Canaccord raises Apple price target to $145, estimates iPhone captured 93% of smartphone profits

Apple's domination in the smartphone market compelled Canaccord Genuity to raise its price target on Apple stock to $145 on Monday, advising investors to buy in on the continued strength of the new iPhone 6, which decimated profits for competitors last quarter.






Analyst Michael Walkley of Canaccord issued a note to investors on Monday, a copy of which was provided to AppleInsider, in which he said the growing iPhone user base should help drive steady long-term sales for the company.

In particular, surveys conducted by Canaccord suggest that the larger displays of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have attracted more Android smartphone users than the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s before them.

A larger iPhone installed base bodes well for future sales, Walkley said, as Apple has a history of retaining customers and selling upgrades. Walkley estimates that there is currently an iPhone installed base of 404 million people, of which he believes only 15 percent have upgraded to the latest-generation iPhone 6 lineup.


Source:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/02/09/canaccord-raises-apple-price-target-to-145-estimates-iphone-captured-93-of-smartphone-profits

Samsung decides 56 smartphones a year is too many, will cut lineup by 30%

Samsung has been in a pretty tough spot lately. After several quarters of record profits in 2012 and 2013, the company has crashed back down to Earth. The low point for Samsung came last quarter, when it reported a 49 percent drop in profits. At the high end of the market, the company currently has to fight off Apple, which just released a phablet of its own. At the low end, it's going up against a flood of cheaper Chinese OEMs, led by Xiaomi and Huawei.

To try to get out of this slump, Samsung is taking a "less is more" approach. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company said it would cut its 2015 smartphone lineup by 25-30 percent. The company will work on the internals, too, saying during its last earnings call that it will "increase the number of components shared across mid- to low-end models, so that we can further leverage economies of scale."

Full article:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/11/samsung-decides-56-smartphones-a-year-is-too-many-will-cut-lineup-by-30/

Does Samsung or LG Have the Best Curved Smartphone?

As Samsung and LG Electronics have released different types of curved smartphones, the industry is paying a lot of attention to competition in the curved smartphone market.
According to industry sources on Jan. 25, Samsung is expected to introduce a new model with dual curved edges as a successor to the Galaxy Note Edge. Some say that the Galaxy S6, which is scheduled to be unveiled at the MWC 2015 to be held in March, will adopt dual curved edges.
When it was launched late last year, the Galaxy Note Edge drew a lot of attention due to its first curved display. The curved display design really helped the model to stand out.
In particular, the biggest advantage of the device is that its curved edge contributes to wider use of the screen, making it possible to display information along the right edge. While watching videos or playing games, users can utilize large screens without interruption. Owing to the curved edge, they can check notifications or text messages while engaged in other activities.
LG, on the other hand, focused on the design and usage of the G Flex 2 through a display that can be bent and curved to different degrees alongside its length.



Source:
http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/article/8746/curved-smartphones-does-samsung-or-lg-have-best-curved-smartphone

What will the Android smartphone upscale type of 2015 look like ?

It will certainly not escape the sharp eyes of our readers, running rumors about high-end smartphones coming in 2015 has been launched. And if many are far-fetched, manufacturers are struggling to keep the secrets that surround their bearers. We have tried to gather in this folder to draw a sketch of the 2015 smartphone.

Screen: the transition to qHD is not made for everyone The screens may be one of the few differentiating features of high-end smartphones that will come out this year. Let's talk definitions first. If we are to believe the many rumors, it seems that all manufacturers have not opted for qHD screens. Thus, the next HTC One at Hima code name or M9 according to various sources, the G Flex 2 and Mi Note will have only a full HD (1920 x 1080). This is much less clear about the Xperia Z4 would be sold in two different versions, one with a full HD (compact version?) And the other with a qHD display (2560 x 1440 pixels). Samsung on the other side, it is unlikely not opt for a qHD screen on his next Galaxy S. Again, the many leaks seem to confirm. Finally, if one has virtually no information about the next LG flagship smartphone, it would be as amazing if the Korean Company would switch from QHD on LG G3 at a lower resolution on its LG G4.

There remains the question of size. 2014 saw explode the size of the high-end smartphone screens and it seems that 2015 is much wiser about it. The first rumors speak indeed a screen size of between 5 and 5.5 inches, very similar dimensions to those encountered last year. Although with smartphones such as the Nexus 6, with a 6-inch screen, the human limitations of the size of the hand were reached. We did not complain. According to early rumors, it will therefore expect a 5-inch screen for HTC One M9, a 5.2-inch screen for the Galaxy S6 and a screen size between 5.2 and 5, 5-inch Xperia Z4.

Processor: Qualcomm unavoidable?


Source:
http://www.frandroid.com/marques/google/264096_quoi-ressemblera-le-smartphone-android-haut-de-gamme-type-de-2015

​Google leaves most Android users exposed to hackers

An executive confirms Google has no plans to fix a security hole in the default browser for older versions of Android, which are relied on by around 60 percent of all Android users.

People with Android smartphones and tablets running older versions of the mobile operating system -- around 60 percent of all Android users -- are going to have to live with a security flaw Google has decided not to fix.

A known security bug in the default, unbranded Web browser for Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and older versions of Google's mobile OS will go unpatched, Google's chief of security for Android wrote in a Google+ post on Friday.

"Keeping software up to date is one of the greatest challenges in security," Adrian Ludwig wrote. Because the browser app is based on a version of the WebKit browser engine that's now more than two years old, fixing the vulnerability in Android Jelly Bean and earlier versions is "no longer practical to do safely," he wrote.

Google confirmed on Saturday that Ludwig's post is the company's official position on the matter.

Source:

http://www.cnet.com/news/google-leaves-most-android-users-exposed-to-hackers/

YotaPhone 2 Review: Two Screens Are Indeed Better Than One

  

    

Yota Devices is a Russian company that entered the mental space of tech enthusiasts everywhere with the debut of the original YotaPhone a couple of years ago. In 2014, it launched the YotaPhone 2, a second-generation smartphone that greatly improved on the original concept. The YotaPhone 2 is a surprisingly capable, well-equipped Android smartphone – which happens to also have the clever addition of a second, fully touch-sensitive e-ink display, all wrapped up in a very smartly-designed package.

    

Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/19/yotaphone-2-review/

How Xiaomi plans to take over India’s smartphone market in 2015

On Jul. 22, 2014, Xiaomi decided to sell its Mi 3 model on Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce website.
Some 100,000 people signed up to buy the phone and Flipkart just couldn’t handle the rush.
Soon, this became the norm for the fast-growing Chinese smartphone company. The entire stock of Xiaomi’s smartphones was getting sold out in seconds.
Even Xiaomi was caught off guard. “When we came here, we were planning to sell a few thousand phones, and we were concerned if that target might be met. In the first two weeks alone, we sold 20,000 phones,” Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s vice president of international operations, told Quartz in an interview last year.
That’s exactly the sort of momentum that Xiaomi hopes to capitalise on in 2015—and that now it will also cease to be just a phone company in India.

From the beginning

Source:

http://qz.com/328952/how-xiaomi-plans-to-take-over-indias-smartphone-market-in-2015/

Lenovo comes with the latest and cheapest A6000 4G smartphone

Smartphone industry is going through a phase where no company can say that it has everything under control. The rule is applicable to each and every company, no matter if it’s Apple, Samsung or Nokia. The reason behind it is the innovative handsets getting launched every now and then. A few years ago, 3G looked like the future, but today, people are talking about 4G and 5G. As per the reports, Lenovo has come up with the cheapest possible 4G smartphone model called A6000. It won’t cost you more than Rs 6,999.

Flipkart becomes the distributor:

As of now, Lenovo has made this phone available only on Flipkart, the Indian E-Commerce giant. The company expects a huge demand of this phone; hence, it has decided to sell it through flash sale model. Consumers have already seen Apple and Xiomi opting for the same model to distribute their phones in the market due to a huge demand.

Source:

http://www.pc-tablet.co.in/2015/01/19/4931/lenovo-comes-latest-cheapest-a6000-4g-smartphone/

Google cooks up a food-truck model to sell Project Ara smartphones

Google wants to sell its first Project Ara smartphones in style, and it’s drawing inspiration from food trucks. Later this year, it will deploy “mobile trucks” where customers will be able to design, print and assemble their own custom handset in under five minutes.

The first Project Ara smartphones will go on sale in Puerto Rico. The trucks will stop first in Old San Juan, moving south to Ponce, the island’s second-largest city, then through the rest of Puerto Rico, said Jessica Beavers, marketing lead with Google’s advanced projects division, at the Project Ara developer conference in Cupertino, California.

“We’ll slowly be rolling our truck across the island,” she said.

Source:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2870912/google-cooks-up-a-foodtruck-model-to-sell-project-ara-smartphones.html

Samsung To Release A Galaxy S5 With An 8-Core Processor

  Samsung has quietly announced that there will be two variations of the Galaxy S5. One will run the quad-core Snapdragon 801 with a 2.5GHz clock speed along with another model powered by an octo-core Exynos SoC running at 2.1GHz.

  8 cores. 2.1Ghz. All that power, all those cores. In the palm your sweaty little hands.

The details are still on the light side but Samsung has done this in the past. There was a Galaxy S4 flavor that ran a previous version of the Exynos Octa-core. That model was designed for and exclusively sold in the Korean market.





Source:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/25/samsung-to-release-a-galaxy-s5-with-an-8-core-processor/

A glimpse into the future: 5 top trends at CES

After a week filled with high-definition TV screens and shiny new gadgets, the International Consumer Electronics Show comes to a close.

Now that we've gotten a glimpse into our future, what were some of the themes of this year's CES? Here are five trends:

1. At CES, cars drive you.

Source:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2015/01/10/ces-five-trends/21498725/