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Android Gains Ground in Wireless Traffic War

Admob is out with its latest roundup of traffic metrics on the wireless web (PDF), and although the iPhone still rules, Android is gaining significant ground. The iPhone accounted for 40 percent of wireless web usage in August, up from 33 percent in February, but Android more than tripled its share of traffic, jumping from 2 percent to 7 percent over the past six months. The really notable thing about Android's performance is that numerous upcoming handsets based on the open source OS haven't even arrived yet, including ones from LG, Motorola, Samsung, and INQ. Check out more in GigaOm's story.


What Lies Ahead As Android Phones and the iPhone Square Off in China?

Slowly but surely, Apple has been trying to crack the Chinese market with the iPhone. There have been many obstructions, and China Mobile has already expressed its desire to push Android-based phones, such as Dell's, throughout the country. As MacNewsWorld reported late last week, though, the iPhone's slow boat to China has finally arrived. China Unicom, the second largest wireless provider in China, announced on Friday that it will start carrying iPhones in this year's third quarter. Is there likely to be a smackdown between Android-based phones and the iPhone in China, and how free and open will China's government allow cutting-edge smartphones to be?


Dell Shows Off an Android Smartphone Aimed for China

Could the open source Android operating system possibly find its biggest momentum yet in China? Last week, Telecomasia.net reported on China Mobile's intent to introduce its Ophone smartphone concept this month. The Ophone hardware is made by China-based Lenovo, and runs a version of Android. China Unicom is also preparing to release Apple's iPhone in China in September, but many people believe that Chines users will favor phones based on open source operating systems. Now, as Engadget reports, Dell is ramping up to enter the Chinese smartphone market with its Mini 3i smartphone, running the Android-based Open Mobile System (OMS).


Fashionistas, Design and Early Open Source Smartphones

Today, JKOnTheRun notes that HTC--the first hardware maker to back the open source Android operating system--may be putting Android on over 50 percent of its future phones. If true this is a big blow to Windows Mobile, the platform on the major portion of HTC?s lineup for some time, they conclude. I have to agree, and this is yet another example of Android's pronounced momentum in the smartphone market, where we're going to see large waves of Android handsets arrive this year and next. Android is shaping up to be a hugely influential open source platform.? For Android phones to really get competitive with the iPhone, though, the cool factor matters. This is much more important than it may seem at first glance.


Wikimedia Foundation's Mobile Site Caters to Android, iPhone

The Wikimedia Foundation is presenting a new site formatted for mobile phones, found here. It features a cleaner, less cluttered interface that allows mobile users to get more readable versions of Wikipedia entries. It currently supports Android phones and the iPhone. In addition, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking for open source help in developing the effort.


Report: Android Now Has 6 Percent of the U.S. Smartphone Market

In spite of rumblings that the Android operating system isn't spreading out to more handsets, consider this finding from researchers at AdMob: The Android OS now has 6 percent of the U.S. smartphone market and is tied with Palm as the fourth-largest OS. AdMob's latest research on the smartphone market also found that growth in requests [to AdMob's network] from devices running the Android and iPhone operating systems continued to outpace other platforms in March, despite the relatively limited number of devices in market. The growth in requests from devices is largely being driven by very healthy growth in usage of the app stores for both Android and the iPhone. Here are some of the other key points from AdMob's report.



Could Handwriting Recognition Become Android's Advantage?

As JKOnTheRun notes, The Android Developer's Blog has a detailed post up about soft keyboard input methods. The post includes this: The Android IMF is designed to support a variety of IMEs, including soft keyboard, hand-writing recognizers, and hard keyboard translators. Our focus, however, will be on soft keyboards, since this is the kind of input method that is currently part of the platform.? We've also noted that the new software development kit (SDK) for the next version of Android includes much better capabilities for both handwriting recognition and speech recognition. JKOnTheRun suggests that good handwriting recognition could become a big differentiator for Android devices as they compete with the iPhone and BlackBerry. Check out their thoughts.?


Smartphone Sales Predicted to Stay Strong, to Become Led By Open Source

Two new market research reports are predicting strong smartphone sales growth going forward, and some researchers are predicting that open source-based smartphones will soon start to trump Apple's iPhone. In-Stat is predicting that the number of mobile application users will quadruple in five years, and that sales of open source-based smartphones will double iPhone sales over the same time period. In-Stat's latest report on the trend, foresees applications moving briskly from mobile application stores such as Apple's and the Android Marketplace.?


Developers Using PhoneGap to Create Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

The skyrocketing success of Apple's App Store and the recent launch for Research In Motion's (RIM) App World for BlackBerry is clear proof that people want third-party apps for their mobile phones. Unfortunately, developers with a brilliant idea for the next blockbuster app typically have to decide which platform to choose before they write their first bit of code -- iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.

The creators of PhoneGap think it's nonsense that developers have to write the same app in several different programming languages to reach the widest swath of mobile phone customers, so they developed an open source, cross-platorm framework that bridges the gaps among them.



Android vs. iPhone: Is an Open Strategy Best?

Consider the different approaches to openness taken by the two companies with (arguably) the greatest product differentiation, most thriving ecosystems and potent cash-flow generation engines in the [mobile arena]: Apple and Google, writes Mark Sigal on GigaOm.? Apple and Google are playing out a classic proprietary vs. open game of tug-of-war with the iPhone and the Android platforms. Sigal argues that the fly in the ointment with Google's Android strategy is that Google has to set limits on what will work with deployments of the Android platform. How much of a problem is that, and how truly open is Android? Check out Sigal's post for more thoughts.


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