Mobile Phones

Apple iPhone 3G has second place in the U.S. mobile phone sales, leaving forward only the main bestseller Motorola RAZR V3, reported research agency The NPD Group.

Apple iPhone 3G helped win a good share of the U.S. market. So, until this device was release sales of iPhone smartphones on the market was at 11%, and after the launch of iPhone 3G Apple gained 17% of the market. Benefits had received the mobile operator At&T, whose services are used by the owners of iPhone: 30% of iPhone 3G buyers from June to August connected to At&T.

It is noteworthy that the American people chose a rather interesting model of «smart phones» - according to NPD, from June to August 2008 most smartphones have been sold by Apple iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl and Palm Centro.

According to the company Nanoradio, it created the world’s first chipset, which supports both 3G and UMA at once.

In the near future will be produced mobile phones based on this chip. Samsung P270 is said to be the first. Also another phone - Samsung P250 for 2,5 G-networks with support for UMA. Both devices will be sold in Europe early next year.

UMA - Unlicensed Mobile Access - can receive calls in the area of Wi-Fi coverage. Herewith a continuous shift caller from the GSM into a zone of Wi-Fi and vice versa. Earlier, development mobile phones with the function of UMA, was slowed down, as it was considered that it will be unattractive to buyers.

Quite a long time there were rumors that Sony Ericsson is going to cut up to 2000 jobs, but has long remained unconfirmed, where exactly will it happen. The restructuring, which is symptomatic, began with North American offices in North Carolina, where by the end of the week will be cut 450 jobs.

The fact that such unpopular measures will be carried out, the leaders of Sony Ericsson reported yet in the middle of the summer. This decision relates to the large losses suffered by the company for the first half of 2008. To come out of the difficult situation the company has developed a new development scheme, under which 2,000 jobs will be cut.

It should be noted that staff reductions begin in North America, where the company has a very weak position. Apparently, Sony Ericsson acknowledged one more time its inability to get better sales resutls in the massive U.S. market - which is pretty good news, by the way, for the Korean company LG.

LG Electronics announced that worldwide sales of series of phones LG Prada had reached one million units. In March 2007, when the phone LG Prada first appeared in the market, he was quite widely accepted as a phone, which combines design and technology, including touch screen with advanced interface.

Also, Korean manufacturer has announced that with demand in the market, LG and Prada intend to continue cooperation, planning to release a new phone model of LG Prada, which will appear in the European market in the fourth quarter of 2008.

source lge.com

Difficult situation in the market of flash memory is observed as SanDisk (major memory producer) is in rather dangerous situation - the day before was confirmed information that Samsung has proposed for Taiwan’s company only $5.8 billion

SanDisk has rejected the proposal. Chairman of the Board of Directors Eli Harari said: «We think the proposal of Samsung does not reflect the value of our portfolio with its products and services, our leadership in the market of flash memory».

According to Samsung, «over the past 52 weeks the world has changed considerably - and this can be seen against the backdrop of disappointing results of the same Samsung». According to a Korean company, the market of NAND-memory will not recover in short term, and SanDisk have to use the huge money to stay afloat.

Increased competition in the market of memory led to a sharp drop in margins of companies that produce flash modules.

We keep following news from Greepeace expters what concerns mobile industry and now Greenpeace presented «Green Guide of electronics industry», which reflects realities about how companies relate to the issue of cleaner production. This rating is based on data for use poisonous materials in producation, optimizing energy use and waste management industry.

First place in the ranking has Nokia, which got 7 points on the scale of «green» of the 10 possible, mostly due to the fact that since 2005 has been producing phones in which PVC is not used. In second place comes Samsung with five points, which since November 2007 produces LCD panels without polyvinyl chloride.

At the very bottom of a ranking table is Microsoft, Sharp and Nintendo. Nintendo received zero score for almost all criterias, except for the optimization of chemical elements.

SRS Labs in cooperation with CSR report of new technology developed to significantly improve sound quality for conversation with the Bluetooth-headset. Software PureSpeech, using technology, Clear Voice Capture (CVC) developed by CSR for the new line of DSP-processor BlueCore, allows you to weed out the majority of noise transmitted through the microphone headset, along with voice: especially a problem in a noisy street.

The idea is that the new model suite, equipped with the chip BlueCore, will use software algorithms PureSpeech, which will provide better sound quality in conversation. It is supposed that the soft will be installed as a firmware update, or SRS Labs will create a special soft for all popular mobile platforms.

New soft created by SRS Labs and CRS is planned to be released to the market in the first quarter of 2009.

For those of you wandering if Napster still exists Best Buy has the perfect answer. Best Buy acquired Napster for $121 million.

Best Buy is going to pay $67 in cash while the rest will be paid by Q4 of this year. Why 67 mil in cash?

Moving on then, Best Buy is going to get Napster’s 700,000 digital entertainment subscribers which is not to bad. Best Buy’s president Brian Dunn said he wants to use “Napster’s capabilities and digital subscriber base to reach new customers with an enhanced experience for exploring and selecting music and other digital entertainment products over an increasing array of devices.”

 via mobilewhack.com

The world’s first wooden VoIP phone is the PAPPA*PHONE, made by Furni in Montreal for Hulger.

It is made from American walnut and brass, the PAPPA works with Skype and all other VoIP with Mac and PC via USB.

Source says that no software installation required, and hey, no buttons - this Hulger phone is as sleek as it gets, as the functions of the computer interface replace the buttons and phone-screen menu.

Each phone is handmade to order from one piece of wood. The design has been conceived to “wear in” not wear out, so this phone will only get better with use.

via designcentre.ru

SD Card Association (SDA) announced new standard for SD cards - Embedded SD. It is aimed to enhance the existing standard SD in the field of built-in memory, potentially, it would double the total amount of memory for portable devices.

Embedded SD is designed for use in mobile devices of various kinds: phones, communicators, etc. specifications are compatible with the already well-known interfaces, SD/SDHC (SD 2.00). Maximum capacity of Embedded SD will be 32 GB.

As the SDA reports, flash drives of Embedded SD will be different with there compact sizes, low power consumption and functionality. All these features are the best suited for mobile devices.

The final version of the specification Embedded SD will appear in November.

source sdcard.org

According to the ReadWriteWeb, Communicator Palm Centro is in the top five mobile devices in the U.S., through which runs the largest amount of Internet traffic.

At the end of August, Palm Centro is in second place. Only managed to overtake his rival Blackberry Pearl 8100, and, literally throughout the month of the device went lvl.

Third place took Blackberry 8300, the fourth - iPhone, and the fifth - Samsung Instinct.

ReadWriteWeb also notes that, despite the fact that 62% of all the world Internet traffic goes through devices of Nokia, in the U.S. Nokia is not even the top twenty. iPhone in August had the fastest growing indicators: it almost caught up with the Blackberry 8300 and soon, perhaps this ambitious smartphone will be in third place.

Greenpeace in its last report praised the work done by Apple to remove toxic substances from the new generation iPod players.

Representatives of the organization are convinced that the latest update of player is much “greener” than previous versions. Moreover, this experience once again confirms that safe for the environment can be even popular gadgets, tech rich and accessible.

Greenpeace also expressed the hope that Apple will not end up with this. The next step should be the company’s “cleaning” of other products: laptops, computers, etc. In addition, Apple should have a free recycling of devices of own production in the future international system.

ABI Research suggested significant sales growth in the segment of touch screen devices in the next year: total profit from sales of these devices (mobile phones, players, MID, UMPC, etc.) will be $5 billion.

According to a study in 2007, the number of touch screen gadgets sold  increased by 91% over 2006. In addition, this year sales growth should increase even more.

Research Agency connects significant growth of interest in devices with touch-displays with the release of Apple iPhone.

In the lastest statistical observations of Gartner, the global market for smartphones grew by 16%, in which the greatest role has the mobile market is the United States. The amount of total sales in the second trimester of 2008 amounted to 32.2 million devices.

In the market of Symbian smartphones - Nokia devices still occupy a leading position (47.5%), but its sales growth declined noticeably compared with competitors.

According to Gartner, in order to maintain competitiveness, Nokia needs to promote and release new N-series models, as well as focus on the upgrade of already existing popular smartphones.

Apple’s share fell almost by twice. Analysts explain this with expectations of consumers of new 3G devices.

Motorola has suffered a devastating defeat in the Chinese market - one of the most important in terms of mass consumer demand. According to the EJL Wireless Research, a U.S. company moved to third place in the ranking of the largest suppliers of GSM-phones, leaving forward Samsung.
Nokia remains far ahead.

Demand for GSM and CDMA phones of Motorola continues to fall down as a rock - the level of sales compared to 2006 fell by almost 75%, and no signs of imminent “recovery”. For Motorola Chinese market is a priority - seeing large number of models virtually exclusive for Celestial.

It is expected that by the results of 2008, LG may pass Motorola to take third place in the world’s “report card on the Ranks”.

The U.S. company currently is under painful transformation.