Nokia would 'consider any option' for tablet OS, says chief Stephen Elop

Nokia's chief Stephen Elop dropped a big hint regarding the company’s position on the choice of operating system for an upcoming tablet, saying it will consider any option for a tablet OS. When pressed about the rumoured Nokia tablet and whether the company would consider producing an Android-based tablet, Stephen Elop told reporters in Sydney, "We would consider any option (Android or Windows). It is important to note that the opportunity for companionship is something that any user is looking for. So, when you think about the Lumia 920, running on Windows Phone, having a Windows tablet or PC or Xbox is something that will give us the opportunity to have a pretty integrated experience. Our first focus on what we look at is clearly in the Microsoft side," the Australian Financial Review reports. Possible? Nokia announced last week that it would be holding a press conference on the opening day of Mobile World Congress later this month in Barcelona. At the event, Nokia is rumoured to be unveiling a Windows RT tablet sporting a battery-equipped keyboard cover. Other specs of the rumoured tablet include HDMI and USB connectivity and a 10.1-inch HD display. The battery cover will also have a kickstand for the tablet and two additional USB ports for mice or other input devices. The company’s chief also said that while Nokia had not made any announcements about a tablet, it is waiting for Microsoft's success, or lack thereof, with the Surface, to inform how and when it could enter the market. "We are studying very closely the market right now as Microsoft has introduced the Surface tablet, so we are trying to learn from that and understand what the right way to participate would be and at what point in time," he was quoted as saying by AFR. Elop also said that 7-inch and larger display tablets have an equal place in the market. If and when Nokia does launch a tablet (or maybe two considering that earlier statement), it could add some strength to Nokia's portfolio of Windows products. Its Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices already have Office baked in and a Windows tablet with similar functionality will increase its market share as well as offer a product competitive with iPad or Android tablets. Neither iOS nor Android have a full-fledged Microsoft Office app, although alternatives do exist in the respective app storefronts.   Microsoft last week launched its latest version of Office for the desktop and Office 365, with the notable omission of any iOS support, which is anticipated to arrive early this year. Besides the tablet, rumours hint that the company may show up at MWC with another PureView Windows Phone 8 device (with allegedly a better sensor than the 41-megapixel Nokia 808 PureView) alongside the follow up to last year’s flagship the Lumia 920.

HTC Windows Phone 8X Review

PRICE IN INDIA

35,800

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7.0

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Windows Phone 8 may not be the most popular OS of choice at the moment but that hasn’t stopped OEMs from delivering truly great hardware. HTC’s flagship Windows Phone 8 device, the 8X, hit online stores well before Nokia launched the Lumia series. The 8X exudes style and elegance and is targeted at fashionable youngsters. However, does the 8X have something more to offer for the power users or is it merely a fashion accessory? Let’s find out. Design and Build  The HTC 8X features one of the best smartphone designs we’ve come across in a long time. The blend of rubberized polycarbonate and glass gives the phone a premium look and feel and the bright, vivid colour options beg a second look. Sadly, we only get the blue and black trims here in India. The 4.3-inch, Super LCD 2 display takes center stage in the front with a row of capacitive buttons along the bottom. The volume rocker and power button sit flush with the side panel and while this gives the phone a very clean look, it’s not the easiest to use. Like all WP8 handsets, the 8X also features a dedicated camera shutter button. A handsome looker Around the back, we have the 8MP shooter along with an LED flash and the speaker grill, placed at the bottom. The 8X also features Beats Audio enhancement for music and video playback over headphones. In terms of ergonomics, the 8X is miles ahead of its nearest WP8 competitor. With a thickness of about 10.1mm and weight of 130g, the phone feels very comfortable in your hand as well as pocket. Due to the moderately large screen size, the entire screen is within your thumbs' reach. Features  Interface  This display is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 2 so it can take a fair bit of abuse before scratches start to appear. The HD resolution on a display of this size means you get a whopping 341ppi, which is great for web browsing or catching up on HD flicks. Sunlight legibility is also good allowing you to easily read the display outdoors. HTC has bundled some of their own apps like Flashlight, HTC Hub, etc. that we’ve seen on their Android offerings. Apart from this, it’s pretty much all stock Windows Phone 8 and unlike Nokia, HTC doesn’t seem to have bothered much with any exclusive apps for the platform. Easy to use UI Apart from a slight stutter that creeps in every now and then, the UI is quick and fluid. The display is bright and sharp and manages to produce vivid colours. The handset is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC with a dual-core Krait CPU and Adreno 225 for graphics. This, coupled with 1GB RAM, makes quite a potent combination for any type of app you throw at it. Media  Audio quality is surprisingly good with Beats Audio. The stock music player does a good job of sorting out your music library and you have the option to browse through music and videos in the store as well. Beats Audio is only activated with headphones plugged in. Good media playback options There’s 1080p video playback support for MP4 files. There’s only 16GB of onboard storage, which is quite low considering this a flagship device. It wouldn’t have been this bad if we could expand the storage but sadly, HTC has left out that option. Connectivity  The 8X is a quad-band GSM and 3G handset so it will work on most carrier networks around the globe. Other connectivity options include Wi-Fi ‘n’ with dual-band support, Bluetooth v3.1, NFC and microUSB for charging. There’s no video-out option here. The stock browser does a very good job of rendering web pages and zooming in and out shows little to no sign of lag. The keyboard is also very comfortable to type on and the word prediction works well. Good set of productivity apps For navigation, we have GPS along with GLONASS as well. The active noise cancellation does a good job of cutting out ambient noise when on a call. Camera The 8MP BSI sensor comes with some pretty impressive specifications. For starters, it boasts of a large aperture of f/2.0 which means it should be able to do well in low light photography. Apart from the standard tweaking options, HTC hasn’t added too many custom options the way Nokia has with the 920. Still, you do have the option to tweak the Hue, Contrast, Sharpness, etc. In outdoor daytime shots, the 8X manages to capture good colours and but when you zoom in, the level of detail is still only average. Macro shots are a lot better as the camera is able to focus well on a large area. Our shootout test with the Lumia 920 highlighted the performance of the camera in greater detail, so do take a look. Good for outdoor shots Indoor with ambient light Indoor shots, without flash aren’t too bad either. There is some amount of noise that creeps in but it’s pretty good otherwise. Video recording maxes out at 1080p. The best part about this 8X however, is the front camera. Even at just 2.1MP, it has a f/2.0 aperture with Full HD recording capabilities. Battery Life  The HTC 8X packs in a 1800mAh battery, which delivered a very good 7-hours and 40-minutes of video playback time. However, we noticed that with regular real world usage, which included calls, music playback, EDGE and Wi-Fi usage, the battery tends to drain a lot quicker. Verdict and Price in India The HTC 8X is available in the market for Rs.35, 800, which makes it terribly overpriced for what’s on offer. It’s a superbly built handset with a very good form factor, has an excellent front facing camera and a high density screen. Apart from this, there just isn’t a singular strong selling point that would make us shell out this kind of money for it. The handset will do extremely well if priced around Rs.25,000 as it would give some stiff competition to the Nokia Lumia 820. Right now, we wouldn’t recommend the 8X at its current selling price as you’d be better off with the Lumia 920 or any of the more powerful and feature-rich Android handsets.

Young indie developer Kinects your life

A young indie developer puts to use the Kinect’s abilities to recognise speech, gestures, and motion to build useful, inexpensive applications for one and all.

Afour-wheeled robot revs up and travels across the room as twenty two-year-old Samarth Shah verbally commands it to move forward. The robot is connected to a computer and the Microsoft Kinect, an accessory of the XBox 360 video game console. Shah belongs to a sprawling breed of young indie developers who put to use the Kinect’s abilities to recognise speech, gestures, and motion in applications beyond the Kinect’s intended purpose of gaming. The robot, which Shah built along with two friends Devanshee Shah and Yagnik Suchak, recognises voice commands and gestures and performs simple actions. Raise the right hand and it goes forward. A swipe of the hand sends it to the right. It stops when the left hand is raised and moves to the left when the left hand is swiped. The gesture recognition programme, coded in Visual Basic using the Microsoft software development kit (SDK), carries out what Shah describes as “skeleton tracking”. It follows the positions of 20 joints of the body to detect a valid gesture. The three cameras on the Kinect together determine the angle, position, and orientation of the joints. The trio has decided to scale up the design of the robot to numerous applications such as operating a wheelchair with voice commands. Shah is also working on a Kinect application to surf the web using a browser that recognises movement. Code in Visual Basic for the speech and gesture controlled robot built by Samarth Shah Reaching the semifinals of the Kinect Fun Labs Challenge in the prestigious Microsoft Imagine Cup in 2012, got Shah, who was then an engineering student, immersed into the world of Kinect. He procured a Kinect from the US and got his hands dirty with C++ code and later moved to Visual Basic. His winning entry at the Imagine Cup was a prototype used to automate trivial, repetitive tasks for researchers at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, where he was working as a Research Fellow. The researchers could automatically schedule emails, save updates, share work with their colleagues, print documents, search documents, etc. with the help of gestures signalled to the Kinect. He was awarded a Kinect, which he later used to build more applications such as a combination of the Kinect and a computing board for home automation. Leave the room for five minutes or more and the Kinect will detect your absence and switch off selected utilities in the room. Return and the utilities will switch back on again. You can turn on or off any appliances in the room using a speech command or a gesture. Eventually when he started interacting with developers around the world, he realised that most of them use C# for Kinect application development. As more support and documentation is available in C# compared with C++ or Visual Basic, Shah decided to switch to the popular programming language. Owing to his personal interest in image processing, Shah delved deeper and started to explore the use of the Kinect for image processing tasks in Linux and Windows environments. Using the Kinect as a camera and OpenCV, a programming library for computer vision, RGB data and depth data can be retrieved from images. After applying a few processes, the data can be used to perform face detection in almost real time. He says it is possible to run other complex algorithms on the Kinect by modifying his programme further. While attempting to understand how the Kinect works, Shah also created a few simple applications that could be of practical use or would give ideas to other enthusiasts to build more advanced applications upon them. One of his initial projects, which can be interesting for the geeks in the corporate world, is a programme for gesture and speech controlled presentations. You can move to the next slide with the swipe of your hand or by saying keywords such as ‘next’ and ‘previous’. Another fun application created during that period is a Kinect-controlled mouse through which one can control the computer’s mouse and perform actions such as left and right clicks with hand gestures. Using principles applied to the presentation controller, Shah created a gesture and speech controlled music player and a speech-to-text converter. He also created a Kinect application to view and browse online interactive maps such as Google Maps. Shah claims that all these applications have been tested by him on both Windows 7 and Windows 8. The $150 (Rs 10,000) Kinect, with its compelling array of sensors and cameras, has been attracting hackers, hobbyists, programmers, developers, roboticists, and scientists since it was launched in 2010. Sensors that are too expensive or too rare to tinker with became accessible with the Kinect, enabling young, standalone developers such as Samarth Shah to build amazing things on top of it, without making big monetary investments in their works. Shah says he hopes to use his skills with Kinect development to integrate it with open source environments and for social good -- to help the physically challenged go about their everyday lives and to use the Internet. The source code for the gesture controlled robot is available for download under a free license.

BlackBerry Z10 is here, costs Rs 80,000!

The BlackBerry Z10 was announced last week and is slated to be officially launched in India in the near future. However, being available in the UK means the device will definitely sneak into the grey market.  We have learnt from our sources that the Z10 is available in the grey market and comes with an appropriately stratospheric price tag. We spoke to three grey market retailers and at least two of them have confirmed selling units of the Z10. They informed us that more handsets will be in stock tomorrow and they will each cost Rs 80,000, excluding bill and warranty. In fact, the price has only increased since the handset first became available. Yesterday, the retailers claimed to have sold phones for Rs 75,000. Another retailer we spoke to confirmed availability of new stock at his shop from Friday onwards. A handsome looker, but will you fork out Rs 80,000 for it? Of course, these prices are in line with prices of other highly-anticipated handsets that haven’t been released in India. The Nexus 4, which was launched last year internationally, has yet to be seen on Indian shores. On eBay.in, the handset is available from Rs 32,000 onwards for the 8GB model and the price goes all the way up to Rs 49,000 for the 16GB version. Considering the Nexus 4’s original price ($299 and $349), this is a more than twice the price.  Even when the iPhone 5 hadn’t officially entered India, its price was a mind-boggling Rs 1 lakhfor the 64GB model, while the 16GB sold for 76,000 and the 32GB version for Rs 85,000. This was during the peak popularity of the device. Based on these numbers and depending on supply, the Z10 might see a further jump in price before coming down again closer to the official launch of the device. When official, the device could still end up with an expensive price tag. It is expected toretail close to Rs 45,000. Clearly, BlackBerry fans are willing to pay a very high price to get a taste of the new BlackBerry 10 OS. In UK, the handset has been available through official channels since February 1 and in the US, eBay sellers have been selling the Z10 for as high as $1,500, which is about the same price as India.  The BlackBerry Z10 was announced on January 30 at an event in New York. It is the first handset by the company to run the BlackBerry 10 OS. Here is a quick look at some of the highlights of the Z10: 4.2-inch screen with a resolution of 1280 x 768 LTE, 3G, EDGE, Wi-Fi, NFC GPS with A-GPS support Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP 8 megapixel AF camera with 1080p recording; 2 megapixel front facing camera with 720p recording 16GB internal memory, expandable up to 64GB via microSD MicroHDMI for AV out The phone is powered by a dual-core 1.5GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor and comes with 2GB of RAM. The BlackBerry Z10 will be kept powered on by an 1800mAh battery. Keep up with all the latest BlackBerry 10 news in our BB 10 section.

HTC plans cheaper phones for China as revenue sags

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  Reuters/Reuters - A person talks on a mobile phone in front of a HTC advertisement board in Taipei January 7, 2013. REUTERS/Pichi Chuang

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC Corp will shift its focus more towards emerging markets and offer lower priced phones in China this year as it grapples with slumping revenue in the shadow of Apple's iPhone and Samsung's Galaxy series.

HTC gave a disappointing outlook on Monday for first-quarter revenue, saying it would be flat to 17 percent lower than in the previous three months - worse than analysts had forecast - while margins are also seen holding steady or shrinking.

The former contract manufacturer's fortunes have been declining sharply since the second half of 2011, as the growing global dominance of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in smartphones quickly deflated the success of its own brand's rapid rise.

China, the world's most populous nation and a rising consumer power, is a key battlefield forsmartphone makers with its still low levels of penetration, but its price-conscious consumers pose a dilemma for premium brands keen to maintain their high-end image but eager to tap the mass market.

HTC Chief Financial Officer Chang Chia-Lin told a conference call for investors on Monday that his company, which has tended to rely on developed markets for most of its revenue and in China has focused on mid- to high-end models, was now ready to offer smartphones priced less than 1,999 yuan ($320) - currently its cheapest phone in China.

"We're going to go down, but not below 1,000," he said. "We see there's still room to play" in 1,000 to 2,000 yuan phones.

Chang said HTC would also more closely target emerging markets overall this year. It expanded its reach to Myanmar last month by introducing local-font phones.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has vowed to focus on Greater China as his company's next big growth driver. Apple's revenue from the region jumped to $7.3 billion in the December quarter, up 60 percent from a year earlier.

POWER OF THE BRAND

HTC said it expects first-quarter revenue of T$50 billion to T$60 billion ($1.69-2.03 billion). That compares with T$60 billion in the fourth quarter and T$65.75 billion a year ago.

Analysts had forecast HTC would earn revenue of T$62.77 billion for the quarter, according to the average projection of 18 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

HTC also said it expects a first-quarter gross margin of about 21 to 23 percent, flat to lower from 23 percent in the prior quarter, and an operating margin of 0.5 to 1.0 percent, also flat to lower from 1 percent.

The weaker-than-expected first-quarter revenue outlook follows a 91 percent year-on-year slide in the Taiwanese company's net profit in the fourth quarter that fell short of analyst forecasts.

Analysts doubt that 2013 will be a turnaround year for HTC as the power of its brand lags far behind Apple and Samsung.

But some have said that the next version of its flagship smartphone, code-named "M7" and which they expect to be launched in the middle of this month in New York and London, could give the company a first-mover advantage of a few months on features such as higher-resolution cameras.

Chang declined to give details or a launch date for the new model but said he expected sequential revenue growth quarter to quarter in 2013 as the company rolls out new products.

Samsung Electronics, the world's top smartphone maker, said last month that it expected the global smartphone market to shrink in the first quarter from the seasonally strong fourth quarter, while the overall handset market would see growth at a mid single-digit percentage rate this year from 2012, with the smartphone segment set to slow.

Strong smartphone sales powered an 89 percent increase in operating profit at the Korean company in the October-December quarter to a record $8.3 billion.

Cupertino, California-based Apple, which faces intense competition from Samsung, sparked a slide in its share price late last month when it forecast lower revenue of $41 billion to $43 billion in its current fiscal quarter, down from $54.5 billion in the previous quarter and below the average Wall Street forecast of more than $45 billion.

On Monday, shares of HTC fell 1.6 percent, versus a 0.9 percent rise in broader market. HTC's shares have fallen more than 40 percent since the start of last year, compared with a 12 percent rise in the Taiwan stock benchmark.

Richer Google Now notification system arriving in Chrome

New changes mean a key Android feature for general-purpose alerts is closer to reality. Google's browser is getting a mechanism for more elaborate notifications.

Samsung's Chromebox runs Chrome OS.

Google is getting closer to building Google Now notifications into Chrome, marrying the anticipatory alert system of Android with its browser.
Yesterday, developers committed a patch with an "initial implementation of Google Now notifications."
According to the code, the patch means that "The Google Now event page gets Google Now cards from the server and shows them as Chrome notifications. The service performs periodic updating of Google Now cards."

Google's work to build Google Now into Chrome emerged in December. Although Android is Google's highest-profile operating system project, Google Now would ensure Chrome OS won't fall behind in this important that links people to Google's personalized services.
The function gets a computer's location, makes a request to a Google server based on that location, then shows the resulting notification "cards." That will give Chrome and Chrome OS Android's capability to show personalized alerts about weather, upcoming appointments and travel, nearby restaurants, and whatever else Google adds to its Now technology
And today, another brick was laid into place. Chrome watcher Francois Beaufort spotted the arrival of a "rich notification center" on Windows. Chrome already can display notifications, letting Web apps issue alerts such as incoming instant messages. but Google is reworking the code into a two-part system, a cross-platform element and a platform-specific element.
Presumably the "rich" aspect will make it more suited to the more graphically elaborate notifications of Google Now cards, which can show things like weather symbols.

Microsoft's tablet blip versus Android's boom

The surge in Android tablet shipments is not good news for Microsoft, which is just now trying to gain a toehold in the market.

Android-based tablets like Amazon's Kindle Fire are becoming very popular just as Microsoft enters the tablet market.

(Credit: Amazon) 

 

As Android tablet shipments surge, probably the best thing that can be said about Microsoft is that it's not going away.
Android tablet shipments totaled about 30 million in the fourth quarter, IDC reported today. And that number (total market) jumps to 50 million if you throw in Apple's iPad.
"There is no question that Microsoft is in this tablet race to compete for the long haul," an IDC analyst said today in a statement, trying to put Microsoft's tablet debut into perspective.
In fact, that's probably about as positive a statement that can be made at the moment.
Then this: "Reaction to the company's Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best," IDC added.

Muted in this case amounts to 900,000 units shipped "into the channel."
So, how does that compare with other major vendors just entering the market? Amazon shipped about 4.7 million Kindle Fire tablets in the fourth quarter of 2011 when that $199 tablet debuted.
And Asus, which makes Google's Nexus 7 tablet, shipped 3.1 million tablets in the fourth quarter of 2012, the quarter after the Nexus 7's debut. Many if not most of those are undoubtedly the Nexus 7.
Throw in the market totals that IDC reported today (Amazon shipped about 6 million last quarter and Samsung almost 8 million) and it's clear that Android tablets are not only leaving a bigger footprint in the market but are eroding Apple's share.
That leaves Microsoft, for now, as a blip amid an Android boom.
How does Microsoft gain on Android? Lowering prices might help.
"We believe that Microsoft and its partners need to quickly adjust to the market realities of smaller screens and lower prices," IDC said.
And what about the long haul? "In the long run, consumers may grow to believe that high-end computing tablets with desktop operating systems are worth a higher premium than other tablets," IDC added.
That could indeed be a long haul.

Will Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 Surface Pro with laptop-like performance sell in large numbers? We'll see. But with a starting price of $899, it's certainly not a bargain compared with Android tablets.

(Credit: Microsoft)