Mobile Roundup – August 2011
The last few weeks have been packed with releases, acquisitions and rumours in the mobile industry (as usual), so we decided to post an end-of-August update post to keep you updated:
Windows Phone 7 Mango Update has been announced to be with us in September 1st week, so only a few days to wait. The Mango update is big news for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 developers as it introduces over 500 new or improved features. Perhaps one of the most interesting updates is mobile IE 9 which is included with Mango, this will provide better HTML5 support. The update also adds Twitter and LinkedIn integrated services. Nokia is rumoured to release its flagship Windows Phone device in October at the Nokia World Conference. We expect Windows Phone 7 to have a strong response.
Nvidia hopes that cheap mobile chip sales will boom, the chips maker well known for graphics chips is forecasting continued revenue growth thanks to their Tegra smartphone processor. The company has developed revenues to $1.02bn and improved on a loss in Q2 2010 of $175m to a profit in Q2 2011 of $174m. The Tegra powers both the Samsung Galaxy and the Motorola Droid X2. Nvidia are not sitting ideal as they already have a quad core mobiel processor on the way currently code named Kal-El.
Blackberry Colt leaked, revealing RIM’s holy grail their QNX operating system. Recent news and statistics have shown that RIM has been losing market share to iPhone and Android over the last 24 months. The company has put a lot behind their new QNX OS. However, a heap of RIM’s USPs such as BES are rumoured to not be ready for launch of the Colt! The answer suggested all over the web is that it has taken RIM much longer to re-write their BES services on QNX than RIM expected. However, what does sound very good is rumours that the Colt and other QXN devices will soon support Android based applications!
USA Adults Like QR Codes according to ComScore’s report 14m US adults used a QR code in June. Magazines and Newspapers represented nearly 50% of all the QR scanning which is interesting when we read various reports telling us “Newspapers are dead”.. not yet.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich OS leaked, so we can all take a look at the new Android smartphone OS screens and compare them to current Android screens and to iOS5? As well as an improved look there is apparently panorama mode fo the camera, and an app launcher. Also strong talk about Chrome being the browser on Android now.
And the two other pieces of information that just about everyone knows now:
Google buys Motorola, for $12.5bn – The purchase includes over 17,000 patents as well the manufacturing capabilities to output nearly 7m devices a quarter.
Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple – The share price took a bit of a dip (erasing $25 billion from the market value) and the fans showed their love, but Steve Jobs is no longer CEO of Apple for the second time round.










