Smartphone shipments ease off the gas pedal

Smartphone sales slowed a bit in the second quarter amid a weak global economy, but Gartner thinks that's about to change.

The worldwide market for smartphones grew 15.7 percent in the second quarter, as vendors shipped a total of 32.2 million devices. That's pretty solid, but earlier this year the market was growing at a 60 percent clip. Blame a slowing economy around the world and the development of more sophisticated "enhanced phones" running Java or Qualcomm's BREW rather than true smartphone operating systems like Symbian, Windows Mobile, or Apple's OS X, according to Gartner.

Nokia is still the market leader by a huge margin, shipping nearly half of all smartphones sold in the world during the second quarter. The company is not growing nearly as fast as its rivals, however, and lost market share; second-place RIM increased its shipment totals by 126 percent to obtain 17.4 percent market share, and HTC grew its shipments 119 percent to edge out Sharp for third place.

Conspicuously absent from Gartner's top 5 was Apple, which shipped just 717,000 iPhones during the second quarter as it ran down the inventory of classic iPhones ahead of the July launch of the iPhone 3G. Apple should show up in next quarter's rankings, however, as the company sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs in just the first weekend it went on sale. Fujitsu's 1,071,490 units was good enough for fifth place for the entire second quarter.

North America is the fastest-growing region for smartphone sales by far, with shipments up 78.7 percent in the second quarter. This region accounts for just 25 percent of all smartphone sales, however, as our cousins in Europe and Asia got on the smartphone train much earlier. Western Europeans bought 29.3 percent more smartphones in the quarter, while Japanese customers actually bought 24 percent fewer phones than during the same period last year.

The picture should be brighter later in the year, Gartner said. "Wider availability of new touch smartphone models together with the global introduction of the iPhone 3G will help sales of smartphones return to stronger growth in the third quarter of 2008," analyst Roberta Cozza wrote in Gartner's press release.

Source

The Chrome is out of the bag: Google's browser arrives Tuesday

Here's the full announcement, from the Google blog:

A fresh take on the browser

9/01/2008 02:10:00 PM

At Google, we have a saying: "launch early and iterate." While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit "send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers.

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We'll post an update here as soon as it's ready.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director

source : http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

Microsoft Launches New Shopping Site

Microsoft is working on a new shopping Web site for software, hardware, and peripherals that it plans to advertise in the Windows XP Start Menu and the Internet Explorer Web browser.

Called "Windows Marketplace," the Web site is slated to go live for U.S. Windows users by year's end, according to Microsoft, which plans to officially announce the online store on Monday at its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto.

The Windows Marketplace will be a way for Microsoft partners to peddle their wares to the millions of Windows users, the Redmond, Washington-based software vendor says in a statement.

Providers that are expected to sell their products through the store include Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Circuit City Stores, Buy.com, and Best Buy Company, according to Microsoft. Products that have gained a "Designed for Windows" logo will be easier to find on the Web store through a special search filter, the software maker says.

Built-In Links

Aside from advertising the online store in Windows, Microsoft plans to link to the site from its online properties. The link in Internet Explorer will be made through Windows XP Service Pack 2, which is expected out in the coming weeks. Also, the Start Menu link that currently points to the Windows Catalog will likely redirect to the Windows Marketplace in the future, a Microsoft spokesperson says.

The U.S. version of the Windows Marketplace will be maintained by online publishing company CNet Networks, which will provide product and pricing information for over 100,000 products. Software downloads will be offered through CNet's Download.com Web site, according to Microsoft.

Vendors who currently have a merchant relationship with CNet will be automatically included on the Windows Marketplace, as will products with that have been granted the designed for Windows logo, Microsoft said. Details on the relationship between Microsoft and CNet were not released.

Windows Marketplace is a U.S.-only initiative for now, however plans for international expansion are in the works, the spokesperson says.

source : www.pcworld.com