It’s Gareth and James this week for an adventure through the world of mobile news. The CEO shuffle at Blackberry is examined by James, Gareth’s reveals his thoughts on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Donkey has his say and Nokia raises some interest this week
Idealo.co.uk has used its knowledge within the price comparison shopping industry to compare worldwide prices of the most popular Apple products . The results of the comparative analysis are quite interesting, particularly for British consumers.
Apple stores in Brazil, Czech Republic and Thailand ranked as the three most expensive online Apple stores in the world. These online country stores ranked in the top three for most expensive prices both including and excluding VAT. The average prices excluding VAT for these three online country stores was 28 percent higher than the other online country stores.
More info and analysis charts below:
Samsung today announces an exclusive collaboration with Tulisa Contostavlos, giving Phones 4u customers the chance to film a music video at an exclusive shoot with the singer. Customers who buy a phone from Samsung’s Galaxy Family (Samsung Galaxy S II, Samsung Galaxy Note or Galaxy Nexus) from Phones 4u from Friday 27th January, can enter an exclusive competition and be in with a chance of winning a ticket to the shoot.
Fresh from her stint as the winning judge on last year’s X-Factor, Tulisa will be working outside of N-Dubz whilst releasing solo material this year. Samsung and Phones 4u are offering the chance to be part of it all by inviting one hundred competition winners to attend an exclusive shoot with a friend, where they will use their new Samsung Galaxy phones to film Tulisa performing. The content will then be used to create an alternative music video which will support the promotion and release of Tulisa’s new single.
As well as entry into the competition, Phones 4u customers will also receive exclusive preview content from Tulisa’s upcoming solo career, including video footage, photographs and wallpapers. The promotion will be supported in-store at Phones 4u throughout the country, with Tulisa set to make a personal appearance at the best performing store.
We may not be huge fans of Nokia’s Series 40 operating system here at tracyandmatt but that doesn’t mean it is not a popular OS for many people. With the Smartphone market growing so rapidly this latest press release from Nokia just goes to show that low to mid range devices are still selling by the millions.
Nokia today announced one of the most significant milestones in its history with the sale of its 1.5 billionth Series 40 mobile phone. The device was sold to a female consumer in the Brazilian city of São Paulo and represents a historic moment as Nokia continues its strategy of connecting the next billion.
The 1.5 billionth phone was a Nokia Asha 303, a stunning touch screen handset with QWERTY keypad designed for web browsing, social networking and gaming, that features pre-installed entertainment and applications such as Angry Birds Lite.
The device was purchased from a Magazine Luiza store in São Paulo by Mayara Rodrigues, a 21-year-old who loves staying in touch with friends and family through social networks.
Sony claims that it’s distinctive Android tablets are leading the race to dominate sales in a crowded market. A company spokesman said that Sony’s products accounted for 26% of the UK market in October, the most recent period for which independent data is available. Sony also claims it has had a successful Christmas, but conceded that it was likely to have been beaten on tablet sales by aggressively priced BlackBerry Playbooks.
Wonder if they will learn anything from Blackberry on that strategy?
Posted by: Gareth
Google look to be changing their privacy agreement, whether you like it or not. Google said on Tuesday it will require users to allow the company to follow their activities across e-mail, search, YouTube and other services, a shift in strategy that is expected to invite greater scrutiny of its privacy and competitive practices.
Consumers will have no choice but to accept the changes. The policy will take effect March 1 and will also impact Android mobile phone users, who are required to log in to Google accounts when they activate their phones.
The change to its privacy policies come as Google is facing competition for the attention of Web users. It recently disappointed investors for the first time in a couple of years, failing last week to meet earnings predictions. Apple,for the same period, reported record earnings on Tuesday that blew past even the most optimistic expectations.
Some said Google’s move is aimed squarely at Apple and Facebook, which have been more successful at capture people’s attention. A Google executive said in an interview that the company wants to create a much more seamless environment across its various offerings. Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy for product and engineering, wrote in a blog post.
If you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.
Posted by: Gareth
The nice chaps at Clove have sent us over the iCrado Neo desktop stand which is a universal cradle with some style. They also said we can give it away!
The cradle is made from metal and is very rigid, and feels solid and well made. The colour finish is too of a high standard and rubber feet on the base of the cradle avoid it slipping on a desktop.
Rubber grips provide a soft and protective resting place for the phone on the stylish cradle and because of the cradles design it means you can dock a phone even if it is in a protective case.how many others offer such a feature? What about docking it in portrait and landscape mode? Not many cradles offer this, the iCrado Neo does. Holes within the cradle itself give it a unique design but also help with cable management, keeping them neat and tidy.
If you would like to win this fantastic accessory just keep on reading.
UK’s first live multi-operator trial of next generation 4G LTE mobile broadband in Cornwall extended to end of June 2012
Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale today announced an extension to the UK’s first live multi-operator customer trial of next generation 4G LTE broadband.
The trial has seen the two companies collaborate to provide wireless broadband to 180 customers living in and around St. Newlyn East in Cornwall since October 2011. The extension until the end of June 2012 has been granted by Ofcom to enable the companies to continue to investigate the application of 4G LTE in rural areas. This will be beneficial to the rollout of any potential subsequent commercial service.
Yesterday Apple announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 first quarter which spanned 14 weeks and ended December 31, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 44.7 percent compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.
“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”
“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”
Is there not stopping them?
Posted by: James
BGR has posted what they believe to be RIM’s roadmap for the coming year or so. Whether the details are correct or not we will have to wait and see but the details look promising. The devices I am actually most intrigued about are the two new Curve’s that BGR are reporting will launch this year. Could these be a successor and in the same price region as the Curve 8520 which nearly every teenager I see has? If so then RIM looks to retain those customers and a low end Curve makes sense to me. Although we now have the Curve 9360 and 9380 they are still a lot more expensive than the 8520 on PAYG/sim free and to be honest that device is a little dated now to say the least with it running OS 5.0, although still hugely popular in many counties including the UK.
Anyway, here is what BGR say we will see:
Posted by: James
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