So Mr. Jobs is saying we won’t be disappointed by the announcements that will be made at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference.
And now the company has been gracious enough to also let us know when exactly he’ll be delivering.
Mark the date: the man’s keynote address kicks off on Monday 7 June at 10 AM PST.
We know a new iPhone is coming – but what else?
Web and mobile instant messaging (IM) aggregator service provider eBuddy, based in Amsterdam, has announced that its Mobile Messenger app has zoomed past one million downloads in less than three months on Nokia’s Ovi Store.
The app has been downloaded by users in more than 203 countries, the company adds – a testament to the global footprint of Nokia.
The app has garnered over 930 reviews on the Ovi Store and a 4/5 star rating. Alternatives on Nokia’s Ovi Store include Nimbuzz and fring.
That said, eBuddy is easily one of the most popular mobile instant messaging applications in the world – it enables millions of users around the world to chat for free in one, aggregated interface across all major IM networks including AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Hyves, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger.
In total, eBuddy’s mobile applications have been downloaded over 75 million times, and more than 15 million unique mobile users access eBuddy every month, sending over 7.5 billion messages.
Finally, SIRIUS XM says it will soon release a free Android app that will enable DROID and Nexus One owners – among others – to enjoy access to over 120 channels of sports, talk, entertainment, news, comedy and commercial-free music.
For now, you can only download apps for iPhone, iPod touch and BlackBerry smartphones.
The satellite radio broadcaster says it will release the Android app some time in May this year, and all users of the SIRIUS XM App will receive a 7-day free trial of the SIRIUS XM Premium Online service to boot.
Naturally, the app will be able to tap into channels over both cellular and WiFi networks.
The press release provides a laundry list of programming, but here are some of the goodies: MLB Network Radio, SIRIUS NFL Radio, NHL Home Ice, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Oprah Radio aaaaand Playboy Radio.
During the 7-week trial of the premium service, users will also be able to listen to artist-branded music channels such as The Grateful Dead Channel, Eminem’s Shade 45, B.B. King’s Bluesville, Willie Nelson’s Willie’s Place and Elvis Radio.
Not included in the offering are Howard Stern, NFL and NASCAR programming.
The SIRIUS XM App for DROID and Nexus One will be available as a free download through the Android Market on the handset or by visiting this page.
Again, availability is scheduled for May, but you can already sign up to receive an email with a link to download the free app when it’s live.
A mere month and a half after launching, Brightkite says its new Group Text feature is a big hit with users in the United States.
According to the startup, which boasts more than 2 million registered users, the average Group Text user sends a whopping 17 messages per day. Already, its total usage is growing 19 percent on average per day.
Brightkite is now sending more than 20 million messages a month, nearly half of which are regular SMS messages.
Amazon.com company Audible this morning announced that its BlackBerry app is now available on BlackBerry App World (and on its own website).
If that’s not enough to make you rush over there, the company is also including, for a limited time, a free download of David Baldacci’s bestselling thriller Divine Justice.
With the Audible app, BlackBerry users in the U.S. and Canada can shop, download and listen to audio content from Audible.com, which boasts over 75,000 titles in its catalog.
Key features:
– Stream audio samples for all titles
– Download or stream purchases directly to your BlackBerry
– Toggle between Wi-Fi and cellular connections (when available)
Audible for BlackBerry v1.4.2 is available for the BlackBerry Tour, Curve, Pearl and Bold series of smartphones. It should be downloadable right about … now.
On a sidenote: Audible promises apps for iPhone / iPod touch and Android are on the way, too.
Good news for Opera (and its legions of fans around the world): the company has just announced that its mobile browser Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store.
The app will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on which market you are located in.
The iPhone app was shown off by the Norwegian software company to a small circle of reporters at the most recent Mobile World Congress (us included). Opera then officially submitted Opera Mini for iPhone to the Apple App Store on March 23.
We knew it was coming soon, but Verizon Wireless and Motorola just announced that Motorola DEVOUR is now available online and in stores today for $149.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a two-year customer agreement.
DEVOUR is the second Android-powered smartphone from Motorola to run on Verizon Wireless’ 3G Network after the Droid. The phone comes with MOTOBLUR, Motorola’s content delivery service.
The 3.1-inch capacitive screen, 8GB microSD card, full QWERTY keyboard, and the social networking-centric MOTOBLUR all combine to make a great device. The phone also comes rocking a 3 MP camera, 802.11 b/g WiFi, GPS, and a 3.5mm headset jack.
Check out our earlier review here.
Not an easy thing to conceptualize indeed, but according to eMarketer there will be more mobile Internet users in China than the entire population of the US by the end of this year.
For your reference, the 2010 estimate of the size of the United States population stands at roughly 310 million people according to Wikipedia, so that’s a shitload of people browsing the Web from their phones right there.
The report, which you can purchase here, also says the number of mobile Internet users in China will grow fast to reach a staggering 957 million by 2014.
At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is quickly increasing in its slipstream.
While Google doesn’t publicly show how many applications there are in Android Market, a Google representative this morning informed me that the application store now serves approximately 30,000 free and paid apps in total.
The application store for Android devices supposedly hit the 10,000 apps milestone in September 2009 according to third-party developer AndroLib, who later also claimed that number doubled in just over 3 months.
Google at the time matched these claimed stats against its own count, and said there were in reality some 16,000 apps in Android Market in December 2009. Yesterday, I asked Google for an update to those internal stats after I noticed AndroLib currently pegs the number of apps at nearly 35,000, and this morning the company got back to me saying there are now officially 30,000 apps in the Android Market. In other words, Google says the number grew from 16k to 30k apps in exactly three months.
The company declines to detail what percentage of apps in Android Market are paid versus free, but for what it’s worth, AndroLib says the ratio is about 39% paid vs. 61% free of charge.
Just for comparison’ sake: Apple counted over 140,000 apps in the App Store in January 2010, so it’s safe to assume there should be about 5 times as many apps for the iPhone and iPod touch as there are for Android devices right about now.
Research agency research2guidance recently released a report forecasting that the total app download market could grow to a whopping $15 billion by 2013.
Mobile app analytics company Flurry estimates that while Apple sold 1 million iPhone devices in its first 74 days of availability on the market, the Motorola Droid actually shipped more devices during that timespan. Sales of Google’s Nexus One, by comparison, kinda stunk: the company only sold an estimated 135k phones in 74 days.
Flurry reaches its conclusions through applications using its solution for analytics reporting. Because applications embedded with Flurry are said to have been downloaded to over 80% of all iPhone OS and Android devices, the company claims it can make reliable estimates about total handset sales.
Check out Flurry’s blog post for possible reasons why the Motorola Droid appears to have outsold the Apple iPhone in terms of numbers of devices shipped in the first 74 days on the market.
The respective launch dates of the 3 devices were: iPhone, June 29, 2007; Droid, November 5, 2009; and, Nexus One, January 5, 2010. Note that this means the Nexus One still has a few days left to reach 74 days, but it’s safe to say Google won’t be selling almost a million devices by the end of this week.
Earlier this year, Flurry estimated both first week and first month sales of Nexus One sales compared to Motorola Droid and the first-gen iPhone. They paled in comparison then, and they do now.
Here’s what Flurry has to say about the limited success of the Nexus One:
As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come. Apple’s more vertically integrated strategy vs. Google’s more open Android platform approach offer strengths and weaknesses that remind us of PC vs. Mac from the 1980’s.
A key difference this time around is that Apple is enjoying much more 3rd party developer support, whose innovative applications push the limits of what the hardware can do. Ultimately, however, developers support hardware with the largest installed base first. For Android to make progress faster, from a sales perspective, it needs more Droids and fewer Nexus Ones going forward.
Ouch.
Adobe this morning announced that third-party developers now have access to the Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 editor, allowing them to make it a part of their applications.
The news comes four months after the company released Photoshop.com Mobile for Android, enabling users to easily edit and share their photos. That app got an upgrade, too.
Amusingly, Adobe also takes a bit of a swing at Apple for not being able to provide such tools to iPhone app developers. Said Doug Mack, vice president and general manager of Digital Imaging and Rich Media Solutions at Adobe:
“Unlike iPhone, the Android platform allows us to make the Photoshop.com editor broadly available to developers so they can provide it within any application they are working on. Photoshop functionality can then easily be accessed from an online auction, real estate or social media application so users can quickly fix photos and make them look their best, before being showcased.”
The updated version of Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 brings effects like Vibrant (to boost photo colors) and Pop, which brings a ‘pop art’ style to images. The Soft Black and White, and Warm Vintage tools can be used to add a classic and aged effect to photos. Other new effects include Vignette Blur, White Glow and Rainbow.
Adobe Photoshop.com Mobile for Android 1.1 is available as a free download in all countries with Android Market in English only. Search the Android Market for “photoshop.com” to find it.
Opera Software has been busy lately, releasing fresh finalized and beta products on a near-daily basis. This morning, the company announced that it has released a native version of Opera Mini 5 beta for handsets running Windows Mobile 5 and 6.
Interestingly, the new WinMo version of Opera Mini does not require Java. That basically means any Windows Mobile phone can accommodate the app. Despite not requiring Java, Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile includes the same feature set as the Java-based version.
Image recognition technology startup Kooaba yesterday released an API that definitely deserves some developer attention.
The Swiss company aims to unlock its library of over 10 million images, ranging from album covers to books and movie posters, and provide access to all that precious data via the cloud.
Augmented reality app Layar hit the App Store in October 2009, only to be withdrawn by the eponymous Dutch developer of the program a month later due to repeated crashes reported by users.
It’s been quiet since, but an update for the app just popped up on my iPhone (iTunes link), with the concise and crystal clear description:
“We’re back!”
The company claims that its Reality Browser app now features an entirely re-engineered engine, rendering the app more stable, lightweight and faster. In addition, language support has been broadened to include French, German, Dutch and Italian (with promises of more languages coming soon). The app also appears to sport a new logo.
The startup, which recently secured $3.4 million in financing as well as a global distribution agreement with an unnamed handset manufacturer, just sent out an e-mail to its users saying that the app is available on the App Store again. In it, the company claims there are now over 400 ‘layars’ users can view through the camera browser.
Pretty huge news in our book: Skype has published a free mobile application for Symbian in the Ovi Store, basically enabling over 200 million Nokia handset users to easily download the program and start making free Skype-to-Skype calls from their phones.
If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now – and / or infuriated.
Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform (see list below).
It’s not the Skype wasn’t already available for Symbian, but its appearance in the Ovi Store will certainly increase awareness of its existence – as well as that of the Ovi Store, for that matter.
We recently reported that Nokia’s Ovi Store now serves more than 1 million downloads per day as of January 2010 (yesterday they said that number increased to 1.5 million per day or 22 downloads per second), and if the success of the Skype app for the iPhone is any indication, the addition of Skype will lift those numbers up significantly.
The app does everything you’d want a Skype app to do, as it includes support for making free calls to other Skype users over Wi-Fi and 3G, instant messaging, picture and video sharing – the whole nine yards.
This is the long list of phones that can now accommodate the installation of the Skype Mobile app: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 5320.
Skype says it will even be updating the app soon to make it function on Symbian mobiles from other handset makers, including Sony Ericsson.
Bad news for carriers, good news for most everyone else.
When Jason Kincaid tried out the iPhone app online music streaming startup Grooveshark built and showed off in July 2009, he wrote that it was great but that he “wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon”. He was right on both counts.
Grooveshark now says it has given up on its ambitions to get approved for the official App Store, claiming that Apple has been “ritually rejecting” the app for “primary selfish reasons”. We’ve heard that song before.
Handset manufacturer Palm has updated its guidance this morning, indicating that revenues for the quarter and full year will be “well below its previously forecasted range of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion”. The company expects that revenues for the third quarter of fiscal year 2010 will be in the range of $285 million to $310 million on a GAAP basis.
In a statement, Palm says disappointing sales are due to “slower than expected consumer adoption” of its products, resulting in lower than expected order volumes from carriers and the deferral of orders to future periods.
Online music service Grooveshark is today announcing the launch of a native app for devices running Palm webOS, or in other words the Palm Pre and Pixi phones.
With the app, Grooveshark users gain access to its vast on-demand song catalog – the number of tracks in there runs in the millions – but also to the personal playlists and favorites they and other users have cultivated on the kick-ass music service.
The app should be available ‘very soon’, according to the startup, although VIP users (who pay $3/month) can get early access.
The native Palm app will complement Grooveshark’s mobile offering, which to date includes apps for Android and Blackberry devices.
Its iPhone app, in the meantime, was said to have been finished for release back in July 2009. So far, there’s been no sign of an appearance in Apple’s App Store, although we hear some news about that may be coming soon.
Here’s a video from Grooveshark demonstrating the app in action. The man apologizes for his ‘oily after-dinner fingers’.
Google has submitted a new version of its Google Mobile App for the iPhone platform (iTunes link), and the fresh app now finally boasts built-in support for Voice Search on iPod touch devices (2G or newer).
Update: we have 3 commenters saying there still is no Voice Search on their iPod touch devices to be found, even after updating. We’re looking into it.
Version 0.4.5.3281 also brings improved stability when using Voice Search on ‘restrictive networks’ and is also said to make Search by Voice completion detection function a bit better.
Other than that, the update brings a number of bug fixes, one that fixes pasting into the search box and one that should prevent the app from crashing when you do a search for ‘@’.
In case you’re keeping count: Google Voice Search hit the iPhone mid-November 2008 and landed on Android at the beginning of February 2009.
AT&T and Motorola this morning confirmed earlier rumors that the BACKFLIP with MOTOBLUR will be available in online and in AT&T stores across the nation, beginning March 7.
This is the first Android handset for the carrier.
The device will go for $99.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate.
More information, pictures etc. are available here.
Also check out our hands-on review of the phone.
Full press release:
AT&T Announces Availability of First Device on Android Platform With Motorola
HSPA 7.2-capable Motorola BACKFLIP Coming Soon to AT&T Stores Nationwide
DALLAS and LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., Feb. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — AT&T* and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that the Motorola BACKFLIP™ with MOTOBLUR™ will be available in AT&T stores nationwide and online at www.wireless.att.com beginning March 7.
MOTOBLUR offers AT&T customers a new way to connect to their favorite people, content and applications, whether it’s work or personal email, messaging or social networking. Motorola’s exclusive Android™ experience syncs contacts, posts, messages, photos and much more — from sources such as Facebook®, MySpace, Twitter®, Gmail™, Picasa, work and personal e-mail, and Last.fm — and automatically delivers them to live widgets for immediate reply, right from the home screen. And, for customers who prefer multi-tasking, AT&T’s 3G network offers the added advantage of talking and surfing the Web and accessing applications at the same time.
BACKFLIP features a unique form-factor with an original reverse flip design, spacious keyboard and BACKTRACK™ touch panel, allowing the display to be hands-free while one’s fingers work behind the screen. BACKFLIP runs on the nation’s fastest 3G network and is powered by MOTOBLUR™, Motorola’s Android-powered content delivery service created to make phones more personal and socially smart. Customers can see photos and learn more at www.att.com/backflip.
“Motorola BACKFLIP brings together the best of social networking with the nation’s fastest 3G network,” said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. “With the ability to ride on our newest and fastest 3G network, access to more than 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, and the ability to talk and surf at the same time, BACKFLIP boasts a better 3G experience.”
MOTOBLUR™
MOTOBLUR keeps track of contacts so it’s easy to keep up. Users can flip through messages and updates on the BACKFLIP and respond in a flash, without having to log in and out of applications. MOTOBLUR helps consumers keep a pulse on what’s happening on their social and news networks. Only MOTOBLUR can sync Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with phone book and email contacts, while threading status updates and profile pics through calls, messages and address book. From the home screen, consumers can update their status to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter at once.
Finally, MOTOBLUR provides users with simplicity and peace of mind, as lost devices can be located from a secure personal information portal and GPS can be used to locate them. One user name and password brings back a user’s contacts, messages and connectivity to previously configured networks and email providers.
“Motorola is proud to bring the first Android-powered device to AT&T’s 3G network,” said Mark Shockley, senior vice president, Motorola Mobile Devices. “AT&T customers will love the social media advantages MOTOBLUR offers as well as the innovative hardware design.”
BACKFLIP is the first Motorola device to feature the new and unique BACKTRACK™ feature which gives AT&T customers the ability to navigate quickly and easily through Web sites, menus and more with a touch panel located behind the screen when the device is folded open. BACKTRACK offers a new way to scroll through the Web, texts, e-mails and news feeds without obscuring the home screen. Flip the keyboard backwards into table-top mode to listen to music, watch videos, view pictures with the digital picture frame or to turn BACKFLIP into a digital, bedside alarm clock.
BACKFLIP comes with a full HTML browser that can be viewed on the 3.1″ high-res, touch screen display and makes use of 7.2 HSPA 3G technology on the nation’s fastest 3G network. Android Market™ has access to more than 20,000 apps and widgets, in order to customize the device to fit each consumer’s personal style. Customers can easily shoot photos and video with the BACKFLIP’s 5 MP camera and flash, and upload them to their favorite photo sharing or social media site.
The Motorola BACKFLIP features Wi-Fi connectivity and AT&T customers receive AT&T Wi-Fi access at U.S. hotspots included as part of their unlimited data plan. AT&T’s has the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network with more than 20,000 U.S. hotspots.
Pricing and Availability
The Motorola BACKFLIP will be available March 7 at AT&T retail locations nationwide or at www.wireless.att.com for $99.99 after $100 mail-in rebate. (Pay $199.99 and after mail-in rebate receive $100 AT&T Promotion Card. Two-year agreement and smartphone data plan required.)