A Reliable Development Company Can Help You Design Your AppThe Right Way
The statistics are in, and everyone these days seems to own a cellphone, from grade school students to retirees — everyone, it seems, has access to a smartphone and the plethora of available apps that come with it. According to the U.S. Consumer Electronics Association, smartphone sales have increased nearly twentyfold in the last decade, and smartphone sales have passed the 50 billion dollar mark in the U.S. alone. If you have ever wondered about cutting yourself off a slice of that pie and getting your project to market, the process of building a mobile app might be a little bit more complicated than you think. You have an idea, of course, but it takes more than just a genius idea to get a revolutionary app off the ground and into everyone’s hands. Designing a mobile app is complicated, and the sophisticated and often challenging benchmarks are difficult to reach if you’re working by yourself. Luckily, you aren’t in the fight alone, and there is help out there — all you have to do is look for a knowledgeableand reputable app development company to help you out.

The first step is picking a platform for your mobile app. Do you want to specialize, catering your app to Apple users alone, or do you want to spread your reach and target Android, Tizen, and Blackberry users as well? You need to carefully target your market and understand which platform — or platforms — your app will work best on. A dedicated mobile app developer can help you pinpoint demand matrices and point you in the right direction when you gear your app to specific customer bases. Next, you’ll need to determine what stage your app is in. If your app idea is brand new, a developer can help you storyboard your idea, getting the ideas onto paper, and finding the right target market for your new application. You’ll need to build fast and iterate often, which means you probably want to stick to one platform to cut down on development time. If possible, stick to a coding language you already know if you want to build your base quickly and efficiently.
Conversely, if you have already got the preliminary ideas down, and you know what kind of loadout you want to run, an app development company can help you with the next vital stage: wireframing. In the traditional lifecycle of an app’s development, there are a number of different ways to create the specs specific to your vision for an application. Sketching out wireframes is a great way to get your thoughts out there and to start to plan how the app features and views will flow together.
A development company can then help you take your app through the development and testing phases, keeping you up to speed on the latest technology trends, like cloud computing, NFC, wearable tech, and IOT. They’ll tell you when to move on and adopt newer technologies and how to maintain your legacy systems, and they’ll also stay with your app through the launching and quality control phases. If you place your trust in a proven company, driven to achieving goals and seeing your project through to the end, why not go with a reliable partner like Toronto’s Clearbridge Mobile custom app development team. They will stick with your project every step of the way, even helping you get your app into the Google Play or Apple stores.
If you want to build a next-level app, look into partnership with a professional development team. For end-to-end service, forward-thinking support, and teams of agile experts who can handle anything from mobile payments to QSR, enterprise to retail, a mobile app company with a proven record cannot be contended with. Toronto’s Clearbridge Mobile is a good place to start your search for a reliable partner; after all, their portfolio boasts partnerships with a number of Fortune 500 companies such as PayPal and Microsoft. Creating a great mobile experience requires talent, vision, and innovation. Only an expert mobile application development company can bring a project from concept to polished product and ensure that your app delivers the kind of experience your customers need.
Huawei sees big growth in Europe, while Samsung and Apple lock down the US

As we enter the final months of 2015, the smartphone market is quite a different place than it was at the start of the year. Kantar Worldpanel has identified a couple of important trends, noting a big market shift in Europe while the US consolidates behind the two largest players.
In the US, Apple and Samsung now account for 66 percent of all smartphone sales, and combined account for 9 out of 10 of the top selling models in the US. According to the research, US customers looking to upgrade next year slightly prefer Apple over Samsung, by a margin of 43 to 34 percent respectively.
The majority of US consumers are looking either at an iPhone or Galaxy handset for next year’s upgrade.
That said, Android’s market share continues to grow in the US, up from 62 percent a year ago to 66 percent in Q3. Meanwhile, iOS has shrunk from 33 percent to 29 percent of the market. The situation is different in Europe, where Android has been losing ground to iOS in some of the continent’s largest markets. The United Kingdom now has a greater portion of iOS users than at any point before, while Germany has seen a 5.5 percent drop in Android’s share from a year before.
However, some Android manufacturers have been able to buck this trend to leap up in market share. Huawei has risen to second place out of all Android brands in Europe in Q3, up from sixth place in 2014. Huawei is also the top brand in China at the moment, followed by Xiaomi, meaning that the company is gaining a substantial international presence.
“With a wider portfolio of products ranging from the high-end all the way to the low-end, Huawei made particular inroads in Spain and Italy.” – Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech
Huawei handsets:
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Huawei has managed to leap over several of its competitors in Europe as they have struggled with sales this year. HTC, Motorola (Lenovo) and Sony has all seen their shares slip as their latest products have not struck the same chord with consumers. Both HTC and Sony have reported particular poor mobile financial results this year, posing questions about how much longer these companies will remain interested in the smartphone market.
2015 has been testing for a number of smartphone manufacturers and 2016 could be a make or break year for a few of them. If you want to sift through some more of the data yourself, check out this interactive data visualisation below.
http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/smartphone-os-market-share/
Fallout C.H.A.T. aims to add Fallout-themed communications to your phone
The folks over at Bethesda Softworks are gearing up for a big launch, the much anticipated Fallout 4. It’s only a week out from release day, but in the meantime, those looking forward to the game can add a Fallout-theme to spice up their text communications by way of a new app from Bethesda.
Dubbed the Vault-Tec Communications Hub and Transmitter, or Fallout C.H.A.T. for short, this new application will flavor your messaging with 60 Fallout-themed emoji and animated GIFs, and a fully customizable keyboard.
Unfortunately, Fallout C.H.A.T. isn’t a true keyboard extension. The app is essentially an image database. You can compose a message, and then C.H.A.T. will convert it into a corresponding image, as you cannot actually “chat” with anyone. In other words, the application will be fun for Fallout fans to poke around with, but only for a short time.
It would be awesome if Bethesda instead made this into a fully-functioning keyboard, but alas, that isn’t the case. If anyone wants to take it for a spin, the download link is below.
Come comment on this article: Fallout C.H.A.T. aims to add Fallout-themed communications to your phone
The new ‘Need for Speed’ looks like a movie shot on film
The new, simply titled Need for Speed (out this week on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One) is as close as you’re going to get to an art-house, video game version of The Fast and the Furious. The series has had players recreating cop chases from movies since 1998’s Hot Pursuit, but this is the first time the game actually feels filmic. It isn’t going to stand toe-to-toe with Microsoft’s Forza series or Sony’s ill-fated, but gorgeous Driveclub because it doesn’t have to — visually, they aren’t even competing against each other. NfS doesn’t run at 60FPS like Forza Motorsport; it doesn’t feature those meticulously detailed cockpits either. What’s more, car models aren’t nearly as detailed as Driveclub‘s. But whatever NfS lacks in “perfection,” it makes up for with killer arcade-like handling and a visual style guided by a clear aesthetic: Make a racing game that looks like a movie shot on film.
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Airbnb wins over voters in fight against rental restrictions in SF
Airbnb and similar services have won against Proposition F, with most San Francisco residents choosing to vote against the controversial measure. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the proposition lost by 55 percent to 45 percent, though Reuters is reporting that it lost by 61 percent instead. Prop F, which is also known as the Airbnb Initiative, is backed by hotel workers’ unions, landlords and housing activists. They believe that laws governing services like Airbnb’s should be stricter and that rentals are making the housing crisis worse, driving up rent and land prices in the city.
Source: Reuters
On the court with the promising Qlipp tennis sensor
It wasn’t long ago that we rounded up a collection of gadgets aimed at tennis players — everything from fitness trackers to sensor-laden rackets. But this is still a young market and we’ve seen several new entries since then. Equipment maker Babolat announced the Pop, a stat-tracking sensor housed in a wristband, back in August. Meanwhile, a new name is entering this growing field. A small team called 9 Degrees Freedom successfully crowdfunded the Qlipp — a small sensor going for $99 in pre-release deals before jumping to its regular $129 price. It’s a “universal” device that should work with nearly any racket and the company boldly claims it’s the “ultimate tennis performance sensor.” I received a pre-release version several weeks ago and, thanks to a nagging foot injury, I ended up spending far longer with the device than I anticipated. That added time gave me the chance to watch the accompanying app evolve as the Qlipp neared its December release and while the typical crowdfunding growing pains are evident, I do like where the company’s going with this device.Slideshow-338509
Cortana for iPhone beta signups kick off
Just as it did with Android, Microsoft is gearing up to bring its Cortana virtual assistant to iPhones. The beta release of Cortana won’t have all of its features — you can’t say “Hey Cortana” to wake it up, for example — but it sounds you’ll be able to ask Cortana questions manually and add reminders. Basically, it’ll have the same limitations as the current Cortana Android beta. If you want to be a Cortana guinea pig, fill out this survey to sign up for the beta and sit tight for a download link over the next few weeks. Be warned, though, Microsoft also says it’s only looking for a “limited number”of people to try it out, and it’s currently only available in the US and China. You can be sure it’ll open up the Cortana for iPhone beta even more eventually.
Via: The Verge
Source: Microsoft
Steve Jobs Passed on Building Apple Car in 2008 to Focus on iPhone
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who passed away in October 2011 following a lengthy battle with a rare illness, contemplated building a so-called “Apple Car” as recently as 2008, according to his former advisor Tony Fadell.
Tony Fadell discussed an Apple Car with Steve Jobs in 2008 (Image: Bloomberg)
In an interview with Bloomberg, Fadell, who led Apple’s iPod division between 2001 and 2010, said he had discussions with Jobs on multiple occasions to hypothesize about what features an Apple-branded vehicle could have.
“We had a couple of walks,” Fadell said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. The pair posed hypothetical questions to each other, such as: “If we were to build a car, what would we build? What would a dashboard be? And what would this be? What would seats be? How would you fuel it or power it?”
Jobs, who drove a Mercedes, decided not to move forward with the idea at the time, said Fadell, instead focusing Apple’s efforts on the iPhone, which accounted for about two-thirds of the company’s net revenue last year according to SEC filings.
Fadell, who now serves as Nest Labs CEO at Google parent company Alphabet, said he does not have firsthand knowledge about Apple’s car plans, but he did reflect on the similarities between smartphones and modern vehicles.
“A car has batteries; it has a computer; it has a motor; and it has mechanical structure. If you look at an iPhone, it has all the same things. It even has a motor in it,” said Fadell, who’s now the chief executive officer of Alphabet’s Nest home appliances company. “But the hard stuff is really on the connectivity and how cars could be self-driving.”
Apple has considered building a car before 2008, Bloomberg noted. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller disclosed in 2012 court testimony that Apple discussed building a car before the original iPhone launched in 2007, while former Apple board member Mickey Drexler has also said Jobs wanted to build a car.
Apple faces growing competition from tech rivals such as Tesla and Google, and traditional automakers, if it chooses to enter the electric vehicle market. Recent rumors suggest Apple has assembled a team of hundreds of employees to develop an electric vehicle that could enter production as early as 2020.
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Polar and Swarovski partner to make fitness tracking fashionable
Polar is a pioneer in wearables that track fitness. They have been making activity trackers and heart rates monitors for over 35 years and recognize a severe hole in the market of fashionable fitness trackers. Just because fitness focuses on health doesn’t mean you can’t look good while doing it.
So Polar and Swarovski partnered up to bring the Polar Loop Crystal for women who don’t want to wear an ugly or tech looking activity tracker and still want to monitor their activity. The new activity tracker will come embellished with 30 Swarovski crystals and feature a textured bracelet with a comfortable fit.
Polar has a long history of creating fitness products that encourage and offer guidance for healthy lifestyles. Being active and focusing on wellness is a trait that we’ve always viewed as beautiful,” says, Marco Suvilaakso, Global Product Director at Polar. “More often, consumers are looking to technology as a way to make their increasingly busy lives easier. We designed the Polar Loop Crystal specifically for women who are not only passionate about fashion, but also who are looking for an accessory that can keep up with their routines, offers motivation throughout the day and supports their fitness goals and overall well-being.
The Polar Loop Crystal will track daily activities like steps, calories burned, workouts and sleep, and gently vibrates to remind users to move if they have been inactive for too long. It not only looks good, but it has the brains to back it up as it will also vibrate when you get a call, display text messages and vibrate if you’re inactive for too long.
The Polar Loop Crystal will be available to purchase at Polar.com for $159.99 this month.
The post Polar and Swarovski partner to make fitness tracking fashionable appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Facebook passes new milestone with its AI research
Facebook’s AI brain has become rather good at detecting breeds of dog.
Facebook may be best known for its huge social network, but the company is also conducting research in exciting computing fields, including artificial intelligence. The company has been speaking a little more about how far it has come with its machine learning research this week and is preparing to put some of its technology to work in consumer products.
Facebook’s AI Research team (FAIR) has been working to train computers to identify objects in photos, understand natural language and to be able to plan ahead. Apparently, the company’s system is 30 percent faster and uses 10 time less training data than previous industry benchmarks.
The research team has devised a range of tests to teach computers a range of skills from predictive visual learning to understanding how to play Go. All of these ideas share one key theme, object recognition. This is an area that Google has been working on intensely for some time too, but Facebook is also looking to combine the idea with other technologies, such as language understanding.
Most recently, the research team has been working on object description. Facebook’s technology can analyse and pick out objects in both the real world and from pictures, including seemingly odd things like a species of dog. Facebook looks to be integrating this into its social network to help describe images to the visually impaired. In the end, the researchers envision that this type of technology can augment our own memories and provide more useful data at our fingertips.
There are a number of interesting videos in the source link below, if you want to see the technology in action. Founder Mark Zuckerberg shared the video below, which offers a closer look at what the company is up to. Facebook will also be presenting a new paper at NIPS next month, detailing how far the company has come.














