Palm, Inc being sold to Nokia, Pre future uncertain

Development, Palm News 19 Responses »
Apr 012009

An insider report from a close friend of mine over at Palm has informed me of talks that Nokia has begun talks to make a bid for 50% of Palm’s stock, giving them majority share and ownership of the Sunnyvale, California company. Nokia, who recently bought Trolltech’s Qt software, may be planning on turning the webOS into a platform for their newer Symbian devices while also taking out their top competitor.

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, Palm asked their CEO Ed Colligan to step down and brought in Kimmo Kinnunen, Nokia’s Director.
No news has been released on the fate of Palm’s much anticipated device, the Pre, however my sources have information that Sprint may be getting a shipment of new Nokia devices on April 31, including a device known simply as Nebula.

This news is breaking and I have very little information, however, I will update this post with the latest information as it comes to me; my source has gone dead currently, so hopefully I can get some more information as soon as possible!

Posted by Ryan Rix, Vice Administrator at 9:56 pm

On smartphone usage in Great Britain

Palm News No Responses »
Apr 012009

AdMob’s recent figures showed that the UK is full of (Apple IOS-based) smartphone users. An UK-based consulting company called ComScore has performed a tally of smartphone users and their behaviours, and figured out a few interesting things.

First of all, iPhone users are surprisingly active. 93% of the population have used mobile media on their device, with 75 percent of them using their iPhones to send and receive email. The App Store also turned out to be extremely popular:

The App Store is also extremely popular among iPhone owners, with 55.6 per cent accessing news and information via a downloaded application, compared with 22.1 per cent of smartphone owners, and 6.3 per cent of all mobile phone users. The iPhone has also provided a boost to the mobile games sector, with 37 per cent of iPhone owners downloading a game and 18.6 per cent purchasing one. Only 5.6 per cent of smartphone owners and 2.7 percent of mobile phone users purchased a game in January.

Finally, here is a table they provided with further information:

Top Activities Among iPhone Users vs. All Smartphone Users
Three-month average ending January 2009
Total U.K. Age 13+, Smartphone Owners
Source: comScore Mobile

Per cent of Per cent of Per cent of
Activity iPhone Smartphone All Mobile
Users Users Phone Users
Accessed news/info via browser 79.7 48.0 19.8
Accessed e-mail 75.4 35.4 13.1
Listened to mobile music 65.6 40.5 22.6
Accessed news or info via
downloaded application 55.6 22.1 6.3
Accessed social networking site 54.8 29.6 12.7
Accessed weather 55.5 26.1 9.2
Used web search 55.1 31.9 12.3

Cutting a long story short: the iPhone is an insane success story. Apples decision to “force” users into registering themselves with iTunes immediately has turned out to be exactly what the average user needs…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 11:20 am
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