So far, BlackBerry has only announced two devices that run its new BB10 operating system — they keyboardless Z10 and QWERTY Q10 — but today we might be getting a look at the third device in its lineup. A BlackBerryOS.com f…
LG announced updates for its L-series of smartphones a few weeks ago, and they’re demoing the new handsets here at MWC. The L stands for “low-end” here — these are aimed at price-conscious European and Asian consumers. T…
After successfully carving out a huge chunk of the smartphone market for itself, Samsung is returning to its feature phone roots with a new line of budget phones called Rex. There are four Rex handsets in total; three (the Rex…
HTC plans to shift its focus to emerging markets and selling low-end phones in China in light of lower-than-expected first quarter earnings, Reuters reports. In a call to investors on Monday, HTC chief financial officer Chang …
An interview with Apple’s (AAPL) senior vice president of marketing Phil Schiller conducted by Chinese-language Shanghai Evening News made waves on Thursday when it seemed to suggest earlier reports about a cheap iPhone were inaccurate. The executive reportedly said cheap smartphones will “never be the future of Apple products,” leading many to question earlier claims from The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Digitimes and others suggesting a lower-end iPhone will launch in 2013. The Shanghai Evening News interview has since been updated, however, prompting Reuters to withdraw its earlier report on the matter. The full extent of the updates is unclear and the original article remains posted on the Shanghai Evening News website.
A new report adds weight to recent rumors suggesting Apple (AAPL) is preparing to launch one or more new iPhone models by mid-2013. In a note to investors on Monday, Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley told clients that Apple’s iPhone 5 saw “very strong” demand in the holiday quarter, likely pushing cumulative sales for fiscal 2013 above analysts’ consensus to 173 million units. Moving into the summer months, Walkley sees Apple launching a new “higher-end iPhone” sometime in the June quarter, and a low-end model could be in the works as well. “We believe Apple could launch a higher-end iPhone model by the June quarter versus its more typical September/October timing for a new iPhone launch,” Walkley wrote. “We
South Africa is one of Research In Motion’s (RIMM) top five markets in the world, and it is a decent proxy for the entire African market. Leading regional carrier Vodacom’s November smartphone statistics illustrate exactly why BlackBerry 10 cannot arrive soon enough… and why RIM badly needs a cheap new BlackBerry 10 model by spring. Vodacom holds more than 50% of the South African handset market and South Africa is the largest mobile phone market in the continent. On November 12th, Vodacom announced that it had 2.7 million BlackBerry users on its South African network, a number that increased by 300,000 in three months. The number of Android users grew by 200,000 to 700,000 subscribers. The number of iPhone users
It’s been rumored for a while that Google (GOOG) and ASUS (2357) are working on a $99 Nexus tablet. Although benchmarks can easily be faked, a new GLBenchmark for a tablet identified as only “ME172V” and reportedly built by ASUS has popped up with specs well below those of the Nexus 7. According to the GLBenchmark, the entry-level Nexus 7 could have a 7-inch display with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution display, 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, a 4270mAh battery and Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean. Interestingly enough, the purported low-end Nexus 7 also has a micro SD card slot, which the original Nexus 7 does not. It’s possible that the entry-level tablet could be an entirely
NVIDIA blew reviewers away with its flagship GTX 680, but building cards for the low-end is a whole different challenge. The GT 640 hits the $99 price point, where it sits right between the AMD Radeon HD 7750 at $109 and the last-gen Radeon 6670 at …
HTC may be looking to follow in Samsung and Apple’s footsteps in developing its own processors, according to a rumor from China Times. The Taiwanese vendor has reportedly signed a “memorandum of cooperation” with ST-Ericsson to co-…
