A two percent decline in mobile phone shipments during the first quarter of 2012 may have hurt some handset vendors, but it did little to slow Samsung, which was the world’s largest mobile handset vendor for the first three months of the year. According to the latest metrics from Gartner — which measure sales of handsets to customers, not shipments into the channel — Samsung sold 86.6 million mobile phones in the first quarter, 25.9 percent more than it sold during the same period a year ago. That was enough to give it a 20.7 percent share of the market and seize the title of “world’s largest mobile handset vendor from Nokia, which sold 83.2 million cell phones during the quarter as its market share slipped to 19.8 percent from 25.1 percent a year ago. Unfortunate news for Nokia, which had been the market’s leader since 1998, but inevitable given the company’s recent decline and, perhaps, its choice of Windows Phone as an OS for its newest handsets. Because what’s driving Samsung’s growth is Android. According to Gartner’s sales data, Samsung was by far the largest Android smartphone vendor, claiming nearly 44 percent of Android-based smartphone sales. Interestingly, no other Android phone manufacturer captured more than 10 percent of the market. So if Samsung commandeered the handset market’s top spot in the first quarter and Nokia its second, who claimed third? Apple, which sold enough iPhones to capture 7.9 percent of the total mobile phone market. As for mobile OS market share, Android continues to rule the market — 56 percent of smartphones sold to end users globally in the first quarter of 2012 run the OS, far more than the 22.9 percent running Apple’s iOS.
Read MoreEvery year, come tax season, I curse myself. I might write about all things digital, but when it comes to receipts and important documents, my record-keeping is analog amateur hour. So this year I’m getting serious about scanning. Fortunately, there are plenty of portable scanning options out there, ranging from mobile apps to wand-like scanners. This week, I set out to determine whether an app or a pocket-sized scanner with receipt-management software can really do the job of a larger scanner. I tested three options: The smartphone app JotNot Scanner Pro by MobiTech 3000 , PlanOn’s tiny SlimScan SS100 scanner, and Xerox’s new wand-shaped Mobile Scanner . The JotNot Pro app uses the iPhone’s camera to capture images of documents. And after five days of testing, it became apparent that the app was great on the go, but I wouldn’t use it to scan tons of files. The SlimScan scanner’s size was attention-grabbing, but the device and its software were problematic for me. Despite its larger size and $250 price point, the Xerox scanner was my top pick, because of its fast scanning and its wireless connectivity via an Eye-Fi card. [ See post to watch video ] I began the scanner tests with JotNot Pro for iPhone, which was updated late last year and costs $1.99.
Read MoreHere’s a shocker: Not everyone wants to buy a smartphone. Parents, for example, often balk at paying high monthly cellular-data bills for their teens and tweens and would rather they stick with simpler phones, if they have phones at all. And even some adults prefer simpler, less costly phones. For a lot of these users, a popular solution has been what’s called a connected media player: essentially a smartphone without cellular voice and data access, and without the monthly cellular bill. And the king of that category has been Apple’s iPod Touch, which starts at $199. A Wi-Fi-only device, the Touch looks like a thinner iPhone, with the same high-resolution 3.5-inch screen. It runs most of the same apps, handles email and Web surfing, and is a very capable hand-held game machine, music and video player, and photo viewer. [ See post to watch video ] Now Samsung, Apple’s biggest rival in the smartphone arena, is going after the Touch with a new connected media player sporting a similar-sized screen, the Galaxy Player 3.6. But Samsung is charging about $50 less—$150. And in about 10 days, it’ll launch a second model, the larger Galaxy Player 4.2, for $200. Both devices run on a year-old version of Google’s Android operating system. Samsung dipped its toe into this market last year with earlier Galaxy Players, but they were mostly ignored by consumers, partly because of bulky designs and high prices. Now, the Korean giant is doubling down with more compact and affordable models. I’ve been testing the Player 3.6 for the past few days and comparing it with the latest iPod Touch. The Samsung has some advantages, such as a camera that takes better still pictures, an FM radio and expandable memory. But overall, it feels like a cruder device than the Touch
Read MoreChipmaker Intel finally has a win to call its own in the smartphone market. Earlier this week, it entered into a partnership with the Indian handset maker Lava to supply chips for the Xolo handset. And, naturally, Intel CEO Paul Otellini had one to show off during an appearance on CNBC yesterday. He calls it “the highest-performing handset on the market, as far as we can tell.” It has taken a few years to get to this point, but there’s a two-billion-unit addressable market to be carved out. In the video below, Otellini also talks about the competitive threat — though he seems not to consider it much of a threat at all — coming from Microsoft’s Windows 8 and its variant that will support chips running the ARM architecture. How much market share does he expect to lose? None. Intel’s chips can offer the same performance and power efficiency that ARM chips do, while being 100 percent compatible with existing PC software. See the full interview below:
Read MoreWell, anything can be forced to converge. … You can converge a toaster and a refrigerator, but those things are probably not gonna be pleasing to the user. – Apple CEO Tim Cook on Windows 8 tablet-laptop hybrids
Read MoreA near-final “release preview” version of Windows 8 is due in the first week of June, Microsoft confirmed late on Monday. Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky made the announcement at a Windows Developer Days event in Japan. The release preview follows two earlier test releases, including a “consumer preview” version issued in February . Although Microsoft hasn’t confirmed a release date for the final version of Windows 8, it is widely expected to be released in time to arrive on PCs this fall. Windows 8 is a huge bet for Microsoft as the company is counting on it not only to power mainstream PCs but also to help battle the threat posed by the iPad and other tablets. It features a radically overhauled interface, first shown at last year’s D9 conference , as well as a built-in Windows Store for selling apps. In addition to computers running traditional processors from Intel and AMD, Windows 8 will also power new tablets and laptops running low-power ARM processors. The company said last week that Windows 8 will come in a few different flavors including consumer and pro versions as well as Windows RT — the name for the version that runs on ARM-based computers.
Read MoreMicrosoft is taking the beta tag off its version of Skype for Windows Phone . With the move, Microsoft’s Internet calling service is now no longer as much of a second-class citizen on Microsoft’s own devices. Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion purchase of Skype last October , but until this February’s Mobile World Congress there wasn’t even a beta version of the software for Windows Phone. As of Sunday, Skype for Windows Phone has earned the official 1.0 moniker . That doesn’t mean that the software is necessarily on par with its Android and iPhone counterparts, however. A key limitation, as noted by the Verge , is that Skype can’t run in the background. So you can’t stay on a call — or even receive one — unless Skype is the application in the foreground of the phone.
Read MoreVerizon Wireless plans to put its marketing weight behind Microsoft Corp.'s next mobile phone software to help develop a strong competitor to Apple Inc. and Google Inc., according to the chief financial officer of Verizon Communications. Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon and Vodafone Group Plc, already sells the Apple iPhone and many devices based on Google's Android software. But Verizon's CFO Fran Shammo said the company wants a third strong software competitor in the mobile market where operators pay hefty subsidies for smartphones like the iPhone. "We're really looking at the Windows Phone 8.0 platform because that's a differentiator. We're working with
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