Weekly mobile mash-up #11

Here are the latest summer mobile industry news!

Mobile Industry News

State of the Mobile industry: According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors sold 118.3 million units in the first half of 2010: a 54% growth compared to 2009. Android had the highest year-on-year growth rates, RIM and Nokia (in spite of being the leader) the lowest – http://bit.ly/dax5HB

Android does (very) well: Eric Schmidt announced last week that 200,000 Android phones were sold every day worldwide. That’s a sharp upturn when compared to the 160,000 Android phones sold every day announced at the end of June, and to the 100,000 announced during Google’s IO in May – http://bit.ly/b7hize
But Symbian does better: According to Canalys, 300,000 Symbian phones are sold every day, that’s to say 50% more than Android. Nevertheless, we can assume that most of those phones are not smartphones and that sales are driven by emerging countries – http://bit.ly/8ZLzlO
- Two weeks ago, Canalys highlighted that Nokia is leading the smartphone market with a 38% share
- Joanna Stern from Engadget had a really interesting chat with Niklas Savander, Nokia’s VP, about the future of the Finish manufacturer: definitely worth a read – http://bit.ly/ap9HMZ
FaceTime with 3G: 9to5mac folks quickly compared Facetime against 3G connection and the conclusions are not good for the “not-that-unlimited” data plans: it’s about 3MB per minute – http://bit.ly/c5bWny
Mobile payment is coming: The Wall Street Journal unveiled that Jack Dorsey’s mobile payment solution – Square – should be available at the end of summer – http://bit.ly/c3kbRb
- And PayPal launched its new Android app – http://bit.ly/b4d0Kw
AntennaGate’s chief cut: Mark Papermaster, head of the iPod and iPhone hardware engineering team, is reported to have left Apple (only 18 months after being hired) following the antenna problems on the iPhone 4 – http://cnt.to/m5q
Mobile navigation: GPS manufacturer Garmin said that their mobile apps generated $27 million in Q2 of 2010. Will it be enough to stave off the Google Map tsunami? – http://bit.ly/aIScFh

Privacy

Google’s evil plan for privacy: The Wall Street Journal published a confidential Google’s brainstorming document showing how the giant wants to make the most of the data he’s got. Have a look here: http://bit.ly/cn6Hxo
- Jessica Vascellaro talks to Simon Constable about the big privacy issue facing Google — how far should it go in profiting from its crown jewels-the vast trove of data it possesses about people’s activities?

Apple’s devices have security holes: The German government claimed that iPhones and iPads have security weaknesses and there are no existing patches to solve them, these allow “potential attackers access to the complete system, including administrator rights” – http://bit.ly/cx7zIh
BlackBerry in Saudi Arabia: BlackBerry and Saudi Arabia reached an agreement regarding the use of BlackBerry phones in the country. The 700,000 Saudi Arabian BlackBerry users can still use their phone, but Saudi Arabia officials will be able to read all text messages they receive, as data will be hosted on local servers. Hard times for privacy – http://bit.ly/b0beUy
- Usually every message received on a BlackBerry passes through RIM’s servers in Canada and are encoded, so no one – not even governments – can have access to them
- US and French governments are forbidding the use of BlackBerry’s in their administrations as they consider the handsets as not being secure enough for use. Back in 2009, Barack Obama had to fight to keep his – http://bit.ly/dcCib8
Apps and privacy: LookOut published this infographic last week to highlight new security vulnerabilities under the app genome project

Mobile statistics and reports

Mobile in China: Chinese’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the number of Chinese mobile users has now reached 805 million, as Tomi Ahonen highlighted last week, this is more than the US and Western Europe markets combined – http://bit.ly/amUP7J
Mobile app revenue: ABI Research found that in 2010, iPhone’s OS will account for 52% of all application revenue. Additionally revenues from mobile application sales continue to decline. Indeed, OS developers (Android, Apple) are supporting low-priced and free applications because they help to market and sell their devices – http://bit.ly/9wIsBn
iPhone to be left behind by Android in 2012: iSuppli forecasted that by 2012, Android will surpass the iPhone. Number of Android users will reach 75 million smartphones, to iPhones 62 million – http://bit.ly/bQAxYH