something in the way

Soon after research highlighting that Android has surpassed Nokia to become the world’s most popular smartphone OS was published, a new report from Strategy Analytics suggests that Google’s mobile OS has now captured a record 22% of the tablet market.

According to figures stated in the report, global tablet shipments reached 9.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2010 with Apple continuing to dominate the tablet market with a 75% global share. Although impressive, Apple’s share slipped 20% from 95% in the third quarter, thanks largely to the apparent success of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab which sold over one million units in two months after it launched.

Despite warnings from Google that its Android operating system at the time wasn’t specifically tailored for large-screen tablet devices, manufacturers rushed their Android tablets to market in the fourth quarter, offering low cost devices aimed at capturing early-adopters and those without the budget for an Apple device.

Strategy Analytics expects Android to increase share in the first half of 2011, we tend to agree with them. At the recent CES event, a number of high-powered Android tablet devices were announced, most running Google’s new Android Honeycomb operating system, software that Google hopes will tempt many users away from Apple’s iOS-toting iPad.

Apple is expected to announce its next-generation iPad within the next couple of months, rumours suggesting it will become available in early Summer. We imagine Apple will record phenomenal sales of its new tablet but as the tablet market continues to expand, Android tablets will continue to provide significant competition for consumer hearts and wallets.Image Credit

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Attention BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet developers! As a follow up to our BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Webcast series, we’ve put together a video overview demonstrating how easy it is for developers to use the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Beta2 for Adobe® AIR® and the BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator Beta to develop BlackBerry PlayBook applications.

In the above video, I walk through deploying your app to the BlackBerry PlayBook Simulator and the similarities between the Simulator and testing your app on an actual BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. I also demonstrate how the BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK integrates directly into Adobe® Flash Builder 4 and the GUI builder in Flash Builder “Burrito”.

With the tools available to developers, practically anyone can create a BlackBerry PlayBook application, so start building! You might also be interested in learning that developers who create a qualifying application for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet prior to its initial North American release are eligible for a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

BlackBerry Tablet OS Development Resources (SDK, Simulator, Webcasts)

Don’t forget get to also check out my friend Matthew’s new BlackBerry PlayBook Web Fidelity video on the Inside BlackBerry blog, which demonstrates rich multimedia, Adobe Flash games and social networking websites like Facebook running in the BlackBerry Browser.

Thanks also to our friends at Universal Mind for providing the code and app used in the video! For more information, please visit http://www.universalmind.com/

A while back I wrote a post questioning the future of the iPad, or more generally the tablet as the wave of the future. Well, the questioning is over. Now that I've spent significant time with the iPad, I find the device to be incredibly compelling. Apparently, I'm not the only one either. There have been numerous tablet-related announcements lately, including the "PlayBook" tablet by blackberry, the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab, and numerous windows 7-powered tablets.

Here at Google we’re really excited about the promise of tablet computers, which will be great for browsing the web and using apps. We’ve been working hard to optimize our services for the new format - larger touchscreens, increased portability, rich sensors - and we’d like to share some information about our progress so far.

While surfing the web on your iPad, we expect many of you will want to check your Gmail. If you go to gmail.com in your browser, you’ll see something different than what you’re used to on the desktop. We’re releasing an experimental user interface for the iPad built on the Gmail for mobile HTML5 web app that we launched last year for the iPhone and Android devices. Those devices have large screens compared to other phones, and tablets like the iPad give us even more room to innovate. To take advantage of the iPad’s large display, we’ve created a two-pane view with your list of conversations on the left and messages to the right.

To try this new interface, go to gmail.com in your browser. We recommend adding a homescreen link for easy access. As this interface is experimental, expect changes as we continue to develop and optimize. Also, please let us know any ideas or feedback that you have. You can also access Gmail on the iPad through the native Mail app using the IMAP protocol.

Additionally, the iPad ships with a number of Google services pre-installed. As with Mac computers and the iPhone, you’ll find Google Search in the top right corner of Safari. The YouTube app for iPad is built-in, so you can watch HD videos and read and write comments. The new Maps app on iPad takes advantage of high-resolution satellite and Street View imagery, includes a new terrain view, and lets you search for local businesses and get directions. Just like on the iPhone, you can also go to the App Store to download Google Mobile App with search by voice. Of course, Google Mobile App was originally designed for the iPhone’s screen dimensions, but we’ve adapted it to work on the iPad and we’re looking into new ideas to make the app even better.

As you use Google’s web-based applications on iPad, you’ll notice that you sometimes see the desktop user interface and other times you see the mobile interface. We’ve evaluated the behavior of each Google web app using the iPad Simulator, and we are serving the interface we feel works best. If you’d like any help using our products on iPad, please click the 'Help' link within the product.

We’re particularly excited by how tablet computers create the opportunity for new kinds of user interaction. Here on the mobile team, we often talk about how mobile devices are sensor-rich: they can sense touch through their screens, see with a camera, hear through a microphone, and they know where they are with GPS. The same holds true for tablet computers, and we’re just starting to work through how our products can become even better on devices like the iPad.