The Mobile Fun Blog

Samsung is on top of the world this morning because it had the most market share in the United States for 2009 and Brand Keys said the company topped its customer loyalty survey for wireless handsets.

While the iPhone, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) and Android smartphones take up a lot of the conversation, Samsung is the world’s second-biggest handset maker because of its large portfolio of low-end and feature phones. They do make some solid devices, and the study found customers really liked their Samsung cell phones.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s not the only one getting sue-happy over patents, as this brilliant infographic from The New York Times shows that pretty much every major player is involved in a patent lawsuit.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) says the smartphone will overtake the desktop within the next three years, so many companies are trying to carve out their space. Patents are an important part of this and it makes sense for companies to protect their legitimate cases, but I think the patent system is a bit flawed – Apple has a freaking patent on unlocking a touchscreen by gesturing on an image.

Streaming music services have been making some noise recently, but Grooveshark has been forcibly muted on the iPhone. After months of repeated rejections from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s AppStore, music streaming app Grooveshark has decided to cut their losses and forgo the AppStore for the sake of giving at least a small subset of iPhone users a chance to use their service. The online music service has just announced that they are now available for jailbroken iPhones through the Cydia app store.

Can’t wait to get Flash 10.1 on your smartphone? Well, the case may not be in your favor if you’re carrying around a first generation Android phone. Even if your device is still up to snuff today, it’s said that the new version of flash will only support specific processors.

Looks like some new countries have been graced with an Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) App Store presence. This, according to Apple’s iPhone Developer News. If you live in one of the 13 countries mentioned below, you can now pop open iTunes or the App Store app on your iPhone or iPod Touch for Application heaven. The official note from Apple:

Are you having trouble coping with the reality of not having one of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s “magical” iPads in your hands? Rather than sweat through the next couple months in want of the slick tablet device, you can try to trick your desires into submission with a DIY iPad. It’ll be made of paper and no more useful to you than any other placebo, but it might just be enough to help you sleep at night.

The iPhone AppStore has and always will be controlled Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s iron-fisted app approval team, which is fine, because that usually means iPhone users can expect reliable and high quality apps. But, when Apple uses its control over the AppStore to censor more than just “adult” content, it starts to feel a little Big Brother-ish. Finding itself directly at odds with Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android platform, Apple has reportedly prohibited an iPhone app from mentioning “Android” in the app’s description. The Flash of Genius iPhone app’s description wasn’t obscene or erotic in any way, it just happened to mention Google’s Android Development Challenge.

ContactFlow is one of those iPhone apps that found its way from a jailbreak app to the official Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) AppStore. The idea is simple – to allow users to browse their contacts like they are albums in the iPod app, cover flow style.

The application, as expected, doesn’t stop at simple browsing – you can also use it to call someone, send SMS or an email. An appropriate iPhone app will start depending on the function selected.

Say the iPad supported Flash, had a camera, and ran a new iPhone OS that had multitasking. It sounds great, but what about a keyboard? What is the iPad when you really sit down and think about it? It’s a device with a large display running an operating system designed for hand held devices. We all laughed when Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) showed off “smart books” for the first time, running the stock version of Google (NSDQ: GOOG)’s Android operating system, but the iPad isn’t any different, if anything it’s simply a “smart slate”.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) just posted their Q1 2010 numbers and while we’re digesting them have a look at the press release yourself after the jump.

Total iPhone sales are now 33,745,000 + 8,700,000 from the press release today = 42,445,000. That 8.7 million figure is also over 1 million more than Apple’s best iPhone selling quarter, fiscal Q4 2009, which saw 7.4 million iPhones sold.