Ewan Spence

Last night, after several months of rumors and speculation, Samsung finally announced their 2012 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III. It’s a device that I’ve been telling everyone to wait for, telling everyone that it’s going to be the best Android handset to come out this year, telling everyone that buying any other smartphone would be a huge mistake. Now that the Galaxy S III is official, I have to admit that I was wrong, and I’m deeply sorry.

Stefan Constantinescu.

Got to love the alleged view of the UK mobile networks:

 Citing an “extremely reliable” source, [Professeur Thibault] first goes on to address the absence of a Focus S equivalent in Europe which is apparently due to carriers’ unwillingness to stock a device that looks so similar to the Galaxy S II. If there were ever a good incentive to not be lazy with design for Samsung, that would be it…and it really does look to have gotten to them. The source goes on to say the leading OEM is ready to release new models this year for Europe and that, “they should be beautiful”.

My emphasis, via Windows Phone Daily.

Eric Schmidt:

Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else… Fragmentation, however, means that you have an app and it runs on one device but not the other

You know, everyone can drive a truck through this argument, but polite society means you could never ask Schmidt the exact question to get an honest answer in an interview

…or maybe they’ve sold eleventy-million and one. That’s the problem when you don’t tell people your sales figures - we’ll start to make them up. Charles Arthur of The Guardian:

And yes, for journalists it is frustrating to be driven to roundabout language such as “believed to be the world’s largest smartphone seller”. I’m far from the only person to have been frustrated by this today; I know directly of two others on different publications who gnashed their teeth over precisely this topic and the misleading tweets from Samsung Mobile SA. If Samsung thinks it’s the world’s largest smartphone seller, then I’d like to at least have it on Samsung’s authority

And there we go - a bit later than I expected, but Amazon Kindle Fires are being flashed with clean Android ROM’s, in this case of 4.0 and the Ice Cream Sandwich build. To be honest this was always going to happen, and I think the few hundred Fires that will be flashed won’t worry Amazon.

Bezos will be happy with the extra PR and marketing going out there to help sell more catalogues Kindles for his digital store. It’s building mind share, and it gets over the idea that the Kindle Fire is the only true Android tablet in the eyes of the regular consumers.

Mission accomplished.

I’m not sure if the news that Samsung won’t be providing an update from Android 2.3 to Android 4.0 for the Galaxy Tab 7 and the Galaxy S is (a) a huge big stick to beat them up - and if I had bought the Tab on a twenty-four month contract in August I’d be raising a very big eyebrow; or (b) the perfect example of “if the hardware is doing what you need it to do, not what you want it to do, then chill.”

Maybe it depends on which will bring in more page views?

9th December. On Android and iOS (so it’s using Unity then?). I’d best take the day off…

David Gilson (moonlighting at Blottr instead of the All About family), talks about the current state of play in the Android world with the linkbaiting headline of “Is Android Doomed?”

Google has to walk a fine line of not being seen to give preferential treatment to Motorola Mobility, in order to stop the likes of HTC and Samsung quitting Android. So far it’s been doing a good job, by means of helping them to fight its proxy patent war against Apple.

An interesting read…

I’m sure that private and public timeline are different, and arguing that the Android timeline is “older” because it was more in the public eye than Apple will cause no end of fanboy wars. But if you want to look at timelines, how about Android before iPhone and Android after iPhone?

So pardon me if I raise an eyebrow to Eric Schmidt today:

…I think most people would agree that Google is a great innovator and I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort.

Back in February, a huge number of people wondered why Nokia went with Windows Phone 7 and not Android. Here’s another reason to add to the rather obvious business cases that were pointed out after Feb 11, and it’s all to do with Samsung.

Today, Samsung announced they would be paying Microsoft a per-device royalty on all their Android devices. And the per-device Android fee handed to Microsoft is more than the per-device cost of licencing Windows Phone 7. There’s a potential fiduciary argument that Windows Phone is now cheaper than Android.

Starter for ten, how much are Nokia paying per Windows Phone they sell? Well it’s “significantly lower than for other Windows Phone licensees” (AAS) and Nokia are receiving ”substantial payments” from Microsoft in regards to their IP. There’s no hard and fast numbers out there but I bet the balance sheets, at least for the next two or three years, are going to be in Nokia’s favour on that per-device cost.

Nokia and Stephen Elop were always playing the long game, and it’s starting to bear fruit.

Or more specifically the right to use certain patents on their Android devices, which Microsoft will now collect a per-device royalty. And here’s me thinking that Google buying Motorola Mobility was meant to strengthen Android against this sort of thing…

Kevin Marks, re-iterating that Android is not just Google Android:

Why would Amazon do this [The Amazon Android tablet]? Because they are primarily in the shopping and media business. Apple has stopped them selling eBooks and media inside their apps on iPad/iPhone; Google has banned their App Store from the Google Android Market. Amazon could even offer a referral fee for anything bought via their store as an incentive for device manufacturers to ship it.

A recent study conducted by security software provider McAfee found that the amount of malicious software, also known as malware, targeting Android had jumped 76 percent since the previous quarter, a remarkable rise in just three months. At the same time, Android had surpassed Symbian as the most attacked mobile platform.

The caveat of course being a snake-oil salesman telling you more snakes are on the new system, but hey, another victory for Android!

They’re the same developers they asked to code all of those wonderful “Honeycomb” apps.