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The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Samsung shipped more smartphones than Apple in the last quarter ending September 30. According to a person “familiar with the situation,” Samsung shipped 20 million smartphones where as Apple shipped sold 17.1 million in its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended September 24, as announced in Apple’s last conference earnings call. [Noting that shipping units doesn’t mean selling them. Samsung may have shipped 20 million smartphones, but Apple sold nearly that many. – Ed.]

As noted in Apple’s last conference earnings call, sales of the iPhone slowed down in the second half of the last quarter (as predicted) due to speculation and rumor of a product refresh: namely, the iPhone 4S (check out TUAW’s Chris Rawson post taking a closer look at this). However, with the iPhone 4S selling a hefty 4 million units within the first three days of its launch, things could look a bit different at the end of the next financial quarter!

Samsung reportedly beats Apple in smartphone shipments originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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On Monday, the scheduled release date for Steve Jobs: A Biography, Fortune Magazine will publish an exclusive excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s highly anticipated biography of Steve Jobs.

The sections to appear will focus on Steve’s working relationship with the former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, which spanned nearly three decades. As stated by CNN Money, “…the co-founder of Apple and the co-founder of Microsoft were the twin pillars of personal computing — at times fierce competitors, at times key allies.”

Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs will be available on the same day, October 24, 2011. Previously the release date was set for November 21, and before that March 6, 2012. According to publisher Simon & Shuster, “…the book is based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years, as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues.”

Fortune to publish first excerpt from Isaacson’s biography of Jobs originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Along with Apple’s quarterly results earlier this week, there’s another report hitting today that covers a growing segment of the mobile device market: Good Technology’s roundup of device activation statistics, compiled from the company’s range of Fortune 500 clients that use Good’s service to provide secure email and calendaring to handsets and tablets. (See previous results here.) The results this time around: interesting but not that surprising. You can see the full PDF report here.

iPhone and iOS activations continue to lead the field, with iPhones representing 61% of all smartphone activations on Good’s platform and iOS devices generally covering 70% of activations (a drop from the 78% share in the previous quarter). Android smartphones, however, picked up some ground on the iPhone over the quarter, showing improvement month over month. Android phones finished the quarter with about 39% of smartphone activations, passing iPad activations again (28.3% vs. 26.3% of the total) after the iPad overtook Android last quarter.

Good’s assessment of the iPhone/Android shift is largely in line with Apple’s spin: customers put off iPhone 4 purchases in anticipation of a new iPhone release in the fall, which is exactly what we got. Good SVP John Herrema did get a look at preliminary data for the iPhone 4S launch weekend, and given the observed 25% bump in activations over the quarterly average for the iPhone 4, he’s confident about an iPhone surge: “Looking forward to Q4, 2011, we expect… the iPhone 4S to be the catalyst for an Apple rally.”

When it comes to the iPad versus the larger universe of tablet devices, the story remains that there is no “tablet market” — the iPad is the only game in town as far as big companies are concerned. The report summary puts it thusly: “To say iOS tablets dominated adoption in the enterprise is to understate the case…. Android tablet activations within Good’s customer base remain in the realm of a rounding error compared to what we’re seeing with iPad and iPad 2.” iOS tablets made up more than 96% of all tablet activations in the quarter.

As always, it’s important to note that Good’s data does not cover RIM’s Blackberry devices, as they are supported by RIM’s proprietary server infrastructure; Windows 7 phones and tablets are also not tracked by the company.

Q3 enterprise adoption: iPhone slips, Android gains, iPad owns the tablet space originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Magic Defenders isn’t new, but it has claimed a lot of my iPhone gaming time lately. It’s a tower defense game, so if you like that genre, odds are that you’ll like this one.

Instead of building towers, you play the game as a mage that’s casting spells against waves of attackers. The game cycle has you casting spells using mana, killing attackers to earn XP, and then using that XP to upgrade your spells to kill attackers more quickly, earning more XP, and so on. It’s a lot of fun and considering that the game has a few different heroes to play through and level up across three invasion episodes, there’s plenty of content to explore. Blazing down enemies is very rewarding, as is learning how the various spells work together. You can slow enemies down with one spell, for example, freeze them in place with a second, and then nuke them all down with a third.

The game’s great on the iPad, too, but the drag-and-drop spell interface makes it easy on any iOS device. And at 99 cents on the App Store for a universal version, Magic Defenders is one of the best bargains out there that you might have missed the first time around. If you like tower defense games or ridiculously addictive game cycles, it’s definitely worth the buck.

Daily iPhone App: Magic Defenders originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I first took a look at the Skobbler crowd sourced GPS app for iPhone back in June of 2010. I found it uneven in quality, but it was free, and if you weren’t going to spring for one of the big boys like Garmin, Navigon or TomTom it was worth a try.

Skobbler has now been updated, and it costs US$0.99. The app has been renamed GPS Navigation 2. Your dollar gets you US and Canada maps in a universal application that adds local search, a “take me home” option, integration with your contacts and iPod playback while navigating. The maps are from OpenStreetMap, kind of a Wikipedia for mapping. Using the map requires a data connection, but you also have the ability to download maps at prices ranging from $5.99 for North America, Europe, and Australia to $3.99 for places like Italy, Ireland, the UK, France and Germany.

How does it work? It’s still a mixed bag. The maps are clear enough, but operation is quirky. You get a 3D map, but if you scroll to the right it suddenly turns 2D. Scrolling left doesn’t get you the 3D map back; you have to hit a “back” button. As I drove, I didn’t always see my car centered on the map, and I often drifted off screen. Navigating back home was a complete failure, as I was told to turn onto a street that did not connect to where my house is.

The app advertises local search. I tried “grocery store.” Nope. Pizza? Zip. Pizza Hut? Uh-uh.

I tried some non-residential addresses and they worked fine, and the voice for turn-by-turn directions was audible and pleasant. The app provides a female voice with a soothing British accent.

There are some other inexpensive nav apps. Motion X GPS Drive comes to mind at $0.99, but features like voice directions cost extra and are subscription based. Waze is a free, crowd sourced nav app, and it gets consistently good reviews.

If you aren’t about to buy a more expensive navigation app, and you feel lucky, this app might be worth a look. The GUI has been considerably improved from the older version, and the added features are nice. On the other hand, if it can’t get you home, it’s really not a good investment, even at $0.99. Screen shots are below.

Skobbler updates its $0.99 nav app with mixed results originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Winterboard for iOS 5 is now available for download in Cydia. Saurik has officially update Winterboard with iOS 5 compatibility. You can download Winterboard for iOS from Cydia. Winterboard is a…

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