Smartphones now top sellers in US

Thirty-eight per cent of all US mobile phone owners now have a smartphone, with Apple’s iPhone having shown the most growth in recent months, according to Nielsen’s latest US data covering the month of May 2011.

Fifty-five per cent of Americans who purchased a new handset in the last three months reported buying a smartphone instead of a feature phone, up from 34 per cent a year ago.

Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system. However, according to the data, the purchases of iPhones have increased in number the most in recent months.

Earlier in the week a different analyst report showed that Google’s Android share of the smartphone operation system market in the US fell slightly in the first quarter of this year.

Android’s share of the market was at 52.4 per cent at the end of last year and had dropped to 49.5 per cent by March, the figures from market intelligence firm IDC showed. Apple’s iPhone increased its share of the market over the same period, growing from 17.2 per cent to 29.5 per cent. RIM’s Blackberry continued the steady decline which has been ongoing for more than a year, dropping from 37.8 per cent of the market a year ago to just 13.8 per cent in March

Is it time to switch your mobile OS?

If you were waiting for today's iOS 5 announcement to decide on whether you should make the jump to the iPhone, you might still be waiting. While the improvements are welcome--we're keen on the Camera app shortcuts, for example--many of them are features that Android users have been enjoying for some time. They include notifications, over-the-air updates, and the ability to search within e-mail messages. It appears as if a lot of the improvements are incremental, with the aim of reaching parity with competing smartphones.
So if you're already a happy Android user, we'll be blunt: there's no reason for you to switch yet. We'll admit that some of the features are more compelling than others--Newsstand as a central subscription store that will download new issues in the background sounds neat, and the ability to launch the Camera app right from the lock screen is great--but they aren't enough to woo new customers.
If you're an iPhone owner, there appears to be more reasons for you to jump ship. If you just can't wait for an iPhone 5, Android does offer phones with newer technologies like 4G speeds, NFC, and fancier AMOLED screens--no need to wait until fall to get one.
However, we can't recommend you switch just yet. We've only seen 10 of the 200 or so new features of iOS 5, with many more to be uncovered over the coming months. And of course, there is the ever-elusive iPhone 5 (or potentially iPhone 4S). We simply don't know what new features that phone will bring, if any. If you're already married to the iPhone, why not wait a few more months to see if you even want to file the divorce papers?
Meanwhile, we'll point you to our recent chart that compares iOS 5's new features with those of Android, Windows Phone 7, and BlackBerry to see if you do want to switch. And of course, we welcome your comments as to whether you're willing to make the jump to something else.

Samsung Indulge now available at Cricket Wireless

First introduced back at CTIA 2011, Cricket Wireless announced the immediate availability of the Samsung Indulge, the carrier's first Android smartphone from Samsung. The Indulge costs $329.99 off contract and requires Cricket's $55 Android plan, which includes unlimited talk and data, text (domestic and international) and multimedia messaging, navigation, and more.

Similar to the Samsung Galaxy Indulge for MetroPCS, the Android 2.2 device features a 3.5-inch HVGA touch screen with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, a 3-megapixel camera, and TouchWiz 3.0. The Indulge also offers Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but unlike the MetroPCS version, the Cricket model is 3G only.