Motorola has announced a successor to its earlier Droid Pro, the Pro+. The Pro+ features a full QWERTY keyboard on the front of the device, Android 2.3, 1 GHz processor, 3.1-inch screen, and hotspot capabilities. Sadly, the device will not be making its way to the U.S. — rather, hitting Europe and Asia in October.
Motorola is filling a gap that Apple hasn’t yet attacked. Users who are tired of BlackBerry, but still need the business feel, now have a more viable option. We look forward to this hitting the states hopefully by the end of the year.
comScore has just released their ‘U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share’ report for the three month period ending in July. The report once again sees Apple’s market share increasing, this time up 1 percentage point to capture 27% of the market. This is in comparison to Google, who came in at an impressive 15% increase to top the chart at 41.8% market share. They are of course followed by the usual suspects, RIM in third at 21.7% (down 5%), and Microsoft at 5.7% (down 1%).
Apple’s market share among mobile OEMs is also on the increase, growing 1.2% to capture 9.5% of the market. Of course, Samsung (who also increased 1%), still dominates among OEMs with 25.5% of the market. LG comes in at second with 20.9%, followed by Motorola, and Apple. Read more
This is interesting. Amazon appears to be testing a redesign of its shopping web site that appears to be specifically optimized for tablet browsing. The Next Webdiscovered several tweaks which seem to be accessible only to a small number of users who are testing out the new design. These include the more prominent search bar and bigger controls, so you don’t have to sand your fingers down.
Another tell-tale sign: The new site gives prominence to Amazon’s tablet-friendly services such as Instant Video, MP3 Store, Cloud Player, Kindle, Cloud Drive, AppStore for Android, Game and Software Downloads and Audiobooks. Yes, we might be reading too much into it, but this feels like a part of launch preparations for the rumored Amazon tablet.
Forrester’s Sarah Rotman Epps predicts bright future for the Amazon tablet, which in her own words will “be synonymous with ‘Android’ on tablets” a year from now (disclosure: Epps was wrong on predicting iPad numbers plummeting back in June). She wrote in a note to clients Monday that Amazon could sell five million tablet units in the fourth quarter, considerably more than the 3.27 million iPads Apple sold in its first quarter, adding:
Enter Amazon.com, whose tablet can compete on price, content, and commerce. If it’s launched at the right price with enough supply, we see Amazon’s tablet easily selling 3 million to 5 million units in Q4 alone, disrupting not only Apple’s product strategy but other tablet manufacturers’ as well.
A recent survey from Nielsen revealed that a tablet from Amazon marrying e-reading features of the Kindle to the computing capabilities of tablets could appeal to wide demographics. Nielsen says women now amount to a whopping 61 percent of e-reader owners, up from 46 percent last year. As for tablet and smartphone adoption, women climbed only by four and three percentage points in the period, respectively. The numbers led Silicon Alley Insider to joke that “women are from Amazon, men are from Apple”.
Ever wished you could run your favorite iOS app on your Mac? What about your Windows machine or Android device? If creators of new Kickstarter project iEmu reach their funding goals, it may be possible sooner than you think.
iEmu is a new project based on the open-source QEMU emulator, currently accepting donations through Kickstarter, that aims to emulate the S5L8930 chipset used in iPhone 4 and first-gen iPads. It will support a number of platforms including “Linux, Windows, Mac, mobile platforms such as Android, and even on iOS itself”.
The goals of iEmu? Well the end goal is an emulator capable of running “most iPad/iPhone apps” that even supports peripherals like the compass, accelerometer, and GPS. It would also “be extended with plugins for custom iOS exploration” and able to be reflashed in iTunes. Read more
The Lapdock that sells alongside the Motorola Atrix hasn’t seen much success — due to high pricing. With the upcoming release of the Droid Bionic, we were wondering if the new LTE device would be seeing any of these accessories. In a new report from Droid Life today, the Droid Bionic will be seeing the Lapdock and HD Station that the Atrix saw, but will feature a new accessory called the Webtop.
The Webtop is a cheaper version to the Lapdock, allowing you to plug the adapter into the Bionic’s HDMI and micro USB port, and then run a HDMI cable from it to a TV or monitor. It will also charge while on the adapter.The similarities to Lapdock will definitely make it easy for users to transition to the new peripheral.There’s also no word on pricing.We look forward to this new accessory, but first we’d like the phone — Motorola!
