Last year’s fourth quarter is the current record holder at AT&T. Then Ma Bell activated 9.4 million devices. All of the same factors that drove such huge sales last year are again in place. Most notably Apple kept with its adjusted iPhone launch schedule, which with the iPhone 4S was moved from the early summer to fall. That means AT&T will reap the benefits of a new iPhone release and the traditional Christmas sales boom both in the same three-month period.

There may be incentives for consumers to invest even more heavily in the iPhone this year as opposed to last. The new iPhone 5 not only has a new design and new iOS 6 features, but it is the first Apple smartphone with LTE capabilities. AT&T could also an uptick across its LTE device portfolio due to the huge expansion of its network. At the end of 2011 AT&T had a meager 15-city footprint, but today it offers its new 4G service in 109 markets covering 150 million people.

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In July, Samsung projected it would have a record-breaking year, selling 300 million handsets, driven by the popularity of its Galaxy smartphone line. It turns out Samsung hit that target in the first 11 months of the year and still has one traditionally very lucrative month to build on that success.

On Sunday, Shin Jong-Kyun, Samsung president and head of its mobile communications business, said the manufacturer was “incredibly proud” of hitting its 300 million-unit goal early, claiming the increasing popularity of the Galaxy S series is making it one of the recognized smartphone brands in the world, Xinhua reported. The Galaxy may not yet have the icon status of the iPhone, but Samsung overtook Apple in smartphone sales in the third quarter, and is well on target to leapfrog former smartphone king Nokia by the end of the year.

While the Galaxy doesn’t yet have the cachet of the iPhone, it definitely has more flexibility. Samsung has shown willingness to work with almost every operator to design a version of the Galaxy S that works on their radio technology and bands, while Apple, in an effort to limit the number of iPhone models, has kept to the most popular bands and radio configurations. But Samsung appears to be targeting Apple’s traditional customer base, launching a new U.S. advertising campaign that mocks the Apple fanboy. Whether Samsung can attract Apple’s traditional customers by making fun of them, though, is an open question.

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Bernstein’s guess is predicated on a sales rate of around 4.5 million units sold per quarter, which isn’t at all unreasonable given that consumer interest hasn’t shown any signs of significantly flagging since then. Even the original iPhone only sold 1 million units in its first quarter. If the iPad continues to sell at its current rate, it’ll become the fourth biggest consumer electronics category, in terms of sales, by next year.

That’ll mean that the iPad, on its own, will sell more than all gaming consoles combined, and the entire cell phone market. Only televisions, smartphones and notebook computers will continue to exceed it. It’s hard to emphasize what a tremendous accomplishment that would be for Apple.

Of course, the iPad had a lot of advantages over other newly introduced, electronic devices. First, it had a built-in software platform, replete with applications ready to go out of the box, thanks to its use of iOS and Apple’s efforts to have developers prepare iPad-specific apps in time for launch. Second, demand was clearly present, as evidenced by Apple’s long, drawn out teaser campaign of carefully orchestrated leaks and PR strategizing. The campaign also no doubt helped heighten demand, whipping Apple fans into a frenzy of anticipation.

While much has been made of Apple’s rise to a position of prominence comparable to that of its longtime rival, Microsoft, the iPad and its success puts the company in an entirely different sphere of influence. For all it accomplished, Microsoft never created a brand new category of electronic device that itself ranked among the top-selling general categories. That degree of thought leadership will ensure Apple shapes the industry for years to come, despite any battles it may lose along the way.

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Tweetie for Mac, big brother to the game-changing iPhone Twitter client of the same name, is shaking things up again with the desktop app’s latest update.

The update incorporates a range of smaller fixes and tweaks, including swipe gestures and improved URL-shortening. However, the big news is that Tweetie for Mac now incorporates video tweeting.

Video means that we can start creating richer tweets. The 140-character limit is all well and good, but for me, the idea of capturing moments on video has already set the sparks of inspiration flashing around my brain-box.

To give you an example, here’s a quick tweet I made yesterday, testing out Tweetie’s video upload: “http://yfrog.us/0x8usz Me! Live! Playing Sigur Rós on glockenspiel, just for you.”

Once recorded, the video is uploaded to the yFrog video and picture hosting service. Alongside recording direct from the iSight camera, the application also supports drag-and-drop video uploads. Tweetie handles all the uploading, encoding and boring stuff, which means making new videos is fun and easy.

Tweetie’s developer, Loren Brichter of Atebits, also dropped hints to TheAppleBlog about the forthcoming update to the 2.0 iPhone version of Tweetie:

I don’t have a release date set, but I will say that Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone is BIG. It’s a complete rewrite based on the new Mac core, and I think it will take the Twitter client war to a new level, much like Tweetie 1.0 did at the time of the original release.

Fighting talk indeed; in the meantime, current users of Tweetie for Mac can update the application to activate video tweeting. If you’re looking to give Tweetie a try, it’s available for $14.95 or as a free ad-supported version.

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By converting your voice messages into text e-mails, Quick Voice Pro could be a time-saving boon for busy iPhone owners.

Empowered by our emails, tweets, IM conversations, and blogs, we’ve become modern-day information conduits. We collect knowledge, then discharge it into the ether, spurting out a constant fountain of fact, fiction and entertainment.

Quick Voice Pro is a new tool that could make sharing your thoughts even easier. The app converts audio recordings into text-based e-mails, using an online voice-recognition system.

Learning To Talk

If there’s a thought on the tip of your tongue, Quick Voice Pro immediately accommodates: The app loads up in a snap and is ready to record from the off. You’re able to open the software, blurt out whatever is on your mind, and get it converted, all in a short amount of time.

The layout of the app is incredibly simple, too, meaning there’s no possibility of friction with the interface. All the different functions are presented on one page; plus, there’s no settings screen and absolutely no configuration needed for first-time users.

While the tech-savvy may be impressed with the app’s advanced voice-recognition capabilities, Quick Voice Pro really seems to have been designed with novice users in mind, offering a big red record button and a large play button. And it doesn’t feel patronizing, either. The app simply incorporates well-considered, functional design.

It’s not all perfect, though. Recordings are all named MyRecording by default, which will make sifting through them a real chore for regular users. There is a button for renaming recordings, but it just doesn’t feel as intuitive as it could in comparison to the rest of the app.

Speaking of Email

Tapping the record button initiates record mode. Although you can’t go back and edit a recording once you’ve saved it, there is a pause button, letting pensive people stop for a moment and gather their thoughts before continuing.

Once recorded and saved, the app can auto-generate an e-mail for you, leaving you to enter the from and to address. The body copy of the email will be your recorded message. The actual voice-to-text conversion doesn’t happen on the iPhone; it’s all handled server-side. There was a major issue that stood out with the emailing process: The subject line always reads, “You Have QuickVoice Mail!” There’s no way to change it, and so effectively, you’re sending your contacts a message headed with an advertisement for the app.

Speaking Aloud

UK-based startup Spinvox provides the voice-to-text recognition and conversion. It’s incredibly accurate, which was surprising, and of note was that it’s comfortable with long words and both American and English accents.

To test the app, I made up a nonsensical sentence with a few long, potentially clumsy-sounding words thrown in:

“Rebellious, insidious individuals, find it highly probably that they will be libelous for their erroneous actions.”

This was then converted to the following:

“Rebelious(?) insidious individuals, find it highly probable that they will be libelous for the erroneous actions.”

Voice to text email brought to you by QuickVoice.

Note the question marks on words the software is unsure of. It’s a nice touch, clarifying that it has taken a chance and may be incorrect.

Summing Up

During testing, I found that messages take around 10 minutes to convert and arrive in the recipient’s mail box. Considering the impressive degree of accuracy, this is an acceptable amount of time.

On the flip side, there’s a 30-second limit to all recordings — this can wind up being a drag if you’ve got a lot to say, however, it’s understandable. SpinVox probably doesn’t want people clogging up its server, trying to convert entire hour-long presentations.

The only substantial problem is that, since this isn’t a free app, it doesn’t seem fair that paying users are responsible for spreading advertising it via email subject lines. And, just in case your contacts didn’t notice the branded subject, the message text always ends with, “Voice to text email brought to you by QuickVoice.”

The voice-to-text conversion works, however, I would hesitate to send any emails that contain such clear advertising for a product that, while effective, sees its users as billboards rather than valued customers.

This could have been a Silver TheAppleBlog Award, but, due to its uncalled-for product placement, Quick Voice Pro earns a Bronze.

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Do you ever want to peek over the shoulder of your web site visitors to see how they move about and navigate? As site owners, we often make assumptions as to how people are getting to particular pages or using particular functionality. Armed with pages and pages of analytics statistics we focus on what people are viewing or searching for.

Sometimes, though, there is no substitute for just watching how people interact and use your site to really understand your users’ behavior. Usability and testing tool Clixpy hopes to make that possible.

Clixpy is a web tool that tracks and records everything that a visitor does while interacting with your web site. Every scroll, click, text entry and hover is captured in a video for you to view at a later time.

A convenient dashboard displays all of your captured videos.

Installation is fairly straightforward. A short piece of JavaScript is provided for you to place into the HTML of your site. The code is tied to your account and is independent of a particular web site, which is nice. This allows you to monitor multiple sites or pool your captures using just one account.

Clixpy captures are purchased in groups. Your first 100 captures cost $5, with discounts being available for larger buys. You maintain a credit pool and each capture just pulls from your available credits.

You do have some control of how and when your captures are taken, though. When turning on captures you are given the opportunity to set some parameters to limit how many or how long they will run. This allows you to target particular times of day or new feature releases.

The Clixpy folks provided me with a pool of credits for review purposes and I doled them out over the course of a couple of days on one of my sites. It really was informative to watch the recordings that Clixpy gathered. Seeing real users clicking around is interesting and challenged some assumptions I had about how people interacted with my site.

Since each capture pulls a credit, I was sort of irritated when I would get single page view recordings. My initial thinking was that these captures wouldn’t tell me much, but I now realize that careful examination of these sessions could help identify issues and offer insight as to how to make my site more “sticky” and reduce its bounce rate.

Clixpy generally works just as advertised but I did run into some issues. For example, a capture should include every page view by a user but I can clearly identify many instances in which the same user session is split among multiple Clixpy captures. As each capture session has a cost, it would be nice to not have them wasted like this. There were also a couple of instances where it seemed that the clicking through of pages didn’t quite match up properly and the timing of the recording was inconsistent.

Also, while not a function of the application or service, one irksome thing I noticed is that you need to register on the site before you are given any information on cost. Clear pricing information should always be provided before any user data is gathered or a sign-up is processed.

I also have some concerns about the privacy implications of Clixpy but, in general, it is just presenting the same type of information gathered by an analytics package in a visual format. Password fields are ignored and other form fields can also be disabled. For long-term usage I would be sure to include information in my own privacy policy alerting users that it is in place. Users can opt out of being tracked by any site using Clixpy by visiting the Clixpy disable page.

Clixpy isn’t a substitute for proper focus group or usability testing but a small investment could provide useful information that can be difficult to gather otherwise. Check out a demo of Clixpy or register for an account to get started.

How do you feel about “spying” on your site visitors with Clixpy?

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Developed by Mobelux, and formerly known as Tumblrette, the official Tumblr iPhone app has now arrived.

Tumblr is essentially the short ‘n sweet side of blogging: Posts are ultra-snappy, comprised of mixed-media uploads such as images, quotes, audio and video. The service is free, via Tumblr.com, and, since the site is so intuitively designed, it’s incredibly easy for new users to dive straight in.

The result of this platform, paired with such a simple and effective interface, is the ultra-diverse Tumblr community. Browsing through various tumblelogs is like sifting through the Lost and Found Department of the entire Internet. It’s a beautiful mess of everything and anything, from the shocking to the spectacular.

Over on the iPhone, the official Tumblr app integrates all the features of the main site, plus a couple of unexpected welcome additions.

Get Ready to Tumble

The app is split in to three panels. First-time users are initially presented with the Tumblr Settings panel (accessible only via the app itself as opposed to the iPhone’s Settings app). From here you’re able to sign in to your Tumblr Dashboard, register a new account and configure Dashboard settings.

Although there’s a Sign up for a Tumblr Account button, the registration process doesn’t occur in-app. This means that tapping the button drops out of the app and moves in to Safari; it works, but it’s certainly not an elegant way of handling new registrations.

Furthermore, the Settings panel displays the name of your primary tumblelog but doesn’t display the name, or otherwise even mention the existence of, any other tumblelogs you may own or contribute to. For prolific users, this could be quite a drawback.

Dashboard Confessional

Once registered and set up, you can configure the Settings panel to always display an iPhone formatted version of the Tumblr Dashboard every time the app is loaded. The Sites panel displays your Tumblr Dashboard — an overview of new content posted to tumblelogs that you’re following.

Clicking on a post in the Dashboard allows you to view it in full, plus there are two buttons: Like and Reblog. Clicking the Reblog button allows you to post content from other tumblelogs straight to yours, automatically crediting the source too.

Rather unexpectedly, and again quite inelegantly, clicking Reblog actually loads the standard web-based Reblog page embedded within the app. It feels clunky to have the standard web-interface within the app and ends up being ineffective for quick-fire tumbling.

Those prolific users that I mentioned earlier may be pleased to note that the Dashboard panel provides quick access to all tumblelogs of which you’re a member. The drawback, though, is that there’s still no configuration options on these pages — it’s simply an embedded page within the app’s browser — so there’s no clear benefit to this feature and as such it feels half-baked.

Mixing Your Media

The Post panel is where the action happens. There are six different post types that can be sent directly to your tumblelog: text, photo, quote, link, chat and audio.

Without copy/paste on the iPhone, the text, quote, link and chat options seem particularly redundant. There is apparently a bookmarklet available, although I couldn’t find it in spite of various Google and Tumblr.com searches.

The other two posting options, photo and audio, are downright brilliant, grin-inducing joys. The former allows you to snap images on the iPhone camera, add text and then upload directly to your tumblelog. The latter is exactly the same, except instead of imagery, it’s all about making sound recordings.

Being able to get away from the computer, snapping and capturing images and sound from the world at large, is exactly what Tumblr is about. It sums up the essence of tumbling while furthering the concept and freeing Tumblr users from their desktop computers.

Summing Up

The inelegant registration process and embedded web page for reblogging only stand out as issues because, the rest of the time, the Tumblr iPhone app is so coherent in its design and ease of use. These niggles will, I hope, get resolved in future updates.

As for the post options for chat, links, quotes and text, these will become incredibly useful once copy/paste is introduced to the iPhone.

The app comes together when you find yourself out on the streets, wanting to capture a moment, an incredible sight, or an odd overheard conversation. The photo and audio features that make this possible are deliciously addictive.

If you’re a regular Tumblr user, or you’ve got an eye (or ear) for interesting happenings when you’re out and about, the Tumblr app will be your ideal companion.

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Wrapping up another seven days and bringing you the freshest picks, it’s time for this week’s App Store Roundup.

Tom Reetsman kicked off the week by calling Technologizer’s Ed Oswald out on an article he wrote about MobileMe, the general gist of it being that Oswald canceled MobileMe, only to lament the disappearance of his data.

By Tuesday, Google added Tasks syncing to the already impressive Gmail web app. Wednesday saw a roundup of iPhone time tracking apps, essential tools for freelancers managing multiple projects. As I’ve mentioned before, Harvest — my favorite time tracking service — has a fantastic web app available for iPhone.

Finally, our own Matthew Bookspan pitted two productivity services against each other — DEVONthink Pro Office and Evernote Premium. Contrary to my preference (I’m an avid Evernote iPhone and OS X app user), it seems that DEVONthink’s tool came out on top.

Moving on, let’s talk about apps, this week I’ve been looking at ExZeus, Aggravate Nails on Chalkboard, Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder, Epiphany Recorded and Rolando Lite.

ExZeus ($5.99)
Giant robots, laser cannons, alien invasions, explosions — these are inherently exciting things. Distill these things down to videogame form and there’s a good chance you’re on to a winner. ExZeus finds you playing a robot with a laser cannon causing explosions while fighting off an alien invasion: this is hyperbolic space shooter action at its best. The gameplay captures old Sega classics like Space Harrier while the rainbow gun metal 3D graphics bring Transformers instantly to mind (plagiaricious!).

Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder (free)
On to serious stuff then, as we take a look at this voice recording tool. There’s a bevy of options available to those looking for a memo recorder for the iPhone. For those still searching for a audio recording tool, this free, ad-supported app is a good starting point. The app can use either the built in iPhone mic, or the headset mic, records in up to 44100 kHz and even has a scrub tool — letting you skip to the essential parts of each recording.

Epiphany Recorder (free)
While Audio Memos Free is a traditional voice recorder app, Epiphany Recorder has a unique angle on the whole memo recording concept. The idea behind the app is that often you’ll hear something worth recording and, before you get the opportunity to capture it, the moment will be gone. To combat missing those all-important moments, Epiphany Recorder captures the previous two minutes of audio from the moment you hit record. Of course, you have to keep the app open, but it’s still a commendable way of solving an issue for students, journalists and seminar attendees everywhere.

Rolando Lite (free)
Released last year, Rolando is a fantastic tilt ‘n’ touch based puzzler for the iPhone and touch. I wrote up a comprehensive and complimentary review for it a couple of months back, stating that Rolando is an essential for iPhone and touch gamers, “… what we have here is the benchmark for what a complete iPhone (or touch) gaming experience could be and, furthermore, should be.” If you don’t have Rolando and you’ve never tried it, you’re now fresh out of excuses as Rolando Lite is a free demo containing the first few levels of the full game. Get it now!

Aggravate Nails on Chalkboard (free)
Wonderful, yet another way to simultaneously alienate your close friends while illustrating the fact that your state-of-the-art iPhone, with GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and all that digital jazz, is nothing more than a shiny digital whoopee cushion. Except this app is actually quite good, for starters, it knows its place in the pricing pantheon (next to worthless) and is free. And therefore worth the 5 minutes of unadulterated joy you’ll derive from watching your friends’ skin crawl as you screech your fingers down the iPhone’s screen.

Just One More Thing

I’ve noticed a fantastic new trend emerging over at the App Store. It all started two months ago when Olivier Bernal, a French iPhone app developer, decided to pinch stock photography from iStock Photo. Then a too-close-to-the-bone clone of Nintendo’s famous zapper game Duck Hunt appeared on the App Store, only to be pulled last week following a complaint from Nintendo.

It seems that app developers are already running out of original ideas and instead running rampant with other people’s copyrights. I picked three copyright infringing apps, released in the last week, that flaunt it like a middle-aged divorcee speeding round town in a second-hand Porsche with a “Single and Lovin’ It” bumper sticker.

First up is The Eggs, described by the developers as, “A simulation of a popular Soviet game ‘Electronica IM-02′ which was a clone of Nintendo’s Game&Watch series game ‘Egg’.” So, effectively, we’re talking about an iPhone simulation of a simulation of a game which, in itself, was an emulation of a classic Nintendo title.

There are several things I’m not sure about here; firstly, I’m not sure whether I correctly used simulation and emulation. Most importantly though, I’m not up on my Soviet copyright law — was the game originally infringing copyright? Or, in Soviet Russia, does copyright infringe you?

Then there’s Flipt – Heroes Edition, a traditional tile matching game that uses images culled from the Heroes TV series and is almost certainly not an official spinoff. The app description is a giveaway, “Find pairs of matching images all themed around the popular sitcom Heroes™.”

Because, of course, Heroes is indeed a sitcom. I’ve always thought that Sylar is the Chandler of the bunch. And, I particularly enjoy that the app description used the ™ symbol while totally infringing the trademark.

And I’ll skip straight to the point with CuBert — it’s a direct rip of classic Q*Bert, heck the character is exactly the same as the original retro hooter-nosed weirdo. To the guys at LagMac, the game’s developer, this may apparently be “… in homage to Q*Bert creators,” but it’s still a massive copyright infringing bag of profit-generating plagiarism.

How can the people behind these apps be smart enough to program a game for the iPhone and then actually get it on the App Store, but either have no concept of copyright or are simply just risking it? How can you be that smart and yet also that dumb?

I’ll leave you to ponder that final question and see you next Saturday for another App Store Roundup. In the meantime, let me know which apps you’ve been downloading in the comments.

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This week we’re looking at Remember The Milk, Mokugyo (With Cat), Ocarina and iFriends.

Remember The Milk (free) - Remember The Milk is a clever site that gives you a selection of list-based tools for keeping track of all the tasks that life throws at you. It makes use of a great methodology called Getting Things Done. This fantastic iPhone app links in to your online RTM account, meaning you can become a blur of productivity even when you’re on the go.

Mokugyo (With Cat) (free) – While Mokugyo (With Cat) seems to be utterly useless, it’s endearing enough to warrant a quick mention. To reach a state of ‘nagomi’ (higher relaxation), you must tap on a Japanese wooden gong and what seems to be a singing bowl (used for meditation). This makes just enough sense until you try out ‘cat mode’, where tapping the bowl and gong triggers cat meows as you watch a totally weird lolcats-esque slideshow.

Ocarina ($0.99) – Rapidly becoming one of TAB’s favourite iPhone developers, Smule have created another unique app. By literally blowing in to the iPhone and pressing buttons on the screen, you can play different notes and, with a little practice, string together a tune. This is an enchanting musical instrument masquerading as an iPhone toy and certainly worth more than a buck.

iFriends ($1.99) – So far, it’s been worth steering clear of contact list management apps. They rarely bring added value, tend to be ugly, featureless and poorly-designed. iFriends, though, is potentially a worthy replacement for the phone button. The app features a dynamic top friends list with a clever friend scoring system, cutesy and slick graphics, contact searching and access to SMS too.

A recording studio in your pocket!

Before we close the gates on our fruity garden, we’ve got a few moments left to tell you about something we missed a couple of weeks back. FourTrack, from Sonoma Wire Works, is a traditional four-track recorder, crammed with a surprising number of features and functionality at the great price of $9.99.

By plugging in your iPhone headphones (with mic), you can record direct to FourTrack — effectively having a mini-studio in your iPhone. It’s great for toying round with ideas and creating quick track demos. Expect a full TAB review and tutorial for FourTrack sometime soon, in the meantime, for bedroom music makers and even pros on the go, you should grab this app and get recording.

That’s all for this week, we’ll be back next Saturday for another App Store Roundup. Drop by the comments and let us know which apps you’ve tried in the past week.

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Few over the age of 25 will like the idea of creating a permanent record of telephone calls and other forms of communication, but the discomfort of mature adults can represent a counter-indicator. Plus, it seems safe to assume that people can distinguish between government (bad) and personal (good) uses of recording technology. Communication archives will require strong privacy tools and a reliable delete function, but an argument against a permanent record is an argument against communication. After all, people avoid email in some contexts, but no one proposes eliminating email archives.

The retention of telephone numbers for calls dialed and answered represents an important feature of cell phones. A record of the content of a call could provide a similarly rich resource. The ability to play back a conversation could improve understanding or resolve disputes the same way as re-reading an email can. Voice conversations might get forwarded or included with a reply. Search technology could be applied directly to the audio or after a speech-to-text conversion. An accumulated body of communication would represent an important source of information and a treasured asset in the same manner as email and traditional letter writing.

Unified communication and messaging efforts seek to converge diverse modes of communication into a single stream, but the ability to link all forms of communication by subject, time and recipient may prove to be more useful. Conversation threading might work something like CRM for personal relationships. Tristan Louis offers a detailed wish list in his blog post describing a Personal Relationship Manager. Importantly, trust and the inflexible nature of the telephone network make AT&T et al. poor candidates for implementing conversation threading. The challenge is far better suited to the Internet-enabled communication tools of the emerging infocom industry.

How recording might alter communication behavior remains to be seen. The fact of a permanent record may improve the prospect for civil behavior or it may not — that certainly hasn’t proven to be the case for email. There exist laws regarding the recording of telephone calls, but the extension of off-line laws to an Internet context can prove hazardous. Efforts to implement conversation threading might give rise to an entirely new category of communication, as different from traditional telephone calls as email differs from writing a letter. And the utility of conversation threading may prove greater than the discomfort associated with recording telephone calls. Regardless, there is ample room for improving the communication status quo.

* 4 terabytes holds 1 million, 4-megabyte song files — the equivalent of 20,000 recorded songs each year since the arrival of record labels in the 1950s.

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