BlackBerry World kicked off in Florida today, where RIM finally gave us a peek behind the veil of its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system. Almost immediately, the Canadian handset maker was criticized for not innovating enough, with BB10 described as shades of the late, great webOS and having more in common with iOS and Android than Microsoft's Windows Phone, which may be the only hope mobile users have for a refreshing new OS. Ready for the rest of the day's news? Then read on to find out what's making headlines for Tuesday, May 1, 2012.
IDC: Samsung Tops Mobile Phone Shipments for Q1 2012
Nokia, you've been dethroned: New data from IDC reveals that Samsung is now the top dog where total mobile phone and smartphone shipments are concerned, with 42.2 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter of the year for a 29.1 percent share of the market. That's a huge improvement from the same quarter a year ago when the Korean electronics giant shipped only 11.5 million devices, a whopping 267 percent year-over-year change. The bad news continues for Nokia, because Apple is resting nicely in second place with 35.1 smartphones shipped, an 88.7 percent increase over the same period last year with 18.6 million. So where does that leave Nokia? Solidly in third place, with a mere 11.9 million smartphones shipped, a 50.8 percent drop from the 24.2 million it shipped in the same quarter a year ago. Painful, but at least they're holding their own against fourth-placed Research in Motion and fifth-placed HTC.
Jolicloud Social Index Service Arrives on App Store
Social networking apps seem to be a dime a dozen, but few of them actually make an effort to collect all of your various photos, videos, music, documents and links under one roof. Jolicloud wants to be the answer to this dilemma, and this week the company has rolled out their official iPhone app to aid in this task. The service indexes everything you have created, liked or received from popular online services such as Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, Flicker, Instagram and more, then automatically builds a personal and searchable library of this content. "Explore and search your personal cloud like never before," the company explains. "Your Jolicloud is entirely searchable so you can find a document you shared on your Facebook wall a year ago or a Twitter link you absolutely need for a presentation." Best of all, the service and the app are free, so check it out!
RIM Reveals BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha with Test Device
Research in Motion kicked off BlackBerry World 2012 earlier today, where CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage to show off a few features of the long-awaited BlackBerry 10. The general consensus seems to be that the new QNX-based platform is too little, too late and fails to offer a truly unique difference from iOS or Android. The Verge has compiled a plethora of notes on the gathering, where developers received temporary hardware to begin working on their apps for the eventual release later this year. But will developers bite? RIM is rumored to be laying some cash on the table in an effort to woo developers into the fold, which includes a guarantee that they'll make at least $10,000 in the first year on "certified" BlackBerry 10 apps -- if that fails to happen, the company will cut the developer a check for the difference. With Microsoft finally stepping up their Windows Phone game as a viable third platform, is there any left for RIM? Remains to be seen...
Apple Releases Minor Updates to Cards, iLife for iOS Apps
While The Financial Times may be heading out of the App Store, Apple is busy today updating its iLife apps. iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand all received minor updates today, ranging from adding a Copy Link button to iPhoto's iCloud journal publishing feature to accessing Help while editing an iMovie project on the iPad and a trio of bug fixes for GarageBand. Also on the update list is Cards, which adds beautiful letterpress cards for Mother's Day, new Get Well card designs, additional cards for birthdays, thank you and other events and improved accuracy for envelope address verification. The iLife updates are pretty beefy, so you might want to download while your internet connection is idle. You know where to find 'em, right?
Financial Times Finally Abandoning iOS for HTML5
PaidContent is reporting that The Financial Times is leaving the iOS platform, effectively killing off its apps in favor of an HTML5 portal where they have more control over subscriptions. The move shouldn't come as a surprise, since the publisher pulled the iOS app from the App Store last year, but it continued to be usable for existing subscribers. "Now, however, the FT will render the iOS app unusable by its remaining users over the next month, as it completes its HTML5 migration," the report reveals. "It is taking the step because only a relative handful of users remain and because it can no longer continue to maintain features inside the app." Could Apple soon see more such defections from its popular App Store?
Follow this article's author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
(Image courtesy of CrackBerry.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment