Microsoft’s Tag Reader is an app that allows you to scan a product’s bar code using your phone’s camera. Your phone will then give you information on the product including promotions, videos and special offers. This is the Redmond based firm’s first application for Android and Tag Reader has already been released for the iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry and of course, Windows Mobile platforms. The app is free and can be downloaded from the Android Market. If you Pre and Pixi users feel a bit left out, start bugging Microsoft and perhaps the next build will be for webOS.
source: Microsoft via Engadget, UnwiredView

There’s no questioning that both iPhone and Android users dominate the landscape of the app market thanks to the depth of offerings that are developed for them. While there are many reports and research that pit the two platforms against one another vying for a chunk of the app market, it looks like iPhone users have a tendency to purchase more apps than their Android counterparts; reports AdMob. With that knowledge, its speculated that it may influence the decision of developers in choosing which platform they should support.  AdMob’s January 2010 Mobile Metrics concludes that the users of both platforms are avid in the use of applications on their handsets, but iPhone owners just buy more – approximately  50 percent of iPhone users surveyed buy at least one app per month, while only 21 percent of Android users do the same thing. An analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, Avi Greengart, states that one of the reasons behind the higher purchases by iPhone users could simply be “the sheer quantity and variety of applications” that is made available on the App Store. Add in the fact that developers also had more than a year to develop for the iPhone before competition started to roll around, it provides just another justification for the conclusion. Those numbers may soon change as we have seen Android go on the offensive and begin to take hold of the handset market inch by inch – and the Android Market may one day prove to become equally in depth to what the App Store offers.
via Mobile Tech Today

Myxer is an entertainment company in the business of providing downloads to mobile phones. You know, things like wallpaper, ringtones, videos, etc. They have delivered more than 1 billion such downloads and with 350,000 registered Android users, they decided to get into the metrics business. In their report for January, Myxer has found something very interesting. While it is usually the big, flashy cities like New York and San Francisco where you would expect to find the vanguard of technological change, it seems to be middle America that is embracing Android first. 7 states in America’s heartland-Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming-have seen Android usage outnumber that of the iPhone. Maryland is the only East coast state that can claim the same thing. Some are saying that the reason for the results is that in some of the Mid-West states, Verizon is the only carrier with broad 3G coverage. But it could be that in the U.S., change starts in the middle of the country and spreads out to the coasts.

Other interesting things discovered by Myxer is that 3 out of every 4 Nexus One users is Male. On the opposite end of the spectrum, 2 out of every 3 users of the Samsung Behold II and the HTC myTouch are Female. Across every Android handset, more Women than Men downloaded mobile entertainment. The G1 seems to be the handset with the youngest demographics. 57% of downloads  for that device fall into the 18-24 age group. Finally, users of the DROID are the least active, consuming an average of just 4 pieces of mobile entertainment per month.
source: Myxer

Now that Apple has introduced the iPad, it’s time to introduce the first iPad killer. Notion Ink is planning on offering the Adam tablet. Unlike the iPad, the Adam will support Flash content and has twice the battery life of the Apple device. Running on Android, it will produce full HD video at 1080p. It appears that the tablet will have an Nvidia chip under its hood and feature a PixelQi screen. Talk is that there will be two different models, one measuring 12.9mm thick and the other, 11.6mm. That could mean that there will be two different sized screens. The manufacturer, Notion Ink, is offering a $1 million app competition to try to spur on developers. There is no word on launch date or pricing, but the Adam name suggests that it will eat Apple.
source: Fudzilla

Google made some buzz today, as they released their Google Maps 4 (avaliable in the Android Market) and new Buzz social networking feature. What’s interesting is that you can access the Buzz feature within Google Maps, or by pointing you mobile web browser to the buzz.google.com site. With it, you can post information for places, not just your current GPS location, as well as read Buzz posts by other people and make reply comments. It also integrates with your GMail account with comments also being sent there.  For example, you can post a Buzz about a local restaurant “Sal’s Italian Restaurant is the best” and then have other people reply, which you can view in GMail, the Buzz site, or in Google Maps. We gave it a try on the Motorola DROID, first by installing the new Google Maps 4, then we were able to see small balloon icons on the map where people have already done Buzz postings. We could easily reply to them, and also create new Buzz posts.

Checkout the video and Buzz site for more information.
source: Google

According to a survey taken by comScore, as of the end of the 2009 fourth quarter, RIM had the largest market share of the mobile smartphone OS sold in the U.S. with a 41.6% piece of the pie. That is down a full percentage point from the beginning of the 3 month period. Gaining some strength is the Apple iPhone OS. The touchscreen device had 24.1% of the market last September, rising to 25.3% as the year ended. Windows Mobile finished the year third, with 18% of the U.S. smartphone OS market, down 1% from the end of Q3. In fourth place, webOS garnered a 6.1% slice which was a fairly large decline from the 8.3% share it held in September. And while Google’s open source Android OS finished in last among the top 5, its 5.2% market share at year’s end was more than double the 2.5% reading from the end of the 3rd quarter. While Android ended the year with great momentum thanks to the great reception given to the Motorola DROID, the momentum should continue in the current quarter with the release of the Nexus One. While the N-One itself has seemingly not performed to sales expectations, it has brought plenty of attention to the OS which could have helped the entire Android market continue to pick up marketshare at the expense of other platforms like Windows Mobile and webOS.
source: comScore via Mashable

iPhone owners and owners of Android devices can now view a new feature launched by Google. Popular Images is accessible from the task bar at the top of the Google home page and allows you to view interesting or popular images. There will be several categories that you can choose from such as Cars, Sports, Movies and Music to name just a few. A special selection called Trends will allow you to see the requests from Google Trends that have the most recent activity. To access this new feature, go to google.com on your mobile browser and click on images. Under the search box you will see some of the top images and  there will be a link to “Browse Popular Images”. The Mountain View based company has been busy. As we reported yesterday, Google has started giving advertisers the option of having phone numbers listed in ads dialed automatically when the number is clicked on by the phone’s user.
source: Google via UnwiredView

It is hard enough to know what you will have for lunch tomorrow, much less try to figure out what the cellphone market will look like in 2013. Still, research firm IDC is predicting that smartphone sales will be greater than 390 million units by that year. Peering deeper into its crystal ball (singular, please), IDC sees that Nokia remains the top selling smartphone throughout the world (minus the U.S., of course). That will allow the Symbian OS to remain number one worldwide. Number two will be a fast moving, comparatively new kid on the block, Android. Google’s open source OS will be powering 68 million smartphones by 2013 according to IDC. Starting in 2008 with just 690,000 handsets, growth to the estimated 2013 figure would represent an annual increase of 150% in Android owners. The iPhone OS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile will round out the top 5 while Linux mobile trends lower and webOS grabs a limited share despite steady growth. So when the next 3 years go very quickly, don’t forget to refer back to this article and we will see if IDC nailed it. By the way, didn’t they pick the Jets to win the Super Bowl this year?
source: IDC via UnwiredView

Last Friday we informed you of a rather unexpected move by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, saying his favorite gadget is the Android-powered HTC Nexus One and not the iPhone. Apple fans can now breathe easy though, as it turns out that Mr. Wozniak didn’t really have this in mind. He has left a comment on Gizmodo’s post about his preference, letting everyone know that he still likes his iPhones the most and he’s just said that the Nexus One is a pretty cool gadget – nothing more. Here’s the full comment by Steve Woz:

“Actually, everyone got it wrong. My favorite phones are my iPhones. When asked what my favorite gadgets were I took it to mean new gadgets I was playing with (that I considered good). I am not a switcher but I’m not going to tell people that the Nexus One is not a good gadget. Same for the Droid. I continually buy and play with new hot gadgets because I gets asked about them all the time. I have had prior Android phones that I didn’t consider good. I usually have between 2 and 6 different cell phones on me, more when there are interesting product introductions.

I try mainly to make good comments but I’m honest about flaws too. I don’t get into arguments trying to claim that there are objective reasons that make one person’s phone better than another’s. It’s subjective. You can’t win such arguments, only have a stressful life doing so. I have no problem praising and learning from non-Apple products as well as Apple products, when they are good.”
source: Gizmodo

It’s very unlikely to find some handsets not offering GPS as one of its standard set of features. Location based services have seen a steady increase in usage thanks partly to their simplicity in getting things accomplished. Google is also taking advantage of this concept and slowly integrating search queries from their web site based on your specific location. Fortunately for Android and iPhone users, Google will start offering suggestions based on the phone’s current or last location – simplifying the experience and making the suggestions more relevant. So if you’re stuck in an unfamiliar spot and want to look up the nearest pizza place, you don’t have to put in specific pieces of information to narrow down choices that are close by. In order to take advantage of this new feature, you have to turn on “Save recent locations” and “allow use of device location” under the Settings link on the google.com web page.
source: Google Mobile Blog