Reports indicate that Samsung’s Android tab will land at AT&T soon. Also in today’s App Industry Roundup, Verizon will develop its own app store and Facebook’s Zuckerberg wants to be friends with all your devices.
Galaxy tab at AT&T
The Samsung Galaxy tab is expected to be one of the top competitors to the Apple iPad this holiday season, and it looks like AT&T will offer the product. The Galaxy Tab, which is smaller than the iPad and runs on the Android 2.2 platform, could land at other wireless carriers as well since Samsung has successfully spread Galaxy phones across U.S wireless carriers.
Engadget is reporting that it has internal photos that prove a Galaxy tab will arrive at AT&T prior to December. The report on AT&T’s holiday line-up also provides information of new Windows 7 phones, an HTC product and colorful versions of the touch-operated BlackBerry Torch.
Verizon’s app store
Meanwhile at Verizon Wireless, it appears that the wireless carrier is building out its own version of an Android app store. Each wireless carrier offers a link to Android apps from their phones, but that is little more than a branded ‘skin’ of Android’s own Marketplace. Verizon’s effort is more substantial according to various sources. The so-called V-Cast App Store will be free for developers to submit apps, “but unlike the official Android Market (where anything goes) each app will go through a detailed evaluation and approval process prior to launch,” the Androidandme website notes.
That layer of control is how Apple manages its App Store. Verizon is hosting a developer’s conference on Sept. 21 and 22, where these developments may be officially announced.
Facebook’s talking head
In his wide-ranging interview for the New Yorker, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg didn’t discuss mobile apps in particular. However, the story is filled with inferences of how important accessing Facebook from whatever device is on hand matters greatly to the company. The New Yorker story is part history of Facebook and part manifesto on where the company is heading.
Facebook’s future growth depends on access everywhere, according to reporter Jose Antonio Vargas. Recently, of course, Facebook launched a new feature to its mobile app called Places that will tell your friends — and their friends — where you are. But Zuckerberg apparently thinks that every device you own should be connected to your friends.
“Zuckerberg imagines Facebook as, eventually, a layer underneath almost every electronic device,” Vargas writes. “You’ll turn on your TV, and you’ll see that fourteen of your Facebook friends are watching ‘Entourage,’ and that your parents taped “60 Minutes” for you. You’ll buy a brand-new phone, and you’ll just enter your credentials. All your friends—and perhaps directions to all the places you and they have visited recently—will be right there.”
Of course, it’s hard to argue with Facebook’s success. It has grown in part thanks to tools like Facebook Connect, which allows users to access other sites with their Facebook login credentials. (This feature is available to Appolicious users.) The Connect feature came thanks to Facebook’s decision in 2007 to make the site a “platform,” Vargas writes, so “outside developers could start creating applications that would run inside the site. It worked. The social-game company Zynga—the maker of FarmVille and Mafia Wars—is expected to earn more than five hundred million dollars this year, most of it generated from people playing on Facebook.”
If you’re interested in Facebook and how it became so intertwined in our daily lives, check out the New Yorker profile.
