By Aldo Panessidi

HTC refuses to offer cheaper handsets just to boost sales.  Despite struggling to match the sales numbers of its competitors, the company is sticking to its strategy of producing only medium- to high-end handsets.

HTC CEO Peter Chou defended the company’s strategy in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We don’t want to destroy our brand image. We insist on using better materials to make better products that offer premium experience. Many consumers like that.”

Chou’s comments come at a time when many industry watchers are beginning to question HTC’s strategy. Motorola and Samsung are capturing the low-end handset market in the Chinese market, but Chao insists that HTC will not manufacture “cheap, cheap phones” to boost its market share.

HTC will increase its marketing efforts and expand its distribution network into emerging markets. Chou expects that 2012 Chinese shipments will reach three times last year’s total. Shipments to India and other emerging markets are steadily growing. Chou is adamant, “We think our strategy is successful.”

By Aldo Panessidi 

Microsoft’s ARM-friendly Windows RT operating system launches this fall, but Microsoft is going to make it very difficult for tablet makers to use it and still compete with Apple’s iPad 3 pricing.  Microsoft will reportedly charge tablet makers $85 to license each device that uses its Windows RT.

VR Zone reported that Microsoft’s pricing was disclosed to them by a number of vendors during the Computex Taipei trade show. All claimed the price would be anywhere between $80 and $95. With that amount added to the cost of tablet manufacturing, ARM-powered Windows RT tablets could cost between $549 and $799. Premium products could be priced between $799 and $899.

Microsoft’s hardware and software strategy looks like it’s patterned after Apple’s. Both companies want control. Windows RT will come exclusively pre-installed in Windows on ARM devices (or WOA for short).

It will be strictly limited to WOA PCs built exclusively for Microsoft. Windows apps will only be made available only through its Windows Store.

By Aldo Panessidi

Mobile phone maker Nokia announced this week that it plans to restructure. Nokia is trying to stay in business with job cuts, sale of its Vertu luxury product line and reorganization at the top of the company. With $1.7 billion lost in the first three months of this year and a $1.2 billion in 4Q 2011, the company is on a sad slide.

The 10,000 job cuts add to last year’s workforce reduction of 14,000 employees. This year Nokia will shut down research and development facilities in Ulm, Germany, and Burnaby, Canada, and a manufacturing facility in Salo, Finland. It also plans to shuffle senior leadership and acquire Swedish software firm Scalado AB.

Nokia’s latest strategy shows an increasing reliance on the potential for success with Windows Phone. The Scalado AB is a mobile image company. Its acquisition should strengthen Nokia’s Windows Phone service portfolio for the Nokia Lumia 900, and the remaining Lumia line of busienss.  In the press release announcing the restructuring, Nokia said it acquired Scalado AB to beef up its "imaging experience" for its line of Lumia devices.

Nokia said making the cuts and the restructuring will cost it about $1.2 billion but will reduce costs by about $2 billion by next year. It also lowered second-quarter earnings expectations.

By Aldo Panessidi

Now that the Samsung Galaxy S3 is in consumer hands, Samsung is telling how they were so good at keeping the details of the new device top secret. They were so tight-lipped that engineer Buyong-Joon Lee wouldn’t even admit what he was doing when asked by his 11-year-old son.

The lengths took to keep us guessing were extensive. Handsets were moved between facilities in locked boxes. One executive was charged with hand-delivering prototype devices to network partners. Samsung further befuddled watchers by producing three Samsung Galaxy  S3 devices with completely different specs. Each model was designed and constructed as if it was the final product. Engineering teams had to build and rebuild components to accommodate each design, just as if all of them were the final model.

Of course had to get help from lots of internal departments to get the device to market, but even they were kept in the dark as much as possible. For example, just to set prices and buy components, the procurement department had to rely on written descriptions of parts, not the parts themselves.

Well, Samsung did the seemingly impossible task these days of launching a flagship device before the market knew all its secrets.

By Aldo Panessidi

A licensing agreement between Amazon and MGM will add hundreds of classic movies and TV shows to the Amazon Prime Instant Video catalog. Amazon Prime is available for $79 per year and offers unlimited video streaming of more than 18,000 movies and TV episodes, free book downloads for Kindle tablet owners and free two-day shipping for all Amazon orders.

As Brad Beale, director of digital video content acquisition for Amazon said in the company’s press release.  “Our customers tell us they love having tons of movies and TV shows to choose from, which is why we are focused on adding even more titles to our already extensive Prime Instant Video library. MGM offers one of the most distinguished catalogs in all of Hollywood, and this deal will bring Prime Instant Video customers hundreds of new titles to enjoy on their Kindle Fire or any wireless device compatible with Amazon Instant Video. Customers can enjoy favorites like The Silence of the Lambs, Dances with Wolves, Rain Man and The Terminator, as well as fan-favorite TV series like Stargate.”

Enjoy watching these movies and TV shows through crystal clear sound with top quality earbuds & headsets as well as XMI speakers.

By Aldo Panessidi

A Chinese website has published pictures that they claim reflect a working model of the sixth-generation Apple iPhone. The TGBUS website posted a series of “iPhone 5” photos that they believe are authentic.

The device in the pictures matches the hardware described in previous leaks. These photos look like they’re as close to the real thing as anything else that we’ve seen so far.

As far as their source, the Italian phone blog iPhoneItalia has discovered that these pictures are 3D renderings created and posted by a Flickr user.

Everything about these photos matches previous iPhone 5 rumors. The case is thinner than that of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. The device is also noticeably taller than the other versions - to this end, all new iPhone accessories for the iPhone 5 would have to be designed to fit a rumored 4.08 inch display. Don’t get too excited yet... as none of the dimensions can be verified from the photos.

The cases for both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S are longer than the one shown in these pics - by a few millimeters in each direction beyond the wrap-around antenna. These pictures show a case that barely extends beyond the width of the antenna. There’s a smaller dock connector, a relocated audio jack, new speaker grills, a larger camera lens and an LED flash. The backside of the case shows a two-tone rear cover that appears to be aluminum and glass. The antenna matches this in color.

By Aldo Panessidi

Google helpfully added badges to its Chrome Web Store so you could tell if an app offers offline functionality, and now Google has made the search even easier with an offline section in the Chrome Web Store.

We are hoping to see mobile apps for both cell phone and tablets from Chrome web store

Go to the "Collections" part of the store, and find the "Offline Apps" section. Lots of the titles will be familiar -  Angry Birds, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Offline Google Mail. Those will be alongside selections like Nitro for task management, NYTimes for news and Space Invaders for those needing a nostalgia rush.

Developers aren’t being left out of the improvements. Google announced the availability of the Chrome Web Store in Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates.  All developers can use new analytics tools to view their titles’ performance trends over the past 90 days.  This one isn’t surprising. Google does know data.

By Aldo Panessidi

HTC the manufacturer of the HTC One X, HTC One S, HTC One V,  HTC Evo, HTC Amaze smartphones and HTC Flyer and HTC Jetstream tablets   is buying S3 Graphics in an effort to add to its patent portfolio, as well as help defend itself from some of the lawsuit activity plaguing the electronics and software industries.

Grace Lei, HTC’s general counsel, said the company wants ownership of S3′s patents, in part, as a response to the 2011 U.S. International Trade Commission finding that Apple was in violation of various S3 patents (although this ruling was later overturned.) As Lei put it at the annual HTC shareholder’s meeting, “We think S3′s patent portfolio is valid and strong, and we have decided to complete the purchase of S3 after cautious assessment.” Lei also noted that S3 owns about 270 patents, including those licensed to Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

HTC has been locked in a battle with Apple over its alleged infringement of Apple patents in its Android handsets. Apple had been able get U.S. Customs to delay shipments of the HTC One X smartphone to U.S. carriers, in effect delaying that device’s launch by two weeks.

U.S. Customs cleared the devices for shipment at the end of May. HTC is insisting that its technology does not infringe upon Apple’s patents.

By Aldo Panessidi

The folks at iFixit got their hands on a final version of Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retina Display this week, and what did they do?   They tore it apart.   Here are a couple of things they found:

• Samsung SSD and Hynix RAM cannot be upgraded. You’ll have to decide upfront how much capacity you’ll need over the life of your MacBook Pro.
• The battery is glued to the housing and the display is fused into the assembly. Replacing the battery or the display will be expensive.

Maybe the amount of power packed into the MacBook Pro will somewhat make up for this criticism. The laptop is packing 95% of juice. That’s enough for seven hours of power. Even for some of the smartphones and tablets out there that kind of battery life is a stretch.

By Aldo Panessidi

Ask anyone what Near-field communication (NFC) technology does and they’ll tell you it processes mobile payments. Now Samsung is going to give NFC a whole new meaning with TecTiles.

TecTiles are little “stickers” with a simple NFC tag inside. Each sticker lets the user “program” the sticker to have a specific response whenever any device with an NFC chip passes nearby.  You designate a TecTile to perform a specific function like open a website, change a device setting, make a call, download a document, or whatever else you’ve told the sticker to do. When you tap the screen above the TecTile it will do what you programmed it to.

Unlike QR codes, NFC doesn’t require launching an app or using your phone’s camera — just put your phone on top of it and hit “OK.”

We hear the app is very easy to use, and within seconds we were able to program the TecTile with simple commands like phoning a specific number. As long as you don’t “lock” the TecTile, you can re-set it to other programs.

Samsung’s TecTile app runs on any Samsung phone with an NFC chip, including the Samsung Galaxy S 3 and Samsung Galaxy S 2, the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S, and the Galaxy S Blaze. The TecTile app will be available in Google Play.  You can purchase stickers in packs of five for $14.99 from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.