News mobile phones

Samsung loses $7.3 million patent suit in China

China-based Holley Communication has won a suit against Samsung over dual-mode cell phone patents, resulting in a payout of US$7.3 million. Holley Communications claims that Samsung is infringing on its patents, which cover dual-mode cell phone technology that allows a single phone to work on both CDMA and GSM networks. The suit was filed in China in The Intermediate People's Court of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang. The $7.3 million is a record for pay-out in the Chinese cellphone industry.

More than 700k cellphones have been sold by Samsung that contain the infringing technology, and the product is still on sale in most markets. Holley officials stated that this pay-out is only the first piece of compensation they would be seeking.

Palm receives an additional $100 million from Elevation Partners

Yesterday Palm Inc. announced that Elevation Partners, a private equity firm co-founded by Bono, the frontman of the band U2, has agreed to invest an additional US$100 million into the company. In return for the investment, Elevation Partners will receive newly issued Series C preferred stock that it can convert into regular Palm shares at a later date.

Palm says that the additional funds will help it maintain financial stability during the current world economic crisis and will allow it to roll out with full force its planned 2009 products, which are rumored to include a new Linux based smartphone OS named Nova.

Nokia's Mail On Ovi available for Series 40 powered cell phones

Nokia has launched a global public beta of its new web mail service, Mail on Ovi. The service is currently only available for select S40-powered feature phones, and can only be setup from the phone.

Nokia announced its Mail on Ovi service a few months ago, pointing to the emerging markets as the motivation since personal computers are not as common in those markets. The Mail on Ovi service is free and offers users up to 1GB of online storage, with integrated junk mail filtering. Oddly, the web-accessible version of Mail on Ovi is not planned to launch until February 2009. Interested users can get more information from Nokia's Beta Labs.

Nokia also recently announced that it is integrating all of its online services with a single sign-on for users. Nokia's online services, such as Share on Ovi, Sync on Ovi, and Files on Ovi, previously required users to keep track of different user names and passwords. The creation and integration of the Nokia Account for users will offer a single sign-on experience.

New cell phone antenna tech to drastically reduce power use

A new wireless antenna technology developed by Atif Shamim, an engineering student at Canada's Carleton University, is claimed to be able to reduce a mobile phone's antenna power consumption by nearly 92%. The key piece of the technology involves disconnecting a cell phone's antenna from the rest of the electronic components in the device.

In order to separate the antenna from the rest of the phone, Shamim's system uses very short range wireless transmitting micro-antennas within the chip design to handle the communications. Shamim says that by insulating the antenna from the rest of the devices that it would normally be wired to, there is no chance for the antenna's transmission power to be drained, thus lowering the overall burden a cell phone places on its battery.

RIM reports solid Q3 financials

Late yesterday Research In Motion reported its fiscal year Q3 earnings, which fell in line with analysts' expectations. Revenue was up 7.9% from Q2 to US$2.78 billion, and up an impressive 66.3% from the $1.67 billion figure posted at this time last year. RIM states that 81% of this past quarter's revenue came from handset sales, with the remainder coming from software and service fees.

Those revenue figures lead to $477,296 in adjusted net income, translating to a diluted adjusted earnings per share figure of $.83. RIM says that it added 2.6 million new BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter, which marks a 14% increase from the prior quarter and gives RIM a total of roughly 21 million subscribers.

Palm posts quarterly loss, talks of new platform

Yesterday Palm released its Q2 results for its fiscal year 2009 business operations. In addition to the financials, though, Palm's CEO announced that it will officially unveil its next generation Linux based operating system, dubbed Nova, at its press conference at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Palm CES press conference is scheduled to take place on Thursday, January 8th, and BusinessWeek reported earlier in the week that the new Palm Nova OS would be announced at that time. Palm has said that the first products to feature the new platform will be launched in the first half of 2009 and that it will continue to produce Windows Mobile powered smartphones for business users for the foreseeable future.

In terms of its financial performance, Palm posted US$191.6 million in revenue for the quarter. The company moved 599,000 smartphones, which is down 13% from the previous year's figure. Smartphone revenue came in at $171 million, which is down 39% from the prior year.

Palm posted a net loss of $508.6 million for the quarter, the majority of which, $396.7 million, was attributed to a charge associated with the change in status of some deferred tax assets.

AT&T previously confirmed that it would be using LTE for its 4G network, but is also planning to update its HSDPA network to the faster HSPA+ technology first. An AT&T spokesperson recently confirmed that the carrier has been running trials in Chicago that test upgrades to its HSDPA network that would offer data speeds of 7.2Mbps or more.

AT&T spokesperson Mark Siegel confirmed the tests, but declined to explain what technology was being used to achieve these faster data speeds. HSPA+ not only increases downlink data connection speeds up to 14.4Mbps, but also increases uplink speeds, as well, which enables faster uploading from cell phones.

Now Nokia announced it will be bringing Microsoft's Silverlight web technology plug-in to its S60-powered smartphones early this year. The plug-in will be demonstrated during the Microsoft MIX08 keynote on March 5th, 2008.

Microsoft's Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross platform web technology that allows for a a lot more robust internet experience. Applications developed with Silverlight are capable of high quality animations and audio-video playback within the browser. Nokia has said that the technology will also be ported to its S40 featurephone operating system, as well as Maemo, the linux-based operating system used on its Internet Tablet product line.

Yahoo! announced its onePlace mobile content management organization for consumers. OnePlace will allow consumers to use bookmarks to instantly store content of any kind, including links to photos, videos, newsfeeds, and search results. The content will be perpetually updated and categorized, making it simple for users to follow with the last information.

Yahoo! onePlace will be accessible on any browser and any internet-connected device. Users will also be able to create special collections, allowing them to, say, start collecting photos, maps, and links for a next overseas trip. OnePlace is expected to be available in Q2 2008.

Sierra Wireless today unveiled its latest, and smallest, USB 3G modem, the Compass 597. The new device mobile broadband access speeds on EV-DO Rev. A networks, providing up to 3.1Mbps for downloads and 1.8Mbps for uploads.

The Compass 597 USB modem as well features a built-in GPS antenna and the manufacturers own LBS technology, TRU-Locate, for fast and accurate navigation pinpoints. It also sports a microSD card slot for memory expansion, and a flexible antenna connection extender for boost signal strength.

The small Compass 597 USB modem is expected to be usable in Q2 of this year.

T-Mobile Venture Funds, the investing arm of T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom, announced on Monday that it had invested an undisclosed sum in a home-networking company called Ubiquisys. Ubiquisys has been focusing on Femtocells, which are small, low-powered mobile cell phone base stations that are configured to improve local signal coverage and use a wired home broadband connection to connect back to the carrier.

T-Mobile has been dabbling in the home networking market recently with its HotSpot@Home service, which allows for users to seamlessly transfer phone calls from a cellular network to a home WiFi network and back again. Femtocells work similarly, except they use the same network technology to connect to phones as do the normal towers (ie. GSM, UMTS, or CDMA). They can also offer other abilities, such as detecting while a special handset connects and issuing an email or SMS alert, similar to a proximity notification.

Sprint Nextel recently launched the first commercial Femtocell in the U.S.A., a CDMA device made by Samsung and sold by Sprint under the Airave name.

Today Nokia announced it will be bringing Microsoft's Silverlight web technology plug-in to its S60-powered smartphones after these year. The plug-in will be demonstrated during the Microsoft MIX08 keynote on March 5th, 2008.

Microsoft's Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross program internet technology that leaves a much more robust internet experience. Applications developed with Silverlight are capable of high quality animations and audio-video playback within the browser. Nokia has said that the technology will also be ported to its S40 featurephone operating system, as well as Maemo, the linux-based operating system used on its Internet Tablet product line.