Palm shares are trading higher today, bolstered by anticipation of the Nov. 15 launch of the Pixi, the company’s second webOS handset, and by some silly rumors about a potential takeover by Nokia. Does the company really need another software platform to add to Symbian, Maemo and Qt? C’mon.
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says Google’s Android OS will claim 14 percent of the global smart-phone market by 2012, putting it ahead of Apple’s iPhone but behind Symbian, which currently runs on about half of all smart phones. While this might seem optimistic, it’s not entirely unreasonable given the distribution deals Google has been lining up. Yesterday, the search giant announced a deal to bring Android-based devices to Verizon Wireless. Now comes word that Dell is building an Android handset for AT&T.
No wonder Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is so dismayed by the company’s Windows Mobile division: Most Windows Mobile users aren’t even aware their phones run it. In fact, according to the CFI Group, WinMo has such poor brand recognition that it was forced to group it in the “Other” category in its Smartphone Satisfaction Survey.
Microsoft is prepping a slimmed down version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system to work on so-called netbooks. Asustek is mulling a mini-laptop that runs on Google’s Android OS. Now, Nokia is looking with interest at the netbook market as well.
The mobile application market is clearly a large and growing one, but will it someday be “as big as the Internet”? According to independent app store GetJar, it will. In an interview with BBC News, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs said the next decade will see such massive growth in the market that apps will rival the Web in popularity.
Nokia will not debut a new Android-based handset at its annual Nokia World conference in early September because the company has no new Android-based handset to debut. That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS.
After market close Thursday, Motorola posted a loss of $397 million, or 18 cents a share, and said it will sack 3,000 employees this quarter and next as it cuts costs, reorganizes its mobile devices business and generally tries to reverse its continued descent into the maelstrom.
The mobile market is heating up to a roiling boil, isn’t it? This morning Nokia said it plans to acquire the 52% of mobile software outfit Symbian that it does not already own in a cash deal valued at about $410 million. But rather than roll up the company’s operations into its own, it’s turning them over to the newly formed Symbian Foundation.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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