BlackBerry is planning to launch its Secure Work Space service as part of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 for iOS and Android devices in July that will help regain its lost ground in enterprise markets. The service aims at securing data on work and personal devices on all leading platforms as well as its own BB10 OS. BlackBerry aims at enabling access of data like emails, calendar, contacts, documents, tasks, memos and browsing for iOS and Android users behind a corporate firewall using a VPN connection. Current corporate security measures include a thorough testing of devices and then making it a compulsion for all employees to use the secure tested devices for any corporate related work. But BlackBerry is trying to promote the Bring Your Own Device culture by trying to provide its security features on the most used mobile platforms, iOS & Android.
A recent tweet by Jon Frott of CNBC informed that Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch has resigned from Adobe to join Apple in the capacity of Vice President of Technology, directly reporting to Senior Vice President of Technology at Apple, Bob Mansfield. Adobe later gave an official statement stating Lynch to be departing from Adobe and wished him good luck for his future endeavours. According to Adobe’s website Lynch played a prime role in many of Adobe’s technologies after he moved on to Adobe from Macromedia few years ago when Macromedia was acquired by Adobe. Flynch’s key roles included involvement in high support of Flash and his fight against Apple in 2010 to include Flash on iOS, development and management of PDF format and support and development of various cloud services at Adobe.
Major carriers in the US compete against each other by offering huge discounts on handsets and at times even providing them for free of cost, but in exchange they lock down the handset to their carrier and expect their customers to sign a contract for a period of 2 years. But the recent rule set by the Library of Congress makes cell phone unlocking illegal even after the 2 year contract period if it is done by the users directly and not by the carriers. A recent bill proposed by the Senators of various states against the ban on cell phone unlocking has been supported by many small carriers in the US and the association of small carriers. It is generally very difficult for small carriers to offer wide range of smartphones on their networks to attract new customers but with a bill that makes cell phone unlocking legal again they aim to attract new customers on to their networks.
In the ongoing patent battle between Samsung and Apple there have been charges pressed against each other from both sides. Samsung filed a patent infringement charge against Apple claiming that almost all of Apple device using the Infenion baseband chipset are violating Samsung network patents and requested the ITC to ban all Apple devices. The ITC initially ruled against Samsung but later revoked the case and suggested a further study on the case. The latest development on the case is that the case has been further delayed till end of May which might essentially be a sad news for Samsung for now.
The Samsung Galaxy S IV that is scheduled to launch in an exclusive event a while later is said to have dumped ARM and moved on to Imagination’s range of PowerVR GPU for its devices as confirmed by the company. Apple has been using the PowerVR chips since a long time and proving the effectiveness of the chips with extreme graphics running quite smoothly. The latest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 5, sports PowerVR SGX 543MP3 GPU with a 3 core architecture and it is confirmed that Samsung’s Galaxy S4 will be using an almost identical version PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU. The only difference is that PowerVR SGX 544MP GPU will be supporting Direct X 9.3 and will be clocked at 500MHz as opposed to 350MHz in iPhone 5.
iSchool campus is a service aiming to implement usage of iPad for education over various schools in the US with their proprietary apps. The latest addition to their service is Paul Elementary School in Minidoka County, Idaho. Principal Colleen Johnson said that the iPad has dramatically changed how her school operates, and she anticipates Apple’s tablet will be able to completely replace textbooks in the future.
Teachers in Paul Elementary School say that iPad gives ownership of learning to the students and fosters genuine self driven excitement, the students are more excited to learn and who what they know to others. With the introduction of iPads the kids are now being more creative in the school, noted one of their teachers.
Samsung is doing every possible thing to remain on the top of the charts. The new reports from Kantar Media as reported by The Wall Street Journal suggests that Samsung spent the most amount of money for marketing its devices in the US and nearly increased the amount it spent by five fold compared to what it did in the year 2011. Samsung was in Third position for marketing spendings in 2011 with first position taken by Apple followed by HTC and then Samsung but Samsung not only beat HTC in 2012 but also Apple.
Research firm IDC says that 2013 will be the year when the volume of Android tablets sales will finally dethrone iPad from the top with a predicted market share of around of around 48.8% for Android tablets against 46% for iPads. Android tablets might rule by volumes but a major chunk of the profits will still go to Apple as it is the only company owning 46% whereas the 48.8% of Android tablets will be shared amongst hundreds of tablet manufacturers.
Thanks to Amazon, with the introduction of Kindle Fire the importance of smaller and more portable low cost tablets was understood by the market. Since then we have seen a surge of tablets with screen size less than 8″. IDC says that currently almost 50% of the tablets sold overall are with a screen size less than 8″.
Quantas Airways recently refurbished all their aircrafts with new carpeting, lighting, curtains, leather seat covers and cabin dividers. But the best change in their flights seems to be addition of iPads for all classes in their 767 aircraft flying between Honolulu and Sydney. Quantas started testing iPads as in-flight entertainment systems back in 2011 itself.
The initial rollout will feature movies, music, and television shows for their customers that are streamed directly from the Q Streaming service, the company’s in-flight entertainment system based on in-flight Wi-Fi. Quantas will upgrade functionality on the iPads later with interactive games, digital newspapers, magazines, and travel and business apps.
It was an year going really well for Apple and everything it touch turned into gold and everything it did got praised. On March 19th 2012, Apple announced that it will spend $45 billion dividends and share buyback programme for the next 5 years. Right now few analysts feel that it is high time for Apple to announce a bigger dividend program and a higher share buyback program. While Apple pooled up $137.1 billion in cash reserve by the end of December 2012, Brian White of Topeka Capital said that the money will grow to $241 billion by the end of financial year, 2015. As Apple’s money pile is growing at a good rate investors started suggesting a better use for the cash reserve.
iPhone / iPod touch downloads