Amazon’s Kindle Fire is currently the most popular Android-powered tablet, but it doesn’t feature a GPS chip. Given how important location-based services have become, that’s a bit of a drawback for many developers and quite a few apps that want to access location features on Amazon’s tablet actually crash. To avoid these issues, Kayak teamed up with Skyhook to provide location services for its updated Android app. Kayak, of course, relies heavily on location services to show its users information like nearby hotels and airport information.

Skyhook’s Android SDK allows developers to get location information across virtually all Android versions and forks like the Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s NOOK.

The service, which provided virtually all of the location features for iOS before Apple switched to its own solution in 2010, uses WiFi triangulation when it can’t use a GPS chip or cell tower triangulation to determine a device’s location.

On Android, it is worth noting, Skyhook is also enabled in a number of other popular apps, including Tweetcaster, HopStop, deCarta and OpenTable. WiFi triangulation, of course, is never quite as accurate as GPS (except for when you are indoors), but using a service like Skyhook greatly improves location accuracy in urban areas and speeds up GPS satellite acquisition times.

Just over a week ago, the jury began deliberations on the ongoing patent infringement case between Google and Oracle. After waiting in the wings, with bated breath, the verdict is finally in, as Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court of Northern California dismissed the jury this afternoon after a unanimous decision that ruled in favor of Google’s mobile OS — declaring that Android did not in fact infringe on the Oracle patents in question.

The decision follows an opposing verdict earlier this month, in which the jury in the long-running infringement case found that certain components of Android APIs had too close of a resemblance to code used in Oracle’s Java programming tools. However, the jury ended up splitting on the notion of whether or not Google could in fact claim fair use in its defense (which could have then led to a mistrial.)

The jury’s decision was obviously a laborious one, following two years of a legal back-and-forth between the two tech giants. Oracle had initially filed the lawsuit back in August 2010, in which the company asserted that Android infringed on Java patents that Oracle acquired as a result of its purchase of Sun Microsystems. Google responded by saying that, at the time of development, it was not aware of Sun’s patents and that Android was in fact free to use.

Of course, that decision was only the first act in the three-part deliberations, in which the copyright infringement issues were to be followed by consideration of Oracle’s patent infringement claims (the focus of today’s hearing) and, finally, the damages Google might be liable for were it found found to infringe.

However, much of that speculation was rendered moot today, as a week of deliberation came to a close today at the U.S. District Court of Northern California, with the jury unanimously declaring that Google did not in fact infringe on the six claims set forth by Oracle in regard to U.S. Patent RE 38,104 as well as the two claims regarding U.S. Patent 6,061,520.

Of course, this does not mean that the whole case has been decided; instead, the decision marks the end of the trial’s second phase, which, again, focused solely on Oracle’s claims of patent infringement.

While the jury had previously found that Google was in violation of Oracle’s copyrights, as stated above, it could not come to a unanimous decision on the issue of fair use. Meaning that, although Oracle ostensibly “won” its copyright case, it effectively has a hold on its ability to collect on any of the $1 billion in copyright damages it is seeking from Google — a conclusion that was supported by the tweets of legal reporter Ginny LaRoe, who attended today’s hearing.

And #Googacle The Trial is over. Judge Alsup dismissing jury. Since Oracle won virtually nothing, no damages phase at this point.

— Ginny LaRoe (@GinnyLaRoe) May 23, 2012

On top of that, there are a number of other legal questions surrounding the copyright case on which Judge Aslup has yet to issue a final ruling, although he is expected to come to a decision next week.

Updating

As we reported would happen yesterday, Google has today announced that it has closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, buying the Illinois-based device maker for $40 per share in cash for a total of $12.5 billion.

As widely expected, Sanjay Jha is stepping down as CEO and Dennis Woodside, Google’s former Americas head, will take the helm at Motorola Mobility, which will be operated as a standalone company. The company says the acquisition will help Google “supercharge” the Android ecosystem: while Motorola will be making devices using the platform, it will also remain open.

Page, interestingly, uses his blog post announcing the deal to focus mainly on the mobile aspects of the acquisition — Motorola also has a substantial business as a media hardware vendor, making things like set-top boxes and other equipment and technology to deliver digital video services.

“The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live,” he writes, emphasizing what the future might hold for mobile technology and likening it to Star Trek made real (and those Google Glasses really do look very Star Trek).

“It’s a great time to be in the mobile business…I’m confident Dennis [Woodhouse] and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come,” Page writes.

In announcing the acquisition, Page describes Woodhouse as “phenomenal” at team-building, and notes under him, U.S. revenues went up to $17.5 billion from $10.8 billion in less than three years. “Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola,” he wrote.

Now come more questions: what Motorola assets will Google hold on to, and what will it cut off in the new-look Motorola Mobility — and what will that say about Google’s bigger strategy as an integrated tech player? And will employees go in the process, as we have heard they will?

Unless an app you have your eye happens to have a free demo version to muck about with, there’s little one can do to try out an Android app on a device in advance. Sure, you could buy the app straight from the Google Play Store and get a refund within 15 minutes if you’re not satisfied, but Amazon has a new solution in place that helps take the friction out of that testing process.

The latest update for the Amazon Appstore Android app packs a welcome surprise — instead of being stuck Test Driving your apps on your PC, you’ll now be able to do it from directly within the app.

Well, some of you will be able to do it. Not every Android phone will be able to take part in the Test Drive program quite yet, as Amazon points out that the service is only set up to work with certain devices for now. My Galaxy Nexus doesn’t seem to be on the list at the moment, and Engadget reports that the immensely popular Galaxy S II is similarly shut out of the fun.

Still, it seems to be quite a treat for the devices that do work (Amazon doesn’t have a list of supported hardware just yet). Once you’ve got the updated app in place, you’ll see a nice big Test Drive button under the images on an app’s landing page.

The new feature leans heavily on Amazon’s massive EC2 backend — once the Test Drive button is pressed, an instance of the app starts running on EC2 server, with inputs being sent to the server and video/audio being sent back to the device. It’ll be interesting to see how well the feature actually works, but methinks I’ll have to dig through my box of Android gadgets for a bit before I find something that plays actually plays nice with it.

Over the past six months, the folks at OpenSignalMaps have been keeping tabs on the devices that have been downloading their network monitoring app, and so far they’ve recorded downloads onto 681,900 separate Android devices in 195 countries. Now they’ve taken all that data and splayed it out for all to see, and it highlights rather nicely how big a headache fragmentation can be for developers.

For the most part, the results are as you’d expect — runaway hits like Samsung’s Galaxy S II was the most represented device among the 3,997 distinct models they spotted, and Samsung Android devices were far and away the most widely used. What really gets me is how many other devices and brands fill up the rest of that list. Seriously, if you haven’t yet, go look at it. Mouse-over some of the smaller blocks, see if there are any brands or devices that ring a bell.

It’s pretty crazy to see just how many players are in the field, and nothing against OpenSignalMaps — their app is actually pretty damned useful — but it’s not an immediate must-download for every user.

That there are gobs of Android devices floating around out there isn’t exactly a shocker, but data like this really drives home the issue. With so many devices running so many versions of Android with who knows many carrier- and manufacturer-mandated tweaks onboard, how is a developer supposed to make sure that all of their users gets a consistent experience? They can’t, unless they’re willing to test like crazy.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt famously downplayed the term “fragmentation” at this year’s CES, suggesting instead that people call it “differentiation.” It’s hard not to agree with sentiment on some level — after all, one of Android’s key strengths is how easily it fits into different niches and price points. But according to him, as long as every Android user is able to use the same apps, there’s no problem here.

That strikes me as a rather shortsighted way of looking at it. Downloading and installing apps is one thing, but what I think really counts — the user experience — can still vary from hardware configuration to hardware configuration. Not a day goes by without new Android hardware (or rumors of new Android hardware) making the rounds — hell, just an hour or so ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google will soon be filling out the new Devices section in the Google Play Store with new, unlocked “Nexus” hardware thanks to cooperation from up to five hardware manufacturers.

That’s why developers like Animoca have invested what I can only imagine is a sizable amount of money and effort testing their apps with something like 400 Android devices before pushing them out into the world. And of course, fragmentation isn’t just a hardware issue — the OSM post points out that the two most used versions of Android now only account for 75% of the devices they surveyed, down from 90% last year, yet another issue for developers to grapple with.

Does every developer need to go through a process that outlandish? Certainly not — OpenSignalMaps seems to test on a tiny fraction of that, and smaller developers can cover most of their bases with a handful of carefully chosen devices. At the end of the day though, despite the sheer amount of choice and flexibility that Android has provided users, those developers still have a choice to make — do they want to strive for perfection, or do they want to keep their sanity?

Smule has been churning out scores of popular music-making iOS apps for years now, but they’ve been notoriously gun-shy about bringing those apps to other platforms.

As of today though, that streak has finally come to an end — the company has just released their auto-tuning Songify app into the Google Play Store.

Originally developed by Khush (whom Smule acquired toward the end of last year), Songify turns user-recorded speech into surprisingly listenable songs by tuning those voice inputs to go along with preset background music. The iOS version peaked at #1 on Apple’s Top Free Apps chart shortly after its launch in July 2011, and Smule now hopes for similar success as it expands into new territory.

For a while though, it seemed like this day would never come. Late last year, Smule co-founder and CTO Ge Wang told InsideMobileApps that Android app development was under consideration by the company, but issues of audio latency in certain devices meant that not every user would have a consistently solid musical experience. Though company representatives are quick to note that latency is becoming less of an issue over time, Songify sort of side-steps that issue because it doesn’t rely on instantaneous audio feedback like some of Smule’s other apps (say, Ocarina for example).

Still, that didn’t stop the company from testing the waters ahead of today’s official launch. A preview version of Songify was recently published in the Google Play Store to generally positive reviews, though they did point to a few issues that were addressed in the final build.

So what’s next for the team at Smule? In case Songify doesn’t provide you with quite enough musical mirth, Smule has also revealed that their Magic Piano app is set to make its Android debut in just a few weeks, though it too is currently available in preview form for those who just can’t wait.

For now though, Smule is content to hunker down on Android and iOS — company representatives confirmed (again) that expansion into platforms like Windows Phone isn’t in the works at this time.

Big mobile plans afoot for Baidu, the Google of China that leads in search and has launched a host of other services in the wake of that business. The company today unveiled the first smartphone to be built on its own platform, the Changhong H5018. And while that device is designed on a “forked” version of Android — forked Android devices being very popular in China — Baidu says that it doesn’t want to stop there: the idea is to take its platform, the Baidu Cloud Smart Terminal, to other operating systems like Windows Phone and iOS.

“We want Baidu’s Cloud Smart Terminal to function as a platform that sits on top of all operating systems, such as Windows Phone and iOS,” Kaiser Kuo, a spokesperson for Baidu, told TechCrunch today.

“We are not yet working on a Windows Phone device but the hope is to make one,” he noted, adding that while Baidu plans to leave no stone unturned in its strategy, “some stones are proving to be more recalcitrant than others.” That is likely a nod to Apple and how Baidu could develop its platform on iOS without completely ruining its relationship with the iPhone giant.

Mobile is a big and growing area for Baidu. In Q1, it noted that 20 percent of all of its search traffic is now coming from mobile — it is already the leading search engine in official Android devices with 80 percent penetration, Kuo noted — and he added that the mobile traffic percentage is “growing rapidly”, almost certainly faster than its more mature traffic on fixed Internet devices. At the same time, mobile continues to boom in China, with the country now outstripping the U.S. and the world’s biggest smartphone market.

The Changhong H5018 is Baidu’s big strategy to create a device that will appeal to the less affluent demographic in the country. While the iPhone has proven to be hugely popular in China, it is sold at a premium price and that cuts out large parts of the addressable market that cannot afford it. Kuo notes that at the moment there are some 1 billion mobile users in the country still on feature devices. “It’s a market dominated by feature phones that prevent users from taking full advantage of the Internet,” he said. “There is a tremendous market for low-priced but feature-laden smartphones, and this product fits that niche very well.”

It’s understood that while the basic price for the device will be 1,000 yuan (around $159), it will be sold through resellers that will attach data and calling tariffs to the device — the first named carrier is China Unicom — and subsidize the cost of the handset in the process. The phone will start to sell later this year, the company says.

Part of the reason the device will be priced so inexpensively, Kuo said, is because most of the services that Baidu is loading into the device will be cloud-based. That means the device does not need to have as much processing power built into it. “You don’t need a lot of power, just the ability to connect to the Internet because we are shifting the computing from the terminal back to the cloud,” he noted.

Among the services will be a cloud-based storage service, location-based services and Baidu Map, voice recognition and handwriting-based search input, Baidu Music and services to recharge your call and data credits on the device.

In other respects the device sounds like it will be very much on par with other basic smartphones: 3.5-inch touch screen; 3G connectivity; 3 megapixel camera and a 1400mAh battery.

The phone is being made by Foxconn and that in itself is an interesting development and shows how the manufacturing giant — partner to Apple for the iPhone and iPad among many others — also has ambitions to position itself as a mobile brand in its own right.

It also follows on from an earlier model that Baidu had released in conjunction with Dell, which Kuo described as the “precursor” to the phone launched today.

Baidu’s plans to extend its circle of partners for the phones was also indirectly confirmed by its VP of engineering Jing Wang, who noted in a company statement that “The Baidu Cloud Smart terminal platform is a crucial step in Baidu’s overall Cloud strategy in the mobile Internet sphere…it will significantly lower manufacturing costs for many mobile manufacturers and cooperating partners. Baidu is joining hands with hardware vendors, terminal manufacturers, developers and others in the industry so that everyone along the whole value chain is a winner.”

Although Baidu certainly has a lot of ambition, for now it looks like most of the mobile plan is limited to China. Although Baidu has “dipped its toe” into other countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Egypt, there are currently no plans to offer Baidu’s new phone in markets outside of the mainland. “The whole point is that it is supported by Baidu’s cloud services and all of these are currently in Chinese and not supported outside of China,” he noted. “When we have robust cloud offerings outside of China, only then would it make sense to offer terminals there.”

Google today announced its latest update for Google Maps for Android with support for Google Offers. One interesting piece of this announcement that stood out was that Google Maps for Android users now get access to free Google Offers like a free coffee or dessert. Turns out, that’s actually just a small part of a wider update to Google Offers. Merchants across the U.S. – including towns where Google’s pre-paid offers haven’t launched yet – can now use a new self-service interface to create these free offers.

We talked to Google Offers’ director of product management Eric Rosenblum about these changes earlier today. According to Rosenblum, there are three major pieces to today’s announcement: a new way for users to use Offers, a new way for merchants to use it, and expanded distribution of offers through Maps for Android.

Until now, Google and most of its competitors in this market have focused on pre-paid offers. With this new free offering, Google wants to give merchants more opportunities to get new customers to their stores. Store owners can use a new self-service interface to set specific times for when and how long an offer should be valid. This new interface also gives merchants access to stock photography and other tools to fine-tune their messages. The coupons can be for money off, a percentage discount or a free product or gift.

This is pretty similar to what Groupon is doing with Groupon Now, the difference being that this is for free coupons and not for pre-paid offers. As Rosenblum put it, this is basically a way to give shoppers “a gentle nudge” to come and try out a new store, coffee shop or restaurant.

For potential customers, this means that they can now use the Google Maps for Android app (no word on whether this feature will come to other platforms anytime soon) to find these new offers and save them. For users who opt in to this, the app will also alert them whenever there’s a nearby offer.

Google just launched an update for Google Maps for Android that brings three interesting new features to the app: integration with Google Offers, support for Google Business Photos and indoor walking directions.

With the new Google Offers integration, Android users will now be able to see which nearby stores currently offer deals. This, says Google, includes both offers that can be purchased, as well as “free” offers that are available immediately. Users can also opt-in to receive notifications when there are offers near them. Google, it is worth noting, also offers a dedicated Google Offers app for Android as well.

The Google Maps for Android app now also lets users in the U.S. and Japan (the two countries where venue owners can already upload their own indoor maps) get indoor walking directions. This is clearly an area Google has been working on for a while. Earlier this year, the company, for example, launched an Android app that allows venue owners to help Google improve its indoor location accuracy.

The app now also features support for Google Business Photos (a.k.a. Indoor Street View). With this feature, users can get access to 360-degree panoramic images from inside local stores and restaurants. These images are now highlighted on every participating business’s Place page in Google Maps for Android.

Way to blow your own horn, Google. Yesterday a newspaper in the UK, the Independent, ran a short item about how Google was about to reach an app milestone — 15 billion apps downloaded. So we reached out to Google to ask about this… and guess what? It already happened.

A Google spokesperson tells us the milestone was passed “a few weeks ago.”

The last number that Google released with more public declaration was 11 billion downloads, when the store was still called the Android Market, which it announced during its Q4 2011 earnings in January. In April, when Google reported its Q1 2012 earnings, it didn’t mention downloads on Google Play, the newly-rebranded store.

Apple reached 15 billion app downloads in July 2011, and the most recent number for Apple is 25 billion downloads in March 2012.

Doing the basic math, that roughly means that Google is seeing about 1 billion downloads of Android apps per month, while Apple is seeing about 1.25 billion app downloads per month.

So there is still a gap in aggregated downloads between the two platforms, despite that fact that Google has nearly caught up with Apple in terms of total number of apps: Currently Google Play has some 500,000 apps, while Apple has 600,000 apps in its app store.

There are other areas of disparity, it seems: Up to the end of January 2012, analyst Horace Dediu notes, Google has paid developers $320 million compared to $4 billion from Apple.

On the other hand, there seems to be other evidence pointing to the fact that Apple’s download rate is slowing down: Fiksu, for example claims that Apple’s app download rate fell by 30 percent in March.

For Google, the drive to have high volumes of app downloads is two-fold: it demonstrates to developers that this is an active and used platform, so that they continue developing for it. And it gives Google a bigger inventory from which it can potentially make more from advertising, which is the company’s real money spinner.

Data revealed in the Oracle v. Google trial over Java patents last week pointed to how Google’s Android effort was money-losing throughout 2010. Documents in the same case also showed that Google projected that it would make a profit on its mobile effort in 2011 and beyond — although we don’t have updated figures from Google that testify to whether that has been the case or not.

But those records also indicated that the vast majority of that revenue will be coming from advertising, with small but growing percentages also coming from app sales. In 2011, Google projected it would make $492.5 million in ads on Android with $14.5 million in app sales. For 2012, Google projected $804.3 million in ad sales with $35.9 million from app revenue.

Figures from those documents also showed that Google expected a loss of $113 million in 2010 from Android and that it expected to have profits of $64 million in 2011; $248 million in 2012; and $548 in 2013.

The HTC Titan II has already gone through the Fly or Die ringer, but the real determining factor for these phones is the level of competition surrounding them. In the case of the Titan II, the HTC/Microsoft partnership is most threatened by more HTC and Windows-powered phones, namely the Lumia 900 and the HTC One X.

So what do these phones have that the Titan lacks? How does the Titan wipe up the floor with them?

Well, that’s why I’m here, and why we’ve made this lovely graphic for you.

Truth be told, specs really don’t matter anymore, especially specs like processor clock speed and (I’m sorry to say it) megapixel count on cameras. What really matters is your preferred operating system, display size/resolution, and comfort with design.

When weighing these three phones against each other, the similarities are abundant, as are the subtle differences. For example, the Lumia 900 will net you $100 less than either of the other two phones. At the same time, it’s a touch smaller than the Titan and the One X, and if you prefer HTC hardware to Nokia’s then that doesn’t really matter.

I happen to be a pretty huge fan of the Lumia 900 simply because Windows Phone can pull off its stupid 480×800 resolution requirement on a 4.3-inch screen much better than it can on the Titan’s 4.7-inch display. Past that, the phones are quite similar. The Lumia feels a bit more premium in the hand, yet HTC does an excellent job of making even their plastic phones feel high-end.

If Windows Phone is your flavor, this is definitely a tough call. Good luck.

If it’s HTC that tickles your fancy, it all comes down to the OS. Do you prefer Sense 4 on top of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, or would you prefer to play with Microsoft. The One X specs slap down the Titan II like Daniel LaRusso at the beginning of The Karate Kid, but as I mentioned earlier, specs matter less and less these days. Where you’ll really win with the One X is the 4.7-inch 720p display. If you can tote it around comfortably, it really doesn’t get much better than that.

The ball is in your court, my dear readers. Choose wisely.

A post on CNN Money found that during a quick assessment of 10 Verizon stores and reps in New York – arguably a small sample size – the representatives would pitch Verizon’s Android’s 4G phones over the “old fashioned” 3G iPhone. Said one rep: “The iPhone is a great phone, but it’s on 3G. I’m not going to recommend a phone that’s outdated.”

Now I don’t doubt David Goldman’s story that Verizon reps are pushing Android inventory in New York if only to clear out the back room. However, I had to test it myself. I chatted briefly with a Verizon rep online and found that she (I assume it was a she as her name was Chiquita) just wanted to close the sale rather than steer me towards anything else:

You’ll also note that Verizon is currently incentivizing 4G with double data plans for LTE phones. We also spoke to one sales rep under the condition of anonymity who said they had heard nothing about any specific promotion to with Android phones. And, as you see in my own exchange, the rep was more than happy to steer me towards an iPhone. Panic averted.

The biggest problems with Kremlinology like this is that some sales incentives may not percolate out to every sales rep and that the impetus to push Android phones may be regional and plays into a number of biases in terms of perceived wealth, gender, and surrounding culture. Although a blind, Turing-style interaction with a sales rep online is fairly blind, whether you’re pushed an iPhone or a RAZR at a store on Broadway has a lot to do with a lot of things. Until we see a document (and we’re looking) that says Verizon reps get extra ponies if they pitch Android over iOS, I’m not buying it.

In September 2010, I wrote a post that ignited an absolute shitstorm around these parts. “Shitstorm” in this case meaning a post with a thousand comments, the majority of which were spewed up by rabid Android fanatics. The title of that post:

Is Android Surging Only Because Apple Is Letting It?

At the time, we were in the midst of a massive Android surge to the top of the smartphone ecosystem food chain. This was happening all around the world, but the focus of this particular post was the U.S. market. Based on some comments made by developer David Beach at the time, I wondered if, as the title suggested, Android was only doing so well in the U.S. because the iPhone was still only available on one carrier, AT&T?

It’s time to revisit that thought because there’s now absolutely no question that this was the case. There’s now data to back it up. What’s more, despite what some surveys suggest, this trend may have fully reversed itself.

Over the past few days, both comScore and NPD have put out data showing that Android still has a healthy hold on the U.S. smartphone market with their best market share numbers yet. According to comScore, Android controls 51 percent of the market. According to NPD, it’s more like 61 percent.

For comparison, Apple is the number two player with 30.7 percent of the market according to comScore, and 29 percent according to NPD.

On the surface, there’s one big glaring problem with these numbers. Actual sales data from the three largest carriers in the U.S. doesn’t seem to back up the comScore and NPD numbers. At all.

In the last quarter, the iPhone accounted for 78 percent of all smartphones sold through AT&T. On Verizon, the iPhone accounted for 51 percent of all smartphones sold. Sprint didn’t report their total smartphone sales numbers, only iPhone sales numbers, but estimates peg the iPhone percentage around 60 percent. The iPhone is not (yet) sold on the nation’s fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile.

That’s 51 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s largest carrier (Verizon). 78 percent of all smartphone sold on the nation’s number two carrier (AT&T). And 60 percent of all smartphones sold on the nation’s number three carrier (Sprint). Jay Yarow of Business Insider did the math: all together, the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of the smartphone sales in the past quarter on the big three carriers. The 63 percent number is close to the 59 percent estimated by Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt last week, as reported by Eric Savitz for Forbes.

And if you believe the Yankee Group, the big three carriers account for roughly 80 percent of the overall U.S. smartphone market. This equates to almost exactly 50 percent of the overall smartphone market in the U.S. for Apple.

It’s hard to see how Android could control 61 percent of the market when there’s only 50 percent to spare after the actual numbers are calculated. Maybe Android is huge with undocumented workers. Undocumented workers who love taking surveys, mind you. But I digress…

And, of course, there are other smartphones out there from RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, and the like. Even giving Android the other 50 percent of the market would mean all of the other players equal zero percent. (Sadly, perhaps not that far off, actually.)

ComScore at least has some wiggle room here. They don’t actually measure phone sales quarter to quarter, but overall market usage. So it’s certainly possible that after a few years of Android sales, they do still control the majority of the U.S. smartphone market. But their numbers get sticky when you look quarter-to-quarter and see that Android’s market share increased nearly four time more than the iPhone’s market share this past quarter. Again, that doesn’t sound right when the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all smartphones sold on the big three carriers.

When I brought this point up a few days ago, comScore was quick with an answer. They told me that amongst the big three carriers, the iPhone subscriber growth actually did outpace Android subscriber growth, 13 percent to 11 percent. It’s just that overall Android growth from the remaining carriers (meaning T-Mobile and the regional carriers) more than wiped out that difference.

First of all, 13 percent (iPhone) versus 11 percent (Android) growth on the big three carriers still doesn’t sound right if the iPhone accounted for 63 percent of all sales last quarter. Second, if the big three do in fact make up about 80 percent of the overall market, how did the remaining 20 percent tilt the scales 4x in favor of Android (in terms of market share growth quarter to quarter)? It doesn’t make sense.

And then you look at NPD’s numbers. Yarow demolished those earlier. And sure enough, NPD reached out right away with clarifications.

Here’s the real issue: this rapid swing in favor of the iPhone seems to have exposed some serious flaws in the way these market analysts get their data. They’re hiding behind vague technicalities on how their numbers could be what they say, but they still don’t add up. Their problem is that we have actual numbers from the three largest carriers in the U.S., all of which are finally selling the iPhone and boasting about those numbers because they’re huge.

So how do the other guys get their numbers?

Surveys.

In comScore’s case, their MobiLens data comes from “an intelligent online survey of a nationally representative sample of mobile subscribers age 13 and older”. They don’t disclose the number of people surveyed, but you can bet it’s not a massive number (sure enough, it’s not, see update below). In NPD’s case, they survey 12,811 people.

Which numbers do you trust? Millions upon millions of actual sales reported in a legal manner by public companies or surveys of thousands of people?

Further, as Ethan Kaplan points out, “NPD and the like are incentive based surveys so naturally skew a certain way. Teens, college students, etc.” Several others have made this point over the past few days. The numbers comScore and NPD use in their statistically small surveys are likely skewed for a number of reasons. And again, now we have actual sales data that heavily suggests that’s the case.

By now, I probably have the Android fanatics really upset, so let’s throw out all these rational numbers and instead continue on with the dream that Android is “winning” in the U.S. Not winning in revenue or profit mind you — you know, things that actually matter for business, and things which Android will likely never be winning in any sense of the word — but winning in terms of overall market share. If you want to ignore all the above information and insist that Android is still winning there, that’s fine. But let’s jump back to the beginning of this post.

Again, the argument made in September 2010 was that Android was winning in market share in the U.S. because Apple was letting it win by only making the iPhone available on AT&T’s network. If Android still does control half to two-thirds of the market as the surveys suggest, what does it mean that on the three carriers where the iPhone is available, Apple now controls over 60 percent of these markets on a quarterly basis? (Again, this is fact backed up by actual sales numbers.)

It means that Android was/is winning in market share because Apple was/is allowing it to.

Android was previously the top smartphone OS for both Verizon and Sprint. But that was only because the iPhone was not available on either network until last year. When it became available, it quickly shot to the top. One type of phone outsold hundreds of other models combined. That’s pretty insane.

And it doesn’t speak well for the future of Android’s market share, survey or not. At least not in the U.S. (the rest of the world is more complicated for many other reasons). What if Apple finally puts the iPhone on T-Mobile later this year? Given what we now know — again, from actual data — is there any question that it becomes the top smartphone there? What about the other, smaller regional carriers? That’s already starting to happen.

Android’s only hope is to actually have a phone, or a set of phones, that are more appealing to consumers than the iPhone. But that hasn’t happened in the past four years, so what makes us think that will change this year? Or next year? All Apple has to do is say the word and they can win the market share battle in this country.

Actually, again, if you consider the numbers above, it sure looks like they already have won that battle.

Update: comScore notes that their surveys are 3-month averages of about 30,000 mobile phone users.

Barnes & Noble has found a new, major partner in its fight to get an edge over Amazon and Apple in the market for e-books and the devices being used to consume them: it is teaming up with Microsoft in what the two are calling a strategic partnership, name yet to be determined.

It will come in the form of a new subsidiary of B&N that will include all of its Nook business as well as its educational College business. Microsoft is making a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for around 17.6 percent equity in the subsidiary.

The news leaves the door open for B&N to eventually spin these off into a separate business altogether — or even sell them to Microsoft. And it leaves a load of questions about what B&N will do next with the Nook, which is currently built on a forked version of Google’s Android platform.

The new company, referred to for the moment as Newco, will contain B&N’s digital business, as well as its College division. While Microsoft will take 17.6 percent, B&N will own 82.4 percent of the venture.

This is a key way of getting more content on to the Microsoft platform — specifically e-books content to ensure that its Windows 8 tablets will be able to compete not only against the best-selling iPad but also the Kindle Fire from Amazon, along with the rest of the company’s e-readers. The Kindle Fire has stolen a march among Android tablet makers and part of the compelling offer is not only the low price ($199) but also the fact that it contains so much content, including seamless access to all of Amazon’s e-book offerings.

This is also a progression — a very big one — of the funding etudes that Microsoft has been making to developers to make sure they are making apps for Windows Phone. It’s a way of getting more content on its two mobile platforms — which, it can be argued, may have come too late to the market. The first product to come out of the door of Newco? A Nook application for Windows 8, the companies say.

And given that education has been one of Apple’s bigger pushes this year, and the obvious and close links between education and e-reading, it’s not too surprising to see that B&N has also put its College division into this subsidiary.

Microsoft, too, has been courting the education market — inking its biggest-ever cloud-services deal in the education sector earlier this month. Nevertheless the pair have a long road ahead of them. In January, Apple noted that there were already 20,000 educational apps for iOS and that there were already 1.5 million devices deployed in schools, numbers that will inevitably have grown in the last 4-5 months with the launch of the new iPad and numerous initiatives to spread the tablet in the educational sector.

And there is a legal twist to the deal, too: the two companies say they have definitely sorted out their patent litigation now: “Moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products,” the two write in the release below. If Microsoft doesn’t use this as an opportunity of possibly persuading B&N to swap over to Windows 8 for a version of the Nook, it will also give it a very interesting inroad into developing more for Android.

As for B&N and the future of these products… this deal looks like it could potentially pave the way for B&N to spin off this business into its own standalone operation, if not into the waiting arms of Microsoft itself — long speculated to be looking at ways of gaining a stronger foothold in the area of mobile devices to better implement its bigger strategy. The idea of a subsidiary was something that B&N had first floated back in January, when it noted that it was weighing up how best to separate its digital business to “maximize shareholder value.”

There are many more questions — such as what this could mean for the company’s broader strategy for growing the market for the Nook (international being a key push that the company has yet to make, apart from some baby steps); and how well, exactly, those products are doing for the company: IDC puts the Nook’s share of the tablet market at just 3.5 percent.

The company is holding a conference call on the deal later today and we’ll update as we learn more. Update: A follow up post with details from the 8-K filed by B&N (including details on payouts from Microsoft), as well as highlights from the conference call is here.

Full press release below.

New York, NY and Redmond, WA (April 30, 2012) – Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) today announced the formation of a strategic partnership in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary, which will build upon the history of strong innovation in digital reading technologies from both companies. The partnership will accelerate the transition to e-reading, which is revolutionizing the way people consume, create, share and enjoy digital content.

The new subsidiary, referred to in this release as Newco, will bring together the digital and College businesses of Barnes & Noble. Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in Newco at a post-money valuation of $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximately 17.6% equity stake. Barnes & Noble will own approximately 82.4% of the new subsidiary, which will have an ongoing relationship with the company’s retail stores. Barnes & Noble has not yet decided on the name of Newco.

One of the first benefits for customers will be a NOOK application for Windows 8, which will extend the reach of Barnes & Noble’s digital bookstore by providing one of the world’s largest digital catalogues of e-Books, magazines and newspapers to hundreds of millions of Windows customers in the U.S. and internationally.

The inclusion of Barnes & Noble’s College business is an important component of Newco’s strategic vision. Through the newly formed Newco, Barnes & Noble’s industry leading NOOK Study software will provide students and educators the preeminent technology platform for the distribution and management of digital education materials in the market.

“The formation of Newco and our relationship with Microsoft are important parts of our strategy to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK business, and to solidify our position as a leader in the exploding market for digital content in the consumer and education segments,” said William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble. “Microsoft’s investment in Newco, and our exciting collaboration to bring world-class digital reading technologies and content to the Windows platform and its hundreds of millions of users, will allow us to significantly expand the business.”

“The shift to digital is putting the world’s libraries and newsstands in the palm of every person’s hand, and is the beginning of a journey that will impact how people read, interact with, and enjoy new forms of content,” said Andy Lees, President at Microsoft. “Our complementary assets will accelerate e-reading innovation across a broad range of Windows devices, enabling people to not just read stories, but to be part of them. We’re at the cusp of a revolution in reading.”

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have settled their patent litigation, and moving forward, Barnes & Noble and Newco will have a royalty-bearing license under Microsoft’s patents for its NOOK eReader and Tablet products. This paves the way for both companies to collaborate and reach a broader set of customers.

Newco,

On January 5, Barnes & Noble announced that it was exploring the strategic separation of its digital business in order to maximize shareholder value. Barnes & Noble is actively engaged in the formation of Newco, which will include Barnes & Noble’s digital and College businesses. The company intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of Newco may occur. There can be no assurance that the review will result in a strategic separation or the creation of a stand-alone public company, and there is no set timetable for this review. Barnes & Noble does not intend to comment further regarding the review unless and until a decision is made.

Additional information will be contained in a Current Report on Form 8-K to be filed by Barnes & Noble.

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft will host an investor call and webcast beginning at 8:30 A.M. ET on Monday, April 30, 2012. To join the webcast, please visit: www.barnesandnobleinc.com/webcasts.

On the same day that Amazon will be releasing its quarterly earnings, some research from comScore underscores just how far the company has come since launching its Kindle Fire tablet in November 2011.

The researchers say that as of February 2012, Amazon’s Kindle Fire now accounts for 54.4 percent of all Android tablets in the U.S. Given how many different models of Android tablets there are out in the market at the moment, that gives it a strong lead over the rest of the field: the whole range of Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets, added together, only accounted for 15.4 percent of the market, with the Xoom following at seven percent, comScore said.

That’s an embarrassing state of affairs for a company like Samsung, which has not only flooded the market with different-sized devices but was an early mover in the Android tablet space. And these figures also emphasize just how much work Sony has ahead of it in its battle to try to get more traction in tablets and mobile in general.

On the other hand, the small shares for so many manufacturers also, inadvertently, gives a good opening for Microsoft to entice OEMs to build on its platform to try to wrest share from Amazon and Apple and its iPad, which is still the most popular tablet of all — although its share of sales has decreased over time. Apart from Amazon, which is using a forked version of Android, no one has really made headway among consumers using Android to date.

It also points to the possibility that if Amazon can create a successful forked Android product, will we see others trying their luck using this route soon?

Of course, there’s more to making a successful product in the tablet market, and what Amazon has managed to do is create a price-busting ($199), content-rich product that not only has the benefit of Amazon’s own content relationships, but by getting a critical mass of tablet users it is also attracting third-party developers to make apps specifically for its platform.

The full breakdown:

Beyond that, Asus with its Transformer has made an almost equal impact as Motorola, with a 6.3 percent share of the market and Toshiba’s AT100 has a 5.7 percent share.

With some expecting Amazon to release a second model of the Fire with a bigger screen — and others speculating that Apple will do the same by releasing a smaller-screened iPad — the industry hasn’t really settled on which size tablet might be optimal. Some figures out from comScore give some insight at least into how different sizes get used.

Basically, when it comes to browsing, the bigger the better: a tablet with a 10-inch screen generates 39 percent more browsing than a tablet with a seven-inch screen, and a 58 percent higher consumption rate than five-inch tablets.  (That’s not too much of a surprise, really, since it’s much easier to browse the Internet on a bigger screen, but it does also point to the fact that over time we may see more content created to capitalize on this trend.)

ComScore’s numbers come from a new research division called Device Essentials, which tracks Internet traffic on a device-specific basis. Other types of data it collects are around smartphone and feature phone usage on an OS-level; how much smartphone traffic is carried by different operators; and traffic for specific content categories based on operating systems and devices; and whether people are using cellular network or Wi-Fi to browse.

Facebook has been in the process of ramping up its effort to leverage its ever-growing platform to aid mobile developers to market their native and HTML5-based apps. In this attempt to extend its platform on mobile, Facebook brought its social channels and social app discovery to mobile web apps on Android and native apps on iOS. With a new update to Facebook for Android, the social network today announced that it is bringing social discovery to native Android apps.

In a blog post today, Facebook said that apps and games like Pinterest, BranchOut, Diamond Dash, and Words With Friends have seen a spike in traffic to their native iOS apps and Android web apps through Facebook. Thus, with this release, social app discovery for native apps is available on both Android and iOS.

The update, Facebook says, will make it easier for people on Facebook to discover and re-engage with their favorite apps on mobile devices, presumably driving additional growth for Android apps. This means that channels like Bookmarks, Requests, and News Feed, which have previously been available on other platforms, are now accessible on native Android apps. To date, 7 of the top 10 iOS apps and 5 of the top 10 grossing Android apps (like Live Holdem Poker Pro, Zynga Poker, Slot City, Slotomania, and Draw Something) are integrated with Facebook.

In case it’s not clear from the above, Facebook now enables developers to build apps for the mobile platform of their choice, and to take advantage of the social discovery and increased traffic brought through viral channels. For developers, once a mobile optimized version of an app is ready to go (with Facebook Single Sign On), head over to app settings, and enable “Android Native Deep Linking,” and fill in the form. You can find the documentation here.

For more, check out the blog post here.

Independent mobile ad network InMobi released its Q1 2012 Ad Data report for North America this morning, covering the mobile ad landscape for the first part of the year. Not surprisingly, the report found the top two mobile operating systems were, again, iOS and Android, each with a sizeable chunk of market share and growing. RIM, meanwhile, was still clinging to spot #3, but has dropped 4.6% since Q1 2011, the report found, going from a 11.9% share to 7.3%. this past quarter.

InMobi’s report is not a full picture of the mobile landscape, of course – it’s only a slice of it, pulled from data sourced by ad impressions on its network. Today, the company reaches 578 million consumers in over 165 countries, serving more than 93.4 billion ad impressions each month.

In the new report for North America, InMobi found that Apple’s iOS platform has maintained its lead over Android for the third consecutive month, with total iOS impression share at 37% versus Android’s 34%. However, even though InMobi refers to iOS as “iPhone OS” in its findings (but not its graphics…), it appears they’re also counting iPads and iPod Touches when determining the platform’s totals.

When this so-called “iPhone OS” is broken down, InMobi says the iPhone itself has 19.7% market share, the iPod 12.2% and the iPad 4.9%. Given Android’s fairly small tablet footprint, an apples to apples comparison (groan, sorry) of mobile phone platforms alone would put Android phones ahead if you were only looking at mobile handsets. InMobi did not, so you can claim this data is skewed in Apple’s favor, if you choose.

Anne Frisbie, InMobi’s VP and Managing Director for North America, says that Apple’s position in this market has a lot to do with the new iPad. “Apple maintained its lead over Android and further increased its share of impressions and handset dominance; the new iPad certainly helped its overall position,” she says. “However, we know that fierce competition is created across the operating systems when new devices enter the market, and this time last year Android surpassed iOS globally.”

In other words, things can still change.

But in terms of ad impressions (if not device type), iOS leads globally, too. InMobi found Apple devices claiming the top three positions at a combined 18% global market share.

Globally, however, Nokia devices combined have the highest number of impressions at 35%. This grouping didn’t just include Symbian phones, though – it also included Windows Phone as well as Nokia feature phones that have Internet access.

Meanwhile, as iOS reigned in North America, in the U.K. specifically, Apple’s share was even larger, with 45% of all ad impressions, compared with Google’s Android at 26% and RIM at 16%.

But in all of Europe combined, Google’s Android was most popular, with 36% of all impressions versus Apple’s 28% and RIM’s 13%.

Facebook has released an update to its Android app today that should give users of the social network on Android devices a more integrated and instant experience — and takes Facebook another step closer to making its mobile app experience more like the one people have when using the social network on the web.

Specifically, the new version lets users share photos and messages direct from the home screen of their devices, and it includes several features that had been in the standalone Messenger app.

Facebook for Android 1.9, according to a blog post from Facebook software engineer Frank Qixing Du, also integrates several features that had been in Facebook’s separate Messenger app. These include the ability to see when your friends are online or on their mobile devices; the ability to add people to a group conversation; and a more intelligent contact list, sorting it by the people you interact with most.

After updating the app, camera shortcuts and messaging shortcuts will also appear in your Android app tray, as shortcuts separate from the Facebook app itself:

As before, you will also be able to upload photos, track what your friends are uploading and writing, and look up the phone numbers of your contacts.

So far, the reviews in the Google Play app store have been mixed. On the minus side, several are pointing out that there is now some confusion between Facebook’s Camera and Messenger apps, and those that users would have already had — the native Android apps. Also these new additions take up extra space for now. On the plus side, there’s strong praise for the new design and better Messenger integration.

Check out the reviews and the app itself in Google Play.

As bad as Nokia’s financials look right now – a $4 billion drop in sales won’t make anyone’s day – don’t consider the Windows Phone move a failure just yet. They’ve done what many phone companies have thus far failed to do. They’ve changed swiftly with the times and, more important, they’ve done it in quite admirable way.

If you’ll recall, the first real Android phone was HTC’s G1. Considered a clunker by all but the most die-hard of users, the device sold fairly well, topping out at 1 million units in 2008. But the G1 did something more important than make T-Mobile the first Android carrier – it grabbed a certain user contingent who understood Android, understood the framework, and would follow the platform to the grave. The popularity of the G1 was a direct reaction to the burgeoning iOS platform. The same thing happened in the WebOS space, but WebOS was exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time and is a disaster distinct from the Android launch.

Over time, the maker of the G1, HTC, got better and better at making Android phones. The experience gained from the G1 allowed manufacturers to rejigger their sales strategy, leading to the famous Droid marketing campaign and the hysteria for Google’s Nexus line.

Nokia is in a similar place. The company has pivoted completely. Their popular Symbian smartphones are essentially dead and their Windows Phone line is curtailed until popular adoption grows. They’re essentially waiting. Most important, they’re taking a bath on the Lumia line by pricing it at or below the comfort level of most casual smartphone buyers

They’re selling loss leaders in order to gain market share. Microsoft knows it and Nokia knows it and I assure you HTC, Samsung, and LG know it. They only folks who shouldn’t be worried are Apple but I suspect Microsoft is definitely on their radar.

I can say one thing without equivocation: Windows Phone is better than Android. WinPho is monolithic, there are no clear issues with branching or hardware compatibility (today’s news notwithstanding), and WinPho’s UI familiarity will soon be bolstered by millions of Windows 8 installs around the world. Android is great if you’re a small manufacturer and you just want to dump a stack onto what would have once been called a feature phone. Windows Phone is great if you want the largesse, the popularity, and the trustworthiness of Microsoft behind your product.

So ignore Nokia at your peril. Their strategy is just right at just the right time. Remember: nobody ever got fired for installing Microsoft. Not even Stephen Elop.

Chrome for Android is becoming somewhat of a flagship mobile app for Google, but given that it’s only available on phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich, its reach is pretty limited. It’s still one of the best mobile browsers on the market, though, and Google is adding a number of cool features to it today. Chrome for Android is now also available in 31 additional languages and in all countries where Google Play is available.

Among the new features is the ability to request the desktop version of a website instead of the mobile version that site may have defaulted to. Quite a few mobile sites offer their mobile users to switch back to a desktop version already, but this option is notably absent from far too many sites. Many sites also default to the mobile view whenever they see an Android device, no matter the screen size, which can get a bit annoying on a tablet.

With this new version, Chrome for Android users can now also choose to add bookmarks to their Android home screens and choose which apps should handle links opened in Chrome.

The updated app also now allows users to download files to their device and includes support for complex text layout and right to left text. In addition, this new version now suggests country-specific search engines and users can now use Chrome with the system proxy configured in their Android settings.