China iPhone Sales Beat US for the First Time

 

Apple Inc beat Wall Street's revenue and profit forecasts on Monday as it sold more iPhones in China than the United States for the first time, but the company gave no sales figures for its new Apple Watch.

Apple's iPhone sales in China soared, increasing its revenue in the country 71 percent to $16.8 billion, although that was helped by gift-buying for Chinese New Year.

Chief Executive Tim Cook said that China's expanding middle class is fuelling iPhone sales there, which is the bulk of the company's sales. The iPhone 6 was launched last autumn in China with a number of carriers.

(Also see:  Apple Becomes Top Smartphone Vendor in China in Q4: Report)

Wall Street hailed the results but share reaction was muted. Its shares rose 1.6 percent in after-hours trading to $134.52.

Apple sold 61.2 million iPhones in the quarter, up 40 percent from the year-ago quarter, but down from the record-breaking holiday quarter. It sold 12.6 million iPads, down 23 percent from a year ago.

Apple's big screen iPhone 6 (Review | Pictures) and iPhone 6 Plus (Review | Pictures) have been popular with customers worldwide, helping the company overtake rival Samsung in global smartphone sales last quarter.

"A 60 million-plus iPhone number is a home run and will be cheered by the Street as this remains the bread and butter of Apple," said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives.

Apple gave no sales figures for its recently released Apple Watch, but did say the current quarter was off to "an exciting start".

Cook said demand for the watch continued to be greater than supply, as it has been since pre-orders started earlier this month.

"From a demand point of view, it's hard to gauge when you don't have product in stores," said Cook on a conference call with analysts. Apple is only selling the watch online and in select third-party boutiques due to the large number of models and straps for the watch, which could become a logistics nightmare if it offered every permutation of the many varieties at already jam-packed Apple stores.

The most valuable publicly traded U.S. company raised its quarterly dividend 11 percent to 52 cents per share and boosted its share repurchase programme to $140 billion from $90 billion announced last year.

Together, Apple estimated that would mean returning $200 billion to shareholders by the end of March 2017. It ended the quarter with $193.5 billion in cash and marketable securities, up more than $15 billion from the last quarter.

Even so, that was "a bit lower than expectations," said Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

Apple said net income for the fiscal second quarter rose to $13.57 billion, or $2.33 per share, from $10.22 billion, or $1.66 per share, a year earlier.

Analysts had expected earnings per share of $2.16 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Overall revenue rose to $58.01 billion in the second quarter ended March 28, from $45.65 billion a year earlier. That beat Wall Street's expected revenue of $56 billion.

Apple said it expected fiscal third-quarter revenue of $46 billion to $48 billion, in line with analysts' average forecast of $47 billion.

 

Lenovo K80 features 4 GB of RAM and a 4000 mAh battery, will compete with Asus ZenFone 2

Not long after Asus announced the ZenFone 2 as the world's first smartphone to offer 4 GB of RAM, and Xiaomi introduced the Mi Note Pro with 4 GB of RAM, now Lenovo unveiled its own handset with 4 GB of random-access memory.

Called Lenovo K80, the new handset will directly compete with the Asus ZenFone 2 not just because it offers 4 GB of RAM, but also because its price and other features are relatively similar to those of Asus' smartphone (which is already available in select markers, including China). 

The K80 runs Android Lollipop, sports a 5.5-inch 1080p display, and is powered by a 64-bit Intel Atom processor clocked at 1.8 GHz. The handset also offers LTE, a 13 MP rear camera with Optical Image Stabilization, 64 GB of storage space, and a very generous 4000 mAh battery. The K80 is 8.5mm-thin, and comes in various color variants, including black, silver, and red. 

Starting April 30, the Lenovo K80 will be available in China for 1,799 CNY ($290). A model with only 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage space will also be released (for 1,499 CNY - about $240). We don't know if Lenovo is planning to launch the K80 in other markets, but we'll let you know when we find out.

Lenovo K80 detailed specifications

GENERAL

Release date	April 2015
Form factor	Touchscreen
Battery capacity (mAh)	4000
Removable battery	No
SAR value	NA

DISPLAY

Screen size (inches)	5.50
Touchscreen	Yes
Touchscreen type	Capacitive
Resolution	1080x1920 pixels

HARDWARE

Processor	1.8GHz  quad-core
RAM	4GB
Internal storage	64GB

CAMERA

Rear camera	13-megapixel
Flash	Yes
Front camera	Yes

SOFTWARE

Operating System	Android 5.0
Java support	Yes

CONNECTIVITY

Wi-Fi	Yes
Wi-Fi standards supported	NA
GPS	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes
NFC	No
Infrared	No
DLNA	No
Wi-Fi Direct	No
MHL Out	No
HDMI	No
Headphones	3.5mm
FM	No
USB	Micro-USB
Charging via Micro-USB	Yes
Proprietary charging connector	No
Proprietary data connector	No
SIM Type	Regular
GSM/ CDMA	GSM
3G	Yes

SENSORS

Compass/ Magnetometer	No
Proximity sensor	Yes
Accelerometer	Yes
Ambient light sensor	Yes
Gyroscope	Yes
Barometer	No
Temperature sensor	No

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Pew Say 64% of US Adults Own Smartphones

Asignificant number of U.S. adults -- especially younger adults, people with low income or education levels, and non-whites -- depend on their smartphones to access the Internet, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. The study found that 7 percent of Americans use their phones to go online because they don't have broadband service or any other easily available alternatives at home.

The Pew surveys found that 64 percent of adults in the U.S. now own smartphones, a substantial increase from the 35 percent who did in 2011. While smartphone ownership rises with income and education levels, though, the research found that lower-income and less-educated adults are also increasingly dependent on their smartphones to go online. (For comparison, another recent Pew survey found that a median of 24 percent of people in emerging and developing economies own Internet-capable smartphones.)

Smartphone owners also rely heavily on their devices to conduct a variety of tasks beyond the stereotypical game-playing, shopping or listening to music. For example, 62 percent of those surveyed said they had used their phones in the past year to research specific health conditions, while 57 percent used their devices for online banking.

Other popular uses included searching real estate listings for places to live (44 percent); looking for job information (43 percent); accessing government services or information (40 percent); taking classes or accessing educational content (30 percent); and submitting job applications (18 percent).

Career, Employment Use a Surprise

We reached out to Aaron Smith, senior researcher for the Pew study, to ask what about the survey surprised the research team most.

"The biggest surprise for us is the large number of people who are using their phones to engage with career and employment resources," Smith said. "In discussions about digital divide issues and the possibility that mobile access can help bridge those divides for certain vulnerable populations (such as those with low incomes) one question that often arises is how mobile-reliant users can meaningfully engage with jobs and job resources."

Smith added, "To the best of our knowledge this is the first time anyone has gotten a direct measure of how many people are actually using smartphones for that purpose. In fact, we found this data  point so interesting that we're planning to conduct some follow-up research in the spring in which we'll look at jobs and career seeking in the current digital environment in much greater detail."

To get a deeper picture of how Americans use their smartphones, Pew researchers also conducted an "experience sampling" survey of a number of device owners. This survey involved contacting survey participants twice a day for a week to ask how they had used their phones in the previous hour.

Not surprisingly, text messaging turned out to be one of the most-used smartphone applications; a full 97 percent of respondents said they had used text messaging at least once over the course of the week. On average, participants reported recently using text messaging in seven out of the 14 daily survey calls.

E-mailing via smartphones was also popular, with 88 percent of respondents saying they had used their devices at least once during the week to read or send e-mails. In fact, smartphone owners used their devices for e-mail more often than for social networking, video watching, maps or navigation.

A 'Tenuous' Link to Digital Resources

For the 7 percent of the population that has no other access to the Internet beyond their smartphones, the connection to digital resources is often tenuous, the Pew research found.

"Compared with smartphone owners who are less reliant on their mobile devices, these smartphone-dependent users are less likely to own some other type of computing device, less likely to have a bank account, less likely to be covered by health insurance, and more likely to rent or to live with a friend or family member rather than own their own home," the study noted.

This group of smartphone owners was also more likely to lose their phone service because of financial difficulties, or find themselves cut off because they had reached the maximum amount of data traffic allowed by their plans.

"Nearly half (48 percent) of smartphone-dependent Americans have had to cancel or shut off their cell phone service for a period of time because the cost of maintaining that service was a financial hardship," the report stated. "In addition, 30 percent of smartphone-dependent Americans say that they 'frequently' reach the maximum amount of data that they are allowed to consume as part of their cell phone plan, and 51 percent say that this happens to them at least occasionally. Each of these figures is substantially higher than those reported by smartphone owners with more access options at their disposal."

Nokia say it is not making, Selling phones again

Is Nokia returning to the phone-making business?

Apparently not as the longtime cell phone manufacturer officially denied rumors that it is planning a return to manufacture or sell consumer handsets. The denial came in a statement posted on the company's Web site over the weekend.

Nokia was once a significant presence in the mobile phone market, but it has been forbidden from making them until 2016 as part of its deal to sell the company to Microsoft for $7 billion last year.

Terse Statement

The talk of Nokia returning to phone manufacturing started with a Re/Code report claiming the company would return to the market in 2016 via its Nokia Technologies division, which made the N1 tablet released last year. Following the Re/Code story, media reports from China said that Nokia would start producing Android-based smartphones from a new research and development center in that country. It was that second round of reports in the Chinese media that Nokia referred to in its denial statement.

"Nokia notes recent news reports claiming the company communicated an intention to manufacture consumer handsets out of a R&D facility in China. These reports are false, and include comments incorrectly attributed to a Nokia Networks executive," according to the unsigned statement. "Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets."

While the company denied it was currently planning any manufacturing, Nokia is still putting out Nokia-branded devices into the market, most notably with the launch of a brand-licensed tablet computer in China, which runs on Google's Android platform. That seems to indicate that Nokia would look to have third parties actually build the phones under the Nokia name, rather than making the actual phones.

We reached out to Jan Dawson, chief analyst for Jackdaw Research, who told us that by the time Nokia is in a position to make phones again, it might not matter much.

"To be honest, by the time 2016 rolls around, it will be so long since Nokia was a major name in phones that I suspect it won't make much difference what the company does," said Dawson. "I don't expect them to sell many phones, whether it makes them itself or has them made by third parties."

Licensing Pending

Nokia’s denial never addressed smartphone design licensing, an area the company might still have a hand in going forward. That's because the company still sees value in designing and licensing handsets, according to a public presentation given late last year by Nokia Technologies president Ramzi Haidamus.

Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia does not seem to have been a great success. Microsoft sits in third place with just a 3.4 percent market share, behind Google Android smartphones and the Apple iPhone, according to a recent report from IT analytics firm comScore. Dawson noted that the various reports and denials could muddy the waters in terms of branding. "Microsoft retained the Nokia name for smartphones for several months, and still uses it on feature phones," he said.

Sony unveils flagship xperia Z4 smartphone in japan

 Set to hit the market in Japan this summer, Sony's new flagship smartphone -- the Xperia Z4 -- is a thin, lightweight but large-screen device that's designed to cap off the company's Xperia Z series. There's no word yet on when the Z4 will be available in other markets.

The phone comes with front and back cameras with features especially aimed at the selfie and social networking crowd. The imaging technology even sports a "cooking mode" to make users' photos of food look more appealing.

Sony is also touting the Xperia Z4's audio capabilities, which it says uses LDAC audio compression technology to deliver high-quality, CD-like sound. Other notable features include a dustproof, waterproof body and a battery  that can provide up to 17 hours of talk time.

Signs of a Sony Smartphone Exit?

Early reviews of the Xperia Z4 note that it doesn't differ dramatically from its predecessor, the Xperia Z3, which was released last year. That could partly explain the relatively low-profile launch for the new device, which was announced only on Sony's Japanese-language corporate site.

Another reason for the new phone's relatively quiet debut could be Sony's current restructuring, which is seeing the company put a greater emphasis on other divisions besides smartphones. During a corporate strategy meeting in February, CEO Kazuo Hirai said Sony would no longer try to pursue growth in areas where its sales have slowed; instead, he said, the firm aims to focus on sales of camera sensors and PlayStation devices to increase profits by a factor of 25 by 2018.

With support for a wide range of languages -- including English (U.S. and U.K.), German French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian -- it's likely the Xperia Z4 will eventually be marketed globally. For now, however, Sony is not providing additional release dates, although it has said the device's price in Japan will start at 7,000 yen, or about $60 at current exchange rates.

Snapdragon 810 Processor

The Xperia Z4 features a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor, 3GB of RAM and a 2930mAh built-in battery. The phone runs the latest version of Google's Android operating system, Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Weighing 144 grams and measuring just 6.9 millimeters in thickness, the Xperia Z4 features and aluminum and glass body and comes with a 5.2-inch screen. It will be available in four colors: white, black, copper and aqua green.

The main camera offers a resolution of 20.7 million pixels, while the front camera's resolution is 5.1 million pixels. Both offer full HD imagery. With support for self-portraits and video calls, the main camera also offers a variety of image-enhancing filters, including a "cooking mode to reproduce the freshness and three-dimensional sense of cuisine."

Google search lets you send notes, directions to your android phones

 You can do a lot more from Google's search page than just look for Web sites and information online, especially if you have a smartphone that uses the company's Android operating system. The latest updates let users with Google-linked phones send directions from a desktop search to their mobile devices, as well as create notes, alarms and reminders.

For now, the new features are available only to Android users in the U.S. They also require phone owners to have the most recent version of the Google app installed on their mobile devices, and to have turned on both Now cards and Web & App activity.

Earlier this month, Google revealed that its search function now lets users with Android phones locate their devices simply by typing in "find my phone" on their desktops. In addition to showing the location of a device on a map, that search feature can also be used to remotely ring a misplaced phone.

It All Starts with Search

To use any of the latest Google capabilities, Android phone owners will also need to have their browser language set to English and be signed into the same Google account on both their desktops and mobile devices. Location reporting also needs to be set in "high accuracy" mode.

To send directions from a desktop search, you'll first need to type, "send directions to my phone." After that, type in where you want to go and then click, "send directions to your phone." After receiving a notification on your mobile device, you can then touch the screen to use Google Maps to find your way.

You can create notes, alarms or reminders in much the same way. Starting at google.com, type in the desired command -- "send a note to my phone," "set an alarm" or "set a reminder" -- and then click the prompt to enable that function on your mobile device.

For those with Android Wear devices, setting reminders or taking notes doesn't even require taking out your phones. By using the Keep app, you can start browsing existing notes or create a new one just by saying, "OK Google, open Keep" or "OK Google, take a note" to your Android Wear device.

New Code Samples for Android Wear, NFC

Google last week also launched five new Android code samples for developers looking to enable a variety of functions, and posted them to its repository on Git Hub. The samples help code developers add new functionality for Android Wear, Android for Work, near field communication (NFC) and screen capturing.

XYZ Tourist Attractions, for example, "is modeled after a hypothetical tourist attractions app that notifies the user when they are in close proximity to notable points of interest." It enables the display of images and summary information on Android Wear components, as well as providing actions for other nearby attractions via a grid-view interface.

Another code sample, NFC Beam Large Files, demonstrates how to transfer large files via Android Beam with devices running Android 4.1 and higher. After an initial handshake over NFC, files can be transferred over a high-speed channel using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct.

Developers who want to get a jump-start on building new Android apps for Christmas can also find Google's Santa Tracker as open source code on GitHub. The code includes a graphical launcher for videos and games, as well as for the Santa-tracking

app itself.

HTC Desire 620 photo and specification

Specifications and leak of the HTC Desire 620 have been leaked by a Bulgarian website – Nixanbal. The phone which will be a successor to HTC Desire 610 has appeared as a full hands on report on the website

The design of the phone almost resembles HTC’s Desire series with removable plastic back and dual front-facing speakers. According to the specification list leaked by Nixanbal, the upcoming HTC Desire 620 features a 5-inch 720p HD display. Under the hood is a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 64-bit quad-core processor, paired with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of on-board storage and microSD card slot. It will have 8MP rear and 5MP front camera, 2100mAh battery and run on Android 4.4 KitKat along with HTC’s Sense 6 UI.

Giving insights about the price, the report states that HTC is planning to launch the Desire 620 in January  in Europe with a price tag of  $ 320

The leak follows the recent spotting of the device’s alleged specs via an FCC filing. HTC had launched the Desire 610 in February this year