Update: BlackBerry ships 1 million Z10 smartphones in move to profit
Research In Motion Limited, now doing business as BlackBerry, shipped about 1 million BlackBerry Z10 smartphones during its fiscal fourth quarter.
Anything more than a million in Z10 sales in the quarter can be considered a success for BlackBerry, anything less would have been disappointing, according to Ovum. The Z10 is the first BlackBerry 10 OS device.
BlackBerry shipped a total of 6 million smartphones in the quarter, the company said Thursday as it released its quarterly earnings.
Revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on March 2, was approximately $2.7 billion, down 36 percent from the same quarter of fiscal 2012. Net income from continuing operations for the quarter was $94 million, compared to a net loss of $118 million during 2012. Read more...
Fujitsu, NTT DoCoMo, and NEC to form smartphone chip venture
Japanese electronics heavyweights Fujitsu and NEC, together with the country's largest mobile operator, NTT DoCoMo, said Wednesday they will form a new joint venture to build and sell wireless chips for smartphones.
The venture, Access Network Technology, will focus on creating chips that combine wireless modems with other functions, cutting the number of chips needed to make a phone and reducing reliance on outside vendors. The companies will initially develop products for their own use, but will target international sales in the quickly growing smartphone market.
In Japan, mobile operators have long dictated what specifications and functionality manufacturers build into the phones that run on their networks, although their control has loosened somewhat with the recent influx of foreign smartphones. Fujitsu and NEC currently work with NTT DoCoMo on a contractual basis to develop the chips for their handsets, and the deal formalizes the long-standing arrangement. Read more...
Nokia woos networks with ‘exclusive Windows 8 mobe deals’
Nokia is keeping schtum amid claims it hopes to sign exclusive deals with European mobile operators for its planned Windows Phone 8 smartphones.
The handset-maker is negotiating with carriers to grant sole rights to sell its phones running Microsoft’s next mobile OS in different countries, according to the Financial Times. The carriers would have to share the cost of marketing and promoting the phones.
Such a step would be a major break with tradition for Nokia, as it has typically made its handsets available to all carriers in an effort to reach the broadest market possible.
A spokeswoman for Nokia asked by The Reg to confirm the talks said she wouldn’t comment on “speculation and rumour” but did confirm that Nokia is in "on-going" talks with carriers. Read more...
Qualcomm sees smartphones pushing demand toward end of year
Qualcomm has lowered its forecast of global cellular device shipments for 2012 due to a gloomy economic outlook, though it expects device sales to surge in the fourth quarter because of upcoming products, a likely reference to Apple's iPhone and Microsoft's Windows 8 tablets.
The mobile chip company reported results for its fiscal third quarter on Wednesday, posting revenue and profit up significantly from a year earlier but down from the previous quarter. Revenue hit US$4.63 billion, up 28 percent year over year and down 6 percent sequentially, while earnings per share were $0.69, up 13 percent from a year earlier and down 46 percent from the previous quarter.
Citing more cautious forecasts by economists, Qualcomm said it was lowering its forecast for global shipments of 3G and 4G devices in the current calendar year to between 875 million and 935 million. But that outcome would still represent an increase of 14 percent from 2011, assuming the results come in at the midpoint of the forecast, the company said. Read more...
Tablets, smartphones still hammering PC market
Tablets and smartphones -- and users' infatuation with them -- continue to pummel the PC market.
Worldwide PC shipments were flat this past quarter, just like they were for the previous six quarters before that, according to a report out Wednesday from the research firm Gartner.
PC shipments globally totaled 87.5 million units in the second quarter of 2012. That is a decline of 0.1% from the second quarter of the previous year.
"In the second quarter of 2012, the PC market suffered through its seventh consecutive quarter of flat to single-digit growth," Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a written statement. "Uncertainties in the economy in various regions, as well as consumer's low interest in PC purchases, were some of the key influencers of slow PC shipment growth."
Kitagawa noted that despite analysts' and PC makers' high expectations for ultrabooks, which are thin and light laptops with long battery life, not enough were sold in the second quarter of this year to have an impact on the market. Read more...
A third of IT shops support personal smartphones, tablets at work
Some IT shops provide technical support for personal smartphones, tablets and laptops used at work, but the percentage is still relatively small, a Gartner poll found.
Of 938 businesses surveyed in nine countries, 32% said they support personal smartphones, while 37% said they support tablets, Gartner said Thursday. Laptops owned by workers got the highest level of IT technical support, at 44%.
The overall level of support for personal devices was 44% in Brazil, Russia, India and China, known as the BRIC countries, which have a larger number of young workers and growing economic power. The five non-BRIC countries surveyed, U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia and Japan, had support levels at 28%, Gartner said. Read more...
Nearly 1 in 5 smartphone users are sexting
Almost a year after Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal led him to resign from office, Americans seem to be as careless about using their smartphones as the former congressman was. Nearly 1 in 5 Americans who have a smartphone say they have used it for sexting, sharing explicit photos or text messages with others, according to a new survey.
The biggest age groups for sexting are 18- to 34-year-old men (32 percent) and 35- to 44-year-old women (25 percent), says Lookout Mobile Security, which sponsored the Harris Interactive poll of 2,097 adults. Read more...
Facebook bolsters efforts to build smartphone
Facebook is revitalizing its effort to create a smartphone, recruiting engineers who have experience with mobile devices, according to a story in the New York Times Sunday.
Facebook has kept its renewed effort to come up with a smartphone quiet, avoiding putting ads on public sites, according to the article, which cited unnamed sources inside the company, people briefed by the company and people who had been the target of recruitment initiatives.
Facebook wants to release a smartphone by next year, and has picked up former Apple engineers who had worked on the iPhone, as well one who worked on the iPad, according to the article. Read more...
Samsung acquires mSpot to gives its phones a cloud media boost
How do you make your smartphones stand out in 2012? Well, you could try constantly cramming the latest hardware into your handsets, but everyone else is doing that, too. You can’t rely on the operating system to set your phones apart, either, unless you’re Apple or RIM and no one else can use the OS. Read more...
4G LTE networks hit battery life on some smartphones
While battery capacities in smartphones has increased, 4G LTE networks are taking their toll on battery life for Web browsing and video streaming, according to a new analysis by Metrico Wireless.
Four new smartphones tested 20,000 times on live AT&T and Verizon Wireless LTE networks all delivered less than five hours of battery life for either streaming video or Web browsing, testing service Metrico said in a 10-page report released today.
Streaming video and Web browsing are seen as key selling points behind customer interest in LTE smartphones, making the test findings that much more important, Metrico noted. Read more...
Three incredible new smartphone accessories that are under $30
There is so much that can be done with our smartphones now that we basically never put them down. If we’re not checking in to something or watching a video, we’re surfing the web and/or making phone calls. So in between all that hard work we do with them, why not have a little fun as well? Welcome to the wonderful world of smartphone toys.
We’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on these devices after all, so I went in search of some things under $30 that are cool for just about any phone. Read more...
Cut the contract: How prepaid smartphones can save you money
Smartphones may make our lives easier, but boy, they sure do make our wallets lighter. A typical smartphone setup with one of the major U.S. carriers costs around $70 to $80 a month -- and that's on the lower end of the spectrum. So what if there were a way you could get the same kind of service for less than half the cost?
It turns out there is -- if you're willing to make a few trade-offs. The secret lies in a rapidly growing but rarely discussed segment of the smartphone market known as prepaid or contract-free service. Prepaid service has been around for some time, but in the last couple of years it's started to transform from a source of cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel phones into a viable outlet for compelling smartphones.
So what exactly do you give up by going the prepaid route and is the sacrifice worth the gain? Read on; you might just be surprised. Read more...
ITC rules in Apple’s favor in HTC mobile patent dispute
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday issued a final determination that Apple doesn't infringe certain HTC patents related to smartphones. HTC makes devices based on Google's Android mobile operating system that compete with Apple's iPhone.
The ruling was made on a complaint that HTC filed with the ITC following a complaint lodged by Apple last year. HTC accused Apple of selling products that violate its patents relating to power-management methods and phone-number directories. Read more...
Android security: Don’t let 2012 become the year of the bad app
The massive adoption of smartphones and tablets in 2011 was accentuated by the Christmas period sales figures. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, close to seven million new smartphones were activated globally on Christmas Day.
In the final week of 2011, the number of downloaded apps passed the billion mark for the first time. In 2012 that level is expected to be commonplace.
Such a large market is immensely attractive to those looking to profit illegally from the boom. Using apps to deliver malicious payloads is not new but there has been a marked increase in the number of bad apps detected over the past two years. Read more...
Visa certifies more smartphones for NFC payments
Visa has added smartphones from Samsung Electronics, Research In Motion and LG Electronics to the list of devices it has certified to work with the 185,000 NFC-based payWave payment terminals in Europe.
All the certified products run Visa's payWave application on a secure SIM card and use NFC (Near Field Communications), a short range communications standard, to securely transmit payment information to a contactless payment terminal, according to Visa.
The first round of certified phones are: Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380. Read more...