Software, Android | featured news

The latest numbers are in: Android is on top, followed by iOS in a distant second. This word comes from Gartner, a top research firm for these sorts of things. Overall, within the last quarter, Android outsold iOS devices nearly three to one while capturing 64% of the worldwide market share. Samsung was the top dog accounting for 90M handset sales.

How sweet it is! Google has given developers a taste of " target="_hplink">Android 4.1 (codenamed "Jelly Bean"), the latest update to the company's OS for mobile devices.

Poor Instagram users. First, their beloved photo-sharing application moves from iPhone-only exclusivity to the Android phone masses. A week later, Facebook swallows up the tiny startup behind the app for $1 billion. The purchase sparked worries that Facebook might shutter Instagram or change it for the worse by harvesting their personal information or shoving ads into their carefully curated photo streams.

Google has beefed up security on its Android mobile-device software to better prevent "malicious" software from residing in its app store.

Google, seeking to reboot its flagging efforts in television, said consumers will soon have a broader choice of TVs using its software--with lower prices also a likely outcome.

Google‘s long-awaited answer to Flipboard, the “social magazine” exclusively on Apple‘s iPad and iPhone, just debuted today. Google Currents offers a similar appearance, except it works on Android devices as well as iPads and iPhones. It’s the latest in a long string of applications, most recently Yahoo‘s Livestand, that seek to turn online content into something resembling print magazines, but without all those dead trees and with 20th century innovations like, say, video.

More than 10 billion apps have been downloaded from Google's Android Market store, says the search giant.

For two years, Apple has told the world that phones running on Google Android operating system are iPhone rip-offs. Now Apple is about to learn whether a U.S. trade agency thinks its claims have merit.

Android developers have released a version of 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that can run on chips found in most personal computers, from netbooks and laptops to desktop towers.