Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia will report its fourth-quarter 2013 earnings tomorrow, a seminal moment for the company as the figures will represent the last full period in which it will own the hardware assets that it is selling to Microsoft.

It also matters as Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phone sales in the quarter will provide a report card of sorts for Microsoft. Given that Nokia makes and sells the vast majority of Windows Phone devices, its sales are proxy for the larger market for the phones. So if Nokia had a good quarter selling Lumias, Microsoft had a good quarter selling Windows Phones.

Microsoft will report its earnings later in the day.

Nokia sold 8.8 million Lumia devices in the third quarter of 2013. Given extant growth trends, we would expect Nokia to sell more phones in the fourth quarter. Add the simple fact that the period includes the holiday sales cycle, and we expect another bump. This means that Nokia should sell — easily — more than 10 million Lumia handsets in the quarter.

The stakes here are high for Nokia, given that it’s hard to win in this context, but very easy to lose. If it sells 11.5 million handsets instead of 11 I doubt people will laud it. But a weak number could cast a pall. The irony is that the asset in question is what the company is selling, so a negative result may not have as sharp an impact on its share price as it otherwise might.

Investors are expecting Nokia to earn around €0.08 ($0.11) in the quarter on revenue of €6.4 billion ($8.671 billion). It will be interesting to parse the company’s earnings as it intends to mark the assets it is selling as discontinued businesses. Nokia will dramatically change once it and Microsoft clear the final regulatory hurdles that sit between their consummation.

For the full-year period, Nokia is expected to earn €0.07 ($0.09) (on aggregate revenue of €23.7 billion ($32.11 billion) in revenue. That latter figure is a firm decline from its 2012 tally of €30.2 billion ($40.92 billion). And Nokia, selling off another chunk of revenue, is about to slim again.

So that’s that. Keep your eye on the Lumia number, as it matters for both firms.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

Right on top of the release of the Rose Gold color for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 for Verizon comes word that the Galaxy Note 3 “Neo” will be appearing … Continue reading

As smartwatches become a device category that most major hardware makers are turning their attention to, there’s a question of how much smartphone utility we’ll be able to translate to the wrist. One big convenience hurdle is making it possible to reply to texts and emails quickly from the wrist, and that’s where Minuum‘s go-anywhere software keyboard comes in.

The Minuum keyboard from Toronto-based startup Whirlscape is an alternative input method originally prototyped on smartphones that makes it easier to type naturally without using much of the screen. It launched previously in beta on Android, and has done well on smartphones, according to user reviews.

Whirlscape had always designed their keyboard to be usable on any number of connected devices, including wearables, the founders told me in the past. Today, they’ve got proof: As you can see in the video above, Minuum running on a Galaxy Gear smartwatch manages text input much more conveniently than you might imagine possible from a screen so small. It was filmed in a single take, too, according to the Minuum team, without any fancy camera tricks.

For now, Minuum says this is just an “in-house demo,” at least until Samsung opens up the Gear platform, but the company also tells me that it’s already in talks with other smartwatch manufacturers who can put the software on shipping devices “in the upcoming months.”

BlackBerry has an almost uncanny ability to not die when it’s been written off again and again. Today, the Pentagon has announced that it will install 80,000 BlackBerry handsets on its network by the end of January. According to Fox News, the new phones are part of the Pentagon’s “new mobile program for unclassified work.” BlackBerry’s shares soared 10% in midday trading on the news.

The Pentagon’s faith in BlackBerry gives the company the sort of credibility it needs to retain corporate clients and keep investors interested in its future — that it has one.

Today’s gains pushed BlackBerry temporarily north of the $10 per share mark. The company is trading at the time of writing a hair below that threshold. BlackBerry ended 2013 at $7.44, meaning it is up around 34% so far in 2014.

Given that we are less than a month into the year, that’s somewhat impressive.

BlackBerry has suffered from declining device sales, loss of corporate clients, and eroding mind share more than commensurate with its slipping unit volume. This Google Trends chart is telling, I think, showing the decline in interest in BlackBerry:

Blue: iPhone. Red: Android. Yellow: BlackBerry. Green: Windows Phone

But whether BlackBerry could carve out a niche away from the consumer space, vending its hardware and software to large clients was never a closed question. The Pentagon’s installation plan of new BlackBerry devices certainly keeps the dream alive.

Unless, of course, the Pentagon is making a poor buying decision and BlackBerry’s future remains as cloudy as widely thought.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

God help us. Phablets are officially a thing.

According to Juniper Research, phablets are expected to hit 120 million units shipped by 2018, up from the estimated 20 million phablets shipped last year (2013).

Samsung validated the trend with the super-sized Galaxy Note series, which has gone on to be surprisingly successful for the Korean electronics giant.

The growth in the space is obvious when you look at Samsung’s numbers.

With the first Galaxy Note, launched in late 2011, the company sold 2 million units in the first four months. Samsung’s most recent iteration of the device, the Galaxy Note 3, sold 5 million units in a week.

But Samsung isn’t the only company to push out giant phones. LG recently released the G Flex, with a giant, curved display, Nokia has the Lumia 1520 running Windows 8, and HTC has the One Max (to name a few).

Apple, on the other hand, doesn’t have a phablet per se. However, as phablets have grown in popularity, Apple has made slight changes to its products to accommodate these growing trends, such as the release of the iPad mini and the extension of the iPhone screen from 3.5 inches to 4-inches.

The term “phablets” rose to prominence over the past two years, connoting a tablet-smartphone hybrid. Juniper believes that the screen must be 5.6 inches to meet phablet requirements.

So we now know that phablets are here to stay. But riddle me this: Is “phablet” too popular a term to swap it out for “tablone?”