Following the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency announcing it would end its contract with RIM and purchase $2.1 million worth of iPhones, Bloomberg reported today that the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board will also make the switch. The agency said in a notice posted to its website that BlackBerrys have been “failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate” while announcing plans to purchase iPhone 5′s as replacements:
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates plane accidents, disclosed its plan to switch to Apple Inc.’s iPhone 5 in a document posted last week to a federal website. The BlackBerrys have been “failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate,” according to the NTSB’s notice.
While the agency only has about 400 employees, last month’s announcement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs agency means RIM will lose additional 17,600 government employees to the iPhone in the near future. According to the document posted by the Transportation Safety Board, the agency “requires effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations.” RIM, however, is still counting on many government customers to upgrade to BlackBerry 10… Read more
Pay with Square at Starbucks: We already knew Starbucks was signed up to bring Square payments to 7,000 of its stores via the newly renamed “Square Wallet” app. Starbucks just confirmed in a press release that starting today it will officially begin accepting Square payments via a scanned QR.
Fantastical for iPhone: Those familiar with the Mac OS X desktop version of the Fantastical app will be pleased to know developers Flexbits have announced an iPhone version is in the works and coming soon. The Mac version is a slick, menu bar item calendar app for access to reminders and calendar functions, but also has support for iCal, BusyCal, Entourage, Outlook, iCloud, Google Calendar or Yahoo! Calendar. You can sign up to find out when it becomes available here.
New app releases:
Clear for Mac:We knew it was coming and today the Mac App Store version of the popular Clear to do app for iPhone officially makes its way to the Mac.
Jingu Friends:Originally available as a BlackBerry app with more than a million downloads since May 2011 and 3.5 million messages sent monthly, the developers of the Jingu Friends app have released an iOS version of the app today on the App Store. The app allows you to discover new people to chat with through a lounge environment that “immediately drops you into a global conversation stream where you can listen or participate.” From there you can find out more about the messaging apps participants use:
All messages posted on Jingu Friends are public, but users can take their conversations private through seamless integration into smartphone messaging apps like BBM, Hookt, WhatsApp and Kik.
FreshBooks for iPad: FreshBooks is coming to the iPad today with version 1.1 introducing a universal app that now supports both iPhone and iPad.
FreshBooks – The Fastest Way To Track Time, Organize Expenses & Invoice Your Clients, Anytime, Anywhere.
Updates:
Pinterest version 2.1: Pinterest is introducing a new feature today that allows users to create up to three secret boards to share with friends and family. In a blog post, Pinterest explained how to use the new feature: “go to your profile, tap on the Boards tab, and scroll down to the bottom until you see a button that says Create a Secret Board.”
• Block or report other users
• Create up to 3 secret boards
• Edit boards from your device
Clear version 1.2:Clear for iPhone gets a big update today that brings iCloud support, the ability to share quotes on Twitter and Facebook, quick list switching, and more: Read more
In December, we heard reports that the Pentagon had officially certified an Android device and Android 2.2 for use on Defense Department networks. According to a report from The Washington Post, citing a recent document posted by the Defense Department, the Pentagon is hiring contractors to securely manage a combination of at least 162,500 iOS and Android devices. The document also noted the project could expand up to 8 million mobile devices: Read more
Australian airline Qantas previously announced it is dropping BlackBerry in favor of Apple’s iPhone and issuing iPads to pilots, but now it is rolling out iPads to passengers to compliment a new in-flight entertainment streaming service.
Qantas is abandoning RIM due to a recently conducted employee survey that indicated airline staffers prefer Apple’s smartphone offering. CIO Paul Jones told The Sydney Morning Herald that the iPhone offers a “user-friendly interface and simple access to emails, contacts and calendars, as well as meeting all Qantas’ security requirements.”
Staff members can also carry Android devices under the airline’s bring-your-own-device policy. The move to Apple’s iPhone will save Qantas millions of dollars, as will transitioning to the iPad to replace costly paper in the cockpit, according to NewStraitTimes. The airline will dole 2,200 iPads to pilots to improve communication and cutback on printed charts and manuals. The 64Gb iPads with 3G will save the airline about $1.5 million annually.
“Transition from the BlackBerry to the iPhone is part of Qantas’ broader mobility strategy and, once complete, will result in significant cost savings,” said a Qantas spokesperson.
With the full-scale shift to iOS in progress, Qantas further announced it plans to launch QStreaming across its B767 fleet. Qantas Domestic CEO Lyell Strambi revealed customers travelling on a Qantas’ B767 aircraft would now experience “in-flight entertainment streamed direct to iPads in every seat.”
“Following the successful trial of our QStreaming service this year, we will partner with Panasonic and use their eXW solution to provide over 200 hours of on-demand IFE content via iPads to every passenger in Business and Economy travelling on our B767 fleet,” Strambi explained. “QStreaming will be available free of charge to all our passengers across the B767 fleet.
…For the first time ever, two-thirds of new phone acquirers are buying smartphones.
Smartphone use is exploding in the United States, while PC sales are dropping. If 66 percent of mobile phone buyers purchase smartphones, and 36.3-percent of them get the iPhone, then that means almost a quarter of all phones bought in the U.S. are iPhones. That also means 36 percent of the purchased phones run Android OS.
More from Nielsen, including the incredibly skewed graphic, is below—which gives Symbian, Palm and Windows 7 devices almost the same amount of “fill” at 2.8-percent as Apple’s 34 percent.
In its Q1 2012 report of device activations by platform, multi-platform software company Good Technology analyzed thousands of activated smartphones through its network of enterprise customers. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook noted this week during Apple’s Q2 earnings call that the iPad was now being deployed or tested by 94 percent of the Fortune 500s and 75 percent of the Global 500. Good Technology’s numbers show the iPad and iPhone together continue to dominate Android in the enterprise market with roughly 73.9-percent of all smartphone activations and 97.3-percent of tablet activations during Q1. Apple’s iOS devices together took 80 percent of total activations, which is up 10 percent from last year.
Among iOS, iPhone 4S is the clear leader with 37 percent, representing four times the amount of activations of any other device. In the graphic of the Top 10 Devices above, we see iOS take up six of the top 10 spots with iPhone 4S and iPad 2 accounting for the majority of activations during the quarter. Good’s numbers, however, do not include RIM or Windows…
