Here’s a big surprise! (Sarcasm) – Media research firm, Nielsen, released its list for top U.S. mobile phones, sites, and brands for the first ten months of 2009, and not surprisingly, Apple iPhone 3G took top spot among mobile phones with 4% of the market. The Apple iPhone placed slightly ahead of RIM’s BlackBerry 8300 series at 3.7%, and well ahead of the remainder of the pack, which was led by Motorola’s RAZR V3 series at 2.3%.

In addition, Apple also made an appearance on Nielsen’s list of top ten brands accessed via mobile networks for the January-September 2009. Apple took tenth place – Yahoo! took first place and Google, sadly, took second place.

- source: blog.nielsen.com

DigiTimes reports that OmniVision Technologies has secured orders from Apple for 5-megapixel camera sensors destined for the next-generation iPhone. Sources report that the OmniVision is expected to supply Apple with 40-45 million sensors in 2010 for the new iPhone, reportedly set to launch in the second half of the year.

OmniVision Technologies is expected to see CMOS image sensor (CIS) orders for Apple’s iPhone devices grow to 40-45 million units in 2010 from 20-21 million estimated this year, according to industry sources. The sources said OmniVision has secured 5-megapixel CIS orders for the next-generation iPhone model, which will hit shelves sometime during the second half of 2010.

In addition, in April DigiTimes noted that OmniVision had won a contract to supply Apple with 3.2-megapixel camera sensors for what turned out to be the iPhone 3GS. That report also claimed, however, that Apple had secured 5-megapixel camera sensors at the time for an unreleased product. No signs of those 5-megapixel sensors have surfaced, although speculation obviously centered around Apple’s much-rumored tablet at the time.

Just days before Apple’s September media event where it introduced new iPods, DigiTimes also claimed that OmniVision would be supplying 3.2-megapixel cameras for the iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod classic. All three claims turned out to be incorrect, however, as Apple apparently scrapped plans for including a camera in the iPod touch after the thinness of the device caused difficulties with its inclusion, the iPod nano received only a 0.3-megapixel camera, and the iPod classic failed to receive a camera at all.

- source: digitimes.com

A BusinessWeek report from last night has received significant attention today for its focus on Verizon’s claimed readiness should the company and Apple strike a deal to bring the iPhone to the largest U.S. wireless carrier next year.

Verizon Wireless has even made upgrades that would make its network more capable of handling extra traffic that would be generated by the iPhone, Verizon Wireless Chief Technology Officer Anthony Melone says in an interview.

“We have put things in place already,” Melone tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “We are prepared to support that traffic.”

The report notes that the iPhone has placed tremendous stress on AT&T’s network, causing data traffic to explode by 5,000% over the past few years. Consequently, many have wondered whether any other U.S. mobile provider would have been able to meet the iPhone demand had they been able to offer the device. The BusinessWeek report points to a vague comment from Melone stating that Verizon has similarly seen growth of 1,000% per year, although recent comments from Verizon CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, have pegged the growth at substantially closer to 100% per year. Still, Verizon remains confident that it will be able to provide a quality customer experience for iPhone users should the opportunity arise.

- source: businessweek.com

Toshiba announced that they have launched a 64GB embedded NAND flash memory module. The new chip offers 64GB on a single chip and will start mass production in the first quarter of 2010.

The reason the largest iPhone (32GB) currently has 1/2 the memory of the largest iPod touch (64GB) is that the iPhone can only house a single NAND flash chip while the iPod touch can accommodate two. The additional space in the iPhone is taken up by its communication hardware. This new advancement should allow for 64GB iPhones and 128GB iPod touches in 2010.

Last year, Toshiba first announced their 32GB NAND flash modules which apparently ended up being used in the latest iPhone revision. iSuppli’s teardown identified Toshiba as the supplier of the iPhone 3GS’s flash memory.

- source: toshiba.co.jp

A Swiss iPhone developer has published research that indicates that security vulnerabilities affecting the iPhone are not limited to jailbroken iPhones. Developer Nicholas Seriot has created a proof of concept app called SpyPhone as a demonstration of how Apple’s own APIs could be misused to read or edit a user’s address book or gain access to a user’s web surfing history or recent location information.

For such attacks to succeed, a malicious application would still need to get past Apple’s stringent App Store approval process to be available for non-jailbroken iPhones, however this is not outside of the realm of possibility as such an app would not require the use of any exploits or third-party APIs, and the spyware portion could be hidden by delayed activation or an encrypted payload.

Seriot detailed these potential iPhone privacy risks in a talk he delivered in Geneva on Wednesday, during which he also outlined possible defense strategies, suggesting that Apple should design the iPhone OS to require users to authorize read or read-write access by iPhone applications to potentially sensitive on-device information such as the Address Book, add firewall functionality to the device and ensure the keyboard cache is not as readily available to third-party applications.

- source: theregister.co.uk

BBC News reports that supermarket and retail chain Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer, will begin offering the iPhone 3G and 3GS through its Tesco Mobile arm, a joint venture with wireless provider O2.

A spokesperson for the firm said that it hoped to offer the phone “in time for Christmas”.

Although Tesco has not revealed tariffs, the spokesperson said that its prices were “competitive”.

Tesco has also posted an information page to provide details on its iPhone offerings as they become available.

O2 had held an exclusive agreement with Apple to distribute the iPhone in the UK since its introduction in November 2007, but other companies have recently gained the right to sell the iPhone there, with Orange beginning sales earlier this month and Vodafone set to follow early next year.

- source: direct.tesco.com

Haven’t seen much from the iPhone Dev Team lately but they released an update to their ultrasn0w product that fixes an issue for those running firmware 3.1.x with the 04.26 baseband. Apparently, that specific combination resulted in a missing carrier name in the upper left hand corner of your home screen (Springboard).

Ultrasn0w update from 0.91 to 0.92 fixes that problem, which was important for roaming on your iPhone. You should see that update live now if you have http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com as a Cydia source. If not and you want/need this update then you should definitely add it by going to Cydia -> Manage -> Sources -> Edit -> Add and input the above URL.

- source: blog.iphone-dev.org

The first known actual iPhone worm has been spreading across jailbroken iPhones in Australia late last week. The worm seeks out jailbroken iPhones with SSH installed in which the default password has not been changed, and installs itself on the device. Once installed, it changes the background to an image of Rick Astley (essentially Rick Rolling you) and looks for other phones on the network to install itself on, though it has the potential to be used for more malicious things.

Sophos, an Anti-Virus firm, has examined several instances of the worm, and has found multiple varianats. They also found comments in the code suggesting that this was an experiment, and was created as a stunt to spotlight how insecure most jailbroken iPhone’s are.

A forum member on an Australian form, where the exploit was first discussed by the alias ike_x has taken credit for the iPhone worm and has been assisting users in removing it.

One individual going by the online surname JD interviewed Ikee over IRC chat, and published it to his blog, in which Ikee answers questions like why he did it.

First i was curious to how far something like this would actually spread, i think what most people were unaware of is the fact it IS a worm and every phone that got infected with it was spreading it (I initially only infected 3 phones when I woke up i checked google and found out a fair few people were hit with it)
Secondly i was quite amazed by the number of people who didn’t RTFM and change their default passwords.

Luckily for people outside of Australia, there have been no reports of the worm outside of Australia.

- source: TUAW

In a brief press release by RadioShack earlier this week, RadioShack announced they will begin selling Apple’s iPhone starting with the Dallas-Fort Worth and New York City markets later this month. RadioShack plans to sell the iPhone across the U.S. in 2010.

“As part of its ongoing mobility strategy, RadioShack is pleased to announce that it will introduce Apple’s iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in a limited number of company-owned stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth and New York City metropolitan areas beginning later this month. RadioShack expects to introduce iPhone in stores nationwide in 2010. For more information about exact store locations and product availability, visit www.radioshack.com. For more information about iPhone, visit www.apple.com/iphone.”

Turns out BGR was right, Last year The Boy Genius Report reported that Best Buy and Radio Shack would begin selling the iPhone. Best Buy began selling the iPhone in September 2008.

- source: ir.radioshackcorporation.com

GeoHot has released a free unlock for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS called blacksn0w. You can install blacksn0w from the blackra1n application installed on your iPhone when jailbreaking with blackra1n. You can also install blacksn0w from Cydia by adding blackra1n.com to the Cydia source list.

blacksn0w is a free unlock for the latest iPhone 3G and 3GS

blacksn0w is also available on Cydia, add blackra1n.com as repo
requires firmware >= 3.1 and baseband 05.11.07

If you happen to use blacksn0w and run into Wi-Fi issues, GeoHot suggests you try to Reset Network Settings in Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings.

- source: iphonejtag.blogspot.com