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Tag: touchscreen

  • MWC 2010: Interview with Gauthier Chastan, Marketing Manager at Stantum

    Stantum has been the pioneering company in multi-touch technology since 2002, and in 2005 was the first company to market commercial products using a truly reliable multi-touch user interface.

    We didn’t miss the opportunity to try their 4,3” and 12” demonstration units, which have been showcased by the Stantum team at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    Gauthier Chastan, Marketing Communication Manager at Stantum gave us a live demonstration of the company’s mobile embedded digital-resistive touchscreen that supports up to ten touch at the same time, has finger pressure recognition and works not only with fingers but also with styluses or any other input device.


  • Q2: Nokia Retains Lead but Apple and RIM Are Rising Fast

    “Smart phones continue to shine as one of the brightest spots of the technology industry, with shipments growing despite the global recession,” says the recent Canalys’ report on the Q2 key smartphone market trends.

    “Innovation in interfaces, design, applications and promotion continue to excite consumers, which, in contrast to the PC industry, is helping to keep average selling prices stable. The rise in data traffic seen by mobile network operators is finally generating a return on their investment in broadband capacity and will drive further infrastructure expenditure,” the autors predict.

    According to the report, Apple has established industry leadership in terms of industrial design, ease of use and application availability, offering one of the most desirable devices on the market and setting a standard that rivals are striving to emulate. It reinforced its position during the quarter by launching the iPhone 3GS.

    Pete Cunningham, Canalys senior analyst, said, “Apple has revolutionised the smart phone sector, leapfrogging more experienced rivals. The competition must move much faster to close the gap in terms of functionality and design and at the same time try to target Apple’s weak spots. These are primarily related to its business model, which requires premium upfront pricing, high cost of ownership and, in many countries, a restricted operator line-up.”

    The research shows that the competition is building in a number of different forms. RIM has successfully expanded its product portfolio to include a wide selection of devices and interfaces that appeal to a range of customers at different price points. This includes 2.5G models that are smaller, lighter, lower cost and have better battery life than most of its 3G rivals. Palm has received widespread acclaim following the launch of the Pre in the US during Q2.

    Chris Jones, Canalys VP and principal analyst, added, “As a relatively small company, Palm has shown what creative leadership and focused investment can achieve. By going back to its roots and developing its own operating system, it has produced an innovative and differentiated product. Investors have responded to this, with its share price growing over 70% this year. Palm still has plenty of challenges ahead – it must find the resources to launch the Pre on the global stage, while continuing to fund development of its product pipeline.”

    Another emerging trend is the rise of the Google-led Android OS, which is already taking 3% of the smart phone market. Success so far has been driven through HTC, but with many other vendors, including Samsung, joining the fray, volumes are expected to increase substantially. The free licence model, tight integration with Google applications and the potential for a high degree of vendor and operator customisation are all benefits attracting industry participants.

    Jones continued, “It is noteworthy how differently the smart phone business is developing compared to the PC industry. PCs are a highly standardised, commoditised platform, where one model is often largely indistinguishable from another. Consequently, PC price points are incredibly low, which is good for customers, but the industry lacks excitement. Smart phones are different – Nokia, Apple, RIM and Palm have all achieved success by developing their own operating systems and delivering distinct devices and interfaces. Android customisation will further add to this diverse mix. As a result, new smart phones are front page news around the world."

    “The main loser has been Microsoft’s highly standardised Windows Mobile platform. Its smart phone market share has now fallen below 10% and the trend is likely to continue as many of its OEM partners, including HTC, Motorola and Palm, are focusing investment on other platforms,” he conclude.

    In addition to smart phones, netbooks are the other hot area within the technology industry in this difficult year. The competition and opportunities created between these platforms will be discussed at the Canalys Mobility Forum, taking place on November 17, near London’s Heathrow Airport.

  • iPhone Has "Changed Dynamic" of US Smartphone Market


    Worldwide smartphone shipments grew 5.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year, according to the latest quarterly market overview by Canalys.

    However, Pete Cunningham, senior analyst with Canalys, told smartphone.biz-news the North American consumer market saw shipments rise in Q1 2009 by 22.5 per cent year-on-year.

    He said North American market growth was being helped by the smartphone’s shift into the mainstream.

    RIM, which was instrumental in the development of the enterprise smartphone market, still dominates but the emphasis is changing.

    "The smartphone market in the US has grown up predominantly as a professional-focussed market," said Cunningham. "But since the iPhone launched, the dynamic has changed.

    "Now smartphones are pushing into the consumer space and that’s aiding the growth."

    The analyst said he was confident smartphone shipments would continue to grow in North America, although he predicted the rate would slow slightly.

    Pete Cunningham, senior analyst with Canalys

    He expected the Palm Pre, due to be launched on June 6th, to do well, as would the anticipated update to the iPhone.

    Cunningham said that in EMEA smartphone shipment growth was 3.4 per cent in Q1 2009.

    He said the bulk of growth was in Western Europe where operators were really pushing vendors to drive consumers towards smartphones.

    There was also growing reluctance from the majority of operators to subsidise high tier proprietary operating systems.

    "They are looking for vendors to support open platforms," he said. "There has certainly been momentum gathering in this since the beginning of the year which has caught some vendors out."

    Among them is Sony Ericsson, according to Cunningham, with the majority of the phone maker’s offerings having proprietary OS rather than open platforms.

    However, he said that moving forward he was confident the Western European market would continue to grow, especially with the prospect of a number of high profile launches imminent, including the Pre and upgraded iPhone.

    Another factor that has been evident in the smartphone market is the practice of carriers agreeing "super exclusive" partnership with high-profile handset makers.

    In the UK in 2008, this included Vodafone and the Blackberry Storm,T-Mobile and the Google G1, O2 and the iPhone.

    Cunningham said this was likely to continue with the Palm Pre expected in Europe shortly after its US launch.

    "The drive behind this is partly because operators are trying to focus on customer retention," he said. "And to do this they need high profile devices."

    Another key feature in the smartphone market has been the growth in sales of touchscreen devices, shipments of which nearly doubled in Q1 2009 compared with a year ago, according to Canalys.

    Cunningham said the success of the Nokia 5800, which had a "tremendous" first quarter, had really helped boost the technology.

    However, he expected to see a lot more QWERTY keyboards on upcoming models – and touchscreen/QWERTY offerings like the Nokia N97 and Palm Pre.

    "I would not be surprised if we saw more of this combination," he said.

    "A touchscreen is great for browsing but, especially with the growing demand for social networking, a keyboard is very good for text entry.

    "Software keyboards are sometimes not so great."

  • Smartphone Sales Keep Growing As Mobile Market Suffers


    Smartphone sales grew 12.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 despite sharply falling sales of mobile phones generally – down 9.4 per cent year-on-year.

    Leading the charge in high-end device sales were RIM’s Blackberry handsets and Apple’s iPhone, along with a number of other touchscreen phones, according to research firm Gartner.

    Sales of RIM handsets totalled 7.23 million in Q1, or 19.9 per cent of the smartphone market, up from 13.3 per cent in the same period last year.

    Over the same period, the iPhone’s market share more than doubled from 5.3 per cent to 10.8 per cent, with sales of 3,94 million devices.

    The growth makes Apple the third-largest smartphone maker in the world and gives it twice as much share as HTC.

    Nokia remained the leading maker of smartphones in Q1 but saw its market share drop to 41.2 per cent from 45.1 in Q1 2008. It sold 14.99 million devices, up slightly from 14.58 million in the same period last year.

    The Finnish giant’s smartphone sales were helped by the introduction of its 5800 device into more regions.

    Nokia started shipping its 5800 touch screen smartphone at the end of 2008.

    Overall Smartphone sales were 36.4 million units, which accounted for 13.5 per cent of all mobile device sales in the first quarter of 2009 compared with 11 per cent in the first quarter of 2008.

    However, worldwide mobile phone sales totalled 269.1 million units in Q1 2009, a 9.4 per cent decrease from the first quarter of 2008.

    Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said the positive performances by RIM and Apple showed that services and applications are now instrumental to smartphones’ success.

    She said that much of the smartphone growth during the first quarter of 2009 was driven by touchscreen products, both in midtier and high-end devices.

    "Touch for the sake of touch was enough of a driver in the midtier space, but tighter integration with applications and services around music, mobile e-mail, and Internet browsing made the difference at the high end of the market," she said.

    Symbian accounted for 49.3 per cent of worldwide smartphone operating systems (OS) market share in the first quarter of 2009, but this was down from 56.9 per cent share in the first quarter of 2008.

    Nokia maintained its leading position in the overall mobile market, although its market share dropped to 36.2 per cent from 39.1 per cent a year earlier.

    Samsung’s market share rose 4.7 percentage points to 19.1 per cent and Gartner said the announcement of its first Android-based product, the i7500, will help Samsung in a highly competitive second half of 2009.

    LG’s market share increased slightly to 9.9 per cent, with the company benefitting from a very strong portfolio of touchscreen, messaging and imaging devices.

    Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices at Gartner, said there are some signs of a recovery in markets such as North America and China.

    But she said that overall sales in the first quarter of 2009 registered the biggest quarter-on-quarter contraction since Gartner began monitoring the market on a quarterly basis in 2001.

    "This was also the first time the market contracted year over year during the first quarter, a period traditionally helped by strong seasonality in the Asia/Pacific market," she said.

  • Does a Mobile's Embedded Content Influence Purchase Decisions?


    Many factors influence consumers’ decisions to buy one mobile phone over the other – but it seems that embedded content is an increasingly important one.

    A survey by independent app store GetJar has found that brand remains the key purchase decision factor (28% respondents), followed some way behind by user experience (17%).

    But coming up in third place is embedded content, which GetJar says is now more important in purchase decisions than price, design or even touchscreen capability.

    Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of GetJar Networks, said that a phone’s user interface and brand are dominant factors for deciding which handset consumers choose.

    "The big change in consumer preference we see within this survey is the importance they are placing on content," he said.

    The survey asked respondents to rank a list of 10 phone features by order of importance including brand, screen size/resolution, user experience/phone software, phone memory, quality of camera, price, touchscreen, music player, embedded content and overall design/look and feel.

    Those taking part in the poll, conducted across the 130 countries in the GetJar network, were also asked to grade each of those features individually on a five-level scale of importance.

    The content that comes with the handset placed third with 12 per cent of respondents worldwide saying it is "extremely important" to their choice of new handset ahead of phone memory (8%), price (5%) and design (7%).

    While the poll showed increased demand for embedded content across all the major international regions, it is US consumers that appear to place it higher on their list of priorities than those in Europe.

    In the US 60 per cent of respondents said it was "extremely important" to their choice of handset compared to 47 per cent in Europe.

    The findings also indicate that the uptake of new handsets will be faster in Europe, with only 25 per cent of those surveyed saying they will not get a new phone this year compared to 40 per cent of US consumers polled.

  • ARCHOS Offers Android-powered Smartphone


    ARCHOS is to bring out a touchscreen smartphone based on the Android operating system.

    The new ultra-thin Internet Media Tablet (IMT) will have voice support and deliver "PC-like" performance, according to ARCHOS.

    It is similar to the Archos 5 media tablet – with the big differences being voice support and the Android OS.

    ARCHOS is to use Texas Instrument’s OMAP 3 platform, which will allow the processor to use less power without affecting performance.

    According to hdtv.biz-news, the device will allow playback of HD video while offline.

    Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager for TI’s OMAP platform business unit, said: "The OMAP 3 platform, with its support for the Android OS, is a powerful tool to support HD video, high quality multimedia and connectivity anytime and anywhere."

    The IMT will be ready in Q3 of this year.

    ARCHOS will give more details about the device at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    But a statement from the company did say that it was "looking to expand beyond portable media players to provide solutions for the converged space, where a foundation in high-quality video content delivery is a benefit".

    "ARCHOS is marrying its rich digital media history with voice functionality to tackle new markets," said the company.

    Some core features of this smartphone include:

    • 5-inch touchscreen
    • Adobe Flash and Flash Video support
    • unrestricted access to TV, movies, music
    • games
    • photos
    • TV recording and HD playback
    • 500GB storage
    • 7 hour video playback battery life
    • runs on a 3.5G 7.2Mb/s HSUPA.

  • ARCHOS Offers Android-powered HD Media-playing Smartphone


    ARCHOS, the company that "invented the PMP", is to bring out a touchscreen smartphone based on the Android operating system.

    The new ultra-thin Internet Media Tablet (IMT) will allow playback of HD video while offline.

    It is similar to the ARCHOS 5 media tablet – with the big differences being that it will have voice support and deliver "PC-like" performance.

    ARCHOS is to use Texas Instrument’s OMAP 3 platform, which will allow the processor to use less power without affecting performance.

    The IMT will be ready in Q3 of this year.

    ARCHOS is expected to give more details about the device at next week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    But a statement from the company did say that it was "looking to expand beyond portable media players to provide solutions for the converged space, where a foundation in high-quality video content delivery is a benefit".

    "ARCHOS is marrying its rich digital media history with voice functionality to tackle new markets," said the company.

    Some core features of this smartphone include:

    • 5-inch touchscreen
    • Adobe Flash and Flash Video support
    • unrestricted access to TV, movies, music
    • games
    • photos
    • TV recording and HD playback
    • 500GB storage
    • 7 hour video playback battery life
    • runs on a 3.5G 7.2Mb/s HSUPA.

    ARCHOS released the first pocket-sized HD-based MP3 player with the Jukebox 6000 in 2000.

    The company claims to have invented the portable media player in 2003 and was the first to bring television recording, wireless and touch screens to PMPs.

  • Is The Glofiish DX900 Really Acer's First Smartphone?


    With anticipation growing about Acer’s entry into the smartphone market later this month, there are suggestions its first offering might simply be a rebranded Glofiish DX900.

    The Taiwanese computer giant acquired E-Ten in mid-2008 – maker of the DX900 – a handset that includes dual-SIM support, a 3-megapixel camera, a 2.8-inch VGA quality touchscreen display, GPS, Wi-Fi and runs Windows Mobile 6.1.

    Reports have also suggested that the new Acer smartphone will in fact be a totally new design and come with a rotating swivelling hinge for the keyboard.

    Whether this is the case or Acer is simply going to unveil the Glofiish smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with its own badge remains to be seen.

    If the latter were the case, it would be a little disappointing.

    But the MWC invite did specify there would be a "launch" – so hopefully that’s what we are going to get.

  • Verizon To Close VoiceWing VoIP Service


    Verizon is to shut its VoIP service VoiceWing on 31 March.

    Existing VoiceWing VoIP service customers have been contacted by Verizon Communications to inform them that it is withdrawing the offering from the end of March.

    The company does not report how many VoiceWing subscribers it has on its books.

    VoiceWing is likely to be replaced by a new venture, FiOS Digital Voice.

    Verizon recently launched ‘The Hub‘, a multifunction touch-screen home phone that connects to a broadband line.

    It also has plans to introduce a new VoIP package utilising its own fibre-optic connections.

    VoiceWing was launched five years ago by rebranding DeltaThree. It was set up to compete with Vonage.

    DeltaThree, which ran the back-end services for VoiceWing, has also been a victim of the times and has been running out of cash. It was recently delisted from Nasdaq.

  • Snom To Reveal First Touchscreen VoIP Handset


    Snom Technology is to unveil the world’s first touchscreen VoIP handset at this year’s CeBIT tradeshow.

    Called the snom 870, the German VoIP telephone maker said the device has an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

    This allows users to easily connect calls and set up telephone conferences.

    The latter are set up by dragging and dropping the button icons of contacts onto the relevant area of the display.

    Snom will also be exhibiting its entire VoIP product suite at CeBIT, which runs from 3-8 March in Hannover.

    This includes the MeetingPoint model, snom’s first VoIP conference handset.