Android popularity among consumers soars high

Android has been making waves as the best smart-phone platform. It has turned out to be the favorites among the consumers as compared to Apple's iPhone.

The monthly surveys done by Nielsen in U.S. on mobile consumers revealed interesting facts. It stated that 31 percent of consumers prefer their smart-phone in Android Phones. And a 30 percent vouched for Apple iphone. Mobile users who planned to upgrade to a smart-phone in the next year also opted for an Android platform than Apple.

The inclusion of Version iphone in U.S. also could not reduce the desirability and popularity of Android Smart-phones.

Though Apple overtook Nokia in handset sale by revenue, looking on to the past 6 months sales record of Smart-phones, purchase of Android based smart-phone outnumber iOS. Fifty percent of people who purchased a smart-phone in the past six months said they had chosen an Android device and 25 percent said they had bought an iPhone, and 15 percent said they got a Blackberry device.

Android's share of new smart-phone purchases was twice that of Apple iPhone. Android continues to rule the smart-phone market share battle with 37 percent, compared to 27 percent for the iPhone and 22 percent for Blackberry.

Android platform market has increased tremendously with its popularity, and it is quite evident from companies like Motorola and Samsung Electronics joining hands with Android. Customers are constantly looking for smartphones that can substitute Apple iphone. And with Motorola and Samsung emerging in the market big time Android sales can account for half of the total smart-phone market in 2012

Apart from Android and Apple a 10.5 percent of consumers planned on buying a Blackberry device, down from 12.6 percent July 2010, and Windows devices also slipped from 6.8 percent 2010 to 6.4 percent in 2011 even with the launch of Windows Phone 7 in November.

Google introduces 'Google Offers'

Google is all set to spread its arms in the territory of local sales advertising. It plans to launch "Google offers" through which local businesses can advertise its products with its mouthwatering discount offers. It is expected to fetch a good number of revenue for Google. It is coming out with its beta version in Portland, New York and San Francisco.

"Google offers" function more or less like Groupon. Users receive an e-mail with a local deal of the day. They then have the opportunity to buy that deal within a specific time limit. It will also provide users the ability to subscribe to location based deals and as the beta launch reads. One can expect best discount as well.

Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a trail for a pre-paid program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways.

"Google Offers" will be powered by Google Checkout. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.

The Internet giant was supposed to buy Groupon at a staggering price of $6 billion.
Groupon is a Chicago based internet coupon service which records users around 35 million. Groupon is a group buying website that features different deals daily in various locations. It is present in most geographic markets around the globe including India. It walked away from Google acquisition as the acquisition fell due to hesitation by Groupon's founders. Groupon would have helped its new owner expand in the $133 billion U.S. local-ad market and lessen its reliance on Internet-search advertising.

Amidst all the confusion Google decision to come out with its own clone of Groupon is a very bold one. This may posed a serious threat to the very existence of Groupon. With already well established brand name and also being the largest search engine it is sure to grab the market fast.

Top 5 multi-platform mobile app development tools

As per a new study by research firm Gartner, mobile applications downloaded from online stores will be a $58 billion worldwide business by 2014. Driven by the popularity of the iPhone and Android operating system, the demand for skilled app developers is reaching the highest point ever. The days are gone when organizations used to choose either iPhone or android or others platforms and ignore the rest. Today, it's becoming evident that you got to have your app ready for cross platforms. Here comes the significance of multi-platform app development tools. Each platform is unique and exhibits different features, capabilities and behaviour. Here is a list of the top 5 development tools for cross-formatting mobile applications.

1. RhoMobile

RhoMobile offers Rhodes, which is an open-source framework based on Ruby. This permits the developer to create native apps, spanning over a stunning range of OS' and smartphones. The OS' include Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and RIM. The developer just need to code once, which can be used to build apps for most of the major smartphones. Apart from Rhodes, RhoMobile also offers developers RhoHub, which is a hosted development environment, and RhoSync, which can be employed as a standalone server to keep all the app data current on the users' handhelds.

2. Appcelerator

Appcelerator is a free and open source application development platform. The Titanium Development Platform from Appcelerator lets you create native mobile, tablet and desktop application experiences using existing web skills like Javascript, HTML, CSS, Python, Ruby, and PHP. It now powers over a 1,000 native apps per month. The best thing about Titanium is that if gives users easy access to over 300 APIs and location information. Apps can be totally hardware-based and all app data can be stored either in the cloud or on the device. Platforms include iOS, Android based mobiles and tablets.

3. appMobi

appMobi's mobile technology starts with the XDK, a cross-platform native app development tool that addresses ten times as many potential developers as native development tools. Unlike native tools, the XDK uses standard web languages HTML (and HTML5), CSS, and JavaScript to create native apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets (with more devices coming soon).

4. PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a HTML5 app platform that allows developers to create apps for Android, Palm, Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, iTouch and iPad devices. allows the developer to work with device hardware features such as accelerometer, GPS/location, camera, sound and much more. It also offers an Adobe AIR app and also online training courses to help the developer access native API's and build mobile apps on its own platform.

5. MoSync

MoSync is another Free Open Source Software (FOSS) multi-platform mobile app development tool that offers the developer multi-platform mobile app dev SDK tool. It also includes Eclipse-based IDE for C/C++ programming. MoSync offers support for several types of OS', including Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian, Moblin and even a mobile Linux distro. Support for the iPhone OS and BlackBerry is also on its way.
The list is certainly not exhaustive. Adding to the above five tools, there are some other cross-platform mobile development tools as well that are in huge demand. Some of these skills are - WidgetPad, Whoop, TotalCross and DragonRAD.

Android activations shoot up to 10 million

With the increase in the Android mania world wide, Android is now the top smartphone platform. Google reported that Android device users have downloaded and installed three billion applications from the Android Market at the rate of 500 million per month. Carriers are activating more than 300,000 Android devices every day, a Google executive confirmed. Google Inc. purchased the initial developer of the software, Android Inc., in 2005.

The Android Army invasion continues marching this week as Google announced 350,000 device activations take place each day. Google was activating 200,000 Android devices per day. At the rate of 350,000 per day, Google is selling more than 10 million Android phones per month. Android just chalked up its fourth consecutive month as the top platform when it comes to advertising, Android created a revolution with its special applications in the technology world.

Android handset users are downloading applications at the rate of 500 million per month. In the U.S., two separate studies found that Android captured 44 percent of the smartphone market in the third quarter ahead of Apple and Research in Motion. As a Google product, Android comes with the Google search engine built-in by default.

Android won 48 percent of mobile ad impressions. Apple's iOS followed with 31percent, and RIM came in third with 18percent.Android users are downloading 16.66 million apps per day, 695,000 apps per hour, 11,500 apps per minute, or 193 apps per second. Advertising on Android-based phones is a revenue stream for the search giant and, in fact, makes the Android enterprise within Google profitable all by itself.

Google also noted that Android device users have downloaded and installed three billion applications from the Android Market. The growth of app downloads is outright staggering. Android handset users are downloading applications at the rate of 500 million per month.

In January, Apple announced that more than 10 billion apps have been downloaded. Its store carries about 350,000 apps, which is twice the number of the Android Market, which is somewhere near 180,000. iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users downloaded five billion apps. Apple has seen another two or three billion downloads since January, and the rate is probably one billion downloads per month (or 33.33 million apps per day, 1.3 million apps per hour, 23,000 apps per minute or 386 apps per second).

Although Google has a larger hand in mobile ad impressions it is in competition with other IT firms concerning the handsets and softwares.

Google launches its new search engine "Recipe"

Earlier in the month of March Yahoo unveiled its search engine called "Search Direct" as a competitor to worlds most famous search engine Google "Instant Search". And in reply to yahoo's direct Google introduced its advanced new search option called "Recipe Search Option".

Yahoo's new search engine came in the process of re-strategizing its search engine business and to capitalize on large users. Yahoo direct claimed to provide a fast simple search experience that goes beyond a list of blue links. As one starts typing a query into Yahoo Search, the site will begin populating results with each new character entered.
Google has renovated its search engine as a counter to Yahoo direct. It is a new version of its already present and flourishing search engine. The search engine giant has been working on this project from last two years which will afford searching beyond key words. Kavi Goel, a senior Google official said that the advanced search engine will allow users to discover more appropriate resources ranging from finding images that look similar to one in mind or getting new wallpaper for desktop, or even locating new recipes. It gives a new user experience beyond key words.

Goel demonstrated the new Google search engine in World Wide Web Conference. He displayed the mechanism and uniqueness of the new search engine and as to the way it works.

Goel added that future options would move beyond the "static" answers, leaving scope for more interactive and fluid experience. It would extract relevant information for users beyond documents. It is not about retrieving documents. It explores some of the bleeding-edge structured data and Web-mining projects within Google that focus on finding answers rather than simply retrieving documents. He further added that the service is under its final testing before it is launched in the market for its users.

With yahoo, Google launching new search engines every now and than consumers are opened with a variety of choices. This will boost the competition further more.

India to see four android handsets by Fly Mobile

UK based mobile manufacturer fly mobile is planning to launch four Android handsets in India by October. The upcoming Android devices from Fly Mobile will put more prominence on video streaming as well as music playback. This announcement was made by the Chief Executive Officer of Fly mobile, Prem Kumar.

Prem kumar stated that in third quarter of the current financial year they will be launching four Android phones in the price range of Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000. He also said, the handsets will be running on Android 2.2 version and each of the models will attach at least three to five mega pixel cameras.

Kumar said that Fly Mobile is strengthening its app ecosystem and is in the process of launching its app store, which will be India centric. Consumers will be able to experience the store by the third quarter this year.
He further added that the company has plans to increase the number of its service centers from the existing 384 to 450 in the next two months.