Last Year's Smartphones Selling Better Than the Latest and Greatest

Hardware companies are in the business of convincing you to buy the hottest new item. And save for Apple, it looks like smartphone makers aren't doing a good job of it.

Four of the top five best-selling consumer smartphones of the second quarter were all made over a year or more ago, according to a recent report.

The iPhone 4 was the best selling smartphone among non-corporate consumer purchases from April through June, according to research firm NPD, with the iPhone 3GS coming in at a close second. Representing the Android operating system, HTC's EVO 4G ranked as the third most purchased smartphone in Q2. And finally, the lesser-known Samsung Intensity 2 (released in June of 2010) came in fifth place. Samsung's Inspire 4G ranked fourth, the only phone released in 2011 to make the top five.

To some extent, the increased iPhone sales make a certain amount of sense. The price of the 3GS dropped after Apple debuted its iPhone 4, attracting the bargain hunting demographic. To boot, the iPhone 4 saw a surge of new buyers after the release of a CDMA version on Verizon's 3G network. Most recently, Apple released its white iPhone 4, resulting in another spike of sales.

With the slew of new Android phones released this year, sales have spread across the myriad Android-powered options consumers face. As a result, no one particular Android model has emerged as a true victor.

Instead, Android continues to dominate in operating system market share, as 52 percent of new smartphone purchases run Google's operating system. Apple's iOS emerges in a not-too-distance second place, with 29 percent of the OS market share. And of course, much of this growth is at RIM's expense; the Canadian company bled out over half its share of sales compared to the same period last year. As usual, Windows Phone 7, Windows Mobile, and webOS each held less than 5% of the market.

Image courtesy of NPD Group

source: Gadget Lab

Google Closing Android Market Developer Support Forums

If developers weren’t already peeved enough, we have some more bad news for them – Google’s shutting down the developer support forums where the coders of the market convene to discuss issues with the Android market or application development. The site has been home to huge discussions and complaints from market developers with massive threads usually spawning when developers are seeing diminished returns due to Android market bugs, errors or what have you.

Now, Google’s going to focus on supporting developers one-on-one, handling issues only when developers directly contact them. We like to think they’re getting a bit annoyed when a big ****storm brews over market issues and seeing the entire tech community immediately alerted to it.

But what’s the alternative? Developers can continue to contact Google independently for each issue as they always have. The problem with that is, more often than not, developers are met with canned responses. And in some rare instances, they are met with no response at all.

If you do get that canned response, you probably won’t get a status update on whatever fix you’re concerned with. I imagine a lot of isolated issues are handled in a timely manner, but the widespread issues that have popped up in recent months have taken Google forever to fix, with some not even having a resolution in sight.

Many would say that Google’s taking the easy way out (or being a “cop out”) by shutting the developer support forums down. I’m not so sure I’d disagree. As one Reddit user put it, their customer service and support were already rock bottom with the forums, and to take away the avenue developers use to discuss issues in hopes to fix problems Google drags their feet with is doing nothing at all to help. [Google]

source: Android Phone

Acer M310 Windows Phone said to have HDMI-out, 8GB storage

We first heard about the existence of the Acer M310 Windows Phone last week, but literally no information was given besides the fact that two test units were discovered on a developer's traffic sheet. How about a few more shreds of meat to chew on? According to WindowsPhoneNZ, the Mango device was sighted at TechEd New Zealand with HDMI-out support. We may be seeing this feature across a large variety of Windows Phones coming out this fall, as the HTC Eternity has been rumored to include video output via HDMI as well. The observer claims the M310 has a "black shiny look" and "bevelled edges," has a similar appearance to the Acer W4 (shown in the above image), and includes DLNA support over WiFi. The handset was also seen snuggling up to Asus' entry into the Windows Phone market, which was said to have a matte black finish and may have a front-facing camera. Certainly, if these factoids are correct, this fall's Mango lineup looks to be laden with all kinds of hidden gems we haven't seen on Microsoft's OS yet.

source: Engadget

Samsung intros the Galaxy W, Y, Y Pro and M Pro

Samsung has announced four new Android phones that conform to their new naming scheme for the Galaxy brand.

The first of the lot is the Galaxy W. It has a 3.7-inch, 800 x 480 touchscreen TFT LCD touchscreen, 1.4GHz single-core processor, 5 megapixel camera, 14.4Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and a 1500mAh battery. It runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and come will with Samsung’s Game, Social and Music Hubs.

Next is the Galaxy M Pro. It’s a slim, 9.97mm thick, QWERTY smartphone with a 2.66-inch, 480 x 320 TFT LCD touchscreen and optical trackpad. It will have a 1GHz processor, 5 megapixel rear camera and VGA resolution front camera. Connectivity features include 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n. Being a business phone, Samsung is also offering a variety of enterprise solutions, including Exchange Active Sync, Sybase Afaria, CISCO Mobile and CISCO WebEx. It will be running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and powered by a 1350mAh battery.

Third is the Samsung Galaxy Y. It’s a candybar touchscreen phone with a 3-inch 320 x 240 resolution TFT LCD touchscreen, 832MHz processor, 2 megapixel camera, 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Android 2.3 and 1200mAh battery. The phone will come with SWYPE built-in and will be sold in a variety of colors.

Last one is the Galaxy Y Pro. Samsung did not divulge much information about the specifications of this phone but they should be similar to those of the Galaxy Y, except the Galaxy Y Pro has a QWERTY keypad instead.

You can look forward to more information regarding these four new smartphones at IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) next week.

source: GSM Arena