Mobilize - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Opera upgrades mobile browser for Symbian

  Looking to speed up browsing on the Symbian platform, Opera Software released on Wednesday Opera Mobile 10.1 for Symbian/Series 60 phones, offering faster JavaScript performance, the company said.

• Smartphones force tough decisions in enterprises

  The current trend in which smartphones and other mobile devices are becoming more prominent as computing tools will require tough decisions in IT shops. Enterprises looking to move applications to handheld devices are going to have to accommodate many device varieties and decide whether to develop native applications or leverage Web-based HTML5 capabilities, IT executives said at a technical conference on Wednesday afternoon.

• iPad's business use soars as HP backpedals on Slate's fit

  Although the Apple tablet been available for just seven months, the iPad is being strongly embraced by businesses, particularly financial services, health care, technology, and legal providers, say three separate enterprise surveys. A big reason is the iPad's ability to be both a general-purpose device like a computer and a highly managed special-purpose device like an appliance, notes Brian Reed, chief marketer at Boxtone, a mobile management provider that surveyed 1,200 enterprises on iPad usage.

• RIM: Smartphone app builders must know audience

  Given the complexities of different smartphone platforms, software builders embarking on an enterprise application project for these systems must know their audience, an official with smartphone maker RIM said Tuesday.

• Sencha offers HTML5 framework for mobile apps

  Sencha began offering on Monday Sencha Touch, an HTML5-based mobile application development framework for touch-based devices. The company also detailed plans for an upgrade to its Ext JS JavaScript framework.

• Apple's mobile developer momentum open to challenge

  While Apple has major momentum in the mobile application developer space, there is room for other companies to steal Apple's thunder, according to an analyst report released earlier this month.

• Windows Phone 7 lacks on-device encryption

  Many businesses will not be able to support Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, which began shipping in the U.S. today. Like the competing Google Android, Windows Phone 7 does not support on-device encryption to protect data stored on it. Many businesses require such encryption to be able to access corporate data through EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) policies and automatically block connections from devices that don't support device-level encryption.

• Microsoft's Silverlight damage control intensifies

  More Microsoft executives are chiming in this week about the company's commitment to the Silverlight rich Internet application platform, after comments from another executive had raised questions about Silverlight's future.

• Free version of BES now available for Notes

  Research in Motion today released a free version of its BlackBerry Express Server (BES) for IBM Domino servers, which run Lotus Notes. The Express version allows an unlimited number of users but has a subset of the mobile management tool's policies: 75 out of the full version's more than 500 policies.

• Smartphone online usage climbing rapidly, with iPhone in the lead

  The iPhone leads the pack when it comes to using the Web over mobile devices, according to a new study released today by Informa Telecoms & Media.

• New MacBook Air: The best ever

  After all the hype about the new MacBook Air releases last week, all the oohing and aahing over the engineering that slipped a significant amount of power and capability into such a tiny package, I was ready to be somewhat disappointed by the new 13.3-inch MacBook Air that arrived on my doorstep earlier this week. I've used every MacBook Air since it was originally released, and I still use an 18-month-old Air for hours and hours every day. What could impress me about the new one? As it turns out, plenty.

• Adobe going mobile with Flash Builder, Flex, and AIR

  With upgrades to its Flash Builder, Flex, and AIR application development technologies Monday, Adobe Systems is taking a decidedly mobile bent.

• Nokia uniting mobile app dev around Qt

  Nokia is focusing on Qt (pronounced "cute") as the sole application development framework for its Symbian and MeeGo mobile phone platforms for both native and Web application development, the company said Thursday.

• Windows Phone 7 to have limited Mac sync capability

  Ever since it unveiled the new mobile OS in February, Microsoft has been cagey on whether its new Windows Phone 7 would support direct synchronization with Apple's Macintosh computers. Now a spokeswoman confirms that Microsoft will offer a Mac OS X tool that syncs "selected content" between Macs and Windows Phone 7 devices.

• iPhone 4, iPad, Android leap in business adoption

  Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS dominate the new non-BlackBerry installations in enterprises across the globe between July and September 2010, according to Good Technology's tally of what the mobility management vendor's customers are deploying. Good's mobile management tool is typically deployed in large businesses and government agencies, and so is a good proxy for overall enterprise adoption patterns. But it does not support RIM's BlackBerry or Hewlett-Packard's WebOS, so Good's results do not include data on those platforms' activations.