Gizmodoers, the holidays are upon us! And it’s a safe bet you’re either traveling somewhere, or waiting for people to travel to you this weekend. Either way, plenty of time to sit around and play with your phone. Here are some new toys to stuff your phone’s stocking.
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You like to mess with your phone? Unlock that bootloader and flash some ROMs? Soon there’ll be another option for would-be tinkers who want to run mods. Google just approved the first ever Android phone to run the ever-popular Cyanogenmod right out of the box.
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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.
BlackBerry announced its fiscal Q3 2014 results today, and the numbers aren’t pretty. The company revealed a whopping $4.4 billion GAAP-adjusted loss for the quarter, which includes a write-down on current inventory of around $1.6 billion. It “recognized revenue” on only 1.9 million BlackBerry handsets, compared to 3.7 million in the same period a year ago, but it also claims that it sold around 4.3 million BlackBerrys through to end customers it says, of which 3.2 million were BlackBerry 7 handsets. Whichever way you look at that, it’s not good.
BlackBerry stressed the growth of Enterprise Services, Messaging, and QNX Embedded OS in auto and cloud as high points, and noted a change in corporate structure in which those are given more equal weight against its Devices unit. And as for the Devices unit, BlackBerry announced a partnership with Foxconn that will span five years and kick off with a smartphone unit designed specifically for “Indonesia and other fast-growing markets in early 2014.”
This partnership could offload the majority of BlackBerry’s hardware inventory management duties to Foxconn, and Mexico is named as another early target for devices coming out of the arrangement. Essentially, it sounds much more like BlackBerry is making Foxconn a licensee with more or less full control over its smartphone division, while it continues to work on services and software in-house. It could be a good way to offload the risk and responsibility of handset production while still selling to its remaining market strongholds.
Earnings for this quarter were dismal, and missed already bleak analyst expectations. The company is in yet another transition phase as it looks to its new CEO John Chen to help it recover from the lasting damage done by the BlackBerry 10 launch and the very poor sales of Z10 and Q10 handsets. No one expected them to do well this time around, but a $4.4 billion loss is over four times what it suffered even last quarter, so it’s clear that changes at the faltering company have just begun.
[Illustration: Bryce Durbin]
It always seems like the flagship phones get the most attention, but what about a device that doesn’t even bother trying to claim that title? Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside has been saying for months that one of the company’s priorities was to improve the experience of using a low-cost smartphone, and the end result of drive was the cheapo Moto G.
So how did Motorola do? Well, as long as you set your expectations appropriately before taking the plunge, you’ll find a lot to love here. The lack of LTE is a bummer for you North American types, but the Snapdragon 400 chipset nestled inside keeps things moving along at a respectable pace and the battery will run for days and days on a single charge. Purists may not be too keen on the sorts of oversaturated screens that Motorola seems so fond of but hey, you can’t with ‘em all.
Long time listeners of the Droidcast will know that it’s very rare for me and Darrell to see eye to eye on, well, anything, but we came together just this once to give the Moto G a pair of Flys.
This week the most powerful camera phone on the planet – so to speak – has recieved a software update from Microsoft. The Nokia Lumia 1020 with its beastly back-facing … Continue reading
This week the team at CyanogenMod – a real-deal company now, mind you – have revealed that they’ve attained a second round of major funding from new funders Andreessen Horowitz … Continue reading
MyGlass, an app that pairs Google Glass with iOS devices
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After a long day in front of the computer, the ads in a paper magazine can seem a little flat. Where’s the interaction? Where’s the content? Moto is filling that gap with this cool full-page magazine advertisement that lets you pick your favorite Moto X color with the push of a button. Just like the internet!
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The folks responsible for devices like the MX, MX2, and MX3 inside China are letting it be known this week that they’ll soon enter the USA. As we saw all … Continue reading
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