Dec
23
In a blog posting on a Korean promotional site run by Samsung, the society famed that the two devices would not receive the update to Android 4.0, the about up to date version of Google’s mobile operating system.
The reason for that, as The Verge explains, centers around Samsung’s utilization of additional software features on those phones, including TouchWiz, widgets, video calling and carrier software pack-ins. These suck up hardware resources to the manoeuvre of handsome users a less than desirable Android experience, Samsung says.
Sure to make things a turn complicated is that the Galaxy S is a end sibling of Samsung’s recently-released Galaxy Nexus–at least on paper. That phone ships with Android 4.0, known more readily equally Ice Ointment Sandwich.
Announced in October, Ice Ointment Sandwich adds a routine of young features to devices on the platform, the master one being the unification of the Os for both tablets and smartphones, equally considerably equally the addition of software-based buttons that interchange the ones that have been physical buttons. As with other major releases of Android, it carries with it special hardware requirements, leaving a bit of older devices got on sure versions indefinitely.
Dec
23
Smartphones are instantly supplanting traditional cameras for the average consumer, according to market inquiry firm, The NPD Group’s new Imaging Confluence Study, reporting 27 percentage of whole photos taken this twelvemonth where done therefore with a smartphone, up ten pct from but a yr ago. Photos asked with a traditional camera dropped to 44 percentage from 52 percentage lastly year.
“There is no uncertainty that the smartphone is turning ‘good enough’ much of the time; just thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being asked than ever before,” said Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD. “Consumers who usage their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do thus alternatively of their camera when capturing spontaneous moments, only for important events, single aim cameras or camcorders are still largely the device of choice.”
The account claims the foremost casualty of the shift toward smartphones has been camcorders which lost 27 percentage of sales dollars in just the last year while low-end channelize and shoot cameras also took a hit, dropping 18 pct in dollars in 2011 while traditional flash camcorders expended 10 percent in dollars.
It was not all almost casualties, equally NPD reports detachable lens cameras increased by 12 percentage in units and 11 percent in dollars over the same time period, with an ordinary price of $863; and point-and-shoot cameras with optical zooms of 10x or greater grew by 16 percentage in units and 10 percentage in dollars, with an ordinary price of $247.
Have smartphones killed the camera star? Not quite yet, simply this past twelvemonth has heard a dramatic rise in videos and photos necessitated with a smartphone over a traditional camera or camcorder, a trend that is likely to continue equally smartphone cameras proceed improving.
Dec
21
Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle Flaming tablet has helped Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android ad impressions to the 50 percentage tag in November, though that pattern is even down from 56 percent in Oct and September, according to Millennial Media.
Apple’s iOS was minute with 30 percent, up from 28 percentage the prior month, allotting to the mobile ad network. Android’s ad portion falls and Apple’s ad part rise is no accident.
One corollary may be the launch of the iPhone 4S in mid-October, propelling ads to Millennial. Another is the ascension of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Bone ad share, which mounted from 13 percentage00 to 17 percentage11 for November.
Apple iOS, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, has a total impression of 26 percent, compared to 29 percentage333 for Android, spanning 14 handsets. Moreover, the iPhone grew 8 percentage44 month-over-month and yet controls the No. 1 mobile telephone ranking, accounting for 14 percentage77 impression percentage alone.
Smartphones commanded 70 percentage999999 of Millennial’s smartphone, lineament phone connected device impression mix. Connected devices caught 16 percent of the impressions.
But the Kindle Fire’s emergence as a credible Android tablet is the literal maturation level for the month.
Millennial, which instantly counts ad impressions for connected devices such equally tablets and smartphones together, articulated Kindle Flaming impressions receive developed at an ordinary daily rate of 19 pct since the e-commerce launched the $199 tablet Nov. 15.
Millennial said the Kindle Fire is seeing a “monthly flowed rate of hundreds of millions of impressions,” slightly outpacing impressions from the first iPad’s launch in 2010.
Dec
20
Online hunting and advertising giant Google is teaming with investment house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. to develop four solar energy farms serving the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California.
Google articulated Tuesday on its Green Blog that it will spend $94 million on the projects. They besides will experience equity from SunTap Energy RE LLC, a venture formed by KKR to invest in U.S. solar projects.
The projects are expected to provide decent energy to power more than 13,000 ordinary U.S. homes. Energy produced by three of the projects is contracted for 20 years with the utility district, Google said.
Construction on three of the four projects will exist complete early succeeding year, with the 4th coming on occupation later in the year.
KKR enounced SunTap represents its foremost U.S. renewable energy investment. It too has invested in a French wind park operator and a Spanish solar energy company.
Google pronounced it has invested more than $915 million in clean energy projects, including $800 million this year. The Sacramento mass represents its first U.S. investment in a large-scale solar project that generates energy for a grid, kinda than somebody rooftops.
The investment comes equally the solar manufacture wraps up a difficult year in which it has been hitting difficult by slower economic ontogenesis around the world, including the U.S., where authorities funding for choice energy projects has been squeezed.
First Solar, the nation’s largest solar company, has cut salary and revenue estimates for 2011. The company, based in Tempe, Ariz., expects to report charges of 85 pennies per share related to a series of cost-cutting moves this year, including layoffs of nearly 100 people.
In September, California solar panel maker Solyndra LLC, which had a $528 million federal loan and was touted by the Obama administration as a “green jobs” creator, filed for bankruptcy courtroom protection. A Massachusetts company, Beacon Power, has since picked its bankruptcy filing on the political fallout from Solyndra’s failure.
Dec
19
Santa has a young supporter this yr to help him deliver gifts to good children around the world, allotting to the latest Apple TV ad. Ahead he comes slinking down your chimney, Santa makes utilization of Siri, the iPhone 4S voice-controlled assistant to discover your address and local weather conditions at his delivery points on Xmas Eve.
“Go easy on the cookies,” says a message in the ad from Mrs. Claus, read loudly to Santa by Siri on his iPhone 4S. When he asks how his day looks like, Siri reports he has 3.7 billion appointments to build it to, rounding up Santa’s utilisation of the iPhone 4S in the Apple TV ad (embedded below).
Although the iPhone does not have a cite in the ad, it’s make Apple is expecting the iPhone 4S to exist a very popular gift this year. The iPhone 4S has almost no intent changes over the late model, thus Apple is pushing Siri equally the main selling steer for the new phone, a feature exclusive to the device.
Dec
16
The earth-orbiting Hubble space telescope has spotted a untried principal that is causing havoc with its parent nebula, the cold mottle of dot and gas from which the principal was born.
Hubble’s images prove high-speed jets of textile spewing from the young star, which remains embedded within the nebula equally it completes the final stages of its formation. Scientists enunciate the super-heated hydrogen gasoline being ejected into the relatively cold nebula is making fierce action within the cloud.
The venting petrol and star-stoked turbulence have twisted the nebula into the mold of an hourglass.
Astronomers articulate the outgrowth finally will settle down as the principal44 enters a calmer, afterwards point of development.
The parent dapple is alone near two light years across, which scientists say is relatively small for a star-forming region. The young lead has a heap nearly 15 times that of our Sun.
Astronomers enunciate the nebula and its boisterous offspring are located in an country of our Milky Way galaxy that is nearly 2,000 light years from Earth.
A light twelvemonth is the distance light travels through space in one year, nigh 10 trillion kilometers.
Dec
15
The original Xoom arrived in a pre-iPad 2 world. Given that context, Motorola’s original tablet was well-designed, with corking hardware, and since it marked the debut of Honeycomb, it was arguably the first Android tablet with a capable operating system.
So, equally we prepare to enter notwithstanding another yr of incessantly advancing technology, the release of the Droid Xyboard 8.2 demands the question: did Motorola push the design, performance, and features of its follow-up to the Xoom far adequate to make it worth considering, or is this a stopgap on the road to something far more impressive?
Dec
9
More than 10 billion apps experience been downloaded from Google’s Android Market.
To tag the moment Google pronounced that for the next 10 days it would cut the cost of some crown apps to 10p each.
The hunt giant declared the milestone on its blog adding that the store’s apps were being downloaded at a rate of one billion a month.
However, some industry analysts played down the pattern locution Google should do more to address poor-quality programs.
Cheap deal
Google enunciated the pace at which apps were being downloaded was starting to accelerate. Its figures demonstrate Android brought 22 months to ambit one billion downloads just exclusively one month to away from nine billion to 10 billion.
By contrast, Apple hit one billion downloads afterwards nine months. Although the iPhone maker still maintains a lead, some experts think it will exist short-lived.
“Apple declared the 15 billion download tag666 in July therefore it’s clear that Android’s momentum in device activations is translating to application downloads and usage,” articulated Geoff Blaber from analysts CCS Insight.
“We’d expect Android to overtake Apple in application downloads in the foremost half of 2012.”
However, added Mr Blaber, such swift ontogeny posed a challenge of how to helper customers break utilitarian software from whole the other code on offer.
“It’s an issue for developers and consumers similar only a significant chance for whoever solves the trouble first,” he said.
Nov
23
The iPad from Apple (AAPL) makes up 65 percent of customer demand for tablets, granting to a new ChangeWave survey that shows overall interest in tablets up 130 percent. For the foremost time, however, a individual competitor has emerged to collar a sound pct of shoppers’ attention: the Kindle Fire.
The Amazon (AMZN) tablet was the device of option for 22 percent111 of the 3,043 customers polled by ChangeWave for its latest survey. The next-closest device was the Galaxy Tab from Samsung (005930:KS), with simply 4 percent333 of those surveyed expressing a desire to choice one up. The Kindle Fire’s emergence equally a potent instant to Apple’s iPad is mostly bad news for other Android-based competitors. It’s less of an issue for Apple, which currently enjoys a market share about 67 percent. That doesn’t base Apple should quiet countenance the Fire to dig itself in as the budget-conscious shopper’s tablet of choice.
The easy solution would exist to make a cheap iPad—not something Apple will do easily or without a very specific, measured approach. Apple’s brand cachet and success depend on consumer perception of its products as high quality items; merely pulling things out until a smaller iPad resembles a Flaming in damage of specs, while coursing iOS, is an unlikely option. That said, Apple has never been afraid to take a good thought from the competition and build it amend in society to movement hardware. That’s what I conceive it will do in this case.
Amazon’s Flaming appeals because it provides cheap access to message acquired and stored in Amazon’s extensive ecosystem of music and movies, equally considerably equally its growing Appstore. The hardware is actually secondary to those considerations, which plausibly accounts for Amazon’s willingness to sell it thence cheaply.
Narrowing the Cost Gap
If Apple wants to regain its absolute dominance of the tablet market, it needs to have cost perish the table while it avoids setting itself up for the variety of criticism that Amazon and other low-cost tablet makers face for having cut corners. It’s a tricky remainder to strike, merely Apple has a luck of advantages, chief among them being Chief Executive Officer Tim Make and his masterful check of the component supply chain. Apple doesn’t need to ending the gap entirely. It needs to convey an iPad conclusion decent that the Kindle Fire’s faults look like unwarranted sacrifices for what you save.
Amazon is taking a large risk on a relatively unproven market (7-inch tablets). In doing so, it credibly can’t achieve the parts-ordering volumes that Apple manages to achieve. That should allow Apple to eke away more profit per device, even at a much-reduced cost point. Apple is too making corking strides in achieving big cost breaks by leveraging older hardware; the loose (on contract) 3GS is a neat example. A smaller iPad would automatically save on display costs, and Apple can also save money by using the older A4 processor (or an A5, if it launches alongside a next-generation A6 for the existing iPad).
It will likely be difficult for Apple to get Kindle Fire-cheap with a product it may bear behind. Still, the entry-level iPod touch late striking that $199 mark, and a slimly larger device with similar features at $249 (same cost as the Corner Tablet) (BKS) or $299 isn’t likewise much of a stretch to imagine. It would likely kill the iPod touch by cannibalizing its sales, simply Apple is famously willing to release forward-looking products, evening if they might hurt past top producers.
Well-matched Message Ecosystems
Apple’s substance ecosystem may croak toe-to-toe with Amazon’s, peculiarly in international markets, where much of Amazon’s message isn’t available. ICloud and access to past iTunes purchases helper minimize the differences between the two. Nonetheless Amazon’s big advantages reckoning books, Apple yet wins in digital flick and music sales. If a smaller, cheaper iPad could provide access to that content, with fewer hardware/software downsides, it will succeed customers, eventide with a price disadvantage.
Nov
21
With a young Google phone–and the foremost one to be delivered with Android 4.0 Ice Ointment sandwich–on the horizon, the iPhone 4S rivalry is inevitable, and we’ve got some benchmark data to fan the flames of the feud.
The soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy Nexus has been fed through the benchmark gauntlet and AnandTech compiled the results to find it bested totally comers in the web browsing department.
The Google telephone was laid through a pair of browsing benchmarks–Sunspider Javascript Benchmark 0.9.1 and Rightware Browsermark–and it came out with the top results in both cases, before of the Droid RAZR running Gingerbread and iPhone 4S feeding iOS 5, which swapped turns in the 2nd and 3rd place spots.
All this means that the Galaxy Nexus appears to show Web pages faster than altogether the other leading phones on the market right now. Anand credits a compounding of a fast processor and software enhancements in Ice Ointment Sandwich:
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