Nokia N-900 Internet Tablet

Nokia unveiled their next generation internet tablet this week. xThe Nokia N900, like the N810 and N800 tablet before it, the device uses Linux-based Maemo software. Unlike Nokia’s earlier tablets, it connects to the internet over a cellular connection. It’s not a phone, it’s a tablet, but the GSM connections imply that cellular voice may be a possibility in the future.

Features include GSM, GPRS, EDGE and HSDPA connectivity (along with support for AWS frequencies used by T-Mobile), Wi-Fi, a 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, TV-out, Bluetooth, FM transmitter, GPS, a browser powered by Mozilla; full Adobe Flash 9.4 support; a slide-out QWERTY keyboard; Nokia’s Messaging service, which allows up to 10 email accounts; 32GB of storage, expandable up to 48GB via a microSD card; and a 5MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The company says it remains committed to the Symbian OS for its smartphones, although analysts are starting to wonder if Maemo could eventually replace it, says MocoNews.

It marks the third operating system that the company has said it will support—just in the past week. On Monday Nokia announced the 10-inch “Booklet 3G”, a netbook running Microsoft Windows.

Nokia said the N900 will be available in some markets starting in October with an estimated retail price of EUR 500 ($712) excluding sales taxes and subsidies.

On 1 April 2008, Nokia announced a WiMAX equipped version of the N810 called the “N810 WiMAX Edition”, with specifications similar to the original N810, but the production of the Wimax Edition of the Nokia N810 was canceled in January 2009. Source: Dailywireless

Opera Releases Its Latest “State Of The Mobile Web”

Last month, Opera released its findings and statistics related to its view of the mobile Web and stated that Opera Mini users had reached a milestone- 10 billion mobile pageviews in the month of June.

Yesterday, Opera released its “State of the mobile Web” for July and, among other interesting tidbits, stated that its users visited over 12 billion pages, a 15 percent jump over June, representing an even larger milestone for the mobile browser.

The report highlighted the large growth in the Middle East when it comes to mobile Web consumption, stating that in Iran, for example, there were more Opera Mini downloads in July than there were unique users in June, but Iran showed only a 32% growth in unique users from June to July.  Furthermore, between July 2008 and July 2009, the number of unique users in Iran actually decreased by 22.4%, whereas the only other decreases were seen in Saudi Arabia and Israel (under 10% each).

Despite the decrease, Iran is still at the top of the list for the Middle East.  Page-views per user in Iran went up from 119 to 188 between July 2008 and July 2009.  In addition, the report also states that Google is by far the dominant search engine in all of the Middle East, and that Facebook is the reigning social network everywhere in the Middle East except for Saudi Arabia where Friendster is dominant.

As for Opera growth overall, the browser had nearly 29.1 million users in July 2009, a 9.9% increase from June 2009 and more than 145% compared to July 2008.  As for data consumption, Opera Mini users generated nearly 187 million MB of data for operators worldwide in July.  Since June, the data consumed went up by 11%.  Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 1.7 PB of data in July.  Since July 2008, data traffic is up 223%.

While this in only a snapshot of a broader picture when it comes to mobile Web consumption, it’s still interesting to see the raw numbers.  It would be nice if other browsers would take the time to release it’s usage data as well so we could have a decent comparison.

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Despite The iPhone, App Developers Remain OS Agnostic

With all you hear about the iPhone and its thousands of available apps, you’d think it’s the only mobile OS that developers are interested in.  A new study reveals that while the iPhone is an important piece of the puzzle, developers are still remaining OS agnostic- meaning they’re developing their apps to run on multiple mobile operating systems instead of going platform-specific.

Sponsored by research firm Chubby Brain, the study looked at venture-backed 2009 mobile app start-ups and determined that 67 percent are developing their applications to work on multiple platforms- namely, the top six mobile operating systems: iPhone, Palm, RIM, Android, Symbian, and Windows.  In addition, 33 percent are developing for a single platform- primarily the iPhone.

Of the 67 percent of developers that are developing for multiple platforms, more than 3/4 (76 percent) are developing their apps to run on all six primary operating systems.  Additionally, 12 percent are developing for only two out of the top six- that being RIM and the iPhone.

It’s interesting research, though likely skewed due to the fact that the sample size included only venture-funded app start-ups.  With VC funding, it’s likely the developers want to get their apps to as many consumers as possible, and being platform-specific would be limiting.  If the research included all apps being developed right now, you would undoubtedly see a spike in iPhone-specific development. Source: Mobile Marketing Watch

4G mobile broadband could be some way off for UK

4G mobile broadband could be some way off for UK’s New, fourth-generation (4G) mobile broadband technologies are already in development, but could be delayed in the UK until 2012. That is according to PC Pro, which explained that deployments of Long Term Evolution and other new mobile broadband technologies are already beginning in the US, Europe and China. However, the UK has been slow off the mark and will not be able to participate in any of its own schemes until the 900MHz band of spectrum currently owned by Vodafone and O2 is redistributed by the government, the website reports. Source: http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/news/2009/07/4g_mobile_broadband_could_be_some_way_off_for_uk

…and the Android shall inherit the earth

Android fever seems to be catching on. Everyone phone manufacturer now wants to show that they are active in Android market. Few weeks back there were also rumours of Nokia launching android device (which may still be true).  HTC is at the moment the leader, releasing more Android phones than anyone else.

The following is from a very interesting article in The Independent:

With four billion handsets in the world – more than twice the number of internet users, and two and half a billion more than the number of televisions – it’s safe to describe the mobile phone as the most successful technology of our generation. But what’s the next step for mobile communication? If Google has its way, the future is Android – and the next few months are going to be crucial to its success.

Android, in case the news has passed you by, is billed as the mobile phone operating system that will change the way we use mobiles. Where traditionally, phones have all worked differently, with usability ranging from the passable to the infuriating, Android’s mission is to simplify, partially by devising a more intuitive interface, and also by making it so widely available that it becomes a standard. “Combining the simplicity of Android software with its imminent availability on a range of mass-market phones from various manufacturers, and the trend in developing countries to go ’straight to mobile’, makes Android an exciting global platform for the next few years,” says Richard Warmsley, head of internet and entertainment of T-Mobile.

From Android’s humble beginnings as a two-person company in Palo Alto, California, through being bought up by Google in 2005, it has grown into the flagship operation of a group of 48 companies known as the Open Handset Alliance. Featuring such heavyweights of the tech world as LG, Toshiba and Samsung, its aim is to “enrich the lives of countless people across the globe” by improving mobile experiences.

The handset manufacturer Motorola is so confident the future is Android it’s reportedly retired its team of 77 engineers who were working on the company’s own operating system, and is now hiring software engineers familiar with Google’s free alternative. Such is its potential that Android has been mooted as the software of the future for netbooks and set-top boxes as well as phones.

With any discussion of mobile phones, the elephant in the room is always going to be Apple’s iPhone, which has been a huge critical and commercial success. Android phones and the iPhone might appear to be in direct competition; they are both high-spec, and similarly priced. But Al Sutton, a UK-based Android developer, thinks the situation may develop along similar lines to the home computing market: “I can see the iPhone and Android co-existing in the future in a similar way that Macs and Windows PCs do at the moment”, he says. “Apple is focused on being a premium brand, whereas Android’s focus is ubiquity.”

Read the complete article at http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/googles-android-invasion-1755615.html