Google’s mobile operating system has reached a significant milestone with a total of 10 billion applications having been downloaded by users from the Android Market. It took the market about 20 months to serve up it first billion apps and only five more for the second billion. Impressive numbers at a rapid rate.

Now, Android is delivering a billion apps per month, the same figure that Apple revealed at the launch of its latest iPhone 4S in October, that will be reaching South Africa’s shores on the 16th December.

However, Android still has a way to go to catch up to Apple let alone surpass it, which as of October 4, had more than 18 billion app downloads by iOS device users.

Take a look at the Android Market’s growth below:

source: AllthingsD

Sony has announced that it will be dropping the Ericsson brand from smartphone devices in mid 2012. Sony acquired Ericsson’s 50% stake in the company’s joint venture for  €1.05 billion in October.

A senior Sony executive revealed that the Sony Ericsson brand would be phased out as the company focusses on becoming a complete smartphone business that will sell its new smartphones under the Sony label. The move aims to invigorate Sony’s smartphone sales, which slowly began to pick up when Sony Ericsson decided to soley develop smarthphones powered by Google’s Android operating system.

With this decision, Sony Ericsson will invest significant amounts into its marketing and advertising channels for the new Sony smartphone brand. Kristian Tear, executive VP and head of sales and marketing at Sony Ericsson commented that “A lot of planning goes into getting the branding right but we will be done by middle of next year. It will also mean that the marketing and advertising investments will go up. We haven’t been as fierce as we were a few years back but we will step it up, refocus and invest more in brand-building in select markets.”

Although Sony is the world’s leading entertainment company, it holds only 2% of the global smartphone market and expects its mobile presence to increase with its assets on the content, technology and brand side along with its planned marketing and advertising boost.

Sony’s acquisition still requires approval, so the changes aren’t expected to be implemented until next year.

source: The Next Web

You might have noticed that YouTube has officially rolled out its brand new design to all users that they began testing out in mid November. The re-design comes as the next step in an entire aesthetic change for Google having first launched Google+ as a social network rival for Facebook, followed by a revamped Gmail, Google Analytics and most recently the Google bar.

The search giant’s streaming video arm launched a total site overhaul with the aim of reshaping the entire media landscape around the concept of ‘the channel’. Until now, Google concedes that YouTube viewers haven’t seen the site as a destination for channels filled with varying content, but rather a place to view different videos found on the web. With the re-design Google intends for the YouTube audience to become a destination site for media. Instead of presenting a grid with random one-off videos, the front page features a feed running down the center of the site, that displays the top channels in a user’s stream. Every feed will look different, with selected channels based on YouTube recommendations and sitewide viewing trends, what a user’s friends are sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, as well as those channels specifically chosen by the viewers themselves. The overall design is cleaner and more streamlined.

The redesign and new layout also serves to enhance the experience of users discovering new content that interests them who may have previously found it difficult to navigate the millions of videos uploaded on the site in search of what they liked.  A.J. Crane, YouTube product manager explains that “we are trying to make everyone an effective programmer on YouTube.”

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Google‘s own Chrome browser has had incredible growth in 3 short years. After being announced in December 2008, the lean and mean browser has taken the web by storm, and has now officially overtaken Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browser.

Chrome now has 25.55% of the web browser market compared to Firefox‘s 25.42%. That is hardly any growth, but what makes this significant is that Firefox has actually started declining in market share, where it once held 30% of the market. Internet Explorer is also continuing to lose market share, and this week it fell below 40% for the first time. This is probably due to users of old machines finally upgrading from Internet Explorer 6, but instead of upgrading to IE8 or 9, going directly to another browser like Chrome. And any self-respecting “tech-guru” will tell their luddite friends to switch to another browser, which updates itself and leads to less maintenance.

But it looks like South Africa is a little behind worldwide trends for browser usage – Internet Explorer has taken a very recent up-tick in usage, and Firefox has only steadily been declining over the last few months. Google Chrome is clearly growing the fastest, and it looks like it will overtake Firefox within the next 90 days: (click graph to enlarge)

The question is now how quickly Google Chrome will be neck in neck with Internet Explorer in worldwide traffic. At the current pace of growth, it looks like 2012 might be the year Google Chrome becomes the most popular browser on Earth.

After recently rolling out the new redesign for Gmail and Google Analytics in November, Google has released a video of their new navigation bar on their official blog as part of the next stage of their redesign. The Google bar will enable users to easily and simply navigate between services as well as share content on Google+.

The black horizontal bar at the top of the screen will now be replaced with a new Google menu that will drop-down from the Google logo.

Watch the video below:

Samsung has marked the occasion of the launch of the Galaxy Nexus with the latest Android or Ice Cream Sandwich operating system with the release of a video advertisement.

The ad showcases some of the new features offered by the first smartphone to use Android 4.0 including face recognition, panoramic photo shooting abilities and near-field communication that lets devices in close proximity communicate. Other impressive features include: a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor, a super AMOLED 720p screen, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera capable of shooting 1080p video as well as a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera and front and rear speakers.

View the advertisement entitled ‘Calling All’ below:

source: Mashable

Google recently announced that its new version of Google Analytics will be rolling out to all users. Where previously users could swap between the old and new layout, the new layout has now been turned on full time and activated in all user accounts. In addition to a redesigned interface that makes it even easier for users to explore data, there are a number of significant new features. Over the next few weeks, as Google makes Google Analytics v5 the default for all users, the search engine will also be rolling out the report email scheduler and PDF export.

Some of the new features include:

• Google Analytics with real-time reporting shows what’s happening on a user’s site right now.  Reports are continuously updated with each Pageview reported on the very second it occurs on the site.

• Multi-channel funnels allow users to see which channels their customers interacted with during the thirty days prior to purchasing or converting.  Conversion path data includes interactions with many media channels including clicks from paid and organic searches, affiliates, social networks, and display ads.

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Coca-Cola recently revealed at ad:tech that it is piloting a program with Google Wallet where consumers can use their mobile device to pay for a drink at 200 of its vending machines across the United States. The trial is aimed at consumers who don’t have cash on them but want to buy a coke. Inevitably, they will  however have a mobile device with them at all times which can be used as an alternative form of payment.

Wendy Clark, senior vice president of integrated marketing communications and capabilities at The Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta said that “The combination of mobile commerce and location technology moves our business from the point of sale to the point of thirst. If we know where you are and that you are thirsty we can move you to the nearest outlet to quench that thirst.”

This experiment was motivated by the changing landscape of consumer engagement and the importance of interacting with connected consumers in order to spread content and create value.

In addition to Coca-Cola’s mobile efforts in the United States, the company has been increasing its presence internationally as well, with a voice transformer app that Coca-Cola’s Fanta rolled out in Europe that lets users play pranks on their friends. The conversation could then be posted on Facebook and reflected Fanta’s fun and playful image.

Coca-Cola also rolled out Chok, a mobile phone application, in Hong Kong the objective of which was to encourage users to collect bottle caps from the Coca-Cola TV commercial they were watching. Users would download the Chok app and when they saw a bottle cap fly out of the television screen at them during the commercial, they could ‘catch it’ with their mobile phone and shake it to win various prizes and rewards.

The app hit No. 1 in the charts after the launch.

“If we do our job well and we give our fans share-worthy content, then they become the salesforce,” says Wendy Clark.

source: mmresources