By Julia Anderson and Colin Steele, Editors

Apple sold more than 4 million iPhone 4S devices in the three days after its launch, the company reported. AT&T and Sprint also reported record sales on the first day their customers could purchase the iPhone 4S in stores.

More than 25 million devices are now running iOS 5, the latest iPhone, iPod touch and iPad operating system, Apple said. In addition, more than 20 million people have signed up for iCloud, Apple’s new cloud storage service. Both iOS 5 and iCloud debuted just last week.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich debuts

With Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Google is unifying its smartphone and tablet operating systems.

The current smartphone-specific OS is Android 2.3 Gingerbread, and the tablet OS is Android 3.0 Honeycomb. But Android 4.0 is designed to run on both kinds of devices, which should quiet some of the complaints about Android device fragmentation.

Ice Cream Sandwich features a new user interface, with separate home screen tabs for apps and widgets. There’s also improved management of notifications and application-level controls over data usage. And for business users, the OS offers new security and VPN APIs.

Google and Samsung showed off Android 4.0 at a media event in Hong Kong this week. The OS is expected to be available on devices next month.

RIM launches BBX, immediately sued

BBX, the next-generation operating system for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, debuted at this week’s BlackBerry DevCon Americas conference.

BBX combines the traditional BlackBerry OS with QNX, an operating system Research in Motion (RIM) acquired last year. RIM was short on details about BBX, but the company did say the OS would make it easier to develop richer, more interactive “super apps” for BlackBerry devices.

Talk about potential BBX features was short-lived, however, because the day after the launch, a software company called BASIS filed legal action against RIM over the BBX name. It turns out BASIS has its own operating system called BBx, and RIM’s announcement caused “great confusion” for BASIS users, the company said.

The lukewarm reception to BBX, last week’s BlackBerry outage and the continued success of iOS and Android devices have at least one blogger wondering whether RIM should give up on BlackBerry entirely.

Motorola, Verizon unveil Droid RAZR

The new Droid RAZR will be the world’s thinnest LTE-capable smartphone, Motorola and Verizon Wireless said this week.

Despite its 7.1mm waist line, the latest in Motorola’s line of Android smartphones has a similar look to other Droid models. But it boasts a Kevlar fiber casing designed to “withstand the back-pocket test,” Motorola said.

The Droid RAZR runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and supports Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Motorola has also included support for its MotoCast application, which streams content between PCs and mobile devices. Business users will have access to corporate email, the ability to view and edit Word documents, and Citrix Receiver for remote application access.

Pre-orders for the Droid RAZR start Oct. 27, and it’s scheduled to be available in stores in November.

Photo (cc) by Denise Cross and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

A massive BlackBerry outage has left users with limited email and messaging services for much of this week.

The BlackBerry outage began Monday for users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and it spread to North America on Wednesday. Research in Motion (RIM) has blamed the BlackBerry outage on the failure of one of its core networking switches — and the subsequent failure of its backup system.

The BlackBerry outage comes at a terrible time for RIM. Once the only game in town for mobile email, its market share is eroding as consumer devices running Apple iOS and Google Android take hold. RIM still offers the strongest enterprise management capabilities, but that matters less and less, thanks to the consumerization of IT. And its enterprise reputation will definitely take a hit with this extended BlackBerry outage.

Late Wednesday night, RIM said service levels were improving. And today, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis posted this message on YouTube:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/zQ1esvGae_s" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Apple iOS 5 released

The latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 5, hit iTunes on Thursday. The release brings more than 200 new features to the iPhone and iPad, including a drop-down notifications menu, better camera options and Twitter integration that’s laid on real thick.

With iOS 5, Apple is also moving beyond mobile devices into another consumerization area: cloud storage. The new iCloud service stores music, videos, photos and documents and makes them available across your iOS devices, Macs and even PCs. Hey, speaking of cloud storage…

Box.net targets businesses

Cloud storage and collaboration service Box.net has raised $81 million in its latest round of funding, designed to help boost its enterprise offerings.

Box.net and similar services, such as Dropbox, have grown in popularity among people who want to store and access their data and documents — both personal and business — from any device. But this Wild West approach has businesses concerned about security, and now the major IT vendors are swooping in.

Microsoft (Windows Live SkyDrive), Apple (iCloud) and VMware (Project Octopus) are all entering the cloud storage market to address enterprise needs. Box.net, for one, is not backing down.

“Businesses of all sizes are moving their information and collaboration to the cloud, and with this new capital we’ll support their transition by continuing to aggressively out-innovate legacy players like Microsoft,” co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie said in a press release.

Box.net also turned down a $600 million acquisition offer from Citrix Systems earlier this year, according to Forbes. And to combat this week’s debut of iCloud, the company is giving away 50 GB of storage to all iOS users.