Samsung Smartphone Sales May Pass Apple

Samsung Electronics Co., maker of the Galaxy mobile phone, may have surpassed Nokia Oyj and Apple Inc. in smartphone sales for the first time on demand for devices that run on Android software, a research company said.

Samsung is estimated to have sold between 18 million and 21 million smartphones globally in the April-June quarter, compared with 16.7 million for Nokia and 20.3 million iPhones, Neil Mawston, a London-based analyst at Strategy Analytics, a research company based in Boston, said in an e-mailed response to questions on July 22. The data exclude tablet-computer sales.

The estimates show Google Inc.’s Android is gaining ground on Apple in smartphones as Nokia, which is turning to Microsoft Corp. for software support, struggles to keep up with the pace. Samsung, which also produces low-end phones that aren’t capable of downloading applications, has said it aims to more than double sales of high-end devices this year.

“Samsung’s Android portfolio is selling strongly in most regions,” said Mawston. “Samsung stands a reasonable chance of capturing the top spot on a quarterly basis if it can continue expanding its Android portfolio across high-growth markets like China and Brazil. Samsung and Apple will be at similar levels in smartphones by the end of the year.”

Catching Nokia

Including basic phones, Samsung will probably have a 20 percent share this year, compared with Nokia’s 26 percent, closing the gap between the world’s two largest handset makers to the narrowest ever, he said.

Samsung wasn’t immediately able to verify the figures, said Nam Ki Yung, a Seoul-based spokesman for the Suwon, South Korea- based company. Steve Park, a Seoul-based spokesman for Apple, declined to comment.

Cherry Gong, a Nokia spokeswoman in China, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Samsung fell 0.4 percent to 847,000 won at the 3:00 p.m. close in Seoul, while South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index lost 1 percent. The shares have declined 11 percent this year.

Samsung’s global smartphone sales had lagged behind Nokia, Apple and Research in Motion Ltd. in the first quarter, according to researcher International Data Corp.

The South Korean company’s sales are accelerating after it began selling the Galaxy S II, a successor to its best-selling Android device introduced last year to counter Apple.

New Galaxy

Samsung planned to roll out the model in 120 countries through 140 operators from May, the company said in April. The latest Galaxy handset went on sale last week in five cities in China, including Beijing and Shanghai, as the company seeks to make a push into the world’s largest market for mobile phones.

The latest 4.27-inch Galaxy phone, unveiled in February, helped Samsung more than double operating profit at its mobile phone business in the second quarter, according to five analysts polled by Bloomberg News.

Apple reported net income that beat estimates on July 19, lifted by record sales of iPhones and iPads. In contrast, Nokia reported its first quarterly loss since 2009 as the Finnish company struggles to sell handsets based on its 10-year-old Symbian software.

Cupertino, California-based Apple plans to introduce a new iPhone in September that boasts a stronger chip for processing data and a more advanced camera, two people familiar with the product said last month.

Lawsuits

Apple sued Samsung in April, claiming the Galaxy products “slavishly” copied technologies and designs used in the iPad and iPhone. The suit against Samsung added to its patent fights with Android-device makers including Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and HTC Corp., with the Google software gaining market share.

Android’s share will rise to 44 percent by 2015 from 39 percent this year, according to a forecast by IDC. Global sales of smartphones will soar 55 percent to 472 million units this year, according to the researcher.

Samsung is also tapping consumers looking for lower-priced models with devices using its own Bada software. It plans to introduce a new model based on the system in the second half, J.K. Shin, head of Samsung’s mobile-phone division, said July 20.

The debut of a new iPhone may slow the momentum for Samsung, Mawston said.

“Samsung will need to work hard to hold off that competitive threat,” he said.

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Nokia to slash all phone prices in September

Nokia plans to slash prices across its entire product line this September in an attempt to bolster sales, according to industry insider Eldar Murtazin, who is known for often accurately reporting inside information pertaining to Nokia and other smartphone vendors. Murtazin posted the following message on his Twitter account: "Nokia are going to cut prices for the whole product line by 10 per cent in September. They struggle for a market share worldwide."

Nokia's share of the global cell phone market has been steadily declining in recent months. The company's solution has been to dump Symbian in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Still, the transition period is going to be a long and hard one, and the company knows it. Apparently Espoo believes the solution is lower prices.

Nokia's first Windows phone, codenamed Sea Ray, looks nearly identical to the recently-announced Meego-based N9 smartphone, but it's running Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system. Nokia's first Windows Phone 7 handset(s) will be launching in Europe later this year: France, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands have been confirmed.

Five months ago, Nokia announced that it was choosing Microsoft's Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform. Three months ago, Nokia and Microsoft finally signed a definitive agreement regarding their global mobile ecosystem partnership.

Windows Phone 7.5 (codenamed Mango) is expected to begin rolling out this fall (check out our preview from last month). There is talk that Microsoft is already working on the next Windows Phone updates, codenamed Tango and Apollo. Last year, we heard of that the second major update to Windows Phone will be Apollo, due toward the end of 2012. At some point Microsoft will have to release Windows Phone 8. One of these updates could indeed be Windows Phone 8, or an update to Windows Phone 8.

It's generally accepted that Windows Phone is not selling well. AT&T Mobility CEO believes things will start to pick up with codename Mango and as the Windows Phone Marketplace gains more apps. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop meanwhile argues that Windows Phone scores better than Android and iPhone with consumers, but OEMs are doing their best work for Android. He believes that once Nokia starts doing its best work for Windows Phone, the platform will take off. Microsoft says it dreams of selling 100 million Windows phones per year.

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Nokia prepares £80m brand repositioning campaign

Nokia is plotting an £80m overhaul of its brand positioning, as it looks to relaunch following the announcement in February of its partnership with Microsoft.

The Finnish handset manufacturer plans to roll out a major global integrated campaign in October, when it is expected to launch its first phone running on the Windows 7 operating system.

The six-month campaign is being created by several agencies from its global roster. In the UK, Nokia works with Wieden & Kennedy, Fallon and R/GA, among others.

The repositioning comes as Nokia battles to retain market share in the face of competition from rivals such as Apple, RIM, and HTC. In April, Nokia's chief executive, Stephen Elop, announced the loss of 7000 jobs, including 700 in the UK.

Nokia hopes its partnership with Microsoft will help it regain share from Apple iOS and Android-based devices.

A Nokia spokesman said: 'We are excited about the Nokia with Windows phone, but it's not our policy to comment on specific campaigns for unannounced products.'

Separately, Nokia this week unveiled a campaign for its Qwerty range of smartphones.

In the ad, by Wieden & Kennedy, a flock of sheep passes through Godalming in Surrey, as Nokia users alert their friends via instant messaging and Facebook, or seek an alternative route. It ends with the line 'Apps. Maps. Social. Completely connected QWERTY.'

Adam Johnson, head of brand and campaigns at Nokia, said: 'Nokia is committed to authenticity in our communications, using characters and situations that the British public can relate to.'

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Is Apple slitting Samsung’s throat with orders stoppage?

Samsung Mobile’s chief technology office Omar Khan is leaving the company for greener pastures, it was revealed yesterday. Khan is leaving for Citi where he will be responsible for their mobile initiatives. The unexpected departure arrives at a time when Samsung is chasing Nokia to become the world’s leading phone vendor and fighting Apple’s copycat accusations of stealing the design of iPhone’s hardware, software, packaging and even marketing communications.

As it turns out, Samsung may have already lost orders from Apple, its biggest buyer, as a result of the growing rift. The Globe and Mail reports that Apple might end its relationship with Samsung by taking their five billion dollar a year in electronics parts orders elsewhere. For example, Apple could order NAND flash from Toshiba, Micron and Hynix Semiconductor and mobile processors from Intel and TSMC. Samsung also supplies Apple with LCDs for computers and iPads. Samsung’s financial filings provide clues to its relationship with Apple.

For example, Samsung recently had to consolidate operations by merging component and manufacturing businesses in order to hide losses of the flat panel business among the lucrative semiconductor operations. This indicates Apple may have stopped buying LCDs from Samsung. They also issued weak second-quarter earnings, with profits dropping 26 percent to 3.7 trillion won (about $3.5 billion) due to sluggish television and semiconductor operations, signalling that Apple might have as well stopped ordering A5 and A6 processors from Samsung. The lower-than-expected guidance prompted analyst Kim Sung In with Kiwoom Securities Co. to slam the company hard over the misstep, arguing:

Only the phone business is holding up. Everything else is looking bad. There’s no bright picture for the company looking ahead.

So, if the loss of Apple’s business doesn’t derail Samsung, any slump in phone sales at this point will. So far phone sales are holding up pretty well…

IDC pegged Samsung’s first-quarter smartphone shipments at 10.8 million units, enough to rank the company the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor by units, following Nokia, Apple and Research In Motion. However, they’re #2 in terms of all handset units shipped globally, thanks to their own operating system Bada which powers feature phones. But Apple is expected to penetrate that low-end of the market with an affordable iPhone this Fall catering to feature phone owners who are upgrading to their first smartphone. Samsung outsells the iPhone in eight key markets now, a Kantar Woldpanel ComTech survey estimates, with a significant chunk of new sales coming from feature phone owners. The research firm expects that by the summer of next year nearly half of all handsets sold will be smartphones.

And about that Omar Khan departure. High-level hires are a fact of life, but it’s interesting that the executive left barely a month after Samsung hired a new chief marketing officer, Todd Pendleton, to oversee all marketing activities for Samsung’s mobile division in the US. This included “defining and leading integrated marketing, customer relationship management and customer experience management to create marketing strategies that align with Samsung Mobile’s corporate business strategy”, which is basically what Khan had been doing. It is therefore possible that Khan didn’t like his new role of chief technology and product officer or the new marketing chief might have marginalized him.

Regardless of the reasons, Khan was an asset to Samsung and his departure is clearly a loss for the Korean consumer electronics conglomerate. According to The Droid Guy, Khan “was at the forefront of Samsung Mobile’s entire move into Android from the Behold II to the Samsung Galaxy SII and everything in between and on the way”. Another possible link: Citi, Khan’s new employer, is a launch partner of Google’s Wallet initiative. Did Citi charge him with furthering that project? Only time will tell…

Update: Samsung updated with the following:

Omar Khan was a valued member of the Samsung Mobile US team but has decided to leave Samsung Mobile to pursue another opportunity. Omar is not leaving to join a competitor to Samsung, and we anticipate having a continued relationship with him once he settles into his new role. Tim Rowden will be assuming Omar’s previous duties, and Nick Dicarlo and Gavin Kim will be assuming most of the product and service spokesperson responsibilities for Samsung Mobile.

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Smartphone Buying Guide: Q3 2011

If you are in the market for a smartphone there are plenty of great options to choose from. An overwhelming majority is powered by Google's Android platform, which continues to extend its lead in terms of total users thanks to a growing lineup of devices covering a wide range of features and form factors. But there's also stuff going on elsewhere.

Apple didn't release a new iPhone this past June as it has in previous years, however the company is expected to bring out the guns sometime around September with new hardware and the next version of iOS -- which is enough reason to be excited about. Meanwhile, Microsoft is slowly getting more Windows Phone 7 devices in the market, and with the arrival of Mango this fall and Nokia on board as its shiny new partner things are about to get much more interesting.

Meanwhile, things have been pretty stale on the BlackBerry and webOS camps. The former has been losing market share quarter after quarter, and it doesn't seem like a QNX-based handset will be out soon to push things forward. HP has been focusing on the recent TouchPad launch, but the company is expected to launch a third-gen Pre smartphone soon.

As with previous editions of this guide, we've put together a selection of the hottest devices out there to help you navigate through the sea of new smartphones getting released week in and week out. Each phone is listed alongside its feature highlights, specs and prices, from newest to oldest. Some devices listed here are not yet available but will be in a relatively short time span. We hope this will help you narrow down your purchase, and as usual your feedback is always welcome.

New & Upcoming Releases :: Nokia N9 • iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S?) • HTC Eternity • LG Thrill 4G • HP Pre 3 • Motorola Droid 3 • Samsung Galaxy S II

Current Popular Smartphones :: HTC EVO 3D • HTC Sensation 4G • Sony Ericsson Xperia Play • Samsung Droid Charge • Samsung Nexus S 4G • T-Mobile G2x • HTC Arrive

Early 2011 and 2010 Phones :: HTC Thunderbolt • Samsung Galaxy S 4G • Motorola Atrix 4G • HTC Inspire 4G • HTC Evo Shift 4G • Samsung Focus • BlackBerry Bold 9780 • Apple iPhone 4

Nokia N9

The N9 is Nokia's first phone to sport the MeeGo operating system. It features a 3.9-inch AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass and no front-facing buttons; instead, Nokia has implemented a swipe feature for switching between screens and functions. Under the hood, a 1GHz processor and 1GB of RAM powers the device. There's also an 8MP Carl Zeiss wide-angle camera on the back end even NFC connectivity. But with Nokia abandoning MeeGo this phone is going to be a tough sell.

Additional views:

Carrier: TBA	Talk Time: 7 hours
Price: TBA	Standby Time: 19 days
Manufacturer: Nokia	Weight: 4.76 ounces
Platform: MeeGo	Wireless: 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
Network: GSM, WCDMA , HSPA+ 14.4	Storage: 16GB/64GB

iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S?)
Available: TBA

Apple's next generation iPhone has been rumored for months and yet nothing about its release can be confirmed as of this moment. However for such a relevant product that has the potential of being a game-changer, we couldn't update our guide without bringing to your attention the likely announcement from Apple come this September. Rumors point to a thinner and lighter design, an eight-megapixel camera, and the same A5 processor used in the iPad 2. The only thing certain is that it will run Apple's updated iOS 5 with wireless sync, iCloud, iMessage, revamped notifications and over 200 new features.

HTC Eternity
Available: TBA

The Eternity is HTC's upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphone and should be among the first to run the platform's"Mango" update -- meaning it won't be out until this fall. Known features include a large 4.7-inch display, the biggest we've seen so far not counting the Dell Streak which was marketed as a tablet, a single-core 1.5GHz processor, 8MP auto-focus camera with dual-LED flash supporting 720p HD recording, a 1.3MP front-facing camera, and 16GB of internal storage. In terms of connectivity, it has the usual Wi-Fi, DLNA, GPS, and Bluetooth support.

LG Thrill 4G (LG Optimus 3D)
Available: TBA

The Thrill 4G, known elsewhere in the world as the LG Optimus 3D, boasts an impressive specification list that includes a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP4 processor and a 4.3-inch touchscreen capable of displaying 3D content without the need for special glasses. It also has a dual-lens 5-megapixel rear camera to record 3D photos and videos, as well as HDMI 1.4 and DLNA to stream content to other 3D-capable devices. Naturally, the device will also support 2D high-definition video and LG says it will have four times more video decoders than competing designs. There's no official price point so far and availability is estimated for Q3 2011.

Additional views:

Carrier: AT&T	Talk Time: 4 hours
Price: TBA	Standby Time: 4 days
Manufacturer: LG	Weight: 5.9 ounces
Platform: Android 2.2	Wireless: 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Network: GSM, HSPA 14.4	Storage: 8GB internal, 8GB microSD card included

HP Pre 3
Available: July 2011

The Pre 3 is an upgraded version of the Pre 2 featuring a 3.6-inch 480x800 display, a 1.4GHz processor, a front-facing camera, a redesigned keyboard for larger fingers, and the same sleek, yet under-appreciated webOS. There will also be some synergy with HP's TouchPad, which will be able to take the Pre 3's calls and touching the two devices together will let you share URLs and other data. Availability is set for this summer but no carrier has been announced.

Additional views:

Carrier: TBA (AT&T and Verizon likely)	Talk Time: --
Price: TBA	Standby Time: --
Manufacturer: HP	Weight: 5.5 ounces
Platform: webOS 2.2	Wireless: 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Network: --	Storage: 8GB / 16GB

Motorola Droid 3
Available: July 14, 2011

Motorola brings a powerful new option for anyone seeking a phone with a slide-out keyboard. The Droid 3 sports a 1GHz dual-core processor, a 4-inch qHD (960 x 540) display, 16GB of storage, an 8-megapixel camera, a full QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.3 customized with the newest version of Motorola's Blur UI. There are lots of very solid spec improvements all around over the Droid 2, though the lack of LTE may disappoint some.

Additional views:

Carrier: Verizon	Talk Time: 9 hours
Price: $200 with two-year contract	Standby Time: 12.5 days
Manufacturer: Motorola	Weight: 6.5 ounces
Platform: Android 2.3	Wireless: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
Network: CDMA, EVDO Rev. A	Storage: 16GB internal, expandable via microSD

Samsung Galaxy S II
Available: April 2011 in Europe, July 2011 in U.S. - TechSpot's Review

The Galaxy S II is one of the sleekest smartphones in the market at just 0.33 inches thick and weighing 4 ounces. Samsung's hot selling Android handheld features a 4.27-inch (800x480) Super AMOLED Plus display, dual-core 1.2GHz processor, an 8MP primary camera with 1080p video capture and a 2MP camera in the front, as well as integrated NFC support on some versions. There's also Bluetooth 3.0+HS and HSPA+ connectivity, as well as Samsung's custom UI TouchWiz 4.0. The version released on Sprint will be called the Samsung Within, on AT&T the Attain, and on Verizon the Function. It is speculated to be released in the US in mid-July.

Additional views:

Carrier: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint	Talk Time: 8.5 hours
Price: TBA	Standby Time: 25 days
Manufacturer: Samsung	Weight: 4.1 ounces
Platform: Android 2.3	Wireless: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0
Network: GSM , HSPA+ 21 / CDMA, EVDO Rev. A	Storage: 16GB/32GB

Thank you : http://www.techspot.com/guides/417-buying-smartphones/