RIM, Palm grab iPhone market share!!

“Apple carries just 19.2% of first-quarter U.S. smartphone sales, as BlackBerry and Palm Centro encroach on the ‘prosumer’ market.Apple Inc.’s iPhone, a new model of which is widely expected this summer, took 19.2% of the U.S. market for smartphones in the first quarter of 2008, according to research firm IDC’s vendor survey.That was down from 26.7% of smartphones sold in the fourth quarter of 2007, which included the holiday shopping season, IDC reported.Much of the slack was picked up by Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry, which took 35.1% of the market in the fourth quarter and 44.5% in the first.IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said the BlackBerry is now strong in the “prosumer” segment, as Research in Motion (RIM) has successfully widened the appeal of the device beyond the professionals who have been its core customer group.Smartphones are designed to be used for Web surfing and e-mail, in addition to voice calls, and usually have alphabetic keyboards or touch screens. They account for a growing share of cell phones sold, as prices descend and carriers complete their fast data networks.IDC did not reveal the total number of smartphones sold in the quarter. Apple said it sold 1.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, including overseas sales.Palm Inc., a pioneer in the category along with RIM, also picked up market share in the first quarter, when it grabbed 13.4% of smartphone sales, up from 7.9% in the fourth quarter, IDC said.”Palm also did really well. It posted a sequential gain mainly on the strength of the Centro phone,” Llamas said. The Centro, a smaller phone than Palm’s Treo models, came out last fall for the Sprint Nextel Corp. network and was launched by AT&T Inc. in February.But Palm’s market share is down from 23% in the first quarter a year ago, apparently falling victim to the iPhone, which went on sale late last June. RIM’s market share is also down from last year, when it sold 48.7% of U.S. smartphones in the first quarter.No. 4 in market share in the most recent quarter was Samsung Electronics, with 8.6%, up from 5.1% in the fourth quarter, a rise Llamas credited to the availability of the BlackJack on Verizon Wireless.Motorola Corp, which is struggling in the overall cell phone market, performed poorly in smartphones as well, dropping from a 7.5% share in the fourth quarter to 2.6% in the first” via money.cnn.com

StyleTap Announces Plans To Bring Palm Applications To Apple iPhone

StyleTap Inc. today announced plans to bring to market a version of StyleTap CrossPlatform for the iPhone and the iPod touch, which will instantly allow over 20,000 mobile applications to run on these popular devices. Further information about the product, including how it will be marketed and sold, will be made available in early July 2008.In addition, the company announced that StyleTap personnel will be at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA from June 9-13, 2008, and will be available to meet with mobile application developers interested in learning more about StyleTap CrossPlatform for the Apple devices. Interested parties should contact StyleTap via email at sales at styletap.com, or through the contact form on the StyleTap website.
In February 2008, in order to determine the level of interest, StyleTap posted a video to Viddler and YouTube (see www.styletap.com/product_apple.php for links to the videos) showing an experimental prototype of StyleTap CrossPlatform running existing mobile applications on an iPod touch. The response was instant and overwhelming – the videos have been viewed more than 800,000 times and the company received many emails from both end-users and application developers expressing great interest in having such a product available.
“The iPhone is one of the hottest new mobile devices out there,” said Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of StyleTap Inc., “And the response to our video has convinced us that many, many consumers, and companies, will eagerly jump at the change to buy iPhone devices if they can continue to run their must-have applications.”
Technically, StyleTap CrossPlatform is an excellent fit with the iPhone, as the powerful processor and large screen allows applications written for Palm OS® devices to run at full speed and at full screen resolution. The iPhone touch screen technology works in a very natural way with mobile applications originally designed for touch screen devices.
Many popular mobile applications have been written by passionate people who used their domain expertise to create extraordinarily useful applications. However, few of these same people can justify the time, cost and risk incurred in porting these applications to other mobile operating systems, especially since the number of operating systems continues to multiply as the market gets more and more fragmented. StyleTap CrossPlatform solves this problem.
StyleTap CrossPlatform offers developers the best of both worlds: with no changes and therefore no work required on their part, developers can now sell their applications to millions more users who use other devices running StyleTap CrossPlatform. However, if they do wish to use unique features of new devices, StyleTap CrossPlatform provides simple extensions that give them access to those capabilities without having to completely re-write or convert their applications.
StyleTap CrossPlatform has successfully enabled developers of applications originally written for Palm OS devices to deploy their applications on the millions of handheld PDAs and smartphones running Microsoft Windows Mobile. These same applications will soon be available to the hundreds of millions of users with smartphones based on the Symbian OS platform, with the impending release of StyleTap CrossPlatform for Symbian OS, currently in the beta testing cycle.
About StyleTap Inc.
StyleTap Inc. is a privately-held Canadian software company founded in 2000 whose mission is to provide the essential software ingredient that enables mobile applications to run on any smartphone. StyleTap Inc. is the developer of StyleTap CrossPlatform for Symbian and StyleTap CrossPlatform for Windows Mobile which are robust, high performance software platforms that enable Symbian OS and Windows Mobile devices to run thousands of software applications that are also compatible with Palm OS devices. StyleTap continues to expand the capabilities of its existing products and extend its unique technology to run on additional devices and operating systems.

Bike or Die 2 Released For Palm OS!!

“Toyspring has released Bike or Die! 2, the sequel to its popular bicycle simulation game for Palm OS devices. In Bike or Die 2 players pedal a Physics-based bike simulation through cleverly designed obstacle courses consisting of varied terrain such as hills, rocks, snow and caves. The game has a unique gravity and feel to it as you attempt to maneuver through each course without destroying yourself. The new version features much improved graphics with added textures and a more 3D-like levels, background music, customizable bikes and player profiles. Bike or Die 2 for Palm OS is available now for $14.95. A free trial is included.” via palminfocenter.com