'Operating system'

iOS and Mac OS X market shares hit record highs

By: |Oct 3rd, 2011 at 08:11AM
Filed Under: Browser, Mobile
50

A recent report from Net Applications suggests that Apple’s iOS and Mac OS X operating systems both achieved a record high global market shares during the month of September. iOS had a global market share of 54.65% for the month, up from the 53.04% grip it had on the market in August. iOS is trailed by Java ME with an 18.52% market share, Android (16.25%)  Symbian (6.12%) and BlackBerry (3.29%). Mac OS X reached a record high 6.45% share of the operating system market during September, up from 6.03% in...

Exclusives

Nokia to turn mobile landscape on its head with ‘Meltemi’ smartphone OS

By: |Sep 29th, 2011 at 09:00AM
Filed Under: Exclusives, Mobile, Software
30

Nokia is again developing a proprietary smartphone operating system after announcing this past February that it would abandon both Symbian and MeeGo in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Citing multiple anonymous sources, The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that Nokia’s executive vice president of mobile phones, Mary McDowell, is heading up the project. Code-named “Meltemi,” the new mobile platform is reportedly Linux-based and it is intended for use on low-end smar...

Intel kills MeeGo in favor of Tizen

By: |Sep 28th, 2011 at 11:35PM
Filed Under: Mobile, Software
8

Intel announced on Wednesday that it will be shifting its efforts from MeeGo to the new “Tizen” mobile operating system recently announced by The Linux Foundation. The move is in line with reports from early September that suggested Intel would move on due to a lack of consumer enthusiasm surrounding the OS. Nokia launched the MeeGo-powered N9 this month but also announced in June that it was ditching the platform in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. “We believe the future belongs...

Steve Ballmer: No platform will ship more than Windows

By: |Sep 14th, 2011 at 04:15PM
Filed Under: Software
77

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer surprised developers during Micorosft’s BUILD conference in California on Wednesday when he took the stage to talk up Microsoft’s new operating system, currently named Windows 8. Ballmer noted that there have already been 500,000 downloads of the operating system since it went live last night. “We still have a long way to go with Windows 8,” Ballmer said. “We’re retooling all of what we do.” Ballmer believes that the changes will compel dev...

Samsung reveals bada 2.0-powered Wave 3, Wave M and Wave Y [video]

By: |Aug 31st, 2011 at 03:00AM
Filed Under: Mobile
5

Just days ahead of the IFA trade show in Berlin, Samsung officially unveiled three new bada 2.0-powered handsets: the Wave 3, Wave M and Wave Y. We first heard wind of the Wave 3 last week when an Android user spotted it inside of Samsung’s Mobile Unpacked APK and now we have the full details. The Wave 3 is the high-end smartphone of the bunch and comes equipped with a 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, a 5-megapixel camera, a 1.4GHz processor and HSPA connectivity all in a 9mm thin brush-aluminum shell. The W...

Apple sued over OS X fast boot feature

By: |Aug 8th, 2011 at 09:45AM
Filed Under: Legal
54

Florida-based Operating Systems Solutions has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple. OSS is alleging that the Cupertino-based firm’s Mac OS X fast-boot feature infringes on one of its patents relating to a “method for quick booting an OS.” More specifically, the lawsuit says Apple infringes on:A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is...

On Jumptap’s network, Android dominates more U.S. states than iOS or BlackBerry

By: |Aug 5th, 2011 at 08:02PM
Filed Under: Mobile, Software
43

Jumptap recently released a report that separated the 50 states by mobile operating system. It mapped out which states are prominently iOS users, which use Android the most, and which states use BlackBerry smartphones based on 83 million users on its ad network. New England and the Midwest represented the largest pockets of iOS users while Texas, California and much of the West were Android users. New York is primarily a BlackBerry state, perhaps due to the number of corporate users in New York City. Alaska w...

Android least open of open source platforms, report says

By: |Aug 4th, 2011 at 04:55PM
Filed Under: Mobile, Software
62

Android may be an open source operating system, but it’s not as open as other platforms according to a new research report from VisionMobile. The research firm compared Android, Eclipse, Firefox, the Linux kernel, MeeGo, Qt and Symbian and found that, of those open source environments, Android was the least “open.” According to the report’s “open governance index,” which scored each environment on how open it is, Android scored a 23%. It was far below the others; Eclipse sc...

Android market share jumps as BlackBerry slides; smartphones now owned by 1 in 3 Americans

By: |Jul 5th, 2011 at 04:55PM
Filed Under: Mobile
73

According to a new report from comScore, 1 in 3 Americans now own a smartphone. Google’s Android OS is ahead of the pack with a 38.1% share of the market during the 3-month period ending in May — up 5.1% from the last report in February. Apple’s iOS operating system jumped 1.4 percentage points to a 26.6% share, and RIM’s BlackBerry OS fell 4.3% to a 24.7% share of the market. Microsoft also dropped from a 7.7% share to a 4.8% share, and HP’s webOS fell from a 2.8% share to a 2.4% sh...

HP ponders Windows 8 tablets

By: |Jun 30th, 2011 at 11:30PM
Filed Under: Software, Tablets
25

On Friday, HP’s brand new webOS-powered TouchPad tablet will make its debut in the United States. Even though HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion last year so that it could stray away from the Windows-powered tablet market by owning webOS, the company may soon build tablets running Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system. In a recent interview with Fast Company, HP’s president and chief technology officer Phil McKinney suggested that Windows 8 tablets could be in the pipeline. “IR...

HP in talks to license webOS

By: |Jun 29th, 2011 at 06:15PM
Filed Under: Mobile, Software
12

During an interview with Bloomberg recently, HP’s CEO Leo Apokether said that his company is in talks to license its webOS software to other manufacturers. “We are talking to a number of companies,” he said.”I can share with you that a number of companies have expressed interest. We are continuing our conversations.” Apotheker said there’s no specific time frame for when another company may announce that it’s using webOS and noted that “there is no time pressure...

Exclusives

RIM is black-burying carriers with half-baked BlackBerrys

By: |Jun 20th, 2011 at 11:18AM
Filed Under: Exclusives, Mobile
252

Launching new products is always difficult. Launching new products with hundreds of different carriers is exponentially more difficult. Apparently there is an easy way and a hard way to do things, however, and RIM has been making carriers offers they can’t refuse. BGR has learned from a trusted source that RIM has been strong-arming several carriers, essentially forcing them to approve devices they normally would not move through the Technical Acceptance phase. (more…)

Android, iOS see continued growth in U.S. at cost of RIM

By: |Jun 4th, 2011 at 11:00AM
Filed Under: Mobile, Software
125

On Friday comScore released its latest mobile subscriber market share report, which suggests that both Android and iOS are increasing their U.S. market shares at the cost of RIM’s BlackBerry OS. ComScore surveyed 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers during a three month period ending in April 2011 and found that Android’s U.S. market share jumped 5.2 percentage points to a 34.6% grip of the industry. Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS market share grew a marginal 1.3 percentage points to a 26% share. RIM̵...

Breaking

Microsoft demos tablet-friendly Windows 8 at D9 conference

By: |Jun 1st, 2011 at 07:09PM
Filed Under: Breaking, Computers, Software
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During the D9 conference in California, Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky began showing off Redmond’s upcoming Windows 8 operating system, fully optimized for tablets. According to AllThingsD, which got an early peak at the OS, Microsoft’s ultimate goal was to create an OS that could run on a home computer just as well as it could run on a portable 8-inch tablet. The new start screen, pictured above, shows a tile-based interface that’s strikingly similar to Microsoft’s Windows Phone op...