Hasta La Gadget!

We’d been hoping that Huawei’s flagship Ascend D Quad would roll by the FCC, hinting that the long-in-waiting hardware was soon to become a reality. It’s here, and it looks to be the XL version we were promised back in Barcelona, with no mention of the LTE that some US carriers love so well. Like the Ascend D1, though, it’s carrying pentaband HSPA+ that would let its 3G fly at full speed on any North American GSM carrier. There’s a slight surprise in the camera. Schematics mention a 12-megapixel sensor as a possibility alongside the officially announced 8-megapixel shooter — that said, whether it’s a quiet upgrade, a regional variant or just a discarded dream isn’t made obvious here. More certain references can confirm video out through HDMI and MHL as well as the increasingly de rigueur NFC. We don’t need the FCC to confirm launches that start late this month in China and October in Europe, but the approval guarantees that there won’t be rude surprises for the release or for any imports, whether they’re unofficial or through a carrier deal.

Filed under: Cellphones

Huawei Ascend D Quad XL hits the FCC with North America-friendly 3G, 12MP camera mention originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netflix mentioned during its most recent earnings call that it had identified an attractive European market to launch its streaming video service in during Q4 2012 and now we know where that is: Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. There’s no word yet on pricing or which devices the service will be available on, but Nordic viewers can expect the usual assortment of movies and TV shows for a flat rate, with many available in HD and surround sound. Judging by the languages of support personnel Netflix was looking for last year, Asia is next on its world domination map (after Canada, Latin America and UK & Ireland) although how investors will react to the hit expansion makes on its earnings in the short term.

Continue reading Netflix Watch Instantly streaming coming to Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland this year

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Netflix Watch Instantly streaming coming to Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Aug 2012 01:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We have seen reports from Strategy Analytics, IDC and Canalys detailing how many smartphones that handset makers shipped in the last quarter (the takeaway: Android is still on top, with Samsung the chief benefactor); today, Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, WPP’s market analytics business, has released its rolling monthly update on how that translates into on-the-ground sales in some of the biggest markets in the world. The results give more weight to Samsung’s current domination; and underscore how important it is for Apple to “wow” the market next month with the launch of a new handset.

Kantar, which bases its conclusions on millions of interviews with consumers every month (1 million in Europe alone, it notes), found that Samsung is currently the top-selling brand in Europe at the moment, thanks in part to a successful launch of the S3 in May, but also aggressive pricing in a region hit by economic pressures. Samsung accounted for 45% of all smartphone sales across the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain in the last 12 weeks that ended July 8. Arch-rival Apple, in contrast, accounted for just 16% of all sales in the region, Kantar analyst Dominic Sunnebo tells me. In fact, Apple has declined in every market Kantar surveyed, except for the UK and U.S.

Android’s share of sales across the big-five European countries is now at 66%, a big jump from 43% a year ago, Kantar notes. In Australia, Android took 60.5% of all sales in the period, and in the U.S. it accounted for just over 51% of all sales.

Apple’s lackluster performance in Europe is something that Apple itself highlighted during its last earnings report, blaming the economy and people holding off on purchases until the next iPhone release. Kantar showed that as a result of these factors, Apple took between 4.3% and 11.4% fewer sales in the last 12 weeks than it did a year ago across the markets of Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Australia — with Australia accounting for the biggest of those declines.

Interestingly, despite Android doing so well globally, it actually declined in one key market: the U.S. its 51.5% share of the market is actually 5.3 percentage points down on a year ago. Was this because the Galaxy S3 launched later there, I asked Sunnebo? No, he says, it’s about consumer preference and price:

“An important point here is that there is very little difference in price between an Apple iPhone or an Android phone in the U.S., so the choice is made purely on what the consumer wants, not what they can afford,” he tells me, “whereas in Europe, Apple continues to command a price premium over Android. With recessionary pressures as they are in Europe this is likely to have an impact.”

Indeed, he notes that the S3 is more of a brand pusher than a direct sales generator: “While the majority of noise is focused on big-name products such as the S3 or S2, it’s easy to forget that Samsung is selling smartphones across all tiers,” he notes in the report. Kantar says that in the UK, for example, Samsung accounts for five of the top 10 best-selling smartphones in the UK, “with even the smartphone/tablet hybrid Samsung Galaxy Note making it into the top ten.”

In the U.S. Apple’s share of sales went up by 9.5 percentage points to account for 38.2% of all sales in the period. The UK was not as strong but also increased: up by 2 percentage points to 22.9% of sales.

Kantar notes that a lot of this appears to be about people holding off from purchases until the next iPhone comes along. “Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data clearly shows that the proportion of Apple consumers who have owned their device for at least 18 months and not upgraded has increased markedly over the last quarter, indicating current owners are holding off upgrading until the release of the iPhone 5,” Sunnebo writes.

Indeed, the Apple brand continues to command “high loyalty”: in the UK 80% of consumers who own an iPhone have bought another; and 92% say they plan to stick with Apple when they next upgrade. “With this in mind, any dip in Apple share is likely to be short-lived with the release of an updated iPhone in quarter three bringing momentum back to the Cupertino giant,” he concludes.

Other brands. The story is not great. While Apple’s declines may be short-lived, RIM’s seem more indicative of a longer-term issue. The only country where it has managed to stave off market share declines is in France, where it only accounted for 9.2% of sales. In the U.S., which used to be RIM’s proud, top market, it only accounted for 3.7% of sales. Ouch. The UK is the only market where RIM managed to go into double digits for sales, with 10.9% of sales in that country, although that is half of what it was last year.

The story for Windows Phone is similar to that of iPhone and iOS, notes Kantar — that is, people appear to be holding off for Windows Phone 8 releases. That’s happening on a much smaller and more depressing scale, though. Windows Phone did not break through even 5% of sales in any market Kantar researched, as you can see in the full tables below. And just as RIM has a (sort of) break out market in the form of the UK, Symbian is still seeing a bit of life in Italy, where it accounted for 12.8% of sales, although that is a decline of more than 22 percentage points on last year.

ATM card skimming is hardly a new activity, and neither are card skimmers that continue to get smaller and more discreet. As Brian Krebs of the Krebs on Security blog reports, though, a new development out of Europe has now crossed a key, and potentially troublesome threshold. The European ATM Security Team (otherwise known as EAST) has discovered a new type of wafer-thin card skimmer in use in at least one unnamed European country that’s small enough to fit directly in the ATM’s card slot — that’s as opposed to most current skimmers that can be well-disguised but generally sit on top of the card slot. As you can imagine, that makes it considerably more difficult to spot for even the most attentive ATM users, but Krebs notes that the skimmer still requires a secondary device like a camera or keypad overlay to record a person entering their PIN.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Security researchers find new wafer-thin ATM card skimmers in use originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today Nokia announced that its deal to buy imaging company Scalado has been finalized — a sign of another piece of the puzzle falling into place for Nokia as it continues to restructure to reverse huge declines in handset sales. But that dark, Finnish cloud has a silver lining that we’ve been noticing: the emergence of a bunch of startups being formed by many among the 40,000 people that have been laid off. The other day we wrote about how some of the smaller players have been picking up funding from Nokia courtesy of its Bridge program. And now we’ve come across what might possibly be one of the more ambitious spin-offs yet.

Oulutalent is a team of no less than 500 former-Nokia employees based in the town of Oulu. The skills on offer, and the ready-made team, is a testament to what Nokia has had to drop by the wayside, but also what is on the market for the many tech companies out there fighting the war for talent.

Averaging more than 10 years of experience, the group claims to have “created over 50 devices including major blockbusters. In addition to devices, we have done novel cloud services and UI platforms from scratch. We are on the leading edge with touch and LTE phones, Linux and WiMax tablets and we have world-class technical competence on all.”

The group is being led by Pekka Väyrynen, an engineer who developed patented wireless technology for Nokia (that is, the patents that are reported worth up to $6 billion and may well start getting sold off to help Nokia’s cash position).

Effectively, what we have in Oulutalent is a handset-making operation that could in theory be bolted on to a company with mobile ambitions (Amazon? A new Asian entrant? Nokia’s MeeGo spinoff Jolla?); or one that is growing already and needs to expand. It plays on the big area of outsourced operations — something that may have been too expensive for Nokia to maintain may well be hard for another as well; this lets that cost stay off the balance sheet.

Oulutalent notes that it can provide a range of consulting and technical services, from identifying market opportunities and planning product portfolios; to “concepting” (covering hardware and user experience, simulation and prototyping); turning those concepts into products; and then helping with the aftersales.

One twist is that the team is not in full effect yet, with some employees still working out their terms with Nokia, according to a spokesperson for the company.

And another is whether Oulutalent will be able to prove to the market that it’s worth the investment: its success is partly dependent on whether others believe Nokia’s downfall was mainly due to some bad decisions from management; or whether it was also down to those executing on decisions.

Oulutalent is offering itself as a group for “turn-key product creation,” but there may be possibilities to engage smaller teams, too. That is the approach being taken by a similar project called Kyvyt (Finnish for “talent”). Despite its Finnish name, Kyvyt is based in the German town of Ulm, where Nokia also had a large team of people who apparently were working on its low-end Linux based platform Meltemi (another project Nokia left on the cutting-room floor). Kyvyt is offering out its pool of talent as and where it is needed, and it is also running events like job fairs, as well as posting job adverts on its site.

The Oulutalent spokesperson says that it will cooperate with Kyvyt, although declined to specify what that will mean. More detailed information, she says, will be coming out in coming weeks.

Ironically, as Nokia has been cutting staff, it’s taken a few on, too, to focus on areas where it hopes to stand out against handset competitors. The Scalado purchase will see some 50 people join Nokia’s smartphone operations in Lund, Sweden, where Nokia will be incorporating Scalado’s technologies and IP into its imaging business:

“We believe that this acquisition will strengthen Nokia’s leading position in mobile imaging and provide us with a great opportunity to create even better imaging products and applications,” Jo Harlow, executive vice president, Smart Devices at Nokia, said in a statement.

In the bigger picture, Nokia has insisted that it is safe and secure as far as cash reserves are concerned, but at the same time it’s running out of goodwill with the investment community: Nokia’s debt rating yesterday was cut once again by Moody’s, as the agency noted that losses in the current quarter will be even greater than previously thought. The three major credit agencies, Standard & Poor’s; Fitch and Moody’s have all now graded Nokia’s debt down to “junk” status.

Nokia, as before, has said that the “impact on the company is limited” with the company taking action to turn things around. The company says at the end of June it had a cash balance of €9.4 billion and a net cash balance of €4.2 billion, both higher than a year ago.

It’s not clear who is providing the capital to finance Oulutalent, although the Bridge program we wrote about before is basically restricted to startups of four people or less, so it’s unlikely to play a role here. We’re asking questions and will update as we learn more.