Daily News Brief: MS Conspiracy Theory Exposed!

Microsoft Fueling HD Wars?

That's what Michael Bay believes, who directed the Transformers movie. Still peeved that Transformers only appears on HD-DVD and not Blu-ray, Micheal wrote that "Microsoft wants both formats to fail" in an attempt to move consumers toward digital downloads, and that MS is "handing out $100 million checks to studios" to push HD-DVD and confuse the market. Makes perfect sense too, because, well, if two formats manage to gain a foothold in the market, said formats will spontaneously combust, leaving digital downloads to rule over masses of confused movie watchers.

Nokia Offers Free Music for a Year

As part of their 'Comes With Music Program', Nokia announced they'll be giving away free music from "millions of artists[...], past, present, and future." To qualify, consumers need only purchase a Nokia device, making them eligible to download free music for a year, which they can keep forever. As of yet, it's unclear which record labels will participate, save for UMG, who is already on board.

iPhone Searches Dominate Google

Score one for technology and entertainment, which saw more Google searches in 2007 than any other category. And the fastest-rising search term? The iPhone, of course, which didn't exist a year prior. Also making the top 10 list are Webkinz, celebrity news site TMZ, and transformer toys, which held the 2, 3, and 4 spots respectively. See the rest here.

iPhone Dominates France

French mobile phone operator Orange reports they've sold 30,000 iPhones in the first five days since it's November 29 launch. Meanwhile, T-Mobile in Germany said it sold 10,000 units on the first day, who yesterday won a lawsuit allowing them to lock iPhone customers into a two year contract. Orange remains the only Apple network partner to sell unlocked phones, which does so to comply with French law.

$222,000 RIAA Verdict Constitutional

After losing a copyright infringement suit brought forth by the RIAA to the tune of $222,000, Jammie Thomas appealed the verdict claiming the damages were in excess of actual damages the music labels might have incurred. But the U.S. Department of Justice didn't agree, dismissing Thomas' claims and stating that the Copyright Act serves both a "compensatory and a deterrent purpose." File sharers take note...

Shrinky Dink Chips

While most of us can remember using Shrinky Dinks to downsize Smurfs and He-Man characters, Michelle Khine recently found another use for them. Armed with a laser printer, a toaster oven, and Shrinky Dinks, the University of California Merced professor managed to make microfluidic devices, which are computer chips with plumbing typically fabricated in multimillion dollar labs. Read all about the process here.

iPhone and Android Market Share on the Rise

PIQOO | www.piqoo.blogspot.com

New statistics from comScore show that Apple and Google are both gaining ground in the battle for smartphone market share in the United States. Perhaps, as Google indicated when introducing the Nexus One, the iPhone and Android platforms are really next-generation "superphones" and the comparison with "normal" smartphones is unfair.

RIM, maker of all things BlackBerry, still has a solid grip on first place, carrying just under 42 percent of the market for the fourth quarter of 2009. However, RIM did decline from Q3, as did Microsoft, and Palm.

Apple gobbled up 1.2 percent of the other platforms' losses, inching above 25 percent market share for smartphones in the United States and solidly in second place for the foreseeable future. If the rate of RIM's losses and Apple's gains continue at the pace seen this past quarter, the iPhone would pass the BlackBerry as the dominant smartphone by this time in 2012.

Google's smartphone market share more than doubled during the fourth quarter of 2009. Of course, it started at only 2.5 percent of the overall market and doubled to just over 5 percent, still in last place just under a percent below Palm.

Like its Web browser sibling Chrome, the Android statistics are a little less impressive when viewed through that lens. However, again assuming gains and losses consistent with this past quarter, at the rate Android grew it would actually pass BlackBerry and jump into second place by mid-2012, and be in a position to challenge Apple for first place by 2013. Not too shabby for the new kid on the block.

One interesting aspect of the comScore report, though, is the gap between smartphones, and mobile phones in general. While smartphones like the iPhone and the Droid get all of the attention, and media headlines make it seem as if smartphones are the only devices being developed, Apple doesn't even make the list for overall mobile phone market share, and first place smartphone platform RIM drags in at last place for mobile phones in general at only seven percent.

Apple has certainly made strides to make the iPhone a more business-friendly platform, but it could be as popular in the board room as it is in the living room if Apple would do more to provide some sort of iPhone equivalent to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to provide IT administrators with more control over the devices.

Some sort of alliance with Microsoft--providing native Microsoft apps for core business applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, would also radically change the smartphone landscape and help Apple leapfrog RIM in a fraction of the time it will take at the current pace.