The iPad mini is quickly becoming a key component of Apple’s product lineup, and according to some sources, might even be the best-selling tablet Apple makes at this point. The smaller tablet hit shelves in early November last year, and likely had a huge impact on Apple’s record tablet sales last quarter, which topped 19.5 million devices. It’s impossible not to see a Retina update in the mini’s future, and new reports (via MacRumors) claim we’ll see production begin for that device this summer.

NPD DisplaySearch analyst says we should see display panel production begin for a Retina iPad mini beginning in June or July, which will be sourced primarily from LG Display, and specifically not from Samsung, Apple’s sometime partner, but not a display supplier for the current iPad mini. The iPad mini with Retina Display should have a 2,048×1536 pixel, 7.9-inch screen, which makes for a PPI of 324, or just about the same as that of the iPhone 5. That would make it fully compatible with apps designed for the full-sized iPad’s Retina screen, but give it an even higher pixel density at the same time thanks to the smaller screen dimensions.

This production start date would fit with an anticipated ship date of between July and September for a Retina iPad mini, thought we’d be much more likely to see such a device arrive in the fall according to recent statements by Apple CEO Tim Cook. During the most recent Apple investor call, he told people to look to fall and 2014 specifically for exciting new product launches from Apple, which seems to indicate we might have to wait at least that long for something as exciting as an iPad mini refresh.

A Retina screen on the iPad mini would help Apple address the only real shortcoming reviewers and critics have identified on the tablet thus far. When the first reviews hit the web, mention of the lack of a Retina display was almost universal, though few cited it as a dealbreaking oversight. Even so, the addition of that capability will likely bring at least as much praise as its absence brought raised eyebrows.

Early rumored case leaks have shown that the next generation might be slightly thicker than the existing version, which would be in keeping with what happened between the iPad 2 and the first Retina Display iPad, which gained both girth and weight over its predecessor. I’m personally hoping that this is an early prototype; the size and weight change between the iPad 2 and 3rd gen device was very noticeable, and took away from the benefits of having a better screen.

Apple isn’t hurting in the tablet game, but some competitors are starting to show stronger numbers than they have in the past, including Asus, which reported earnings this week. Those included 3 million tablets sold for the quarter, a larger portion of which are likely the Nexus 7 Android devices it makes for Google. NPD DisplaySearch says that the Kindle Fire line of tablets will get 300 ppi or higher displays in the next generation, too, so Apple bringing the best-of-breed display in its next-gen device makes sense in terms of helping keep its dominating lead.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins seems to be among the most transparent executives in tech in terms of showing his hand regarding future product plans, which may be partly because he doesn’t have much to lose at this point. In an interview yesterday, he downplayed tablet computing in what looks to be an indicator that BlackBerry will drop the PlayBook, its own lame duck tablet and the first of its devices to sport a QNX-based operating system.

Heins should’ve stuck to specifics, however, as he went way overboard and came off as though he was losing touch with reality in the interview as quoted by Bloomberg, with broad sweeping statements like “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” and “[t]ablets themselves are not a good business model.”

Tablets may not be a good business model for BlackBerry, which took huge writedowns on BlackBerry PlayBook inventory, were forced to run massive fire sales with price cuts of up to $400 to clear out inventory, and even finally discontinued the entry-level 16GB version entirely. By any real measure, the PlayBook was and is a failed product. But to say tablets won’t last five years, or that they aren’t a good business model requires that you completely ignore Apple’s tremendous success with the iPad, including the 19.5 million iPads it sold last quarter, an all-time record that came in well above analyst estimates.

Heins has recently made remarks that indicate BlackBerry may be experimenting with alternate device form factors, possibly taking a cue from hybrid gadgets like the Asus PadFone which combine a smartphone and tablet or mini-notebook style device in one. Once again, Heins said that he would need a BlackBerry tablet to be a unique device in an increasingly crowded market.

BlackBerry may have blown it on the PlayBook, but trash-talking tablets in general is worse than sticking your head in the sand: it makes the company look hopelessly out of touch. There’s definitely a lesson to be learned in the fact that Apple is the only company that’s really been able to succeed with a tablet device, but that lesson isn’t that the tablet market is a write-off entirely.

Don’t write off Microsoft’s chances in mobile just yet. It may still be struggling to make itself count in the smartphone space but early signs are more promising for Windows plus tablets. Microsoft has gone from having no share of the global tablet OS market in Q1 last year to taking 7.4% one year later, with three million Windows 8 tablets shipped in Q1 2013, according to preliminary figures from Strategy Analytics‘ Global Tablet OS Market Share: Q1 2013 report.

The analyst notes record tablet shipments in the quarter, with global branded tablet shipments reaching an “all-time high” of 40.6 million units in Q1, driven on by year-on-year growth of 117% (vs 146% in Q1 2012).

Microsoft launched Windows 8, its touchscreen-friendly reboot of its desktop OS, last fall – so it’s swung from zero to a 7.4% share in just under half a year. Compare that to the Windows Phone OS, which launched more than two years ago, in fall 2010: Windows Phone took only a 4.1% share in the US smartphone OS market in the three months ending February, according to Kantar figures. Globally, its share is even smaller. Earlier this year ABI Research predicted Windows Phone will end 2013 with around 3% of the worldwide market.

Returning to tablets, compared to the dominant players in the tablet OS market — iOS and Android — Microsoft’s share is still very modest. Strategy Analytics dubs it a “niche” portion, noting that “very limited distribution, a shortage of top tier apps, and confusion in the market, are all holding back shipments”. Microsoft has followed its Windows Phone strategy of paying developers to create apps for Windows 8 but it’s still got work to do in the quality vs quantity stakes. While “confusion in the market” likely refers to Microsoft’s decision to offer two flavours of tablet OS (Windows RT/Windows 8).

According to Strategy Analytics’ figures, Apple retains its lead in the tablet OS space, with a 48.2% share in Q1 vs a “robust” 43.4% for Android on 19.5 million and 17.6 million unit shipments respectively. Apple’s tablet lead over Android is shrinking considerably, dropping to under half the market from 63.1% in the year ago quarter when Android took just over a third (34.2%).

The analyst described Apple’s performance as “solid”, helped by its first full quarter with the iPad mini in its tablet portfolio. But Android is growing fastest, with global branded Android tablet shipments increasing 177% annually in the quarter. Add in budget white box tablets and Android becomes the market leader, taking a 52% share of the total tablet market while iOS slips to 41%.

Apple has just released its Q2 2013 earnings report, announcing sales of 37.4 million iPhones in the quarter ending March. Apple also reported 19.5 million iPad units sold, which shows incredibly strong growth for Apple’s tablet business.

This is a slight decrease from last quarter, which included a holiday sales spike and being the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 was available.

In terms of iPhones, this quarter’s 37.4 million represents 7 percent YOY growth; however it’s down 22 percent from last quarter. Where iPads are concerned, we’re seeing an 18 percent decline from last quarter, yet the segment remains strong. It’s grown 65 percent from last year’s 11.8 million from the same quarter.

Moreover, this is the iPad’s second-best quarter ever, losing out only to last quarter. It’s also the best non-holiday quarter the iPad has ever seen.

The iPhone numbers here aren’t all that surprising. Tim Cook has said before (and Steve Jobs before him) that expectations for the next-gen iPhone always tend to slow sales of the current model ahead of launch. Since we expect to see the next iPhone in June, it would make sense for sales to slow a bit.

Last quarter, Apple sold a whopping 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPads, both of which broke previous records. In other words, this latest report shows continued growth for the iDevice segment.

Apple doesn’t break out specific device numbers, so it’s hard to tell which models perform best. However, it seems that the introduction of the iPad mini has most certainly boosted sales for Apple’s tablet division, as many have been holding out for a smaller tablet from Apple since the iPad first launched.

The U.S. real estate market is seeing a bit of a rebound right now and, with it, real estate-related online services like Zillow, Redfin and Trulia and newcomers like Houzz are also getting back in the groove of launching regular updates. Trulia today launched its redesigned iPad app, which now features new listing pages with large photos, a new navigation menu and an improved map view. The Trulia redesign comes a week after Zillow launched its revamped iPhone app.

Previously, Trulia’s property pages looked a bit cluttered compared to some of the competing services, but in this redesign, they are being overhauled. Images are now significantly larger, and the sidebar now features a map view, as well as pricing history and additional information, without trying to cramp all of the details about the home into it.

The sidebar now also features a bit more local info, including the median home price in the neighborhood and school ratings. Trulia previously only showed this information in its property results map. Users can also use the usual iOS gestures to zoom in and out of the new images.

The rest of the app now follows the same design style as the property pages, including the new navigation menu, which has also been streamlined and simplified compared to the previous version.

Just like before, though, the app still puts a map at the center of the search experience. In this new version, however, the company has added colored markers to make it easier to see which houses you’ve already looked at and which ones have just come on the market.

Trulia has been slowly ramping up its development over the last few months, recently launching its Trulia Suggests feature, which learns from your browsing habits on the site and provides users with personalized recommendations. As we reported last month, Trulia also recently completed a $150 million in follow-on funding to strengthen its cash reserves and for potential acquisitions and mergers.

Before Mailbox was even an officially announced project, and long before it sold to Dropbox in what is said to have been around a $100 million deal, Josh Milas and Alex Obenauer took to Kickstarter to fund their very own reinvention of email. The team created Mail Pilot, which promised “email reimagined,” with the goal of turning email into a task-oriented to-do list to help people truly get things done.

Here we are over a year after the Kickstarter project officially closed its successful funding period, and Mail Pilot is finally ready to debut its iPhone and iPad app to the general public. But it’s a very different one than it was as originally conceived, which, depending on what backers were expecting, may disappoint a few of them. Mail Pilot’s founders, however, believe the new model is better than their old, for backers and new customers alike.

Originally planned as a subscription service that, like Mailbox, used third-party servers to process a user’s email, Mail Pilot took a late game change in direction, announcing last week that it would be dropping the third-party server model and also doing away with subscription fees. Now it’s a one-time purchase for the app itself, and the app communicates directly with your own mail server, without having to route through a second destination. This offers speed and performance improvements, alleviates privacy concerns, and keeps costs down, the founders explained to me in an interview, and as someone who has used both early and later versions of the Mail Pilot beta, I can personally attest to the improvements in general performance.

“Dropping the subscription was conversation that we had had at least once every month since even before we went on to Kickstarter, because we didn’t know whether people would be willing to pay that, and we didn’t think they would be,” Obenauer explained in an interview. “But it was necessary for the server costs and for implementing some of the more advanced features.”

Since launching in beta back in September, Obenauer said that they’ve learned a lot more about what’s possible using just IMAP from the local applications themselves, and they also learned that the majority of users were dead set against having a subscription for something like a mail client, as expected. Also, the privacy implications of using third-party servers to process mail messages made many participants uncomfortable, even with proper encryption and security in place.

The challenge then became reworking the Mail Pilot model to implement its advanced features without the use of a third-party server. Those features involve mostly turning email into a more immediately actionable to-do list, with a checkbox to mark things as complete and send them to archive, the power set them for review at a specific later date or just a day to a few days away with a single swipe, and the ability to create lists out of emails directly.

The app is universal, and retails for $14.99. It’s a bit steep for an iOS title, but Obenauer said that they’ve found it’s what their audience is “willing to pay for an improved email experience.” That it’s more of a productivity app than a simple Gmail client is what helps justify the price, Milas explained, and it is true that apps like Things and OmniFocus are right in that price range.

Mail Pilot’s ditching of subscription fees means that backers who pledged a lot of money for extended service get free copies of the various Mail Pilot apps for life, and the iOS version is just the start. Milas says that a Mac version is on the horizon next, and there are plans for Windows and Android apps to follow down the road. Mail Pilot supports any email service provider with IMAP compatibility.

Mail apps are being acquired faster than they can be built, so I asked Obenauer and Milas whether they’re in this for the long haul or looking for a quick exit. They said they’re best-positioned right now to be able to build the product they want on their own, but anything’s possible.

San Francisco-based virtual meeting player FuzeBox has had some impressive success to kick-off 2013, posting a 200 percent rise in demand for its product in the initial quarter of the year, with 50,000 new subscribers added in just a few short months. The company also now counts 30 percent of the Fortune 500 among its clients, and is debuting new features for its iPad client to help continue its adoption as more meeting attendees shift to mobile.

The new features include the ability to initiate meetings from iPad, with up to 12 streams in full HD for participants, and sharing of content either via a built-in web browser or from cloud-based content. iPad meeting goers can also shoot video via their device’s camera and upload it immediately for sharing in full HD, as well as begin meetings for a third-party presenter. Refinements and changes to the UI should also provide for a smoother experience. Overall, the idea is to make the iPad client feel like much more of a first-class citizen in the overall FuzeBox ecosystem.

“Mobile is accelerating at a greater pace than a lot of the other platforms, but the desktop platforms are still dominant in terms of current usage,” CEO Jeff Cavins explained in an interview, describing the growing importance of mobile. “But what we see is a trend towards just huge deployments of iPads as these workplaces have gone mobile. Think of it in terms of cost savings: it’s a lot more cost-effective to deploy iPads than laptops in a lot of cases, and a lot more direct and easy to use in a lot of cases, too.”

The FuzeBox advantage is in making sure that features work across platforms seamlessly, and that services available on one are available on all. The company is investing heavily in infrastructure, with data centers around the world to make sure it can handle server demand and deliver high-quality streaming results, since it gets a lot of use these days in helping creative teams demo and collaborate on rich media content like HD video advertisements. Eventually, we’ll see the features introduced in the latest iPad version make their way to Android tablets, and also potentially even to smartphones down the road.

There are a lot of challengers in this market, but FuzeBox, which was founded in 2009, thinks it’s iterating fast enough and smart enough to keep the rest of the pack at bay. So far it seems to be working well enough to attract new customers, including strong attention from those with the deepest pockets.

Keyboard cases for iPad are many and multiplying, but at this point it’s a question of refining the best concepts, not creating dramatically different devices. The Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case for iPad is a great example, taking a lot of cues from the massively popular Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad and folio style designs to create a solution that might be as near as perfect as tablet typers can get.

• Keyboard is 6.4mm thin
• 160 hours battery life
• Magnets for secure closure and three viewing angles
• MSRP: $99.99
• Product info page

The Ultimate Keyboard Case is not small, but it isn’t big either. It avoids feeling anywhere near as bulky as a total hardcase like the Brydge, but don’t expect something with the low profile of Apple’s Smart Cover, for instance. But it sill manages to be just about as low-profile as the Logitech Ultrathin, and it has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, including a protective cover for the back of your iPad, three possible viewing angles for your device, and a sound port built into the case that redirects the iPad’s speaker output for better listening.

The materials feel top-quality, it weighs only 411 grams (slightly more than the Ultrathin’s 355 grams) and its keyboard layout feels natural and won’t impede your touch typing abilities. The design of the keyboard component and faux leather hinge means that you can use it with the keyboard folded back in behind, without keys awkwardly facing outward where you can accidentally hit them with your fingers, as is often the case with folio designs.

As mentioned, the Belkin Ultimate Keyboard Case is great to type on, with one small quibble: the recessed design of the keys means that it can be awkward to hit the space bar, since your thumb will also brush up against the base of the case itself. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it does annoy when you’re coming from a standard notebook or desktop keyboard. But the dedicated keys, including a microphone key that brings up Siri on later generation iPads or voice dictation on earlier ones, as well as the convenience factor outweigh any downsides.

The Ultimate Keyboard’s other big feature is its use of magnets to allow for three different viewing angles. It’s a nice trick, and one that works well. The one limitation here is that if you’re trying to type in an unstable setting, say on a very bumpy car or train ride, the magnets can actually become dislodged. As long as you’re using the Belkin on a flat surface and you aren’t on Safari, however, the magnets do their job and offer a bit of flexibility vs. the Logitech Ultrathin.

I feel like we may be reaching peak keyboard case, especially for the standard-sized iPad. But Belkin’s Ultimate Keyboard Case, though somewhat late to the party, shows that there’s still some depth left to be plumbed in terms of wringing innovation out of the overcrowded space. At $99.99, it’s not cheap, but if you’re looking for a way to make your iPad a much more capable text-entry machine, while still offering full protection for your iPad itself, this is a good option.

We’ve covered Seattle-based Haiku Deck‘s iPad-based presentation tool in the past, and come away impressed. The mobile native PowerPoint killer lets anyone create attractive presentations quickly using only their device, and now the startup behind it has raised a $3 million Series A funding round, led by Trilogy Partnership and including existing investors Madrona Venture Group, Founders Co-Op and more.

The $3 million in Series A Funding adds to the just under $1 million Haiku Deck secured in seed funding prior to this, and will help the startup continue to build out its product and expand its user base through additional hiring, Haiku Deck founder and CEO Adam Tratt explained in an interview.

“We’re really excited to be able to grow the team to be able to deliver more to a broader population of people who are using the app,” he said. “As we catch on with more salespeople, and marketing people, social media people and bloggers, there’s just a ton of opportunity for us to build out the platform so we can deliver more awesome things to that audience.”

While the funding means a renewed vigor in product development, Tratt also says they’ll still be sticking to the startup’s core strategy of focusing on simplicity, and delivering tools that are easy for non-designers to use to create excellent-looking presentations. Most recently, the startup added graph and list-making tools to Haiku Deck, both of which you can see in action in the embedded presentation below.

http://www.haikudeck.com/p/WvdAbKOoUd/why-work-at-haiku-deck

Haiku Deck is a perfect example of a classic tool rethought for the mobile-first generation, complete with simple ways built-in to make sharing the presentations it can be used to create easily on the web. Tratt’s small operation has done very well in the eight months or so it’s been on the App Store, and after initial success with the education market, it’s now being picked up by the kind of people who naturally share tools, which bodes well for future adoption.

“What we’re seeing increasingly now that we have charts and graphs and a little more flexibility with the text is more business users and bloggers using the app,” he said. “It’s sort of like a whole new circle in the Venn diagram of awareness for us. Bloggers are increasingly posting Haiku Decks that summarize the story they’re trying to tell in a way that’s very visual and Tweetable. And with salespeople, there are lots of road warriors out there that are going from meeting to meeting trying to customize their pitch.”

While it continues to be free, Haiku Deck is working on premium features to start generating incoming revenue. The current focus is still on user growth, though, according to Tratt, which means we’ll see other updates arrive first.

A group of MIT students created an app at a PennApps Hackathon that can do amazing things, connecting multiple iOS devices into a single, interactive screen. The app itself, which doesn’t require any kind of jailbreaking or special access and is currently available in the App Store for free, is impressive enough, but Mosaic has much bigger plans: They’ve also created an SDK to let other developers incorporate similar functionality into their own apps.

The possibilities are immediately attractive. Imagine a board game that spans four iPad minis, one for each player. Or a dungeon-crawling RPG where you build the map by laying iPhones end to end. There are obvious uses too in display advertising and customer-facing terminals and POS applications, but the prospect of interactive apps that can use the multiple iOS devices already residing in many households to add up to something more than just the sum of its parts is what really excites the imagination.

“We’ve talked to a lot of casual developers and there’s a significant amount of interest for things like board games, that’s like the easiest one for everyone to do,” Mosaic co-founder Ishaan Gulrajani explained by way of examples. “Everyone has an iPad, you put them together, and then you have a surface that’s huge enough that you can play board games, or you have something like Angry Birds, where you have the birds on one phone, and then on another the second player can build a structure that the first tries to knock down.”

For tabletop gamers eager for a digital version of Settlers of Catan or Warhammer that accurately recreates the experience of the physical board game, but with the flexibility and added extensibility of digital, the appeal is clear. Mosaic has also been talking to creative agencies, and they’ve observed that people will actually open the app just for the novelty of this new way of interacting with the device. For brands and advertisers, that’s a huge selling point, since it’s a draw for an audience that might otherwise pass something by entirely. For increasing engagement on in-store display advertising, or on branded content, that’s a big plus.

“Brands can do things like ‘Swipe this Starbucks coupon from one phone to another, and you both get a dollar over your next Starbucks purchase,’ for instance,” Gulrajani said. “We have something that’s inherently viral, and we want to be able to leverage that in every way that we can.”

The Mosaic.io app itself, which is designed mainly as a proof-of-concept and sales demonstration tool for the tech behind it, nonetheless offers some useful features for end-users, too. You can instantly get set up sharing photos stored either locally or on Dropbox, and as you can see from my demo photos, the display will update to reflect different orientations when you swipe across screens. You can tell it’s just meant for demo purposes when you use the app, but even the limited functionality is enough to wow anyone watching.

So far, the Mosaic team has tested up to 10 iPhones, and has found that even with that many devices, video latency isn’t a huge issue. The way they achieve that is by using a single synchronized clock across the various devices using clock synchronization algorithms, and while quality will vary depending on the strength of a user’s Internet connection, Gulrajani says it’s “definitely” acceptable for playing back video.

Mosaic is looking to launch initially by connecting with developers eager to use it. They aren’t implementing any kind of queuing system, and are treating requests on a first-come, first-served basis. The startup is bootstrapped, and hopes to remain that way for the foreseeable future, with plans to later charge for API use based on the volume of calls required by developers.

Strong growth in tablet sales is helping to drive overall growth in the global smart connected device market, according to analyst IDC, as the market reshapes itself with mobility at its core. Posting a new report for full year 2012 and projections through to 2017, the analyst notes that market expansion last year was “largely driven” by 78.4% year-over-year growth in tablet shipments — which exceeded 128 million units. But this is just the beginning for tablets: IDC expects tablet shipments to surpass desktop PCs in 2013, and portable PCs in 2014.

Overall, worldwide shipments of smart connected devices grew 29.1% year over year in 2012, and the entire market pushed past one billion units shipped, with a total market value of $576.9 billion.

IDC said it expects tablets to grow their share of the overall smart devices market from 10.7% in 2012, to an estimated 16% by 2017 — with a projected growth rate of 174.5% between 2012 and 2017. Over the same period, the desktop PC category will have negative growth of -5%, and will slide from 12.4% share in 2012 to 6% share in 2017.

Portable PCs are also project to take a declining share of the market, dropping from a 16.8% share in 2012 down to 11% estimated for 2017. The category will still see some growth, according to IDC, which is projecting 19.3% growth for portables over 2012 to 2017. But the powerhouse growth is in the tablets and smartphone categories — the latter projected to also grow by triple-digits (109.9%).

This year IDC said it expects the tablet market to reach “a new high” of 190 million shipment units, with year-on-year growth of 48.7%. While the smartphone market is expected to grow 27.2% to 918.5 million units.

“Consumers and business buyers are now starting to see smartphones, tablets, and PCs as a single continuum of connected devices separated primarily by screen size,” said Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President for Clients and Displays, in a statement. “Each of these devices is primarily used for data applications and different individuals choose different sets of screen sizes in order to fit their unique needs. These kinds of developments are creating exciting new opportunities that will continue to drive the smart connected devices market forward in a positive way.”

Powered by growth in the tablet and smartphone categories, IDC predicts the worldwide smart connected device market will continue to “surge” — with shipments forecast to surpass 2.2 billion units and revenues reaching $814.3 billion in 2017. By 2017, 83% of the market is projected to be composed of smartphones and tablets, up from 70.8% in 2012.

Returning to 2012, IDC noted that in Q4 of the year Apple significantly closed the gap with market leader Samsung in the quarter, thanks to the combination of its refreshed smartphone (iPhone 5) and new smaller tablet (iPad Mini). Apple took 20.3% unit shipment share in the quarter versus 21.2% for Samsung, according to IDC. On a revenue basis, Apple continued to dominate with 30.7% share versus 20.4% share for Samsung.

Zendesk has released its first iPad app whose features reflect an approach that puts a premium on development and a focus on apps native to the iOS platform.

And it is built for mountains and enhanced for couches:

iPads have the least usage among Zendesk customers compared to the iPhone and Android. But it is growing fast in comparison, especially considering that it is so much newer compared to its counterparts:

Zendesk’s focus on mobile stems from the popularity of iPads and other devices:

For the most part, people use the iPad to do simple tasks, which is reflected in how Zendesk developed the app. It does not have administrative functionality or advanced analytics, which they say are jobs still better suited for the web-based environment.

The new iPad app’s capabilities include a simple dashboard, swipe actions on tickets, ticket history on customer profiles and a new reporting dashboard.

The coolest addition has to be the bookmarks that uses a “playlist” metaphor. It lists the issues the agent is monitoring. Each item on the list is a different bookmark that has a number for the total number of issues for that particular topic.

Here’s what the reporting dashboard looks like:

Zendesk has chosen to build out a native iOS app for the iPad, so it can use the operating system’s core capabilities. Pie charts and the “spinning wheel” features are demonstrative of this approach.

Zendesk has a team dedicated to mobile development, which is reflected in this release. But like a lot of apps, it is still pretty lightweight. Deeper analytics seem like a missing piece that should be added in the next release.

The company does plan to open its mobile capabilities to developers. That should mean a broader set of features that would include analytics.

Apple reached out to us today to clarify that regardless of comments made by Google Executive Chairman at the Big Tent event in India earlier today, it hasn’t yet received an official submission of Google Now for iOS. There’s no such app in the queue, Apple says, so Google Now on iOS is still a pipe dream for the time being.

In case you missed it, Schmidt’s comments are at 17:50 in this video of the fireside chat from Big Tent with Alan Rusbridger. He explicitly talks about Apple’s approval policy and Google apps submitted to the queue. But it appears his comments didn’t specifically reflect an iOS version of Google Now in particular, despite bringing up the subject in direct reference to that topic brought up by a Rusbridger question.

Google Now for iOS might still be in the works at Google as this apparently leaked video suggests, but it’s still in Google’s hands according to this new information direct from Apple.

Update: Apple has officially stated that Google Now was not submitted to the App Store for review.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt was on stage today at the Google Big Tent Summit in India, and he discussed a range of topics, including Google Now. Recent rumors posit that Google Now could make its way to iPhone and iPad, based on a supposed leaked video received by Engadget last week. Schmidt addressed a direct question about Google Now on iOS today at the Big Tent event, adding fuel to the fire by suggesting the ball is now in Apple’s court for Google Now on iOS.

According to Techmeme Editor Mahendra Palsule, who was watching the live stream of the event and live-tweeting the proceedings, Schmidt responded to a direct question from moderator Alan Rusbridger about when Google Now would work on his iPhone with “You’ll need to discuss that with Apple” (at around 17:50). “Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of them they approve and some of them they don’t,” he went on to say. It’s similar to the kind of messaging that came out of Google and its execs when rumors were swirling about Google releasing Maps as a standalone app.

The demo video for Google Now claims to be a promotional video of the feature that was circulated internally, and shows how the smart assistant feature would work on iPhone and iPad, via the Google Search app. It would live there and be available from a swipe up within the app, the same way it’s available system-wide with Android 4.2.X devices. The video demos features including traffic for commutes, live updates for flights, translation and conversion services, as well as updates for athletic events and sightseeing info.

Even contained within the Google Search app, Google Now is a feature that would be useful on iOS. And for the search giant itself, iOS presence for the contextual assistant would mean a much larger potential data pool to draw from in crafting its personalization engine.

Schmidt’s answer to Rusbridger isn’t exactly a direct confirmation that Google has indeed submitted Google Now for iOS, but it’s a very strong suggestion that that’s the case. Apple has a track record for giving these things the green light, too, so there’s definitely hope for iOS fans who also want a taste of Google Now.

Swiss mobile development and design firm Clever & Son bills itself as a “maker of premium apps,” and judging by Couch Player, its latest creation, the startup lives up to its name. Couch Player is essentially a replacement for the built-in Apple Music app on the iPad, but it manages to be much more with just a few simple tweaks.

In particular, Couch Player emphasizes the playlist, and reorganizes the entire experience to make that the central focus of the app. Playlist creation on Couch Player is handled via simple drag-and-drop gestures, with a browsing interface that takes better advantage of the iPad’s ample screen real estate to make it possible to simultaneously navigate your entire iTunes library (either stored locally or in the cloud via iTunes Match) while also keeping an eye on and adding to your playlists.

You can easily create multiple playlists on the fly, and switch between them too, all while keeping your library open and browsable in a column on the left-hand side. Small features like the ability to swipe left on any song in a playlist and get related albums, artist and song suggestions for other content to add to the playlist add feature functionality.

Couch Player doesn’t offer much flare in terms of interface design, but there is a playback progress bar that’s color-coded based on the album cover for the currently playing track. And the simplicity is actually one of its most attractive features: everything gets out of the way so you can concentrate on building the perfect playlist for an outdoor picnic or pick-up basketball game.

Simplicity was the name of the game for Clever & Son co-founder and managing director Tobias Gemperli in designing Couch Player, he explained in an interview. The point wasn’t to replace default system software, but to transform playlists from a feature into a focus.

“Our aim was not to create a feature complete music app but rather to concentrate on the core functionality which is the playlist creation,” he explained in an email interview. “Since we couldn’t find any app which does this well on the iPad we decided to build our own. Our aim was to make playlist creation an experience on its own.”

Some unfortunate things missing from Couch Player include an AirPlay or Bluetooth sound device source selector from within the app, but it’s a relatively minor complaint because you can still use your iPad’s multi-tasking bar to choose a speaker to connect to. But the simplicity with which you can build and switch between playlists is what makes Couch Player appealing, and that part is well executed.

Couch Player will be released Thursday, March 21 in the App Store for the public, where it’ll be available for a starting price of $2. If you’re looking for a home jukebox experience that works with your existing library, it’s an intelligently designed app, and the kind of thing Apple should be looking at for clues about improving on its own inbuilt player experience.

Apple has a couple of new interesting glimpses into possible new future tech published by the USPTO today, including a patent application for an iPad Smart Cover with a built-in battery and induction charging, and a mobile camera design that offers true optical zoom, instead of the low-quality digital zoom we’re all used to in current devices.

The induction charging patent application (via AppleInsider) makes the Smart Cover about a thousand times more useful than it is in its current form. It adds an inductive charging coil to the Smart Cover, which can transmit to a receiving end within the iPad itself. The Smart Cover would also contain a battery within its segmented padded divisions, which would make it possible to charge up the iPad when the Smart Cover is covering the iPad’s screen and lined up properly via the existing built-in magnets, or when folded behind the iPad to prop it up for viewing.

The Smart Cover itself would need to be plugged in to charge, or alternatively could be fitted with solar panels to pick up extra juice from ambient light. But the big news for the larger ecosystem would be that the iPad itself would have to be outfitted with wireless charging equipment. So long as Apple stuck with an accepted standard like Qi for that tech, it would open the door for plenty of new opportunities from third-party accessory makers: you can basically taste the fresh batch of new Kickstarter projects.

In a second application published today (via UnwiredView), Apple describes a new type of digital camera for inclusion in mobile devices, which would enable optical zooming in a module that’s still small enough to fit inside of an iPhone 5′s case. Basically, the camera would bounce incoming light off of an internal mirror at a 90-degree angle, meaning it could use the entire width of the phone to build a lens and optical zoom element rather than just being limited by the thickness of the device’s body from front to back.

The patent also describes using a light splitter cube to break up incoming light into separate red, blue and green frequencies, which makes it possible to use camera sensors that are more color-accurate, and take in much more light in the same environment vs. sensors that have light-splitting features built in. Once again, this is made possible thanks to the added room for camera elements Apple would be able to use by changing the orientation of the camera components to lengthwise across the device via the mirror behind the lens on the back of the camera.

Both of these patents are significant, because they provide avenues Apple can explore to add truly new and useful features to the iPad and iPhone. Induction charging has been rumored as a possible feature of the iPhone 5, the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 6, but so far it hasn’t come to pass. Apple generally waits on wireless tech for it to prove its value with consumers before adding it to their products, however. The camera design modification, however, is something it could easily implement ahead of anyone else, since Apple tends to focus special attention on camera improvements in the iPhone, especially when making otherwise iterative improvements (as in the leap between the iPhone 4 and 4S, for instance).

Dramatic changes to product hardware would go a long way toward helping Apple address criticism that it’s ‘falling behind’ rivals like Samsung in the innovation department, and these in particular would be impressive by avoiding the specs race in favor of more interesting changes with real relevance to users. Still, Apple’s patents are never a good indicator of immediate product development strategies, so don’t hold your breath for these features in Apple’s next generation of devices.

Apple has been working on the iPhone since long before it hit the market in 2007, and today a new developer prototype has come to light that shows how it might have looked if they’d rushed it to market earlier. The 2005 internal prototype is pictured in photos obtained by Ars Technica, from an unnamed former Apple employee.

The prototype iPhone doesn’t look like an iPhone as we know it at all, aside from the fact that it boasts a rectangular screen. The device is 5″ x 7″, closer to the current iPad mini than anything else, which is 5.3″ by 7.87″. It’s also two inches thick, which is around the depth of six iPad minis stacked, but that was necessary for including all the ports the iPhone prototype had on board.

Yes, ports. The early iPhone design had a USB port, Ethernet and serial. They weren’t included so that you could hook up to your dot matrix printer – Ars’ source says the development team was simply making the gadget as easy to work internally with as possible in its early, pre-release form. The unit itself was designed completely around helping the internal team refine the product; a large display also makes it easier to work with. But back then everything was up in the air, meaning it was still arguably a real possibility that the iPhone could have shipped with wired Internet on board.

Ars notes that the chip used in the prototype is the older, slower antecedent of the Samsung-made ARM design used in the actual first iPhone, so the partnership was in place long before Apple went into full-scale production.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in 2010 that Apple actually worked on the iPad before it ever began work on the iPhone, so it makes sense that an early prototype for an Apple phone would largely resemble the Apple slate that would later follow. And in basic engineering terms, it’s easier to work big before working small. And even though they never would’ve shipped it, it’s funny to imagine that Apple was making phablets long before Android OEMs were stretching the limits of what sized device can comfortably be termed a “phone.”

Apple’s iOS is consolidating its grip on the enterprise market and taking share from Android, according to customer data from enterprise file sharing and hybrid cloud storage company Egnyte, which offers cloud back-up and storage services for a mix of customers, from large corporates with thousands of seats to SMEs with just a handful.

Of course different enterprises have very different needs and requirements when it comes to mobile devices. Take a look at governments, for instance, and you’d be convinced BlackBerry is still killing it. But as a snapshot of the mobile OSes being favoured by different sized companies, mostly U.S.-based (80 percent of the data, with the other 20 percent pertaining to European businesses), this data is an interesting subset to add to the pile.

The data, shared directly with TechCrunch, covers 100,000 of Egnyte’s paying customers over the last year-and-a-half+, tracking which OS they are using to access its services on mobile devices and also splitting out iPhone and iPad use. The numbers look strong for Apple, with the iPhone especially growing its proportion of users since the second half of 2011 to-date — perhaps helped by the halo effect of iPads arriving in the enterprise and persuading business folk to trade their BlackBerrys for iPhones. Egnyte’s data doesn’t specifically refer to BlackBerrys but does show Apple taking share away from Android.

“Apple seems to have at least temporarily won the hearts and minds of business users with its products accounting for about 70 percent of our traffic,” Egnyte told TechCrunch.

In Q3/Q4 2011, Egnyte’s data shows the following device breakdown — giving iOS a 68 percent majority of Egnyte’s enterprise user-base:

• iPhone 28%
• iPad 40%
• Android 30%  (phones and tablets)
• other 2%

In 2012, the iPhone grew its proportion, while the iPad’s very sizeable share shrank to below a third — suggesting iPhone usage cannibalised iPad usage to an extent. Overall, though, Apple’s percentage rose to 69 percent:

• iPhone 42%
• iPad 27%
• Android 30% (phones and tablets)
• other 1%

Egnyte has also scraped some early data for Q1 2013, which shows both iPhone and iPad usage rising — this time apparently at the expense of Android phones and tablets, which had previously held a steady share of 30 percent. There is also no sign as yet of a Microsoft enterprise mobile resurgence with its Windows Phone OS (the ‘other’ catch-all category doesn’t yet figure in the 2013 data). Apple holds a whopping, ‘Pacman-shaped’ 78 percent share of the user base as of Q1 2013:

• iPhone 48%
• iPad 30%
• Android 22% (phones and tablets)

Egnyte’s data on enterprise users’ preference for iPhones tallies broadly with data from mobile device management company Good Technology, covered recently by CITEworld. Good reported even higher percentages for iOS — with nearly 77 percent of devices activated by its corporate customers in Q4 2012 powered by iOS, up from 71 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. Good also found Android’s enterprise mobile shared declining, dropping to 22.7 percent in Q4 2012, down from 29 percent in Q4 2011. (It also tracked a 0.5 percent rise for Windows Phone.)

Returning to Egnyte’s data for 2012, almost a fifth (19 percent) of the Android traffic was generated using a Nook tablet — so despite the iPad’s popularity with business users, some enterprises are evidently not immune to the lure of using cheaper tablet hardware.

The company also breaks out Wi-Fi access by device for 2012. It found that 40 percent of iPad sessions occurred over Wi-Fi, while just 31 percent of iPhone sessions did — suggesting the iPhone still prevails as the device of choice in the most mobile situations, ie when users are moving around a lot or aren’t in range of a Wi-Fi network (perhaps because businesses have purchased Wi-Fi only iPads to keep ongoing costs down).

Egnyte speculates that smartphones are fractionally quicker to begin using than tablets, typically sitting within easy reach, so tend to be the device of choice for viewing files on the fly, with users waiting for a more comfortable environment before getting out the tablet to do some editing.  ”Overall, tablet use in the corporate marketplace hasn’t been as high as we would expect, but… we think this may be more due to people’s love affairs with their phones, than for any lack in the capabilities of a tablet,” the company said.

Commenting generally on the data, Egnyte told TechCrunch:

While initially iPads dominated our use, iPhones have taken over.  2011 use showed the iPad accounting for 40 percent of our usage, in 2012 iPhones are now 42 percent of usage, and Android has remained constant at about 30 percent of use. There are two interesting points here, first, Apple seems to have at least temporarily won the hearts and minds of business users with its products accounting for about 70 percent of our traffic. This is important because it’s a flip-flop from the days of old, where Apple products were rarely seen in the corporate landscape.   It’s also an indication that when BYOD wrested control over what devices consumers used from IT, they overwhelmingly chose an easy to use product that focused on UI and usability, perhaps even at times over depth.

The second interesting point is that while tablets are certainly hot, iPhones are driving most of the traffic. This may be due to the fact that the iPad doesn’t replace a laptop yet as the corporate device of choice, but try and take a business person’s smartphone away from them, and you may not have a hand left.  Smartphones are a must have, and we suspect that since people are already checking email on such a phone while they are working remotely, it’s an extra step to get out and bootup your tablet, so if you have a great phone app that does the same thing, just use it to view your files. Most editing we think still happens on the laptop/desktop.  This ‘on the go’ access is further confirmed by the fact that only 31 percent of iPhone sessions occurred over Wi-Fi, that means over three-quarters of access happens via cellular services.

Office for iPad is a long-standing rumor that frankly becomes less interesting to me with every day that passes, thanks in large part to great third-party apps like Haiku Deck that are stepping up to take advantage of Microsoft’s waffling on the matter. Haiku Deck was a great product when it launched back in August 2012, and a big version 2.0 update makes it even better today.

Haiku Deck’s entire philosophy is to make it possible for anyone to quickly create great-looking presentations on their iPad, with a minimum of fuss. No design experience is required, and the app features a built-in Creative Commons search tool to help you load your preso with great pics, without running afoul of any copyrights. You can also upload your own pics (or grab them from Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram and more), should you so choose, pick a theme, enter some text, and you’re off to the races.

The new version of Haiku Deck keeps things simple, but also adds some additional image management features, including the ability to reposition, zoom and crop pictures, as well as added privacy controls that make it possible to share your slide decks to just a select few. But the big new feature additions are a chart and graph creation engine, and the ability to build bulleted or numbered lists.

In keeping with its overall mission, Haiku Deck’s charting tools keep things easy, and are designed around touch-based input. You should be able to build a great looking chart if you’ve never opened a spreadsheet-making program, according to Haiku Deck founder and CEO Adam Tratt.

“We wanted to take the same approach to presenting data as we have with presenting words and pictures,” he explained. “So we took a look at charts and graphs, and what we realized was that the workflow for people trying to create a chart is they open up Excel, and they create a table, and they try to create a chart, and if you’re good at Excel you can make a decent one, but if you’re not a designer it’s hard to make it look good, and most people can’t even build one to begin with.”

Haiku Deck then built their own engine, keeping things simple and designed entirely around the visual product and touch-based manipulation. You drag columns and pie pieces to change numbers, and you add new values simply by tapping. Even the most incompetent of Excel users can get a great-looking simple pie chart made in probably around 10 minutes or less.

The new features definitely add to Haiku Deck’s flexibility, but also manage not to add too much clutter to the app. Tratt said that striking that balance is crucial to the startup’s mission, and making sure to keep simplicity at the forefront will continue to be a priority going forward.

Haiku Deck is available free, which likely had a strong impact in terms of helping it attract 300,000 downloads in its first six months. Those who download are using the software, too: over 250,000 Haiku Decks have been created with the software since launch. Tratt says that the company, which has $900,000 in initial funding and is currently looking around for more, will focus primarily on user growth for the foreseeable future, and then turn its attention to revenue generation down the road.

Microsoft may or may not eventually release Powerpoint for iPad, but if you’re tired of waiting, give Haiku Deck a try. It barely resembles Microsoft’s tired old presentation software, and that’s a very good thing.

Ever since Google launched its Chrome browser on multiple mobile devices, more people have been getting used to syncing their desktop browsing experiences for on-the-go usage. Being able to have one browsing experience wherever you go is handy, but when a browser doesn’t move as fast as, say, Safari on the iPhone, it’s hard to dedicate yourself to making the switch.

Google knows that and has pushed updates to its Chrome browser for Android, iPhone and iPad with the focus on bringing the speed of the experience up to snuff. On the Android side of the house, the company says that the browsing experience is now 25 percent faster thanks to expanded support for HTML5 and utilization of the latest V8 JavaScript engine. If pages load fast and scrolling is like butter, you’re going to use it more. Period. Those same changes will start being made on other platforms soon, Google says.

Here’s what Grace Kloba and Rohit Rao had to say about the changes:

We’re continuing to add plenty of under-the-hood stability, security improvements and bug fixes to Chrome for both Android and iOS. We look forward to your feedback on the latest versions of Chrome, now available on Google Play and in the App Store.

On the iOS side of the house, Google has added better search and sharing options, which are key components of a speedy experience on an iPhone or iPad. Clearly, Android has the advantage of having stronger sharing options baked into the OS, so Google has to be more creative with how things are done within its apps.

Instead of seeing a long URL in the “Omnibox” at the top of the browser, you’ll see your search phrase so you can keep refining it instead of dealing with that ugly URL. After using a Chromebook for a while now, I’m longing for the day that I’ll never have to see an ugly URL again, especially when all you’re using is a browser on a screen.

Here’s what the experience looks like; the changes might not be available to you for a few weeks:

On iOS, sharing and history surfing got simplified as well. You can now hold the back button to see all of the pages you’ve previously visited and tap Share under Menu to share whatever page you’re on. You’ll also see more options than before. The big thing here is that you can share any web page directly to iOS messages, a feature that has been sorely missing.

Is mobile Chrome there completely on these devices? No. But being the No. 1 desktop browser does give Google a leg up on adoption. By the time that most people have at least given the browser a chance on their mobile devices, hopefully Google will keep up its quick iteration process and lock those folks in. Apple definitely needs to take another look at Safari moving forward before it gets completely taken over by Mountain View.