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BlackBerry Dominates Enterprise, But iPhone Users Happier

Mar.05, 2008 in Mobile Phone News Leave a Comment

Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, is the clear leader in business smartphone marketshare, and the Canadian company’s dominance will continue throughout the second quarter of this year, according to a recent report. However, Apple and its iPhone wins the top slot in enterprise user satisfaction.

Seventy-three percent of the 2,013 IT decision makers queried by market research firm ChangeWave said their companies currently employ RIM BlackBerry devices. That percentage is unchanged since ChangeWave’s last survey, in November, 2007, but RIM’s lead over it closest competitor, struggling Treo-maker Palm, grew by a percentage point.
Palm has 18 percent of the market, Motorola has nine percent, Nokia has seven percent, and both Apple and Samsung have five percent, according to ChangeWave. (With the software development kit for the iPhone due this week, which will enable external developers to create business-specific applications, Apple’s is sure to see an increase in the number of companies using its smartphones over the coming months and years, analysts say.)
ChangeWave also predicts that RIM’s enterprise penetration will continue to increase through second quarter 2008, as 77 percent of respondents said they plan to buy RIM devices for future smartphone deployments. Apple will soon take the second place slot in business smartphone ranking, according to ChangeWave, with 11 percent of respondents saying their companies plan to purchase iPhones. Only eight percent of respondents said they plan to purchase Palm devices. [Read the rest of this entry…]

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Apple Expected to Announce Corporate Email Support

Mar.05, 2008 in Mobile Phone News Leave a Comment

Many analysts predict that tomorrow Steve Jobs will unveil the company’s strategy to woo corporations into using iPhone for their employees. This will mean interoperability with corporate email systems such as Microsoft Exchange.

“If [as] part of the enterprise announcements, Apple announces it has licensed the ActiveSync/Exchange protocol from Microsoft, presumably this would mean that the iPhone would at some point sync directly with Exchange,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with JupiterResearch, in a post to his blog last Thursday. “Bottom line if this happens? Big win for Apple.”

Apple is under pressure because its shares are down 35 percent this year to tap into some corporate markets. This means that Apple might come in direct competition with Research In Motion (RIMM), whose BlackBerry devices now dominate the wireless e-mail market.

Apple has had to deal with waves of criticism regarding its policy to close iPhone deals with only a few carriers and still reaching high in terms of sales (10 million projected by the end of the year), but the company refuses to make a compromise and make the unlocked version of the phone available for carriers around the world.

Recently, China Mobile Communications Corporation, also known as China Mobile or CMCC, the largest mobile phone operator in China, expressed interest to start talks with Apple regarding the iPhone distribution. Last year there were rumors that Apple’s officials have tried to nail a deal with China Mobile, but nothing was officially confirmed.

However, in November, China Unicom, the second largest Chinese mobile carrier, said also that they would be open to talks with Apple.

Google Gears heads for Windows Mobile phones

Mar.05, 2008 in Mobile Phone News Leave a Comment

Google is bringing Google Gears to mobile phones so that people on the go can access Web-based applications even when they’re not connected to the mobile Net.

Smartphones and 3G data services are changing the way some people work, allowing them to access documents and applications from anywhere. But when their wireless connection is interrupted or not available at all, they’re cut off.

Google Gears for mobile helps solve this problem so mobile workaholics can even get stuff done on airplanes or when they’re supposed to be on vacation in some far-off destination with no wireless access. (On second thought, maybe having access to work documents and other Web-based applications from anywhere isn’t such a good idea.)

Google Gears is an open-source browser extension that lets developers create Web applications that can run offline. Google has been developing the software for PC users, but now it is extending it for mobile users too. Google Gears is still in its early days. The mobile version right now supports Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones. This means that other smartphone users, such as those using Apple’s iPhone, or people using other popular mobile browsers, such as Opera, won’t be able to use Google Gears.

But Google has said that it plans to expand support to other browsers and cell phone platforms, including its own Android software.

Another issue is that mobile Gears only works with applications that are Gear-enabled. So far, Google Gear applications aren’t widely available, but Google is trying to make it easier for developers to create Gears-enabled mobile Web applications.

Charles Wiles, product manager for Google’s mobile team, posted a blog explaining how Google Gears for mobile would work. He used the example of Zoho, a Web-based productivity application, and Buxfer, a Web-based personal finance application.

Google Gears is integrated into these applications. When users go to the Web site where these applications are located they will be asked to install Google Gears for mobile. Once installed, Gears sits on the phone and people can access their data even when there is no network connection.

Adobe bites its tongue after iPhone Flash jab

Mar.05, 2008 in Mobile Phone News Leave a Comment

Was Steve Jobs trying to send an unofficial message to Adobe Systems? Something on the order of “get it in gear, guys, if you want to stay on my VIP list”?

As my colleague Tom Krazit reported Tuesday afternoon, Jobs used the Apple shareholders’ meeting to publicly dismiss the the full-blown PC Flash version as “too slow to be useful” on the iPhone. He then went on to describe the mobile version–Flash Lite–as “not capable of being used with the Web.”

That’s an unusual–albeit refreshingly frank–way to talk in public about a business partner. Give Jobs credit for speaking his mind, although I very much doubt Adobe appreciated his candor.

I tried to get a comment from Adobe, which has worked closely with Apple over the years. Will Flash be supported on the iPhone or not? Here’s the official non-response, response to my query:

“”Flash and Flash Lite are a huge success. All major handset manufacturers worldwide license Flash today delivering a broad range of mobile devices ranging from feature phones to smartphones and consumer electronic devices. With more than 450 million Flash-enabled mobile devices shipped worldwide and 150 percent year-over-year growth we are on track to see 1 billion Flash enabled devices by 2010. Consumers demand a rich Web experience on any device and platform and Flash delivers just that. We look forward to our continued relationship with industry leaders to deliver engaging experiences to consumers worldwide.”

25 Native iPhone Apps We Hope to See

Mar.04, 2008 in Mobile Phone News Leave a Comment

Thursday promises to be an eventful day for the iPhone. That’s when Apple will summon the tech press to its Cupertino, California, headquarters to hear about the company’s plans for the mobile device–particularly in regard to applications built by third parties.

All signs point to Apple’s taking the wraps off a software development kit (SDK) that it had promised to deliver in February. And when Apple does grant developers access to building native applications for the iPhone, that will mark a significant new direction for the device since Apple first previewed the iPhone at the January 2007 Macworld Expo.

Back in the days before the iPhone’s launch, Apple resisted calls to open the iPhone to third-party development, citing its desire to preserve the device’s security and stability. By last summer’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple offered developers an alternative: They could create Web-based applications that iPhone users would access through the device’s built-in Safari browser.

Though some software developers took Apple up on that offer, others built native iPhone apps anyway. The catch was, to install these third-party apps, users had to “jailbreak” their iPhones, which works by intercepting the communication that is supposed to happen between the iPhone and iTunes–thereby voiding the warranty and running the risk that future iPhone software updates would render the phone inoperable. [Read the rest of this entry…]