April 24, 2009
The predictions were dire, and the actual results were nothing to shout about.
But the cellular handset market weathered the first quarter reasonably well given the depth of the global downturn.
Research in Motion's Blackberry Bold had a good first quarter
According to ABI Research, 258 million phones were shipped during the three-month period. That is down 11 percent compared with last year. But it is ahead of expectations for 253.5 million handsets.
The research firm now thinks handset sales will fall 8 percent his year, compared with its previous projection of a 8.4 percent decline.
The second quarter, similarly, should show improvement over the first, though it will still be down 10 percent from a year earlier.
Samsung and LG did well during the first quarter, as did RIM with its Blackberry Bold, said Practice Director Kevin Burden.
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economy, news, wireless | Tagged: ABI Research, Cellular Handsets, LG, Mobile Phones, Research In Motion, Samsung | 
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Posted by Mark Boslet
March 26, 2009
The good news is 39 percent of Americans now say they can’t live without their mobile data communications.
39 percent of Americans can't live without their mobile communications. The rest are still satisfied to sit behind a PC
The bad news is the remaining 61 percent remain content with their home Internet connections and their PC-based e-mail.
The demographic snapshot of the country is the work of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. It once again shows a vanguard of early adopters rushing toward the latest technology, in this case the emerging world of online applications and high-speed 3G Web connections.
It is not surprising to find a sizeable minority of Americans excited about the new mobile possibilities. Devices such as the iPhone have helped simplify on-the-go communications and the access to online data on a variety of topics from stock prices to weather.
But it is surprising to find something of a backlash among the traditionalists. According to Pew, more members of the PC-based majority now say they would not find it difficult to do without their mobile devices, an increase from a year ago.
“The bar for what constitutes a sophisticated tech user has risen with the advent of wireless connectivity,” says Pew Associate Director John Horrigan. It is clear many people are not ready for this always-on, always-connected lifestyle.
Leave a Comment » | news, wireless | Tagged: iPhone, Mobile Internet, Mobile Phones, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Smartphones | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
March 19, 2009
In a sign of things to come, Samsung unveiled a movie rental service for mobile phones and PCs that will kickoff in Germany and Britain.
Service will compete with iTunes as companies push more content to the Web
More European markets are expected by the end of the year, though word on the rest of the world was mum.
The service will compete with Apple’s successful iTunes store, and reflects a push by service operators, hardware makers and content companies to put video, software applications and other content online in a dash for new revenue.
The fee for renting a movie for 24 hours will be about $3.60. Movies can be owned for about $7.24.
Samsung said so far about 500 titles are available from Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal and Momentum. The company hopes to expand the library to 2,000 titles by June.
The movies are downloaded to a PC before being transferred to a mobile device. It was unclear what formats, other than Windows, would be compatible with the service.
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Posted by Mark Boslet
February 25, 2009
Last month, Nokia projected mobile handset sales would fall 10 percent this year.
Displays for these units are following step, projected to fall 6.2 percent in 2009 and remain largely unchanged (up 0.3 percent) in 2010, says iSuppli.
Prices declines for displays was slow
The market won’t surpass 2008 volumes until 2011, says the research firm.
The business was already suffering from falling prices in 2008 before the sharply slowing economy and a build up for finished phone inventories cut sales volumes and added to its problems.
Display shipments at some suppliers fell by more than 40 percent in the fourth quarter.
Despite production cuts by some suppliers, prices should fall 15 percent to 20 percent in 2009, though perhaps not as much as in 2008, iSuppli says.
1 Comment | economy, hardware, news, wireless | Tagged: Downturn, Handset Displays, Market Decline, Mobile Phones | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
February 17, 2009
Nokia on Tuesday became the first major cell phone maker to agreed to install Skype Internet calling software on its cell phones.
Nokia's N97 will be the first phone shipped with Skype
The Finnish manufacturer said its Nseries line of high-end cell phones will include Skype, with the N97 the first to ship with the software in the third quarter.
Second tier producer INQ already integrates Skype with several of its models and the Skype is available as a download for phones running Windows Mobile from Microsoft and Google’s Android operating systems.
Phone makers have long resisted integrating Skype, which is owned by eBay, because carriers have feared the Internet service would cannibalize their businesses. Skype can be used to make free computer to computers and, for a fee, connect calls to other phones.
Nokia said the Skype software will let N97 users make free calls to computers and other N97 phones, as well as see when other Skype users are online.
The announcement was made at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Leave a Comment » | news, web 2.0, wireless | Tagged: android, Google, INQ, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, nokia, Skype, windows mobile | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
February 10, 2009
Google announced on Tuesday an expansion of its AdSense advertising program to include mobile search ads.
Publishes can co-brand a search box
The initiative is a second step toward bringing Google ads to mobile phones and portable handheld devices.
In September 2007, the Internet search giant brought out AdSense for mobile content, a program for network operators and mobile Web site owners to place Google ads alongside their online content.
Now its has expanded the offering to include search, according to a blog entry.
“AdSense for mobile search is a quick and easy way for carriers and mobile publishers to embed a Google search box on their mobile portals and web sites,” said Yury Pinsky, a Google product manager. “Mobile operators and website owners share in the ad revenue generated by searches originating from their sites.”
Web pages can even be co-branded with a publisher’s logo.
Google said it was taking applicants for a beta-testing program and would conduct private briefings at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.
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Posted by Mark Boslet
February 5, 2009
Google said it has adapted its computer-based Google Book Search for the small screens of mobile phones.
Book Search has 1.5 million public domain books
But the search giant also apologized in advance for how difficult the task was.
Google said that mobile phone users can now access more than 1.5 million books in the public domain to read and browse. Just steer your Android-based phone, iPhone or other model here.
But the company said in a blog post that the “technical challenges are daunting.” For computer access, Google simply made digital copies of pages in a book, a method that works well for the larger screen of a PC.
To adapt the service to a cell phone, the company decided to scroll the text onto the smaller screen, a process it calls optical character recognition.
“The extraction of text from page images is a difficult engineering task,” according to the blog post. “Smudges on the physical books’ pages, fancy fonts, old fonts, torn pages, etc. can all lead to errors in the extracted text.”
The company said it will make enhancements over time to its optical character recognition.
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Posted by Mark Boslet
February 4, 2009
Motorola has had a difficult time of it.
In the fourth quarter, its handset sales plunged 53 percent as the popular iPhone from Apple and the new Blackberries turned consumers away from its aging product line and its last big hit, the Razr.
Windows Mobile 7 may change the competitive landscape
Now it is eager to get back on the playing field and is promising a revitalized family of products to hit the market in the fourth quarter and the first half of 2010.
“Consumers are migrating toward devices that increasingly involve data subscriptions,” says Sanjay Jha, co-CEO.
So what operating system will the new products run? Motorola says many will use the Android smart-phone software from Google instead of Windows Mobile 6 from Microsoft. “We believe in 2009, Android is more competitive,” says Jha.
“But in 2010 when Windows (Mobile) 7 becomes available, we will participate more,” he said.
1 Comment | news, wireless | Tagged: 2009, android, Google, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, motorola, windows mobile | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
January 8, 2009
Skype announced Thursday a lite version of its popular Internet calling software for mobile phones.
The software will work on Android phones running Google’s handset software and more than 100 Java-enable phones from makers such as LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony-Ericsson.
Can you Skype? The answer may be yes
Skype called the software an updated beta version that benefited from earlier testing last year. For the first time it is available to users in the U.S.
The software lets users call other Skype consumers using their cellular handsets.
Skype also announced a 1.0 beta of its software for Intel-based mobile Internet devices.
1 Comment | computers, news, web 2.0, wireless | Tagged: android, Cell Phones, Google, Intel, LG, Mobile Phones, motorola, Portable Internet Devices, Samsung, Skype, Sony | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
December 15, 2008
With competitors rushing to imitate the iPhone’s ability to switch from portrait to landscape viewing, the mobile-handset business has provided a boom to MEMS manufacturing.
Cross section of MEMS accelerometer
During the second half of 2008, sales of Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) accelerometers used to detect motion in smart phones rose beyond expectations.
The growth is expected to continue, says iSuppli. The market researcher says global shipments for MEMS accelerometers will reach 900 million units in 2012 from 65 million units last year.
In turn, worldwide sales of all types of MEMS for mobile phones will jump to $1.3 billion by the end of 2012 from $296.8 million in 2007.
“Apple’s visionary use of MEMS accelerometers that support the automatic switch from landscape to portrait view on the iPhone display has prompted a flood of competitors to follow suit,” says Principal Analyst Jérémie Bouchaud.
In 2008, 10 percent of the 1.29 billion mobile handsets shipped worldwide will include MEMS accelerometers, up from 2 percent at the end of 2007, iSuppli said – with benefits for manufacturers such as STMicroelectronics, Bosch, Analog Devices and Kionix.
At the same time as they have seen gains in the handset market, MEMS have seen declines in other markets, such as the one for rear-projection televisions.
Leave a Comment » | chips, news, wireless | Tagged: Analog Devices, Apple, Boom, Bosch, Growth, iPhone, Kionix, MEMS, Mobile Phones, STMicroelectronics | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
