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ZTE Pushes Past RIM
ZTE became the world’s fifth largest smartphone vendor in the second quarter, it announced today, overtaking Research in Motion (RIM).
That’s according to research firm IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, which shows that thanks to sales of eight million smartphones in the second quarter ZTE has slipped onto the top five list. RIM, which was fourth on the list in May, is now nowhere to be seen, as sales of the firm’s Blackberry handsets continue to falter.
With eight millions smartphones shifted in the second quarter, ZTE’s shipments increased 300 per cent compared to the second quarter last year, helping it snatch a 5.2 per cent share of the worldwide market and making it the fastest growing smartphone maker after Apple. This puts the firm just 0.5 per cent behind Android phone maker HTC and just 1.4 per cent behind Nokia.
Unsurprisingly, rivals Apple and Samsung fill the top two spots, holding on to 16.9 per cent and 32.6 per cent of the smartphone market, respectively.
“ZTE’s great smartphone performance in 2012 in international markets has been a major contributor to our consistent expansion, and is a demonstration of the depth and strength of our R & D,” said ZTE EVP and head of its Terminal Division He Shiyou.
“We have moved into the middle to high-end smartphone market with the recent launch of the ZTE Grand X in countries including China, Turkey and the UK, and we will continue to build our handset capabilities in the middle and high range sectors, while still delivering great lower-end smartphones like the ZTE Kis.”
Windows 7 Most Used OS
Windows 7 is now the leading operating system (OS) for PCs, according to figures from web traffic analysis firm Statcounter.
The report claims that in June more than half of all internet connected PCs, or 50.2 per cent, ran Microsoft’s most recent Windows 7 OS.
Statcounter’s statistics show that Windows XP was the next most popular operating system, used by 29.9 per cent of users.
This might be the first time that Windows 7 has had more market share than the other operating systems put together, but with the launch of Windows 8 looming, it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft will begin pushing Windows 7 users to make the switch to its next operating system.
That’s already started happening with XP. Launched back in 2001, the OS was a massive hit for the software giant and for this reason it’s finding it hard to wean users away from Windows XP – especially considering how rubbish Windows Vista was. However, Microsoft has said that it’s time to move on, and it will end business support for Windows XP in the next two years.
Is It “Game Over” For RIM?
June 11, 2012 by admin
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Research In Motion’s share price on Monday fell to less than $10 on Nasdaq, a breach that technical analysts say could prompt even further declines, after an analyst warned that the BlackBerry maker’s sales were dismal last month.
The stock, which is trading at its lowest since 2003, has fallen nearly 15 percent in the past week alone.
After an announcement last week that RIM expects to post a quarterly operating loss, sentiment is extremely bearish on the stock, said Elvis Picardo, a strategist at Global Securities in Vancouver.
To make matters worse, Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette said in a note to clients on Sunday that RIM sales deteriorated further in May.
On Monday, RIM’s shares fell 5.8 percent to $9.66 on the Nasdaq, while its Toronto-listed shares closed on Monday 6.1 percent lower at C$10.03.
“You would have expected the C$10 level to have provided pretty strong support, but if it cracks through that it’s really hard to say where this decline will stop,” said Picardo.
RIM, which almost invented the concept of on-the-go email with its first BlackBerry device in 1999, has seen its once dominant position fade in the face of competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices from the likes of Samsung Electronics Co using Google Inc’s Android software.
Is B.Y.O.D Proving To Be A Headache?
May 29, 2012 by admin
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IT managers trying to cope with the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.
As a result, IT shops won’t be able to provide the security necessary to protect company data, says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.
“The number of devices coming in the next few years will outstrip IT’s ability to keep the enterprise secure,” he said, adding that IT workers are “going crazy” and “get into fights” over whether users should have upgrades.
To help IT cope, software vendors should create what Dulaney called “beneficial viruses” that could be embedded in corporate data carried on mobile devices. These software tools would require users to have licenses in order to access files, just as digital rights management technology does with music and video files.
Beneficial viruses would also “be smart enough” to delete the sensitive data if a device is lost or stolen, or if data winds up on an unauthorized device, Dulaney said, adding, “It’s time for the SAPs and Oracles to begin thinking about doing that, and it’s a lot harder than we think.”
Today, IT shops use mobile device management software to monitor which mobile users are authorized to access applications and whether they can access the data outside the corporate cloud.
Cisco Hits 50 Million Milestone For Its IP Phones
April 26, 2012 by admin
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Cisco Wednesday announced Wednesday that it has sold its 50 millionth IP phone, a significant increase in just two years when 30 million were sold.
The switching technology giant today also said it will make software for presence, instant messaging and Cisco Jabber IM clients available for free to its Unified Communications Manager customers.
The latter move means organizations with UCM can roll out presence and IM to employees simply and cheaply to smartphones and tablets running various operating systems, Barry O’Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco’s voice technology group, said in a blog post.
The supported OSs include Windows, Mac, iPad, Cisco Cius, iPhone, BlackBerry and, later in 2012, Android, O’Sullivan said.
The move helps companies “deploy a unified communications client that is BYOD-ready,” he added. BYOD refers to Bring Your Own Device, a trend where companies allow workers to use devices of their choosing to connect to company data wirelessly.
RIM Goes Non-BlackBerry
April 9, 2012 by admin
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Research In Motion on Tuesday launched software that will allow its large “enterprise” customers to manage Apple and other rival devices through the same servers as they use for the BlackBerry smartphone and Playbook tablet.
The new Mobile Fusion software, first announced in November, is an acknowledgement of sorts by RIM of a growing preference by many users inside big corporations and government to access professional communications over their personal devices, often the Apple iPhone or iPad, or devices running Google’s Android.
RIM, which long dominated the so-called enterprise market, has watched the BlackBerry’s market share steadily erode in recent years. Unable to arrest the trend, the company now aims to generate a fresh revenue stream from it. Mobile Fusion will cost $99 per user to license and $4 per user a month, with discounts available for bulk orders.
In a second announcement on Tuesday that highlights RIM’s eroding market position, it said its PlayBook tablet now boasts 15,000 applications – still just a tiny fraction of the number available on the iPad. One of the biggest complaints about RIM’s products is the dearth of content and applications.
A recent survey from Appcelerator and IDC showed less than 16 percent of developers were “very interested” in creating programs for RIM, compared with 90 percent for Apple and 80 percent for Android.
Remote Access Tools Threatens Smartphones
March 7, 2012 by admin
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Malware tools that allow attackers to gain complete remote control of smartphones have become a major threat to owners around the world, security researchers say.
In a demonstration at the RSA Conference 2012 here Wednesday, former McAfee executives George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, who recently founded security firm CrowdStrike, installed a remote access tool on an Android 2.2-powered smartphone by taking advantage of an unpatched flaw in WebKit, the default browser in the OS.
The researchers showed an overflow audience how the malware can be delivered on a smartphone via an innocuous looking SMS message and then be used to intercept and record phone conversations, capture video, steal text messages, track dialed numbers and pinpoint a user’s physical location.
The tools used in the attack were obtained from easily available underground sources, Kurtz said. The WebKit bug, for instance, was one of 20 tools purchased from hackers for a collective $1,400.
The remote access Trojan used in the attack was a modified version of Nickispy a well-known Chinese malware tool.
Learning how to exploit the WebKit vulnerability and to modify the Trojan for the attack, was harder than expected, said Kurtz. He estimated that CrowdStrike spent about $14,000 in all to develop the attack.
But the key issue is that similar attacks are possible against any smartphone, not just those running Android, he said.
WebKit for instance, is widely used as a default browser in other mobile operating systems including Apple’s iOS and the BlackBerry Tablet OS. WebKit is also is used in Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.
Several mobile remote access Trojans are already openly available from companies pitching them as tools that can be used to surreptitiously keep tabs on others.
Ericsson Seeking To Cash In On Patents
January 19, 2012 by admin
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As wireless access is added to new types of devices, Ericsson is reorganizing its licensing department in an attempt to generate more revenue from its patents, the company said on Thursday.
The Swedish telecommunication vendor’s CEO Hans Vestberg wants to keep close tabs on the latest developments, and as part of its reorganization Ericsson’s chief intellectual property officer Kasim Alfalahi will now report directly to Vestberg.
The company’s IPR portfolio includes 27,000 granted patents. Today, any vendor that wants to use cellular connectivity in its products needs a license from Ericsson, which is offered under so-called fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.
Licensing patents under those terms should be fairly straightforward. But that isn’t always the case; in the Netherlands Samsung and Apple, as part of their global legal battle, are arguing in court over what fair and reasonable means.
Ericsson has largely stayed out of the telecom legal battles, but announced it had sued ZTE, which then counter-sued, in April last year. The case is still pending, according an Ericsson spokeswoman.
RIM Hopes Apps Will Help Sales
January 18, 2012 by admin
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Research In Motion is highlighting the native and Android apps available on its struggling PlayBook at the Consumer Electronics Show as it gets ready to launch the first major overhaul of the tablet’s software in February.
The company is showing the PlayBook OS 2.0 in its booth, demonstrating the Android apps that will finally be available to users of the tablet. RIM said in March last year that it would release a player that would let users of the tablets run apps designed for Android, and that capability will finally be available with PlayBook OS 2.0.
Popular games such as Cut the Rope and Plants vs. Zombies will be available in the store, said Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations and ecosystem development. The apps appear and work like any other app; users don’t have to launch a separate player to run them.
Not just any Android app will be accessible to users, and that’s by design, Saunders said. “We don’t want to enable an open marketplace the way the Android Market is,” he said. Android developers must use a software package to make their apps compatible with the PlayBook, and then they must submit it to RIM’s standard app curation process. The company hopes to weed out the malware and pirated apps that often appear in the Android Market, he said.
When PlayBook OS 2.0 becomes available, “some number of thousands” of Android apps will be available in the market, Saunders said. The company has been working with some of the aggregator marketplaces to port apps and attending Android meetups to encourage developers to make their apps available to PlayBook users, Saunders said.
RIM is taking pains to attract as many developers as possible by supporting as many languages and frameworks as possible. “One thing we’re focused on is providing a rich palette of tools developers can use,” Saunders said. RIM has developed ports for a number of frameworks and languages to make it easy for developers to use whatever tools.
IBM Goes Social
December 12, 2011 by admin
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Responding to increased use of tablets within business settings, IBM will launch on Wednesday several mobile applications designed to let employees use IBM enterprise social collaboration software with iPads and other mobile devices.
The new applications, free to customers with active licenses of the IBM software, have been built specifically for tablet interfaces and have security, IT management and compliance features.
“The apps are very lightweight and talk directly back in a secure manner to the enterprise systems that people who don’t have these devices are using inside the company,” said Rob Ingram, senior manager of IBM’s Mobile Collaboration Strategy.
One of the applications lets employees use IBM Connections via iPads, while another one is for LotusLive Meeting users to participate in online meetings using iPhones or Android, BlackBerry or iPad tablets.
For IBM Sametime, another application lets employees engage in one-on-one or group instant messaging sessions on iPad and Android tablets. There is also one application for Lotus Symphony Viewer that lets users view ODF-based files, including documents, spreadsheets and presentations, on iPads, iPhones or Android devices.
There are also applications for managing telephony tasks within IBM Sametime from tablets and for Android device users to add widgets to home screens as shortcuts to their Lotus Notes mail and calendar.