Android tops iPhone in US: comScore

Google's Android surged past Apple's iPhone last quarter and is closing in on the Blackberry as the most popular smartphone platform in the United States, market tracking firm comScore said.

According to comScore, 63.2 million Americans owned smartphones at the end of December, up 60 percent from a year earlier.

Blackberry maker Research in Motion was the US smartphone leader at the end of the fourth quarter with 31.6 percent of the market but its share fell from 37.3 percent the previous quarter, comScore said.

Google's Android mobile operating system was next with a 28.7 percent of the smartphone market at the end of December, up from 21.4 percent at the end of September.

Apple was third with 25.0 percent of the market, down from 24.3 percent the previous quarter, according to comScore.

Microsoft software was running on 8.4 percent of the smartphones in the United States, down from 9.9 percent the previous quarter, comScore said, and Palm, which is owned by Hewlett-Packard, saw its market share slip to 3.7 percent from 4.2 percent the previous quarter.

Source: Yahoo News

Read More

LG to show off glasses-free 3D Android phone

Small 3D displays that don't require glasses are in, and LG plans to show off what it's calling the first "full" 3D smartphone at a mobile conference later this month.

The LG Optimus 3D isn't really the first Android phone to do the glasses-free 3D trick—after all, we heard word of the no-glasses, 3D-enabled Sharp Galapagos in November, while the Samsung W960 (granted, just a feature phone) beat everyone to the glasses-free 3D phone party last May.

But LG is promising a "full" 3D experience thanks to a dual-lens camera capable of taking 3D pictures, which (presumably) you'll be able to view instantly on the handset's 3D display.

So, how big of a display are we talking here? LG's press release goes way easy on the details, adding only that the Optimus 3D will come with HDMI support and DLNA for sharing 3D content, with "further details and a live demo" slated for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month.

For a picture—or a purported picture, at least—of the Optimus 3D, we need look no further than Phandroid, which has a snapshot of what appears to be a new LG Optimus handset with a four-inch-ish screen.

A tipster claims that the Optimus 3D will come with a dual-core processor, same as on the recently announced Optimus 2X, while a little dot that appears to be a lens for a front-facing camera sits in the upper-right corner of the handset's bezel.

In any case, we'll be getting the full skinny on the Optimus 3D at LG's MWC press event; I won't be making the trip to Barcelona, unfortunately, but I'll be following along remotely.

Handheld devices with small, glasses-free 3D displays will be getting a major test with the arrival of the Nintendo 3DS later this month in Japan, with a worldwide release to follow in March. During my brief hands-on with the 3DS, I called its 3D screen "far better than I was expecting" with "a real sense of depth to the image," although I could "feel the eye strain creeping in" when the 3D effect was pushed too far.

Expect more glasses-free 3D smartphones to arrive on the heels on the LG Optimus 3D, although whether we're talking an honest-to-goodness trend or little more than a gee-whiz fad remains to be seen.

Read More