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BlackBerry is doomed, says another analyst.

For the past year, we’ve been arguing that Research In Motion (RIMM) is in trouble.

The smartphone leader is rapidly losing share to Apple and Google in the consumer market, which is where most of RIM’s growth comes from. Worse, the iPhone and Android have also recently begun making inroads in RIM’s core market–the enterprise.

Put those trends together, and RIM looks like the next Palm–a one-time smartphone leader who lost a step in the innovation game and was quickly rendered irrelevant (with predictable effects on the stock price).

We think that eventually Microsoft will buy RIM as a way of shoring up its own demolished mobile business, and the two companies’ strength in the enterprise market would certainly complement each other. But the trends that are driving iPhone and Android into the corporate market are also rapidly blurring the line between “consumer” and “enterprise.”

Even normally optimistic Wall Street has begun to throw in the towel on RIM. The latest analyst to do so, Bernstein’s Pierre Ferragu, cites several important factors:

The large enterprise market is saturated (i.e., no growth there)

The small-and-medium-sized enterprise market is more open to competition, and there is limited room for growth. Also, average selling prices will decline.

Companies are increasingly opening up and allowing employees to use the smartphone of their choice–and, increasingly, those smartphones are iPhones and Android phones. This has two benefits: It makes the employees happy AND it saves the companies money.

Here are some quotes from Ferragu, via John Paczkowski at All Things D:

“The market for corporate mobile e-mail is highly penetrated and saturated outside of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises)… Growth in the number of companies using mobile e-mail will be limited to the SME market, in which RIM is likely to suffer the most from competition. If there is still some growth in the number of users at companies already using mobile email, it is limited and we suspect it will turn into negligible value growth as it will go along with significant ASP decline.”

“…Despite the company’s overall dominance of the [enterprise] segment … 74 percent of companies with mobile e-mail have already adopted alternative platforms, including the iPhone and Android,” Ferragu explains. This phenomenon is very new: almost all these companies “opened-up” their systems in the last two years, half of them in the last 12 months. We expect these companies to progressively ramp up the installed based of non-Blackberry solutions and therefore expect increased pressure on RIM’s performance.”

“Enterprise satisfaction with RIM solutions is very high, and most managers surveyed said that they expected BlackBerry products to remain innovative and competitively featured… The issue boils down to cost and consumer preferences: employees want to be able to use their own phone, and allowing them to do so presents IT & Telecom managers with a way to substantially cut their operating costs.”

So what can RIM do to stop the decline? Not much, says Ferragu. It missed a step, and now the competition has blown right past.

Time for RIM to sell while it still can.

Author: Henry Blodget, Business Insider

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Hundreds of millions of phones—including Apple’s iconic iPhone—support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, which allows your phone to be instantly updated with new e-mail, calendar entries, and contact updates. Not only has this instant updating, known as “push,” been an option for Exchange/Outlook accounts from the start, Google beat Microsoft with this feature over a year ago, with its Sync technology.

Now you can get this same push functionality with a Hotmail account. While the Hotmail ActiveSync capability works with iPhones, iPads, Windows Mobile 6.x phones, Windows Phone 7 phones, and Nokia E, S, and N series phones, Google Sync adds BlackBerry to the list. Hotmail’s ActiveSync may work with other devices, such as Android 2.2 phones, but Android 2.1 has a known issue that prevents it from working. Microsoft claims that more devices, including Android 2.2, will be added to the tested-and-approved list in the coming months. Microsoft provides setup instructions for each approved device type on its Windows Live Solution Center site.

I quickly tried the new syncing on my iPhone 3GS, and it worked as advertised for messages, contacts, and calendar entries. By default, three days worth of mail were kept in sync on the phone. And I could also still keep my Outlook/Exchange account in sync, thanks to the iOS 4′s multiple account support. It even supported multiple calendars, but not to-do items. The only tricks to setting it up were to choose Microsoft Exchange as the account type and use m.hotmail.com as the server.

The feature is a good fit with other new features in the lastest version of Windows Live Hotmail. If you use its Sweep function to clean up your inbox, your changes will automatically show up on your phone. The same goes for contact “de-duplication,” by which you can remove multiple entries for the same person.

You can read more about Exchange ActiveSync for Hotmail, as well as view a video demonstration, on the Inside Windows Live blog, where Dick Craddock, Microsoft group program manager for Windows Live Hotmail, adds that “in the coming months, we will continue to bring out new features and capabilities based on feedback from our users.”

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Germany’s Infineon Technologies AG, formed in 1999 from the spinoff of Siemens AG’s semiconductor division, is among the most dominant forces in the smartphone industry. While its CPU offerings have yet to take off and dominate, every iPhone and a large number of Android smartphones use some chip (such as wireless 3G modems) from Infineon’s portfolio.

Now hot on the heels of its $7.68B USD acquisition of the world’s top antivirus software vendor McAfee, Bloomberg reports that the world’s top CPU maker Intel is preparing to purchase Infineon’s wireless business. The rumored purchase price would be 1.5B € ($1.91B USD). Infineon’s CPU unit and other businesses would presumably not be included in the sale.

Such a purchase would give Intel fuel for its upcoming planned campaign against the ARM architecture in the smartphone arena. Intel, a firm proponent of x86 based designs, currently has no CPUs in smartphones currently on sale. Intel is working to develop scaled-down variants of its Atom platform to compete in the smartphone sector.

With Infineon’s mobile wireless expertise, Intel could design better x86-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) offerings to compete with similar packages from ARM. Intel could also potentially look to package “hardware security” leveraging McAfee’s experience into such a SoC design.

Infineon’s wireless silicon designs both discrete and packaged with other system components (in SoCs) act as a broadband processor controlling the output of phones’ radio device.

Infineon’s smartphone plan presently looks bullish, with the company looking to “ramp-up of new smartphone and entry-level phone platforms at several major customers.” That kind of drive obviously has the potential for great financial profitability, a tempting proposition for Intel.

On the other hand, another implication of the purchase, if it goes through, would be to create uncertainty, for ARM-based smartphones like the iPhone or Android Galaxy S. These phones use ARM CPUs, but currently rely on discrete Infineon wireless communication chips. Presumably Intel would want to keep that business alive — especially since it pulled in 346M € ($439M USD) last fiscal quarter. A decision to slow development on discrete offerings in favor of x86 SoC designs, though, could be used to force x86 onto the smartphone market.

Neither company has officially acknowledge talks. Infineon officials would only say their company has made “significant progress” with an unnamed buyer interested in the wireless unit. Intel has not commented on the talks.

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PC maker Dell on Wednesday launched its first Android powered smartphone Aero in the US market.
Though the company had earlier launched a smartphone named Streak, Dell itself termed it as a tablet and said that Aero is its first wireless handset.
The Aero runs on Android 1.5 operating system and weighs 104 grams. It features a 5 megapixel camera, 3.5 inch touch screen and is a quadband mobile phone with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G and GPRS capabilities.
The latest Dell device also comes with handwriting recognition application, Microsoft Exchange e-mail, Quick Office mobile productivity application, a search manager, and inbuilt Facebook application.
The Aero is priced at $299.99 in the open market and at $99.99 with a two year contract with AT&T.

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The Samsung Galaxy S 1900 was named the European Smartphone of the Year at the recent European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) Awards 2010-2011, while the Samusung Wave HD won the European Social Media Phone of the Year award.

The EISA judges commented that the Galaxy S is “a ‘jewel in the crown’ for demanding users wanting to be connected, entertained and updated on the move. It’s a well made device that should capture the attention of every mobile phone lover.”

Regarding the Wave HD handset, the judges stated that it “capitalises on the current interest in smartphones by providing means and applications for social media environments” and “is thin and beautifully designed, featuring a metal chassis”.

“We are absolutely delighted that the Samsung Galaxy S has been recognised by such a reputable association as EISA as the European Smartphone of the Year ahead of competitors devices such as the iPhone 4,” said Gary Twohig, general manager of Samsung Mobile Ireland.

“Wave HD has been a runaway success since it went to market earlier this summer. Overall it a very exciting time for us in Ireland with sales of the Galaxy S and Wave HD going from strength to strength.”

The EISA is an association consisting of 50 magazines with an interest in multimedia across 19 European countries. In June of each year, the editors from all its magazines meet to decide which of the products covered in their publications will receive an award from the EISA.

The Galaxy S is powered by Android. It has a 1 GHz application processor and a 4 inch Super AMOLED screen. It offers HD video, Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 interface and advanced Location Based Services (LBS).

The Wave HD offers a 3.3 inch AMOLED touchscreen, with a 1GHz processor. It features a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash and Bluetooth 3.0.

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Juniper Research claims that mobile app store downloads will hit 25 billion by 2015, but new storefronts face an uphill task to compete with established leaders such as Apple’s App Store.

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Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC continues to impress with record second-quarter revenues and a 32.8 percent jump in profit. The world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor yesterday reported a 58.5 percent year-on-year jump in revenue, to NT$60.53 billion (US$1.88 billion), whilst unaudited net profit came in at a 2.5-year high (NT$8.64 billion/US$268 million). This was the company’s highest quarterly unaudited net profit since it reported a NT$9.99 billion net profit for the fourth quarter of 2007, before Taiwanese companies started to treat employee bonuses as expenses. The results far exceeded internal expectations; in late April the company said it expected second-quarter revenue to grow to NT$50 billion and handset shipments to rise 50 percent from a year earlier to 4.5 million units. “Both June and 2Q revenues continuously hit record highs, [showing] good execution of brand strategy and grow scale strategy,” noted HTC in a statement.

HTC is a fast-rising player in the mobile handset space. Originally a contract maker of phones, it began making own-brand devices a few years ago and is now regarded as one of the most innovative smartphone manufacturers. As well as being the world’s largest maker of phones using Microsoft’s operating system (OS) in terms of shipments, it is also arguably the biggest proponent of Google’s Android OS, producing critically acclaimed high-end devices such as the Droid Incredible, Desire and Evo. Analysts expect the strong momentum to continue in the second half of the year. Yuanta Securities analyst Bonnie Chang told Dow Jones Newswires she expects HTC’s shipments to rise to 20 million units this year, up from 12 million in 2009.

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Nokia today said it expects to launch the first high-end devices based on its new MeeGo operating system around year-end and ruled out any plans to support the rival Android platform. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, new mobile solutions chief Anssi Vanjoki said MeeGo will be the base for a wide array of new computer-like devices (eg tablets) as the market for handheld gadgets diversifies. MeeGo will support a rich environment for application development and strong support for functions such as GPS and Bluetooth, Mr Vanjoki added. Meanwhile, he confirmed that Nokia doesn’t plan to launch any phones based on the increasingly popular Android platform because it can create more value by building its own hardware and software.

Last week Nokia confirmed it is to ditch Symbian software for its future high-end smartphones, turning instead to the Linux-based MeeGo platform formed from its joint venture with Intel. The Finnish company’s next smartphone, the N8, will be the last N-series phone running Symbian software. The N8 will be launched in the third quarter and will run the upgraded Symbian 3 platform. Nokia will continue to use Symbian for its vast portfolio of cheaper smartphones. Announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress earlier this year, MeeGo combines Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo open source projects into one Linux-based software platform hosted by the Linux Foundation. The project has already received backing from France Telecom’s Orange and Telefonica, as well as numerous OEMs and application developers. The platform is the latest open-source mobile operating system to take on Google’s Android, which is also Linux-based. In related news, Nokia and Intel have released an early version of the Linux-based MeeGo mobile OS to developers, in preparation of the launch of a retail-ready version in October. The joint MeeGo Project has made programming APIs, parts of the handset reference UI and the MeeGo Core OS available, and has stuck by Linux tradition by also releasing the source code. According to MeeGo Project, the release also marks the completion of the combination of Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Moblin OSes. Screenshots and video of MeeGo have appeared on the MeeGo website.

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European travellers using mobile devices while away from home will have to explicitly agree to charges beyond EUR50 a month for downloading data, under European Union rules that come into force today.
The measure is designed to prevent ‘bill shock,’ when users unwittingly run up large roaming bills while overseas, and is the latest Brussels initiative to regulate the price of foreign mobile phone use.

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Nokia Siemens Networks and Nokia have jointly conducted what they claim is the world’s first end-to-end LTE data call in the 800 MHz frequency band. This spectrum is popularly known as the Digital Dividend, becoming available as terrestrial TV moves from analogue to digital broadcasting.

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With the advancements in technology it is now easier than it has ever been to watch mobile streaming sports from a phone. With the 2010 FIFA World Cup kicking off today it should come as no surprise to see many fans look to watch the World Cup on their iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones. With many Americans sitting at work when to World Cup kicks off they will like look for a live streaming feed app for their smartphone.

There are many apps available but please remember that a lot of these are paid apps and you may have to pay for coverage of a particular game. Always read the terms and agreements or head to your local bar to watch on TV as the entire TV schedule has been released.

Author: Frank Greyman

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Yet another cheap touch screen phone from Samsung, the Samsung champ flaunts color versions, including black, white, brown, and pink.

Not long after unveiling the S3370 Corby 3G / Acton, the Samsung champ is a relatively remarkable handset, because of its really small QVGA touchscreen display that measures only 2.4 inches. Even Samsung’s Corby phones (known for being utterly affordable) have larger displays (2.8 inches).

The Samsung Champ also features Touch Wiz Lite, Bluetooth 2.1, 3.5mm headset jack, access to Samsung Apps, 1.3MP camera and MicroSD card support.

Samsung has not revealed the exact price but will start retailing the phone in June in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa and Middle East.

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Chip designer ARM Holdings has come under the market spotlight as rumours do the rounds that it could be an acquisition target for Apple.

The Cambridge,UK based firm, whose microchips can be found in most of the world’s mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone, would likely cost more than £3bn according to reports, such as one on Techradar.com this morning.

Shares in ARM are currently hovering around the unchanged mark at 250.2p but had pushed up to 255.4p earlier today.

Arm Holdings has grown into a multibillion-pound business with 1,700 employees worldwide. Last year almost 4bn chips based on Arm’s designs were shipped worldwide. Consumer demand for smartphones means that Arm is getting more and more of its designs into phones. In the last quarter of 2009 the company was averaging 2.4 chips per handset.

Arm and Apple go way back. Arm is a product of the home-computing boom of the 1980s that pitted Acorn against Sinclair. Having used off-the-shelf processors to power its early models, Acorn decided to create its own microprocessor for a new range of computers with a Californian silicon company called VLSI Technology, and in 1983 the Acorn Risc Machine (Arm) project was born. The chip was a success, but the products Acorn built around it were not. But the chip also met the requirements of Apple and in 1990, Arm was spun off as a separate company with Acorn, Apple and VLSI as founding shareholders.

Part of the reasoning behind the Apple rumours is that as smartphones get smarter, they will need more of Arm’s designs. Having said that, Apple now owns its own chip designer – PA Semi.

Apple has declined to comment on the rumour while ARM could not be reached for comment.

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New top of the range handsets from computer giant Dell have been leaked online to blog Engadget. The Lightning, a phone running the forthcoming Windows 7 mobile operating system, and the Google Android-based Thunder are both due out in America later this year, although no UK dates have yet been announced.

The Thunder features a 4.1” OLED screen, ties into social networks Facebook and Twitter, and also uses a new interface developed by Dell to extend the capabilities of the Google Android OS. According to Engadget it borrows in part from the HTC Sense style of interface. It also runs Adobe Flash 10.1, features an 8mp camera and, in the US at least, will offer a built-in app to integrate video service Hulu.

The Windows-based Lightning has a similar set of features, although it also includes a slide-out keyboard. A fast, 1ghz Snapdragon processor and a 5mp camera, however looks set to make it one of the premium Windows Phone devices when it launches at the end of the year. It will offer Flash, too, which is not currently slated for the first release of the new Windows Phone OS. Towards the end of 2011, too, the handset is likely to get an upgrade to LTE, the new wireless standard.

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­According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global 3G WCDMA handset shipments will grow an impressive 40 percent during 2010. The growth will be fueled by strong demand for high-tier smartphones in mature regions and by shipments of entry-level models in emerging markets. The United States will be the world’s largest 3G country this year.

Alex Spektor, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “We forecast global 3G WCDMA handset shipments to grow an impressive 40 percent to 358 million units during 2010. The growth will be fueled by strong demand for high-tier smartphones and feature phones in mature regions such as the United States, and by shipments of lower-cost entry-level models for prepaid users in emerging markets like China and India.”

Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “The United States will be the world’s largest 3G country in 2010. Shipments in the US will far exceed those of other established 3G markets such as Japan, Italy and the UK. Vendors with a strong operator presence in the United States, such as Samsung and Apple, are in a good position to profit from the surging revenues in 3G handsets and data services that will take place this year.”

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Nokia has agreed to buy privately-held U.S. mobile browser firm Novarra to improve Web surfing on a wide range of its low-end and mid-range phones.

Wireless Internet usage is set to surge in 2010 and beyond as operators and phone makers continue to play catchup with Apple’s iPhone, with many handset vendors are pinning their faith on their own browsers.

Novarra’s rivals, including Opera and Myriad are increasingly refocusing their efforts to sell browsers to telecoms operators, who have a key role in phone distribution on many large markets.

Nokia did not disclose the value of the deal for the company which employs more than 100 staff, adding it aims to close the deal in June quarter.

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The BBC reports that Microsoft has developed its first application for Google’s Android platform. Called Tag, the free software uses a handset’s camera to turn it into a mobile barcode reader, enabling barcodes to effectively become coupons that link people to websites, pass on information or give visitors a discount in an online store.

Microsoft’s move may seem odd in light of the fact it has its own mobile platform that is struggling to compete with rivals. Indeed, last month the company announced the planned launch later this year of Windows Phone 7 Series, regarded by analysts as Microsoft’s last opportunity to remain a major player in the mobile operating system space. However, Microsoft has already made the Tag application available on the iPhone, BlackBerry and Symbian handsets, as well as, of course, on Windows phones. The BBC report notes that Microsoft’s Android launch is made against a background of greater co-operation among operators on phone software. Last month at least 24 of the world’s largest mobile operators announced an agreement to create an open international applications platform, regarded by many as a move by operators to wrest control of the lucrative apps market away from software firms and phone makers.

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Online news has become more popular than reading newspapers in the US, according to a survey.

It is the third most popular form of news, behind local and national TV stations, the Pew Research Center said.

“News awareness is becoming an anytime, anywhere, any device activity for those who want to stay informed,” it said.

Newspapers in the US and UK have been going through financial difficulties, leading many to examine charging for their news online.

The survey showed that news aggregators such as Google News and AOL were most commonly used, along with the websites of CNN and the BBC.

Changing habits

Sixty-one per cent of readers surveyed said they got their news online on a typical day, compared with 78% from local news channels and 71% from a national TV network such as NBC or cable channels such as CNN or Fox News.

Fifty-four per cent said they listened to radio news programmes at home or in the car.

More than 90% use more than one method to get news, and 57% consult between two and five websites as part of their newsgathering, the survey found.

The last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was sold in March
“Americans have become news grazers both on and offline – but within limits,” said Amy Mitchell, deputy director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“They generally don’t have one favourite website but also don’t search aimlessly. Most online news consumers regularly draw on just a handful of different sites.”

Regular readers of newspapers – either local ones or national papers such as the New York Times – have dropped to 50%, the survey said.

Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic have been going through difficult times as advertising slows and more readers migrate to the internet.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer was among many that closed last year, while the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Chronicle have gone through huge job cuts.

In 2009, the Daily Mail and General Trust cut 1,000 jobs at its regional arm Northcliffe Media, which publishes more than 100 newspapers in England and Wales.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corp, also shut down the London Paper and announced that his group of papers will charge for online news.

The group owns the Sun, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, as well as Fox and Sky brands.

Mr Murdoch has accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.

The New York Times will also charge for access to the website by 2011.

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Android and Apple’s iPhone OS were the fastest-growing smartphone platforms in 2009, with sales of the iPhone OS overtaking those of Windows Mobile, research company Gartner said. Symbian and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry still lead the market, it said.

Worldwide sales of smartphones running Symbian totaled 80.9 million in 2009, up from 72.9 million a year earlier. Because total smartphone sales grew faster, to 172.4 million from 139.3 million a year earlier, Symbian’s market share declined to 46.9 percent, Gartner said. Second-place RIM’s market share rose to 19.9 percent from 16.6 percent in 2008.

Apple’s smartphone OS took third place. Apple sold 24.9 million iPhones in 2009, compared to 11.4 million in 2008, taking its share of the market to 14.4 percent.

Microsoft’s smartphone OS dropped to the fourth spot as its market share fell from 11.8 percent to 8.7 percent, and sales dropped by about 1.5 million phones. The launch of a new version, Windows Phones 7 Series, appears to make it a more competitive platform, but as phones based on the rewritten OS won’t show up until late this year, sales will continue to struggle during most of 2010, according to Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Linux, in which Gartner includes LiMo but excludes Android, also continues to struggle in the smartphone market. Its share dropped from 7.6 percent to 4.7 percent in 2009.

Android was only the sixth largest smartphone platform in 2009, with a market share of 3.9 percent. However, that looks likely to change soon. Android phone sales really started to pick up during the fourth quarter. Four million out of a total 6.8 million units were sold during the last three months of 2009. Sixty-nine percent of those were sold in North America, driven by Verizon Wireless’s promotion of the Motorola Droid, Cozza said.

Palm’s WebOS is a newcomer on Gartner’s list in seventh place, with a 0.7 percent market share.

While the smartphone market is booming, total worldwide mobile phone sales of 1.2 billion units were down about 1 percent compared to 2008, according to Gartner.

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