Asustek smartphone hits market ahead of iPhone
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwanese electronics maker Asustek Computer launched a Windows Mobile 6 smartphone with a touch-sensitive screen on Wednesday, just days ahead of the launch ofÂ Apple's iPhone. Asustek's new handset, the ASUS P526, wasn't meant to be an iPhone rival, nor is the timing auspicious, being so close to the launch of the iPhone, the year's hottest product. Development on the device started a year ago, and Asustek has simply followed its own timeline, according to Sannie Lee, a spokesperson at Asustek, talking to the press on the sidelines of Asustek's news conference in Taipei. Andy Wu, account manager in the mobile communications department at Asustek, said the touch screen functions and other parts of the ASUS P526 were all planned into the design well before the iPhone was announced. "The iPhone announcement did grab our attention, but I wouldn't say it had any impact on the way we designed our handset," he said. The ASUS P526 has a 2 megapixel camera, TomTom navigation software for its built-in GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, Skype's Internet telephony software and an application that enables the handset to store business cards by taking a picture. It launched in Taiwan on Wednesday and will reach Hong Kong by the end of this week, Lee said. Later this year, the company hopes to market the P526 in Europe and elsewhere. In Taiwan, the phone costs NT$18,800 (US$574). The P526 comes with car attachments such as a dashboard mount to make it useful for a driver. Its battery will last four hours when used for talking, and it has 150 hours of standby power, Asustek said. The handset has a 2.6-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen and -- unlike the iPhone -- it also has a keypad. The P526 will operate on GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks in the 850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz bands. It works with GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) data connections, but does not operate on 3G (third generation) mobile networks. It comes with 128MB of flash memory for storage and has a Micro SD card slot.
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By Adam Satariano and Connie Guglielmo Bloomberg News  Apple Inc. plans to start selling the iPhone June 29, setting up a showdown with Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. in the market for advanced mobile phones.
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LONDON, December 2  - Samsung Electronics (SSUN.FSE) has projected a significant increase in its mobile phone sale volumes and margins for 1Q05, after having emerged as the worldâs second largest seller of mobile handsets, ahead of
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Robust demand for cheaper phones  boosted third-quarter earnings at Nokia Oyj, the world's  biggest maker of cell phones, with the better than expected  profits sending its shares higher.
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No list of trends would be complete without a mention of Apple's iPhone, a device that many handset manufacturers will be looking to beat in 2008 in order to attract a consumer that is ever more interested in advanced wireless services. Many of those devices will debut at CES next week.
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Almost 2% of US phones sold in July were Apple-based Market analyst iSuppli (no relation) reports that the iPhone captured 1.8 per cent of US handset sales in July, outselling all other models of smartphone during its launch month.â¦
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A vendor based in Dubai pounced on the enterprise mobility market Tuesday evening with a set of Windows Mobile 6 phones that come with built-in security and management software and will be sold independent of carriers.The company, i-mate, unveiled its Ultimate series of four GSM phones at Showstoppers, a product showcase held alongside the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment show happening this week in San Francisco. They will start hitting the market worldwide in the middle of next month.The devices all are about the size of a typical smartphone, run Microsoft&#39;s Windows Mobile 6 operating system, and come with the Office Mobile suite. Two have touchscreens, and two have QWERTY keyboards, one of them using a &quot;slider&quot; design with a larger keyboard and a screen that can be viewed horizontally. They are aimed at markets ranging from small business to larger midsize enterprises.One thing that sets i-mate apart is its business model: It will sell the phones in the U.S. through resellers and retail channels, bypassing mobile operators and the subsidies they typically offer. The i-mate phones will range in price from about $600 to $800, said Nicole Buchanan, vice president of sales and marketing (Americas) at i-mate. The company isn&#39;t averse to carrier distribution if it can make a deal: It will sell devices through Telstra in Australia, Buchanan said.Although carriers dominate the U.S. handset business, a few device makers are starting to take matters into their own hands. Nokia sells phones through its own retail stores and makes some high-end devices available through alternative distributors like Brightpoint, which i-mate will also use. The trend allows businesses to make their handset choices without worrying about what carrier to use or how long the mobile operator will continue offering the device they want.The traditional mobile handset business, in which carriers dictate the timing of handset and service rollouts based on their own business plans, doesn&#39;t match up with typically long enterprise planning cycles, IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi said Monday at the show. Enterprises often can&#39;t find out what phones will be available when they carry out their mobile strategies or whether their current phone models will still be available in the future. Although hardware makers are starting to gain some autonomy, with the prominent example of Apple and its iPhone, they have a long way to go, Bakhshi said.The i-mate phones come with built-in software for securing and managing the devices. The Secure i-Q software lets users or IT support people lock down a lost or stolen device or wipe the data from it over the air. They can then configure a replacement device with all the appropriate applications over the air, Buchanan said. Custom i-Q allows for customization of each device with applications, e-mail settings, and features over the air.i-mate&#39;s only previous product was a digital picture frame with Wi-Fi. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It developed the i-Q software and designed the Ultimate phones, which are built by contract manufacturers. All the devices use an XScale PXA 520MHz processor and have storage expandable to 2GB. They come with features typical of high-end phones, including Bluetooth and cameras. Three of the models have a front-facing camera that can be used for videoconferencing, according to i-mate. One feature that makes the devices stand out is XGA output, which lets a user plug the handset into a full-size display or projector.The Ultimate 6150 and 8150 touch-screen phones and 8502 QWERTY phone are due to ship worldwide in mid-November. The 9502 slider phone will ship around the end of the year, i-mate said.
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The iPhone was the fourth highest-selling handset in the US in the third quarter, according to data compiled by research firm Strategy Analytics.
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(InfoWorld) - So much for Apple Inc. raising the bar in the mobile phone industry. Since Apple announced it would soon start selling a combined music player and mobile device called the iPhone, industry experts have predicted that competing cell phone makers would rise to the challenge and start producing equally exciting phones. They may yet do that, but so far they haven't. I took a quick stroll around the show floor of the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona checking out the music phones from some of the biggest handset makers out there to see if anything might compare to the hype aroundÂ expectations for the iPhone. Apple is known for great hardware designs and simple, intuitive user interfaces. While I saw a dizzying array of form factors and a multitude of user interface styles, I was unimpressed with the hardware I saw and downright confounded by the complexity of all the user interfaces. My examinations were quick -- the show floor is incredibly crowded and hot, so sometimes it took some sharp elbows to even get to touch a phone. I took a brief look at the overall form factor of the phones and then did some navigating around the music player. I started out at the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB booth, perhaps because I know the company has been pushing its Walkman handsets. The W880 is a really nice looking phone. It's incredibly thin and has unusual raised keys that work nicely. Sony Ericsson gets high marks for the hardware form factor on this one, but the software user interface was a different story. I never did manage to find the music player from the home screen. Ultimately, I just moved along to another phone in the display area that was already running the music player. I had a similar navigation problem on Nokia Corp.'s 5200 music phone. From the home screen, I clicked on an icon with a music note in it, which seemed a logical place to launch the music player. But that took me to a music-related game. I scrolled and scrolled through a horizontal bar of icons but didn't find a music player there. Then I noticed that floating in the middle of the screen were two long bars: one for the music player and one for the calendar. That threw me -- of all phone functions, why were the music player and calendar the only two to be presented that way? At least Nokia had loaded the demonstration phones with music. Some of the other handsets I tried out, such as the Sony Ericsson one, had just one song on them. That makes it difficult to get a feel for navigating around the music player. I don't love the form factor of the 5200 but I think some people might. It's sporty, in white and bright red, and a shape reminiscent of Motorola Inc.'s PEBL phones. It slides open. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s SG HF300 "Ultramusic" was next up. I couldn't help but be struck by the cool design. One side of the phone is nearly all screen; the flip side has a keypad for dialing the phone. I never managed to figure out how to use the control panel on the music player side of the phone. It looks like the iPod's but square. I don't have an iPod so maybe iPod users can easily figure it out. If you're not an iPod user -- and you may not be if you're in the market for a music phone -- the SG HF300 might require a steep learning curve. Motorola was next in line. I'm probably least impressed with the Z8 than any of the others. I think the design is clunky and looks and feels like a slider phone from a couple of years ago. For the innovator of the thin phone, Motorola should have done better with the Z8's size. I found it difficult to figure out which buttons corresponded with the words at the bottom of the screen so even hitting "back" proved difficult initially. Then, when looking for the music player application, I suddenly found an error message on the screen and the phone froze. Not a great sign. My final stop was Neonode AB, a Swedish company that has been touting its music phone, particularly its touch screen. The device is in a category of its own and is very un-phone like. About the size of a business card, though not as thin, its touch screen definitely requires training to use. I would have never been able to figure it out without instruction. Users sweep up along the home screen within three columns. The first opens a navigation page with icons for functions such as the music player, calendar and calculator. The middle column opens a touch pad for dialing calls. And the final column opens a tools menu. Sweeping left along the screen goes back a page and sweeping right opens a function that is highlighted. When presented with a list such as albums, you touch the item to highlight it and then touch the middle of the screen to open. Sound confusing? It was. Still, I'm not panning it. It may require a bit of direction and practice but I think it'd be pretty easy to get the hang of how it works. While the small size was attractive, it also meant that it felt a bit designed for a child. Most adults have fingertips that are bigger than the icons on the screen. Overall, I was largely underwhelmed with my experiences. But there's time -- Apple only just announced the iPhone and its competitors haven't really had time to respond. Also, my search was by no means exhaustive. For example, I didn't make it to LG Electronics Inc., which recently unveiled a phone, the KE850, that is being compared to the iPhone. Even at the booths I visited, I chose to look at the phone that appeared to me to be the most focused on music but that may not be the one the manufacturer would direct me to and other models may compare more directly with the iPhone. And finally, I'm the first to admit my exercise was a bit silly given that I've never even seen an iPhone. But such is the power of the Apple marketing machine.
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SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - Thousands of U.S. gadget fans made an orderly pilgrimage to stores on Friday to be among the first buyers of Apple's iPhone, a music- and video-playing device expected to reshape the mobile industry.
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InfoWorld - Taiwanese hardware maker Asustek Computer is working with Intel&#160;on a line of notebook PCs priced as low as $199, according to one of the chip maker&#39;s top executives.
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Barely out of the shops in the United States, Apple&#39;s eagerly anticipated iPhone is the subject of increasing speculation about how and at what price it will be rolled out in Europe later this year.
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Even after being on the market for less than half a year, more iPhones sold in the fourth quarter than Windows Mobile phones in the U.S., according to research from Canalys.Canalys researchers estimate that&#160;the iPhone&#160;had 28 percent of the U.S. converged-device market in the fourth quarter of 2007. Research In Motion, with 41 percent, had the largest share of the market. Windows Mobile phones had 21 percent share of devices sold in the quarter, falling into third place behind Apple.Worldwide, the lineup is a bit different. Nokia, which typically dominates around the world but not in the U.S., sold 52.9 percent of smart phones worldwide in the fourth quarter. RIM grew its share of converged-device sales to 11.4 percent, up 121 percent over the same quarter in 2006. Despite its limited availability around the world, Apple took third place with 6.5 percent of the market, just barely squeaking ahead of&#160;struggling Motorola.Apple may have stirred renewed interest in smart phones in the U.S. Converged-device shipments, which include smart phones and wireless handhelds, grew 222 percent in the U.S. during the quarter, according to Canalys.The iPhone also did well in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, where it became available in three countries partway into the quarter. In the region, Apple came in fifth place behind Nokia, RIM, HTC, and Motorola, but beat out Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Palm, Canalys said.Apple&#39;s success as a new entrant is striking, but it will face challenges to keep its momentum going, said Canalys analyst Pete Cunningham in a statement. Historically, vendors with just one smart phone design, no matter how good, struggle, he said. That means Apple will have to create and refresh a portfolio of devices if it wants to increase its market share, he said.Beyond hardware, competition is continuing in the mobile operating system market. Worldwide Symbian, which credits most sales to Nokia, had 65 percent of the market, followed by Microsoft at 12 percent and RIM at 11 percent, for the fourth quarter, Canalys said.Despite all the buzz around mobile Linux, total Linux phone shipments in 2007 were essentially flat compared to 2006, Canalys found. In Asia Pacific, Motorola had a drop of 28 percent in its Linux smart phone shipments compared to 2006.Phone makers are trying to attract customers to smart phones, which carry a higher price tag than low-end feature phones. However, converged devices made up just 10 percent of the global phone market in 2007, the researchers found.
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Apple Inc. began selling its iPhone Friday, ending six months of waiting by consumers and rival smartphone vendors.
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iPhone? 0.6 per cent in Q4 Apple's iPhone may have been the most talked-about handset during the final quarter of 2007, but its sales were dwarfed by the majors in a period that saw Nokia grab more than 40 per cent of the market, the first time it's done so.â¦
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SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK  - Thousands of U.S. gadget  fans flocked to stores on Friday to be the first buyers of  Apple's iPhone, a music-playing and Web-browsing device  expected to shake up the mobile industry.
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SAN FRANCISCO While rivals and marketing specialists were busy griping about the hype surrounding iPhone&#39;s recent launch, Forrester Research was formulating a study that shows Apple&#39;s newest product will help other tech marketers more than they realize. &quot;The benefits from the iPhone&#39;s positioning and marketing strategy extend beyond Apple and [iPhone carrier] AT&T, teaching competitors how to provide better product, purchasing and services experiences to their customers,&quot; according to the July 6 report, &quot;The iPhone Is a Win-Win-Win,&quot; by Forrester analysts.