Google announced Oct. 31 its Gmail service has 425 million monthly active users, surpassing Hotmail for the first time to become the No. 1 e-mail service.
Hotmail, Microsoft’s e-mail service, had been the top service since it bypassed Yahoo some years ago.
At the beginning of the year, Google announced it had 350 million monthly active users on Gmail, based on its own data. Eleven months later, the company says its data shows it now has 425 million monthly users.
Web analytics company comScore, however, ranks Google’s e-mail service behind Hotmail and Yahoo. According to comScore’s latest numbers from May, Hotmail remains at No. 1 with 325 million unique visitors, Yahoo at No. 2 with 298 million users, and Gmail at No. 3 with 289 million users.
Google on Track to Sell 1M Nexus 7 Tablets Monthly
Google’s Nexus 7 tablet sales are on the rise and will soon hit one million devices sold per month, says Asustek Computer, the Taiwanese manufacturer of the tablet.
Asustek executives said sales of the seven-inch tablet are climbing steadily.
“At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to 1 million,” Asustek Chief Financial Officer David Chang told The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Google spokeswoman Caroline Hsu would not confirm Chang’s statement, however. She told the WSJ the company has not released sales figures for the Nexus 7.
New Blackberry Smartphones in Testing Phase
RIM’s new BlackBerry Smartphones are in the testing stage courtesy of 50 phone carriers around the world. The company is gearing up for the release of the new Blackberry next year.
The carriers, which RIM declined to name, are checking to make sure the new devices are compatible with their systems, the Ontario company said Oct. 31.
The testing phase is a “key step” for the BlackBerry phones and BlackBerry 10 operating system, president and CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement.
RIM plans to have the new Smartphones in stores during the first quarter of next year, but hasn’t publicly set a date for the release.
Glocal All About Local News
A new video site is on a mission to deliver local news.
Glocal a local news video aggregator, will offer an all-in-one site for local news provided by networks, newspapers, businesses and other entities.
Glocal has partnered with 1,900 providers, including the Associated Press, which allow their videos to be re-posted online.
The new online video site is run by friends Aaron Hodari and Lincoln Cavalieri, who came up with the idea after reading an article about Hulu.
According to the site, “Glocal lets you find, watch, and share what’s important in your community. Featuring videos from local and national content creators, Glocal makes it easy to explore what’s happening around the world.”
Technology News Briefs — Sept. 28, 2012