The latest Nielsen Company study has come out and Android fans should enjoy the results. Plus, geolocation app developer DoubleDutch picks up some new seed money.
Android is gaining in OS market
While Apple fanboys might be asking the Nielsen Company, “Surely, you can’t be serious?” the numbers don’t lie. According to Nielsen’s latest monthly survey, more and more customers are planning on making their next smartphone one with an Android OS.
The data breakdown shows a pretty clear shifting of interest towards the Android OS. During the same survey during the July-September 2010 time period, 33 percent wanted an iPhone, 26 percent wanted a phone with the Google Android OS and 13 percent wanted a Blackberry.
Those same numbers in the latest survey tell a different story. Now 31 percent of consumers surveyed plan to get an Android phone, 30 percent want an iPhone and Blackberry pulls up with 11 percent.
Those predictive numbers alone would suggest a shift in interest towards Android phones but when looking at survey respondents from March 2011 that had purchased a smartphone in the past six month, 50 percent went with the an Android OS phone.
Bottom line: if you’ve picked up an Android OS phone in the last few months you’re certainly not alone, and it looks like the smartphone competition for your wallet should continue heating up well into the summer months.
DoubleDutch sows some seed money
In a perfect world, your business associates can stay business associates while your actual friends can find you on Facebook. We don’t live in a perfect world, however, and sometimes you have to bite the bullet and bring your not-quite-friends along for your social media ride.
DoubleDutch is a company that develops apps in part so you can avoid that awkward possibility, and they just picked up $1.2 million in seed funding according to a story from VentureBeat.
DoubleDutch launched last March, and they specialize in geolocation apps that can be customized for specific companies. Say you wanted participants at a TED conference to be able to stay in touch easier, DoubleDutch would create a custom app for that.
Other than TED, DoubleDutch counts Cisco, HP and Adobe among their other clients. That’s some pretty strong company to keep.
While there should be some concern about apps using this technology getting a bit too homogenized in appearance, it’s still certainly beats having to keep track of people by checking-in to Facebook Places.
Lightbank, an investment fund started by Groupon’s Brad Keywell and Eric Lfofsky led the funding which also saw Charles River Ventures, Launch Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Venture51 and Zig Capital contribute.
