Posts Tagged ‘operating system’
Admob report: Android finds home in U.S., but iPhone still dominates
Right after , the mobile advertising company today released a report analyzing where the majority of Android and iPhone operating systems are in its network around the world.
While the study notes that 75 percent of Android OS devices are in North America, compared to 49 percent of iPhone OS devices, the reality is that the iPhone still outnumbers Android two to one in the U.S. There were 8.7 million Android OS devices and 10.7 iPhone OS devices in the U.S. in April. Globally, the numbers are 11.6 million and 27.4 million, respectively.
While the total number of devices running the iPhone operating system may outnumber Android, , an analytics firm, underscored that Android has passed iPhone is sales for the first quarter in 2010. So while there may still be more iPhone OS devices in the U.S., that soon could change as Android continues its sales growth. The NPD Group compiles and analyzes mobile device sales data based on more than 150,000 completed online consumer research surveys each month.
Admob’s last report looked at the newly launched Google phone, the Nexus One. While many thought it would rival the iPhone, the .
Admob serves mobile advertisements to some 23,000 mobile web sites and applications. Each month, the company analyzes the data from these ads to provide insight into what may be happening in the mobile industry.
A full report can be found .
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What to expect from Apple’s iPhone 4.0 OS event
Only a few days after the launch of the iPad, Apple has announced the next event that will give its loyal followers something to worship. The company will be offering a sneak peek at version 4.0 of the iPhone operating system this Thursday, April 8, at 10 a.m. Pacific time.
Apple has done this in the past for of the iPhone OS around this time of the year, which should put our expectations in order. We’re likely not going to see any new hardware, for one. But this year things are a bit more exciting since Apple has the iPad in play, which also runs the iPhone OS.
Currently, the iPad runs iPhone OS 3.2, while the iPhone and iPod Touch are running OS 3.1.3. Apple could conceivably keep the iPad on a separate version of the OS from the iPhone, but I think it’s far more likely that it would consolidate all of the devices onto a single version of the OS. Despite the size difference, the iPhone and iPad don’t differ greatly in terms of hardware, and that hardware gap will be further minimized if the next-generation iPhone also runs on the (and it most likely will).
In terms of new features, we can expect a demonstration of the — the ability to run more than one application at once — that we reported on several weeks ago. While multitasking on the iPhone has been , this time around it seems far more certain. The existence of the iPad, in particular, demonstrates the pressing need for multitasking in the operating system. Otherwise, the limitations of the iPhone’s current single-tasking focus will soon become apparent to iPad owners as their honeymoon period ends, and the reality of the device’s capabilities become more clear.
Multitasking was also one of many aspects of the next-gen iPhone that Daring Fireball’s John Gruber hinted at in a . Gruber has historically predicted upcoming Apple hardware accurately, and his certainty in the specifications seems telling. He also mentioned the inclusion of the A4 chip, as well as a front-facing camera for video chatting. I don’t suspect that Apple will demonstrate video chat in OS 4.0 at this event, since such a feature would imply a front-facing camera on the new iPhone, but it’s definitely a feature that would make sense to include in the next version of the iPhone.
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What are Virtual PCs, and What Can I Do With Them?
Say you want to open a file you downloaded from a questionable source, kick the tires on a new operating system like Linux, or even run an older OS from the familiar environment of your main desktop. If anything goes awry in your virtual machine, you can reset it to a previous state or just delete it altogether, with no harm to your system. You could even run a separate operating system as a virtual machine just to use that one killer app that’s not available on your OS of choice.
Free applications like Microsoft’s Windows Virtual PC (), VMware Player () and the open-source app VirtualBox () are great for getting your feet wet. Setting them up is a similar process to installing a regular operating system. Once you’ve done it, it will seem like you’ve got a real, separate computer living inside your system.