Mobilityfeeds

'How [you] bring the tablet plus laptop together' is what the ultrabook is all about - Intel

As the sales of personal computers slow — whether because of a weak world economy or the popularity of the Apple's iPad — PC makers have been looking for the next big thing to jolt buyers and increase profit margins.

They are doing what they have done so many times before: 

Taking a sidelong glance at what Apple has done.

They have reason to take notice.
Data from the research firms IDC and Gartner shows that the PC shipments of Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Acer, two of the world’s largest PC makers, declined in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the same period a year ago.
Shipments by Apple, on the other hand, rose roughly 20% in that quarter, according to estimates from both research firms.

HTC Titan II Windows Phone Mango smartphone preview

We sat down and spent some time with HTC's new Titan II which has an impressive 16-megapixel camera.

Though there weren’t dozens of new Windows Phones shown at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this year, Microsoft may have had a more impressive showing than Google's Android.

Nokia finally debuted its first 4G LTE Windows Phone 7.5 Mango device, the Lumia 900, and HTC quietly announced a sequel to its recently released 4.7" Titan phone.
Oddly, the manufacturer didn’t have a presence on the show floor, but Microsoft let us play around with one.

Read our first impressions after the break.

CES 2012 - this year's winners and losers

CES 2012 has come and gone, and it’s time for the inevitable summary and think pieces on the directions the industry is heading, the highlights of the show, and so on.

It is, of course, necessary to publish some sort of top 10 list.

So here are five winners and five losers of CES, as judged by those of us who went to the show, and with consideration both for the limited, short-term nature of the show itself and the longer-term sea of trends on which these companies and devices are sailing.

Google might 'own' CES 2013 as Microsoft once did

Not that many years ago, nearly every computing product on the Las Vegas' Consumer Electronic Show (CES) exhibit floor ran Microsoft's Windows.

This year, that was not the case.

Sure, the new "ultrabooks" are Windows-powered, but Google's Android is everywhere else:
In tablets, in phones, and even in TVs.

Even though Microsoft Windows still dominates the PC and laptop markets, Microsoft itself is no longer the leader in consumer tech innovation.

Apple faces one more setback in its patent war against Motorola / Android

Apple has suffered an early loss in its patent suit against Motorola.

An administrative law judge (ALJ) with the United States' International Trade Commission (ITC) issued an initial ruling late on Friday, saying that Motorola did not violate three of Apple's smartphone patents. 

The decision signals potential trouble for Apple, though it still faces the approval of a six-person ITC panel.

Apple and Motorola have been embroiled in a series of lawsuits both in US federal court and with the ITC since 2010, when Motorola first accused Apple of violating a wide range of its patents covering 3G, GPRS, and 802.11 technologies, antenna design, proximity sensing, and device synchronization, to name a few.

Android Market might come one day to China; but later, much later

Is Google's Android Market coming to China or not?

A Google executive seems to think that the Android Market is in the works for the China's growing Android user base. 

But Daniel Alegre, Google's President of Asia-Pacific Operations, might have been speaking a bit too quickly in an interview for the Wall Street Journal that posted earlier last week.

According to new reports from some undisclosed sources at Google, the Android Market is more of a pipe dream in China than possible reality.

Lenovo unveils the Yoga Windows 8 ultrabook / tablet

We like the idea of a tablet that can also function as a notebook.

It provides the best of both worlds, functioning as a tablet most of the time yet coupling with a keyboard when we need to bang out some text.

Most companies take the two piece approach with a screen that pops into a separate keyboard dock, as seen with the popular Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, but the Lenovo Yoga puts it all together for a one piece fits all approach.

The Lenovo Yoga is a Microsoft's Windows 8 ultrabook with a 13.3" screen that uses a dual-hinge design that bends back 360 degrees to also form a tablet with 10 point multitouch capability. 

Nokia to ship 37 million Windows Phone devices in 2012 - Report

Nokia will have a successful run this year with its Microsoft's Windows Phone smartphones, according to a study by analyst firm Morgan Stanley.

The Finnish phone maker has made a rapid and bold effort to redirect its synergies from the Symbian Operating System (OS) to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, and now fruits for the drastic measures are about to pay off.

Morgan Stanley expects that in 2012, Nokia’s Windows Phone shipments will arrive at the 37 million units mark and double to 64 million next year, which means that in two years’ time Nokia Windows Phone devices will surpass Nokia Symbian sales.

Windows Phone' Nokia Lumia 710 is an Android device... says T-Mobile USA

As the new Microsoft's Windows Phone devices start rolling out for the various carriers, one thing to look out for is the consistency of quality in the marketing material that usually surrounds the new roll out of devices.

Particularly, how well such material actually educates the customer on what they could potentially be buying.

Recently, at a South Florida T-Mobile store, in the United States, I was checking out the new Nokia Lumia 710, (which by the way is a very nice entry level phone).

At the display for the device I saw a disheartening sight.

Huawei Ascend P1 LTE Android Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone quick preview

Huawei may not be a name you think of when you’re in the market for a high-end Android smartphone, but that could all change with the introduction of the Huawei Ascend P1 LTE.

If you’re looking for a phone that runs on Google's Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and has all bells and whistles, the Ascend P1 will probably fit the bill.

The Ascend P1 features both LTE and GSM connectivity and comes equipped with a 4.3" qHD Super AMOLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core 1.5 GHz processor (MSM8960), 1 GB or RAM, 4GB of internal storage, and a microSD slot that supports all the way up to 64 GB.

The Huawei Ascend P1 LTE also sports WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, 2000 mAh battery and a half dozen of the standard sensors included in today’s Android phones.

iPad 3 to catch up with Android high-end tablets - but does that really matter?

The Apple's iPad 3 will run on the next-generation wireless networks called long-term evolution, or LTE, according to a report by Bloomberg.

This lets Apple’s iPad keep the marketing edge against Google's Android tablets.

Some manufacturers of Google’s Android-based tablets are hitting the market first with LTE.
But overall, if the iPad gets LTE support by March, as expected according to these reports, Apple will have completed a checklist of extremely compelling features for the device — at least if you believe the reports leaking out in recent months.

Android is getting everywhere, it doesn't always say so

We spend a lot of time talking about Operating System (OS) market share and usage share, but could Google's Android explode to the point where it make such data irrelevant?

When we talk about Android market/usage share, we’re usually thinking about devices like smartphones and tablets. 

It seems that knowing how many people use a particular thing is important to some people (we're not sure why, maybe it helps people think they’ve made the right choice or something).

But Android isn’t confined to just smartphones and tablets. 

Beijing Apple store under attack for non-availability of the iPhone 4S on launch day

Apple, whose skill at hyping new products helped make it the world’s most valuable technology company, became a victim of its own success after a botched introduction of its iPhone 4S in China led it to suspend sales.

Would-be customers who waited overnight as temperatures dropped below minus 9 degrees Celsius reacted with fury after the company’s main store in Beijing’s Sanlitun district failed to open. 

The company sold out of the handsets at stores that did open and later halted sales of all iPhones at its five retail outlets in the country “for the time being,” spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said by phone.

Samsung to merge its own bada OS with Intel's Tizen

Samsung said it is working on merging its homegrown “bada” smartphone Operating System (OS) with Tizen, an Operating System project the company is conducting with chipmaker Intel.

“We have an effort that will merge bada and Tizen,” said Tae-Jin Kang, Senior Vice-president of Samsung’s Contents Planning Team in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Kang said he didn’t know when the work would be complete but that it was already underway.

When the integration is finished, Tizen will support mobile applications written with bada’s SDK (software development kit).
That support will include backwards compatibility for previously published bada apps.

RIM is organizing its own take-over or merging - Rumor

BlackBerry maker RIM’s official line has been that it is not for sale, but this week, persistent rumors that it could get bought anyway got another fillip, in the form of a report that the handset maker has hired Goldman Sachs to advise it.

 
Predictably, the company’s stock rose on the news by some five percent when the report emerged Thursday, originally at the Fox Business site.  

RIM’s stock has declined in value by some 75% in the last year, as its share of worldwide sales of smartphones has declined.

Windows Phone key for Nokia to regain some of its lost market share in 2012 - Analysts

Credit Suisse Analysts are predicting slower growth of only 2% in shipments of mobile phones all over the world for the present year.

According to a Reuters report, the rate is higher compared to past forecasts but it is below the 12% growth predicted for 2011.

The financial firm says that it is expecting its 2012 handset sales to reach 1.85 billion.
This is an increase from its 1.82 billion-projection for 2011. The analysts are also quite positive on the fate of Nokia this new year.

Time to wrap-up CES 2012

As exhibitors start the tear down process, disassembling their monstrous booths and packing up their gadgets and trinkets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the technology world is now left to ponder what was on display and how the events of the past week will shape the industry in the year ahead.

Here’s a few things we learned this week:

The revolution won’t be in televised in 3D

For each of the past two years at CES, it seemed that flatscreen televisions featuring 3D technology were at the centre of many of the biggest booths on the showroom floor.
Scantily clad booth babes would hand out cheap 3D glasses to sweaty attendees, then stand back and watch as they marveled at the images seemingly protruding from the screens.

Nokia smartphone division is not for sell - Elop

Rumors that Microsoft is about to buy Nokia's smartphone division are "baseless," Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in an interview with PCMag.

At the CES 2012 trade show, Elop promised a broader array of US smartphones along with more announcements at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in February, but stayed coy when asked about recent Operating System (OS) purchases.

The interview after the break has been edited for length, but it's all Elop's words.

Android activates more devices every day than babies are born on the planet

Thankfully, we've yet to see any signs of the dark future predicted in the Terminator films - but Androids do seem to be taking over the world.

YouTube's Head of Content, Robert Kyncl said in a speech at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, that more Google's Android devices are activated - ie turned on for the first time - than babies are born on Earth.

Kyncl joked that Andy Rubin, Google's Director of Mobile, was now looking for customers on other planets. 

Motorola Xoom gets the Android Ice Cream Sandwich update; at this time USA only

Motorola has been prepping owners of its Xoom Android tablet for a mysterious project since late November.

The project required Xoom owners to join the Motorola Owners Forums and be a member in good standing. 

Motorola didn't say what the project entailed - but many guessed it had to do with Google's Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Friday, Motorola revealed the details of the project, which confirm that it is delivering the latest version of Google's mobile Operating System (OS) to the original Xoom tablet (both WiFi and 3G/LTE versions).