It’s oftentimes easy for us to get swept up in Android mania and forget that Google’s mobile platform is still in its infancy. Then we get cold hard numbers like these — showing iPhone OS owning 28 percent of the US smartphone market and closing in on RIM’s leading 35 percent — and we face up to the realization that Android handsets still account for less than one in every ten smartphones owned by Americans today. In spite of collecting 28 percent of all consumer smartphone purchases in the first quarter of 2010 (according to NPD), Google’s OS was only able to climb up a couple of percentage points in terms of total market share, showing just how long a road lies ahead of its world-conquering plans. Guess that now explains why Apple’s response to the earlier numbers was so nonchalant.
Other intriguing figures include a high rate of loyalty among iPhone OS and Android users, with 80 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter expressing a preference for the same OS in their next phone — both rather shaming Microsoft and RIM’s numbers, which were a mediocre 34 and 47 percent, respectively. Funnily enough, despite its inflammatory title, this report finds Android and iPhone users are more similar to each other than anyone else — an uncomfortable fact for both parties to deal with, we’re sure. The source link contains some more demographic comparisons, so why not go check them out and drop some sage analysis for us in the comments?
This isn’t so much news as it is a public service announcement: even in markets where iPhone tethering has launched, you’ve never been able to use it to connect to an iPad, and you won’t be able to when AT&T flips the switch on tethering with the release of OS 4. That’s clearly not AT&T’s fault, it’s Apple’s — the iPhone inexplicably supports only USB and Bluetooth for sharing its internet connection, even though jailbroken apps like MyWi prove that a WiFi connection is totally doable and countless other handsets already support WiFi routing. And iPad doesn’t support using another device as a Bluetooth modem, either. And as long as you’re paying the tethering fee, there’s no reason why AT&T wouldn’t want you tethering the iPad; you’ll certainly be able to do it with any phone in AT&T’s lineup that can create a WiFi hotspot, after all, and we’re sure they’d be happy to take your overage cash once you hit 2GB regardless of the device you’re using to gobble the data.
In the meantime, you know what you can tether to an iPad? A phone running Froyo, for one — Google was certainly happy to show off that capability back at IO. Or pretty much any device running S60 from the last several years. Or a Palm Pre Plus… yeah, you get the idea.
In case you hadn’t heard, Steve Jobs got downright conversational last night at D8, riffing on questions from Walt, Kara, and the attending audience of elites. You can hit up the entire liveblog for a timestamped play by play, or browse through some of the highlights below.
We put some extra scintillating quotes after the break to shield the eyes of your children. Just a note, however: all of these are paraphrased quotes typed live as Steve was speaking, and not to be construed as the verbatim Word of Steve Jobs, though the gist is certainly there.
Sure, you read our liveblog of Steve Jobs’ D8 conference — and believe us, it’s heavily quotable — but don’t you want to see and hear the Apple CEO claim HyperCard was huge in its day? Or perhaps you’re more interested in his thoughts on Flash, market cap, and the iPad origins — either way, videos are after the break, with presumably more to come from All Things D.
Well, Steve Jobs just dropped a little nugget of history on us during his chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the All Things D conference. When asked by Walt why they originally put their new OS on a phone and not a tablet, Steve said, “I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet.” After working on the tablet OS which had a glass display and multitouch, another idea occurred to Jobs. “My God, I said, this would make a great phone … so we shelved the tablet and built the iPhone.” And there you have it.
Need a bit more evidence that the next iPhone will do video conferencing? Then take a good, hard look at the exciting screenshot above, which supposedly comes from a field test firmware for the next-gen iPhone that Apple is apparently working on. Not much more to go on than that at the moment, unfortunately, but Boy Genius Report says the screenshot (and a second one after the break) comes from one of its “Apple guys” and, as you can see, it not only offers yet more evidence of video calls, but video call debugging.
See that screen there? That’s from the minty fresh beta 4 of iPhone OS 4.0, which was just released to developers moments ago. Unless our eyes are badly mistaken, that’s an option to setup internet tethering on AT&T, something that WWAN warriors have been waiting for since… oh, forever. We’re downloading the new build as we speak, and we’ll let you know if we find anything out. Oh, and don’t get your hopes up too high — AT&T proclaimed that it was “still waiting on better network performance” before enabling iPhone tethering just three weeks ago.
Update: There’s a video of the screens after the break, just in case your belief was temporarily suspended for any reason. Thanks, Jerish!
Update 2: Well, this is interesting — we just updated an iPhone 3GS in Chicago, and we’re not seeing the tethering option. We’re guessing this is a glitch or just a mismatched carrier setting file, since so many others are seeing it, but we’ll do some digging and see what’s up.
Update 3: Okay, we’ve got it sorted — all it took was a quick network settings reset. Thanks, Gray!
If you like living on the brutal, life-altering bleeding edge the same way we do, odds are you’ve got iPhone OS 4 beta 3 installed on that 3GS of yours — assuming you have an iPhone 3GS, naturally. That also means that you’ll likely be interested to hear that beta 4 is now out and ready for you to download, install, and not brick your phone if everything goes according to plan, just as long as you’ve got access to an Apple iPhone Developer Program account. Go forth, intrepid readers — and do report back on your exploits, won’t you?
Oh sure, having Boxee nailed down to the desktop of your PC is fine and dandy, and that Boxee Box will ensure that the same experience is enjoyed by all who plant their fundament in front of your HDTV. But we all know what you’re after — lemon drops. And a mobile version of Boxee. In a post today by the company, it expressed outright joy in inking a deal with Vindicia in order to bring a payment processing solution to the platform; slated for implementation “by the end of the summer,” this CashBox add-in would enable users to purchase “premium content” from Boxee’s programming partners via credit card, gift card or PayPal. It’s a vital step in Boxee finally finding a revenue stream (something it confessed to needing on a previous episode of The Engadget Show), and better still, “Vindicia’s flexibility makes it possible for [Boxee] to enable payments on its website and across mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android and iPad.” Yeah, those are the company’s own words right there, and in case you still aren’t believing your eyes, chew on one final quote:
“Boxee’s eventual expansion to these platforms will pave the way for universally accessible content no matter where a user is (we love this idea!).”
“We’re number two” might not be the chant everyone’s after, but we have a feeling that Google is more than satisfied with that in this case… for now. According to market research firm NPD, Google’s Android operating system edged up into second place in the US smartphone market during the first quarter of the year, leaving it still well behind RIM’s BlackBerry OS, but marking the first time that it has moved ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS. Specifically, NPD found that RIM maintained a strong 36 percent market share for the quarter, with Android coming in at 28 percent, and iPhone OS in third at 21 percent. The growth for Android was attributed largely to strong carrier support — like Verizon’s buy-one-get-one free offer which, incidentally, also helped Verizon maintain a 30 percent smartphone market share, which is just slightly behind AT&T at 32 percent, and ahead of T-Mobile and Sprint at 17 and 15 percent, respectively.
Disclaimer: NPD’s Ross Rubin is a contributor to Engadget.
