Author: Tero Kuittinen

Asian disease epidemics can be poison for consumer electronics sales. The big SARS scare of 2003 had a major impact on Chinese handset volumes. In April of the year SARS swept the East, Chinese phone sales abruptly declined by nearly 10%, violently reversing the month-on-month sales growth of March. Back then, China was such a small part of worldwide phone sales that the spring swoon did not have much of a global impact. 10 years later, China’s role in global handset market is far greater, and the consumer reaction to a new epidemic could move the needle on worldwide shipment volumes.

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A string of recent iPhone and Galaxy price cuts has rocked the phone markets from Europe to Brazil to India. This is the season for price cuts from Apple (AAPL) and Samsung (005930), and we see the same thing every year. But this time around, the cuts are more severe than we have ever seen before. Some pricing on Galaxy S models in Asia have dropped by nearly 50% as Samsung battles back against the insurgency of upstart brands like Micromax and Karbonn. The Galaxy S III’s price in Europe has plunged by nearly 40% from June 2012 as Samsung prepares to debut the Galaxy S4. Apple’s iPhone 4 has dipped to just $270 in Brazil. In India, Apple now offers to pay 7,000 rupees for old smartphones from consumers who trade them in towards an iPhone 4 — probably the most aggressive promotion Apple has ever launched over there.

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Google (GOOG) and WhatsApp have reportedly been locked in negotiations about an acquisition for more than a month — and WhatsApp is pushing for nearly $1 billion valuation, Digital Trends recently reported. This sounds like a huge number, but even though WhatsApp has not released its user base estimate, it is widely assumed to be more than 300 million. This past New Year’s Eve, WhatsApp processed more than 11 billion outbound messages. The company has started counting outbound and inbound messages separately due to the popularity of its group chat feature that has been one of the cornerstones of its franchise. WhatsApp has become a massively popular service on all continents, but it is particularly big in Europe and Latin America where its market penetration among smartphone users tops 80% in countries including Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Germany.

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This is a crucial period for the PlayStation Vita: several weeks after a price cut that revived the console in Japan, Vita is demonstrating fairly astonishing tenacity. According to Famitsu, Vita remained the No. 2 console in Japan during the week of March 31st with 33,000 units sold, down moderately from 38,000 units in the previous week. The reason this week was particularly important was the debut of a major new title for Nintendo’s (NTDOY) struggling home console Wii U. Alarm bells at Nintendo’s headquarters must be on full blast, because Dragon Quest X sold just 36,000 units and failed to lift weekly Wii U sales higher than 21,000 units from the previous week’s dismal 10,000 unit level.

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Much has been said about what Facebook’s (FB) new initiative means for app developers. But after today’s Facebook Home unveiling, it’s clear that there is one very specific app category that is Facebook’s current obsession: messaging apps. It is safe to say nobody expected two years ago that the popularity of WhatsApp, VINE and KakaoTalk would explode the way it did. WhatsApp hit 11 billion outbound messages on New Year’s Eve; China-driven WeChat has hit 300 million users; Korean KakaoTalk has reached 80 million users. All of these messaging platforms have created a surge of interest in group chats and photo-sharing — features that just happen to encroach on Facebook’s core territory. Even worse, Asian messaging apps have started morphing into social game hubs and WhatsApp is expected to launch an ambitious game initiative later in 2013. Today represented Facebook’s counterattack on these pesky messaging upstarts.

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Well, that did not take long. Within a few days after the Federal Communications Commission confirmed it will review cell phone radiation guidelines, class action lawyers of a certain ilk have swung to action. Since the FCC previously issued guidelines about cell phone use in 1996, it is quite natural it will revisit the issue in 2013. But that does not mean you can’t put a sinister spin on the development.

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Skype just announced proudly that its users spend 2 billion minutes a day on Skype calls. It’s a big achievement, for sure… but considering how long Skype has been around, it’s also somewhat underwhelming. According to company comments from 2011, the average video call length was 27 minutes. If we estimate that the average Skype call including both voice and video calling is closer to 20 minutes, the 2 billion minutes a day figure would translate roughly to 100 million calls per day. This sounds decent enough — except that a cluster of mobile messaging app companies that debuted just a couple of years ago have already moved far beyond that level.

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If the AT&T-Verizon takeover of Vodafone actually goes through, it might represent an earthquake in mobile roaming. AT&T’s (T) acquisition of Vodafone’s portfolio of carriers would mean that it would be able to offer American customers new roaming prices not only to major European tourist and business travel targets like the U.K., Germany and Italy, but also popular international destinations like Australia, Turkey, South Africa and Egypt. The old Vodafone-Verizon (VZ) alliance always had a major stumbling block that prevented effective roaming: The lack of a wide range of mobile phones that would have supported the different W-CDMA and CDMA2000 technologies the two carriers employed.

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Last November, Nokia’s (NOK) HERE map app had a big debut by becoming a top 5 iPhone application in America on its launch day. The last three months have been cruel, however. Following mixed reviews from major tech sites, the HERE app plunged in the app charts across the world. Google (GOOG) Maps became a smash hit on iOS devices across the world. Today, Nokia’s biggest map app success is found in Mozambique, where it reigns at No. 526 in the iPhone download chart. Finns may still carry a torch for Nokia, but they aren’t dumb — HERE is just at No. 663 on the Finnish iPhone app market. The app is moving up the charts in Laos and Cape Verde, though it can’t quite break into top 600 in either market. It is in danger of dropping out of the top 1000 chart in Yemen and Albania.

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