Tag Archives: smartphones

One in Six Active U.S. Patents Pertain to the Smartphone

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If anything illustrates the absurdity of the current state of affairs in the patent system, it is that the smartphone handset market — although booming — accounts for less than 1% of the U.S. annual GDP (by U.S. sales) but encompasses 16% of all active U.S. patents.***

via One in Six Active U.S. Patents Pertain to the Smartphone.

To put the absurdity of the current system into perspective, scholars Christina Mulligan and Timothy B. Lee estimated that it would take roughly 2,000,000 patent attorneys working full-time to compare every software-producing firm’s products with every software patent issued in a given year.

Chinese smartphone vendors cut Apple out of top five in shipments for Q3

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The big surprise was the rise of Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific which took third place. Yulong sells smartphones under the brand name Coolpad. The company is largely unknown outside China, but has seen its shipments in the country steadily increase as a result of its broad product profile and low-end handsets, which reach prices below US$100, said Nicole Peng, an analyst with Canalys.

via Chinese smartphone vendors cut Apple out of top five in shipments for Q3 – Huawei, consumer electronics, smartphones, iPhone, ZTE, Android, Lenovo, Apple, samsung – Computerworld.

Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem

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Almost everyone who owns a smartphone would have noticed that whenever they stream videos or play games their device gets warm and starts to drain battery rapidly. Engineers claim that power amplifiers are to blame for this behavior and that these chips waste as much as 65 per cent of their energy. The professors Joel Dawson and David Perreault, through their startup Eta Devices claim to have solved this problem with a new power amplifier design.

via Smartphones to Use Half the Power as Researchers Claim to have solved Efficiency Problem – ParityNews.com: …Because Technology Matters.

The new technology, dubbed asymmetric multilevel outphasing [PDF], is basically a super fast electronic gearbox that would select the best possible voltage to send across the transistors that would minimize power consumption. This process is done as many as 20 million times per second.

HTC suffers 79% crash in quarterly profits

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HTC’s share of the global smartphone market by shipments fell to 5.8% in the second quarter from 10.7% a year earlier, according to Bloomberg.

via HTC suffers 79% crash in quarterly profits | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

HTC has seen falling average selling prices for its phones as it has tried to break into the fast-growing Chinese market. Approximately 30% of shipments go to China but price pressures mean they account for only 20% of revenues.

Sandia builds self-contained, Android-based network to study cyber disruptions and help secure hand-held devices

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Sandia cyber researchers linked together 300,000 virtual hand-held computing devices running the Android operating system so they can study large networks of smartphones and find ways to make them more reliable and secure. Android dominates the smartphone industry and runs on a range of computing gadgets.

via Sandia National Laboratories: News Releases : Sandia builds self-contained, Android-based network to study cyber disruptions and help secure hand-held devices.

Apple owns US smartphone market while Samsung dominates worldwide

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Smartphone market share numbers for the second quarter of 2012 reveal that occasional bitter rivals Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the market, while competitors fight over the leftovers. Market research firm IDC shows Samsung holding a 30 percent share worldwide, while Apple trails with 17 percent. But NPD’s recent data paints a different picture domestically, with Apple garnering 31 percent of the US smartphone market share, and Samsung holding 24 percent.

via Apple owns US smartphone market while Samsung dominates worldwide | Ars Technica.

Making calls has become fifth most frequent use for a Smartphone for newly-networked generation of users

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How long we spend using our smartphones (by activity) each day

Activity Time/day
Browsing the internet 24.81
Checking social networks 17.49
Playing games 14.44
Listening to music 15.64
Making calls 12.13
Checking/writing emails 11.1
Text messaging 10.2
Watching TV/films 9.39
Reading books 9.3
Taking photographs 3.42
Total 128

via O2 News Centre.

Telefonica Shows Off Firefox OS Prototype, Reveals Plans

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Telefonica has shown a prototype phone using Firefox OS, the new open  HTML5-based operating system from Mozilla, and explained its reasons for adopting a fledgling OS in the face of huge competition from iPhone and Android.

Firefox OS will let the operator balance its “strategic dependence on Android” and allow for the creation of cheaper devices that offer the same user experience, claimed Telefonica Digital chairman and CEO Matthew Key, at an event in London.

via Telefonica Shows Off Firefox OS Prototype, Reveals Plans | TechWeekEurope UK.