News

The iPhone has displayed a 327.5% gain in market share in the worldwide smartphone market for the third quarter this year, rising from 3.4% to 12.9% in just the quarter, despite the slowing worldwide economy's effect on smartphone sales. iPhone sales have also passed sales of Windows Mobile devices in North America for the first time.

Livestation, a service claiming to be "Slingbox without the box," says they are working on an app that would let users watch live streaming TV programs on their iPhone or iPod touch. The service would let you view video being streamed to your computer from anywhere with an internet connection.

Last month BGR got word that Walmart might start selling the iPhone 3G in the U.S. on December 28. Now they have a tip from another source (whom they note isn't on their list of credible ninjas) taking the rumor one step further, saying that not only will Walmart be getting the 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3G, but will also have a 4GB for just $99.

Apple responded to claims recently responded to claims that their TV ads for the iPhone 3G are deceptive in nature. The lawsuit claims that Apple's touting of the iPhone 3G as "twice as fast for half the price" was incorrect and misleading. Apple starts off by saying that the statements made in their ads "were truthful and accurate and were not misleading or deceptive." Most interesting, however, was their claim that, to paraphrase, only a fool would believe those claims.

Amazon's dedicated ebook reader, the Kindle, made headlines when it launched, but it's already been outdone by none other than an iPhone application. Stanza, a free app for the iPhone and iPod touch, lets you download nothing but free public-domain literature. At this time, it is believed to have been downloaded more than 395,000 times.

Every three years, the office and Library of Congress ask if anyone has any suggestions for revising the DCMA. For those of you who aren't familiar, DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States law that makes it illegal to produce or disseminate technology that is put in place to control access to copyrighted material. This time around, they are being asked to decriminalize jailbreaking your iPhone.

It looks like Google's search app might be getting a little competition. Vlingo, a new voice-powered search application was just released into the App Store. The app has been available for RIM phones for some time, but has now been ported to the iPhone. Like the Google app, it can recognize spoken English words (and works best with an American accent ). Unlike Google's app, however, it can search both Google and Yahoo engines.

Shortly after denying Mazo access to its API, Amazon has released an iPhone application which directly ties into the Amazon.com store. Amazon Mobile provides an interface to quickly search Amazon, read reviews, compare prices, and even purchase items. Members can access their wish lists, carts, and a myriad of other incredibly useful items right from the app.

The most exciting feature is "Amazon Remembers". The feature allows you to take a photo of a product and save it to your personal Amazon.com account. Additionally, Amazon will attempt to match up the photo to products in their database. If a match is found, you're notified by email and the app is updated with a link to the product.

According to a research note by Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, the iPhone 3G has managed to rescue the world's smartphone market from a decline this past summer. It rose to claim roughly 16.6% of the world's smartphone market by the end of the most recent quarter back in September and places Apple beneath only Nokia.

Today Apple began shipping the recently announced In-Ear Headphones complete with volume control, microphone, and play/pause controls. When they were unveiled during the iPod nano event, they were announced as an accessory to current iPods. For reasons unknown to us (and many others), the headset's slick in-line volume control buttons don't function on the iPhone. Although it's possible a software update may introduce this functionality for iPhone owners, it may be a hardware limitation.

According to Apple, the headphones' mic and center button will still work with the iPhone.

More good news for iPhone app developers came from Apple today. The company has announced that they are now allowing developers to issue free promotional copies of their applications. Developers can now issue as many as 50 promotional codes that will allow the recipient of a promotional app to download a full copy for free.

The year is coming to a close, and in the spirit of remembrance Apple has posted a list of the top iPhone apps of 2008. The list commemorates the most successful of the apps during App Store's first few years of existence, listing the most popular of apps. It's divided into the categories of Top Paid Apps, Top Free Apps, Games, Entertainment, Utilities, Social Networking, and Music, with sub-catigories for each.

A new issue with the 2.2 software may cause some trouble for people with legitimately unlocked iPhone 3Gs. A few users in an Apple Discussions forum thread are claiming that the iPhones some of them purchased in an unlocked state are being re-locked by the 2.2 update.

Macworld '09 will be here before you know it, and rumors of what Apple might announce are starting to pop up across the web. Among talk of iMac and long-overdue Mac Mini upgrades, MacBlogz has recieved an unconfirmed tip that Apple may add a 32GB iPhone 3G alongside their 8GB and 16GB models.

Things are looking bad for the economy in more than one country in the world, but the App Store appears to be unaffected by it. That is, of course, according to blogger Charles Teague's analysis. He calculated the sales of the App Store's top applications to get a general sense of how the App Store is doing as a whole, and his information shows steady growth despite the economic turmoil.