ubuntu

Fossils don't fit in the new mobile world

28 June 2013 by Steve Blum
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Blackberry and Windows are the bedrock of the mobile world.

A year from now, this past week will be looked upon as the point when we shifted from one mobile operating system epoch to another. Two dinosaurs – Blackberry and Windows – appear irrecoverably stuck in a tar pit of tumbling market share and industry confidence, while two warm-blooded open source upstarts – Ubuntu Linux and Firefox – are walking tall.

Blackberry’s latest results show widening financial and subscriber losses.… More

Based on Linux and orphaned by Nokia, Sailfish OS debuting on Jolla handset

24 May 2013 by Steve Blum
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The first mobile phone based on the Sailfish operating system has been unveiled by Jolla, a company that splintered off of Nokia when it gave up on the MeeGo OS. It’s feature packed and is trying to differentiate itself by offering customizable backs for the fashion conscious.

So far, it fails to impress. I don’t see a killer sales proposition for the Jolla phone. Swappable backs are fine, but I doubt many people will cough up $500 because a phone is easy to accessorize.… More

Facebook is first brand into the mobile skin game

5 April 2013 by Steve Blum
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Sometimes innovation only needs to be skin deep.

Facebook Home is a new kind of threat to Android and a new kind of opportunity for mobile entrepreneurs. It’s middleware that’s downloaded onto select – for now – smartphones and acts as the top skin of the user interface. Instead, for example, of seeing the standard lock screen, users see their Facebook feed, constantly updated.

Android apps are still there, if you dig down. But if you just go with the flow all you see is what Facebook pushes to you.… More

Mobile OS buzz for some, deafening silence for others

3 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Firefox hasn’t quite landed yet.

Firefox has sharpened the debate over prospects for HTML5. The open source, connectivity-centric mobile operating system developed by the Mozilla Foundation gained a lot of attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sceptical attention, mostly.

When the OS landscape is so thoroughly dominated by two superpowers – Apple and Google – it’s risky to bet on a challenger. Several mobile carriers expressed support, but manufacturers lagged behind. Geeksphone, a small Spanish company, had demo units to show at Barcelona, but missed its February ship date for SDKs.… More

Dell's consumer business plummets

19 February 2013 by Steve Blum
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Apple delivers the buzz in Dell’s zone.

Dell’s fourth quarter 2012 financial results show a rapidly deteriorating presence in the consumer sector specifically and personal devices generally. Released this afternoon after Wall Street trading had closed for the day, the figures show a 24% decline in Dell’s consumer business and an overall decline of 20% in desktop and mobile device sales.

On the plus side, Dell says its networking sales are up 42%, its enterprise services business grew 6% and it’s seeing better PC results from large accounts – those numbers only dropped 7%.… More

One OS to rule them all

7 January 2013 by Steve Blum
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Built for ARM and x86 processors.

Ubuntu will be the next major player in mobile and desktop operating systems, if it delivers on its promise of releasing a fully integrated platform by April 2014.

Founder Mark Shuttleworth put the mobile version of the company's Linux distribution through its paces at the Pepcom event at CES 2013 tonight. Running on a Samsung Galaxy – for no particular reason except it's a convenient development platform, he said – Ubuntu did all the things you'd expect from Android or iOS.… More