Phone applications - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Amazon's Appstore for Android opens for business

  Amazon has opened the Appstore for Android, providing another option for app shopping to U.S. users of smartphones with Google's operating system.

• Apple iOS 4.3 upgrade causes problems for Layar

  Apple's release of iOS 4.3 has caused some incompatibility problems for augmented reality company Layar. Some images and icons in Layar's client are displayed incorrectly or not at all, the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

• Opera aims to expand mobile reach in China

  Opera Software has announced a deal to embed its Internet browser on mobile phones sold in China, a move that is meant to help grow the company's presence in the country's burgeoning mobile market.

• Nintendo 64 emulator arrives on Android

  You can now play old Nintendo 64 games on your Android smartphone thanks to new app, N64oid.

• Nokia sells Qt licensing and services business

  As Nokia rebuilds itself to focus on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, it is selling its Qt commercial licensing and services business to Finnish company Digia.

• Sony Ericsson woos developers ahead of Xperia Play launch

  Sony Ericsson is doing its best to attract developers who can create games tailor-made for its upcoming Xperia Play smartphone, working with third-party tool makers to simplify the development process.

• Nokia's Ovi Store moves to rupee payments in India

  Nokia has introduced rupee payments on its Ovi Store in India, in a bid to boost downloads from the store.

• ZTE to put NFC on upcoming smartphones and feature phones

  Chinese phone maker ZTE plans to include NFC (Near-Field Communications) chips in its smartphones and feature phones, it said on Wednesday at Mobile World Congress.

• Qualcomm has high hopes for augmented reality gaming

  Qualcomm is demonstrating a number of augmented-reality games for Android-based smartphones at Mobile World Congress. The games were developed using its AR SDK software development kit.

• Rivals nibble into Apple's app store revenue, report says

  Apple held on to its huge lead in global mobile phone applications last year due to its simple billing system but will give up much of that ground by 2014, market research firm IHS Screen Digest said in a report.

• Operator application push goes live

  A year after its inception, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) has launched commercially, allowing mobile operators to start competing with Apple and Google for developer interest.

• Adidas to bring exercise app to Android

  The Adidas miCoach app will be available on Android in late April, Adidas announced at Mobile World Congress on Monday.

• Samsung makes Galaxy smartphone more enterprise friendly

  Hoping to make Android more attractive to security-minded CIOs, Samsung has added encryption and integrated Cisco's AnyConnect VPN client on its latest smartphone, the Galaxy S II, it said on Sunday at the Mobile World Congress.

• Nokia partners with Microsoft, adopts Windows Phone 7

  Nokia will adopt Microsoft's Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, the company said on Friday, after days of speculation on what it would do to compete with Apple's iPhone and Google's Android.

• INQ launches Android-based Facebook phones

  Mobile phone maker INQ has collaborated with Facebook on phones optimized for the social networking site, and the results are the Android-based INQ Cloud Touch and INQ Cloud Q.