Day: April 8, 2011

“As most of us know, Palm is owned by HP. And we do know that most of Palm’s creation such as the Pre, Palm Pre 2, Pixi, HP Veer, and HP Pre3 are smartphones that have both QWERTY and touchscreen. However, a spy shot has spotted a mysterious HP smartphone. Surprisingly, we found not a single trace of QWERTY keyboard attach to it. Its a full touchscreen smartphone. The only information that was given to Precentral.net by an anonymous tipster is as the following.
“Our best guess is that it has a screen resolution of 480×800. There also appears to be a front-facing camera, although it could simply be a proximity sensor,” states the site before adding that they are “quite confident that the image is legit, unfortunately we don’t have a lot of confidence in any further information. Is the device coming or is it simply a prototype that has been canned?” via slashphone.com

“It’s that time of the month/year again when the analysts release their forecasts on how the various smartphone platforms will fare. Last week we had IDC’s predictions and today we have Gartner giving their two pence worth. The first thing you will notice with the Gartner results is that they are, in the general sense, similar to the predictions IDC made in its own forecast. For example, Android is once again the big man on campus with Gartner predicting that it will rise to take a 38.5% share of the market by the end of this year. That would leave industry stalwart Symbian on just 19.2% according to Gartner, which is a massive decline from Symbian’s 37.6% share in 2010. Moving ahead to 2012 Gartner sees Android grabbing almost half the smartphone market with 49.2%. Of course the farther ahead in time you move the less accurate these predictions become. iOs is predicted to peak in popularity this year attaining a 19.4% market share, but Gartner sees Apple’s platform declining in the years after; down to 18.9% in 2012 and then 17.2% by 2015. Presumably this will be because of Apple’s focus on a single device and that device’s high price point in comparison to the multitude of devices running other platforms as well as the multitude of price points brought to bear by Android, Windows Phone 7, etc. On the subject of Windows Phone 7 Gartner predicts a rise to 5.6% this year and then an almost doubling to 10.8% next year. In the long run (2015) Gartner sees Windows Phone 7 as the second largest platform with 19.5% (still a long way behind Android though). As I said before the farther ahead in time we go the less accurate these numbers become, but Gartner does have good reason to predict a big rise in Windows Phone 7’s fortunes: Nokia. With Nokia able to churn out lots of devices at different price points Windows Phone 7 would get a big boost in terms of its availability and reach. Last, but not least, is RIM which increasingly looks like an also ran whenever we look at these sorts of statistics and predictions. Essentially Gartner sees RIM declining in market share with each passing year, dropping to 13.4% this year before sliding to 12.6% next year and then almost slipping into single digits with 11.1% by 2015.” via mobile-review.com