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Android has overtaken Windows Mobile and Linux for fourth place in smartphone OS market share with 9.6 percent, says Gartner. The worldwide study of first quarter smartphone sales showed a 707 per cent year-on-year increase in Android sales in North America, while the total smartphone market saw its largest year-on-year increase since 2006, says the research firm.
Novell announced SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 11 Service Pack 1 (SP1) in server and desktop versions. SLE 11 SP1 advances the server version's virtualization capabilities with full support for KVM, also boosting high availability clustering support, while the desktop version updates audio, Bluetooth, and multi-monitor support, Novell says.
Advantech announced a 22-inch panel PC designed for medical applications. The POC-227 includes Intel Core 2 Duo or Celeron processors, an optical disk drive, four isolated serial ports and an IEEE 1394a port, plus a SAW (surface acoustic wave) touchscreen, the company says.
Synology America announced a two-bay, Linux-based networked-attached storage (NAS) device for the SMB market, integrating a 256-bit AES hardware encryption engine. The DiskStation DS210+ can hold up to 4TB of internal storage, consumes 30 Watts, and includes the new Synology DiskStation Manager 2.3 software, with improved RAID setup and security features.
Imagination Technologies announced it has licensed its latest Powervr SGX Series5XT IP for GPUs (graphics processing units) to Texas Instruments (TI) for inclusion in forthcoming OMAP SOCs (system on chips). Following a similar agreement earlier this month with Renesas, the collaboration will “define a new zenith of graphics performance for mobile platforms,” the company claims.
General Motors (GM) announced that version 2.0 of the Android version of its OnStar Mobile app for the Chevrolet Volt will feature Google Maps integration. The voice-enabled feature, which shows a Volt's location on Google Maps, may only be the first step in Android integration with OnStar, say reports.
Amazon.com announced that a free e-reader app for its Kindle Store is coming to Android. The Kindle for Android app arrives amidst growing competition from low-cost e-readers such as the Kobe, Android models like the hot-selling Nook, and multi-function color tablets ranging from the iPad to a possible new Sony device.
Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux 2.6.34, which is notable for adding two filesystems: Ceph for distributed and cloud-based applications, and LogFS, which is optimized for flash-memory based devices. Other new features include a faster KVM virtualization driver based on Vhost.net technology, says LinuxPlanet.com.
Portwell announced a COM Express module that offers Intel's recently introduced “Arrandale” Core i7/i5/i3 processors or the even newer Celeron P4505 CPU. The PCOM-B216VG-VI includes up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, supports up to four SATA devices, and drives three DisplayPort displays, the company says.
HTC announced a budget-minded Android 2.1 phone for European and Asian markets. Available in the third quarter, the HTC Wildfire will offer a 3.2-inch capacitive touch screen, a five-megapixel camera, a 3.5mm audio jack, a microSD card slot, and a new app-sharing feature, says the company.
A new fast-booting, cloud-oriented, “Peppermint OS” Ubuntu variant has been downloaded 25,000 times in its first week. Meanwhile, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone CentOS has been released in version 5.5, adding features such as improved KVM virtualization and expanded WiFi support, and pioneering Linux distro-maker Mandriva is up for sale.
Intel will launch its first dual-core Atom processor for netbooks and other mobile devices during the third quarter, Fudzilla claims. The N550 will be clocked at 1.5GHz, have 512KB of second-level cache per core, and offer an 8.5 Watt TDP, Fuad Abazovic writes.
Appro announced a pair of 1U servers aimed at small- and medium-sized HPC (high performance computing) deployments. The Tetra 1326G4 and 1426G4 combine Intel or AMD processors with Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPU (graphics processing unit) cards, offering up to 24 CPU cores and 1,792 GPU cores plus as much as 3TB of storage, the company says.
South Africa-based mobile provider Vodacom has begun selling an Ubuntu Linux based netbook. The Linkbook, which was developed by a South African company of the same name, is equipped with 16GB of flash storage, HSDPA, WiFi, two USB ports, and an 8.9-inch display, says Vodacom.
Texas Instruments (TI) announced a DaVinci video processor with “smart analytics,” claimed to offer three times the video performance of its predecessor. Designed for video surveillance and security applications, the DMVA2 supports 720P video at 30fps and 1080p at 15fps, and is offered with an IP camera reference design from Appro.