[Andy's the first of our new reviewers - so welcome to him, and I hope you enjoy his review! - Matt]

The success of the App Store has been one of the key factors in the continued success of the iPhone (and iPod Touch), allowing developers to fill holes in the functionality of the device and widen its appeal to more users than the base functionality alone might attract. Giving the platform a way to regularly refresh itself also helps keep the device from gathering dust on a shelf somewhere once the initial thrill of a shiny new gadget has worn off.

But the success of the App Store has led to problems of its own. With dozens (often a hundred or more) new apps appearing daily, keeping track has gone beyond the realm of the casual user. The onboard App Store application itself no longer gives the user an easy way to keep track of all the new applications. Also, with increasing competition among the developers, one or two day sales mean there are often bargains to be had but how are users meant to know?
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I love the statistics behind an industry, watching trends, and so on. And yesterday saw AppleInsider publish a table from Gartner’s new stats on worldwide smartphone sales in Q1, 2008. It’s only a summary of the top 5 manufacturers, but it makes interesting reading. Nokia are top, of course, with their Symbian-based S60 smartphones selling 14.6 million units in Q1, with a fast-moving RIM in second place on 4.3 million units. And, the point of Apple Insider’s article, Apple are a relatively new entry at number 3, having overtaken all other established smartphone makers to achieve worldwide sales of 1.7 million in the quarter. So that’s HTC, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all beaten comfortably by the new contender from Cupertino.

What’s especially notable from the statistics is that Nokia and Apple don’t market their ‘smartphones’ as such. Read the full story

It’s now been more than a year since the Apple iPhone was launched onto the world stage, to mass acclaim, seven months since it was available to buy in the USA and three months since it’s been out in the UK. Having played with the iPhone first in August last year, I could see the huge leap forwards in terms of user accessibility and the fabulously quick and easy means of syncing and updating, and I genuinely thought that Apple could be onto a big, big success story. But has this happened?

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