Industry Analyst Strategy Analytics has released estimates for the size of the Android smartphone market during the first quarter of 2013, declaring that Korean device vendor Samsung captured 95 per cent of profits from Android devices in the period.
US operator Sprint Nextel has blamed delays caused by equipment vendors for stifling the rollout of its Network Vision project, in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, the operator said that it had been forced to revise its plans to bring 12,000 multi-mode base stations on-air by the end of 2012, pushing the deadline back to 1Q13.
Telefónic, Intel and Samsung’s investment units have each made a decision to invest undisclosed amounts in San Francisco start-up Expect Labs. The start-up is developing a platform to power a “new generation of intelligent digital assistants”, and has already benefitted from investments from Google and venture capital firm Greylock.
It was an overwhelmingly numbery week this week, as Q1 financials deluged the Informer’s inbox. Over the weekend the mainstream press were all aflutter about the fact that Apple was going to report a drop in quarterly profits. This duly happened, but fluctuations are relative and when your profits are plummeting all the way to $9.5bn for the quarter, it’s hardly a catastrophe.
Korean device manufacturer Samsung Electronics has seen its quarterly net profit rise 42 per cent year on year, for the first three months of 2013. The firm made KRW7.15tn ($6.4bn) in 1Q13, up from KRW5.15tn in the same period last year. Revenue for the quarter was also up KRW7.6tn year on year, reaching KRW52.87tn.
The Informer has been in this industry a long time. He’s pretty jaded and sometimes feels like he’s seen it all. That was until this week however, when Samsung – the Korean handset maker that sells the most phones of any company in the whole world – admitted that its Taiwanese arm had paid a bunch of local students to post scathing reviews about rival HTC’s devices online.
Samsung has admitted paying students to post scathing reviews about Taiwanese rival HTC handsets on websites in Taiwan.
Ahead of its first-quarter earnings, South Korean handset manufacturer Samsung has issued a preliminary financial statement notifying shareholders that profits are set to rise by 53 per cent year on year.
Open source software player Mozilla has revealed it is collaborating with Samsung on a web browser engine called Servo. The engine is Mozilla’s attempt to rebuild the web browser from the ground up on modern hardware, the firm said.
US operator T-Mobile has revamped its retail offering, abolishing handset subsidies for premium devices in favour of an interest-free scheme that separates the cost of the device from the cost of network service. Annual service contracts have also been withdrawn. The pricing overhaul is expected to be one of a number of announcements made by T-Mobile at a press event later on Tuesday, although the changes have already been made on the operator’s online retail portal.
Samsung Electronics has announced that it has appointed two more CEOs to join the current CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon in steering the company.
Informa Telecoms & Media believes that the soon-to-be-released Galaxy S4 will be an evolution rather than a revolution in the smartphone world – but it will still be enough for Samsung to maintain its number-one position in the market.
Visa’s global alliance with Samsung to enable the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service and allow users to make contactless payments using Visa’s payWave mobile payment app on NFC-enabled Samsung devices is encouraging news for the NFC industry, particularly for other handset vendors planning to launch NFC devices.
LTE has seen arguably the fastest growth of any mobile network technology deployed so far. With more than 74 networks live in more than 30 counties, covering every populated continent, LTE is enjoying the most successful launch of any mobile technology in history, with the most swiftly deployed networks. There is a proliferation of LTE-enabled devices in attractive form factors and at desirable price points, and nearly all LTE handsets are smartphones, which provide operators with more opportunities for profitability. According to Informa Telecoms & Media’s LTE forecasts, there were 62 million LTE subscribers at end-December, and this number is expected to increase to 133 million in just a year.
The number of mobile phones sold globally has declined year on year for the first time since 2009, according to research revealed today. 1.75 billion handsets were sold in 2012, a 1.7 per cent decline on 2011, according to research firm Gartner.
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