European Commission joined the antimonopoly trial against Apple

The European Commission joined the antimonopoly trial against Apple which the US Federal Trade Commission initiated at the beginning of July. It means that the verdict can be taken in 4-6 months, announced the New York Post.

It should be noted that officially FTC hasn’t announced about the trial. According to the American press, it concerns the rules of publishing applications in the App Store which Apple introduced in April. In particular, the vendor banned the usage of tools for application porting. It deprived mobile apps developers of the possibility of the official sales of Flash applications. The company Adobe which possesses this technology declared about its intention to struggle against this decision.

Moreover, in July Apple introduced the new rules of using the statistical information which is formed by applications on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. In particular, the new rules deprive the company AdMob of earning money on mobile advertising. In May Google announced about the close of the deal on acquiring this company at $750,000. Last month the executive director of AdMob said that the given ban hadn’t come into force. If the ban becomes effective, iphone apps developers will have problems with their applications.

Google starts fighting against piracy on the Android platform

Google has developed a new way of fighting against piracy in the mobile application market. Now Android apps developers will be able to suppress illegal copying of their products.

The developers who want to protect their software from illegal copying will be able to install a special module into their applications which will occasionally connect to Google servers for checking the license of each separate copy of the product (in accordance with the statistics of downloading at the Android Market store).

If the application was bought illegally, the Google module will perform the action preplanned by the authors, for example, the application can be moved to a trial mode, blocked or even deleted from the device.

The application with the built-in system of verification from Google can be installed only at official Google phones. Thus, those  who use Android modified versions won’t be able to try protected mobile applications in mobile application development.

.

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.

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.

Motorola will present a new Droid on June 23

Motorola will present its new smartphone Droid of the next generation on June 23, wrote Engadget.

The smartphone based on the Android OS will be announced a day before the official launch of iPhone 4 sales. At the same time it isn’t reported which smartphone will be advertised. At present it is known that Motorola is developing two new models – Droid 2 and Droid X.

The directors of Motorola and the mobile operator Verizon Wireless as well as one of Vice Presidents of Google Andy Rubin and the Head of Adobe Shantanu Narayen will take part in the press-conference.

Engadget also published a brief review of the smartphone Droid X. The smartphone will be equipped with a 4.4-inch screen and a resolution of 854×480 pixels. Droid X also has a 8- megapixel camera with the option of video recording with high definition in the 720p format. The given set of functions opens new possibilities for Android mobile app developers as the smartphone will work on the Android 2.1 OS.

The date of this smartphone coming into the market is not announced. At the same time the first model Droid Motorola was announced at the end of October 2009. On the territory of the USA this model came into the market in November.

Google accuses Apple of monopolizing the mobile advertising market

Recently Apple has changed the text of the agreement with the mobile application developers. In the new variant of the agreement, it is clearly stated that the company prohibits third party advertising agencies to collect the data about iPhone users through the applications created for this platform. Thus, de facto Apple bans third party advertising agencies from using contextual advertising as well as advertising which will one way or another react to users’ actions. However, such restrictions don’t apply to Apple itself.

The new rules will take effect from July 1, simultaneously with the launch of the new Apple mobile advertising platform — iAds. Google is sure that with such actions Apple simply cuts its way at the highly competitive advertising market.

The first version of the agreement with iPhone apps developers appeared in April. At that time it forbade transferring statistical data to ‘third party analytical companies’ which had helped in creating targeted advertisements. This step was accepted with dissatisfaction and led to the formal investigation from the side of the US Federal Trade Commission.

The updated version of the agreement differs by even harder limitations which, first of all, are directed to blocking large advertising network systems such as Google and Microsoft.

Android beats iPhone in China

According to the AdMob Company, working in the sphere of mobile advertisement, there are 10.7 mln iPhones and 8.7 mln devices based on Android in the USA. If other gadgets using iPhone OS are taken into account, the number of devices will increase up to 18.3 mln.

In some countries especially in Western Europe the Apple platform is still far ahead (and iPhone apps development is still in its prime), sometimes at the ration 10:1. China is the only country with the opposite situation.

Most devices working on iPhone OS are in North America (49%) and Western Europe (28%). Among countries the leaders are the USA (44%), Great Britain (9%), France (6%), Canada (5%) and Japan (4%).

What concerns ‘googlephones’, in April 75% of them were concentrated in North America, followed by Asia (12%) and Western Europe (11%).

It should be noted that AdMob counts only the devices connected to its advertising network. Apple states that it has sold 85 mln iPhone communicators and iPod touch players for the last three years and Google claims it activates one hundred thousand Android-based gadgets daily (and it provokes increase in the number of Android apps developers), but that’s quite difficult to find out how many phones are actually in use.

A month ago AdMob reported that for the first time the Android traffic of its network exceeded the traffic of iPhone devices in the USA.

Android has defeated Apple in the fight for the U.S. market

According to NPD Group iPhone OS was bypassed by Android OS in the United States in the first quarter of 2010. So, Google has 28% of the market, it puts them on the second place behind Research in Motion (36%), Apple is on third place with 21%.

According to the same research agency, this success of Android is connected with its close cooperation with mobile operators. For example, Verizon offers phones based on Android, as well as Blackberry offers its program “buy one get one free.” But in any case the only operator offering Apple phones, AT&T, is still the leader, owning 32% of the market. It followed by Verizon, actively gaining momentum and managing 30% of the U.S. market.

It is quite possible that Apple will regain its position after the release of the next-generation iPhone, which is expected this summer. But remember the fundamental difference between Android and iPhone, the latter don’t share its OS with third companies, establishing its rules for iPhone apps developers and alone collecting the cream from sales. By contrast Google is on a completely different way, giving its OS to everyone and allowing others make flourishing business from Android apps developments. Besides the exclusive contract between Apple and AT&T was signed for 5 years, which means that all this time Google will make a profit not only on the devices manufacturers, but also on active ads of mobile operators.

The other side of the coin is that Apple has never aspired to be the first. We don’t think that Steve Jobs cannot sleep because his company is somewhere on the third place.

Mobile OS Racing: BlackBerry, Android and iPhone. Who Wins and Who Loses?

comScore, a well known web statistics provider, released the results of its regular research. It conducted a study of the American mobile market, analyzing platforms of the most popular phones and smartphones.
So, BlackBerry smartphones kept their leadership in the USA. The comScore study covered the period from November, 2009 to February, 2010. And at this time BlackBerry occupied 43% of the market. This is 1.7% more than in August-October, 2009.

Nevertheless, positions of BlackBerry were threatened by the Android platform. This OS from Google, that took the fancy of mobile apps developers all over the world, demonstrated the highest growth rates. Android needed just a quarter to increase its presence in the United States from 2.8% to 7.1%. At the same time, the market share of mobile operating system from Microsoft declined from 19.7% to 15.7% during the analyzed period. On the other hand, there were no changes in the rates of iPhone: Apple smartphones stably occupied 25.1% of the U.S. market.

So, mobile application development for Android and iPhone platforms can be estimated as good investment in your future development.

Android becomes even more real: new toys for mobile apps developers

Now we can touch and feel Android in Oxagile office not only on screens of our mobile phones. We have got quite a full-fledged idol and can address it in terms of worship.

Artist Andrew Bell talked with guys from Google and together with Dyzplastic he created something what can be called as “designer toy”. This creature in the flesh represents a popular logo that has become favorite one for those who work at application development for Android OS.

Android is available in variety of skins from the 10th of February (with international delivery services!). Its head rotates, as well as hands, its price is about seven dollars, and the height is three inches.

Mobile software developers working for Oxagile think that Android toy can become the same legendary hero as Be@rbrick and Memobot.