Posted on March 22, 2011, at 4:56 PM .
The Spanish startup Yuilop is getting a lot of coverage lately as they’ve secured 1 million euros in seed funding from Nauta Capital and they’re entering a pretty hot market. Yuilop sounds like it takes a lot of elements from both group messaging apps, SocialScope and even Skype. The platform, while very much in stealth mode, seems to aggregate traditional and social messaging systems into a single app. The company also plans on offering a Skype-style yuilop-to-yuilop free voice chat feature.
The company supports or plans to support Android, iOS, Symbian and BlackBerry. Any German BlackBerry users have access to this app? Let us know.
Head over to yuilop.com and sign up to be notified when this app launches.
Posted on May 20, 2010, at 1:46 PM .
According to the latest research from Gartner, the number of smartphones sold worldwide has jumped 49 percent from a year earlier to 54.3 million units. BlackBerry is now the world’s 4th largest manufacturer of mobile devices and the 2nd most popular smartphone after Symbian.
Android has leap-frogged Windows Mobile and Linux now represents 10 percent of smartphones shipped. Nokia has declined by 4.5 percentage points to 44.3 percent as sales rose by one-third, lagging behind the market’s growth. The iPhone is the third most popular smartphone after Symbian and RIM, with a 15.4 percent share of handsets that are open to third-party applications.
Smartphones now account for 17.3 percent of the industry’s phone sales, and Nokia reported last month that smartphones accounted for about 20 percent of its volume in the first quarter.
Posted on April 14, 2010, at 9:52 AM .
Smaato are a mobile advertising and ad optimization company and they’ve recently announced their March figures on mobile ad click-through rates (CTR). According to Smaato, Symbian leads in their global OS CTR index, followed by feature phones, Windows Mobile, Apple, Android, Palm and lastly BlackBerry.
Continue reading ‘BlackBerry has the Lowest Click-Through Rates in Mobile Advertising’
Posted on February 23, 2010, at 5:55 PM .
Gartner have released their latest figures breaking down the mobile OS market between BlackBerry, iPhone, Symbian, Windows Mobile et al. RIM are doing very well in second place with a 3.3 point gain bringing them to 19.9 percent market share. While Symbian is dominating the list, I’m personally more concerned with smartphone-based OSes that have a relatively vibrant developer community. With all that today’s modern smartphone can do, Symbian seems like a relic of a feature phone world that is almost obsolete.
As we pointed out in the IDC post, you can’t deny Apple’s market share growth rate. Apple is selling just 10M fewer units than RIM, and if the growth numbers remain constant, I can see them overtaking RIM. On the other hand, RIM still has some core business and technology advantages that can leave Apple in the dust.
For example, carriers are going to put an increasing amount of pressure on hardware manufacturers to be efficient with data. Apple have been pretty greedy when it comes to network consumption and if they lose the carriers’ confidence, we’ll be seeing the carriers’ marketing dollars shifting to BlackBerry. RIM are also going to see a tremendous amount of growth globally, while Apple are too rigid in pricing to be effective outside of first world countries. It’s safe to say that the next few years are going to be very interesting.
[Graph courtesy of TechCrunch]
Posted on October 14, 2009, at 2:10 PM .
Gartner has released a slightly revised version of their outlook for the 2012 mobile operating system. The latest predictions put Symbian as the top OS, followed by Android, with BlackBerry in third and iPhone in fourth.
The interesting part of this research is the positioning of BlackBerry relative to the iPhone. The advantage of BlackBerry is that it will always have enough devices to cover the entire gamut of potential smartphone users. While you may not love every device that RIM ships, there will always be a device for you.
While Gartner believes that Open Source OS markets are the future, we aren’t seeing much proof of this. Developers aren’t making enough money on either platform for the devices to be of much of use. We have said this countless times on BlackBerry Cool, it’s the software that determines the winner and hardware is fast becoming secondary with regards to the competitiveness of a device.
Gartner has placed a large degree in confidence in Nokia after their partnership with Microsoft. The thought is that the partnership will allow Nokia to deliver Office Mobile, as well as full SharePoint integration, allowing Nokia to steal some of RIM’s enterprise market share. Perhaps this may look good to an analyst at Gartner, but it simply won’t happen. Unless Nokia comes out with a product that rivals BES, hosts an equally robust developer community as well as provides the security of a BlackBerry, the partnership is just talk. If SharePoint is the only advantage, you will have to prove that it is significantly better than what Wicksoft can offer.
Overall, the predictions are as follows:
1. Symbian
2. Android
3. BlackBerry
4. iPhone
5. Windows Mobile
While we may not know the final outcome until 2012, rest assured it’s the developers who will decide the final victor. So if you’re a developer looking to make that killer app, don’t let Gartner become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Go to the brand you trust and ultimately, go to the brand that’s making you money. I guarantee you it’s not Symbian, Android or Windows Mobile.
[Via]
Posted on September 3, 2009, at 11:16 AM .
Skyfire has announced they have received $5 million in funding. The funds will top off their Series B from existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and Trinity Ventures. The company will use the funds to support new smartphone platforms beyond Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry, as well as utilizing their unique technology for solutions beyond the browser.
It’s not obvious yet how RIM’s acquisition of Torch Mobile and their plans to update the browser will affect third party browsers such as Opera Mini and Skyfire. It’s possible that once RIM updates their browser, there will no longer be a need for third party browsers, as the experience would be adequate for the general user. On the other hand, third party browsers have been innovating in the space and there is something to be said for being the first to market. There may always be a need for third party browsers to deliver a browsing experience better than that of the native browser.
