Smartphones Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Over a quarter of photos now taken with smartphones, according to NPD

by Mike Schramm (Dec 22nd, 2011)

I'll 'fess up -- on our wish list earlier this week, I was the one who asked (reasonably, I thought) for an Apple Camera. I've been shopping for a DSLR lately, and while the quality of some cameras are great, the interfaces are pretty terrible. I really do wish that Apple would step in and ...

Does motherhood sell smartphones?

by Mike Schramm (Nov 15th, 2011)

This might be a late contender for weirdest "mobile usage" news item of the year: A new study, put together by an online resource called BabyCenter, claims that there's a tie between women becoming mothers and women buying smartphones. 53% of moms surveyed by the site reported that they bought ...

Pew: Half of US customers use phones to get info in realtime

by Mike Schramm (Aug 15th, 2011)

Have you ever been out and about with your cell phone, needed some information, and looked it up right there on the spot? You're not alone: The Pew Internet Research Project has released a report that says more than half of US cell phone owners have used their devices to get information they ...

Mobile apps leaving the web behind in usage

by Mike Schramm (Jun 21st, 2011)

Mobile ad company Flurry has released a new analysis on its official blog stating that customers are making the transition lately from using the mobile web to spending more of their daily time in mobile apps. In the early days of smartphone prominence (and by "early days," we mean about three ...

Average US smartphone data usage climbs 89%, cost per MB drops 46%

by Mel Martin (Jun 20th, 2011)

Using your iPhone more and more? You're not alone. Data usage on all smartphones is soaring, according to new research by Nielsen. In a monthly analysis of cell phone bills for more than 65,000 lines, smartphone users, especially iPhone and Android users, are using more data than ever. ...

Report: Not much has changed in the growing smartphone market

by Mike Schramm (May 20th, 2011)

It's that time of the month again -- another report is out from Millenial Media about advertising on the smartphone platforms, with more conclusions about what the market's been up to lately. This month, the big news is... that there's not a lot of big news at all. Apple continues to sit on top ...

Comparing Apple and RIM smartphone numbers for the past year

by Mike Schramm (Apr 25th, 2011)

There's been a lot of back and forth lately about Apple and RIM and their smartphone sales -- of course, with the iPhone, Apple has laid claim on the "new and shiny" market. But RIM continues to be huge, with lots of users still stuck on the BlackBerry and its various services. Jim Dalrymple at ...

Gartner says Microsoft will surpass Apple in mobile by 2015

by Mel Martin (Apr 7th, 2011)

That's the prediction from analysts at Gartner today. In a new report, Gartner's experts say the Microsoft-Nokia partnership will give Windows the number 2 spot in 2015, with a 20 percent market share after the Android OS grabs 48.8 percent of the smartphone market. Gartner predicts Apple will ...

Apple's mobile partner in China announces its own iPhone rival

by Dana Franklin (Mar 1st, 2011)

The parent company of China Unicom, Apple's sole partner for carrying the iPhone in China, revealed plans on Monday to release its own mobile computing platform. Dubbed "Wophone," the platform will compete directly with Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Last year, Apple partnered with China ...

Lonely Planet launches audio walking tours in London

by Mike Schramm (Feb 18th, 2011)

This is a cool new feature in travel apps that I'd like to see a lot more of: Lonely Planet has released some walking audio tours as apps on the App Store. Unfortunately, all of the tours so far are just based in London, but the apps will walk you around some of London's most interesting areas, ...

Flaming Lips create tune for 12 smartphones

by Mike Schramm (Feb 17th, 2011)

This is a little trippy. The band Flaming Lips once released a studio album containing four CDs designed to be played all at the same time. Flaming Lips has upped the ante and uploaded 12 different clips to YouTube, which are all supposed to be played on 12 different smartphones at the same time ...

Apple, ASUS top PC World satisfaction survey

by Mike Schramm (Nov 29th, 2010)

Apple has garnered yet another win in a customer satisfaction survey -- this time it's PC World conferring the honors onto Cupertino, as Apple has topped both the laptop and desktop categories for most reliable and well-supported computer products. PC World says that Apple also did well in its ...

Apple grabs nearly 50 percent of handset industry profits

by Sam Abuelsamid (Nov 2nd, 2010)

For the better part of a decade, Apple has consistently shown that having a comparatively small market share by volume is no impediment to making money, and lots of it. Despite the company's PC share hovering in single digits through most of the 2000s, Apple has been far and away the most ...

AT&T trains retail staff on non-iPhone smartphones

by Sam Abuelsamid (Oct 23rd, 2010)

When the iPhone burst upon the world three and a half years ago, the smartphone landscape was very different from the one we see today. Palm Treos, Blackberries and Windows Mobile were the dominant players; they were mainly selected by geeks and people that needed them for business. In the ...

T-Mobile FCC memo cites Android app that caused network chaos

by Michael Rose (Oct 19th, 2010)

Remember, back in 2007 -- you know, Year One BTAS (Before The App Store) -- when Steve Jobs gave Apple's rationale for keeping the iPhone a closed platform versus allowing native app development? "Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up," he ...