android

Top 100 Windows Phone 7 apps cheaper than on Android

February 25, 2012 | By Surur

Canalys recently posted some research showing that the top 100 apps on iOS cost only a fraction of the top 100 apps on Android.

WPDang added Windows Phone 7 Marketplace to the mix, and found while the average cost of the top 100 apps in iOS was 1.47, and the same on Android was 3.74, the same number on Windows Phone was in-between, at $3.10.

The data should help counter the argument that software is much more expensive on Windows Phone than Android, as that is clearly not the case.

As a small market it is understandable that prices would be higher than the 250 million odd device iOS market, but it is somewhat more difficult to explain why Android apps are so expensive. Suggestions by WPSauce include rampant piracy, which sounds pretty reasonable to us.

As the Windows Phone 7 market increases we expect the price of apps in Marketplace to decrease also, and tend towards the same level as iOS.

Via WPSauce.com

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Android Malware increase 3325% in 2011

February 24, 2012 | By Surur

23-02-2012-16-08-49 We are used to seeing massive growth rates with Android, but I am sure this is one statistic Google will not be touting in their quarterly reports.

Juniper Networks Mobile Threat Center reports Android malware samples had increased from 400 to 13,302 during the last 6 months of 2011, a growth rate of 3325%.

The worst offenders were Spyware, at 63%, but 36% could have cost you actual money, in the form of premium rate SMS Trojans.

Malware was also becoming more sophisticated, like Droid KungFu using encrypted payloads to avoid detection and Droid Dream disguising itself as a legitimate app.

While Juniper Networks found some malware on Windows Mobile (0.7% of the total) they did not identify any such threats on Windows Phone.

The full report can be seen here.

Via ZDNet.com

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Winner of #Droidrage contest announced: Dear Droid, You lag, you freeze; you’ve brought me to my knees.

February 15, 2012 | By Surur

Microsoft has announced the winners of their Valentines Day contest which asked Android users to express their rage with their buggy devices and Windows Phone users their love of their handsets.

Winners were chosen at random from the responders, but the Droid user appeared to have a pretty poetic turn, writing:

Dear Droid, You lag, you freeze, you’ve brought me to my knees, goodbye! #DumpingMyDroid #DroidRage @windowsphone FTW!

Randy Johnson will be receiving a brand new Windows Phone 7 handset along with a 1 year Zune subscription and a 1 year Xbox Live membership.

Tell Your Android Adware Story And Win A Windows Phone !

January 30, 2012 | By Pradeep

Yesterday we reported about the new variation on a trojan malware which may have infected up to 5 million Android handsets. The malware was packaged in many apps from different publishers, with different attractive titles and was made available for users to download from Android Market by Google.

If you are one among them, consider yourself as lucky. You can win a brand new Windows Phone which will never get infected by a trojan malware. All you need is to tell your Android malware/adware story to @BenThePCGuy / Ben Rudolph on twitter, best 20 stories will get a Windows Phone !

Good job, Ben.

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Up to 5 million Android handsets infected with information-stealing bot

January 28, 2012 | By Surur

counterclank

Symantec has released a report detailing a new variation on a trojan malware which may have infected up to 5 million Android handsets.

Android.Counterclank is a minor modification of Android.Tonclank, a bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device.

The combined download figures of all the malicious apps indicate that Android.Counterclank has the highest distribution of any malware identified so far this year. With 250 million Android handsets activated, it appears a significant percentage of Android users are suffering the effects of malware, downloaded directly from the Android Marketplace, and a problem which has only continued to escalate, with Juniper Networks saying Android malware is increasing at a rate of 1,320% per year.

While Windows Phone has not been free of its issues, it is by design much, much less of a wild west than the Android ecosystem. Feeling secure when you downloads apps is definitely a clear reason to chose Windows Phone over Android.

Via allaboutphones.nl

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Dance*Cam Mobile also coming to iPhone and Android

January 21, 2012 | By Surur

We posted recently that Microsoft has confirmed they will be bringing Xbox Live and a number of their titles to other platforms.

The above promotional video shows that Dance*Can Mobile, the mobile companion to the Kinect Dance*Cam game, will also be coming to multiple platforms, including iPhone and Android.

While we think Microsoft should be using their Xbox property to give Windows Phone an advantage, Microsoft’s recent Financial report, which showed that Xbox has become a major leg of the Microsoft business ($4.2 billion in revenue vs $4.7 billion for Server and Tools and Windows and Windows Live) makes it pretty clear Microsoft is not going to jeopardise this segment on their business just for the embryonic Windows Phone business.

The big problem with this of course is that success in Mobile is seen by many, including investors, as the most important priority for Microsoft, leaving Microsoft with the Innovators Dilemma – how to move forward when it may mean cannibalizing your existing revenue structure.

We don’t have the answers for Microsoft but we suggest they examine their priorities, not just for the next quarter, but the next 40.

Thanks Cyk for the tip.

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Prediction: 2012 Will be the Year of Windows Phone

January 18, 2012 | By robtiffany

Windows Phone 7.5 is running fast out of the gate for 2012. The stunning mobile operating system from Microsoft was the talk of CES in Las Vegas this year. The accolades streaming in from the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, reviewers, and tech bloggers are unprecedented.

The Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award in the Smartphone category and it’s no surprise. Before listing off the impressive specs, just look at this gorgeous piece of hardware. Looks matter…trust me. Windows Phone is already the most elegant mobile operating system. Breathtaking industrial design is the other half of the equation. When paired with iconic hardware, it’s like pairing your favorite Walla Walla Cabernet with your favorite steak.

I can’t count the number of reviews and comments stating that Windows Phone on the Lumia 900 has surpassed the iPhone. If you follow the U.S. wireless market, then you know that things like 4G LTE network speeds, large screens, front-facing cameras, and dual-core processors are the current drivers of smartphone sales. The Lumia 900 addresses three of those drivers with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, and a front-facing camera for video calls. It’s powered by a single 1.4 GHz processor and if you’ve paid attention to all the reviews in the press, you’ve heard that Windows Phone runs circles around its dual-core competitors. Better software design, better engineering, more efficient algorithms, and optimized coding techniques means you can do more with less. Last but not least, the Lumia 900 comes with an amazing 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The HTC Titan II came to the CES party guns-blazing with a monster of a smartphone. It tics all the required boxes needed for sales by delivering a massive 4.7 inch screen, support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and a front-facing camera. The 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 2 processor gives this superphone all the horsepower it needs.

Joining the camera arms-race with the Lumia 900, the Titan II comes equipped with a whopping 16 megapixel camera that can capture 720p video. If you’re looking for a giant phone that can go head-to-head with the Galaxy Nexus, this is your device.

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year with compelling hardware matched-up with Windows Phone 7.5, but what else does this platform need to make my prediction come true? Oh yeah, apps. Do you remember back in the 80′s when DOS-based PCs from IBM and Compaq gave Apple IIs and Macs more than they could handle? It might not have been eye-catching, but DOS had more apps that allowed consumers and companies to be successful. In the 90′s, Windows ran away with the computing market with the Mac, Linux, NeXT, and OS/2 unable to compete in the app department. Why do you think this was the case? I know a big reason was because Borland and Microsoft made better and easier-to-use development tools for Windows.

With 50,000+ apps in the Marketplace, Windows Phone is surging forward and now sits in third-place behind the iPhone App Store and the Android Market. Aside from developers betting on the success of a platform, they need development tools, emulators, and programming languages that make it easy for them to be productive. When I look at the velocity at which new apps are being added to the Windows Phone Marketplace, it tells me that Visual Studio is making a big difference.

In my job, I have to work with the development tools for all the major smartphone platforms and I can tell you without drinking any Kool-Aid that the competition isn’t even close. Most iPhone developers I know find that learning Objective-C from the NeXT operating system to be a daunting task compared to modern, high-level languages like C# and VB. While the world is full of Java developers, the complexity of cobbling the necessary tools together needed to build for Android apps is a real productivity killer. Just running Eclipse on JDK 1.6 sucks the life and performance out of my fast Windows 7 laptop. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone is free and the emulator + SDKs all download and install together making the whole process fast and simple. Apps get access to all phone sensors, a local database (SQL Server Compact), and Metro design.

Better productivity means faster time-to-market which means more apps for Windows Phone.

If you’re a web designer/developer, Internet Explorer 9 is alive and well on Windows Phone 7.5. This means you’re no longer held hostage to the highly-fragmented WebKit mobile browser platform. You get a hardware-accelerated, amazingly fast browser with support for more “fully-baked” HTML5 standards like Web Storage, Geolocation, Canvas, Audio and Video.

The lightning fast-Chakra JavaScript engine supports ECMAScript 5 which means your DOM interactions and Ajax web service calls will blur the lines with native apps. When you retrieve data from the cloud or your on-premise servers via Ajax, you’ll now be able to persist it offline in Web Storage. Support for CSS3 means things will be beautiful, 2D transforms will occur, and media queries will give you responsive design.

So here we stand with the best smartphone operating system, best hardware, best development tools and the best mobile web browser. I’m certain that Windows Phone with its army of app developers, OEMs and Mobile Operator partners will be marching to victory this year.

Be fearless,

Rob

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Microsoft adds LG as an Android licensee – now cover 70% of the US Android market

January 12, 2012 | By Surur

Microsoft has announced that it has added LG as an Android licensee. The license “provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for LG’s tablets, mobile phones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome OS Platform.”

Together with other Android licensees HTC, Samsung and Acer, 70% of the US market are now covered by the Microsoft licence, leaving Motorola, who is currently in litigation with Microsoft, as the main hold-out.

“We are pleased to have built upon our longstanding relationship with LG to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Together with our 10 previous agreements with Android and Chrome OS device manufacturers, including HTC, Samsung and Acer, this agreement with LG means that more than 70 percent of all Android smartphones sold in the U.S. are now receiving coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio,” said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, Intellectual Property Group at Microsoft. “We are proud of the continued success of our program in resolving the IP issues surrounding Android and Chrome OS.”

The new licensee is interesting, given that Microsoft’s case agaisnt Barnes and Noble, another prominent hold-out, is felt to be somewhat shaky, with Microsoft recently withdrawing one of the patents it was using against the company.

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Reminder: Windows Phone into round 3, Nokia Lumia 800 taking on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus! Vote now!

December 29, 2011 | By Surur

Windows Phone sailed through round 1, and did a good job defeating the Nintendo 3DS. Now, in possibly its biggest fight ever, the Nokia Lumia 800 is taking on the new Android heavyweight, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

Vote for the Lumia 800 and all of Windows Phone against Android at Gizmodo here.

Thanks Xpache for the tip.

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Initial determination by ITC finds Motorola violates 4 of Microsoft’s patent claims

December 20, 2011 | By Surur

infringing

An example of an infringing device.

Microsoft won the first step of its battle to win license fees from Motorola for use of its patents in Android.

The ITC has made a final preliminary finding that Motorola Mobility is in violation of one of Microsoft’s patents, U.S. Patent No. 6,370,566 which allows users to “schedule an appointment anytime, anywhere, and invite others to attend, making easy use of email addresses and contact information and synchronizing calendars across their phone, PC and other devices.”

The panel found Motorola did not infringe 5 other patients however.

In a statement Microsoft said:

We are pleased with the ITC’s initial determination finding Motorola violated four claims of a Microsoft patent. As Samsung, HTC, Acer and other companies have recognized, respecting others’ intellectual property through licensing is the right path forward.

It is of note that, while Microsoft has been attempting, relatively successfully, to extract license fees from Android OEMs, their aims are very different from Apple’s litigation, which is explicitly aimed at “going nuclear” on the Google mobile OS.

The finding is just the first part of the process. The next step is a final determination by the six-member commission followed by the ITC judge takes the staff’s opinions into account in making a final decision.

ITC bans importation of HTC’s Android devices in US

December 19, 2011 | By Surur

htclogo

The ITC has solidly come down on the side of Apple, banning importation of HTC’s Android devices which violate two claims of patent #5,946,647, which is a system level patent issued in 1999 on analysing and linking data structures.

The patents implicate all of Android, and not just HTC’s implementation, which would make it difficult for HTC to remediate in the 4 months before it goes into effect on the effect on April 19, 2012 .

This of course leaves HTC with their library of Windows Phone 7 handsets in USA, which may explain the rumours of a HTC LTE Windows Phone on AT&T a mere 2 months after the HTC Titan has been released.

HTC has however said “… we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ‘647 patent” but the decision may still prompt HTC to spend a bit more time on Windows Phone 7.

Orange support claims Windows Phone can get viruses, Android “do not have such a problem”

December 19, 2011 | By Surur

jhrj48

There is still a lot of education of carrier staff needed, not least this support staffer from Orange, who clearly thinks Windows Phones run actual Windows, prone to slow-downs, viruses and whatnot, unlike Android which is blesses “not to have such problems.”

Of course we know its the reverse which is true, but this may very well be Microsoft’s fault for sticking with the Windows brand with Windows Phone 7.

Do our readers think a Zune or Xbox Phone would have less perception problems than Windows Phones? Let us know below.

Thanks Kieran for the screen shot and tip.

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Microsoft giving away free Windows Phones to virus-infected Android users with the best story

December 12, 2011 | By Surur

Ben Rudolph, a Microsoft evangelist, has offered Android users stuck in the hell of malware and lack of updates a long cool drink by offering them a chance to win one of 5 Windows Phones if they tweet the best tale of woe regarding their experience with Android malware.

Example tweets so far include:

@BenThePCGuy Am furious with carriers installing carrier iq rootkit with no ability to turn it off.They do not respect the user. #droidrage

and

@BenThePCGuy #droidrage malware bricked phone &, I had to get a new Google store acct. The worst part is no idea what’s safe I need #wp 7.5

See more of the sorry tales at the Hashtag #DroidRage here.

Via MobilityDigest.com

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