Samsung reportedly sold 500 handsets a minute in Q4 2012 and earnt $5.5 billion in profit!
With both Samsung’s OEM and consumer electronics businesses again seeing growth analysts don’t expect anything to slow down for the foreseeable future. This has pushed the company’s shares to record values and they'll likely only be heading upwards as we progress through 2013.
Morgan Stanley analyst, Shawn Kim said, "Guidance is unlikely to disappoint given new product launches and a further upturn in cyclical parts of the business... Smartphone momentum has not decelerated, despite Apple's new iPhone, and the business continues to be driven by its flagship products. This time, it's the Galaxy Note II ... with the upside in unit shipments mainly from the U.S. We expect strong momentum to continue in the first quarter."
Reuter's continued to say that "Samsung's flagship Galaxy S III, which overtook the iPhone 4S in the third quarter to become the world's best-selling smartphone, are likely to have slipped to around 15 million in the last quarter from 18 million in July-September. But estimated sales of around 8 million Galaxy Note II phone-cum-tablets, or 'phablets', should more than make up for that - pushing overall smartphone shipments to around 63 million, analysts estimate." Which is great news for Samsung and disproves the 'too big' myth which many people have been discussing!
It's expected Samsung's sales will slow down as people start waiting for the Galaxy S4, but whe that device is release it will reinvigorate sales again!
Reuters Via KYM.
HTC had their worst quarter since 2004!
Sometimes it's hard to know why things aren't going right, but for whatever reason they're not. That's exactly the predicament HTC finds themselves in at the moment. They seem to be competing with Samsung and Apple, both of whom are selling their phones by the bucket load, but HTC just can't get a magic formula together at the moment. In Q4 2012 the company returned their smallest profit since they started making Android devices so where next?
At the moment HTC has pinned their hopes on the new portfolio of devices which will be landing this year. The much rumoured M7 and a new version of Sense (pictured here) are the supposed saviours. Either way this does not detract from the fact that HTC made £21.5m profit in the past three months off of a total revenue of over £1 billion.
With income still around that figure there's nothing too worrying yet, because HTC can always cut some costs, but it's their lack of manufacturing ability which Samsung and even LG have which is holding them back from making a solid profit!
Via CNet.
Elop says 'anything is possible', but reaffirms he's content with Windows Phone.
In other news:
Stephen Elop is Nokia's CEO and their current leader, he was the one who took the company into the Windows Phone arena and he says that he's quite happy with the position of his company at the moment! He said in an interview with El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, that he even sees Nokia's current strategy getting them in double-digit marketshare at some point in the future and that Lumia 920 sales have been encouraging. When asked about the possibility of using Android as their OS of choice this is what Elop had to say:
El PaÃs: Do you discard launching an Android phone next year?Elop: In the current ecosystem wars we are using Windows Phone as our weapon. But we are always thinking about what's coming next, what will be the role of HTML 5, Android... HTML5 could make the platform itself—being Android, Windows Phone or any other—irrelevant in the future, but it's still too soon [to tell]. Today we are committed and satisfied with Microsoft, but anything is possible.
Elop makes an interesting and rather astute point when he says that HTML5 and the apps which come with it, could make platforms irrelevant in the future. We'll have to wait and see, but as a worst case scenario for Nokia they can always fall back into the loving hands of Android!
Via PhoneArena.
- Oppo is looking for 5 people from around the world to beta test their Find 5 smartphone. The biggest perk of this offering is that you get to keep the phone afterwards! You can enter here!
Via PhoneArena.
- One part of Google chairman Eric Schmidt's journey to North Korea has emerged to be the negotiation for freedom of an American citizen. Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson confirmed "We are going to ask about the American who's been detained. [It's] a humanitarian private visit." The detainee, Kenneth Bae, is a Korean-American tour guide who was arrested in November, after crossing the border into North Korea with five other tourists.
Reuters Via TheVerge.
- ZTE and Nuance have agreed a new multi-year deal for voice activated services on ZTE devices. This agreement focused on ZTE's upcoming in-car services, which is coming in more than 25 languages! Car Mode will come pre-installed on ZTE sets shipping this year and if you're after more details you can find the press release here!
Via Engadget.
- The release for the factory images of Ubuntu OS for the Galaxy Nexus have been pushed back until the end of February! Still it's not too long to wait seeing as we aren't expecting devices until next year!
Via LandOfTechnology.
- If you're in need of Photoshop, more specifically an older version of Photoshop, then Adobe is offering Photoshop CS2 for free at the moment. There are direct links to the official download destinations on this webpage here!
Via LandOfTechnology.
- Apple is being sued by a patent troll which is using some old BT patents which they acquired. You can read the full details here!
And finally, it seems Apple's customer satisfaction has finally been toppled by the relentless onslaught of Android devices. For the first time today a glimpse of the February issue of Consumer Reports shows that on the top 4 US carriers Android phones are rated ahead of the iPhone 5! Does this mean Android is now finally user friendly and has come of age? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
