mLearnCon News and Updates

If you still need proof that Android as a platform is a good choice for phone and tablet manufacturers, you needn’t look much further than the success story of Taiwanese company HTC.

HTC said its sales for May reached $1.42 billion, which is more than double the same month in 2010 and a solid improvement from April’s $1.35 billion, Reuters reports.

HTC entered the smartphone arena with Windows Mobile devices (the company also produces Windows Phone 7 smartphones), but its sales really took off in 2009 when it shifted its focus to Android-based smartphones. Recently, HTC posted its Q1 2011 earnings, reporting 9.7 million units shipped, a 192% year-over-year increase, and revenues of $3.63 billion, a 174% year-over-year increase.

The company’s own Q2 predictions forecast a 103% to 113% year-over-year increase in shipments and a 97% year-over-year increase in revenue.

HTC’s first tablet, the Android-based Flyer, recently hit the U.S. market, and the company plans to launch several high-end Android-based smartphones in the near future, including the HTC Sensation and the HTC Evo 3D.

The original story appear here on Mashable

Since Google's native app for Docs on Android came out last Wednesday, I've been giving it a test drive. Google Docs works well enough in the mobile browser, and many apps have already come out trying to provide sync and edit functions. However, nothing integrates as nicely as a native app direct from the service provider.

My intention was to type this article in Google Docs using my 5-inch Dell Streak smartphone, running Android 2.2 and paired with an Apple Bluetooth keyboard. I managed to draft an opening paragraph before switching to Evernote due to the limited editing options, but more on that later.

When you first start the Google Docs app, you are greeted with a clean, uncluttered home screen with shortcuts to all your items, collections, starred documents, and other helpful things. Text documents, spreadsheets, and PDFs all open quickly and render nicely.

There is also a home screen widget or quick access to starred documents and quick creation of new documents or photos, which Google will run through optical character recognition (OCR) to turn a photo of a document into editable text. And the native app makes sharing a document with your contacts easy.

The full article from PCWorld appears here

Mobile device management provider Good Technology's latest quarterly survey of the devices its thousands of customers manage through Good's tool shows clearly that users -- not companies -- select their own smartphones, a strong confirmation that the "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend is not just a temporary trend but is becoming the norm. (Good says the majority of its customers have already adopted BYOD.)

But when it comes to tablets, businesses are driving adoption just as strongly as individual employees are, Good's analysis shows. Individuals bring in their own iPads, which IT can manage as if they were iPhones, and IT is testing or deploying iPads for sales forces and field forces. Health care workers and salespeople are among those to whom IT is actively deploying iPads, said John Herrema, executive VP for strategy at Good.

The top devices used by Good's customers -- primarily in health case, financial services, government, and professional services -- are the various iPhone models, accounting for about half of the user base. iPads accounted for another 20 percent.

Read the full article from PCWorld here

Read more to find out how Principal Wells views students with mobile devices and learning here

I love tablets. I also love smartphones, you only have to take a look around this blog to see that. I love what each type of device brings to the table, but I am ready for the next step. I want my tablet and smartphone to work together to make each of them better. I am ready for each device to play off the strengths of the other to make a more complete package.

The BlackBerry PlayBook has me thinking about this synergy, as RIM has included a very basic cooperation between its new tablet and some BlackBerry phones. I don’t like the reason behind RIM’s vision of synergy, as the aptly named BlackBerry Bridge solution is intended to get around the lack of email, contacts and calendar apps on the PlayBook. It uses the BlackBerry Bridge to allow PlayBook owners to use those functions residing on the phone. It is a nice concept, but it doesn’t go far enough in my book.

Read how far the author from ZDNet think tablet/smartphone integration should go here