Strategy Analytics has said today that the iPad has seen its tablet market share fall from almost 96 percent to 75 percent in the last few months, thanks to Android devices.

Android tablets jumped to 21.6 percent while the rest of the share was taken by Windows and other tablet OS.

While technically "Android" encompasses a large number of tablets released in 2010, most of the gains by the OS came from the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which shipped over 2 million tablets by the end of the year.

Samsung did admit, however, that it believes hundreds of thousands of those shipped tablets still remain on retail shelves.

Apple sold 15 million iPads in 2010 after releasing the tablet to much fanfare in April.

Android is expected to take a much larger share of the tablet market after a number of Android 3.0 tablet-optimized devices hit the market, starting with the Motorola Xoom this month.


(Pic via Electronista)

Permalink | Comments

---

World of Warcraft maker Blizzard has taken the next step to blocking virtual currency sellers, filing complaints with PayPal to block all 'gold sellers.'

A number of outfits make a living selling WoW virtual goods for real money, which is not endorsed by Blizzard.

Virtual goods include gold, characters, power-leveling and other rare items.

Most of these sellers accept payment through PayPal, but that will no longer be the case as Blizzard has filed complaints with PayPal claiming "Intellectual Properties violation" for the "sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise."

The large online transaction service has sent notices to all affected sellers and they now have three choices. Either give up selling that merchandise, lose your PayPal account permanently, or fight Blizzard in court.

Reads the notice (via Curse):

You were reported to PayPal as an Intellectual Properties violation by Blizzard Entertainment Inc. for the sale of World of Warcraft Merchandise.

If you feel your sales do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of the Reporting Party, please complette the attached Objection to Infringement Report by January 21, 2011.

The completed form should be faxed to the attention of the Acceptable Use Policy Department at [number removed] or emailed to [email removed].

Should you choose not to object to the report, you will be required to remove all World of Warcraft Merchandise from the website [url removed] in order to comply with the Acceptable Use Policy.

Permalink | Comments

---

According to multiple reports, the 4G-supporting Dell Streak 7 tablet will hit on Wednesday and cost just $200 with contract, and $450 without.

Says T-Mobile:

As tablets change the way we consume content, T-Mobile's combination of 4G speeds, breadth of our 4G network, our affordable data plans and compelling new products like the Streak 7 place us in a position to offer the best experience and value for our customers.

The tablet was introduced earlier this month at the CES event.

Dell's first real tablet has a 7-inch WVGA touch-screen display with Gorilla Glass, runs Android 2.2 Froyo, has dual cameras, Qik Video Chat integration and runs on a powerful dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

Furthermore, the tablet has 16GB internal memory, SD slot, support for texting (and MMS), and Swype.

Permalink | Comments

---

Microsoft software 'deconstructor' Rafael Rivera has said today that he believes the reason some Windows Phone 7 devices use up massive amounts of 'phantom data' is thanks to an issue with Yahoo Mail, the popular email service.

Rivera looked through the IMAP packets leaving the device and saw that "Yahoo's IMAP server was not responding to the phone's requests to fetch new messages with the correct response," explains Cnet.

Therefore, instead of sending tiny commands, the servers were sending back blocks of data up to 25 time larger than necessary.

Adds Rivera:

This can also be read as: Your phone is downloading ~25 times as much data as it normally would, had you sided with another e-mail provider.

Although neither company has commented, Microsoft did say last week that only "a small (low single-digit) percentage" of WP7 owners were seeing the data leakage.

Permalink | Comments

---

Curry's has started a promotion for the new Angry Birds for PC game, making it free for the first 15,000 users (or until March, whichever hits first).

The promotion starts tomorrow and will likely be over within 30 minutes so if you are a huge fan of the series, you may want to try to get in quick.

For instructions on how to get the game, for free, check this (via SD):

1) Click here
2) Download Intel App Up software from that link and NOT from Intel website.
3) Create new account and you will get notification in you browser that Angry birds is free to download.
4) Old accounts won't work.

Angry Birds has sold over 60 million copies via iOS and Android.

Permalink | Comments

---

Internet monitoring company Renesys has confirmed this afternoon that Egypt is now in a complete Internet blackout, after small ISP Noor Group went offline, following the path of all of Egypt's major service providers.

The Egyptian government ordered all the ISPs in the nation to disconnect from the Internet four days ago.

Noor was the service provider for many businesses, as well as the country's stock exchange and controlled about 8 percent of the country's Internet connections.

The government's order has come amidst protests and riots in Egypt demanding the end of the Hosni Mubarak regime, and the implementation of a new government "that represents the interests of the Egyptian people." Most believe the Internet cutoff is an attempt by the government to halt the use of social networking sites as a tool for the protesters to organize themselves.

Egyptians can still use mobile phones and landline telephones to communicate.

(Pic via Getty)

Permalink | Comments

---

According to the market research company Canalys, shipments of Android smartphones reached 32.9 million in the Q4 2010, making it the best-selling smartphone operating system in the world.

Symbian, long on top of the list, fell to second, at 31 million shipments.

In terms of market share, Android grew 615 percent from 2009 to take 32.5 percent, while Symbian fell from 44.4 percent to 30.6 percent in the same period.

Phone makers HTC and Samsung had notably strong years, accounting for 45 percent of the Android phone shipments.

Apple's iOS fell to third, at 16 percent, remaining practically flat year-over-year. Shipments increased 86 percent, however, to 16.2 million iPhones.

RIM's BlackBerry share dropped from 20 percent to 14.4, despite seeing a reasonably strong 35 percent growth in shipments.

Windows-based phones rounded out the top 5, although market share fell from 7.3 percent to just 3.1 percent. Windows Phone 7 sales were "steady," says the firm.

Permalink | Comments

---

According to new reports from Taiwanese component makers, the Apple iPad 2 will have dual core 1.2GHz processors, alongside a plethora of upgrades.

Furthermore, the company will produce 5 million units in the Q1, expecting strong sales of the device.

Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the tablet will not have Retina Display, as previously rumored and will keep the same 1024x768 resolution as the original model.

Says the analyst (via Insider):

The improvement of the iPad 2 display focuses on thickness and anti-reflection, not resolution. iPad 2 display module is 30~35% thinner than iPad 1 and it's helpful for better form factor.

Thanks to anti-reflection, iPad 2 could have better sunlight readable experience and it's helpful for Apple to compete with Amazon's fast growing Kindle business.

The most important reason why iPad 2 won't have retina display is yield rate of panel making. At this point, making high resolution and bright IPS/FFS panel is not easy and the production volume and cost couldn't meet Apple's requirements.

In order to compete with upcoming tablets, (running WebOS, Android 3.0 and QNX), the iPad 2 will have a much more powerful CPU, GPU and more RAM.

Continues Kuo:

iPad 2 will use [ARM] Cortex-A9 dual core processor running at 1.2GHz. Increasing 1~2% single core processor clock results in a 3~5% power increase and dual core could get a better balance between computing power and power consumption. That's the reason why Apple will use dual core for iPad 2.

The iPad 2 will also have a GPU using Imagination's SGX543 dual core graphics technology which is 200~300% powerful than iPhone 4.

For making full use of GPU upgrading advantage, iPad 2 needs bigger memory bandwidth. So iPad 2 has 512MB RAM, same as iPhone 4 and twice as much as iPad 1, but running at higher clock 1,066 MHz for getting bigger memory bandwidth (iPhone 4 memory clock is 800 MHz).

As reported in the past, the report concludes that the iPad 2 will have an SD card slot and dual cameras, but the cameras will be of the same quality as the iPod Touch, 1MP for the rear and 0.3MP for the front.

Permalink | Comments

---