Is Internet Explorer Making A Comeback?

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) in April again managed to grab more user share, the third time in the year’s first four months, to stay well above the 50% mark and remain the world’s top browser, a Web analytics company said on Tuesday.

Google’s Chrome’s share also climbed in April, said Net Applications, ending that browser’s three-month decline.

IE boosted its share by about three-tenths of a percentage point last month to average 54.1% in April. That returns IE to a mark comparable to its September 2011 share.

Since Jan.1, IE has increased its usage share by 2.2 percentage points for a 4% gain since the end of 2011. The turnaround has been IE’s largest and longest since the browser began shedding share years ago to Firefox, then later, Chrome.

Microsoft has pinned its hopes almost entirely on IE9, the 2011 edition that runs only on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

On Tuesday, Microsoft again stayed on message, highlighting the gains made by IE9 on Windows 7 — the pairing the firm has said is the only metric it cares about — but ignoring the overall IE increases this year.

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Is Samsung Flip Flopping?

Samsung is apparently rethinking its decision not to bring Android 4 to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab.

Earlier the company stated that neither device could be updated due to the size of Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. The news created a bit of an issue with users sharpening scythes, pitchforks and lighting torches to go on a lynching. Now word on the street is that the company is considering backing down on its decision due to “strong customer demand.”

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Facebook Is Display Advertising King

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will reach roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, toppling Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest portion of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study.

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.

Last year Facebook garnered 12.2 percent share of the U.S. market.

The figures highlights the growing clout of Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network. It has seen its valuation soar to roughly $80 billion in recent transactions for its shares on the private markets as some investors anticipate it could have an initial public offering next year.

While Facebook has grabbed the top ranking, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said the overall market for display ads, which include banner ads, video ads and Web page sponsorships, is growing robustly enough that it is benefiting numerous companies.

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Facebook’s Users Info Was Leaked

Facebook users’ personal information could have been accidentally leaked to third parties, in particular advertisers, over the past several years, Symantec Corp said in one of its blog postings.

Third-parties would have had access to personal information such as profiles, photographs and chat, and could have had the ability to post messages, the security software company stated.

“We estimate that as of April 2011, close to 100,000 applications were enabling this leakage,” the blog post said.

” … Over the years, hundreds of thousands of applications may have inadvertently leaked millions of access tokens to third parties,” posing a security threat, the blog post said.

The third-parties may not have realized their ability to access the information, it said.

Facebook, the world’s largest social networking website, was notified of this issue and confirmed the leakage, the blog post said.

It said Facebook has taken steps to resolve the issue.

“Unfortunately, their (Symantec’s) resulting report has a few inaccuracies. Specifically, we have conducted a thorough investigation which revealed no evidence of this issue resulting in a user’s private information being shared with unauthorized third parties,” Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich said in a statement.

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iPhone Gaining on Nokia’s Dominance

Apple’s iPhone is moving closer and closer  to Nokia’s top spot in smartphones globally, according to first-quarter 2011 results reported by IDC on Thursday.

With the iPhone in the second spot, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion dropped to third after finishing second a year ago, IDC said. 99.6 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter, out of 372 million mobile phones overall.

Nokia sold 24.2 million smartphones in the first quarter, holding on to its global smartphone lead despite announcing that it will move from Symbian to Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system in next few years, IDC said. Nokia “may find itself in danger of ceding market share as the competition ramps up,” IDC said.

Apple shipped 18.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, IDC said, a new record for a single quarter, “and inched closer to market leader Nokia, with fewer than 6 million units separating the two companies,” IDC noted.

Apple also had triple-digit growth in the U.S., with the Verizon Wireless CDMA iPhone 4, and in greater China.

RIM, while down from second place where it was a year ago, remained in third place from the fourth quarter of 2010. The majority of RIM’s shipments are older, lower-cost devices, IDC noted, a trend that will continue in the second quarter.

Samsung finished fourth in smartphones for the first quarter, with 10.8 million smartphones shipped, while HTC finished fifth, with 8.9 million shipped.

Samsung grew the most of any vendor for the first quarter — 350% year-over-year. Samsung has a multiple-OS strategy and sells mostly Android smartphones, including Galaxy S phones, as well as Windows Phone 7 and Wave devices.

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Apple Outs Patch For Tracking Issue

As Apple promised last week in several discussions regarding its location tracking issues, iOS 4.3.3 addresses three bugs related to the database of location information on iOS devices. Firstly, it reduces the amount of the cached location information to a week’s worth, rather than relying on a size limit, as it previously did.

Secondly, it no longer backs up the cache to your Mac or PC via iTunes upon syncing, so the information isn’t available to anyone with access to your computer. And finally, the cache is now deleted from the device when Location Services are disabled in iOS’s Settings app.

Apple has also announced plans to encrypt the location information on iOS devices itself in the next major update to the operating system, which presumably means it will be incoporated into iOS 5.

The iOS 4.3.3 update applies to the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad, iPad 2, third-generation iPod touch, and the fourth-generation iPod touch. Exceptions to this fix though, are the iPhone 3G and the second-generation iPod touch, both of which were supported by the original release of iOS 4 when the location database is believed to have been created but have since been dropped from compatibility. Also missing in action is the CDMA iPhone 4, although some reports have suggested that it didn’t log data in the same way as the GSM model.

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Terror Alerts To Be Issued Via Facebook, Twitter

The U.S. government may start issuing terror alerts via Facebook and Twitter, according to a news service report.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to re-design the current color-coded terror alert system. The new system, according to the report, would have only two levels of alerts — elevated and imminent.

Those alerts would be conveyed out to the public in part via social networking sites Facebook and Twitter . The AP article is based on a 19-page draft of the plan that the news service obtained.

“The new terror alerts would also be published online using Facebook and Twitter ‘when appropriate,’” the news agency reported, “but only after federal, state and local government leaders have already been notified.”

The new system is expected to be in place by April 27.

Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research, said the fact that the U.S. government is entrusting something as critical as terrorist alerts to Facebook and Twitter shows how important social networking sites have become to people’s lives.

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Lenovo To Launch LePad Tablet In June

In what appears to be the year of the tablet, Chinese PC maker Lenovo announced plans to sell its LePad tablet worldwide in June, but will first launch the device in China at the end of March, a company spokesman said on today.

The LePad, Lenovo’s first tablet computer, was unveiled in January during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The device is built with 10.1-inch screen that runs the Android 2.2 OS on a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. (See a video report on LePad’s CES unveiling on YouTube.)

Lenovo said the device would be priced between $399 and $449. But at the time, the company was still unsure whether it would sell the product outside of China.

While Lenovo now plans on selling the tablet overseas, company spokesman Jay Chen couldn’t say which markets will be targeted.  Read More…

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