Android‘s rise continues, with the platform now running on over half of all smartphone sales in Q3 2011, and well ahead of iOS’ 15-percent smartphone market share. Samsung grabbed smartphone vendor top-spot, according to Gartner‘s figures, while Apple shipped 17m iPhones – up 21-percent annually but down almost 3m units from Q2 2011, which the analyst firm puts down to iPhone 5 hype and anticipation – and saw its market share dip year-on-year.
RIM has announced its two latest BlackBerry 7 smartphones, the Bold 9790 and Curve 9380, the latter being the first Curve to use an all-touch design. Set to go on sale "in the coming weeks" the two phones each have NFC support; the Bold 9790 pairs a 1GHz processor with a touchscreen and QWERTY keyboard, along with 8GB of integrated storage and a microSD card slot.
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What's purported to be a snapshot of RIM's very first BlackBerry with the company's new QNX-based OS, also now known as BBX, has emerged. The handset is codenamed "London" and is scheduled for release sometime in June of 2012. The source of the image also revealed the specs for this all-touchscreen device that's certainly cosmetically a huge departure from RIM's traditional BlackBerry styling.
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Windows Phone 7 has apparently overtaken RIM's BlackBerry OS to be the third most interesting platform for app developers, according to new research, with Microsoft's partnership with Nokia a key driving factor. Apple's iOS remains in the top spot for developer attention, Appcelerator's Q4 2011 report suggests, with 91-percent of those coders questioned reporting that they were "very interested" in creating iPhone apps; in contrast, 38-percent said the same about Windows Phone 7, with 28-percent saying they were keen to code for the Nokia Lumia 800 in particular.
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Adobe isn't just axing Flash Player for Mobile, but refocusing its approach toward smart TV as well, pushing native apps rather than Flash compatibility. Although the company will continue to support existing licensees of its Open Screen Project, an Adobe spokesperson told GigaOM, it now believes "the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience." Meanwhile, RIM has confirmed that it will independently develop Flash for the BlackBerry PlayBook, telling AllThingsD that it has licensed Adobe's source code.
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It was announced this week that Google will officially stop support for the native Gmail app for BlackBerry devices starting on November 22nd, this move effectively telling RIM that it'll have to rely on its in-browser iteration if it plans on getting any kind of future support officially. Does this mean that Google has given up on trying to reach people through BlackBerry? I'd say yes, but Google seems to be announcing the change carefully so as not to upset those who've already got the app working on their devices - Google, do you see BlackBerry's end of life in your scopes?
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RIM's BBX-based next gen smartphones will squeeze PlayBook resolution displays into pocket-scale form factors, the company has confirmed, promising 1024 x 600, 16:9 handsets. RIM VP of developer relations and ecosystem development Alec Saunders told PCMag that developers who produced apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook could also be confident that it would run on the company's first BBX smartphones, expected in the new year. However, there are suggestions that alternative screen sizes and resolutions are also in the pipeline.
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Research firm comScore has just released a US smartphone market report for the period ending in September 2011, revealing as expected that Android is still way ahead of the pack, but that Apple continues to grow steadily. In fact, one in ten mobile subscribers in the US now own an iPhone and this is even before Apple released the iPhone 4S.
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Research firm IDC has issued new data today further confirming recent reports that Samsung has overtaken Apple in worldwide smartphone shipments. Samsung is said to have shipped 23.6 million smartphones during the summer, which puts it in the lead with a 20 percent share of the global smartphone market. The wait and anticipation for the iPhone 4S drove Apple's iPhone shipments down to second place.
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The makers of the BlackBerry, Research In Motion (RIM), had a very tough year. It's been steadily losing business and customer loyalty, struggling through technology problems and eroding investor faith. And now the company is facing a 68 percent drop in stock value this year, with its book value now worth less than the net value of its property, such as patents and other assets.
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The BlackBerry Curve 9380 has shown up in the wild again, this time promised on Canadian CDMA carrier TELUS with a release in time for the holidays. RIM teased the smartphone itself last month, revealing a 3.2-inch 480 x 360 display - on what TELUS describes as the "first all touch Curve" RIM has made in the brochure MobileSyrup spotted - while previous leaks have indicated the device will have an 800MHz processor.
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Though it's not the first time we've heard of BBM Music, or heck, even the first time we've seen it, it is the first time RIM is promising the software to BlackBerry users for real, and it'll be out today! All you BlackBerry users have promised that the BBM Music app will be available for downloading inside the next 24 hours, (starting this morning, I suppose, since they've not named a specific time,) to all you citizens of the United States, Australia, and of course Canada. The rest of the world is next on the list, but again hasn't been listed for release quite yet.
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