Unconformity to the design ensures losses. Mozilla has announced that Intex, the Indian handset maker, has launched a Firefox powered device called Cloud FX Phone that will go on sale for $33. Later this week, a second device manufactured by Spice Mobility will be launched for the price of $38. Both of these devices look...
A great quest likely to be sunk by the 2 E’s. A modular mobile phone has been a dream of the mobile phone industry for many years and now Google is giving it a go. Project Ara (see here) is a phone design which is a touch screen with a superstructure on the back where...
HPQ is drifting from one quarter to the next with no direction. HPQ reported good Q3A revenues as market share was gained but weaknesses in the high margin businesses kept any gains from hitting the bottom line. Revenues / EPS were $27.6bn / $0.89 compared to consensus at $27.0bn / $0.89. The stabilisation in the...
Microsoft needs to appeal to the user’s heart not just his wallet. HTC has launched an virtual clone of its flagship HTC One M8 with two main differences from the original: First, it is running Windows Phone 8.1 instead of Android / Google Mobile Services (GMS). Second, after the subsidy, it is half the price...
Stability buys time, but for what? BlackBerry has staved off the immediate threat of collapse but where it goes from here is a mystery. The job cuts and consolidation have created a company with $4bn in revenues, 0.6% market share in smartphones and critically one that is cash flow neutral. This gives it time to...
Xiaomi is like Apple except for its margins. Xiaomi has released the next version of its user experience which will be rolled out onto its phones, tablets and other Android powered devices. Google is nowhere to be seen on this device meaning that this software is proprietary to Xiaomi and replaces the functions and services...
Facebook’s messaging mess highlights a problem for everyone. The number of attempts Facebook is making to crack the millennial messaging market is growing fast and with it the bill for shareholders. Facebook’s travails also highlight a very significant problem faced by all of the ecosystem contenders when it comes to developing their Digital Life offerings....
Improvements give Lenovo more space to invest and execute. Lenovo reported good Q1 results as its handset business and PC business both grew share. This gives the company more breathing room when it comes to turning around the loss making Motorola Mobility that it is about to acquire from Google. Q1 revenues and net income...
Tizen increasingly looks like it has no real future at Samsung As more and more time passes the less likely it becomes that Samsung will ever make anything of Tizen. Instead it will be forced to try and preserve its margins by sticking to Android devices. This is a feat that will be very difficult,...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Android – Fragmentation fix.
Google and China likely to completely take over their versions. The latest report from OpenSignal strongly implies that Android fragmentation is getting worse but I suspect that the reverse is true. The latest study shows that within a sample of 682,000 devices upon which the OpenSignal App. has been installed, there are 18,796 different Android...