MobileCrunch |  |
- Samsung Focus Flash Review: High-End Feel At A Low Price
- Hands-On With The Samsung Focus S For AT&T
- Mobile Ad Serving Startup MADS Raises €1 Million Series B
- Startup Kansas: Kickanotch Raises $1.1 Million For Its One-Stop Mobile Marketing Shop
- Kevin Rose’s Oink Hits The App Store
- Hands-On With The HTC Rezound For Verizon: Fat And Fast
- Meet Verizon’s New HTC Rezound
- Siri Experiencing Extended Outage
- EMI Presses Play On Digital Innovation; Opens Its Catalog To App Developers
- Android Still Most Popular Smartphone OS, iOS Holds Steady In Second Place
| Samsung Focus Flash Review: High-End Feel At A Low Price Posted: 04 Nov 2011 05:00 AM PDT  Short Version:The Samsung Focus Flash has achieved something I didn’t think it would — it managed to tear me away from my new iPhone 4S. Granted, I’ve had the 4S a bit longer than the Focus Flash, but I don’t think it was the “shiny and new” factor pulling me in; it was Mango and I heart it. As for the phone itself, it performed surprisingly well for its specs. Where other factors were downgraded from big brother the Focus S, Samsung left the processor alone, which certainly paid off. Let’s delve deeper, yes? Features:
Pros:
Cons:
Long Version:What surprised me most about the Focus Flash was its price tag. AT&T and Samsung are marketing this device at an entry-level price, but it sure doesn’t feel like a beginner’s phone. It’s quick, responsive, slim, and its specs are respectable. While smartphone noobs will definitely enjoy this little guy, vets could probably enjoy it equally and at a much lower price than they would with some of the mid-range Android phones out there. Setup:I usually don’t dedicate an entire section of a review to the setup process, but with the Focus Flash I’m making an exception. Why? Because I actually enjoyed it. Setting up a phone is probably the worst part of a review — filtering in contacts, setting up accounts, and moving over music is all a hassle. But Windows Phone changed that for me. Everything in Mango is organized a bit differently than we’re used to on iOS and Android. What should be “Contacts” is actually “People” and it incorporates all of your social networks and ties the information together for each individual person. So when I set up my Facebook account, my phone book instantly had information from all my Facebook friends. It was pleasant. Granted, it took me a sec to get the hang of my “setup work flow,” since navigating through Windows Phone is a different beast entirely. But once I got going, there was no stopping me. I’ve mentioned this briefly in a few other posts, but I’d like to take a hot second to just mention Microsoft’s obsession with “delight.” In more than one interview or product briefing, Microsoft has thrown the word “delight” around like it’s what they’re paid for. I’m coming to realize, it’s exactly what they’re paid for. To Microsoft, delight is equal to control plus beauty. Even during a process as tedious as setting up the phone, I still got warm and fuzzy seeing the screen transitions, typing in bits and pieces that Facebook and Twitter didn’t have access to, and seeing the finished product — a page full of live tiles blinking and pulsing with all my stuff. “Delightful” doesn’t even do it justice. Hardware:There’s no question that the Samsung Focus Flash is a good-looking little handset. It sports a brushed finish on the back panel, a flat face, and a contoured design around back to give it a more sophisticated look. On the right side you’ll find a dedicated camera button and a lock button, while the volume rocker’s over on the left. A 3.5mm headphone jack sits up top on the left-hand side, and a microUSB port is square on the bottom for charging. Size-wise you won’t hear me complaining about the Focus Flash. The phones coming out these days with massive 4.5-inch screens are nice and all, but unless you’re a hardcore mobile video fan, the 3.7-inch display form factor is actually much more comfortable in the hand and the pocket. I do, however, have some beef with materials. The brushed back panel has a really hard time with prints, and it took me way too long to polish this little guy up for its photo shoot. The weight of a phone is something I tend to harp on about, but it plays an important role in not only the way the phone feels in the hand but also the way you treat your phone. I find that when a phone is ultra-light, it’s perceived as somewhat “cheap.” Then again, if it’s too heavy it then becomes cumbersome. Balance is key. Even phones like the Droid RAZR (which will retail at a cool $299) feel a bit “too light,” as does the Focus S. The Focus Flash, on the other hand, feels just right — not heavy by any stretch of the imagination, but not so light it feels like it’s worth $50 — which again makes it seem much more pricey than it actually is. All in all, the Focus Flash seems like a well-built little machine and it looks pretty slick, too. Software:I’m going to have to work really hard not to ramble on here because I’m currently blinded by my love for Mango and may have trouble shutting up about it. To put it concisely, Mango is awesome. The only issue I have with the platform, in fact, is a lack of apps. When testing a phone, I can’t help but measure it against my iPhone. So with each review, I try to see if I can do everything I would do on my iPhone with the tester. Getting the apps I wanted was where Mango, and thus the Focus Flash, failed most. Everything else about Mango left me pleased. Unified messaging is simply glorious, and is actually something I now wish for on my iPhone. Whether your chatting it up on Facebook, over texts, or some other messaging platform, Mango pulls it all into one thread based on the person you’re talking to. If you want to switch over to another platform, simply tap the switch icon within the thread and choose the platform you’d like to message on. I also really enjoyed Mango’s social networking integration on the whole. Mango pulls all of your accounts together in a unified “People” hub, where you can create specific groups for however you tend to categorize your relationships. Then there’s the “Me” tile, which lets you post and update your own social profiles, as well as check up on any notifications. Both the “Me” tile and the “People” tile offer up a “What’s New” page with a streaming flow of what’s happening on your Twitter, Facebook, Windows Live, etc. As far as the user interface goes, Mango leans toward convenience above all else. In almost any situation you can pull up a board of letters, whether its cutting down your options to names that start with “A” or apps that start with “J.” There are only two pages on the home screens, one filled with customizable live tiles, and the other a list of applications and settings menus. Upon first inspection I thought this was kind of stupid, since I’m simply accustomed to five or six home screens per phone. But with Mango a streamlined home screen set up is smart. When things are so well-organized and easily digestible, there’s no reason for a handful of home screens. Yes, Mango is playing catch-up to other platforms in a lot of areas, but it’s also ahead in terms of differentiation. Android and iOS are very different beasts, but the idea behind them is very similar. Windows Phone is just… different — it’s a look and a layout we haven’t really seen that much and it’s actually really beautiful and intuitive. It is at this point that I start to beg developers to consider the platform. With apps, I have no doubt it’ll emerge as the third mobile ecosystem. Performance:I honestly have no idea how Samsung pulled it off, but for $49.99 you can have one of the snappiest phones I’ve ever played with. Mango is slick on its own, but with the help of that 1.4GHz processor, the Samsung Focus Flash really steps up in the performance department. Browsing the web with Mango’s Internet Explorer was pleasing to say the least, and I found it to load pages much faster than I had expected. In fact, I ran a couple tests between the Focus Flash and my iPhone 4S and was actually pretty bummed to see my beloved iPhone get beat every time. Built-in hardware acceleration within Mango means that IE9 is the mobile browser to beat. The Focus Flash was a great testament to that. Battery life, however, was a pain and a half. The evening I got the phone, I played with it quite a bit. Probably around three full hours of browsing and setup, and maybe an hour of talk time/messaging. Then it died. After four hours. The next day I toggled on Mango’s Battery Saver and things got much better. The Focus Flash lasted a total of ten hours today with some pretty intensive use, and it still has a little life in it yet. The only real issue the Focus Flash and I had was making calls. The first time I tried testing out the phone, I was in my apartment which gets notoriously awful AT&T coverage. The Focus Flash placed the call, which is more than I can say for most other phones, but it sure wasn’t fun trying to decode what my friends’ were saying hearing just one of every five words. I thought the problem would go away once I left the “dead zone,” but didn’t see much improvement. Conversations aren’t impossible by any means, and I actually had a few great chats using the little guy. But on the whole, call quality isn’t the Focus Flash’s forte. Then again, a lot depends on your location within AT&T’s network. Conclusion:When all’s said and done, the Samsung Focus Flash proved me wrong. I was certainly excited for Windows Phone Mango, but wasn’t sure that $49.99 hardware could keep up. I was wrong. The Focus Flash is a delight. While the specs might not be able to compete on paper, you wouldn’t be able to tell during use. I recommend this phone for anyone who’s all about social networking, messaging, or simply wants a change from iOS and Android. Samsung is one of the largest super-multinational companies in the world. It’s possibly best known for it’s subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics company in the world.
|
| Hands-On With The Samsung Focus S For AT&T Posted: 04 Nov 2011 05:00 AM PDT  If the Samsung Focus Flash had you even remotely excited, then the Focus S is sure to leave you thrilled. With almost all the same specs as baby brother, the Focus S brings a slightly larger screen and more powerful camera to an already snappy little phone. The Samsung Focus S runs Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, and the platform’s black background really pops thanks to that Super AMOLED Plus display. Even better, Super AMOLED Plus screens are basically off on any part of the display showing black. Since Windows Phone defaults to an all-black background, I’d presume you’d get a little extra battery life out of the Focus S (at least compared with phones with similar large screens). While we’re on the subject, the Focus S 480×800 Super AMOLED Plus display measures in at 4.3 inches diagonally, resembling the newly announced HTC Rezound in size. However, the Focus S is much, much thinner than the Rezound, with an 8.55mm waist line. The Focus S is said to be America’s first “4G” Windows phone, yet won’t run on AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Instead, it’ll see 4G-capable speeds on AT&T’s HSPA+ network. It sports a nice textured back panel, which I actually wish had translated over to the Focus Flash (that little guy is slippery!). The Focus S is also incredibly light, but is just a tad too large to fit as comfortably in the pocket as baby brother Focus Flash does. Windows Phone Mango runs like a dream with the help of that 1.4GHz processor, and as I mentioned with the Focus Flash, Mango’s IE9 browser is a total power house. We also played around a bit with the 8-megapixel rear camera and found that picture quality seemed pretty great, especially when viewing on that Super AMOLED Plus display. Mango also has a pretty cool camera app, with a familiar “swipe to photo library” feature we’re seeing on iOS 5. In fact, Microsoft has the patent on that feature. Do I smell another patent war brewing? In any case, the Focus S is certainly worth consideration thus far, but we’ll need to hit you with a proper review before we can be sure. The Focus S is available at AT&T on Sunday, November 6 with an on-contract price tag of $199.99. Samsung is one of the largest super-multinational companies in the world. It’s possibly best known for it’s subsidiary, Samsung Electronics, the largest electronics company in the world.
|
| Mobile Ad Serving Startup MADS Raises €1 Million Series B Posted: 04 Nov 2011 04:54 AM PDT  MADS, a provider of mobile display and messaging ad serving solutions, has raised €1 million – or roughly $1.4 million – in funding in a Series B round led by OTM Investments (both the company and the investor are based in The Netherlands). MADS says it will use the fresh capital to take its business beyond mobile ad serving and set up sales offices in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain to support clients in their local languages. Read more at TechCrunch Europe.
|
| Startup Kansas: Kickanotch Raises $1.1 Million For Its One-Stop Mobile Marketing Shop Posted: 03 Nov 2011 09:59 PM PDT  In July, Kickanotch Mobile, a mobile marketing services startup based in the outskirts of Kansas City, raised $500K from a bunch of angel investors and was "incentivized by" the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation, a private/public partnership created by the state of Kansas to promote technology-based economic development and support local entrepreneurship. And it seems that they’re not the only ones rooting for Kansas startups, as Kickanotch Mobile today announced that it has raised another chunk of outside investment: A $1.1 million series A round led by 42 Ventures of Salt Lake City. The company said that it will use its new funding to expand its sales, marketing, and engineering teams, as well as accelerate the development of new features for its mobile platform. Kickanotch provides mobile application and mobile marketing platform services to allow its clients, which include TV broadcasters, radio stations, publishers and corporations, a way to increase brand exposure and better utilize mobile revenue channels and consumer engagement opportunities. Brands can take advantage of its mobile marketing and monetization applications and platform management SaaS without having to involve developers or spend a lot of time worrying about marketing spend. The startup has built a mobile platform that includes native apps for all major devices, as well as an easy to use control panel, analytics dashbord, and an ad delivery solution all under one roof. Its newly launched “REVkick platform” does exactly this, giving clients an online web control panel to manage campaigns, track user data, and manage web content in realtime. The startup has some competition in the mobile advertising space, but its solution has already drawn more than 50 broadcast, publishing and corporate brands and its media partners' apps have been downloaded in more than 100 countries with user growth consistently doubling month over month. The team thinks that its newly launched features, like mobile analytics, lead tracking, and sponsorship marquees can drive significant boosts in mobile ad revenue, while the ability to engage mobile users with social features, deals, and "free, we hate spam" offers, can drive 3-times the engagement of current solutions. For more on Kickanotch’s mobile apps, check ‘em out here. Kickanotch mobile provides broadcasting, publishing and corporate organizations advanced, efficient and easy-to-use mobile marketing and monetization applications and platform management SaaS. Kickanotch custom applications increase adverting sales and profits and target consumers on virtually any mobile device.
|
| Kevin Rose’s Oink Hits The App Store Posted: 03 Nov 2011 01:42 PM PDT  Oink, the first app from Milk, Kevin Rose’s startup lab is now available in iTunes. Oink is an app that lets you rate things at different places, and uses social reputation to help others figure out who to trust about what topics. Rose gave a preview of Oink a couple weeks ago at the Web 2.0 Summit. At the time, I wrote:
Okay, I am off to see Kevin Rose to get a demo. Try out the app and let me know what you think. Update: the full app is invite-only, but you can check out most of the features without an invite. Milk will be letting in thousands of people a day. Milk is a mobile development lab founded by Kevin Rose, Jeff Hodsdon, and Daniel Burka. Milk has announced its first mobile app, Oink, to be released this fall. Person: Kevin Rose Website: kevinrose.com Kevin Rose is an angel investor and serial entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder of Milk and previously the founder of Digg and WeFollow. Rose also co-founded Revision3, and Pownce (acquired by Six Apart). In addition, Rose is also the co-host of the tech news podcast Diggnation and founder of Foundation, a private newsletter and podcast.
|
| Hands-On With The HTC Rezound For Verizon: Fat And Fast Posted: 03 Nov 2011 01:28 PM PDT  With leaks galore and this afternoon’s announcement, there’s not much reason to rehash HTC Rezound deets. So I’ll just cut to the chase and hit you guys with some first impressions. As you must already know, the Rezound touts a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and was snappy enough to prove it. Combined with 1GB of RAM and Verizon’s 4G LTE network, that speedy little processor offered up one of the smoothest experiences I’ve had with Gingerbread. And even better, the Rezound will ship Ice Cream Sandwich-ready, with an update to be released “early next year.” I never experienced any hiccups, though there was a very slight slow down with a handful of apps running at once. HTC’s Sense UI happens to be one of my favorites (if forced to choose between manufacturer skins), but many of you may still want to ditch HTC’s UI for something a little more vanilla. The 4.3-inch 720p display is just the right size, as HTC clearly isn’t concerned with the “giant screen” trend we’re seeing from its competitors. But that’s good news. If resolution and pixel density is up to snuff, there’s no real reason for a 4.5-inch screen, unless of course you’re a hardcore gamer. In that case, you may need a tad more screen real estate than the Rezound offers. Speaking of ignored trends, the HTC Rezound is much heftier than some of the smartphones it’ll be lined up against in-store, including the world’s thinnest smartphone, the Droid RAZR. That said, it’s still a pretty slick phone, especially for those who lean toward the HTC design style. Super similar to the HTC Droid Incredible 2 in design, the phone sports a nice soft touch back panel, with a little textured patch in the middle for a better grip. Just like the HTC Rhyme sports a female-friendly purple casing, the Rezound seems to aim itself at the male demographic with a hefty helping of red on black. As far as the camera is concerned, the Rezound’s 8-megapixel shooter can get the job done, whatever that job is. We shot a little 1080p video and snapped a few shots with one of the tester units at HTC’s media event in New York City, and quality was right on par with what the specs promise. Sense also brings some fun into the camera app, offering up Action Burst, Instant Capture, and Panorama options, along with other cool effects and photo editing tools. In fact, you can even shoot video or pictures with the effect already applied in the view finder, just to make sure you don’t miss that special moment by applying the wrong effect. Oh, and if that weren’t enough, the Rezound’s camera can play back 1080p video in slow motion. Thanks to the deal between HTC and Beats by Dre audio, the Rezound packs Beats audio support which includes a pair of Beats earbuds and a special Beats profile that boosts bass and volume when toggled on. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical over whether or not Beats would make a big difference, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the Rezound and its audio quality. I was really able to hear those low notes in a way that’s lacking on my iPhone and other phones I’ve tested, and anyone who’s all about the tunes will surely appreciate Beats integration. The HTC Rezound will be available on November 14 with an on-contract price of $299.99. HTC Corp, (TAIEX: 2498) produces smartphones running the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems for themselves and as an OEM to other manufacturers. Since launching its own brand in late 2006, the company has introduced dozens of HTC-branded products around the world. The company recently introduced the HTC diamond to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, Chairwoman, and Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC made its name as the company behind many of the...
|
| Meet Verizon’s New HTC Rezound Posted: 03 Nov 2011 12:46 PM PDT  The HTC Rezound (formerly the Vigor) has been on our radar for what seems like forever now, but we're here in New York City for HTC's big event, and they have just officially pulled back the curtains on their next Gingerbread-powered smartphone. Fear not though, Ice Cream Sandwich fans: the Rezound will ship ready for Ice Cream Sandwich, and HTC and Verizon are aiming to push it to the Rezound early next year. One of the first things you notice about the Rezound that it bucks the recent trend of super-slim smartphones. It's not terribly thick, but it easily makes devices like the Droid Razr and the Galaxy Nexus look downright skeletal in comparison. Fortunately, the Rezound's edges taper pretty dramatically, so it feels much less bulky than it looks. It takes more than few design cues from the Droid Incredible family too, right down to the red accents and the translucent red body under the battery cover. To make up for the heftier body, HTC saw fit to fill the Rezound to the brim with some impressive innards. The Rezound is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM, which should be plenty for power users to enjoy. It comes with 16GB of internal storage, and the truly media hungry can take solace in the fact that it can also comes with a preloaded 16GB microSD card. As expected, the Rezound also sports a sizable (but not overly so) 4.3-inch 720p display. Just above the screen is a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, and around the back (just above the funky textured finish) there sits an 8-megapixel camera with an f/2.2 lens and a dual LED flash. HTC has tried to address some of the flaky camera issues that have appeared in early HTC devices, and added new functionality like panorama support and action burst modes. The camera is also capable of shooting video in 1080p, so mobile cinematographers should have a little bit of fun with it. Like the Thunderbolt before it, the Rezound is a Verizon LTE device, so people lucky enough to live within Verizon's 4G coverage area should be able to enjoy some pretty snappy network performance. Fortunately, after having seen how lackluster their first LTE phone's battery was, HTC has outfitted the Rezound with a 1,620 mAh battery for a little extra longevity. Since we're talking about HTC here, the Rezound also features the latest version of the Sense UI over Android 2.3. We’ve seen it before on devices like the Sensation and the Rhyme, and while it adds a pretty layer of paint to the UI, ardent Android fans may still swap it out in favor of a more basic approach. If you happened to miss the Beats logo on the device’s backside, the Rezound is the first HTC device in the U.S. to feature Beats Audio. HTC’s Beats Audio functionality consists of two major components: a pair of included Beats earbuds, and a special audio profile on the phone. Once the headphones are plugged in, the Beats audio profile automatically kicks in, and plays with the sound output to give it some extra oomph over the pack-in cans. All things considered, HTC may have a holiday winner here. It's not the slimmest, sleekest device you'll ever see, but it packs plenty of horsepower and enough nifty frills that it will probably top many a geek's wishlist. You’ll be able to pick up a Rezound from Verizon Wireless or Best Buy on November 14, with a $299 pricetag.
|
| Siri Experiencing Extended Outage Posted: 03 Nov 2011 11:55 AM PDT  Maybe we need a new website, IsSiriDownForEveryoneOrJustForMe.com, because it looks like Siri is experiencing an extended outage, according to several tipsters, tweets, and our own internal tests. When you try to use Siri on the iPhone 4S right now, the usually perky virtual assistant just responds: “Sorry, I am having trouble connecting to the network” and does nothing. According to iSmashPhone, who spotted this news first, people are beginning to tweet about the Siri outage, but folks seem to be usure as to whether or not they’re the only ones experiencing the issue. It appears that the service, for some at least, has been down for a good part of the day. Granted, Siri is still a beta product – and this is what happens to beta products – but when Apple promotes Siri as one of the best and OMG-gotta-have-it new features of its latest device through its cloying newTV ads, it’s worth noticing when the service doesn’t quite deliver as promised. Follow @martinbowling@martinbowling Martin Bowling My Siri hasn't been working most of the day anyone else notice her being down? Follow @robertcarlsen@robertcarlsen Robert Carlsen Siri is down for me…instead of unhelpful error messages, voice transcription is silently failing. Nice. Follow @gbailey@gbailey Gerald Bailey Wow, is Siri down? I keep getting the message that it cannot connect to the network. Reboot didn't help either. Follow @davidfine@davidfine David Fine Siri is not working well for me right now. Can't even process this simple request. Servers must be down for NYC: http://t.co/IFD4g1LO Follow @ismashphone@ismashphone Siri Outage: Is Siri Down?: It seems that Siri is down. Accoridng to some of the tweets we've been reading, peop… bit.ly/rHwik7 Update: Given that we don’t know how long today’s outage will last, I’m going to remove “first” from the headline until we have some hard data on the length.
|
| EMI Presses Play On Digital Innovation; Opens Its Catalog To App Developers Posted: 03 Nov 2011 08:42 AM PDT  The music industry industry has taken some questionable stances on digital technology over the years. To call it resistant to change probably wouldn’t be stepping too far out of line. That’s why, as music fans, we love to hear about cases in which the music industry demonstrates forward thinking and proactively constructs policy that takes new technologies and distribution media into account. Maybe it’s unfair to paint the entire industry with a single stroke, but if this is true of any part of the industry, it’s traditionally been true of the major record labels. The good news is that EMI, one of the big four, is taking some laudable steps to open its vault of music. The record label has teamed up with The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform whose technology powers a number of music apps from big media companies to indy developers, to create an initiative that will put thousands of its songs and other music-related content (video, photos, and artwork, for example) into the hands of more than 10,000 app developers. According to Echo Nest’s release, the collaboration represents one of the most extensive collections of licensed music to be made available in this way, giving developers a one-stop destination to create cool digital products for EMI’s artists. Traditionally, the labels haven’t played nice with the developer community, bleeding them dry on licensing fees or shutting them out altogether. EMI has an amazing stock of content that is typically very difficult for third-parties to access without jumping through a ton of hoops or involving someone’s lawyer. But not anymore. The new partnership is part of the record label’s OpenEMI initiative, which is focused on digital innovation and improving music licensing processes for new digital apps in a way that is flexible and adaptive for developers. Basically, it’s focusing on letting developers bring their products directly to market, without the requisite hoop-jumping. Man, this kind of stuff should be the norm for music labels, but just the fact that a major record label has created an initiative like this is enough to make me want to stand up and cheer. As part of the new initiative, Echo Nest and EMI have created a sandbox that offers developers creative briefs and a chance to play around in EMI’s bullpen of about 12,000 songs. Only 2K of these are from the general catalog, but precleared content will be offered from artists like Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys, Professor Green, and several more. The pair have also worked out a standardized fee for these songs, which will see the label take 60 percent of net revenue, with the remaining 40 percent split between Echo Nest and developers, though Echo Nest says that developers should see the majority of that money. As to what will come out of this partnership, that remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a great start for developers looking to get legal, painless access to a great pool of music. Granted, if developers want to play with music outside of the EMI catalog, they’re out of luck, but if EMI can continue to approve more songs, this could have the potential for the development of some cool apps. Probably won’t see a Spotify or a Pandora, but really anything is better than nothing. The Echo Nest is a music intelligence company that connects the greatest application developers to the best data and music to enable the next generation of music experiences. Powered by the world's only machine learning system that actively reads about and listens to music everywhere on the web. The Echo Nest opens up a massive repository of dynamic music data to application developers ranging from one-person operations to multinational corporations. In addition to the most advanced music application development... The EMI Group is a British music company. It’s comprised of EMI Music (based in London) and EMI Music Publishing (based in New York). EMI Music is considered one of the “big four” record companies.
|
| Android Still Most Popular Smartphone OS, iOS Holds Steady In Second Place Posted: 03 Nov 2011 07:54 AM PDT  According to new data from Nielsen, Android has continued to pick up steam in the United States, and retains its crown as the most-used smartphone OS during Q3 2011. Google’s mobile OS now accounts for 43% of U.S. smartphones, up from the 39% we saw back in July. Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, has remained lock-steady at 28% this whole time, putting it at a distant second. Despite their lack of growth on the software front, Apple still rules the roost when it comes to hardware. Apple’s iPhones are used by a full 28% of all smartphone customers, making them the top manufacturer for yet another quarter. Meanwhile, use of RIM’s BlackBerry OS has slowly begun to slip: while it previously accounted for 20% of the smartphone OS market, it now accounts for 18%. Certainly not a drastic dip, but the Q3 report doesn’t take into account some of the more recent unpleasantness that the folks in Waterloo have been dealing with. Surprisingly, Windows Phone’s adoption rate seems to have slowed down as well, as it now only accounts for 7% of smartphones, down from the 9% figure we saw last time. Microsoft and Nokia certainly aim to change that come next year, but we’ll soon see how well their grand designs pan out. The Q3 results are definitely interesting, but I think the Q4 report is really the one to look out for. New hardware (and OS) announcements are coming at a blistering pace, and it’ll be a hoot to see how the landscape changes after the holiday retail wars have come and gone.
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch » Mobile To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
