Jon Rubenstein leaves HP.
After being the biggest advocate of WebOS first at Palm and then secondly at HP, Jon Rubenstein has left the company. There was no official reason for him leaving just after the WebOS open source announcement, although there have been rumblings from within HP that Rubenstein himself is in some small way responsible for the perceived failings of WebOS.
Although, the reality may well be somewhat simpler; the original plan for Rubenstein was that he would 'stay with HP for 12-24 months' and he has done exactly that, so maybe it's simply that his time has come. HP has thanked 'Jon for fulfilling his commitment and [they] wish him well'. Jon has announced he has no 'immediate plans' but he has definitely earned a good break after an eventful few years.
RIM's new CEO blasts Android.
The suggestions from earlier in the week that Torsten Heins, the new RIM CEO, would consider using alternative platforms in Blackberry devices has well and truly been put to bed today.
Heins held an interview with Crackberry on his plans for the future and took to opportunity to condemn Android phones as 'all the same', he chose to add that there is 'no room for differentiation'. That may be something Sony [Ericsson], Samsung, Motorola and any other manufacturer you can think of that rocks Android, may well disagree with. But, if that's he's firm belief then maybe he has something up his sleeve to prove his claims and keep RIM going. He also took the opportunity to explain how he was misunderstood, he was not debating the use of another operating system he was simply discussing what he was going to do with RIM as a whole; 'I was talking about drastic or seismic changes', but there was no reference to using other operating systems.
So it's just a simple case of people making inferences that weren't there but he took the opportunity to bash the competition very well indeed.
North Korea makes using a phone a war crime?
Ok so we already knew they were nutters, but during the 100 day mourning period after the Great Leaders death (their words not mine). So if you're busted having a cheeky text under the table or anywhere in fact in North Korea you will either be chucked in a labour camp or killed... Got that kids?!?!
But, in all seriousness, it is appropriate to point out that the reality in North Korea is that the average income is somewhere around $1 a month, so there are very few people in the country who can afford a phone. But, if they do have one and they're sneaky they have a nice unclogged and relatively freshly installed 3G network to browse away on.
Another day, another earnings report.
Today it's the turn of the (South) Korean giants, Samsung, to announce their earnings for Q4 2011 and boy have they done well! They have officially announce a $4.7 billion operating profit for the quarter, yes the quarter!
Over the year as a whole they have managed to ship 300 million phones, which added up to about 40% of revenue and contributed half of Samsung's overall operating profit.
Samsung predicts that in the year ahead the mobile division will continue to provide strong growth with continued adoption of LTE and with the exploitations of new markets segments, by which they mean things like the Galaxy Note (Half tablet, half phone things). And with the serious hype building online around the forthcoming Galaxy S3 (maybe known as GT-i9300 which has been spotted in their inventory lists) 2012 is looking like a good year for Samsung.
