Google has placed increasing emphasis on app sales and downloads, launching movie rentals and redesigning the Android Market to better rival Apple’s App Store. In the three years it has been open, Apple’s App Store has amassed more than 18 billion downloads, and over the App Store’s first two years it totalled approximately 5 billion downloads. Google has benefitted from huge numbers of manufacturers adopting its open-source Android operating system, however. We shall watch with interest how the battle develops over the next few months.

Other figures released show that Apple’s iPhone makes up 15 percent of all mobile phone sales, down slightly from 16.6 percent in 2010, and RIM’s Blackberry OS took up 11 percent of new mobile phone sales, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform continued to languish at only 1.5 percent of the market.

Samsung’s success has been driven by its adoption of Google’s Android software for both Smartphone and tablets; it has also announced a new model, called the Galaxy Nexus, that it has built in direct collaboration with Google. Although it is one of Apple’s largest suppliers of components, the two are also locked in an increasingly bitter legal battle over mobile phone patents.

Highly rated Android sat nav apps include Co-Pilot Live, which ranks favourably with standalone GPS systems and even offers the facility to receive live traffic updates and petrol prices. With great usability, it comes highly recommended. Other Android sat nav apps worth exploring are AndNav2; TeleNav, for the occasional user, which works on a subscription basis; or the highly innovative BreadCrumbz, which even works within the confines of a building, allowing the user to plot every step.

Some smartphones even come with Android sat nav apps as their integral feature and USP, such as the nuvifone A50, produced by Garmin-Asus. Other sat nav apps include Sygic, which fully maps the UK and Ireland and provides real time updates of traffic alongside lane guidance features and warnings of safety cameras.

The Sony Ericsson Arc offers arguably best looking screen currently available. It has a fabulous touch screen of 4.2 inches enhanced by Sony BRAVIA TV technology, packing an incredible 16million colours and 480 x 854 pixel resolution. The ease of use is fantastic, with an extremely touch responsive interface and excellent Facebook, Twitter and email integration, which all adds up to super user friendliness. There are more than 100,000 apps to download in this visually brilliant model that comes complete with Android sat nav apps, such as GPS, Google Latitude, Street View and Google Maps. 

FM radio and MP3 player also come as standard in the Sony Ericsson Arc, which also has a high quality 8.1-megapixel camera, one of the best currently offered with smartphones today. Overall, the software complements the fantastic design of this handset, which is further enhanced by adequate battery life, easy browsing and great pinch to zoom capacity on the touch screen. The Sony Ericsson Arc also comes with a welcome bonus feature, the Noise Shield, which negates ambient noise in the background when making calls, providing an all round pleasurable phone experience.

The latest figures show that Chrome accounts for 22 per cent of the British web market compared to 45 per cent for IE. Apple’s Safari is number four with a nine per cent share. Chrome is also the number three browser worldwide, with one in five users preferring it.

It is surprising that Internet Explorer’s market share is falling when you consider that it is pre-installed on almost every computer sold in Britain. Undoubtedly the increasing popularity of Chrome could be explained by its speed and security. Chrome’s growth comes on the back of Google’s domination of the search engine market, which it is has led for years.

By 2005, Motorola mobile phones were once again at the top of the market thanks to models such as the RAZR series, which featured a sleek flip phone design, are light weight and had leading technology at the time such as 3.5G capability and 2 megapixel cameras. After smartphones became the norm in the mobile phone market, Motorola proceeded to cement their place as one of the major manufacturers by developing a number of successful handsets based on Google’s leading Android operating system.

In recent years, Motorola mobile phones have continued to show the same innovation which saw them be the first manufacturer to popularise the flip phone. The best example of this is the innovative Motorola Atrix, a phone which contains the processing power to double as a laptop and media centre via the use of accessories. The idea behind the phone is that it will offer people a single device for their digital needs, as the handset, along with performing well as a phone, can be docked into a special laptop shell and run as a web book along with also being able to be placed in a Media Hub and connected to televisions and stereos.

Surprisingly to many the announcement came not through the usual press releases or usual channels, but via a Google blog. In the announcement Google is quoted as saying: “As we all know, over the past few years, there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the browser space. For Firefox users, many features that were once offered by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser. Therefore, while Google Toolbar for Firefox works on versions up to and including Firefox 4 only, it will not be supported on Firefox 5 and future versions.”

If a computer is affected the user will be warned by a yellow warning at the top of their search results Damian Menscher, a Google security engineer, said the malware appeared to find its way onto computers via fake anti-virus software, also known as scareware. Unsuspecting victims download the software, which then uses some vulnerability in Windows and takes control of web searches. When a search is entered, instead of going straight to Google it is first sent to servers controlled by the cyber criminals, which modify and redirect the traffic.

There are a number of contract LG Optimus One deals available on the market, with the most popular costing between £15 and £25 per month. With these deals, customers can expect to get between 100-300 minutes of free calls, anywhere between 100 and 600 free messages per month and a data allowance of at least 500MB, although this is usually unlimited.

Thanks to the low cost of the handset, almost all contracted LG Optimus One deals include the phone for free, although some ultra-low cost monthly contracts of around £10 will expect customers to pay anything up to £100 for the handset itself. As the phone can come for free for a contract of just a few pounds per month more, these deals should be avoided.