The ZTE Jetpack, a 4G LTE mobile hotspot to be sold by Verizon, has made its way through the FCC. The device, which can support up to ten Wi-Fi-ready devices, sustains download speeds of 5Mbps to 12Mbps and upload speeds of 2Mbps to 5Mbps. FCC approval is one of the last hurdles before the product will hit Verizon's shelves.
Last month's leak of the ZTE Optik 3G tablet coming to Sprint this month proved true. The seven-inch, Android 3.2 tablet has a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor and will cost just under $100 on a two-year data plan from the carrier. The screen has a resolution of 1280x800, which is high for its size.
New IDC data has shown Apple's 37 million iPhone sales making it the third-largest cellphone maker in the world. More than doubling its shipments, in tandem with LG nearly cutting its shipments in half to 17.7 million, saw it move up a spot and stake out 8.7 percent of the entire cellphone space. The change in position carried through for all of 2011, with Apple's 93.2 million iPhones putting it at six percent of all phones sold that year while LG was down to 5.7 percent, or 88.1 million.
Last month, the ZTE V66 popped up at the FCC awaiting approval for its 4G LTE wireless. Now, thanks to the Bluetooth SIG filing, onlookers have a better view of the seven-inch tablet. The device is expected to show up on Verizon's shelves in the not to distant future.
A leaked Sprint document appears to show an unannounced ZTE tablet, the Optik, that may be headed to the carrier next month. The internal document, which was posted by Androidcentral, suggests the device will feature a seven-inch display, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 16GB of integrated memory and Android 3.2.
A new Android tablet from ZTE has shown up for pre-order on UK retailer Clove's site. The seven-inch V9A Light Tab 2 will have a 3G radio onboard, a 1.4GHz processor (likely a Snapdragon), and a 3,400mAh battery. There will be just 4GB of storage space inside, and it looks to ship with the phone-oriented Android 2.3 rather than a tablet-minded 3.2 or 4.0.
A new study from iGR has suggested that Android might be dominant in the US but that many of those buying weren't making a conscious choice for the platform. About 47 percent of the smartphone base in the country reportedly was using Android, but only 45 percent of those were knowledgeable about Google's OS and chose it by name. Another 27 percent picked their phones based on Google's reputation.
Ericsson and ZTE on Friday made peace and dropped lawsuits against each other over cellular technology. In return for stopping legal action, they agreed to license some of each other's technology patents. ZTE would take a license of Ericsson's patents for GSM and 3G under lower standards-based rates; it's not clear what if anything Ericsson would be paying ZTE.
ZTE may have given out one of Microsoft's more closely guarded secrets for Windows Phone. While launching the Tania, ZTE's UK portfolio head Santiago Sierra explained to Trusted Reviews that Windows Phone 7 devices from the company would cost more than its Android models because of a Microsoft OS license that he believed cost between £15 and £20. It's not clear if the pricing translates directly to $23 to $31 in the US.
ZTE plans to double its smartphone numbers this year as it expands out of China, cellphone strategy head Lv Qianhao said in an interview Tuesday. Its motherland and the US would be the "key engines" for growth in 2012 as it focused on higher-end devices, he explained to Reuters. Best known for its budget Android phones, it was leaning towards the high end and just recently unveiled the Tania, its first Windows Phone.
Among the myriad of new smartphones at CES this week, ZTE brought its Chorus handset that will be headed to Cricket. Electronista stopped by ZTE's booth to check out the new device, which offers a hardware and software combination focused on the carrier's Muve Music service.
ZTE brought its latest mobile devices to CES, where Electronista tried out the company's first Windows Phone offering, the Tania. The handset offers a basic set of features, centering around a 4.3-inch display with 800x480 resolution and a single-core 1GHz Qualcomm processor.
Broadcom claimed the distinction of being the first to make chipsets with 802.11ac, being nicknamed 5G Wi-Fi, on Thursday. The BCM43516, BCM43526, BCM4352, and BCM4360 all have twice as much bandwidth per channel as the current-fastest 802.11n and can stack multiple streams together to get very high speeds. The flagship chip, the BCM4360, can unite three streams and hit 1.3Gbps.
Apple has confirmed expectations and set a release date for the iPhone 4S in China. Its most recent phone will ship to the mainland on January 13 alongside 21 other countries, focusing mostly on Africa and the Caribbean. The roser includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, and Uganda.
Verizon may be on the edge of replacing a large swath of its device line if a rumor floated on New Year's Day is an indicator. Among other withdrawals, a lone source for The Verge had Verizon stopping shipments of the Motorola Droid 3 in January. The exit would likely be in prep for the delayed Droid 4 launch the following month.
The Meizu MX had its formal launch on New Year's Day both in mainland China and Hong Kong. In a repeat of last year's M9, lines in at least some locations were long at a level normally only seen for Apple launches, with over 900 seen at the Hong Kong store. Allegations in 2011 that Meizu had stacked the lines have faded this year as Meizu still had to control lines by asking most in line to come only when called.
Chinese smartphone designers are quietly forming a pact to fend off patent lawsuits from Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia, a rumor maintained Friday. Lenovo and ZTE, as well as smaller firms like Coolpad, Konka, and TCL, were said by Digitimes to be forming a collective. The details weren't given, although a patent defense would most likely involve pooling patent resources together and sharing resources on how to work around other companies' patents.
After months of silence, Google's mobile VP Andy Rubin posted word that Android device activations were now up to 700,000 each day. The rate comes after months of the company claiming a flat 550,000 per day. He had no update on the activation growth rate or whether Google had moved significantly beyond the 200 million total devices switched on since Android launched in October 2008.
Chinese phone and tablet maker ZTE has submitted a seven-inch tablet to the FCC for approval. The V66 as it is called will pack LTE band 13, the 700MHz frequency variant used by Verizon. ZTE has gone so far as to imprint Verizon's 4G LTE logo on the back of the device.
Chinese phone and telecom equipment maker ZTE will launch its first high-end smartphone to compete with the likes of Apple, Samsung, HTC and Nokia by the middle of next year, North American region president Lixin Cheng said in an interview Thursday. The company now considers the country important enough to make it the largest ZTE phone market by 2015, he explained to the Wall Street Journal. Globally, ZTE has a five percent cellphone share, making it larger than Apple.
ZTE is promising to raise the bar somewhat for the most entry level in smartphones through the V881 Blade+. The design recently passed certification and will cost just 1,000 yuan ($158) despite having features from a more advanced phone from a year ago. A 3.8-inch, 480x800 touchscreen will come along with a second-generation 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 512MB of RAM, and a five-megapixel camera.
Two new entry level phones may soon be joining Virgin Mobile's smartphone ranks. Pocketnow has posted renderings of the Chaser and Venture, two ZTE phones bearing the prepaid carrier's brand. Both are likely to run Android 2.3.
Samsung should pass Nokia to become the top cellphone maker of any kind in 2012, Sanford Bernstein analyst Mark Newman said in a research note Thursday. After passing Apple in smartphones, it was now due to eclipse Nokia's once-unassailable lead in cellphones of any kind. Newman saw Samsung as being unique in having both a strong position in smartphones and a willingness to cater down to the very low end, preventing it from losing out in basic phones like Apple and smartphones like Nokia.
The iPhone 4S helped Apple achieve a rare resurgence in British share that toppled Android, Kantar's Worldpanel ComTech found Monday. Apple's October share hit 42.8 percent of UK smartphone sales, knocking Android down to 35 percent. It managed a similar feat year-over-year, with iPhone share up 2.8 points for August through October to hit 27.8 percent, pushing Android down from 49.9 percent to 46 percent.
China has overtaken the US to become the world's most important smartphone market, Strategy Analytics said Wednesday. Where US shipments actually shrank 7.5 percent from spring to summer to fall back to 23.3 million smartphones, the Chinese market grew 57.5 percent just the one season to hit 23.9 million. Nokia, despite its rapid decline, was still the leader in China with 6.8 million Symbian phones, or 28.5 percent, beating Samsung's 4.2 million and 17.6 million.
Android now represents the clear majority of smartphones worldwide, Gartner found Tuesday. It had more than doubled its share in the summer versus last year to hit 52.5 percent, leaving all other platforms combined in the minority. Both Nokia's Symbian and Apple's iPhone had declined in share over the summer to 16.9 percent and 15 percent each, although Nokia's rapid collapse in shipments and the known slingshot effect as customers waited for the iPhone 4S meant that Apple would likely take second place in the fall.
Apple gained enough market share to stay one of the top cellphone makers in the world, IDC said Friday. While not as strong as the spring, the iPhone still gained share from year to year and, at 17.07 million, was in fifth place among all cellphones at 4.3 percent. It was helped partly by Nokia's continued fall, which while still keeping it on top lowered it to 27.1 percent, at 106.6 million phones.
Microsoft's mobile president Andy Lees added to Windows Phone plans for the year early Thursday with confirmation of plans to add NFC to Windows Phone. Devices should start getting the short-range wireless support sometime in 2012. The step would help put them on par with the leading edge of Android and BlackBerry hardware and pay in shops or share data just by tapping the phone.
Sprint's prepaid offshoot, Boost Mobile, will soon offer its first Android-powered smartphone from ZTE in the Warp. It's also the carrier's first 4.3-inch touchscreen phone of any kind, which is paired with a five-megapixel camera. Android 2.3 is onboard, while a 1GHz processor handles computing duties.
The NFC Forum has added some high profile vendors its ranks. Recently, Sharp, ZTE, and HTC joined the non-profit organization that advances the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Other notable participants include Barclaycard and Isis, the mobile payment joint venture between Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.
AT&T rounded out a slew of Android phones with a pair of more affordable models, including just its second for prepaid users. Regular subscribers get the Pantech Pocket, which carries an unusually wide four-inch, 600x800 display intended to improve browsing while staying small enough to be usable one-handed. The carrier is unusually short on performance details but does promise HSPA+ Internet access, a five-megapixel camera with HD video, and Android 2.3.
The ZTE T98 7-inch Android tablet has been unveiled at the PT/Expo Comm China. In addition to running the latest build of Android for tablets, Android 3.2, the device is one of the first production-ready tablets to be announced powered by NVIDIA’s next generation Tegra 3 (Kal-El) processor. The quad-core processor can be clocked at 1.5GHz, but has been slightly under clocked in this application at 1.3GHz.
ZTE joined Samsung's entry into Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) devices Monday by launching the Tania. Its performance is relatively modest and sees it carry a 1GHz Snapdragon, 512MB of RAM, a light 4GB of storage below the usual guidelines, and a five-megapixel camera. With a 4.3-inch, 480x800 screen and an upscale design, however, ZTE may have one of the least expensive Windows Phones its size.
The ZTE Skate has started shipping world-wide. The Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) smartphone, first unveiled at the World Mobile Congress in February, is said to be designed after the style of a skateboard. Although shipping with a Snapdragon processor, it is not one of the more recent processors, and will see the device slot into the mid-range of Android devices in both performance and price.
Cricket made a big push to get prominence as a US cell carrier Thursday by unveiling a new Android smartphone as part of a larger push. The ZTE Score fits in the current entry level with a 3.5-inch, 320x480 capacitive touchscreen, a 600MHz processor, and a 3.2-megapixel camera. It carries a partly customized Android 2.3 but claims Cricket's Muve Music as its real advantage, with unlimited song and ringtone downloads when using the $55 combined data, text, and voice smartphone plan.
Apple on Wednesday took the covers from its Hong Kong flagship store a few days ahead of its September 24 opening. Early shots of the inside supplied to 9to5 have shown one of Apple's most elaborate arrangements to date, with the second floor mostly bisected by the signature glass spiral staircase and elevator. Both the outside and the top inside of the store are plated in glass with just the bottom mostly sealed up by steel, wide doorways, and ads.
Sprint has quietly introduced a global hotspot, officially called the Sprint International Mobile Hotspot by ZTE. It allows users to connect up to five Wi-Fi devices at the same time to share its EVDO data link when local and HSPA when abroad, though in the latter case only with one device at a time. The compact router doesn't require software installation or a connector.
ClassCo sought to profit off of the cellphone industry Thursday with a lawsuit (below) accusing larger smartphone makers of allegedly violating patents for caller ID. The suit claims that Apple, HP (as Palm), HTC, Huawei, LG, RIM, Samsung, and ZTE all supposedly violate two patents for a "calling party announcement apparatus." Just having a phone like the BlackBerry or iPhone that identifies who's calling is an infringement on the patents, ClassCo argues.
Apple should be the top-selling smartphone manufacturer for 2011, according to estimates on Tuesday. The research wing for Digitimes determined that Apple's ouster of Nokia would hold for the rest of the year and put the iPhone on top of the smartphone space, at 86.4 million units. Nokia's struggles with Symbian and wait for Windows Phone would see its shipments drop by a quarter from a year ago down to 74.4 million, giving Apple a comfortable lead.
Confirming previous talk, Apple has posted banners setting September 24 as the opening date for the first Apple store in Hong Kong. The two-storey shop has a banner advertising "Apple HK" and touts its positioning in the very high-end International Finance Center, one of the highest-rent retail areas in the world. The store as photographed by Engadget will be the "new center of Central," Apple said in a reference to its location at the core of the Central district of the city.
Microsoft's Nordic mobile leader Peter Wissinger revealed that phone makers now had Windows Phone 7's Mango update was now contingent only on others. While the firm had already said it was finished early, Wissinger said that it was now only "up to our manufacturing partners" to actually ship their devices. He wouldn't say when that was.
Apple is now the fourth-largest cellphone maker in the world, Gartner said in its own roundup of mobile market share figures. The iPhone's market share of real, end-user sales shot up almost 92 percent from year to year to give it 4.6 percent, moving it ahead of not just RIM but Motorola and Sony Ericsson, all three of which lost share. Apple's rise also widened its leads over ZTE, HTC, and Huawei, who despite their gains weren't growing as quickly.
Apple achieved a goal it has likely been aiming to reach for four years on Friday as Strategy Analytics confirmed Apple was now the largest smartphone maker in the world. Its 20.34 million iPhones in spring gave it the lead with 18.5 percent of the market. Samsung, which confirmed just Friday that it shipped 19.2 million smartphones, grew rapidly but was denied the lead at 17.5 percent share.
Insider sources on Thursday narrowed the launch of all Windows Phone 7 Mango devices, not just Toshiba-Fujitsu's IS12T, to September. Acer, HTC, Huawei, LG, Samsung, and ZTE are all expected by Digitimes contacts to unveil their phones at the same time. Only Nokia's first phone, likely the Sea Ray, would show later, at Nokia World in October.
A purported sighting of a cheaper iPhone 4 has suggested that Apple might take a new strategy of upgrading the older phone even as it introduces a genuinely new model. Well-known Vietnamese leakers Tinhte have shown a design they say has replaced the glass front and back with plastic, presumably to lower the price. Simultaneously, though, it's believed to be faster than the current model, suggesting a possible speed upgrade, though not necessarily the A5.
InterDigital momentarily overlooked its plans to sell itself on Tuesday and filed a complaint at the International Trade Commission against Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE. It claims that any devices the trio makes that use either WCDMA (HSPA) or CDMA2000 for 3G violates at least one of seven patents. Phones, tablets, portable routers, and other devices all qualify, the company said.
A BriefMobile source has revealed a Sprint spreadsheet that has estimated launch dates for a number of upcoming mobile devices. A new device not previously heard of is the ZTE V55 Tablet, and it's due to arrive at the carrier during the first quarter of 2012. No specs are known, however, though if Sprint will carry it, it will more than likely have a 3G radio and possibly a 4G connection as well.
Apple's early win against HTC has sent some Chinese phone makers running to Windows Phone 7, a source said. Mainland Chinese paper 21st Century Business Herald understood that local companies were adding or improving their support for Windows Phone and would use the new Mango build alongside or in place of Android. Huawei and ZTE were already planning to add WP7 devices, although for them it was to diversify their lines more than a defensive strategy.
Microsoft's Imagine Cup account on Twitter inadvertently gave away timing for the first Windows Phone 7 Mango devices through a Twitter post (since deleted). The company promised that the finalists in the student competition would all get "Windows Phone 7.5 Mango." Every winning student would get a phone with the new OS "by September."
A late-night leak Tuesday has backed China Telecom carrying the iPhone by "close" to the end of 2011. Thanks to the existence of CDMA models, the company has all the technology and just needs to complete a deal. One Reuters tip warned that Apple's often strict negotiations didn't guarantee a deal, but another had the release narrowed down to November.
