MobileCrunch |  |
- Smartphone Sales Will Hit 420 Million In 2011, To Take 28 Percent Of The Total Phone Market
- BuddyTV Turns Your iPhone Into A Smarter Viewing Guide And Remote
- Official: Japan To Get The World’s First Windows Phone 7 Mango Handset In September
- Facebook Will Bring Credits To Mobile Browsers
- Video: Motorola Triumph Screens Flicker Black And White, Owners Seeing Red
- Verizon LTE Push Hits Laptops, Tablets, And Networks
- How Appropriate, Pampers Mobile Ad Promoted On Sex App
- Sprint To Finally Retire The Evo 4G?
- T-Mobile G2X Finally Gets Its Much-Needed Gingerbread Update
- The BookBook Case: Because You Always Wanted Your iPhone To Look Like A Little Bible
- Radio Shack Boots T-Mobile, Welcomes Verizon With Open Arms
- HTC Warms Up To Settlement Talks With Apple
- Verizon Mistakenly Leaks Video Of The Touchscreen-Sporting BlackBerry Bold 9930
| Smartphone Sales Will Hit 420 Million In 2011, To Take 28 Percent Of The Total Phone Market Posted: 27 Jul 2011 03:18 AM PDT Thanks to the rise of the popular, non-business smartphone – namely any phone that supports app creation – carriers can expect to sell 420 million units this year, taking over a quarter of total phone sales away from “traditional” phones. The winners in this race? Samsung and Apple. The loser – by a long shot? Nokia, with a fall from 40% to 24% in one year.
It’s easy to forget that the mass of men (and women) lead lives of quiet non-smartphone ownership. Although we wouldn’t leave home without our Gingerbread-powered wundermachines, the market is still wide open for someone to slip in between the expensive smartphone and the nearly free dumbphone, a spot originally controlled by Nokia but now slowly being eroded by Samsung and LG. It’s also interesting to note that RIM fell 5% from 20% of the market since 1Q10. IMS also predicts 1 billion smartphone sales by 2016.        
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| BuddyTV Turns Your iPhone Into A Smarter Viewing Guide And Remote Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:45 PM PDT A couple weeks ago, I went to a hotel suite in Manhattan to get a demo of BuddyTV’s new iPhone app, which hit the app store a few days ago. In the video above, CTO Bill Baxter takes me through the main features. He shows me on an iPad for easier viewing, but the app is for the iPhone and soon Android. It combines a viewing guide on your iPhone, with social features like chat and being able to broadcast what shows you are watching to Facebook and Twitter. But it also suggests shows for you to watch that are airing now, upcoming, trending, or on your favorites list. The app works with Google TVs, and eventually will be able to act as a remote with tablets and phones that sport an IR transmitter. (With Google TVs and Dish set-top boxes it will work over WiFi). The problem it is trying to solve, says founder Andy Liu is that “70% of the time people are watching sub-optimal content. People turn on TV and end up at Karate Kid 2.” The BuddyTV mobile app tries to be smart about suggesting what shows to watch. It doesn’t care if the show is on your cable system, Netflix, DVR (if supported) or somewhere else. It lets you “heart” and rate shows and channels, and then it gives you recommendations base don what it thinks you want to watch. Perhaps the best little feature is teh ability to go through your program guide and heart just your favorite channels and then look at only those—a feature I begged Verizon TV honcho Eric Bruno to let me do on FIOS TV, or at least on the FIOS iPad app. The app also pulls in previews, recaps, and other TV trivia from the main BuddyTV site. And you can set reminders for shows you want to watch with notifications on your phone. (Because you need to be reminded to watch TV). Here’s a slicker promo video: Company: BUDDYTV Website: http://buddytv.com BuddyTV is an online TV guide and discussion center. It provides original articles, news and interviews on a large range of TV content. In addition to content...         
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| Official: Japan To Get The World’s First Windows Phone 7 Mango Handset In September Posted: 26 Jul 2011 06:04 PM PDT As the sun just starts to set here on the West Coast, we’ve got a bit of news straight from the other side of the globe: Fujitsu and KDDI (Japan’s second largest wireless operator) have just confirmed that they will launch the world’s first phone running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) sometime in September.
Word of the new handset comes from a Tokyo press gathering which just began moments ago. Exact details surrounding the handset are still developing, but all signs are pointing to it being the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T (Update: this is now confirmed) device that Microsoft gave a very brief sneak peak of at their Worldwide Partner Conference just a few weeks back. The handful of images in this post are pulled from a video of that fleeting glimpse; we’ll update with better photos as soon as they’re available. Here’s what we know about the device:
Windows Phone 7.5 (otherwise known as “Mango”, since all the cool kids give their updates fun nicknames now) is the first major update to the platform. I’ve spent a good amount of time with it on a pre-release device, and to sum up my experience: call it what you will, but this is version 1.0. This is the first version of Windows Phone 7 that feels competitive thrown up against the likes of Android and iOS and, while it’s still lacking a trick or two, is the first version that feels complete. For those of you who don’t gobble up every bit of Mango news, a quick recap of the bigger new stuff:
Alas, chances are pretty slim that this thing will ever come stateside. Don’t fret though, Windows Phone fans (hey, they exist!): there should be plenty of Mango to go around by years end, with the likes of Samsung, Acer, and plenty of others throwing their goods into the ring.             
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| Facebook Will Bring Credits To Mobile Browsers Posted: 26 Jul 2011 05:59 PM PDT Over a month ago, we first reported on Project Spartan, Facebook’s secret plan to bring applications to the mobile web via HTML5. Facebook is working with teams of third-party developers that they call their “Spartans” and hope to unveil the project later this summer. As we noted, the key to all of this is really Credits. Right now, Facebook has no way to make money on any of the mobile platforms out there. With Credits bought and sold through the web browser, they’ll have a way. It’s that simple. That’s why it’s surprising to see Bloomberg report today that “Facebook May Bring Credits to Mobile Browsers“. Um, of course they will. Not only did we report it last month, in a follow-up story, I included a screenshot of the implementation. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s real. No anonymous sources needed. Either Bloomberg missed that report (to be fair, it was buried in a couple thousands words bashing Facebook PR — more on that in a second) or they weren’t convinced. Either way, I’ll go ahead and include the shot again. This is also odd since Bloomberg did try to give us some credit for something. Sort of. Half-way down the page we get this throw-away line: “The TechCrunch blog previously reported on Facebook's HTML5 efforts.” No link, of course. Typically old media jackassery on the web. Moving on, the real story here remains the one we originally reported: Facebook is attempting to come up with their own way to circumvent Apple’s App Store and Google’s Market, to maintain control of the applications within the Facebook ecosystem. There are mixed signals out there right now as to whether or not Apple may actually be helping Facebook with this effort in some regard. Because many applications (and most games) on Facebook’s platform right now require Flash, they do not work on devices like the iPhone and iPad. If Facebook could get these working through HTML5, it would be another huge blow to Adobe’s platform — which Apple must love. There is some talk that Apple may be interested in seeing this happen within Facebook’s own iPhone app, and their soon-to-be-unveiled iPad app. But again, the key for Facebook is Credits. And that’s where things could get very complicated with Apple. If Facebook tries to circumvent the App Store to sell credits, Apple is clearly not going to want that in any native app (unless some sort of deal is struck, which seems unlikely at this point). But Facebook can get around this by going web-only with the functionality. When we initially reported this, Facebook threw a hissy-fit and tried to spin the press in opposition to our story. This led to the second story where I revealed more about Project Spartan, including the picture of Credits running in a test version of a Spartan app. Interestingly enough, Bloomberg today comes to the same conclusion I did (a conclusion shared by those actually working on Spartan apps, by the way). “Facebook is seeking to build a software community that rivals Apple's,” Bloomberg notes, pointing out that Facebook would like a piece of the growing mobile app revenue pie that Apple is seeing. Let’s see if Facebook PR throws another hissy fit over what is common sense. Facebook wants and needs to make money. Apple wants and needs to make money. Apple owns a mobile platform to do so. Facebook does not. At some point, this will become an issue. A big one.        
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| Video: Motorola Triumph Screens Flicker Black And White, Owners Seeing Red Posted: 26 Jul 2011 02:33 PM PDT The Motorola Triumph — a pretty snazzy-lookin' little beast (especially for a pre-paid device!) if I may say so — seems to have just hit a bit of a hurdle in its first week on the market: a number of new owners are hitting the forums with complaints of a flickering screen. Not-so-proud new owners have reported that the screen starts to flicker after a couple successive taps at the lock button, whereas others have said the screen goes completely white at random. Some of these flicker-victims are calling it a hardware issue, although a number of them have said that even multiple hardware exchanges haven't solved the problem. One Triumph owner in particular had a more extreme issue than mere screen flickering: their screen actually went completely black, while the four buttons on the bottom locked up and stayed lit. The only fix that worked was the classic "battery-out-and-reboot" move. Hopefully, this isn't a widespread hardware issue, which is much more difficult to amend. If it's software-related, it can be fixed as soon as an update is ready to be released. As I said, the Triumph has only been with us for just a week, and barely anything ships without bugs these days. Still, if the issue escalates the same way it did for our black-screened friend up there, both Virgin and Motorola are going to have some angry customers on their hands. Especially after shelling out $300.  [Thanks, juxxx]        
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| Verizon LTE Push Hits Laptops, Tablets, And Networks Posted: 26 Jul 2011 01:57 PM PDT You could be forgiven (and are) for skipping over the LTE news of the last six months: the roll-out of the new 4G standard has been spotty and few consumers actually have any idea what it means, or whether they have it. But Verizon’s next big investment is starting to show up in more than small-run hot spots and high-end smartphones. Today was a big day for LTE — the vanguard of really consumer-oriented devices is hitting, and while it’ll be some time before your free-with-contract phone or bargain-bin netbook is tapping into the fourth G, the news is still significant. Tablets with built-in 3G have been a sort of consumer visibility pilot program for widespread deployment of non-phone devices on mobile networks. Sure, 3G cards and built-in wireless have been options for laptops for a long time, but I’d say that the Kindle, iPad, and Chromebooks have pushed that idea farther in two years than it’s gone in the previous ten. It’s no longer an obscure option but a plain subset of devices. We’ll be seeing lots more, but I think some interplay between smartphone and other-device plans will be necessary before people at large see the light. In the meantime, Verizon is pushing LTE as hard as it can to differentiate it from the competition. Today saw the introduction of an LTE-enhanced HP dm1 laptop. This ultraportable (lighter than laptops, better than netbooks, the fruit of a big HP push a couple years back) doesn’t have particularly impressive specs, but it’s the first to have built-in LTE. With a 1.6GHz AMD E-series processor, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, and an 11.6″ display, it’s about standard for its class. You can pick one up July 28 for $600 from Verizon, no contract required, and then pay monthly for LTE access: $50 for 5GB or $80 for 10GB. Not the most enticing plan, I must say, but Verizon has to maintain an elite air until it goes totally downmarket. Next, a pair of tablets. An LTE-capable Verizon variant of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was announced today (artist’s rendition, top), which will ship Thursday for $530 (16GB) or $630 (32GB) — that’s with a two-year agreement at a minimum of $30 a month, which gets you a whopping 2GB of data. 2GB at the advertised 12Mbps speeds equals… about 22 minutes of use. Per month. Very generous! It’s worth noting that these initial speeds will increase, since right now they can’t even match those (advertised, anyway) of T-Mobile’s pseudo-4G networks. The Xoom, too, finally has an estimated date for its long, long overdue conversion to 4G. We were told it would happen three months after shipping. We were told we’d have a functional MicroSD slot, too. Speaking for myself, if I bought a Xoom I’d have returned it by now. But for those less disposed towards such drastic actions, September is the time (according to a memo sent to Droid-Life) when you’ll have the opportunity to back up all your data and ship your tablet to Motorola for a chip swap. Meanwhile, Verizon continues its nation-wide roll-out of LTE networks. As of a few days ago they are live in 102 markets, and they spent over a billion more dollars in 1H11 than they did in the same period last year, due (according to CFO Fran Shammo) to LTE installation costs. This effort and expenditure should put them in around 175 markets by the end of 2011, which puts them well ahead of AT&T, which is only just now beginning its LTE push, and T-Mobile, which rather than lay down 4G networks, has attempted to redefine its HSPA+ networks (by most accounts a bridge technology like EDGE) as 4G. Their news section is choked with individual region announcements. Right now we’re still at the early-adopter phase, but the great wheels of Verizon are creaking into motion finally, and over the next year (they hope) LTE will change from foreign acronym to household tech jargon — that is to say like 4G, megapixels, and so on, used but not fully grokked. Meanwhile, consumers should be wary of signing up for ridiculous data plans that will almost certainly be revised a few months from now during the holiday push.        
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| How Appropriate, Pampers Mobile Ad Promoted On Sex App Posted: 26 Jul 2011 11:56 AM PDT There is a lot of mobile ad inventory out there and sometimes brands can’t be sure where their ads will appear. Just like on the Web, automated ad placements can sometimes turn up in the darndest places. Take a look at the Pampers ad at the bottom of this screenshot for a popular app called 300+ Sex Positions. It is an ad cross-promoting Pamper’s own Hello Baby app. The copy reads: “Discover the wonders of babys development with Pamper’s Hello Baby app.” Hello Baby, indeed. The Pampers app appropriately enough is a pregnancy calendar that might come in handy if you try some of the sex positions in the first app. But I really wonder whether Pampers and its parent company Proctor & Gamble want their ads appearing in this context. It just isn’t P&G enough. This isn’t just any add either. It is one of Apple’s own iAds. If you squint your eyes, you can see a watermark in the lower righthand corner. What do you think, was this ad placement intentional or a big mistake? Anyone from Pampers out there who can enlighten us on the marketing strategy here? Since some people are having trouble making out the ad, her it is blown up: A mobile advertising platform released with iPhone OS 4 that allows brands to advertise without taking users out of an application. This will allow iPhone developers and corporate marketers...        
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| Sprint To Finally Retire The Evo 4G? Posted: 26 Jul 2011 11:49 AM PDT It's looking like Sprint has signed off on death warrants for a few of its handsets, including our nation's first-ever 4G smartphone, the Evo 4G. According to a leaked screenshot of this internal Sprint document (discovered by SprintFeed), at least 10 phones are getting the ax. First up on the chopping block are the pink Samsung Seek and the blue Sanyo Innuendo, which will both get their EOL (end of life) branding in the next two weeks. Then, the Motorola i1 will see its end along with the grey BlackBerry Style 9670 around the end of July/early August. Following those funerals, September will hit and bring with it a world of pain. The white Evo 4G will be no more, along with the BlackBerry Bold 9650 (rear-camera model) and the grey BlackBerry Curve. A month later, we'll have to say goodbye to the Samsung Epic 4G, the Samsung Transform, and the black Evo 4G. Many of these models have successors that are either in the works or on shelves now. But if you've had your heart set on an Evo 4G, Samsung Epic 4G, or any of these other doomed phones, get your rear in gear because they won't be around much longer. [via Phone Arena]        
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| T-Mobile G2X Finally Gets Its Much-Needed Gingerbread Update Posted: 26 Jul 2011 10:13 AM PDT T-Mobile G2X owners have really gotten the short end of the stick. Granted, dual-core processing and top-notch cameras probably comfort this disgruntled hoard on long, lonely nights, but a 1080p video does nothing to stop the phone from randomly rebooting for… no reason at all. Plus, the phone shipped with Froyo in an increasingly Gingerbread world, which kind of peeves the living daylight out of anyone who truly hearts Android. Anyways, the rant stops now because Gingerbread is on its way. Along with that tasty Gingerbread goodness, the update should also improve battery life, enhance the front-facing camera's operation of Qik Record and Share, and easy disabling of Car Home. Oh, and I almost forgot, the update will also offer a cure for your phone's narcolepsy (about 3 months later than we'd have liked). [via TmoNews]        
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| The BookBook Case: Because You Always Wanted Your iPhone To Look Like A Little Bible Posted: 26 Jul 2011 09:10 AM PDT Tired of feeling like people are judging you for gawking at your iPhone all day? Feel like you’re always 10 seconds from some big dude punching you in the face and making your iPhone his iPhone? Enter the BookBook. It’s a case that makes your iPhone look like.. a book. More specifically, it makes your iPhone look like a little itty-bitty Bible. Which is great, because (almost) no one can judge you for reading a Bible. And who would steal someone’s Bible? There’s just no need; you can get a free Bible just by walking into a church and saying “Sup guys, can I have a Bible?”
The BookBook is the first iPhone accessory out of the guys over at TwelveSouth. If you recall, these are the same guys who made the Apple Keyboard/Magic Trackpad-melding MagicWand. Beyond shrouding your iPhone in a lookalike handbook, the BookBook has another trick up its sleeve: it’s a wallet. It’s got a slot for your ID, two credit cards, and some of that weird papery green stuff I’m told the people of the 90′s called “cash”. One odd bit: as the video below makes clear, there’s no hole cut in the back for your camera to peek through, so you’ll have to pull your iPhone out a bit to snap a shot. You can find the case, available today for $60 a pop, right over here. Or you can wait and see if the Gideons start hiding them in hotel drawers.        
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| Radio Shack Boots T-Mobile, Welcomes Verizon With Open Arms Posted: 26 Jul 2011 07:25 AM PDT The T-Mobile/Radio Shack affair isn't exactly new news at this point — Radio Shack alleged that T-Mobile "materially breached" the terms of their agreement way back in February. No one short of legal counsel knows exactly what grievances Radio Shack has with their magenta-hued carrier partner beyond lackluster sales performance, but it looks as though things are finally coming to a head anyway. As of September 14, Radio Shack will discontinue their T-Mobile offerings in over 4,300 US locations and on their website. Then, on the very next day, they intend to roll out the red carpet for Verizon. Jim Gooch, president and CEO of Radio Shack, seems mighty pleased stating that "the addition of Verizon Wireless, in combination with our existing carrier partners, positions us to now offer the best assortment of carriers, rate plans, devices and accessories for every consumer need." The implication that T-Mobile hasn't been a terribly good partner is clear, but Gooch is no stranger to talking smack about T-Mobile. During his tenure as Radio Shack CFO, Gooch said rather candidly that T-Mobile's product offerings were "not competitive with other carriers" Harsh words, but it’s the last thing Gooch needs to concern himself with if the transition pans out the way he hopes. Update: T-Mobile has reached out to me with an official response to Radio Shack’s decision, which I’ve included below. "After careful consideration, we decided that to in order to increase the effectiveness of our retail network and in line with our sales strategy, T-Mobile will exit RadioShack retail locations, effective September 15, 2011. We are currently focused on higher return national retailer opportunities and we expect to announce new channel growth in the coming weeks, which will more than double the number of RadioShack doors currently offering T-Mobile products and services."        
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| HTC Warms Up To Settlement Talks With Apple Posted: 26 Jul 2011 07:20 AM PDT Perhaps it's a product of Schmidt's carefree attitude or maybe it's a little tinge of fear after their latest lost, but HTC now appears to be ready to negotiate with Apple. With a win on each side, settlement talks may be the only detour before this patent battle turns into a full-fledged war. In early July, the ITC found Apple in violation of two S3 Graphics patents, which were then taken over by HTC when it acquired the graphics company for $300 million. On July 15, Apple got an ITC win against HTC over two of its own patents. "We have to sit down and figure it out," said HTC CFO Winston Yung in an interview with Bloomberg. "We're open to having discussions." Yung clarified that no formal discussions have occurred since the ITC rulings this month, but merely that HTC was considering settlement negotiations. "We are open to all sorts of solutions, as long as the solution and the terms are fair and reasonable," said Yung. "On and off we've had discussions with Apple, even before the initial determination came out." Both of the initial rulings (Apple in violation of S3 Graphics patents and HTC in violation of Apple patents) are subject to review by the full six-member commission. [via CNET]        
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| Verizon Mistakenly Leaks Video Of The Touchscreen-Sporting BlackBerry Bold 9930 Posted: 26 Jul 2011 06:03 AM PDT Mistakes happen. Sometimes they spur a round of seriously unwanted consequences, but every once in a while, a mistake pays off. Maybe not for the person who screwed up, which in this case would be someone in charge of Verizon's website, but definitely for us. If you have yet to pick up what I'm putting down, this morning brought with it another leak — the BlackBerry Bold 9930. Verizon accidentally posted a video demo of the Bold 9930 in place of what should be a video demo of the BlackBerry Bold 9650. So if you find yourself on the Verizon site browsing through the smartphones, go ahead and click through to the Bold 9650. If you click into the video, a Verizon rep named Blake will appear in a demo and tell you how great the BlackBerry Bold 9930 is. According to Blake, the 9930 is the thinnest BlackBerry ever and will run the latest version of BlackBerry 7 OS. The phone touts a 1.2 GHz processor and a 5-megapixel rear camera with auto-focus and flash that is capable of video capture in 720p. Blake also promises that the new 9930 has a larger QWERTY keyboard than older BlackBerry models along with 8GB of internal memory expandable with a 32GB microSD card. Here's the best part: You can dump that pesky optical track pad altogether if you want. If you like it, then by all means, flick on. But for those of us who prefer cold capacitive glass under our fingertips, the new BlackBerry Bold 9930 will sport a 2.8-inch touchscreen display featuring pinch-to-zoom functionality. I just spent some time with the Motorola XPRT, which has a pretty similar form-factor, and I can easily say I prefer a full physical QWERTY paired with a touchscreen much more than a track pad-only option. Check the video after the break.  [via CrackBerry]        
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