MUST you have a physical keyboard TW?
Quote from: Arcmanov on April 24, 2012, 06:36:31 PMMUST you have a physical keyboard TW?burr?? lolThat boat already sailed boy arc.The entire point of my post was to throw in the towel on the physical keyboard requirement. Since the Droid 4 won't support our bands.So now I'm considering the touchscreen variety now, in particular the Samsung Galaxy Nexus as mentioned above.sorry if I didn't make that clear.Slamming, how much you paid for yours and where? Seeing them for US$450 on amazon.
Samsung overtakes Apple as world's largest smartphone vendorShifts 31 per cent of total market shareBy Lee BellFri Apr 27 2012, 11:13KOREAN SMARTPHONE MAKER Samsung has overtaken Apple as the world's largest smartphone vendor, according to a report by research firm Strategy Analytics.Global shipments of smartphones grew 41 per cent annually to reach 145 million units in the first quarter.Samsung accounted for 31 per cent market share with shipments rising 253 per cent annually to 44.5 million units. Apple shipped 35.1 million smartphones worldwide, capturing 24 per cent of the market.Alex Spektor, associate director at Strategy Analytics said this was due to a surge in demand for Samsiung's Galaxy models such as the Galaxy Note, Galaxy S II and Galaxy Y. However we're taking the news with a pinch of salt considering Samsung's particularly vague announcements in the past. Last August Samsung said it would no longer release phone sales data.Nevertheless, Ovum analyst Adam Leach advised that the results could be a direct result of Samsung becoming "the poster child for Android smartphones". He said, "The company's Galaxy range has proven a hit with consumers, and Samsung has leveraged its manufacturing and distribution prowess to meet the consumer demand and in the process has become the Android supplier of choice for operators and other retail channels."If the report is correct, it means that Samsung and Apple combined now account for more than half of global smartphone shipments for the first time, outcompeting all other major vendors combined.As for the Finnish phone maker Nokia, Strategy Analytics said the brand managed to maintain its position as the world's third largest smartphone player, but its global market share fell from 23 per cent in the first quarter of 2011 to just eight per cent last quarter. This is Nokia's lowest market share in the smartphone category since 2002.Whether Strategy Analytics' figures are accurate or not, Samsung is on a winning streak. Due to release a new Galaxy device at a launch event in London on 3 May, the Korean giant's smartphone sales are only expected to grow. µ
Kindle Fire now #1 Android tablet, Google control over Android ecosystem could lessenBy Ryan Paul | Published about 20 hours agoData published by comScore shows that Amazon's Kindle Fire has emerged as the dominant Android-based tablet. At the end of February, the Kindle Fire accounted for 54 percent of all Android tablets. The next most popular Android tablet product line is Samsung's Galaxy Tab family, which dropped from 23 percent of Android tablets in December to 15 percent in February.The success of the Fire is no surprise to those paying attention to the tablet market—as we wrote last year, there is healthy demand for a low-cost iPad alternative. Amazon can afford to offer the hardware at a lower price than its rivals because it can make up the difference in content sales. The key factors driving sales of the Fire are likely its low price point, the strength of the Kindle brand, and the breadth of the Amazon content ecosystem.The rising prominence of the Kindle Fire will have significant implications for the Android tablet market. Amazon is using its own application store and a fork of the Android operating system that is based on version 2.3. As Amazon continues to advance the software in its own direction, it could reduce Google’s control over the Android tablet software ecosystem.Third-party application developers who are building software for Android tablets obviously have a big incentive to ensure that their applications are compatible with Amazon’s popular Kindle Fire. But in order to make an application compatible with the Kindle Fire, it can’t be developed using APIs that are exclusive to Ice Cream Sandwich (the latest version of Google’s operating system).It’s not clear yet if Amazon intends to update its fork of the operating system to bring it into alignment with Android 4. Amazon’s changes to the operating system are said to be much deeper than the kind of cosmetic changes that handset manufacturers typically make to differentiate their products. As Amazon’s flavor of the platform continues to diverge, application developers will likely follow in order to reach the device’s audience.If Google wants to keep its own variant of Android relevant on tablets, the search giant will need products that are capable of competing with the Kindle Fire. Google is reportedly planning to launch its own low-cost Nexus tablet, possibly this year. Such a device would be aimed squarely at competing with the Kindle Fire rather than more expensive devices. Google has recently been working to strengthen its own content ecosystem and streamline its various media stores. It's an effort that could help it pursue the same model as Amazon, where content sales are used to subsidize the price of the hardware.It’s worth noting that other major Android manufacturers are starting to enter the budget tablet market. Samsung recently launched the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, a seven-inch tablet that retails for $250. The device, which comes with Ice Cream Sandwich and Google’s application store, compares favorably with the Kindle Fire. Although it’s not quite as cheap, it has slightly more RAM and some of the performance and technical advantages of ICS. Such products could help Google keep its own flavor of Android competitive on tablets.
