News tagged ‘smartphone’

We still don’t know whether Apple realizes or not the iPhone 5 until September or early fall.  But we’ve tried to sum up all possible reasons why Apple might officially launch the iPhone 5 this fall. First of all, Apple announced Verizon iPhone only in February and the white iPhone’ has stared selling today. An October shipping date of new iPhone would give Verizon and the white iPhones time to enjoy their purchases without temptation from the next model of Apple’s smartphone. The second reason is that Apple typically updates the iPod line in late summer/early fall. This encourages back-to-school sales and jump-starts the all-important Holiday shopping season. By bringing the iPhone into line with its iPod refresh cycle, Apple could better position new iPhone sales so that giving an iPhone for Christmas doesn't feel like you're committing to last year's technology. And the last reason is firmware update. The iPhone 5 and iOS 5 may be presented simultaneously showing us more revolutionary than evolutionary changes.

Bloomberg reports South Korea's communications regulator investigates whether Apple is breaking the law by forcing iPhones to save data on the location of their users.

The Korea Communications Commission have already asked the company to explain why and how often this data is saved on devices, may users delete it and whether Apple copies it to its servers.

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This Monday Apple accused Samsung of copying the design of the iPad and iPhone for its own Galaxy-branded tablet and smartphone products. Next day Samsung filed a counter-suit against Apple.

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In today's early morning trading Apple's stock was down more than 7$ or 2,2%. As you may know, this Wednesday the company is expected to report new record earnings and such news usually increase company's stock price.  However, Jay Yarow from BusinessInsider sees few reasons for the contrary effect:

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Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have started investigation concerning the issue with illegal obtaining and transmitting data from users their consent or knowledge through various smartphone applications. The prosecutors are investigating whether various applications on smartphones such as the iPhone and various Android phones are not notifying users what data is being collected and why such data is required by the application. As far as we know, in the United States it’s prohibited for IT companies to collect any information about user without notice. The Wall Street Journal tested 101 applications and discovered that 56 of those transmitted the unique identification number for the device without letting users know, 47 transmitted the phones location and 5 sent a users age, gender and other personal information.

Market research firm comScore released details of the smartphone market share for the November 2010 – February 2011 period. The company surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found out that Samsung the top cellphone manufacturer with a 24.8% market share.  Apple ranked 5th place with a 7.5% share in February, up 0.9% from November 2010. As comScore notes Apple saw the “strongest gain” thanks to the release of the Verizon iPhone 4, which was the “most acquired handset in the month of February” in the United States. Though, among the mobile operating platforms Google’s Android system demonstrates the strongest growth.

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

Yesterday, on April 3 the Apple’s iPad celebrated its first anniversary. 365 days ago the original iPad went on sale in the United States. The Apple’s “magical device” that was smaller than a laptop but bigger than a smartphone, was exactly what many people had been looking for. Moreover, the iPad created a new market of devices without physical keyboard with large Multitouch screen.  iPad for Apple was a terrific commercial success. The company sold more than 15 million devices, and over 75, 000 native applications via the App Store. The iPad became an iconic device, and now there are long lines around the globe to get the chance of buying an iPad 2.

As you may already know, this Thursday Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci resigned his office after the company's decision to reorganize itself in order to increase its share on the tablet market. The permanent successor should be found by the end of April.

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This time the second iPad’s A5 processor has became an object of teardown, revealing that the chip is indeed being manufactured by Samsung.  Some recent rumors claimed that Apple is shifting production from Samsung to TSMC. Apple is said to be interested in switching from Samsung because the company competes with both the iPhone and the iPad with its own devices - the Galaxy S smartphone and the Galaxy Tab tablet, respectively.

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A new ad of Motorola's upcoming tablet Xoom on the website of Verizon Wireless shows that the device has 1 GHz dual-core processor that is "fully Flash-enabled for video-rich web". But as you can see on the screenshot above, there is a note, which shows that actually Adobe Flash is expected in Spring 2011.

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This week Mike Abramsky from RBC Capital Markets released another note to investors, where he said that partnership between Microsoft and Nokia can "inadvertently help" Google Android, Apple and possibly RIM.

This Friday, at conference in London Stephen Elop, who was a Microsoft's Business Division head and now is a CEO at Nokia, along with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the strategic alliance.

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This Wednesday HP announced its three new webOS-based devices - the TouchPad tablet and two smartphones named Pre 3 and Veer. Before they were unveiled general manager and senior vice president for the Palm Global Business Unit at HP Jon Rubistein told that the company is at the beginning of new epoch.

"Today we're embarking on a new era of webOS with the goal of linking a wide family of HP products through the best mobile experience available. The flexibility of the webOS platform makes it ideal for creating a range of innovative devices that work together to keep you better connected to your world."

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Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users in 2010 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2011)

Today Gartner revealed the results of another research, where it was found that Apple's achievements in 2010 had led to the situation when the company's competitors experienced reduced sales and eventually lost significant market shares.

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Today Mike Abramsky, who is an analyst from investment firm RBC Capital Markets, released a note to investors, where he said that Apple and Verizon will sell more than 1 million iPhones in a week after its launch. He also forecasted that in the first quarter of device availability both companies will sell approximately from 3 to 4 million handsets.

He also took available inventory and estimated pre-order numbers and found out that Apple, Best Buy and Verizon may stock out completely as soon as in the first week after the launch of the device. The analyst believes that Apple has 1-1,5 million units for the launch in its channel inventory.

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Yesterday research firm Canalysis revealed a new study, where it was found that last quarter there were sold 32.9 million smartphones, which are based on Google platform, including Android, Tapas and OMS. In turn, according to Reuters only 31 million of Nokia's smartphones with Symbian OS were sold over the same period of time, and that allows to conclude that Google has overtaken Nokia and became a top smartphone platform maker in the world.

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