The world’s favourite social butterfly, Facebook, finally made its Wall Street debut Thursday as the IPO process got underway. Although it was to be expected, at $38 each, the shares still seem ridiculously overpriced. Legal advisory firm Magister Advisors explained to the Informer that Facebook needs to make ten times more revenue per year than it currently is making, and hit annual figures of between $30bn to $40bn, in order to provide value for that price. The site may be the internet’s equivalent of crack, but making this much money is still a tall order.
Android retains its lead position as the most popular European smartphone OS, with HTC and Samsung dominating the market between them. According to handset sales statistics released by research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Android’s European market share for the three months to April is just over 50 per cent, up from 44.6 per cent last year.
Samsung’s latest handset, the Galaxy SIII, could make a major impact on the evolution of smartphones by introducing more intuitive technologies to make the user experience more responsive to users’ behaviour, voice and gestures. The bold and ambitious improvements made by the firm in latest addition to its flagship brand is underlines the firm’s new-found position as the dominant handset manufacturer on the market.
Against the background of Oracle and Google’s big legal ruckus over the latter’s usage of Java, a platform developer has decided to sidestep the whole argument and ported Android to C#.
Operators pushing out Android OS updates are doing so without notifying users that the download will take them beyond their data limits. A number of Android handsets running on older versions of the platform received updates to version 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, this week. However, when the notifications were pushed out, users who were not connected to wifi networks at the time had the 211MB download taken out of their data allowance.
Google has stepped up its efforts to cater to users in a multi-screen environment with a cloud-based entertainment portal, Google Play, that pushes music, movies, books and apps on the web and Android phones and tablets.
Gartner has published its mobile device numbers for the final quarter of 2011, reporting that 1.8 billion units were sold to end users across the year, up 11.1 per cent on 2010. Smartphones accounted for 31 per cent of all device sales with 472 million units sold, up 58 per cent year on year.
Why is it that the tablet – rapidly establishing its position as the fourth screen in the home – isn’t a family friendly, multi-user device? I understand that it’s a personal screen, but it’s not a personal device.
The handset market is more competitive than ever, and success is increasingly being defined by performance at the top end. 2012 will be the year of the Windows Phone push but can Nokia and Microsoft really compete with established leaders like Apple, Android and Samsung?
Google has announced the availability of a beta version of its Chrome web browser for its Android platform. The browser is available on handsets and tablets running the 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, and is downloadable via Android Market in select countries and languages.
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