Android

EA announces Tetris Blitz for iOS and Android, a twist on the famous puzzler

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

Hot on the heels of launching its free to play Real Racing 3 this morning on the New Zealand App Store (two weeks ahead of schedule), games publisher Electronic Arts announced a new game for iOS and Android devices, Tetris Blitz.

It's an “innovative new twist on the world famous puzzle game,” says Electronic Arts. A bite-sized, frenzied Tetris Blitz experience challenges you with a two-minute sprint to clear lines and rack up as many points as possible before time runs out.

Electronic Arts, the super publisher which in 2011 alone raked in $1 billion in digital revenue, brought the original Tetris game to the iPhone back in December 2009. The iPhone version of Tetris costs 99 cents and the iPad version is an additional three bucks...

Facebook now sends 180 million clicks to Apple and Google app stores

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 12, 2013

The social network Facebook has become such a behemoth in that space that it's now sending an astounding 180 million clicks to Apple's App Store marketplace and Google's Play Store for Android software. That's one of the nuggets from a speech Dan Rose, Facebook VP of partnerships gave at The Wall Street Journal-sponsored D: Dive Into Media.

He also touched on Facebook's mobile strategy and the social network's future prospects as it competes for our time with other popular mobile services...

Amazon beats Apple for best U.S. consumer reputation

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

More indications that Apple may be slipping in the eyes of some consumers. Internet retail giant Amazon.com now has the best reputation among U.S. corporations, Harris Interactive announced Tuesday. Despite Apple winning the poll in 2012, Kindle-maker Amazon grabbed the top spot this year - ironically cited for its emotional impact on consumers despite operating a completely virtual business.

The online retailer also topped Apple, Google, Disney and others in the products and services category. This result only highlights Amazon's increased brand image in tablets, music, movies and cloud computing, areas bringing it into conflict with Apple and other tech players...

The iPhone 5 rates fifth in US user satisfaction

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 11, 2013

Results of a new smartphone user satisfaction survey have some observers scratching their heads. Apple's iPhone 5 ranked fifth in the U.S., behind a number of Android devices from Motorola, HTC and Samsung. Due to Apple's past high ratings in customer satisfaction, the survey's findings prompted questions so far left unanswered.

According to a poll by OnDevice Research, Motorola's Atrix HD took first place in the U.S. user satisfaction scores, with the Motorola Droid Razr M, HTC's Rezound 4G, Samsung's Galaxy Note 2 and the iPhone 5 filling out the top five devices.

While Apple was named the top brand in overall mobile device satisfaction by U.S. consumers, Google ranked number two - even though it does not directly produce mobile devices...

How Apple sales are hitting a language barrier

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated May 16, 2018

Do you need another metric to follow in the race between Apple and Android? How about language?

That's the focus of a new report suggesting Apple's iPhone is predominantly focused on English-speaking nations while Android-powered Samsung smartphones are popular in Asia, Africa and South America, where English-speaking consumers are a minority.

After sifting through the Twitter accounts of both Apple and Samsung, a Saudi Arabian researcher at King Saud University (KSU) found 75 percent of Apple's followers spoke English, while about 35 percent of Samsung's online fans were non-English speakers...

iPhone sales quadruple in India, but gap remains

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 8, 2013

When it comes to Apple's push to enter emerging markets like China, India's huge pool of consumers has largely been overlooked. Indeed, one of that country's leading newspapers charged Apple has "ignored" India, until recently.

From adopting the Indian rupee in the App Store to including local musicians in iTunes, the company has increased sales by up to 400 percent in four months. However, Apple still faces a large gap: only ten percent of India's residents own a smartphone and rival Samsung is the clear leader, researchers say...

Canalys: iPad accounted for 1 in 6 PCs in Q4 2012

Ed Sutherland ∙ February 7, 2013

Apple's iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple's fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.

Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry...

Apple, Samsung took 103% of 2012 handset profits

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

We have often written how the handset market is essentially a duopoly of operating systems - iOS and Android - as well as brands: Apple and Samsung. Yesterday came even another way the two are dominating the mobile world - profits. Apple and Samsung accounted for 103 percent of handset profits in 2013, a figure made possible by the zero or negative growth by six of the eight leading handset makers. Apple held 69 percent of handset profits earned in all of 2012, more than double that of the South Korean Samsung, which hauled in 34 percent of phone profits last year, according to Canaccord Genuity...

Twitter refreshes its terrible iPhone app with revamped search, tweaks

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 6, 2013

The popular micro-blogging platform Twitter today announced a freshly redesigned search experience for its iOS/Android apps and the Twitter.com web interface. This helps you find relevant tweets, trends and people to follow in a single stream. Plus, the reorganized search is now available anywhere in the mobile apps via a new icon.

You can see your five most recent searches, tap them to redo the search and clear your recent search history. Twitter says the updated iOS client launches faster, especially on older iDevices. It's a nice, albeit way overdue refresh. If you're using Twitter's official client, you can update your devices now. I'm sticking with Tweetbot...

Dropbox’s new Sync API lets apps treat cloud files as if they were local

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 6, 2013

The hot cloud storage startup Dropbox today announced a new application programming interface (API) for in-app synch. It makes programmers' life much easier by letting their native iOS/Android apps treat users' cloud-based files as if they were stored locally.

"Give your app its own private Dropbox client and leave the syncing to us", Dropbox proclaims.

By way of plugging in the API, apps can easily gain rich features such as file sharing and seamless real-time syncing akin to the Documents in the Cloud feature found in some iCloud-enabled apps. Without the Sync API, Dropbox apps can only support manual downloads and uploads and devs must do all the heavy lifting themselves...

Chitika: iPad recovers from post-Christmas dip, now back to 81% share

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 18, 2016

Apple's iPad appears to have recovered from its post-Christmas slump. The tablet now enjoys an 81 percent share after falling from a high of 89 percent to 79 percent between December 25-27, 2012. Online advertising network Chitika Tuesday released the chart for the U.S. and Canada which proves the iPad recovered some of the ground lost to cheaper tablets.

The latest data obtained from millions of devices participating in Chitika's ad network shows Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet having the second-highest January 2013 market share. Although a distant runner-up to the iPad, the Amazon tablet scored a 7.7 percent tablet share, while Samsung's family of Galaxy tablets reached 3.9 percent...

iPhone snares global web usage crown from Nokia

Ed Sutherland ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Apple yet again became the beneficiary of Nokia's seemingly never-ending swan song, becoming the most-used mobile brand on the Internet in January. This despite Apple actually losing nearly three percent of mobile online usage. That the Finnish-based Nokia collapsed by more than fifteen points, dropping it out of first place to the third spot, also helped.

According to the independent website analytics company StatCounter, Apple had a nice 25.86 percent of mobile Internet usage in January 2013. Although that was a decline of 2.81 percent compared to the same month in 2012, Nokia's share in the same period fell from 37.67 percent to 22.15 percent, a significant decline...