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Tech research firm Gartner this week released a report which said that Google’s Android OS went from a 0.5 percent market share in 2008 up to 3.9 percent by the end of 2009, and that the rival iPhone more than doubled the size of its user base as well.

Roberta Cozza, a principal research analyst at Gartner, said that “Android’s success experienced in the fourth quarter of 2009 should continue into 2010 as more manufacturers launch Android products, but some CSPs and manufacturers have expressed growing concern about Google’s intentions in the mobile market.” Any discontent among manufacturers and telecoms could hinder the OS’ progress in 2010, she said.

Gartner notes that Apple’s big gain helped it push Windows Mobile out of the third slot in the smartphone OS rankings, but some experts have noted the recent release of Windows Phone 7 and said that Microsoft’s mobile OS could be poised for a comeback in 2010.

Although its market share fell sharply, Symbian remained the most popular smartphone OS in 2009, claiming a 47 percent market share.number of view: 24

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Santa arrived early for Apple Inc. shareholders: The stock surged $6.94, or 3.4%, on Thursday to close at a record high of $209.04. That topped the previous closing high of $207 on Nov. 17. The buzz continues to build about the company’s widely anticipated — albeit unconfirmed — tablet computer.

The Financial Times reported that Apple has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in late January, most likely for a product announcement. An Apple tablet, which some speculate might be called the “iPad,” is expected to be a cross between the iPhone, with its touch-sensitive screen and numerous useful applications, and the Amazon Kindle reading device, with its much larger screen. But as the Financial Times notes, “Apple has explored making tablet style devices for years, only to back off.

The company also has a history of scrapping products very close to their scheduled launch dates.” But Apple stock bulls, who haven’t been held back much by such caveats, figure something good is coming in January. The shares now are up a massive 145% year to date, more than making up for their plunge in the market meltdown of 2008.

A share of Apple now costs about 27 times the average analyst forecast of the company’s earnings per share for the fiscal year that ends next September. That’s expensive relative to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index’s average price-to-earnings ratio of about 15 based on 2010 earnings estimates.

But it’s a far cry from the P/Es of tech’s bubble days of the late 1990s. Apple’s stock market value now is $188 billion, which tops IBM Corp. ($171 billion), General Electric Co. ($164 billion) and Chevron Corp. ($155 billion), among others, and is closing in on Google Inc. ($196 billion) and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. ($204 billion).

Besides the hype over the tablet, Apple is benefiting from Wall Street’s strong appetite for tech stocks in general in 2009. And in a year like this, the rich tend to get richer as the calendar runs out: Some money managers are probably buying hot tech stocks to dress up their portfolios for year-end statements to clients. Other tech issues hitting new 52-week highs Thursday: Google, Microsoft Corp., IBM and Xilinx Inc.

Year to date, the tech-dominated Nasdaq is up 45% to the S&P’s 25% gain.number of view: 4

Android 1.5 Release*

* Watch the video
* Virtual keyboard
* Widgets and live folders
* Video recording
* Updated browser

* Note that the actual timing of Android 1.5 availability on existing user devices will be determined by each carrier.

Android phone The latest version of the Android platform brings new features, improvements, and enhancements to Android-powered phones.
Highlights

* Fast, smooth typing with the on-screen virtual keyboard
* Easy access to favorite apps, contacts, bookmarks, and more via home screen widgets and live folders
* Video recording, playback, and sharing
* Full web experience with enhanced browser
* Hands-free calls and listening with stereo bluetooth
* Lots of UI refinements and performance improvements to the overall phone experience
* New APIs and elements to enable even more innovative apps from developers

See the full list of new features and changes in Android 1.5 »

Read the Android 1.5 Blogpost series on the Android Developer Blog

Android.comnumber of view: 10

September 7, 2009

* Spotify Premium members can download the app for free from Android Market™

Spotify, the digital music service, is delighted to announce the launch of its mobile offering on Android-powered mobile phones as of today.

Available for free through Android Market, Spotify’s mobile application will allow users to enjoy the music service, previously available only on the desktop, wherever they go.

Key features include:

* Access to millions of tracks with Spotify’s constantly updated catalogue
* Continue to run Spotify in the background while making calls, browsing the web etc
* Search and stream music instantly. Browse by artist, title or album
* Create and synchronise playlists. Updates from the desktop application will be synced instantly and vice versa
* Playlists can be downloaded and played in offline mode when you have no connection, are on a plane or subway, or abroad and subject to roaming data fees
* Listen to tracks and albums in their entirety. Rewind, fast-forward, pause, skip and shuffle
* View cover art for all tracks and albums

The mobile service has been made available exclusively to Spotify Premium members in the majority of our launch countries including the UK, Sweden, Spain, France and Norway. Spotify is not yet available on Android Market in Finland.

“This is a hugely significant day in Spotify’s short history,” said Gustav Söderström, director of portable solutions at Spotify. “Since our launch last October, we’ve worked hard to provide our users with a high quality service that gives them access to whatever music they want, whenever they want it.

“As of today our users can access that music wherever they want, providing them with the best of both the online and offline worlds. We’ve now made it even easier to listen to all the world’s music, anywhere on the planet.”

To sign up to the mobile service, music fans should visit the Spotify Premium product page to purchase a monthly or annual subscription.

For further information on Spotify on the mobile, visit our new Mobile page.
About Spotify

Spotify is an innovative digital music service offering music fans instant access to a world of music. Spotify enables on-demand streaming of audio content and aims to be a better alternative to music piracy by offering a superior user experience, while monetising licensed content with both an ad-supported, free-to-the-user model and a premium, paid model. Spotify brings fans closer to the music and artists they love, and provides a marketplace for additional products such as live events, music downloads and more. www.spotify.com
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The new HTC Touch2 will be available straight with the latest version of the Microsoft OS. The smartphone is quite compact and stylish, but packs enough functionality to cater for everyday needs.

Much like the Touch Diamond2, the HTC Touch2 has a touch-sensitive zoom bar to help with zooming in and out. There’s also TouchFLO 3D to cover up the underlying OS and customize the user experience.

The HTC Touch2 has a 2.8-inch display of only QVGA resolution. The Qualcomm MSM7225A platform ticks with a speed of 528MHz and there’s 256MB of RAM.

There’s Wi-Fi on board, as well as a GPS receiver. The 3 megapixel camera has fixed focus only, but the HSDPA support goes as high as 7.2Mbps. There’s also Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP support.

Windows Mobile 6.5 comes with the latest version of Internet Explorer, which has Flash Lite support, which allows it to playback YouTube videos even straight from the desktop version of the website.

Besides the user experience boost, the new version of Windows Mobile will offer two new potentially powerful services – the MyPhone and the Windows Marketplace.

MyPhone will offer free web synchronization of photos, music, contacts and messages, while the Marketplace speaks for itself introducing a huge application catalog straight to the mobile.

The HTC Touch2 will be available starting with 6 October (the release date of Windows Mobile 6.5) but broad availability in Europe and Asia will be reached in early Q4 2009. Pricing is still unknown.

http://www.htc.com/uk/product/touch2/overview.html (source)number of view: 12

The touchscreen smartphone juggernaut that is HTC continues to roll forward – the firm has unveiled the successor to the Touch.

HTC’s Touch 2: runs Windows Mobile 6.5

Unimaginatively called Touch 2, HTC described the handset as “compact and stylish”. Touch 2 is also one of the first official “Windows phones” – that’s smartphones running Windows Mobile 6.5, to you and me.

But it’s worth pointing out that HTC’s chosen to overlay its own user interface – TouchFlo – onto the Microsoft GUI.

HTC is keeping mum about the smartphone’s specific technical features for now, but from the pictures we can see that Touch 2 has a rear-mounted camera, a zoom panel running along the bottom of its touchscreen, and a Micro SD card slot.

We’d wager that the phone has decent connectivity capabilities, too, as HTC let slip that Touch 2 supports the re-designed Internet Explorer browser, Adobe Flash, MS’ My Phone online back service and Windows Marketplace.

HTC’s Touch 2 will go on sale on 6 October. A price hasn’t been announced yet. ®

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With its entry into the market with Chrome OS, Google will be sending two operating systems into the netbook space.
The company said it’s targeting Chrome OS at netbooks, a a market that it’s set to enter, thanks to its Android mobile OS; Acer is already preparing an Android netbook and analysts are predicting the OS could do well in the low-end of the netbook market.

According to analysts, it’s part of a strategy that will see Google closing in on the market with a pincer movement — with Android set to compete in the low end and Chrome OS squaring up to Windows 7 at the fancier, bells-and-whistles end.

Annette Jump, research director at analyst house Gartner, reckons even with Chrome OS in the pipeline, Android is still well suited to the smallest, cheapest netbooks: devices she describes as “7, even 6-inch screen devices with very limited PC functionality, more oriented towards web browsing”.

Jump added that netbook makers are “very willing” to look for alternatives to Windows as margins in this market are small and, with Windows 7 coming along, Microsoft is only likely to ramp up its OS fee.

“That will lead to an overall increased price point for those devices and increased share of wallet for Microsoft in those devices which is not in the interest of any PC vendors so they will be quite willing to talk to Google if they offer something for free — or for $5 versus much higher prices from Microsoft,” she told silicon.com.

Needless to say, Microsoft currently has something of a stranglehold on the netbook market. While Linux initially did well in the netbook space thanks to the likes of the Asus Eee PC, it soon lost out to Windows XP — and, according to Jump, Microsoft now takes 85 to 90 per cent share in mature markets.

However Laurent Lachal, senior analyst at Ovum, reckoned Google’s twin-pronged OS play could help revitalise Linux.

“[Google is] piggybacking on the momentum of Linux and also building that momentum so it’s a nice win-win situation here,” he said, adding: “In the netbook-as-a-would-be-laptop space here, Google [Chrome OS] allows/gives Linux an opportunity to bounce back.”

While having a two-pronged OS strategy might seem a lot of effort for Google when the company already has a lightweight OS out there in the form of Android, Gartner’s Jump said Chrome OS is needed if the company wants to go after the “more standard PC market”.

Android was specifically designed for smaller devices and screens and therefore has limited scope for different applications, hardware and device compatibility, she added.

“Even Microsoft doesn’t have one OS which actually stretches across all devices,” said Jump.

Nevertheless, with both OSes likely to be coming to netbooks in the near future, a degree of overlap is inevitable. It needn’t be a problem, however, according to Ovum’s Lachal.

“Obviously there is some overlap between the two operating systems and actually Google acknowledges this overlap and is perfectly comfortable with it. Because these are open source technologies it is up to whoever uses them to twist them and adapt them to whatever they want them to do,” he said.

Asked whether Google’s Chrome OS has a chance to make a serious impression in the netbook market, Gartner’s Jump said it depends on pricing, how consumer-friendly the UI is and compatibility with hardware and applications.

“At the moment we haven’t seen anything because the OS will be out in another 12 months’ time. There is obviously a chance — I’m sure PC vendors will consider them but they need to tick those three boxes to get there,” she concluded.

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