China’s Alibaba outlined aggressive plans to push its mobile operating system in the world’s biggest smartphone market. That could spell trouble for Google, whose Android platform runs on a whopping 90 percent of China’s smartphones.
Google, Apple and Samsung get all of the attention in the mobile patent wars, but only one of them is a true powerhouse in terms of mobile intellectual property. Samsung, along with Nokia, lead the overall mobile patent portfolio rankings, according to a new study.
Moving photos from your iPhone to your Mac can actually involve many steps and input from a user. But you can also set up wireless, automatic background syncing to a destination on your Mac of your choice, with a $2 app and some quick initial setup.
IOS platform competitors take note: Indie iOS dev Chris Eidhof has posted a list of the main reasons why a new developer finds Apple’s mobile OS such an attractive prospect. It’s a nice snapshot of what attracts new dev talent to iOS in the first place.
A new survey by GPS mobile apps developer TeleNav tries to gauge the American mobile obsession, especially among iPhone users. Findings of that survey are fun and somewhat surprising and have been summed up in this nifty infographic that is good for a giggle.
Android and iOS phones lead the world, but Alibaba thinks China can use another smartphone OS. The Aliyun platform is a cloud OS that’s also runs Android apps. China still has massive room for smartphone growth, so the device may actually have a chance to succeed.
The iOS 5 beta pot is still simmering, with Apple today releasing the third edition of its mobile platform, along with a corresponding new beta of iTunes 10.5. Here’s a quick peek at the most notable new fixes, updates and issues in the latest software version.
Nokia this morning announced that it is ousting embattled CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in favor of Stephen Elop, who will leave his post as head of Microsoft’s Business Division. As Kevin at GigaOM.com noted, the move underscores Nokia’s longtime effort to expand beyond building hardware into the business of software and services. That’s a wise strategy, obviously, but Nokia has lost tremendous ground while its competitors have gained momentum over the last couple years. Elop will have to be both a brilliant visionary and a strong leader if he is to make Nokia a major player again.
Hewlett-Packard has no plans to move aggressively into the smartphone business following its $1.2 billion pickup of Palm, CEO Mark Hurd said last week. That’s too bad, because the pieces are in place for HP to become a major player in smartphones.
The good news continued to roll in for Android this morning with Millennial Media’s claim that ad requests from Google’s mobile OS grew 77 percent from March to April and have risen a whopping 282 percent since January. That news comes on the heels of Gartner’s report that Android owned 9.6 percent of the worldwide mobile OS market in the first quarter of 2010, up dramatically from a meager 1.6 percent during the year-ago period. Millennial provides insight to just a piece of the market, of course, and its figures shouldn’t be taken as an accurate snapshot of the industry as a whole. But it’s a major player in the mobile ad space, and its data is just the latest piece of evidence that Android continues to build momentum.
