Christmas sales at Tesco Mobile were firmly in favour of the market leading Apple device, outselling the Google based Android handsets by two to one, but in January sales of both devices were like for like.

Sales of Android phones eclipsed that of iPhones for the first time in February on the Tesco Mobile Network and there is good reason to believe that this trend will continue throughout 2011.

It is fair to say that the deals offered on new Android phones by Tesco are more competitive than they are able to offer on the Apple device, but as the battle for supremacy in smartphone operating systems continues to make the news, Google’s Android platform appears to be gaining a strong foothold in the market.

In this fast paced and constantly changing market, recent announcements have seen PlayStation herald the imminent launch of its Xperia Play smartphone and Nokia announce that it will be teaming up with Microsoft.

How that will effect the marketplace remains to be seen but as we wait for developments to unfold Android is the clear early winner.

Graham Harris, Chief Executive Officer of Tesco Telecoms and Tesco Mobile comments:
“As one of the UK’s leading operators, these sales are a useful barometer for smartphone trends. There is a lot of choice in the market and as a result consumers are driving healthy competition between rival operating systems.
Tesco Mobile prides itself on customer service and offering customers what they want, through a wide range of competitive deals on all platforms. In addition to competitive Android smartphone deals, we also offer iPhone on a variety of fantastic 12 month contracts.
However, we commend this healthy competition between operating systems as we see this as helping to drive consumer choice and flexibility.”

Geomium Local Social iPhone App

Cities from Plymouth to Aberdeen can now benefit from compelling local content and real time location.

Local social platform Geomium has rolled-out of its location-based services across the UK. The expansion follows its London launch at the end of September, which has so far seen more than 100,000 downloads of the Geomium iPhone app.

Geomium is a web platform and iPhone app that lets users connect with friends, meet new people and see all the latest bars, restaurants, deals and events in their local area, all in real time.

Geomium founder Michael Ferguson believes the company is the first to combine such powerful local data with real time location features, and the UK roll-out is part of a plan to take location-based services out of the techie niche it currently occupies and to become a mass market service.

“We’ve been amazed by the response to our London launch, but our most common feedback was ‘when is it coming to my town?’,” said Michael Ferguson, co-founder and CEO of Geomium. “People love the idea of planning their nights out and chatting with friends using just the one app, so we have taken the decision to roll out Geomium across the whole UK.”

Unlike Facebook Places and other location services, Geomium users set their privacy at registration and the default setting is for no one to be able to see your real time location whereabouts. But around 75 per cent of Geomium users so far have actively chosen to have an open profile.

“Privacy is massively important for any location-based service and we wanted to be completely upfront with our privacy settings as we realised that some people might not want to reveal their location online,” continued Ferguson. “But for three-quarters of users to choose an open profile suggests that people are more open to the idea of sharing location that one might have thought.”

Even if users chose not to share their location with online contacts, Geomium is still an incredibly useful social planner. It aggregates more local content than any other service, so a user will still be able to see all the bars, restaurants, events and money-off deals in their local area, either as a feed or viewed on a handy map.

Geomium also comes with a suite of other social features that allow a user to explore an area, check-in to locations, highlight their favourite places, give a ‘shout out’ to friends and meet new people.

“The key to Geomium is that it is genuinely social,” concluded Ferguson. “Does anyone really care about being crowned mayor of somewhere? But the ability to stay in touch with mates and explore an area’s nightlife feels like something everyone would be interested in doing.”

Geomium is accessed via the web or the iPhone application. Users are able to log-in directly or via their Facebook account to connect with their friends on Facebook.

The problem it appears is in the way that Apple’s Mobile Safari handles Adobe PDF documents, as the browser is designed to automatically open such files, there are fears that a hacker could embed a malicious code in the file.

Apple say that the company is well aware of the reports and the threat involved and are currently investigating the problem.

Mobile experts have suggested that the only way of preventing Mobile Safari from automatically opening PDF files is by jailbreaking a phone and installing an application, called PDF Loading Warner, that then asks for permission every time the browser tries to open a PDF file.

Some have even suggested installing an alternative browser such as the much lauded Opera Mini, although no-one can be clear on whether this would solve the problem completely as they had not been checked for exploits.

Apple too have been slow to fix problems with products such as Safari. There have been multiple versions of Safari upgraded for both Mac OSX and Microsoft due to significant browser problems. While Apple has made progress, the Windows version for PC notebooks (or otherwise), still lags behind at least four other products including Google Chrome and Firefox.

It opens up the debate as to whether smartphones would benefit from having their own security or anti virus programme in place, many have argued that there is no need for such measures with the current OS that are being used.

Although I am not an expert on internet security we are warned on a daily basis of the vulnerability of our PCs to attacks and to this end there are numerous free antivirus downloads for computers.

While there are now some anti virus software developed for mobile devices, there does seem a split in opinion as to whether mobile users actually need such programmes.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who has their own experiences on this subject.

You can also tag your favourite landmarks etc yourself to add your own contribution to the database to share with others. This excellent little app can be found at the Ovi store and is free to download for most Nokia mobile devices.

Here is a clip of how the application actually works;

opera mini browser

To be honest, working on PCs all day every day of the week, I never gave much thought to browsing on a mobile device, happy to shut the door on computers along with the office door.

My Nokia mobile device has managed to keep me updated with urgent e mails allowing me to keep in touch with business and personal contacts alike and generally that has been more than I could hope for.

But the quick connectivity of the Nokia to the web via wi-fi has recently found me checking websites and such while relaxing in front of the tv or listening to music in the evening.

For someone like me who is used to working on a desk or lap top computer, I never imagined that the small mobile screen would be very pleasurable for much more than reading text and e mails.

However, I have found that watching music videos and film trailers on the small screen isn’t so bad after all and now the Nokia is getting much more use for browsing the web.

The software that comes with Nokia’s smartphones can be clumsy and slow, so when I saw the Opera Mini browser in the Ovi store I downloaded it straight away.

OK, it is not the latest offering from Opera, but having used the full blown version on my PC it is a product that I have found both stable and simple to use for web browsing, not to mention the fact that it is fast.

Opera Mini is free to download from Ovi and is installed on the smartphone within minutes, ready to browse. It has transformed my Nokia into a much more user friendly mobile computer, with software that I know and trust as well as being much faster than the original software.

The only problem for me is that I am now spending almost every waking hour with a computer in front of me, but the main thing is that Opera mini has made that a fun, rather than miserable, experience.

eurosport app

The free to download Eurosport app has found a home on over 2 million mobiles since its launch in July 2009, regularly topping the download charts across Europe.

The app that boasts more LIVE sport content than any other in Europe has been designed and developed for use on iPhone and iPod Touch devices, amongst the many features it offers the user are LIVE results, breaking sports news, stats, standings and fixtures.

Eurosport app remains the only sports application that is available in nine local language versions, covering English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish, Polish, Russian and Chinese as well as an international version that is available in any country in the world.

Eurosport Chairman & CEO Eric Le Lay said;

“Eurosport is constantly innovating to provide the highest quality content across all media platforms and on all devices, and mobile is the perfect way to enjoy, share and experience sports news and events. We are delighted with this landmark download of 2,000,000 because it demonstrates the trust and value that sports fans place in the Eurosport brand.”

The Eurosport app is available for free download from iTunes and the Apple store.

tapulous

iPhone application developer Tapulous says that its Tap Tap Revenge game series has been installed on over twenty million phones and has been played more than 600 million times, with sales approaching $1 million per month.

Tapulous, who employ just twenty staff, provide all the evidence needed to see the growing demand for applications for the iPhone and clearly demonstrate the growing success of start-up companies designing programs for Apples iPhone and other mobile devices.

Apple have over 50 million users of iPhones and iPod touches, which is a massive market to tap into and experts are predicting growth in mobile apps in the next two years will match that recently seen by gaming sites such as Zynga, Playfish and Playdom.

Tapulous generates income from the sale of some games and selling advertising and songs through its games, the company is funded by an input of  $2.8million through investors and venture capital groups.

Mini 3 - Dell Smartphone

Dell Incorporated are set to launch their won Smartphone in China in November, followed towards the end of the year by Brazil, due to the large subscriber base and the existence of telecom partnerships in those countries.

Not much information has yet been given on the computer makers plans just that it will use the Google Inc’s Android software and is to be called the Mini 3,and will be  aimed at the consumer market rather than enterprises.

It is believed that world’s largest mobile phone carrier by subscribers ‘China Mobile’ along with America’s Movil’s Claro will be holding the phone.

The President of Dell Global Consumer Group Ron Garriques said;

“Our entry into the smart phone category is a logical extension of Dell’s consumer product evolution over the past two years. We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their Internet experience out of the home and do the things they want to do whenever and wherever they want.”

Now anyone on the go who needs to stay connected and productive can protect, access, share, synchronise, encrypt, backup and store their files from a cell phone, using MyNomadesk.mobi. The mobile dashboard, which mimics the look and feel of the Nomadesk desktop virtual file server, makes remote collaboration, synchronization and backup easier and more intuitive and can be accessed from any internet enabled mobile, handheld device.

What Nomadesk Technology Does

We all risk losing precious unprotected and critical data every day, as the amount of unprotected data stored on multiple devices increases, the information becomes harder to synchronise – and easier to lose.

Nomadesk allows individuals and teams to secure, sync, share and backup data with no limits or change in behavior, giving them access to their files when working online and offline.

Nomadesk’s virtual drive works just like any hard drive storing important information in one place with remote access.Users need only drag and drop their docs into the virtual file server, and files are immediately encrypted, backed up and available for file sharing.

Nomadesk offers the following benefits:

• Free 30-day trial at www.Nomadesk.com
• Most cost-effective file sharing, encryption, synchronization, backup & storage
• Easy installation
• Drag, drop simple – doesn’t require a change in behavior – drop and drag files into a virtual drive as you would with a hard drive
• Unlimited (storage capacity and number of users per fileserver)
• Online & offline access from any digital platform
• Highest security (256-bit encryption on local desktop as well as in the Cloud)
• TheftGuard – protection from theft or misplaced devices. Shred important docs on Nomadesk drive remotely in the event of theft or lost hardware
• Automatic, real-time synchronization and collaboration
• Free technical support
• Seamless integration with Windows, Mac and iPhone
• Maintain greater control over document management
• Replaces need for IT expertise, external storage devices, VPN, FTP and backup system, large email attachments
• DeltaSync – Nomadesk synchronizes changes in documents, minimizing bandwidth
• FileLink – send a link to large documents rather than attaching through email
• Email2Folder – email documentss directly into Nomadesk virtual drive
• Cost-effective disaster recovery and data compliance

For just  Euro 12 per month per file server, an unlimited number of team members can access, share and save docs with unlimited storage capacity. In addition, TheftGuard™ provides advanced tracking, allowing users to spot a stolen or misplaced device on Google Maps and remotely shred all important documents. Nomadesk software can be downloaded on www.nomadesk.com and easily installed with a 30-day free trial.