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Every iPhone ever made uses a ‘totally wrong’ formula to show signal strength, says Apple, after antenna complaints

Apple has confessed that it has discovered that every iPhone uses the wrong formula to calculate how strong a signal it is receiving – meaning that it seems to show good reception when the signal is weak. It has promised a software fix for the problem “within a few weeks” which will match that used in other phones.

The explanation, in which the company says it used “totally wrong” calculations to work out the strength of the signal, seems to explain why some people have complained to the company that they see a dramatic dropoff in the signal strength displayed when they hold the iPhone 4 in a particular way. Within hours of the phone being delivered to customers last month, dozens had posted videos on YouTube showing that the number of “bars” indicating reception strength fell abruptly when they picked the phone up from a desk.

Apple says in a press release on its site that it was “surprised” after the launch of the phone to read reports of reception problems, especially those who reported that the signal strength dropped completely – from five “bars” (the strongest reception) to none when held in a way that covers the antenna on the bottom of the phone.

But after getting “hundreds of emails from users” and seeing articles about the problem, it took the phones back to its laboratories – and discovered, it says, that it has been measuring signal strength wrongly since the very first iPhone, in a development it calls “simple and surprising”.

The company explains: “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays two more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display four bars when we should be displaying as few as two bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying four or five bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.”

That would mean that the apparently strong reception that vanished when the phone was picked up was a mirage – and that the abrupt falloff was because the signal strength dipped below the normal levels for a lower range of bars.

The review site Anandtech investigated the iPhone 4′s reception earlier this week, and found that there is comparatively little difference between the signal strength needed to get four “bars” and one: a difference of 12 decibels’ signal strength is enough to boost the apparent reception from one to four bars. A difference of 10dB is equivalent to a tenfold difference in the power of the signal, and a 3dB difference equates to a factor of two in the signal power.

Other phones use different measures to indicate signal strength: different versions of RIM’s BlackBerry, for example, will show only two bars out of five with a signal strength of -80dB – which would be enough on the iPhone to show five bars.

Apple says it intends to fix the problem with a software update which will mean that the displayed signal strength matches the formula recommended by AT&T, the sole phone provider for iPhones in the US. There is no comment yet from UK phone providers as to whether the formula they recommend for signal strength is the same as AT&T’s. Nor is AT&T’s measurement system available online: the phrase “recommended formula” does not appear in any of its developer documentation, and an AT&T representative said that “You will need to speak to Apple about its letter.”

But Apple insists that the iPhone 4′s wireless performance is “the best we have ever shipped” and that for the vast majority of users, “this software update will only make your bars more accurate”.

The company is facing a class action in the US from angry buyers of the iPhone 4 who have complained that Apple knew about the issues with the antennas before the phone was released. The company has not yet responded to the lawsuit, though in its letter it points out that dissatisfied customers can return their phones for a refund.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Introduced in April as the result of the Danger acquisition, the Kin phones are already history and will not be sold in Europe. Now everything hinges on Windows Phone

Microsoft has taken the Kin – a shell-shaped mobile that emerged from its purchase of the Danger brand – out to the back and shot it.

Slow sales in the US mean that it’s not going to be released in Europe (sorry, Windows Mobile fans) and that instead Microsoft is going to focus on Windows Phone 7, its upcoming revision to its entire mobile operating system.

In a statement to CNet News, which got the story first, Microsoft said “We have made the decision to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7 and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned… Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones.”

The Kin had a lot of advertising behind it in the US, including TV, web, print and radio ads. But it didn’t make any difference.

The Kin was unveiled only in April, to be sold through Verizon in the US and slated for Vodafone in the UK in Europe in the autumn.

Among the elements that were being pushed by Microsoft as putting the Kin ahead of the pack were “deep social networking integration”. However, it was never part of the main thrust of Microsoft’s mobile strategy, which now revolves around the as-yet unreleased Windows Phone.

Michael Gartenberg, a consumer analyst, said he suspected part of the reason for the poor sales was Verizon’s data pricing plans.

The Kin was part of a project being run within Microsoft called Pink, which was developed in parallel to the Windows Phone 7 project, whose products are scheduled to be released later this year.

However Microsoft’s decision to kill the Kin means that for now it will struggle even further to maintain market share in the smartphone market, where it has been losing out to Apple’s iPhone and especially to Google’s Android platform, while Nokia has maintained its lead, with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, holding its own in second place.

The Kin devices, which had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, were made by Sharp, but Microsoft determined the software, online services and hardware.

At the unveiling in April, Patrick Chomet, group director of terminals at Vodafone, said “Kin has a unique and intuitive way of engaging with the user, enabling them easily to share experiences and stay in touch with their friends.”

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(Source The Guardian)

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Chief executive Steve Jobs hails ‘most successful launch in Apple’s history’ despite reported problems over phone reception

Apple says it sold 1.7m iPhone 4s in its first three days, a record for the newest version of its top-selling product, and the company could have sold more but for production constraints. The latest model features video calling and an updated body, although some users have reported problems with reception, apparently due to a design flaw.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, called the iPhone 4′s launch “the most successful in Apple’s history” but added: “We apologise to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Research in the US by the analysts Piper Jaffray and in the UK by AQA suggests that 77% of iPhone 4 buyers queueing outside stores on the first days were upgrading from previous models – implying that 23% of buyers were new to the platform.

The record sales have come despite shortages of the smaller-capacity 16-gigabyte version of the iPhone, which is coloured white. Apple apologised last week and said it would be unable to fulfil early demand for them. By comparison, the previous iPhone 3GS model, launched a year ago, sold 1m in its first weekend.

Apple is competing for market share in the smartphone arena with RIM, maker of the BlackBerry brand; Google’s Android software, which is used by multiple handset makers; and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of the smartphone market but which has seen its share and profitability shrink since Apple and Google entered the market in 2007.

Analysts reckon Apple will be able to sell plenty more of the devices: Colin Gillis of BGC Partners in New York and Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon, project that Apple will have sold 2m to June 26, the end of the company’s fiscal quarter. Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis, had previously estimated 1m to 1.5m.

Apple had a difficult time getting enough touch screens to meet demand for the device, said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw in New York, so the early sales figures may not be an accurate reflection of demand. “It’s too early to say if this is negative,” said Kumar.

While Apple has some production constraints, the company “has a captive audience”, he said. “Demand for the iPhone 4 is not yet satiated so it just gets pushed out into subsequent quarters.”

The iPhone sales results follow Apple’s statement last week that it sold more than 3m of its iPad tablet computing device in the first 80 days. With the iPad, introduced April 3, and the three-year-old iPhone, Apple has widened its business beyond the Macintosh computer and iPod media player.

Sales of the iPhone accounted for 40% of Apple’s revenue last quarter. The device has shown an upward trend in sales: the first sold 700,000 on its first weekend in June 2007, despite a high price that was later cut. In 2008, the iPhone 3G sold 1m in its first week.

Apple’s share price has more than doubled since the original iPhone’s release on 29 June 2007, and it passed Microsoft as the largest technology company by market value late in May.

Some iPhone 4 customers have reported trouble with the new antenna design, which uses a stainless steel band on the outside of the casing. The phone signal drops when users cover the bottom left corner of the device with their palm.

Apple responded by recommending holding the phone differently or using a case to solve the problem. Customers in the five countries began lining up days in advance to buy the device. Apple said the iPhone will be available in 88 countries by the end of September.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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The chief executive of the search giant believes smartphones will empower the poor and is the equivalent to the arrival of TV

Phenomenally successful, but also imitated, envied and feared – Google is the technological icon of our time. But is its ubiquity and influence a force for good?

Chief executive Eric Schmidt has no doubts. He tells the Guardian that Google has been instrumental in a generational shift in democratising information. “Over my lifetime, we are going to go from a small number of people having access to most of the world’s information, to virtually everybody in the world having access to virtually all of the world’s information,” he said. “That’s because of web search, cheap phones and automatic translation. That’s a pretty amazing achievement and Google is part of that.”

Yet with Google active in so many areas, from shopping to video and translation to music, its competitors are becoming more numerous and opponents more vociferous. Schmidt admits: “We try to do everything … We don’t shake off the big goals.”

In an interview ahead of his keynote presentation at the Guardian’s Activate Summit on Thursday, he makes it clear Google is positioning itself for the future through mobile, with the development of its Android mobile system and with subsequent Google-branded handsets. He is keener to talk about this area than the battle with newspaper groupss such as News International, whose paywall model is partly based on what it considers Google’s parasitical attitude to original content.

The mobile battle pitches the three biggest tech firms against each other: Google, Apple and Microsoft. Analyst Gartner puts Android as the world’s fourth most-popular smartphone operating system in the first quarter of 2010 – ahead of Microsoft in a market it joined less than two years ago but behind Symbian (Nokia), Research in Motion (Blackberry) and Apple.

“I believe that the very best engineering is now going on the mobile devices — the hardest problems and the most clever solutions,” says Schmidt. “You know who the person is and where they are, and you don’t get that from a desktop app.” The 50,000 apps built for Android, mostly by third-party developers, cover almost every topic, but the one killer app is still Google itself, says Schmidt.

Schmidt describes how our online lives are now more personal, social and mobile. “When people are awake, they are now online, and that has a lot of implications for society and for Google,” he says. Google’s secret, he adds (though it’s not much of a secret), is that it can handle more data than its rivals because it has larger networks and data centres. Google in effect pulled its business from China earlier this year after moving the operation to Hong Kong, bypassingChina’s censorship regime. Google, whose company motto is “Do no evil” had been heavily criticised for its decision to do business in China and its rethink was welcomed by the industry. It also increased pressure on rivals who still operate there.

“Google doesn’t necessarily do things that other companies do. We have our own set of principles that we work hard on. In the China case, the decision was made not for revenue – it was about what we were willing to deal with. We want to be a good global citizen and we believe very strongly in the openness of information.”

Another key push from Google is encouraging governments to open information to the public, via formats that developers can build useful public services around. One recent victory for open data campaigners in the UK was Transport for London opening its travel data for commercial use, but the coalition government has indicated it may establish a broader public “right to data” that will have to be provided by local and national authorities.Schmidt says Google’s policy is to encourage governments to open their data to the public. The California-based company has teams helping to prepare “non web-resident” archives and databases for the web. “It is no longer acceptable online for government researchers to publish documents read by 500 people in printed form,” he says. “It needs to be web first.

Once that happens, there are lots of interesting things you can do to correlate real-time information, if that is what is needed, or put it on a map … government services are fundamentally about where people are, about what is going on in my town or my school.”

These projects are just as relevant in developing countries, where the introduction of smarter, cheaper phones has created a powerful network. How does Google help developing countries break through the digital divide, and ensure the opportunities of the web are open to all? “Hardware manufacturers are being incentivised to make higher volumes of lower-priced mobiles, and prices have fallen dramatically. But a young person now in pretty much any country, if they have a mobile device, can get access to pretty much all the world’s information and get it translated into their own language.”

Arriving at Google in 2001 after a career spent in Silicon Valley, Schmidt is still excited by its possibilities. “That’s a big news thing – that’s equivalent to the arrival of television.”

For more information on the Activate Summit, visit guardian.co.uk/activate

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(Source The Guardian)

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Apple sees sales of 600,000 units on Tuesday, with demand in Germany 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model

Apple has reported overwhelming demand for its new iPhone 4 model, selling more than 600,000 in a single day on Tuesday which saw ordering websites crash in the US and UK.

In Germany, demand for the new model, which was only unveiled by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs at the start of the month, is running 10 times ahead of that for last year’s model, the iPhone 3GS, reported Deutsche Telekom.

By comparison, when the iPhone 3GS went on sale last year, 1m were sold in its first three days. But that debuted in eight countries, whereas the iPhone 4 has gone on sale only in five.

Apple has apologised to people who tried to order the phone and gave up in frustration, saying demand was far higher than it expected. “We hope that they will try again.. once the iPhone 4 is in stock.”

Since its debut in June 2007, Apple’s smartphone has taken a huge chunk of the smartphone market and forced companies such as RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, and Nokia, which has the lion’s share of smartphone sales, to play catchup. Nokia issued another profits warning on Wednesday, and its share of the smartphone market is falling every quarter.

In the UK, where Apple is offering the phone without a contract through its online store, Apple’s website crashed as people tried to order it. And in the US, where it is only available with a contract from AT&T, the telephone company’s website froze as it tried to cope with an avalanche of orders each of which had to be verified on its own servers. That also led to problems in which some customers saw details of other peoples’ accounts – a reminder of the flaw exposed by a security group last week in which hundreds of thousands of Apple iPad users’ emails were stolen via weak security on AT&T’s site.

As a result of the heavy demand Apple has had to push back the delivery date for phones ordered online, and on Wednesday AT&T suspended orders, citing “unexpectedly high demand”.

Apple said “it was the largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions.”

Last year in the UK O2 had exclusive rights to sell the new iPhone, and said then that more of those handsets were sold in the first two hours of trading than all handsets in an average day.

This year Apple is selling the iPhone 4 without a contract – at £499 for the cheapest version – and O2, Vodafone, Orange and 3 are competing to offer it on contract terms. However neither O2 or 3 have yet announced prices, or allowed customers to pre-order the phone.

However the new contracts being offered for the phones have sparked anger among web users, who say that the carriers’ use of the word “unlimited” for the amount of data that can be downloaded through the smartphone is misleading. The companies impose a “fair use” cap, while describing the service as “unlimited”.

Now, a formal review by the advertising regulator could be about to put a cap on the practice.

This could mean that fixed-line and mobile operators will not be able to use the term “unlimited broadband” unless they are offering a genuinely unlimited service – and that means nothing in the small print that lets the provider send warnings to customers if they reach a certain threshold.

The review is being led by the Advertising Standards Authority, reports New Media Age, which will work with two ad industry bodies to make a comprehensive assessment of industry claims and consumer complaints on both broadband speeds and “unlimited” tariff penalties.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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RIM has appointed Kondor as its accessories distribution partner in the UK, supplying a full range of BlackBerry products across all channels

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(Source Mobile News CWP)

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BlackBerry secures monopoly

The image of ministers and their advisors hunched over their BlackBerries is set to become an enduring legacy of the New Labour era, as it’s emerged that RIM will maintain its stranglehold on the government smartphone market under the coalition.…

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(Source The Register)

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Online collaboration firm Huddle has brought its cloud-based project
management, document sharing and collaboration services to the BlackBerry market
with the launch of a dedicated application for users of the popular business
smartphone.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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New Mobile & Latest Deal News!

With a change in design the BlackBerry Pearl 9105 offers all of the superb features experienced on other models but in a compact design (108×50x13mm and 93g). The QWERTY keyboard has been removed in favour of an alphanumeric keypad with optical track-pad and dedicated media keys. Typing long messages without a QWERTY layout has been overcome with BlackBerry SureType predictive text input that learns the words you use most for speedy input at minimal effort.

BlackBerry Application World gives access to an impressive array of downloadable apps and with a 3G HSDPA Web browser, Wi-Fi connectivity and multitasking new apps can be downloaded quickly in the background whilst other features on the Pearl are being used. Pre-installed tools include push email, document viewer/editor, organiser, GPS with BlackBerry maps and BlackBerry messenger with notification when messages are delivered and opened by the recipient.

It’s not all work and no play with thoughtful inclusions such as synchronisation with iTunes and a media player that can provide up to 30 hours playback from one battery charge. Three methods of enjoying your favourite music tracks include a loudspeaker, via headphones connected to the 3.5mm audio jack or by connecting either a mono or stereo Bluetooth headset.

The TFT display has a great resolution of 360×400 pixels, perfect for viewing images captured on the 3.2 megapixel camera. Great images can be captured easily with the aid of auto-focus, flash, 2.5x digital zoom and video record function. The 256MB internal memory can be boosted up to 32GB with a microSD card to store a huge amount of picture and music files.

Compare all BlackBerry Pearl 3G 9105 deals

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Paper links up with Handmark for application for iPhone, Nokia S60, BlackBerry, Google Android and Windows Mobile

The London Evening Standard is today launching a smartphone news application created in partnership with US mobile apps developer Handmark.

Users will be available to download the Evening Standard app free on mobile web devices and operating systems including the iPhone, Nokia S60, BlackBerry, Google Android and Windows Mobile.

Evening Standard content can be saved for later reading and shared via email and social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook.

The Evening Standard app uses Handmark’s proprietary mobile publishing platform technology.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

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(Source The Guardian)

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Gadget Show presenter Suzi Perry unveils her favourite gizmos

What’s your favourite piece of technology and how has it improved your life?
I’m going to generalise and say the smartphone. Starting from Nokia’s N95, I’ve had a bunch of smartphones since they came along – they’re feature-rich and bring everything from the office to your pocket. They’ve made life so much easier.

When was the last time you used it, and what for?
I’ve got a BlackBerry Bold and an iPhone. I’m on the BlackBerry right now, talking to you, and I’ve been using my iPhone this morning to arrange a virtual sporting event.

What additional features would you add if you could?
I’d like a little projector built in, to project pictures on to any surface. I think we’ll see them in the next year or two.

Do you think the smartphone will be obsolete in 10 years’ time?
No, but I think it will move on. There will always be a need for a hand-held phone.

What always frustrates you about technology in general?
I think the industry can be seen as pretty geeky and quite nerdy. I’ve been working with Train2Game providing courses for people who want to work in the gaming industry. It’s a sexy industry, the tech industry, and these days it’s quite chic to be a geek.

Is there any particular piece of technology that you have owned and hated?
I did once throw a Motorola handset against the wall, because it drove me mad, but I think ugly, obsolete tech is terrible. For me, the Amstrad Emailer is the piece of tech I dislike the most.

If you had one tip about getting the best out of new technology, what would it be?
I’m a big embracer of new technology, but I do try to only buy tech that I’m going to use – I try not to be a magpie and swoop up everything shiny or new.

Do you consider yourself to be a luddite or a nerd?
I consider myself a she-geek!

What’s the most expensive piece of technology you’ve ever owned?
I haven’t really spent an enormous amount of money on anything… probably my MacBook Pro.

Mac or PC and why?
I’m in the 4% – I’m a Mac girl. I think over the years PCs have improved massively to meet the requirements and their ease of use. But for me, it’s always a Mac – I love how it looks, I love the user system and all the software works so well together. And with my iPhone and my iPod touch, it all syncs really nicely.

Do you still buy physical media such as CDs and DVDs or do you download? What was your last purchase?
I’m a downloader. I have an Apple TV at home, which is fantastic for downloading and renting movies. I buy streamed TV shows, using the season pass on iTunes – I recently bought True Blood season two, Damages season three and 24 season eight. As for music, I downloaded Paul Weller’s album, Wake up the Nation.

Robot butlers – a good idea or not?
Anything that does things for you is a good idea, but not yet. We’re not ready.

What piece of technology would you most like to own?
I would like to own a teleporter and have it built into a 1950s American Airstream trailer. I love them. Inside, I’d like it tricked out fully with gadgets. Travel bores the pants off me and I have to do it so much.

• Suzi Perry co-hosts The Gadget Show on Five. She has also been working with Train2Game to launch its new artist and animator course

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(Source The Guardian)

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The big hit with V3.co.uk readers this week was the news that a UK
bank is to offer its staff iPhones to replace their BlackBerrys, and that Steve
Jobs intervened personally to retrieve the iPhone 4G prototype that was left in
a California bar.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Three robbers have been jailed for nine years each for killing a man for his BlackBerry phone which they sold for £60 and a chicken dinner.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Phone makers should be happy: the worldwide market is enjoying strong growth in sales of phones and a boom in smartphone sales, which grew by almost 50% compared to the recession-hit first quarter last year

Smartphone sales increased by 48.7% to 54.3 million units in this year’s first quarter, according to research company Gartner, Inc. Smartphones are a small but extremely profitable sector of a mobile phone business that sold 314.7 million units, a 17.0% increase on the same quarter last year. Nokia remained the top supplier in both categories.

“This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707% year-on-year,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.

Gartner also confirmed what NPD had said earlier: in the US, more smartphones shipped with Google’s open source Android operating system than Apple’s closed proprietary iPhone OS.

Worldwide, Symbian was the most popular smartphone OS, selling 24.1m units for a market share of 44.3%, down by 4.5 percentage points. RIM came second with 10.6m sales and a 19.4% share, ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS with its 8.4m sales and 15.4%. (Symbian is used mainly by Nokia, while RIM makes BlackBerrys.)

Sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile phones were almost flat at 3.7m units, which meant its market share fell by 3.4 percentage points to only 6.8%. Linux dropped 3.3 percentage points to 3.7%.

In the phone market, the top three suppliers — Nokia, Samsung and LG — took almost two-thirds of the market. Nokia sold 110.1 million units in the quarter for a 35% market share, though this was down by 1.2 percentage points compared with last year’s first quarter. Nokia was followed by the two South Korean rivals, Samsung (20.6%) and LG (8.6%), then by RIM (3.4%), Sony Ericsson (3.1%), Motorola (3.0%), and Apple (2.7%).

Although RIM did well to make the top 5, its total sales (10.6m units) were still smaller than Nokia’s increase in phone sales (12.7m units). However, Nokia’s growth wasn’t enough to get it back to its 2008 level, when it sold 115m phones in the first quarter.

Gartner’s Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst, said that e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smarter phones. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” she said.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

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UK bank Standard Chartered is to offer its workers a switch to the iPhone in
a move that could strengthen the corporate appeal of the Apple device and see
thousands of bankers ditching their BlackBerrys.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) – British bank Standard Chartered is replacing the Blackberry, currently its standard corporate communication device, with the iPhone, a move that could eventually result in thousands of its bankers switching to the Apple device for business communication on the go.

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Apple’s iPhone replaces Blackberry for some bankers

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

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Google has been forced into an uncharacteristic U-turn, announcing plans to halt direct sales of its Nexus One mobile phone through its website as it admits that consumers prefer getting their hands on a device and trying it out before they part with their cash.

When Google unveiled its first ever own-brand mobile phone, the Nexus One, it hoped to revolutionise the way that phones are sold. Its head of mobile Andy Rubin said in February, a month after the phone went on sale in the US, that there would be a series of Google phones but “the real innovation here is the distribution of cellphones on a web store”.

He said the company had been able to use the launch to create logistics technology which meant that “when Nexus Two comes out we will just put it on the website and it will instantly go worldwide to all the operators that are hooked into our system”.

But while early adopters seem to have been happy to use a website to buy an unlocked mobile phone, Rubin admitted in a blog post late last week that “it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from”.

While Google’s mobile phone software platform Android is proving a hit with consumers and mobile phone networks, Rubin admitted “the web store has not”.

As a result, as the Nexus One rolls out in more countries, Google will follow the model it has adopted in Europe, where its network partner Vodafone has made the device available in its own shops and it is free on certain long-term contracts.

“We’ll shift to a similar model globally,” said Rubin. “Once we have increased the availability of Nexus One devices in stores, we’ll stop selling handsets via the web store, and will instead use it as an online store window to showcase a variety of Android phones available globally.”

Despite a shaky start when the first device, the G1, went on sale more than a year after Apple’s iPhone launched, Google’s Android platform has gone from strength to strength with a slew of new handsets appearing from HTC, which also makes the Nexus One, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

In the first quarter of the year, phones with Android outsold Apple’s iPhone in the US for the first time ever, according to market research by the NPD Group. The market for phones that can send emails, access the web and download applications is still dominated by the BlackBerry, made by Canada’s Research In Motion and a brand which last year celebrated its 10th birthday, but Android is closing the gap.

In the UK, almost one in every five smartphones now sold uses Android, according to retail experts GfK.

The HTC Desire, which is ranged by four of the five UK networks, has been particularly successful and favourably compared with the iPhone.

But sales of the Nexus One have been sluggish, partly because of the way in which it was being sold and partly because the HTC Desire is essentially the same device but better. Web analytics firm Flurry estimates just 135,000 Nexus One handsets were sold in the first two months in the US.

To add insult to injury, Google’s intended American partner Verizon Wireless recently turned its back on the Nexus One in favour of promoting another Android powered smartphone the Droid Incredible by HTC.

T-Mobile, Google’s original launch partner for the G1 in the US, is the only American network offering a price plan specifically aimed at the Nexus One. The device, which normally costs $529, is $179 for T-Mobile customers willing to sign a two year contract.

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(Source The Guardian)

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(Source ZDNet UK)

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(Source Mobile Today)

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