Mihăiță Bamburic

Suddenly RIM is in the news again, and this time it’s not about financial troubles or product delays to 2013.

Instead, the Canadian manufacturer announced the introduction of its new 4G LTE BlackBerry Playbook, along with the specifications of the 4G LTE 7-inch tablet aimed to bring stability to a company that’s facing difficult financial problems. When’s it coming and where?

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As manufacturers release upgrades to Android 4.0, and people buy Ice Cream Sandwich-based smartphones, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) accounts for 15.9 percent market share of the Android operating system family, which is the highest distribution level since its introduction in October 2011. This statistic is provided by Google based upon the number of devices accessing Google Play within a 14-day period up to August 1. Net Applications rates ICS at an even higher percentage of the Android market.

Android 4.0.3 to 4.0.4 account for 15.8 percent Android market share, a whopping 99.37 percent of the Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich deployment. After the release of popular Android smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III running Android 4.0.4 or HTC One X running Android 4.0.3 as well as the updates to Android 4.0.4 to Sony Xperia S, Samsung Galaxy S II to Android 4.0.3, Motorola RAZR MAXX to Android 4.0.4, the update of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus to 4.0.4 on Verizon and GSM owners who haven’t yet updated to 4.1 and to other older devices, ICS 4.0.3-4.0.4 is justifiably more popular than Android 4.0-4.0.2, which is now just a speck in its rear view mirror.

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Change doesn’t happen overnight at Microsoft, but when the Redmond, Wash.-based corporation simply announced the new Outlook mail service yesterday, it was a big surprise. But surprise attacks can prove advantageous, and six hours after the Outlook team announced the service via Twitter, a million people had signed up for it.

What You Get

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Was it just yesterday that Microsoft unveiled the new Outlook, which will replace Hotmail? I ask because in just six hours, the service reached a remarkable milestone.

“One million people have signed up for a new, modern email experience at Outlook.com. Thanks!” Microsoft tweeted a quarter day after the launch.

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Microsoft updated its email service yesterday to Outlook, changing the interface and adding new features to its Live/Hotmail e-mail service. Among the new features there’s currently the possibility to change your @hotmail.com, @msn.com or @live.com e-mail address to the new @outlook.com. You should hurry to get one now, as the one you want may be gone later.

Upgrading your e-mail address takes three simple steps and afterwards you’ll be able to receive and send new mail from your @outlook.com address.

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Twitter day. That’s how the past 24 hours can be characterized, and analysis of Twitter accounts and tweets by Semiocast only underscores it.

Semiocast's study reveals that the social network has 500 million accounts with 140 million of them in the U.S. alone in the first half of 2012.

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After attracting attention with news about its upcoming gaming tablet, Wikipad has made available the most important specs for their Wikipad tablet. According to a press release, it will be released at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2012 and it will be made available through worldwide major retailers.

Even though the Wikipad debuted last January at the Consumer Electronics Show 2012, not much was known about it. Most of the specs were unknown until today. The tablet is powered by an nVidia Tegra 3 1.4GHz quad-core processor paired with 1GB of DDR2 RAM and a 520MHz GPU, while the internal storage capacity will be at least 16GB. It has a 10.1-inch IPS display with a 16:10, 1280x800 resolution. It weighs 560 grams, and the thickness is 8.6 mm. Power comes from a 23.56Wh battery, which supposedly offers 8 hours of video playback and 6 hours of gaming time. An 8 megapixel rear-facing camera along with a 2 megapixel forward-facing camera are also included. To back up the "gaming" claim, the Wikipad tablet will come with a gaming controller add-on, which attaches itself to the Wikipad at the bottom through a proprietary connector. It will ship with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box.

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Who would have guessed that it was time for the smartphone market to take a breath and slow down before the second half of 2012? Strategy Analytics released a report analyzing the U.S. smartphone market and shipments for Q2 2012, focusing on the two biggest smartphone operating systems, Android and iOS. The results make for an unexpected scenario: has the smartphone market reached its peak and if so, who’s the winning platform?

The Strategy Analytics report posts a decrease on smartphone shipment growth year-over-year with a 70.1 percent increase in 2011 and a 5.4 percent decrease for 2012, calling for a comparison with the report made available by IDC, which focuses on worldwide sales and market share. The differences between global results and those in the U.S. only suggest the U.S. market might have reached its peak, while worldwide smartphones are enjoying better sales.

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Apple released OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion on July 25, and based on that small sliver of time, data analysis company Chitika released a statistic forecasting Mountain Lion's adoption rate, claiming a 3.21 percent OS X market share in just 48 hours. Five days after the release, Apple has announced Mountain Lion downloads exceeded 3 million in just four days. What does all of this mean?

Apple responded rather quickly last year after OS X Lion’s release, claiming 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours. Yet, with Mountain Lion, 3 million downloads in the first four days averages out to 750,000 downloads per day. Granted that's an estimate, but it would actually place Mountain Lion behind Lion based on first day downloads.

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Have you considered the HTC One X but found the price to be too high? The phone now is a whole lot cheaper. AT&T slashed the price in half -- by $100 from $199.99 to $99.99 on a two-year contract.

The One X comes with Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, but the Taiwanese company is working on delivering the latest, Jelly Bean, and confirms to BetaNews that they will upgrade the One X (One XL internationally) as well as other devices such as the One S to Android 4.1. It's great news for HTC owners as well as future buyers. Jelly Bean is a very attractive offering with welcomed improvements and nice new features. The catch: HTC offers no upgrade timeline for when the phones will receive the newest Android version.

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Apple recently made its first ever presentation at the Black Hat security conference, and despite being one of the most expected and highly anticipated moments of the event, the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation hasn’t made the best possible initial impression. The audience was left somewhat disappointed, only to have Apple follow up a major security acquisition.

The keynote was presented by the manager of Apple’s platform security team, Dallas De Atley, who reiterated the iOS security paper that Apple released two months ago. The problem stems from the fact there were higher expectations for Apple's debut: updated information on steps the Cuppertino, Calif.-based corporation is taking to resolve their security issues and concerns would have been of far greater interest, and it would have shown how seriously Apple takes security.

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Google has posted Jelly Bean 4.1.1 factory images for the Nexus lineup on their developers website. It's reason for modders needing to restore the factory default image to rejoice. Unlike other Android devices, the Nexus lineup benefits from Google's direct support and timely updates as well -- Galaxy Nexus received Jelly Bean 4.1 about two weeks ago.

Jelly Bean factory images are available for all Nexus devices, starting with the Nexus S up to the latest released, the Nexus 7. It just shows that Google is committed to updating its lineup of branded smartphones, even after almost two years since the release of the Samsung-made Google Nexus S.

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After the release of the most recent comScore Media Metrix data, any assertion that Google+ is a "ghost town" can be promptly dismissed. Not only is Google's new social network more popular than ever, its number of unique visitors topped more than 110 million each month, and the data doesn’t even take into account tablet or mobile phone usage.

The comScore data reveals that the number of monthly U.S. Google+ unique visitors increased from 15.229 million in November 2011 to 27.732 million in June 2012. Over a seven-month period, the social network has seen an increase of 82 percent on the number of unique visitors. To put it into perspective, 27.732 million is 12.53 percent of the total U.S. unique visitors.

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Today marks the day when Facebook lets everyone know of their financial state, with the company announcing their second quarter 2012 results this evening when the market closes. Perhaps not so coincidentally, a rumor of a new Facebook branded phone from HTC has surfaced right before the company's financial announcements.

HTC and Facebook have collaborated before, and the result was the HTC Status. The device is no longer available from AT&T, and let's just say it's not due to high demand. HTC is currently in a weak financial state, and their smartphones make up about 14 percent of the market in the United States. So, from the start there is a limited reach.

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Patent settlement talks between Apple and Samsung have been planned for a while, and despite the major importance they have to both companies, it wasn't until last week that executives met to discuss whether they can agree on ending the quarrel between them. So what happened? They couldn't set their differences aside as the settlement talks have hit a bump in the road, not agreeing on each other’s value when it comes to patents.

After numerous meetings in court it's clear that settlement is the best option, but the companies haven't yet arrived at a compromise, and the two companies' other legal disputes haven’t been put on hold, as Apple is still trying to resolve an issue it has with Samsung in a San Jose federal court on July 30.

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