Mobile/Insights/2011 Week19

Android 3.1 was launched. User features: resizable widgets, USB accessories support, Adobe Flash 10.2. Dev features: Open Accessory API, USB host API, Media Transfer Protocol, Real-Time Transport Protocol API.

The Android 3.1 browser updates: UI improvements, CSS 3D support, animations, CSS fixed positioning, save page locally, support for hardware accelerated plugins

New Android numbers: 100 million activated devices, 400,000 activations/day, 200,000 apps, 310 device models

Android strategy updates: support for launched devices to be 18 months, phone and tablet versions to be merged in Ice Cream Sandwhich, Android@home was presented, a project to bring the OS to household appliances.

The smartphone market has grown ~80% year over year in with 99.6 million units shipped in 1Q2011. Apple is about to become the biggest smartphone vendor with only 6 million shipped units behind Nokia, who is in the first place.

Android 3.1 was launched at Google I/O.

New user features:

• resizable home screen widgets
• support for USB-connected peripherals and accessories
• Adobe Flash 10.2
• integration with Google's new movie rental service

New developer features:

• Open Accessory API
• USB host API
• mice, joysticks and gamepads input
• Media Transfer Protocol
• Real-time Transport Protocol API for audio
• a new LRU cache class

Native browser updates include:

• UI improvements
• Quick Controls UI update
• CSS 3D support, animations, CSS fixed positioning
• save page locally
• added support for plugins that use hardware accelerated rendering

Google released new numbers on Android's health:

• 100 million activated Android devices
• 400,000 new Android devices activated every day (up 100,000 from Dec 2010, up 200,000 from Aug 2010)
• 200,000 free and paid applications available in the Android Market
• 4.5 billion applications installed from the Android Market
• 310 Android models around the world

Google also announced development of guidelines with OEMs for how quickly devices are updated and are supported. The OHA members pledged that new devices would receive the latest Android platform upgrades for 18 months after launch.

The next version of Android is expected to be launched in 2011 and will be deployable on all screen sizes, merging the phone and tablet lines. The only detail available so far is that it will have expanded NFC capabilities: tag reading, writing and peer-to-peer functionality.

Google demonstrated the implementation of Android in household devices, and presented the Android@home project and work with appliance producers to empower communication between them.

Device blacklisting introduced in the Android Market: developers can keep the app to be installed on certain devices.

The smartphone market has grown ~80% year over year with 99.6 million units shipped in 1Q2011, an IDC report says. The same report puts Apple at only 6 million shipped units behind Nokia, the biggest smartphone vendor. 1

OEM ranking in the US: Samsung at 24.5%, followed by LG at 20.9%, Motorola at 15.8%, RIM at 8.4% and Apple at 7.9%. Mobile OS ranking in the US: Android at 34.7%, RIM at 27.1%, iOS at 25.5%. Source: ComScore 2

Microsoft will show the preview of the next iteration of Windows Phone 7, code-named "Mango", on the 24th of May. Rumoured features include: turn-by-turn navigation system for Bing Maps, Bing Audio (similar to the Shazam app), Bing Vision (similar to the Google Goggles app), podcast support and SMS dictation. 3

Microsoft has acquired Skype. The service may prove to be an important asset in Microsoft's development of Windows Phone 7 and it is expected to compete with Apple's FaceTime and Google Voice. 4