2010 September » TamsPalm - the Palm OS / web OS Blog

HP: we will sell 15 million webOS printers

Sep 282010

We have heard a lot about HP’s plans for webOS-enabled printers – unfortunately, none of this has materialized so far.

Engadget now reports the following quote from higher HP management:

Bradley also made the rather bold promise that HP will sell 15 million webOS-based printers next year alone, and he predicted that tablets will become a $40 billion market within the next few years — a market that HP plans to enter in a “big way.”

As of this writing, not a single such product has been released or leaked – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

Palm presents at App World 2010 in London

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 282010

Before the webOS revolution, Palm didn’t show too much activity in terms of developer relations. Ever since webOS was out, this changed.

The latest stint sees a long-term Palm veteran present at the App World in London:
free palm developer Palm presents at App World 2010 in London

Surprisingly, the sessions are free to attend – find out more via the URL below:
http://www.mobileappsworld.net/workshops/palm_workshop.php

ComScore on August 2010 in the USA

Hardware News No Responses »

Sep 272010

When it comes to dealing with stats about the mobile market, the best principle follows the line of “the more, the merrier”.

ComScore has now shared its data for August 2010 in the mobile market – the smartphone platform share looks like this:

Top Smartphone Platforms 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2010 Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers
	Apr-10	Jul-10	Point Change
Total Smartphone Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
RIM	41.1%	39.3%	-1.8
Apple	25.1%	23.8%	-1.3
Google	12.0%	17.0%	5.0
Microsoft	14.0%	11.8%	-2.2
Palm	4.9%	4.9%	0.0

When looking at phone manufacturers in general, things look different:

Top Mobile OEMs 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Apr-10	Jul-10	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Samsung	22.1%	23.1%	1.0
LG	21.8%	21.2%	-0.6
Motorola	21.6%	19.8%	-1.8
RIM	8.4%	9.0%	0.6
Nokia	8.1%	7.8%	-0.3

Finally, a look at what US customers actually do:

Mobile Content Usage 3 Month Avg. Ending Jul. 2010 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2010 Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers Ages 13+ Source: comScore MobiLens
	Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers
	Apr-10	Jul-10	Point Change
Total Mobile Subscribers	100.0%	100.0%	N/A
Sent text message to another phone	64.6%	66.0%	1.4
Used browser	31.1%	33.6%	2.5
Used downloaded apps	29.8%	31.4%	1.6
Played games	22.4%	22.3%	-0.1
Accessed social networking site or blog	19.9%	21.8%	1.9
Listened to music on mobile phone	13.8%	14.5%	0.7

Cyber warfare: Styx virus targets Iranian nuclear systems

Security No Responses »

Sep 272010

iran virus Cyber warfare: Styx virus targets Iranian nuclear systems A lot has been spoken and written about cyber warfare in the past – so far, we have not seen any actual cases.

This has now changed. TechPinger.com reports the following:

Security experts first learned of the new strain of software in June, but only disclosed its ability to infect major industrial systems in recent weeks. “This is cyber sabotage,” said Roel Schouwenberg, a senior researcher for the security firm Kaspersky Labs. “Stuxnet is designed to basically bring down a plant or take down operations.”

Given the bold passage above, it should be clear that there is some sort of governmental force behind it – let’s see when the Iranians retaliate.

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Sepehrnoush; scitexing by Tam Hanna

New webOS 2.0 screenshots, device numbers emerge

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 272010

Even though I will not comment further on the upcoming Palm hardware, it is always nice to see the products getting closer to launch by the minute.

First of all, the German equivalent to the FCC has just approved the device IDs pictured below:
palm pre 2 New webOS 2.0 screenshots, device numbers emerge

Engadget furthermore got a nice pile of screenshots; the most interesting one is pictured below:
palm webos 2 New webOS 2.0 screenshots, device numbers emerge

Not much to add as of this writing…

Tam Hanna speaking in Portoroz

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Sep 262010

This one is a last-minute announcement for all true Tam Hanna fans.

I will be speaking at the Linux Conference in Portoroz. My topic is an introduction to Symbiaan, more information is in the image:
portoroz conference Tam Hanna speaking in Portoroz

Find out more via the URL below:
http://linux-konferenca.org/?lang=eng

Funny stuff: big government discovers Qt

Funny Stuff No Responses »

Sep 262010

Governmental institutes have provided readers of the Tamoggemon Content Network quite a few laughs over the years. The latest one is funny as long as you don’t pay taxes in the EU.

Mobile Business Briefing reports the following:

A new European research project aimed at developing technology that will allow applications to be ported across multiple platforms has received EUR10 million in EU funding…

The initiative, known as Webinos, is led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (Fokus) in Germany … as are device vendors Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

Webinos is researching a framework for apps … across a wide range of connected environments

…

Looks like the EU hasn’t quite discovered Qt yet – or is there someone making a nice bit of cash essentially duplicating what TrollTech has already done?

Access launches ADN Foundry

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 242010

The folks at Access Co’s didn’t get too much press here recently – given the sad state of ALP and the ever-looming threat of Operas web browser, there really wasn’t all that much to write.

Access has now sent out the announcement below:

ACCESS recently announced the *ADN Foundry* (http://www.accessdevnet.com/index.php/ADN-Foundry/Welcome.html), our new hardware partner program. In the Foundry, we connect you with our hardware partners who are providing devices for development and deployment of your solutions using ACCESS technologies. Our first partner is ACEECA of New Zealand, who has recently delivered two new Garnet OS-based devices including the PDA32 (http://www.accessdevnet.com/index.php/ADN-Foundry/Welcome.html), a new semi-rugged PDA. This is the first new PDA form-factor device in many years and is ready for developers to use for development, testing and deployment of their Garnet-based solutions”

Let’s see what happens next. Garnet OS could be used for another WristPDA, which could eliminate many of the weaknesses seen on the original device due to more advanced components.

The question is whether Access manages to get some work done…

HP’s eStation runs…Android

Palm News 4 Responses »

Sep 212010

We have heard loads and loads of statements about a webOS-powered printer from HP.

HP has now released a “smart printer” called eStation – but the OS used for the tablet is Android. This can clearly be seen in the image below, which hits us via Engadget:
hp estation web os HPs eStation runs...Android

As of this writing, it is not known whether HP will ever release such a tablet with webOS. However, it would be foolish for HP not to offer some kind of printing solution for webOS…

HP: webOS tablets will be iPad-like

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 212010

Palm has had plans for a webOS tablet for some time – unfortunately, no hardware has leaked so far due to the excellent work of Palm’s impressive IP management director (who, while talkative, has frequently denied requests for interviews).

An email sent to some developers contains the following passage:

Now that we are officially part of HP, we are going full speed ahead with our applications initiative. Our proprietary operating system, webOS, is now the OS that will be used in HP’s mobile devices. This includes mobile handsets as well as tablet-style devices similar to the iPad. We will accordingly leverage Palm’s ability to innovate and the scale of HP’s vast install base and distribution network previously unavailable to us.

As of this writing, not much more is known – stay tuned for further info as we get it!

The Productive Programmer – book review

Book reviews No Responses »

Sep 192010

Neither technology nor management books are new – we have reviewed loads of both types on the Tamoggemon Content Network over the years. O’Reilly’s “the productive programmer” wants to change the genre – can it stack up?

Neal Ford chose to subdivide the book into two parts. Part number one looks at various interesting tools which make your work easier. Think about things like virtual desktops, multiple clipboards and so on – even though the small things may not make too much of a difference at first glance, the long-term effects of a minute a day have been documented here in the past.

Part two looks at things which programmers can do to make their lives simpler. This is the part of the tome which I didn’t really like – very little of the information is applicable for C and C++ – most of it is for dynamic languages like Ruby, with an occasional comment about Java.

As usual for O’Reilly, the book is easy to read and has a decently high paper quality.

In the end, the book contains a lot of small yet interesting hints – but unfortunately does not leave me 100% satisfied. If you expected a huge performance increase, forget it – on the other hand, the current price of about 35$ is not that steep…

Mobile app pricing across platforms

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Sep 162010

Swedish case maker Krusell has benefited greatly from the reports on case sales which are released once a month.

The research firm Distimo has now joined the fray, offering the figures below. It shows which price ranges are popular on which platform:

The chart below provides additional information:

Get the full report here:
http://www.distimo.com/report/download-latest

Gartner on 2014 phone market shares

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Sep 162010

If yours truly were to run a market research institute, he would try to stay away from dates researched by other companies as to make the industry as whole appear more “in the know”.

Gartner and IDC were not so smart. The latter has released its take on 2014 a few days ago, and Gartner now follows suite with a completely different set of figures:
gartner on 2014 Gartner on 2014 phone market shares

Not much to add here – stay tuned as we try to help you navigate the stats jungle…

Palm holds developer congress at MWC 2011

Palm News No Responses »

Sep 152010

Last year, the Mobile World Congress was host to developer events by Sony Ericsson and Google – while the first went well, the last one failed miserably causing discontent due to their idea to give out Android devices.

The 3GSMA has now announced the following:

The GSMA is happy to announce three new App Developer Conferences (ADCs) confirmed for App Planet! We will partner with IDG World Expo to offer Macworld Mobile, a mobile developer event for the Apple iPhone and iPad platforms. In addition, Research in Motion (RIM) and Palm have signed on to produce ADCs for their platform developers.

Not much to add here…