Android, Blackberry Lose Smartphone Market Share to Apple iOS
Strategy Analytics announced that the market share for the Android operating system decreased to 56% from 60%. In addition, Blackberry’s smartphone market share declined from 11% to 7% over the past year. This is its lowest level in recent history. Consumers, businesses and operators continue to be frustrated by Blackberry’s limited touchcreen smartphone portfolio and repeated delays to its new BB10 operating system.
Mentor Graphics, Stonestreet One Integrate Bluetopia Protocol Stack with Nucleus RTOS
Mentor Graphics and Stonestreet One teamed together to integrate the Nucleus Real Time Operating System (RTOS) with the Bluetopia protocol stack. Seamless integrating Stonestreet One’s Bluetopia with Mentor’s Nucleus RTOS will enable developers to create innovative products for low power and connectivity with ease and reliability.
Low-Cost Android Smartphones to Account for 80% of Market in Some Areas
According to a NPD In-Stat research report, Less is More: The Worldwide Emergence of Low-Cost Android Smartphones, low-cost Android handsets will reach a penetration rate of 80% of total smartphones in Africa, India, and China by 2015. Low-cost Android will flourish in these emerging areas. However, it will face heavy competition in some regions. Samsung has bada, and Nokia is developing Meltemi. In addition, Microsoft has stated that it wants to sell Windows Phone in developing regions as well and could aggressively lower prices to gain market share.
Android Accounts for 39% of Tablets Sold
Global tablet shipments grew to 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011. This is an all time-high and a 150% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2010 (10.7 million units). According to Strategy Analytics, Apple iOS remains strong at 58% (15.4 million iPads). However, Android now accounts for 39% of tablets sold (29% a year earlier). Strategy Analytics expects demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users to remain strong.
In-Stat Research: The Worldwide Emergence of Low-Cost Android Smartphones
In-Stat expects unit shipments for low-cost Android smartphones to reach almost 340 million worldwide in 2015. According to In-Stat, low-cost Android handset segment will cause some fragmentation in the Android platform. Low-cost Android smartphones will most likely be released with Android 2.2 or 2.3 because these versions offer a good blend of features with modest memory and processor usage. The Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) release requires more memory and processor demands, which makes the new version less attractive for low-cost Android devices.
AVIX RTOS Supports IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM
AVIX-RT, the company behind the AVIX RTOS, today announced AVIX support for the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM (IAR EWARM). The ultra-fast AVIX RTOS, which targets all commercially available Cortex-M3 microcontrollers, is a perfect match for IAR EWARM. In addition to enabling AVIX based applications development, AVIX-RT provides a kernel aware plug-in for the IAR EWARM environment. This plug-in seamlessly integrates with IAR EWARM and can be controlled entirely from within this environment. Using IAR EWARM combined with the AVIX plug-in allows for interactive monitoring of the status of all AVIX kernel objects through the plug-in provided Graphical User Interface.
Wind River Linux 4, Update Pack 2
Wind River rolled out Wind River Linux 4, Update Pack 2. The commercial embedded Linux runtime and development platform includes a fully integrated graphics software stack, from the board to the user interface framework level, for the latest Intel and Texas Instruments’ processors. The pre-integrated graphics stack features GTK, Qt, X.Org and the Wind River Tilcon Graphics Suite. The stack is optimized for embedded development.
LiMo 4 Linux Based Platform
LiMo Foundation introduced version four of the Linux based LiMo Platform. LiMo 4 Platform offers complete middleware and base application functionality. It enables flexible disaggregation of the device platform and the service propositions such that operators and device manufacturers can more freely shape user propositions and secure sustainable long-term value. The first LiMo 4 devices are expected to be brought to market during the second half of this year. LiMo Foundation is a global consortium of mobile operators, device and handset vendors.
Apple iPad Users Unlikely to Switch to HP TouchPad
HP launched their new TouchPad a couple of days ago. On the surface, the TouchPad is an iPad clone. The sleek TouchPad has a 9.7″ touch display and weighs 1.6 pounds. However, the HP tablet features a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1024×768 resolution, and webOS, which HP acquired when it purchased Palm last year. According to In-Stat, the key differentiators are not enough to compete with the Apple iPad and other tablets.
PPCDroid Android Port for Power Architecture
An Android operating system (OS) port now is available as open source code for embedded systems. The port was a collaborative effort between IBM, Mentor Graphics, XGI (now part of SIS) and AppliedMicro. The feature set of the Android OS, and the performance and integration of Freescale and IBM processors based on Power Architecture can help embedded systems designers create products for networking, printing and imaging, industrial, storage and media equipment applications.
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