Iphone, Mobile | featured news

The launch of the iPhone 5 and the declining popularity of non-smartphones have made Apple the biggest seller of phones in the U.S. for the first time, research firm Strategy Analytics said Friday.

The slump in Apple Inc's share price from its September high has badly dented the returns of hundreds of mutual funds that had maintained outsized holdings of the stock. But some went sour on the iPhone-maker just in time.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Global Marketing, said in an interview to a Chinese newspaper that “cheap smart phones will not be developed in order to grab market share away”. There have been a number of analysts, especially over the past few days, and the Wall Street Journal who have speculated that Apple will come out with a lower priced iPhone in potentially a smaller format.

Developers told the Next Web that they’re seeing some activity on their user logs that indicate Apple may be testing its next-generation smartphone and mobile operating system. According to a Monday report, some app developers have logged activity from a device called the “iPhone 6,1” that also appears to be running a new mobile operating system.

Google Maps have found their way back to the iPhone. The world's most popular online mapping system returned late Wednesday with the release of the Google Maps' iPhone app.

Poor Microsoft. People who use your search engine seem especially interested in ... Apple. Bing published its most-searched news stories for 2012, and topping the list -- ahead of the presidential election, Superstorm Sandy and the London Olympics -- was the iPhone 5, the newest version of Apple's iconic smartphone.

Samsung sold more than 97 million mobile phones in the third quarter, besting Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone by more than 74 million units. According to Gartner (NYSE: IT), nearly 428 million mobile phones were sold during the quarter. Approximately 23.5 million of those phones were manufactured by Apple — 97.9 million were made by Samsung.

According to a report by the Verge today, Microsoft is planning to release Office for the iPhone, iPad and Android in early 2013. Relying on inside sources, the Verge reports that Office Mobile will be offered as free apps that allow Android and iOS users to view Microsoft Office documents on mobile devices. The Verge also notes that Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents will all be supported, but edit functionality will only be enabled with an Office 365 subscription, which can be purchased using the app.

The Librarian of Congress announced new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Oct. 25 that will impact what consumers are and are not allowed to do with smartphones, tablets, game consoles and e-readers for the next three years. The new rules, which go into effect Oct. 28, will let consumers jailbreak or root their smartphones, but not tablet computers and home gaming consoles. Digital-rights activists had sought exemptions for the latter devices as well.

The phone once coveted by the elite and the powerful is becoming an object of ridicule as Androids and iPhones corner the smartphone market.