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Google is Catching Up Fast with Palm’s Market Share Even Without the Nexus One

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The latest report by comScore on December 2009 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share shows some interesting trend among current top mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone OS platforms. The report was based on the share of current mobile subscribers with age ranging from 13 and older. Motorola was the top mobile OEM from September to December 2009. While RIM and Apple top  the smartphone platforms in terms of market share during the said period.

Motorola’s market share from September to December slided down from 24.9% to 23.5%.  Surprisingly following Motorola were LG and Samsung while Nokia and RIM land on 4th and 5th place. For awhile I thought Nokia is still the leader in terms of mobile OEMs although this is understandble since the data covers the U.S. market only. If other countries were included, I’m pretty sure Nokia would top the list.

Moving on to the market share of smartphone platforms, RIM leads the pack with a commanding 41.6% market in the period ending December 2009. Apple is at second place with 25.3%, Microsoft at third with 18%, Palm with 6.1% and Google with  5.2%.

This is quite surprising since the period does not cover sales of the Google Nexus One which was only  released on January 6, 2010. Google’s 2009 market share were probably derived from sales of the Motorola Droid and other Android devices.

Moving on, for January to March data, this will definitely change and if sales of the latest Palm smartphones will not register significant marks, Google will easily dislodge it from the fourth position. Even at a comfortable lead against Google, Microsoft is still in danger of losing its position unless of course the Windows 7 mobile devices should come out sooner.

Originally posted on February 9, 2010 @ 10:04 am

Symbian Makes its Mobile Platform Open Source

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The Symbian Foundation has just announced that the source code of their widely used mobile platform is now completely open source.  This makes practically anybody eligible to take, use and modify the code for any purpose, be it for mobile or for other purposes.

For Symbian Foundation, making the mobile phone OS open source  would  provide the Symbian ecosystem with greater potential for innovation, faster time-to-market and the opportunity to develop on the platform for free. This might also attract mobile phone manufacturers to consider using Symbian in their future mobile phone releases.

And as part of  the decision to make their mobile platform open source, Symbian Foundation has committed to share platform roadmap and planned features up to 2011.

So what does this mean for us mobile phone users? Well, if you love mobile phone apps developed on Symbian OS, but does not want to use a Nokia smartphone, soon perhaps this will now be available on other mobile phones.  But that is if mobile phone developers and manufacturers will pick it up and make it available on their mobile devices.

The complete  source code of the Symbian platform is now available for download at the Symbian developer web site. If you’re an applications developer, you can also download the Symbian Developer Kit and also the Product Development Kit. These kits are supported by the latest Symbian^3 platform.

Originally posted on February 4, 2010 @ 4:14 pm

Nokia Rolls Out Custom Dictionary for S60 Phones

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Alright, this one is for all Nokia S60 phone users, who prefer  to input text easily through predictive text dictionary.  Nokia has just rolled out the Nokia Custom Dictionary beta app.

What this app does is to let you edit the list of words that your Nokia phones use for predicting the text that you are going to input.  The app allows you to scan text files to import words or import words from xml file. It also lets you transfer your Custom Dictionary from one Nokia phone to another.

The app supports various Nokia S60 3rd and 5th edition smartphones including Nokia E71, Nokia E63, Nokia 5800 Xpress Music and Nokia X6. It will also work with other Nokia E-Series phones  but you may encounter some minor and yet neglible issues. While for older Nokia N-Series phones such as N96, N95, N79, N78 and N82, the app may have limited functionality.

Whichever Nokia smartphone you have, you need to download the by logging in to your Nokia Beta Labs account and download the app from here.

After downloading and installing the app on your Nokia handset, you can start “teaching” your smartphone commonly used words or even create specific word lists that you can share to other Nokia smartphone users and together you can all start buiding a custom dictionary of terms for your Nokia smartphones.

You may download the app here.

Originally posted on February 1, 2010 @ 7:45 am

Skyfire Mobile Phone Browser Gets Updated to Version 1.5

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I once used Skyfire as my mobile web browser when  I used to have a Nokia phone. It’s my favorite web browser aside from Opera Mini. I just love its sleek UI and how fast it loads mobile websites. Plus, Skyfire handles Flash and Javascript pages as well as streaming videos pretty well. But that was long before the iPhone and Nexus One.

Anyway, if you’re using a supported Nokia phone or a Windows Mobile smartphone and Skyfire is your mobile web browser, you’d be glad to know that Skyfire 1.5 has just been released.

Skyfire 1.5 support non-touch and touch-enabled phones such as those Nokia handsets with S60 OS in both 3rd or 5th version, or non-touch or touch-enabled Nokia handsets running the S60 OS.

Key Features of the Skyfire 1.5 include:

  • more fluid kinetic scrolling on touch-enabled handsets
  • better user interface including full screen mode and finger-friendly buttons for S60 mobile phones
  • more robust and faster browsing
  • auto-rotate for the touch-enabled S60 phones

To download Skyfire 1.5, you have three options – point your phone’s browser to m.skyfire.com, send a download link to your phone by providing your mobile phone number or install the browser on your PC before transferring it your touch or non-touch enabled mobile phones.

 

Originally posted on January 26, 2010 @ 8:07 am

Nokia Symbian S^4 Concept UI Looks Good

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First things first, Nokia is just about to release on a still unknown date it’s latest mobile phone OS – the Symbian S^3, but it would it seem  that it is already working on the next version – the Symbian S^4.  After a brief demo of what the S^4 would look like sometime in December 2009, Nokia is now releasing some more juicy information about its upcoming mobile phone OS.

Second thing – Nokia has been very vocal about the features of the S^4 that seem to overlap with other mobile platform. For instance in its User Interface Concept Proposal (v.2), Nokia compared the S6^4 to the Android. Specifically, the two mobile OS’ movable homescreen.  The difference between these two is that Symbian has “independent unique pages” rather than a multi-touch panel screen of most Android phones.

Notable features of the S^4 that we may or may not see in the final release version include – top and botom menu bars that slides offscreen, streamlined menu for contacts, music, photos and applications, support for homescreen widgets, central power/notification menu, consistent UI that will be built in Qt.

Again, all these were based on a concept proposal made publicly available by Nokia. So, we shouldn’t think of those features as final. One thing is for sure, Nokia wants to improve its mobile phone offerings by coming out with a new and improved mobile OS that could bring new mobile experiences for its loyal users.

Via

Originally posted on January 15, 2010 @ 3:27 pm