It’s funny how one success story can send the world into a frenzy. The iPhone has been an undisputed success, gobbling up market share by the full percentage point. It’s not unstoppable, though. As the latest comScore stats show, actually, sales growth is nearly nonexistent.

Let’s start with the good news, though. Apple is sitting at 25% market share – an incredible number for such a young presence in the market. This is the number that had everyone scared. The bad news for Apple is that it has stopped growing. Relative to the market, the last three months have only been up .3% for Apple. Compare that to RIM who’s up 1.7% on its 41.3% market share in October of last year. Android more than doubled in the last three months, granted only from 2.8% to 7.1% but that is still massive growth.

Part of the problem is no doubt that Apple has conditioned the world to believe every summer will bring a new iPhone. If that’s not the case in 2010, we might see some very stagnant iPhone numbers before year’s end.

Source: comScore

Take your time and reread that headline. Yes, a couple in South Korea left their baby – their real baby – alone in their apartment while they raised a virtual child from a local internet cafe. The couple would return to the house once a day in shifts to feed the malnourished child. The baby eventually died of dehydration and severe malnutrition.

According to police, the couple had been on the run for the past five months after it was discovered the child had died. South Korea has been lauded by web penetration advocates for having the highest broadband per capita stats in the world. With that comes the occasional terrifying story of internet addiction like this one. The country had another web related death recently when a young man died in an internet cafe after playing an online game for 86 hours straight.

The report at AOL cites the economy as one possible cause of the obsession. At some point, though, I think we just need to hold people accountable without excuses. Unemployed or not, abandoning a baby isn’t justifiable.

Nearly good on his word, Steve Jobs will be delivering the iPad to US customers on April 3rd. I say almost because the April 3rd release is 66 days past the announcement, when Steve-O promised us 60. You can pre-order next week – next week – starting March 12th. The 3G version won’t be released until later in the month.

Some of the questions people are starting to ask include questions about shortages, lines, and the number of iPad-centric apps we’ll see on launch day. The only question I want an answer for is when does iPad 2.0 launch? There isn’t much I care to see on the iPad at this point. Nine months from now, though, that’s a different story. By then most publishers should be comfortable with platform, certainly more comfortable than the haphazard rush we’re currently seeing to try to get things ready. That’s when you get to the good stuff.

The rest of the world will be able to get Apple’s latest creation toward the end of April.

In yet another App Store obliteration, Wi-Fi detection apps have been pulled from the App Store without exception. The word from Apple is that these apps, the type that actively scan for wireless networks, use “private frameworks” to locate hotspots, which is a violation of Apple’s terms of use.

“We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information,” said one developer. Apple declined to say more about the removal.

I think it’s odd that Apple would start to rigorously enforce rules without explanation when so many applications continue to slip through the cracks. The most obvious example is the “titillating content” Apple barred not so long ago, though exceptions were made for both Playboy and Sports Illustrated. As The Register points out, it could be Apple is attempting to streamline everything for the iPad launch, that perhaps the tools to make these apps work won’t be available on the tablet. Even then, why all the secrecy? Why not just say, “we don’t want people exploiting certain parts of our devices for personal use.”

It seems like Apple is filing hundreds of patents a day, so it’s not really much of a surprise that the company throws out an infringement suit from time to time. Today, it’s HTC. Apple filed a suit against HTC claiming infringement of “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.”

The suit seems more appropriately targeted at Android, though HTC is marginally involved with things like Sense UI and obviously the hardware. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that the real issue is with Google’s OS, and maybe some multi-touch stuff here and there. Whatever the case, old Stevie isn’t happy. A press release quoted him with the following: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

If the lawsuit succeeds it will likely end in HTC being forced to license patents from Apple for its devices. The only other recourse would be placing a halt on the import and sale of HTC devices, which seems pretty unlikely.

Source: Apple

Apple’s had a rough go with its suppliers of late. If arson, among other things, wasn’t bad enough, the company now reports that several of its suppliers have confirmed child laborers in their employ. The news came in the form of Apple’s own supplier responsibility report, which is really an attempt to clean up the company image.

The report also found that 50 factories have kept employees past than the maximum 60 hour work week and 24 factories paying below than minimum wage. Some 61% of suppliers follow their safety regulations and only 57% have the required environmental permits. It’s not great news, though obviously the child labor thing is the real kick in the pants.

Though Apple wouldn’t reveal where the infracting factories were located, it did say that the children were no longer employed. Apple is still using the suppliers involved.

Source: Bloomberg

The day Apple announced the iPad, Amazon was calling newspapers and publishers before Steve Jobs had even left the stage. As the New York Times’ Bits blog has it, Amazon wanted to hear what Apple had offered. Amazon had been trying for more than a month to sign deals with publishers that would give Amazon customers the best prices anywhere, either by matching or beating the prices given to other dealers.

Amazon tried to sweeten the deal by offering publishers bigger revenues than in the past. Unfortunately, Apple was willing to budge on a much larger issue: price. With Apple, publishers had a bit more flexibility than Amazon would give, which in turn gave publishers bargaining power over Amazon. See, Amazon will do just about anything to stay competitive with Apple.

In fairness to Amazon, it’s not like publishers want to upset that distribution channel. Amazon pretty much pioneered the ebook scene – it certainly made ebooks as popular as they were likely to become before some sort of wonder device came along – which leaves publishers keen to cater to the existing subscribers in Amazon’s marketplace until either the iPad gains enough ground or Amazon releases a new reader.

That last point is very important. If Amazon doesn’t release a new reader within the next year or so, it will pigeonhole itself into becoming solely a content provider, a position I wouldn’t think Bezos wants to be in considering he started the Kindle. Rarely would a company of Amazon’s scale introduce a middling product only to do away with it in a couple years.

Source: Bits

It’s been a while since we heard anything meaningful about the tablet formerly known as the CrunchPad. The device, now named JooJoo, has been overshadowed in a serious way by the Apple iPad. As much as I would like to dissuade everyone from buying one of these things, I know someone will. If you’re willing to dive into one of the more ridiculous tech situations of our time, though, you’ll be waiting to get your hands on your newest gadget. The JooJoo has been officially delayed until March 25th.

Earlier this month, Fusion Garage’s JooJoo Internet tablet went into full production with an anticipated on-time delivery to consumers at the end of February. Last week, the company became aware of a manufacturing issue involving JooJoo’s industry-first 12.1 inch capacitive touch screen which Fusion Garage was quickly able to diagnose and rectify. The company now forecasts the JooJoo will be sent to consumers on March 25.

The manufacturing issue centers on fine tuning the touch sensitivity of the capacitive screen. Fusion Garage will be providing all pre-order customers with a free JooJoo accessory to compensate for the delay in the delivery of their JooJoo.

That’s the official word from Fusion Garage. As nice as the JooJoo seems, the delays and impending litigation are enough to keep me away from the device. To be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first of many delays.

I used to think Blockbuster Online was the greatest thing on the planet. At the time, I was living close enough to a physical store that I was getting as many movies as I wanted plus the bonus of being able to turn them in for free movies for something like $10. It was great. It wasn’t long, though, before the store closed and I started mailing my movies back.

That same thing is about to happen in 500 locations across the country. Blockbuster announced this week that it would close 500 stores over the course of the year. The news comes as the company continues to bleed money, to the tune of $435 million for its most recent quarter.

“While we believe the future is bright, the next 12 to 18 months will remain challenging as we balance the secular decline of a single channel with the ascension of emerging channels, such as vending and digital,” CEO Jim Keyes said on Wednesday. The company is also trying to restructure its nearly billion dollar debt to stay afloat.

Source: MSN

In a release today, Palm announced it was lowering sales expectations for the year due to slower than expected customer adoption of the new WebOS platform. As CEO Jon Rubinstein put things, “driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated.”

His wording seems to suggest that the company still thinks consumers will pick Palm, but that it’s going to take more time. I’ve got news, fellas. It ain’t happening. It’s now nearly eight months since the Pre launched, eight months in which the company has failed to build a strong developer base, to say nothing of mediocre sales. We’re just weeks past Palm’s launch with Verizon, about which we’ve heard nothing. That rarely means good things.

Now everyone has just one question in mind – who’s going to buy Palm? The only other possibility would be for the company to develop yet another device, which I highly doubt it has the money to do. We know RIM and Nokia could both use a better platform, and Dell has been making passing attempts the cell phone market for years. None of them have actually expressed interest, though, and I would think only Nokia or RIM would be in a position to really capitalize on that kind of acquisition.

In any case, Palm is in trouble. We’ll see if it can dig itself out by year’s end.

Source: Business Insider

Shortly after Apple pulled most of the sexual content from the App Store, developers noticed a new category under the app submission software. It seemed like the perfect solution to the offensive content problem. Just give those apps the explicit label and all will be fine, right? Right, but not yet.

One developer, upon noticing the category’s sudden and mysterious disappearance, called Apple to get the scoop. He says he was told, “it’s not going to happen anytime soon.” It’s a shame, really, because it would solve so many issues with the App Store. Giving explicit apps their own home means the people that don’t want to see them don’t have to, and the rest of the world can enjoy mobile smut. It also relieves Apple of the burden of censorship, no longer requiring a definition of what is appropriate or how much money you’re required to have to publish the inappropriate stuff anyway.

Even if this thing goes live, do you really think Apple is going to let anything more than a side-boob show up in any application other than Safari? No way. If we know anything about Jobs it’s that he likes Apple to have the corner on the porn market.

Source: Cult of Mac

More clues have surfaced that suggest Apple is indeed planning a camera for the iPad. We’ve already seen that there is space in the chassis to host a small camera, now MacRumors says there is software to support video conferencing as well. The latest SDK has accept and decline commands for video chat services.

The specific API threads reveal support for at least testing front-facing cameras, zoom, and an LED flash (as in a camera, not the software). 9to5 Mac also uncovered the following buttons for video chat.

The size of the actual image suggests a screen the width of the iPad’s, so it may not be for the iPhone as well. It could also simply be for internal testing, but my guess is that, as with the iPhone, the later generations of the iPad will be where the magic is at. If anything, I’d bet Apple is waiting on a better video camera to put into the iPad.

This weekend Apple made a sweeping change to its application guidelines, banning any material that could be deemed titillating. Well, not exactly any material, but certainly that of smaller developers. In another sweeping decision that’s rife with ambiguity, Apple has denied and pulled applications from small-name developers whose content was deemed too sexy for the App Store. How do you define too sexy? Pretty much anything that involves showing some skin.

As I mentioned, though, there are exceptions. Sports Illustrated still has its Swimsuit app available and Playboy will reportedly be allowed to keep its content live. This is a surefire way to piss off a lot of people. Some four days after the ban, Phil Schiller finally talked to the New York Times about the bans. “It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” he said.

Wait, isn’t that why you guys implemented parental controls? And what of the objectionable material warnings? And what about the fact that anyone wanting to see boobs can still use Safari to get to every porn site on the web? As with previous app decisions, this one reeks of whimsy. Oh, did I ask why Sports Illustrated models and Playmates are somehow less offensive to those women and parents than the girls in the “Beautiful Boobs” app? I bet it’s because they aren’t just the fantasized digital mockups of women with bodies all airbrushed and touched up. These are real women, appearing in real magazines, sticking it to the misogynistic majority by using their vast intelligence to make money with the bodies that have been so objectified in the past. That must be it.

Since the announcement of the iPad, the geek world has been up in arms about Flash. When people aren’t bitching about why the tablet doesn’t have Flash support, they’re giving Apple the once over for including Flash in its marketing materials. There is at least one person outside Apple that doesn’t think Flash is right for the iPad and get this – he’s a Flash developer.

Morgan Adams is a full-time Flash developer who says he’d love to create content for the iPad, but it doesn’t make sense. His main argument focuses on one of the most widely used features in Flash: mouseover. So much of Flash content is controlled and manipulated based on the difference between a click and a mouseover that it just wouldn’t translate to a tablet. The other options for tablet users – gestures, complex clicking, multiple versions of the same site – are either a step backwards or require a lot more programming. Everyone cites video as a major issue for Flash, but video content is easily handled on the iPhone and will only get easier with HTML5.

Be sure to check Adams’ full comments at Roughly Drafted.

Wired went out and found a bunch of Windows Phone developers to see what they think about Windows Phone 7 Series. The response is…less than pleasant. In fact, most of them sound pretty concerned if not downright pissed. That’s bad for Microsoft, considering its developers that keep a platform viable in the marketplace. Let’s start with one of the more hilarious quotes.

“I think it’s just royally fucked. That place is so big: The tools, the people, it’s all so fragmented.” Awesome. That’s Kai Yu, CEO of BeeJive, a company that develops an IM app. There is at least one developer, though, that’s excited about the new platform. “My speculation is that Microsoft has some incredible platforms they can tie all together with the new mobile platform.” That’s Jim Scheinman, COO of Pageonce, a productivity app developer. “If one developer can write across all the other platforms, that would be easier for us and all the developers…. If you want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers, it would behoove Microsoft to try to make that happen. That would be a very, very exciting opportunity for all of us.”

It would be exciting, but Microsoft has burned a lot of bridges by torching its last platform. It’s got a lot of ass-kissing to do before there will be any happy Windows Phone developers in the world.

Source: Wired

Next time your friend brags about his Prius, show him this bad boy. It’s easily as ugly and gets roughly 50 times the gas mileage of Toyota’s latest headache. Of course, it only goes 30 miles an hour.

The car is the brainchild of the Cal Poly Supermileage Team, a group of engineering students who manufacture supermileage vehicles for competition. The team has been developing the car, called the Black Widow, since 2005, working down the weight and cranking up the mileage. The car weighs a svelte 6 pounds and runs on a Honda 50cc engine.

The Cal Poly team will enter Black Widow in competition at the end of March at the Shell Eco-Marathon. The car has placed first or second every year it has entered.

Source: Wired

If you’ve ever tried to download a podcast or a lot of applications, you know how frustrating that 10MB 3G cap can be on the iPhone. For those who don’t know, any time you try to download something larger than 10MB over a 3G connection, you get a message asking you to connect to a Wi-Fi network before you continue with the download. Along with the changes Apple made to iPhone policies this week, it also doubled the download cap, from 10MB to 20MB.

The change was most likely to accommodate the difference in file size between iPhone and iPad applications. It is nice, though, to be able to pick up some shorter podcasts and whatnot on the go, even if my This American Life downloads tend to be a bit bigger.

The change is effective immediately – I was able to pick up a 15MB app no problem this morning.