"The Board of Directors of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) today announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM's Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.
Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM's Board and Chair of the Board's new Innovation Committee. As Vice Chair, he will work closely with Mr. Heins to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide. Mr. Heins said he looks forward to continuing to work with Mr. Lazaridis, globally recognized as a technology pioneer. He said, "Mike created a whole new way of communicating and I look forward to continuing our close collaboration." Read more inside..

"RIM has outed BlackBerry 7.1 OS, the latest iteration of its smartphone software, as well as BlackBerry Tag, an NFC tool used to pair up accessories, swap data and even add new contacts to the similarly updated BBM 6.1. The new version also introduces WiFi hotspot functionality, sharing a BlackBerry’s connection with up to five WiFi-tethered devices, a new BlackBerry Traffic 3.0 app with traffic-based ETA and turn-by-turn voice guidance, and boosted universal search. BlackBerry Tag allows users of 7.1 OS devices to invite a friend to BBM, swap contact information, documents, URLs, photos and other multimedia, or pair their phone with an NFC-enabled Bluetooth device. It’s a similar range of skills that we’ve seen from other manufacturers – Nokia allows for a similar sharing and pairing system with its NFC-enabled phones, and Google has Android Beam for swapping data via NFC – but it should help the short-range wireless system gain traction all the same. Other new features in BBM 6.1 include animated GIF avatar support, 12 new emoticons, color-changeable chat bubbles and longer personal messages in each user’s Profile. It’s also easier to set a new user-photo, with an option directly in the camera app." via slashgear.com

Thanks to a reminder from WebProNews, it's instructive to look again at the smartphone world via StatCounter, a pro service embedded on many web sites which tracks the browser and OS used to access them. And, reflecting the still enormous installed base of Symbian-powered smartphones across the world, Symbian still (for web access, at least) still dominates the world, at 31%.
The counter-intuitive nature of the chart, i.e. that Symbian still dominates despite Android and iOS activations reportedly running very high through 2011, is explained by the difference between sales marketshare and installed base 'share'. Earlier this year, actual sales of Android-powered smartphones per quarter overtook Symbian. But the 300 million or so active Symbian users across the world - regardless of whether they're using a three year old Nokia 5800 or even an older N95 - is a statistic that can't be ignored for actual use. You may remember that I've talked before about not underestimating the inertia behind Symbian's installed base - the numbers boggle the mind.
Added to the huge installed base of Symbian smartphones is the factor of the rise and rise of affordable data, even on pay as you go SIM cards, across the world. In other words, just about everyone is now getting online. In StatCounter's eyes, web access is web access." via allaboutsymbian.com

"As Android and Apple continue to dominate the U.S. smartphone market, RIM and other smartphone manufacturers have made moves to reclaim lost market share.
PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, December 13, 2011 - According to The NPD Group, a leading market research company, Android's operating system (OS) share of smartphone sales grew to command more than half of the U.S. smartphone market (53 percent) from January through October 2011, as Apple's iOS share grew to reach 29 percent of the market, and RIM's OS share declined to 11 percent. RIM and other companies that were formerly on top of NPD's smartphone rankings, however, have made critical business decisions this past year in a quest to shore up their U.S. smartphone businesses." Read more inside..

"Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner, Inc. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module (SIM) devices.
Sales into the channel reached 460 million units. Gartner analysts said this increase was because of inventory build-up in the channel partly because of the shipping of new devices late in the quarter but mostly to prepare the channel for the holiday season. Gartner expects most of the build-up to be sold by the first quarter of 2012." Read more inside..

Research In Motion today announced two new smartphones based on the BlackBerry® 7 operating system (OS) – the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9790 and BlackBerry® Curve™ 9380. Both smartphones offer enhanced communications, multimedia, productivity and social connectivity features together with slim and stylish designs. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 features an iconic design that seamlessly integrates a highly tactile keyboard, optical trackpad and high resolution touch display. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first-ever BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphone with an all-touch display. "We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380,” said Carlo Chiarello, Senior Vice President, Handheld Product Management at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and sleek designs available with these new BlackBerry 7 based models.” Read more inside..

Research In Motion today announced two new smartphones based on the BlackBerry® 7 operating system (OS) – the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9790 and BlackBerry® Curve™ 9380. Both smartphones offer enhanced communications, multimedia, productivity and social connectivity features together with slim and stylish designs. The BlackBerry Bold 9790 features an iconic design that seamlessly integrates a highly tactile keyboard, optical trackpad and high resolution touch display. The BlackBerry Curve 9380 is the first-ever BlackBerry® Curve™ smartphone with an all-touch display. "We are very excited to expand the BlackBerry 7 portfolio with the new BlackBerry Bold 9790 and BlackBerry Curve 9380,” said Carlo Chiarello, Senior Vice President, Handheld Product Management at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry smartphones offer a uniquely refined mobile communications experience that people love and we think many customers will be thrilled by the faster performance, beautiful touch displays and sleek designs available with these new BlackBerry 7 based models.” Read more inside..

"It's the end of an era as Adobe has confirmed that it will no longer be developing its Flash Player for mobile devices. Instead Adobe will be focusing on HTML5 and Adobe-AIR native apps for the major mobile platforms. Adobe's VP Danny Winokur explained the decision:
Our future work with Flash onmobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash develoeprs to package native apps with Adobe-AIR for all major app stores. We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook. We will of course continue to provide critical bug fixes and security updates for existing device configurations. We will also allow our source code licensees to continue working on and release their own implementations. " via mobile-review.com

"Nielsenhave just published their figures for the third quarter in the American market and the results are predictablyin keeping with previous trends. Google's Android platform continues to advance its dominance of the market at the expense of both Microsodt and RIM. Android finds itself sitting atop 43% of the market, which is an increase from the 39% it held in quarter two this year.  That comes about as Microsoft sees its combined platforms (Windows Phoneand Windows Mobile)  sliding from 9% in quarter two to 7% this quarter. RIM also lost marketshare to Android, falling from 20% to 18% over the same time period. Apple's iOS didn't make any gains, but then it didn't loose anything either, staying constant on a 28% share of the market. It's important to note that these figures won't have taken into account the launch of the iPhone 4S yet so expect tosee iOS nudge up a tad in the next set of results and Apple was yet again the number one smartphone vendor in the U.S." via mobile-review.com

"Whilst Android was busy racing past iOS in the mobile download stakes it was also extending its lead in the advertising stakes too. Millenial have just released new data for their network, which shows continued growth for Android and a very healthy lead over iOS.Android accounted for 56% of impressions by the end of the September quarter, which was double iOS, which had 28%. Even if iOS is trailing Android it is still way out in front of third placed RIM, which could only muster up 13% of impressions. Windows Phone is barely worth mentioning, having just 1% (and that's after being combined with Windows Mobile)." Read more inside..