Tuesday 29 March 2011

Chrome OS Coming Q2    [ 29-03-2011 18:39 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: Pocket-lint     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Pocket-lint are reporting that they have had confirmation from Google that Chrome OS will be going live come Q2, possibly June.

Google are still in negotiations with various manufacturers and suppliers. Chrome OS is Google's new OS for netbooks and laptops, a step up from Android Honeycomb you might say. Google will no doubt be hoping that Chrome OS develops in the same way Android has, with developers creating hundreds of thousands of apps for it.

The OS will be shipped with hardware from different manufacturers, but only certain hardware from those manufacturers. However, Chromium OS, which is the open source developer version of Chrome OS, can be used on any machine, but importantly it would receive the same level of official support that official Chrome OS machines would.

Price wise we should be looking at devices in the rangeof $250-$600 apparently. If true that wouldprove a very reasonable, and persuasive, price point

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Sprint Calls For AT&T - T-Mobile Deal To Be Blocked    [ 29-03-2011 17:10 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: Unwired View     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Well it didn't take long for the for criticism of the AT&T - T-Mobile deal to appear and it hasn't taken long for the first real challenge to the deal to appear either. Sprint, America's third largest network, has released a press statement calling upon the American government to block the proposed deal.

Explaining their action Sprint says the move would be anti-competitive and would end up resulting in harm to consumers and would reverse some three decades worth of governmental and judicial action that modernised the American communications market. That's some strong words, but Sprint didn't stop there, no they went on to say that they promise that 'on behalf of our customers, our industry and our country, Sprint will fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly'.

The deal would see AT&T transformed into America's biggest network and, alongside Verizon, would have a commanding lead over other players in the U.S. Clearly Sprint doesn't want to be relegated to the 'also ran' category

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Nokia Sends Open Letter To Symbian Devs    [ 29-03-2011 16:38 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: i-programmer     Translation by: Paul Smith     

With Symbian entering its twilight years Nokia have released an open letter to developers setting out how they plan to retire the platform and by the looks of it it will have one last swan song.

There are new Symbian handsets planned for 2011 and 2012, the time period Nokia is seeing as the 'transition period' where Nokia will be seeking to move customers away from Symbian and onto Windows Phone 7.

Our intention is that when users come to the end of the natural lifecycle of their Symbian device they will make the change to a Nokia Windows Phone device and so it would not be in our interests to undermine their Nokia smartphone experience.

What that means in plain English is that Nokia don't want to burn their bridges. They know they have a lot of people still interested in Symbian and they don't want to send them fleeing to other manufacturers by 'forcing' them onto Windows Phone 7, rather they would like it to be a gradual process where people move of their own accord.

Indeed the remaining Symbian handsets to be released aren't token gestures by the looks of things. Nokia are promising 'GHz+ processing capabilities and faster graphics speeds' in addition to 'the first major update in summer, delivering new a new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons, a faster browser ...'. Even so Symbian is not long for this world and that can be seen in Nokia's plan to market these handsets where Symbian is still doing well e.g. Turkey, China, etc.

The letter ends on a somewhat ambigous tone, but one that does contain the finality of the situation nonetheless "... we cannot give you the date when Symbian will no longer be supported."

You can read the full letter here.

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Nokia Not Happy Apple Lawsuit Ending, Ups Ante With 7 More Patents    [ 29-03-2011 16:26 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: Engadget     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Despite the fact that the International Trade Commission ruled that Apple wasn't infringing Nokia's patents (the decision has yet to be confirmed it should be noted) Nokia is not about to give up just yet in its battle with Cupertino. Rather the Finnish manufacturer has gone back to the ITC with another 7 patents it says Apple is infringing.

The patents relate to such things as multi-tasking, call quality, Bluetooth accessories and other stuff that most people probably don't care about. What this does do, however, is bring the total number of Nokia patents involved in a legal dispute somewhere across the globe to 46. It's sort of like a modern day version of the saying 'The sun never sets on the British Empire' only here it's more like 'The lawyers never go hungry with Nokia about'

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More Predicting: Android Again Rules, Everyone Else Follows    [ 29-03-2011 13:18 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: IDC     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Another forecast of the future of the smartphone market has been released, this time by IDC. Now before we get into the numbers themselves it is important to point something out, IDC were the people who made the predicition that Symbian would continue to dominate the smartphone market until 2013. They don't have quite the same prediction here (to put it mildly) so remember that because it shows these predictions for what they are, fancy guesses.

Having gotten that out of the way let's get straight into the forecast and the first thing we see is the familiar picture of Android holding sway over the globe, like a latter day British Empire it sits is splendid isolation atop the results table with a very commanding 45% market share.

The rest of the pack duly follow in Android's wake here, but unlike last week's forecast it is Windows Phone that is taking the second spot with 20.9%. That means that Apple's iOS is relegated to third with 15.3% and BlackBerry takes fourth with 13.7%. The consistent picture with these forecasts has these same three players scrabbling for the second through fourth spots, it's just the order that changes.

Oh and let's not forget Symbian ... well the only reason it is notable in this forecast is that it almost doesn't exist holding onto just 0.2% of the market.

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