Smartphone shipments to India grew by 167% in January-April from the same period a year earlier, the latest report released by research firm Cyber Media Research (CMR) has stated.

According to the report, nearly 10 million Smartphones were shipped within the South Asian country during the first three months of 2013.

South Korea-based Samsung retained its top-spot in Smartphone shipments by selling some 4 million units during January-April and making up about 40% of the total market share.

The homegrown companies Micromax and Bangalore-based Karbonn, who operate within the Rs 7000 to Rs 16,000 price point, occupied the second and third places respectively at 19.3% and 8.6% market shares respectively. This was the first time in the country’s history that two major domestic Smartphone manufacturers came in among the top three positions.

Cyber Media said the skyrocketing growth rate of the Smartphone is an indication that an increasing number of mobile phone users are migrating from feature phones to the entry-level Smartphones which offer internet browsing and content downloading. The feature phones witnessed a growth rate of just 2.4% during the three month period.

Nokia retained the leadership in the overall mobile shipment in the country, making up 20.3% of the market share, while rival Samsung pursed closely behind with 14.2%, up from 5% a couple of years ago.

The total number of mobile handset shipments in India for the first four months of 2013 propelled to 4 million units, up 11% compared with the same period last year.

The Smartphone users in India have now reached 108 million (calculated based of 850 million mobile phones users in the country), the report said.

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Technology giants Hewlett Packard (HP) has announced that it plans to re-enter into the Smartphone market with a new flagship device.

Yam Su Yin, the Senior Director of Consumer PC and Media Tablets Asia Pacific, at an event in Beijing told news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) that the company is planning to cash the lucrative Smartphone market. However, he didn’t reveal when the company will come up with its new handset.

Yam said that HP is studying all the current offerings in the Smartphone market and is attempting to discover what it can offer that other players in the market don’t.

The Palo Alto-based company has dabbled in the Smartphone market in the past, when it acquired Palm and its webOS platform for $1.2 billion in 2010. By February 2011, it released the two WebOS Smartphones – the HP Veer and the Pre 3 – but the poor sales caused the company to scrap the operating system and hardware associated with it.

In the wake of the failure of WebOS, HP is likely to feature Google’s Android operating system, which accounts for the 69% of worldwide market share, in its future mobile devices. The company has already launched a number of Android-powered products, including seven-inch tablet and a Chromebook.

HP, the parent company of Plano-based HP Enterprise Services, is currently working on segments like all-in-one PCs, tablets and notebooks.

Hewlett Packard would face fierce competition by the rulers of the Smartphone market – Apple Inc. and Samsung – who together make up the majority of Smartphone market share.

According to IDC, the Smartphone shipments are expected to raise 32.7% annual attainment 958.8M units this year, increased from 722.5M units shipped in 2012.

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Huawei Technologies Co, the telecom-network equipment giants, unveiled the world’s slimmest Smartphone – Ascend P6 – at an event in London on Tuesday.

Just over 6mm thick, Ascend P6 will be available for sale in China this month and in Western Europe in July, with the recommended price of €449 (£385).

Ascent P6 is packed with strong hardware features like 4.7-inch display, 1.5 gigahertz quad-core processor, dust-proof metal casing, a powerful 5 megapixels front and 8 megapixels rear camera. The device runs on a customized version of Google’s Android Operating system.

P6 is made up of glass and metal unlike its predecessors, the new version isn’t compatible with the 4G networks. The device comes in white, black and baby pink colors.

The touch screen of the phone is extremely sensitive and it responds only to the gloved hands.

The London event, held at Camden’s Roundhouse, was the first stand-alone global product launch of Huawei, who previously unveiled its new phones rather silently at the trade shows such as the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Huawei has been most successful as the maker of telecom-network equipment such as antennas and base stations, surpassing American and European competitors to become the second largest vendor after Sweden’s Ericsson.

However, the company’s smartphone business is competing with an uphill battle. The release of a new Smartphone shows that the Shenzhen-based company is aspiring to establish itself as a customer brand by increasing its marketing efforts.

The analysts believe the latest flagship device will determine the future of the company’s Smartphone business.

The company is planning to release P6 in 19 countries including China, Germany, Italy and France by the end of July and 100 more afterwards.

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Japanese Electronics giants Sony have launched a waterproof Android Smartphone – Xperia Z Ultra – with a 6.4in screen (16.3cm), describing it as  the ‘slimmest large-screened handset on the market’.

The new device is 6.5mm thick – slightly deeper than the thinnest device on the market, Ascend P6, launched recently by the Chinese telecom-network equipment giants Huawei.

Like original Xperia Z, which was unveiled in January, the enhanced version is also equipped with stunning features, one of which is that in addition to an optional stylus, it also accepts notes or sketches written using metal-tipped pen or a standard pencil.

Xperia Z ultra comes up with a 1080p resolution screen with in-built software to upgrade lower definition photos and videos. It has an 8 megapixel rear camera, and a powerful battery that offers up to 11 hours talk time. The 16 GB of internal storage of the device can be expanded to 64GB with the support of microSD cards.

The Ultra follow-up is highly water-resistant and can be submerged to a deeper limit – 1.5m (4.9ft) in freshwater for up to 30 minutes.

Xperia Z Ultra will be available for sale in Singapore and China sometime in July-August and in Europe from September.

Sony said it aspires to challenge Samsung’s supremacy of the jumbo-sized handset sector with its new flagship device.

The firm is not alone in seeking to grind down the lead of Korean Electronics giant. Several other players in the market have also jumped into the competition with their large-screened handsets. These devices include Huawei’s 6.1inch Ascend Mode, Acer’s 5.7inch Liquid S1; ZTE’s 5.7inch Grand Memo; Asus’ 6inch FonePad Note and Lenovo’s 5.5inch Ideaphone K900.

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Electronics giant Samsung has announced its plans to launch an enhanced version of its epic Galaxy S4 Smartphone that will transmit data almost twice of the normal speed.

The CEO of a South Korean company J.K. Shin, while speaking to Reuters on Monday, said the phone will be available for sale in South Korea by the end of this month.


The new S4 will be a bit more expensive than the current one, said Shin, adding the company is in talks with a number of carriers to introduce the device into the other countries.

The as-yet unnamed Smartphone will use LTE-Advanced 4G technology, an upgrade from conventional 4G called Long Term Evolution or LTE, to offer speed of up to two times that of the existing LTE device. The Qualcomm chips used in the latest flagship device will be compatible to the upgraded networks.

Thanks to LTE-Advanced, a movie which currently takes three minutes to download, will take a little more than one minute, said Samsung.

Samsung released a string of variations of smash-hit Galaxy S4 including Galaxy S4 Active and Galaxy S4 Zoom following its global launch in April this year.

The original S4, an Android-powered device with the 5-inch full HD Super AMOLED display and a dual camera function, has surpassed all of its predecessors to reach 10 million sales in less than a month, which made it the most successful handset ever launched by the company.

Samsung, who emerged as the leader of the Smartphone market last year by selling over 400 million phones, will unveil its new Galaxy devices at an event in London on June 20.

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Mobile messaging application WhatsApp has announced a new record for inbound and outbound messages sent in a single day.

The company tweeted that it processed 27 billion messages –10 billion inbound and 17 billion outbound messages– in a 24-hour period. It, however, didn’t reveal when exactly it received the new record.

WhatApp had handled 18 billion messages – seven billion inbound and 11 billion outbound messages– in its previous record during last year’s New Year Evening.

The massive disparity between inbound and outbound numbers is down to the addition of group messages in Whatapp, which means if someone sends one inbound message in a group it could result in several outbound messages to the other group members.

WhatApp supports Android, Asha, Windows Phone, Symbian and BlackBerry platforms. Unlike its rivals, the company charges users $0.99 per year for unlimited use.

Jan Koum, the WhatApp CEO, recently announced that the company’s monthly active users have been propelled to 200 million, more than Twitter and several other social networking websites.

However the service does face stiff competition in the emerging market countries like China, where Wechat, an instant messaging service of country’s social giant Tencent, boasts over 300 million users. In India Nimbuzz and in Japan Line, both have more over 150 million subscribers.

WhatApp has signed deals with operators across the globe and has partnered with mobile phone giants Nokia to offer Asha 210 feature phone which physically includes a WhatsApp button.

The company’s new record reflects the general shift away from traditional SMS (Short Messaging Service) text being sent by the mobile phone users.

Research firm Informa last month reported that the instant messaging apps outnumbered SMS messaging in 2012, for the first time in its 20-year history. It stated that last year 19 billion instant messages were sent compared with 17.6 billion SMS messages per day and predicted that the figure will reach to 41 billion by the end of 2013.

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Vodafone Group has confirmed the long-running speculation that it has been approached by Germany’s biggest cable operator – Kabel Deutschland – about a probable multi-billion dollar take-over, a move which would boost U.K. mobile company’s broadband and TV offerings.

According to reports, Vodafone has offered between €81-82 (£68-69) to Kabel Deutschland but it has dismissed the offer citing it as too low. The mobile company is now reportedly considering increasing its offer.

Since the unearthing of the U.K. Company’s interest in Kabel Deutschland about four months ago, the shares of the cable firm have rose by as much as 27%.

The acquisition of Kabel Deutschland, which has around 8.5 million customers across Germany, would help Vodafone to bolster its mobile and broadband footing in Germany, where it acquired a leading telecom provider – Mannesmann AG – in a takeover worth $180 billion in 2000.

Vodafone, the world’s No. 2 mobile operator by revenue after China Mobile Ltd, last month recorded its first revenue drop in eight years, with rivals offering more competitive service bundles. .

The U.K. Company is also loosening its clutches over the German broadband operations, acquired in the Mannesmann deal, as Deutsche Telekom AG and Unitymedia Kabel have lured millions of its customers with awe-inspiring packages during the past few years.

Since the German takeover law demands the bidders to offer at least the average share price from the past three months, Vodafone would need to put a value on Kabel Deutschland of at least €6.39 billion to proceed with the offer.

And if the deal goes ahead, it will be Vodafone Group’s largest since it started operations in India in 2007 and it will look forward to attract more customers by bundling mobile, fixed-line, TV and broadband services.

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A recently published global survey conducted by Google and Ipsos MediaCT states that Israelis are the most fervent Smartphone users in the world.

The survey, taken in the first quarter of 2013, was based on the responses of 1,000 global Smartphone users between the ages of 18 and 64.

In 2012, the Smartphone penetration in the Israeli market stood at 35%, while so far this year it has gone up to 57%, witnessing a substantial 22% rise. Britain is the only country ahead of Israel, where 62% of the population own Smartphone.

Spain came in third with 55% Smartphone users while France and Germany are ranked 4th and 5threspectively with 42% and 40% of their populations owning Smartphones.

While Britain slightly edged Israel in terms of Smartphone ownership, but in terms of the device’s usage, the middle-eastern country surpassed all the European countries and America.

According to the survey, the most extensive use of Smartphone in Israel takes place at home (87%), at work (77%) or while travelling home from work or during a walk (72%).

The survey also revealed the details of Israelis’ Smartphone use habits. The country’s people make more use of searches (93%), applications (86%), maps (84%) and social network updates (82%) than people of any other country.

Israelis are also ahead of all other nations in watching videos on the small screens, with 77% viewing the clips on YouTube and other video sharing websites and 48% watching the full length TV shows online.

Israeli Smartphone users left the other nations behind them in every possible parameter. However, an area where they appeared more conservative than the other countries, is online shopping with only 31% saying they used their handsets to purchase items online, compared with 46% of Americans and 39% of Britons.

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Cell phone manufacturer Motorola, in its bids to make a comeback in the hot-competitive mobile market, has announced it will launch its new flagship device – Moto X – later this year.

Moto X, the first Smartphone ever assembled in United States, will be built at a 500,000 square-feet facility in Texas that will create about 2,000 jobs by this October.

Motorola has already started hiring for the Fort Worth plant in Texas. The site was most recently vacant but it was once used by mobile phone giants Nokia. The factory will be owned and run by a Singapore-based contract electronics manufacturer – Flextronics International Ltd – which has a long time relationship with Motorola.

Moto X will be designed, engineered and assembled in the U.S but all of its components won’t be made there. The likes of screen and processor will be manufactured overseas.

Though the specifications of Moto X have not yet been disclosed by the company, it is rumored that its screen and display could be anywhere from 4.5-inches to 5-inches. The phone will use two processors to conserve battery life.

While most of the current phones use Gorilla Glass 2 for screen protection, Moto X is expected to come up with an enhanced version – Gorilla Glass 3 – to ensure the maximum screen safety. The phone is said to be water-resistant as well.

Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside said Moto X will have the feature of managing ultra-low power sensors; such as in gyroscopes and accelerometers, that can sense which components are currently not being used and shuts them down to conserve the power.

In addition to the Moto X, Motorola, which was acquired by Google for $12.5 billion last August, will also launch several lower-end Smartphones this year.

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Samsung Electronics Galaxy S4 marked its introduction into the global market with a remarkable note as the company says they have sold more than 10 million units in less than a month.

In just the first month, sales of the new Smartphone from Samsung, has surpassed all of its predecessors.


The Galaxy S III had taken 50 days to reach the 10 million mark following its release last year. Galaxy S II reached the mark in five months while Galaxy S accomplished the milestone in seven months.

Galaxy S4 is currently available in 115 countries and will be introduced to 155 countries in cooperation with 327 partners, said Korean electronics giants, who emerged as the leader of the Smartphone market last year by selling over 400 million phones.

The Research firm IDC said that the massive success of Galaxy S4 will help Samsung to sustain its position in the Smartphone market.

Android-powered Galaxy S4 has a 5-inch full HD Super AMOLED display and a dual camera function which allows the user to use both front and rear cameras simultaneously.

Currently, S4 is only available in white and black color, or as Samsung likes to say White Mist and Black Forest. But soon it will be available in more colors including Brown Autumn, Blue Arctic, Purple Mirage and Red Aurora, announced Samsung.

Apple’s iPhone 5 — the main rival of Galaxy S4 — sold about five million devices in the opening weekend of its launch, but the amount disappointed investors, who were expecting much higher sales. The market analysts had predicted nearly eight-million sales for Apple iPhone 5 on the first weekend.

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