Top Stories

  Apple Launches Mac App Store
After a celebrated introduction at an Apple event back in October, the Mac app store finally launched this past Thursday to much fanfare. For those unfamiliar, the new digital store allows all OS X computers to purchase and  download applications in the background, very similar to the way apps and  music are downloaded on Apple’s iPhones, iPods, and  iPads. By taking the pain out of buying and  installing software Apple will likely make a mint, but whether or not the “app store model” is the future of desktop software purchasing is yet to be seen.

  Motorola Launches Honeycomb tablet
After being teased with news of it for a while, the first tablet running an Android Based OS appeared at CES last week. While little knowledge of what Honeycomb will consumers was made known, attendees did learn Honeycomb will allow for both multi-tasking and  real-time widgets. Expect more information to come from Google as they continue to develop and  refine the OS before its mass release.

  Tablet Sales to Spike in 2011
According to a new report by Forrester, the tablet market is set to explode in 2011. While tablet and  mobile are both making up for consumer purchases in lieu of desktops, a new iPad model and  Google’s public release of Honeycomb, the tablet optimized version of Android, are likely to account for an impetus of tablet sales. More reasons to expect 2011 to be the year of the tablet include adoption by both the enterprise and  education markets.

Killer Stats

1.   Mac app store sees 1,000,000 downloads on day one.
2.   Google’s AdMob sees 2 billion ad requests per month.
3.   Android passes iPhone in total US subscribers.
4.   Online holiday shopping reached a record $32.6 billion for Nov-Dec.

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