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Android usage to surpass BlackBerry, iOS by year end

Android is on its way to taking the silver medal in mobile market share worldwide, and gold in North America—as long as the platform maintains its currently strong growth numbers. According to market research firm Gartner, the mobile world will be dominated by Symbian and Android devices by 2014, with RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iOS projected to come in third and fourth place, respectively.

Symbian will maintain its market dominance thanks to Nokia's sheer sales volume, while Android will outpace the rest of the competition because of the impending launch of "many new budget Android devices" by the end of 2010 that will help the OS get into the mass market. "Other players, such as Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola, will follow a similar strategy. This trend should help Android become the top OS in North America by the end of 2010," wrote Gartner.

Gartner's predictions are based on Android's current growth trajectory, which has been explosive as of late. This year has already been filled with reports from other firms, such as AdMob and comScore, about Android's rise to the top at the expense of RIM and Apple, and there are undoubtedly more tales to come as Android phones continue to flood the marketplace.

Gartner's numbers have Android's share of the mobile market at 17.7 percent (up from just 3.9 percent in 2009), projected to grow to 29.6 percent by 2014. Comparatively, Symbian is expected to drop from 40.1 percent in 2010 to 30.2 percent in 2014—just enough to keep it on top, but probably not for long after that.

This isn't to say the other players won't be doing their share to boost smartphone sales in the years ahead. The firm says that the introduction of iOS 4.x, as well as the impending release of BlackBerry OS 6, Symbian 3 and Symbian 4, and Windows Phone 7 will all make positive contributions to smartphone growth.

Still, single-source platforms (iOS and RIM's OS) will only increase in unit terms and not share, and despite the widely anticipated release of Windows Phone 7, the firm projects it to only hold 3.9 percent of the mobile market in 2014. "By 2014, open-source platforms will continue to dominate more than 60 percent of the market for smartphones," Gartner said.

Saints 1-0

<a href="http://msn.foxsports.com/video?vid=9e4a2db6-ddd8-402f-b3f4-5a83116b878d&from=IV2_en-us_foxsports_articles" target="_new" title="Saints open with win">Video: Saints open with win</a>

Are the tax cut going to befitting the middle class

New health care reform shifts coast to employees

The premiums that employees pay for employer-sponsored family coverage rose an average of 13.7 percent this year, while the amount that employers contribute fell by 0.9 percent, the survey found.

For family coverage, workers are paying an average of $3,997, up $482 from last year, while employers are paying an average of $9,773, down $87, according to the survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

With so many people out of work, employees have little power to demand a better deal, the organizations said.

Overall, premiums for employer-sponsored coverage - the amounts paid by employer and employee combined - rose an average of 3 percent for family coverage and 5 percent for single coverage, the survey found. That was modest by historical standards. But the costs fell disproportionately on employees.

Workers with health benefits are paying an average of 30 percent of the premium for family coverage and 19 percent of the premium for single coverage this year, the highest in 12 years of surveys by the two organizations. Last year, workers were paying an average of 27 percent of the premium for family coverage and 17 percent for single coverage.

Premiums for single coverage rose an average of $225, and employees bore more than half of the increase.

"Many employers looked into their recession survival kit and seem to have concluded that one way to make it through the recession and hang on to as many employees as possible was to pass on their health premium increases to their employees this year," Kaiser Family Foundation President Drew Altman said by e-mail.

How much, if at all, the federal health-care overhaul enacted in March will restrain cost increases over the long run remains to be seen. While experts debate its likely impact, the legislation is "the only thing we have coming on line as a country to control costs other than what now seems like the primary default strategy in the private sector - shifting costs to people," Altman said.

Since 2005, employees' premium payments have gone up 47 percent while overall premiums have risen 27 percent. Over the same period, wages have increased 18 percent and the consumer price index, a measure of inflation, has risen 12 percent, the foundation and trust said in a news release.

Thirty percent of employers offering health benefits reported that this year, as a result of the economic downturn, they reduced the scope of benefits or increased cost-sharing - the amounts employees pay for medical services in co-payments, deductibles and the like.

Increasingly, employers are offering insurance plans with high deductibles. Twenty-seven percent of employees with health benefits now face annual deductibles of at least $1,000, up from 22 percent last year, the organizations said.

The Kaiser Family Foundation, which is not affiliated with the Kaiser Permanente health plan, conducts research on health issues. The Health Research & Educational Trust is an affiliate of the American Hospital Association.

The survey, which covered public and private employers with three or more workers, was conducted by phone from January through May.

By David S. Hilzenrath

New apple rumors

Wednesday's much-hyped Apple event has come and gone. We got a revamped iPod lineup, a smaller and cheaper Apple TV with Netflix streaming and 99-cent TV show rentals, and Ping, a social network within iTunes 10. Before Steve Jobs took the stage, however, all we had were rumors and predictions. Which ones came true and which ones were pipe dreams? Let's take a look.

RUMORS
Report: Revamped Apple TV Will Include Netflix Streaming
Reality: Correct. Late Tuesday night, Bloomberg cited "three people with knowledge of the plans" and reported that Jobs would announce a revamped Apple TV capable of streaming content from Netflix's Watch Instantly library. A week after Netflix added streaming support to the iPhone and iPod touch, Jobs announced that that capability will also extend to the new Apple TV when it launches later this month.

Report: Apple Working on 99-Cent TV Show Rental Service
Reality: Correct. A week before the press event, Bloomberg also reported that Apple would introduce a 99-cent TV show rental service. Jobs announced Wednesday that users will indeed be allowed to rent TV shows on the new, streaming-only Apple TV for 99 cents. Bloomberg said Apple was in talks with News Corp.'s Fox, CBS, and Walt Disney to add the companies' content. On Wednesday, Jobs said Apple was only able to secure deals with Fox and ABC, but hoped to add more networks soon.

Report: Apple iTV, Running iOS, Coming in September for $99
Reality: Partially Correct. In late August, Digg founder Kevin Rose said in a blog post that he'd heard rumors about a revamped Apple TV, renamed iTV, which would be sold for $99 in September and run iOS. While Apple did indeed introduce a new Apple TV that will be available later this month, it was not renamed iTV. As for iOS, Apple did not specify which OS Apple TV will run. Engadget first reported the revamped Apple TV rumors (sans the iTV moniker) in May, and was correct when it said the new Apple TV would emphasize streaming over local storage.

Report: Revamped Apple 'iTV' Won't Have True HD
Reality: Correct. That Engadget piece also reported that the new Apple TV would be capable of full 1080p HD. In August, however, the blog reported that Apple TV would actually stick with the 720p format. According to the Apple TV tech specs, that is correct. Apple TV includes "H.264 video up to 720p," they said.

Report: Apple Will Extend iTunes Song Preview Length
Reality: Incorrect. On Tuesday, CNet reported that Jobs might announce an extended music preview length in iTunes. Instead of hearing a 30-second snippet, Apple would provide a 90-second preview of a given song. Jobs, however, made no mention of such a feature in his presentation.
Report: Apple Presentation Will Not Include Cloud-Based iTunes
Reality: Correct. In the same story, CNet reported that Apple would probably not introduce a cloud-based music service because it has not yet obtained the licenses required for such an undertaking. While Apple TV switched from a download model to a streaming-only model, Jobs did not take iTunes to the cloud in his Wednesday presentation. Apple purchased and subsequently killed cloud-based music service Lala last year, prompting some to speculate about Apple's plans for the cloud, but no such service has been announced.

Report: Apple Will Unveil a 7-Inch 'Mini' iPad
Reality: Not a chance. In August, DigiTimes's in-house analyst team predicted that Apple will release an iPad with a 7-inch screen, down from the current 9.7-inch display. This prompted speculation that the announcement would happen during Apple's fall event, but Apple September events have traditionally been music-centric, so it's not a huge surprise that Wednesday's event did not include any hardware upgrades for the iPad.