That’s impressive, no doubt, and the analyst behind the numbers notes that he “would not be surprised if Microsoft had the third largest app portfolio in the industry by the middle of next year.” Now granted, hitting number three would take very little effort on Microsoft’s part — they’d just have to beat webOS, BlackBerry OS, and Symbian, none of which have sparked iOS- or Android-like levels of developer interest. So beyond that, what does the growth mean? Read on! Realistically, not much. On a fundamental level, app store success and platform success aren’t yet one and the same — look at BlackBerry, for example — but beyond that, there are several things to consider here. Android launched on the T-Mobile G1 alone, which means that for most of the period IDC mentions, the Android Market was really more of the “G1 Market” than anything else: one device, one carrier, one country. It wasn’t until the first half of 2009 that additional markets and devices came online, and even then it was slow going — typically one device on one carrier per market. Windows Phone 7’s had a moderately more well-supported and well-rounded launch with devices from HTC, LG, Dell, and Samsung reaching multiple carriers in multiple countries across North America and Europe within a few days of each other. Sure, you could use the iPhone as the counterexample here; Apple saw explosive App Store growth with just two devices (the original and the 3G) on a handful of carriers around the world, but by the time third-party apps were enabled, the company had already assembled a big installed base of users hungry for more functionality. And let’s not forget Redmond’s time-honored mantra: “developers, developers, developers.” Microsoft is famously great at supporting its developer community, and it did a commendable job parlaying that developer base into its Windows Phone 7 launch by utilizing tools and languages that those developers already knew. Clearly, throwing together an app for a new platform is a much easier endeavor to justify when you don’t need to crack any new books or learn any new development environments — and indeed, an existing .NET or XNA developer can roll a WP7 app with very little ramp-up time. On the Android side, sure, the syntax is familiar to Java developers, but the libraries and constructs were all new; mix that in with an ultra-limited launch in the early months and you’ve got a recipe for a slow-growing Market. Bottom line? Both these platforms are going to be successful, but for the Windows Marketplace to overtake the Android Market is going to take nothing short of a miracle — and interpreting IDC’s data any other way would be a reach.

Source: Chris Ziegler

The original Google phone got us all excited a couple of weeks back when an OTA update was presumed to be the oven-hot Gingerbread upgrade, only to disappoint us. Now we’ve got the most lucid statement from the Android chefs yet on when the real Gingerbread Nexus One will stand up, which is placed in the relatively ill-defined window of “the coming weeks.” Hey, better weeks than months, right?

Source: www.engadget.com

While the rest of the world has yet to taste the sweet elixir of free voice calls from its email supplier, US-based Gmailers are having their fun extended for a whole new year. Back in August, Google made it possible to dial up voice numbers in the US and Canada for free, and now, in the true holiday spirit of keeping users happy and advertising dollars lowing, Google promises to keep that service free through all of 2011. And if it decides to extend it into 2012, we could have free calls until the end of the world.

Source: Vlad Savov

Oh dear. Like the N8 before it, Nokia just confirmed to us that the Symbian-powered E7 slider will be delayed. The official word has it launching in early 2011, not December 2010. We’ve been told that Nokia’s holding up production due to a “minor durability issue” discovered in the E7 hardware. We can’t blame Nokia for wanting to ensure the best possible user experience — it’s just a shame that it will require the holiday shopping season to sort it out.

Source: Thomas Ricker

We don’t have any hard details yet, but Computerworld reports that Nokia’s planning a busy 2011, with four to five updates to the Symbian UI on tap, as well as dual-core phones. The information comes courtesy of Nokia senior manager Gunther Kottzieper, who gave a presentation at the 2010 Internation Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing earlier today — a slide labeled “Nokia Symbian 2011 focus areas” indicated that a Q1 Symbian update will include over 50 features, including a more intuitive browser, while second- and third-quarter updates will add “a new look and feel for the user interface, a more flexible home screen, an updatable HTML5 browser and an easier software update experience.” A hardware-related slide tipped upcoming 1GHz phones with more graphics memory in the second or third quarter, as well as dual-core phones and something called a “true zoom camera” in late 2011 or early 2012. (We’re guessing that means an optical zoom, which would be just wild on a mobile phone.) Ignore this morning’s E7 delay and all of that sounds like evidence of renewed focus at Nokia under new management — and it also sounds like Nokia taking over Symbian development might have lit some serious fires. We’re dying to look at these slides ourselves — we’ll keep digging and let you know.

Source:Nilay Patel

It may not quite be enough to bring non-BlackBerry users into the fold, but RIM has finally scored one long awaited coup to keep its current users happy — it’s just announced that the Amazon MP3 application is now available for download from the BlackBerry App World. While still technically in beta, the app will let you purchase and download music both over WiFi and over the air, and it includes plenty of BlackBerry-specific functionality, including sharing via BBM in addition to the usual social networking features, and full integration with BlackBerry’s Universal Search and Media Library. Hit up the link below for a closer look, or simply download it yourself to try it out first hand — it is free, after all.

Source:Donald Melanson

Let’s say you’re a mobile phone maker. Now, what’s the first thing you do after raking in $360 million in a quarter? We’re guessing that “launching a new backup / remote wipe portal” wasn’t the first thing that came to mind, but that’s precisely what HTC has done. HTCSense.com was officially introduced alongside the Desire HD and Desire Z  in London last month, promising to one day allow registered owners to use the web in order to locate a lost handset, remotely wipe a lost handset and maintain a backup of your contacts, texts, customizations, etc. in the cloud. Looks like “one day” is “today,” with the portal finally opening its doors to registrants. Unfortunately, the only two phones supported at the moment are the two it was introduced alongside of (neither of which are publicly available), so it looks like you’ll spend most of your time at the source link ingesting what it can offer you in the future. But hey, who said a little schooling was a bad thing?

Update: Pocketnow has a walkthrough of the new services (via a ROM hack on the HD2), with a video embedded after the break. We know it’s tough to wait, but at least this glimpse will make it a bit easier, yeah?

[Source: Darren Murph]

Whether it’s extra bloat (of which there’s some) or a slower chip, the T’s also not as wonderfully lag-free as the S, though both phones would handily beat most of the other low-end Androids we’ve seen. The 3.2-inch capacitive touchscreen’s just as responsive, though the physical buttons here aren’t quite as nice — we prefer Sprint’s distinct, textured keys to the slick plastic rocker for Home and Back and the Menu and Search buttons here. We weren’t able to download Quadrant on the T for benchmarking like we did for its sister phone nor verify the same exact specs inside, but paging through menus we spotted mobile hotspot functionality and WiFi calling, just as originally foretold, not to mention support for old-school FM radio. Now we just wait to see if T-Mobile follows Sprint’s lead and offers the phone at a similarly fantastic price.

Update: It’s a bit of a shame, but LG just informed us the Optimus T won’t have WiFi calling after all — it was originally considered for the device, but the software we saw was apparently a old, out-of-date build. T-Mobile reps wouldn’t confirm or deny that, but told us that the option is something they’d like to bring to more devices later on, though they said it might require Android 2.1 or higher to function properly.

[Source:Sean Hollister]

You knew it was bound to happen sooner or later — low-cost computer maker Cherrypal  has gotten into the tablet game. Its first entrant is the CherryPad America, a $188 tablet that packs a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, Android 2.1 (a 2.2 update is promised later this year), an 800MHz ARM11 processor, 2GB of flash storage, a microSD card slot for expansion, built-in WiFi, and a 3200 mAh battery that promises six to eight hours of use. What’s more, unlike some other low-cost Android tablets, Cherrypal says that the CherryPad will have full access to the Android Market, and it insists that it’s “neither an iPad killer nor an iPad clone, it’s a completely different product designed for a different market.” Perhaps most surprising, however, is that the tablet is actually available right now through a partnership with online retailer Zecozi. Head on past the break for the full press release, along with a second, less polished image — and hit up the source link below if you’re ready to take the plunge.

[Source: Donald Melanson]

When Apple addressed a congressional inquiry on privacy in July, the company claimed that it couldn’t actually track a particular iPhone in real time, as its transactions were anonymous and thoroughly randomized. Bucknell University network admin Eric Smith, however, theorizes that third-party application developers and advertisers may not have the same qualms, and could be linking your device to your name (and even your location) whenever they transmit data. Smith, a two-time DefCon wardriving champ, studied 57 top applications in the iTunes App Store to see what they sent out, and discovered that some fired off the iPhone’s UDID and personal details in plaintext (where they can ostensibly be intercepted), including those for Amazon, Chase Bank, Target and Sam’s Club, though a few were secured with SSL. Though UDIDs are routinely used by apps to store personal data and combat piracy, what Smith fears is that a database could be set up linking these UDIDs to GPS coordinates or GeoIP, giving nefarious individuals or organizations knowledge of where you are. It’s a scary idea, but before you direct hate Apple’s way, it’s important to note that Cupertino’s not necessarily the one to blame. iOS is arguably the best at requiring users to opt-in to apps that perform GPS tracking; transmitting the UDID and account information together publicly is strictly against the rules; and we’d like to think that if users provide their personal information to an application developer in the first place, they’d understand what they’re doing. Of course, not all users monitor those things closely, and plaintext transmission of personal details is obviously a big no-no. Smith’s piece opens and closes on the idea that Apple’s UDID is like the unique identifier of Intel’s Pentium III processor, which generated privacy concerns around the turn of the century, and we wonder if ths story might play out the same way — following government inquiries, Intel offered a software utility that let individuals manually disable their chip’s unique ID, and removed it from future CPUs.

[Source: Sean Hollister]