Tech wrap: Android takes over
Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies like HTC and Samsung who are betting on the platform, analysts said.
The smartphone market will grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, research firm Gartner said. Android, a distant No. 2 to Nokia’s Symbian platform just last year, will increase its market share to 39 percent in 2011, while Symbian’s share will roughly halve to 19 percent following Nokia’s decision to dump the platform. Apple’s iPhone platform will be slightly bigger than Symbian this year, while Research In Motion will control 13 percent of the market and Microsoft Windows Phone 6 percent.
Sales of cameraphones will grow to more than 1 billion handsets this year, helped by fast growth at the high end of the market, Strategy Analytics said.
Moody’s cut its credit rating on Nokia, citing the Finnish company’s weakening market position and uncertainty over its transition to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. HTC overtook Nokia in market capitalization for the first time on Thursday. Nokia still has higher volumes, selling 19 phones for each HTC phone sold last year. But its average sale price was just $85 compared with HTC’s $360, according to Strategy Analytics.
The FCC adopted data roaming rules that would allow smartphones to access the Internet in areas across the country not covered by their wireless carrier, forcing carriers like AT&T and Verizon Wireless to offer “reasonable” roaming rates. Under the rules, wireless carriers would be free to negotiate the terms of the agreements, and could institute safeguards to prevent congestion or harm to their networks from roaming traffic.
Facebook teamed up with some of tech hardware’s biggest names — HP, Dell, AMD, and Intel — to launch the “open compute project”. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the project aims to offer specifications and designs for more power-efficient computers that are specifically geared toward running Internet services, shared openly with other companies.
The Justice Department is close to a deal that would allow Google to buy airline ticketing software company ITA Software, while requiring that the software remain available to Google rivals, according to a source close to the deal.
CES: iPod Guitar and Intel computing wall (video)
AS CES wraps up in Las Vegas, here are two clips showcasing cool technology from the floor, one from an unknown company, another from one of the big boys. Each displays the kind of keen forward thinking that can be found all over the Las Vegas show.
Here is an demonstration of Fingerist, from Evenno. Yes he is “strumming” “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple — on an iPod Touch.
And here is a display of one possible future of massive multi-user computing power, from Intel. I wish I had tech like that to help quicken the time it took to post to this very blog.
CES: HP demos Android smartbook
The nascent smartbook market got a big nudge forward on Friday, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest personal computer maker.
Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s PC division, turned up on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show during a keynote address by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to demo a device based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip and running Google’s mobile Android software.
There was no formal product unveiling, but HP showed off a smartbook with multitouch capability, and Bradley spoke with apparent interest on the category, which is just beginning to build steam.
“We’re not going to make any announcement today but you know how interested and focused and frankly committed we are to this space,” Bradley said.
Smartbooks run on low-power ARM-based processors like Snapdragon or Nvidia’s Tegra, as opposed to netbooks, which run on Intel’s x86-based Atom platform.
There was certainly some buzz around smartbooks at CES, following the unveiling of Lenovo’s innovative Skylight device, and its IdeaPad U1 (which also run on Snapdragon.) Nvidia showed off a number of prototype mobile computing devices, but made no formal announcements about any products, as some had anticipated.
Intel likely isn’t sweating just yet; its dominance of the traditional PC CPU market isn’t under imminent threat. It remains to be seen how consumers will react to the smartbook phenomenon. The battery-friendly devices offer less processing power than Atom, but plenty of juice to do things most folks want to do, like surf the Web and watch movies.
ARM Holdings is a rising star in the field of Micro Processors to power the Mobile Internet Device. ARM have an advantage over it competitors such as AMD and Intel. ARM only design it the processors and the license the technologies to host of other vendors, such as ST Micro Electronics, Toshiba, Nokia, Apple, Nvida and to many, many more companies. The list can really go on and on.
Source:
http://www.contract-mobile-phones.org
A perfect date machine?
The world’s biggest microchip company, known for some of the most dramatic advances in the tech world, this week decided to ask software developers and salespeople for help.
At its annual developers’ conference in San Francisco this week, Intel Corp put up a dozen or so whiteboards across the Moscone Center venue, soliciting answers to the big questions: from how tech might improve business to what you might want technology to do, if it could do anything.
But the answers, scribbled in blue marker, were a mix of practical suggestions like a handheld portable video conferencing device, perennial gripes and whimsy – perfect date machine, anyone?
Here are a selection of the questions and answers:
How do you see the future? Moon hotels Real-time virtual Internet glasses Digital clothing Big solar power airships
How can technology make business more efficient? Coffee helmet Video phone conference An infinitely large display Cellphone/MID projector
How can technology improve the world? Slow down global warming Bring back dead loved ones Food allergen detector Moving sidewalk
How do you see the future?increasingly mobile and multifunctionalHow can technology make business more efficient?backwards compatability for everything, and limited forward compatabiltity for easier transitions.How can technology improve the world?GM food and CO2 scrubbing technology to remove emissions from the atmosphereWhat’s the next big thing?credit/debit card phonesWhat will your kids’ kids think is cool?hoverboards and lightsabersWhat’s your big idea?top side air bags to protect you in the event of a vertical crashIf tech could do anything for you, what would it be?give me a small shock right before I say something stupid to my wife.
from Commentaries:
Humbled giants eye business phone market
LONDON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Once they were warriors battling one another on the digital battlefield. Nowadays, Microsoft and Nokia are worriers, huddling together for comfort.
The world's top phone and software companies need each other to compete with Apple, Google and Blackberry-maker Research in Motion (RIM), whose products increasingly define what users expect from phones and charge premium prices in consequence.
In the market for so-called "smartphones", Deutsche Bank estimates Apple and RIM now take home more than half of all profits, despite producing less than a third of high-end mobile phones. Nokia held a 45 percent share of the smartphone market in June, according to Gartner Inc. (Table 2 in Gartner release)
The news this week that Nokia will feature Microsoft's office software -- features such as Word and Excel -- on phones aimed at business users is symbolic of what is possible rather than significant in itself. It fell short of predictions in the gadget trade press that Nokia might introduce phones running on Microsoft's own Windows Mobile software.
But that doesn't mean their collaboration should be dismissed. There's more to this budding relationship than meets the eye.
First and foremost, Microsoft and Nokia say they are taking on the Blackberry email-phone, a must have among corporate professionals. So far the they haven't done very much, for all the big talk. But they have pledged to make Microsoft Outlook work smoothly on Nokia phones.
This is crucial in overcoming Blackberry's key advantage -- the underlying software that companies rely on to securely manage corporate e-mail.
Nice article, Eric. Also in terms of what it elegantly understates – that nobody in the lucrative U.S. phone market is remotely satisfied with their phones or the cost of ancillary services the subscriber has to come up with.
There’s a lot of room for growth, if somebody would just listen to what the customer wants and deliver something like that instead of slowly bleeding users to death with costly add-ons and phony rebates instead of decent service at a fair price on a not-too ugly handheld device series.
Apple’s iPhone is a promiscuous lifestyle product unhappily married to the ogres of AT&T while flirting with the enterprise user market. Microsoft has Windows and Outhouse to contend with, tripping over its own necrotic brand software in the process of whatever they might try to do next. The Windows decal on any phone is a deterrent to buying it, at this point. I mean, what size of chip would one really need to store all the viruses and spam you’d be getting if one went down the MS route? That one hasn’t been invented yet.
At times like these, one might expect your last sentence to ring true with the makers and sellers of such devices. Hopefully, they’ll get the message soon.
