Huawei's CEO breaks his silence: Explains that nothing untoward happens in his company!

   Huawei have been having some trouble in the US lately. They've been accused by the government of surveillance for the Chinese authorities and there's been some issues of misquotes of execs on whether or not the company would be trying to target the American market any more. Well it turns out that Huawei's founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfai, is typically a quiet guy and he doesn't normally say much if anything to the media. Well that changed today as he took the time to speak to reporters in New Zealand as they've recently won contracts to build mobile network infrastructure in the region and he defended his companies position on the US cyber concerns about his company.

   Zhengfai has said that despite his 26 years of silence, he hasn't avoided the press because of dodgy dealing by his company. Instead, Zhengfai said that there are no improper links to the Chinese government, he said:

"Huawei has no connection to the cyber-security issues the U.S. has encountered in the past, current and future... Huawei equipment is almost non-existent in networks currently running in the U.S. We have never sold any key equipment to major U.S. carriers, nor have we sold any equipment to any U.S. government agency."

   The whole story is quite interesting and it's unlikely that there will ever be an honest answer as to whether there is any untoward behaviour going on behind the scenes on either side of the issue, but in the modern world the best policy is to all try to get along no matter how hard it is. We'll keep you up to date will all the latest news, but in the meantime we have Huawei's stunning P6 to look forward to seeing on the market running Android!
Via Reuters.

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Nokia make as much profit from super-cheap phones as Lumia flagships!

   Today it's come to light that Nokia make just as much profit their insanely cheap handsets as they do from their high-end Lumia devices!

   That's actually really interesting because it means that they are selling so many of their super cheap handsets, like the Nokia 105, pictured above, that their R&D costs on devices like this are not important because of the sheet volumes of these phones which they can sell.

   Nokia China's platform and technology R&D director, Jun Wang, said that the money which the company makes from shifting a tonne of these devices actually adds up to the profit which the company makes from their high-end Lumia smartphones. Wang was speaking at the launch of the 105 in China, a market which is important to Nokia because of the vast amount of people and the huge growth of the mobile phone market in the area lately.

   Nokia will have a relatively tough time in the region though; they have to compete with huge swathes of Android devices which sell at tiny prices for a slice of the 60 per cent of mobile phone sales in China which are less than 2000 Yuan (£250 or $385).

   Nokia is hoping that because they create feature phones with some of the goodies of smartphones that they can tempt people with the tiny £15 price tag that comes with this phone, instead of the slightly higher price which people have to pay for smartphones with touchscreens and faster processors which Android requires.

   What do you think? Have Nokia got a chance? Should they try to focus more on their Windows Phone business? Or would you like to see more in-between phones like the Asha 210? Let us know in the comments below!
Via Pocketlint.

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In Other News: 15/04/2013.

• Judge Raymond Voet from Michigan in the USA has opted to fined himself for contempt because his own phone went off disrupting a prosecutor's closing argument! His phone started asking for voice commands during the trial and he has subsequently done the right thing and fined himself the grand sum of $25!
  Via Telegraph.

• The WSJ is reporting that Microsoft has order 1.5" touchscreens for a smartwatch! There was no details about the quantities, but it's safe to say that Microsoft is at least looking at the possibility of developing a smartwatch!
  Via PhoneArena.

• It is rumoured that Japan Display's tag team of Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi, are setting to work on a 7 inch display with a resolution of 2560 × 1600 pixels, that's WQXGA for those who like their letters instead of pixels. That works out to an incredible 430 ppi and that blows all current 7" tablet screens out of the water!
  Via AndroidBeat.

• EA recently took the award for the worst company in America and they might upset a few more people today as they've announced that they're shuttering the Facebook games Sims Social, SimCity Social, and Pet Society, all of which will close on the 14th of June! This is supposedly down to a lack of players!
  Via HotHardware.

• Reuters are reporting that Nokia's recent push into China is likely to help prevent the revenue decline of the company and help the reduce any Q1 losses!

• HP's budget Android tablet, the Slate 7, is now up for pre-order in the UK! The device, which is powered by a dual-core Rockchip processor, will set you back £129, will be shipped to you on the 1st of May and you can get it here!
  Via ITProportal.

• HTC's Windows Phone 8X has just got a price cut and it can now be yours for £276 if you want to grab one from Clove here!

• Wordpress was subjected to a huge botnet attack which utilised "tens of thousands" of computers last week. Server hosts Cloudflare and Hostgator confirmed the news that the controlled computers tried to long in using the username "admin" trying trying thousands of possible passwords in the process.
  Via BBC.

• Huawei's Richard Yu has said that the company can’t afford to compete with the companies in China which offer low-end devices. Instead, Yu wants Huawei to become a “first-tier” phone producer.
  Via AndroidBeat.

• YouTube for iOS has been update to include live streaming!
  Via Slashgear.

And finally, Pantech have confirmed that their new flagship device will be announced on the 18th, that's this Thursday! The device is set to feature a 5" 1920 x 1080p display, a 1.7 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 13 MP rear-camera and a 2150 mAh battery. The rumour mill also says that there's a pretty cool oblong design, which you can see below! We'll show you exactly what it is on Thursday!

Via PhoneArena.

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Broadcom's Executive Vice President talks China, MediaTek and the future of mobile!

   In a world which is dominated by processors with Snapdragon, Exynos and even the letter A before a single digit number in their titles, it's surprisingly easy to forget that there are more than just three companies out there who design or make their own mobile processors. The other week we heard that ST-Ericsson will be heading out of business, but there's other companies with their hands in the game. Three others which spring to mind are, Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Mediatek and Broadcom.

   It turns out that the last of those four, Broadcom, is responsible for the processors which run Samsung's Galaxy Grand and their Galaxy S2 Plus devices. Obviously these guys don't really have the same sort of brand recognition that someone like Nvidia would, but their Executive Vice President, Robert Rango, recently had an interview with Digitimes and he said some interesting things in that discussion.

   The one of the main strands of the debate was about Broadcom's plan to push hard in the Chinese market. Key to this was the recently 'acquired R&D team', a team capable of "enabl[ing] mobile phone makers with a R&D team of 45-60 persons to complete the design of one smartphone model within one month, compared to the need of a 300-member team and a workload of three months for the completion of the same job in the past". This tiny timescale is put down to the reference designs which the R&D team are busy coming up with which make everything a lot easier for venders.

   Obviously with this investment in China one of their key competitors immediately becomes MediaTek. Rango doesn't think that his company is "lagging behind" them, which is debatable, instead he points to longer-term partnerships with both Samsung and Nokia. The phones from Sammy and Nokia have gone around the world which Rango suggests makes Broadcom slightly more successful because they're not region specific, but we're not necessarily sure we agree on that one.

   There was also an interesting remark about the future of the mobile market. Rango said 'More and more smart devices are likely to enter into the market in such forms as smart watches and smart glasses' and this is something which he believes his company can play a big role in.

   The whole thing is well worth a read if you're interested in this sort of thing and you can find the full interview here!
Digitimes Via AndroidBeat.

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Qualcomm to use the HTC One in ads and are these the Desire P and Q?

   HTC and their new flagship, the One, seem to be making the news pretty much every day for a variety of reasons, some of which are good, the others not so good. But, either way you look at it everyone thinks HTC needs to spend money on advertising to make this device a success!

   That's a post over on Digitimes which comes in quite useful here. The post says that HTC's flagship will be featured on Qualcomm's advertising for their Snapdragon range of processors! The post reads:

“Qualcomm is extending its cooperation with HTC from technology, product and carrier relationship development to marketing with the firsts of a series of promotional films being presented at the ongoing Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2013, said Shen Jin, vice president of Qualcomm Greater China.”

It's actually quite interesting if it's fully accurate, because it means that Qualcomm at least wants to see HTC succeed. The only issue is that we don't know how well Qualcomm's other partners will feel about that. Samsung probably doesn't mind at all because they've got a huge budget to push sales of the Galaxy S4 through already, but people like Sony, who also use Qualcomm processors, albeit last generation ones, will probably feel left out!

   To be honest it probably will make very little difference because Qualcomm have very few adverts, but every bit of publicity is good news for HTC!

   Secondly, there are a couple of images floating around the internet, pictured right, which are supposedly press shots for two new smartphones from HTC.

   The first, the Desire P, seems to be a decidedly mid-range device and it has rumoured specifications which include a 4.3-inch WVGA that's 480 x 800p display, a 1GHz dual-core processor, an 8MP rear camera, HTC's standard Beats Audio EQ and a microSD slot, which would be a lovely change for HTC devices!

   The Desire Q, on the other hand, doesn't have quite as many details. There's supposedly a 4-inch display, Beats Audio and three colours to choose from, which are black, white and red.

   Other than that the devices are set to arrive in China for $365 (£240) for the Desire P and the Q is shaping up to cost $235 (£155). Naturally we'll update you if this becomes official news!
Via AndroidBeat and UnwiredView.

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In Other News: 07/03/2013.

• UK mobile subscribers have probably heard about the mid-contract price increase if they're on Orange or T-Mobile. Tesco have decided they don't think that's fair so Tesco Mobile have confirmed that they are committed to fixing their prices so this sort of thing won't happen to their customers. Tesco Mobile's CMO, Simon Groves said: “We believe it’s only fair to stick to the contract that we make with our customers, and see no reason to change the core tariff price that a customer has signed up to. We’ve never put our Pay-Monthly tariff prices up mid-contract and this Tariff Promise demonstrates our continued commitment to our customers."
  Via Recombu.

• An English court has found that three individual patents Samsung owns about 'processing and transmitting data on 3G mobile networks' are all invalid, this means that Apple are let off the hook with regard to those patents, unless Samsung chooses to appeal, which they will consider after they've thoroughly looked through the legal documents!
  Via Reuters.

• It seems AT&T will soon be rolling out the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update to their HTC One X's. Today a blog post was accidentally published and subsequently pulled which detailed all of the new features in the update, so we can conclude the update will be on the way very soon!
  Via AndroidPolice.

• The video calling service Tango have updated their app for iOS. The update brings the app native and it introduces full screen support. You can get the app for PC, Android, iOS or Windows Phone here!
  Via Engadget.

• TheUnwiredView have got wind that Samsung may be offering a $100 unsubsidised(!) LTE compatible phone for release in India!

• China has today unblocked IMDB! There's not been any justification for the sudden lifting of the ban, but less censorship is good news for everyone right!
  Via TheVerge.

• Rovio is currently offering both the normal Angry Birds and Angry Birds HD for free on the iOS app store! Head over there now for the standard or HD version to get the deal because we don't know if this is a permanent move or if it's it just for a short period!
  Via TheVerge.

• Sony is rolling out the Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update to the Xperia J at the moment just as Motorola roll out the Android 4.1 update to their Droid Razr and Droid Razr Maxx!
  Via UnwiredView and Twitter.

• The OUYA Store is accepting game and app submissions from today as that March 28th release date draws ever nearer!
  Via AndroidCommunity.

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15/06/2012

Microsoft preparing to launch their own tablet.

   Microsoft could be about to release their own branded tablet, a measure aimed to directly challenge Apple and rumoured Nexus tablets. 

   The Redmond-based software company has scheduled an event for Monday,and have promised a 'major' announcement, it's so special the company has said "you will not want to miss" it.

   The rumour comes straight from 'The Wrap' and at the moment we have absolutely no idea what the tablet will look like. The mock up above is what Cnet created by slapping a bit of Windows 8 onto the HP TouchPad, but we have no idea what it will look like if there is one released.

   On the software front we expect Windows 8 RT, which is the version of Windows 8 designed for ARM, would be a banker.

   It'd be great to see Microsoft acquire Nokia and make a tablet courtesy of them, using the amazing Polycarbonate casings they've been using on the Lumia 800 and 900.

   There's no doubt that if this does pan out as rumoured then Microsoft will undoubtedly be selling a good few of these tablets just by their brand name alone. If they can manage to make one that looks aesthetically pleasing then this really could be a potential challenger to the iPad and Android tablets.

   It'll be really interesting to see what happens because Microsoft has rumoured to have banned HTC from making Windows tablets, so lets see how they manage themselves.

In other news:

• Motorola business solutions have purchased Psion, the rugged mobile producers for $200million. Unfortunately this is the part of Motorola that makes your phones, so we're not entirely sure what the company is using them for at the moment.
• Apple and Motorola's spat has now gone as far as the judge asking them to prove the validity of each of their claims before they're consider in court, that's scheduled for the 20th of June, so we'll know how this round is going to be scored soon.
• Batman 'the dark knight rises' is coming to Android and iOS this summer.
• China is set to send the country's first female into space tomorrow!
• The Ethiopian government has made it a crime to use any VOIP service from within the country. So Skype, Google talk and pretty much anything else that does the same thing is out of the question unless you fancy 15 years behind bars!
• Apple has shown that in iOS6 you will have to give apps permission to access your contact book, in the same way you would in Android, as an extra bit of security.
• Kinectimals for Android has been released!!!

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01/06/2012

The future of Android.

 

   If we needed any confirmation that there is an imminent update to Android available the good folks at Pandora have all but confirmed it. The picture to the right is a screenshot of their app and one of the 'new features' is 'Campatibility support for an upcoming Android OS'. 

   

   On the one hand I'm excited to see this, but on the other I know it's going to be a long, long wait for updates for this version to hit my devices, my Sony Tablet S only got ICS yesterday!!!

   Aside from this forthcoming release the is also news from Google's Senior Vice President on Chrome and Applications had this to say about how Android and Chrome OS could draw together in future;    

“Android is extremely successful, we couldn’t be more proud of it. We have exciting steps ahead with tablets, too. There are many instances where people spend all of their time in the browser. 

The notion that, for the first time, your experience is in the cloud. You still run on a local device, CPU, SSD, etc. – but the notion that your computer is actually in the cloud enables zero administration. And from a web console, you can deploy and manage apps. There’s no installing software or anything like that.

I think what is important between Android and Chrome OS with users, is that it makes sense. Look at Apple, there’s MacBooks and iPhone, and they use different operating systems. Convergence will happen, sure. But look at Gmail – you go from a Chromebook to Android, and it just works.” – Pichai

In other news:

• HTC has revealed the Taiwanese and Chinese versions of the HTC One S and both are rocking a 1.7Ghz Dual-core Snapdragon S3 processor. This is the old version of the processor, ie the one in the HTC Sensation XE. But, on the plus side this does make both of these world phones!
• The new Lara Croft game has a trailer available and the gameplay looks decidedly more gritty than the past versions of the game.
• If you're into Space and Galaxies and things, Nasa has some intriguing news for you. Apparently they have predicted that our Galaxy and Andromeda are set to collide in approximately.... 4 billion years time. So no worries just yet!
• All in all Samsung has shifted 52million Galaxy S' and S2's (24+28million respectively). The Galaxy Note has sold pretty well too with 7million having been dispatched. That ladies and gentlemen is how you make money in the mobile industry!
• The judge in the Google vs Oracle case has ruled that API's are not copyrightable things, good work Google's lawyers!

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