Microsoft finds new tablet partner – Hanvon

Hardware News No Responses »
Jul 312010

We have covered HP’s tablet project with Microsoft a lot in the past – now that the Slate is out as a “limited business device” to keep Microsoft’s face, it’s time to move on for the Redmond-based company.

The Chinese news portal Shanzai.com now reports the following:

News today has surfaced that Microsoft and tablet manufacturer Hanvon are poised to make sweet music together, creating new tablet designs for business users. This is the first signs that Microsoft are re-thinking their tablet strategy in a bid to take on Apple and Google for a piece of the tablet market.

Today’s announcement basically describes an alliance of sorts between one of China’s most mature x86 tablet manufacturers and the world’s leading x86 software developer. Zhang Xuejun, president of Hanvon, has indicated that for them, the tablet is very much a business tool as opposed to an entertainment or content consumption device. He goes on to mention how business users will demand a Windows OS on their tablets and hopes that this alliance will bring plentiful dividends in the future.

…

As of this writing, not much more is known – stay tuned for further info as we get it.

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 11:30 pm

Krusell’s sale statistics for July 2010

Hardware News No Responses »
Jul 312010

When it comes to finding out which devices are actually liked by users, the data provided by the Swedish case manufacturer Krusell can be extremely valuable. The reason for that is that their main sales vectors are not the online business, but rather stores frequented by – um – less geeky people.

For July 2010, the sales stats look as following:

1. (1) Apple iPhone 4
2. (2) Nokia 3720 Classic
3. (-) Apple iPad
4. (-) HTC HD2
5. (7) Nokia E52
6. (-) HTC Wildfire
7. (6) Samsung S8500 Wave
8. (3) HTC Desire
9. (9) Nokia 6700 Classic
10. (4) Apple iPhone 3G

Apple iPhone 4 and iPad are both among Top 3 on Krusell’s Top 10 list for July. –Our top seller list have since the start only had traditional mobile phones and PDA’s participating, but we live in a fast moving industry and it’s great to see iPad rushing in on a third place, says Ulf Sandberg, CEO at Krusell. It’s definitely a sign of a new product segment entering our business. The feat made by iPad is even more impressive in the light that it’s still only a limited number of markets where the device is released.

Not much to add here…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 8:14 am

HP supports homebrew, but competes with developers

Editorials, Palm News 2 Responses »
Jul 312010

Palm has learned a lot about how to treat third-party developers – the exchange of many foul fruits, the new and mobile-experienced parents and the constant pressure from Apple have done a lot for the company.

This is best seen in the following statement from HP’s CTO, which hits us via PreCentral:

We also support the homebrew guys. You hear about all the guys hacking phones and unlocking the phones, we actually encourage that. You can go out to PreCentral or any of the sites that support the Palm homebrew guys. they’ll tell you how to unlock your phone and how you can download the homebrew sites. The homebrew guys have just done some phenomenal work from the standpoint of really unlocking the true power of webOS.

Unfortunately, not all is good:

Inside of HP with the 47,000 engineers I issued a challenge [...] for the HP engineers to go create apps, consumer apps [...] I stopped counting at 750 apps and my mailbox has totally exploded.

No (sane) third-party developer wants to compete against the OS or device vendor. Motivating insiders to create webOS apps is a very bad idea and makes the platform a lot less interesting.

This effect has appeared multiple times in the past; and even if HP plays perfectly fair, the bad taste from past (Microsoft) cases remains in the mouths of third party developers.

Palm IMHO should take an example from Samsung – a company which is based in Korea and thus knows extremely well about “formal rules of engagement”. They have been financing, wining and dining third party developers all over Europe for the last months – but have not offered a single direct contract to any of them.

For Samsung, the effect is exactly the same (they get apps). However, third parties who are not privy to the winery don’t tend to hear about it – and don’t feel miffed in the process…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 3:12 am

Palm announces winners of “hot apps” competition

Palm News No Responses »
Jul 292010

A few months ago, Palm started a “hot app” competition which offered cash prices to the most-downloaded applications.

The company has just announced the winners of the “hot apps” challenge.

Find the full list here:
http://developer.palm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2098

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 4:47 am

HP offers gift cards with Palm devices

Palm News No Responses »
Jul 292010

We have reported about HP’s adding of Palm devices to its cell phone store some time ago.

The company has now “sweetened the deal” a bit by adding a 50$ gift card for HP products to all Palm cell phones sold via its web shop:
hp gift card HP offers gift cards with Palm devices

Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.cellstores.com/mobile/?r=hp

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:09 am

Do you like our site backgrounds?

TamsPalm internal 12 Responses »
Jul 282010

Dear Readers,
given that today is a somewhat slow news day, and given that our new design and rotating background system is now around for some time, I felt like asking you all to give us feedback.

First of all, a big thanks to all the readers who sent in complaints and praise for the new layout and the image choice. We have read each and every email with great pleasure.

From a performance standpoint, the difference between “Backgrounds” and “no Backgrounds” is minimal. This means that site performance will not be affected much (outside of peak times) irregardless of whether we enable the background images or not.

Editorial effort, also, is minimal. The images have already been shot for reporting purposes, and are essentially being recycled here.

Thus, the question is: do you like the idea?

Sound off in the comments or via a twitter message to the user tamhanna. There is no need to register!!

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 10:07 am

How to become a file handler under webOS

Development No Responses »
Jul 282010

In Germany, a developer called MetaView has almost godlike celebrity value in the Palm community – and indeed, some of his applications have turned out to be extremely impressive.

One of the reasons why he really is pretty cool is that he also runs a blog where he shares interesting code snippets on a more or less regular basis. His latest victim is file handling:

Have you ever tried the menu item “Default Apps” (German: Standardanwendungen) in the App Launcher’s menu? Then you know that apps can register for certain file/mime types. But how to do it isn’t documented yet. According to this forums thread one might expect to get some documentations about it rather soon. Until then, Jay Canuck and the WebOSInternals-Team both using some luna-send commands to perform the file type registration for their applications: Internalz and Preware. Translating this luna-sends into proper service calls was easy and looks like this:

…

Hit the link below to find out more:
http://metaviewsoft.de/wordpress/?p=443

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:25 am

HP Gaming CTO: control more important than skill

Miscellaneous 2 Responses »
Jul 272010

In the last few years, the emergence of bluetooth and TCP/IP connectivity has made cross-plattform gaming on mobile devices possible. However, very few game houses have released cross-plattform games so far.

The above-mentioned Rahul Sood now shares an anecdote which could explain the situation:

…

There was a project that got killed at Microsoft. This project was designed to allow console gamers and PC gamers to interact and battle over a connected environment. Personally I wish it would have stayed the course. I’ve heard from reliable sources that during the development they brought together the best console gamers to play mediocre PC gamers at the same game… and guess what happened? They pitted console gamers with their “console” controller, against PC gamers with their keyboard and mouse.

The console players got destroyed every time. So much so that it would be embarrassing to the XBOX team in general had Microsoft launched this initiative.

…

This obviously has huge implications on cross-platform (or even cross-device) multiplayer gaming – what do you think?

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 9:38 am

WiFi for the Sprint Palm Pixi

Palm News No Responses »
Jul 272010

The main difference between Verizon’s and Sprint’s Palm Pixi is that the latter lacks WiFi. Given that the two devices are very similar otherwise, a radio board swap sounds like a possible idea.

An individual called gitit20 has now uploaded the video below to YouTube – it shows the process:

Strangely, the memory chip is on the radio board, and is socketed rather than soldered to the board. This could be done in an attempt to simplify repairs without data loss…take a look above to learn more about the hardware of these two devices!

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:30 am

HP: no more iPaqs, webOS only in the future

Palm News 2 Responses »
Jul 252010

1c HP: no more iPaqs, webOS only in the futureEver since HP bought Palm, a lot of individuals wondered themselves what would become of the famous – Windows-Mobile-powered – iPaq line.

CNBC now reports the following:

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Instead, HP Executive Vice President Todd Bradley told me that the PC giant will exclusively use its webOS software, which it got when it closed its Palm acquisition three weeks ago. Not that Microsoft is completely striking out with HP—Bradley also said definitively for the first time that HP will build a tablet computer based on Microsoft’s Windows 7.

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Not much more to add here – goodnight, iPaq…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:55 am

19% of world-wide phone shipments now smartphones

Hardware News No Responses »
Jul 242010

One of the biggest and most-recurring questions is the question about smartphone market share: what is a smartphone, and how many of them are sold.

Mobile Business Briefing now reports the following:

Smartphones made up 19 percent of total worldwide handset volumes during the quarter, up from 15 percent a year earlier. … Nokia managed to capture a 40 percent market share, which Strategy Analytics said was due to the Finnish vendor’s “competitive pricing, a huge retail presence and heavy promotion of its portfolio of cost-competitive Symbian models …

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Meanwhile, the firm described BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s (RIM)’s 40 percent annual growth rate as “relatively sluggish” due to fierce competition … Apple was deemed to have had a mixed second quarter. “Apple’s iPhone shipments, revenues and profitability continued to outperform, but public criticism of the company is mounting,” …

Given that these figures are world-wide numbers, I am not sure how much longer this growth can be sustained…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 10:15 am

HP Slate is now an enterprise product

Palm News No Responses »
Jul 242010

HP’s purchase of Palm sent a very clear signal to the world that the company was no longer happy with the mobile policy of its long-term partner Microsoft. Nevertheless, the Slate already was announced – and one never, ever pisses off Microsoft.

Engadget now reports the following:

…

… speaking at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference, HP Personal Systems Group VP Todd Bradley just said that the Slate will be “more customer-specific than broadly deployed,” and that it would launch the Microsoft-based tablet “for the enterprise” in the fall.

…

For me, this sounds like a typical deal to keep Microsoft happy – let’s see whether we’ll see any more tablets from the boys and whether the device will actually become available…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 12:35 am

Rubinstein: webOS 2.0 comes “later this year”

Palm News No Responses »
Jul 232010

Palm once was a poster child for firmware updates – even the humbler Palm III could be upgraded to OS4. During the OS5 time, upgrades were rare – now that we are on webOS turf, Palm has reminded itself of its old competencies.

Engadget reports the following:

HP’s Jon Rubinstein — formerly of Palm CEO fame, of course — just mentioned in an interview with Fortune that webOS 2.0 is on track for “later this year.”

…

As of this writing, developers have not yet been provided beta versions – stay tuned for further info as we get it.

P.S: /me actively hopes for Qt support. Anyone else?

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 2:47 pm

Why the Nexus One had to go

Hardware News 2 Responses »
Jul 232010

One of the most interesting chapters in the recent history of mobile computing has come to an end – Google has just discontinued the Nexus One:
nexus one Why the Nexus One had to go

I have not come here to praise the Nexus One, but I have not come here to bury it either – instead, I wanted to offer you one simple message (which also explains why Microsoft hasn’t created a prototype device of its own for Windows Phone 7):

An OS vendor may NEVER EVER compete directly with its hardware partners…

Not much to add here…

Posted by Tam Hanna, Site Founder at 5:14 am
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