corporation that aims to support HTML5 apps written using ‘open Web’ technologies rather than platform-specific native APIs. The idea is essentially to have all user-accessible software running on the phone be a Web app that uses advanced HTML5 techniques and device APIs to access the phone’s hardware directly via JavaScript. It initially targeted Android-compatible smartphones. Continue reading
