Which smartphone people prefer depends on many things: design, user experience, applications available, enterprise support and security, camera, cloud services, voice-activated services, and performance issues such as browser speed. Openness–the ability to customize the phone without limitation—is also important to some people. In this regard, Apple and Google sit on opposite ends of the spectrum with Microsoft somewhere in between. READ MORE
More businesspeople are now using iPhones than BlackBerry smart phones. That’s according to an iPass survey of more than 2,300 enterprise workers for its latest quarterly Mobile Workforce Report. iPass found the iPhone is being used by 45% of the business crowd—that’s up from 31% last year. READ MORE
A new survey of mobile app developers by Appcelerator and IDC found that Amazon’s new Kindle Fire edged out Samsung Galaxy Tab as the leading Android Tablet in North America. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 also moved ahead of RIM’s BlackBerry operating system for third place behind iOS and Android. RIM’s displacement follows the successful release of the Mango update for Windows Phone and the public announcement of the first wave of devices from the Microsoft/Nokia partnership. READ MORE
Research in Motion has been busy trying to let customers know it will be working hard to earn back their trust after days of outages affecting users in several countries around the world. READ MORE
Blackberry has got your back in an emergency–or, at least, they’ve developed an app for that. READ MORE
If you travel to remote places but need business-critical access to e-mail or the Internet, satellite phone provider Iridium Communications has introduced a new product that might be able to give it to you. READ MORE
During the “Arab spring” uprisings, the West decried the ruling regimes’ practice of shutting down or severely limiting protesters’ access to social media. But that’s exactly what the U.K. government recently proposed: to ban social media during times of “civil unrest, disorder, or rioting.” However, after high-level talks with companies such as Research in Motion, Twitter, and Facebook, they are doing a quick about-face. READ MORE
In spite of concerns about BlackBerry’s decline, Research in Motion has launched a new cloud-based management system tailored for SMBs, reports InformationWeek. BlackBerry Management Center is a free, web-based service that provides a simple way to manage and protect BlackBerry smartphones remotely. READ MORE
Good news for fans of the little green robot: According to Nielsen, as of June, Android tops the U.S. smartphone OS market, grabbing a full 39 percent market share. Apple, its closest competitor, finished a distant second at 28 percent. Bringing up the rear are BlackBerry OS at 20 percent and Windows Phone 7 at 9 percent. On the hardware front, however, Apple still managed to retain the title of top manufacturer. In all fairness, Apple’s victory in this category is relatively easy since it is the only company to produce iOS devices; meanwhile, Android’s OS finds its way to devices made by Motorola, HTC, and Samsung. RIM, the makers of Blackberry, surprisingly finished a close second to Apple in the manufacturing department, commanding a 20 percent chunk of the market. Nielsen based its results on a sample of roughly 20,000 people, all of whom are postpaid customers. Read more from TechCrunch.
In what some are calling a “game changer,” Research in Motion has decided to turn its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM6) into a “social experience,” says cnet’s Jaymar Cabebe. This is much-needed news from a company that has had its share of troubles: in just a month, RIM has had an exec pen an anonymous public plea for change and the company announced that 2000 employees would be laid off. So what does this new announcement mean? For starters, BlackBerry developers, for whom work has been scarce lately, now have opportunities to develop a host of apps that provide users with social experiences they have come to expect on platforms such as iOS and Android. And it seems that services are willing to give RIM a shot. The company is working with Foursquare to let users update BBM statuses and TelMap, Wikitude, andHuffPo are now jumping on the BlackBerry bandwagon. Read more at cnet.
