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Windows Phone 7 sales figures released
After keeping the Windows Phone 7 sales figures hidden behind doors for so long, Microsoft has finally released them to the public. According to the Redmond giant, more than 1.5 million WP7 handsets were sold to retailers in the first six weeks of the mobile operating system’s launch. It may sound like a lot, but take note that the numbers only portray the amount of devices that made their way out to retail outlets, and not the amount that were taken home by consumers. For all we know, more than 50% of all the handsets they shipped could still be sitting on shelves all over the world. The vice president of business and marketing for WP7 who released the figures seemed very optimistic though. “We know we have tough competition, and this is a completely new product. We’re in the race – it’s not a sprint but we are certainly gaining momentum and we’re in it for the long run.” Microsoft may not have gotten the triumphant return to the mobile scene they had hoped for, but at least they know what they’re in for and they seem prepared for it. Let’s see what they have up their sleeves for the upcoming year.
According to some recent reports, Intel might be dipping its toes into the smartphone market in the coming months. Bloomberg reports that the chip manufacturer has struck a deal with ZTE to produce some new phones together. Intel will be designing the devices that will run on a version of their Atom microprocessor. The phone is said to go on sale in China and it hasn’t been made known if we’ll see the phones on this side of the world. No word on what operating system will be running on the phones either, so the question is still up in the air. Despite Intel’s dominance in the PC market, they haven’t been able to make any headway in the smartphone sector due to their processors being power hungry and the current mobile operating systems designed to run on ARM chips. As usual, take this rumor with a pinch of salt, but if things do turn out to be official, expect Intel and/or ZTE to speak up soon.
It has been a good 24 hours that the world has been talking about the Amazon Blaze smartphone which leaked on the web, literally out of nowhere. No one was talking about an Amazon smartphone and no one really expected Amazon to be readying a smartphone. This leads us to the question whether this product has an element of truth associated to it, or is it one of those million rumors which is directed at entertaining the web readers. By the look of things, Amazon Blaze is a reality. You feel like trusting this product for real because Amazon has manufactured gadgets in the past, but all those were limited to being e-book readers. So is Amazon now looking to expand into the smartphone arena? The Blaze does look an impressive start, if at all it will be one. Android 2.3, a 4.3-inch Mirasol display, a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8600 processor, a 5MP rear camera and a 1.3MP front cam for video chatting – all this sounds very impressive. But we would still wait for Amazon to endorse this as a reality, before we talk about it any further. You can of course type in your views in the comments section to let us know what you make of the Amazon Blaze.
The majority of Apple fanboys and freaks around the globe believe that the next generation iPhone will break cover at the WWDC which is to be held in the first half of June 2011. But, the Koreans are out there to contradict this belief and they think that it will be the last week of June this year when the iPhone 5 will eventually be released. Korean news site ETNews apparently heard this at the Mobile World Congress in Spain earlier this year and that is how this source is almost certain of the iPhone 5 release in late June. For some strange reason, this source also believes that the iPhone 5 will debut in South Korea and the US at the same time, which is something that cannot be trusted. The world is so used to seeing Apple products being first introduced in the US and then elsewhere that such a change of strategy from Cupertino is indigestible. I guess the Korean source needs to do its homework right before coming up with such gossip.