Dispatches From The Battlefield - Some Digital Jamboree Notes from various Smartphone Makers

Lets do some updates from the smartphone wars bloodbath battlefieds of the Digital Jamboree. As we await the final numbers from Gartner (the other three: IDC, Strategy Analytics and Canalys have already published their Q2 total count of smartphones sold/shipped) we have plenty of interesting news. Where should we start? Lets start with the Sammy..

SAMSUNG STRONG, STRONGER, STRONGEST

So Samsung believes in the exact opposite of 'only one iPhone for everyone' haha.. Did you think the Galaxy series was not diverse enough with massive screens, pico projectors, slider QWERTY keyboards and discount versions? Latest evidence? In-built TV tuner! The fifth biggest mobile network in the USA, MetroPCS has just started to sell the Samsung Galaxy S Lightray 4G, yes with built-in TV tuner. Not analog TV tuner, as US analog TV broadcasts were shut down, yes, this has digital TV built-in. And its the free digital TV type, not the subscription service (that shut down as commercially unviable in the USA). They released the Galaxy Lightray smartphones in time for the Olympics. You think this is weird or silly? Don't. More than half of all mobile phones sold in Japan and South Korea have in-built digital TV tuners already - they were introduced midway in the past decade. So again, the USA lags Japan and South Korea in handsts by what, seven years?

And while I am on Sammy, then their evil Bond-villainesque world domination plot for the Galaxy series? Now they offer to buy your existing smartphone, whatever it is, and give you money for it. You don't need to hand it in when you buy your Galaxy, they let you do your file and phone number transfers, etc, and then when you are done with the old smartphone, almost any model will do, iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias, and Samsung will accept it via online form, and send it in, they send you the money. Its not as much money as you'd earn from selling your used smartphone on eBay, but its good money nonetheless. This will no doubt further help those wanting to switch to the Galaxy but recently bought a smartphone and feel they don't want to 'waste' that investment.

ALL QUIET ON THE iPHONE FRONT

Meanwhile how's our iPhone? No news. The expectation is that somewhere in mid September we'll know about what will be in the iPhone 5. The strongest rumor suggests the screen size will grow to 4 inches, based on stories from Japan from Sharp, who is apparently contracted to manufacture the iPhone 5 screens. But nothing else really to report from the iPhone front.

BLACKBERRY 10 COMING

So the RIM news is that yes, they had actually considered going Android, but decided no. The new CEO Thorsten Heins has poked fun of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop now many times, including announcing that the Blackberry platform is not on fire. And the target date for Blackberry 10 launch is January of 2013. Cannot come soon enough for RIM. Meanwhile more turbulence at RIM, Hampus Jacobsson, a top Blackberry 10 designer leaves the company.

NOKIA NOKIA, DEAR DEAR NOKIA

And the Nokianews is of course, as expected, all bad news - or weird news. Nokia in a classic case of putting lipstick on a pig means its still a pig - they have literally released a nail polish in the pink color of the Lumia series. Yeah. After the smartphone is Osborned and dead, you now try to sell it to unsuspecting 'dumb blonde' type of women who would rather have their nail polish match their smartphone, than care that it signals they picked the wrong smartphone? I think this was a 'bold' idea that should have been killed before it got to the commercial stage, especially after Nokia heard that the whole Lumia series would be Osborned by Microsoft.

We hear that the US retail price of the Lumia 900 has been lowered again from 49 dollars to 19 dollars. AT&T who had been quoted being so excited about how supposedly well the Lumia initially was selling, has refused to give an actual Lumia series sales number - but were happy to report their iPhone sales number for Q2. That should tell us something. 

And on those silly rumors we had two months ago, that somehow Windows was outselling the iPhone in China? Ha-Ha-Ha. .We have Canalys numbers now for Q2. Not even close. Not even nearly close. Not even far. Oh, and Canalys counted 2.5 million Nokia smartphone sales in China in Q2, while my estimate said 2.9 million in 'Greater China' as Nokia reports in its quarterly data. Pretty close, eh? When adjusted to report the same region, the two numbers are within 5% of each other. So whose your daddy eh? Do I know my numbers? And.. who told you first? Does this blog give you value?

Why is the Nokia market share crashing? I Told you, it is because of retail refusing to sell Nokia smartphones, ever since the Elop Effect. Global reaction against Nokia. And some of the regular readers of this blog continued to feud with me, even after Nokia CEO himself admits the retail problem. Do we need more evidence? Today Business Week reports that once again, this problem is real. A Manhattan AT&T store had no Lumia to even show a customer and never mentioned it as a choice. This, after AT&T had made the Lumia launch the biggest spending AT&T had ever used to promote a new phone model (combined with Nokia's biggest spend ever - 3x the money Nokia had previously used to luanch a new phone, and added to that, Microsoft's enormous spend to add to the lot). That was only a few months ago. Now? Jo Harlow the boss of Nokia handsets tells Business Week "I don’t want to characterize the retail sales associates as if it’s an insurmountable challenge..." Yes. Obviously it is a challenge yes. A horrible, huge, massive and global challenge yes. A very very tough climb that Nokia faces everywhere thanks to the idiot CEO. But Harlow bravely says the problem is 'not insurmountable.' Just perhaps the toughest climb in all of mobile haha.. 

Business Week tells us - in a major Manhattan store of AT&T - no Lumia whatsoever, and the sales guys - ignore this brand altogether. I told you, this is what is killing Nokia, the retail refusal to sell Nokia smartphones, reported in countless press stories from China to the UK; and devastatingly, from the home of Nokia, Finland to the home of Microsoft, the USA. Yes. Today. Business Week reports Manhattan AT&T store: No Lumia even on offer.

Meanwhile back in Europe, Nokia Germany is offering a 50 Euro refund check (about 70 US Dollars) - to various retail outlets including Ikea - for anyone who purchased a Lumia 800 or 900 in Germany. 

In the Nokia corporate news, the story broke that Lenovo might be looking to buy Nokia - that rumor was addressed by Lenovo's European boss (but not Lenovo corporate HQ out of China) who called it laughable. Nonetheless, the Nokia share price crash stalled and recovered strongly on the rumor, which may now bring in the real vultures and start the bidding war on the dead giant. I wrote my deep analysis of who all might be interested in bidding for Nokia and what parts, and why.

In the firing department, Nokia shuts down the Qt development unit in Australia which signals that the whole Qt developer tools part of Nokia may be shut down. Again, this would be a competitive advantage for Nokia against all smartphone makers, and a strong 'ecosystem' component of a Nokia intent on winning in smartphones - but the only reason a Nokia CEO would shut down the Qt developer environment is that this is in Microsoft's best interest, not Nokia's. Remember, Nokia still in Q2 sold more Qt compatible smartphones (ie Symbian and MeeGo based) than all Lumia Windows smartphones, and Nokia's featurephones running S40 were supposed to be made compatible to Qt as well. Elop prefers to destroy and burn his platforms rather than pursue Nokia's best interests. (obligatory Anti-Elop comment here - Elop is the worst CEO of all time, has personally destroyed Nokia, and must be fired immediately)

Then to those burned platforms. Did you remember a platfrom called Symbian, which still in 2010 sold more than all iPhones and all Blackberries - combined? Which still today is bigger in global users than all iPhones and all Blackberries, combined? Which is second only to Android by installed base today? Which many call obsolete, yet delivered such a superphone that the world's biggest telecoms event, the Mobile World Congress just this Spring awarded Nokia the best phone of the event award to the 808 Pureview, a phone with such hot tech, that for example the latest edition of Windows Phone cannot even support the tech? That Symbian.. 

Yes, news comes from Finland that the 808 Pureview demand in Finland is far outstripping supply. Various Finnish handset outlets from network stores to independent stores say that they are in short supply or out of 808 Pureviews. Nokia's spokesperson Tapani Kaskinen told Finnish television broadcaster MTV3 that "Nokia has been very satisfied with the demand of the 808 Pureview, and that the company has not been able to deliver enough of the phones to match demand. The problem is not a component shortage or any other production issue, simply that Nokia underestimated the demand for this phone model." (translation is mine, original story by MTV3 is here in Finnish)

So what do we learn? While Nokia CEO Stephen Elop pushes the undesirable and unwanted (and now even Osborned) Lumia series, with massive price cuts, refund payments and - a custom nail polish line - his better-selling Symbian all by itself still produces highly desirable smarthones. And due to Elop's mismanagement, while Nokia smartphone unit is unprofitable, this highly profitable superphone is not being sold properly!

HTC VANISHING PROFITS

HTC has reported that they see a huge fall in the current quarter profits. So the HTC series is undesirable, has to be sold at big discounts. This while their sales are falling, while running on Android that is massively growing. How is it that Samsung can produce massive growth and profits with Android smartphones, and HTC is spectacularly unable to replicate that? It does not compute in my book..

GOOGLE 100 M ANDROIDS

And Google has passed a huge milestone. They now are activating over 100 million Androids per quarter. Even after you remove the modest numbers of Android tablets, that means that the Google Android ecosystem activates one million Android smartphones - every single day of every month, Saturdays and Sundays included. Wow. So Android has passed over 60% market share already. Truly massive!

So that is what was on my mind today, looking at the smartphone battles. I also think we are nearing the end of bothering to monitor this part of mobile, the end-game is pretty well clear, Samsung and Google have run away with the dominating positions. Apple iPhone has secured a safe second place. The rest is fought by surprisingly weak entrants to the third place, considering how strong some of them were as recently as a year to 18 months ago (HTC, RIM, Nokia, Microsoft, LG etc). So I am expecting to end the deep Bloodbath analysis series every quarter, by the end of the year. The details of the minnows of this space don't really warrant the attention.. But lets still monitor the Digital Jamboree to the end of the year and decide then..

Comments

[John Phamlore]

Tomi,
Given your continual praise for Symbian, one would naturally feel anger towards those who within Nokia had their own agenda and killed off this OS in favor of their own. Unfortunately for you, those zealots were in fact proponents of Linux not any Microsoft OS.

You must surely know these zealots attempted to destroy at least $400 billion of value in Apple by trying to get Apple to trash Apple's OS heritage in favor of Linux:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/scott-forstall-the-sorcerers-apprentice-at-apple-10122011.html

That which became Symbian never had the full support of Nokia. Yet still every time there was a technical hurdle, a relatively small team could work miracles. According to Wikipedia "Much of the credit for EKA2 goes to a single Symbian kernel engineer, who began the project as an experiment many years before it became an official part of Symbian OS."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EKA2

Microsoft didn't make Nokia ally with Intel supporting WiMAX and thus angering its one potential ally in the US, AT&T. Microsoft didn't make Nokia waste its time on WiMAX instead of acquiring the IP to be able to one day produce a LTE wireless radio so that Nokia could serve the future US smartphone market; instead surrendering to Qualcomm in 2008 losing the patent battle and now being forced to use a Qualcomm SoC solution. Microsoft didn't make Nokia place political hurdles against Symbian development for years, in effect declaring a burning platform memo for a decade for a failed transition to Linux. Microsoft didn't make Nokia waste about five years trying to develop a GTK/Gnome-based UI only to give up and buy Trolltech and change direction to Qt.

All of Nokia's wounds are self-inflicted, started at least by 2002, pre-date Elop, and are caused by its decision to obsolete what was to be come Symbian in favor of Linux.

[Buttface Elop]

Elop's intention with the 808 PureView is obvious. He already did it with the N9.

The reason he didn't stop these two products from being manufactured is simply the fact that he wanted to create a hype with these two. Since both devices were absolutely standing out of the crowd, they happened to have positive critics everywhere. By using the same look for the Lumia as it was used for the N9, he thought people would be stupid enough to go and buy that "hyped" phone. But they were not. The were able to differentiate the N9 from the cheap, design theft committing Lumia 800.
Now the same with the 808 PureView. But this time, it's the word PureView that got the hype. And that's why he made only a little number of 808 PureView to generate the hype and make the PureView brand become popular. Next step will be a cheap Lumia with PureView. But again, people can differentiate and will find out, that PureView on Lumia will not be the same PureView as seen on the 808 PureView.

[Matthew Raymond]

Some of the HTC One series phones would be able to compete with the Samsung Galaxy SII and III if they had a MicroSD card slot. Instead, they're pushing cloud storage, which is a poor choice for the US market where people have limited data plans and weaker privacy laws that the EU.

[kdt]

@Baron95 --almost right, but in Social Media you have Twitter.

[vvaz]

@john

What killed Nokia was very inflexible attitude towards Symbian. I was observing Nokia struggles starting in 2007 from Maemo sidelines and it was constant battle of small group of hackers against Symbian stronghold.
Yes, GNOME was a dead-end (mainly because GNOME developers refused to allow some changes necessary for mobile devices to go upstream, forcing Nokia to keep its own fork of parts of environment or using sub-optimal solutions) but even when Nokia saw the light and bought Trolltech it ended not with one unified platform but something which was essentially special, separate version of Qt for Symbian.
Even despite all those adversities small group of people inside of Nokia was able to produce N9. Without Symbian related obstacles they could deliver it at least one year earlier, and without Elop (he started to cut Maemo projects well before Feb 11) on Spring of 2011 it would be second generation device - maybe this time with proper hardware.

[elm70]

@baron95

LOL

For your theory, winner take all

So, iOS & Android are the winners

All others are dead or will die :-P

So you beloved WPhone is dead from your post here

Tchuss

E_lm_70

Ps: is Japan the most advanced market for smartphone? If yes, the from gs.statcounter there is already 50% market for iOS, 50% Android, and the other below 0.1% market

[Former Symbian Evangelist]

Tomi, is the 808 potentially even a bigger hit than the N9? With the N9, there were very few markets that sold it after initially saying they will not. For the 808, markets such as USA, UK and others have been forced to make it available "unlocked" even though this was not initially planned.

[jack1059]

Again to I I can't help but agree. In depth analysis is hard to disagree with. On the nokia front I walked into my local best buy the other day and noticed that the lumia 900 was missing from the display phones. Replaced by a Samsung gs3. And again, I wonder wtf is the board of nokia thinking? The CEO is clearly working for Ms. But the board. A truly sad case of industrial sabotage on a scale never before seen in corporate history.

[jack1059]

For the prediction end of it. I agree. Android and iPhone as 1and 2, with blackberry 3. Why blackberry? They chose the right independent ecosystem / os approach. Combine that with security features, the fact that no one really trusts ms. Nokia is a dead man walking. And who else do you have at 3? Blackberry. Unless they monumentaly screw up bb10, which I don't see them doing. They might, but they look like they are moving carefully with it, which is a good sign.

[Asko]

@Baron95 "Microprocessors: Intel, AMD and ARM Licensees. All others (Motorola, National, Sun-spark, IBM Power PC, etc) dead."

For example PowerPC is not dead. It is very strong on the console markets (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii), remote management boards/cards on servers and other embedded solutions.
IBM makes still many different servers (IBM Power Systems) with PowerPC.

And Oracle and Fujitsu still make SPARC servers and supercomputers. Even MIPS is still used on embedded world and network solutions.

They may be dead on desktop but otherwise they are kicking well.

[Spawn]

@John Phamlore

> Linux not any Microsoft OS

Actually Smbian and MeeGo formed one ecosystem and the plan was to integrate S40 there too.
The logic is simple: Make all 3 stronger with a shared eco-system. Ever wonder Qt for Android was done and made it upstream? Yes, that was in Nokia's best interest.

Elop was correct on one thing (but I doubt it was hin coming up with that): Its a war of ecosystems and not of platforms.
Nokia had platform #1 and they tried to decouple the market share from the platform so they could easily offer S40, Symbian, MeeGo and maybe even Android while using the same ecosysten on all of them. There very own ecosystem. Something nobody else did and still does not offer.

Symbian was not in competition with MeeGo. They where partners through the ecosystem. They could have made each other stronger. A win-win situation for Symbian, MeeGo and for Nokia.

> Symbian never had the full support of Nokia

If you believe that full support means only focus on Symbian and kill of all alternates like happened with WinPhone then, yes, it.did not had that full support since that was not the plan.

The plan was about the ecosystem with Symbian, MeeGo and S40 participating there. That was what had full support (Qt IS the preferred Symbian development framework for thay reason) until Elop.

> Nokia place political hurdles against Symbian development for years

If you happen to dislike Qt and the ecosystem-strategy but prefer something else then yes. Otherwise Symbian got a great development framework pairing up with MeeGo to form the all-winning ecosystem.
Symbian was included, no a focus-point, on the ecosystem-strategy from the beginning.

> declaring a burning platform memo for a decade for a failed transition to Linux.

The transition was not about replacing Symbian with MeeGo.
The transition was moving away from a platform-focus to an ecosystem-focus and Symbian and developers was.not only included in that it was central.
Symbiab was number #1 and they saw its decreasing. Slowly but still decreasing its position. So, the plan was to transition the number #1 position from the platform to the ecosystem and wxpand it to other platforms to make all of them stronger, not bind the success of the company to a single platform but have options and offer more then one to fullfit market demand whatever that demand is or may become.
The ironie is that this was a winning-strategy and it was all done and rwady to be executed. But Elop decided to abort, go with all-in-one and not Symbian but the (then unproven and as we swe now not ready to compete) WinPhone. He did an U-turn doing everything different and he for surw failed with that (as numbers prove). If you drive opposite direction of the winning-street you are in the losing-street. Simple, easy, clear.

[Spawn]

@Buttface Elop

Indeed its Elops intention to bring out a Lumia Pureview. He already say "the technology will live on" meaning not on Symbian but on our new WP8 Lumia.

But that was not why N9 and Pureview came to market. Elop tried to prevent the N9 from coming to market. But luckely the previous management made atrong contracts with Intel so they had to produce two phones and deliver one to customers. That could not have been undone so easily. But they tried succeasful to limit the impact it had by naming it dead before, not offering it in most markets and keeping as silent as possible about it.
Elop himself tried to prevent the Pureview from coming to the US and inly later gave up once the demand was stronger then his stand in Nokia. That says us something about Elop's stand and the mistrust he has in the BOD. After all the BOD may sleep bit they are not dead (yet).

So, yes, Nokia will offer Lumia WP8 with Pureview. No doubt.

@Tomi

There is one topic I am missing in this article. The unexpected success of the Google Nexus 7.
That is a tablet, from Google and its selling like hot cake.

Google finally made it to have Andeoid on Tablets a success too. That is huge cause so far the tablet-market is what Apple dominates but not any longer it seems.
There is also those ohya (or however its named) game console running Android which looks promising. That means Android may become a serious competition for Pkaystation, xbox and Nintendo soon too.

If it continues that spead Andeoid becomes a central platform and ecosystem for all kind of technology devices.
The only thung missing right now are desktops. Anyone like ti predict when Google is going to offer Android for x86 on desktops? I think latest end of 2013 but very likely sooner.

[Spawn]

@Baron95

> RIM or Nokia

RIM does one thing very different to Nokia that give them, in my opinion, a much better point to start at. BB10 is not a new ecosystem from scratch. Android apps are running there, Qt apps are running there. That gives them an ecosystem bridge to Android and Symbian in a similar way MeeGo would have been. Surr, its still a new device/OS from just one single maker unlike WP8 which will have different manufactors, different device-offers. But then bringing an Android app to BB10 or bringing a Symbian app to BB10 is rather easy. That gives them a huge advantage over brand-new Metro (please do not argue about WP7 ecosystem since there was and is no).

You can see the fruits of RIM's Android and Symbian bridge already today with the Playbook. There are far more high-quality Android and Symbian apps in the Playbook market then native apps made for the Playbook. The collection of apps and hence possibilities is impressive. The playbook itself is not. What they need is acctractive hardware, cheap hardware, a wide range of offers. I find it an eyeopener the CEO does try to partner to address that.

From a pure strategy point of view RIM does better then Nokia and I would expect they will do better in the future cause of that too. They wil very likely not be able to come close to Android or Apple but I think they will be able to keep a decent market share ebough to make profit again.

That is unlike Nokia which, as one of many WP8 resellers, has to compete against the other WP8 offers in a brand new ecosystem without any bridges.

2013 becomes the year that will show us how these strategies compare to each other. I may wrong and maybe Nokia is able to win huge again whild RIM continues ti fall but I somehow doubt that but think the opposite will happen.

[AtTheBottomOfTheHilton]

@Spawn

RIM is doing the right thing here, creating their own operating system. As you said BB10 will be everything Meego would have been. The BB10 preview, the Playbook OS is very nice in terms of user experience. Also the Playbook multitasking is the best I've seen, Symbian user will feel right at home here. Another thing I like is that you can close applications by default, unlike Android.

RIM is creating something of their own and all that effort will pay off. Nokia tries to do the opposite, do nothing of their own and that will eventually make them poorer.

I expect RIM to get good reviews once BB10 is released and many Symbian users will move over to RIM. That third ecosystem will be BB10, that also include Android apps.

[John Phamlore]

Tomi,
Given your mentioning of Nokia's IP, the following yes-no question is vitally important to understanding Nokia's current position and future possibilities:
Does Nokia have both the IP and the industry alliances to produce "worldwide" LTE wireless chips like Qualcomm is claiming it will be able to do, chips that can function not only across the two major US carriers AT&T and Verizon but perhaps even China's own version of LTE, as well as other major markets?

I would argue there is no evidence that Nokia could ever have actually produced such a chip even if it had never hired Elop. And if Nokia could not have produced such a chip, if Qualcomm did not sell Nokia the solution, Nokia was dead in the high-end smartphone market in a few years, and their Board of Directors would have known that. Even if Nokia had the wireless IP, it would have had to invest in its European fab partners to equal the die shrinkage that Qualcomm can get from TSMC. (TSMC has enough problems apparently supplying just Qualcomm and Nvidia.)

[Spawn]

@AtTheBottomOfTheHilton

> RIM is doing the right thing here, creating their own operating system.

Yes, it is. They own that platform, control it and can move forward on it whereever there focus will be.

But I also think partnering with others would help them a lot. RIM indeed.needs and will focus on e.g. business customers, on high end.
With an own OS that is to much focused. They need more devices, more fields. Someone who can and likes to focus more on the lower and mid segments, the mass markets.
That the CEO sees that and is trying to make that happen is a very good sign. I think they will find partners and are able to spread that OS that platform.

> As you said BB10 will be everything Meego would have been.

That is not what I meaned or wrote. The N9 was just one device of many running MeeGo that would have hit market.
Nokia was not only able to do what RIM cannot do, a large segment of all kind of.devices and offers, but that was there core capability. Noone was to do that like Nokia. They alone.could have made MeeGo a success in terms of market share.

RIM can not. They are rather focused and I do not see them in a position like Apple to cut with just 1-2 products a large piece of the market share cake. Nokia btw failed on that too (one Lumia, how stupif for someone like Nokia). The times RIM was able to get huge market shares with a limited offer are gone once and forever.
But they dont need to. RIM can make money and profit witg a smaller market share too. As we see with Android vs Apple the market share is not.in direct relation to the profit. That means you just need to have the more profitable part of the.cake rather then the largest one. That is where RIM focus on unlike Android and unlike WinPhone (Apple is in between and they really are amazing on that, unique, impressive).

BUT to get momentun and nake the overall platform acctractive and accelerate adoption, investment, grow (faster) you also need to look for the size of your cake, of the different segments. What does it helo that "all" Android apps run on your platform but you do not have anytging more to offer Android does not have too? Symbian apps work on Android too, developers reach more users/customers on Android, that (and iOs) is where the money is.
Someone may bring there Android d apps to BB10 too but how many target BB10 first? How many will not even.bother ro invest the minjmum time to make there Android apps using the RIM BB10 services?
For that RIM needs to spread BB10. They need partners that can do what they cannot do (as in not like to do cause thats not there focus).

> RIM is creating something of their own and all that effort will pay of

I think so too but not only cause "its something own" (Samsung does not have that either with Android) but cause that gives them an advantagw or at least different possibilities plus the management seems to have a clue what they need to do.
I somehow doubt that, the clue, is the case with Nokia. I think that Nokia management could take over Samsung todat and have it ruined tomorrow but just applying a range of U-turns to its.current success-strategies like they did with Nokia.

> I expect RIM to get good reviews once BB10 is released

That is not so easy. Even Android got them and the needed attention after some iterations. To draw N9 like attention and reviews.on releasing the firstdevice with a brand new OS and design is not that easy.
I think that may one.of the reasons why BB10 got moved to Q1/2013. Its.not.in that state yet. But then again, if that is the case, its a great management decision to delay. One that is really haed to fight for but worth it.

2013 will show.

[Ilgaz]

Mr. Ahonen, I and many others, in light of newer models want to know/ understand what is wrong with HTC.
They don't have Elop, their specs are fine, updates are OK, they have prestige and respect particularly for their "make win mobile usable" legend and yet, it mysteriously does bad.
Weird thing is, store guys love htc by heart (not for $ or cuts), when they know you they suggest htc.
IMHO htc deserves a blog entry of its own from an experienced professional like you.

[Henry Sinn]

Ilgaz,

Good point re HTC.

I've noticed the same thing here in stores in Australia

Salespoeple all love them

[cycnus]

My take on RIM/BB10.

RIM realize that theirs pre-10 OS is only comparable to featurephone OS and need to remedy this quckly. But THE DIFFERENT between RIM and nokia were RIM never had smartphone OS, so although they bought one of the BEST OS out there, they don't really know what to look for.

Just FYI, from various source on the net... (not the exact word, i just type what I remember in my brain).
"QNX is one of the best OS, it's the one use on nuclear reactor...."
"The problem with BB10 (QNX) for RIM is the BB10 API were not tailored for smartphone. It doesn't even have a good calender API, thus when the first time playbook were introduced it doesn't have calender"

So,
RIM bought one of the best OS, the most slickest, Real time OS. but not tailored for smartphone. (HYPE) It would be interesting to see if some phone can have this beast (HYPE). BUT THE REAL PROBLEM is they need to catch up, and playing catchup with Android and iOS is a risky business....

1. Without BB10, and a strong android/iOS news everyday, RIM is a sure dead.
2. If media/public considered what RIM unveiled on January 2013 is half backed, RIM is dead faster, because it's commit a 'fashion-sin'
3. What is interesting is if media & public consider BB10 is good on the first take, because RIM still need to fight with ecosystem....

....
As for HTC, I guess that samsung benefit from all the news surrounding apple vs. samsung.

[Huber]

@ Ilgaz:

There are some issues with HTC phones:

- Battery not removable
- No SD card slot
- One X (international version with Tegra 3) is overheating and eats battery like there is no tomorrow

That's why I personally prefer Samsung.