Qualcomm Releases New S4 Processors

Qualcomm has announced a slew of Krait-based Snapdragon system-on-chips (SoC) processors to fit in its S1 and S4 performance classes.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon range of SoC chips have proven to be extremely popular in smartphones and tablets, however the firm is facing a growing challenge from Texas Instruments and Nvidia. Coming little over a week after Nvidia revealed its quad-core Tegra 3 processor, Qualcomm has announced eight Snapdragon S4 processors and four Snapdragon S1 processors.

Since Qualcomm showed off the Krait architecture in February with three chips, the firm has not extended its headline S4 range of processors. Now it has added eight SKUs, with models including the MSM8660A, MSM8260A, MSM8630, MSM8230, MSM8627, MSM8227, APQ8060A and APQ8030. Qualcomm was cagey about when devices sporting these chips will appear, only mentioning an early 2012 timeframe.

Perhaps more important for Qualcomm’s sales figures are its entry level Snapdragon S1 chips. The four new chips in this category are the MSM7225A, MSM7625A, MSM7227A and MSM7627A models, with the firm claiming that they have been optimised for those OEM customers that are making the transition from 2G to 3G devices.

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Google, which last week created a bit of chaos with the launch of a Gmail application for Apple iOS devices, has decided to put out discontinue its Gmail application for the BlackBerry.

As of Nov. 22, Google will no longer offer technical support to users of the application, nor will it allow people to download it anymore, the company wrote in a blog post.

However, people will be able to continue using it, although Google will put its development efforts on the version of the application for mobile browsers, available at gmail.com.

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AMD To Slash A 10th Of Its Workforce

Advanced Micro Devices Inc revealed a plan on Thursday to save about $200 million of operating costs in 2012 by cutting 10 percent of its global workforce and streamlining internal business processes.

The layoffs mark the first major move by Chief Executive Rory Read, who took the helm in August to try to galvanize a microprocessor maker that has bled market share to larger rival Intel Corp, while missing out on the mobile device boom.

“It’s not too surprising given the operating background of the new CEO and this is exactly what you’d bring an outsider in to do, but their problems go far deeper right now,” said Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities.

The layoffs should be completed in 2012′s first quarter, AMD said in a statement. Savings generated could help bankroll research and expansion into areas such as low-power chips, emerging markets and cloud computing next year.

In late September AMD, a distant second to Intel in selling microprocessors that are the brains of PCs, warned of manufacturing problems manufacturing it new 32 nanometer Llano chips as well as older 45 nanometer chips.

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Want A $19/Month Mobile Plan?

A new wireless operator is gearing up to launch next week with plans offering unlimited data, voice and texting for $19 a month and no contract.

Republic Wireless, a division of Bandwith.com, will provide the service through Voice over IP using the nearest available Wi-Fi hotspot starting Tuesday, Nov. 8, a spokesman confirmed via email.

When a wireless phone user is traveling, the service will be provided through traditional cellular connections, initially over the Sprint network.

One important catch: Republic will require that its users have a new Android-based smartphone equipped with hardware and software that supports automatic switching from Wi-Fi to cellular. The device must have single phone number that works on both networks.

Republic hasn’t disclosed further details on phones the network will support. The company said more details will be made available on the launch date.

Republic calls its Wi-Fi and cellular mixture “Hybrid Calling,” a strategy it said reduces the costs for network services and makes the $19 flat monthly “membership” rate possible.

Republic estimates that smartphone users are within reach of Wi-Fi over 60% of the time, said the spokesman, Kevin LaHaise.

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Judge Oks Sprint’s Lawsuit Against AT&T

A judge in the U.S. on Wednesday gave the go ahead to parts of C Spire Wireless and Sprint Nextel’s lawsuits against AT&T’s proposed US$39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

AT&T and T-Mobile had moved for dismissal of the lawsuits arguing that the complaints by Sprint and C Spire, formerly Cellular South, failed to adequately substantiate that the merger would cause them “antitrust injury”.

The decision by District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia could complicate AT&T’s defense of the deal which has been already opposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in August to block AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile, saying that the deal would significantly reduce competition, increase prices and stifle innovation. Seven state attorneys general have joined the lawsuit. That case goes on trial in February before Judge Huvelle.

Where private plaintiffs have successfully pleaded antitrust injury, the fact that they are defendants’ competitors is no bar, Judge Huvelle said before allowing Sprint and C Spire to proceed with their claim that the merger would make it difficult for them to acquire wireless devices. The companies had claimed that after the merger AT&T and Verizon would be in a better position to get exclusive handset deals, while foreclosing their access to the most innovative handsets and raise their costs.

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Apple Loses Court Case

Apple has lost a patent lawsuit against a small Spanish company, allowing the firm to continue selling its tablet computer.

Apple filed the case a year ago when it obtained an injunction from a local court to ban imports of the NT-K tablet into Spain. However, according to court documents, the Spanish court has vacated the injunction, saying that there are no legal grounds to block sales of the device.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the NT-K tablet is made in China and sold in Europe by Nuevas Tecnologias y Energias Catala, based in the eastern Spanish region of Valencia.

The NT-K tablet runs a Spanish language version of Android written by Nuevas Tecnologias’ programmers.

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AMD Makes Gains

Worldwide processor shipments grew during the third quarter this year and Advanced Micro Devices gained market share from Intel over last year despite being plagued by manufacturing problems, according to a study released by Mercury Research on Tuesday.

Shipments of processors during the third quarter went up by just 5% compared to the same quarter last year, according to Mercury Research. Chip shipments have grown despite flat-to-slow growth in PC shipments worldwide over the past year, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at the research firm.

Intel held an 80.3% market share, a small drop from 80.6% market share during the third quarter last year. AMD’s market share was 18.8%, growing from 18.3% market share last year.

Mercury Research’s numbers cover all x86 systems including laptops, desktops and servers. The company did not provide full microprocessor shipment numbers.

AMD’s Fusion mobile chips for netbooks and laptops are doing much better this year compared to last year, which helped the company gain year-over-year market share over Intel, McCarron said.

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Is Motorola Mobility A Patent Pimp Too?

Motorola Mobility has received $228m in patent licensing deals.

Motorola Mobility, which is in the process of being bought by Google, confirmed in its accounts that in June 2010 the firm signed a licensing deal with an unnamed company for which Motorola would receive $175m and future royalties. Those future royalties stacked up to an impressive $228m in just the nine months leading up to 2 October 2010.

Google’s attempt to buy Motorola’s handset division was generally regarded as a move to acquire the firm’s considerable patent portfolio. Motorola’s handset division is widely credited with being one of the major contributors to the development of mobile phones and while the firm’s smartphones might not be as fashionable as devices from Apple, HTC or Samsung, it clearly has patents that can bring home the bacon.

Although Motorola did not disclose the name of the other party in its licensing deal, there is a better than average chance that it is Research in Motion. The two firms came to a “long-term, intellectual property cross-licensing arrangement involving the parties receiving cross-licenses of various patent rights” in June 2010.

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Blackberry Delays Update

Last week at its BlackBerry DevCon conference, Research in Motion tried to get developers excited about the upcoming PlayBook OS 2.0 mobile operating system, to spur developers to create applications for RIM’s BlackbBerry PlayBook tablet, released last spring to poor reviews and low sales. But yesterday, RIM wrote in a blog post that it was delaying the release of the PlayBook 2.0 OS “until we are confident we have fully met the expectations of our developers, enterprise customers, and users.”

PlayBook OS 2.0 was originally promised for October 2011, but RIM has now set a target of February 2012. To meet the new February 2012 release date, RIM said it was dropping a key feature originally promised for PlayBook OS 2.0: its popular BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service.

Developers were looking forward to the promised October PlayBook 2.0 OS release in hopes it might spur sales of the poorly selling tablet, especially as the original timing would have taken advantage of the holiday sales season that will also see the release of the unified tablet/smartphone Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich” operating system and a bevy of new smartphones using Microsoft’s recently released Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” operating system, in addition to Apple’s strong-selling iPad and new iPhone 4S, both featuring the recently released iOS 5 operating system.

The PlayBook OS is based on the QNX operating system that RIM bought in spring 2010 to be the basis for its tablets and, sometime in the 2012-13 timeframe, be the basis for a new operating system for its BlackBerry smartphones. Last week, RIM said that it will provide a unified tablet/smartphone operating system called BBX, based on the QNX/PlayBook platform. It said that applications developed for the PlayBook OS would be compatible with BBX, but did not make the same promise for BlackBerry OS apps.

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30% Of BlackBerry Users Want Out

The BlackBerry smartphone and its maker, Research in Motion, were in serious trouble even before last week’s global service disruption.

More than 30% of BlackBerry users in large companies said in September, a month before the outage, that they were looking to use a different smartphone device in 2012, according to a survey of 243 smartphone users in companies with more than 10,000 workers by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

“With last week’s outage, I suspect the 30% number is even higher,” said Steven Brasen, the EMA analyst who conducted the survey. “User satisfaction with BlackBerry is by far the lowest of smartphones. A huge number are dissatisfied.”

Brasen said the survey found that 11% of BlackBerry users in large companies are “completely dissastisfied” with the device, while only 2% of iPhone users and 0% of Android users are completely dissatisfied with their smartphones.

Brasen said the opinions of end users are becoming very important to IT executives.

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