The WSJ is reporting that Facebook's upcoming Android event will be a home screen—as in the first screen you see when you flip on your phone—dedicated to Facebook. It will “display content from users' Facebook accounts on a smartphone's home screen.” More »
If it feels like you not only have more apps on your iPhone, but that you’re spending more time in those apps, then you should congratulate yourself on being as savvy as pollster Nielsen. According to a report from the organization, the number of apps on the average smartphone increased from 32 to 41 — a jump of 28 percent — over the past year.
As you can see from the Nielsen infographic at the top of this post, the percentage of time spent by smartphone owners in apps rather than on the web has also climbed. The average smartphone user spends only about 19 percent of his or her time on the web; the rest of the time, native apps are being used.
The one other fascinating tidbit on the chart shows that the number of smartphone owners in the US has climbed from 38 million in 2011 to 84 million in 2012 — that’s a jump of 121 percent in just one calendar year.
[via Engadget]
Report: Americans have 28 percent more mobile apps in 2012 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 17 May 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A map of all the thousands of separate device models that downloaded OpenSignalMaps in a six month period.
OpenSignalMaps
One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs, according to data posted by the creators of OpenSignalMaps on Tuesday. While the Android platform provides a lot of flexibility to consumers, OpenSignalMaps’ data drives home the point that the small army of device variations can be staggering. Market developers can miss out on a lot by not supporting less popular or older devices.
It’s no secret that the Android umbrella covers many makes and models of devices, and that fragmentation is an occasionally daunting problem for developers. To see how wide a net they cast, OpenSignalMaps logged the specs of devices that downloaded the app over the course of six months. This collected info on over 680,000 devices—a significant sample, even if small compared to the many millions of Android users and devices in the world.
The Hungarian Concorde Tab
The developers logged 3,997 distinct devices, the most popular of which was the Samsung Galaxy S II. This figure was inflated quite a bit by custom ROMs, which overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable and cause those phones to be logged as separate devices. 1,363 types were logged only once, and while some were custom ROMs bucking the numbers, a good few were just massively unpopular devices—for example, the Hungarian 10.1-inch Concorde Tab.
Millions and millions of viewers, high-profile international partnerships, live audiences that dwarf Western competition: For years, it looked like there was little that China’s online video industry couldn’t achieve — except for reaching the living room. Strict regulation of TV services made connected devices off-limits, and companies who snuck their apps on set-top boxes had to deal with repercussions. Now it looks like this may be changing.
Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, China’s online video provider PPTV announced a strategic partnership with WASU Media Group. WASU is a local cable TV operator in one of China’s many provinces, but it has something really valuable for PPTV: A license to bring online video to the living room, which it has been using to bring triple play offerings to their customers. However, WASU’s license isn’t just restricted to the territory it works in. Instead, it’s able to launch online services on connected devices everywhere.
PPTV, which is also known as PPLive, has been trying to get into the living room for years. The company’s P2P video client is installed on 240 million PCs across China, and it has been adding some 30 million users with its iPad app and other mobile clients in recent years. The company worked on its own set-top box project some three years ago, but never shipped the device because China’s regulators were starting to crack down on similar offerings from competitors.
At the core of the issue is China’s complicated licensing framework, which requires that online video operators get separate licenses for addressing PC, mobile and connected TV usage. The TV space has been the most heavily regulated, and regulators have effectively been treating any video startup the same way they would treat an established cable TV operator.
The result has been that there hasn’t been a move towards streaming in the living room, as there has in the U.S. PPTV and WASU hope to change this by combining their efforts, while also securing a big share of the coming connected TV boom in China. Digital TV Research expects the Chinese online video market to grow from $50 million in 2010 to $1.38 billion in 2016, and connected devices could play a huge role in that growth.
The good news for PPTV’s competitors is that there are still other ways into the Chinese living room. Lenovo announced an Android-based TV set at CES, and Chinese CE manufacturers have been introducing countless Android-based set-top boxes in recent months. None of these devices has access to Google’s Android Market — which isn’t available in China — but consumers will nonetheless be able to install third-party apps from a variety of sources. This in itself could lead to a connected TV revolution within China, and possibly even force regulators to rethink their stance on online services in the living room.
Image courtesy of (CC-BY-SA) Flickr user x-ray delta one.
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Google may be working on a voice-recognition assistant for Android under the codename of Majel, according to an unconfirmed report.
AndroidandMe.com claims the company plans to expand its existing Google Voice Actions, already available on most Android phones, by adding a natural language processing feature.
Voice Actions allows users to give commands by saying keywords such as “send text to. But the updated software could allow it to respond to commands by using more natural verbiage, similar to Siri.
Majel is a reference to the female voice of the computer on board the ship in Star Trek. Mashable reached out to Google for comment, but the company declined to address the matter.
We expect Google will use Majel for search queries at first, and will incorporate other commands such as controlling phone and app actions down the line. Majel could be released before the end of the year, but more likely in the next few months, according to AndroidandMe.
SEE ALSO: Google Buys a Virtual Assistant, But It’s a Far Cry From Siri
Google recently announced that it acquired a company called Clever Sense, the maker of the app Alfred, which serves as a digital personal assistant. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Mashable did confirm with Google that the Alfred app does not have voice-command capabilities at this time. Similar to Siri, he does search the Internet and provide users with recommendations from restaurant suggestions to bar and nightlife options. Alfred also learns user preferences and tastes over time to make more targeted recommendations.
Google could be planning to pair Majel with Alfred’s “learning” technology — though that’s still speculation at this point.
Do you think some combination of Majel and Alfred could take on Siri? Why do you think Google acquired Alfred? Let us know in the comments.