Comment

It’s just the geek version of sports teams. Also it’s the previous version of geek sports teams – these days its about IOS vs Android (vs WP).

about 1 hour ago on The Mac & The PC 1 recommend

Comment

HTC is in a pretty different situation to all the other OEMs though. Sony and LG are large multinationals with other divisions, RIM has enterprise services, even Nokia has old school mobile phones and NSN to fall back on. HTC only has smartphones – if they have too many bad quarters in a row (as has been happening) it starts a pretty bad snowball effect. Component suppliers start treating them as lower priority customers, carriers bully them about their handset branding (e.g. no One on Verizon), their brand cachet (what little they’ve built up) begins to degrade and its all downhill from there. They don’t have any other revenue streams to rely on, appear to have pretty damn bad management issues, are suffering from a lack of general direction and branding and marketing abilities, and have made some pretty bad investments recently to boot (beats, onlive).

I mean the One is a hell of a handset, better than the SGS4 IMO, but other than that they really don’t have anything going for them – they don’t have the marketing dollars to take on the SGS4 head on, their WP handsets are dead in the water, the First was an abject failure, and if rumours are correct they’re even moving their lower market handsets back to the Desire brand so they can’t even leverage what brand good will they build with the One. They sort of need to do something pretty drastic soon.

about 3 hours ago on Is it a good idea to buy the One now? 1 recommend

Comment

Dr Dre said its good, and he’s a doctor. It’s full of science!

about 8 hours ago on HP Envy Rove 20 is the company's stab at a giant all-in-one Windows 8 tablet 5 recommends

Comment

It must work some sort of magic on the lay person, otherwise the brand would be gone by now.

about 9 hours ago on HP Envy Rove 20 is the company's stab at a giant all-in-one Windows 8 tablet 1 reply

Comment

I don’t usually grammar police, but this is a pet peeve. Bias is a noun. Biased is an adjective.

Since you’re describing The Verge, a subject, it should be be biased.

about 10 hours ago on Please Stop Complaining about Verge Bias and Microsoft

Comment

Plus MS’ Surface RT RRP gave Asus the lattitude to price their tablet cheaper.

about 10 hours ago on Microsoft recruits Siri to bad-mouth the iPad in new Windows 8 tablet ad

Comment

Google did damage to the pricing expectations of both Android tablets and Android Nexus smartphones. Good luck selling an Android 7" over the asking price of the Nexus 7. People’s price expectations of the Samsung ‘Nexus’ S4 were also a lot lower than the annouced $649 asking price.

about 10 hours ago on Microsoft recruits Siri to bad-mouth the iPad in new Windows 8 tablet ad

Comment

I’m sorry, one of these companies released a product being sold at cost price for its OEMs to compete against, the other priced their product at a reasonable market rate. Which one should OEMs be grateful to again?

about 11 hours ago on Microsoft recruits Siri to bad-mouth the iPad in new Windows 8 tablet ad 1 reply 1 recommend

Comment

But both WP and Nokia’s Lumia designs are pretty distinctive, Nokia has been the majority of the advertising for WP in the past couple of years to the point that the 8X was ‘like a Lumia’. Between that and the extra exclusive features that Nokia’s added to WP I think it’s too late for HTC to try and hitch their wagon back onto WP. Besides, they don’t even have a consistent branding for WP akin to Nokia’s Lumia, they even gave up naming rights to Microsoft for the ‘Windows Phone 8X’.

about 14 hours ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future

Comment

I think its a bit too late for that now. HTC built their fortunes on Windows Mobile and then kicked them to the curb to become the OEM for the first Android handset. They don’t even have the brand cachet to offer like Nokia did.

about 14 hours ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future

Comment

Actually HTC is a very good comparison to Nokia – both Nokia pre-WP and HTC today came from pretty commanding positions in their respective markets, but have come to ruin by being heavily mismanaged with a lack of direction from the top and releasing scads of poorly branded handsets over poorly implemented R&D.

HTC may have a chance if they can implement as comprehensive an overhaul and change in direction as Nokia did, but I don’t think there’s anyone willing to chuck in a billion dollars a year to help HTC through its transition. Plus I don’t think Chou is willing to step aside until the HTC train is well and truly crash and burned.

about 15 hours ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future

Comment

It was the opposite where I’m from, on contract the 8X was one tier more expensive than the 920. Most likely a result of carrier agreements, something that Nokia has traditionally been better at than HTC.

about 15 hours ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future

Comment

The thing is cash without basic change is just delaying the inevitable. I give props to Nokia because at least when they figured that something was amiss they (eventually) had the balls to bring in someone to fix up the mess, and he identified the problem, arranged a solution, instigated wide ranging changes to the company and secured funds while he was at it, and Nokia are seeing benefits now.

A quick injection of cash via an ODM contract won’t help HTC build a brand, or learn to market effectively, or improve their carrier relations, or regain lost staff, or regain tier one status with component manufacturers. Nor will their competitors stand still waiting for them to sort out their problems. HTC has a bunch of systemic problems that are indicative of mismanagement from its higher levels down, and there was a post from an insider in the HTC article pretty much confirming this.

And that’s even assuming that Microsoft want them on board in the first place. If they did choose to make a phone MS would be better served working with one of their existing ODM partners like Pegatron rather than taking a huge risk by going with a company that is somewhat dysfunctional and doesn’t even have a brand name to offer into the deal like Nokia did.

Its sad because I’ve owned a bunch of HTC handsets from the old Dopod 810 right up until the HD7, but I just don’t see it going well for them, Surface phone or not.

about 22 hours ago on UPDATED: Surface Phone: How Microsoft Can Push WP and Rescue HTC

Comment

‘Issues’ is a nice euphemism for it. They had resistive touch screen tech on the 7710 in 2004 but binned it in favour of maintaining dozens of similar phones. They knew that Symbian wasn’t going to cut it in 2005, two years before the iPhone even came out, and yet kept tooling around with it for five more years. Such a waste.

1 day ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future 1 reply

Comment

The TWO.

1 day ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future 2 recommends

Comment

The First was $99 on a two year contract when it was released, just like the 920, so yeah, they were competing. Since then though the First has been dropped to 99c and the 920 to $29 on contract.

1 day ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future

Comment

Here’s some suggested MeeGo reading.

Between the internal bickering between the Symbian and MeeGo camps, the extremely wasteful R&D spending, the layers and layers of useless middle management slowing down development and the general mismanagement and lack of direction from the top, if Nokia tried to push forward with MeeGo it would have run them into the ground – all those doomsayers saying that Nokia would be bankrupt would have been right.

MeeGo changed its UI three times, hitched itself to Intel and TI for its chipset work, meaning it was waiting and waiting for Intel’s smartphone chipsets (which never actually made it to a shipping phone until mid 2012) and didn’t have an LTE chipset ready at all, for any of its MeeGo devices. Elop took stock of the situation and correctly saw that there was no future with MeeGo and Nokia in the state it was in.

Dislike WP all you want, but Elop’s choice meant he could ditch the chipset problems, the UI flip-flopping, the wasteful R&D and the excess middle management and focus the company on a handful of well made devices. And they got a nice cash injection over their platform transition period to boot.

Maybe in another world if Nokia had kept focus after the year 2000 and not devolved into the disorganised mess that it became by 2010, MeeGo could have had a chance. But sadly things went awry long before.

1 day ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future 1 reply 2 recommends

Comment

But considering that Nokia’s schedule has been to release their flagship device around October/November what’s the point of implementing 1080 now, half a year ahead? GDR3 is scheduled for about then, so the next flagship should ship with GDR3 on board (and whatever else Nokia chooses to add) and thus should be able to have 1080 and quad core.

The 925, this year’s early refresh of last year’s flagship, will ship with GDR2 and Amber before they’re released to the rest of the range.

1 day ago on Why GDR2 will dissapoint

Comment

The Xbox One apparently runs three operating systems – the Xbox OS for games, a cut down Windows OS for apps, and the hypervisor to concurrently run the first two. The fact that it has the cut down Windows OS for apps means that yes, it will most likely be compatible with WinRT apps, though they may need to be altered slightly for the Xbox’s TV/Kinect/controller interface. It also should mean that a developer can target Xbox, Windows and WP with a minimum of additional work porting the app across the three platforms.

1 day ago on Will Microsoft leverage on XBOX One and have it run a WinRT derived runtime and give it an app store.

Comment

Microsoft doesn’t give Nokia 1 billion every year. It was a total amount of 1 billion for one or two years I believe.

Nokia receives a platform support payment from Microsoft of USD250 million per quarter (i.e. yes, USD1 billion per year), however Nokia in return pays MS for the WP licenses used in their Lumia handsets. It’s stated in their quarterly results.

And now that Nokia has windows phone I think it will be harder for them to hit lower cost phones than say Samsung can produce

Nokia has already shown that it can manufacture excellent quality low cost phones, with the 521 coming in at USD129 off-contract on T-Mobile. Below this price point they have their Asha fulltouch handsets.

1 day ago on HTC in disarray: staff departures, 'disastrous' First, and production problems cloud company's future 5 recommends