Drippler Reaches More Than 150,000 Downloads On Android

Drippler, a free update service for gadget owners, recently hit 150,000 downloads on the Android Market. Drippler created an application that allows Android users to stay updated with their mobile phones for more than 30 different models. Drippler has a model specific "Updater" app that Android users can install on their droid and receive updates on apps, games, firmware updates, reviews, accessories and more.

Matan Talmi the CEO of Drippler stated, "With Android's massive growth, users are constantly searching for the latest apps to download, usage tips, accessories and ROM updates. We're here to save them the hassle of searching and make sure they are always up-to-date. We will soon support many more Android models, and eventually provide a Drippler Updater app for any model on the market."
Recently, the Updater was featured by Sprint on their list of recommended apps for Android Market. Some of the top Drippler apps downloaded on the Android Market are for the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Evo 4G and Motorola Droid X. The app features the latest updates, news and rumors about the device. Users can browse by either the 'Latest' updates, or the most 'Popular' ones. The app also features a desktop widget, and Facebook and Twitter sharing. Following a major update to the app, a regular user of the app stated,"I've loved this app for months and the update is incredible. It's great."
Drippler does not just cater to Android users; users of smartphones, tablets, video game consoles, and other gadgets can also use Drippler to their advantage. Drippler provides consumers with personalized updates on their gadgets, keeping them up-to-date with the latest gadget updates, news & rumors. Creating an account is easy and free at drippler.com. Once selecting the relevant gadgets, Drippler takes care of the rest.
For more information on Drippler visit http://drippler.com 

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CloudTalk Launches Voice Social Network for iPhone and Android

Emotion may be the missing element in Facebook and Twitter posts. A new mobile social network called CloudTalk adds this by having you use your voice to post, as well as allowing text, photos, and videos. CloudTalk today released mobile apps that let users interact with the primarily voice-based social network on iPhones and Android phones.

San Francisco-based CloudTalk's Chairman and CEO David Haden demonstrated the new app to PCMag.com last week. Hayden had previously released a CloudTalk predecessor, called Pana.ma in 2009. Not only can users leave voice messages in a social network feed, but our meeting was recorded using the service. CloudTalk also lets users create and participate in public communities; current examples of these commnunities include Digital Photography, Singles Club, Music, and Apple Talk.

A Web version of CloudTalk is available, but it's still in beta, and doesn't include all the features of the mobile apps, such as community content. "We're leading with the smart phones, because that's what people use for communication. We're at a transition where the mobile is more important than the Web," said CloudTalk's chief marketing officer, John Linney.

Unlike Facebook or Twitter, though, you don't have a set group of friends or contacts for all your group conversations in CloudTalk. Instead, you invite selected contacts as participants for each conversation, and can add more if necessary. The conversations remain available, so you can add to them at any point in the future and all participants will be updated, somewhat similar to how Google Wave works. Users can also send private messages to contacts, but unlike in Facebook, you don't get to see all of another user's contacts on a rich profile page, and you're not prompted to add friends. It sounds a bit like T-Mobile's Bobsled, but with an emphasis on messages, rather than VOIP calls.

"The friction caused by phone calls when we can't take them, and voice mail that feels like a dead end, is making it harder to use our voice in daily communications with our social circle. CloudTalk stands out as the only platform to put the power and convenience of voice at the center of the social communications experience," wrote Hayden on a company press release, announcing the service. "CloudTalk makes talking as easy as texting, so we can freely use our voices to convey emotion, avoid misconstrued tone and get a message across far more quickly and powerfully than text alone."

Not only does voice add emotion, but some concepts are just too involved for a simple tweet to do the job. This could be of particular interest to businesses, which may need to collaborate with complex instructions and descriptions, either for procedures, strategies, or products.

CloudTalk iPhone and Android apps are free and available starting today on the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace. Look for an in-depth review of the service on PCMag.com in the coming days.source

Smartphone demand surging, Nokia to tumble

Growing demand for phones running on Google's Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies like HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform. 

Android's popularity has helped the Asian manufacturers to rise fast in smartphone rankings, and HTC overtook Nokia in market capitalisation for the first time on Thursday. 

Shares in HTC were worth $33.4 billion at their Thursday close, with Nokia stock worth $33 billion. 

Nokia still has higher volumes, selling 19 phones for each HTC phone sold last year. But its average sale price was just $85 compared with HTC's $360, according to Strategy Analytics. 

Surging growth in the high end of the market, helped in part by new models of HTC, will lift global sales of cameraphones 21 percent in 2011 to 1.1 billion handsets, topping the 1 billion mark for the first time, Strategy Analytics said. 

The smartphone market will grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, research firm Gartner said on Thursday. 

Android, a distant No. 2 to Nokia's Symbian just last year, will increase its market share to 39 percent in 2011, while Symbian's share will roughly halve to 19 percent following Nokia's decision to dump the platform. 

Apple's iPhone platform will be slightly bigger than Symbian this year, while Blackberry-maker Research In Motion will control 13 percent of the market and Microsoft Windows Phone 6 percent. 

Nokia decided in February to start using Microsoft as its main smartphone platform, a move Gartner expected would boost Windows Phone market share to 11 percent next year and to 20 percent in 2015. 

"This is not about giving Nokia too much credit, this is about saying that Nokia will do everything they can to stay in this business. Anything less than this would mean the end of Nokia," analyst Carolina Milanesi said. 

NOKIA RATING CUT 

On Thursday, Moody's cut its credit rating on Nokia, citing the Finnish company's weakening market position and uncertainty over its transition to Microsoft's Windows Phone software. 

Moody's cut its rating on Nokia's senior debt to A3 from a previous A2. The agency also cut the company's short-term debt ratings to Prime-2 from Prime-1, and said the outlook on the ratings was negative. 

"The rating downgrade primarily reflects Nokia's weakened market position in its core business, mobile devices, which has reduced the company's margins and funds from operations," said Wolfgang Draak, Moody's senior vice president and lead analyst for Nokia. 

Standard & Poor's also cut its rating on Nokia late last month. 

"The growing quality of high-tier cameraphones is making them an increasing threat to the lower end of the point-and-shoot digital camera market," said Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics. 

The research firm forecast that sales of cellphones with 5-megapixel or higher resolution cameras would more than double this year to 361 million phones. At the same time it sees the digital still camera market growing a mere 1 percent to 130 million units.source

Applications – the next big buzz and opportunity in mobile space

A mobile phone has multiple forms of use and mobile applications only add value to it. Applications such as the Nokia’s Ovi Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, Apple’s App Store and upcoming versions from Samsung and Microsoft give independent developers a relatively quick and easy route to consumers.

With the current explosion of new applications, it is expected that the market for mobile applications will be as big as the Internet, peaking at 10 million apps in 2020.

According to Samir Kumar, Managing Director, Inventus Capital, mobile today was like personal computers in 1984. Everything was an opportunity, he said, adding, “Mobile application is seen as the next big opportunity after the ringtone market and promises a revolution in active and engaging communication.”

Commenting on the developing VAS market in India, Ponappa PG, CEO, Emerging Markets, mPortal, said, “The advent of 3G, mobile number portability and high penetration of feature rich phones are the reasons why the application market will get a boost.” He felt that there was a huge opportunity in the bottom of the pyramid markets, where people did not understand what applications were. At the same time, he stressed that technology had to be simplified in order to create the need and to tap the rural market.

“Facebook, Pandora, weather applications, Google search and Google maps are the most popular applications,” informed Vijaykumar Radhakrishnan, Chief Technology Officer, Dot Com Infoway, citing the most downloaded applications on mobile.

Much has been said about the need for the print format to co-exist with digital. In order to simplify the magazine reading experience, DCI Mobile Studios is in the pre-launch stage of its magazine application, called Magzter. Throwing light on this application, CR Venkatesh, Managing Director & CEO, Dot Com Infoway, said, “Magzter started with the Indian and the Asian markets. Currently, we have Galatta Cinema, Media Voice, Tehelka, and Global Gujarati as our clients in India.”

However, Magzter as a policy has no exclusive contracts with anyone, thereby allowing the magazine to be on various applications. “That gives me a challenge to keep innovating. If I don’t innovate, the client will leave me and the clients like that proposition,” Venkatesh added.

He further noted that it was difficult to convince publishers in the Indian market to go on the digital platform, while those in the West embraced this as an opportunity. He was confident that with the launch of new tablets, smart phones, and spread of 3G, almost every magazine would want to go digital.

Meanwhile on the aspect of managing accounts, Probir Roy, Co-founder, Paymate, pointed out that the mobile phone was quickly replacing the plastic money concept. At the same time, he stressed on the need for banks to have a strict security policy to ensure foolproof transactions.

Dot Com Infoway’s Radhakrishnan asserted, “Applications is the next big opportunity after ringtones in the mobile space.”

The industry experts were sharing their knowledge and expertise at the Mobile Applications Conference India 2011, which was held in Mumbai on February 19. This day-long conference explored new opportunities that are emerging in the mobile applications space and sought to some light on where the mobile industry is headed and how entrepreneurs and developers can take advantage of that. source

A free cloud service for building smartphone apps

 Conduit, an application developer for Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, is now making its app-building tools available free. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company has developed a website for building an application once that will run on five smartphone platforms: iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry and Nokia's Symbian.

The service uses feeds from your website or social networks. "You can slice and dice it how you want" for the mobile app, said Dayna Verstegen, marketing director of the company.

The app-building site also walks the developer through the application process for each smartphone marketplace, whether it's iTunes or the Android marketplace. Conduit also runs its own marketplace and apps built in on the free platform will be added to it.

Apps built on the free service will display ads, which is how Conduit makes money from the service.

The company started out building browser apps for companies in 2005 and grew to include mobile apps. Clients range from large and high-profile companies -- eBay, TechCrunch, Fox News -- to small business owners, such as a high-end pet store in Baltimore, Verstegen said.

The free cloud service, Conduit Mobile, launched this morning and there are now 2,000 mobile applications that have been built.

The company said it had 230 million users active as of February and 230,000 customers.

It will continue building custom mobile applications through a revenue-share model as well.source

Samsung adds 10.1-in. Android Honeycomb tablet

Samsung has added the Honeycomb-based Galaxy Tab 10.1 to its line-up of tablets.

The new tablet comes with a 10.1-inch LCD screen and a resolution at 1280 x 800 pixels. Under the hood, there is a 1 GHz dual-core processor.

The tablet measures 9.6 inches by 6.6 inches by 4/10 of an inch and weighs 1.3 pounds, according to a company statement. That makes it a good bit lighter than the Motorola Xoom, which also has 10.1-inch screen, is based on the tablet-optimized Honeycomb OS -- also known as Android 3.0 -- but weighs 1.6 pounds, according to a spec sheet on Motorola's website.

The back camera has an 8-megapixel resolution and LED flash and the front camera has a 2-megapixel resolution.

Users who want to watch streaming video on their tablet can access the Internet using Wi-Fi (802.11a, b, g and n) or HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access) at up to 21M bps (bits per second). For users to take full advantage of that speed, their mobile operator may first have to upgrade their network. Today, there are 79 commercial HSPA+ networks that can handle data speed of 21M bps, according to a recent report published by industry organization GSA (Global mobile Suppliers Association).

The device will start shipping in some markets, including Sweden, in June. Pricing was not disclosed.source

iPhone vs. Android

Many Verizon customers are asking themselves whether they should stick with the carrier's Android devices or jump ship to iOS.
PCWorld editors Tom Spring and Robert Strohmeyer both have strong views on the subject, and they're ready to present their arguments. First up, senior editor Tom Spring explains why he's had it with Android.
Read the Remaning on - http://www.pcworld.com/article/218104/head_to_head_iphone_vs_android.html

Google Service Solves Sudoku By Looking At It.

 If you're stuck on your sudoku puzzle, there's hope. New photo recognition software for Android mobiles, Goggles, can help solve the puzzle. 

Just hold the numerical puzzle up to the camera on your mobile. Goggles will then recognize the numbers already in the puzzle and calculate the missing values. 

Goggles, now in version 1.3, is also capable of reading ads in US magazines and newspapers and pulling up the appropriate websites. Recognition of bar codes has also gotten better, reported Google in its blog. 

Goggles photographs items and loads them up to Google's servers, where they are analyzed before results are sent to the user's mobile. 

Google says the app can also recognize products and famous sites. It also translates texts between English, German and Spanish. 

The free software is available for all smart-phones that use the Android operating system. The Sudoku assistance is also available in the Google Mobile app for the iPhone.source