Apple threatens Amazon

With its newly unveiled iPad tablet PC, Apple is threatening the dominance of online retailer Amazon in the US e-book market, writes The Chosun Ilbo.

Amazon, the world's largest online bookstore, has been leading the e-book market for the past two years, selling 2.5 million units of its Kindle wireless e-reader. But less than a week after the iPad's debut, Amazon has already been forced to revise its pricing policy.

Amazon had been charging $9.99 for e-book versions of popular titles, but last weekend it was forced to raise its prices when US publishing giant Macmillan demanded it charge $12.99 to $14.99.

Strategy Analytics, a global market research and consulting firm, has released data which suggests smartphone sales have jumped 30% year-on-year during the fourth quarter of 2009 to 53 million units, while mobile handsets on the whole saw sales jump 12%, states IT Pro Portal.

According to the data, Nokia, Research In Motion and Apple remained the top three vendors of smartphone devices, which have handsets that are capable of running Internet browsers and software applications.

The Boston-based research company reported that increased consumer spending and the availability of new mobile devices with faster broadband capabilities, were the main reasons behind the meteoric rise in smartphone sales.

Nokia's N900 smartphone is the first to get a Mozilla mobile Firefox browser that will soon be available for other platforms, says Sci-Tech Today.

Firefox's move into mobile devices is aimed at countering the browser's slowing growth on the PC. Mozilla's mobile Firefox browser supports add-ons. But Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry are closed to Firefox.

Mozilla has released a mobile version of its Firefox browser for users of Nokia's N900 smartphone, which runs the handset maker's high-end Maemo operating system. Built on the same engine as Firefox 3.6 for PCs, the new mobile browser is currently available for download in more than 30 languages, with support for more smartphone platforms and languages on the way, the developers said.