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Smartphones outsell computers for the first time
The International Data Corporation (IDC) has reported that for the first time in history, smartphones have outsold computers. It was estimated that a record-breaking 92.1 million computers were shipped in Q4 2010 and 100.9 million smartphones were shipped in the same period, pushing the smartphone sales above the PC sales for the first time. This increase in sales shows that the world is finally starting to embrace smartphones – especially with platforms like Android opening up to the low-end consumer market, making smartphone accessible to everyone. But let’s not forget that phones are usually cheaper than computers, and the lifespan of a computer is usually longer than that of a smartphone (which usually gets replaced every 2 years, while a computer’s lifespan can last longer than that), not to mention people constantly upgrade their computers – be it due to problems or just for performance, while smartphones don’t have that option. But the numbers aren’t anything to laugh at. In the future we’ll probably be seeing smartphones in the hands of everybody in the world. How many of you chose to get a new smartphone instead of a new computer last 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.