There has been word for the past few days that Research In Motion’s PlayBook has been jailbroken. What this means is that, for the first time ever in RIM’s history, root access has been gained into a BlackBerry operating system. Why is this a big deal? Well, of RIM’s few remaining strengths, one of them was security, both in terms of encrypting and securing the messages you send over the RIM network, and device security. It’s why BlackBerry products became so popular with enterprises a...

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 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...

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha on Tuesday said that his company is open to building smartphones powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. The Motorola boss said that while the company is focused on Google’s Android platform right now, it would absolutely consider the new Microsoft mobile OS under the right conditions. “I think we’re completely open to the notion of Windows as a platform,” Jha said during the Oppenheimer Technology & Communications Conference. &...

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...

Microsoft announced on Monday that it has sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses to date, but that hasn’t stopped the tech giant’s share of the global operating system market from sliding. According to market watcher Net Applications’ data for June 2011, Microsoft’s global operating system market share slid to 88.29% as it continued on its slow but steady decline. The second most popular OS in the world was Apple’s OS X, which was up a nominal amount to 5.37% of the global OS market...

According to Chang Chi, the deputy head of Taiwan-based Market Intelligence Center, Windows Phone will have a 17% grip on the smartphone market next year. Chi said that Android’s share of the market in 2011 is 38%, followed by Symbian (23%), and iOS (18%). However, he expects Android’s market share to grow 2% next year, iOS to increase to a 19% share, and Windows Phone to skyrocket to a 17% share of the market. Chi also expects that HTC will surpass RIM and become the fourth largest smartphone mak...

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...

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…)

RIM on Tuesday announced the availability of a new software update for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Before we get into all the details, we should note that this is not the major update PlayBook users have been waiting for that will enable email and PIM functions without the need to tether. Now that we have that out of the way, version 1.0.5 of RIM’s QNX-based operating system brings the following additions to the BlackBerry PlayBook: the Facebook app is now preloaded, in-app payment support has been ...

Nokia could launch its first Windows Phone some time this year, and when it does, the firm plans to set a quick pace to get more phones into the market. Speaking in an interview with PCMag, Nokia’s executive vice president of smartphones, Jo Harlow, discussed Nokia’s roll-out strategy. “We should be launching new devices in a rhythm that might be every couple of months, every three months, something like that,” Harlow said. Unlike HTC and Samsung, which see Windows Phone as a “se...

During a press event in Japan recently, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that Windows 8 would would launch sometime next year. His firm says otherwise. “It appears there was a misstatement,” a Microsoft spokesperson recently said in a statement. “We are eagerly awaiting the next generation of Windows 7 hardware that will be available in the coming fiscal year. To date, we have yet to formally announce any timing or naming for the next version of Windows.” Despite Microsoft’s stat...

According to a report from CIO, BlackBerry users who installed RIM’s latest update for the tablet’s QNX operating system are now experiencing weakened battery life. The recent 1.0.3 software update introduced BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and video chat to the device, but it also appears to have had a substantial impact on battery life, possibly reducing it by 11% or more. RIM addressed the issue by suggesting that users accept the new license agreement for video chat, which may drain the battery if ...

Market research and analysis firm Canalys on Wednesday released its global country-level smartphone market share data for the first quarter of 2011. According to the firm’s report, Android continued to dominate the worldwide smartphone market as global shipments grew to 37.5 million units, giving Google’s mobile OS a market-leading 35% share of smartphone sales in the quarter. Nokia’s market share fell dramatically year-over-year from 39% in the first quarter of 2010 to just 24% last quarter...