Apple : Apple iOS 6 Maps help could come from Foursquare

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Apple iOS 6 Maps help could come from Foursquare Posted: Rumor has it Apple is in talks with location-based social network Foursquare to boost its lackluster iOS 6 Maps offerings. According a Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday, Apple is looking to share in Foursquare's map data, which could be used to integrate Foursquare users' tips and ratings directly into Apple's iOS 6 Maps. Adding Foursquare's map data to iOS 6 Maps could potentially improve the app's ability to locate businesses and other points of interest, which did not live up to the standards set by Google Maps in earlier iOS versions. Tuesday's report claimed that Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue has spent the last few weeks meeting with Foursquare representatives, though nothing is concrete yet. Fixing Apple's "maptastrophe" TechRadar has reached out to Apple and Foursquare to find out if the two companies have anything to share, though at this stage that's unlikely. Previous versions of Apple's iOS operating system used Google Maps, but Apple ditched Google in favor of its own, internal solution with the launch of iOS 6. That didn't go over so well, though, with users complaining of inaccurate and incomplete data in Apple's maps. Apple has been playing catch-up ever since, reportedly poaching Google Maps makers to fix its own app and issuing apologies straight from the mouth of CEO Tim Cook. The Wall Street Journal's report claims that Apple is in talks with other companies in addition to Foursquare to help improve iOS 6 Maps. Google delivers Google, meanwhile, responded last week with its own iOS 6 Maps app, which brought back many of the features - local transit, Street View, etc. - that iOS 6 users had been missing. And iOS 6 users turned up in droves to download the replacement Maps app; Google announced today that Google Maps for iOS 6 was downloaded 10 million times in the first 48 hours. Now if only Apple would allow iOS 6 users to delete its in-house Maps app from their devices, everything could go back to normal.

Samsung steals top cellphone seat from rival Nokia Posted: For nearly a decade and a half, Nokia has dominated annual cellphone sales over rivals like Samsung, LG, and more recently Apple. Based on a new report, Nokia's reign is about to end, as Samsung is expected to usurp the incumbent champion based on its 2012 performance. Analytics company IHS has forecast Samsung will finish 2012 with a hold on 29 percent of the cellphone market, while Nokia will retain only 24 percent. In 2011, the companies actually had nearly inverse those numbers, with Nokia maintaining its control with a 30 percent share compared to Samsung's 24 percent. Numbers game "The competitive reality of the cellphone market in 2012 was 'live by the smartphone; die by the smartphone,'" said Wayne Lam, senior analyst for wireless communications at IHS. For its part, Samsung definitely delivered on the smartphone front, with devices like the Galaxy S3 leading the charge. Samsung had squashed the competition during the third quarter, selling 98 million phones (55 million of which were smartphones) on its way to a 22.9 percent share of the market. Nokia meanwhile was big in the cellphone market during the third quarter, moving 82 million devices, though only 7.2 million of those were smartphones. Apple has managed to hold onto third place thanks to pulling in 10 percent of the sales, but the company still has a long way to go to catch up to either Nokia or Samsung. Changing of the guard IHS attributed Nokia's declining performance to the change in direction, as the company is now moving towards Windows Phone 8. Though smartphones like the Lumia 800 and Lumia 920 did release before the end of 2012, their presence was clearly not enough to make up the ground lost to Samsung earlier in the year. Conversely, the analytics firm points to Samsung's ability to appeal to both the high-end and low-end of the smartphone market as a chief reason for its success. Samsung saw its smartphone shipments rise 8 percent from 2011, giving it the greatest growth, and a healthy 28 percent of the market. Meanwhile, Nokia saw the biggest dip in its smartphones shipped, and fell to just 5 percent, which was an 11 percent decrease over 2011. Apple was then able to hold onto its second place position as far as smartphones were concerned, gaining 20 percent of the total market. HTC and Research in Motion both barely factored into the equation, with each company holding onto 5 percent of the smartphone market. RIM's fortunes may be on the upswing in 2013 however, with the anticipated launch of BlackBerry 10 just a month away. The evolution of smartphones in the current market has accelerated quite quickly, and it will be interesting to see just how well all these competitors perform during the upcoming year.

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