FriendCaller Blog

According to a testimony, US have finally declared that Nokia will pay developers so that they can create Windows Phone 7 Mango applications.

The information  is thought to be extracted from a popular news channel CNN which averts that, ‘Nokia is attempting to woo app developers with such incentives as pre-installing their software on the forthcoming phone, prominent promotion for their products and funding development of an app, according to three people involved in the negotiations.’

Microsoft’s remark  on the claim is yet to come.However if the company’s track record is taken into consideration, then its more likely that the report CNN broke out is definitely true.

Evidently nothing is wrong with incentivising app growth for one of your platforms, infact it’s a great way to take the initiative.But one thing that will be a question mark for everyone is, What made Nokia do this? I mean there are numerous applications already serving the Windows Marketplace. As a matter of fact, it is propagating even faster than the Google’s Android Market for now.

When CNN encountered with one of spokeswoman from Nokia, this is what she had to say:

‘the company offers app developers a variety of incentives, some in partnership with Microsoft, which include coding assistance and marketing.’

She added more by saying: ‘We do not disclose these arrangements, as each is different.’

One of the presumptions could be that Nokia is trying to get its Symbian developers to swap over to Windows Phone 7, making the deal less pungent. Now that surely makes some sense since, its a matter of time when Symbian would be amongst least favourites.

Nokia’s very first batch of Windows Phone 7 Mango handsets are thought to emerge in Q4 of 2011. Rumors are buzzing around that the very first handset, significantly the Sea Ray, could be arriving as early as next week.

As mentioned in one of our previous blogs, Microsoft is offering free phones, developer tools and training to all those stranded developers who have been affected by WebOS burial by HP? Pretty generous isn’t it?

Similarly Nokia is following on the same lines but in a different way. So let’s have our fingers crossed and wait what this brings for Nokia in future.

Though Nokia do have to declare a verified release date but as ZTE, HTC and Samsung have announced their respective handsets publicly, we look forward as to when Nokia would soon join in with them.

Yes! Shocking but true. With Google taking the lead and Apple being the top manufacturer today in the Smartphone market, it’s getting more and more difficult for RIM’s BlackBerry to keep holding the grounds. Recent stats gathered by comScore shows that in July 2011, approximately 82.2 million people in the U.S own an Android or iPhone, thus showing a 10% increase as compared to April 2011.

Wow! In just 2 months time, the Smartphone market for Google and Apple has surely become gigantic. But for RIM BlackBerry smartphones, the stats are not that much promising. According to comScore, Google is ruling the market with 41.8% market share (gone up from 36.4% in April), while Apple lands on the second slot with 27% market share (gone up from 26%).

Now, where does RIM’s BlackBerry fit in? Well, frankly not anywhere near to Google and Apple. The market shares for BlackBerry smartphone dropped from 25.7% to 21.7% in a short span of just 3 months. Moreover, no new versions are coming up and the apps for BlackBerry have become stagnant with no latest updates at all. Pretty disturbing scenario for BlackBerry developers who have experienced this downfall in the past as well.

The data collected by comScore shows a clear downfall of RIM’s Blackberry in the smartphone market, how? According to the facts stated in the report, approximately 234 million Americans aged 13 or above own a mobile phone, not necessarily a smartphone. Samsung gets the lead here with a 25.5% share of U.S mobile subscribers as compared to LG and Motorola with 20.9% and 14.1% respectively. Apple gets the forth position with 9.5% of the total market. RIM lands on the 5^th spot with 7.6% market share. Not that impressive!

What will be the future of mobile market in the coming years? Well, it’s hard to predict. That’s why giving up on BlackBerry according to these facts and figures didn’t appeal us much. So, we are hopeful and our FriendCaller for BlackBerry app will soon be launched with all the latest VoIP features.

 Although there’s a rumor about Windows Phone taking over iOS by 2015, but this seems dubious to us even if it’s Nokia Windows Phone 7. As for now, Android and iPhone continue to dominate the Smartphone market. Let’s wait and watch what the future unfolds!

Standardizing the charger connectors for mobile phones was one of the best ideas ever. It took some pressure from the European legislator asking for a common standard but finally it happened, and the best thing is that it paid off too. I have been testing our Android devices from Motorola, HTC, Huwaei, Samsung, Google, you name it. A micro USB connection is used in all of them. One charger making one connection to the Mac or PC sounds great and a bit similar to iPods and iPhone as well. Being a proprietary to Apple, they all stayed the same for the last few years and it fits all the iPods, iPhones and iPads etc.

I was already disappointed to find out that the Asus Transformer TF101 tablet used a different connector when I purchased it. Since, it was proprietary and they gave you just one cable at the time of purchase, often you experience ‘low or dead battery’ and often at times you do not have the charger with you as well. So, I wasn’t missing it much when I left it behind in our US office.

Today, I got another tablet, an Acer Iconia. This is the 7^th tablet that I have purchased I guess and they did it again. I connected it to my USB cable to test our upcoming FriendCaller Android Video Calling app and was very happy about the great video quality. But then the moment arrived when the tablet ran out of power while connected to my MAC. What was going on? How did it happen? My initial thought was that it is using more power and less charging but then to my horror, I found out that the micro USB port would not charge at all.

So, I searched the box and found a proprietary charger with a connector similar to the old Nokia one but with a 12V output. No doubt, it is a disturbing trend. Although I understand that the power of the USB port is limited, still it should be good enough to charge any mobile device of that size, shouldn’t it?

Gartner has just released its smartphone market share report for Q1’11,  and there have certainly been some interesting developments over the past year.

One such example is Nokia and the announcement it made concerning the retirement of its Symbian device, as well as the formation of an alliance with Microsoft. I am positive that Nokia, when making this announcement, never envisioned that the market would take it as a forgone conclusion, while at the same time ignoring its alliance with Microsoft. Furthermore, I cannot recall a previous instance where a mobile OS has disappeared so quickly from the market landscape. In fact, Symbian’s market share was down from nearly 50 percent in Q1’10 to around a quarter of the market share in in Q1’11! You may recall the presentation where Nokia’s CEO spoke about Symbian as a burning platform? It now appears that they have burned down their own house, and it will be interesting to see if they will be able to repair the damage that has been done.

Not surprisingly, Android comes out as the winner in Gartner’s Q1’11 report with a nearly 30% increase in market share. Apple continues to trail behind, but that is most likely driven by the reality that they are simply too busy slowing down the iPhone ecosystem with complicated approval processes and vague developer guidelines. During 2010, Apple’s market share remained almost flat.

Today’s consumers desire open platforms and innovation. Android addresses this need by providing phones that offer far more mobile freedom such as VoIP calls over 3G, personal hotspots, and the ability to integrate VoIP apps, including FriendCaller, within the phone’s dialer. Android has always taken the lead in developing innovative wireless phone platforms, with Apple following behind, or in some cases simply ignoring its innovations.

RIM isn’t doing much better, and according to Gartner, the company also lost one third of its market share in the past year. RIM is another platform that limits and regulates developer access. As such, developers have come to feel largely ignored. Ask yourself this: If you were a VoIP developer, would you want to develop on a platform that does not provide low-level access to the audio hardware? The answer is likely no.

The primary reason that Android sales are exploding, up from 5 million in Q1’10 to more than 36 million this year, is that with this platform, the consumer gets both a cool phone, and cool apps to use. In order to get cool apps, developers need the tools and freedom to develop and distribute them. Android provides both.

Gartner’s report puts manufacturers who still believe in closed business models on notice. The future is open!

Recently we announced it, now it’s available: FriendCaller on Nokia Series 40 devices.

Finally, also Nokia users benefit from inexpensive and worldwide VoIP calls with FriendCaller.

So, VoIP on Symbian, does it make sense? Even if you think, that the most mobile web users are surfing with iOS (iPhone) or Android, in fact, in some parts of the world, in case Africa, Asia and South America, Nokia’s Symbian is still the leader. For deeper media coverage check out Pingdoms article about mobile OS usage in the world.

Back to topic, the usage of a VoIP service on your Nokia S40 device seems to be a bit difficult, so we give you a short “how-to”:

Follow these steps to use FriendCaller on your Nokia Series 40 Device:

1. Open Menu
2. Go to Settings
3. Choose Connectivity
4. Click on Internet phone
5. Then on Accounts
6. Add new
7. Connect and you are getting guided by the setup wizard
8. Now you can choose FriendCaller from the list.
9. Login with your existing FriendCaller Account or create a new one
10. Next time you make a call, choose Internet call and you are calling via FriendCaller.