At the Motorola event in New York, Google chairman Eric Schmidt said that around 1.3 million Android devices are being activated per day. About 70,000 of those activations per day are tablets. There are now about 480 million active Android devices in total out there.
Motorola is now shipping new devices with Chrome pre-installed. Usually Android phones come with different browsers, but now that Google owns Motorola… At Motorola’s “On Display” event, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside announced the first devices that Chrome will come pre-installed on. This includes the Droid RAZR HD and Droid RAZR M. Woodside also pointed out during the presentation that Google Maps and YouTube would not be coming pre-installed on Apple’s next iPhone as a way to indicate that there is nothing wrong with sending their own devices pre-installed with their own software.
Motorola has just announced the Droid RAZR HD. The Droid RAZR HD has a 4.7-inch screen, HD display, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 2,000 mAh battery, 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and preinstalled Chrome browser along with the LTE capacity. The Droid RAZR HD has a Super AMOLED screen, 8-megapixel rear camera, 1GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage that can be expanded by microSD. An Android Jelly Bean update is expected soon.
The market share of Android has increased from 50.8% to 52.2% in the U.S. Apple’s market share in the U.S. went from 31.4% to 33.4% in the quarter ending July 2012 according to comScore. That means that between the two platforms, they control 85.6% of the U.S. market share. RIM’s BlackBerry OS has a 9.5% marketshare, Microsoft Windows Phone is at 3.6% and Nokia Symbian is at 0.8%.
This week Facebook released a new iOS app. The new iOS app was built using Cocoa rather than HTML5, which made it a lot faster. Unfortunately the Android version of the Facebook app is still pretty bad. Facebook’s management realized that their Android app is so bad that they are cajoling employees into replacing their iPhones with Android devices to use the app. This way they will have to deal with Facebook issues every single day to the point where they get frustrated and simply just fix it. That is one creative business management tactic!
Nikon has revealed the Coolpix S800c Android power-shooter camera. The camera has a GPS embedded for geotagging and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The camera has a 10x optical zoom and 1080p video capture. The Coolpix S800c has a 16-megapixel BSI CMOS sensor inside the device and a 3.5-inch OLED WVGA touchscreen. You will be able to connect with the device using a WiFi connection so you can upload images from the camera itself without having to transfer it. The Coolpix S800c will be available in black and white next month for $350.
Sony has announced a successor to the Xperia S smartphone. They posted the details about the Xperia SL on their website. The Xperia SL has a Snapdragon S3 CPU from 1.5GHz to 1.7GHz. There are two color options: pink and silver. The Xperia SL will ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The Xperia SL will have a 12.1-megapixel rear-facing camera and 4.3-inch 720p display. No word on pricing or availability. [TheVerge]
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 pricing and availability is now known. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is a 10-inch WiFi tablet that has a Stylus Pen. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 has the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, 1.4GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 1280×800 TFT display, 5-megapixel rear camera with autofocus/LED flash, and a 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera. The tablet will be available starting tomorrow on August 16 for $499 (16GB) or $549 (32GB).
