Boom in smartphones. Is their room for new players such as Dell?

On March 11, 2010, in Uncategorized, by rohit
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Smartphones are growing at a rapid speed in the mobile handset market. There are few evidences to back this statement.

The report of IDC says that the converged mobile device market has seen a growth of about 30 percent in 2009. The report also mentions that this growth momentum will continue even this year.
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Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, believes that the market for smartphones will split into high-end segment and low-end segment. He says that this is a trend that is speedly eroding the feature phones market.
The Yankee Group’s survey of 2009 had found about 43 percent of consumers of US plans to take smartphones their next mobile device.

Well, one question arises. Is is that all these reports is a gesture to smartphone market for new vendors?

If you look at the recent news of Palm and Garmin, it indicates that the market of smartphones is in fact not profit panacea that one would expect. According to Palm, the manufacturers is now expecting a full-year revenue going below what it had estimated earlier of $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion. The reports of Garmin is also similar. The company is till date “disappointed” with its nuvifone products sale. These can also give a jerk to new players in the market such as Dell, LG, Acer and other.

Ramon Llamas, analyst of IDC’s smartphone, said: “Instead of, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ it’s turned into, ‘If you build it, will they come?”

Lamas further mentioned that the two, Garmin and Palm, faced unique challenges. So far the marketing effort of Palm targeted the “Valentine’s Day” potential customers and not the traditional smartphone early adopters. He explained that Garmin suffered promotional scarcity and its ecosystem too much relied on interest in mapping and directions.

John Jackson, the CCS Insight analyst, said: “We knew that Palm would launch the Pre into the teeth of new flagship products (or revs of products in Apple’s case) from Apple, RIM, HTC and others.”

Jackson added further, “The same is true for Garmin, compounded by the issue of Google (and now Nokia) basically undermining the navigation proposition with freeware. Without a portfolio, a limited number of stock-keeping units (one in Garmin’s case and basically two in Palm’s case) are that much more likely to get lost in the mix. Apple is the exception, but that success story is well known at this point.”

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Social Networking sites access grew three times on mobiles in a year

On March 7, 2010, in News, by rohit
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Use of web browser enabled smartphones are rising everyday. Mobile users are using such phones to access the popular social networking sites on the go. This is one of the good indications that some of the day-to-day online services are extending beyond the PC.
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According to reports in the month of January this year, about 33 percent smartphone users accessed their favourite social networks websites with their mobile browsers. There has been seen a growth of 8 percentage as against last year in the same period, Web metrics firm ComScore confirmed recently.

In just one year the number of mobile phone users browsing Facebook grew by 112% and for other top social networking site Twitter it saw a jump of 347%.

Senior Vice President of mobile at ComScore Mark Donovan said, “Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web.”

He also added, “Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”

The measurement made by ComScore was only of smartphones and other mobile phones use through the handset browsers. This data does not reveal the 6 million phone users using only mobile applications.

According to the data of ComScore, more than 10 percent of mobile users have browser based handsets for connecting to the social network sites. This is an increase of about five percent in a year.

ComScore also revealed that over 25 million Facebook users use mobile browser to access it. It is twice of MySpace users. Since February last year the mobile users of Facebook has exceeded MySpace. Three months before Facebook surpassed MySpace and became the leading social network on internet. In January this year Twitter attracted 4.7 million mobile users.

In 2009 end 17% mobile phone users in United States used smartphones. This was 11% increase in the same period in 2008.

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Early preview of Dell Mini 5

On March 3, 2010, in Dell Mini 5, by rohit
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New details arrives of Dell’s Mini 5 tablet after an early preview of the device. The entry of the company seems of becoming successful in the tablet world. Even though the handset is having a 5-inch screen, 90 per cent larger than the smartphones, but it is easy to hold and the device is easily put in a pocket.

Persons who have tried to appreciate the Mini Five says the device is too big to be used for long time as only a phone.

In the pre-release state, the software of the Dell Mini 5 shows its preponderance as a tablet computer device over the phone features.

At the CES, the previewed model spotted and also what has been found in recent photos that there is a new taskbar-like layout in the device to move the application launcher, acts as a home screen switcher and also as notifications into separate sections. We found that the custom gallery application and the web browser of the device supports multi-touch, but it does not include the Google Maps in this feature. For instant messaging services Meebo is there and for all the Office document editing Quickoffice is pre-installed. The voice control of the device is controlled by Nuance.

The operating system is powered by Android 1.6 at present, but while shipping starts in spring Android 2.x will come preloaded. For social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter, basic widgets are pre-loaded.

There has been complaints regarding the keyboard of Mini 5. It is appreciated to be useful for thumbs but the landscape mode of the device is considered to be difficult to handle because the number pad requires the handset to be resting flat on a desk for comfortable use. Moreover, as the rival iPad can be used from any orientation, the Mini 5 provides landscape layout in only one orientation.

If we look to the hardware part then it is seen that the Snapdragon processor is fast. Since, the device has only 2GB of permanent space, so the storage may be a bit of problem.

The launching details have yet not been officially intimated, but it seems that if it is launched in similar time span to the rival iPad, it may offer lower price because of limited storage and smaller screen.

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Size, the question for Mini 5 and Apple iPad too

On March 2, 2010, in Dell Mini 5, by rohit
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The screen size of Dell’s Mini 5 is similar to a small kindle at 90 percent larger than smartphones with 3.5-inch screens. People may mess up it between a phone device and a kindle. It can be used as a reader and also a large Android phone device. With two cameras, it can be used as video conferencing as well as small enough to be used as a camera.
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If we talk about the iPad, it is too big to keep in your pocket with 10-inch screen. Yes, it can easily replace a kindle, but for this two factors are to be considered. First, a data plan and second, a power source to make it last to the duration which Kindle does. Not to forget, Kindle also comes with free lifetime data.

Dell Mini 5 has one biggest advantage over Apple iPad and that is its phone features. Moreover, even if the iPad had a camera, it would have been very big to use it as a camera.

Hence, in short it can be said, if I carry with me a smartphone, a laptop and also a Kindle then Dell Mini 5 is the perfect answer to it. It is similar to big iPhone, but more affordable. Even for many folks, larger screen on an iPhone could be a great help if one does not struggle with some small type.
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Analyst feels that to hit the price points, Apple crippled the iPad. Apple can be taken to granted that it can do better with back end, but here, if we talk just hardware to hardware, then Mini 5 has an advantage.

We shall not assume that iPad will fail. The big question is that whether a small product can replace a phone, the name of which is not a kind of embarrassment. Are the name of 5-inch product named Mini or a 10-inch product named iPad is a mistake?

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Dell developing OPhone OS-powered smartphones for Chinese market

On March 1, 2010, in News, by rohit
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In the coming few months OPhone OS-powered smartphones will hit the Chinese market. The OPhone OS i.e. the Open Mobile Phone Operating System was originally developed by the China Mobile for smartphones. The first OPhone OS that will hit the Chinese market will be the HTC-made OPhone A6188 device. It is one of the manufacturers out of many, including Dell.
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It is estimated that about twenty OPhone OS models will appear in the Chinese market this year. First time OPhone handsets were sold there was at the end of 2009 and it was on a limited basis only. China Mobile, one of the leading mobile operators in China, will be helping in boosting the awareness and demand of OPhone OS.

What is OPhone OS?

The OPhone OS files as a carrier-made Mobile operating system. This technology helps in integrating several carrier-specific features such as it will be supporting the mobile TV broadcasting services of China Mobile and the MMS service out-of-the-box. Apart from this, the OPhone OS mobile device is offered at an aggressive price point. Moreover, the OPhone OS will be breaking the old rules of handsets by bundling the device and the SIM card together.

Over 20 mobile manufacturers have been persuaded by China Mobile till now to create such handsets that run OPhone OS. Apart from Dell, the other manufacturers in the list are Lenovo Group, Huawei Technologies and TCL.

Dell has already started to engineer the OPhone OS devices. It in fact was aiming the US market. HTC and LG Electronics are also developing the OPhone OS-powered phones. However, one thing to remember here is that the Chinese market is already crowded when we talk about mobile. Let us wait and see whether the OPhone OS is able to make any impact in Chinese market with another mobile operating system.

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Dell Pharos Traveler 117 and 127 SmartPhones

On December 18, 2009, in Dell Pharos, by
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Due to a website mishap – some more sap pushed the wrong images or something  – Dell leaked a new line of Pharos branded smartphones. The Traveller 117 and 127, which will be made by Inventec, will rock 7.2Mbps HSDPA, GPS, Windows Mobile 6.1, 2MP camera (.3 front facing camera) and four hours of talk time (200 hour standby).  The 117 will feature a touch screen while the 127 will sport a full QWERTY keyboard (and a Blackberry like design).

Of note, Dell currently sells a number of Pharos PDAs/GPSes, some of which include the ability to make calls.

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