Apple became the world’s leader at the number of vulnerabilities

Apple Corporation became the world’s leader at the number of vulnerabilities detected in its applications, writes Ars technica with reference to the research conducted by the company Secunia specialized in IT security.
Apple managed to overcome the former leader at the number of vulnerabilities – Oracle Corporation. The third place is occupied by Microsoft, HP, Adobe, IBM, VMWare, Cisco, Google and Mozilla Corporation are also in the top ten. In general, these 10 companies are responsible for 38 % of all detected vulnerabilities.
The report covering the first half of the year 2010 doesn’t reflect the seriousness of the detected errors, bugs and vulnerabilities. Thus, the products from Apple application developers can be rather safe if their disadvantages are very difficult to use for cracking.
Secunia has been keeping the record of vulnerabilities since 2005 and annually detects in average 4464 problems connected with security. More than 80 % of vulnerabilities allow cracking the system remotely, 10 % require for cracking the access to the local system and 8% require the access to the local network.

Research In Motion reduces sales but increases profits

The Canadian producer of BlackBerry devices, Research in Motion, has accounted for the first financial quarter of 2011. The company informed about the profit which exceeds the forecasts of the analytics against the growing sales of corporate smartphones. According to the company, Blackberry smartphones are sold not bad at the corporate as well as at the private markets.

According to RIM, in the first quarter the sales increased by 24% and were 4.24 bln dollars. The experts predicted higher figures, somewhere at the level of 4.35 bln dollars. The net profit of the company has increased by 20% up to 768.9 mln dollars against 643 mln dollars a year earlier.

The market analytics say that despite the traditional ruff of RIM is a phone with a fully functional keyboard, the company should have present at the market a smartphone with a big sensor display, similar to iPhone, to compete more successfully at the consumer’s market. Also RIM can’t boast of an impressive list of applications from BlackBerry apps developers.

The Mackie Research Company suppose RIM now will be difficult to compete with Google Android and Apple iPhone at the smartphone market just because of the absence of a smartphone with a big sensor display.

Android is leading at the free apps segment, Windows Mobile is dragging behind

According to analytics, more than half of Android applications at online apps stores are free, however, paid ones cost more than those for iPhone.

There are about 70,000 applications at the online store Android Market, about 57% of them are free. According to the analytical company Distimo, neither similar store can boast of the same share of free applications. That’s definitely good news for those who own an Android-based device or are going to buy new one.

In analytics’ opinion, it’s due to the technical limitations of the Android Market. Thus, only Android apps developers from 9 countries can add paid products and only the users from 13 countries can buy them whereas the sore operates in 46 countries. The additional restriction is the necessity to register at the Google Checkout service – only after this one can effect a purchase. At the biggest online apps store – Apple App Store – your account must be also linked to the iTunes Store that’s why in terms of convenience they are similar.

Intel optimizes ОS Google Android under the х86 architecture

The Intel Corporation is working on the optimization of the operation system Google Android for using it at the devices with х86 compatible processors.
The Android platform was originally developed for smartphones and ARM chips are usually used in such devices. However, the operation system is compatible with other architectures, in particular, with MIPS and x86. By the way, last year Acer presented a netbook with the processor Atom and Android OS.
It should be noted that the modification of Android optimized especially for x86 compatible chips will be based on Version 2.2 (Froyo) of the platform. This innovation will enable Android application development not only for smartphones, but also for netbooks and smart books. This version of the operation system is planned to be released by the end of the summer; third-party developers will be able to get acquainted with the source code of the product if they want.
The Intel version of Android is expected to be used in netbooks, tablet computers and other gadgets with the х86 processors. First of all, it refers to the Atom chips with little energy consumption.
Let’s remind that moving Android to the х86 platform is also done by the participants of the Android-x86 project.