Nokia could finally show off those Android-based “Normandy” smartphones we’ve been seeing surface lately. The company will debut its rumored fork of Android later this month at Mobile World Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal. The event kicks off in two weeks in Barcelona, Spain, and runs through February 27th.
Nokia, whose devices and services division was acquired by Microsoft last fall, had been working on the Android phones ahead of the acquisition, WSJ says. Nokia has been the primary handset maker for Windows Phone OS-based smartphones since dropping its own OS years ago, and even its Android fork borrows heavily from the signature Windows Phone design as seen in recent leaks. Expand Expanding Close
Perhaps one of the greatest “what could have been” stories in recent (tech) times is definitively the question of what Nokia would be like today had they gone with Android over Windows Phone? There’s little question Nokia’s fortunes might have changed dramatically and as a result, the fortunes of every other Android OEM not named Samsung.
For all the things the Moto G may be, there’s little question that the Moto G isn’t the phone for the individual who cares most about smartphone photography. With a $179 price tag, we understand some compromises will have to be made and even if a 5 megapixel camera, f/2.4 lens and flash combination are present, we know some tradeoffs are at hand in overall quality.
Samsung is predicting a record $9.4B profit for Q3 in its latest earnings guidance, on estimated revenues of $53.9B. While both figures are estimates rather than confirmed results, Samsung’s earnings guidance is usually pretty much spot-on. If confirmed, this will build on the company’s record numbers in Q2.
HTC, in contrast, reported its first ever loss, as it warned back in July. Its revenue of $1.6B was lower than even its lower-end forecast, and it lost $101M – the company’s first ever loss in its 16-year history.
Bloomberg attributes the wildly differing performances to sales of mid-market handsets in growth markets like India and China.
While HTC has focused a revival on its flagship One handset and $12 million marketing deal with actor Robert Downey Jr., Samsung has expanded its range of mid-priced smartphones such as the Galaxy Golden and S4 Mini to capture sales in China and India … Expand Expanding Close
After Microsoft’s first attempt at a Windows Phone YouTube application was blocked by Google for violating the Terms of Service, this morning the company’s second attempt has also been blocked due to the same issue, according to The Verge. This is despite the two companies working together to build the HTML5 application.
The Verge posts the following quote from a Google spokesperson:
“Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service. It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines.”
Microsoft told TechCrunch that they are “working with [Google] to resolve the issue.”
In the circles most of us hang out, it might seem incredible that featurephones – aka dumb phones – were still outselling smartphones until recently, but that was indeed the case right up to the first quarter of this year. The latest Gartner figures show that smartphones finally broke ahead in Q2, achieving 51.8 percent of worldwide phone sales.
Smartphones accounted for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second quarter of 2013, resulting in smartphone sales surpassing feature phone sales for the first time,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Asia/Pacific, Latin America and Eastern Europe exhibited the highest smartphone growth rates of 74.1 percent, 55.7 percent and 31.6 percent respectively, as smartphone sales grew in all regions …
There was good news for both Samsung and Google in the figures … Expand Expanding Close
Another instalment in Microsoft’s “Scroogled” smear campaign attempting to point out the downsides of using Google services. While Microsoft has released many ads attacking Gmail, search and other Google products as part of the 7 figures it plans to drop on the campaign, this one was apparently supposed to be an internal video for employees anyway.
Whether it was a controlled leak or not, the ad, which takes cues from one of Google’s own Chrome ads, has happened to make its way online right in the middle of Google I/O and it doesn’t appear that a take down notice is getting issued.
Last week we showed you the native YouTube app Microsoft built for Windows Phone 8, but it appears today that Microsoft never had Google’s consent to produce the app.
“Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube.”
Windows Phone users will have to rely on third-party YouTube apps in the meantime until Microsoft and Google work things out.
Previously, Windows Phone’s YouTube app was simply a web link to the mobile site limiting the possibility of much integration.
YouTube, which is of course owned by Google, is a fundamental app addition in the Windows Phone 8 catalog, which is probably one of the platform’s weakest areas.
Previously, Windows Phone users relied on third-party apps for native support.
In a rather odd ad campaign spotted by GeekWire, Microsoft is running the kind of ad used by soap powder brands in the 1980s: showing owners of a competitor brand being converted to the wonders of the client’s product.
The datedness of the ad technique is not the only odd thing about the ad: it’s also pitching the Lumia 920 against the Samsung Galaxy S3, a handset just superseded by the S4. While the S4 is a relatively minor refresh, the high-profile nature of the launch means that those in the market for a new phone can hardly be unaware of it.
GeekWire also noted that while the ad is a relatively bold move by a company that has so far failed to make much of a splash with Windows Phones, Microsoft has stopped short of trying to take on the iPhone.
AndroidPolice just posted screenshots of a leaked version of Google Wallet, but the most notable tidbit does not concern the app at all: Google plans to launch a Google Wallet card.
The card acts and looks like a typical credit card, but it stores many credit cards into one, shiny piece of plastic. It also works practically everywhere. According to the screenshots, users order the Google Wallet card from their Google Wallet app for front-door delivery.
AndroidPolice noted the significance of a physical Google Wallet card:
The other important implication? The physical Wallet card could make carrier approval for Wallet a thing of the past unless you want to use tap payments. Google could publish a version of the Wallet app without NFC permissions that just allows you to switch between your cards, that could be installed on any phone (even iOS or Windows Phone, theoretically), and you just use the Wallet card for payments. That’s pretty cool. And could seriously reduce the chance of rival mobile payment systems of catching on. Google really does seem to have thrown a wrench in the works of the likes of ISIS and other competing systems.
As for the Google Wallet app, it will soon feature a “Wallet Balance” option for depositing or withdrawing money. Users will also have the ability to transfer money from person to person. Availability for these latest Google Wallet features only seem to hint at the Unites States, for now, but stay tuned for more.
Microsoft updated SkyDrive today and teased a new SkyDrive app that allows users to access, upload and share from Android devices.
Today, as part of making sure SkyDrive is available to all Windows customers, we’re excited to announce that an official SkyDrive app for Android phones will be available in just a few weeks. The Android app is similar to our mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS and allows you to browse your SkyDrive, upload files to SkyDrive, as well as share SkyDrive files with “Send a link.” You’ll also be able to open SkyDrive files from other apps, as well as upload, save, and share to SkyDrive from other apps.
SkyDrive is a Google Drive direct competitor and cloud storage service that can upload and sync files to the cloud. It further lets users access those files from a Web browser or a local device, and it offers 7 GB of free storage for new users with additional storage available for purchase.
User-interface screenshots for the SkyDrive for Android app are above.
Go to Microsoft’s Inside SkyDrive page for more information.
A Nokia board chairperson admitted to a Finnish talk show recently that his company has a backup plan in case the Windows Phone 8 software continues to fail.
According to CNET (via Yle Uutiset), Risto Siilasmaa, who has only been with Nokia since May, hailed the 2011 transition from Symbian to Microsoft’s Windows Phone during Thursday’s interview on “Päivän Kasvo“. Despite the accolades, he said a “contingency plan” is in place should the current mobile operating system “fail to live up to expectations.”
Windows Phone 8 launched in June and barely grabbed 0.18-percent of the marketshare for the month, according to NetMarketShare findings. The prospects do not look good, but Siilasmaa expects the OS to hold its own. Meanwhile, the details of Nokia’s Plan B are unknown. 9to5Google thinks the mysterious backup plan certainly hints at Android.
Google’s mobile operating system could be Nokia’s only saving grace, but fierce competition from Samsung and HTC will make a much-needed recovery even harder for the fledging manufacturer.
Microsoft just wrapped up its presentation at this year’s E3 event. While we did not hear anything about iOS support for its new cross-platform Xbox Music service, the company did confirm Xbox SmartGlass would come to both Android and Apple devices. SmartGlass incorporates at least some of Apple’s AirPlay-like features that enable users to send video from their mobile devices to Xbox Live and Windows 8. It would also allow phones and tablets to be used as a second screen for providing content related to video or games on Xbox.
Microsoft demoed the feature with Madden on Xbox. It allowed players to use their tablet’s touchscreen to draw plays. Unfortunately, Microsoft only mentioned support for Windows 8 mobile devices for the Xbox gaming features:
Microsoft announced ahead of the E3 conference a new software application called “SmartGlass,” which can be downloaded on Windows phones and Windows 8 tablets, as well as devices powered by rivals such as Apple Inc’s iOS and Google Inc’s Android operating systems… For TV, someone watching “Game of Thrones” on the “HBO GO” streaming service via Xbox could simultaneously browse websites about the show’s cast.
UPDATE: An LG spokesperson reached out to PCMagand denied allegations that the company is abandoning the Windows Phone platform:
“No, we are not giving up on Windows Phone. Although we don’t have another Windows device in the pipeline at this moment, that is simply because demand for Android devices is so strong. […] We’ve maintained since the beginning that LG will support whatever operating system consumers want but at the moment, our priority is to get our Android devices to a level where we feel we’ve covered all the bases, to use an American analogy.”
During last week’s Q1 2012 earnings call, LG hinted it is abandoning Windows Phone hardware production to focus on Android, and now a Korean newspaper attributes the move to underwhelming sales and claimed Microsoft’s chief is immediately meeting with the manufacturer in coming weeks.
Microsoft Korea spokesperson Lee Seung-yeon told The Korea Herald that LG is dumping Windows phones due to poor retail performance and said Windows Phones barely stole 2 percent of the global smartphone market share.
The report also suggested Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer will attempt to remedy the split with LG during a May 22 visit to Seoul, Korea by engaging in business meetings with local industry representatives, including LG:
“’Ballmer, who will speak about the ‘new era of technology,’ will be staying for a day in Seoul,’ said a Microsoft Korea spokesperson Lee Seung-yeon. ‘We, however, don’t have the fixed details of his business meeting schedule as of now.’
An LG spokesman also said it is yet unaware of the meeting.
“Ballmer’s visit takes place shortly after LG Electronics’ executive said during an earnings conference session last week that the company is planning to focus on smartphones running on Google’s Android mobile operating system.”
LG makes a slew of Windows-based handsets, such as the Optimus 7.
Skatter Tech’sSahas Katta wrote a blog post yesterday about his Windows Phone challenge experience and explained how he beat the contest using a Galaxy Nexus, but Microsoft employees withheld his prize “just because.”
Katta claimed he beat a “Get Smoked” Windows Phone challenge at the Santa Clara Microsoft Store yesterday. The assigned quest was to “bring up the weather of two different cities” faster than a competing Windows Phone user. Katta cold booted his smartphone as instructed, accessed his unlocked screen, and quickly viewed two separate weather widgets for San Jose and Berkeley that were luckily running on the device’s home screen.
Despite executing the task first, Katta was immediately told the Windows Phone “smoked” him:
I excitedly thought I won out of pure luck. However, I was quickly told that I lost. I asked for a reason and was told Windows Phone won because “it displays the weather right there.” That was rather unclear. I showed her my device which also was showing off the same information with two side-by-side weather widgets on the center home screen. After pressing for a better reason, I was told that Windows Phone won “just because.”
After trying to push for a real answer since I clearly won the contest by their rules, another Microsoft Store employee (possibly a manager) came by after noticing me asking more questions. Thinking on his feet, he quickly gave a ridiculous out-of-thin-air reason that I need to display the weather of different cities in different states and that “my phone could not do that”.
Microsoft is slinging mud at Google recently with bitter videos and critical advertisements, but the Internet giant is staying silent and has only thrown one thing at the Windows company: The “Google Search” app.
“Find better results using Google from your Windows Phone. Search the web faster and easier with the latest features: Google Autocomplete, My Location, and Voice Search,” announced the app’s description.
Following a lengthy interview in October where he gave us insight into the future of Android and Google’s view on iOS and Windows, Android’s head of user experience Matias Duarte sat down withThe Verge to discuss his work on Android and more specifically, Ice Cream Sandwich. During the interview Duarte elaborated on his competitor’s design choices, where he says iOS looks cartoonish and explains if it were “put on a website or magazine, you’d laugh at it, it would look childish”. Host Joshua Topolsky also calls him out for saying Windows Phone looks like “bathroom signage in an airport”, to which he didn’t comment.
Matias gave a few demos using a Galaxy Nexus, including one of live video chat effects like blurs and warps that alter your face in real-time. He also explained his view on photography features calling traditional features of point and shoot cameras such as white balance “crap”, saying “if it’s not immediately obvious, it’s something the machine should be taking care of for you”.
HTC is doubling down on Windows Phone. Pictured above: The HTC Titan, powered by Windows Phone 7.5 ‘Mango’ and arriving to AT&T this Fall.
HTC, the embattled handset maker from Taiwan and the second-largest smartphone vendor in the United States, is doubling down on Microsoft’s mobile platform, seemingly to reduce its reliance on Google’s Android software which has been under heavy fire lately from Apple, Microsoft and Oracle over patents. According toZDNet Asia, a HTC manager for Singapore said during the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango launch event:
We believe that Windows Phone 7 will eventually be better than other platforms and will give Android a run for its money.
Melvin Chua, the manager, also noted that the Windows Phone platform already accounts for nearly one-third (30 percent) of HTC’s overall sales. This subtle hint points to a possible 180-degree turn for the company that made fortunes by making and selling Android phones. It’s not terribly surprising, though. Their chairwoman Cher Wang recently went on record, saying the company discussed internally a mobile operating system purchase. “We can use any OS we want”, she was quoted as saying.
In the battle for mobile supremacy, Apple and Google are winning as competitors continue to lose ground, finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the strong iOS and Android ecosystems (can you say ‘duopoly’?), per latest survey from the NPD Group. The results came by tracking U.S. consumers aged 18+ who reported purchasing a mobile phone and exclude corporate purchases. In the June quarter, iOS grabbed 29 percent of the U.S. smartphone share versus Google’s 52 percent share. Both tech behemoths have grown their platform share at the expense of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
RIM’s been on a serious decline amid poor sales and delays related to their QNX-based superphones. Their BlackBerry OS software share fell to just eleven percent in the U.S. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard’s webOS is in a state of limbo as the world’s leading computer maker announced intentions to exit the hardware business. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile grabbed five percent of the market each.
The emerging prepaid market is the next battelground for iOS and Android. Google, however, has the first mover advantage here… Expand Expanding Close
Telefonino.nettoday leaked (viaBGR) a bunch of upcoming Samsung devices. The mega-leak includes seven Android-driven phones and two tablets and three phones powered by Samsung’s own Bada operating system. Heck, the company is even working on their inaugural Windows Phone ‘Mango’ handset.
Starting off with tablets, the P6200 looks like the original Galaxy Tab successor. This seven-inch Honeycomb slate boasts a 1024-by-600 pixel Super AMOLED display plus front and back cameras for capturing video and conducting video calls. It will come in both WiFi-only and 3G HSDPA version.
As for the phones, Samsung appears to be going all out on the hardware front. Take the I9220, for example. This Gingerbreak phone runs a 1.4GHz processor, has an eight-megapixel camera and packs in a spacious, juicy 4.3-inch Super AMOLED display sporting a 1280-by-720 pixel resolution display, meaning it can render HD 720p video natively, without rescaling.
Then there is the I9210, another Gingerbread phone with a slightly larger 4.5-inch SuperAMOLED display, 4G connectivity and an eight-megapixel camera with LED flash. The sickest of them all has to be the I9250 superphone. Probably your next handset, it rocks a monstrous 4.65-inch SuperAMOLED display with native 720p resolution (1280-by-720 pixels), the obligatory five megapixel camera (what, no eight-megapixels?) and Android Ice Cream, the latest and greatest version of Android due for release in the fourth quarter of 2011. But wait, that’s not all – six more phones after the break. Expand Expanding Close
IMS Research put out a study estimating that some 420 million smartphones will be sold worldwide in the 2011 calendar year, or 28 percent of all handsets sold. The survey portrays Apple as making huge gains in the space, buoyed on the sales of 18.65 million and 20.34 million iPhones in their last two quarters – enough to garner a 19 percent share of the global smartphone market. Combined with Nokia’s slumping sales, Apple emerged as the world’s leading smartphone maker.
It remains to be seen whether Samsung, which is due to report its earnings Friday, will beat Apple’s smartphone sales (some say it will). IMS noted the fact that the company grew their share of global smartphone market from three percent in the first quarter of 2010 to 13 percent in the first quarter of this year. Samsung, as you know, sells phones powered by Google’s and Microsoft’s software in addition to their own operating system for feature phones, Bada. IMS’s Analyst Josh Builta says this of LG:
LG, despite being the third largest OEM in the world, has offered a fairly limited smartphone portfolio in recent years, a factor that resulted in the company reaching less than a three percent share of the total smartphone market in 2010.
However, Nokia’s fall surprised even the most seasoned watchers and is unheard of in this industry. Nokia, the Finnish phone giant, lost 16 percentage points of its smartphone market share, going from a 40 percent share last year to 24 percent in the first quarter of 2010. They shipped 16.74 million smartphones in the June quarter – a 34 percent annual decline – versus Apple’s 20.34 million units – a 134 percent annual increase. Nokia also killed Symbian and is only shipping the well-received but short-lived MeeGo-powered N9 to select markets. Here’s how the analyst described Nokia’s problem:
Clearly one of the key dynamics of the mobile handset competitive environment in recent years has been the inability of many traditional market leaders to recognize and adjust to the growing smartphone tier. The reasons for these failures vary and include everything from poorly designed and manufactured devices, unsatisfactory user interfaces, and portfolios that don’t offer products with a differentiating feature. These lapses have created opportunities for newer entrants to the market, which they have aggressively pursued.
Research In Motion fell from 20 percent to 15 percent in the same period, mind you. IMS sees one billion smartphones by 2016 as average selling prices drop and vendors release more inexpensive handsets. Smartphones then will account for one of every two mobile handsets sold, the research firm concludes.
The Asus Padfone has inspired what appears to be a cottage industry of phone-docking tablets in the making. Take a new docking accessory from ECS. Code-named Trinity, it’s the result of joint efforts by ECS and its partner ICE Computer. Unlike the Padfone which is a real tablet, the ECS solution is an intelligent docking station that can house various smartphone brands. It takes your phone’s video and outputs it via HDMI to the built-in display which is of the same 9.7-inch variety and 4:3 format as the iPad’s.
You also get an SD card slot, two USB ports and a front-facing camera. It’s a cross-platform play of sorts due to its ability to work with and house multiple smartphone brands, from Apple’s iPhone to Windows Phone and Android smartphones. Best of all, the gizmo should work with future iOS devices – including iPhone 5 – using “simple upgrades”. Expect the Trinity to hit the market in the fourth quarter costing $200 or less. Go past the break for a video introduction. via ITProPortal
Nokia could finally show off those Android-based “Normandy” smartphones we’ve been seeing surface lately. The company will debut its rumored fork of Android later this month at Mobile World Congress, according to The Wall Street Journal. The event kicks off in two weeks in Barcelona, Spain, and runs through February 27th.
