Mobile/Insights/2011 Week23

Android OEMs are opening up to 3rd-party device customizations

iOS 5 was announced at WWDC. Safari updates include full tabbed browsing, Safari Reader, Reading List and deep Twitter integration

The mobile Web is the 3rd platform for which developers create, after Android and iOS

NFC technology is made a priority in S. Korea

New Android distribution numbers put Android 2.1 at 21%, 2.2 at 64%, 2.3.x at 9.2%: and Android 3.x at 0.6%. Read more

OEMs which produce Android devices are opening up to more 3rd-party device customizations, as HTC has open sourced its HTC Sense UI and released an SDK and has promised to provide phones with unlocked bootloaders. Samsung has also reached out to Cyanogen, a prominent modding group and sent them the Samsung Galaxy S II flagship devices asking them to install their custom flavour of Android. It is estimated that the user base for CyanogenMod is around 500,000 users. Read more

iOS 5 Safari updates include:

• full tabbed browsing
• the Safari Reader, already existing on the desktop version, was ported to mobile; the feature singles out the text of webpages with articles and brings it in the foreground, blending out ads and other page elements; it also supports emailing of the text and it is accessible through a button in the location bar
• Reading List is a new feature which allows tagging of certain tab for later viewing, tabs which are synchronized across iOS devices and Macs
• Twitter integration

At WWDC this week Apple announced features of the upcoming iOS 5. They include:

• updated notifications system on the top of the screen, similar to what Android does and a new notifications listing on the lock screen
• Newsstand, an integrated app for reading purchased magazines
• deep OS Twitter integration, with single sign-on for Twitter and all apps using their iID system, including native apps, like Safari, Camera, Maps, Contacts, Youtube
• the iMessage service allowing the sending of messages, pictures and other among iOS users
• Safari got a set of new features; see above
• a new Reminders app
• Camera, Mail, Game Center improvements

iCloud is the name of Apple's free cloud storage service that was announced at WWDC. It has support for documents, music, books, photos, video, device settings, installed apps, calendar sharing.

Microsoft has announced that it will augment its own cloud-based service in Windows Phone 7, called SkyDrive. It will add support for photos, videos, documents, which will be included in the "Mango" update expected this fall. The company is also rumoured to be producing its own Windows 8 tablet by the end of 2012. Read more

67% of developers are developing for Android, 59% for iOS, 56% for the mobile Web, 46% for Java ME, 45% for Blackberry, 38% for Windows Phone and 34% for Flash or Flash Lite, reveals a report from Vision Mobile. For the future, 35% of developers expect to be developing for Android, 32% for Windows Phone, 28% for Chrome OS, 27% for iOS, 27% for MeeGo, 25% for QT, 24% for Blackberry and 22$ for WebOS. The platforms which are to be abandoned from the developers' perspective are: Symbian, which 39%, Jave ME with 35%, Palm OS with 28%, BREW with 28%, WebOS with 19%, Flash or Flash Lite with 18% and WAC with 18% of developers. Read more

iCube, a startup from China announced to be developed their Harmony Unified Processor architecture, which it claims "it is the first ever developed to handle both logic and graphics processing in a single core and in each of multiple processing pipelines." They are aiming at a 2012 roll out of samples and volume production. This new architecture is meant for the Android devices market. Read more

Following the roll-out of NFC technology in different regions around the world, one of them being the Google Wallet launched last week, in S. Korea the Grand NFC Korea alliance has been formed which aims to put Korea at the leading edge of NFC technology. The first initiative of the Alliance is national promotion of NFC-based mobile payment system by distributing terminals to merchants and developing applications for the system. The Near Field Communication chips are expected to produce a major change in how people use their phones, make payments, transmit data, exchange information. Read more