Tag: smartphones

ARM buys OffSpark

Posted on February 9, 2015 by - News

lightningBritish chip designer ARM has bought Dutch firm Offspark, which is an open source security software outfit.

It is all part of ARM’s cunning plan to make chips for the internet of things.  It seems that the move by Intel to buy McAfee is starting to make some sense and ARM is seeing the wisdom of having inhouse security software.

Offspark’s PolarSSL technology is designed for sensor modules, communication modules and smartphones.

ARM said buying the group would add its security and software cryptography to its IoT platform, designed to link billions of devices online.

It is not clear how much ARM paid for the security outfit. ARM has promised that the  technology will remain open source and will be made available to developers for commercial use.

It complements ARM’s Cryptobox technology of mbed OS that enables secure execution and storage.

Apparently ARM is to  release mbed OS under an Apache 2.0 licence which will include mbed TLS, Thread, and other key technologies toward the end of 2015.

The release of mbed TLS 1.3.10 is now available under GPL and to existing PolarSSL customers on polarssl.org.

 

Swatch gets into the smart watch market

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Swiss Watches the BrandIf Apple thinks it will have its own way in the smart watch category this year, it had better think again.
Swatch is planning to introduce a smart watch in the next three months and it’s going to have some advantages over the Apple device.
According to Bloomberg, the watch can communicate with the internet without needing to be charged, will work with Windows and Android and will let you make mobile payments.
Swatch has something of an advantage over Apple too in that it’s been in the market for decades and has had touch screens since the end of the 20th century.
It also knows its market and has distribution deals that Apple cannot possibly match.
Further, attempts by companies like Intel and Google to launch TV services haven’t exactly been the dish of the day.
While some analysts are predicting huge sales of smart watches, others are more sceptical.  Young people, by and large, don’t tend to wear watches and use their smartphones for telling the time.
People need to be convinced that spending money on duplicate functions makes any sense at all.

 

Video drives the mobile data market

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

tvThe age of TV is not over, it’s just taken a different shape.
IDC estimates that mobile data traffic will show double digit growth in 2015 – by 59 percent.
The company said in a report that while faster networks and more affordable 4G handsets are playing their part, the real reason for data growth on this scale is mobile video apps and other streamed content.
In 2013, mobile data traffic was 19,049,158 terabytes but by this year that figure will grow to close to 52 million terabytes while in 2016 the figure will not be far off 80 million terabytes.
IDC thinks 4G service prices will continue to fall but 3G still has its place, particularly in the non-Western markets.
By 2018, the company believes that people using 4G handsets will generate 46 percent of data traffic.
By 2018, it estimates that 4G devices will churn 5.5GB of data a month, three times more than a 3G smartphone.
Right now, mobile video generates 50 percent of all mobile data and that number is set to increase.  And video calling services are also set to grow.

 

Authentication market value to soar

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 16.35.17By the end of this year, mobile multi-factor authentication software and services will be worth $1.6 billion by the end of this year.
The reason is that user names and passwords to identify people aren’t secure enough, according to ABI Research.
And attacks against organisations, of whatever size, continue to flourish with many breaches made because of weak passwords.
That means there’s considerable market demand for authentication technology that gives an additional layer of security.
ABI thinks that one time passwords and tokens are emerging as the favourite way of authentication.
They offer better security because passwords generated only work for a single session or transaction.
Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter already use two factor authentication methods. And one type of two factor authentication uses hardware based security tokens.
Companies like MobileIron, Gemalto, Entrust,, Centrify, CA, Symantec and others are competing for market share.
ABI believes the market is so ready for this kind of secure technology that by 2020 the authentication market will be worth $13.2 billion.

 

China internet users number 649 million

Posted on February 3, 2015 by - News

chinaflagThere are now 649 million Chinese people with internet access, according to a government report.
And, significantly, a large percentage of those people use smartphones or mobile phones to access the net.
At the end of 2012, there were only 564 million people able to access the web, said the China Internet Network Information Centre.
While the 2014 figures showed a modest growth, there is still room for vendors because internet penetration is only 47.9 percent of the population – with many of those people living in rural areas.
Reuters reports that smartphone sales aren’t doing so well.  It quotes government figures that showed 389 smartphones shipped in China in 2014, a drop from 423 million in 2013.
Some players like Google, Facebook and Twitter have practically no presence in mainland China.
The authorities there routinely censor many web sites and keep a sharp eye for blogs related to politics or to pornography.

 

Android market share falls

Posted on February 2, 2015 by - News

330ogleData from market research company ABI Research indicates that Google’s Android operating system is losing share in the smartphone market.
The data shows that certified Android smartphone shipments fell in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the third quarter.
Cerified Android shipments fell to 205 million in the fourth quarter, down from 217.49 million – a drop of around five percent.
The clear winner in the quarter was Apple’s iOS – while it only shipped 74.50 millions during Q4, that was up by 90 percent compared to Q3 2014.
Microsoft also managed to increase its market share in the fourth quarter, rising to 10.70 millions – up 19 percent compared to the third quarter.
Others – by which we can infer operating systems by Blackberry and the like, saw growth decline by 26 percent.

 

Smartphone shipments boom

Posted on January 30, 2015 by - News

smartphones-genericOver 375.2 million smartphones shipped during the fourth quarter of 2014 – that’s up by 28.2 percent compared to the same period the year before.
Apple had been the number two vendor in 11 previous quarters before Q4 2014, but, according to IDC, it was close to a tie with Samsung, the market leader.
IDC now predicts that Samsung could well outstrip Samsung during 2015.
It’s not just Apple that is challenging Samsung – as we’ve reported before, is under challenge from small Android OEMs selling products at much lower margins.
Growth in 2013 represented 40.5 percent but according to IDC, “the market clearly still has legs”. It estimates growth will fall to a mid teen figure during 2015.
The top five vendors for the fourth quarter were Samsung, Apple, Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi.  The last showed growth of 178.6 percent during Q4 2014, compared to Q4 2013.

 

Samsung shows profit drop

Posted on January 29, 2015 by - News

Samsung HQ Silicon Valley - MM picMassive South Korean combine Samsung said its earnings fell for the first time in three years.
And it’s blaming the decline on mobile phone sales, which fell by 21 percent in its financial year.
The company’s net profit fell to $21.3 billion for the year, down by 27 percent compared to its previous financial year.
Many are agreed that competition from homegrown Chinese manufacturers have nibbled into Samsung sales in the country.
It also missed a trick in the second half of last year by not having anything to compete with Apple introductions.
Samsung is predicting an increasing decline for smartphones in the first calendar quarter of this year.

 

Flat panels judged by area

Posted on January 29, 2015 by - News

oldtvWhere once the global flat panel industry focused on unit growth, it appears that it is now taking a bigger interest in area demand.
Market intelligence company IHS said that last year, display panel shipments grew to 168.9 million square metres.
That’s up by nine percent compared to the year before, and will grow at five percent CAGR to reach 223.6 million square metres in 2020.
Bigger is now better, according to Yoshio Tamura, director of research for IHS.  “There were four major driving forces,,, consumer demand for larger LCD TVs, soaring demand for five inch and larger smartphones, larger automotive display screens, and larger tablet PCs.”
Major players in the PC business including Apple, HP, Lenovo, Acer and Asus have launched notebooks with larger screens.
Smartphones, particularly in the Chinese market and developing market, are fuelling demand for bigger screen sizes.

 

Major Apple supplier to slash jobs

Posted on January 27, 2015 by - News

foxconn-tvTaiwanese megacompany Foxconn will slash jobs because of falling demand for Apple gear.
That’s according to Reuters, which has spoken to a company representative who confirmed the cuts will come.
The representative who works to the chairman of the board, said labour costs had doubled since 2010.
Foxconn currently hires 1.3 million people and came under fire in 2010 after a number of its workers killed themselves.
The Reuters report said revenue growth for Foxconn fell to 1.3 percent in 2013.
Analysts are predicting that the massive growth in sales of smartphones and tablets is bound to decline as saturation levels increase.
Both Apple and Samsung now face intense competition from own brand Chinese smartphone vendors offering units at rock bottom prices and with rock bottom margins.

1.167 billion smartphones sold last year

Posted on January 20, 2015 by - News

smartphones-genericChinese vendors managed to sell 453.4 million smartphones in 2014 – and total global shipments of the devices amounted to 1.167 billion units.
That’s a growth rate of 25.9 percent, according to market intelligence company Trendforce.
Samsung continued to be the global leader in smartphone market share in 2014, although its growth rate fell, eroded by the Chinese manufacturers at the lower and mid end of the market, and at the high end of the market by Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus.
Apple managed to grow by 24.5 percent in 2014, shipping a total of 191.3 million units.
Combined, Apple and Samsung shipped 518 million units.
Apple’s success is attributed to the large size smartphone, the iPhone 6 Plus.
LG was the “dark horse”, making progress with its flagship smartphone the G3.

Google takes aim at five billion people

Posted on January 15, 2015 by - News

330ogleSoftware giant Google will introduce a modular mobile phone that it says will be affordable for the five billion people who don’t yet have a smartphone.
Google is increasingly moving into the hardware business.
It will build the machines in Puerto Rico.
According to the BBC, the Google modular phone will include a 3G chip, with a pilot arriving in the second half of this year.
There will be between 20 and 30 clip on modules that connect to a frame, with modules including screen, batteries and cameras.
The modules will connect to the frame using magnets.
There’s no news yet on pricing, but to appeal to the five billion people that don’t have smartphones it will have to be cheap.

 

Future dim for Wintel in 2015

Posted on January 9, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseThe arrival of Windows 10 and the introduction of 14 nanometre microprocessors are unlikely to stimulate much demand for PCs in 2015.
That’s the view of Digitimes – which has interviewed sources in the supply chain that make kit using the software and components.
Windows 10 is delayed – it’s not now expected to ship until the August at the earliest, and will make use of a future 14 nanometre CPU from Intel which is codenamed “Skylake”.
But the wire thinks that in 2015 only 200 million PCs will ship this year – with smartphones and tablets continuing to erode market share.
The manufacturers in Taiwan are more update about Apple based PCs rather than their Windows based cousins and are anticipating that while enterprises may decide to upgrade.
Windows 8 has triggered a distinct lack of excitement in the marketplace, with many enterprises hanging on to Windows 7 systems for dear life.
Windows 10 is expected to look a lot more like Windows 7 than Windows 8.x.

 

Tablet users to exceed one billion

Posted on January 8, 2015 by - News

tesco-hudl-tabletA report claimed that over a billion people in the world will use a tablet this year – that’s 15 percent of the world’s population.
eMarketer said that by 2018, 1.43 billion worldwide will use tablets but that doesn’t mean that sales of tablets will increase exponentially.
While the number of tablet users will increase by just over 17 percent in 2015, eMarketer says that growth was 53.1 percent in 2013 and 29.1 percent in  2014.
In 2018 the growth figure will be just under eight percent, and there are a few reasons for that, the study suggests.
One is that tablets are seen as luxury items, and they are facing competition from ever larger smartphones and other devices.  The last reason eMarketer gives is that the use of tablets is not always that clear.
By 2018, Chinese tablets will be used by around 435.5 million people, USA people will account for 172.6 million, India for 60.2 million people and the UK for 38.4 million people.
The survey predicts that Indonesia will enter the top five in 2016, and by 2018 nearly a fifth of the world’s population will be tablet users.

 

Tablet sales will continue to slow down

Posted on January 6, 2015 by - News

cheap-tabletsGartner said that sales of tablets in 2015 will continue to slow down.
While sales of tablets will reach 233 million units this year – which is an increase of eight percent compared to last year – the trend is downwards.
Ranjit Atwal, research analyst at Gartner, said that in the last two years global sales grew by numbers in the double digits.
He said: “The steep drop can be explained by several factors.  One is that the lifetime of tablets is being extended – they are shared out amongst family members and software upgrades, especially for [Apple] iOS devices, keep the tablets current. Another factor includes the lack of innovation in hardware which prevents people from upgrading.”
Apps could help grow the market, he said. And that will be helped by advanced in the personal cloud.
Garner figures show that traditional PCs will show a decline over the next two years.
He estimated the smartphone business will grow by 3.7 percent this year, and is being polarised between high and low end market price points.
The Android OS continues to rule the roost, and units expected to ship in thousands of units in 2015 amount to 1,454,760, compared t 279,415 for the Apple operating system.