Symbian

App store GetJar plans to "aggressively expand" its software for Android devices with at least part of a new $25 million funding round.

GetJar, which started its app shop in 2005, touts itself as the world's largest open app store and the second largest app store behind Apple's. GetJar boasts more than 1.5 billion downloads to date for multiple mobile platforms, including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian.

With the new capital, GetJar said it plans to expand its sales, marketing and engineering efforts. The company is eyeing the Android arena in particular and … Read more

Android has strengthened its leading position as the most popular smartphone platform on Millennial Media's mobile ad network, according to the company's January Mobile Mix report.

For January, Google's mobile OS captured 54 percent of all ad impressions seen on smartphone platforms on the network, up from 46 percent in December. At the same time, the share of impressions held by Apple's iOS fell to 28 percent from 32 percent the prior month.

In third place was Research In Motion's BlackBerry with a 14 percent share, followed by Nokia's Symbian and Microsoft's Windows … Read more

Nokia is wonderful at hardware. But like Motorola, another veteran of awesome industrial design, Nokia is not terribly strong on the software front--once upon a time it was, but it proved unable to shake itself loose from the now-outdated software of its glory days.

The Nokia E7 is a prime example. It really is a thing of beauty (I like a proper keyboard, me) but I don't want one because it runs Symbian. As it happens, I retain a lot of respect for Symbian as an operating system, but its user interface sucks. It's a tragedy that Nokia … Read more

Nokia's adoption of Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform will work in the interests of application developers, mobile operators, and content publishers, CEO Stephen Elop said today.

A couple of hours after Nokia announced its Microsoft tie-in at Nokia's Capital Markets Day in London, Elop said Windows Phone 7 developers would particularly benefit from the deal, which will see Nokia abandon its historical focus on Symbian and drop the idea of basing high-end phones on MeeGo. Analysts said the announcement confirms Symbian is no longer worth developers' attention at all.

"This is good for developers … Read more

A surge in sales turned Android into the second biggest smartphone platform in the world last year, according to a new report from Gartner.

Unit sales of smartphones running Google's mobile OS grew 888.8 percent year over year, from 6.8 million in 2009 to 67.2 million in 2010. In terms of market share, that translates into major shift--from 3.9 percent in 2009 to 22.7 percent in 2010.

Sales received a strong kick in the fourth quarter due to demand for a number of high-end smartphones, including HTC's Evo 4G and Incredible, Samsung's Galaxy S series, … Read more

Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop is reportedly preparing for a major shake-up at the company as he searches for a way to save the once mighty cell phone brand.

Elop is expected to unveil a new strategy for turning around the company at its investors' conference in London on Friday. Nokia has been slipping in terms of market share the last several quarters as it faces stiff competition at the high end of the market from Apple's iPhone as well as phones running Google's Android platform. And at the low end, the company is also facing competition from … Read more

Stephen Elop, Nokia's new chief executive, has seemingly begun bracing the company for radical change with a no-holds-barred memo saying the once dominant mobile phone company is now "years behind" its competitors.

The memo, published at The Wall Street Journal and Endgadget, arrives on the eve of a public strategy briefing at the end of this week and the massive Mobile World Congress trade show next week. Nokia, which reported a 21 percent decline in profits for the fourth quarter of 2010, declined to comment on the memo.

In it, Elop says Nokia is like a man … Read more

In 2010, the smartphone arena continued its shift with Apple and Android vendors grabbing a greater slice of the global market and Nokia and Research In Motion watching their shares drop, according to research firm IDC.

The year as a whole still found Nokia and BlackBerry maker RIM in first and second places, respectively, with the highest market shares and units shipped across the globe, according to IDC's latest "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker," which was released today. But Nokia saw its annual market share fall to 33.1 percent, from 39 percent in 2009, while RIM'… Read more

Nokia is widely expected to announce some sort of strategy shift when CEO Stephen Elop meets with investors in London on Friday. A new report suggests, however, that several executive departures could also accompany the shift.

German weekly Wirtschaftswoche reported on Saturday that a number of executives may leave, citing company sources. According to a Reuters summary of the German article, among those that may depart are phone unit head Mary McDowell, markets unit manager Niklas Savander, Chief Development Officer Kai Oistamo, and services and solutions manager Tero Ojanpera.

Elop suggested on the company's recent earnings call that a … Read more