Jostling for position
Somehow the release of a new version of Android Honeycomb - Google's tablet-specific version of the mobile platform - escaped our attention at the end of last week. Maybe that's because there wasn't that much to report.
The key additions highlighted in the Android blog post are:
- Support for a larger number of tablets
- A new display mode designed to better display apps designed for smartphones
- The ability to load media directly from SD cards
- Improved developer tools for different sized screens
There are a bunch of more technical tweaks in what Android itself concedes is an incremental release, which you can see via the blog link above. It seems unlikely that Android 3.2 will be much of a game-changer in terms of helping it compete with the iPad and other tablets, but is probably a much-needed set of improvements derived from a few months of having Honeycomb in the field.
Meanwhile some new research reveals Apple's position to be stronger than ever in the North American market. Changewave has concluded that almost half of its respondents - the vast majority of which were North American - wanted their next smartphone to be Apple. If you take what seems to be an anomalous spike a year ago out of the equation, that's the highest level since Changewave started collecting such data.
Furthermore, while respondents seem to be getting harder to please in general, Apple has managed to maintain a pretty high customer satisfaction rating. Meanwhile the trend is pretty negative for RIM on its home turf.
