Android shipments grow almost 900 percent
According to Canalys Smart Phone Analysis services, the smartphone market grew 64 percent globally year-on-year (YoY) for the Q2 2010, with Nokia remaining the worldwide leader.
Nokia, long the world’s biggest phone seller, shipped 23.8 million phones during the quarter, good for 38 percent share of the global market. The vendor saw 41 percent growth YoY.
While 41 percent growth is strong by any standard, it is important to note that that number fell well below the overall market growth of 64 percent, and well below the growth of Android and Apple.
For the quarter, Android saw a ridiculous 886 percent growth, with Apple seeing 61 percent growth. U.S. market leader RIM saw 41 percent growth for their BlackBerry devices.
HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG all offer Android devices.
Says Canalys VP and Principal Analyst, Chris Jones: “The latest release of our detailed and complete country-level smart phone shipment data for Q2 2010 clearly reveals the impressive momentum Android is gaining in markets around the world.”
Amazon, Apple accused of fixing e-book prices
Connecticut’s Attorney General Richard Blumenthal seems to think that Apple and Amazon may be enjoying an unfair advantage in the e-book market and has accused the two companies of price fixing.
Blumenthal has requested meetings with the tech giants in an effort to discuss the deals they have with massive e-book publishers Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Penguin.
The AG says both companies have deals with the publishers that promise them the best e-book prices over any competition.
Such “most favored nation” clauses blocks the publishers from offering discounts deeper than what Apple or Amazon receives. While the deals are not illegal under current antitrust laws, they certainly fall into a gray area.
“The concerns are compounded, and hence potentially more troublesome, since this arrangement appears to be something that will be agreed to by the largest e-book publishers in the United States and two competitors who combined will likely command the greatest retail e-book share,” Blumenthal added, via CNNMoney.
Facebook to hold off on IPO until 2012?
Bloomberg has reported today that social networking giant Facebook may delay its IPO (initial public offering) until 2012, giving founder Mark Zuckerberg extra time to gain users and boost revenue.
The news comes from three anonymous sources within Facebook who do note that Zuckerberg has board control and could push for the stock offering at any time, but would prefer to have another year of growth before all finances go public.
Facebook is currently valued at about $25 billion, although revenue was only around $800 million last year.
“The burden of being public has never been greater,” says Kevin Landis of Firsthand Funds. “Zuckerberg doesn’t have to put his name at the bottom of four 10-Q statements every year and attest that everything in there is true or else he’s responsible. The minute it’s public, he does.”
Zuckerberg has said simply that the company will go public “when it makes sense” to.
RIAA sends questionable DMCA takedown for Radiohead album
Record label representatives have been caught issuing DMCA takedown notices for Radiohead’s In Rainbows album despite apparently not having any legal standing to do so.
Radiohead released In Rainbows online in 2007 after severing their relationship with EMI. It was initially offered online, with downloaders allowed to choose their own price - even if they chose to pay nothing.
The DMCA’s takedown provision allows rights holders or their agents to have infringing content taken down by service providers. But the rights in question would have to be for digital distribution.
A few months after it’s initial online release, the band made a distribution deal with a RIAA member, ATO Records, which doesn’t seem to include any digital distribution (ie download) rights.
In fact it appears that Warner/Chappell Music, a publishing company owned by Warner Music Group, is contracted to be Radiohead’s representative in digital licensing. Although public details of the arrangement are somewhat vague, Last.fm lists the company as the label for In Rainbows.
A guick search of the Chilling Effects database shows that the RIAA has included the album in at least one DMCA takedown request.
Another takedown notice which includes the album comes from the RIAA’s international equivalent, IFPI, which ATO Records isn’t even affiliated with. Even stranger is the frequent listing of In Rainbows in takedown notices by a Brazilian anti piracy organization called Anti-Pirataria Cinema E Música (APCM).
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Official iPhone 4 jailbreak released
The iPhone Dev Team has released the first official iPhone 4 jailbreak this week, using a browser-based exploit.
However, some of the users that have jailbroken their device has reported broken MMS and broken FaceTime.
Hacker “comex” released the option via jailbreakme.com, and visitors to the site on their iPhone 4 devices can start the jailbreaking process right from their phone browser.
The iPhone Dev Team’s hack is the first for the device, despite hacker Geohot’s claims to an iPhone 4 jailbreak last month.
As a note, iPads running iOS 3.2.1 will not be able to jailbreak their devices.
Making this jailbreak different than pretty much every other one before it, is the fact that it is completely browser-based, using the Apple Safari browser.
The hack comes a week after the U.S. Library of Congress officially made jailbreaking legal.
Microsoft not happy about Yahoo Japan-Google deal
Earlier this week, Yahoo Japan, the biggest portal in the nation, said it would being using Google’s search engine to power its search instead of following Yahoo Inc.’s decision to use Microsoft’s Bing for search.
Microsoft is clearly not happy with the decision.
The software giant has said today it plans to argue before Japan’s Fair Trade Commission that the deal is anti-competitive, as it would give Google almost 100 percent of the search market in the region.
Japan is the world’s third-largest market for search queries.
The FTC has already said the deal does not violate anti-monopoly laws in the nation.
Yahoo Japan has 57 percent search market share in the country while Google has 37. Microsoft has 2.8 percent.
Microsoft’s tablet future has ‘job-one urgency’
During his company’s latest quarterly earnings conference call, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer spoke about the company’s plans for tablets in the near future, but remained very scant on the details.
The company posted its best quarter ever last week, but has been openly criticized for its lack of strategy in the tablet market, as well as in other consumer businesses.
When asked specifically about tablets, Ballmer said Windows has been available on tablets and slates for years, with constant sales. However, none of Microsoft’s devices have ever come close to the buzz created by Apple’s iPad.
“Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a product,” Ballmer said, admitting that “they’ve certainly sold more than I’d like them to sell.”
“For us, the job is to say we have a lot of [intellectual property] and software and we’ve done a lot of work on ink and touch,” he continued, via PCW. “We have got to make things happen. Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we have to with Windows 7 on slates. We’re in the process of doing that as we speak.”
Without giving more details, he concluded: “We’ve got to push right now with our hardware partners. People will say, ‘When?’ I’ll say, ‘As soon as they are ready, and it is job-one urgency.’ Nobody is sleeping at the switch.”
Any timetable for a new tablet release? They “will be out in not a heck of a long time.”
RIM to reveal BlackPad tablet in November?
According to BusinessWeek, RIM is preparing to release its still unconfirmed BlackPad tablet in November.
Earlier in the week, the smartphone company registered BlackPad.com, with the domain being purchased by CSC, a company that specializes in corporate branding, on behalf of RIM.
The two sources claim the BlackPad will have a 9.7-inch screen, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth tech that will allow users to connect to the Web via their BlackBerry smartphones.
“They can’t wait for a second generation of devices from Apple or they’ll fall too far behind,” says Rodman and Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar.
Pricing will be “in line” with that of the iPad, which begins at $500 USD.
Samsung to introduce Android tablet this quarter
Samsung has said it will introduce a tablet this quarter running Google’s Android operating system, joining the stables of tech firms releasing tablets by the end of the year.
Nokia, LG, HP and RIM have confirmed, or unconfirmed tablets set for release by the end of the year, running either Android, WebOS or BlackBerry operating systems.
The market leader, the Apple iPad, sold an astonishing 3 million units in its first 90 days.
Samsung’s tablet will have a smaller 7-inch screen, but there are no other details available, not even what version of Android the device will ship with.
LG will launch its Android tablet in the Q4, RIM will release its BlackBerry tablet in the Q4, and Microsoft has said it hopes to release Windows 7 tablets in the Q4, as well.
Android app developer denies stealing user info
Earlier this week a company called Lookout showed how several Android wallpaper apps were accessing user information, including phone number, subscriber identification, voicemail password, browsing history, text messages & the phone’s SIM card number.
The claims were made during a presentation at this week’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.
In a number of interviews since then the developer, Jackeey Wu, has released a statement denying most of these claims and Lookout has since agreed that only the phone number, subscriber identification & voicemail password (when stored on the phone) were accessed and sent to Wu’s server in China.
Wu stated, “I collected the screen size to return more suitable wallpaper for the phone. More and More users emailed me telling that they love my wallpaper apps so much, because that even “Background” can’t well suited the phone’s screen. I also collected device id,phone number and subscriber id, it has no relationship with user data. There are few apps in Android market has the favorites feature. Many users suggest that I should provide the feature so I use the these to identify the device, so they can favorite the wallpapers more conveniently, and resume his favorites after system resetting or changing the phone.”
He also included a screenshot from installing one of the apps, showing the permissions used. You can read the entire statement below.
Lookout’s clarification on their website says, “While the data this app is accessing is certainly suspicious coming from a wallpaper app, we want to be clear that there is no evidence of malicious behavior. There have been cases in the past where applications are simply a little overzealous in their data gathering practices, but not because of any ill intent.”
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