LEAK: ANDROID ICE CREAM SANDWICH ON VIDEO

The one Android update to rule them all -- better known as Ice Cream Sandwich -- is penciled in for an official launch sometime in the next two months, so it's only natural for some shots to leak out. We just weren't expecting a two-minute video showing off a few of the new features. As the story goes, a lucky gent ordered a Samsung Nexus S on eBay and, upon its arrival, noticed that his new prized possession looked a little... different. Hopping over to the About screen, he was shocked to discover that the device was running ICS. The firmware appears to be operating on the same baseband as the screenshots leaked a few weeks ago, but it's running on an updated build (IRK48) and kernel (3.0.1).

There is plenty of influence from both Gingerbread and Honeycomb here, as well as four shortcuts on the bottom (a definite bump from the two found on vanilla 2.3). There's a new Google Apps icon which opens up a tray containing a number of featured services put out by the search giant, and long-pressing the home button brings up a vertical Honeycomb-style multitasking menu. The notification bar, camera UI and other menus also have a much different look.

The anonymous tipster has confirmedbthat shortly after the video was posted, his Nexus S was remotely locked and wiped. Check out the XDA Developers thread for the full saga.

INTEL KILLS MEEGO, SWITCHES TO TIZAN

Intel announced on Wednesday that it will be shifting its efforts from MeeGo to the new “Tizen” mobile operating system recently announced by The Linux Foundation. The move is in line with reports from early September that suggested Intel would move on due to a lack of consumer enthusiasm surrounding the OS. Nokia launched the MeeGo-powered N9 this month but also announced in June that it was ditching the platform in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. “We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5,” Intel said in a blog post, explaining why it did not decide to evolve MeeGo. “Shifting to HTML5 doesn’t just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been.” Intel also noted Tizen will support smartphones, tablets, netbooks, smart TVs and in-vehicle systems.

RUMOR: SAMSUNG'S BADA MOBILE OS TO GO OPEN SOURCE

Samsung launched its own smartphone OS, Bada, almost two years ago and so far adoption by consumers, and developers, has been lukewarm at best. If a Wall Street Journal rumor is true however all that may change. According to the report Samsung is going to make Bada open source for developers and manufacturers. Citing the usual "person familiar with the situation", Samsung apparently isn't interested in snagging any outside companies like, say, webOS, but wants to strengthen its independence from Android after Google announced it will purchase Motorola. Right now, it feels like we've already seen this story play out for the still-kicking Symbian. On the other hand, maybe Samsung, with its massive manufacturing capabilities and current hit-making prowess, can strike the right balance of hardware, software and apps to make it worthwhile.

LEAK: ANDROID "JELLY BEAN" COMING AFTER "ICE CREAM SANDWICH"

It is being reported that trusted sources have revealed the name of the next version of Google's mobile OS, after Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), as Jelly Bean. This naming continues Google's tradition of naming the product after a sweet and in alphabetical order. Ice Cream Sandwich is expected to launch in October or November and will merge the smartphone Gingerbread OS with the tablet Honeycomb OS. Very little is known about ICS and what features will be included.

Some sources are also indicating that some of the "wow" stuff slated for ICS will now be rolled over to Jelly Bean. Other sources have stated that ICS will have major architectural, functional, and design changes and won't be just a re-heated Gingerbread/Honeycomb sandwich.

RUMOR: INTEL BAILING ON MEEGO

Intel plans to discontinue development of its MeeGo operating system for the time being due to a lack of enthusiasm for the platform, DigiTimes reported on Friday. Citing multiple anonymous industry sources, the report claims Intel will instead focus on “handset platforms to be paired with either Android or Windows Phone in 2012.” Nokia had initially been Intel’s premier partner on the MeeGo platform, but the company recently announced that it was dumping MeeGo in favor of Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. Nokia did unveil one MeeGo-powered phone this past June, the Nokia N9, but the Finnish vendor simultaneously confirmed that the N9 would be the first and only MeeGo smartphone Nokia produces.

In response to DigiTimes’ claims, Intel commented that it “remains committed to MeeGo and will continue to work with the community to develop and help meet the needs of customers and end users with open source.”

ANDROID OS GETS BOOST AT THE EXPENSE OF iOS

Millennial Media reports a sizable swing in smartphone usage for the first time in several months, with Android usage on the firm’s network increasing from 54% in June to 61% in July. Android’s lead as reported by Millennial’s Mobile Mix report now extends through its eight consecutive month, and Apple’s iOS again finds itself a distant No. 2. While iOS has declined slowly but steadily over the past few months on the Millennial ad network, July saw Apple’s OS drop six points to 21%. IOS lost just one point in each of the previous two months. RIM’s BlackBerry platform dropped one point to 14% in July, Symbian slid one point to 2% and Windows Phone stayed flat at 2%.

STUDY SHOWS ANDROID MORE LIKELY TO DOMINATE MORE STATES THAN iOS AND BLACKBERRY

Jumptap recently released a report that separated the 50 states by mobile operating system. It mapped out which states are prominently iOS users, which use Android the most, and which states use BlackBerry smartphones based on 83 million users on its ad network.

New England and the Midwest represented the largest pockets of iOS users while Texas, California and much of the West were Android users. New York is primarily a BlackBerry state, perhaps due to the number of corporate users in New York City. Alaska was neutral and Hawaii had more iOS users than Android or BlackBerry.

Jumptap collected its data from its mobile advertising network, so the data doesn’t represent sales or market share of course.

ANDROID OS RISES WHILE BLACKBERRY FALLS

Android’s U.S. market share is continuing to grow at the expense of RIM, Microsoft, and Palm, according to a new report from comScore that took a snapshot of the mobile phone market during the March quarter. The report found that Android powered 34.7% of all U.S. smartphones, up 6% from December 2010. RIM’s BlackBerry OS market share fell 4.5 points to a 27.1% share of the market, while Microsoft’s Windows and Palm’s webOS each saw a 0.9 percentage point decrease. Apple’s iOS market share jumped 0.5 points to a 25.5% share of the market, just behind RIM’s 27.1% grasp. Samsung remained the most popular mobile phone brand with a 24.5% share of the market, followed by LG (20.9%), Motorola (15.8%), RIM (8.4%), and Apple (7.9%). The report also found that 234 million Americans above the age of 13 used mobile devices.

ANDROID ACTIVATIONS PASS 350,000.....PER DAY!

Google on Thursday during its first-quarter earnings call revealed that daily Android activations have surpassed the 350,000 mark. That adds up to nearly 2.5 million Android activations each week and about 10.5 million activations each month. Google said in December of last year that it was activating 300,000 Android devices each day, and if it can maintain its current pace there’s no question it will achieve global market dominance for years to come.

Some research firms say it’s already the world’s top smartphone operating system, having recently passed Symbian’s quarterly sales pace for the first time, and just about every firm on the planet is predicting that Android’s market share will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

GOOGLE ASSERTING CONTROL OVER ANDROID

Bloomberg's Businessweekhas received word from "a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem" that Google is actively working to gain control and final say over customizations of its popular mobile OS. That might not sound unreasonable, and indeed Google's public position on the matter is that it's seeking to stabilize the platform and ensure quality control, but it does mark a major shift from where Android started -- an open source OS that was also open to manufacturers and carriers to customize as they wish. Not so anymore, we're told, as apparently Mountain View is now demanding that content partnerships and OS tweaks get the blessing of Andy Rubin before proceeding. The alternative, of course, is to not be inside Google's warm and fuzzy early access program, but then, as evidenced by the company recently withholding the Honeycomb source code, you end up far behind those among your competitors who do dance to Google's pipe.

Things have gotten so heated, in fact, that complaints have apparently been made to the US Department of Justice. They may have something to do with allegations of Google holding back Verizon handsets with Microsoft's Bing on board, ostensibly in an effort to trip up its biggest search competitor. Another major dissatisfaction expressed by those working with Android code is that Google needs an advance preview of what is being done in order to give it the green light -- which, as noted by a pair of sources familiar with Facebook's Android customization efforts, isn't sitting well with people at all. Google and Facebook are direct competitors in the online space and it's easily apparent how much one stands to gain from knowing the other's plans early. As to the non-fragmentation clauses in licenses, Andy Rubin has pointed out those have been there from the start, but it's only now that Google is really seeking to use them to establish control.

GOOGLE'S NEXT GEN ANDROID OS IS ICE CREAM

A Google executive on Wednesday shared preliminary details surrounding the company’s next version of its Android operating system. In an interview with Phone Scoop at Mobile World Congress, Google’s Android Engineering Director Dave Burke reiterated that Google’s “I” build of Android will merge features of Honeycomb and Gingerbread in an effort to unify the tablet and smartphone versions of the Android OS. Burke also said this future Android build will likely bring Honeycomb’s “action bar,” which adds customizable functions to individual apps, to smartphones. He noted that the “system bar” at the bottom of the Honeycomb UI would likely not make it to smartphones, though Honeycomb’s overall look and feel with be translated to handsets in some fashion. The next major build of Google’s Android OS is thought to be named “Ice Cream,” but a launch time frame is not currently available. [BGR]