Hasta La Gadget!

Time and time again, the manufacturers that Apple has tapped in China to mass produce its devices start making rounds in the news. Often the allegations deal with worker abuse and labor violations, apart from the usual product rumors that are supposedly spread by sources within manufacturing facilities Foxconn has been Apple’s manufacturer for a long, long time. Its actually the biggest manufacturer of Apple products, and it finds itself surrounded by allegations once again. Reports coming in from China claim that around a dozen Foxconn managers have been arrested on charges on demanding kickbacks from iPhone component manufacturers.

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Foxconn Managers Arrested For Allegedly Demanding Kickbacks From iPhone Component Makers original content from Ubergizmo.

The much rumored deal between Apple and China Mobile was confirmed last month. We had been hearing for quite some time that both companies had been negotiating, at one point it was also rumored that Tim Cook flew down to China in order to meet with the carrier’s top brass. They’ve both finally reached an agreement which will see the world’s largest mobile carrier launch the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c on January 17th. It may have a lot of iPhone 5s units on hand to cope with demand, rumor has it that Foxconn has delivered a shipment of 1.4 million iPhone 5s units to China Mobile last week.

Foxconn is Apple’s primary manufacturer of the iPhone, sources with knowledge of the plans claim that they don’t know what the order volume for China Mobile will be after January. This particular order is meant to cater to demand following the launch on China Mobile. The carrier has more than 750 million subscribers, and analysts expect Apple to sell up to 20 million units on the carrier alone in 2014. China Mobile has already started taking pre-orders for the new iPhones, it finally launches them on January 17th. The deal could help Apple’s market share in China surge from six percent, the company’s smartphones are under a lot of pressure from Samsung’s devices, and those made by local Chinese vendors.

China Mobile Reportedly Has Over 1 Million iPhone 5s Units At Launch original content from Ubergizmo.

If there’s one thing BlackBerry is known for, its the keyboards on its mobile devices. There was a time when BlackBerry smartphones with full QWERTY keyboards ruled the world, but then trends changed and the company didn’t evolve with them, so it ended up losing significant market share. Nevertheless, there are diehard BB users out there who would prefer a Q10 over a Z10 any given day, most of them would never want the company to completely give up on QWERTY keyboards. While that might not happen anytime soon, it appears that BB’s latest plan to kickstart the success of its hardware business might make use of fewer physical keys.

The company recently announced that it has teamed up with Foxconn to develop low-end devices geared towards emerging markets, where BB still enjoys popularity and where its keyboards are one of the biggest selling point. BGR claims to have heard that the first device to come out of this agreement, codenamed Jakarta, won’t have a physical keyboard. Instead it is said to tout a full touchscreen and run on BlackBerry 10 OS, which could mean that the Canadian manufacturer might finally be phasing out OS7. No additional details have been leaked about this device, perhaps we might hear more over the coming weeks. BlackBerry will continue to manufacture high-end devices, and its highly likely that one of them will definitely have a full QWERTY keyboard.

BlackBerry And Foxconn’s First Device Won’t Have A Keyboard [Rumor] original content from Ubergizmo.

Foxconn is commonly known for its association with Apple, it is one of the largest manufacturers that Apple contracts for a number of its products. While there have been rumors that Foxconn might be thinking about jumping in the smartphone game itself, for now it has found a partner. BlackBerry has announced that it has signed a five year deal with Foxconn, under the deal these two companies will work together to develop smartphones geared primarily towards emerging markets. Foxconn will manufacture these smartphones at its facilities in Mexico and Indonesia.

New BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that this deal allows the company to focus on what it does best, “iconic design, world-class security, software development and enterprise mobility management,” while addressing the needs of emerging markets by leveraging Foxconn’s scale and efficiency in manufacturing smartphones. Chen believes that this deal will help BlackBerry compete more effectively. The company’s hardware division hasn’t been able to produce a hit in 2013 and as a result of that BlackBerry has lost significant market share and money throughout this year. Some analysts believe that this just might be the last straw for BlackBerry and its devices, which once dominated the global market. Back home at Waterloo, the company will continue work on high-end devices, which are expected to come in the first half of 2014.

BlackBerry Teams Up With Foxconn For Five Years original content from Ubergizmo.

BlackBerry announced today that it would be partnering with Foxconn to produce devices going forward, and CEO John Chen revealed a few details about the first fruits of that partnership on the company’s earnings call today.

The first smartphone from Foxconn with BlackBerry branding should arrive in March or April 2014, he says, and be a 3G device based on BlackBerry 10. It’s going to launch in Indonesia first, and Chen says they have another six or seven markets the company has identified for it to spread to later on.

This should help BlackBerry lower its exposure to financial risk, while giving it room to work on its device pipeline in a way that will help it produce better BB10-based devices, Chen offered on the call. That’s likely true, but the key ingredient here will be price. With companies like Motorola aggressively going after emerging markets with devices like the low-cost Moto G, BlackBerry won’t just have to contend with players like Nokia for the growing international market of low- to mid-range smartphone devices.

The new Foxconn devices will be manufactured at facilities in Mexico and Indonesia, and BlackBerry will retain all intellectual property associated with the devices and also do product quality assurance on devices coming off the line to make sure handsets live up to expectations. BlackBerry will recoup revenue from the sale of the devices, Chen said on the call, but it’ll also free up their in-house designers to work on “very high-end” devices aimed at developed markets.

“For the forseeable future, in North America, our designers will focus on enterprise handsets only,” Chen said about BlackBerry device strategy going forward. “Most of all I’m going to depend on Foxconn for consumer devices,” he added, noting that they’ll be working on consumer hardware not only for developing markets, but also for mature markets, too down the road. With this partnership, Chen said he hopes Foxconn will be working on hardware almost exclusively, leaving BlackBerry to concentrate on software.

Chen also noted on the call that he has “already held one in [his] hand,” referring to the first BB10 device from Foxconn, and went into surprising detail about the financial relationship between the two partners. BlackBerry will shoulder the cost of manufacturing by paying Foxconn direct once production spools up and costs are concrete, but offloads the financial charges associated with carrying inventory. It will reap the revenue from the sale of devices, and there’s a provision in the agreement whereby Foxconn starts to also take a portion of that revenue if it exceeds a certain amount.

It’s an interesting project, and it’s even more interesting that Chen is so forthright and transparent about exactly how it’s structured and how things are going to go down in terms of launch markets and timelines. He also noted that this is a deal that he inherited from outgoing BlackBerry leadership, but one that he believes is a good, strong plan. It definitely makes for a very different take on what BlackBerry becomes as a smartphone company, and it’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out once devices start making their way out to consumers.