RIM axes two new handsets
Rumours are swirling that RIM, maker of the BlackBerry phones, has cancelled two of the three planned handsets that it was to introduce this year – including one showcasing its new BlackBerry 10 operating system. The company is also reported to be struggling to get its key BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) services to run on the new OS. The only device which presently runs BB10, originally known as QNX, is the PlayBook tablet. That was released in April 2011 but does not yet run BES for email and calendars or BBM, despite promises from RIM that software updates were imminent to enable those services.
Online reports suggest that the company has decided against making Milan, a touchscreen phone with a slide-out keyboard. Further suggestions say that it has also scrapped a model known as Colt, first mooted last August, which would follow the classic BlackBerry shape by having a full integrated QWERTY keyboard beneath a 3in screen.
The
Guardian
Motorola Defy Mini officially unveiled ahead of CES 2012
Motorola has expanded its range of rugged handsets with the company's Defy brand being plumped by the arrival of the Motorola Defy Mini ahead of CES 2012. Joining the 2010 released Motorola Defy and last year's Defy+ handsets the newly unveiled Motorola Defy Mini will land as a compact 'strong and sturdy' device resistant to dust, water and the odd knock or drop. Running Google’s Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS from the box the Motorola Defy Mini is to sport a 3.2-inch display with Corning Gorilla Glass further boosting the handset’s rugged and knock resistant credentials. With a 3-megapixel rear-mounted camera with LED flash to be bolstered by a second, forward-facing, VGA snapper, the Defy Mini’s impressive specs haul is to be completed by a 1650mAh battery and integrated MotoSwitch software.
T3
Smartphones drive record Samsung profit
Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest technology group by sales, defied the slowing global economy with record profit in the fourth quarter of 2011, and expects the strong momentum to continue this year driven by robust smartphone sales. The South Korean company estimated its operating profit for the October-December period at an all-time high of Won5.2tn ($4.5bn), up 73 per cent from the same period a year earlier. It said preliminary fourth-quarter sales rose 12 per cent to about Won47tn. Samsung will announce full results later this month. Samsung attributed the robust projections to the strong performance of its handset division, further bolstered by a one-time gain from the $1.4bn sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology of the US, a deal it said closed last month.
Financial
Times
LG unveils integrated Google TV for CES 2012
LG has confirmed that it will introduce a television with integrated Google TV at CES 2012, a key step for both companies as they look to a connected future. LG's take on Google TV has been eagerly anticipated, with the Korean giant keen to bring in Google's Android-based IPTV platform and pair it up with its 3D and Smart TV technologies. "LG has constantly strived to provide consumers with wider choices in home entertainment that bring the highest level of sophistication and convenience," said Havis Kwon, President and CEO of LG Electronics Home Entertainment Company.
tech
radar
How did fake Wendi Deng slip through the Twitter net?
It is not clear how Twitter thought that a male Londoner was the Chinese-born wife of a billionaire media mogul – but what is certain is that once the social network got in touch with Wendi Deng directly they knew that the account they had verified as belonging to her was fake. It is understood that Twitter was in contact with Rupert Murdoch's wife directly – as is routine when verifying accounts – at which point it would have become clear that the @wendi_deng account that had been marked as hers for 24 hours was in fact nothing of the sort. The unfortunate episode throws a spotlight on Twitter's verification process, which it uses to clamp down on the many thousands of imposters that feature on the social network. Twitter launched its verified accounts programme more than two-and-a-half years ago in an effort to combat a rise in fake celebrity profiles.
The
Guardian
Google Tablet: Will it bring down the Kindle Fire or iPad?
Google may be working on its own tablet, but no one knows whether that device will compete with the iPad or go after the Kindle Fire, as DigiTimes suggested in a report. According to the Taiwanese site, officials in Google’s supply chain believe the company is targeting the Kindle Fire with its own 7-inch $200 tablet running on Android 4.0. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in December that the company planned to release a tablet in the next six months, mimicking Google’s Nexus brand for smartphones. The tablet would be “of the highest quality,” Schmidt said in the interview with an Italian newspaper, fueling more speculation about a Google-branded tablet that began in March last year. In the tablet market, devices running the Android operating system failed to take off, as iPads outsold other tablets by a ratio of about 10 to 1. Even among the non-iPad tablet sales, Android tablets were behind HP’s discontinued TouchPad, according to NPD figures. And in less than two months since it was launched, Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet managed to become the number two tablet after the iPad because of its low price of $199. So after it bought Motorola for $12.5 billion, Google can finally step in and set a benchmark among partner tablet manufactures, just like it did with Nexus smartphones.
PC
Advisor
Facebook launches ‘business cards’ for users
Every ‘Facebook Card’ is made from a set template which will take a user’s profile picture as the image and glean the rest of a members’ personal details from their description on the site. The first 200,000 users to sign up to the new scheme will receive a bundle of 50 free personalised cards, which means 10 million cards in total will be given away over a short period of time. To apply for the first official Facebook Card, users need to click on ‘About’ in the their basic information section on the new Timeline profile page and then scroll down to ‘Contact Info’ and hover the mouse over a little business card icon – which should then direct you to Moo. The first 50,000 users will receive the cards free of shipping costs, but thereafter, a small fee will be charged. “MOO.com is very excited to announce this integration with Facebook to provide a revolutionary new customer experience that brings together Facebook Timeline with MOO’s high-quality printed products,” said Moo chief executive and founder Richard Moross.
The
Telegraph
Verizon fixed-line sale would enable Vodafone combination, Goldman says
A disposal of Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)’s fixed-line operations would clear the way for the company to merge its wireless and enterprise units with partner Vodafone Group Plc (VOD), analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) said.
An agreement on a frequency purchase and marketing cooperation that Verizon’s mobile-phone unit reached in December with U.S. cable operators led by Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) would make separating its divisions easier, the analysts, including Tim Boddy in London, wrote in a research report. “The remaining wireless and enterprise businesses would have faster growth and a clear fit with Vodafone’s assets and strategy, making it a more attractive merger partner,” the analysts said in the report yesterday.
Bloomberg
Top 1 per cent of mobile users consume half of world’s bandwidth, and gap is growing
The world’s congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 per cent of consumers generating half of all traffic. The top 10 per cent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 per cent of wireless bandwidth. Arieso, a company in Newbury, England, that advises mobile operators in Europe, the United States and Africa, documented the statistical gap when it tracked 1.1 million customers of a European mobile operator during a 24-hour period in November. The gap between extreme users and the rest of the population is widening, according to Arieso. In 2009, the top 3 per cent of heavy users generated 40 per cent of network traffic. Now, Arieso said, these users pump out 70 per cent of the traffic. Michael Flanagan, the chief technology officer at Arieso, said the study did not produce a more precise profile of extreme users. But the group, he said, was probably diverse, with a mix of business users gaining access to the Internet over a 3G network while traveling, and individuals with generous or unlimited mobile data packages watching videos, the main cause of the excess traffic.
NY
Times
China Telecom set to target British businessmen
China Telecom Europe (CTE) is seeking to attract British professionals to subscribe to its soon to be launched mobile network in this territory to take advantage of the UK’s growing business links with Asia. The telecoms company, which yesterday announced it is to launch its first overseas mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the UK this quarter, after signing a deal with Everything Everywhere, is “looking for opportunities in the commercial market” for British businesses to utilise its call packages at Chinese-specific information services.
Marketing
Week
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