Hasta La Gadget!

Remember we reported on how a man’s Samsung Galaxy S4 caught on fire, and how Samsung tried to cover up the incident by offering a replacement but only if he were to keep quiet about the it? Not only did this move not sit well with the owner of the phone, Richard Wygand, but apparently many on the internet did not take too kindly to Samsung’s decision on the matter either. Given the backlash, we’re sure Samsung would be more than happy to go with an alternate decision if given the chance to do it over again, but in the meantime Nokia has decided to capitalize on Samsung’s PR screw up.

The Finnish handset manufacturer has tweeted a response to Wygand, in which a Nokia rep by the name of Jason wrote, “.@ghostlyrich we want to help you out. Let me send you a Nokia Lumia so you can experience how customer service should *really* work.” This is not the first time that Nokia has taken the opportunity to poke fun at Samsung. The company has released ads in the past where they made fun of Samsung’s products and compared it to theirs. Of course we’re not sure how serious Nokia is about replacing Wygand’s busted up Galaxy S4 with a Nokia Lumia device, but it’s a nice PR move nonetheless.

Nokia Steps In After Samsung’s PR Nightmare With Galaxy S4 Users original content from Ubergizmo.

There’s no sugar coating the fact that BlackBerry’s hardware division hasn’t been able to produce a truly spectacular device this year that would have caught the market’s attention, and even brought in substantial revenues for the company. It all started with the first BB10 device, the Z10. A few months after its release, the company released the Q10 and a few months after that, the Q5 and closed off the year with its Z30 phablet. All of these devices are powered by its new BlackBerry 10 platform announced in January. However, in the previous quarter, BlackBerry had to take a $1 billion hit due to unsold inventory, which goes to show that its devices didn’t perform well. The constant losses has many people wondering why the company doesn’t just stop making devices and simply focus on its enterprise technologies? Citigroup analyst Ehud Gelblum thinks that the cost involved with shutting down its hardware division would end up sucking its cash balance dry.

(more…)

Analyst Thinks Cost Is Why BlackBerry Can’t Shut Down Its Ailing Hardware Division original content from Ubergizmo.

In recent times Japan has seen a substantial shift from feature phones to smartphones powered by iOS, Android and other platforms. This obviously meant that users got access to a wide variety of applications that are available on each and every platform. The smartphone trend has caught on quite quickly in The Land of the Rising Sun, with Apple clearly dominating the local market. That said, app analytics firm App Annie has released a new report saying that Japan has overtook the U.S. based on sheer app revenue, spending 10 percent more than the U.S.

This is a significant improvement, considering the fact that just last year, Japan was spending 40 percent less on mobile apps as compared to the U.S. Two reasons are believed to be behind this increase, first the fact that smartphone adoption in the country has jumped from 28 percent to 42 percent in just one year and the second being interest in mobile games. GungHo Online and Sega, who are both game publishers, are said to be the biggest drivers of app sales in Japan. Moreover, given Android’s footprint in the country, Play Store sales were able to match App Store sales in the country. App Annie expects that smartphone sales in Japan will grow in the coming year as well, possibly reaching beyond 60 percent penetration in the entire cellphone market.

Japan Leads The U.S. In App Revenue original content from Ubergizmo.

Microsoft has obviously been putting in a lot of time and resources into its mobile operating systems, Windows RT and particularly Windows Phone. It is up against behemoths like Android and iOS which already rule the globe mobile device market. Microsoft has seen its market share increase this year, and its acquisition of Nokia’s devices and services division is likely to aid the increase as well in the coming year. As per a new report by The Verge, Microsoft is considering waiving licensing fees for Windows Phone and Windows RT, which means that device manufacturers won’t have to pay to run these operating systems on their devices.

This plan is said to be under “serious consideration” by OS chief Terry Myerson, however it is believed that nothing has been decided upon at this point in time. Such a move will mean that Microsoft will lose out on licensing revenues from other OEMs as well. Nokia’s made some of the best selling Windows Phone devices, but now that its division is under Microsoft, the company will lose out on those licensing revenues as well. It is expected that Microsoft will try to make up for the revenue loss through apps and services, the company has experimented with running ads in Windows 8 apps so something along the same lines can be implemented in those operating systems as well. The aim is to combat Android, but it remains to be seen if free versions of its mobile operating systems will entice OEMs to develop more Windows Phone and Windows RT powered devices.

Microsoft Reportedly Considering Waiving Windows Phone And Windows RT Licensing Fees original content from Ubergizmo.

Chinese supplier Pegatron has been in the spotlight before, and not for reasons that are positive in the first place. Well, it seems that the company is in the limelight once again, having come under scrutiny after a bunch of employee deaths which were associated with its iPhone 5c production factory. There was an example where 15-year-old Shi Zhaokun finally gave in to pneumonia after having to work nearly 280 hours in his first month alone at the factory. Needless to say, this was definitely in violation of local labor regulations as well as Apple’s supplier code of conduct. One does wonder, however, with Pegatron having violated Apple’s supplier code of conduct, why can’t Apple choose a different supplier after all these years? Are there no capable suppliers apart from Pegatron to continue rolling out the slew of iDevices?

Shi Zhaokun apparently used a fake identification card so that he could get around China’s minimum hiring age laws, and there was a seeming lack of will to enforce government laws that cap the maximum working hours per week at 60 hours, whereas Zhaokun was said to have worked between 75 and 79 hours for the first three weeks there. Pegatron claimed that Zhaokun’s health issues had nothing to do with his job at the iPhone 5c factory, and the worker logs did not depict an accurate representation of his working and rest hours.

Underaged Pegatron Worked Overworked original content from Ubergizmo.