News

Nokia gives Symbian the cold shoulder and gets some WP7 love!

Nokia today outlined its new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company’s speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment.

Major elements of the new strategy include:

– Plans for a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft to build a new global mobile ecosystem; Windows Phone would serve as Nokia’s primary smartphone platform.
– A renewed approach to capture volume and value growth to connect "the next billion" to the Internet  in developing growth markets
– Focused investments in next-generation disruptive technologies
– A new leadership team and organizational structure with a clear focus on speed, results and accountability

HTC snaps up Saffron Digital for £30 million

Taiwanese manufacturer HTC have acquired the mobile video content specialist firm Saffron Digital for £30 million. Not too long ago, we reported that HTC injected $40 million into online gaming business OnLive, and Saffron Digital is the second major investment HTC have taken recently. Saffron Digital specialises in providing mobile media delivery services, with high-profile customers including T-Mobile, Paramount Entertainment, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

This is quite obviously part of a strategy to boost their software offerings on their smartphones in order to stand out from the ever growing crowd of mobile phones. HTC’s CEO Peter Chou said “Saffron Digital has developed an incredible expertise in mobile multimedia delivery. This ability to deliver optimised content in the future will be a key asset as content becomes more and more complex and localised.”

Hopefully we’ll see more content from HTC and maybe even gaming to go with their Sense online portal.

Posted by: Vince

INQ announce a duo of Facebook phones

Our fellow Londoners at INQ have announced two new socially orientated phones, the Cloud Touch and Cloud Q. Both feature deep enough Facebook integration (using Facebook’s Social Graph API) to earn the title of ‘Facebook phone’ and rightly so – access to your Facebook Wall, Messages, Friends, Chat and Notifications are all available straight from the homescreens. Both phones also feature TouchType’s Fluency Prediction Engine which guesses the words you’re about to type based on your previous tendencies and some black magic. They’ll also feature Spotify integration for the musical duties.

As for the phone’s themselves, the Cloud Touch is a full-touch Android 2.2 based affair with a 3.5 inch HVGA touchscreen and 5MP camera. The Cloud Q has exactly the same specs but trades the large screen for a qwerty keyboard. The Cloud Touch is expected to be available in April and the Cloud Q sometime in Q3.

For full specs and information, see the press release after the break.

BBC iPlayer app for iPad and Android

Good news for those of you that like to catch up on a spot of TV or radio on a mobile device. The BBC iPlayer app is now available for both the iPad and Android. I know that the Android one is currently restricted to the UK but i am not sure about the iPad version.

Having tested it out on my iPad and it seems to work flawlessly and best of all it is free.

Go check it out in your respective app stores.

Posted by: James

Video on Skype coming soon to Android

Got an Android phone with a front facing camera? Or a Tablet and want to do the video conferencing damn near all of them advertised? Well, February 28th could be a good date for you. Rumour has it that there will be an update for Skype on Androidy platforms that will include video chattery. Can’t imagine the networks being particularly enthusiastic about it so I imagine it might just be wi-fi only after a short time but the fact that it might just allow for some nice cross platform conferencing will be a winner.

[Source]

Posted by Gareth

Sony Reader app barred from App Store, Kindle lives on

Despite Amazon’s Kindle app being available on the App Store for quite some time, you’d think that Sony’s Reader app would also be given the green light. But you’d be wrong. Clearly, Sony didn’t read the Apple bible to app heaven closely enough as their app has been rejected on the terms that it features in-app purchases of books without passing through Apple’s own API for in-app purchases (which would crucially bypass Apple’s 30% cut in sales).

The condition that purchases must go through Apple has in fact been in the guidelines all along, but the Kindle app was allowed through -  it directs you to a mobile site in Safari instead. However, Apple also highlighted another term in the guidelines; you can’t sell goods and services outside of your app. Surely that means Amazon is infringing too, but no word from either Apple nor Amazon has been said about what to do about it.

Sony have already stated they promise to pursue “other avenues to bring the Reader experience to Apple mobile devices.” This will probably mean they’ll end up (reluctantly) giving Apple their 30% share of sales. But what will it mean for Amazon? Their app sells books outside of the Kindle application which technically is an infringement of the guidelines that should result in the boot from the App Store. Considering the size of Amazon and the number of iOS devices out there, that 30% is a big deal. Eventually, they’ll have to update their app to either cut Apple in or disable in-app purchasing altogether (though what will become of their “Buy Once, Read Anywhere” slogan?). Either way Apple wins – they either get their fair share or people will have to turn to their home-grown iBook store, but what would happen to your vast Kindle library that you used to read on your iDevice? Maybe paper books weren’t such a bad idea after all.

Posted by: Vince

The HP Veer

The Veer is probably best described as a replacement for the Pixi, slotting below the Pre3 in specs and in size. In fact, it’s about the same size as your standard credit card making it a very cute little phone. With a planned availability this spring, I reckon this will be a pretty big hit with the kids and women looking for a phone to slip into their jeans pocket or handbag. My only concern is the keyboard considering how tiny this phone is, but like almost every phone, I still want one. I won’t ramble on about the specification, and just let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Find more information after the break.

The HP Pre3

We now have the official details on the HP Pre3 so fill your boots below. All I can say is it looks real sweet.

A few highlights of the Pre3:

The HP TouchPad

With the HP TouchPad now being official HP have released images and the full spec of the device which you will see below.

On a personal note I can say that I am truly impressed with this new creation and I firmly believe that WebOS on a tablet will be nothing more than beautiful. We will of course see more tablets next week at MWC and we still have the BlackBerry PlayBook to be released, but in the meantime lets enjoy the HP TouchPad.

More after the break:

HP’s ‘Think Beyond’ event

HP’s Think Beyond event in San Francisco has just taken place and what a fine array of WebOS products we have had announced.

No waffling from me. Straight to the action: