Taiwan-based component suppliers predict Apple, RIM, and HTC to ship more than 50% of global smartphone shipments

The Taiwan-based component suppliers have predicted that top smartphone makers- Apple, RIM and HTC will see the growth of global shipment respectively 19-20 million, 14-15 million and 8-9 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2011. These three top companies together will share more than 50% of global smartphone shipments of 80-85 million units.

Among these top smartphone companies, Apple’s iPhone is the most popular brand name. Apple has been estimated to ship 20-25% global market share replacing RIM as the second-ranked smartphone vendor.

It is expected that RIM’s BlackBerry is the only smartphone company who can compete with Apple’s iPhone. However, according to the prediction, there will shipment will be 5-6% less than Apple.

It is needless to say anything about HTC, the American based smartphone company. HTC is continuously producing latest smartphones for different companies. They have the highest possibility to reach their estimated shipment in the New Year.

What about Samsung Electronics? This year Samsung got much media publicity with the launch of their latest smartphone Samsung Galaxy S. However, Taiwan-based component makers have not mentioned about this manufacturer company.

According to the report, these vendors and Nokia will account for 90% of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of 2011. May be Chinese based smartphone companies will compete for the rest of 10% of the global smartphone market.

Sprint's Samsung Instinct won the heart of the consumers

Good news for Samsung (SEO: 005935). Finally, the South Korean mobile phone set producer has produced something that has become a major competitor of Apple iPhone 3G. The Samsung Instinct marketed by Sprint is doing very well. The sales of Samsung 3G started from June 20^th. So far, it is the best EVDO handset ever offered by Sprint. The company is having a tough time to keep pace with the high demands of the consumers. The first week sales is a proof that consumers have accepted the new touch screen technology. Into Mobile reports:

“We had high expectations going into the launch so our initial order to Samsung was the largest for any Sprint EVDO handset to date,” said John Garcia, President of Sprint’s Wireless Division. “The strong early response tells us that wireless customers recognize Instinct as a highly-innovative and convenient touch-screen device combined with the fast speeds available on the largest national mobile broadband network."

The Sprint Instinct is priced at just $130 after $100 rebate and 2-year contract. If you can't swing that kind of coin, try winning a free Instinct.

No doubt that iPhone is very popular it is one sleek looking smart phones but it has lags behind in some departments. For example, the Apple iPhone 3G does not have voice dialing system. In this regard, Samsung Instinct is a voice-centric device rather than data centric.

Related articles:
Market News

Into Mobile

Apple iPhone 3G: Not so PERFECT!

iPhone is a major trendsetter in the mobile phone world. Upon release in 2007, the phone instantly became popular among mobile phone lovers and gadget freaks. This month, Apple released the latest version of iPhone – Apple iPhone 3G. The phone comes with all the great features you can expect from a smart phone. Still, there are some major glitches. Apple CEO, Steve Jobs is known for his reputation for paying attention to the most minor details. Still, he could not cure these problems:

• First, let us talk about the cost. The latest Apple iPhone 3G costs $199 which sounds very cheap but in reality the cost is higher. It costs $160 more than the original iPhone because AT&T has put a costly data plan to subsidise the up-front cost of the phone.

• Though iPhone has transformed the web browsing over mobile phone a great pleasure, the new Apple iPhone 3G does not support Adobe flash. This means many multimedia websites are off-limit.

• Though Apple has provided kits for the users to change batteries by themselves, it is not a very good idea. Why? The sleek case of the new Apple iPhone 3G is not very easy to open.

• The new Apple iPhone 3G does not have video recording facility.

• You can not just cut and paste text from websites with the new Apple iPhone 3G.

• The biggest disappointment of the new Apple iPhone 3G is, it lacks multi-media message service. You can not open pictures or videos send to you by your friend. Where hundreds and thousands of other phone sets comes with multi-media messaging options, the iPhone has nothing.

• The new Apple iPhone 3G does not support voice dialing which makes BlackBerry a better choice for businessmen on the road.

Related article:

Sydney Morning Herald

Nokia is buying Symbian shares and making Symbian free for all

Recently, Finland mobile giant, Nokia, bought out its fellow shareholders in Symbian, the UK based handset Software Company. Nokia is now also making Symbian loyalty free. Market analysts believe that Nokia is doing it to outsmart its rivals and this is going to seriously hurt Microsoft, Google and other major mobile software producers. Currently, Symbian is used in two-thirds of the total smart phone handsets with computer like capabilities around the world and 6% of the total mobile phones around the world. Other major mobile softwares are: Android from Google; Apple’s iPhone, Windows Mobile from Microsoft; and BlackBerry of RIM. Telegraph.co.uk reports:

Nokia was quick yesterday to dismiss the idea that its moves were simply a reaction to its rivals. "This is a market-making move and looking at it as a response to anything would not do justice to what we are doing," said Kai Oistamo, executive vice-president of Nokia.

But analysts were in little doubt. "This move's a shrewd response to growing threats from other providers of mobile phone software," said Geoff Blaber of industry watchers CCS Insight.

Mr Blaber made particular reference to the "open-source" LiMo Foundation as well as Google's Android, which also promises to offer handset makers an operating system at virtually zero cost.

Nokia is also launching Symbian Foundation, a non-profit organization that will unite the Symbian with three user interfaces.

Currently, Windows Mobile from Microsoft is controlling 13% of the smart phone market. Microsoft charges from $8-$15 per phone from the handset makers and Symbian charges $4.10. As Nokia is going to make Symbian free for all, according to Carolina Milanesi, a Gartner analyst, this puts a lot of pressure on Microsoft as they are trying to make their place in the mobile phone market.

Related articles:
Telegraph.co.uk

Wikipedia

New iPhone will take away major South Korean market share from LG and Samsung

No matter how they label their new products, ‘iPhone hunters,’ ‘iPhone killers,’ Samsung Electronics Corporation (SEO: 005935)and LG, two of the largest mobile phone producing companies of South Korea will face tough competition from the new Apple iPhone 3G.

According to the data of Strategy Analytics, till now, LG enjoyed a sales growth four times higher than the industry average in South Korea and Samsung two times. Now, after the release of new iPhone model at a low subsidized price could take away major market share of LG and Samsung in South Korea.

Yankee Group analyst, John Jackson, said that you would not need an analyst to tell you that a low subsidized price for the most-anticipated gadget ever was going to move huge amounts of iPhones in finite number of channels through which they would sell. It would hurt the Korean producers in key high-end segments.

Not only Samsung and LG but other major mobile phone companies like Motorola (NYSE:MOT) and Sony Ericsson are also expected to face a tough competition against the new iPhone. The latest model Apple iPhone 3G offers phone, iPod media player, web browser and faster internet access on advanced wireless networks. The Apple iPhone 3G will cost $199. From Jully 11, it would hit the market. According to Jae Lee, Daiwa Securities analyst, now it would be the best time for Korean makers to trim the fat from their cell-phone prices or else, they would not stand a chance in front of the iPhone.

Related article:
Reuters

iPhone

Samsung

Samsung Instinct: The latest iPhone clone from Samsung

Apple has announced its latest iPhone model, Apple AAPL iPhone 3G. Now, it’s Samsung’s turn to strike. Earlier, LG tried to take over iPhone with its Voyager and Vu. Samsung released an array of models including F480, F700, SGH-i900 and so on. Unfortunately, none of the models could take over iPhone. Once again, the South Korean mobile giant has announced its latest iPhone look alike; Samsung Instinct. This time every body is saying that it is going to be a major competitor for iPhone though it’s software functions are not as good as that of iPhone. The phone was announced in April. In the recently held CTIA Wireless 2008, Samsung Instinct took the Emerging Technology Award. The phone set also became the Most Innovative and Best Cell Phone in CNET’s Cream of the Crop. It will go on sale on June 20^th.New York Times.com says:

In other words, a certain population still awaits something that offers the touch-screen joy of an iPhone without those limitations. Oh, there have been efforts, but just slapping a touch screen onto a phone does not make it an iPhone. It’s all about the software, kids.
Here comes one more. On June 20, Sprint will offer the new Samsung Instinct. It, too, is a blatant iPhone wannabe, but its software structure is simple and it has its own personality. It does not succeed in surpassing the iPhone, especially the new one — but it does succeed as a smartphone.
The Instinct is tentatively priced at $200 with a two-year contract and a $100 rebate. It’s a wee bit taller and thicker than the iPhone, but noticeably narrower (2.2 x 4.6 x 0.5 inches).

Dimension:
Length: 4.6"
Breadth: 2.2"
Width: 0.5"
Weight: 4.4 ounces.
The phone is taller, narrower and lighter than iPhone.

Features:

• The Samsung Instinct comes with 3G EV-DO data services.
• The Samsung Instinct comes with a 3.25 inch color touch screen with haptic feedback. While browsing the web, the screen makes feel cramped. It is protected by plastic coating.Tech.yahoo.com reports:
  

  The Instinct's main touch interface has four tabs: Favorites, Main, Fun, and Web. Tapping the Main tab brings you to the phone's core applications (e-mail, navigation, settings, etc.), while Fun calls up multimedia (music, videos, camera), and Web includes ... well, the Web browser, plus widgets for news, weather, sports, and the like.

  As you touch the various tabs, little icon-based boxes slide back and forth, gathering smoothly into a grid—it's one of the little touches that makes browsing the Instinct's menus an iPhone-esque experience.

• The Samsung Instinct comes with a 2.0 megapixel camera.
• The Samsung Instinct can record video clips, a feature not available on the iPhone.
• The Samsung Instinct comes with a GPSand turn-by-turn directions which is powered by TeleNav.
• The Samsung Instinct has FM radio. The Sprint Radio offers more than 150 channels.
• The Samsung Instinct has microSD memory card slot (expandable upto 8GB).
  

• The Samsung Instinct has voice dialing system. Quoting AP, CNET, and Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo says:

CNET
The Instinct's touch screen dominates its real estate. With support for 262,000 colors and a 432,240-pixel resolution, the display is positively gorgeous. Colors popped, graphics were vibrant, and text was crisp. Indeed, it's one of the better displays we've seen in a while...but [it] can look rather cramped...

AP
The result is a lucid, logical interface. It's not as pretty as the iPhone's, but it allows the user to quickly use e-mail, Web browsing, GPS navigation and text messaging; watch videos, live TV and photos; and listen to music and online radio.

Wall Street Journal
The touch system on the Instinct is more like that on an ancient ATM than a cutting-edge gadget, even though it has a gimmicky feedback mechanism that gives you a tiny vibration-jolt when you press an icon.

• The Samsung Instinct has speech recognition system which enables the user to make phone calls, send text and picture, go to search, go to news, go to weather, go to movies, go to sports, and go to search.
• The Samsung Instinct comes with 3.5mm headphone jack. Gizmodo says:
• 
  

  Snappy Interface: Other touchscreen phones we've seen have annoying split-second lags. The Instinct, for the most part, does not. Some of its visuals were obviously borrowed from Apple, such as pop-up option screens, lists of settings, etc., but at the same time it has features that are original, albeit inspired by Cupertino: When a call comes in, you tap the center then slide up to accept or slide down to ignore. Hanging up is a slide from left to right. (The phone interface has other cool features, too, like "personal" call history for each of your contacts—so don't go cheatin'—and the ballyhooed visual voicemail, which unfortunately wasn't available to test at this time.) The UI only got stuck a couple of times, and never permanently. As with any other "natural" interface, it takes a few minutes to figure out the physics of the system, but once you do, it's intuitive.

• The Samsung Instinct comes with Bluetooth 2.0.
• The Samsung Instinct has LiIon battery with up to 6 hours of talk time.
• Sprint Music Store offers wireless downloads with $0.99/track.
• The Samsung Instinct also has Microsoft Live search.

Weak points:

• Sprint TV has been reformatted to fit the screen of Samsung Instinct, but the video quality is not so good. You can enjoy Spring TV with live on demand programming.
• The web browser and UI need more development. Tech.yahoo.com

Web browsing on the Instinct isn't quite so impressive, however. The browser works well enough with mobile-optimized pages, but (as I've written before) slows to a crawl with full-HTML pages. You can scroll by tapping and dragging Web pages, but there's no "pinching" on the Instinct's non-multitouch display, so you must tap a virtual button to zoom in or out. In other words, while the Instinct's Web browser is certainly above par, it can't hold a candle to the iPhone's.

• The graphics on Samsung Instinct touch screen are slightly dull.
• The Samsung Instinct does not have Wi-Fi.
  

Price:
Initially, Samsung Instinct was priced $499.99. After iPhone 3G was priced at $299, Samsung brought the price down to $199 with a rebate of $100, which requires a two year contract. The phone set will be sold by renowned wireless telecommunication Network company, SprintS.

If you want to get more information you can visit these two websites:
http://www.nowisgood.com/

http://www.samsunginstinct.com/

Related articles:
The Street.com

Crave.cnet

Tech.yahoo.com

Mobilewhack (1)

Mobilewhack (2)

Mobilewhack (3)

Gizmodo(1)

Gizmodo (2)

New York Times

Samsung

SamsungInstinct

Samsung F480 TouchWiz: The latest "iPhone killer " from Samsung

Every body is saying that it is going to be an ‘iPhone killer’. I am not a serious mobile user; so, it is upto you do decide which one is better. Next month, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (SEO: 005930) is launching SGH F480 ‘Tocco’ in Europe. Tocco is an Italian word which means touch. Touchscreen phones are the trend at present and the Samsung F480 TouchWiz is a smart, sleek mobile phone for fashion conscious people. It resembles more with Samsung Armani handset or LG’s Prada or LG KU990. Samsung announced the phone at the Barcelona Mobile Congress in February. Unconfirmed reports said that the phone is going to have different branding in UK.

Dimension:

• Length: 98 mm
• Width: 55 mm
• Breadth: 11.5mm
• Weight: 91 gram
• The first thing that will strike you about the Samsung F480 TouchWiz is its size. The phone has the size of your credit card.phonearena.com says:

Did someone say PRADA? Well, it really looks similar. We won’t go into details about the design in this preview as the images will say it all. The F480 can stand next to the Prada and Armani phones with its head high up as it definitely looks great. Additionally, it can have a leather cover on the back (half of it) and front, making it look as a fashion accessory. The unit we currently use is of this type, but we also saw one without the leather – it is just the battery cover which is different.

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has leather back and chrom trim.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz supports 3G, EDGE, GSM, and GPRS.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has HSDPA with a download speed of 7.2mpps.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has 240 MB of internal music memory.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has micro SD expandable memory which can be expanded up to 8GB.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz comes with USB 2.0.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has a 2.8 inch, 320 x 240 pixel touch screen, which comes with drag 'n' drop feature to access common functions like the clock, radio player, music player, photos, birthday reminders. Upon touching each icon the phone gives a vibrating feedback. phonearena.com further says:

As we said earlier, this is the first phone to use Samsung’s new TouchWiz interface, which is the successor of the Croix. It is very similar in the way it acts, but in visual aspect they have nothing in common: our main dislikes of the Croix were that it has monochrome look, and often the user must wonder what the icons actually meant. In the TouchWiz, everything is colorful, easily distinguishable, and has label with its function, so even the first time user will orientate easy. Similar to the G600 (and the Soul), the menus change with an animated transition. In this model they cannot be personalized, but are different depending on menu you are currently in. In combination with all the colorful icons, this looks very good.

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has Bluetooth 2.0 via A2DP.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has built-in blogging support, email and web browser. Cellphonedia says:

Samsung takes pride in its upcoming release of its new 3G mobile, the Samsung SGH-F480. It has a built-in camera that is about 5 megapixels with 20 x digital zoom functions. If that's not enough to blow your mind, add the fact that the Samsung SGH-F480 has video capture and video player capabilities. This makes it equipped with a digital video zoom that can go up to 12 x. Aside from this; it has a 2nd internal camera, a built-in flash, and an auto-focus function. This is along with its capability to project image stabilization. You can take pictures and videos as often as you like since it has about 130 MB of phone memory. The F480's phonebook alone can store up to 1,000 contacts. Thus, if you need more room to store your videos, photos and other data, the Samsung SGH-F480 has an external memory card slot that can accommodate 1 MB up to 4 MB of storage capacity.

Video/Camera/Audio/Radio:

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has 5 mega-pixel camera with auto-focus and flash.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz comes with video and image stabilizing technology.
  

• The Samsung F480 has slow motion function and built-in video editor.
  

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has video calling facility.
  

• The Samsung F480 is a complete multimedia phone that allows you to play a variety of audio and video files. Your mobile phonereviews.co.uk says:

The user can enjoy music on their phone by using the built in music player, radio feature or by enjoying their favourite ringing tones on the Samsung E480. The music player supports MP3 format, AAC & AAC+ music formats. The user can control their music using the easy to manage touch screen controls. The user can download or transfer their favourite music onto their phone using the connectivity options available & Internet access. The E480 supports both MP3 ringing tones & polyphonic ringtones which allow the user to enjoy a lively ringing tone experience on their phone. The radio feature is a FM radio complete with RDS feature which is accessible from the main menu.With the Samsung F480 TouchWiz, you can enjoy FM Radio with RDS.

Weak points:

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz does not support WiFi and GPS.
  

• Samsung F480 TouchWiz is not so user friendly. The touch function drains more power from the battery. Compared to the Samsung F480, iPhone is simpler and better. GSM arena.com says:

Samsung F480 features a new UI, with nice colorful icons. It is a welcome change as previous touch UI Samsung handsets we reviewed seemed a little too reserved. The other nice improvement to the interface is the addition of widgets. We did like the idea and we are glad the implementation didn't let us down.The Widgets are basically a very convenient way for customizing your home screen. The Widget bar toggles on and off the homescreen by pressing the arrow in the lower left corner.The Widget bar itself includes a number of icons, which can be dragged onto the display and ordered to the user liking. If any of them should become unwanted, they can easily be dragged back to the bar. Here is a quick video demonstration on how the whole widget thing works.

• The Samsung F480 TouchWiz has three hour talk time and 250 hours of stand-by life.
  

Price:

The price of Samsung F480 TouchWiz is around €500 (£400).

Now, the million dollar question is, do you think that Samsung F480 is better than iPhone?

Related articles:

Sky News

Mobile Gazette (1)

Mobile Gazette (2)

Techradar

Register hardware

Electricpig.co.uk

IT ProPortal

Tech Digest.tv

Shinyshiny.tv

samsung

samsungelectronics

samsungF480

appleiPhone

sghF480