It's a rare week indeed that doesn't see the emergence of some fresh news of Android's ascendance, but lately the evidence has been coming particularly fast and furious, suggesting that there really is no stopping the mobile platform--at least not anytime soon.
The last week has brought nothing but good news for Microsoft and Windows Phone 7. Between Nokia's hardware commitment, Angry Birds on the way and Microsoft's own announcement of a roadmap for vital features such as multitasking, Windows Phone 7 seems to be catching a second wind in 2011.
Mobile World Congress hasn't even started, but the next generation of super phones are already being unveiled. Samsung showed off its latest, the Galaxy S II, at its flashy Unpacked event in Barcelona. The Galaxy S II sports a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, a dual-core processor, and a whole new user interface.
Today I got my first hands-on time with the Motorola Xoom tablet, running Android 3.0.
Tablet application developers can rejoice now that Google has released its software development kit for Android 3.0, the new edition of the platform designed specifically for tablets.
Today's announcement that Google co-founder Larry Page would replace Eric Schmidt as the company's CEO was a surprise, but maybe it shouldn't have been. While the company's earnings are still stellar, Schmidt has made a series of embarrassing statements and the company has had some very public failures.
Smartphone users tend to hold strong opinions about the various mobile platforms out there, often displaying feverish loyalty to the one they use and outright disdain for all others.
One can only hope that security software provider Trend Micro saw a nice sales boost after the proclamation of its chairman earlier this week that Android phones are more vulnerable to hacking than iPhones are. If it didn't, those blatantly self-serving statements were made for nothing.
Windows is on the verge of dropping below 90% market share, with smartphones and tablets posing an increasingly serious threat to Microsoft's dominance of the operating system market.
Images and details of the BlackBerry Dakota--the impending flagship smartphone from Research In Motion (RIM)--have emerged. The Dakota is packed with features as RIM struggles desperately to regain lost ground and compete with the Apple iPhone and the rising Android invasion.
Security researchers have shown that carefully crafted text messages sent to cell phones via short message service (SMS) can cause them to shutdown without the knowledge of the owner.
At CES 2011 today, Asus announced three new Android tablets and a Windows 7 based slate PC. The tablets, all Android-based, go by the moniker "Eee Pad" while the Windows 7 device is called an "Eee Slate." Each one offers some unique features, from stylus input options to sliding keyboards or docking stations. Unfortunately, we don't yet have exact shipping dates or prices for the Android tablets, and the Eee Slate looks to be fairly pricey.
Google's Android mobile platform may still follow Apple's iPhone in the smartphone race, according to fresh Nielsen data released Monday, but that advantage may not last long.
There are apps that I don't want to like, but do. Then there are apps I do want to like, but don't. The 8pen keyboard, unfortunately, belongs in this latter category. I'm a big fan of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking, but the developer needs to go back to the drawing board with this one.
As recently as a year ago, many enterprises couldn't have imagined that the iPhone would now be second place in terms of security features that enterprises require, behind only the BlackBerry and ahead of Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.