Hasta La Gadget!

Smartphones are getting kind of popular nowadays, in case you hadn’t noticed. The latest figures from IDC show a 79.7 percent expansion of the global smartphone market between this time last year and today, which has resulted in 99.6 million such devices being shipped in Q1 of 2011. That growth has mostly been driven by Samsung, which has more than quadrupled its output to 10.8 million shipments in the quarter, and HTC, whose growth has been almost as impressive. The other big gainer is Apple, with 10 million more iPhones shipped, but the truth is that all the top five vendors are showing double-digit growth. In spite of Nokia losing a big chunk of market share and RIM being demoted from second to third in the ranking, both of those old guard manufacturers improved on their quarterly totals. IDC puts this strength in demand down to the relatively unsaturated smartphone marketplace, and believes there’s “ample room for several suppliers to comfortably co-exist,” before ominously adding, “at least for the short term.” And after the short term, our break-dancing robot overlords take over.

Update: IDC has also released data for Western Europe that shows Nokia has lost the top spot both in terms of smartphones, to Apple, and in terms of overall mobile phone shipments, to Samsung.

Continue reading IDC: smartphone market grows 80 percent year-on-year, Samsung shipments rise 350 percent

IDC: smartphone market grows 80 percent year-on-year, Samsung shipments rise 350 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 May 2011 04:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks about the future of Windows at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2011. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Microsoft has announced a partnership with Research In Motion. No, it’s not the end of the world — yet.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took the stage at RIM’s BlackBerry World on Tuesday to deliver the news: Microsoft’s Bing will be the new default tool for web search and map navigation on future BlackBerry devices.

“We’re going to invest uniquely into the BlackBerry platform,” Ballmer said at the conference. “I’ve never been more excited about where our future is going.”

Clearly, with the new search agreement, the two tech giants have their targets locked on Google.

The BlackBerry-Bing partnership marks the second major alliance that Microsoft has formed this year to strengthen its position in the mobile game. Previously, Microsoft and Nokia in February announced a partnership in which they agreed to ship future Nokia smartphones with Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system. The alliance symbolizes a radical break from the past, with Nokia laying to rest the Symbian operating system that it’s shipped on smartphones for several years.

Microsoft, Nokia and RIM each face shriveling market share in the mobile game. And perhaps to these companies, teaming up is the only way to prevent Apple and Google from completely gobbling up the mobile industry with their iOS and Android platforms, respectively.

Still, RIM’s partnership with Microsoft is bizarre. RIM has steadfastly shipped smartphones with its own proprietary operating system, without much meddling from third parties.

“Steve Ballmer at BlackBerry World?” said Michael Gartenberg, a Gartner analyst attending the BlackBerry conference. “It’s like being transported to an alternate universe.”

“It shows when it comes to mobile search, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Gartenberg added.

Though a search engine is just one component of a mobile experience, the BlackBerry-Bing alliance is a sign that Microsoft and RIM are aiming to pare down some of Google’s dominance, particularly in the search game.

Bing already has seen substantial growth in recent months. Microsoft in April surpassed a milestone with Bing powering 30 percent of all U.S. searches, according to research firm Hitwise. Incidentally, Google in March lost 3 percent of its search share, with 64 percent of U.S. searches.

See Also:

• Nokia Kills Symbian, Teams Up With Microsoft For Windows Phone 7 …
• Why Windows Phone 7 Will Make Android Look Chaotic
• 6 Survival Tips for Nokia and Microsoft

Nokia is joining the ever-growing in-demand tablet market, according to Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia Corp. He said that the company is planning to design a unique tablet. Here are Mr. Elop’s full comments.

We have a number of options in the tablet computing space given the changing strategy that we have. For example, we could take advantage of Microsoft technology and software and build a Windows-oriented tablet, or we could do things with some of the other software assets that we have. Our team right now is assessing what’s the right tablet strategy for Nokia how does that fit in

There are now over 200 different tablets on the marketplace, only one of them is doing really well. My challenge to the team is I don’t want to be the 201st tablet on the market that you cannot tell from all of the others. We have to take an uniquely Nokia prospective and so the teams are working very hard on something that would be differentiating relative to everything else that is going on in the market

While Nokia has yet to set a target date or even develop one, we can all take a look at what we can expect from it. Since Nokia has dropped Symbian, that leaves us just two natural choices Windows or MeeGo. However, Nokia seems confident that its tablet will be state of the art, which means that Android or Linux could be used.

Like we stated above, all of this news is just the start of it for Nokia. But it should be exciting to see how Nokia takes on Apple, along with Android in this tough market.

Via Xbit Labs

At last, Barnes and Noble is defending itself against the Microsoft lawsuit filed back in March claiming that B&N’s Android-based “e-reader and tablet devices” are infringing upon Microsoft’s IP. A portfolio strengthened significantly thanks to that little Nokia partnership. We’re not going to pick apart B&N’s response in detail. However, we’d like to focus on this little nugget of FUD asserted by Barnes and Noble’s legal team:

On information and belief, Microsoft intends to take and has taken definite steps towards making competing operating systems such as the Android Operating System unusable and unattractive to both consumers and device manufacturers through exorbitant license fees and absurd licensing restrictions that bear no relation to the scope and subject matter of its own patents.

Grrrowel. But B&N does make a good point about Redmond’s intentions. Microsoft has been repeating the mantra that Android is not free for awhile now. In fact, Steve Ballmer told CNN just last year that, “there’s nothing free about android… there’s an intellectual property royalty due on that whether [Google] happens to charge for that software or not.” A tack Microsoft (and Apple) has been keen to pursue through litigation with Motorola and a licensing deal with HTC. And this is only the beginning. Android: free like a puppy. Relive Steve’s immortal words in the video after the break.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble says Microsoft trying to make Android ‘unusable and unattractive,’ has a point

Barnes & Noble says Microsoft trying to make Android ‘unusable and unattractive,’ has a point originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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