Find: Indystate from iSuppli - More than half of all handsets will be smartphones in 2013

More than half of all handsets will be smartphones in 2013

No, you’re not imagining things—everyone around you does have a smartphone these days.

A new forecast released Tuesday from the industry analysis firm IHS iSuppli says that smartphone shipments will account for 54 percent (up from 46 percent this year) of the global cellphone market in 2013. This marks the first time that smartphones are the majority of manufactured phones.

The prediction adjustment comes just one week after T-Mobile announced a low-end Android phone for $100 in the United States.

Event: TechRevolution Seminar focuses on local startup opportunities - 9/25/12

Billy regularly visits our courses.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Billy Houghteling <billy_houghteling@ncsu.edu>
Date: Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 3:20 PM
Subject: TechRevolution Seminar: September 25, 2012

The Springboard Initiative and the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) are excited to present our next innovation outreach event.  I hope you will have time to join us on September 25th for our TechRevolution seminar.  Our seminar topic will be "Funding Environment for University Startups " and will feature Mr. Robert J. Creeden, Executive Director of the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network.


For additional information and to register, please visit:


http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e6b6t9w416f02b11&llr=crh9l7dab

Best regards,

Billy

Job: iPhone mobile app developer needed up to $6,000 budget

From a fellow student here.
Benjamin Watson
Director, Design Graphics Lab | Associate Professor, Computer Science, NC State Univ.
919-513-0325 | designgraphics.ncsu.edu | @dgllab


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: chisom anen <coanen@ncsu.edu>
Date: Fri, Aug 24, 2012 at 12:18 PM


Hello, My Name is Chisom Anen I am a junior here at NC State University. I am looking for someone or a team to help develop an app for me which can be used on various mobile platform. 
They compensation for developing this app would $1,000-$6,000. 
I am only looking for qualified applicants whom already developed a few functional moblie applications in the past. A portfolio will be needed to be taken seriously.
Upon creating the application I would also like there to be a website as well.
Most major graphics will/can be provided for the application, it is a plus if you can create graphics as well.

Find: Patent troll collects money for putting urls in texts

NYTimes leads group defense in mobile patent suit

Patent-TrollThe New York Times Co. is girding for a legal battle that many larger organizations have avoided.

Find: Space for startups to debut next month on Hillsborough Street

An exciting, good idea. 

Space for startups to debut next month on Hillsborough Street

The idea grew out of an innovation summit in February where 175 young people, government officials and creative types brainstormed ways to build an innovation-friendly brand for Raleigh.

Find: Indystate - Nokia Grows its Share of Windows Phone Market

Nokia Grows its Share of Windows Phone Market, But That Market May Not Be Growing Fast Enough

A new study shows that Windows Phone is growing and Nokia is gaining an increasing share of that market.

Given those two trends, one might think things are just dandy for both Microsoft and Nokia.

Of course, we all know that’s not necessarily the case.

The problem is that Windows Phone share, though growing, is not growing nearly fast enough, particularly for Nokia, which has bet its company on the success of Microsoft’s phone operating system.

The study, conducted by Localytics, shows that just since January the number of Windows Phone handsets has grown 312 percent worldwide and 273 percent in the United States. Nokia’s share of the global Windows Phone market, meanwhile has gone from 22 percent of the market to nearly 60 percent (and its U.S. share has gone from zero to 32 percent.)

The problem is that Microsoft and Nokia’s market share, even with the growth, is not enough to support either company’s broader ambitions.

Both are counting Microsoft’s next software update–Windows Phone 8–to allow the companies to make some serious inroads against the competition.

The plus side of the new software is it adds a built-in wallet, more customizable home page and is based on the same Windows NT core used by the company’s desktop software. The down side is that the software won’t run on any existing phones–including the current crop of devices from Nokia, HTC and Samsung.

Details on the first Windows Phone 8 devices are expected to be announced at a joint event on Sept. 5 in New York.


Find: local wireless news - htc leaves, bandwidth.com enters and republic grows

As a wireless firm exits RTP, new one enters and another grows

TruphoneThe Triangle's reputation as a center for wireless innovation and as a source for talent apparently hasn't been hurt by the departure of HTC or the uncertainty surrounding Research In Motion as truphone comes to the region. Plus, let's not forget Bandwidth.com's new venture.

Find: fingerprint locking on ios - Apple buys AuthenTec for its finger scanning and nfc tech

Good idea. 

Apple wanted AuthenTec's "new technology" ASAP for future products




Aurich Lawson

Apple may be planning to add 2D fingerprint sensors to a future version of the iPhone, according to details revealed in a recent Securities & Exchange Commission filing. The PREM14A document (hat tip to TNW) was filed as a result of Apple's buyout of security chip firm AuthenTec, and it reveals more details about the agreement between the two companies, as well as hints about Apple's future engineering plans.

The SEC document reveals that Apple had been after biometric security company AuthenTec's unspecified "new technology" for almost a year ("late 2011") before it decided to go ahead and buy the company in July. At the time, AuthenTec had been approaching a number of consumer electronics companies—Apple included—to try to sell licenses for its unspecified technology. Apple was apparently the only company to try to move forward with an agreement—cost seemingly deterred others—but negotiations ended up falling apart in early 2012. That's when Apple began entertaining the idea of a buyout, offering AuthenTec $7 per share, for a total of $356 million.

According to the document, Apple tried to woo AuthenTec by arguing that its offer would allow the company to develop technology for just one platform instead of many.

Find: Facebook lead designer Ben Blumenfeld leaves for Designer Fund

Key thought: as developing apps gets cheaper, you add value with good design 


Facebook lead designer Ben Blumenfeld leaves for Designer Fund

ben blumenfeld

After five years at Facebook, lead designer Ben Blumenfeld is leaving his post to become co-director of Designer Fund, a full-service angel fund that provides mentorship and resources to up-and-coming designers hoping to start companies. While investors are watching closely to see who leaves Facebook in the wake of its IPO, this departure has been in the works for a while. Blumenfeld got Designer Fund off the ground a year ago with friend and colleague Enrique Allen, but is only now going to work full time at the company.

Allen, who previously worked for 500 Startups, helped launch Facebook Fund, a seed fund supporting entrepreneurs working on the Facebook platform. Blumenfeld and Allen collaborated at Facebook Fund, and were both irked...

Find: Will Nokia become collateral damage in Microsoft's battle with Apple?

No question, Microsoft did a lot of harm to Nokia, certainly in the us, where tablets are one space without carriers, which leaves Nokia on an even playing field. 

Will Nokia become collateral damage in Microsoft's battle with Apple?

nokia windows 8 tablet mockup

From the moment of their announcement, Microsoft's Surface tablets have sat firmly entrenched in the middle of the Windows 8 spotlight. They've seized a stranglehold on the hardware conversation and focused it exclusively upon themselves. Though many have lamented the impact that will have on Microsoft's traditional PC OEM partners, what I think has gone overlooked is the effect of Surface on Microsoft's other hardware partner, Nokia.

Find: AT&T driver safety app will let parents turn off calls and messaging remotely, track teenage drivers

Good idea. 

AT&T driver safety app will let parents turn off calls and messaging remotely, track teenage drivers

Gallery Photo:

We all know that using a phone while driving is dangerous — the National Safety Council estimates there have been over 800,000 crashes in the US involving drivers using cell phones and texting so far this year. As one seller of the products and services at the center of the issue, AT&T has a responsibility to educate customers about safe driving habits, and its “It Can Wait” information campaign is part of that effort. Today we’re learning about another part — AT&T is developing software parents can use to remotely turn off voice and text transmission on their children’s cell phones while driving; revealed in a video (below) for its nationwide “never text and drive” pledge campaign.

Find: Twitter’s mobile web app delivers performance

Twitter’s mobile web app delivers performance

As the number of people using Twitter has grown, we've wanted to make sure that we deliver the best possible experience to users, regardless of platform or device. Since twitter.com is not optimized for smaller screens or touch interactions familiar to many smart phones, we decided to build a cross-platform web application that felt native in its responsiveness and speed for those who prefer accessing Twitter on their phone's or the tablet’s browser.

A better mobile user experience

When building mobile.twitter.com as a web client, we used many of the tools offered in HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to develop an application that has the same look, feel, and performance of a native mobile application. This post focuses on four primary areas of the mobile app architecture that enabled us to meet our performance and usability goals:


  • event listeners

  • scroll views

  • templates

  • storage

  • Twitter's mobile app architecture

Find: Simple Strategies for Smooth Animation on the iPhone

Simple Strategies for Smooth Animation on the iPhone

The iPhone was revolutionary for its use of direct manipulation – the feeling that you’re really holding content in your hands and manipulating it with your fingertips. While many mobile platforms have touch, it is the realistic physics and fluid animation of the iPhone that sets it apart from its competitors.

However, jerky scrolling ruins the experience. The new UI of Twitter for iPhone 4.0 contains many details that could impact performance, so we had to treat 60 frame-per-second animation as a priority. If you are troubleshooting animation performance, this post should provide some useful pointers.

Find: Tablet industry state in q2y12 by ihs - apple at 70%, Samsung 2nd at <10%

Apple expands dominance in tablet market

Apple's iPad Apple's market share climbed to 69.6 percent in the quarter from 58.1 percent in the previous three-month period, according to a report Tuesday from IHS iSuppli

Find: International mobile phone operator picks RTP for U.S. HQ

New mobile company in town!

International mobile phone operator picks RTP for U.S. HQ
TruphoneTruphone, a six-year-old firm based in the U.K., provides mobile communications capabilities to international travelers.

Find: The gold rush continues - retailers team up for mobile payments

Retailers team up for mobile payments service

ecommerceWal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and others form Merchant Customer Exchange to take on Google, PayPall, a startup backed by Starbucks, and others.

Find: finally, action at Motorola -- Google to lay off 4,000 workers

But we still don't know where we're going with this. 

Google to lay off 4,000 workers at Motorola Mobility

Google MotorolaTwo-thirds of the reductions will be outside the U.S., said the person, who declined to be identified because the matter isn't public. Google is also shutting down about one-third of Motorola Mobility's facilities, a source says.

Find: We should be doing something like this -- Mobile startup drives apps creation with S.C. students

Though I'm not sure the one per week idea is good. 

Mobile startup drives apps creation with S.C. students

52appsMobile software startup 52apps has an ambitious goal: create a new application for the iPhone or iPad every week. Just as ambitious: Do it with college students in South Carolina, far from the engineering hotbeds of Silicon Valley, New York or Austin, Texas

Find: US smartphone sales increase 9 percent thanks to huge prepaid growth

US smartphone sales increase 9 percent thanks to huge prepaid growth

htc evo v official 640


It’s impressive that despite an adverse economy, smartphone sales in the US are growing at a rate of 9 percent year over year, but even more interesting is where that growth is coming from. NPD reports that while sales of traditional postpaid devices were flat in Q2 of 2012, prepaid sales nearly doubled — up 91 percent over the same period last year. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that by NPD’s numbers, prepaid phones grew from 10 percent of all smartphone sales a year ago, to over 17 percent in the last quarter.


So what’s driving the change? As pointed out by GigaOm, one factor is the improved quality of Android devices available through prepaid providers — like HTC’s Evo V, which can be purchased through...

Find: Census Bureau releases 'America's Economy' app for Android

Good idea. 

Statistics on the go: Census Bureau releases 'America's Economy' app for Android

America's Economy App

The US Census Bureau just released its public API last month, and now the agency has released the America's Economy app for Android phones and tablets with an iOS version in the works. By combining its own data with that of the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau's app will track real-time trends in "employment, housing construction, international trade, personal income, retail sales and manufacturing." The app was created as part of the Census Bureau's Web Transformation Project to help federal employees and the general public access accurate data about the US' socioeconomic health. Both tablet and phone versions of the app are available in the Google Play store now.

Find: first arm a15 chip arrives - Samsung chip opens door to "Retina" Android tablets

New Samsung Cortex A15-based chip opens door to "Retina" Android tablets



The block diagram for Samsung's new Exynos 5 Dual SoC

Samsung has just released details about its new Exynos 5 5250 SoC for mobile devices. This dual-core, 1.7GHz chip is the first one on the market to feature the new Cortex A15 CPU architecture from ARM, which will provide substantially improved performance over the Cortex A9-based chips used in most of today's smartphones and tablets.


The chip also includes ARM's new Mali-T604 GPU designed to power Retina-class displays and support high-performance connectivity options like SATA and USB 3.0. These improvements make it a substantial upgrade over current-generation products like NVIDIA's Tegra 3 or Samsung's own Exynos 4. We'll look at different aspects of the chip to see not just how the Exynos 5 and other Cortex A15 SoCs will benefit current tablets, but also how those improvements could lead to more viable laptop replacements.

The CPU: ARM's Cortex A15

Most ARM processors in today's devices, including the NVIDIA Tegra 3 in the Nexus 7 tablet and all variations of the Apple A5 used in newer iPads and iPhones, use Cortex A9-based designs. The A9 excels in power usage, but is more limited when it comes to performance.

Find: NVIDIA Q2Y13: $1.04B Revenue, Tegra Sales Recover

Tegra seems to have legs, though it tailed off end previous year. Nvidia may have growth in it's future. Still 50% margins ain't bad.

NVIDIA Q2 FY13 Earnings Report: $1.04B Revenue, Tegra Sales Recover

I don't normally comment on earning's calls, but this is something I've been talking a lot about in meetings offline so I decided to write up a short post. Yesterday NVIDIA announced its Q2 earnings. In short, they were good. Total revenue was up to $1.04 billion and gross margins were healthy at 51.8%. The more interesting numbers were in the breakdown of where all of that revenue came from. NVIDIA reports on revenue from three primary businesses: GPU, Professional Solutions and Consumer Products. The GPU business includes all consumer GPUs (notebook, desktop and memory - NVIDIA sells GPU + memory bundles to its partners) as well as license revenue from NVIDIA's cross licensing agreement with Intel. The Professional Solutions business is all things Quadro and Tesla. Finally the Consumer Products business is home to Tegra, Icera, game console revenue and embedded products.
I plotted revenue across all three businesses going back over the past 2.5 years:
The quarter that just ended was NVIDIA's second quarter for fiscal year 2013 which is why the quarter stamps along the x-axis look a bit forward looking at first glance. Going back two years ago, the consumer products business was virtually nonexistent. Two years ago NVIDIA's consumer products sales were one quarter what they are today. The growth in the Tegra space has been steady since then, but late last year it saw a bit of a fall off (Tegra 2 wasn't exactly competitive in the second half of 2011). NVIDIA boasted healthy growth this quarter thanks to some fairly high profile Tegra 3 design wins, but the overall revenue for the consumer products group is still below its $191.1M peak three quarters ago. There's still a lot of hope for the business and it's definitely healthier than it was a couple of years ago, but there's still a long way to go. Ultimately NVIDIA needs to produce designs competitive enough to last until the next design cycle, and not taper off early. Tegra 2 was late to market and thus its competitive position was understandable at the end of 2011. Tegra 3 did a lot better but the real hope is for its Cortex A15 based successor, Wayne.
As it stands, Tegra (and the rest of the consumer products group) is responsible for 17.2% of NVIDIA's total quart...

Job: App Design and Creation Intern

An internship opportunity with SmartOnline, a local mobile tools company.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bob Dieterle <bob.dieterle@smartonline.com>
Date: Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 11:52 AM
Subject: FW: App Design and Creation Intern
Cc: Robert Hancock <robert.hancock@smartonline.com>


Hi Ben,

I hope your summer is going well.  I am looking for great creative graphics design interns that want to learn our platform and build apps for our clients using the platform.  Please see the description below.   I was hoping that you can post this within your classes and/or other ways to promote this.  They will be working under my experts in this field and I think will learn a lot as each client app would be different and challenging.

 

Thanks,

Bob Dieterle

Sr Vice President and General Manager 

Image001

4505 Emperor Boulevard, Suite 320, Durham, NC 27703

T (919) 237 4182  M (919) 667-7747   F (919) 765 5020

 

Find: Burner wants to help you temporarily obfuscate your phone number

Spoofing on phone calls. Nice. 

Burner wants to help you temporarily obfuscate your phone number



"Burning" a communication device has been a mainstay of those interested in privacy, from the IMF (you know, from Mission: Impossible) to the corner boys on The Wire, and everyone in between. Those of us who aren’t superhuman secret agents or clever criminals may have a much more mundane reason for wanting to create a temporary phone number that routes to your actual number. Someone creating an online ad, a telemarketer trying to appear local so you'll pick up, or an uncertain party in a blind date could all use a throwaway number. Enter Burner, an iPhone app that debuted on Wednesday.

Sure, these days, you can use Google Voice, SkypeIn, or a number of any other services, but what’s nice about Burner is that you can do it from your own iPhone (an Android version is coming soon) in an instant. All I had to give Burner was my phone number. The company doesn’t even know my name or have my e-mail address. And yes, as expected, some people are already using it to create "casual encounters"-style personal ads (possibly NSFW).

I created my own Burner number in about 20 seconds. It defaults to your actual area code (in my case, 510), but you can choose a different one if you like. The app costs $2 and comes with a single temporary phone number and enough credits for a 20-minute phone call, which I burned through (excuse the pun) while on the phone with Greg Cohn, the co-founder and CEO of Ad Hoc Labs, the app’s parent company. Users can buy more numbers or add credit if necessary, or disconnect themselves from the temporary number by "burning" it in the app.

Find: Digia to acquire Qt business from Nokia, port it to Android and iOS

Nokia to acquire Qt business from Nokia, port it to Android and iOS

Finnish software company Digia announced today that it is acquiring the Qt software business from Nokia. Digia plans to pick up where Nokia left off: continuing Qt development, but renewing the toolkit’s focus on cross-platform support. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

Qt is an open source software development toolkit that was originally created by Norwegian software company Trolltech. Nokia acquired Trolltech in 2008 and subsequently transitioned Qt to an open governance model and a more permissive licensing scheme. Nokia had originally intended to use Qt to provide a unified development framework that would work across Symbian and MeeGo.

Nokia’s decision to abandon its existing mobile platforms in favor of Windows Phone 7 raised some questions about what the failing phone giant would do with Qt. Rumors that the toolkit would soon be sold surfaced earlier this month, alongside news that Nokia was shutting down Qt offices in Australia. In our coverage, we noted that Digia, which acquired the Qt commercial licensing business from Nokia last year, was a likely candidate for buying the remaining Qt assets.

Find: idc's industry os state y12q2 - Android 68%, iOS 17%, wp7 & bbos both < 5%

4 android for each iOS. 

Android dominance in smartphone market is growing

Smartphone OS market shareThe success of Samsung's Android phones helped Google's operating system extend its dominance in the smartphone market where Android phone shipments now outnumber Apple iPhone shipments 4 to 1.

Spotted: the UX of mobile augmented reality -- it can be good

Narratives of satisfying and unsatisfying experiences of current mobile augmented reality applications

Thomas Olsson, Markus Salo

Over the last few years, mobile applications demonstrating Augmented Reality (AR) - such as Layar, Junaio and Google Goggles - have been introduced to consumers. We conducted an online survey to explore the user experience (UX) of early stage mobile AR applications available in the market in spring 2011, covering both location-based AR browsers and image recognition AR applications for object-based interaction. We identify various types of experiences such applications have evoked by qualitatively analyzing 84 users' narratives of their most satisfying and unsatisfying experiences. The results highlight, for example, experiences of awareness of surroundings, empowerment, positive surprise, amazement and fascination from the novelty value, as well as some examples of immersion and social connectivity.

Spotted: Web use on smartphones -- users revisit sites only 25% of the time

Characterizing web use on smartphones

Chad Tossell, Philip Kortum, Ahmad Rahmati, Clayton Shepard, Lin Zhong

The current paper establishes empirical patterns associated with mobile internet use on smartphones and explores user differences in these behaviors. We apply a naturalistic and longitudinal logs-based approach to collect real usage data from 24 iPhone users in the wild. These data are used to describe smartphone usage and analyze revisitation patterns of web browsers, native applications, and physical locations where phones are used. Among our findings are that web page revisitation through browsers occurred very infrequently (approximately 25% of URLs are revisited by each user), bookmarks were used sparingly, physical traversing patterns mirrored virtual (internet) traversing patterns and users systematically differed in their web use.

Find: Mobile Websites vs Responsive Design: What’s the right solution for your business?

Mobile Websites vs Responsive Design: What’s the right solution for your business?

The following post originally appeared on the Google Mobile Ads Blog.

As more of your competitors Go Mo, building a mobile-friendly site becomes more of a priority for your business. Over the past two years alone, mobile search traffic has increased five-fold. Customers are searching for your business from their mobile phones, and you need to engage them with a mobile experience designed for completing on-the-go tasks from their small screens. Recently many businesses have been asking us about an emerging trend among web developers—responsive design—and if they should use it. While we believe that building a separate mobile website is an appropriate solution for certain businesses, it’s also important to understand how responsive design might fit into your plans to Go Mo.

What is responsive design? It is a website design technique that allows you to create a single website that will adapt to the device on which it’s being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. A site built with responsive design will automatically resize for different devices, but it is up to you to prioritize the content that matters most to the mobile user. For example, a mobile user might need to quickly find your phone number or directions, whereas a tablet user might want a simpler way to make couch-surfing purchases. A site built using responsive design could prioritize click-to-call and click-to-map buttons, while the tablet site would focus on simplifying the shopping cart. For the technical details on how responsive design works for building mobile-friendly sites, read this blog post from the Google webmaster team.

Competition: Google Places API Developer Challenge 2012

Deadline 10/31

The power of places and big data for good: Google Places API Developer Challenge 2012

Author Picture
By Carlos Cuesta, Google Maps API Product Marketing Manager

Cross-posted with the Google Geo Developers Blog

How would you make your community or local government run better? In our first Google Places API Developer Challenge, we’re inviting developers around the world to make something that improves their communities or governments by using the Google Places API and its database of places and tools. The developers of the winning applications will receive a VIP experience at Google I/O 2013.

You might create an app or site that solves health problems, understands crime patterns, or improves commerce. You can use any platform as long as you build with the Google Places API and it benefits your community or government. We’re looking for your best and most innovative ideas.




Built on the comprehensive global database of more than 95 million places that powers Google Maps, the Google Places API enables you to search for information about a variety of nearby places such as establishments, geographic locations and prominent points of interest. You can re-rank place results based on user check-ins, and create new places specific to your app.

To help you develop your ideas and build better apps, we’ve been working with local government officials in Austin, Boston, Chicago, London, Louisville, New York City, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle along with the White House to surface a wide variety of data sets for your apps. You can find these data sets and more on the Google Places API Challenge site at http://developers.google.com/challenge and hear more about what cities have to say about the challenge here. You can also follow updates and hangouts about the challenge on +Google Maps API.

The submission window opens on August 15th and closes on October 31st, 2012.

We look forward to seeing what can happen when your imagination and the Google Places API come together!

Find: Amazon launches rental service for paper textbooks

Amazon launches rental service for paper textbooks

Amazon Textbook RentalJuggernaut Amazon is striking another blow at the traditional textbook industry by offering semester-long rentals of physical books. The listings for a number of textbooks now include a "rent" option that's usually around $50 for a title that sells for $170. According to Amazon's FAQ, the books are rented out by the semester (counted as 130 days), with one 15-day extension allowed. Textbooks are shipped at standard prices, and the cost of returning them is paid by Amazon. Depending on their luck, renters might receive a book that's new or one that's gently used.

Ebay's Half.com and other sites rent textbooks at roughly similar prices, but Amazon's ubiquity means it's likely to make the practice more mainstream. While Amazon also offers a...

Find: OpenGL celebrates its 20th birthday with two new versions

Es is better, gl is an es superset and gains compute shaders. 

OpenGL celebrates its 20th birthday with two new versions



Enlarge / The SGI Reality Engine revision 2 bumped the number of processors on the Geometry Engine up to 12. This is what graphics power looked like in the olden days.

Dave Fischer, via Wikipedia

The Khronos Group has released two new versions of its 3D graphics APIs. The mobile-oriented OpenGL ES specification has been given a major upgrade to version 3.0, and the desktop OpenGL specification has received a minor update to bring it to version 4.3.

After some years of stagnation and an abandoned attempt to radically change the way OpenGL worked—during which time Microsoft's Direct3D API progressed in leaps and bounds—the Khronos Group has been developing new iterations of the OpenGL standard at a regular clip. While Direct3D has still been first to standardize certain new features, the OpenGL designers are quickly picking them up and integrating them.

OpenGL ES has risen to prominence primarily on the back of the iPhone and Android. Both iOS and Android use OpenGL ES as their 3D API, and the enormous growth in smartphone gaming has made OpenGL ES a critical API for many developers.