HTC Evo WiFi Hotspot Function Demo

Who Ever Thought Verizon Would Not Need the iPhone?

Make no mistake, Apple's iPhone has been a huge success for AT&T. Other carriers, and the most often mentioned candidate, Verizon Wireless, would likely not spurn the chance to sell the iPhone.

But it is just possible that Android devices now are getting enough traction that Verizon Wireless, though it might want to sell the iPhone, does not actually need to sell the iPhone.

That is a big shift. Android's growth, fueled by Verizon exclusives such as the Droid X and Droid Incredible, might finally be reaching the point where the issue no longer is so critical.

The Android-powered HTC devices might be reaching such critical mass that going too far out of the way to get an iPhone deal is less important. Apple has a carefully-cultivated and faithful following. But most people are not Apple addicts. If the Android can demonstrate it is as easy to use, supports the same apps, costs the same and works the same, most people are likely to give it a look.

Right now HTC seems to have captured most of those qualities.

What Android's Impressive Growth Means for You

Not Your Imagination: People Do Different Things on Their Mobiles

The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones is different from the way they spend their time when interacting with Internet applications and services on their PCs, the Nielsen Company has found.

If total Internet use were one hour, the top PC apps would be social networking and blogs, at 13 minutes, 36 seconds of use. Games would occupy six minutes, six seconds. Email tasks would consume five minutes. Use of portals would come in at two minutes, 35 seconds. Search would occupy two minutes, six seconds.

On a mobile device, applications usage patterns are very different. Email activities account for 25 minutes, while seven minutes are consumed interacting with portals. Social networking and blogs would occupy six miinutes, 18 seconds, while search would occupy four minutes.

The Nielsen survey also found a28 percent rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior on the part of mobile Internet users, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices also was highly pronounced, with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.

Portals remain as the second heaviest activity on mobile Internet (11.6 percent share of time), despite their double digit decline and social networking’s rise to account for 10.5 percent share means the gap is much smaller than a year ago (14.3 percent vs. 8.3 percent).

Other mobile Internet activities seeing significant growth include music, video and movies, both seeing 20 percent plus increases in share of activity year over year. As these destinations gain share, it’s at the cost of other content consumption. News, current events and sports destinations saw more than a 20 percent drop in share of U.S. mobile Internet time.

There seems to be a clear lesson here. People do not have unlimited money or time to spend with applications. So as applications proliferate, users will have to make choices about how they use their time. A day, after all, is a zero-sum game. People might be able to multitask up to a point, but only up to a point. Even if users had unlimited funds, they would not have unlimited time to spend on mobile applications.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities, social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

more detail here

Top 10 Mobile Downloads

What are the top 10 downloads to mobiles, across ecosystems?

GetJar conducted a review of more than 70,000 apps within its store in July 2010, and Facebook was number one. But messaging, search and mail were among the top 10 apps.

Other leading categories include lifestyle, entertainment, music, maps, search, financial, sports and productivity downloads, though.

Hits Three Million Downloads Per Day | GetJar:

Teens are Distracted Drivers (As if Anybody Doesn't Know That)

Almost nine in 10 teenage drivers (86 percent) have driven while distracted, even though 84 percent of teen drivers know it’s dangerous, according to the American Automobile Association. A survey conducted in May of nearly 2,000 male and female teen drivers ages 16 to 19 revealed that 73 percent have adjusted their radio/CD/MP3 player, 61 percent have eaten food, and 60 percent have talked on a cell phone while driving.

AAA Newsroom

Firefox Market Share Drops

If you are a user who has come to value Mozilla Firefox, you might not be so happy to learn that Firefox has lost a bit of market share against Chrome for three straight months, according to the latest statistics from NetMarketShare. Chrome now has about seven percent global market share.

Many observers would suggest that Google's Chrome is likely to continue doing so, mostly at Mozilla’s expense. Firefox still has about 23 percent share of the global browser market, while Apple's Safari, for example, has just a bit over five percent.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer saw its usage share rise a slender 0.42 per cent in June 2010, presumably on the strength of Internet Explorer 8, which boasts improved security and apparently is benefiting from a rather extensive marketing campaign. Microsoft has 61 percent share of the global browser market.

Firefox market share drops as IE makes slender gain

Rural Broadband Stimulus "Not Enough"

"Broadband is capital intensive, and the level of available (stimulus or other support) funding in the future will influence the ability to achieve big leaps in the level of broadband availability and the rate of upgrades," said Chris Campbell, director of the Vermont Telecommunications Authority.

He's absolutely right: the "broadband stimulus" always was too small to make much of a direct change in rural broadband adoption.

But that's only acknowledging the disparity between urban, suburban and rural communications infrastructure. The costs of deploying modern, up-to-date terrestrial infrastructure always are quite high in the most-rural areas.

In fact, in the most-rural areas, it is virtually impossible to create a self-funding business case, which is why we have subsidy programs of various types.

Of course the broadband stimulus was not enough. Nothing other than permanent subsidies will ever be enough if you are talking about terrestrial, fixed networks.

Stimulus to increase rural broadband may not be enough | The Burlington Free Press