Apple top for smartphones in 2011 but Android extends OS lead

Apple took top place in the worldwide smartphone charts in Q4 2011, new stats have suggested today, clinching the overall number one position for the year with 19-percent of the market. iPhone sales made up almost a quarter of smartphone purchases worldwide in the three months leading up to the end of 2011, Gartner claims, with Samsung taking the number two spot. In cellphones overall, Nokia remains on top of the charts but with a sliding market share, 23.8-percent of the worldwide market in 2011 but down over five points from 2010.

Nokia has already warned that such a slump is likely to continue through 2012, with interest in Symbian devicesfading faster than previously expected. Meanwhile the company is pushing ahead with Windows Phone, though Microsoft’s platform only had 1.9-percent of the worldwide smartphone market share in Q4 2011.

Android held the Q4 smartphone OS top place, with 50.9-percent of the market worldwide, while iOS had less than half that amount at 23.8-percent. Both saw significant increases year-on-year however, unlike RIM whose share dropped from 14.6- to 8.8-percent.

Read more »

iCloud gains 15 million users in 21 days

Apple CEO Tim Cook offered up details on how iCloud is doing at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. iCloud was one of several topics Cook talked about during the conference. He also talked about working conditions at factories building Apple products in China along with the philosophy of Apple. Cook gave up a few tidbits about iCloud that were very interesting.

He announced that the cloud based syncing service has over 100 million users currently. Last month Cook announced the service had 85 million users. Simple math shows that in the 21 days since Cook announced the 85 million number, Apple has added 15 million new users to iCloud. Apple considers the cloud service to be a long-term strategy for the future.

Cook calls iCloud a “strategy for the next decade” for Apple. Clearly, Cupertino has big plans for the future that involve the cloud service. iCloud is deeply integrated into Apple iOS 5 and is compatible with the iPhone starting with the 3GS. What do you think the future holds for iCloud?

Read more »

HTC streaming Spotify rival tipped

HTC could take on Spotify and Pandora with a streaming music service for its mobile devices, sources indicate, building on its Beats Audio investment with more unique features to differentiate its smartphones. The company is working with music producer and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine on the unnamed streaming service, GigaOm‘s sources claim, in addition to new music-centric hardware such as Bluetooth-connected speakers that might debut as soon as Mobile World Congress later this month.

The company already offers Bluetooth speakers with the HTC Rhyme, but according to the tipsters and more substantial “wireless boombox” is in the pipeline. That would use Bluetooth to stream audio from HTC phones and tablets, as well as presumably offering some degree of remote control over playback.

HTC has apparently been in talks with Spotify previously, as well as other streaming music providers, around powering a service for HTC devices, but the negotiations failed to go anywhere. Instead, Iovine is believed to be using his heft in the industry to create a Spotify rival, something fellow music execs are tipped to approve of as it could potentially dilute Spotify’s rising star.

The service will be preinstalled on HTC devices, though it’s unclear as to whether it will demand a subscription or, like Nokia Music on the Finnish company’s Lumia devices, be a free addition intended to encourage shoppers to pick HTC phones and tablets rather than those of rival manufacturers, even if they run the same underlying OS. Pricing plans and other details are still being worked on, supposedly, but HTC is tipped to have “long harbored” ambitions around streaming music services. The company already offers streaming video using itsHTC Watch rental system.

HTC could reveal the new music platform as early as the Barcelona mobile show at the end of February, where it’s also tipped to be bringing three new Android smartphones – including the Ville and Edge – and a new tablet. We’ll be at Mobile World Congress bringing back all the details as they’re announced, and you can keep up with all the news in our MWC 2012 hub.

Read more »

Samsung eyes spinoff of LCD unit as profits slump

The LCD industry is facing some very tough times as profits for some of the largest companies are shrinking, making the future of the LCD industry murky at best. Samsung is one of the largest names in the LCD industry and the world’s largest TV and flat screen maker. The problem for Samsung is its LCD arm saw profits fall more than 10% in 2011 with demand for LCD panels softening.

With softening demand, sales prices of screens have declined, hurting profits. The tough road in the LCD panel market is affecting more than Samsung; it’s also affecting Samsung rivals LG and Sony. Some analysts place some blame for the soft market and falling prices on the panel makers themselves for continuing to produce screens over and above market demand. By producing too many screens, panel makers have forced themselves to slash prices to sell the excess production.

Read more »

Google Wallet reopens for prepaid cards, adds transfer block

Google has reopened its Google Wallet mobile payments service to prepaid cards, having slammed the door on new additions after the discovery of a potential hack, while also delivering a fix that it claims will make the system more secure for users. No evidence of actual abuse has been identified as a result of the hack, the company’s commerce team insisted, which allows the Google Wallet PIN to be revealed on Android devices that have been rooted.

The fix prevents existing prepaid cards from being swapped from one user to another, something Google says it believes will help tighten up Wallet security overall. As for the temporary lock-down, Google reckons that – despite there being no evidence of real-world hacks – it took the step merely as a precaution.

“Yesterday afternoon, we restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards to the Wallet. In addition, we issued a fix that prevents an existing prepaid card from being re-provisioned to another user. While we’re not aware of any abuse of prepaid cards or the Wallet PIN resulting from these recent reports, we took this step as a precaution to ensure the security of our Wallet customers” Osama Bedier, Vice President, Google Wallet and Payments

Still, Google maintains that those with rooted devices shouldn’t use Google Wallet. “Sometimes users choose to disable important security mechanisms in order to gain system-level “root” access to their phone” the company said in a statement last week, “we strongly discourage doing so if you plan to use Google Wallet because the product is not supported on rooted phones.”

It remains to be seen whether the security blip will impact adoption of Google Wallet, or indeed dissuade current users from trusting the service. Let us know how you feel in the poll below.

Read more »

Aereo cuts cable cord with streaming antenna clusters

Subscription TV service Aereo wants to cut your cable connection, and it plans to use thousands of tiny antennas hooked up to internet connections to do it; that is, if broadcasters don’t litigate it to death first. Set to launch in New York City on March 14, streaming free-to-air content to your phone, tablet or computer for a $12 monthly fee, Aereo also offers a cloud-based DVR and the ability to pause live TV. Rather than snap a TV tuner onto your iPad, however, Aereo clusters antennas together in individual data center blocks.

So, unlike the FilmOn AIR tuner or the Elgato EyeTV, each of which can tune into free-to-air TV using a tuner physically connected to the device, each Aereo subscriber gets their own tiny antenna in one of the company’s centers. Those antennas can pick up HD-quality transmissions, assuming they’re available, and offer content from over twenty channels including shows from ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Aereo Official Intro:

Your individual tuner streams the channel to an HTML5 app, which can be used in desktop browsers, on phones and tablets, and even on some smart TVs. The company expects its subscribers may still want to sign up to on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but even with those fees included it still undercuts traditional cable.

However Aereo may face legal headaches from broadcasters over how, exactly, it’s using TV signals. The company isn’t simply offering a tuner, one lawyer told the LATimes, but is modifying the signal to suit distribution to phones, tablets and computers. That could see it fall foul of copyright laws, though no broadcaster has officially commented as yet.

Read more »

Apple could buy its way out of Chinese iPad ban hints Proview chairman

Enacting a full import ban on the iPad 2 in China is likely too difficult to achieve, litigious trademark holder Proview says it has been warned by customs, leaving the company hinting it would accept a payoff from Apple. Having won its legal challenge against Apple in China last year, convincing courts that it, not the American company, holds the iPad trademark, Proview has now discovered that implementing a sales ban against the coveted tablet may be even more troublesome than the Cupertino legal team.

“The customs have told us that it will be difficult to implement a ban because many Chinese consumers love Apple products” Proview Technology chairman Yang Long-san told Reuters. “The sheer size of the market is very big.”

Instead, the company is chasing piecemeal blocks at a local level. ”We have applied to some local customs for the ban and they’ll report to the headquarters in Beijing” Yang confirmed. Earlier this month, some evidence of that strategy had been seen in Chinese retailers, with government officials confiscating iPad 2 units out on public display. However, a heated unofficial trade in the tablets continued, with buyers still able to grab the iOS slate “under the counter.”

According to Yang, the best option for ending the iPad trademark saga is an out-of-court settlement. That wouldn’t be new for Apple, however; the company has argued it acquired worldwide rights to the trademark from a Taiwanese Proview subsidiary in a deal several years ago. However, Proview managed to convince the court that the deal did not cover use of “iPad” in China.

Read more »

Samsung kills 32GB Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ model

Bad news if you’ve been waiting for the 32GB version of the GSM Galaxy Nexus, as according to retailers Samsung has cancelled plans to release the larger-capacity model. Already stung by delays, the 32GB HSPA+ Galaxy Nexus has now been dropped from production by Samsung altogether, according to a spokespersonfrom retailer Expansys, and “at this time it looks like they will not be releasing it.”

Meanwhile, the retailer’s pre-order page for the 32GB Nexus – which had initially been promising deliveries in early January, based on Samsung’s own timescales, but was then pushed back to February and subsequently into March – has been updated to show the phone as discontinued. The alternative suggestion is the existing 16GB model which went on sale last year.

The decision by Samsung is made all the more frustrating because the Galaxy Nexus’ storage options are more limited than most Android devices. While in many cases onboard capacity is less important, as there’s a microSD slot to augment it with affordable memory cards, the Galaxy Nexus lacks such expansion.

It’s been suggested that Google is trying to push reliance on its cloud storage options – Google Drive rumors resurfaced earlier this month, suggesting a full online storage product was imminent – but also that Samsung has been struggling to meet production demand of the cheaper 16GB model. Either way, GSM network users hoping to get 32GB for their media will have to struggle on without it.

Read more »

Ultrabook prices unlikely to drop much until 2013

After the constant bombardment at CES last month, it’s hard to deny that Intel’s Ultrabook spec hasn’t hit its stride. And while most are hitting the $1000 mark (for base models, and with a few exceptions) the valuable perks they add in portability and battery life have made them a few fans – including us. Unfortunately, they aren’t likely to budge on the all important sticker price for at least another year: DigiTimes reports that ultrabook hardware suppliers are having a hard time lowering the price of components, and the total cost for the skinny laptops is unlikely to shift significantly until 2013.

The primary culprit is SSD drives, which remain pricey even as traditional hard drives offer greater capacities as lower prices. Solid-state drives continue to offer comparatively huge dollar to gigabyte ratios, and their speed and power advantages are unlikely to win over the consumer market, which tends to focus on raw storage. Thin display panels and expensive metal chassis aren’t helping the situation. Many “premium” ultrabooks are still saddled with relatively high retail prices, like HP’s Envy 14 Spectre, hitting the street on Friday with a price of $1399.

Still, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for those who want power, style and battery life without breaking the bank. Suppliers and vendors claim that many models will land in Q2 just south of the $800 mark, though computer sellers will be making razor-thin margins and will likely push for either upgraded internals or more expensive alternatives. Intel stated at their CES Ultrabook press event that they’re hoping to see the spec lead to significant increases in both computing power and affordability – us too, Intel. Us too.

Read more »

FCC protects “too big to fail” GPS from LightSquared interference

Today it appears that the FCC has laid down their final (or near-final) judgement of the LightSquared ruling, this judgement saying that because LightSquared’s method for transmitting broadband internet interfered with GPS signals across the USA, they would not be allowed to operate. LightSquared has of course again contested the ruling saying that the testing done by the FCC was “severely flawed” and that they “profoundly disagree” with the results, equating the GPS market with “too big to fail” companies of early 2011 – bailout-receivers like the auto industry here in the USA.

In calling the GPS industry too big to fail, the folks at LightSquared have noted that instead of improving their devices to avoid LightSquared’s frequencies, they’ve simply had the government outlaw LightSquared’s usage of the seemingly completely legally usable frequencies. Jeff Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy, wrote the following on the matter:

“GPS manufacturers have been selling devices that listen into frequencies outside of their assigned spectrum band — namely into LightSquared’s licensed band. The GPS industry has leveraged years of insider relationships and massive lobbying dollars to make sure that they don’t have to fix the problem they created.” – Carlisle

Telecommiunications experts speaking with the NY Times have noted that interference between LightSquared’s signals and GPS signals is a tricky subject for the FCC because the interference itself appears not to be the fault of LightSquared’s at all. The GPS band on the electromagnetic spectrum is right next to the airwaves of satellite-telephone segments used by LightSquared, this making it quite easy for GPS devices to hear those extraneous transmissions. So instead of calling on GPS manufacturers to create devices that do not stray into nearby airwaves, the FCC is shutting down LightSquared’s use of the airways they should, if it weren’t for GPS, be able to use.

Because the GPS industry is too gigantic and a change on their part would be undeniably costly, the FCC is simply not allowing LightSquared to move forward. the commission will be sending out a request for public comment on Wednesday for the proposed action – so it’s not over yet!

Read more »