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In business, it seems like you have a BlackBerry, you have a Treo, or you have a very comparable model from, say, Samsung. If you’re a hipster looking to impress your friends, you have an iPhone. Apple is looking to change that perceptin. On Thursday, the company announced that it will support push email. This is the system used by BlackBerry, Palm, etc., which makes your smartphone email kind of like your desktop email. The two — your handheld and your desktop/laptop — are normally synced through an Enterprise server. So it looks like Research In Motion, makers of the BlackBerry, have a bit of competition now. They’ve had a stranglehold on the business smartphone market for quite some time.
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Qualcomm is in a strange position. They’re being blocked from patent infringement by chip maker Broadcom on one hand. On the other, they’re filing their own patent suits. These are aimed at Nokia, the world’s No.1 handset maker, for infringing on some of their GSM patents. Qualcomm is seeking injunctions to bar Nokia from selling phones in violation of those patents in the U.K. But they lost. To date, they have not been able to trump Nokia, and with each loss, the chances of a future victory diminishes. Yes, this might play out, as Qualcomm has filed 11 suits in total.
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So are they looking to sell off their mobile phone unit or not? This is the question we’ve been asking — prompted by many analysts — since it was announced that Motorola has dropped to the No. 3 handset maker in the world, now trailing both Nokia and Samsung. There hasn’t been anything official, but the rumors have been running rampant. They’ve already cut R&D budgets, though that’s said to hopefully move them back to profitability. But CEO Greg Brown indicates that no hint of a sell-off, and is looking for someone to bring Motorola back to their No. 2 spot.
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Ever since it was first announced, I’ve been a big fan of the Palm Centro. The Treo is a mighty fine offering, but the Centro seems to have a bit more of a consumer tough to it. It’s touch-screen, just like it’s sister phone, which is always a draw. The keyboard — full QWERTY — is also well-spaced, especially for a phone of its size. I know a few friends who picked this up on Sprint, and they absolutely love it. Well, Sprint’s three-month exclusive deal is up, and AT&T has pounced on the device. As I’ve said before, if it was a hit on Sprint, it figures to be a remarkable success on AT&T.
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Though they’re not the first to pick it up, T-Mobile has announced that they’ll be featuring the Motorola ROKR as part of its handset lineup. It’s a neat little device, a candybar design with full music capabilities. This is backed by 2 gigabtyes of on-board memory, same as its rival, the Samsung Juke. I didn’t see word on microSD expansion, though. To be clear, this is the E8 model, quite different than the previous incarnation of the ROKR. It was displayed at CES back in January, and was a decent hit with the crowd there.
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I’m trying to keep up with the important stuff going on at the Mobile World Congress. There are new phones being introduced by carrier after carrier, and it’s tough to separate out the good from the bad. And sometimes, the bad is remarkably so. Today, we’re checking in with Gary Krakow of TheStreet.com. He’s talking about the new Nokia N96, the successor to the ultra-popular N95, and the much-anticipated Garmin nuvifone.
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The Mobile World Congress always brings out a flurry of ideas for new phones. Some are good, some are bad, and some are remarkably bad. So we’ll lead with the good. Fujitsu has developed a phone which uses fingerprint technology to secure personal and corporate data on your phone. No, it’s not quite a retina scan, but it reads below the skin’s surface to a layer which contains the “true” fingerprint. So you won’t have to worry about those shrewd criminals who place copies of your fingerprints over theirs.
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Tons going on this week at the Mobile World Congress. Among the most buzz-generating attractions is Android, the platform being developed by Google for the Open Handset Alliance. Well, LG is the first one to give us a soft release date: Early 2009. Some people are going to be a bit disappointed by this. After all, there were reports of the platform becoming available by the middle of this year, but that simply hasn’t panned out. But, things are still moving along, and we should start seeing this OS soon enough.
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Can you hear me now? No? How about now? Still no? That about sums up what people think about cell phone call quality. A recent study shows that about 40 percent of calls don’t meet industry standards for quality. Ouch. But honestly, did you think that it would be otherwise? Yeah, this isn’t 2000, when there were probably seven or eight dead zones in your town. But I’m still amazed at the number of calls that drop or fade out while people just move about their houses.
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The device hadn’t been out for six months by the end of 2007, but Apple’s iPhone has moved into the No. 2 spot in the U.S. smartphone landscape. Of course, that’s by platform, really. From what I’m reading, it seems like the iPhone could be the single most used smartphone in the U.S. However, the competition here is Research In Motion, which offers a number of BlackBerry smartphones, and Windows Mobile phones, which covers a whole slew of devices. The iPhone covers 28 percent of the smartphone market, ahead of Windows Mobile at 21 percent, but behind RIM at 41 percent.
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