Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile platforms together accounted for a record 92 per cent share of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to new data from Strategy Analytics.

Android, the undisputed leader of the industry, captured an impressive 70 per cent share of the global smartphone market in Q4 2012, up from 51 per cent a year earlier, the research firm said. Apple’s iOS took 22 per cent during the period, and all other smartphone platforms combined accounted for the remaining 7.9 per cent.

“The worldwide smartphone industry has effectively become a duopoly as consumer demand has polarized around mass-market Android models and premium Apple designs,” Scott Bicheno, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

Phone makers shipped an estimated 152.1 million Android smartphones globally in Q4 2012, up from 80.6 million units a year earlier. For the full year, almost half a billion Android smartphones were shipped worldwide.

“Android’s challenge for 2013 will be to defend its leadership, not only against Apple, but also against an emerging wave of hungry challengers that includes Microsoft, Blackberry, Firefox and Tizen,” Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Apple grew 29 per cent annually, shipping 47.8 million smartphones worldwide in Q4, and 136 million in all of 2012, according to Strategy Analytics.

Overall, global smartphone shipments grew 38 per cent annually, totalling 217 million units in Q4 2012 from 157 million units a year earlier, the research firm said. For the full year, smartphone shipments reached a record 700 million units, increasing from 490.5 million units in 2011. Shipment growth slowed from 64 per cent in 2011 to 43 per cent in 2012 as smartphone penetration began to mature in developed regions like North America and Western Europe.

In other news, recent research from IDC revealed that while Samsung and Apple lead the market, Huawei and ZTE both made gains to earn a spot among the top five smartphone vendors in Q4.

by Angela Moscaritolo

Apple have now released the latest version of their operating system, iOS 6.1, for the iPad and iPhone. The important question is what new features does iOS 6.1 bring to Apple devices ?

Well, the major new addition is support for more 4G LTE networks worldwide with another 36 carriers now supported which brings the total number up to 56. However, this is pretty irrelevant to UK users because the smartphone was already supported on EE’s 4G network.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth updating because the update also includew a number of other important additions. One such addition is the option to download individual tracks from iMatch , which was strangely removed in iOS 6.

Apple have also added a new button to reset the “Advertising Identifier” which is what advertisers use to bombard users with targeted adverts. You’ll now be able to reset the data , as well as having the option to opt-out of receiving targeted adverts.

US users will also now be able to use Siri to book cinema tickets thanks to the Fandango application.  In essence users will now be able to order tickets using their voice alone, which is surely a sign of things to come.

iOS 6.1 also includes a number of security and bug fixes which are always an important inclusion in any operating system update. While, the overall speed and reliability of the operating system has also been improved.

iOS 6.1 is available to download right now on the iPhone 3GS and later and the iPad 2 and later. As always 3G recommends you backup your data before installing the update in-case anything goes wrong.

By Simon D Thomas

According to a Bloomberg report, U.S. Circuit Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago ruled during an ongoing patent lawsuit filed by Apple that the companies must reveal details surrounding Google’s acquisition of Motorola. Judge Posner also supported Apple’s request to see documentation related to the development of Google’s Android platform.

Apple has been on a patent lawsuit spree over the past few years against mobile phone manufacturers. In 2010, Apple filed the lawsuit against Motorola, alleging that the company copied Apple’s signature touchscreen interface and other mobile technologies. Motorola has since countersued.

The judge approved Apple’s request issued on Friday, March 2. The data in question will show how much Google believes Motorola devices are worth. The devices feature technology that Apple claims infringes on its patents.

“The Android/Motorola acquisition discovery is highly relevant to Apple’s claims and defenses,” said Apple lawyers told the judge during the request for more information on March 2.

The companies will participate in two trials starting in June that will go in front of different juries. The first case will focus on Apple’s six patents, while the second case will focus on Motorola’s three, Bloomberg said.

In August 2011, Google announced it would be acquiring Motorola for $12.5 billion. Although the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission have since approved the deal, approval is still pending from various countries, including China, Israel, and Taiwan.

A new addition of Google to enhance its services is designed to offer a unified search experience, across supported devices.

As an example, users who want to check out a place before going there, can use a computer to search for the information, which will be able available on their iPhones or Android devices.

Away from their computers, users won’t have to stretch their memory to remember the places or information that they have found.

They will only have to log on Google.com’s homepage, on their mobile devices, and look under the ‘Recent icon’, to review their previous desktop searches – in order to get directions or to find out the phone number of the restaurant, in which they intended to make a reservation.

In order to access this feature, users have to enable the ‘Web History’ when they are doing the search.

On the Google official blog, Junichi Uekawa, Google’s software engineer, warns the users that the details about the previously searched places can be accessed from the Recent icon – only for a day, after the search has been performed.

Senior vice president of mobile at technology outfit Google, Andy Rubin, has announced that the total number of new Android devices activated each day amounts to almost 850,000.

Rubin also bragged the total number of activated Android handset all over the world has surpassed the 300 million mark.

“Each and every day, we are humbled by the trajectory of Android and our partners. With a year-on-year growth rate of more than 250 per cent, 850,000 new Android devices are activated each day, jetting the total number of Android devices around the world past 300 million,” Rubin stated, as per a report by The Inquirer.

No doubt, such an astounding sales figure is quite an achievement for the Mountain View based search giant, considering how arch rival Apple managed to sell 37.04 million units of its flagship iPhone in the last quarter alone (as per the company’s latest fiscal report), Google and the Android family’s journey in the smartphone is unlikely to be just a walk in the park in the days to come.

Despite repeated requests, Apple has refrained from revealing the net figure of iPhone it sold throughout all these years.

Software giant Microsoft Corp. is pondering the idea of introducing its flagship mobile OS platform Windows Phone to 23 additional countries in order to compensate for the market share lost out to arch rivasl Google and Apple.  As part of this new move the company is also planning to release the platform to the less expensive smartphone models.

Microsoft intends to kick start the new expansion plans by launching its mobile application outlets in countries such as China, Venezuela, Thailand as well as 20 others by the end of the month. The handsets will also arrive in these markets around the same time, claimed corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, Terry Myerson.

With this, the Windows Phone platform will have its strong presence felt in 63 markets worldwide along with a possible target of 60 per cent more buyers.

In a recent study, market research organisation IDC predicted that the WP family will surpass Apple Inc. in the global smartphone arena by the fall of 2015.

Reacting to this forecast, Myerson expressed his thoughts: “It’s a great forecast — I wish all I had to do is press a button and say, ‘Make it happen,’” as reported by Business Week.

“We’ve got some great strategies to get there, but it’s not a gimme. We’re a challenger in a market against two established competitors,” Myerson added.

Apple has filed a patent relating to a 3D eye-tracking based interface with the US Patent & Trademark Office.  Applications range from high-end security features, such as biometric and surveillance functions, to entertainment applications such as gaming, as well as photography and video recording tools that could be derived from this patent.

This new technology could enhance the experience for not only iPhone and iPad users but also possibly be integrated into Macs.

Many Apple fans have been waiting for a true 3D virtual world inside the display of their favourite tablet, and now they may achieve something close to this; especially if Apple puts to work some other patents such as its head-tracking and unique ambient light technologies, bringing Apple closer to a new 3D graphical user interface.

“To accomplish a more realistic virtual 3D depiction of the objects on the device’s display, objects may be rendered on the display as if they were in a real 3D ‘place’ in the device’s operating system environment,” explains Patently Apple.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone mobile OS platform may be lagging far behind the other key players in the market today, but according to a new study, it will be surpassing Apple’s iOS by 2015 to secure the second spot in the smartphone OS market.

The study was carried out by the market research outfit IHS iSuppli, and according to its findings, the Windows Phone will be surpassing all other smartphone OS platforms other than Google’s Android by autumn of 2015. The findings are similar to a report published by the IDC, last year in March.

According to IHS’s predictions, Windows Phone will manage to secure somewhere around 16.7 per cent share in the global smartphone market within the said timeline – significantly higher than where it stands today, with approximately 2 per cent stake in the market.

“Because of Nokia’s support, apps developers will eagerly shore up the Windows platform. This will cause other makers of Windows Phone devices, such as Samsung and HTC, to offer more products supporting the OS — further expanding the market,” IHS analyst Wayne Lam explained, Seattle Times reports.

Over the weekend owners of A5 powered Apple devices were finally provided with an untethered jailbreak solution; both Mac and Windows versions of the Absinthe software are available for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0 or 5.0.1.

The Absinthe jailbreak has been released by the Chronic-Dev team after being developed over many months by the hacking Dream Team, which also included hacker pod2g and members of the iPhone Dev team.

The method to get the Jailbreak up and running is slightly different to previous ones, though very straight forward.

Just follow these simple steps:

>> Firstly, download here the appropriate file to your PC or Mac.

>> Extract and run the file

>> Attach your iPad 2 or iPad 4S with a USB cable

>> Then simply click on “jailbreak”, it will take a number of minutes (around 15), the message “Restore in Progress” will be displayed on your handset.

>> Wait until the installation is completely finished before clicking on the new Absinthe icon on your homescreen, which will then cause your device to reboot

>> On rebooting you should now be able to access the Cydia ‘app store’ icon

For those who prefer an audio visual explanation, here are a couple of videos from iDownloadBlog which go through the steps for

…iPhone 4S:

… ipad 2

The good: Apple’s iPhone 4S has a faster processor and an upgraded camera, all the benefits of iOS 5, and a useful and immensely fun voice assistant. Call quality on the Sprint model is admirable, and the data speeds, while certainly not 4G, get the job done.

The bad: It’s about time we get a larger screen.

The bottom line: The iPhone 4S isn’t the king of cell phones, but it’s part of the royal family nonetheless. Even without 4G and a giant screen, this phone’s smart(ass) voice assistant, Siri, the benefits of iOS 5, and its spectacular camera make it a top choice for anyone ready to upgrade.