Category: Mobile

As we’ve said before, BlackBerry’s (BBRY) goal with the Z10 isn’t to catch up with iOS and Android overnight but to simply live to fight another day. And based on some recent supply checks conducted by analyst Paul Peterson of boutique research firm BlueFin, it seems that BlackBerry has gone a long way toward achieving that goal. Per Barron’s, Peterson has written a research note claiming that it “appears that [BlackBerry] management is confident that the BB10 launches will be an unqualified success” because orders to suppliers for the Z10 handset have shown a “significant surge in orders in the past 30 days.”

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With just over one day left until Samsung (005930) unveils the Galaxy S IV, new details have begun to trickle out. Earlier reports claimed the company’s flagship smartphone would include eye-tracking technology, however this may not be the case. According to Bloomberg, the Galaxy S IV will not include the feature at launch, although it may appear in “future versions of the phone.” Samsung will instead use a simpler head-tracking technology that will have the ability to pause videos when a user turns away from the screen.

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One of the reasons Samsung (005930) has all but crushed its rival Android vendors has been a series of first-rate advertisements backed up by its Death Star-sized marketing budget. Per The Wall Street Journal, new research from advertising research firm Kantar Media shows that Samsung spent $402 million in 2012 marketing its smartphones in the United States, topping even Apple (AAPL) with its similarly enormous $333 million U.S. marketing budget for the iPhone. No other smartphone company studied by Kantar even came close to matching Samsung and Apple last year: HTC (2498) spent $46 million, BlackBerry (BBRY) spent $39 million and Nokia (NOK) spent $13 million. And given that Apple and Samsung are currently the only two smartphone vendors turning a consistent and sizable profit at the moment, we shouldn’t expect that either company will ratchet down its advertising budget anytime soon.

Apple has indeed managed a significant turnaround in India’s smartphone market, according to new figures out from IDC today (via CNN). The Apple smartphone grabbed 15.6 percent of India’s smartphone market by revenue  in Q4 2012, according to new data from the research firm, just behind market leading Samsung with its 38.8 percent, a significant change from the third quarter of last year, when IDC showed that Samsung had 46 percent share and Apple didn’t even crack the top five.

The about-face from Apple comes after IDC said in early February that the Mac maker had turned on the juice with respect to sales in India, growing its share by as much as 400 percent. At the time, no specific details about Apple’s actual change in percentage were released, but today’s update indicates that growth has been impressive in absolute terms, as well as relative when it comes to revenue. Still, the company has a lot of ground to make up when it comes to actual device shipment share.

Apple’s move up has been prompted at least in part by a major change in the way it sells the iPhone in India, by employing the help of small local retailers to distribute the device, and creating amortized payment plans that defray the significant upfront cost of buying an iPhone in India. Changing the cost/value proposition was key, since Apple’s iPhone is often much more expensive in India than it is elsewhere in the world, and actually getting it to customers proved very difficult using Apple’s previous distribution channels. The iPad mini and iPad 4 launched in India only shortly after its North American release, however, indicating Apple is trying harder to get products to that market early.

The Apple Store itself still doesn’t have a presence in India, either in physical retail or online. Apple did launch the iTunes Store in India in December, however, which is a big step in helping make sure the device has an ecosystem, but Apple still doesn’t offer the iPhone with carrier subsidies there the way it does elsewhere in the world. Despite the challenges that remain, these IDC figures suggest it’s doing something right, though it’s worth keeping in mind that smartphone adoption in India remains low, at around just 10 percent of the population.

A variety of benchmark test results last month revealed that NVIDIA’s (NVDA) next-generation mobile processor will be hard to beat. The Tegra 4 processor displayed vast improvements over older Tegra 3 models and in some cases resulted in scores that nearly quadrupled the performance of older devices. According to a new report, NVIDIA’s latest processor is even faster than Qualcomm’s (QCOM) flagship Snapdragon 800 CPU.

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The HTC (2498) One is one of the best-looking Android devices we’ve seen in a while, but there is one downside to it — so far it’s available on every single major American wireless carrier except for Verizon (VZ). But Droid-Life found a Bluetooth SIG certification filing over the weekend for an upcoming device with the model number “HTC6445LVW” that the site believes is likely a version of the HTC One designed for Verizon. Droid-Life’s reasoning is this: The last big HTC to come to Verizon, the Droid DNA, has a model number of “HTC6435LVW,” so it’s very likely that the 6445 model is the next HTC phone to release for the carrier. What’s more, the mystery phone’s specifications match up exactly with the HTC One’s specs, so the chances are good that some version of HTC’s flagship phone is coming to Verizon in the near future.

During its press conference in February, HTC (2498) failed to announce a release date for the HTC One. It was previously rumored that the company’s flagship smartphone would launch on March 15th, however a new report claims the phone’s release has been delayed until later this month. According to phone retailer Clove, the HTC One has been “officially” delayed in the United Kingdom until March 29th. An HTC spokesperson confirmed to BGR that the company “will start fulfilling pre-orders by end March in certain markets and will roll out to more markets as we approach April.” HTC’s new flagship smartphone is equipped with a 4.7-inch full HD display, a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor and a new “Ultrapixel” rear camera. BGR’s full review of the HTC One will be published in the coming days.

Today, Facebook has unveiled the cities and dates for their 2013 Mobile DevCon.

This year, you’ll have three chances to catch the mobile developer conference: april 18th in New York, May 2nd in London, and May 7th in Seoul, South Korea.

“We’ll have sessions for iOS, Android and Mobile Web developers. There’ll also be sessions dedicated for Product Managers. We’ll be covering Open Graph, social games, Mobile App Install Ads, and our mobile SDKs – but the focus is helping you grow your apps. In addition, there will be sessions on how we at Facebook build our own mobile apps,” says Facebook.

You can also look forward to session with companies who have worked with Facebook and built for mobile like GetGlue, Fab.com, and Zeebox. The DevCon concludes with one-on-ones with Facebook engineers and product managers.

Facebook warns that “this is a highly technical event – we’ll be deep in product and code,” but the event is open to any mobile developers, engineers, or product managers that are “at the sharp end of mobile app development.”

Facebook says that they have over 680 million active users on mobile, so you know when you’re developing with Facebook you’re developing for a giant audience.

Sorry, AT&T (T) — it seems that the Federal Communications Commission is willing to let T-Mobile merge with another company after all, as long as it doesn’t involve you. Bloomberg reports on its Twitter account that the FCC has approved the proposed merger between T-Mobile and MetroPCS (PCS), which still has to be approved by MetroPCS shareholders to become official. This last step could be particularly tricky, however, since some shareholders last year filed a lawsuit to block the merger while accusing the companies of “cheating shareholders” by “drastically” undervaluing MetroPCS’ worth.

How do we know that Apple (AAPL) is facing its most intense pressure ever in the smartphone space? Because longtime Apple watchers like iMore’s Rene Ritchie are starting to get antsy and are encouraging Apple to make a bigger splash with its next-generation iPhone. In a lengthy and thoughtful opinion piece, Ritchie frets that Apple has become too comfortable with its pattern of releasing a major iPhone revamp one year and then releasing a minor refresh the next year, as was the case with the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and then the iPhone 4 and 4S. He says that if the company follows the same pattern and releases a refreshed iPhone 5 as the iPhone 5S, then it risks being seen as “boring” by some consumers and tech bloggers.

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Verizon Wireless (VZ) will reportedly finally launch its version of Nokia’s (NOK) latest flagship smartphone next month. The Lumia 928 will feature specs that are very similar to the Lumia 920, however it will include an aluminum case and a xenon flash in addition to the standard LED flash, The Verge’s anonymous sources claim. The handset is also rumored to feature support for simultaneous voice and data on Verizon’s LTE network.

Despite being such a (relatively) new category of device tablets are racing up on their smaller cellular cousins, with rapidly growing user adoption and smartphone-surpassing web page traffic generation. Little wonder then that tablet apps are also generating increasing amounts of revenue — predicted to pass smartphone app revenue within five years.

Making a forecast in a new report, analyst ABI Research predicts tablets will account for more than a third (35%) of total app revenues this year, or some $8.8 billion out of a total pool of $25 billion. That’s still a way behind smartphones of course — projected to generate $16.4 billion this year, or just under double the amount generated by tablet apps — but the revenue share is growing and ABI reckons tablets will surpass smartphones in app revenue generation by 2018.

The reasons for tablets to become ultimate app revenue winners are down to their larger screen, which offers plenty of scope for developers to build attractive wares, and also lower cost slates helping to ramp up tablet ownership and increase app downloads, reckons ABI.

“The larger screen makes apps and content look and feel better, so there are more lucrative opportunities,” says senior analyst Aapo Markkanen in a statement. ”One might think that the bigger installed base of smartphones would compensate for the disparity, but that notion fails to take into account the arrival of low-cost tablets, which hasn’t even started yet at its earnest. The smartphones paved the way for them, but in the end we believe that it’s the tablets that will prove the more transformative device segment of the two.”

The analyst adds that the tablet category is also well placed to open up the computing market by addressing underserved demographic groups such as the elderly and children. “The really big deal about tablets is how they will help to finally bring the computing age to, for instance, children and the elderly,” says Markkanen. ”The business opportunity associated with them is undeniable, but at the same they can also bring about very significant social benefits.”

On the OS front, ABI predicts that the lion’s share of the app wealth this year will continue to be generated within Apple’s iOS ecosystem: it expects 65% of the combined $25 billion to come from iOS vs just over a quarter (27%) from Google’s Android ecosystem. While “the other mobile platforms” will generate the remaining 8% between them (ABI does not break this out).

Despite dominating app revenue, ABI recently predicted that Apple’s iOS will only account for 33% of the smartphone app downloads this year, vs. 58% being Android apps. However Apple’s tablet lead with its iPad devices continues to be a big one, with ABI expecting 75% of the tablet apps downloaded this year to be iPad apps, vs. just 17% being Android apps. Amazon (with its Kindle Fire tablet) is projected to get around 4% app share, while Windows tablets are relegated to around 2%.

Samsung’s (005930) next-generation Galaxy S IV is set to debut later this week, and it is expected to pack several exciting new features when it does. Among them will be a new eye-tracking feature that can automatically scroll content on the display as the user’s eyes near the bottom of the screen, and a feature that will pause media playback when the user’s head turns away from the phone. This will be the first time such functionality appears on a popular smartphone out of the box, but an Israel-based startup is already working to bring eye-tracking technology to popular smartphones like the iPhone and Android handsets.

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A smartphone said to be Samsung’s (005930) next-generation Galaxy S IV has been revealed in a hands-on video published by the same source who previously leaked still images of the phone. The new Samsung handset pictured in the video lines up with earlier rumors and appears to match a teaser image published late Monday by Samsung. The Galaxy S IV is expected to feature a 5-inch Super AMOLED display with 1080p resolution, an eight-core Exynos chipset, up to 64GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and new touch-free control features that work by tracking the user’s eyes. The full video of the purported Galaxy S IV follows below.

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Samsung (005930) just can’t resist teasing us with the Galaxy S IV. The company has posted an image of a silhouetted device on its official Twitter account with a caption that reads, “The countdown for #TheNextBigThing has begun. Who’s ready for the Global Unpacked Event on March 14?” From a design perspective, the image shows a device that looks very similar to the Galaxy S III in terms of shape. In fact, the image teased on Samsung’s Twitter page looks a lot like the leaked images we saw yesterday that were purportedly of the Galaxy S IV, so it wouldn’t be surprising if Samsung sticks with the same design that brought it so much success over the past year.

As if smartphone maker HTC doesn’t have enough to worry about in an Android space so saturated with Samsung-branded hardware it’s driving HTC’s sales back to 2010 levels. But now the Taiwanese company is facing the prospect of having to fork out for damages if haptics company Immersion gets its way. Immersion, which counts Samsung among the licensees for its “touch feedback technology”, had been content to stay a U.S. lawsuit against HTC — in order to wait for the completion of an International Trade Commission investigation into whether HTC has been infringing some of its patents. But, given HTC’s recent performance in the mobile space, Immersion has decided this strategy is no longer appropriate and today said it plans to ask for the stay of its lawsuit to be lifted — so that it “may prosecute its claim against HTC for damages immediately”.

The ITC action was originally scheduled for “final determination” on October 28, 2013 — after which Immersion may have been able to secure an exclusion order against HTC preventing infringing devices being imported into the United States. But with HTC’s fortunes in the doldrums, Immersion reckons it can get a better outcome via the U.S. District Court route, where it can win damages, attorneys’ fees, and potentially injunctive relief.

“Given HTC’s recent performance in the mobile market, we believe an exclusion order preventing HTC from importing infringing devices would no longer be an impactful win, and we are turning our energies to seeking damages for past and ongoing shipments of infringing devices,” noted Immersion CEO Victor Viegas in a statement.

Immersion filed its original complaint against HTC (and also Motorola) with the ITC on February 7, 2012, alleging infringement of six U.S. patents relating to the use of haptics technology — namely: 6,429,846 (“the ’846 patent”); 7,592,999 (“the ’999 patent”); 7,969,288 (“the ’288 patent”); 7,982,720 (“the ’720 patent”); 8,031,181 (“the ’181 patent”); and 8,059,105 (“the ’105 patent”).

A multi-year license for Immersion’s haptics technology signed by Samsung last week included a patent license covering “Samsung’s prior and future use of simple forms of haptic effects, sometimes referred to as Basic Haptics, in its smartphones and other mobile devices”, according to the company.

Immersion, which was founded back in 1993, says it has more than 1,300 issued or pending patents in the U.S. and other countries.

After yesterday’s photos posted to a Chinese forum of a device claimed to be the Samsung Galaxy S IV, a video of what looks like the same device has landed on YouTube —  again purporting to be the sequel to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III. As with the leaked photos, the video was spotted by SammyHub. The video shows a large handset, initially with the back off and the battery removed, before the battery is inserted, the plastic back snapped on and the phone turned on. As it boots up, it displays Chinese carrier China Unicom’s Wo logo before loading what appears to be a version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI.

The design of the device looks very similar to the Galaxy S III, with a high gloss plastic casing — tallying with other S IV reports – and metallic looking bands around the edges. The physical home button is present and correct, below a screen that looks longer than the S III’s pane — in keeping with rumours that Samsung is upping the touchscreen inch count to 5 inches (from the 4.8 inch pane on the S III). A five inch screen will push Samsung’s flagship handset into phablet territory, alongside Samsung’s Galaxy Note range.

The demo of the device goes on to showcase the camera function, the dialler and the settings menu — including the about page (in Chinese) which shows it’s apparently running Android 4.2.1 (Jelly Bean). In the background of the video, another video can be heard (and briefly seen reflected in the device’s screen) running Apple’s iPad Mini promo — doubtless to suggest that the Galaxy S IV is hoping to tread on the mini iOS tablet’s toes.

As with all such leaks, it’s not possible to confirm whether this is the real deal — although, being a video, it’s certainly more elaborate than many of the blurry leaked photos that crop up online ahead of flagship product releases. Either way, Galaxy fans don’t have long to wait as Samsung is due to unveil the real deal at an event in New York on Thursday.

Update: For a bona fide glimpse of the real deal, Samsung’s US Twitter account tweeted the following graphic, ahead of Thursday’s event:

Yes, a cheaper version of the iPhone could hurt Apple’s (AAPL) margins, but it could also open up several very important markets to Apple products. Asymco’s Horace Dediu looks at data showing how the iPhone’s market share in the United States has continued growing even as Android’s growth has stalled for the moment. He hypothesizes that having older iPhones available at lower prices is helping the device expand its reach to budget-conscious American consumers who don’t need to have the latest device.

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Remember the last time Sony (SNE) had a hit smartphone? That’s a trick question because Sony has never had a hit smartphone. But there’s a first time for everything and unnamed sources have told Digitimes that Sony’s new Xperia Z smartphone has sold out of its initial stock in Japan, France, Germany, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Digitimes report backs up previous reports we’ve read about showing the Xperia Z selling well not only in Japan and France but in Italy and Spain as well. The Xperia Z’s strong sales are somewhat surprising given Sony’s previous lack of success in the smartphone realm and the fact that Sony launched the device in the same quarter that both HTC (2498) and Samsung (005930) launched flagship Android smartphones of their own.

It was something of a black eye for BlackBerry when it came out that Sprint wouldn’t be carrying the all-touch Z10 BB10 smartphone. A huge relaunch, integral to the company’s future success, and one of the four major U.S. carriers was taking a pass on the first hardware. But the carrier is going to sell the keyboard-toting Q10, and will also sell what could be a Z10 successor, complete with touch-only interface, later in 2013.

AllThingsD reported earlier today that Sprint would have an all-touch device, which it described as not just a slightly modified Z10. This new phone is being launched in the second half of the year, according to AllThingsD’s sources, likely well after the launch of the upcoming Q10 with its hardware keyboard. The Verge followed up this earlier report with a supporting claim that describes the Sprint handset as a “version 2.0″ of the Z1o, according to its sources.

Sprint’s decision to pass on the Z10 while all its competitors look poised to offer both that handset and the Q10 makes a little more sense in light of this rumor. The device may be a carrier-exclusive variant, which is something BlackBerry has been known to do in the past in its former guise as RIM. But both sources of these new reports seem to indicate that what we’ll see won’t be simply a refreshed Z10 with some different specs, but a different all-touch device. No word on where it might fit in term of appealing to upscale or more budget-minded consumers.

A Z10 follow-up might actually be worth waiting for those interested in BB10, since the Z10 itself was impressive, but nonetheless a little rough around the edges. Some more time to bake might be just what the doctor ordered for an all-touch BlackBerry 10 device, and Sprint might be banking on that to help it become the carrier of choice for RIM’s next-gen mobile OS. We’ve contacted BlackBerry to see if there’s any official comment about device release plans for Sprint, and will update if any is forthcoming.