44% of British people can’t imagine their lives without mobile phones

According to the research conducted by the BM Savings Company, more than half of Britain’s population (51%) never leaves their houses without mobile phones. 44% of British people can’t even imagine their lives without mobile devices.

26% of respondents admit that they feel upset after leaving their mobile phones at home and missing calls. About three quarters of the questioned people spend half an hour talking on the phone daily. And the youth (88%) don’t regret spending more than two hours daily chatting on the phone or using various mobile applications. As a result, mobile application developers work hard to create more and more useful applications for iPhones and iPads, etc.

Half of the participants consider mobile banking the most convenient financial service and 49% of them prefer dealing with real people while solving financial matters. At the same time 52% are satisfied to use mobile banking at any time at any place and 38% use this service when can’t reach the bank.

Apple updated MobileMe: iPhone can’t be stolen now

Apple has updated the data synchronization service for mobile devices MobileMe. The main innovation is the availability of thе application Find My iPhone for iPhones, Apple iPads and iPod touch players. It represents a port in the form of an individual client’s application of the service for finding stolen portable devices from Apple.

In other words, Find My iPhone is a branded ‘anti-stolen’ system – the user and the former owner of the device can see the interactive map where the position of the lost device is located with the help of GPS or antenna signals. He can not only apply to the police having provided them with the exact place where the device is but he can also send remotely the command for deleting all the data from the memory of the phone or he can display the message on the screen with the request to return the phone to its legal owner. The application itself is free, however, you’ll have to subscribe for MobileMe which costs $99 a month if you want to use it.

Earlier the information that Apple would annul the subscription fee for using MobileMe at the next update of the service appeared. However, it hasn’t happened. Probably this step will encourage iPhone apps developers to create cheaper applications for protecting personal data of the owners of Apple gadgets.
Apart from Find My iPhone, the update of the MobileMe service has touched its other components as well. In particular, the user’s web interface has been changed – the mail client has been adapted to wide screens (for iPhone 4), the possibility for creating and using the rules for sorting letters as well as the instrument panel for text formatting has been added.

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 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.

Smartphones market finally recovers from crisis

The Digitimes analytical resource has informed that smartphones market exceeded level of pre-crisis period (2007) for the first time in the first quarter of 2010. During the 1Q 55.2 millions of smartphones were sold, and market growth amounted to 67% (compared to the first quarter of 2009).

Nokia becomes a leader on the market; it shipped 21.4 millions of smartphones and considerably strengthened its position in all the regions, particularly in South America. It is also noteworthy that share of Nokia touch screen models for the first time exceeded 50%. So, mobile software developers should consider this fact as a good sign for their innovative applications.

The second player on the smartphones market is RIM: it sold 10.59 millions of devices in the first quarter. It also managed to improve its position in Latin America: the growth was an impressive (297 percent!!!).
Apple is on the third place with 16% of the market. Last year it had only 11%. We sure that specialists who work at apps development for iPhones are happy for their beloved company .

iAd from Apple: ads in mobile apps

This month Apple has introduced its new mobile advertising system iAd. It differs from competitors (for example, Google’s AdMob), because iAd integrated directly into iPhone OS. Moreover, these ads will be stored on Apple servers.

Advertisements will be interactive and will look like small applications. It is already known that some of them will be created using HTML5 technology. According to this new business model, iPhone apps developers will receive only 60% of proceeds from the iAd advertising.

The iAd system was announced by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. According to his words, the average user works with iPhone mobile apps about half an hour a day. So, demonstrating new ads every three minutes the company will get about a billion hits a day.

Also Steve Jobs stressed that Apple is not going to focus on the quantity of advertising, on the contrary it will intend to raise its quality making from ads a new source of positive emotions.

The iAd platform will be integrated directly into the operating system, and will run ads within applications. Apple engineers want to change the approach to development of the most commercials: it is proposed to use not only text and image links, but multimedia applications that will be embedded into other applications ( such as games, readers, RSS-clients etc.). The platform will make its debut this summer.

Read also: Mobile Application Development: Boom in the IT World

Nokia wants to launch own “App Store” for mobile apps developers

Graig Williams, Managing Director of Nokia in South-eastern Europe, has admitted in his recent interview to Die Presse (the Internet edition) that his company developed a new product, which main task is to press Apple on mobile market. So, Williams has promised that Nokia will introduce a direct competitor for iPhone this year. This device is supposed to focus on network services. According to experts’ opinions, the very App Store, connecting iPhone apps developers and users, has greatly contributed to success of iPhone on mobile market. According to Greig Williams’s words, Nokia is going to create a similar, but more open service (without total control, as in Apple’s project).

By the way, the last Nokia’s multitasking OS Meego is meant not only for smartphones but for Tablet PCs also. In addition, Nokia plans to produce some new devices, based on this OS. However, Williams refuses to tell anything about future competitors of iPad.

Creating mobile applications with jQuery

We have already written about web development for iPhone using html and js only. And today we want to tell you about jQTouch, a plug-in for well known Javascript-framework jQuery. It allows to create web applications for touch phones very easy – for all the phones with a touch screen and with finger-oriented interface. Such as iPhone, for example, and as based on Android HTC Hero, Dream, Magic, and a lot of different WM-communicators with different shells.

Let’s enumerate some features of jQTouch:

•    It is very easy to control behavior of all the components.
•    It is possible to create themes.
•    There is some interaction with a phone (for example, you can determine its orientation).
•    It supports animation and various interface features of iPhone.
•    This is jQuery, and this says it all!

The plug-in is very nice, but still we do not have a full application at the output. Why? As we do not have access to such things as the accelerometer, vibration, sound and so on.

And, by the way, using such frameworks as PhoneGap you can transfer your mobile apps written with html and js to any other platform. For example, PhoneGap, supports iPhone, Android, Blackberry (OS 4.5), Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm and Maemo. But remember that developing iPhone applications you need MacBook, license and all that other stuff.

Web development for iPhone using html and js only

In some cases, there is no need to use Objective C and special licenses to develop web applications for iPhone. All you need is your knowledge of html and js.

Of course, you can just create a web site and adapt it for iPhone. But we want to add some more information about it.

First, with the advent of html 5 we all get the chance to work with local databases. Moreover, all the browsers based on the WebKit engine (we mean the last updates, of course) support this feature now. It’s so easy to work with them:
db = openDatabase (“YourDemoDB”, “2.0″, “HTML5 DemoDB”, 134000);
The function of database creation refers to the following parameters:
• name of the database;
• its version;
• display name;
• size in bytes.

Then open the transaction and perform the needed actions:
db.transaction (function (tx)
(
tx.executeSql (“DELETE FROM tbl_test WHERE id =?”, [item.id]);
));

Secondly, it is worth saying about the possibilities of off-line work with creation of a manifest-file. More information about it can be found on the Apple website.

So, manifest is an ordinary file, such as css or js, for example, that contains information about cache of your application. When you enter the page for the first time all the data, indicated in this file will be cached.
Now let’s see what it looks like in practice:

1. Indicate a link to some file on our page

2. Create the file
CACHE MANIFEST
demoimages/image_1.jpg
demoimages/image_2.jpg
demoimages/icon.jpg
And that is all! It works. You have developed web application for iPhone and can work fully with your cache: update it, handle events, and so on.

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.