Apple's iPhone tops US smartphone shipments, but Android devices take 44% - Apple Insider

Apple's iPhone tops US smartphone shipments, but Android devices take 44%

By Neil Hughes

Published: 09:45 AM EST

Apple's iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2010, taking 26.2 percent of the market, but the wide variety of handsets running Google's Android represented a commanding 43.6 percent.

New data from Canalys released on Monday shows that Apple took the top spot in the U.S. as the best-selling smartphone vendor in the country. Apple's 26.2 percent share edged Research in Motion's 24.2 percent, giving Apple the greatest shipments of any vendor in the U.S., which is the largest smartphone market in the world.

However, Canalys also found that devices running Google's Android mobile operating system represented 43.6 percent of U.S.shipments in the third quarter of 2010. Worldwide, Android grew 1,309 percent from the same period a year ago, from 1.4 million shipments in the third quarter of 2009 to more than 20 million units during the three-month span this year.

"With Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson all delivering large numbers of Android devices, and with focused efforts from many other vendors, such as LG, Huawei and Acer, yielding promising volumes, the platform continues to gather momentum in markets around the world," said Canalys Senior Analyst Pete Cunningham.

"Android has been well received by the market and in some geographies it is becoming a sought-after consumer brand. It has rapidly become the platform to watch, and its growing volumes will help to entice developers, ensuring consumers have access to an increasingly rich and vibrant mobile content and application ecosystem."

The numbers show a total of 9.1 million smartphones running Android from the Open Handset Alliance being shipped in the third quarter of 2010. That was ahead of the estimated 5.5 million iPhones sold in the three-month frame. Research in Motion's BlackBerry came in third in the mobile operating system race, shipping an estimated 5.1 million, followed by Microsoft with 600,000.

Recent studies have repeatedly shown that Android-based smartphone shipments have eclipsed Apple's iPhone in 2010. Some have shown that Android's growth was not slowed by the launch of the iPhone 4 this summer.

Apple and Android have publicly disputed one another over new device activation numbers throughout 2010. But on last month, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs admitted that Android outsold the iPhone in the June quarter, citing numbers from Gartner which he said he believes are "pretty accurate."

Jobs said during his company's quarterly earnings call that in the June quarter, many customers were waiting to buy the iPhone 4. He said his company is waiting to find out what happened in the September quarter, but it's hard to track because there is no "solid data" on how many Android devices are shipped each quarter.

Apple just had its best quarter ever, selling a record 14.1 million iPhones. That helped the company achieve 70 percent growth in profits to $4.31 billion.

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Brazil Stocks Advance on Commodity Rise, Rousseff Election Win - BusinessWeek

November 01, 2010, 10:04 AM EDT By Alexander Ragir

Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Bovespa stock index rose for a second day as commodities advanced and traders reduced bets interest rates would increase after President-elect Dilma Rousseff vowed to restrain spending after yesterday’s election.

Vale SA, the world’s biggest iron ore producer, rose as metals prices advanced. MRV Engenharia e Participacoes SA and Rossi Residencial SA gained on Rousseff’s victory. Cosan SA Industria & Comercio, the world’s biggest sugar-cane processor, climbed after saying its unit, Cosan Overseas Ltd., sold $300 million of perpetual bonds to yield 8.25 percent.

“This election was somewhat of an overhang on the Bovespa,” said Ed Kuczma, an emerging markets analyst at Van Eck Associates in New York, which manages $21 billion. “As long as Brazil continues on the fundamentals Lula enacted, Brazil should be fine.”

The Bovespa stock index rose 0.7 percent to 71,137.14 at 9:44 a.m. New York time. The Bovespa stock index advanced on Oct. 29, capping a second monthly gain, as homebuilders and retailers rallied on easing concern policy makers will raise borrowing costs to cool the economy.

The real was little changed at 1.6996 per dollar today.

Yields on interest-rate futures contracts due in January 2012 fell 3 basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 11.31 percent.

Copper rose in London as manufacturing accelerated in China, the world’s biggest consumer of the metal.

Vale rose 0.6 percent to 48.03 reais. Cosan gained 2.2 percent to 27.44 reais.

Rousseff’s Promises

Rousseff won 56 percent of the vote yesterday compared with 44 percent for Jose Serra, the former governor of Sao Paulo state. The Brazilian people won’t accept governments that spend at “unsustainable levels,” Rousseff told supporters in Brasilia after the election results were announced.

Rossi climbed 1.9 percent to 16.97 reais. MRV advanced 1.4 percent to 16.83 reais.

Rousseff won by promising continuity with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose policies lifted 21 million Brazilians out of poverty since 2003 and created a record 15 million jobs.

Maintaining Lula’s economic policies may be insufficient to allow Rousseff to match his successes, which include winning Brazil’s first investment-grade credit rating in 2008. Traders are pushing up borrowing costs for Brazil, which has $957 billion in public debt, on bets that Rousseff will fail to curb spending, forcing policy makers to raise interest rates in 2011.

--Editors: Glenn J. Kalinoski, Brendan Walsh

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Ragir in Rio de Janeiro at aragir@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

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Iraqi forces storm church to end standoff; 58 killed - CNN

58 dead in Iraqi hostage situationNEW: Seven-five others wounded at Catholic church in Baghdad NEW: Most of the casualties were women and children, officials sayThe Islamic State of Iraq claims responsibility for the attackGunmen entered the church Sunday, taking as many as 120 hostage

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- The death toll from a hostage standoff at a Catholic church in Baghdad has risen to 58, police officials with the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Monday.

Seventy-five others were wounded in the attack by armed gunmen Sunday, the officials said, adding that most of the casualties were women and children. Two priests were also among the dead as well as 17 security officers and five gunmen.

The hours-long standoff ended Sunday after Iraqi security forces stormed the Sayidat al-Nejat church. Eight suspects were arrested.

"All the marks point out that this incident carries the fingerprints of al Qaeda," Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi said on state television Sunday.

He said that most of the hostages were killed or wounded when the kidnappers set off explosives inside the church.

At least two of the attackers were wearing explosive vests, which they detonated just minutes before security forces raided the church, the police officials said.

The Islamic State of Iraq later claimed responsibility for the attack through a statement posted on a radical Islamic website. The umbrella group includes a number of Sunni extremist organizations and has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq.

"The Mujahedeens raided a filthy nest of the nests of polytheism, which has been long taken by the Christians of Iraq as a headquarter for a war against the religion of Islam and they were able by the grace of God and His glory to capture those were gathered in and to take full control of all its entrances," the group said on the website.

Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that he was praying "for the victims of this absurd violence -- all the more ferocious in that it hit defenseless people gathered in the house of the Lord, which is home to reconciliation and love."

Survivors of the ordeal said they were about to begin Sunday night services when the gunmen entered the church, according to Martin Chulov, a journalist for the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper who was on the scene. A priest ushered the congregants into a backroom, Chulov reported that survivors said.

At one point, one of the gunmen entered the room and threw an unidentified explosive device inside, causing casualties, Chulov said.

The U.S. military spokesman said that as many as 120 people were taken hostage.

The gunmen seized the hostages after attacking the Baghdad Stock Market in the central part of the Iraqi capital earlier Sunday, police said. Four armed men entered the nearby Sayidat al-Nejat church after clashing with Iraqi security forces trying to repel the stock market attack.

Iraq's Interior Ministry told CNN that gunmen attacked the stock market to distract Iraqi security forces who were outside the church to protect it.

The gunmen were demanding that the Iraqi government release a number of detainees and prisoners inside Iraqi prisons, saying the Christian hostages would be freed in return, according to the police officials. Iraq's defense minister later said on state television that the kidnappers had demanded the release of a number of prisoners in both Iraq and Egypt.

Iraqi security forces sealed off the area surrounding the church, the officials said, and buildings were evacuated of civilians as a precautionary measure. At least 13 hostages, including two children, managed to escape ahead of the rescue operation, police said.

The Iraqi authorities ordered the attackers to release the hostages and to turn themselves in, warning that they would storm the church if they do not comply. A few hours passed quietly as military units took up positions outside the church, including several American units, said Chulov.

"Then all hell broke loose," he said. A firefight erupted, and Chulov said he heard three to four large explosions. Later, he saw about 20 ambulances race away from the scene.

The American military spokesman minimized the role that U.S. troops played in the operation.

"The U.S. only provided UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] support with video imagery. As always we have advisers with the ISF [Iraqi security forces] command teams," Bloom said.

While the U.S. combat mission in Iraq officially ended earlier this year, some 50,000 American troops are expected to remain in the country until the end of 2011 to train, assist and advise Iraqi troops.

CNN's Hada Messia contributed to this report.

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Shuttle Discovery's final crew is experienced bunch - msnbc.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A tight-knit crew of six veteran astronauts are gearing up to ride the space shuttle Discovery on her last voyage beyond Earth this week.

The space flyers are due to launch on Discovery on Wednesday at 3:52 p.m. EDT (1952 GMT), from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The five men and one woman slated to lift off on the shuttle are not just crewmates, but friends as well. In fact, five of the six crewmembers were selected into the same astronaut training class. They are flying on the final mission for shuttle Discovery STS-133 as NASA prepares to retire its shuttle fleet next year.

But just who are the people behind the orange spacesuits? Here's a glimpse at each member of the last crew of space shuttle Discovery:

The commander
Steve Lindsey, 50, is the commander of the mission. A native of Temple City, Calif., Lindsey is a retired colonel in the United States Air Force. He was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1995, and has made four spaceflights, two of those on shuttle Discovery.

"Discovery is a workhorse fleet leader in number of flights," Lindsey said in a preflight briefing. "It's a privilege to be able to fly the last flight of Discovery." [ Gallery: Building Space Shuttle Discovery ]

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The strong but soft-spoken Lindsey said he is excited to lead his fellow crewmembers on the 11-day expedition to the International Space Station.

"Personally, I'm really excited to be flying with this crew," Lindsey said. "They're a fantastic group of people to fly with. Somebody once told me, you'll find as you get more experience, it's less about what you do on a mission, and more about who you get to fly it with. And I think that's really true in this case."

Lindsey is married and has three children.

The pilot
Eric Boe will serve as the pilot of STS-133, Discovery's 39th flight. The 46-year old native of Atlanta, Ga. is a colonel in the United States Air Force, and was selected to join NASA as a pilot in July 2000.

Boe completed his first spaceflight on NASA's STS-126 mission, on the space shuttle Endeavour. At a preflight briefing, Boe reflected on the significance of being part of one of the final flights of NASA's space shuttle program.

"I think all of us are happy to be on another flight," Boe said. "It's a little bittersweet when something comes to an end, but it's a privilege to be able to fly the vehicle."

For the upcoming mission, Boe said he is most looking forward to gaining new experiences and working as a team with his other crewmembers.

"When you're up there, things go pretty quick," he said. "I think I'll have a little more time to look around and pay attention to the small details. The biggest overall thing I hope to get out of this is to really absorb some of the small details I might have missed on the first flight."

Boe is married and has two children.

The astronaut dreamer
Discovery's Mission Specialist 1 is Alvin Drew, a recently retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force. During the crew's stay at the space station, Drew will participate in the mission's two spacewalks.

In addition to commemorating the legacy of the space shuttle Discovery, Drew will have another important milestone to celebrate while in space on Nov. 5, he will turn 48-yearsold.

Drew, who was born in Washington, D.C., was selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, and made his first spaceflight aboard the shuttle Endeavour for STS-118 in 2007. Having grown up dreaming of becoming an astronaut, Drew admitted that his spaceflying career seems almost surreal at times.

"[Becoming an astronaut] was one of the things that was in the back of my mind during my Air Force career, but nothing that I really took that seriously," he explained. "I think depending your career on becoming an astronaut is like planning your pension around winning the lottery. It's something that you can go pursue, but you should have a 'Plan B' in place. I did everything to stack the deck in my favor, but never really expected it would happen."

Drew's spacewalks on Discovery's STS-133 flight will be the first of his career, and he said he's proud to contribute to the future of the orbiting laboratory.

"Hopefully I can come back in 2020 and see the station working and think, I had a small part in keeping it going this long," he said.

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The Army's spacewalker
U.S. Army Col. Tim Kopra will serve as a mission specialist for Discovery's STS-133 spaceflight. The 47-year old native of Austin, Texas, is Discovery's Mission Specialist 2 and will lead the two spacewalks outside the station during the mission.

Kopra was selected to become an astronaut in July 2000 and completed his first spaceflight in 2009. He launched with the STS-127 crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2009 and logged two months aboard the space station. During his stay, Kopra performed one spacewalk and completed robotic operations and numerous science experiments.

For the upcoming mission, Kopra is especially excited to be reunited with so many of his classmates from the astronaut corps.

"What's really special about this flight is the fact that all the Class of 2000 folks are on it," he said. "We started together, and here it is 10 years later and now we're going to have this opportunity all of us with some spaceflight experience, and being able to share that together. We started out knowing very little to nothing about spaceflight, and all of us have grown in different ways over the years."

As NASA's space shuttle program draws to a close, Kopra and his crewmates recognize the contributions of the many people across the nation that work tirelessly to ensure the safety of the astronauts and the success of the mission.

"We really feel honored to be doing what we're doing," Kopra said. "The vehicle is a representation of a lot of hard work and a group of people who have been working toward a safe flight every single time."

Kopra is married and has two children.

Discovery's space doctor
Michael Barratt joined NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as a project physician in May 1991 and was subsequently selected for astronaut training in July 2000. Now, the doctor-turned-astronaut will perform duties as Mission Specialist 3 on Discovery's last spaceflight.

In March 2009, Barratt embarked on his first spaceflight, launching on a Russian Soyuz TMA-14 rocket to the International Space Station. During the long-duration mission aboard the orbiting outpost, he logged 199 days in space.

"I was surprised how little free time we had on our station mission," Barratt said in a preflight interview. "After six and a half months, we were still working very long days. I wouldn't call a station mission leisurely in any way, shape or form."

In light of Discovery's final mission, Barratt maintains that a lot of the glory belongs to the people who, over the years, maintained the shuttle between flights.

"The orbiters look great. If you just landed and didn't know the political landscape, you'd never know the program was coming to an end, because the birds are so pristine," Barratt said. "Everybody is incredibly dedicated. They're doing what they're doing for all the same reasons they signed on for years ago."

Barratt, 51, calls Camas, Wash. his hometown. He is married and has five children.

Home again on space station
Nicole Stott is the Mission Specialist 4 for Discovery's upcoming flight. She began working at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in 1988 as an operations engineer in the Orbiter Processing Facility.

Stott, 47, was selected for astronaut training in July 2000 and launched on  her first spaceflight to the International Space Station in 2009, also aboard Discovery. The mission also marked Stott's first long-duration tour of duty on the orbiting station. While living and working on the space station, Stott completed one spacewalk and spent a total of 91 days in space.

Stott's second journey on Discovery will also be the orbiter's last, and in a preflight briefing, she spoke about the prolific shuttle's storied career.

"It's a historic thing that we have such a special vehicle to fly," she said. "The hope, in addition to having a successful mission, is that we'll be celebrating the real significance of the vehicle itself. We have to look at this as a celebration of just how wonderful Discovery has performed."

Additionally, having grown up in Clearwater, Fla., Stott knows firsthand the impact and enduring legacy that NASA's space shuttle program has had on the country.

"There's nothing negative that you can say about it," Stott said. "There are only positives and encouraging things that have come from this program."

Stott is married and has one child.

Follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow as she covers Discovery's final space voyage from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Click here for mission updates, new stories and a link to NASA's live webcast coverage.

© 2010 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

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Microsoft's Head Is in the Clouds - TechNewsWorld

It was pretty much all about the cloud at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Professional Developers Conference, held last week at its Redmond, Wash., corporate campus.

CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives spoke about how the software giant's latest developments span the PC, the mobile phone and the cloud.

They also highlighted the revamp of Windows Azure as a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering, pushing it as a next-generation operating system.

Microsoft further used the occasion to unveil major changes in its browser with the release of IE9 Platform Preview 6 for developers.

It's not clear, however, what effect its ramped-up push into the cloud will have on the software giant's competitive position in the short term.

At PDC 2010, Microsoft positioned Windows Azure as a PaaS. A PaaS lets users set up the platform they heed - -- the hardware, operating systems, IT infrastructure and tools -- automatically on the cloud, instead of having to physically source some or all of these components.

Microsoft announced Virtual Machine Role, as well as Server Application Virtualization -- two new Windows Azure capabilities that will make it a PaaS.

Virtual Machine Role lets users run an instance of Windows Server 2008 R2 on Microsoft's cloud. This lets developers move their apps to the cloud more easily.

Server Application Virtualization lets devs transfer app images to Windows Azure.

Microsoft also announced Windows Azure services, which let developers create rich cloud apps. One is the Windows Azure AppFabric Composition Model. The model provides critical application deployment and management capabilities that help devs assemble services more quickly.

Another service is the Windows Azure Marketplace. This includes DataMarket, previously codenamed "Project Dallas." The Windows Azure Marketplace offers premium (for-pay) and public content, including demographic, financial, mapping and entertainment data. It was launched Friday and has more than 35 content providers offering data subscriptions.

Microsoft also introduced the Extra Small Widows Azure Instance for developers. This is priced at 5 US cents per compute hour.

"This emphasis on the cloud is likely Ray Ozzie's signature contribution to Microsoft, and it looks like he actually did an impressive job of getting a lot of folks who don't normally work together to cooperate," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.

"I think the impact is going to be positive for Azure," John Barnes, chief technology officer at Model Metrics, told TechNewsWorld. "We're going to evaluate it because we're hearing more and more positive things about it."

However, Microsoft may find the going tougher than expected. "Depending on the enterprise, there's still some skepticism about the cloud," Barnes said.

It will be five to 10 years before people fully accept moving everything to the cloud, he added.

Microsoft did not respond to TechNewsWorld's requests for comment by press time.

As for IE9, the next version of Microsoft's browser, the focus is strongly on HTML5. The company is working on interoperability, committing to the W3C and the standards process. The IE9 beta has been downloaded 10 million times since it was launched about six weeks ago, Microsoft said.

Microsoft on Friday made IE9 Platform Preview 6 available for developers at IETestDrive.com. This preview offers better performance and quality, as wel as increased standards support.

For example, IE9 now supports CSS3 2D transforms. It also supports full hardware acceleration.

"IE9 is the only browser in the market that is 100 percent hardware accelerated," Enderle said. "The others haven't been able to pull this off yet, and it's a huge improvement over IE8 as a result."

Although Microsoft's pushing of hardware performance will slow down adoption of IE9 at first, it will appeal to those who buy new hardware and are most likely to buy other devices, Enderle pointed out. "It's called going where the money is, and this practice is more consistent with Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) practice than it is with Microsoft's," he added.

"Microsoft's seen what happened with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome and has tried to make its browser much faster and tighter," Model Metrics' Barnes remarked.

Still, this may not be enough to stem the growing popularity of Google's Chrome browser, which been making inroads into the browser market at Microsoft's expense, of late.

"Whether people will go back to IE after having used Chrome or Firefox remains to be seen," Barnes said.

Why the heavy play on HTML5? Is Microsoft tired of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash?

"Flash has issues, and, while Microsoft will continue to support it, Flash is somewhat of an embarrassment because it should have been Microsoft's technology," Enderle said.

"Flash has its roots in 'Chrome Effects,' a project that was killed because of internal politics. Microsoft probably would just as soon see Flash go away," he added.

"Flash, HTML5 and Silverlight all have their places," Model Metrics' Barnes suggested. "I think HTML5 is great for cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility."

Flash and Silverlight have a place in the short term, and they'll probably coexist with HTML5 for the next three to five years, Barnes said. "I know Adobe's doing a lot with Flash, and it talks a lot about how HTML5 and Flash can coexist -- and the same can be said for Silverlight."

Apple, too, is pushing for HTML5 instead of Flash, which it describes as old technology and prone to malware attacks.

Talk of a move toward mobile computing has been gaining traction for some time. Apple seems to have taken this to heart, revamping its MacBook Air family's user interface with features formerly only seen in mobile devices.

Is Microsoft missing the boat here? There's almost nothing heard about a mobile version of IE9.

Perhaps not. At PDC 2010, Microsoft demonstrated using Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone to develop apps. VSE is the free version of Visual Studio.

Devs can use a variety of ways to get data with WinPho7. These include REST, JSON and Web services, and Microsoft on Friday announced it's shipping a new OData library devs can use. This provides standards-based OData to consume and query data on the Web.

"The Windows Phone 7 offering has the best browser Microsoft has ever put in a phone," said Enderle. "It's just that Microsoft had issues with Flash initially."

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Alternative Search Engine Blekko Launches to Eliminate Spam in Search - ABC News

Blekko's alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that's been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta. With the official rollout, Blekko is also releasing several new features designed for both mainstream and the site's super users.

As you may recall, Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology.

The most significant upgrade to Blekko's search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one of seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user's query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag.

The auto-fire functionality is designed with passive searchers in mind and aims to eliminate friction for first-time users. The technology that powers these auto-slashtags was developed through an extensive research and development phase that involved analyzing the relationship between queries and the type of spam results they typically generate.

Blekko plans to introduce auto-slashing for additional categories moving forward, but selected to launch with ones that represent a high volume of search traffic and are typically laden with spammy results. Health, lyric and financial queries on Google or Bing, for instance, will return results dominated by poor quality content farms or malware-hosting sites. Those same searches on Blekko yield results only from high quality sites.

Blekko's slashtag formula works because of passionate users who take the time to add and edit URLs for category slashtags. As such, the company has released new features to enable users to apply to be editors for slashtags as well as share their comments and feedback on individual slashtags. Think of this as the Wikipedia formula but applied to search, so a small percentage of users will work together to build out slashtags for the majority of Blekko searchers.

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