Apple's iPhone continues to gain marketshare despite a slowing global smartphone market during the second quarter, doing particularly well in China — where the overall market actually shrunk by 4 percent year-over-year.
The first software patch designed to mitigate the high-profile Stagefright vulnerability in Google's Android mobile operating system was insufficient, one security researcher discovered, leading to the issuance of yet another update.
Apple's dominance in the enterprise mobility marketplace waned during the second quarter on a precipitous drop in tablet marketshare, the balance of which went to devices running Android and Windows, according to mobility solutions firm Good Technology.
Several years ago, Steve Jobs called out Adobe Flash as a trainwreck of security and performance problems, garnering him contempt from industry players deeply invested in the software platform. Today, Google's Android platform is getting same brutal appraisal, but it's coming from Android's own fans.
Yet another serious Android security issue was publicized this week, with the latest exploit rendering devices "lifeless," and said to affect more than half of units currently on the market.
A newly discovered security issue in the Android mobile operating system dubbed "Stagefright" has been called one of the worst vulnerabilities to date, and could present a critical issue for some 95 percent of devices in users' hands.
Apple's iPhone 6 has remained the top selling smartphone for ten months in a row, with sales actually increasing in May, blocking Samsung's flagship phone from taking the top spot for the quarter.
Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus from last fall beat this year's top Android flagship phones in a series of raw performance benchmarks. However, despite often having a pixel resolution advantage, Android phones also typically deliver worse looking graphics on top of being slower, as revealed by GameBench.
Last Friday, Tom's Guide published an article calling Samsung's flagship Galaxy S6 the "world's fastest smartphone," writing that it came in "first in 6 out of 9 real-world tests and synthetic benchmarks." Unfortunately, that claim relied on cherry picked figures and ignored the real world entirely.
With an eye on easing the transition from Android to the iOS ecosystem, Apple plans to offer switchers a special Android app that wirelessly transfers personal data, downloaded apps and other information over to a new iPhone.
While tech pundits have long insisted that Apple and Google are growing more alike as rivals in smartphone and tablet computing, this week's WWDC should provide clear evidence that Apple is on a completely different track compared to the Android train operated by its formerly close iPhone services partner.
A fresh report published by comScore on Friday says Apple's share of the U.S. smartphone market grew nearly two percent during a three-month period ending in April, pushing iPhone's share of subscribers above 43 percent.
Adobe's Digital Index team on Thursday issued a report on video viewing and browsing ahead of Apple's WWDC, noting that Apple TV has doubled its share in premium video viewing to overtake Roku as iOS devices in general widen their lead over Android and other competitors.
From all the breathless coverage detailing Google's I/O 2015 conference announcements, you might not have noticed that virtually all of what Google had to show this year were things Apple had already introduced over the past year (or long ago). Once hailed as being "more innovative" and faster at introducing new features, Android has become a slow follower.
Seeking to connect everything around us, from household appliances to public parking meters, Google on Thursday announced Brillo, a low-level operating system that can run on a range of devices, as well as Weave, a communications layer that will allow devices to talk to one another.
Mobile development services firm Urban Airship on Thursday released a study that found Android users are on average more than two times more responsive to push notifications than iOS device users.
The next version of Google's Android mobile operating system will reportedly bring system-wide support for fingerprint authentication, paving the way for more Android devices to adopt Touch ID-style biometrics.
Riding a wave of record-breaking iPhone sales, Apple remained the market leader in enterprise mobile device activations for the first quarter of 2015, but competitors are slowly eating away at iPad's tablet share, according to Good Technology.
Apple slightly increased its lead as the most popular smartphone maker in the U.S. during the March quarter, while Samsung and Motorola lost ground, according to new data published on Friday.
Adoption of the iPhone was up globally during the March quarter, and in Europe was particularly influenced by people switching from Android devices, according to new smartphone market data published on Wednesday by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
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Roger Fingas
AppleInsider Staff
Mikey Campbell
Daniel Eran Dilger
Neil Hughes
