Photo: Gubatron / Flickr

While the iPhone and the Blackberry are sexy enough that they’re attracting pretty girls, the high-flying Google Android mobile OS platform is too geeky to attract customers of the fairer sex. That’s what INQ’s head honcho says, and even though his company’s devices are built on Google’s OS, he thinks this is a problem.

This is not nightclub chic

Speaking to Mashable, INQ CEO Frank Meehan said that: ‘If you go to a nightclub in any city in the world, the pretty girl has an iPhone or a BlackBerry.’ He continued, saying: ‘She doesn’t have an Android phone. She has no emotional attachment to an Android phone. It’s too complicated. It’s a geek device, it’s all wrong.’

Clearly that doesn’t bother him

From anecdotal evidence, the INQ chief’s statement has basis in truth, but it’s surprising to see a man whose own current flagship devices are built on this platform being so forthright about it. Admittedly, INQ is small fry when compared to other Android manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung and HTC, but that doesn’t give his statement any less merit.

He argues that: ‘Android manufacturers are all just focused utterly on the tech, because they’re all hardware guys. They don’t get software. They’ve tried to outdo Apple with hardware, but the problem is the customer doesn’t care.’ Citing Samsung’s Galaxy handset, the fastest-selling Android phone to date, he argues that sales have been price-driven and not ‘desire-driven’.

The INQ CEO says people couldn’t be bothered about the name, with the current name-brand association being tantamount to ‘calling a phone “Alpha Centauri” or “Uranus”’.

How accurate is his point, though?

With a sneaky ‘bum’ reference like that, the INQ CEO sounds like an interesting – and decidedly hilarious – man who must make for a great interview. And to his credit, with his Cloud Touch and Cloud Q handsets, his company is aiming more mainstream than the rest. The thing is, it’s difficult to verify how accurate his claims are, outside of personal experience.

More importantly, with Android handsets eclipsing Symbian to become the biggest mobile OS platform on the planet, should Google be worried that their smartphones haven’t found a home in Chelsea’s clutch bag for Friday night partying?

And what about the ‘ugly’ girls?

Photo: Nokia

For years we’ve known that Nokia was in trouble with regards to its smartphone strategy. Other tech sites knew it, too. Nokia investors were also in on it, as was the average consumer who paid attention to sales trends. It seemed, however, Nokia employees were either oblivious to this or just refused to acknowledge it – we venture the latter.

Now, with an amazing, no-punches-spared leaked memo Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent out to employees, it seems leadership is no longer prepared to jump around the problem and pretend it does not exist. He says the company is ‘standing on a burning platform.’

The iPhone did it

When the memo was first revealed, many were sceptical as to how real it was, but various sources have confirmed its authenticity. The scepticism is justified, however, if you read the stark words Elop uses for a company that is so unfamiliar with defeat or struggles.

One of the more intense sections reads: ‘The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.’ Saying more on the iPhone, Elop writes: ‘They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.’

Android is killing us, too

As to the effect Google Android is having, the Nokia CEO admits that: ‘Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.’ Why Nokia smartphones are struggling, irrespective of their great hardware is not lost on him, as he writes: ‘Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem.’

Our own platforms aren’t holding the fort

To Elop’s credit, he addresses everything the tech world has been harping on about, admitting that Symbian is increasingly struggling to meet consumers’ needs, and that MeeGo is simply taking to long to get to market. He says ‘We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing [innovation] to market fast enough,’ before admitting that ‘at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.’

Engadget has the whole memo available to read if you’re at all interested in what the Nokia CEO has to say, and what the Nokia smartphones strategy is likely to be moving towards.

Photo: BBC

Everybody’s favourite TV catch-up service, BBC iPlayer, is on its way to even more mobile devices. The broadcaster just confirmed in a blog post that the iPlayer would be available for the iPad and Android 2.2 soon.

Soon, soon

BBC’s Daniel Danker wrote a blog post finally addressing the murmurings about the BBC iPlayer’s mobile strategy. He says ‘Having stuck our toe in the water last year with the iPad, this new native app is a significant improvement on the existing experience. And it’s great to be on the Android platform too.’

Speaking to how soon we can expect the apps on each of the devices, Danker says: ‘We’re just applying the finishing touches to the apps as we speak, and all things being well we plan to have Android and iPad apps in [app] stores by the end of the week.’ Great news then for the many fans of the streaming TV service that happen to have mobile devices.

iPad uniformity, Android hobbled

However, with the good news comes some bad – as can no doubt be expected. While the iPad will see one native app released that functions on all of Apple’s tablet PCs, the Android strategy is a little different. Much like only Android 2.2 devices could use the iPlayer in browser form, only Android 2.2 devices will be able to play the application natively.

While the snarky will immediately cry out Android fragmentation, Danker says ‘for technical reasons we can’t bring the app to every single Android device’. He continued, saying ‘Our Flash streams need a powerful mobile phone processor and a Wi-Fi connection to ensure a smooth viewing experience, which means that only newer, more powerful Android 2.2 devices connected via Wi-Fi can support the Flash 10.1 streaming experience.’

While that’s a bummer for many earlier Android adopters, it is what it is. Ultimately what matters most is the BBC iPlayer mobile strategy is working, and the broadcaster clearly has plans to bring the streaming TV service to as many platforms as possible.

Photo: Zwykly Ludzik / Flickr

Google had a press conference to show off what was coming with Android 3.0, its tablet PC mobile OS platform. While the overall response on the web to what the search giant showed has been overwhelmingly positive, we’re most intrigued about the implications of the company’s first official Android Market web store. The store is live already at market.android.com, if you want to check it out.

Why does this matter?

What’s nice about the Android Market web store is that you purchase applications from within your browser, for either your smartphone or tablet. Your devices will then automatically download your purchases, making it a seamless and pain-free experience. Google’s Chris Yerga, taking a subtle jab at Apple, says: ‘No wires, no synching with computers, none of that sort of nonsense,’ before concluding that ‘everything just works seamlessly synching between the two.’

It’s also an elegant, bloat-free solution that is, in many people’s eyes, superior to Apple forcing you to use iTunes for app purchasing, and forcing you to plug your device into a computer for certain syncing purposes.

Developers rejoice – borrows from iTunes

The most striking thing about the Android Market web store is how much it draws from iTunes. And no, not in the sense that it mimics Apple’s approach, but rather that it takes what makes the iTunes store good – if not perfect – and reapplies it in this environment. As such, app discoverability looks set to improve significantly, as will app adoption, hopes Google.

This is more significant than one may think, because for developers who have been committed to the Google Android mobile OS platform, the returns they’ve seen have been small when compared to how the stars of Apple’s iOS platform have fared. If Google has finally figured out how to create a better culture of app purchasing, then the Android mobile OS platform and eco-system can only improve.

The wonderful thing about Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP Palm, and even Nokia working so hard to build brilliant mobile OS platforms and experiences is that we, the consumers, are the ones who end up winning. The fact that it makes Android smartphones or Android tablets an even more compelling sell is secondary to us.

Photo: justinsomnia / Flickr

It’s been almost a year since Google announced to the world their cloud-based printing service back in April last year, but last week Google took a huge step into the future of printing by offering the Cloud Print wireless printing services to the public, to be used for mobile services.

HTML5 supported

Android 2.1+ and iOS users can now print Google Documents and Gmail pages straight from their mobile phone, while HTML5-compatible web browsers should also be ready to use Cloud Print.

In fact, the wireless printing option is not limited to only Android and iOS, as any mobile gadget can take advantage of the service, as long as it supports HTML5. At the moment, the wireless printing option from a mobile device is limited only to certain Google websites, the mobile version of Gmail, for example, but that will change in the near future with application updates.

While Cloud Print is currently only available to Windows and Mac users, Linux versions are on their way and should be available in the near future.

Extra convenience

It will take only a short period of time to realise exactly how convenient Cloud Print is. Emails are handy by their instantaneous nature, but having the option to print these documents in your car on your way to work has now made email so much more useful and powerful.

Setting up the Cloud Print service is no problem at all, and once your printer is linked to your Gmail account, printing can be done with the press of a button. Printing the document is available in the menu option on the Google Documents and Gmail mobile sites, but of course more advanced printing options will soon be available.

Setting up Cloud Print is advised to anyone with the capabilities to use it. You never know when it will come in handy.

Photo: pittaya / Flickr

2010 was a fantastic year for Google’s Android, the young operating system managing to surpass the all-conquering iPhone. Two surveys released towards the end of last year showed clearly how the Android platform has consumed the US and worldwide market and successfully competed against the likes of Apple’s iPhone OS and RIM’s Blackberry.

Android hugely benefited from the lapse in sales performance from the competition, dating back to Apple’s last iPhone launch, but 2011 will see some serious threats to Google’s smartphone platform from every angle in the smartphone market.

Threats

Experts have predicted that Android will be second in the global market share within two years, but the ride will be bumpy considering the approaching storm.

Apple’s iPhone 4G is the biggest threat in Android’s eyes, with the new iPhone promising to include a front-facing camera, high-resolution screen and even a custom processor.

Top of the market

While Microsoft have traditionally targeted business users, the release of their Windows Phone 7 is clearly a declaration of war, with the prize being the domination of the smartphone market. The smartphone’s focus on fun apps, social networking and Xbox Live support clearly indicates that the consumer market, now dominated by Android, is the centre of Microsoft’s latest target.

The Blackberry 6 OS has improved the web browsing experience significantly and the addition of the ‘social networking feeds’ application as well as cleaner, crisper graphics and flashier animations could be enough to keep Blackberry at the top of the US markets.

Newcomers

The Palm Pre and Pixi have seen disappointing sales lately, but HP’s purchase of Palm will ensure the WebOS gets the propelling it surely needs, although we have yet to hear either company promising any new products. When they do, however, Android will be the operating system to beat.

Photo: waldopepper / Flickr

Remember Goldman Sachs made an investment in Facebook that would value the company at an eye-watering $50 billion? Can that even be the true Facebook valuation? Depending on who you believe, that may be too little. A play on the famous line from The Social Network would be: ‘You know what’s cooler than $50 billion? One trillion dollars.’

One. Trillion. Dollars

Silicon Alley Insider reported this story based on what they’ve been told by sources. ‘Last night, we heard from two industry sources close to top Facebook execs that these days, when the company hires you, you’re told the goal is to turn Facebook into the world’s first TRILLION dollar company,’ they wrote.

They continue the piece asking the inevitable: ‘So how does Facebook get to be a trillion dollar company?’ before throwing up their hands in defeat. ‘But $1 trillion? We haven’t a clue.’

Back of the napkin maths

I mean, let’s be fair here for a second – Apple, who are the second biggest company in the world by market cap, and make $60 billion revenue annually, have an overall market value of $300 billion. Exxon Mobile, who are the biggest company in the world, routinely hover in the $400 billion range. Facebook would need to be two and a half times larger than the current biggest player in the game by market cap to reach this ridiculous target.

Flashback

It’s remarkable to think Facebook was started just seven short years ago. Now it’s one of the biggest companies in the world, by any measure, with over 600 million users, and this could quite possibly hit the 1 billion mark. People can debate the Facebook valuation until the cows come home, but what is undeniable is its reach.

It’s the first app many smartphone users first download, and with word emerging that an official Facebook-powered and branded phone, built on Android, is on the horizon, folks began wondering how many more avenues the company can leverage its social graph.

What do you make of the Facebook valuation? Bogus or, somehow, amazingly, ridiculously possible?

Photo: thinknew / Flickr

Paul Buchheit, the man who developed Gmail and later went on to sell his own startup, FriendFeed, to Facebook has expressed what many have long feared: Google’s Chrome OS and Android mobile OS platforms cannot co-exist. More specifically, Buchheit predicts that the cloud OS will perish, or be swallowed by Android.

Tweeting freely

In a to-the-point tweet, Paul Buchheit wrote: ‘Prediction: ChromeOS will be killed next year (or “merged” with Android)’. Considering this comment was made shortly after the reveal of Chrome by a former Google engineering rock star, the tech world took note of what Buchheit was expressing.

In a FriendFeed thread, he later expanded his thoughts, saying: ‘Yeah, I was thinking, “is this too obvious to even state?”, but then I see people taking ChromeOS seriously, and Google is even shipping devices for some reason’ which he preceeded by saying ‘Because ChromeOS has no purpose that isn’t better served by Android (perhaps with a few mods to support a non-touch display)’.

What we make of it

Speaking honestly, we’re completely in agreement with Paul Buchheit. While Google’s initially articulated vision of Google Android being for smartphones and Chrome OS being for netbooks and tablets made sense in the early days, it makes little sense in a world where the Android platform has so much momentum. Furthermore, with Android tablets already on the market, the attitude that ‘the market will decide which is better suited’ is silly, to say the least, since the market has already decided.

Chrome OS, as exciting as a cloud OS is, as promising as the startup speed is, and as brilliant as the Chrome browser is, seems to have little place in the computing world. Is Mr. Buchheit off the mark here, or do you see this cloud OS carving up a respectable space for itself in computing?

Photo: Microsoft

The smartphone app marketplace is the be-all and end-all – with the same applying for tablets and their marketplace. There is absolutely no denying the fact that even if you have the best handset in the world, with the best mobile OS platform in the world, your smartphone will fail in the market if it is not embraced by developers and does not have sensational apps built for it.

With that in mind, it looks like developers are already clear on which platforms they intend supporting next year.

Windows Phone 7

Working with tech analysis website Digiday and Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus, surveyed app publishers, developers and advertisers this past quarter so as to learn what their plans for next year are. The report, titled State of the Apps Industry Spotlight, found that developers are most interested in spending 2011 making mobile apps for Windows Phone 7, Google Android, and the iPad.

As the general smartphone app marketplace has begun maturing, publishers and devs alike have expanded on their cross-platform app development initiatives. To no one’s surprise, Google Android, which has been growing like a weed has seen the biggest rise in developer activity from 2009, along with the iPad (which, in fairness, is a brand new platform), and Windows Phone 7 reboot is also attracting developers. It’s fair to say Microsoft’s courting was successful.

Symbian brings up the rear with webOS

Unsurprisingly Symbian only has 6 per cent of developer’s intent on building apps for it, as per the survey. We say this is unsurprising because it’s not as if Symbian or Nokia have been having a whale of a time in recent months, and it’s also known that Nokia is shifting its interests to MeeGo. What was surprising, however, was how few developers were interested in building software for HP Palm’s webOS, with only 4 per cent of developers planning on doing so. Whether this is just indicative that HP and Palm haven’t begun evangelizing developers yet, or that the platform is nascent is hard to tell, but those figures are worryingly low.

In short, insofar as good evangelism of developers occurs, and the various handset and tablet mobile OS platforms work hard on being developer friendly, there will be some activity. Chart A and Chart B show the compare platforms being developed for in 2010 in contrast with development intentions for 2011.

Photo: Android

Last year this time, Gartner predicted that the growth of Google Android would put that mobile OS platform in second place overall come 2012. Gartner was wrong by two calendar years. Android is the second most common smartphone platform in the world already, behind only Nokia’s fast ailing Symbian mobile OS.

Yes, folks, for a mobile OS platform that has barely been around three years, that is absolutely jaw dropping.

Gartner revise research

Gartner Research reported that global smartphone sales have increased 96 per cent year-on-year, to reach 19.3 per cent of the total smartphones market. The folks at Gartner were quick to point out that this is the third time consecutively year-on-year smartphone growth has been in the double digits, which is simply remarkable.

But what the whole industry is achieving pales in comparison to what the frontrunners are doing to their competition. Gartner says that 25.5 per cent of smartphones sold this past year carried Android OS, with only Symbian topping it at 36.6 per cent. Sure, Symbian seems to have a healthy lead, but it’s only when you put these numbers in perspective that they become unreal. This time last year, Symbian had 44.6 percent of the global marketshare, while Google Android OS had 3.5 per cent. Just wow. It’s been growing like a weed all year.

Takeaway: mobile OS fluidity

While the Android team’s growth achievement is unbelievable, one takeaway from the meteoric rise of this mobile OS platform is that the smartphone industry is very much in flux, still, and is highly fluid. What that means is that even though analysts world over have predicted that 2011 would be a blowout years for Android and Apple’s iOS, expected to take the one two spot by some distance, nothing necessitates this will actually be the case.

From extensive hands-on time with Windows Phone 7, I can say I prefer that operating system to Google’s – and that’s saying something. Personal preference isn’t indicative of sales trajectory, no doubt, but it was superior operating systems that helped both iOS and Google Android leapfrog RIM, and gun down Symbian at a dizzying pace. It could be the same that sees rank outsiders like Windows Phone 7 and HP Palm webOS rise through the ranks fast.

Also, 19.3 per cent for smartphones is still a comparatively small percentage of the overall mobile phones market. Expect that market share to change dramatically in the coming years, leaving room for growth for everybody.