How times have changed. Not long ago, there was much consternation, pitchforks and gnashing of teeth at Apple’s medieval rules governing App development and iTunes DRM, and now your music can be set free (for £0.20 a track, naturally) whilst third party browsers are now free to roam wild on the iPhone!
Here is our pick of the best:
Incognito – Lets you browse…incognito. No mopping up your search history after visiting Rick Astley’s Wikipedia page! £1.19, but can you put a price on privacy?
Webmate – Allows quick and simple proper tabbed browsing, where links are queued up to be viewed later. Check out this iPhone Webmate browser video to get a better idea! Available for £0.59.
A step in the right direction, but still a step short of getting the browsers we really want on the iPhone. Opera and Firefox variant Fennec are both champing at the bit to be unleashed on Apple’s baby, perhaps this relaxation of Apple’s ‘copying existing iPhone functionality = bad’ app rule could see those browsers arrive sooner rather than later.
With all the Q3 2008 numbers finally in, it shows some exciting changes in the mobile phone industry!
Whilst overall phone shipments topped out at almost 40 million units over the third quarter, Samsung managed to overtake the inexplicably successful Motorola in the US, becoming the market leader for the first time. A combination of appealing new devices, cut-throat subsidies and shrewd marketing (off the back of a weak Korean currency allowing cheaper shipments) has managed to wrestle the Motorola RAZR’s death-grip on the US, and not a moment too soon!
Equally groundbreaking is that Apple has snatched second in the extremely competitive smartphone sector, overtaking BlackBerry with 17% of the market covered! It wasn’t all bad news for BlackBerry’s creators RIM though, who themselves have increased their share to 15%, from 10.2 in Q3 of 2007.
The losers? Well, all these market share increases make for sombre reading as far as Nokia is concerned, as other manufacturers chomp Pac-Man style into their huge piece of the smartphone pie. Their market share has declined by a small margin, but it comes as little surprise with their far reaching span of handsets for all regions.
With each of the big four manufacturers pretty much in control of their own operating systems (Nokia have Symbian, Apple and RIM devices run on proprietary software and Motorola uses Linux), it will be interesting to see if Android can muscle its way into what will be an increasingly tough area to penetrate.
Perhaps they have already targeted the unsteady one in the pack, with Motorola recently announcing plans to create an Android-powered device. Either way, 2009 will be a very interesting year in the mobile business, and Omio will keep you abreast of any developments!
