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Trojan targets Mac-using activists in China
There's a new backdoor trojan exploit out there for Mac users that appears to originate in China, specifically targeted at political activists in the Uighur movement against that country. The trojan appears in email inboxes as a picture attachment which, when opened, secretly installs information gathering and remote control tools, characteristic of advanced persistent threat (or APT malware). Security experts say that the trojan was almost certainly created in China, and when you combine that fact with connections to certain required servers in that country (as well as an observation that some of the debug code in the attack is in English), it seems likely that this is a coordinated attack against this activist movement. With Mac use on the rise in the East, including high profile political activists, Macs are facing a growing malware threat in that region. There are already a few varieties of this attack in the wild, but hopefully fixes for the exploit will be available soon.
iOS claims 65% of mobile web marketshare
NetMarketShare has released its latest report on Internet usage by mobile devices, and not only has iOS remained on top for Internet usage, but Apple's OS has grown its lead up to 65% of total mobile Internet traffic. In just the last month, usage on iOS went up by 3%, and the year-over-year figures line up to almost 15% growth. That's incredible -- it's a sign that not only is Apple selling more and more iOS devices (including those new Retina iPads, which certainly made up a nice chunk of this new Internet browsing), but that users are depending on them more and more for connecting to and interacting with the Internet. It's also worth noting that iOS users are generally heavy 'net users as well. Even though there are more Android phones out there, iOS users are browsing enough to keep the totals in their favor and growing. [via 9to5Mac.com]
MacStories looks at four years of the App Store
It's been almost four years since Apple debuted its App Store platform for iOS (and then the Mac), and MacStories has an in-depth look back at that time. In just four short years, Apple has gone from saying that all we'd need on iOS are web apps, to a millions of dollars a year industry that supports almost half a million jobs. Needless to say, that's phenomenal growth. But what's most interesting about the growth of the App Store is how the apps themselves have changed. MacStories writes about that initial push -- in those early days, the quality of the software was very low, and there were a lot of "speculators," for lack of a better term: Developers who just released quick and dirty apps (honestly, fart apps is what most of them were) to try and make a little bit of money. App branding, too, has come a long way. In the early days it was all about search and gaming the system, and these days, there are more ways to find good apps than ever. At the same time, it's also harder for developers to make their mark in an increasingly crowded market. Apple's own success may be its biggest problem. The App Store has grown in a huge way over the past four years, and that may make it harder for both developers and Apple to figure out how to best run it going forward.
Pando Networks studies growth of F2P MMOs, makes infographic
Pando Networks, creator of the ubiquitous Pando Media Booster, has done a study on the growth of the F2P MMO industry. The data, which can be viewed in a handy infographic after the cut, shows that the number of people downloading free-to-play online games grew by 450% between 2009 and 2011. According to the study, the increase in players has come from a number of large titles -- such as Lord of the Rings Online -- making the switch to a F2P model. Also mentioned is the ever-popular MOBA, League of Legends. The study also notes that this huge growth isn't just happening in the United States or Europe; it's a worldwide phenomenon. In Latin America, the number of people downloading F2P titles rose by 595%, while the number of people downloading free-to-play titles in Japan and Australia rose by 392% and 234%, respectively. For the full infographic, just click on past the cut and have a look. [Source: Pando Networks press release]
Goldman Sachs sees iPad demand slowing
Almost two years after the iPad launch, Goldman Sachs reports that demand is slowing down, just as the holiday shopping season begins. "While improving holiday demand into late November could certainly push the momentum in the other direction, we believe it is prudent to assume the iPad is facing some near-term demand challenges," writes Bill Shope. Shope believes price is the reason. Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet is much less expensive at US$199, for example. While many consumers are still willing to pay more for a quality product, there's no question price is a big driver in a market like this. Shope recommends that if Apple wants to keep demand for the iPad as high as it's been in the past, the company will need to get the price down. The iPhone's price dropped off sharply after introduction, but we haven't seen that same drop with the iPad. Shope also says that increasing adoption of iCloud and Siri integration would likely drive iPad demand back up. Shope does call the iPad's growth chart "remarkable by any metric," but his analysis says Apple must act soon to kick the iPad back out into the spotlight as competing tablets threaten to take it away.
DC Universe Online boasts 1000% playerbase growth
DC Universe Online has been free-to-play for just under a week now, but SOE is already reporting huge spikes in player population. SOE president John Smedley has been tweeting constantly since the transition, with the most recent tweet announcing that population is up 1000% from its pre-F2P numbers. It's not all sunshine and butterflies over in DCUO-land, however. Players have been experiencing a number of issues with the F2P transition, such as astoundingly long server queues, endless loading screens, and other gameplay-inhibiting problems. Smedley says that the team is "on it," though. If you want to be part of the game's booming playerbase, just head on over to the game's official site (or download the game on Steam) and jump on in.
IDC: Samsung, ZTE see jump in mobile shipments, Apple slides to fifth place
Q3 earnings reports have been pouring in over the past few days, which means it's time to check in with IDC on the state of the mobile market. The research firm's latest report, released today, is something of a mixed bag. On the one hand, Q3 global shipments increased by 12.8 percent year-over-year -- higher than the 9.3 percent that IDC had predicted for the quarter and the 9.8 percent growth observed last quarter. At the same time, however, the market grew at the second slowest pace in two years and shipments to Western Europe and the US actually declined over the year, something the company attributes to more restrained consumer spending and more widespread economic uncertainty. On the company level, both Samsung and ZTE came away as the biggest winners this quarter; Sammy's shipments increased by 23 percent over the year, good for second place, while ZTE's shot up by a whopping 57.9 percent, launching the company into fourth place. Apple, meanwhile, saw 26.2 percent growth in its shipments and a slight bump in market share, but still couldn't avoid getting leapfrogged by ZTE and dropping down to fifth place. And then there's LG, which had by far the worst quarter, relative to Q3 2010. The manufacturer saw shipments decline by nearly 26 percent over the year, while its market share slipped to 5.4 percent. All these horses, however, are still chasing Nokia, which saw a small drop in shipments, but managed to hang on to the top spot, with over 106 million shipments during the quarter -- good for 27 percent of the market. For more numbers and insight, check out the full PR after the break.
ARM doubles Q3 profit, sees surge in revenue, is understandably pleased
The news just keeps getting better and better for ARM Holdings. Today, the chip designer reported third quarter net profits of £31.5 million ($50.4 million), more than double the £14.8 million it reported during Q3 2010. Revenue, meanwhile, rose to $192.3 million -- a 22 percent increase over the previous year, and a slightly higher figure than previously expected. In a statement, chief executive Warren East attributed these results to a "continued high level of design activity, with many new customers licensing ARM technology for the first time, driven by end-market requirements for smarter, low-power chips." Indeed, a total of one billion ARM mobile chips were shipped this quarter (up ten percent from last year), and the company expects to rake in about $763 million in total revenue, by the end of 2011. Find figures and facts galore, at the source link below.
Elsword adopts cute, cuddly, ferocious pets
Pet lovers, rejoice: Elsword Online is adding a brand-new pet system to the game. Pet haters, rejoice: Elsword is allowing you to torment furry balls of cuteness in order to turn them into killing machines. Once players hit level 10, they can select a pet to help them in their journeys. Right now there are only two types of pets in the game -- Pocket Phoru and Ancient Phoru -- although Kill3rCombo promises that more are coming soon. A pet can be trained as it grows through multiple stages of life, changing based on how the player treats it. Pets aid their masters with different types of attacks and buffs. Kill3rCombo's Ben Colayco sees the pet system as keeping in line with the overall tone of the game: "Introducing pets to Elsword adds another dimension to the game and allows players to become fully immersed in the comic book style world. By echoing character evolution and growth within the pet system, we wanted to reinforce that Elsword offers a unique and dynamic environment to players, while at the same time maintaining the key differentiators that set us apart, such as maturation of characters." [Source: Kill3rCombo press release]
Apple shares huge iPhone sales and approval numbers
Tim Cook, subdued as he is today, was probably most excited this morning when talking about just how well the iPhone has done lately. The iPhone 4 specifically, says Cook, has continued to sell like crazy, and in fact now makes up half of the sales of the iPhone in total, overcoming both the original and the 3G and 3GS in units. "That momentum is far outpacing the industry," said Cook in today's event. Customer satisfaction is huge for the phone as well -- the iPhone is consistently rated number 1 in every survey Cook says he can find, and 93% of the Fortune 500 companies are currently testing or deploying the iPhone in their operations. All of that, says Cook, has given the iPhone just a 5% share in the handsets market around the world. Note that that's handsets as a whole, not just smartphones. Cook says the company is aiming to go even higher with the iPhone. "I could have shown a much larger number if I just showed smartphones, but that's not how we look at it," he said. Cook also promised more iPhone news later on today.
NVIDIA CEO sees major growth in mobile processing, quad-core tablets coming this year
During a sitdown with reporters yesterday, NVIDIA Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang discussed his company's near- and long-term financial outlook, while providing some insight into the chipmaker's quad-core future. According to Huang, NVIDIA expects to rake in between $4.7 and $5 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2013, with revenue from its mobile chip unit projected to mushroom tenfold by 2015, to a whopping $20 billion. Huang acknowledged that these predictions could be affected by external factors, including the ongoing patent wars between tablet and smartphone manufacturers, but didn't seem too concerned about their immediate impact. "At this point, it looks like it's much ado about nothing," he said. In fact, Huang foresees rather robust growth in the mobile processing sector, estimating that there are about 100 million devices that will need chips this year -- a figure that could soon rise to one billion, on the strength of more affordable handsets, efficient ARM processors and the rise of ultra-thin notebooks. And, despite his recent disappointment, Huang expects Android tablets to comprise a full 50 percent of the market in the near future, claiming that NVIDIA's Tegra chips can currently be found in 70 percent of all slates running Google's OS, and about half of all Android-based smartphones. In the short-term, meanwhile, NVIDIA is busy developing its quad-core mobile processors -- which, according to the exec, should appear in tablets during the third or fourth quarter of this year (quad-core smartphones, however, may be further down the road). Huang also sees room to develop wireless-enabled, Snapdragon-like processors, thanks to NVIDIA's recent acquisition of Icera, but he hasn't given up on GPUs, either, predicting that demand for graphics performance will remain stable. The loquacious CEO went on to divine that Windows 8 will support apps designed for Windows 7 (implying, perhaps, that Microsoft's Silverlight platform will play a major role in future cloud-based developments), while contending that smaller, "clamshell devices" with keyboards will ultimately win out of over the Ultrabook strategy that Intel has been pursuing. For the moment, though, Huang seems pretty comfortable with NVIDIA's position in the mobile processing market, citing only Qualcomm as primary competition. "We're the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm," he argued, adding that companies without a solid mobile strategy are "in deep turd." You can find more of Huang's insights at the source links below.
Objective-C rocketing up the TIOBE charts
The TIOBE index is a chart of what have been rated as the most popular programming languages in the world, according to various searches online, the number of experts in those languages, and even software output (though it is very certainly not a strict chart of "most lines written"). Obviously, it can't be perfect, but it's at least a very simple indicator of what kinds of computer languages developers are using at any given moment. Look what has appeared at spot number 6: Good old Objective-C, the language that Mac and iOS developers use to code Mac and iOS apps. Mac and iOS development are gaining in popularity lately, thanks to both the Mac and iOS App Stores, and lots of developers are either jumping in to Objective-C development for the first time, or deciding to flex their coding muscles even more (often by leaping into the iOS fray). This chart shows just how phenomenally Objective-C is growing lately -- just since 2009, developers have started flocking to the platform in droves. That's pretty amazing. Part of it, of course, is that Apple has poured a lot of resources and development time into building up Objective-C and Xcode alike, but I don't think you can overestimate just how powerful the growth of the App Store as a distribution platform has been for Objective-C and its apps. [via DF]
Report: Touchscreen demand to grow by 90-percent, led by mobile, tablet markets
This just in: people really like touchscreens, and their tastes aren't going to change anytime soon. That's the takeaway from a new report from market research firm DisplaySearch, which predicts that revenue from touch panel sales will hit the $13.4 billion mark by the end of this year, before soaring to nearly $24 billion by 2017. Shipments of capacitive touch displays, in particular, are expected to increase by 100-percent over last year, accounting for a full 70-percent of all tactile revenues. The mobile market still accounts for most of this industry-wide growth, but demand for touch-based tablets is accelerating considerably, with more than 72 million panels expected to ship this year, and 100 million projected in 2012. Jonesing for more numbers? Better gallop past the break to get your hands on the full PR.
Nielsen: smartphones dominate among new subscribers; Android leads, iOS surges, RIM falters
Visit any mobile retailer and you're likely to notice that smartphones are becoming mighty popular. In fact, Nielsen now reports that these wondrous creations now account for more than half of all mobile phone sales -- 55 percent, to be exact -- compared to 34 percent one year ago. The study, which consists of data from March through May of 2011, suggests that while smartphones continue to be outnumbered by feature phones, penetration has risen from 29.7 to 38 percent in a matter of months. Nielsen further states that while Android remains the dominant platform (with 38 percent market share), its growth appears only steady, despite Andy Rubin's recent assertion. Meanwhile, iOS (with a 27 percent stake) is experiencing quite the growth and now accounts for 17 percent of all new activations. Unlike the folks in Mountain View and Cupertino, the crew in Waterloo have reason to worry: RIM's market share has fallen from 27.4 to 21 percent in a few short months, and the platform now accounts for only six percent of new activations. If you're interested in finding out more, just follow the break for another snapshot of the mobile world. And if you're feeling generous, you might consider sending Sirs Lazaridis and Balsillie a get well soon card.
HTC sales up nearly 88-percent from last year, analysts still skeptical on stock
Despite having moved into the number five slot on IDC's list of the top handset makers world wide -- beating out RIM and just behind Apple -- HTC has actually seen its share prices drop 19-percent since June 7th. The stock did rebound slightly following news that the company's sales for June were a staggering 87.8-percent higher than the same time last year. Surprisingly, that's actually a drop from May's figures which were 116-percent higher than the same month in 2010. Even though the company continues to break its own sales and profit records, some analysts don't think the company is out of the woods just yet -- a rather confusing outlook to us but, then again, we're not financial analysts.
Nielsen study shows climbing iPhone sales in the US
Nielsen has released the results of a new survey of mobile phone users in the US, and the word (almost) all around is growth. More and more people are buying smartphones, and while Android currently sits in the most popular smartphone spot (with 38% of smartphone owners holding Android devices), the iPhone is the fastest growing smartphone over the past few months. That's not to say that Android's not growing -- the whole market segment is. But according to Nielsen, the Verizon iPhone has spurred a new jump in iPhone sales recently. Where's the picture not so rosy? At RIM -- the Blackberry line of phones has shrunk in market share by nearly five percent, and that's a trend that's probably not over quite yet. While much of this smartphone audience consists of completely new users to the market, there still has to be a loser, and for now, RIM is it. That said, the smartphone market in general is booming, showing a real transition from the days of simpler feature phones to more functional devices. [via Ars]
Andy Rubin: over 500,000 Android activations a day, and growing
You may have noticed that Steve Jobs isn't nitpicking anymore over how Google measures the number of Android activations. It probably has something to do with the fact that, no matter how you slice it, at this point Android's growth is outpacing that of the iOS. In fact, according to Andy Rubin, 500,000 new Android devices are activated every day, and that number is continuing to grow. Heck, as of December that number was only 300,000 -- that's a 60-percent increase in just over seven months. At this rate there will be more Android phones than people in just a few short years. There might not be enough food and potable water to sustain the Earth's ever growing population, but at least everyone will be able to tweet about it. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
HTC sales in May reached $1.42 billion, more than double last year's total
We're seriously considering just reposting the same bit of text every time HTC's earnings come up for discussion. The story never seems to change. Taiwan's premier smartphone maker has once again blown away its performance from the previous year, having informed the Taiwan Stock Exchange that it tallied up T$40.62b ($1.42b) in consolidated sales for May 2011. That's a neat chunk of change more than April's T$38.73b and it also comfortably dwarfs last year's May total of T$18.82b ($656m). There's no breakdown of what devices are to credit for HTC's ever-ascending revenues, but if you ask us, its future prosperity looks pretty good with the Sensation, EVO 3D, and a few tablet-shaped things lurking on the horizon.
NCsoft increases profits, maintains revenues
It's a banner year over at the NCsoft household, as the company is showing a strong rise in net profits for the first quarter this year. Even though NCsoft's revenues have held relatively steady during Q1 2011, profits are up by 30% for a total of $37.5 million due to recent promotions in Lineage and Aion. The vast majority of NCsoft's money comes from Korea, with Chinese and Western markets trailing behind. According to Gamesindustry.biz, Aion is making the most bank for the company (accounting for 44% of revenues), followed by Lineage (28%) and Lineage 2 (22%). NCsoft's Sara Rogers sees nothing but good news in these numbers: "NCsoft consistently delivers strong figures in a way that most other games publishers can only dream of. These results prove that we have the MMO brands that people want to play and that we're able to grow and maintain customer loyalty, which is crucial in successful MMO publishing. This year, Gamescom will be very significant for us. We'll have a major presence and maybe even steal a headline or two."
Flipboard daily usage higher than ever, triples in two months
Despite losing truckloads of money, iPad magazine The Daily is apparently seeing a lot of traffic, and content aggregation app Flipboard is seeing the same trend. CEO Mike McCue says the company is seeing a huge slope upwards in traffic, with an average of 8 to 9 million "flips" (essentially pageviews), up from 3 to 4 million just a few months ago. That's some solid growth, probably driven both by sales of the iPad 2 and by tablet growth in general. As we've reported before, as more people learn to use tablets, more people (as you'd expect) actually use tablets. Unfortunately, there's no news about how all of that traffic is affecting Flipboard's bottom line. Magazines and content aggregators still haven't quite figured out how to turn all of those user numbers into profit numbers. But there is still some life in content on the iPad, despite all of the issues we seem to be hearing about from traditional magazine and newspaper publishers.
