WP7 Predicted To Outgrow Android, WebOS MIA

Market researchers from IDC expect Google’s Android to capture more than twice the smartphone platform market share of Apple’s iOS this year. However, it’s growth will slow down and the opportunity will transition to Windows Phone 7 (WP7), which will become a more popular smartphone OS than Apple’s iOS.

IDC believes that Android will hold 39.5% of the smartphone market by the end of the year, which is predicted to be ahead of 20.9% of Nokia’s Symbian, Apple’s iOS with 15.7% and RIM’s 14.9% of Blackberry. Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile are waiting at the back of the field with a share of 5.5%.
However, IDC expects Microsoft to come roaring back and grow WP7 shipments by an average of 67.1% every year, which would give Microsoft the spot behind Android in 2015. IDC expects Android’s growth to slow to 23.8% per year, the iOS compound annual growth rate to 18.8% and Blackberry’s growth to an average of 17.1%. The result for 2015? Android holds 45.4% of the market, followed by WP7 with 20.9%, iOS with 15.3% and Blackberry with 13.7%. Is it just me or is HP’s WebOS missing in this list? Perhaps it is part of “others”, which account for 4.6% of the market, which would mean that HP’s $1.2 billion investment in acquiring Palm won’t be paying off. There was no information how much market share WebOS may hit, but at less than 5%, it would be a fish dead in the water.
IDC’s predictions are largely based on the fact that WP7 will soon be running on Nokia phones (2012), but there is some general doubt whether this alliance will pay off as Nokia and Microsoft expect it to. Nokia recently laid out substantial risks in the adoption of the platform, there are risks of Microsoft alienating its other partners through the Nokia relationship and WP7 is a largely unproven platform with challenges as far as the platform creation, including the Windows Marketplace, is concerned. The stars have to align for Microsoft in order to be able to come close to IDC’s prediction. We would take this forecast with a grain of salt and wait until we are seeing a stronger move toward WP7 and improved shipment numbers.
“Android is poised to take over as the leading smartphone operating system in 2011 after racing into the number 2 position in 2010,” said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “For the vendors who made Android the cornerstone of their smartphone strategies, 2010 was the coming-out party. This year will see a coronation party as these same vendors broaden and deepen their portfolios to reach more customers, particularly first-time smartphone users.”

Nokia and Microsoft: 2 Losers = 1 Winner ?

Analysis - The combination of assets between Microsoft and Nokia is a fascinating alliance that has been born out of desperation of two giants that aim to score a portion of the global smartphone goldmine. As powerful as Microsoft and Nokia have been in the past and as many resources and experience they can throw at developing a smartphone, the partnership is merely an opportunity and not a guarantee for success. Nokia will have to learn to swim in hostile waters that are just waiting to eat it alive. And even if it succeeds, it will lose in the end.

Stephen Elop has taken Nokia by the hand and made the jump. Symbian is burning to ashes, MeeGo has been taken along like the unwanted stepchild, but may be left to drown. Steve Ballmer’s Titanic is saving Elop and Nokia from Google’s and Apple’s sharks for now, but Microsoft has been unable to fix the leaks in its own Windows Phone 7 hull and hopes that Nokia may deliver a miracle. If you think about it, the alliance between Nokia and Microsoft was really the only possibility for both companies to keep the hopes for a brighter future alive.

Nokia: Rise and Fall
Nokia was the Apple of the cellphone industry in the past. The company dominated cellphone sales with a market lead since 1998 and drove the industry through phenomenal growth above 1 billion sold units every year. It was the driving force to make text messaging popular and it was a key player behind the adoption of data services, which included, for example, downloadable ringtones and simple games. We should not forget that the smartphone can be traced back to Nokia (if we forget for a moment that Handspring was the company that actually shaped the modern smartphone with the Treo in 2001): Remember the bulky Communicator 9000 from 1996?

In the fourth quarter of 2010, Nokia sold about 124 million phones. However, only 28.3 million of those were smartphones and only 2.6 million were sold in the U.S. Nokia’s smartphone sales climbed by 36% year over year, while the entire market climbed by 72% and the stars of the industry increased their sales by almost 100% (Apple) and almost 900% (Google), according to Gartner. Apple now controls the high-end segment of the smartphone market and Google aims for the mid-range with RIM (which is also growing below the market average), while there are only scraps left for Nokia, Microsoft and HP (Palm).
Nokia’s market share has been declining at an accelerating pace – and has just surrendered its leadership position in smartphones to Android. Having waited for too long already, the company needed to act. Nokia always described Android as a rival and not as a potential partner and Elop’s recent burning platform memo continued on that path. Microsoft was the only option. Elop has detailed knowledge of Microsoft and there may be some unusual synergies that could make the alliance work in a much better way than with two companies whose executives do not speak the same (business) language.

Leaving Symbian Behind, Cutting MeeGo
Symbian is the obvious casualty of this alliance. There are more questions that actually surround MeeGo, a platform Nokia birthed in cooperation with Intel. However, the development has been too slow and we now know that only one device will make it to market in 2011.
Seriously? Why bother?
MeeGo cannot succeed without a platform and an ecosystem. Nokia already said that it plans to pitch Windows Phone 7/Nokia as the “third ecosystem”, which would indicate that MeeGo will not be a (significant) platform.
The netbook UI development has already been abandoned and it appears that Nokia is simply polite and has not told Intel yet that it has no interest in MeeGo anymore. Would you buy a MeeGo phone, if its future is uncertain? In today’s world, probably not. As devices are more connected to an ecosystem of other types of electronics it will be even more unlikely that you buy such a device – even as a backup device or your young children as an emergency communication device.
Let’s be realistic. MeeGo is dead. But Nokia is taking thing slowly as for India Nokia WP7 will be launched after atleast 15 months. So, their is enough time to test out MeeGo.

Microsoft’s Big Advantage and Nokia’s Problem
Nokia must have been extremely desperate, much more than what we have seen in public. In this alliance, Microsoft is taking the lion’s share of the cooperation’s benefit. As much as Microsoft said that it was happy with 2 million Windows Phone 7 units sold in Q4 2010, we know that Windows Mobile 6 still outsold the new platform. You can’t sugarcoat the Windows Phone 7 performance so far: It has been a failure. We have grown tired of Steve Ballmer telling us that user feedback has been fantastic and that the devices just need to get into customer’s hands to see better sales. Sounds a bit like a Saab commercial: “People who testdrive a Saab usually buy one.” How many people do you know who have bought a Saab? And wasn’t Saab nearly shut down not too long ago?
Ballmer can talk about user feedback all day long: The problem is that Windows Phone 7 is not selling. Why? Windows Phone 7 is marketed wrong. It’s a nice-to-have product without a positive lifestyle factor attached. It is not a must-have product. No one would complain if Windows Phone 7 was discontinued today.
With Nokia on board, Microsoft has an opportunity to get about 30 million Windows smartphones out into the world, every quarter. However, it is an opportunity that will need a lot of TLC to grow and make sense for both Nokia and Microsoft. The two companies have laid out a massive ecosystem approach that can work, but Microsoft will have to dramatically change its view of the smartphone market to have a shot at growth. And we will need to see more than just bold words in a presentation.
Microsoft’s problem – and now Nokia’s problem – is Microsoft’s flawed marketing that has created a catastrophic perception of Windows Phone 7. Microsoft tried to be different by telling people that they don’t have to really use their Windows Phone 7 devices and that is just a bad idea to be glued to their phones. The company completely missed the fact that consumers actually like to spend time with their phones. The impression of a device that will not encourage interaction is probably not a great sales driver. We at CTech believe that Microsoft’s marketing has buried the market opportunity of the current generation of Windows Phone 7. The platform needs a complete relaunch.
Microsoft’s opportunity has always been the Xbox 360 in mobile devices. So far, Xbox Live mobile has only been a sideshow. Dear Microsoft, smartphones are entertainment devices. Have you guys ever thought about making Xbox Live content (and not just shared game data) seamlessly available to smartphones? You could get some ideas from Sony and Android Market.

Microsoft’s Problem: Nokia’s Legacy
Nokia is essentially stuck with a smartphone platform that isn’t exactly catering to what smartphone users want today. However, Microsoft’s commitment to Nokia could easily alienate other handset manufacturers that are seeing much more success with Android anyway. Why would they deal with Microsoft and measly sales every quarter? They wouldn’t.
Nokia may be Microsoft’s only hope, but it’s not a done deal as Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will need amazing hardware to attract attention. Competitive hardware isn’t enough and one more sensor or more pixels on the screen won’t be enough either. There are enough handset manufacturers that are copying the iPhone. Nokia needs to rethink the smartphone in a similar way Apple did in 2006/2007. If you are a frequent CTech reader, the pitch may be getting old already, but I cannot reiterate enough that a next-generation smartphone cannot be anything less than the Seabird concept phone that was shown on Mozilla’s Labs pages.

Nokia and Microsoft have to be realistic and admit that, given the resources the two companies have available, what has been shown so far is embarrassing. There is an opportunity for both to show the innovative power and creativity that has made the companies great. We haven’t seen it yet and now is the time to leverage this potential.
It’s make or break time for both. However, even if the alliance will be successful for both companies, it is already clear that there can only be one winner. Nokia has lost the platform play and will simply be a handset manufacturer with a few additional assets. Microsoft will be the true winner as it has an opportunity to keep Windows relevant in a world that is more and more mobile – and right now does not even recognize Windows as a mobile platform.

Nokia Vs. Apple Patent Battle: It’s All Or Nothing

Nokia has taken off the gloves and now accuses that all Apple products violate Nokia products in one way or the other. It’s surely attention getting move, but will it help Nokia to survive?

Nokia said that it has filed a second patent complaint with the ITC, following the first case in which the ITC determined that Apple did not infringe on Nokia’s patents. With this new filing, Nokia now claims that Apple illegally takes advantage of 46 Nokia patents and has cases pending in The U.S., Germany, U.K., and in the Netherlands.
According to Nokia, Apple infringes patents ”in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers.” Those patents relate to “the areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.”
“Nokia is a leading innovator in technologies needed to build great mobile products and Apple must stop building its products using Nokia’s proprietary innovation,” said Paul Melin, Vice President, Intellectual Property at Nokia. Nokia said that it has invested almost $61 billion in research and has about 10,000 patent families. While the company has every right to defend its innovations, there is not enough detail publicly available to determine whether Nokia has a case against Apple or not, or whether Nokia simply uses a stalling strategy against Apple.
This new lawsuit as well as Nokia’s decision to move to the Windows 7 platform could also suggest that other phone manufacturers are a potential target as well. However, such industry-wide lawsuits rarely work and tend to isolate the suing party from the industry and possibly the market as well. Rambus, for example, has experience in that.
Can a lawsuit save Nokia? Probably not, as – even if Nokia has an opportunity to win – it can dragged out by Apple long enough to potentially bring Nokia down to its knees and awarded damages could be used to pay out Nokia investors. Given the current state of the phone industry and Nokia’s “burning platform”, one could also suggest that those $61 billion were not invested in the right areas of research.  Stephen Elop’s letter to Nokia’s employees indicates that the company’s situation is very much based on its own inability to innovate and recognize shifting consumer interests. Only new devices that are more than just copies of Apple’s iPhone and iPad will give Nokia a future.
However, that isn’t just Nokia’s problem. That is a problem the entire phone and PC industry has.

Firefox Mobile 6 To Get Hardware Acceleration in Q2

Mozilla published the first outline of features for the upcoming versions of Firefox 6 and 7.

Firefox 4 Mobile has just been released as the technically most advanced browser for Android and Maemo, but Mozilla is advancing the mobile platform just as fast as the desktop version, which is already available as Firefox 5 preview.
Firefox 4 Mobile is based on the core Firefox 4 technology, which includes the JaegerMonkey JavaScript engine,  but hardware acceleration is missing at this point. The Mozilla roadmap currently has no information about Firefox 5 Mobile, but notes that Firefox 6 (Mobile) should enable layers acceleration using OpenGL ES on “at least a subset of Android hardware.”
We are expecting hardware acceleration to be enabled on the mobile version of IE9 as well, which means that Firefox would ensure the competitiveness of the Android platform as far as web browsers are concerned – even if we believe that Google is preparing a mobile version of Chrome for Android.
Proposed features for the desktop versions of Firefox are WebGL anti-aliasing for version 6 and (cross process) hardware accelerated layers composition on “all supported desktop platforms” in Firefox 7. Firefox 6 is due in early Q4 of this year, while Firefox 7 is targeted at mid-Q1 2012. Interestingly, the mobile version of Firefox 6 is listed under Q2 goals, which may refer to a non-final release only.

HCL ME Android 2.2 Froyo Tablets Launched at Affordable Prices

HCL Technologies have officially announced three new ME tablets that runs on Android 2.2 Froyo. These tablets are expected to be available very soon within the price range of Rs. 14,990 and 32,990. Two of the tablets have a 7 inch display while one of them comes with a 10 inch display.
Let us have a look at all the three models:-

HCL ME AE7 Specs

 

HCL ME AE7 is the cheapest of the lot. The tablet has a 7-inch touchscreen display, with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels.  It has a decent 800Mhx processor, 256MB DDR2 RAM, 2GB Flash Memory and up to 8GB expandable memory limit. The device also features a gravity sensor, 3.5mm audio jack, 0.3MP camera, WiFi and Bluetooth.
The tablet is powered by 2400mAh Li-polymer battery capable of providing around 5-6 hours of battery life. The price of HCL ME AE7 tablet is just Rs. 14,990

HCL ME AM7

HCL ME AM7 is similar to AE7 as far as display size is concerned.  It`s resolution is 1024 x 600 pixel, which is better than AE7. The processor speed is again 800 MHz, however, it has a 512MB RAM support, 8GB Flash memory and 16GB expandable memory option.
Other features of this tablet include a 1.3 megapixel camera,  gravity acceleration sensor, AGPS, USB 2.0 port, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth  and two powerful high quality speakers. It`s battery life is expected to be better as it is powerd by a 4200mAh battery. The price of HCL ME AM7 is Rs. 25,790.

HCL ME AP10A

This is the big one. Yes, AP10A has a giant 10 inch display screen having a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels. The tablet comes with a better 1GHz processor with 1GB RAM, 16GB Flash Memory and expandable memory option of up to 32GB. Other features are quite similar to HCL ME AM7. With overall better specifications, the price of this tablet gets as high as Rs. 32,990.
You can buy these tablets from HCL store.

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