Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totalled 314.7 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 17 per cent increase from the same period in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc. Smarpthone sales to end users reached 54.3 million units, an increase of 48.7 per cent from the first quarter of 2009. Among the most successful vendors were those that controlled an integrated set of operating system (OS), hardware and services.

“In the first quarter of 2010, smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner. “This quarter saw RIM, a pure smartphone player, make its debut in the top five mobile devices manufacturers, and saw Apple increase its market share by 1.2 percentage points. Android’s momentum continued into the first quarter of 2010, particularly in North America, where sales of Android-based phones increased 707 per cent year-on-year.

Growth in the mobile devices market was driven by double-digit growth of smartphone sales in mature markets, helped by wider product availability as well as mass market price tags. “Increasing sales of white-box products in some emerging regions, in particular India, also drove sales of mobile phones upward. We expect sales of white-box products to remain very healthy for the remainder of 2010, especially outside of China,” said Ms Milanesi.

The first quarter also saw some movement outside the top five mobile handset vendor rankings (see Table 1), Hong Kong-based manufacturer G-Five made its debut into the top 10, grabbing 1.4 per cent of market share in the first quarter of 2010. The rise of white-box manufacturers from Asia has also helped the “others” section, as a proportion of overall sales, increase its market share to 19.20 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, up 2.7 percentage points. “This is having a profound effect on the top five mobile handset manufacturers’ combined share that dropped from 73.3 in the first quarter of 2009 to 70.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi.

Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Terminal Sales to End Users in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

In the first quarter of 2010, Nokia’s mobile phone sales to end users reached 110.1 million units, a 1.2 per cent decline in market share year-on-year. Although Nokia’s midtier products sold well, Nokia lacks a high-volume driver in the high-end. “MeeGo based devices and other high-end products will not rejuvenate Nokia’s premium portfolio until the end of the third quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and Nokia will continue to feel pressure on its average selling price (ASP) from vendors such as HTC, RIM and Samsung,” said Ms Milanesi. The reorganisation announced last week demonstrated that Nokia is trying to streamline the reporting process to deliver results quickly, which we believe shows its recognition of the pressure it faces from investors.

Samsung sold 64.9 million devices in the first quarter of 2010, an increase of 26.3 per cent year-on-year. Samsung was one of the five vendors in the top10 vendors ranking to grow its market share, which increased by 1.5 percentage points year-on-year. Samsung saw healthy margins in the first quarter of 2010 and was also able to grow its presence in developing markets such as India and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

RIM’s mobile phone sales reached 10.6 million units in the first quarter of 2010, a 45.9 per cent increase year-on-year. RIM is making its debut into the top five worldwide mobile handset manufacturers ranking. RIM’s focus this quarter was centred on its ecosystem strategy, its tightly integrated control of store, OS and device played to RIM’s strengths.

Sony Ericsson sold enough units to remain in the top five mobile handset manufacturers, but its market share declined 2.3 percentage points in the first quarter of 2010. The channel held some inventory for Sony Ericsson in the first quarter of 2010 as some new products reached the channel late into the quarter. One of Sony Ericsson’s most important future differentiators is its relationship with its parent company, Sony. This partnership, combined with Sony Ericsson’s ownership of the strongest portfolio it has had since 2007, place it well to lead the trend toward increasingly connected consumer devices.

The first quarter of 2010 was Apple’s strongest quarter yet, which placed the company in the No. 7 position with a 112.2 per cent increase in mobile devices sales. “Growth came partly from new communication service providers in established markets, such as the UK, and stronger sales in new markets such as China and South Korea,” said Ms Milanesi. “The second quarter of 2010 will be a very important one for Apple. We expect that Apple will present its new iPhone in June during its Worldwide Developer Conference, which will be the first to feature the latest release of the iPhone OS that includes welcome improvements for developers and users, such as multitasking.”

In the smartphone OS market, Android and Apple were the winners in the first quarter of 2010 (see Table 2). Android moved to the No. 4 position displacing Microsoft Windows Mobile for the first time. Both Android and Apple were the only two OSs vendors among the top five to increase market share year-on-year. Symbian remained in the No. 1 position but continued to lose as Nokia remains weak in the high-end portfolio.

Smartphones accounted for 17.3 per cent of all mobile handset sales in the first quarter of 2010, up from 13.6 per cent in the same period in 2009.

As seen with the iPad and web books based on Google’s Android platform, mobile OS ecosystems are developing and will move beyond smartphones to continue to deliver consumer value and a rich user experience,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Table 2
Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 1Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (May 2010)

Mobile e-mail, rich messaging and social networking will continue to drive demand for smartphones and enhanced phones that feature full qwerty hardware keyboards. “To compete in such a crowded market, manufacturers need to tightly integrate hardware, user interface, and cloud and social networking services if their solutions are to appeal to users,” said Ms Cozza. “Just adding a qwerty keyboard will not make a device fit the communication’s habits of today’s various consumer segments.”

The morale of the research would be to understand the domain of mobile marketing and effectively utilize the advantage to our marketing efforts.

iPad is likely to be a great medium for publishing houses, who have drastically been hit with fast falling revenues (in reference to the year 2009). Newspapers have seen significant decline in print advertising revenues, online versions did not provide many options to monetize. However iPad and mobile apps may have slated to change all these.

Why iPad and Mobile Platforms for Publishing Companies?

 Why choose iPad and Mobile platforms instead of Web, the major problem with digital content on the web are that people expect it to be free. As this is one of the greatest strengths of the web, while free is great for consumers and the World, it does not create any revenue for publishers.

The iPad provides an opportunity to change all that. We’ve already become accustomed to paying for iPhone applications, it seems natural to pay for iPad magazines, books, and news papers provided the experience is significantly better than the dead-tree versions.

Several hundred thousand iPads have been pre-ordered. Analysts expect Apple to sell around 5 million units in 2010. A survey executed by the analysts of comScore indicated that 34 percent of iPad buyers will use it to read newspapers and magazines. 68% of young consumers indicated a willingness to pay for news and magazines specially formatted for e-readers.

The US Audit Bureau of Circulations already revised the definition of digital magazines. Publishers may now report items as E-reader distribution averages, mobile app purchases, etc. in order to reflect the new audience.

The article quoted Chris Anderson of Wired at TED 2010 stating that the iPad “[is] an opportunity to reset the economics,” of digital publishing. “For the first time, people may value this experience so much they’ll pay for it.”

Many Companies adapting to the World of Mobile and iPad World:

Many prominent Publishing houses like McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin, Kaplan, USA Today, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BBC News, the Associated Press, Time magazine and many more are looking at iPad apps as a very strategic initiative on a subscription mode. USA Today has been downloaded 175,000.

Statistical details on the applications being downloaded on the “Apple iTunes store” –source O’Reilly Research

We could see from the figure one that 30% of downloads are from the books and rest applications comprise to 70%, as many publishing companies have started publishing multiple titles on the emergence of the iPad.

In reference to the fig 2: Application Downloads

Obviously, a game developer won’t be able to churn out new applications at the same rate as an eBook publisher. Game developers have, on average, 2.3 apps in the store (looking at data from the last week), while a typical eBook vendor is selling almost 18 apps right now.

Books are also currently the fastest growing category in the App Store (285% in the last three months), mostly because vendors can simply pack different texts into separate applications. Compared to other categories, productivity apps are only growing slowly, though the number of apps in this category still grew 58% over the last 12 weeks.

Statistics on the Downloads

Different kinds of eBook application on iPad and iPhone

Average prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Distribution of prices in Top-100 under the category “Books”:

Portfolio characteristics of the most successful publishers from Top-100 “Books”:

Fig 3: Content uniqueness:

Fig 4: By content

• Portfolio of the average successful publisher from Top-100(“Books”) has approximately 60 applications.
• Moreover, there’s one publisher holding 25% of all content of the section “Books”.

Effective models for selling the books:

• Free Application with free books and In App purchase of books
• Portfolio of books with SEO of high quality both in iTunes and through search engines (Google etc)

Conclusion:

• Publishing companies should work on releasing interactive books which started promptly developing last month, especially in light of iPad release (even though the cost for producing such books is much higher as compared with normal books);
• The segment of medical books has some perspectives (most probably it is also related to iPad release, which allows to operate easier with the graphics etc) and making the students or the readers to have a very good usability.
• Interactive books for children and comics, which is one of the most stable and quick-growing segments.

Why Techjini?

• More than 25 iPhone applications in the Apple-app store.
• Global Consulting Company: We apply innovation into every aspect of application development, be it Project management or Lifecycle Management.
• Individual and personalized focus on each client of ours.
• Competitive pricing  for iPad application development services
• Professional support and maintenance for iPad projects.

For more details or a free quote kindly contact shiv@techjini.com

Many prominent Hotel Groups like Hilton, IHG, Choice Hotels, Best Western, The Peninsula, Four Seasons and many more are looking at mobile apps as a very strategic initiative to increase customer loyalty. Hilton’s app was downloaded 126, 000 times till date.

Why buzz in mobile Space?

• 75 million Blackberry users in the world
• 50 million iPhone users in the world till date and 450,000 iPads sold in 1^st week and growing.
• 172 million Smartphones users in the world with 4% on Android

Smartphones market growing 25% YoY basis

How do we help you to Benefit?

We could develop a customized iPhone or any smart phone app that will initially give your smart phone toting customers basic tools for booking and managing reservations. Expect to find:

• Search and book hotels
• GPS functionality to find nearby hotels
• ability to see hotel photos and facilities
• custom directions using the iPhone’s GPS
• click-to-call front desk for each hotel
• automatic use of any membership Club account information to speed bookings
• redeem loyalty points for stays
• view point balances, level, etc…
• view and cancel upcoming reservations
• enroll in the program, if you’re not a member
• customize billing preferences and room/rate preferences
• Customer could customize his requirements even before arrival into the hotel.
• see special offers for loyalty members

Why iPhone App for Hotels?

There has been a huge buzz about using latest technologies for marketing. It was facebook, twitter and now the latest is iPhone. iPhone is very handy compared to other technologies and it provides the following benefits with a a very personalized and targeted approach to your customers

• Brand Elevation
• Improves Customer loyalty
• Easy way to promote your promotional offers faster
• On the go mobility to reserve
• Improves Customer Satisfaction
• Improves Revenue at low TCO
• Real time data for Customers about the latest happenings

Cnet reports that the number of users who will tap into the App store will be at 100 million by 2013. Just imagine the momentum and let’s grab the opportunity with a well build good looking app that helps in your Brand Elevation.

ROI on Smart Phone Apps for Hotels

The main driver behind the increased usage of mobile apps by Hotel customers is ” Convenience”. It is said that many of the customers are booking rooms on the fly. Given below are some stats that could help you i evaluating the ROI quotient for Smart Phone Apps.

• Mariott Hotels mobile initiative has generated nearly $ 2 million in gross revenuebetween its Aug, 2008 launch and end of the year. Courtesy Ad Age.com
• Omni Hotels mobile site traffic has grown by 85 % in the past six months and mobile is seeing a conversion rate of 25% said Kerry Kennedy, the hotel’s e-Commerce Director.That means one in every four people who visit the chain’s app end up booking a room.
• Mr. La Rose of Hilton told that wireless bookings have generated roughly $ 1.4 million dollars in an average 100 day period.
• Many Hotels have improved ROI of more than 25% per year.
• Mobile bookings have improved to nearly 85% without any promotions of mobile apps.

By looking at the above stats , we could at least safely consider that it is going to wow the customers and when we get the ROI in 2-3 years it is going to wow the management. As a customer focused industry, we need to bring that convenience and comfort to customers which in turn improves Sales.

Why TechJini ?

• Global Consulting Company
• Innovation in every aspect of Application Development Life cycle
• More than 25 iPhone Apps in the Apple App Store
• Focused and personalized approach towards each Client
• Experience in working with Mobile OEM’s and Fortune 500 companies
• Quality Process – Zero defect delivery
• Flexible Engagement Models
• 100% Delighted Customers
• More than 60% of annual revenues from repeated business
• More than 100% growth YoY

• The master records changes to its data in its binary log (Binary Log Events).
• The slave copies the master’s binary log events to its relay log.
• The slave replays the events in the relay log, applying the changes to its own
  data using Slave Thread.

The basic steps to set up replication are…

• Set up replication accounts on master server.
• Configure the master and slave.
• Instruct the slave to connect to and replicate from the master.

Here are few assumptions….

Master IP Address: 192.168.1.215
Slave IP Address:   192.168.1.203
Replication User: replication
User Password: slave

The I/O Slave Thread (it runs on Slave Server) makes a TCP/IP connection to the master. Thats why we need to create an user account on Master Server with proper privileges.

Now run the following query on Master to create a Slave account….
mysql>  GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.* TO ‘replication‘@’192.168.1.203′ IDENTIFIED BY ’slave’;

Now edit my.cnf file on Master accordingly.

[mysqld]
server-id                       = 1
log-bin                          = mysql-bin
log-bin-index                = mysql-log-bin.index
relay-log                       = mysql-relay-bin
relay-log-index             = mysql-relay-bin.index
expire_logs_days         = 10
max_binlog_size          = 100M
binlog_do_db               = [Database Name to be Replicated]
binlog_ignore_db         = [Database Name not to be Replicated]
#binlog_ignore_db       = [Database Name not to be Replicated] (for more than one data base which is not supposed to be replicated)
datadir                          = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir                           = /tmp

Now restart Master mysql server and run the following query…

mysql>  SHOW MASTER STATUS;

Now edit my.cnf file on Slave accordingly…..

[mysqld]

server_id                = 2
master_host            = 192.168.1.215
master_user            = replication
master_password   = slave
master_port            = 3306
relay_log                = mysql-relay-bin
relay-log-index       = mysql-relay-bin.index

We can set the value for master_host, master_user and master_password using mysql query. So it is better to avoid setting those values  directly from configuration file.

If master is having data already, insert the data from master server to slave server database or each of the databases.
Copy master database back up inside slave server and run  the following command on slave….

mysql -u[username] -p[password] [database name] < directory_path/[database.sql]

Now Restart Mysql Slave server and  run following query to synchronize master and slave….

mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST=’192.168.1.215′, MASTER_USER=’replication’, MASTER_PASSWORD=’slave’, MASTER_LOG_FILE=’mysql-bin.000004′, MASTER_LOG_POS=570;

Note: MASTER_LOG_FILE and MASTER_LOG_POS values have been taken from the result of SHOW MASTER STATUS

If a Slave is already running on your Slave Server,  Mysql Server will throw a error like…
ERROR 1198 (HY000): This operation cannot be performed with a running slave; run STOP SLAVE first

So run..
mysql> STOP SLAVE;
And  run the query for CHANGING MASTER again.

If it shows an error like..
ERROR 1201 (HY000): Could not initialize master info structure; more error messages can be found in the MySQL error log

Run…
mysql> RESET SLAVE;
And  run the query for CHANGING MASTER again.

Finally start slave on slave server using..

mysql> START SLAVE;
mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS\G

Congrats! Mysql Master-Slave Replication has been set up

Also we will be able to see the Replication Threads in the process list on both the Master and the Slave.

So simply run…

mysql> SHOW PROCESSLIST.

I mostly use tabs to remind me of important emails. One, they are always in front and second when I restart Thunderbird I don’t have to look for them again as Thunderbird remembers/maintains last open tabs. Ofcourse tabs are also very helpful in keeping all open windows clean.
New Lightning addon works well with google calendar. Very helpful when sharing different calendars with different people. It synchs well and also gives reminders.

But thats not what excited me enough to write this article I upgrade to b4 pre today and they have included Gloda search engine based search and conversations. Earlier it was available as an add on and I tried this earlier with b2 but it didn’t work.

Thunderbird 2 has per folder indexing which is not so helpful. You will have several folders and then your replies going into sent items. So what is needed is a tool to search across all folders. Also several times you need to read full conversations which is very very difficult right now. Thunderbird 3 has this powerful search engine ‘Gloda’ which search across all the folders and presents them either as a list or as conversations. WOW!! could it get better?

Now you can search your entire mailbox, rss feeds etc from single place and that too with lot of intelligent options. The result is also displayed very nicely. You have several filters to further refine search/conversations.

There are several things we can do to ensure that we write ‘good code’, one of the way is to start with good design. Understanding and having ability to correctly utilize OOP concepts and design patterns. To ensure that everyone in our company is a master we have formed and started TechJini Design Patterms study group. We had our first class yesterday which covered introduction of OOP concept and healthy discussion covering real life examples trying to model real life problems. Its clear that everyone has good base and is an expert in analysing and applying OOP concepts, so we expect to have good discussions in future.

Next session is about Abstract Factory Pattern. Looking forward to it.

public android.os.ParcelFileDescriptor openFile(android.net.Uri uri, java.lang.String mode) throws java.io.FileNotFoundException

Rest of the code in ContentProvder is not needed for this problem.

Step 1:
Declare your Content Provider in AndroidManifest.xml

<provider android:name="MyDataContentProvider"  android:authorities="com.techjini" />

Step 2:
Create your ContentProvider and implement openFile
All you have to do is get real path from uri, open it and return the descriptor

URI uri = URI.create("file:///data/data/com.techjini/files/myImage.jpeg");
File file = new File(uri);
ParcelFileDescriptor parcel = ParcelFileDescriptor.open(file, ParcelFileDescriptor.MODE_READ_ONLY);
return parcel;

Step 3:
(You need this step only if file is not already present on the device/sdcard)
Save your content to the file. Following is an example to store a Bitmap

FileOutputStream fos = openFileOutput("myImage.jpeg", Activity.MODE_WORLD_WRITEABLE);
imageView.getBitmap().compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100, fos);

fos.flush();
fos.close();

You can find out where your image is stored using

System.out.println(getFilesDir().getAbsolutePath());

Step 4:
Access the file in WebView

myWebView.loadUrl("content://com.techjini/myImage.jpeg");
//com.techjini is what you mentioned in 'android:authorities' in your AndroidManifest.xml

Looks simple

The date parameter simply appends date/time to the backup.

In order to restore the backup taken above use following command

gunzip < FILE_NAME.sql.gz | mysql --default-character-set=utf8 -u root DB_NAME


This will ensure that db is back up without affecting multi byte data.

Open %JBOS_HOME%\server\default\conf\jboss-service.xml and add the new location

    <attribute name="URLs">
        deploy/, E:/ file:/var/opt/apps/
     </attribute>