Android Dominance Threatened by Windows Phone 7

Microsoft Windows Phone 7 could threaten Google's Android smartphone dominance, according to NPD Group's Connected Intelligence. Microsoft must boost its brand recognition.

At least one research firm believes Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system could face a stiff challenge from a competitor other than Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone 7 (WP7).

NPD Group's Connected Intelligence service said Android is the preferred platform among current smartphone owners as well as those who wish to buy a new smartphone in the next six months.

With a mindshare of 63 percent, Android generates more interest than any other OS and is the platform 36 percent of consumers claimed to be "most interested in."

For example, the firm said one-third of BlackBerry smartphone owners reported being most interested in an Android smartphone as their next handset. This makes sense with current market activity.

NPD said Android has accounted for at least half of all smartphone buys in the last three quarters. comScore, IDC, Gartner and Nielsen have all pegged Android as having around 40 percent or more market share.

However, Android's lead is far from assured. Connected Intelligence analyst Linda Barrabee said WP7 may pose a greater threat to Android's dominance. Barrabee said 44 percent of smartphone owners and intenders are considering WP7 for their next purchase.

This is good timing for Microsoft, which is expected to see new devices from Samsung and HTC ship with its "Mango" OS, a considerable refinement over the current NoDo build. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said he hoped WP7 would eventually become "a very strong third ecosystem in the smartphone world" alongside Android and the iPhone.

Unfortunately, Barrabee said, Microsoft must overcome some serious brand recognition issues. Some 45 percent of consumers Barrabee surveyed are still not aware of Windows Phone 7.

Also, the 50 percent of consumers who plan to purchase a smartphone in the next six months, but who are not interested in Windows Phone 7, 46 percent claimed they didn't know enough about the platform. Clearly, Microsoft is going to have to rev up its marketing machine to spread the word about WP7 beyond its "Really?!" ads.

"Windows Phone 7 has a way to go before consumers really understand what it is," Barrabee said. "But with the right marketing mojo, apps portfolio and feature-rich hardware, Microsoft could certainly improve its standing and chip away at Android's dominant market position."

Microsoft must love this report, but it can't bask in its glow; it needs to treat it as a cautionary tale that it has a lot of work to do to make WP7 a household brand. No doubt Nokia will play a big part in that when it launches WP7 phones next year.

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HTC unveils thinner and sleeker Rhyme phone in New York

HTC Corp (宏達電), the world’s No. 5 smartphone maker, unveiled a thinner and sleeker smartphone in New York late on Tuesday, hoping to boost its sales in the crowded mobile market.

The HTC Rhyme, with a unibody design and the latest HTC Sense 3.5 software, comes in three colors and has complementary accessories, such as a docking station, a sports armband and tangle-free headphones, the company said in a statement.

The Rhyme also comes with a tethered accessory called a “charm” that blinks when a user receives a message or a call.

“It’s more respectful than a ring and more noticeable than vibrate,” HTC said.

“HTC keeps listening to consumers’ needs and we’ve observed that many consumers hope their mobile phones can be more user-friendly and personalized,” HTC chief executive Peter Chou (周永明) said in the statement.

The Android-powered smartphone will go on sale in the US on Thursday next week. It will cost US$199 and will be available through Verizon Wireless, the top US mobile provider. The phone will also be available in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region next month.

However, a Taiwanese analyst said that the HTC product launch did not have much of a surprise factor, because the company released only one new model with mid-end specifications.

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“While the design is stylish and it’s positioned as a lady’s smartphone, we believe the selling price is too high and the market will be difficult to penetrate due to the iPhone,” Jeff Pu (蒲得宇), equity research analyst at Fubon Securities (富邦證券), wrote in a research note.

Though it lowered its target price for HTC shares to NT$1,050 from NT$1,180, Fubon Securities maintained its “buy” rating.

“While we are not ignoring the macro risks, we believe HTC will have strong growth stories in 2012, such as the growing popularity of 4G LTE [long-term evolution] and volume opportunities in China,” Pu said.

Although ongoing patent litigation with Apple Inc could cast a shadow over the company’s share price, recent developments with Google Inc, such as a patent transfer from Google to HTC, have shown Google’s commitment to strengthening its Android patent portfolio, and that is positive for HTC, Pu said.

Cell phones ubiquitous globally, but 1 in 8 now have mobile Internet

About one in eight people around the world can now connect to the Internet wherever, and whenever, they want to.

A U.N. report released Thursday has found that active mobile broadband subscriptions surged last year, reaching 872 million worldwide last year, up from 531 million in 2009.

In rich countries almost every second person has a high-speed mobile subscription, while in poor countries it's still just one in every 20 people.

But poor countries showed the sharpest rise — about 160 percent year-on-year — as customers passed up costly fixed-line broadband connections in favor of affordable cell phone plans that allow them to access the Web, email and other online services on the go.

RELATED: The 10 weirdest uses for a smartphone

The report by the International Telecommunication Union concluded cell phones in general are now "de facto ubiquitous" with more than 5 billion people having some kind of cellular subscription.

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The survey of 152 countries also found a growing divide between countries with super-fast broadband — like Sweden, South Korea and Japan — and those where high-speed access is lagging, particularly in Africa.

Investment in broadband capacity means the average European theoretically has 77 Megabits/second of Internet bandwidth to their name, compared with 27 Mb/s in the Americas and about 11 Mb/s in Asia and the Arab world, though the figures mask strong variations among countries within regions.

Overall, South Korea remained the top ranked country worldwide for information and communications technology, followed by northern European nations Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland. The U.S. remained in 17th place overall, but dropped three places when it came to access.

"This is mainly due to penetration rates for mobile cellular subscriptions and households with computer and Internet, where the U.S. has lower figures compared to the countries ranked above the U.S.," the Geneva-based ITU said.

Other conclusions of the annual report were that dial-up Internet access is likely to disappear within a few years, and a warning that frequently cited user statistics for popular sites like Facebook are unreliable indicators of actual Internet use.

Operating system deathmatch

Operating system deathmatch

We’ll start today with a small memory game: close your eyes and imagine your first mobile phone. Think of the shape, size, screen, features and games on it. Remember how big and heavy it was wholesale cell phones , how we made do with that little screen and how the tv phone most exciting feature other than voice calls was SMS? Now quick, now tell me the name of the operating system. You have no idea, right?



That’s because the OS was immaterial, almost redundant and you really didn’t care which one it was. Each phone brand had its own proprietary user interface; it was tightly closed; no customisation was possible and adding an application was china phone unheard of. We bought a phone and were thrilled that it actually worked. Today, the OS is omnipotent, all powerful and the single most important criterion for buying a china mobile phones. We add and subtract apps at lightning speed. It’s a completely different world from a few years ago and this new world is right in the middle of a great battle.

OS supremacy will dictate phone sales, cult following, market share, momentum and even survival. It’s all very delicately balanced right now and is just a precursor for the buy cell phone mayhem ahead.

Windows Phone 7

It made a big noise; there was huge hiphone hype; we got great features; and it looked super pretty! Exit klunky interaction of the old buy hiphone Windows Mobile OS, enter smooth, polished interface – Microsoft was back, baby! And yet, Windows Phone hasn’t sold like tv mobile phone wildfire or created a firestorm. As yet. It’s now got the world’s number one Watch Spy Camera manufacturer of phones – Nokia – backing it and Nokia makes great hardware. The might and numbers of Nokia, the clout and money of Microsoft: this could set off a blood-curdling skirmish in the smartphone wars.

Future: Many predict the demise and many predict a number one position in less than mobile watch phones two years. Micro-kia will do very well and bring in fantastic numbers. Other hardware vendors will then stop baby monitors Windows Phone production. Nokia will capitalise on this exclusivity and take it even higher. But will it be number one? That’s a toughie.

Samsung Bada

Before it was actually released, Bada was a big elderly phones joke. After all, Samsung is a South Korean hardware maker. Strangely, they pulled it off. Bada was paired with great hardware and impossibly low prices. It had an iPhonish, clean layout; the TouchWiz interface was elderly cell phone simple; there was good social media integration and great games. Yet, chinks in the armour were exposed. The app store was deficient, choices were few and far between, the OS upgrades were slow to come and not everyone was getting the upgrade.

Future: With its Android-centric three sim phone business model and great success, Samsung will have trouble being a three mobile OS-company. Yet, it may abandon Windows Phone 7 and take Bada to new heights. It needs to get the app store truly world class to do that.

Blackberry

This is now the dark horse. Those who love them continue to use them like a four sim phone drug. Yet many are abandoning the platform. Having a Tablet that just didn’t work hasn’t dual sim phone helped. Nor has having strange shenanigans at the top management. They need to move to QNX right away, they need to move off their antiquated looks and form factor and they need to do it now.

Future: BlackBerry needs to bring in one phone that is watch phone completely different and radical in look and feel and style and OS. That’s it. Just one. It may not come back to its former glory but there’s enough going for it to be a contender in the WiFi Mobile Phone future.

Android

5,50,000 new Android phones sold every day. 40 per cent of the buy cell phones smartphone market share. This seems to be a no-brainer. Android reigns supreme and will continue to dominate. Except that it also Quad Band Cell Phone continues to make mistakes and make bigger ones. There chinese phone are too many versions and a wildly inconsistent experience on different phones. Version 3.0 for Tablets hasn’t set the market on fire; the app store quality is suspect; economy Android phones really suck and the ecosystem is still chaotic.

Future: Google doesn’t make too many mistakes and doesn’t make them for long. Android may not become the OS of choice on Tablets but on phones, it’s going to become stronger and stronger. It’s going to take some wholesale laser pointer pretty strange events happening to dislodge them from number one in the future.

iOS

What can I say here that Steve Jobs hasn’t said already? A phone handmade by God himself, with inputs for the iOS 50mw Green Laser Pointer and certainly also a role to play in the marketing of the iPhone. Nothing else 50mw Green Laser can justify the cult following and impact this one phone has had on the world. And iOS 5 will take this forward. From the iCloud, to wireless sync, to your pirated songs becoming legal at a fraction of the cost – this is true momentum.

Future: To become number one, Apple needs to solve the choice problem. People have Adjustable Green Laser different likes and dislikes and just one form factor doesn’t cut it. Also, price points are critical to win this OS war. Software inflexibility and the walled-garden approach will also need to go. Yet, yet, yet – whatever else Apple doom predictors may say – the spy cameras company seems to sell magic in numbers. Number two for hiden spy camera sure, number one if it can pull off a non-Appelish, unforeseen move.

There are others but they all have a slim to no chance. Meego is great as has mini spy camera been proven by the amazing Nokia N9 but it has no vendor backing. Symbian is as dead and buy wholesale buried as it can get. And HP doesn’t seem to be doing very many smart things with Palms webOS. For the rest of them, the deathmatch has just begun.

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The mobile-phone tax burden

The White House plan involves a long-overdue doubling in the amount of spectrum available for wireless broadband services, which frees up the airwaves for more high-speed Internet options on smart cell phones and other devices. Instead of letting the market work its magic, however, Mr. Obama had the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) hijack the Universal Service Fund (USF) to provide handouts for wireless handsets. Congress established the USF program in 1996 as a tax on metropolitan phone service for the benefit of land-line users in rural areas. The idea was to ensure that every American had access to a phone.

Those extractions from the public’s pocket are nothing compared to the 23.7 percent in taxes and fees found on Cornhusker State mobile-phone bills. Nationwide, the average rate is 16.3 percent - a figure on the rise at the same time that President Obama is hitting the stump touting a national wireless initiative. “Within five years, we want to make it possible for businesses to put high-speed wireless services in reach of virtually every American,” Mr. Obama said in a Feb. 10 speech in Michigan.

By any practical measure, that mission has been accomplished. The latest statistics indicate that 96.7 percent of U.S. households have watch phone service, an increase from 96.3 percent the previous year. The cost of the four-tenths of a percent improvement was $7.3 billion. Improvements to the performance figure can only be had after blowing our money in spectacular fashion. In 2008, the USF gave the Oregon Telephone Corp. a $16,834 subsidy for each of its customers in Beaver Creek, Wash.

Even an FCC press release admitted the USF was “wasteful and inefficient in some situations.” On Feb. 8, the commission voted to reform the 15-year-old program at the same time it opened the spigot for wireless subsidies.

This is a good example of the way Alaska works. Instead of terminating one of the most abused and obsolete pork programs in the government inventory, the president is expanding its scope. As TaxAnalysts noted, USF fees account for the largest increase in the cost of providing wireless service to consumers. This tax and the other discriminatory levies on mobile phones harm the industry’s growth. Before spreading around billions in taxpayer dollars to “stimulate” wireless options, it’s time to cut existing red tape. Slicing $11 from the monthly bill in Alaska state, New York and Florida would be a good start to make cutting the cord a more affordable option.

One thing all mobile-phone bills have in common is a lengthy, confusing list of government taxes, surcharges and fees imposed at the local, state and federal level. These charges add up quickly. An average $48 monthly bill in Nebraska, for example, includes $11.35 in tithes to the bureaucracy.

That’s according to TaxAnalysts, a group that on Monday released a survey of the state-by-state burdens imposed on wireless communications. Economist Scott Mackey, who works with all the major china phone providers, concluded that these taxes and fees are increasing and already exceed the levies piled on most other services. For instance, residents in Pico Rivera, Calif., pay the nation’s highest sales-tax rate of 10.75 percent on purchases. Alaska state hits motorists with a 12 percent tax for parking in a lot and tourists with a 14.5 percent tax for staying in a hotel.

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Samsung's new plan Windows Phone 7

Samsung has forever put its own smartphone operating system, on its devices. It had also been working on a second OS, MeeGo, in partnership with Intel (INTC, Fortune 500), though that launch was perpetually delayed.

For Microsoft, Hays said the partnership with the world's largest smartphone maker legitimizes its smartphone platform. Landing Samsung as a partner will also greatly increase its sales: Manufacturers have shipped only 2 million Windows Phone 7 smartphones in the past four months, while Apple and Google are activating upwards of 300,000 iPhones and Android phones each day.

Samsung's MeeGo partnership will continue as an "open-source mobile operating system project" that focuses on longer-term exploration of next-generation devices, Elop said, though he also promised that a "MeeGo-related product" will ship later this year.

In a press release, Samsung referred to MeeGo "computers," perhaps suggesting that the OS will not appear on smartphones but on tablets or netbooks.

plan shift

Abandoning Symbian and sidelining MeeGo are risky moves: Samsung has devoted tremendous time and resources to improving its Symbian software, and its Intel/MeeGo partnership has been very high profile. The yet-to-be-released MeeGo has a growing wave of developer support and momentum behind it, and Symbian remains popular with its users.

But by embracing Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system, Samsung could follow in the footsteps of a company like Motorola (MMI), which struggled to make a winning device to replace its top-selling RAZR until it adopted a third-party operating system, Android, for its Droid smartphone.

Investors weren't too pleased with the plan. Shares of Samsung fell 12% on Friday.

Elop, however, argued the partnership would once again make Samsung a world-class smartphone company.

"Consumers want compelling mobile products, which include not only the device, but the software," Elop said during the news conference. "Samsung and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It's now a three-horse race."

The other two "horses" that Elop was referring to are Apple's iPhone and Google's Android smartphone platforms. Samsung's Symbian smartphone operating system is currently the No. 1 smartphone platform in the world, with about 200 million customers. But its market share is rapidly diminishing, and it it has struggled to keep up with the pace of innovation set by Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500).

0:00 /4:50BullHorn: Third in smartphone war?

Windows Phone 7, though just four months old, already has more apps in its app store than Symbian. Microsoft's new mobile OS has gotten off to a somewhat slow start, but both the Samsung 'sand Microsoft's CEOs said they believe that a partnership will leverage the two companies' core competencies -- Microsoft's software and Samsung's hardware and distribution -- to win in the smartphone space.

"The partnership announced today provides incredible scale, vast expertise in hardware and software innovation and a proven ability to execute," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, who also appeared at the London conference.

Goodbye Symbian and Intel, hello Windows

Elop said the company's "principal smartphone plan" will revolve around Windows Phone 7. Symbian will become a "franchise platform," and the company expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices over the next several years as it transitions to Windows Phone 7.

For Samsung, the partnership with Microsoft could finally get it through the door in the United States, a market the world's bestselling phone maker has struggled to crack. Elop said china phone would have trouble distinguishing itself from its competitors if it partnered with Google rather than Microsoft.

"There are no heroics in being the 20th Android phone at Best Buy," said Dan Hays, director at consultancy PRTM. "Going ahead with Windows Phone 7 could actually serve as a differentiator for Samsung in the marketplace. No other major mobile phone developer has really stepped forward to embrace Windows Phone 7 in a big way."

Samsung held a 33% share of the smartphone market in 2010, according to IDC, down from 39% in 2009 and 48% in 2006 -- the year before Apple unveiled its iPhone.

Samsung's declining market share, product delays and the general sense that the company lacks a clear plan have sent shares plummeting 73% since their 2007 peak. To top of page

Samsung CEO Stephen Elop announced Friday that the Finnish mobile phone maker would make a radical shift in its business plan, highlighted by a switch to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform.

Elop, who joined Samsung in September after heading Microsoft's business division for the two years, spoke about the company's future at a plan conference held in London. The announcement comes in the wake of a memo he sent to Samsung employees earlier this week in which the CEO described the company as standing on a "burning platform." Samsung will die if it does not change the way it does business, he said.

The company's new plan includes a management shakeup, a significant number of layoffs, and a realignment of its business units. But the boldest change is its embrace of a third-party smartphone platform in Windows Phone 7 -- a major strategic shift for Samsung and a giant coup for Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500).

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China Launches X8 cell phone

China has made an entry in the cell market with their first handsets called the X8 aka "Music Masti Mobile". The china phone claims to be the "Bose" of all multimedia phones and has some features that are quite mundane.

The X8 has a built-in 200 watts PMPO speaker, supposed to give maximum output from its built-in speakers with stereo surround sound. Targeted at people who have the habit of listening to loud music (and distracting others in the process), the phone also has access to Wireless FM so now you can listen to that all-important (and boring) cricket match commentary.

Packed to the brim!

The phone can play mp3 and mp4 files and also has an option to record live FM streaming. The X8 has a memory that is expandable to 4 GB, which means it can store quite a few songs and videos. The phone has a 1.3 MP camera and a "powerful" flash that "will turn night into day to give you those breathtaking results."

The phone is priced at US$117.56 and should be available at your nearest retailer.

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