Friday, 4 January 2013

04/01/2013: HTC blame poor advertising for poor sales, Spotify suspends song downloads, Corning tease Gorilla Glass 3 and much more!

HTC's Peter Chou blames lack of advertising for poor sales.

   HTC's chairman, Peter Chou, spoke to the Wall Street Journal yesterday and said that he thought his company's poor performance last year was down to a lack of marketing and advertising budget.

   He specifically outlined his challenges of competing with the "strong and very resourceful" marketing of his competitors, presumably he means Apple and Samsung, who have to ability to pou "lots of money into marketing." 

   Chou continued. "the worst for HTC has probably passed. 2013 will not be too bad/" Interestingly he didn't say good either, so he's realistic about the challenges which his company faces as they try to go toe to toe with the behemoths from Cupertino and Korea. The best way HTC see of challenging this pairing is to offer "unique products" and presumably offering the first 1080p phone, the Droid DNA, was a start on this path. 

   We're not sure whether HTC will stick religiously to a 'hero phone' strategy like they tried to to last year with their One series, but we'll have to wait and see what they bring to CES next week! Naturally you'll be able to get all the important news from each day right here!
WSJ Via Engadget.

Spotify suspends music download options!

   If you're a Spotify member and you try to download a song to keep today you'll be greeted with this message: "We're no longer supporting new download purchases on Spotify." Instead this will direct you to a a lovely FAQ page on the company's site.

   For the moment the songs you have already downloaded will still appear in your library and will play despite the current embargo. At the moment no one is sure but once the song meets its expiry date it will likely not be able to play any more.

   Spotify's FAQ page, on the matter, currently reads, "We’re currently not offering new download purchases on Spotify. You can still use downloads you’ve already purchased" and "even though it’s not possible to buy downloads using Spotify Desktop, you’ll still be able to use your Spotify gift card, as long as it’s one of the cards that features 'Downloads' as an option." Which is good news for those of you who just got a lovely Spotify giftcard for Christmas!
Via PocketLint.

Corning have teased Gorilla Glass 3: Arriving at CES?

   Corning's Gorilla Glass is one of the most popular options amongst manufacturers for offering you strong and long lasting screen protection on your mobile phone and it's employed on both the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S3 amongst other devices. Both of those phones use Gorilla Glass 2 which is very good in itself! 

   Corning wasn't going to rest on their laurels though and they've teased the arrival of 'something tougher' and in this case it'll be Gorilla Glass 3 which is said to be three times stronger than Gorilla Glass 2! Other enhancements include 40 per cent less scratches than the last version and 50 per cent better shock resistance, both of which will make Gorilla Glass 3 the new standard for tough phone and tablet displays! We expect to see this screen launch on some of the devices manufacturers bring to CES next week! We're starting to get excited!
Via T3.

In other news:

  • Twitter has received a valuation from Forbes that Twitter has been valued at $11 billion (£6.8 billion) in some recent trades an increase of $3 billion since August of 2011 when it was valued at $8 billion (£4.9 billion).
    Via Wired.
  • The Nexus 10 is currently back in stock in the UK Play Store. The 16GB is the only available option at the moment and you can pick it up for £319 here!
  • Talking of tablets Microsoft's Surface Pro tablets will be arriving on January 26th if CNET's calls to US stores turn out to be correct!
  • Acer's Iconia B, or B1 as we used to know it, looks to be all but set for it's release after CES! A couple of days back it was spied on Acer USA's website and it is set to go on sale in India RS $7,999, which is equivalent to $147 USD. That money buys you a dual-core 1.2Ghz processor, a 7" 1024x600 resolution display, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage and Android 4.1! We're not sure whether this will be coming to the whole world, but with a US version of the site having been published we'd be surprised if it wasn't!
    Via PhoneArena.
  • EE is now offering Femtocells to their customers and they go by the name of the EE Signal Box. Unfortunately the devices only give you 3G signal through your home broadband but if you're struggling for signal we're sure you won't mind not getting your 4G connection! You can check the device out here and we're not sure about the cost at the moment but we assume EE will just lend you one if you're out of range of their network!
    Via Coolsmartphone.
  • In the last couple of years there's been a lot of fines issued from countries around the world to Samsung, LG and four Taiwanese firms for their parts in the LCD screen price fixing issue which happened a couple of years ago. Today we've seen a fine of £35m come in from Chinese trade regulators for this crime, which compared to the £357 million fines issued in America this one seems like a bit of a let off!
    Via BBC.

And finally, LG has released a little CES teaser that hints at what is coming in the next week. Now the video doesn't give much away, but it looks like LG could be offering up some interesting devices! Many people believe there's a small glimpse of the Optimus G2 which is rumoured to include a 5.5-inch display with a 1080p resolution as well as a 13-megapixel camera, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and possible a bump to 3GB of RAM.
Via Recombu.

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