Tag Archives | Apple. iPhone

Bizzy, an Intriguing But Incomplete Local-Business Guide

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 19, 2010 at 6:01 pm

I’ve been playing with Bizzy, a new service that feels a little bit like Facebook, a little bit like Yelp, and a little bit like Groupon. It has lots of potential, although at the moment it feels like an interesting framework that hasn’t yet been stocked with useful information.

The site–which currently provides information for San Francisco, New York, Dallas, and Shreveport, Louisiana–is one of a bevy of new companies built around the idea of connecting consumers with local businesses. More than most, though, it focuses on letting you keep tabs on your favorites rather than helping you find a place to go on one particular night.

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Gartner: Smartphone Sales Surging, Especially Android

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 12, 2010 at 10:34 am

Research firm Gartner said Thursday that smartphone sales are up some 50 percent year-over-year, with Android showing explosive growth and topping Apple in the quarter ending June 30 for the first time in the history of the company’s survey. Gartner is only the latest in a line of outfits to confirm Android’s stratospheric rise.

Growth year-over-year is a stunning 850 percent. Last year at this time, Android accounted for only 1.8 percent of the market. This year? 17.2 percent. That was enough to put it in third place overall. Symbian led all with a 41.2 percent share, followed by RIM with 18.2 percent. Both were down from a year ago.

iOS slipped into fourth place with a 14.2 percent share, however it was up just over a percentage point from the year previous. Gartner cautioned that its numbers could have been stunted by consumers holding purchases off for the iPhone 4, and limited availability once it was released.

“We expect that a wider global roll-out of iPhone 4 will sustain Apple’s sales momentum throughout the second half of 2010,” the company wrote in its report.

Obviously, it’s Android’s non exclusive strategy that is really paying off for Google here. But lets wait another quarter until we see the first indications of iPhone 4’s effect on sales before we pass judgement. Add to this simply releasing the iPhone on Verizon as rumored could put iPhone back on top very quick, and it just seems too early to tell…

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AT&T U-Verse iPhone App Allows TV Viewing

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 9, 2010 at 1:17 pm

AT&T has launched an app which would allow U-Verse customers to schedule programs for recording on their DVRs as well as downloading and watching programming on their iPhone. While satellite TV provider Dish had announced last week that it was developing a Sling-based iPhone app that would allow for similar functionality, AT&T is the first to actually release one.

A Wi-Fi connection would be needed to download the programming, as obviously these files would be too big to download over 3G. The app and its use would be free, but would require a U300 package or higher, the company said. To entice users to subscribe, new U-Verse customers would receive a $75 iTunes gift card upon registration.

There is a caveat to downloading, it appears. AT&T selects the content from which you can download, which only includes select networks. Thus, the programs available may not necessarily match those that are recorded on your DVR. In this case, Dish’s planned app seems to be the better deal.

BlackBerry users, don’t fret: AT&T plans to offer a version of its app compatible with the upcoming BlackBerry Torch, due out on the company’s wireless arm on August 12. In addition, iPad support would also be available once AT&T can work out the content deals with the various content providers, it said.

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Jailbreak Your iPhone, Get Flash with Frash

Posted by Ed Oswald on August 9, 2010 at 9:32 am

Our regular readers will probably remember my post last month on Frash, a Flash plug-in being developed for jailbroken iPhones. Well, it is now available for download. Comex, the same hacker who developed the Jailbreakme.com website jailbreak, has uploaded the application to the Cydia app store.

Frash would be compatible with the iPhone 4, the iPhone 3GS, the third generation iPod touch, and the iPad. Be forewarned however that the app — which enables Flash in Mobile Safari — will only support basic Flash animations, but not Flash video. It’s a start however, and those who really want the support on their iOS devices are probably not going to mind the drawbacks.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who’s daring enough to install this on their device on how the experience is.

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New Study: (Most) iPhone 4 Owners are Satisfied

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 4, 2010 at 11:50 am

A couple of weeks ago, we published the results of a survey of Technologizer readers–both iPhone 4 owners and prospective iPhone 4 owners–about the “Antennagate” controversy. While the happy campers outnumbered the disgruntled consumers, it did show a meaningful minority as dissatisfied, some to the point where they said they intended to return the phone.

I said that we weren’t attempting to collect data that was projectable to reflect the experiences and opinions of all iPhone 4 owners. Nevertheless, a bunch of irate commenters griped about the survey because…it wasn’t projectable to reflect the experiences and opinions of all iPhone owners. They explained to me why our methodology was meaningless. (As my friend and former colleague Ed Albro noted, you never know how many statistics experts read your publication until you publish a study whose conclusions they dislike.)

Okay. ChangeWave, an outfit that does nothing but consumer research, has conducted an iPhone 4 satisfaction survey of its own. The company doesn’t detail how it found iPhone 4 owners to survey, or the demographic breakdown of respondents. (It does say that it surveyed 213 people–I surveyed 500, and several people who didn’t like our conclusions informed me that anyone who knows anything about surveys knows that was so small a sample as to be meaningless.)

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The Case for (Not) Jailbreaking Your iPhone

Posted by Dave Z on August 2, 2010 at 2:39 pm

The simplest and most expansive iDevice jailbreak was released last night. In the past, and prior to Spirit, most jailbreak solutions required a computer intermediary running software locally to get the job done. It wasn’t difficult, but it did require research and could be somewhat intimidating to the uninitiated. Whereas the new jailbreakme.com website offers jailbreaking to anyone who can simply navigate to a URL. But I wonder how big the need or interest in jailbreaking is these days.

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Android Finally Outsells iPhone–Yes, Again!

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 2, 2010 at 8:41 am

JK on the Run’s Kevin C. Tofel is reporting that a new Nielsen study says that Android phones have 27 percent of the US market for smartphones, beating out Apple’s iPhone for the first time. At the same time, another report says that Android has an even heftier 34 percent of the market, making it the country’s most popular mobile OS.

Both factoids sounded familiar. Sure enough, back in May yet another firm (NPD) said that Android had 28 percent of the market to iPhone’s 21 percent. Lesson: Don’t take research reports as gospel.

Everybody agrees that Android phones are outselling iPhones in terms of units. Given how many models are on the market, and how well-marketed some of them are, it’s not surprising that it’s taken the lead–the shocker is that it took this long for such a pervasive OS to beat one that’s on only two phones from one carrier.

For consumers, the unit-sales horse race isn’t all that interesting. It’s the overall health of the competing ecosystems–as reflected in quality and quantity of third-party apps, services, and accessories–that matters. And while Android is making rapid progress here, nobody who’s trying to be even sort of objective will make the case that the Android Market is now the equal of the iPhone Store.

Android now has users in vast quantities; it’s up to Google to polish up the still-mediocre Market and do everything in its power to help developers create lots of exceptional apps.

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