U.S. Government & Military To Get Secret-Worthy Android Phones

The amount of stuff we trust to fly in and out of our smartphones is astounding. Just look at what happened when a couple of reporters got access to an unwitting (and rather unlucky) Apple employee’s iMessages alone — within days, they learned more about him than most people know about their closest friends.
Now, imagine all the stuff that could fly in and out of a government official’s phone, or that of a highly-ranked member of the military. Forget saucy texts and booty pictures — we’re talking about state secrets, here.
Looking to keep their secrets underwraps while on the go, the U.S government is working on a build of Android custom-tailored to meet their security requirements.
Word of the project comes from CNN, who notes that U.S. officials/soldiers aren’t currently allowed to send any classified data over their smartphones. If they need to transmit anything that might sink ships (so to speak), they currently need to find a secured (generally meaning hardwired) line hooked to an approved device.
Here’s the gist of the project:

• A limited number of soldiers will get the phones first, then federal agencies, then possibly contractors
• The U.S. won’t be building their own hardware — that’d be too expensive. Instead, they’ll be buying commercially available devices and reflashing them.
• They hoped to be able to offer iOS devices, but it’s not going to happen. CNN notes that federal officials met with Apple to request that they share their source — as you’d probably guess, Apple wasn’t too cool with that idea.
• Surprisingly, users of the handsets will be able to install new applications, though the handsets will put a specific emphasis on exactly what information the application can access and what it’s currently sending. Seems unlikely that they’d give these things full Android Market access, though — that’d be rather silly.
• The project is being funded by DARPA, with the NSA evaluating it as they go (while working on a version of their own, curiously.)

Most of the project’s details are still underwraps, but this is all still rather interesting. What hardware might they use? If DARPA makes any substantial security improvements to Android’s kernel, might that work make it back to the official branch? Might this work eventually be monetized (remember, Siri was born as a DARPA project) and offered to enterprises looking for a locked-down version of Android — and what does that mean for RIM/BlackBerry?

Google dominates Indian Android app space

Leading Android apps

It’s no surprise that Google’s Android platform has turned out to be the most budding platform. It’s also the case in the slightly more price sensitive Indian market. Apple’s iOS-based iPhones and iPads are still pretty expensive for mainstream consumption in the Indian market, but it’s not the case with Android. Nielsen, a research company has released a blog post that states that Google also happens to dominate the mobile app terrain in India. The report states that Indian smartphone users tend to spend roughly 40 percent of their time using data apps. Out of all the apps on the market space, the majority of 25 percent are made by Google.
 The most used app from Google’s portfolio surprisingly is the Android Market followed by Gmail and Gtalk and then, the rest. The most popular app on the other hand isn’t a Google one, though. Facebook, the popular social networking service launched their app on Android and iOS devices quite sometime back and on Android, it’s the most popular app around today. Nimbuzz also figures in this list and it’s the second most popular social networking app around, used primarily for chat. In terms of other categories of apps, GPS, video, e-mail and search apps dominate the terrain.

Amount of time spent

 In terms of time spent, Google’s apps dominate in the Search, GPS, e-mail and streaming video sections. Other third party app developer apps are preferred as far as chat and social networking apps are concerned. For example, 99 percent of social networking apps used aren’t Google-based. It doesn’t appear as if Google+’s mobile app has taken off in India. The same goes with chat, where only 7 percent of the time is spent on Google-based chat applications. The Nielsen report also details age groups and the use of the popular Google apps, which you can find on the Nielsen report blog post. The report doesn’t really cover other apps across other platforms, so it’s hard to conclude, if these are the most popular apps in the Indian market today. However, considering how well Android is doing these days, it might be assumed that it’s the

case.