Owners of mobile phones are being asked to test the security of their network to see if enough is being done to stop eavesdropping.

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(Source BBC Technology)

As London’s Barclays Cycle Hire scheme launches, there’s already a third-party Android app to go with it

As sure as night follows day, mobile applications follow location-based public pronouncements.

It should come as no surprise then that canny Android developers Little Fluffy Toys have knocked up a widget to follow on the heels of London mayor Boris Johnson’s launch of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme.

Cycle Hire Widget, a free application, uses a mixture of live Transport for London data and crowdsourcing to display the availability of bicycles at the nearest docking stations. Because TfL doesn’t currently share details about the availability of bikes at specific locations, the application screen scrapes TfL’s data and repurposes it for the app.

(From my chair at Kings Place, you’re probably not interested to know, the nearest docking station is 506m south west, with apparently only two bikes taken from nine slots.)

We spoke to Kenton Price, director of Little Fluffy Toys, to find out more about what’s behind the app:

“Many of the cycle apps that existed for other cities already, and to be honest a bunch of the new London ones, are really not much more than a Google Maps mashup of a bunch of locations superimposed on a map.
“We also chose the tiniest widget you can choose – a 1×1 that takes 1/16th of one of your home screen. Into that we’ve packed information about the nearest three locations, including the direction and distance, and the colour-coded known status of that location: Green for all OK, red for closed, orange for not enough bikes, yellow for not enough slots.
“But we expect most users will then click it again to open it up. And inside there we show more info about each location, including the best info we have about the status of the location. If we have recent live info from TfL, we will show the number of bikes and the number of slots, and the time at which we retrieved it.
“If we don’t have info from TfL then we can use crowdsourced info. If a user is within 50 metres of a hire location that doesn’t have recent TfL data, s/he will be prompted to report back on its status. That info is then shared with other users. You can select a location for walking directions to it. If for some reason you don’t want to show a location, perhaps because you know it’s closed whatever the buggy TfL feed tells us, long-press to exclude it from the widget.”

TfL relaxed its terms and conditions (find them here) in preparation for the cycle scheme launch, with the aim of encouraging third-party developers to create “innovative” apps based on “reliable and accurate information”. But Price claims his attempts to access TfL’s live data have been met with a wall of silence – TfL, on the other hand, said they have been in conversation with third-party developers from early on.

Price says: “We wrote to them the day they announced the locations were free-for-all, asking for free/busy status. They replied saying [there were] no plans. And that’s the last we heard from them. This £100m+ scheme that said it was reaching out to developers – and we haven’t had any replies at all to our emails since. We’ve done the best we can – the BarclaysCycle Twitter tag appears to be publish-only, no one gets responses from them.

“It’s very disappointing that we’ve basically filled in the blatant holes in their massively expensive scheme and we’ve had no thanks or even acknowledgement that we exist – although Boris started following us on Twitter the other day.”

A TfL spokesperson refused to comment on particular developers, but told the Guardian third-party developers will have access to more data in time. For the time being, TfL said, the “fundamental information [being used by developers] has to be right.”

“The up-to-date information listing all docking stations that are live in London is available on the developers’ area and must be used,” the spokesperson said. “The first thing is to get that information correct and have up-to-date information about where the docking stations are. It might sound slightly dull but the first port of call is that we know where they are and that the information is correct.”

There is no timeframe for the next bout of data rollouts, TfL said, but they are “forthcoming”.

For now, Price is happy. As he concludes: “It’s been a riot, I’ve loved it. My favourite moment so far was when CNet said we had all that geeky goodness with our crowdsourcing stuff – I practically burst with pride.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Motorola to focus on next-generation technology in competitive smartphone battleground

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(Source Mobile News CWP)

Free broadband firm TalkTalk promises competitive prices in mobile services deal with Vodafone

Internet and phone firm TalkTalk has struck a deal with Vodafone to launch a mobile service under its own brand.

TalkTalk, which helped revolutionise the broadband market by introducing “free” internet access four years ago, will offer both contract and pre-pay tariffs to existing customers from the autumn.

Market watchers will be looking to see whether the company, the second-largest residential broadband provider in the UK, will have as big an impact in the mobile industry as it did in on internet services.

Chairman Charles Dunstone said TalkTalk, which was spun out of Carphone Warehouse earlier this year, would make a “gentle” entry into mobile services, but would offer competitive prices.

“It will be a way to add a very good value mobile package to the account you have with us for your fixed-line phone and broadband,” he said.

TalkTalk entered the phone market in 2003 and the broadband market in 2006. Carphone Warehouse, meanwhile, still has its own mobile venture called TalkMobile, which also uses Vodafone’s network.

News of the mobile phone service came as TalkTalk announced first-quarter results which showed it added 34,000 net broadband customers in the second quarter, taking its total to 4.23 million. That puts it ahead of Virgin Media, which announced earlier this week that it had 4.21 million customers, having added 28,100 in the quarter. BT said yesterday it had 5.2 million broadband customers, adding 96,000 in the last three months, although it does not split out its residential customers from its large base of business users. The UK’s fourth-largest broadband provider, BSkyB, meanwhile, added 119,000 broadband customers in the quarter, taking its total customer base to 2.6 million.

TalkTalk’s average revenue per broadband user was £23.90, slightly up on a year ago. TalkTalk, which bought rival Tiscali a year ago, said its share of net broadband adds was about 10% this quarter, keeping it on track to add 140,000 to 180,000 customers over the year as a whole.

Revenues climbed 31% in the quarter to £444m, broadly in line with expectations.

The company said it remained confident it would deliver 6-8% revenue growth, and 20% growth in normalised earnings per share and dividends per share for the year to 31 March 2011.

Vodafone, meanwhile, has a number of other wholesale deals which allow companies to use its network to become what are termed mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). It provides network coverage for BT, Asda and Lebara, which targets the UK’s immigrant population.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Up to 4 million downloads

An Android wallpaper application that collected data from users’ phones and uploaded it to a site in China was downloaded “millions of times”, according to mobile security firm Lookout.…

Free On-Demand Webcast – Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

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(Source The Register)

A crisp, bright screen makes this smartphone appealing – but Samsung’s new in-house operating system doesn’t

What is it? Samsung Wave GT-S8500 – the first device to run Samsung operating system Bada

Category: Hardware and software, given the newsworthy nature of operating systems these days..

You’d use it for… On the move, personal or business. It’s not going to intrude on BlackBerry’s ground as leading high-performance business mobile device, but the Wave sits happily as a phone suited to staying up to speed while on the move.

First impressions: what is it like to look at, to hold, to use? Perfectly good look and feel to the phone, a sturdy but slender shell encasing a fairly high-spec bit of mobile kit. It’s when you activate the screen things start to go downhill.

The home screen – quite separate from the screen of apps – has six iterations as you swipe your finger right-to-left, inching across a background of some picturesque eastern European town square.

Each of these five modules is for housing a quick access single widget – but the access isn’t so quick after four or five swipes of the finger. Navigating from the home screen to your downloaded apps directory takes another click. Granted, the software is snappy and quickly responsive, but these things all pile up in the “pointless” file.

And you can’t swipe up to the URL bar in the browser, forcing you instead to press an on-screen button. Seems needless.

What does it really do well? Mobile internet has a well-suited clean font, made all the more appealing by the crisp super AMOLED screen. Put the Wave side-by-side with an iPhone 4 and a 3G – you’ll see the difference. FYI: guardian.co.uk looks better on a Wave than a 3G.

Keyboard keys appear far too close together, but typing seems to work fine if not more usable than on the iPhone. When browsing the web, pinching zooms are clunky and not instantaneously responsive.

Video playback is impressive, on the eyes and the ears. Creating media is a good experience too, the 5MP camera shooting strong video and stills taking allowing nifty features like user-directed focus.

What’s the cost? Around £300 sim-free; a 24-month contract, free handset, will set you back between £25-£45 per month.

What’s it up against? A smartphone market with less wiggle room than the App Store. It’s a relatively ruthless market out there for high-end devices, software increasing in consumer importance at a rate of knots.

With Bada, Samsung is late to the party and forgot to invite its marketing muscle. For this reason alone, Wave falls short of the majority of recently-released Android devices – Samsung have plenty of work to do before the release of Bada-powered Wave 2.

Blind us with the tech specs, then: Quite a few headline tech specs come with the Wave: the 5MP video/still camera will draw the punters – 5x zoom for stills and 720p video recording make the feature more than adequate; the Super AMOLED screen is a turn on, but likely only to the techies.

As light as any iPhone, the Wave is slimmer but only at a stitch. At 3.3 inch, the Wave screen limits its viability as a comfortable-to-use mobile internet device. With 2GB internal memory as standard, most users will require a MicroSD card (up to 32GB capacity).

What’s it good for? Taking and sharing decent-quality stills. It would be good for accomplishing tasks quickly if there weren’t so many naggingly bad points of user experience making pretty much any task an exertion.

What are its failings? One word: Bada. A few more words: the cramped feeling while using SMS, the uneconomic use of the 3.3 inch screen made worse by the majority of the screen having a black (or very dark) background even when running apps.

Will I have to read the manual? Does anyone still read manuals? If new to Samsung, you may need to Google “Help! I’ve accidentally locked my Samsung Wave – what now?”

How long is the battery life? With its 3G signal sensor turned off, the battery will last you over 24 hours from full – more than can be said for any iPhone before 4.

What’s its USP? The Wave’s USP would have to be the Super AMOLED screen which, on this score alone, puts it near top of the class for smartphones. That said, I don’t know one single person who’s been sold a phone on screen specifications – and it’s not great marketing fodder either.

Rating out of 10: 6.5

Finally, is it worth it – yes or no? Not at the current price. There are countless devices (and countless yet to be released) doing a better job and with a better operating system. Don’t hold out for the Wave 2.

Rating: 3/5

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

iPhone shrinkage, RIM on the up

Sales of Android-based phones more than quadrupled in the UK during the most-recent quarter.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

Warning: contents include account details

Citigroup is urging customers who use their iPhones for online banking to immediately upgrade to a new version of the application because a security weakness in the the old one puts them at risk.…

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(Source The Register)

Adults banned from searching children’s computers or phones under a new law passed in Chongqing, southwest China

It is a ruling that teenagers around the world will regard with a certain amount of envy. Parents in one Chinese city are to be prevented from snooping on their children’s online activity and text messages.

Adults, including family members, are banned from searching through children’s computers or phones under a new regional law passed in Chongqing, southwest China, state media reported today. The regulation outlaws snooping into their emails, text messages, web chats, and browser history. The regulation is designed to protect the rights of children, but is surprising given widespread concern in China about excessive internet use among young people and their access to unsuitable material. Psychologists have sought to have internet addiction listed as a clinical disorder and treatment camps have sprung up across the country. The Chongqing Evening Post described the new regulation, adopted on Friday by officials in Chongqing, as the first of its kind in the country. Other Chinese media said it expanded an existing national rule. But both experts and children doubted whether it would have an impact in practice.

Lu Yulin, a professor at the China Youth University of Political Science, told China Daily that children were unlikely to take their parents to court.

“Parents who habitually check such information won’t stop due to the regulation,” he said.

Eleven-year-old Song Jingbo, from Xi’an, told the newspaper he did not think his mother and father would be able to access his data anyway, adding: “I am far more internet savvy than them.”

China has the largest population of internet users in the world and minors alone account for more 126 million of them, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% this year, new figures show

Sales of Android phones have risen by more than 300% from the beginning of 2010, with one in 10 contract handsets sold in the UK now running Google’s mobile operating system.

Android’s share of the UK mobile contract market grew by 10.2 percentage points from the first quarter of 2010 to the second quarter, from 3% to 13.2%, new figures from retail watcher GfK show.

From the beginning of 2010, most of the UK’s major mobile operators have started selling a number of hotly-anticipated mobile devices running Google’s Linux-based software. The HTC Desire and HTC Legend are among other devices lauded by critics.

Just last week, Samsung launched a direct marketing challenge to the Apple iPhone with its Android-powered Galaxy S device.

Many mobile operators were unable to keep up with demand for the HTC Desire when it launched in the UK in April this year. HTC, the Taiwanese manufacturer of many devices running Android, posted a 41% global sales increase for the first six months of 2010, with figures from April, May and June reflecting record sales, according to the company.

In the same period, mobile devices running “advanced” operating systems – defined as those able to run independent compatible applications – grew in the contract market from 55% to 66.7%. Figures available from June show mobiles with advanced operating systems now representing 73.5% of the contract market.

“The figures suggest an increasing number of consumers are now asking for Android handsets by name,” said GfK analyst Megan Baldock. “Operating systems are no longer simply a by-product but a key selling point in their own right.”

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

LONDON (Reuters) – DSG to roll out Phones 4u shop-in-shops in Currys

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(Source Yahoo UK News)

Phones 4U to have presence in at least a further 50 DSGi stores throughout 2010 following trial, with further roll-out planned for 2011

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(Source Mobile News CWP)

Back in May, Rupert Murdoch told investment analysts he would use a press conference “in about three to four weeks” to announce “an innovative subscription model” together with “a number of publishers, device makers and technology companies”.

The press conference never came. But that doesn’t mean News Corp (NSDQ: NWS) isn’t convinced enough of the chances online content subscriptions can work to make them a central pillar of its own business all by itself.


Photo by AMagill on Flickr. Some rights reserved

• About the same time, News Corp should have unveiled the subscription project, it made an alternative announcement… it acquired the IP to the Skiff e-reader platform…

• … And it took a stake in Journalism Online, the Steve Brill-Gordon Crovitz startup helping newspapers charge online. At the same time, John Houseman was appointed as president of News Corp’s digital journalism initiative, responsible for driving and managing new business efforts in “premium digital journalism”.

• The Times and Sunday Times newspapers websites relaunched and have become the first News Corp consumer titles to start charging. (News Corp acquired one of the most famed news subscription offerings in WSJ.com as part of Dow Jones and is expanding paid access to multiple devices.)

• iPad editions debuted for The Times (£9.99 a month) and The Australian, (AUS$4.99 a month) through iTunes in-app payments, each making a big splash initially and satisfying Murdoch’s big belief in mobility. The Times app has had some rocky moments with those in-app payments, with an unknown number of subs getting free months as a result.

• Hulu, in which News Corp has a stake together with Disney (NYSE: DIS) and NBC Universal (NYSE: GE), also launched its long-expected $9.99-a-month premium service for online, iOS and consoles.

• Fox Mobile offered up Bitbop, an unrelated subscription effort compared to Hulu for mobile.

• BSkyB (NYSE: BSY) took its iPhone TV app on to iPad, but at a premium – the same price as a satellite subscription.

• News Corp’s UK newspapers have been blocking the Meltwater search crawler for not paying one of two new licenses required for the privilege.

• And now MySpace Music is apparently considering adding a subscription music service.

There was no industry-wide consensus working together with News Corp, nor even any big joined-up News Corp-wide project apparent – no Times delivery bundled with a Sky TV subscription (as some folks speculated), for example. One partnership that News Corp is taking part in – Next Issue Media, often described as (what else) Hulu for magazines, finally appointed a chief executive but has yet to make any public progress toward an online subscription newsstand or advertising model.

But each of these developments reeks of “innovative subscription model”, just without the “number of publishers, device makers and technology companies” Murdoch described.

Murdoch’s suggestion did succeed in firing up a News Corp that already has ample experience building its own content businesses with continuous, multiple income streams. BSkyB is one of the most successful pay-TV businesses in the world, with average annual revenue per customer now at £503 ($769) a year, and Fox is well used to getting subscription revenue, albeit in the form of license fees from cable operators.

There’s little which links together any of these initiatives as far as consumers are concerned, and the model is often delivered in executed in different ways across the corporation’s many distinct media brands. But, inside News Corp, there’s an increasingly firm belief it can go on validating the recurring paid content model in its own image.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Samsung has stepped up its marketing game against the Apple iPhone, sprinkling free Galaxy S devices across the twittersphere

Samsung is out with the stretchers, running full tilt towards the customer carnage left by antennagate. Yes, if you’re a disgruntled iPhoner, Samsung is coming for you.

Via Twitter and Facebook, Samsung is giving away (yes, literally giving away) its Galaxy S device, mostly to a “cross section” of customers reporting iPhone reception problems. And so comes the belated response to Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and his public dressing down of other devices – including the Samsung Omnia 2 – last week.

In a press statement, Samsung says: “Recently there has been a real increase in online activity from consumers dissatisfied with some of our competitors’ products.

“We decided to contact a cross section of individuals to offer them a free Samsung Galaxy S as a replacement, as we’re confident that once people have the phone in their hands, they’ll see how impressive it is for themselves.”

Samsung apparently started handing out the Android-powered devices ia Twitter on Wednesday.

Tiffany Nieuwland, Conde Nast digital marketing staffer, was among the first to be offered one after bemoaning the number of dropped calls she gets. Jose Espinosa, director of digital services at Connect Group, was next up for a Galaxy S in the post. And then DigitalNetwork, a London-based search and digital recruitment company.

You get the picture, right? Less a “cross section of customers reporting iPhone reception problems,” more of a cherry-picked bunch of digital influencers.

Will Critchlow, co-director of web marketing and development company Distilled, appears to have been the first recipient of the kindly offer. He received his no-strings Samsung phone this morning – with a handwritten courtesy note attached, no less.

“I asked my followers what phone I should get, a few people got back with various links, one of which I retweeted. It appears that’s the one Samsung picked up on,” Critchlow told us.

“We’re an office full of geeks here. It’s an effective strategy in terms of making me evangelise the phone. But will it make my followers buy one? Who knows. It ultimately comes down to how good the product is.”

Critchlow, an iPhone 3G owner, said he was relatively impressed with the Galaxy S (and you’d be forgiven for thinking they were the same phone, from the appearance), which is his first hands-on experience of Google’s Android software. (It runs the Android 2.1 software.)

Samsung kicked off its iPhone-bashing Galaxy S campaign with the below poster. But how long will it last? Bring on the side-by-side customer reviews, we say.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

BBC Trust rules that corporation’s smartphone apps do not need to pass full public value test, despite rivals’ concerns

The BBC Trust has given given the all-clear to the launch of the BBC’s iPhone apps despite commercial rivals’ concerns about their market impact.

Smartphone applications for BBC News, BBC Sport and the iPlayer did not require further scrutiny through a public value test, it said.

The trust’s review included research into the apps market by a media consultancy firm, Mediatique.

BBC trustee Diane Coyle, who led the review, said: “The apps market is rapidly taking off as more people choose to get their news, sport and other online content while they’re on the move.

“The trust has a duty to represent the interests of licence fee payers, who will increasingly expect to access BBC content in this way, but also to listen to concerns raised by industry.

“In this case we have concluded that while the apps market is developing quickly and we will monitor the launch of BBC apps, a PVT is not required.”

The Trust said a public value test was not required because the iPhone apps did not involve the creation of new content.

But it said the impact of the BBC services on the apps market should be monitored and would be reviewed six months after launch.

“In circumstances where the BBC’s apps have an unanticipated impact on the market it will remain open to the Trust to call the proposals back in for further consideration or to consider any fair trading complaints on appeal.”

The apps were in line with previous BBC activity, which already offered a range of basic web apps for mobile devices, it said, adding: “The proposals are also in line with current market trends including the growing penetration of smart phones and mobile internet usage.”

• 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”.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Mobile phone operator reports its first quarterly service revenue growth since the recession

Strong demand for mobile data has helped Vodafone increase its service revenues for the first time in 18 months, as its key markets recovered from recession.

Britain’s third-largest mobile phone operator today reported a 1.1% rise in service revenues to £10.58bn in the last three months, reversing a trend that began in the final quarter of 2008. Revenue from data services such as smartphones and high-speed internet “dongles” jumped by 25%.

“These are the first quarterly results to show service revenue growth since the global recession impacted,” said chief executive Vittorio Colao.

“We have achieved these results through our continuing commercial approach in key European markets, focusing especially on data, and from strong growth in emerging markets, with India now cash-positive at an operating level and our highest ever quarterly revenue in Turkey,” he added.

Colao also said that Vodafone would announce a change of strategic direction in October, to “drive shareholder value”. This is understood to include a new focus on data services, especially in emerging markets like India and China.

Colao declined to give further details this morning, saying it would be “disrespectful to his board”, but hinted that it may be driven by the increased number of mobile operating systems on the market today.

“The world has changed,” he told reporters. “Many operating systems are strong and competing … this is a good opportunity to have a look at our strategy.”

Vodafone saw strong growth in demand for smartphones in Europe during the quarter, particularly in the UK where the company started selling Apple’s iPhone earlier this year.

Since taking over as chief executive in summer 2008, Colao has been trying to increase growth in Vodafone’s existing territories rather than continuing with the acquisition drive that has given it stakes in markets around the world.

Vodafone also announced today that it has finally resolved a long-running dispute with the UK tax authorities. This row centred on Vodafone’s decision to register Mannesman, the German mobile giant it acquired in 2000, in Luxembourg.

HM Revenues & Customs had claimed that Vodafone owed taxes in Britain under the Controlled Foreign Companies rules, which the mobile operator disputed. It has now agreed to pay £1.25bn to settle the case, having previously made a provision of £3.1bn on its books.

Shares in Vodafone rose 1.88% this morning to 151.85p.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

It’s enough to make one side with Apple

AdMob has been placing premium-rate numbers into iPhone applications again, this time in an application targeted at kids, who are even more likely than adults to hit the link without noticing.…

Read Full Story…
(Source The Register)

Ofcom’s new code of practice will require providers to include information on all paper bills regarding consumer access to dispute resolution services

Mobile phone and broadband providers must notify customers that they can take their complaints to a free independent resolution service, under plans outlined by communications regulator Ofcom.

An Ofcom-approved resolution service has been available to consumers from two approved providers – the Communications and Internet Services Adjudication Scheme (CISAS), and the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman (Otelo) – but last year 77% of consumers who failed to resolve complaints with their phone and broadband provider after 12 weeks did not know they existed.

From next year, communications providers will have to include information of the relevant dispute resolution service on all paper bills. They will also have to write to consumers whose complaints have not been resolved within eight weeks to inform them of their right to take their complaint to a dispute resolution service.

Nick Hutton, telecoms expert at Consumer Focus, said: “Each year, millions of customers experience problems resolving their complaints about phone and broadband services. Making it easier for consumers to find out about the help available to resolve their complaints is a positive step.

“A further welcome move would be for phone and internet providers’ complaints data to be published. If consumers could compare performance on complaints handling it would allow them to factor this into their choice of provider and act as a spur to companies to improve help for customers who have cause to complain.”

Ofcom research shows that dispute resolution services improve the outcome for consumers. Where complaints about mobile providers were not resolved within 12 weeks, 91% of complaints were subsequently resolved when taken to a dispute resolution service compared with 51% where the consumer did not go to a dispute resolution service.

Ofcom will also establish a code of practice with minimum standards for how providers must handle consumer complaints. The idea is that the code will provide consistency in standards and will give Ofcom powers to take action against providers who don’t treat complainants fairly.

The code will require providers to make sure the fair and timely resolution of complaints, and have procedures that are transparent and accessible so consumers can easily find out how to make a complaint.

Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards, said: “We want to make sure that when something goes wrong, consumers are able to find out easily how to make a complaint and can be assured that their provider will be able to handle their complaint effectively.”

The code of practice will come into force on 22 January 2011. The requirements to improve awareness of dispute resolution services will come into force on 22 July 2011.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

• Quarterly figures show steep like-for-like decline
• Underlying profits also down 27%
• Sales rise 1% but handset prices are cut

Profits at Nokia have plunged over the last three months as the company continues to struggle against rivals such as Apple and RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, in the smartphone market.

The Finnish handset maker reported today that profits fell 40% in the second quarter of 2010 compared with a year ago. Underlying profits were down 27%.

Although net sales were 1% higher at just over €10bn (£8.4bn), the profitability of its handset and service division slipped as the company cut the prices of its higher-end phones to make them more attractive to consumers.

Nokia’s failure to compete better against Apple’s iPhone and the growing number of handsets running Google’s Android platform has put chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in the firing line. The company is reportedly looking for a replacement, with analysts warning that Nokia needs to get its hands on a “European Steve Jobs” if it is to regain its dominant position in the mobile market.

Kallasvuo called for an end to speculation over his future, telling the US television station CNBC that it is damaging the company. “There has been a lot of speculation on my position, on myself, during the last couple of weeks and that is not good for Nokia and must be brought to an end one way or another,” Kallasvuo said. “At the same time, I’m not in a position here and now to really shed any more light on the topic so I guess this is a no comment. I really concentrate now on the task at hand.”

Kallasvuo also insisted today that Nokia, which makes roughly four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide, had reasons to be optimistic, although the company is only aiming to maintain its share of the mobile device market this year. “The global handset market has continued to grow at a healthy pace, led by some of the less mature markets where Nokia is strong,” he said.

Kallasvuo added that solid sales of cheaper phones to developing markets had boosted the overall performance of Nokia’s handset business.

The average selling price of a Nokia handset dropped to €61 (£52), from €62 in the previous quarter. For smartphones, average prices fell 8% quarter-on-quarter to €143, and are down 21% over the last year.

Today’s figures suggest that Nokia is having to cut smartphone prices to maintain market share at the expense of profitability. Its smartphone shipments were up by 12% quarter-on-quarter at 24m units, in line with Nokia’s estimate for the overall growth of the market.

The company is now pinning its fortunes on the new Nokia N8 smartphone, although its release has already been delayed until later in the year.

Nokia also maintained its prediction that the global handset market volume would grow by 10% this year.

Earlier this week, Apple reported its best ever quarter, partly due to strong demand for the iPhone.

Read Original Story…
(Source The Guardian)

Data from the Android developers site suggests that lots of phones are running 2.1 – but there’s something missing from what we’re being told which may mean it’s exaggerated

How fragmented is the Android platform? Google knows. And it’s quite interesting. The problem is that it’s not quite ready to tell us in detail. Only with winks and nudges.

The chart above comes from data on its developer site about versions accessing the Android Market for apps. A point to note: there’s only one Android device out there which is running 2.2 (aka “Froyo”), and that’s the Google Nexus One. Which has been discontinued.

However, some of the other phones can be upgraded to 2.2; it will be interesting to see what sort of timescale there is on that.

But what must be encouraging for the folks at Google, and Android developers, is that 2.1 is so dominant in that pie chart. (There’s a tiny fraction, 0.3%, consisting of “incompatible versions” – not sure what those would be.)

Because certainly the biggest threat – and the biggest problem – for Android developers is platform fragmentation. Old version of Android can’t run apps that target more recent versions, though old apps can run on the new platform. (Think of it as being like Windows. Sort of.) But the later Android versions have all sorts of features that you don’t get on the others. (You can see the version feature comparison on Wikipedia.)

The timings of the version releases:

1.5: 30 April 2009
1.6: 15 September 2009
2.1: 12 January 2010
2.2: 20 May 2010

That means that this chart covers just one year (roughly).

The notable things that 2.2 has that 2.1 hasn’t? Adobe Flash 10.1 support [corrected]; “remote wipe”; Wi-Fi hotspot function; voice dialling over Bluetooth. So now the question is how soon operators (particularly UK operators) will be pushing 2.2 out to Android customers. The suspicion is that the answer is “not soon”, given that 2.1 only just made its way (via an over-the-air – OTA – update).

And be wary – very wary – of trusting these graphics as really indicating the preponderance of Android versions out there. What we don’t know, because these graphs don’t show us, is:

- whether people with newer versions of Android are more likely to access the Android Market (that would push the share for newer versions upwards: and it seems likely, since I’d be very surprised if Nexus Ones really were 3% of all Android phones sold)

- what proportion of Android apps are written for what version of Android. Although Android apps are forwards-compatible (ie if it’s written for 1.5, it will run on 1.5 and every successive release), you’d certainly be put off visiting the Market if you went there once on a 1.5 or 1.6 phone and found that pretty much everything required a later version: you wouldn’t go very much more. That would also push the numbers towards the later versions, and make it look like the more recent versions are doing better. (If you know any data about what proportion of apps in the Market target which version, do tell us in the comments.)

Here’s how the access has changed, according to Google. But again, the same uncertainties prevail: how many? Are people put off? What’s the real growth?

True, Android sales have accelerated this year and 2.1 is getting more prevalent. But that comparatively big chunk of 2.2 accesses indicates, to me anyway, that this is a distorted picture of what handsets out there are truly running.

Of course Google could help us to dispel this all by publishing how many accesses there actually were, and how many downloads. Whereas Apple likes throwing out numbers from the App Store, which gets lots of people going “ooo!”, the problem is that there’s nothing much to compare it with. Come on, Google, get into the game. You said there were 160,000 activations per day. Now tell us about Android Market transactions. It’s the least you could do.

Well, that, and pushing the network operators and/or handset makers to push out version 2.2.

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(Source The Guardian)