Teens sure do love their texting. New data from Nielsen proves it.
According to an analysis of 65,000+ mobile subscribers' phone bills, U.S. teens have tripled their data usage. In the third quarter of 2011, teens aged 13-17 averaged 320 MB of data per month. This number has increased 256% over the last year, and not surprisingly teens are are consuming data faster than any other age group. But when it comes to data usage, boys are consuming 382 MB per month while girls only use 266 MB. This is not the case when it comes to texting.
It hasn't even been five years since Apple unveiled the first iPhone. The device wasn't the world's first smartphone, but was arguably the most capable and well-designed and Apple's marketing prowess it made it the first must-have gadget of its kind. Soon after came Android, which has powered increasingly impressive devices by a range of manufacturers.
The growth of smartphone adoption and associated mobile technologies has been staggering. As of the end of 2011, the majority of U.S. adults under the age of 35 now own a smartphone. Sixty-two percent of them have downloaded apps (mostly games), and mobile Web usage among these consumers has grown 45% since last year.
Today Facebook launched the much anticipated Timeline and Timeline mobile for Android and its HTML5 mobile site m.facebook.com. But Timeline mobile for the Facebook iOS app is nowhere to be found. Timeline on the iPhone will be available in a future update of the Facebook iOS app, a Facebook spokesperson tells us. For now, iPhone and iPad users will have to use Facebook Timeline through the mobile site.
There's no doubt that Facebook Timeline will eventually go live for iOS apps. But for now, Facebook seems to be mostly focused on its HTML5 web app project. The fact that Timeline mobile isn't going live for iOS anytime soon is proof of that.
Social media-fueled personalized magazine app Flipboard announced today that they've seen 1 million new users as a result of launching their iPhone app last week.
The app has long been beloved by owners of the iPad, the only device on which it was available until recently. By bringing the app to the iPhone, the Palo Alto-based startup made good on a promise they had been making for several months.
When it comes to HTML5 implementation, Android has historically lagged behind most of the other major mobile platforms. iOS is considered the crown jewel of HTML5 performance and even Windows Phone has faired better than Android. That may all be about to change.
In Sencha's latest HTML5 benchmark, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich was put through the paces. The newest flagship Android device acquitted itself well. As Sencha puts it; "The Galaxy Nexus is a big step forward for developers looking to leverage HTML5 on Android." See the details below.
There have been over 1,000 instances of Android malware found this year and the rate of growth has nearly doubled since July. Smartphones are increasingly becoming targets for malicious hackers because they are filled with rich data, tied to payments processing services and typically have less security than a personal computer. You thought 2011 was the Year Of Mobile Malware? Wait till you see 2012.
Mobile security firm Lookout has made six predictions for the trends of mobile malware in 2012. Some are rooted (no pun intended) in some of the emerging trends in the latter half of 2011 while others are new and potentially harmful evolutions that could engulf users in a stream of spam, viruses and malware.
If you had a button that you could press to pause time, make flying birds freeze in mid air, etc. what would you do with that opportunity? Some of us would catch up on all the links we've bookmarked as "to read" or favorited on Twitter. I don't have a button like that, but a new iPhone app that launched today comes pretty close.
Summly (iTunes) is a machine learning app that uses semantic analysis of text and a variety of algorithms to cut long-form text down into just a few hundred characters; it summarizes articles online by capturing just a few of the most important sentences. It does a good job and is available for free in the iTunes store. It's a powerful tool that I've been anxiously waiting for ever since its founder, 16 year old UK dweller Nick D'Aloisio, announced that he had raised venture capital and was shutting down his first iteration of the app, called Trimit. Summly is the new version of the app, it's free and it's really easy to use.
When it comes to mobile payments, how much do you really trust a credit card attached to your smartphone? Is it secure? Are merchants going to sell your personal information or start sending you piles of junk mail? These are some of the concerns that a new report from Javelin Strategy and Research surfaced this fall during a survey of consumers' fears of mobile payments and online transactions.
The survey concludes that four out of five consumers would spend more money online if they considered credit cards safer and had payment alternatives. Javelin predicts that an additional $109.8 billion would be spent by offering a "no credit card required" way to pay online and at merchants.
Android malware continues to evolve. The latest batch takes a two-pronged attack at users susceptible to downloading free games and can end costing victims a lot of money. Lookout Mobile Security reports that these apps, dubbed RuFraud, are pirated clones or add-ons of popular games and other apps designed to send premium SMS messages without users consent.
This is not the first time we have seen pirated apps deliver Android malware. Nor is it the first time that the tactic of sending premium SMS messages has been used by malicious coders.
When you really boil it down, which apps that you've downloaded from the Android Market do you actually use? According to new numbers from Nielsen, outside of the Market itself, Facebook is the next used app across age groups on Android. Four out of every five people use Facebook for Android, outdistancing Google's own apps and just about every other app on the platform.
That comes as no surprise. Facebook is the most popular app of all time, with 350 million people accessing the social network from mobile devices. Across the age demographics surveyed by Nielsen, Google properties took the next four spots. After that, the list gets interesting, with media apps more popular for younger segments and productivity apps prevalent for older Android users.
