The first analyst data evaluating China’s smartphone industry in Q1 2012 is out, with Apple reported to have more than doubled its market share, according data from Woori Investment and Securities, reported by Yonhap.

Woori’s report concludes that Apple’s sales between January and March 2012 hit 6.2 million devices, up from 2.1 million units the previous quarter. This increase of almost 200 percent is said to have seen Apple’s market share shoot up from 8 percent to 19 percent, thanks to the launch of the iPhone 4S, which was introduced amidst chaotic scenes in January.

The report notes that impressive sales of the new smartphone — which is being offered by two telecom operators for the first time — still leave Apple significantly behind Samsung, after the Korean giant’s quarterly sales hit 9 million, up from 6.7 million at the end of 2011.

Those figures, Woori estimates, would extend Samsung’s market share to 28 percent (up 4 percent), putting it significantly ahead of the rest of the pack in the world’s largest smartphone market.

The firm reports that smartphone sales are continuing at a brisk pace in China, having increased by 156 percent year-on-year to account for 32 million sales during the first quarter of 2012.

However, there is still plenty of scope to develop as smartphones account for just 30 percent of total handsets sales in the country, according to Woori.

Apple doesn’t break down its sales data via markets so it is difficult to give definitive statistics or a clear indication of its progress, but the findings are significant.

Referring to 2011 smartphone sales figures from Analysys, as other analyst reports for 2012 are yet to be published, the 16 percent overall market share is far greater a share than the portion of sales that Apple enjoyed at any point last year – which peaked at 7.1 percent of new device sales in the second quarter.

The Woori data certainly pours cold water on claims that sales of Windows Phone 7 devices have seen Microsoft overtake Apple in the country.

Microsoft backed away from media reports — which originated from comments attributed to Michel van der Bel, its COO for Greater China — providing a non-committal statement which suggested that there had been a miscommunication.

Apple could extend its reach further still in China if it is able to partner with China Mobile and get a share of the operator’s 660 million plus customers. The pair are reported to be in talks over a deal to carry the device but, given the longevity of negotiations and compatability issues, any agreement would likely come around the launch of the next version of the iPhone, at the earliest.

As it stands, iPhones are incompatible with the operator’s 3G network, but still more than 15 million subscribers use the smartphone on China Mobile’s 2G network.

Apple’s recently repored quarterly revenues of $39.2 billion with a net profit of $11.6 billion. The firm disclosed that it sold 35.1 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPads during the three month period.

According to GigaOM, the main provider of US Internet service, Comcast has raised its data limits to 300GB from 250GB.

The key reasoning for this, according to Comcast itself, is set-top boxes like Roku and of course the iPad phenomenon:

Four years ago, when we first instituted a broadband Internet data usage threshold, the iPhone had just been introduced…the iPad didn’t exist…and the experience of watching streaming video on your home PC or through a Roku box or direct to an Internet-capable TV was much different than it is now.

It is true that we consume more data than ever before, and I personally don’t pay attention to my data consumption as a Comcast subscriber. If I were to think about how many devices I have connected to the Internet at my house I come up with: iPad, 2 iPhones, 2 laptops, Apple TV, and an XBox. That’s some serious data consumption I bet.

In its blog post today, Comcast also shared that if you were to go over the 300GB cap, you can purchase additional blocks of data at $10 per 50GB.

If you happen to be in a market where Comcast isn’t increasing the cap size and introducing more buckets of data, have no fear, the company says that it is lifting caps for everyone:

In markets where we are not trialing a new data usage management approach, we will suspend enforcement of our current usage cap as we transition to a new data usage management approach, although we will continue to contact the very small number of excessive users about their usage.

In my opinion, this is just the beginning of a huge turning point when it comes to data usage. With people dropping Cable TV more each year, we’re starting to use the Internet to consume absolutely everything: TV, movies, software, games, and communication. What will a data cap look like in the next five years and how often will Comcast update its plan? This is pretty scary stuff if you ask me.

Earlier today we ran a story – as did many, many other publications – about Apple’s iPhone 4S-only service Siri recommending people to buy the Nokia Lumia 900 when asking what the ‘best smartphone ever’ is. OMG, right?

Siri bases its answer on search engine Wolfram Alpha for the most part, which itself draws from a limited set of data and just a handful of user reviews, so of course it wasn’t really a decent answer to the question.

Not that it stopped Microsoft from mentioning it on the Windows Phone blog …

But, as others have pointed out (hi MG!), it doesn’t really mean anything.

It was funny, though. Wanna know what else is funny?

When you ask the Nokia Lumia 800 in my case what the best smartphone ever is – thus using Microsoft’s TellMe service in combination with Bing – the first result you will get is this Business Insider article with the following headline:

Yes, The iPhone Is Still The Best Smartphone You Can Buy.

Ha. Thanks for clearing that one up for us, Lumia.

Now please, everyone, get back to work, or to enjoying your weekend.

(Hat tip goes to Bloomberg News’ Alex Sherman, who pointed this out to me).

Yes gals, it’s a bra with a holster for your iPhone. I can’t imagine how weird this would make actually answering your phone, or whether you’ll leave your vibrate option on or off, but it certainly got my attention.

The project is on Kickstarter and currently has 12 backers. Apparently, the handy bra pocket can hold more than just a phone, and might come in handy to carry around cash or credit cards too:

The project was started by two University of Washington students, Kyle and Mariah. It seems like the two did some research before starting to create the product:

After doing a survey of over 200 young women, we found that 95% of our participants had a problem finding a place to put their belongings while out at a party and 73% had lost personal items from a lack of pocket. In addition, we found that 88% were interested in having a way to discreetly hide their personal items on their person.

I would definitely say that the JoeyBra is “discreet”:

JoeyBra on Kickstarter

Ladies, can you hit us up in the comments and tell us if this is something that you’d actually use?

It’s no shock that one of our favorite things to do with our smartphone is to take pictures. What is is surprising, however, is that one app is quickly becoming the “default” applications for this picture taking.

The iPhone, Apple’s leap into telephony that changed the mobile world as we know it, was announced in 2007. The revolutionary device made everything easier, including snapping a picture and sharing it with friends. Google acquired the company behind the Android operating system in 2005, and made its debut on a handset in late 2008.

Little did both companies know that just three years after the iPhone launched, both of them would quickly lose control of their main feature, photography.

Instagram was founded in 2010 and launched in October. At the time, MG Siegler covered its launch and featured this quote from its CEO Kevin Systrom:

I think that communicating via images is one of these mediums that you’re going to see take off over the next few years because of a fundamental shift in the enabling technology.

Systrom was right and it’s been off to the races for Instagram ever since. I remember the first time I saw Instagram, I clicked a link in a tweet from a good friend of mine and was impressed with the page’s simplicity. The photo itself wasn’t impressive, but the fact that this company had done a fantastic job in presenting it to me grabbed my attention. I’ve been an avid member of the community ever since.

It’s no surprise that Apple featured Instagram numerous times, as it raced up the charts as one of the top free apps available for your iPhone. Almost immediately, Android users were pining for the day that they too could take simple photos and have them displayed in a beautiful way. Those Android users got their wish this week, as Instagram finally hit Google Play.

A picture is worth a thousand words

The idea of Instagram is simple in and of itself; you take a photo, throw a stylized filter on it, add a few words, and share it with your friends. People can comment on the photo, “like” it, and share it to their social networks as well. The fact that Instagram has stayed this simple is a testament to the team’s original vision.

That vision? Become the default photo application on every smartphone in the world. While this vision isn’t a direct quote from the company, it’s surely something in the back of its mind, and the minds of its investors.

AllThingsD reported this morning that Sequoia is going to lead a $50M round of investment, valuing the company at upwards of $500M. Those kinds of numbers are astronomical, considering that it’s, as some put it, “just a photo app”. But those people are missing the point. Instagram isn’t “just a photo app”, it’s quickly become the photo app. When your friend gets a new phone, they’ll probably ask you what apps to get, and surely Instagram will be one of your suggestions? Why? Because well, it’s quickly becoming the default.

When you think about how powerful the word “default” can be, then you start to realize that a $500M valuation for a company that is becoming the default application to do one of the most popular things on a smartphone makes complete sense. After all, Apple wants its Camera app to be the default way to take photos on an iPhone, and the same goes for Google’s Android. Stealing away marketshare from the two companies that are behind the manufacturing of the top selling devices has to be worth something, right?

Forget the fact that Instagram hasn’t figured out, or shared, how it’s going to make money. Grabbing this many users is not simple to do, especially within the first two years of your product’s existence. Instagram has done it though, and it’s time to stand back and watch a juggernaut in action.

Not just the #1 photo app

Instagram has a very real chance to become the number one App for smartphones, period. Yup, not just the number photo sharing app. As of right now, here’s where Instagram sits in the charts for both iOS and Android:

Even though Instagram has only been out for less than a week on Google Play, it’s already the number 2 free app. That excitement has also fueled the iOS version of the app to number 4. The new Android users are doing the marketing to the remaining iOS users who haven’t gotten in on the Instagram act yet. That ping-ponging may very well turn Instagram into the number one app on both platforms.

Sure, we’ve seen one app hit the top of both charts before, but that feat has been primarily accomplished by games like Angry Birds. Those games also have ways of making money baked in, sure, but the free versions don’t require you to pay to play.

How much is the #1 app in the world worth?

If the reports are true, it just may very well be $500M. Look at Draw Something, the app made popular by OMGPOP, and the success it had on both platforms. That game’s success got Zynga to dig in and make a real offer to the company, and turned into a $210M acquisition. It was OMGPOP’s biggest hit and Zynga simply couldn’t pass up having a huge presence on both mobile platforms.

Unlike photography though, games have a shelf life and can drop off the face of the earth after a solid run at the top. This doesn’t apply to Angry Birds though, since Rovio has done a great job in fending off this trend with by constantly reinventing it with new themes and characters. Instagram doesn’t have to go through that much trouble to breathe new life into its community, a few new filters now and then will do.

At some point in time, Instagram will have to return some of that money to its investors, but for right now, its rise to the top is more than enough to bring in new money.

If I had a few million bucks laying around, I would be very tempted to become part of a round of funding for a company that is the first thing people think about when they hear the word “photo”. Being the number one photo app isn’t Instagram’s goal, it’s becoming the number one app overall. It just might do it.

Skyfire, the Safari alternative for web browsing on your iOS devices has added a handy new feature for those of you who share an iPad with multiple people.

The feature is called “HotSwap” and allows the setup of multiple accounts for everyone who puts their dirty mitts on your beloved iPad.

The app has been downloaded 13 million times since it launched in December 2010 and was recently named the App Store’s “#1 paid iPad Utility of 2011″.

The new feature allows multiple users to keep their bookmarks, history, open tabs, social networking and email logins intact without having to log out each and every time.

Skyfire’s CEO Jeffrey Glueck had this to say about the new feature and Skyfire’s future:

Our goal at Skyfire has always been to create great user experiences via mobile cloud solutions, both through our consumer browsing apps, or through our carrier-grade data optimization offerings. HotSwap continues this tradition. From the office to the coffee table, tablets have quickly evolved into a shared family device. With HotSwap, up to four users can create customized profiles to access their favorite content with ease. The family iPad just got personal again.

Apple’s Safari doesn’t currently have functionality to support multiple users, like it does for its desktop OS. With HotSwap, Skyfire carves out more of a niche for itself in its plan on becoming a go-to alternative for the default mobile browser on iOS.

Skyfire got attention immediately for its ability to convert flash video nearly on the fly and serve it up in an iOS-friendly player, which the company says brings up to four times the number of videos to iDevices.

➤ Skyfire for iPad

If you’ve tried to use your iPhone for tethering using “unconventional” means, meaning that you don’t want to pay your service provider extra fees, you’ve found that it’s nearly impossible without jailbreaking your device.

Once in a while an app sneaks onto the App Store for tethering, usually disguised as a “random number generator” app. Without fail, Apple gets hip to the app and removes it from the store.

One of the apps that got the heave-ho treatment from Apple was iTether, created by the folks at Tether.com. The company provides tethering apps for Android and Blackberry users, and have announced its re-entrance into the iPhone (and iPad) world today. Here’s what Tether’s CEO Tim Burke had to say:

It was clear from our initial application iTether, there was enormous demand within the iPhone ecosystem. It was unfortunate that Apple decided to remove our application, only 20 hours after we launched. However, this caused us to innovate. Our underlying patent-pending technology behind Tether for iPhone is unlike anything on the market.

The underlying technology that Burke references is a web-based application built completely in HTML5.

Here’s a video of the app in action:

The cost for the service is $15 for the first year and $30 for every year after that. That’s a pretty small cost compared to what AT&T will charge you for tethering.

I’ve not personally heard of anyone losing service for tethering, but you could quickly become one of the 5% of users who get throttled on AT&T’s network for excessive usage.

For me, one of the most exciting trends that I’m seeing from companies like Apple and Google are the unification of desktop and mobile experiences. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed using the developer preview of Mountain Lion on my Macbook Air if only because it makes my notes, calendars and chats show up on all of my Apple devices. Because of this, I don’t even think of them as separate devices anymore. I have one computing experience that is carried out by a series of devices.

I remember how difficult it used to be to get information to and from a mobile device, you’d have to email things to yourself. When I had a Sidekick, I’d IM little notes, phone numbers, or directions to myself from my desktop computer. Slowly but surely, we’ll never have to do those things again.

Google announced today that it is slowly releasing what it calls “a new local search experience across your devices”. That’s a fancy way of saying that things you search for on your desktop computer will be readily available for you when you pick up your mobile phone. A seamless and integrated computing experience at its best.

The feature will work on your iPhone or Android device and requires that you have web history turned on. Here’s what the company had to say about the feature today:

How often are you doing a Google search from your computer to find information about a place before going there? Now, next time you go to Google.com on your Android phone or iPhone, information about that place will be conveniently available under the new “Recent” icon. Calling, getting directions or seeing details about the places you just searched for is now only one tap away.

This means that the next time you’re looking for directions or information about a restaurant you’re going to later on that night, once you shut your computer down and pick up your mobile phone, you’ll be able to continue your reading experience or get the details that you need. You don’t have to worry about syncing your phone or copy and pasting any details to yourself.

When you’ve done your search for a place while logged in on your desktop, the results will show up under a new “Recents” button on the mobile version of Google’s homepage:

The best part about this new feature, which should be available for everyone in the coming days, is that you don’t have to download an app to use it. Simply log into your Google account from whichever browser you’re using on your iPhone or Android device and the recent places button will be waiting for you. The data doesn’t stay forever though, it will wipe itself clear in a day. It’s a nice way to access things on your mobile device without having to bookmark it or send it to yourself.

Before Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the Mobile World Congress last week, the company did a demonstration of its Chrome browser for Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. The feature that Google focused on was the portability of your desktop actions and history over to your mobile device.

I expect this to be a theme for 2012 and by the end of the year, you’ll be interacting with all of your devices in the same way using the same tools and the same data with the only difference being how large the screen is or where you are when you’re doing it.

The power of Spotify is its expansive database of music that you can stream on your desktop or with a premium account, a mobile device. You’ll be extremely hard-pressed to not be able to find a particular track or musician that you like on the service.

As the company is turning itself into a music platform complete with its own app store and public API, more and more great apps are popping up around listening to tracks on Spotify.

One absolutely gorgeous app is called SpotON Radio and it’s available for iOS. The premise is simple, you enter an artist that you like and the app uses the popular Echo Nest API to create a radio station of songs that are similar to the artist you chose. This functionality might sound familiar, as it’s exactly what Pandora has done quite well for years.

The difference between an app like this and Pandora is that you can save tracks to your existing playlists or create new ones, since the app is built around Spotify. You must have a premium Spotify account to use the app, so if you’re still on the fence about dropping down $10 a month, SpotON might change your mind.

Thumbs up!

As I mentioned, if you’ve ever used Pandora you’ll be extremely familiar with what SpotON has to offer. As soon as you log into the account with your Spotify account you’re shown a list of your top artists, meaning the ones you listen to the most. From there you can let the app build radio stations comprised of tracks and artists that are similar to the one you chose:

When a station is created, you’ll be able to do a few things with it; save it as a Spotify playlist, thumbs up and thumbs down tracks to help the app choose music for you, and share your stations on Facebook. The app itself is beautifully designed and having used it for a better part of the day, I can see myself not using Pandora as much since being able to find new tracks and save them directly to a Spotify playlist is something I just can’t do with Pandora.

The great part about jumping between tracks is that you don’t have the constraints that Pandora puts on you by limiting how many times you can jump ahead to the next track.

The app is currently free but hints on its app store copy and website that it could have a cost associated with it in the future. While I would highly suggest this app even if it cost a few bucks, the fact that its free makes the download an absolute no-brainer. Again, if you haven’t picked up a premium account for Spotify, you’re really missing out. SpotON is just one way a seemingly infinite database of great music can be put to use in a whole host of ways.

➤ SpotON Radio for iOS

Today we got sent a video called “Psycho Siri” that is so well done, it could pass for a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie. The storyline involves one of the characters finding an abandoned iPhone 4S, but I won’t ruin the rest of it for you.

Try to not get creeped out when Siri says “it’s futile for you to run and hide”.