Via Apple 2.0, online advertising network Chitika now estimates that more than 600,000 iPads have been sold, doubling first day sales as reported by Apple (s aapl) on Monday. If this rate continues, Apple will likely sell its millionth iPad before both the international and 3G iPad launch.
Less than a week after the iPad launch, Apple has sent out media invitations for a “sneak peek of the next generation of iPhone OS software.” The event will take place this Thursday, April 8, at 10:00 PST at the Town Hall on Apple’s Cupertino campus.
The latest report (PDF) from mobile advertising network AdMob has good news for the company’s parent firm, Google (s goog), but greats news for Google’s mobile rival Apple (s aapl).
For February, smartphone traffic share increased an astonishing 193 percent over the same period last year with a corresponding drop in feature phones. Half of that traffic belonged to Apple.
However, it should be noted those numbers aren’t market share, or web share, but ad share as measured by AdMob from data “pulled across ads served on more than 15,000 sites and applications,” half of which are from devices in North America.
Having disclosed all that, Apple is set to rule the mobile web. Just look at the graph and follow the thin blue line. Read More about Apple Dominates Mobile Internet Devices: Report
With the advent of Windows Phone Series 7, the highly competitive smartphone market looks to become hyper-competitive in 2010. While more choice is always good for consumers, for developers seeking a return on the investment of time and effort the right platform choice is crucial.
Windows Phone Series 7 remains largely an enigma for developers until the MIX conference next month. There will be a “marketplace” hub, but Series 7 will apparently not be compatible with Windows Mobile programs. Highly restricted multi-tasking appears similar to that in iPhone OS, and multi-touch will be required in Series 7, which is scheduled for release late this year.
But that’s then, and this is now. Colin Gibbs has prepared a report (subscription required) for GigaOm Pro on the seven leading mobile platforms to advise developers on which platforms are the right and wrong ones. Read More about A Developer’s Guide to Mobile Platforms
The iPhone OS is pitched as the entire Internet in your pocket…minus Flash. This works most of the time, but what if you just want to design a site or form that looks like a native iPhone App?
This is where iWebKit comes in. iWebKit is a free framework package for creating websites and applications that are optimized for the iPod Touch, iPhone & iPad. The bulk of the framework is CSS3 which can work its magic to makeover any dreadful site and make it look fresh.
I will be covering the web-form aspect of creating an optimized site, but iWebKit has many deeper features that can communicate directly with the OS. Its documentation is excellent, so dig around or check out the demo site on your iPhone to get inspiration.
When designing for the iPhone OS, you should use the iPhone simulator available in the SDK to get an idea of where your design is heading. You can also use Safari to get a pretty close representation, but nothing beats using a real physical device. It’s amazing how cool it feels and you really do get the impression it’s a native application. Read More about How-To: Create an iPhone Web App
Looking at data from web metrics firm Net Applications, the first month of the new year was not big news for Apple (s aapl). Both Mac OS X and Safari reached something of a plateau in market share, and the growth rate of iPhone OS slowed.
OS X peaked at 5.27 percent in October, which not coincidentally was the release month of Windows 7. Since then, OS X has more or less been stuck around 5 percent, and was 5.13 percent for January. It’s an open question whether this is stagnation or perseverance. Windows 7 upgrade churn is just one of two major factors working against OS X market share, the other being continued success of the netbook.
As for the breakdown between versions of OS X, Snow Leopard has been moving up about 4 percent a month for the last three months, and now stands at 35 percent of the OS X user base. That’s a faster upgrade rate than Leopard, and much faster than Windows 7, which just broke 10 percent. Read More about Market Share: OS X, Safari Flat; iPhone OS Slows in January
The last report for 2009 from web metrics firm Net Applications ends another solid year of growth for the iPhone OS. In contrast, Mac OS X appears to be flattening out at around five percent, while Chrome has officially passed Safari to become the third most popular web browser.
For December, the iPhone recorded the single largest monthly gain in market share since the device was introduced, jumping 20 percent from last month to 0.43 percent of the total OS market. While that may seem insignificant in terms of share, that spike fits in nicely with estimates of record-breaking iPhone sales for the holiday quarter. Those estimates range from 8.8 million to 11 million iPhones, and would smash last quarter’s record of 7.4 million iPhones sold. Read More about In December iPhone Jumps, OS X Plateaus, Safari Falls to Chrome
AdMob, the mobile advertising network, has released its latest metrics report (PDF), which looks at trends for the year. In 2009, one of those would be 150 percent growth for iPhone OS devices on AdMob’s network, with the greatest growth for the iPhone and iPod touch outside the U.S. While this is great news for the platform, it’s not quite the world domination the pretty charts suggest.
According to AdMob, there were 25.3 million unique iPhone OS users in their network in November, a unique user being one that has seen at least one ad request in a given month. That represents less than half the 60 million or so iPhone OS devices that have been sold, but it’s still a valid sample measuring change, change that favors Apple (s aapl), at least for now. Read More about iPhone and iPod Touch See International Surge
For October, OS X 10.6 and iPhone OS 3.0 continued to make incremental gains in market share, as did Safari. Unfortunately for the Apple (s aapl) web browser, Google’s (s goog) Chrome is gaining faster.
Compiling data from more than 160 million visitors to its worldwide network of sites, web metrics firm Net Applications has released numbers for the month. For web browsers, Internet Explorer still represents more than 60 percent of the market. That would be great for Microsoft (s msft), if it weren’t for the fact IE is down about 10 percent from a year ago and Firefox is up about 5 percent. Safari now stands at 4.4 percent, up from 4.24 percent in September, and 2.87 percent last year, and that’s great, but not as great as Chrome. Read More about Chrome to Pass Safari in Browser Market Share
A month after Apple (s aapl) made iPhone OS 3.1 available, version 3.1.2 for the iPhone and iPod touch can now be downloaded via iTunes.
Besides achieving version synchronicity (3.1.1 came with the 3G iPod touch), the update addresses issues with waking from sleep, cellular network disruption, and crashes while streaming video.
The most notable problem, the “iPhone coma” issue, resulted in some iPhones becoming unresponsive, touch controls not working, and phone not ringing when called. This required a hard reboot, but that was only a workaround. It’s still too early to tell whether 3.1.2 is a true fix for that pernicious issue. Read More about iPhone OS 3.1.2 Released
