iPhone News
Google now App Friendly!
Starting today, when you conduct a Google search on your iPhone or Android device, you’ll get apps as results along with regular search results.
These special links will take you directly to the app’s page in the Android Market or iPhone App Store, where you can buy or download the app immediately. Links will include star rating, number of reviews, price and the name of the app maker.
This should significantly cut down on link-clicking, cutting-and-pasting and general back-and-forth navigation between searching for and downloading mobile apps.
For example, if you want to search for the music app Shazam, you might see something like this:
We’re impressed that Google has made this feature available to iPhone users from the start. This functionality is available right now in the U.S. and will be expanding internationally soon.
– Jolie O’Dell
ATT Says 40% of iPhones Sold to Businesses
 AT&T revealed today that 40% of its iPhone sales since the beginning of the year have been to business customers, suggesting that the iPhone is beginning to challenge the dominance of the BlackBerry in the enterprise market. Though AT&T Business Solutions CEO Ron Spears wouldn’t say how many iPhones the company has sold, analysts estimate that the number is about 15 million. Research in Motion claims a worldwide BlackBerry user base of 41 million. According to a report on ZDNet’s “Between the Lines” blog, Spears made his comments at the Barclays Capital Communications, Media and Technology conference today. The exec attributed the initial reluctance on the part of businesses had to do with security, which was not seen as particularly strong on the iPhone The iPhone has a long way to go to catch up, however. A recent NPD study showed BlackBerry is on top of the US smartphone market, accounting for 36% of sales in the first quarter of this year. The iPhone got a 21% share, behind Android-powered devices which made up 28% of sales in the same period. |
. “What most people heard in the first year from ‘07 to ‘08 was oh my God, it’s not BlackBerry secure,” he said. “This is not going to work on the enterprise space.” By the time the 3G was released in 2008, however, most of the security issues were solved. The 3GS, Spears said, was seen by corporate information systems planners as a mobile computer, and is replacing laptops for some business users. “If they’ve got a field service force that needs one or two applications on a daily basis,” Spears asked rhetorically, “do they need to go out and spend $1,000 or $1,200 for a laptop and then worry about sort of the lifecycle costs of keeping up with the laptop?”Apple becomes Most Valuable Tech Company
Apple has just surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization and is now second only to Exxon Mobil among U.S. companies.
The data is changing second by second. Apple and Microsoft have switched back and forth a number of times over the past hour, but with Apple’s stock up and Microsoft’s down, it looks like Apple will likely end the day in the second position.
Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the share price times the number of outstanding shares. It is often used as a public metric of a company’s overall net worth.
This comes less than three months after Apple passed Walmart to become the company with the third-highest market cap. Since that time, Apple’s stock has continued to rise (it is hovering between $245 and $246 a share as of this writing, hitting a high of $251 today); meanwhile, Microsoft’s shares have declined.
After decreasing in October of 2008 and then again in January of 2009 (when Apple CEO Steve Jobs took a six-month leave of absence), Apple’s stock has been on the rise. In fact, it has increased 95% over the last 52 weeks.
It’s interesting to look at the company’s trajectory over the last decade and its transformation from also-ran computer maker to digital and computer technology behemoth.
Karen Pauksta 