BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 UK pricing and availability revealed - GSMArena.com news

BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 UK pricing and availability revealed - GSMArena.com news

21 July, 2011

If you are a BlackBerry faithful living in the UK, you are surely looking forward to the new Bold appearing on the shelves of your local cell phone shop. And now, we are not only about to give you the expected time frame of that happening, but we will also enlighten you on the pricing.
So here's the deal - if you pre-order your Bold Touch 9900 now, chances are it will be on your doorstep between the middle and the end of August. That's not too long a wait, so if you are interested, you might want to start saving.
Of course, you should be saving not for the handset itself, but for the contract accompanying it as all major UK carriers will be offering the Bold Touch 9900 UK for free. T-Mobile will require you to sign a £30.64/month contract , while on Orange, Vodafone and O2 will be charging you just over £35.We have no information of the length of the contracts yet, but 18 months for the more expensive ones and 2 years for the cheaper deal sounds like a pretty safe bet.
The only UK carrier that hasn't unveiled its Bold Touch 9900 UK contract plans is Three, but it has been confirmed that the handset will be available there, too, so we should know more soon.
If you are still unsure of whether the QWERTY-plus-touch bar phone works with the BlackBerry OS, feel free to check out our Bold Touch hands-on.

Disappointing Q2 for Nokia, set to launch first WP7 phone this year - GSMArena.com news

Disappointing Q2 for Nokia, set to launch first WP7 phone this year - GSMArena.com news

21 July, 2011 

Nokia just announced their Q2 financial results - sales volumes decreased and the company posted an operating loss of nearly half a billion euro. On the up side, IP royalty payments went into Nokia's pocket, to the tune of €430 million.
Net sales of the Devices & Services department of Nokia decreased 20% Year-on-Year (YoY), down to €5.5 billion. Of that, feature phones pulled in €2.55 billion (20% down YoY) and the smartphones made €2.37 billion (down 32% YoY).
The company as a whole (including Nokia-Siemens Networks and NAVTEQ) has €9.26 billion in net sales (down 7% YoY) and an operating loss of €487 million.
The Average Selling Price (ASP) remained mostly unchanged since last year's Q2 - overall it was €62 (up from €61), smartphones getting €3 pricier on average (€142 ASP for Q2 of 2011) while feature phones' ASP fell a euro to €36.
It was the lower shipping volumes that reduced sales. Nokia shipped 20% fewer devices overall (88.5 million in total, compared to 111 million for Q2 2010). The European, Asian-Pacific and Chinese markets saw significant reductions in unit volumes - about 6-8 million devices less were shipped this quarter compared to the year-ago quarter.
Nokia's smartphones aren't doing too hot, taking a 31% decrease in shipment volumes and their gross margin for Q2 2011 went down to 25.7% (from 32.2% in Q2 2010).
Nokia introduced a new platform, MeeGo, with the Nokia N9 and they've started shipping the first Symbian Anna phones this quarter plus they've started shipping the Symbian^3 handsets with Anna, but that didn't help much as there was strong pressure from competing smartphone platforms, especially in Europe and China.
Feature phone shipments fell 16% YoY. Dual-SIMs were in high demand, though those launched late in the quarter, which reduced their impact. QWERTY-packing feature phones were also strong performers.
During Q2 of 2011, Nokia outsourced Symbian's development to Accenture and 2,800 Nokia employees will transfer to Accenture in October. Also, Nokia's global workforce will be reduced by 4,000 by the end of 2012. This is all part of Nokia's cost reduction plans.
Looking to the future, CEO Stephen Elop says they've received "optimistic" responses to their Windows Phone 7 developments. Starting this year, they will do "a sequence of concentrated product launches in specific countries".
He also reaffirmed that Nokia knows how to defend its intellectual property (€430 million in royalties from unnamed companies are proof of that) and while this quarter's results were disappointing, their plans for the long term are going well.
You can check out the full report here (Note: PDF file), where you'll find plenty more numbers of Nokia's performance during Q2.

Mobile phones News

Nokia slip slingshots Apple into No.1 spot - www.techradar.com

Apple now the world's leading smartphone manufacturer

 

By Chris Smith

Phones like the N8 couldn't save Noka from a terrible quarter

Apple has now overtaken Nokia as the world's leading smartphone manufacturer following this week's massively contrasting financial reports.

On Tuesday, Apple announced that it had sold a staggering 20.4m iPhone handsets between April and June, on the way to record-setting income and profits for the quarter.

Nokia responded on Thursday with a hugely disappointing loss of £323 million for the same period, during which it sold 16.7m handsets - down 32 per cent from one year previous.

That means, for the first time Apple shifted more iPhones in a single quater than Nokia sold handsets making Steve Jobs's company officially the biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

The news will be icing on the cake for Cupertino as it already overtaken Nokia in terms of the revenue brought in from the smartphone arm of its business.

Ailing Finns

During the Nokia financial report the ailing Finns also revealed that it had received a one-off payment of $600m from Apple in order to license patented Nokia technology.

As part of a new agreement, Apple will continue to make payments, but it's going to take a lot more than that for Nokia to even think about getting back on an even playing field.

Those Windows Phone-packing handsets surely can't come soon enough.

Mobile phones News

In pictures: Google+ iPhone app - www.techradar.com

A first look at the Google+ app for iPhone

 

By Dan Grabham

Google's new social network is gaining popularity fast

We've got a look at Google's newly-approved Google+ app - you can download it now from the link.

We'll be bringing you a full Hands on: Google+ review on TechRadar as soon as we've had a proper play with the app.

The app is compatible with iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 but you'll be able to run it in compatibility mode on the iPad.

Nokia's first WP7 phone reportedly lacks any innovation - GSMArena.com news

Nokia's first WP7 phone reportedly lacks any innovation - GSMArena.com news

19 July, 2011

More rumors on the upcoming Nokia Windos Phone 7 smartphone just came in. The latest bit of online gossip has it that despite the long wait the Nokia W9 might not be as innovative as you would have hoped.
When Stephen Elop went on stage in February to talk about the switch to WP7, he said that the Nokia contribution to the platform will be worth billions, rather than millions. In fact word is Microsoft is going to pay them billions for choosing their mobile platform. But if Nokia's contribution is indeed to become so precious, they would need to bring plenty of innovation to the platform and make more people consider switching to it.

Nokia W9 Sea Ray
However, industry analyst Eldar Murtazin was quoted saying today that none of that will be happening with the Finish company's first WP7 smartphone. Reportedly, it will be packing the same chipset and screen as its competitors and it won't bring anything new on the software side.
The only novel part about the Nokia W9 (or whatever they decide to name it) will be the design. And as the first leaks show the design, too, will be almost identical to that of the MeeGo-powered N9.
Here's hoping that this doesn't end to be true as it would be a real shame. Plus, Nokia promised to introduce their Ovi Maps free navigation to WP7, so the bit about no software differences sounds rather odd.

WP7 Nokia W9 Sea Ray leaks again, confirms hardware keys - GSMArena.com news

WP7 Nokia W9 Sea Ray leaks again, confirms hardware keys - GSMArena.com news

19 July, 2011

We just got another glimpse of the upcoming first Nokia Windows Phone 7 smartphone. A brief video of the Nokia W9 Sea Ray surfaced, showing its Mango OS in action. The styling similarity to the MeeGo-running N9 is confirmed once again, but the virtual keys rumors were disproved.
Unlike last time, when Stephen Elop himself was to blame for the leak, we cannot identify the demonstrator this time. However, the video is reportedly taking place right next to the smartphone's assembly line, so it should be a Nokia employee again.
We are not going to speculate on whether Nokia themselves are intentionally releasing those video or if they are genuine leaks, because it hardly matters. Instead, we'll just let you enjoy the video.

As you can see the Nokia W9, codenamed Sea Ray, will be coming with the three usual WP7 hardware keys - back, menu and search. The controls on the right are a pretty standard affair, too - volume rocker, power key and a shutter button. Also, we noticed that the unit has a RTM version of Mango, which should be almost as good as the final deal.
Logic points at an announcement at Nokia World at the end of October, but seeing the progress the Finns have been making we are getting optimistic that it might come even sooner.

Samsung plans on selling 300M phones in 2011, big launch ahead - GSMArena.com news

Samsung plans on selling 300M phones in 2011, big launch ahead - GSMArena.com news

18 July, 2011

In an interview with the S. Korean Yonhap news agency Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile communications and digital imaging, laid out Samsung Mobile's big plans for 2011. This year the company is aiming (and expects) to surpass its last year's shipments - 25 million smartphones out of a total of 280 million sold with the staggering 60 million smartphones and a total of 300 million phone shipments. That's close to 1 million devices sold a day.



The expected growth in the smartphone segment is quite bold but it seems well backed up by the current success of the Galaxy S II smartphone, which is doing very well in its home country Korea, in Japan, Europe and elsewhere. Also Samsung is aiming to push it even further with the planned announcement of new "noteworthy" Bada smartphones at this year's IFA in September. Also keep in mind that Samsung is in the business with Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and is rumored to be working on a WP7 version of the Galaxy S II.
Samsung Galaxy Q
Finally, Samsung is rumored to release yet another Galaxy device at this year's IFA expo at Berlin in September. This new Galaxy Q is thought to have a whopping 5.3-inch display and possibly LTE connectivity. No other details have been given but it could feature a SuperAMOLED (Plus or the normal variety) display. We'll have to wait it out and see, but from where we're standing it looks like September could turn out to be an exciting month for tech geeks.

1GHz S40 Nokia C3-01.5 pictures surface, is the first of many - GSMArena.com news

1GHz S40 Nokia C3-01.5 pictures surface, is the first of many - GSMArena.com news

18 July, 2011

Today we got lucky! A new unannounced S40 Nokia handset with a 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM broke loose and we got a few shots to show you. The Nokia C3-01.5 is the first S40 phone based on the new hardware platform, but it looks exactly as its C3-01 Touch and Type sibling.
Just a month ago we heard about a new wave of S40 handsets coming up. We also encountered an interesting rumor about a new S40 handset with a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, a ClearBlack capacitive display and hardware QWERTY keyboard.

Nokia C3-01.5
The Nokia C3-01.5 that we meet with today (quite a name, right) is not the rumored handset, but it probably comes from the same lineup. It’s a refresh of the already familiar C3-01 Touch and Type with the notable improvement of a 1GHz processor and 512MB RAM. The rest of the specs should be the same.
According to a few leaked documents, the new models that Nokia has in the works are the C2-01.5 (RM722), C3-01.5 (RM-702), X2-01/X2-03 (RM-709), X3-02.5 (RM775 or RM-776) and the X2-01.1(RM-717). As you can see all these should be upgraded versions of some old fellas.
As the leaked pictures suggest, the retail names will probably stay the same. Nokia's product naming convention is obviously bound to get even more confusing.
We guess those S40 announcements should not be that far away in time. Nokia World in September, anyone?