smartphoneos
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HTC cuts 15 percent of workforce amid weak sales
As expected, smartphone maker HTC has announced more layoffs, and the cuts are brutal. The company will let 15 percent of its workforce go (over 2,000 employees), due in large part to falling revenues and profits. Last week the company reported shaky financial results, which it chalked up to worse-than-expect sales of its HTC One M9 flagship. It's also facing an ever-tightening smartphone market and more competition, especially from Chinese companies like Xiaomi and Huawei. The layoffs are part of a company-wide realignment, and CEO Cher Wang -- who took the reigns from Peter Chou in March -- tried to put a positive spin on it.
Jolla startup receives MeeGo patents, nod of encouragement from Nokia (update: only partially true)
We already know that the MeeGo splinter group, Jolla, is following a slightly different path to what we've known and loved on the N9, but don't fear: there's every chance that the smartest features from the original OS will be retained, not least because Nokia has just given the startup a gift-wrapped bundle of patents. Jolla founder Jussi Hurmola mentioned the altruistic gesture in an interview with ItViikko, and although he didn't specify exactly which patents have been transferred, his warm words towards his former employer -- with whom he said he enjoyed a "good and open relationship" -- give us a strong hint as to their value. Update: We've seen comments on a number of forums saying that ItViiko's mention of the patents is unconfirmed speculation, so we're reaching out to Nokia for further clarification. Update: Apologies all. Turns out the source article wasn't quite accurate in its description of patents being given to departing employees. Nokia tells us it's supporting Jolla through an incubator program called Bridge, but it has not actually given over patents to any of the Bridge startups.
South Korea brings the big guns to the mobile OS knife fight
Publicly, Samsung and LG tersely supported Google's union with Motorola (which we've taken to calling Moogle) -- privately it appears the South Korean giants aren't as thrilled to be at the mercy of Mountain View's whim. Imagine their predicament if they were frozen out of Android tomorrow -- which is why the Korean government has stepped in to create its own OS. Kim Jae-hong, deputy minister from Seoul's Ministry of Knowledge Economy, thinks that American dominance in mobile software is generally a bad thing. The minister said that the country would "foster a habitat" for the open-source OS, which might mean incentivized pricing on these devices, and we're hearing a cloud-based Chrome OS is also in the offing. The biggest news Jae-hong slipped is that Samsung had been very dismissive of a Korean OS until it heard about the Google / Motorola deal. What a difference a Moogle makes, eh?
NPD: Android ousts iPhone OS for second place in US smartphone market
"We're number two" might not be the chant everyone's after, but we have a feeling that Google is more than satisfied with that in this case... for now. According to market research firm NPD, Google's Android operating system edged up into second place in the US smartphone market during the first quarter of the year, leaving it still well behind RIM's BlackBerry OS, but marking the first time that it has moved ahead of Apple's iPhone OS. Specifically, NPD found that RIM maintained a strong 36 percent market share for the quarter, with Android coming in at 28 percent, and iPhone OS in third at 21 percent. The growth for Android was attributed largely to strong carrier support -- like Verizon's buy-one-get-one free offer which, incidentally, also helped Verizon maintain a 30 percent smartphone market share, which is just slightly behind AT&T at 32 percent, and ahead of T-Mobile and Sprint at 17 and 15 percent, respectively. Disclaimer: NPD's Ross Rubin is a contributor to Engadget.
LG not interested in proprietary smartphone OS, likes Android and Windows Phone 7
LG has told the press at MWC that it will not be developing its own smartphone platform "at least for the next two to three years." We think companies should focus on what they do well, and given our ambivalence toward the S-Class UI, it's probably a good thing that LG will narrow its operation down to churning out delectable slabs of electronics and leaving the software side to the geeks over at Google and Microsoft. The head of the company's handset unit, Skott Ahn, has indicated that the future of LG smartphones will be shared between Android and Windows Phone 7 (sorry, Symbian lovers). It will have taken plenty of restraint to not respond to local nemesis Samsung -- who has just introduced its first Bada handset -- but LG appears to be of the opinion (which we share) that the smartphone OS sector is already overcrowded, and its expectation is that over the next couple of years the market will distill itself down to just three predominant operating systems.
