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FRAMINGHAM, Mass., August 3, 2006 – The second quarter of 2006 saw the worldwide handheld devices market experience its tenth consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline. According to IDC’s Worldwide Handheld QView, vendors shipped a total of 1.4 million devices, a 26.3% decrease from the same quarter one year ago. For the first half of the year, vendors shipped a total of 2.9 million units, down 21.4% from the 3.7 million units shipped during the first half of 2005. “The past ten quarters have provided a combination of factors that have led to this milestone: the exit of vendors from the handheld market, the shift of vendor focus from handheld devices to converged mobile devices (i.e. smartphones), and the increasing popularity of converged mobile devices overall,” said Ramon Llamas, research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Markets Team. “Looking ahead, we expect additional quarters of decline and a flattening out of shipment activity before a return to growth. In order to do that, vendors must discover more market segments, relevant applications, and improved usability beyond personal information management. The inclusion of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS have kept handheld devices relevant, particularly for core users. However, more applications must be deployed to reach more users and eventually bring about a stabilizing effect to shipment activity.” Vendor Highlights Palm, Inc. Despite posting a year-over-year decline, Palm remained far and away the worldwide market leader of handheld devices with shipments totaling more than the next two vendors combined. In addition to being the leader of handheld devices, Palm has also developed its converged mobile devices, with shipments surpassing its handheld devices. HP. HP remained the clear number 2 vendor of handheld devices worldwide, with double the shipment volume of the number 3 vendor, Dell. Like Palm, HP has been developing its own line of converged mobile devices, but during Q2 HP’s handheld devices still outpaced its converged mobile devices.Dell. Holding steady in the number 3 position was U.S.-based Dell. Over the course of the quarter, Dell continued to tout the Axim X51, having phased out its Axim X30 and X50 products from a year ago. Unlike Palm and HP, Dell has not released a converged mobile device to the market. Mio. Despite posting a year-over-year decrease this quarter, Taiwanese vendor Mio was able to post the smallest year-over-year decrease of the top five vendors, and supplanted Acer for the number 4 position worldwide after trailing by just a thousand units last quarter in the process. Acer. Of the top five vendors, Acer suffered the largest year-over-year decline, but still managed to remain ahead of other vendors to lay claim to the number 5 position worldwide. Acer’s position as the number 5 vendor worldwide is hardly assured, with a number of vendors trailing closely behind. Source: IDC Worldwide Handheld QView, August 3, 2006 Notes: Vendor shipments are branded shipments and exclude OEM sales for all vendors. Handheld devices are pocket-sized, either pen or keypad-centric, and are capable of synchronizing with desktop or laptop computers. Handheld devices are designed to access and manage data including office documents, multimedia, and games. Handheld devices do not include telephony but may include wireless capabilities that enable Internet access and text communication. These devices feature evolved operating systems or applications environments such as the Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC, Linux, or other proprietary platforms with the ability to download, run applications, and store user data beyond their required PIM capabilities. IDC’s Worldwide Handheld QView provides device vendors, software developers, service providers, and component suppliers with timely and accurate information on the worldwide handheld market. The program provides quarterly measurements of worldwide unit shipments and vendor market shares. For more information about IDC’s Worldwide Handheld QView program, please contact Jonathan Guloyan at 508-935-4296 or jguloyan@idc.com.

“Drowned power button is located on top side, as well as two leds. On the left we can see miniSD slot, soft reset button, headset jack. Unfortunately, only original headset will fit, this means that you will not be able to use your favorite headphones in this one. The headphones that are in the package are very quite, you cannot hear anything while you’re in a subway even if volume is set to maximum. Sound quality is below average. I should also say that headphones act as external antenna for radio and television, but we shall speak more about that in corresponding chapter. miniSD and headset connectors are locked by not very good covers (cork prevents you from connecting headset nicely within first attempt).” Read this nice review here:

“Sony Ericsson has launched a Mobile Cinema operation in France for the release of the new multimedia smart phone, the M600i. To watch Final Fantasy VII Advent Children in its whole length and in DVD-like quality on a mobile: this is what Sony Ericsson offers in exclusivity to anyone buying their new phone. A 512MB micro memory stick, containing the full-length movie in 256MB will be presented in an exclusive offer to each buyer of the new Sony Ericsson M600i.Thanks to Mobiclip, the optimized video codec patented by the French company Actimagine; in one click, pictures come to life as if you were at the movies. The animation film Final Fantasy VII is played on Sony Ericsson’s M600i, in DVD-like quality, full screen, at 30 frames per second, while limiting power consumption. You just need to insert the memory card into the phone, click on the icon on the screen, and the film starts.”We want to make Mobiclip the reference for mobile cinema in terms of video technology, while offering a unique experience to the consumer: quality of content, quality of picture, ease of use, and a lot less power consumption”, reminds Andre Pagnac, Chief Executive Officer of Actimagine. “Our collaboration with Sony Ericsson offers to everyone the opportunity to live the unique experience of Mobile Cinema on the new M600i.”Besides a unique design, with an extra large touch panel screen, push e-mail functions, a multi functional AZERTY keyboard and an Opera 8.0 navigator, the Sony Ericsson M600i offers the state-of-the-art in terms of sound and picture.” via slashphone.com

SGH-i858(Click to enlarge)
“A new Linux-based phone is shipping to subscribers of China Mobile’s “Go-Tone” GSM/GPRS service. The Samsung SGH-i858 features a large, 2.4-inch QVGA (240 x 320) color touchscreen, along with a slide-out hardware keypad. It runs version 2.5 of Mizi’s “Prizm” Linux phone stack.The SGH-i858 is the second recent Linux phone release from Samsung. The Korean consumer electronics giant (Samsung is Asia’s 9th-largest company) in April began distributing its unique SCH-i819 — which features both GSM/GPRS and CDMA radios — to China Unicom.Both recent Samsung Linux phones also have a “slider” form factor, and support touchscreen as well as keypad operation. Like the SCH-i819, the new SGH-i858 is probably based on a Qualcomm multi-chip communications processor module, such as the MSM6500.Additional SGH-i858 features include a 2-megapixel camera, TV-out, text-to-speech software, bluetooth, MMS (multimedia messaging service), IrDA with learning universal remote control software, and a business card reader. It also has standard smartphone features such as a PIM (personal information manager), Media Player, and File Viewer. ” More at linuxdevices.com

“The big thing to note is that the Symbian version of Flash cannot play or understand everything that you could write. That’s why it is called Flash Lite – it is a mobile optimised subset of the Flash and as such it understands many, but not all, the commands a typical Flash author could use. You will need to look specifically for Flash Lite content to get files that will work on your device. The Flash Lite player is a commercial product from Macromedia, and initially the player was only available if you purchased it. For S60 2nd Edition, UIQ 2.1 and earlier phones you can purchase the player seperately directly from Adobe for $8. However Mobizines bundles the Flash Lite player with their free download of Mobizone so it is possible to obtain the Flash Player for free. S60 3rd Edition devices (N71, N73, N80, E60, E61, E70, N91, N92, N93, 3250, 5500) ship with a Flash Player application (Flash Lite 1.1; the next revision of S60, S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 will use Flash Lite 2.0) included out of the box. It’s very important to note is that there are two versions of Flash Lite available – 1.1 and 2.0. Backwards compatibility allows the 2.0 player to open and run older .swf files, but 1.1 cannot run a 2.0 file, so it’s worth double checking any application is compatible with your installed Flash player.” Find out more at allaboutsymbian.com

“HTC may not be particularly well known in North America, but they’re the company behind a lot of Windows Mobile-powered smartphones on the market, including a good number of self-branded handsets from Cingular and T-Mobile. Now the Taiwan-based handset maker has its eyes set on challenging the BlackBerry devices and Moto Q’s of the world with the all-new HTC Excalibur. It is said that this smartphone has been in the works for quite some time now, but it is only recently that pictures have started popping up on the internet. Specs are a little slim at this point, but as you can tell from the pic, it comes with a full QWERTY keyboard and naturally runs on WinMo5. Word is that it does quad-band GSM and Wi-Fi as well.What will really set the Excalibur apart from the competition, though, is its unique touch-sensitive “jog strip” that replaces the ubiquitous jog wheel we find on the device offered by Research in Motion. You can see this clever strip just to the right of the vibrant better-than-QVGA display.” via mobilemag.com

“Cal-comp & Kinpo presented its new pocket pc phone ‘Saturn SP90’ at TAITRONICS Bangkok. The Saturn SP90 is a pocket pc phone with QWERTY keyboard and it is a winner of 2006 reddot design for its sleek industrial design. It supports tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz and runs on Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition.” via aving.net

“The game begins with a wonderfully rich introduction that includes some credits but, more importantly, introduces you to the game and what is going on. It lasts almost three full minutes but, as I watched the wonderful cinematics, I couldn’t help but wonder if the graphics and sound for the game would be as rich. (On a side note, don’t think that your display has wigged out on you when the intro starts up because the first 15-20 seconds contain no video – just audio. While I was initially disappointed by this, I think it increases your anticipation for the graphics so that, when they do appear, you are properly blown away by them….)” Read this review at clieuk.co.uk

TOKYO—Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has brought logical block addressing (LBA) to NAND Flash memory, and that it would launch LBA-NAND, a new line-up of high-capacity devices integrating the new addressing method. LBA-NAND are designed for use in mobile consumer products, such as digital audio players and personal media players, and will support manufacturers in developing products that can take full advantage of advances in NAND Flash memory capacity while minimizing development costs. Toshiba will start to release samples of the new NAND Flash from August 2006. Read the full press release here:

“Actually, Nokia’s cheating on its classic concept of series 6000 exactly with Nokia 6233 is not a coincidence. One of the motivations was the desire for making up vertical line-ups, where phones would have in common not only indexes or the brand in general, but also looks. Such products will be aimed at similar audiences, but will segment the market even further. Let’s see how this is going to work out by the example of Nokia 8800 and Nokia 6233. The resemblance of these models is emphasized with a stainless framing found on the latter handsets, yet the former phone costs thrice as much. Reasoning from the price, you could say that the audiences of these two are never going to fuse or influence each other – indeed, a man who’s bought the 8800 isn’t likely to replace it with the 6233. But the positive image of Nokia 8800 as a luxury-product – that’s what this all about. This move is quite simple and at the same time very efficient – more capable models get released earlier and start building up the name for other phones having somewhat similar design, which will be released earlier. In Nokia 6233’s case, the negative effect cause by the model being different from other handsets of the series gets reduced to the minimum.” Read more at mobile-review.com