All posts from Unwired View

Rumors indicate that Apple has already begun designing the next-generation iPhone, which I’ll call iPhone 5 from here on. This, of course, makes sense, as the average time from the start of the design process to market in the mobile phone business is 18 months. So even if Apple work faster, they still would need to have started already.
The same rumors indicate that the Hon Hai Group (better known as Foxconn in some parts of the world) will continue to be the iPhone’s manufacturer and as such will be making the iPhone 5 as well. Orders for the iPhone 5 are expected to take up a large portion of their production facilities.
This was also to be expected. What is rather unexpected though, if these rumors are confirmed, is that Apple may be switching their baseband chip supplier for the iPhone 5.

Up until now, the baseband chip supplier for the iPhones and the iPad 3G has been Infineon, a company recently acquired by Intel for a boatload of cash. And the fact that they were Apple’s supplier has to have had some impact on the size of that pile of cash.
Well, that may have been money better spent on something else, since it seems that the baseband chips for the iPhone 5 will come from Qualcomm, not Infineon. Apple will continue to design the application processor themselves (like they did with the A4 inside the iPad, iPhone 4 and the newest iPod Touch).
And it may make a lot of sense if Apple also dumped Infineon’s baseband solution from the iPad 3G at some point in the future, since such contracts are rarely signed for one product alone.
Interestingly, this may all have something to do with that ever-elusive CDMA iPhone. If Apple were to make a CDMA iPhone (for the likes of Verizon and/or Sprint in the US), they would more or less have to go with a Qualcomm baseband chip (since they invented CDMA). And if Apple were to use said baseband chip from Qualcomm in the CDMA iPhone, it would also make a lot of business sense to use Qualcomm solutions in the GSM versions of their product line as well.
However speculative, this may just be one more small confirmation that the CDMA iPhone is, indeed, coming. Sometime.
Via Commercial Times

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Qualcomm’s CEO, Paul Jacobs, has confirmed today that the company is working on a 1.5 GHz mobile processor that will power the smartphones and tablets of tomorrow. The chip will be commercially available in the first quarter of 2011. A 1.2 GHz version of the processor is also expected to show up in next year’s gadgets.
These statements were made during the Innovation Qualcomm event in London.

But don’t expect smartphones powered by Qualcomm’s 1.5 GHz chip any time soon. It will be available for phone manufacturers in early 2011, and from then on it may be a few more months until the devices it will power will hit the streets. Though we may see some announcements of devices sporting this processor during Mobile World Congress 2011, which will take place in February in Barcelona.
As for the 1.2 GHz chip, the information offered is even more ambiguous. The only sure thing is that at some point during 2011, we will see 1.2 and 1.5 GHz processors in commercially available smartphones and tablets.
Which, strangely, appears to be quite the delay from what Qualcomm’s SVP of product management said back in January. That announcement indicated that 1.5 GHz and 1.3 GHz Snapdragon processors will be available (to OEMs, not to you and me) before the end of this year.
So it looks like development of the next generation of top of the line Qualcomm mobile processors might have been delayed by about one quarter, for one reason or another.
Either way, it will be refreshing to see any mobile device go above the now-standard (for the high-end) 1 GHz frequency, regardless of when that will happen.
Via Pocket-lint

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The BlackBerry Torch 9800 was supposed to be RIM’s great new entry into the high end smartphone space. With a capacitive touchscreen (a first for the Canadian company) and that trademark BlackBerry keyboard, hidden under a sliding mechanism, surely RIM thought this would be an instant hit with consumers.
However, it turns out it wasn’t. A few days after the August 12th launch, analysts weighed in on the sales situation, and what they said wasn’t nice. Apparently only 150,000 BlackBerry Torch units were sold during the launch weekend, a number very far from previous RIM launches such as the Tour 9630 for Verizon, which sold 275,000 units in just one day.
But those were analysts. Today we have confirmation that sales of the BlackBerry torch are very slow from none other than Fred Devereux, AT&T’s President of Wireless Operations in the US West. He spoke during Seattle’s Mobile Future Forward conference and said he was “surprised there hasn’t been a faster adoption” of the smartphone, which he personally thought was the best BlackBerry to date.

An unusual statement, to say the least. Executives usually refrain from making such remarks, but perhaps Mr. Devereux was so surprised about the Torch’s measly sales numbers that he just couldn’t keep it in anymore.
Now granted, this may not mean the Torch will be a flop in the long run. Those who constantly choose RIM’s offerings are in the corporate/enterprise space, and they’re not the types to jump at a smartphone immediately after it’s released. In corporate environments there are very clear phone update schedules, and these may not have been able to make a mark in the sales numbers yet, but probably will at some point in the future.
However, what is pretty clear is that the Torch did not help RIM gain traction in the consumer space. Which is probably something they had hoped would happen. Given this development, the predictions about RIM’s market share staying flat over the next few years seem more plausible than ever.
Via Electronista

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Although it’s been more than a month since Rogers announced that it would bring the Samsung Captivate to Canada, the carrier has not launched the smartphone yet.
Even more, it’s still not clear when it will launch it. However, Rogers says that customers will be able to pre-order the Captivate “soon”, so it shouldn’t be too long until the handset hits the shelves.
Like AT&T’s Samsung Captivate, Rogers’ features Android 2.1, a 4 inch WVGA Super AMOLED display, Wi-Fi, GPS, HSPA, 5MP autofocus camera, HD video recording, 1GHz processor, and 16GB of internal memory. You can check out the smartphone here at Rogers.

Despite Rogers not having it, the Samsung Galaxy S is already in Canada, thanks to Bell – which introduced the smartphone’s Vibrant version last month.
Via Mobile Syrup

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iPhone 4’s well-known antenna issues may have negatively impacted sales more than Apple would have wished.
Piper Jaffray has recently published a survey that deals with this matter.
Of the 258 cell phone users interviewed (in Minneapolis, US), 177 were aware of the iPhone 4’s antenna problems. 35 (or about 20%) of those aware of the problems declared that they have impacted their purchase decision.
35 users = about 13.5% of the total number of respondents (i.e. the 258 users who are/were possible iPhone buyers). So we could say that, without the antenna issues, Apple would have sold 13.5% more iPhone 4s in the US until now.
Had an iPhone for Verizon Wireless existed, the Cupertino company would have sold many, many more smartphones.
As Fortune reports, Piper Jaffray’s survey implies that the lack of a CDMA iPhone made for Verizon Wireless “is holding sales back by about three times more than the antenna issue”.
Here’s a table with the survey’s numbers:

There have been tons of rumors about an iPhone for Verizon, and the latest has it that the largest US carrier will finally launch an Apple smartphone in January 2011 – in about four months from now. Both Apple and Verizon would benefit from this, so I really think it will happen. Maybe not in January, but sometime next year – which should be the iPhone 5 year.

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It looks like Vodafone is not the only British mobile carrier that readies the launch of RIM’s BlackBerry Torch 9800.
According to a leaked screenshot posted at iBenRowe, O2 UK will also sell the Torch, sometime in early October (a possible delivery date being October 4). No word on pricing at this moment.
Vodafone will likely release the 9800 before O2, as it has already added the smartphone to its website’s coming soon section, where a red BlackBerry Curve 3G 9300 can also be found.

The BlackBerry Torch is RIM’s first slider and comes with BlackBerry OS 6, a 360 x 480 pixels touchscreen display, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, GSP, 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, and 4GB of internal memory. The smartphone is currently available only in the US and only through AT&T.
Via Phone Arena

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Available online at Verizon as of today, the Samsung Fascinate Galaxy S comes with a surprise: it’s been included in a Buy One Get One offer.
This means that anyone who buys the Fascinate with a new 2-yr Verizon agreement will get another Fascinate for free (although this also requires a 2-yr agreement).
As already announced, Verizon sells the Galaxy S Android smartphone for $199.99 on contract.

$199.99 is also the price Motorola is asking for its Droid X and Droid 2, but these aren’t included in any BOGO deal, so Samsung may have an advantage here.
You can buy the Samsung Fascinate online here.
Starting tomorrow (September 9), the handset will also be available in Verizon’s retail stores.

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Expected to hit European shelves in mid-September, the Samsung Galaxy Tab Android tablet will also be launched in Asia.
In India, for example, the Galaxy Tab might be available as soon as October.
According to NDTV, the tablet should cost between 30,000 and 40,000 INR ($642 – $857).

The Galaxy Tab is Samsung’s first Android tablet. It features Android 2.2 Froyo, a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 TFT multitouch display, 3G (phone functionality included), Wi-Fi, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, 3.2MP autofocus camera with LED flash, 1.3MP secondary camera (for video calls), 1GHz processor, 16/32GB on-board memory, and MicroSD card support.
Later this year, the Samsung Galaxy Tab will also reach the US, possibly via AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.
Via SamsungHub

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Nokia has finally confirmed that it’s going to launch the N8 in the UK at the end of September – more exactly, in the last week of the month.
The company has also announced the price of the Nokia N8 for the UK.
Unlocked, the new Symbian^3 smartphone costs £429 (about €520 or $660) – more than in the US, where it’s only $549. If you get with a £35 monthly plan and a 2-yr contract agreement from O2, Vodafone or T-Mobile, the N8 is free.

Orange, Virgin Mobile, Three UK, Carphone House, Phones4u and Tesco Phone Shops will also offer the handset (starting October 1).
Until then, you can pre-order the N8 directly from Nokia UK’s online shop. Shipping is free, there’s an HDMI cable in the box, and you can choose to get the smartphone in any of these colors: dark grey, blue, silver white, green and orange.

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Samsung’s Galaxy S range of high-end Android smartphones just keeps getting bigger and bigger. Perhaps Samsung are trying to deliver on that ancient rumor that the Galaxy S will be available in 110 countries worldwide.
The strategy of having a Galaxy S available for any carrier that wants one is certainly paying off. In the US, for example, each one of the Big Four carriers has its very own Galaxy S version.
And now Samsung have announced that they’ll more or less be replicating what they did in the US in China. There are three big carriers here, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, and each will get their own version of the Galaxy S, custom made for their 3G frequencies.

So China Mobile will get the TD-SCDMA packing GT-I9008, China Unicom will get the WCDMA I9088, and China Telecom will get the CDMA-based SCH-I909.
All three devices will be available in China by the end of this year, with China Telecom’s version being first to market later this month.

All of this information was announced today during a special launch event that took place in Beijing. There it was also announced that the number of Galaxy S smartphones sold worldwide already exceeds 3 million. Which is not bad at all for a device at that price. It’s also interesting that of those 3 million, 1 million were sold in the US and 1 million in Korea. Of course, Samsung’s plan was to sell 10 million of these phones, and it definitely looks like it’s on track so far.
Via Press Release

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We already know that WebOS 2.0 is coming this year. None other than former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein reportedly said so himself. So as we prepare to enter the last quarter of this year, it’s normal for us to expect that HP are hard at work preparing WebOS 2.0 for release. Also, we’ve come to expect that whenever something new is in development in the smartphone world, there will be leaks.
It’s no different in this case. Screenshots possibly taken from a beta SDK for WebOS 2.0 have emerged, and they show HP’s newest mobile OS in all its glory.

Highlights of new features include Dropbox and MobileMe support and selection of default apps for data types as well as specific file types.
And if you can live with that shade of gray, this is shaping up to be an update to look forward to. An incremental update, but a good one nevertheless.
Also worth looking forward to is that HP WebOS tablet that will apparently hit the streets at the beginning of next year. It will presumably sport this version of the OS (well, the final bits), and may just pose a threat to Apple’s iPad and the upcoming onslaught of Android-based tablets.
Hopefully HP will also consider releasing at least a high-end smartphone running WebOS 2.0. More competition is always better, so to speak. It pushes competitors to innovate at a faster pace, and the original WebOS did just that. Here’s hoping its successor will be able to do the same.
Via Engadget

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Smartphones, smartphones, smartphones. Or “converged mobile devices”, to quote analysts. That’s where it’s at in the mobile industry, according to IDC’s latest Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that people love smartphones. Or at least they’re buying more and more each day.
In the first half of this year, 119.4 million smartphones were sold worldwide. That’s 55.5% more than the 76.8 million units sold in the first half of 2009.
IDC expect this trend to continue in the second half of this year, bringing the estimated total smartphone shipments in 2010 to 269.6 million, 55.4% more than last year’s 173.5 million.
Astonishing numbers indeed, and ones that will be achieved thanks in no small part to newly released devices such as the Apple iPhone 4, HTC Evo, Verizon’s Droid series, Samsung’s Galaxy range, and the BlackBerry Torch, to name just a few.
Smartphone sales are expected to grow a lot faster than the total number of phones sold, which is expected to only increase by 14.1% year-on-year. Last year, the market declined by 2.8%, which was a first in IDC’s Mobile Phone Tracker history.
The growth is said to continue throughout 2011, despite economic uncertainties. The smartphone market is expected to grow by 24.5% in 2011. However, smartphone growth will decline progressively from now to 2014. In 2014, the smartphone market is only expected to grow by 13.6%.
No one smartphone OS will dominate the space in the coming years in the same way that Windows is dominating the computer world. Here are IDC’s projections for smartphone OS market shares in 2014:

Symbian will maintain its leading position, while continuing to slowly lose market share. BlackBerry’s market share is projected to be almost flat (though, because of the overall growth of the smartphone market, RIM will see device shipment numbers increase). Android will overtake BlackBerry and reach second position, possibly posing a threat to Symbian in the (very) long run. Windows Mobile (or rather, Windows Phone) is expected to regain a bit of the market share it has lost in the past few years.
An interesting projection, although I do wonder how accurately one can predict what will happen in this space in 4 years, when one OS (Android) came from nowhere to almost No.2 in under two years. We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess.
Via Press Release

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