Posts Tagged “HTC”
Jun
09
2010
 
First WiMAX handset not Sprinting from storesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Initial sales optimistically overstatedUS operator Sprint has admitted inaccurately claiming that its HTC EVO 4G handset had outsold the Palm Pre and Samsung Instinct combined, by three times in a third of the time.… Read Full Story…
Sales of the new HTC Evo handset have beaten Sprint’s previous record by a Read Full Story…
Jun
07
2010
Battleship of an Android phone sets Sprint sales recordPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
4G, 4.3-inch display, no Steve JobsAs Steve Jobs prepares to unveil the latest Jesus Phone, Sprint says that its mega Android phone set a single-day sales record for the company when it debuted on Friday.… Read Full Story…
Paul Withers considers implications for Taiwanese manufacturer of stock shortages of popular HTC Desire, and hardware issues with HTC HD2 Read Full Story…
Jun
06
2010
The new iPhone is coming. But it’s the old one that rivals should fearPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Apple’s ’4G’ device is out this month. Will Steve Jobs also cut the price of the current model and challenge Nokia head-on? Steve Jobs will appear before the Apple faithful tomorrow to reveal the latest version of the Californian technology group’s mobile phone. Nicknamed the iPhone “4G” – on the basis that the last one was the 3GS, with the “S” standing for speed – it will be the summer’s must-have gadget, hitting the UK this month. But it is also seen as being in the vanguard of an all-out assault on the mobile market. In the three years since it launched its first handset, Apple has grabbed the headlines and, more importantly, snatched a lucrative share of the more mature mobile phone markets of the US and Europe, where consumers are willing to pay upwards of £30 a month to get an iPhone. Now, speculation is rising that the company is approaching a so-called “iPod moment” in mobiles: the point at which it will decide that it can capture a much larger slice of the market by producing more than one device. The success of the App Store, which has seen iPhone users download billions of applications, coupled with the pressure to have a wide market to attract advertisers to its embryonic iAd platform, is pushing Apple towards diversifying, just as it did with the iPod six years ago when it introduced the iPod mini. There is also increasing competition from Google’s Android platform. After two and a half years, handset manufacturers are finally producing compelling Android phones – such as the HTC Desire – and more are slated for release this year, including the mass-market HTC Wildfire. But rather than unveil a new, cheaper version of the iPhone, Apple is expected to position the iPhone 4G at the top of the smartphone market and reorganise the existing range. The company is likely to halt production of the iPhone 3G – which cannot cope with Apple’s new multi-tasking software – and scrap both existing versions of the iPhone 3GS, which have 16GB and 32GB of memory. It will replace them with a new 8GB version of the 3GS, which is expected to be aimed at the wider market. The iPhone 4G – according to mobile industry insiders who have seen one and confirmed widespread web leaks – will be available in two versions: 32GB and 64GB. These will put “clear blue water” between it and the mass-market 3GS, as one industry executive puts it. The 4G is slightly smaller and slimmer than the current 3GS. It has an improved 5-megapixel camera with flash and uses micro-sim cards, as seen in the iPad. It also has a glass back, which greatly assists phone reception. In the UK, it is expected to be sold by the same mobile phone networks that have the current iPhone: O2, Orange and Vodafone. It is unclear whether Tesco Mobile will have the 4G when it is launched in the last week of this month. The parallels between Apple’s current position in the mobile phone market and the place it held in the digital music market when it introduced the iPod mini are revealing. The first iPod appeared in late 2001, but it was not until 2003 that Apple launched the iTunes store. One million tracks were sold in the first five days and 70m in the first year. That showed Apple there was a real mass market for digital music and was a spur for the creation of the first variant of the iPod line, the iPod mini, the following year. At the time, Apple was lodged firmly in the high end of the market for digital music players. The iPod was the benchmark by which all others were measured and Apple had a share of about 30%. The iPod mini – replaced at the end of 2005 by the Nano – was designed to grab a large part of the next third down. In similar fashion, the iPhone has become the handset by which other mobiles are measured, and in markets including the UK it has made Apple the third-largest mobile phone manufacturer after Nokia and Samsung. It is now a question of how much of the rest of the market – chock full of me-too touchscreen devices from the likes of Nokia, LG and Samsung – Apple wants. “I would argue that they may already have reached the tipping point,” Ben Wood at CCS Insight – a long-time follower of the mobile market – says. “The iPhone has become a ubiquitous product in the markets where its pricing is acceptable.” He believes that a real driver behind Apple’s growth will be the iAd platform, which Jobs announced this year alongside the new version of the iPhone software – which is also in the iPad. The new mobile advertising platform is designed to allow iPhone app developers to create in-app advertising. Currently, anyone who clicks on an advert in a downloadable app is bounced out of it and on to the advertiser’s webpage. As a result, many users are put off clicking on adverts. In contrast, iAd will allow full-screen video and interactive advertising content to be served within an application. Crucially, Apple will sell and serve the adverts, and developers will receive 60% of their iAd revenue. “With iAd, which could be as significant to Apple as the iPod franchise itself, Apple has a tremendous opportunity. It will provide a further chance to lock in their leading position in application development,” Wood says. “If iAd becomes the kind of phenomenon that Apple appears to be able to create, and becomes as big as it could, then potentially Apple could really disrupt the market by subsidising the iPhone from their iAd revenues.” But whether iAd means that Apple needs to go all the way into the low end of the market is doubtful. “IPhone users are a segment of the population that has affinity with technology and disposable income, and that is a marketeer’s dream already,” Wood says. And Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at rival analysts Gartner, is not convinced that this is the right time for Apple to go mass market, citing price constraints on the iPhone’s most important feature – its large touchscreen. “On the iPod touch and the iPhone, the screen is very important,” she says. “Music is easier [to do in a mass-market device] because it is just [data] storage, and with the price of storage coming down you can experiment with design. But when you have applications running on the device, how much dumber can your device become before it is useless? And that is where they are going to struggle. What else do you cut?” Apple could cut its own profits, but it has shown little desire to do that in the past: the switch from the 3G to the 3GS actually reduced the manufacturing cost of the phone, analysts reckon. “Yes, of course, they can expand their addressable market so much quicker, but do they want that?” says Milanesi. “Just as Jobs says Apple does not want to be the Dell of the PC market, [so] Apple does not want to be the Nokia of the mobile market.” How true that is will be revealed tomorrow. Focus on Apple’s factory
While Apple fans will drool over the new iPhone this week, tragic events in China have thrown a spotlight on the human cost of the west’s obsession with shiny toys. A spate of suicides at the massive Chinese plant run by Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn has called into question working conditions at one of Apple’s largest suppliers. The Californian company has dispatched a team of investigators to discover why 10 people have killed themselves so far this year. Management at the Shenzhen facility, which stretches across three square kilometers and employs more than 250,000 people, are trying to solve the problem by hiring counsellors, playing soothing music on production lines, increasing wages and asking new recruits to sign a ‘”no-suicide” contract. They are also taking more direct action, installing netting around outdoor stairwells of the dormitory buildings, where workers sleep eight to a room. Speaking last week, Steve Jobs said Apple was “diligent” when it came to understanding the working conditions in the supply chain, auditing its direct suppliers as well as tertiary suppliers. “We are over there trying to understand what is happening and more importantly trying to understand how we can help because it is a difficult situation,” he told the D8 conference organised by All Things Digital. He said many young workers came from poor rural areas and were away from home for the first time. “They are probably less prepared to leave home than your typical High School student going to college in this country. I think there are some real issues there,” he said. But he stressed: “Foxconn is not a sweatshop. They have got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools. For a factory, it is a pretty nice factory.” Some of Foxconn’s workers disagree, complaining the monotonous workload causes depression. “I do the same thing every day,” Xiao Qi, a college graduate who works at Foxconn in product development told Bloomberg Businessweek. “I have no future.”
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May
20
2010
HTC Wildfire available to pre-orderPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The 5 megapixel camera takes excellent pictures, it has auto-focus, smile detection and an LED flash. Internal memory can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. Staying connected with your contacts has never been easier with the Wildfire. Texts, emails and instant messages can all be displayed in a chat-like, continuous view. The Wildfire will also stream wall updates from Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to ensure you stay up to date with the gossip wherever you may go. A new feature for the Wildfire is the ability to rate and share downloaded apps with your contacts, which is a great idea. Built-in applications include Google Search, YouTube, Picasa, Gmail, Gtalk and Google Maps. A variety of connectivity options comprise of quad-band roaming for use overseas, Wi-Fi for hotspot locations and GPS for guided navigation. The HTC Wildfire is a compact (107 x 60 x 12mm) user friendly smartphone that will continue to evolve as new applications are released. Compare all HTC Wildfire dealsTags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, google, HTC, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, released, roaming, sol, test, Touch, twitter, update
Budget Android 2.1 smartphone out next monthThree, T-Mobile and Virgin Media have all now said they will offer HTC’s latest Android handset, the budget Wildfire, in the future.…
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May
18
2010
HTC Wildfire coming soon to Virgin MobilePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The 5 megapixel camera takes excellent pictures, it has auto-focus, smile detection and an LED flash. Staying connected with your contacts has never been easier with the Wildfire. Texts, emails and instant messages can all be displayed in a chat-like, continuous view. The Wildfire will also stream wall updates from Facebook, Flickr and Twitter to ensure you stay up to date with the gossip wherever you may go. A new feature for the Wildfire is the ability to rate and share downloaded apps with your contacts, which is a great idea. Internal memory can be expanded up to 32GB with a microSD card. Built-in applications include Google Search, YouTube, Picasa, Gmail, Gtalk and Google Maps. A variety of connectivity options comprise of quad-band roaming for use overseas, Wi-Fi for hotspot locations and GPS for guided navigation. The HTC Wildfire is a compact (107 x 60 x 12mm) user friendly smartphone that will continue to evolve as new applications are released. Compare HTC Wildfire dealsTags: 10, 12, 3, all, android, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, email, google, HTC, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, phone, released, roaming, sol, test, Touch, twitter, update, virgin
Not on fire and certainly not wildHTC has introduced yet another Android handset, this one clearly set to be pitched at the less well-heeled if the spec is anything to go by.… Read Full Story…
Google has been forced into an uncharacteristic U-turn, announcing plans to halt direct sales of its Nexus One mobile phone through its website as it admits that consumers prefer getting their hands on a device and trying it out before they part with their cash. When Google unveiled its first ever own-brand mobile phone, the Nexus One, it hoped to revolutionise the way that phones are sold. Its head of mobile Andy Rubin said in February, a month after the phone went on sale in the US, that there would be a series of Google phones but “the real innovation here is the distribution of cellphones on a web store”. He said the company had been able to use the launch to create logistics technology which meant that “when Nexus Two comes out we will just put it on the website and it will instantly go worldwide to all the operators that are hooked into our system”. But while early adopters seem to have been happy to use a website to buy an unlocked mobile phone, Rubin admitted in a blog post late last week that “it’s clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from”. While Google’s mobile phone software platform Android is proving a hit with consumers and mobile phone networks, Rubin admitted “the web store has not”. As a result, as the Nexus One rolls out in more countries, Google will follow the model it has adopted in Europe, where its network partner Vodafone has made the device available in its own shops and it is free on certain long-term contracts. “We’ll shift to a similar model globally,” said Rubin. “Once we have increased the availability of Nexus One devices in stores, we’ll stop selling handsets via the web store, and will instead use it as an online store window to showcase a variety of Android phones available globally.” Despite a shaky start when the first device, the G1, went on sale more than a year after Apple’s iPhone launched, Google’s Android platform has gone from strength to strength with a slew of new handsets appearing from HTC, which also makes the Nexus One, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. In the first quarter of the year, phones with Android outsold Apple’s iPhone in the US for the first time ever, according to market research by the NPD Group. The market for phones that can send emails, access the web and download applications is still dominated by the BlackBerry, made by Canada’s Research In Motion and a brand which last year celebrated its 10th birthday, but Android is closing the gap. In the UK, almost one in every five smartphones now sold uses Android, according to retail experts GfK. The HTC Desire, which is ranged by four of the five UK networks, has been particularly successful and favourably compared with the iPhone. But sales of the Nexus One have been sluggish, partly because of the way in which it was being sold and partly because the HTC Desire is essentially the same device but better. Web analytics firm Flurry estimates just 135,000 Nexus One handsets were sold in the first two months in the US. To add insult to injury, Google’s intended American partner Verizon Wireless recently turned its back on the Nexus One in favour of promoting another Android powered smartphone the Droid Incredible by HTC. T-Mobile, Google’s original launch partner for the G1 in the US, is the only American network offering a price plan specifically aimed at the Nexus One. The device, which normally costs $529, is $179 for T-Mobile customers willing to sign a two year contract.
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(Android Market, free, Google) With the recent UK release of Google’s Nexus One phone, their Android operating system is getting a fair amount of attention, but they also develop a large range of free apps for all Android phones, like the HTC Magic. Google Goggles (Android Market, free, Google) has been revamped recently. Previously, just by taking a picture of anything from book covers, local landmarks and barcodes, it could work out your location or send you to an online shop. Now it allows phones to be pocket-sized interpreters. No longer will menu confusion lead to biftek de cheval arriving on your plate, just take a picture of the foreign text and Goggles will ensure you avoid the horse steak. Who needs GCSE French now? The current crop of languages offered is limited, but Google will gradually upgrade the app until it’s an all-encompassing translation solution. Nokia also provides apps for its own handsets, like the excellent touchscreen X6. Their Ovi Maps offering provides turn-by-turn directions, a great money saver to usurp the TomTom. Their latest innovation is designed to replace the monotone satnav voices. Own Voices (Ovi Store, free, Nokia) allows you to record your voice to direct you on your way. Specialised satnavs offer upgrades so that everyone from John Cleese to Mr T can guide people, but this is the only way to wind up your other half by ensuring “turn right” rings out in your own dulcet tones when they should really be turning left.
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May
14
2010
HTC Smart only £10 per month on O2Posted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The intuitive interface allows you to switch to landscape view with a simple tap on the screen and smart zoom enlarges and reflows text for easy viewing of web content. Keep up to date with all your contacts on Facebook or Twitter, all of your correspondence is kept in one place. The HTC Smart has a 3 megapixel camera with flash and there is also the option to record video clips. Watch your favourite videos or listen to your track list with the built-in multimedia player and the internal memory can be expanded with a microSD card for extra storage for your files. Other features include Bluetooth, FM Radio with RDS, and the handset is quad-band for international use. The battery gives up to 6 hours of talk time and up to 600 hours of standby time. Compare all HTC Smart dealsTags: 10, 12, 3, all, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, HTC, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, o2, phone, sim, sol, test, twitter
May
13
2010
HTC hits back at Apple with patent-infringement suitPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
HTC has responded to Apple’s recent patent-infringement lawsuit against it with one of its own, relating to general hardware and software Read Full Story…
‘I’ll see your tit and raise you a tat’HTC has fought back against Apple’s patent suit with – you guessed it – a patent suit.… Read Full Story…
May
12
2010
HTC files to ban U.S. iPhone, iPad, iPod salesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
NEW YORK (Reuters) – HTC Corp said on Wednesday it filed a patent infringement case against Apple Inc and asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban U.S. sales of iPhones, iPads and iPods. Read Full Story…
May
12
2010
HTC calls for halt to sales of iPad, iPhone and iPod in USPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
The fight between Apple and HTC, maker of mobile phones using Google’s Android platform, is growing increasingly acrimonious with the Taiwanese firm calling for the regulatory authorities to halt the sale of iPhones, iPads and iPods in the US. HTC, which makes Google’s Nexus one as well as its own-branded HTC Desire, has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) calling for it to “halt the importation and sale of the iPhone, iPad and iPod in the United States.” The move comes after Apple sued HTC back in March, alleging that it had infringed 20 patents relating to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”. Calling for sales of a rival’s products to be halted is common practice in patent disputes. As part of its legal action against HTC, Apple has also filed a complaint with the ITC, which would see sales of HTC’s products – including the Nexus One – halted. Nokia, the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer, is also embroiled in a patent fight with Apple alleging the iPhone infringes 10 of its patents. It launched the legal action last October after the collapse of long-running negotiations to agree a deal that would have seen Apple pay a licence fee to use technology Nokia developed, which is fundamental to the way a mobile phone works and is already in the iPhone. Apple hit back in December claiming that Nokia had infringed 13 of its patents, singling out the E71 handset as being particularly egregious. Nokia then took its complaint to the ITC saying the Californian company had infringed seven Nokia patents across its iPhone, iPod, and Mac products. In March a judge in Delaware ordered a suspension to both the original Nokia lawsuit and Apple’s countersuit while the ITC deliberates. Part of the reason for the current fight between HTC and Apple, meanwhile, is believed to be the fact that in February HTC released handsets which use “pinch-to-zoom” functionality which resembles that of the iPhone. The legal spat, which could drag on for years, also comes as devices using Google’s Android platform are starting to have a serious impact on the market for so-called smartphones. Earlier this week market research by the NPD Group said Android devices have outsold the iPhone in the US for the first time, although the figures did not include iPod Touch devices. Android phones now make up the second most popular category of smartphone in the US. The market for phones that can send emails, access the web and download applications is still, however, dominated by the BlackBerry, made by Canada’s Research In Motion. Android sales in the UK, meanwhile, have also started to take off, with sales of mobile phones using the software platform increasing fourfold in March, according to recent figures from retail watcher GfK. Almost one in every five smartphones now sold in the UK is Android. Last month, Microsoft seemed to weigh in to the fight by signing a patent agreement with HTC that provides “broad coverage” under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for HTC devices running Android mobile platform. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft receives royalties from HTC, which created the first smartphones that ran its Windows Mobile operating system. “As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of North America, HTC Corporation. “We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones.” HTC currently sells a dozen smartphones in the US, including the HTC EVO 4G which is sold by Sprint, the DROID Incredible which is being sold by Verizon Wireless and the HTC HD2 which is stocked by T-Mobile.
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May
08
2010
HTC Desire now in black – only on OrangePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News, New Deals, New MobilesNew Mobile & Latest Deal News!
The HTC Desire has a fantastic 3.7 inch widescreen, AMOLED display, delivering 720×480 pixels resolution. Arguably crisper and clearer than any other display on the market, it delivers touchscreen responsiveness definitely in the ballpark of the iPhone and, moreover, it is fast. The combination of Android 2.1 sitting above a Snapdragon CPU clocked at 1GHz with 512Mb of RAM and ROM really does enable you to zap through opening up applications and then moving between them. Its multimedia credentials, are quietly competent rather than superb – such as the 5 megapixel, autofocus camera with LED flash and its 32GB memory card capacity. Where the Nexus One really impresses, though, is in what could be called its charisma, if it could walk into a crowded room, heads would most definitely turn. Its Teflon-coated back and sides are simultaneously rubbery and tough yet soft and almost sensuous, a strangely compelling tactile experience. Compare all HTC Desire black dealsTags: 12, 3, all, android, card, compare, comparemobiles.com, deal, Deals, HTC, iphone, latest, latest deal, mobile, mobiles, new, new mobile, orange, phone, room, sim, sol, test, Touch
May
04
2010
Nokia and Intel defensive on MeeGo Linux patentsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Safety guarantee too late for HTCTech companies are playing hardball on smart phones, yet Linux could gain the upper hand with Intel and Nokia going on the defensive with MeeGo.…
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Google and Apple will face new competition from a group of mobile networks based in London London is to become the centre of a fightback by the world’s biggest mobile phone networks, which together serve more than four billion customers, against the growing power of Apple and Google. The capital will be the location for the headquarters of a new business that will create a single global market for downloadable mobile phone applications, allowing the mobile phone companies to cash in on the growing craze for “apps”. By the end of the year, the mobile phone companies could be in a position to present application developers with a single standard that will operate across everything from BlackBerry devices to mass market Samsung and LG handsets. Mobile phone apps have proved a huge hit with consumers, with more than 3bn downloaded by iPhone users in just 18 months. But while they are creating a dramatic increase in traffic for mobile phone networks, they are not bringing any significant increase in revenues. Apple splits revenues from paid-for apps with the programme’s developer, not the network. The situation is likely to get worse as Apple updates the iPhone in the summer so that more than one app can run at a time, further increasing its appetite for network capacity. While the iPhone is likely to remain an expensive gadget aimed at high-end users, making it a niche product – albeit a very lucrative one for Apple – there is the potentially much larger threat from the growing adoption of Google’s Android platform. Later this year handsets from the likes of HTC and ZTE, which use the Google software and are aimed at the mass market, will start appearing. Already in the UK, according to recent research, almost one in every five smartphones now sold uses Android and some carriers reckon there will be more Android devices than iPhones within a year. Google has made it plain it wants to co-operate with the networks on Android but while it is understood to be sharing a portion of mobile advertising revenues generated through the phones with mobile operators, Google does not share revenue generated by apps. The mobile phone companies were galvanised into action by the appearance of Google’s own-branded mobile phone, the Nexus One, at the start of the year. It is the first in what the search engine giant hopes will be a portfolio of mobile phones over which it has complete control. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February a group of more than a dozen mobile phone companies including O2, Vodafone and Orange announced their intention to form the Wholesale Applications Community, which would work on a single platform for downloadable apps that would work across all their networks and across a wide range of phones. Since then, WAC has attracted 40 members and this week the operators will announce that it is to be based in London, where it will merge with another industry body called the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP). Backed by nine operators including AT&T, Orange and Telecom Italia, Nokia and Ericsson, OMTP developed the nascent Bondi open apps standard, which is used in the recently announced Samsung Wave handset.A chairman is currently being sought for WAC, whose interim chief executive is head of the OMTP Tim Raby, and the first board meeting of the new organisation is expected in July. Its first task will be to pick a technology platform from the numerous competing open standards, including Bondi. It is understood to have chosen to use the open platform currently under construction by the Joint Innovation Lab (JIL) partnership between Vodafone, Verizon Wireless of the US, Softbank in Japan and China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile phone network. It is also supported by LG, Samsung, Sharp and most crucially Research In Motion, maker of the Blackberry email device and bitter rival of both Apple and Android. Also involved in the process is the LiMo Foundation, which has been creating an open source mobile phone operating system based on Linux with the backing of partners including Motorola, NEC and NTT DoCoMo. Its software is inside Samsung’s H1 and M1 handsets which Vodafone has used as the flagship devices for its 360 suite of social networking services. There is speculation that Vodafone 360 could be rolled into the wider WAC effort.
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Google’s Android is the operating system of choice for almost 20% of all smartphones sold in the UK, according to new figures Google’s Android mobile phone platform seems to be taking off in the UK, with sales of mobile phones using the software platform increasing fourfold in the past month, according to new figures from retail watcher GfK. Almost one in every five smartphones now sold in the UK is Android. The increase in sales is due to a slew of new Android devices which have hit the market in recent months, not least the HTC Desire – which, over the past few weeks, has been added to the range of most major mobile operators and been well received by critics. Vodafone, meanwhile, started selling the HTC Legend at the start of April, adding it to a list of Android devices available in the UK which includes the HTC Hero and Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson. GfK, whose pronouncements about the retail industry are pored over by City analysts, said that Android handsets accounted for 12.3% of all phones sold to customers signing up for a long-term mobile phone contract in week 15 of 2010 – the week ending on April 18 – compared with just 3% of the market in week 12, the last week of March. In terms of the total market, Android’s share grew from 1.6% to 6.7% during the period. As for smartphone devices – which GfK defines as the market for phones that can download applications from third party providers, so it includes the iPhone – they now account for 37.6% of the total mobile handset market and 63.9% of the contract market. GfK said the figure has remained relatively stable so Android is gaining market share from rival platforms, rather than merely benefitting from an overall increase in smartphone uptake. GfK refused to give details of the market share of other operating systems. “It’s not down to one particular handset,” said a spokesman for GfK. “More and more of the major handset manufacturers are viewing Android as a useful solution and using it in their smartphones”. More Android devices will become available in the UK over the coming weeks. Google’s Nexus One, for instance, went on sale through Vodafone’s stores and website today, a new Android phone from LG – the Optimus GT540 – is due out next month, while Samsung is due to add the Galaxy S to the current Galaxy Portal (i5700) which is already available in the UK. Vodafone, meanwhile, will next month launch an Android phone designed for the mass-market as part of a “refresh” of its portfolio of own-branded devices. Vodafone has turned to Chinese manufacturers Huawei, ZTE and TCL as the mobile phone network looks to push smartphones into the mass market. The company announced nine new handsets in its own-brand range on Wednesday. Alongside some basic feature phones aimed at developing countries – including one called the Vodafone 247, which has a built-in solar panel that could find its way to the UK as an “eco-phone” – Vodafone announced new smartphones including the Vodafone 845. The 2.8in touchscreen device is the first Vodafone branded phone that uses Google’s Android operating system and has been manufactured by Huawei, which until recently was best known in the mobile phone industry as the maker of 3G mobile broadband dongles. The Vodafone 845 runs on Éclair, the latest version of the Android platform and as well as being able to access thousands of applications it come pre-loaded with the Vodafone 360 service. Fellow Chinese dongle manufacturer ZTE, meanwhile, is responsible for another smartphone in the new Vodafone range. The 546 has a qwerty keyboard and is aimed at developing countries which have not yet installed 3G networks. ZTE also produced the 247 for Vodafone. Another Chinese manufacturer, TCL – which has a mobile phone joint venture with Alcatel – has produced a new touchscreen device for Vodafone called the 543, which is also aimed at the mass market.
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