Posts Tagged ‘HTC’
Sprint HTC EVO will be Available for Pre-order This Month
Sprint’s much-anticipated HTC EVO 4G is expected to ship this summer, and it looks like pre-ordering season is just around the corner.
According to Engadget, the Android 2.1-powered EVO 4G will be made available for pre-order at The Shack sometime in May. (I’m a little surprised that name, “The Shack,” has stuck this long.) Plan pricing for this HTC smartphone hasn’t been announced yet either, so stay tuned for that.
In the mean time, you can still enter to win a free HTC EVO 4G of your own if you act quickly.
HTC Boasts Its Outpacing Other Smartphone Makers in US Market
HTC is proud of their accomplishments lately – most notably HTC CEO Peter Chou, who told the Wall Street Journal that the company is growing in the U.S. market “faster than others.”
According to the Journal, HTC shipped 5.5 million to 6 million smartphones to the United States in 2009, and Chou claims those estimates will grow in 2010, but he doesn’t provide any specifics.
One of HTC’s main hurdles, however, is brand recognition. That has been overturned somewhat by help from partnerships with Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile. They’ve also gained a lot of attention thanks to the partnership with Google on creating the Nexus One, but Google seems to reap the PR benefits from that more than HTC does.
The WSJ notes that HTC’s preference for the Google Android system in general could be prove to be a problem following the Goog’s recent withdrawal from China. One possible remedy, Chou says, is the use of an alternative search engine on smartphones but still retaining the Android OS.
There’s no arguing that HTC has grown significantly in the last year, in both sales numbers and brand name recognition around the world. But Chou doesn’t offer any statistics on the growth (or lack thereof) on other companies to see just how impressive HTC’s numbers are or not.
Nonetheless, with several new smartphone models on the way this year, there should be plenty of HTC-related news in the coming months, and they definitely could beat last year’s sales numbers if they keep the pace up.
Apple’s HTC patent suit: Can it derail Google’s Android devices?
Apple said Tuesday that it is suing HTC for infringing on 20 patents related to the iPhone and pursuing a permanent cease and desist order that could derail a wide range of Android devices.
Specifically, Apple is suing HTC in a Delaware district court and the U.S. International Trade Commission for violating patents related to “the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.” Apple didn’t detail the specific patents involved.
Funny that’s what everyone in the smartphone food chain says. The ITC is going to be quite busy evaluating all the patent lawsuits against various mobile phone players.
Get Live News on Your Mobile as You Get on TV
English news channel NewsX has now made its videos available on mobile phones with just a 30-second delay from what is seen on the TV. The service is primarily aimed at “tech-savvy” and “corporate people”, says spokesperson Ajatshatru Singh.
“This service is primarily for the urban and corporate people who are very tech savvy and who are happy using gadgets. It is for those who want news on the go – which is what we call the mobile generation… So as long as they have a device in their hands, the news can be delivered to them,” Singh, head of Online, NewsX, told IANS.
As part of this service which was launched last week, viewers can access the same news content on their mobile device as they see it on NewsX TV channel and also its website. A special mobile URL – m.newsx.com/live – can be used to access the same.
Asked why the channel felt the need to introduce this concept, Singh explained: “The opportunity to do this has always been there given that India has the fastest growing mobile market in the world. It was about a year ago that we realised that with so many handsets floating around, people will want to get any kind of content delivered on their mobiles – so why not news?”
According to Singh, the video service will best work on phones such as the Apple iPhone and high-end models of all other companies like Motorola, Nokia, Samsung or HTC.
Also, there are no extra costs for availing the service, except for the basic expense of using mobile Internet.
“We have no subscription charges, no fees attached with this. As long as you have a phone with Internet, you can log on to the URL and access news. There is also no specific operator we have tied up with. The service is cost independent and operator independent,” he said.
Toshiba to Develop Tablet PC with Two 7-Inch Screens
Toshiba is reportedly developing a tablet with two 7-inch displays, which folds like a book. That would make it the latest in a long line of companies-both big names and start-ups-who have toyed with these dual-display devices.
The concept makes some sense. A design with two displays maximizes the screen real estate while keeping the size down. You can mix-and-match different display technologies and operating systems to serve different applications in a single device. And the success of touchscreen smartphones, and more recently the Apple iPad, demonstrates that many users are willing to forgo a physical keyboard. But so far the dual-display has been DOA.
Asus, HTC, MSI and Sony among others have all experimented with these devices, either as full-blown tablets or e-book readers, but there’s no sign any of them are coming to your Best Buy anytime soon. The Microsoft Courier project generated a lot of excitement, but never made it out of the incubator. One Laptop Per Child scrapped its XO-2 dual-screen tablet, and instead plans to release updates to its standard XO netbook. OLPC will eventually offer a standard low-cost tablet, the XO-3.
Then there are the dual-display e-readers. Start-up Kno demonstrated its device at the D8 conference, but its unwieldy tablet, which consists of two 14-inch displays, has puzzled reviewers. The Entourage Edge is a hybrid device-the company calls it a “dualbook”–with a 9.7-inch E-Ink display on one side and a 10.1-inch LCD tablet running Android on the other. It’s a novel concept, but the device is much thicker than an e-book reader or tablet, and doesn’t really excel at either.
Aside from Apple, no company has yet figured out how to deliver a great experience on a standard tablet, let alone one with two displays-sometime using different technologies and input mechanisms. Google is still working on versions of Android and Chrome OS tailored for tablets. And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently admitted that the company has a lot of work to do on Windows 7 tablets to catch up with the iPad.