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News tagged ‘Nokia’
Internal Samsung memo shows iPhone caused 'crisis of design'
New documents revealed during the legal battle between Apple and Samsung by Samsung Chief Strategy Officer Justin Denison show that the South Korean electronics giant had a "crisis of design" when the first iPhone launched in 2007. An internal memo telling about a "crisis of design" between the company's products was intended to put Samsung in a positive light became fodder for Apple counsel William Lee and "opened the door" to Apple's questioning.
Leave a commentClaimed SIM Tray for Next-Generation iPhone 5
New photos of the next-generation iPhone 5 SIM tray have surface online, claiming Apple’s plans to introduce a more compact "nano-SIM" standard alongside this year's iPhone launch. The photos of the empty SIM tray, published over at Nowhereelse.fr, reveal a design that will command roughly 40 percent less internal space when compared to existing micro-SIM cards. Sized roughly a third smaller than existing MicroSIM cards found inside current iPads and iPhones, the so-called nano-SIM design was reportedly modified back in May to address objections on the part of rival handset maker Nokia.
Top 5 customer complaints about smartphones: Samsung Galaxy SIII, iPhone 4S, Nokia Lumia 900, HTC Titan II, Galaxy Nexus and Blackberry Curve
FixYa, an online tech support community, released an interesting report regarding the top 5 most commonly reported issues in some of today’s most popular smartphones.
The data comes from more than 25 million users and 650000 experts. And the report covers top handsets like the Samsung Galaxy SIII, iPhone 4s, Nokia Lumia 900, HTC Titan II, Galaxy Nexus and Blackberry Curve. Let's take a look at the results:
As far as the iPhone 4S goes, the top 5 most reported issues are:
- Battery Life – 45%
- Can’t Connect to Wi-Fi – 20%
- Bluetooth Connection – 15%
- Siri Complaints – 10%
- Other – 10%
Apple Changes Siri's Answer to "What's the Best Smartphone Ever?"
Apple has changed Siri's answer to the question "What's the best smartphone ever?" after it was discovered that the Nokia Lumia 900 came up as the result.
Now Siri offers the following result:
Vote On The Nano-SIM Card Standard Is Currently Underway
In May of last year, Apple submitted a proposal for its nano-SIM card design that would replace the current micro-SIM. However, as of couple months ago, the company was fighting with rival mobile phone makers which were pushing their own standards for SIM cards. In an effort to convince other companies to support its design, Apple has even said that they will offer royalty-free patent license to its SIM-card design.
Apple And Foxconn's Agreement Will Raise Bar For Working Conditions In China
Yesterday Fair Labor Association the results of its investigation into three Foxconn facilities. The inspection has revealed a number of violations of the labor law, and following FLA’s recommendations Apple and Foxconn have agreed to bring overtime and working hours in line with the Chinese legal limit of 36 per month and 49 per week. Also Foxconn will hire thousands of new workers and provide a compensation package to ensure employee’s salaries remain at the same level amid reduced overtime and working hours.
Apple Asked ETSI To Set Basic FRAND Licensing Rules
After being defeated by Motorola in a patent dispute over FRAND licensing this month, Apple proposed the European Telecommunications Standards Institute to set consistent royalties for patents that are essential to wireless communication standards, the Wall Street Journal. The body participates in setting the standards relating to 4G LTE, 3G UMTS and GSM technologies.
Apple’s Profit Share Among Top Mobile Phone Manufacturers Reached 75%
Asymco's analyst Horace Dediu has published his of profit and revenue distribution in the global mobile phone market. According to his analysis, Apple has increased its share of the top phone manufacturers’ profits to 75 percent. Samsung followed in second position with 16 percent of profit share, and no other manufacturer received more than 4 percent of profits.
Apple climbs two spots to become world's third-largest mobile phone maker
Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales in 2011 in Millions of Units
Research firm IDC has recently released its estimates of global mobile phone sales for the fourth quarter of and full-year 2011. The results show that Apple passed LG and became the third world largest mobile phone vendor for the first time. Apple was closing to LG by the middle of 2010, but during the third quarter ZTE pushed the company back on the fifth place. However, thanks to the iPhone 4S launch, Apple moved up in the year’s final quarter and passed LG in full-year numbers as well.
According to the estimates, Apple was neck-and-neck with Samsung for the crown of top smartphone manufacturer, Nokia and Samsung firmly hold down the top two spots in the overall mobile phone rankings on the volume of their lower-end feature phones.
Apple Estimated to Retake Title of World's Largest Smartphone Vendor
A couple of days ago the research firm Strategy Analytics announced its estimates of the global smartphone market for the fourth quarter of 2011. The firm has found that Apple narrowly squeezed by Samsung to retake the title of world's largest smartphone vendor as measured by unit shipments. Apple's 37 million iPhones narrowly eclipsed Samsung's quarterly smartphone shipments of 36.5 million units.
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “While Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20 percent global share during 2011. With global smartphone shipments nearing half a billion units in 2011, Samsung is now well positioned alongside Apple in a two-horse race at the forefront of one of the world’s largest and most valuable consumer electronics markets.”
In the second quarter of 2011 Apple passed Nokia and is holding off Samsung now. But in the third quarter Samsung easily passed Apple, and Samsung’s continued growth paired with a pause in iPhone sales ahead of the iPhone 4S launch. The iPhone 4S launch could help Apple to retake the lead from Samsung in the fourth quarter, although it was not able to top the charts for full-year 2011.
Apple Became The World's Top Semiconductor Consumer In 2011
Given the increasing popularity of Apple’s mobile devices and growing demand for smartphones, it is no surprise that Apple is raising its expenses on chips. The research firm Gartner that Apple is now the largest buyer of semiconductors in the world as measured on the basis of Design TAM, or total silicon content in all devices designed by Apple and its rivals. In 2011, Apple spent $17 billion on silicon parts, which accounts for 5.7% of total silicon buying.
Apple awarded 676 patents in 2011
According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple was awarded a total of 676 patents in 2011. Now Apple is No. 39 among companies awarded inventions in the U.S., comparing with the last year result, when Apple won 563 patents and was ranked the No. 46 global company in terms of inventions.
The No. 1 inventor in America was IBM, which was awarded 6,180 patents in 2011. The second place belongs to Samsung, which won 4,894 inventions outside of its home country of Korea. The third place took Canon with 2,821 patents. Panasonic came in the fourth place with 2,559, while Toshiba took fifth with 2,483 inventions. Microsoft is in the sixth place, with 2,311 patents, Hewlett-Packard with 1,308 patents in 14th place, Intel with 1,244 patents in 16th place, and AT&T, whose 721 patents put it in 35th.
Apple's iOS finishes 2011 with 52% share of mobile Web browsing
The latest figures from Net Applications show that Apple closed out 2011 with a commanding 52.1 percent share of mobile devices tracked browsing the Web. In second place was Java ME with 21.3 percent, while Google's Android came in third with just 16.2 percent.
Apple's share slid from 54 percent in November of 2011, and is down from its high of 61.5 percent in October. But it's also up from the 46.6 percent share iOS was tracked at in February of 2011. Coming in fourth in the data was Nokia's Symbian platform, with 5.8 percent, while Research in Motion's BlackBerry holds 3.5 percent. Interestingly, while sales of new BlackBerry devices have been weak, December of 2011 proved to be the best month of the year for RIM.
If dividing Apple’s devices shares in mobile web-browsing, the iPhone took 25.2 percent and leads all mobile devices. The iPad, though, was the second most popular device, with a 24.5 percent representation.
In the PC market Apple’s Macs platform finished with 6.4 percent in December of 2011 comparing with the 92.2 percent share Microsoft held with Windows. Windows XP, despite being 10 years old, is still leading the market with 46.5 percent. Windows 7 is in second with 37 percent, while Windows Vista holds 8.44 percent. As for Apple's Mac OS X, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard platform remains its most popular at 3 percent, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, released in July, closed out 2011 with a 2 percent share in December.
Argentina blocks iPhone sales in bid to strengthen economy
The Argentinean government has temporarily blocked sales of certain electronics including Apple's iPhone and RIM's BlackBerry. Such measures were attempted in order to stabilize the country's ailing economy, to slow rising inflation and correct the disparity between the pesos and U.S. dollar, while suggesting that companies must build plants in the country to resume sales.
In order to continue smartphone sales in Argentina, Apple must build a plant or partner with a local company to manufacture the iPhone. RIM is reportedly looking to partner with an existing plant so that it can continue sales in the region. Other handset makers like Motorola, Nokia and Samsung have already moved or built plants in Argentina's Tierra del Fuego free zone after the government passed the Internal Revenue Law of 2009, which added a 20.48 percent tax to the existing 21 percent VAT for certain imported electronic devices.
According to Argentinean site Fortunaweb, iPhone and BlackBerry sales comprised 60 percent of the total market in October. And to strengthen the Argentinean economy, the government made decision to support local manufactures, banning some electronics manufactures from sales in this country. The Economist reported in December article that "a slowing year-to-year GDP blamed on decreased demand for agricultural commodities and huge government subsidies have caused the country to enact tighter controls on capital flight".
iPhone leads competition in UK holiday smartphone sales
Citing findings by research firm GfK, the Financial Times reported on Monday that Apple’s iPhone 4S accounted for nearly one out of every four smartphone sales in the UK during the lead up to the holiday season and retains the best-selling smartphone in the UK.
During the first week of December, five versions of Apple's handset, including the two and a half year old 3GS, ranked as one of the top 15 smartphones sold and took over 37 percent of a smartphone market that nearly doubled in size between Feb. 2010 and Aug. 2011. According to figures from Ofcom, the U.K.'s government-approved regulatory authority for telecommunications, 46 percent of all mobile users are now smartphone owners.
Apple’s rivals are also showing significant grown in sales. The second best-selling smartphone in the UK is Samsung's Galaxy S II and three versions of RIM's BlackBerry Curve all landing in the top ten. Noticeably absent from the top-selling handsets was Nokia. The company's new partnership with Microsoft has yet to bear fruit. The Windows Phone 7-based Lumia line failed to crack the top ten handsets sold in the UK after.