In year 2016 it will be sold over 1.4 billion smart phones. Mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech. The smartphone is the single most important product, which will determine the development of the semiconductor market. Smart phone centre of innovation and investment in hardware, software and company creation. The smart phone market is huge. Today, there are well over 2bn smartphones in use, and there are between 3.5 and 4.5bn people with a mobile phone of some kind, out of only a little over 5bn adults on earth. With billions of people buying a device every two years, on average, the phone business dwarfs the PC business, which has an install base of 1.5-1.6bn devices replaced every 4-5 years
Smart phone market is no longer fast gowing market. Expect single-digit worldwide smartphone growth in 2016. According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC ) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , 2015 will be the first full year of single-digit worldwide smartphone growth. IDC predicts worldwide smartphone shipments will grow 9.8% in 2015 to a total of 1.43 billion units. The main driver has been and will continue to be the success of low-cost smartphones in emerging markets. China has been the focal point of the smartphone market – now China has largely become a replacement market and there is economic slowdown in China.
Apple & Google both won, but it’s complicated – both Apple and Google won, in different ways. Android won the handset market outside of Apple, but it’s not quite clear what that means. Microsoft missed the shift to the new platform so Windows Mobile is on life support.
We will continue to see a globalization of the mobile landscape in 2016, as new China brands shake up the smartphone markets with new designs and business models. Expect continuing growth from China brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei. Huawei says it sent in 2015 to more than 100 million smartphones and its now firmly among the world’s three largest suppliers. Samsung is the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer, but it looks that it’s production volumes are shrinking because of cheaper Android phones coming from China.
Last year’s CES had a conspicuous lack of killer smartphones, and O’Donnell expects this year to be very challenging for handset vendors – Apple included. It is getting really hard to differentiate from a phone perspective. In the smartphone market changes happen slowly, and for the challengers it is difficult to penetrate the market.
Apple’s position in smart phones is not currently a threat really none. The volumes of the iPhone does not come close to the Android camp in the unit sales figures, but it is clearly not Apple’s target at all – it targets to high-end phones. Apple made record sales in 2015 holiday season, but it is possible that Apple is going to have a tough year in 2016. Some Wall Street analysts predict an end of iPhone sales growth, shrinking iPad sales, and a tough year ahead for Apple. The high cost and the markets getting full are met weigh the Apple iPhone phone sales.Wall Street expects iPhone sales for the fiscal year ending in September will barely budge — and might even decline — from last year. That would be the worst year for iPhone sales since the device was introduced in 2007. If realized, the forecast significantly affect Apple’s value. Despite recent reports of cuts by iPhone suppliers, Apple remains most profitable company in S&P 500. Fortunately for Apple, most of its smartphone competitors are struggling.
Microsoft got the third mobile ecosystem market position, but it’s market share is pretty low: Microsoft’s market share was only 1.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2015. It is very possible that Microsoft will cut Lumia production significantly in 2016. Microsoft’s long-rumored Surface Phone is coming in the second half of next year, reports Windows Central. Windows 10 phones are not dead yet even from other manufacturers as Acer, Alcatel OneTouch just made some new ones. The key feature in the Jade Primo is support for Microsoft’s Continuum feature, allowing you to use the phone like a PC when connected to a larger display – though limited to apps that run on the device’s ARM processor. The idea, claims Acer, is that you can leave your laptop at home, but what’s the demand for PC phones? It is hard to get winning much traction in a market dominated by Android.
Microsoft says the Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin early 2016 to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones. Microsoft could not update the smart phones in 2015 despite the fact that the operating system had originally been set to launch alongside the desktop version of the software in July. Microsoft has had a longstanding “chicken and egg” problem: Too few people have Windows phones for developers to care about making apps for the platform, and customers don’t want to buy Windows phones because they don’t have enough apps. Microsoft tries to help his problem With Windows 10, apps that developers write for the PC will also work on Microsoft’s phones. It could have some positive effect, but is no silver bullet. Microsoft’s biggest problem: The 10 most-used apps of the year in the U.S. were all made by three companies — Facebook, Google, and Apple.
It’s only been 15 years since the first camera phone came out. Today smartphones are giving consumers enhanced photo and video capabilities with 8-16 megapixel class. Smartphone cameras are great, or at least close enough to great that you don’t notice the difference. We’ve reached the point where you’ve got to work pretty hard to find a phone with a mediocre camera. Compared to a DSLR, smart phone cameras are lousy because they use tiny sensors, but still the camera in your pocket is crazy good considering the limitations manufacturers work under. The vast majority of top-tier smartphones use Sony sensors for their main cameras. The molded plastic lens elements in many cameras have reached the point where they’re essentially perfect.
For new smart phone camera technologies you could see array of lenses to enable Lytro-like refocusing, create 3-D depth maps, and improve image quality in low light. Some manufacturers are also exploring new areas, such as 3D cameras, massive megapixels (80MB), cameras that can take 360 degree panoramic images and video and cameras that can shoot 1,000 frames a second. 4K Ultra HD for mobile is another move to watch in 2016 as it becomes more common feature. Smartphones have decimated the point-and-shoot camera segment.
Smart phones are increasingly used to shoot videos. Smart phones are already deployed in many newsrooms for mobile journalism video shooting as it is easier (and cheaper) to learn how to film and edit on your phone than it is to use a big camera.(check for example step-by-step guide to shooting iPhone video). Live streaming video from smart phone becomes mainstream. Periscope was one of the first apps to really make live streaming events simple and easy enough that people wanted to do it. Many other apps are following the trend. Facebook begins testing live video streaming for all users.
Smart phones have already replaced many separate technical gadgets already, and this trend will continue. Smartphone have increased screen sizes and have finally become mobile TVs: Smartphones have overtaken the tablets as the most popular mobile device for viewing videos. The most watched content were targeted at teenagers videos and animation series for children.
Mobile display will be more accurate than eye in 2016 in high-end smart phones. Few enjoys a 4K-quality image even in his living room, but by the end of 2016, the same accuracy can be your smartphone. ETSI is preparing for development at ETSI CCM working group (Compound Content Management). Scalable 4K signal requires a very high dynamics (HDR, high dynamic range), as well as the WCG wider color space (Coloc Wider gamut). Such HDR / WCG techniques has only slowly been add to TV broadcasting. One can of course ask whether UltraHD- or 4K image are planting a cell phone make any sense, but they are coming (Sharp already announced that it would launch 4K-level mobile phone).
So device manufacturers need to support user expectations for downloading larger files for apps, movies, photos, videos and other materials, more frequently and more quickly. Networking speed is an area where we will see companies start to push the envelope in 2016, such as new creative strategies for caching, spectrum hopping and managing the Internet of Things.
The quality of LTE modem can make or break your smart phone product. Smartphones consist of two main components: Modems and application processors. Application processor performances of several smartphone brands are widely published, but LTE modem performance measures are much more difficult for the average purchaser to assess. Consumers have generally ignored the importance of connectivity in smartphone purchases, but device performance and positive user experiences are driven by best-in-class connectivity. There are 5 LTE smartphone modem chip makers currently shipping in mobile devices and besides U.S.-based Qualcomm, they include: HiSilicon (China), Intel (U.S.), Leadcore (China), MediaTek (Taiwan), Samsung (Korea), and Spreadtrum (China).
5G will be talked a lot enven though standardization is not ready yet. Just five years after the first 4G smartphone hit the market, the wireless industry is already preparing for 5G: cell phone carriers, smartphone chip makers and the major network equipment companies are working on developing 5G network technology for their customers.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that a smartphone is also a telephone. Nearly half of all phone users today employ their mobile phones as their primary voice connection (a number sure to grow). That the voice features in cell phones also advance. Very early on, the standard for human voice transmission was set as the “voice band” located between 300 Hz and 3.3 kHz (to put this in perspective, the natural frequency span of human voice during speech ranges from about 50 Hz to nearly 10 kHz). These standards were carried over for cellphone audio quality. Now that there are about about as many cellphone subscriptions as there are people on earth, one would think that there really shouldn’t be any more technological excuses for poor voice quality. New standards branded as HD Voice and VoLTE promise the eventual extension of voice transmission frequency range up to 7 kHz. There are also other major challenge preventing great sounding calls – especially noise challenges facing cellphone users. To get good sound quality we need to develop algorithms that isolate the person speaking from all other sources of noise.
Financial Services needs to get over its reluctance and go mobile in 2016, but it might not happen in large scale this year. Compliance concerns have long prevented financial services businesses from adopting mobile capabilities as quickly as other industries. Yvette Jackson of Thomson Reuters argues that technology advancements have made compliance worries of the past now obsolete.
Mobile payments are finally taking the momentum in North America, Japan and some European countries in 2016. Every second consumer is expected to smartphone or wearable device purchases to pay in few years. There are now types of mobile payment technologies in use. Some of them will turn to be interim techniques.
Despite many tools available mobile application development is still hard work in 2016. Mobile developer report shows growing back-end challenge: 33.9 per cent spent more than half their development effort on back-end integration. This effort includes creating and debugging APIs, finding documentation for existing APIs, and orchestrating data from multiple sources. iOS and Android dominate as target platforms. The disappointment for Microsoft is that all its hoopla about the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) does not seem to resonate here. What about making money? Only just over 60 per cent of those surveyed are primarily out to make money from apps themselves, with others aiming for goals such as customer loyalty and brand awareness. In-app purchases are the most effective method, followed by advertising and app purchase. Application landscape is changing: Single-function applications no longer meet the everyday life needs on mobile devices.
Web standards are becoming promising for mobile use but they are still far from making mobile apps obsolete in 2016. There’s a litany of problems with apps. There is the platform lock-in and the space the apps take up on the device. Updating apps is a pain that users often ignore, leaving broken or vulnerable versions in use long after they’ve been allegedly patched. Apps are also a lot of work for developers. Use the Web and the Web browser can sometimes help in solving some of those problems while creating other different set of problems. For example updates to HTML apps happen entirely on the server, so users get them immediately. Also HTML-based platform and a well-designed program that makes good use of CSS, one site could support phones, tablets, PCs, and just about anything else with one site. Currently HTML5 standards are advancing rapidly in the area of mobile Web applications. Web standards make mobile apps obsolete? I don’t think that it will happen immediately, even though many big tech companies are throwing weight behind a browser-based world (backed strongly by Google and Mozilla). So app or web question will still very relevant for mobile developer in 2016.
Google appears to be lining up OpenJDK – an open-source implementation of the Java platform – for future Android builds. Android runs apps written in Java on its Dalvik engine, and lately, its Android Runtime virtual machine. These apps require a Java class library, as well as various Android-specific bits and pieces, to work. Now it seems the next big releases of Android will use not the heavily customized Harmony-derived library but instead OpenJDK’s core libraries.
Android, which is controlled by Google, is one of Facebook’s biggest markets. Facebook has a contingency plan in case the company falls out with Google, according to The Information: a way to deliver app updates without going through the Google Play Store — currently the only way to update apps — and has a way of handling in-app payments. Amazon, which makes Android-based tablets, has a similar system: The app acts as a new store front from which other apps can be downloaded and updated, without Google Play.
There will be fascinating conversation in tech about smartphone apps and the web – what can each do, how discovery works, how they interplay, what Google plans with Chrome, whether the web will take over as the dominant form and so on. Ask the question: Do people want to put your icon on their home screen?
Mobile Internet continues to be important also in 2016. There is place for both Internet pages and apps. The internet makes it possible to get anything you’ve ever heard of but also makes it impossible to have heard of everything. We started with browsing, and that didn’t scale to the internet, and then we moved to search, but search can only give you what you already knew you wanted. In the past, print and retail showed us what there was but also gave us a filter – now both the filter and the demand generation are gone.
There is hunt for a new runtime, and a new discovery layer. Could it be messaging, Facobook or something else? Facebook and Google try to make mobile publishing platforms faster. Facebook has Instant Articles platform that aims to make articles loading fast on mobile devices. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google’s plan to make pages appear super-fast for those using mobile devices. Fast-loading pages may also mean fast-loading ads, with advertising platform support for AMP that’s been announced. I expect that first those plaforms will make loading the articles faster than traditinal pages, but over years those systems, if they catch, will be bloated to be slow again.
Maybe in 2016 we should stop talking about ‘mobile’ internet and ‘desktop’ internet - it’s like talking about ‘colour’ TV, as opposed to black and white TV. We have a mental model, left over from feature phones, that ‘mobile’ means limited devices that are only used walking around. Get over it. For 15 years the internet was a monolith: web browser + mouse + keyboard. The smartphone broke that apart, but we haven’t settled on a new model. Mobile’ isn’t about the screen size or keyboard or location or use. Rather, the ecosystem of ARM, iOS and Android, that has bigger scale than ‘Wintel’.
Dick Tracy had it right. Wearable devices are becoming more of any every day item as they proliferate across markets. Wearable market is still immature and growing in 2016. While many new fitness bands, smartwatches, and other wearable devices have entered the market, most have under-whelmed prospects and users. It is quite clear the wearable industry is in its infancy and fraught with growing pains. You can expect the top five vendors will not only shift places, but come in and drop out on a quarterly basis. Wearables grew 197.6% in Q3 2015 when mobile companies shipped a total of 21.0 million wearables worldwide.
Whereas the smartphone is the ultimate convergence product, we are learning that wearables are inherently divergent products. It seems that super-duper smartwatches loaded with full-blown phone/email/camera/voice assistant capabilities together with all other bells and whistles are not necessarily winning recipe like it was for smart phones. Many consumers want instead simplicity, ease of use, and instant actionable feedback. As an embedded developer of wearables, not only do you have the challenge of addressing battery life issues, but also architecting and developing a system that takes full advantage of the underlying hardware. Heartbeat monitoring has become the must-have feature for fitness trackers. China has quickly emerged as the fastest-growing wearables market, attracting companies eager to compete on price and feature sets.
The newest wearable technology, smart watvches and other smart devices corresponding to the voice commands and interpret the data we produce - it learns from its users, and generate as responses in real time appropriate, “micro-moments” tied to experience.
Links to some other mobile predictions articles worth to check out:
16 mobile theses by Benedict Evans
Mobile 2016 Predictions from EE Times
2015 Appcelerator / IDC Mobile Trends Report: Leaders, Laggards and the Data Problem
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple iPhone SE Reuses Design Wins to Penetrate Lower Budget Market
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329337&
Can Apple play in the growing low-to-mid budget smartphone market? The latest attempt, the iPhone SE, looks promising.
How does a company like Apple introduce themselves into the growing low-to-mid budget smartphone market?
Their first attempt was in 2013 with the release of the iPhone 5C, which had mixed reviews. The $549 price tag of the iPhone 5C only seemed “low-to-mid budget” when compared with the $700 price of the iPhone 5S released at the same time.
It is almost as if Apple has made a full circle with the release of the 4” iPhone SE.
It appears Apple didn’t re-invent anything for the iPhone SE. Instead they slightly modified the iPhone 5S enclosure, took the Qualcomm MDM9625M radio and supporting circuits from the iPhone 6, and grabbed the A9 processor and 12MP camera from the iPhone 6S. They pulled from their past design successes and released the iPhone SE for an introductory price of $399 USD.
As market and financial analysts release more reports and opinions about the ‘cooling’ mobile market, the low-to-mid budget smartphone market is heating up and seeing devices full of features and capabilities which used to be found only in flagships like the Samsung S7 devices of the world.
The iPhone SE serves Apple well. It satisfies those devoted Apple fans who miss the 4” smartphone and gives Apple a device to compete with rivals Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Microsoft.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s Nexus security update for April fixes 8 critical Android bugs
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/04/googles-april-nexus-security-update-fixes-8-critical-android-bugs/
Google is releasing the monthly security update for its Nexus Android devices today and with it, it is also announcing a list of the security vulnerabilities it has patched in this release. This month, the update includes patches for eight critical bugs, including one that affects the infamous libstagefright library, which has already seen its fair share of well-publicized vulnerabilities.
Google notified its partners about all the issues in this new bulletin two weeks ago and for them (and anybody else who is interested), source code patches will be made available through the Android Open Source Project in the next two days.
Nexus Security Bulletin—April 2016
http://source.android.com/security/bulletin/2016-04-02.html
The most severe of these issues is a Critical security vulnerability that could enable remote code execution on an affected device through multiple methods such as email, web browsing, and MMS when processing media files.
Android Security Advisory 2016-03-18 previously discussed use of CVE-2015-1805 by a rooting application. CVE-2015-1805 is resolved in this update.
The “Stagefright” hole in Android – what you need to know
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/07/28/the-stagefright-hole-in-android-what-you-need-to-know/
Stagefright Detector
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zimperium.stagefrightdetector
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Exec Says They’re Not Giving Up on Windows Phone
http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-exec-says-they-re-not-giving-up-on-windows-phone-502464.shtml
Microsoft has recently confirmed that Windows phones are no longer a priority for the company this year, as it focuses on a series of other projects, and this has made many believe that Redmond is finally willing to give up on its mobile platform.
That’s not the case, says Aaron Woodman, Senior Director, Windows Marketing, in an interview on the sideline of the Build 2016 developer conference.
Windows Phone market is more widely adopted in Europe, and Woodman says that it is businesses that are supporting this growth on the Old Continent.
In the end, the good news here is that Microsoft still thinks Windows Phone has a place in its vision, so everyone should be looking forward to 2017.
A Microsoft Surface Phone may come in three versions but not until early 2017
http://www.windowscentral.com/surface-phone-may-come-three-versions-early-2017
Microsoft’s plans for a Surface phone still appear to be happening, but it may be pushed back until early 2017 with their other new Windows 10 devices. There could also be up to three models of the premium flagship.
With Microsoft’s Windows 10 Mobile OS continuing to be developed with new builds nearly every two weeks it seems like a good time to wonder what Microsoft’s hardware intentions are going forward.
No more Lumias
The current Microsoft strategy when it comes to mobile is still one of retrenchment. Microsoft has pulled back development of the Lumia line, including product cancellations, for presumably a few reasons, including:
Windows 10 Mobile is still being developed and improved
Let OEM partners have some breathing room to create new hardware
Give Microsoft time to come back with a strong product and something to disrupt the market
Microsoft is also encouraging its OEM partners to get on board with Windows 10 Mobile, and Microsoft’s retrenching means the company does not have to compete with those same manufacturers.
If I hazard a guess, it sounds like Microsoft is planning to re-enter the phone space with new hardware at the same time as Windows 10 ‘Redstone 2.’
None of this is particularly new or shocking as Mary Jo Foley over at ZDNet recently reported that Redstone 2 has been pushed back to spring 2017 to line up with new Windows 10 devices being launched by the company.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung patents smart contact lenses with a built-in camera
http://mashable.com/2016/04/05/samsung-smart-contact-lenses-patent/#RdaPeV6XRPq9
In the future, we could all be wearing smart contact lenses, like the ones secret agents use in movies.
Samsung has been granted a patent in South Korea for contact lenses with a display that projects images directly into wearer’s eyes, according to the Samsung-focused blog SamMobile. A built-in camera and sensors are controlled by blinking.
Embedded antennas then beam content to an external smartphone-like device for processing.
According to SamMobile’s report, Samsung started developing smart contact lenses as a means to create a better augmented reality experience than the ones that exist through Google Glass-like wearables. Smart contact lenses would allow AR to be projected right into a person’s eyes and be more invisible at the same time.
Samsung is working on smart contact lenses, patent filing reveals
http://www.sammobile.com/2016/04/05/samsung-is-working-on-smart-contact-lenses-patent-filing-reveals/
In an ever expanding universe of wearables, Samsung is doing its best to keep all bases covered. Today, the publication of a patent application shows the company is developing smart contact lenses.
The patent application, filed in South Korea, shows a contact lens equipped with a tiny display, a camera, an antenna, and several sensors that detect movement and the most basic form of input using your eyes: blinking. The display projects images directly into the eye of the wearer. An external device, a smartphone, is needed for processing
According to the application, the primary reason for the development of smart contact lenses is the limited image quality that can be achieved with smart glasses.
we can’t help but wonder whether the Gear Blink trademark, filed in both South Korea and the US, could have anything to do with what we are seeing today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Huawei to double the camera is a big innovation
The smartphone is by far the most important tool for taking pictures these days.
The camera will start to be one of the most important features to the smartphone can stand out from their competitors. Huawei new P9-model dual camera may therefore hit the real bonanza.
Yesterday in London presented P9 model has been developed together with the camera manufacturer Leica. In the past has been presented afterwards to focus on graphics-friendly smartphones, but Huawei and Leica have taken this a whole new way.
P9 to the back of the shell has two cameras, one store in the RGB color information and the other a black and white data. The cells can be used to improve contrast and tones of the images in poor lighting conditions.
But more interesting use of two cell will be when they are used to store images with a short focus area – samples of which seem almost a professional photographer. Such forms and macro shots are stunning.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4226:huawein-tuplakamera-on-iso-innovaatio&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kantar: Windows Phone down to 5.9% in Europe, 2.6% in USA
http://mspoweruser.com/kantar-windows-phone-down-to-5-9-in-europe-2-6-in-usa/
Kantar has released their market share numbers for the 3 months ending February 2016.
Market share numbers for the OS has continued to slip, with Windows Phone now holding only 5.9% market share in Europe, down from 10.1% last year over the same period and 6.4% last month.
There is not much encouragement elsewhere, with US remaining steady at 2.6% and China at 0.9%.
With Microsoft not set to release any more handsets this year it seems either Microsoft’s new OEMs will get some traction with Windows 10 Mobile or these numbers will start looking like the good old days in 6-12 months time.
Comments:
off course, they don´t have some devices to sell, and WP 10 is a disaster – beta version with a mountain of bugs. If your choice is Microsoft, you are beta tester all life.
I don’t think MSFT is letting Windows Phone die. It is just being assimilated into being just another method of accessing Windows and their growing ecosystem. Nothing wrong with the strategy. Given their situation after 8 years of mess ups, it’s actually smart. But whether it will work or not is a different issue.
They are already relying on their two biggest rivals’ OS to sell their smartphone apps and services. Because their own smartphone OS doesn’t have enough customers to keep them in front of the world’s app buyers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Some people are still using 2G phones, and not for the reasons you’d expect
http://mashable.com/2016/04/06/2g-phones-austalia/#aiRlUuJKP5q0
These are the twilight hours of 2G. The old mobile phone network, on which many of us spent our youth in the ’90s texting and playing Snake, is slowly getting phased out in Australia.
The country’s biggest telcos are turning it off: Telstra has said it aims to phase out 2G by the end of 2016 and Optus from April 2017. Vodafone has not yet announced any plans to shut down 2G.
“While demand for 3G and 4G is increasing, we recognise many customers are satisfied with a basic mobile service,” a Vodafone spokesperson told Mashable Australia. “We’re continually monitoring spectrum to balance the need for 2G, 3G and 4G services on the Vodafone network.”
While most Australians are playing around on 3G or 4G these days, there are those who remain loyally on so-called “dumb phones,” Nokia 3310s in their rictus grip. Whether out of necessity or fashion, these Australians are getting the most out of 2G, while it lasts.
Her main reason for sticking with a pre-paid 2G service is to keep her bills low. “I never make outgoing calls, and the purpose was just so I could be contacted,” she explained.
She’s also averse to wasteful purchases.
Rachel has the Internet at home, but doesn’t see the need for it to be on her phone.
She added that the kids at school tell her an old Nokia is actually pretty cool now — they’re retro.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Launches Android Studio 2.0 With Instant Run, Faster Android Emulator, and Cloud Test Lab
https://developers.slashdot.org/story/16/04/07/2228231/google-launches-android-studio-20-with-instant-run-faster-android-emulator-and-cloud-test-lab?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Google today launched Android Studio 2.0, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE), with a long list of new features. You can download the new version for Windows, Mac, and Linux now directly from Android.com/SDK. In November, Google unveiled Android Studio 2.0, the second major version of its IDE.
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google launches Android Studio 2.0 with Instant Run, faster Android emulator, and Cloud Test Lab
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/07/google-launches-android-studio-2-0-with-instant-run-faster-android-emulator-and-cloud-test-lab/
Google today launched Android Studio 2.0, the latest version of its integrated development environment (IDE), with a long list of new features. You can download the new version for Windows, Mac, and Linux now directly from Android.com/SDK.
Google launches Android Studio 2.0 with Instant Run, faster Android emulator, and Cloud Test Lab
Instant Run: This feature is supposed to dramatically improve your workflow by letting you quickly see changes running on your device or emulator. It lets you see your changes running “in a near instant,” which means you can continuously code and run your app, hopefully accelerating your edit, build, run cycles.
Android Emulator: The new Android Emulator is up to 3x faster in CPU, RAM, and I/O in comparison to the previous Android emulator.
Cloud Test Lab: This new service allows you to test your app across a wide range of devices and device configurations.
App Indexing: It is now easier for your users to find your app in Google Search with the App Indexing API.
GPU Debugger Preview: If you are developing OpenGL ES games or graphics-intensive apps, you have a new GPU debugger (in preview) in Android Studio 2.0.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google could adopt Apple’s Swift language for Android in bid to ditch Java
In a move you could never imagine in your Wildest Dreams
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2453886/google-could-adopt-apples-swift-language-in-bid-to-ditch-java
GOOGLE IS REPORTEDLY considering making Apple’s Swift programming language a ‘first class’ language for Android, in a move that could allow developers create native apps for both operating systems.
So says The Next Web, which has heard from anonymous sources that Google is considering adopting Apple’s open source language alongside the Java programming language most often used for Android apps today.
Swift won’t replace Java, at least initially, The Next Web report said, despite the firm’s court battle with Oracle
Google is said to be considering Swift as a ‘first class’ language for Android
http://thenextweb.com/dd/2016/04/07/google-facebook-uber-swift/
About the time Swift was going open source, representatives for three major brands — Google, Facebook and Uber — were at a meeting in London discussing the new language. Sources tell The Next Web that Google is considering making Swift a “first class” language for Android, while Facebook and Uber are also looking to make Swift more central to their operations.
Google’s Android operating system currently supports Java as its first-class language
Swift is also open source, which means Google could adopt it for Android without changing its own open source mobile structure.
Born at Apple as a replacement to Objective C, Swift quickly found favor with developers as an easy-to-write language that shed much of the verbosity and clumsy parameters other languages have. It was introduced at WWDC 2014, and has major support from IBM as well as a variety of major apps like Lyft, Pixelmator and Vimeo that have all rebuilt iOS apps with Swift.
Specifically, Android would need a runtime for Swift — and that’s just for starters.
Google would also have to make its entire standard library Swift-ready, and support the language in APIs and SDKs. Some low-level Android APIs are C++, which Swift can not currently bridge to. Those would have to be re-written.
Swift would also not be useful in bridging higher level APIs in Java; they’d have to be re-written as well.
Kotlin
Just reaching its potential, sources also claim Kotlin is being discussed as a first class language for Android.
Like Swift, Kotlin is object oriented with a focus on safety. Unlike Swift, Kotlin works with Android Studio, Google’s IDE for Android development.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Strategy Analytics: 12.8M VR units will be sold in 2016 for $895M; 77% of revenue will go to Oculus, HTC, Sony; 87% of units will be smartphone-based VR devices — VR headsets to generate $895M in revenue in 2016 — Market researcher Strategy Analytics said it expects global virtual …
VR headsets to generate $895M in revenue in 2016
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/07/vr-headsets-to-generate-895m-in-revenue-in-2016/
Market researcher Strategy Analytics said it expects global virtual reality headset revenues will reach $895 million in 2016.
About 77 percent of that value will be accounted for by newly launched premium devices from Oculus, HTC, and Sony. These three brands however will only account for 13 percent of volumes in 2016 as lower priced smartphone-based devices will dominate share of the 12.8 million unit virtual reality headset market. Strategy Analytics said it sees 2016 as a pivotal year for virtual reality given a confluence of factors and also one where managing expectations will be paramount given a dearth of available content and the technical limitations of entry-level virtual reality.
Oculus VR launched the $600 Oculus Rift on March 28, and HTC launched the SteamVR-based HTC Vive this week. Sony plans to launch the PlayStation VR headset in October. Meanwhile, Google Cardboard has been distributed for free far and wide, and Samsung launched its mobile-based VR device, the Samsung Gear VR, last November.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Investigating the Potential for Miscommunication Using Emoji
http://grouplens.org/blog/investigating-the-potential-for-miscommunication-using-emoji/
To your smartphone, an emoji is just like any other character (e.g., lower-case ‘a’, upper-case ‘B’) and needs to be rendered with a font. Since each smartphone platform (e.g., Apple, Google) has its own emoji font, the same emoji character can look quite different on different smartphone platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
George Dvorsky / Gizmodo:
Doctors used data collected by a Fitbit Charge HR to decide whether to reset a patient’s heart rate with electrical cardioversion — This Dude’s Fitness Tracker May Have Just Saved His Life — A 42-year-old man from New Jersey recently showed up in an emergency ward following a seizure.
This Dude’s Fitness Tracker May Have Just Saved His Life
http://gizmodo.com/this-dudes-fitness-tracker-may-have-just-saved-his-life-1769604325
A 42-year-old man from New Jersey recently showed up in an emergency ward following a seizure. After looking at the data collected by his Fitbit Charge HR, the doctors decided to reset his heart rate with an electrical cardioversion. It’s the first time in history that a fitness tracker was used in this way.
When the patient arrived at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, the clinical team noticed he had an atrial fibrillation (an irregular and fast heart beat), but they weren’t sure if it was chronic, or if the seizure triggered it (the seizure happened 20 minutes prior to the patient’s arrival in the ER).
This bit of information is crucially important because it will determine whether or not the medical staff can electrically cardiovert the patient to alleviate the arrhythmia
The patient’s Fitbit confirmed that the atrial fibrillation was in fact triggered by the seizure, which meant they could go ahead and perform the electrocardioversion.
Tomi Engdahl says:
iPhone Microscopy and Other Adventures
http://hackaday.com/2016/04/11/iphone-microscopy-and-other-adventures/
CMOS imaging chips have been steadily improving, their cost and performance being driven by the highly competitive smartphone industry. As CMOS sensors get better and cheaper, they get more interesting for hacker lab projects. In this post I’m going to demonstrate a few applications of the high-resolution sensor that you’ve already got in your pocket — or wherever you store your cell phone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac:
KGI forecasts Apple Watch shipments will fall 25% year-on-year, be below 7.5M units vs. 10.6M in 2015 — A KGI investment note seen by 9to5Mac suggests that Apple Watch shipments will fall by more than 25% this year. The note estimates 2015 sales at 10.6M units, and predicts that full-year shipments …
KGI forecasts Apple Watch shipments will fall 25% year-on-year, be below 7.5M units vs. 10.6M in 2015
http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/11/apple-watch-sales-2015-2016/
A KGI investment note seen by 9to5Mac suggests that Apple Watch shipments will fall by more than 25% this year. The note estimates 2015 sales at 10.6M units, and predicts that full-year shipments this year will be below 7.5M units. The fall would be even more dramatic in real terms, as it would be comparing 12 months of sales in 2016 against 8 months of sales last year.
The company cites two reasons for the forecast. First, that the wearable device market is still a fledgling one, not yet mature in terms of behaviour. But KGI’s Ming-Chi Kuo also believes the Watch itself falls short …
Kuo argues that the device lacks killer applications as yet, and the form factor has room for improvement. He also believes that the limited battery life and reliance on the iPhone for functionality are holding back demand.
KGI expects mass-production of the next Apple Watch to begin in the third quarter of this year, suggesting a likely launch alongside the iPhone 7, with better connectivity among the improvements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Byttow:
Why anonymous apps fade: they’re entertainment products of waning novelty, and don’t foster community — The Inherent Problem with Anonymous Apps — Vanity Fair and TechCrunch recently reported that Yik Yak is in trouble, a company that raised over $70 million dollars and valued at around $400 million.
The Inherent Problem with Anonymous Apps
https://medium.com/@davidbyttow/the-inherent-problem-with-anonymous-apps-2795ef0c1855#.tr6f3cvgo
Vanity Fair and TechCrunch recently reported that Yik Yak is in trouble, a company that raised over $70 million dollars and valued at around $400 million. At the time it last raised, Yik Yak had exploded across thousands of campuses in the US, propelling it to the top ranks in downloads on iOS and Android.
Here’s the problem: Yik Yak rocketed because it was entertaining and relatable to their college demographic. But, like most entertainment products: novelty wears off, interest wanes, and attention moves on.
Almost a year ago, I decided to shut down a product called Secret. Similar to Yik Yak, it exploded in popularity.
The cycle is analogous to video game release cycles. When a quality game releases it sees a spike in usage and attention but is then shelved as players move on to the next thing.
For an entertainment product to survive a hype cycle it has to provide unique utility, evolve with its customers, and foster communities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flagship Smartphones Go Always-Listening, Always-Seeing & Always-Sensing
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1329382&
With the right design strategy, always-on displays and always-listening mics will be joined by always-seeing, always-sensing features.
The most recent flagship smartphones are making a move towards always-on technology. We have already seen quite a few phones offering voice activation while the screen is on or while the phone is plugged into a power source. Nonetheless, full-fledged, touchless, always-on handheld devices remain quite rare and relatively new. The trend started with Motorola’s Moto-X featuring always-listening voice activation. The Apple iPhone 6S, released half a year ago, features always-listening Siri. The brand new Samsung Galaxy S7 is a double member of the always-on club, with S-voice activation as well as a perpetual low-power date and time display. These flagship phones are the pioneers, but it’s a safe bet that these features will quickly become standard for all handheld devices.
The challenge of always-on portable devices
The main challenge for portable devices with regard to adopting always-on technology is the limitation on battery life. Always-on static devices, like the highly acclaimed Amazon Echo, are quite common; having a constant power supply allows for leeway in the implementation. Portable devices, on the other hand, need to have extremely efficient designs so they won’t drain the battery and significantly reduce the standby time or normal use time of the device.
The newly released Amazon Echo Tap is a small, portable version of the Echo. Now you can take Alexa with you wherever you go, but this comes at a price.
Looking under the hood
Motorola claims that the battery of the Moto-X is not drained by the always-listening feature because it uses a “super low-power natural language processor.” The iPhone 6S boasts the same type of efficiency
More:
http://www.embedded.com/electronics-blogs/say-what-/4441803/Flagship-smartphones-go-always-listening–always-seeing—always-sensing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why a Nokia smartphone would be a bad idea
http://www.androidauthority.com/nokia-smartphone-bad-idea-684370/
When you think of smartphones, there are a few names that come to mind as major players in the game: Apple, Samsung, Motorola, LG and HTC, just to name a few. One name that doesn’t come to mind? Nokia. Though once one of the greatest kings of mobile, Nokia silently left the industry it once helped champion after selling its smartphone business to Microsoft. For those that are hoping to see Nokia make a return to the mobile game, however, there’s a small ray of hope in the distance: its sale terms to Microsoft only prohibited Nokia from making new phones for a limited time, and the agreement is set to expire in Q4 2016. This will allow Nokia the opportunity to re-enter the smartphone arena, but is that really a good move for Nokia?
Looking at Nokia’s track record over the years, the Lumia line has been all but successful for the Finland based company. The hardware choices, paired with arguably lackluster software in Windows Phone, really failed to grasp the smartphone share that Nokia aimed for.
Nokia had a hard time before it sold its smartphone division and lost many of its key players. Coming in now makes for an even more difficult situation. The oversaturation of smartphones has created a plateau of sorts, with many companies reaching near-peak smartphone sales, now focusing on perfecting their product.
Rumors of a Nokia comeback have been fueled by ongoing conversations of a mystery device, commonly referred to as the Nokia C1. It’s unclear if these rumors are true, or just nostaligic driven wishes
Tomi Engdahl says:
BlackBerry is planning to release 2 new Android phones, despite weak Priv sales
http://mashable.com/2016/04/11/blackberry-priv-sales/#pVGZwdyCKqqm
The Priv, BlackBerry’s best smartphone in a decade, has not helped the struggling smartphone company rebound.
BlackBerry sold just 600,000 of the Priv, which runs Android, between January and March. CEO John Chen blamed the poor sales on the device being “too high-end of a product.”
BlackBerry CEO John Chen told The National the company plans to release two midrange Android phones this year. One will have have a keyboard and one will have a full touchscreen.
“A lot of enterprise customers have said to us, ‘I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I’m more interested in a $400 device.’,” Chen said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung reveals Android N will be version 7.0
http://www.neowin.net/news/samsung-reveals-android-n-will-be-version-70
Five months after Google began its rollout of Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the company unexpectedly released its first developer preview of the next major version of the OS a few weeks ago. It’s currently known only as the Android ‘N’ release – but Samsung has apparently now revealed its version number.
Release notes for Samsung’s MultiWindow SDK 1.3.1 state that “this version has been released with Android N(7.0) compatibility”,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Microsoft, Samsung commit to supporting Facebook’s React Native app development framework for Windows 10 and Tizen platforms, respectively
Facebook’s React Native gets backing from Microsoft and Samsung
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/13/facebooks-react-native-open-source-project-gets-backing-from-microsoft-and-samsung/
React Native was originally developed by Facebook to allow its developers to take React, a framework for helping developers build single-page apps the company developed in-house, and allow them to use these same skills to build native mobile apps for iOS and Android.
As the company announced at its F8 developer conference today, React Native has now been used by more than 500 companies and developers who published apps to Apple’s app store, and more than 200 companies and developers who published apps on Google’s Play store (React Native for Android is newer, which explains at least some of this difference in numbers).
In addition, the company today announced that both Microsoft and Samsung have committed to bringing React Native to Windows 10 and Tizen, respectively.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kareem Anderson / WinBeta:
Marmalade Core, a cross-platform C++ SDK, lets developers create games across iOS, Android, and Windows 10
Cross-platform games made easy with Microsoft’s Marmalade Platform
“Developers can write code once and deploy it to many types of devices using Marmalade Core.”
http://www.winbeta.org/news/cross-platform-games-made-easy-microsofts-marmalade-platform
Beyond its delicious sounding developer name, Marmalade is the backend for Microsoft’s newly announced cross-platform gaming initiative in Windows 10. Using the Marmalade Platform combined with Microsoft’s jam packed Visual Studio, developers can create a gaming experience like none other across iOS, Android, and Windows 10.
Developers can write code once and deploy it to many types of devices using Marmalade Core, a cross-platform C++ SDK, leveraging a platform abstraction API that hides much of the complexity of native platforms.”
“As part of showcasing how Marmalade Core and Visual Studio combine to help create great cross-platform games, we also went hands-on at //build with 2D Kit and 3D Kit.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Best smartphones 2016: iPhone SE, Huawei P9, Galaxy S7 Edge and more
Updated We round up the best handsets available today
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2350539/best-smartphones-2014-galaxy-s5-xperia-z2-lumia-930-lg-g3-and-more
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sharp’s adorable robot phone is a not-so-cute $1,800
If you want a phone that dances, talks and projects videos, it’s going to cost you.
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/13/sharp-s-adorable-robot-phone-is-a-not-so-cute-1-800/
The RoboHon is real, it’s going on sale, and (obviously) it’s going to Japan first. At a press launch at the Sharp’s HQ in Tokyo, we finally got some important details, and it’s not all good news. Launching on May 26th in its homeland, the robot phone will cost 198,000 yen (plus tax!) which comes out at over $1,800. In the spectrum of expensive zeitgeist technology, that makes the Oculus Rift et al. seem like a bargain.
If you hadn’t heard of the RoboHon before, it’s all the basic smartphone functions reborn into a tiny robot body. It walks, it dances, and an embedded projector inside its head can display photos and video at a functional-enough 720p resolution. Sharp confirms that it does have LTE radios inside
The screen is the most questionable specification here: a two-inch QVGA screen — the company’s response here is that the phone is a robot that you talk to, reducing the need for screen interactions. Well, at least a little.
Sharp, the company that first brought color screens and cameras to smartphones, says it’s already looking into bring RoboHon elsewhere in the world, but barring robot enthusiasts (and Engadget editors, it seems), it will have difficult time pitching such a pricey oddity — plus additional monthly pricing. (My favorite question during the press briefing: “Do you think RoboHon will sell?” Sharp: “Of course, yes!”)
‘RoboHon’ is the tiny robot smartphone you never knew you needed
http://www.engadget.com/2015/10/05/roboho-tiny-robot-smartphone-only-in-japan/
Watch the teaser video after the break. Skip along then come back to me. Sharp’s RoboHon is so damn adorable, I can’t look away from this kawaii singularity. This robot smartphone may be cute, but it’s also jammed full of skills and features. A projector, articulated animated arms and legs, talkative but in a charming Japanese robot sort of way. You’re old, Pepper the robot. There I said it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Naked Labs unveils 3D Fitness Tracker, which uses a mirror and scale to scan your body in 3D and track changes over time; set available for preorder at $500
Naked Labs’ home fitness scanner captures your entire body in 3D
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/14/naked-labs-unveils-home-fitness-scanner-that-captures-your-entire-body-in-3d/
Naked Labs is unveiling what it calls the world’s first 3D Fitness Tracker. It scans your entire body using a mirror and a scale, capturing your weight and the outline of your body. It then uses that information to calculate your percentage body fat, and it shows you if those trips you’re making to the gym are paying off — even if you aren’t losing weight.
The Naked 3D Fitness Tracker is a sophisticated machine with an Intel processor, Wi-Fi, a turntable, a companion mobile app, and scanning technology that resembles Microsoft’s Kinect body-sensing technology for video games. It’s the ultimate example of the “quantified self,” a movement in which people seek insights about themselves through analytics. The quantified selfers have inspired our age of Fitbits, Apple Watches, and all the other devices that capture our exercise habits.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Expects Your iPhone To Expire In Three Years
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2016/04/16/what-is-the-life-expectancy-of-my-iphone/#16225e535c3c
There is no mythical ‘self-destruct’ chip inside Apple’s hardware, but Cupertino has acknowledged that it believes its hardware has a definitive life span. And the suggested life feels rather on the low side.
While there may be heroic devices out there with far longer life spans (and I’m writing this on one such MacBook Pro that’s approaching the six-year mark, albeit with some DIY replaced parts) these numbers tie in with much of Apple’s strategy, including the available of OS updates to older devices and the hardware offered to replace older units.
Apple does provide compatibility of its operating systems to older hardware, but the details released in the environmental pages codifies the length of support that hardware can expect. While the smartphone industry is built around regular purchases of new hardware thanks to the carrier contracts (currently at the two-year mark), laptops and desktops do not have the same formal structure. At least not one that Apple has previously acknowledged.
Tomi Engdahl says:
This stretchy stick-on turns your skin into an OLED display
http://www.cnet.com/news/this-stretchy-stick-on-turns-your-skin-into-an-oled-display/
Flexible material comes embedded with OLED technology for wearable displays that stick right on your skin like a temporary tattoo.
A team of researchers believes its flexible, OLED-embedded electronic skin has potential applications for health monitoring and communications. The research appears in the April 15 edition of Science Advances.
Takao Someya and Tomoyuki Yokota at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Engineering have developed the skin, which solves several problems with wearable displays. It manages to be thin and flexible, so that it can move with the skin and body, eliminating the need for thick, rigid glass or plastic substrates. This could limit the number of devices we carry around in our pockets.
“The advent of mobile phones has changed the way we communicate. While these communication tools are getting smaller and smaller, they are still discrete devices that we have to carry with us,” Someya said in a statement.
Ultraflexible organic photonic skin
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1501856.figures-only
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emojineering Part 1: Machine Learning for Emoji Trends
http://instagram-engineering.tumblr.com/post/117889701472/emojineering-part-1-machine-learning-for-emoji
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google’s Android N OS Will Support Pressure-Sensitive Screens
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/17/1842221/googles-android-n-os-will-support-pressure-sensitive-screens
In the latest Developer Preview 2 of Android N, Google introduced new “Launcher shortcuts” to the beta OS. It allows developers to “define shortcuts which users can expose in the launcher to help them perform actions quicker.” It’s reminiscent of Apple’s “3D Touch” feature found in the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus
Android N will support pressure-sensitive screens
They probably won’t call it 3D Touch, though
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/17/11446854/android-n-support-pressure-sensitive-screens-3d-touch
Android N is going to make it easier for device makers to create their own version of 3D Touch pressure-sensitive screens on their devices. Hopefully, when it’s officially released, Google will figure out what to call the feature — because Apple 3D Touch is obviously Apple branding, and “support for pressure-sensitive screens” is an awful thing to have to write over and over again.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A key person working on the Google Glass revamp has left after only 5 months
http://uk.businessinsider.com/project-aura-departure-2016-4?r=US&IR=T
The world is still waiting to see how Google reinvents its troubled Glass wearable device.
But one of the people tasked with making it more appealing to users will no longer be part of the process.
Geoff Dowd, the man responsible for user experience design at Project Aura, Google’s division dedicated to revamping Glass and building other wearable technology, has left the company after only five months.
Project Aura, which is itself an effort to reboot Glass in the wake of a poor consumer interest, appears to be shrouded in uncertainty. A source familiar with the efforts describes the group as still trying to figure out its exact direction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Phone Production begins at the Salo plant – Turing phones start shipping soon
manufacture of mobile phones of Nokia and Microsoft’s rejection by Salon plants will begin again. Nokia’s Salo Nakolan former factory space leased Turing Robotic Industries announces that the company’s Turing Phone phones are at the production stage.
According to the company will start shipping at the end of April, “selected customers”, and the rest of the supply of pre-orders made in May.
The company has hired a factory with less than 20 employees, and Turing Phone in advance of subscribers is a few thousand.
Turing Phone and is used in Finnish Jolla Sailfish OS
Sources:
http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2016/04/19/puhelinvalmistus-salon-tehtaalla-alkaa–turing-puhelimien-toimitukset-alkavat-pian/20164216/66?rss=6
http://www.digitoday.fi/mobiili/2016/04/07/turing-puhelimen-valmistus-alkaa-salossa-toukokuussa–tyontekijoita-paljon-ennakoitua-vahemman/20163735/66
Tomi Engdahl says:
The world’s smallest Android smartphone
Smartphone screen has grown rapidly in recent years.
However, Posh Mobile goes against the tide: in its latest Micro X model is the world’s smallest Android smartphone. The company boasts of Micro X concept, in line S240 as the only credit card-sized smart phones. The device will still work 4G and online. The online store price of the device has a hair under $ 90.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4280:maailman-pienin-android-alypuhelin&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU Press Room:
Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on Android operating system and applications — The European Commission has informed Google of its preliminary view that the company has, in breach of EU antitrust rules, abused its dominant position by imposing restrictions …
Antitrust: Commission sends Statement of Objections to Google on Android operating system and applications
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-1492_en.htm
The European Commission has informed Google of its preliminary view that the company has, in breach of EU antitrust rules, abused its dominant position by imposing restrictions on Android device manufacturers and mobile network operators.
The Commission’s preliminary view is that Google has implemented a strategy on mobile devices to preserve and strengthen its dominance in general internet search. First, the practices mean that Google Search is pre-installed and set as the default, or exclusive, search service on most Android devices sold in Europe. Second, the practices appear to close off ways for rival search engines to access the market, via competing mobile browsers and operating systems. In addition, they also seem to harm consumers by stifling competition and restricting innovation in the wider mobile space.
The Commission opened proceedings in April 2015 concerning Google’s conduct as regards the Android operating system and applications. At this stage, the Commission considers that Google is dominant in the markets for general internet search services, licensable smart mobile operating systems and app stores for the Android mobile operating system. Google generally holds market shares of more than 90% in each of these markets in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
Chrome for Android and iOS passes 1 billion monthly active users — Google today announced that its browser has passed 1 billion monthly active users on mobile. In other words, Google has managed to add another 200 million Chrome for Android and iOS users in just five months.
Chrome for Android and iOS passes 1 billion monthly active users
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/20/chrome-for-android-and-ios-passes-1-billion-monthly-active-users/
Google today announced that its browser has passed 1 billion monthly active users on mobile. In other words, Google has managed to add another 200 million Chrome for Android and iOS users in just five months. Not bad for a mobile app that debuted less than four years ago.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s gold mine was just wishful thinking
Widely news about Apple’s recycling strategy, which resulted in the company collected the gold of up to tens of millions of value has proved to be a real canard. If Apple were collected uutisoidut a thousand pounds of gold from old iPhones, this would have required 33.3 million iPhone. A single smart phone is gold worth about one dollar, so in other forms of recycling is certainly more profitable.
In reality, Apple paid a recycling companies, which are rotated with the money Apple about 41 million kilograms in front of the electronic waste.
Apple recycles itself of course also their own devices, and presented to Liam about proudly-robot, which can handle 1.2 million old iPhones a year.
Agreements between electronics manufacturers and recycling companies are secret, but Vicen estimates that Apple will loose money rather than get earning on recycling contracts.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/applen-kultakaivos-olikin-pelkkaa-toiveajattelua-6543697
Tomi Engdahl says:
As long as smartphones are made, they have had the old 3.5-millimeter audio plug for headphones. But now it seems that it starts to disappear some time in the future.
Future iPhone is reportedly missing it. Apple transfer the audio output to the iPhone’s Lightning port.
Also Chinese Leeco opened the game with new Android models that have only USB Type-C connector.
Audio plug rejection of both plus sides that the disadvantages.
The consumer needs to buy new headphones.
For example with USB-C headphone listening is no longer possible at the same time, when the mobile phone is being charged.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4296:audioplugi-katoaa-alypuhelimesta&catid=13&Itemid=101
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows Phone Free-Fall May Force Microsoft To Push Harder On Windows 10
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/23/0323223/windows-phone-free-fall-may-force-microsoft-to-push-harder-on-windows-10?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
Microsoft sold a minuscule 2.3 million Lumia phones last quarter, down from 8.6 million a year ago. Phone revenue declines will only “steepen” during the current quarter, chief financial officer Amy Hood warned during a conference call. That’s dragged down Microsoft’s results as a company, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dan Grover:
WeChat PM: chat apps succeed when they streamline high-friction processes like app installation, login, and payment, not when they rely on conversational UI
Bots won’t replace apps. Better apps will replace apps.
http://dangrover.com/blog/2016/04/20/bots-wont-replace-apps.html
Lately, everyone’s talking about “conversational UI.” It’s the next big thing. But the more articles I read on the topic, the more annoyed I get. It’s taken me so long to figure out why!
Conversations, writes WIRED, can do things traditional GUIs can’t. Matt Hartman equates the surge in text-driven apps as a kind of “hidden homescreen”. TechCrunch says “forget apps, now bots take over”. The creator of Fin thinks it’s a new paradigm all apps will move to. Dharmesh Shah wonders whether the rise of conversational UI will be the downfall of designers. Design, says Emmet Connolly at Intercom is a conversation.
Benedict Evans prophecized that the new lay of the land is “all messaging expands until it includes software.”
“People don’t want apps for every single business that you interact with,” says David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger, “…just have a message within a nicely designed bubble … [that’s a] much nicer experience than an app.” Under his charge, Facebook Messenger has tested this approach, building integrations with high profile partners as well as opening up a bot API.
We’ve even seen avant-garde attempts at taking this idea to its extreme, like Quartz’s latest app, which presents the news as a conversation, or the game Lifeline. Apps like Mailtime even promise to save us from our emails by turning them into chats.
This recent “bot-mania” is at the confluence of two separate trends. One is agent AIs steadily getting better, as evidenced by Siri and Alexa being things people actually use rather than gimmicks. The other is that the the US somehow still hasn’t got a dominant messaging app and Silicon Valley is trying to learn from the success of Asian messenger apps. This involves a peculiar fixation on how these apps, particularly WeChat, incorporate all sorts of functionality seemingly unrelated to messaging.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Android Administration: Google’s Relationship With the Obama White House
https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/23/1440219/the-android-administration-googles-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
The Intercept takes a look at Google’s remarkably close relationship with the Obama White House, driving home its point with charts of When Google Visited the White House and how individuals have moved Back and Forth Between Google and Government. “Much of this collaboration could be considered public-minded,” writes David Dayen. “It’s hard to argue with the idea that the government should seek outside technical help when it requires it. And there’s no evidence of a quid pro quo. But this arrangement doesn’t have to result in outright corruption to be troubling. The obvious question that arises is: Can government do its job with respect to regulating Google in the public interest if it owes the company such a debt of gratitude?”
Google’s Remarkably Close Relationship With the Obama White House, in Two Charts
https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close-relationship-with-the-obama-white-house-in-two-charts/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tasker review: The thing you need to do all the things
http://www.androidcentral.com/tasker-review-thing-you-need-do-all-things
Tasker
Total Automation for Android
http://tasker.dinglisch.net/
Tasker is an application for Android which performs tasks (sets of actions) based on contexts (application, time, date, location, event, gesture) in user-defined profiles or in clickable or timer home screen widgets.
This simple concept profoundly extends your control of your Android device and it’s capabilities, without the need for ‘root’ or a special home screen.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Michael Crider / Android Police:
Sony Offers A Build Of The Android N Developer Preview For The Xperia Z3
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/04/21/sony-offers-a-build-of-the-android-n-developer-preview-for-the-xperia-z3/
Normally only Nexus and other first-party Google devices get a taste of an upcoming Android version before it’s released, barring custom ROMs and other end user activities. But Sony has been offering experimental AOSP builds for some of its phones for some time, and today the company has surprised and delighted owners of the former flagship Xperia Z3 with a custom Android N developer preview. This is more or less the same as the preview builds for Nexus phones and tablets, and it includes the Play Store and Google Services – everything one needs for a full Android experience.
It’s not clear why the Xperia Z3 was chosen over more recent Sony devices
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
High-end smartphones priced at about $400 are on the rise, disrupting $700 flagships
The rise of the $400 smartphone—you want how much for a flagship?
Newcomers to the smartphone market are arriving with disruptive pricing.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/04/the-rise-of-the-400-smartphone-you-want-how-much-for-a-flagship/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is this brave new mobile world is: operators disappointments, new phones are of no interest
A study by Accenture among smartphone users give a surprisingly negative image of people’s attitudes so as to operators and new devices.
Already 80 per cent of consumers own a smartphone. However, more than half of smartphone users are dissatisfied with the mobile network services and are prepared to change their operator.
• 60 percent of consumers are dissatisfied with the quality and user experience of mobile network connectivity and willing to exchange operator
• 62 percent of users are concerned about the safety of mobile payment transactions
• 47 percent of users are concerned about the privacy and data security
• 83 percent of users are dissatisfied with the experience interfering mobile advertising
In addition to customer dis-satisfaction mobile operators have met the threat of falling sales of smart devices.
The vast majority (71 percent) of smartphone users stated that it was willing to pay a premium price for a better mobile network connection, and up to 83 per cent would buy more products and services, if their reliability and fault correction speed can be improved.
“Consumers’ dissatisfaction and at the same time decreasing sales of smart devices can be seen as a threat, but advanced service providers will see a situation also opportunities,”
“The most important thing is to provide consumers with high-quality experiences through multiple channels and across all platforms.”
While consumer enthusiasm to buy new smart devices has subsided, their digital hunger is still hard. Accenture’s research report, the smart phones are used in addition to communications in particular, watching videos (81 percent of smartphone owners) and mobile playing games (69 percent). the proliferation of smart phones and consumer dissatisfaction with the current mobile user experience for service providers to create many new business opportunities.
“In Finland, smartphone users will receive international comparison, world-class service at an affordable price,”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/tassako-uusi-uljas-mobiilimaailma-on-operaattorit-pettymyksia-uudet-puhelimet-eivat-kiinnosta-6544558
Tomi Engdahl says:
Your Phone’s Next Superpower? Putting Awesome VR in Your Pocket
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/vr-in-your-pocket/
You’ve seen the photo. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg striding through Samsung’s Mobile World Congress press conference, breezing past dozens of reporters and industry types too engrossed by their Gear VR headsets to notice the most powerful man in the Internet. Zuck’s smile suggests he can’t quite believe the scene. It’s an instantly iconic image, something that will make an alien race one day wonder what the hell those strange beings on Earth were doing.
It’s also incredibly revealing.
When Zuckerberg reached the stage, he waxed poetic on the social possibilities of VR. “Pretty soon,” he said, “we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just there, right there in person.” The press ate it up.
For all the attention lavished upon the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive and Magic Leap, most people will experience the wonder of VR with the same device they use to send a text and summon a car. “While mobile VR may not trump PC-based VR gaming,” says Nick DiCarlo, Samsung’s head of immersive and VR products, “we do believe mobile VR can be the best when it comes to videos and social interactions.” This makes sense when you consider two things. First, no other tech approaches the smartphone’s scale: 6 billion people will own one by 2020, according to one report. And second, phones are relatively cheap. Even Oculus founder Palmer Luckey concedes that a Rift for everyone remains years away.
Because Android almost certainly will remain the world’s dominant mobile OS, Google plays an integral role in VR. The Wall Street Journal said earlier this year that Google is developing a version of Android to handle the technology. Watchful developers spotted references to “VR Listener” and “VR Helper” apps in early versions of Android N.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Daisuke Wakabayashi / Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Apple is working on adding cell-network connectivity, faster processor to its next-generation Watch — Apple’s Watch Outpaced the iPhone in First Year — Despite sizable sales, Apple’s latest product has challenges to overcome — Apple Inc. sold twice as many Watches as iPhones in each device’s debut year.
Apple’s Watch Outpaced the iPhone in First Year
Despite sizable sales, Apple’s latest product has challenges to overcome
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/apple-watch-with-sizable-sales-cant-shake-its-critics-1461524901-lMyQjAxMTA2MzI4NDcyMTQ3Wj
Tomi Engdahl says:
India will require physical panic buttons on all mobile phones to prevent violence against women
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/27/india-panic-button/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29
In a bid to prevent crimes against women, all mobile phones sold in India will be required to have a physical panic button installed by the beginning of next year. Department of Telecommunications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Twitter that the new rule will go into effect in January 2017. When pressed, the panic button will send an alert to police and people chosen by the phone’s user.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s First CareKit Apps Are Here
http://www.fastcompany.com/3059372/most-innovative-companies/apples-first-carekit-apps-are-here
Developers can use CareKit to build apps that track patients’ health between doctor’s visits.
How often do you visit your doctor’s office? Three, four times per year? For most of us, our health is really about what happens between these visits: It’s the medications we take, our changing moods, or that decision to hit the gym more regularly.
Apple sees a huge opportunity to connect patients, doctors, and caregivers using mobile technology. Its flagship devices, such as iPhone and Apple Watch, are continuously collecting health information using sensor-based technology. But the next step is to bring this data into the hands of a care team, including doctors, nurses, health coaches, and caregivers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat:
IDC: 334.9M smartphones shipped worldwide in Q1, up just 0.2% YoY, marking the smallest YoY growth on record; Samsung extends lead over Apple
IDC: Smartphone shipments flat for the first time; Samsung widens lead over Apple in Q1 2016
http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/27/idc-smartphone-shipments-flat-for-the-first-time-samsung-widens-lead-over-apple-in-q1-2016/
Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 334.9 million smartphones worldwide last quarter. This figure is up just 0.2 percent from the 334.3 million units in Q1 2015, marking the smallest year-over-year growth on record. We saw hints of this in yesterday’s Apple earnings report, when the company reported an iPhone sales drop for the first time.
Despite the poor state of the worldwide smartphone market, Samsung continues to dominate. In Q1 2016, the South Korean company once again shipped more smartphones than any other vendor.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An interactive paper badge for conferences
https://hackaday.io/project/9407-an-interactive-paper-badge-for-conferences
This utilizes the power of the QRCODE, a QR Scanner in a Smartphone, and a interactive website to do stuff for the visiting web site user…
QRCODE’s are ubiquitous today. Realtors, companies, and other commercial entities use them to allow customers to visit their website without typing anything. All you do is aim your smartphone at the QRCODE and voila! it takes you to the designated web site.
If the website is your own personalized we content, you can show off your photo, bio, profile, hobby’s, online chat session, links to other websites, your location, etc. The web site can use geo-location services to pinpoint you and the visitor or a syatem of QRCODE signs can be placed in a conference hall to designate location when there is no Wi-Fi or 3g/4g signal.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Christina Farr / Fast Company:
The first Apple CareKit health apps are out, and CareKit becomes available on GitHub today — Apple’s First CareKit Apps Are Here — Developers can use CareKit to build apps that track patients’ health between doctor’s visits. — How often do you visit your doctor’s office? Three, four times per year?
Apple’s First CareKit Apps Are Here
http://www.fastcompany.com/3059372/most-innovative-companies/apples-first-carekit-apps-are-here
Developers can use CareKit to build apps that track patients’ health between doctor’s visits.