Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.
Here are three recent examples. → Read More
As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.
On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don’t need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.
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Earlier this morning, we looked at the findings from analytics provider Distimo‘s latest report, which examined what happens when mobile apps go on sale. (Spoiler: when priced correctly, revenue goes way up). The second part of the report looked at the ranking gains that occur when an app achieves “featured” status in a mobile app store like iTunes or the Android Market.
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Following Fujitsu, another Japanese electronics maker is ready to sell color e-book readers: Toshiba announced [JP] the so-called BookPlace DB50 today, a 7-Inch device that comes with direct access to big T’s BookPlace store (which currently offers around 43,000 different Japanese e-books and magazines).
Toshiba says they plan to expand the range of available titles to 100,000 by March this year, the largest in its home market. The store has been available in America since 2010. → Read More
AT&T this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011. Consolidated revenues clocked in at $32.5 billion, up 3.6 percent compared to the year-earlier quarter. They recorded a huge net loss for Q4 2011: $6.7 billion, or $1.12 per diluted share.
Zooming in on smartphone sales, it’s worth noting that AT&T delivered its best-ever quarter to date, hands down. → Read More
Apple’s iPad reigns supreme from whatever angle you choose to look at the tablet market (profits, apps, quality, market share, mindshare, you name it), but research firm Strategy Analytics this morning said Android did manage to capture a record 39 percent tablet OS market share in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Apple maintains the lead with 58 percent market share in Q4 2011 (down from 68 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010).
Peter King, a research director at Strategy Analytics, says global tablet shipments (the research firm explains that these refer to ‘sell-in’ and not over-the-counter sales) reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in Q4 2011, surging 150 percent from 10.7 million in Q4 2010. → Read More
The Galaxy Nexus’s 4.65-inch display may make it a handful for some, but a nifty new project from a developer known as DDRBoxman allows users to interact with their Galaxy Nexus on an even grander scale.
With the help of a projector, a Kinect camera, and a specially tweaked Ice Cream Sandwich ROM, he was able to interact with his Nexus by touching a wall. → Read More
The future was supposed to be all about swooping through pixellated cities, the crepuscular computer ghost-light arcing through the Aurignacian canyons of Neo Tokyo as we trailed our enemies into the dark. Instead we get some of the coolest map visualizations I’ve ever seen with a few social media tricks thrown in to make a very cool mapping platform called UpNext. You win some, you lose some.
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An Android developer by the name of Koushik Dutta is building an alternative Android app store which will house the apps that have been banned from Google’s official Android Market. These will include the custom ROMs (customized versions of the Android OS), classic gaming emulators pulled due to copyright complaints, unofficial tethering apps removed at the behest of mobile operators, Visual Voicemail apps, one-click rooting apps, and more. → Read More
We’re tuned in live to Google’s Q4 2011 earnings call, where they’ve just disclosed a few details they left out of this morning’s big ol’ data dump. Amongst them: a progress update on Android’s growth.
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Thrillist-owned JackThreads has just announced the availability of their first mobile for Android and iPhone. Built by Fueled Mobile Design and Development using designs and user experience built in-house, the app allows shoppers to browse new deals and sales as they are announced on the site and, if so inclined, make purchases.
I spoke to lead developer Chris Steib who said that JackThreads saw that much of the traffic was coming through mobile sites, something they had not initially expected. → Read More
It’s not really news to say that the Galaxy S II is a hit, but it has actually become a mega hit in South Korea. According to maker Samsung, the Android handset has been sold a whopping 5 million times in its domestic market since release at the end of April 2011. In other words, a little more than 10% of the country’s entire population (48 million people) are now proud owners of the phone.
It’s the first cell phone that has reached this milestone in mobile-crazy South Korea, according to Japanese business daily The Nikkei. The paper also says that one out of four South Korean smartphones users owns a Galaxy S II (sounds like feature phones don’t play a big role in that country anymore). → Read More
Nielsen just released its latest numbers with regard to new smartphone owners, and it would seem that the iPhone (particularly the 4S) is quite popular among those migrating over to the smartphone segment.
In fact, since the iPhone 4S launched in October, the number of recent smartphone buyers who chose the iPhone has reached 44.5 percent, up from just 25 percent in October. → Read More
The Infobar C01 from yesterday was a bit too much for you? Not to worry, Japan still produces “ordinary” Android phones: Fujitsu’s ARROWS μ F-07D [JP], which mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to start selling this Friday, is the newest example.
It doesn’t look as unique as the Infobar, but the list of specs is long and pretty impressive. → Read More
Japan’s mobile landscape is currently in the midst of an Android revolution, and today KDDI au (the country’s second biggest carrier) announced another 5 smartphones with that OS on board for the local market. The most interesting model in the new line-up is the so-called INFOBAR C01 [JP], a candy bar coming with a heavily customized UI (based on Android 2.3).
KDDI au introduced a similar model back in May last year, the INFOBAR A01 (both handsets are part of KDDI’s designer sub-brand iida). → Read More
A few weeks ago, I wrote: A couple weeks ago, MG wrote: Android development itself remains a huge pain in the ass. I hear this again, and again, and again. Which took me a bit aback. I’ve developed numerous Android and iOS apps (though not games, so I can’t speak to the differences there) over the last few years, and neither set of developer tools seems to me to be hugely superior: both have their strengths and their really irritating failings.
Oh, the irony.
Up until recently all the Android apps I’d worked on had had fairly vanilla graphics requirements. But for the last few weeks I’ve been in crunch mode developing an Android app with moderately elaborate graphics — and. Well.
I stand by what I said, to a point: the developer tools for the two platforms are comparable. But Android’s fragmentation has become a giant millstone for Android app development, leaving it far behind its iOS equivalent. It’s not the panoply of screen sizes and formats on devices running Android; the Android layout engine really makes that annoying, but no big deal. It’s not the frequent instances of completely different visual behavior on two phones running exactly the same version of Android; again, annoying, but relatively minor. Device fragmentation is just an irritation.
OS fragmentation, though, is an utter disaster. → Read More
Back in fall 2010, Apple filed suit against Motorola alleging that the company was violating several of its patents with its flagship line of Droid smartphones, all of which run Android. The case was filed with the US International Trade Commission — a favorite battleground for these smartphone suits, as it has the ability to block potentially infringing devices from import into the United States.
Today, Motorola has gotten some good news: the ITC has released its initial determination on the case, and it is ruling in Motorola’s favor. The news was first broken by CNet. As the CNet article reports, this is only an initial determination, and won’t become final until it’s been voted on by the ITC’s full committee. → Read More
Yesterday Google unveiled Android Design, a very nicely done (and sorely need) portal that instructs third-party developers on how they should go about designing their applications, both in terms of making them look nice, and in providing a consistent experience for users.
But while these guidelines are a big step forward for Android, there’s another issue: Google doesn’t really have any way to ensure that developers actually follow them. After all, there’s essentially no approval process for an application to get admitted to Android Market — provided you aren’t bundling malware or violating Google’s Terms of Service, you’re in.
So what is Google’s plan?
Yesterday I spoke with Matias Duarte, the Director of User Experience for Android (and the man ultimately responsible for its look and feel). And while he was coy about Google’s plans, he did give some hints. Namely, that Google will be working to give developers significant incentives to follow the UI guidelines. → Read More
Do women need special cell phones? Certain companies, such as Deutsche Telekom or Samsung, seem to think so. Now Fujitsu Japan is ready to roll out [JP] not one but two handsets specifically designed “for girls”, a feature phone and an Android model.
The Android phone, the so-called F-03D Girls’, has been developed in cooperation with popular teenage fashion magazine Popteen. → Read More
Tired of looking at Android apps that are decidedly more homely than their iOS counterparts? Google is too — and it’s finally doing something about it.
Today the Android team has launched an official ‘Android Design’ portal, featuring an extensive guide outlining UI best practices that developers should work to use as they’re building their apps. You can find the new site right here.
Android’s visual shortcomings have been well documented (you can find a video of me discussing this issue with Android’s Director of User Experience, Matias Duarte, right here). In the old days (say, when the original Droid launched) it really was often downright ugly — and the apps were even worse, with buttons that did unexpected things and UIs that looked generic and amateur. → Read More
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