Apple Top On The List For Customer Loyalty

Yes, Apple being beaten by Android in app. users, got a chance to come back with Customer Loyalty…

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple is well ahead of rivals in building brand loyalty among its users in a mobile market where the key brands are rushing to build as large a foothold as possible, a study by research firm GfK showed.
 
Some 84 per cent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 per cent of consumers who use smartphones running Google's Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.
Only 48 per cent of people using Research In Motion's cellphones said they would stay loyal to their Blackberrys, the study showed.
 
Smartphone sales have been surging since Apple introduced its first iPhone in 2007 and even though the growth has slowed the sales still rose 49 per cent last quarter from a year ago, according to research firm IDC.
Ryan Garner, analyst at GfK, said the ongoing rush to build market position was crucial for the future success of the brands as on average 63 per cent of consumers are sticking to the type of phone they have -- lowering the chance for fast changes in the market place.
Garner said fast growth of Android and launch of new Microsoft Windows, which will be similar for PCs, tablets and smartphones, mean there are still opportunities for others.
 
"Apple is clearly ahead of the game, but developments next year will challenge that," Garner said.
 
More than 70 per cent of consumers said they would stick with their phones due to their seamless integration of features and access to content.
"The scope for brands to lure customers from rivals has diminished and the richest rewards will go to those providers that can create the most harmonious user experience and develop this brand loyalty," GfK said.
 
The research firm interviewed around 4,500 people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, China, the United States and Japan.

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Android Beats Apple iOS in App. Users

TORONTO: Google Inc's Android operating system passed Apple Inc's iOS as the most popular software platform for application downloads as consumers bought more Android smartphones.

The Google platform accounted for 44 per cent of all app downloads in the second quarter, eclipsing Apple's 31 per cent share, according to ABI Research. That was fueled by a 36 per cent jump in Android phone shipments from the previous three months, ABI said.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, introduced Android in 2007 as an open-source platform, allowing any phone maker to use it for free and focus on designing hardware rather than software. Android has helped propel Samsung Electronics Co into the ranks of top smartphone makers and drive a recovery at Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc even as sales of Apple's iPhone surged.

"Android's app downloads per user still lag behind Apple's by 2 to 1," said Dan Shey, practice director of mobile services at ABI.

Global downloads of games, music, news and other apps are expected to rise to 29 billion this year, more than triple the 9 billion downloaded in 2010, ABI said..

So, What OS do you have?? Share with me in comments...

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Hackers Can Identify What You Type On Your Smartphone

Yeah! Its Strange but true..

WASHINGTON: A research team at Georgia Tech claims that it has discovered how to use a users smartphone to track what the person is typing on the keyboard.

The smartphone accelerometer, an internal device that detects when and how the phone is tilted, senses keyboard vibrations and deciphers complete sentences with up to 80 per cent accuracy.

"We first tried our experiments with an iPhone 3GS, and the results were difficult to read," Patrick Traynor, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Computer Science, said.

"But then we tried an iPhone 4, which has an added gyroscope to clean up the accelerometer noise, and the results were much better. We believe that most smartphones made in the past two years are sophisticated enough to launch this attack," he said.

The technique works through probability and by detecting pairs of keystrokes, rather than individual keys. It models "keyboard events" in pairs, then determines whether the pair of keys pressed is on the left versus right side of the keyboard, and whether they are close together or far apart.

After the system has determined these characteristics for each pair of keys depressed, it compares the results against a preloaded dictionary, each word of which has been broken down along similar measurements, i.e., are the letters left/right, near/far on a standard QWERTY keyboard.

The technique works reliably only on words of three or more letters. "The way we see this attack working is that you, the phone's owner, would request or be asked to download an innocuous-looking application, which doesn't ask you for the use of any suspicious phone sensors," Henry Carter, one of the study's co-authors, said.

"Then the keyboard-detection malware is turned on, and the next time you place your phone next to the keyboard and start typing, it starts listening," carter said.

The study has been published in the paper "(sp)iPhone: Decoding Vibrations From Nearby Keyboards Using Mobile Phone Accelerometers," and will be presented on 20th October....

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