Digital Zone 196: Dip and Squeeze

Posted by Patrick Wiscombe on February 8, 2010 under Tech Podcasts | Be the First to Comment

In this edition of the Digital Zone, we talked about:

The new Heinz dip and squeeze ketchup packets
iPad 2.0
Amazon purchases a touch-screen company
iPhone market share starting to slip
Symbian gives away it’s phone OS
Excessive internet usage
American love internet health research
AT&T says ‘yes’ to the Sling

New research shows the iPhone is actually starting to slip when it comes to smartphone market share. The new numbers come from ABI Research, an analytics firm that measures sales of smartphones from quarter to quarter and works with manufacturers to ensure its data is in line with the companies’ own estimates. According to ABI, Apple’s iPhone accounted for 18.1 percent of global smartphone sales in the third quarter of 2009. In the fourth quarter, that number dropped to 16.6 percent. The numbers say this is Apple’s first quarter-to-quarter drop in smartphone market share in two years. The company seeing the biggest growth in the fourth quarter of ’09, was Motorola which shot from nowhere up to 4 percent of the global market. ChangeWave Research found the number of people planning to buy an Android phone is going up while the iPhone is slowly slipping.

AT&T it will now allow the Sling Media television-viewing program for the iPhone to operate over its “3G” high-speed mobile network. The reversal comes as the Federal Communications Commission is drafting rules to keep broadband providers — including wireless companies — from favoring or discriminating against Internet traffic flowing over their networks. AT&T said last May it worried SlingPlayer Mobile would clog its network. Sling Media, which had been selling a Wi-Fi-only iPhone app, has submitted an updated version with 3G features for Apple’s approval.

PCWorld.com is reporting the iPad is already undergoing some significant changes including an OS X-like Apple tablet, a camera slot for the iPad, and a Chrome OS tablet user interface. According to anonymous sources who spoke to TechCrunch, this version of the tablet would purportedly run on an Intel chip, have a touchscreen that would be as large as 15.4-inches (diagonal)–the same size as the 15-inch MacBook Pro. The rumored MacPad would not necessarily run a full-fledged version of OS X, but its operating system would be closer to OS X than to the iPhone OS and there could be some annoucements as early as this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference. One of the biggest complaints about the iPad is that it didn’t include a webcam and that they ditched the idea at the last minute.

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Amazon has reportedly purchased touch-screen company Touchco, according to the New York Times. The Times said Touchco has a touch-based technology that is cheaper to produce than those found in Apple’s products, and is also sensitive to different levels of pressure.

The Symbian Foundation said they are making the cell phone software for free for anyone to use and said the software is used on more than 330 million phones around the world.

People who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression according to British scientists. Psychologists from Leeds University found what they said was “striking” evidence that some avid net users develop compulsive internet habits in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites and can have a serious impact on mental health. Internet addicts spent proportionately more time browsing explicit websites, online gaming sites and online communities and had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than normal users. Researchers aren’t sure if depressed people are drawn to the internet or if excessive use of the internet causes depression.

In a related story, more than half of Americans looked up health information on the Internet last year, according to U.S. government researchers but only 5 percent used email to communicate with their doctors. Fifty-one percent of adults aged 18-64 had used the Internet to look up health information during the past 12 months, women were more likely than men to look up health information on the Internet (58 percent versus 43 percent) and were also more likely to use online chat groups to learn about health topics. The survey found 6 percent of adults requested a refill of a prescription on the Internet, and almost 3 percent had made an appointment with a healthcare provider in the previous 12 months using the Internet. Researchers found doctors are reluctant to use the Internet or email to communicate with patients because of concerns about privacy as well as confusion about how to charge for their time – so they just left them waiting in the virtual waiting room.

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PODCAST SPONSORS: Please support the companies that make the Patrick Wiscombe podcast network go and take advantage of the special offers only available to our listeners.

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