Nielsen reported on its blog this week the results of its most recent research on smartphone usage which shows that the most used smartphone apps for adults in the U.S. older than age 18 are those made by Facebook and Google, Gmail and the Android market.
 
Nielsen’s report said that for Android users between the age of 18 and 34, Facebook was the most popular app, achieving an 80pc active reach and for those between age 35 and 44, over 75pc used the app.   64pc of Android smartphone …

Apple dominated the British smartphone market for the month of October, a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reveals.
According to data from the Research Firm, more than two in five smartphones sold in Britain for the month of October were from Apple.
Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director for the research firm, said in a statement that “Apple took a whopping 42.8 percent share of all smartphone sales, giving it a significant lead over Android — a feat many thought was …

Among smartphone owners, iPhone users are the most loyal to their choice of brand, a new survey reveals.
According to research firm GfK, 84 percent of iPhone owners said that they will also buy an iPhone when the time comes that they will replace their current smartphone.
Meanwhile, 60 percent of smartphone owners who use a device running on the Google-backed Android mobile operating system said that they would purchase another Android device when they buy another smartphone.
As for Research In …

The market share of Apple’s iOS platform dropped to 15 percent for the third quarter of the year as Android leapt in the smartphone market share wars, a new report from Gartner reveals.

Apple iOS market share dropped in the third quarter to 15 percent as Android takes more than half of smartphone market. Image: willy-photographer / Flickr (CC)

According to Gartner in a recently-published report, the iOS market share dropped from the 16.6 percent smartphone market share it had during the …

Android has proven its market dominance multiple times already but is nowhere near from stopping, with analyst firm Gartner reporting that Android sold a tad bit over 50 percent of smartphones in Q3 2011.

An Android robot standing on top of an Apple iPhone. (Image: MIKI Yoshihito (CC), via Flickr)

According to Gartner, Android OS took a 52.5 percent slice of smartphone sales that almost doubled its market share from the same period last year.
Gartner’s Roberta Cozza said, Android did well …

Firefox 8 has launched, less than six weeks following the release of Firefox 7, consistent with Mozilla’s rapid release cycle.
 
New features of the Firefox 8 release, which is for desktop editions of Windows, Linux, Mac, and mobile Firefox for Android, includes Twitter search integration, increased support for WebGL graphics hardware acceleration, and on demand tab-group loading.  Mozilla explained in its blog post that with the inclusion of Twitter search in Firefox 8, “Twitter …

Google executive chair Eric Schmidt has announced that the firm will remain committed to offer its Android mobile operating system (OS) free of charge.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. (Image: Jolie O'Dell (CC), via Flickr)

“We will run (Motorola) sufficiently independently so it will not violate the openness of Android,” Schmidt said at a press conference today.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the former Google chief executive, during his South Korea tour, said the …

HTC has released the list of its phones that will be getting operating system upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The announcement was made by the company itself on its Facebook page.
Contrary to the hopes the owners of HTC smartphones had that they would get the updates this year, they will be able to get the firmware for their gadgets  only in early 2012.
List of the first contenders for the update will include smartphones HTC Sensation, HTC Sensation XL and HTC Sensation XE, as well …

WDS comptrollers have reported that Android smartphones are more likely to stop functioning than rival mobile operating systems.

(Image: LAI Ryanne (CC), via Flickr)

The 12-month study from the wireless brand specialist and solutions provider consisted of more than 600,000 technical support calls to the firm, where Android hardware problems topped the list for most calls received.
Google’s Android OS had 14 percent of hardware related issues, whereas Windows Phone 7, Apple iOS and …

Telecommunications companies spend billions of dollars for hardware repairs of Android phones every year, a new study says.
The study was done by wireless services company WDS which looked at over 600,000 technical support calls made by consumers to the company’s support team over the course of the past 12 months.
According to WDS, “The return and repair of Android smartphone devices is costing mobile operators as much as USD$2 billion per year”.
That figure is significant given the …