Are They Doomed or Will HTC 10 save HTC?

HTC has announced the HTC 10, an Android 6 (Marshmallow) smartphone that seems to touch on all the design and feature wishes of any high-end smartphone customer. However, those plums won't be enough for the HTC 10 to sell well in a crowded Android field, analysts said, even with its 5.2-in. display, fast Snapdragon 820 processor, metal case and superior camera technology. HTC is facing slipping market share and desperately needs to score a success, they said.

"Even with a device like the HTC 10, which has a clean design and … improved internals, HTC simply lacks the scale to effectively compete with Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, LG and Lenovo," said Jack Narcotta, an analyst at TBR.

"On paper, HTC has the right strategy and the right products," Narcotta added. "The problem is that the premium Android space is toxic to nearly all Android manufacturers. Only the largest are able to endure there, and HTC is simply outgunned." Narcotta further predicted that unless HTC's recently announced Vive VR headset "vaults into a billion dollar business, HTC is doomed."

TBR estimated that HTC's global market share in 2015 was less than 4%. Analyst firm IDC said HTC hasn't been among the top five smartphone makers for several years and ranked 15th globally in smartphone shipments in 2015. It was seventh in the U.S. In terms of sales, Gartner said HTC went from a 2.2% share globally in 2013, down to 1.3% last year.

HTC began 2015 on an optimist note, thanks to slowly improving financials and high expectations for the One M9. Smartphones aside, the Re camera seemed to signal a widening of HTC’s focus, and there were rumors of an HTC tablet to follow up the Nexus 9, as well as an Android Wear smartwatch. The worst seemed to be over, or, as one company executive put it at the time, HTC had “been through hell and survived.”

"HTC 10 hits all the high points -- design, music, screen and camera -- but you have to come up with something else to juice the game," said IDC analyst Will Stofega. By comparison, Samsung may have hit on something effective in its marketing of the new Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge smartphones bundled with the Samsung Gear VR.

Soon, Samsung will sell the Gear 360, a spherical VR camera. "Samsung has it right with bundling its newest phones with other products that are not overly expensive," Stofega said.

Likewise, Huawei and its new P9 smartphone with the Leica branded dual-lens camera, announced last week, could be distinctive enough to make some difference in a highly competitive market, he added.

Smartphone companies have always had to find a singular but sometimes elusive quality to market in a new device and then spend marketing dollars to back it up. Innovations, such as flexible and foldable screens and faster 5G wireless, that are clearly different from today's products, will take much longer to arrive, possibly not until 2022.

"Right now, it's a very saturated market and there's no special thing coming up, so manufacturers are resting on their laurels," Stofega added. While high-end Android smartphones face competitive problems, there is a general recognition -- even with Apple -- that customers in the U.S., as well as other places, are slow to upgrade to new phones.

"Even Apple has to take stock of what's happening in the U.S. and other saturated markets," Stofega said. "You need more than faster speeds and something that's incredibly different, which is not an easy thing to do."

At a recent conference, Stofega said he heard that LTE phones will sell well in Africa in the next year, "but even they don't make up the volumes needed." Overall, there is smartphone growth, albeit slower than in recent years, so smartphone makers are not about to walk away. But U.S. sales in the last quarter of 2015 were down 6%.

At Mobile World Congress in late February, LG Electronics officials were especially candid about the need to find new strategies to sell smartphones. Two years ago, LG said it knew there would be a plateau in smartphone popularity so it launched the G5 smartphone with a modular design, and heavily marketed the phone in the U.S.

Even Apple is feeling the impact of customers' putting off smartphone upgrades more often than they once did. Brokerage firm BTIG last week cut its estimates for iPhone sales through 2017, based on long upgrade cycles, and indicated that structural changes are underway for the market.

"HTC still has some of the best designs out there today, but they don't have the necessary marketing budget to go out there and push and don't spend — or can't spend," Stofega said. "I've always been a fan of their designs. They have always been spot on."

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies, added that the HTC 10 is "good-looking, but it's not the only one that is." She said its primary market will be loyal HTC fans who are upgrading from an HTC M7 or M8.

Before 2012, HTC was considered a smartphone market leader, but "the market grew up so quickly around it that new competitors were able to quickly gain scale," said TBR's Narcotta. "HTC misfired when it mattered most by changing its strategy [to lower-priced devices] when Samsung and Apple were competing in the premium space, only to change it back again when Samsung's smartphone business began to slow down."

Report Links Apple and Samsung suppliers to child labor in Africa

Cobalt mined by child laborers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may be entering the supply chains of major tech companies like Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft, as well as auto manufacturers like Volkswagen and Daimler AG, according to an investigation from Amnesty International and Afrewatch, a DRC-based non-government organization. Cobalt is used in alloys for aircraft engine parts and technology gadgets in alloys with corrosion/wear resistant uses. Cobalt is widely used in batteries and in electroplating. Cobalt salts are used to impart blue and green colors in glass and ceramics.

The report, released recently, lays out how cobalt mined by children as young as seven is sold to a DRC-based subsidiary of Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese company. The subsidiary, Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM), processes cobalt ore and sells it to companies in China and South Korea, where it is used to manufacture lithium-ion batteries for use in smartphones and electric cars. Amnesty contacted 16 multinational companies listed as customers of the battery makers, based on investor documents and public records. Most said they were unaware of any links to the companies cited in the report, while others, like Apple and Microsoft, said they were evaluating their supply chains. Amnesty says that none of the companies provided enough information to independently verify the origin of their cobalt supply.

The investigation is based on interviews with 87 people who work or have worked in informal, artisanal cobalt mines in the DRC, including 17 children between the ages of 9 and 17. Amnesty and Afrewatch obtained photographic and video evidence of the hazardous conditions in which many of the miners work, often without basic protective gear or safety guidelines. The children interviewed for the report said they work up to 12 hours a day to earn between $1 and $2, and typically work above ground, gathering and washing rocks from defunct industrial sites or nearby lakes and rivers.

They carry heavy loads, face physical abuse, and are regularly exposed to dangerous chemicals and dust, the report says, risking long-term lung disease and in some cases, death. Prolonged exposure to cobalt dust has been linked to "hard metal lung disease," which is potentially fatal, and many artisanal mines are poorly constructed and ventilated. At least 80 artisanal miners died in the DRC between September 2014 and December 2015, according to information gathered from a UN-operated radio station, though the report notes that the true figure is likely much higher since many accidents are not reported.

"It's a real tragedy, and we think that the companies that are profiting from the cobalt, which ends up in our smartphones, should be part of the solution," says Mark Dummett, business and human rights researcher at Amnesty. "It wouldn't take a great deal to help these children's lives."

The DRC accounts for at least 50 percent of the world's cobalt supply. The country's mining industry used to be dominated by a state-run company, but it collapsed with the rest of the Congolese economy during the 1990s. Since then, the government has encouraged artisanal miners to dig for cobalt in areas deemed unsuitable for industrial mining, and it has passed regulations on environmental and safety practices. But Amnesty argues that the government has not authorized enough zones for artisanal mining, forcing many to strike out in unregulated areas, and has done little to enforce its rules. The report also documents cases where government workers extorted money from artisanal mine workers by making them pay for access to unauthorized areas.

According to estimates from UNICEF, there were about 40,000 children working in mines across the DRC's southern region in 2014, and the US Department of Labor has listed Congolese cobalt as a good produced by child labor since 2009. A DRC government study, cited by Amnesty, estimated that there are between 110,000 and 150,000 artisanal miners in the country's southern region, most of whom are self-employed. Nearly 64 percent of the Congolese population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank, and the country ranks next-to-last on the UN's human development index. Ongoing conflict in the country has been fueled in part by its vast supply of natural resources.

A US law that went into effect last year under the Dodd-Frank Act requires public companies to disclose whether their supply chains involve so-called conflict minerals — tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold — which have been linked to violence in the DRC. Dummett says similar regulations are needed for cobalt, which has not been linked to any armed groups in the country, though some question the effectiveness of the Dodd-Frank approach. A 2015 report from Assent Compliance, a Canadian IT firm, found that 90 percent of the 1,262 companies that filed conflict minerals reports couldn't say for certain whether their products are conflict-free. Others fear that the high costs associated with the regulations could entice businesses to leave the DRC altogether, which would only exacerbate the country's poverty.

"Whether or not this could have any impact is questionable given the rather mitigated impact of Dodd-Frank on the ground," says Christoph Vogel, a researcher at Zurich University and senior fellow at NYU's Congo Research Group, who was not involved in the Amnesty investigation. "Rather than improving human rights conditions and livelihoods, the law's practical implementation has so far contributed to increasing poverty and economic exclusion while the previous criminal networks largely continue to operate."

In written responses provided to Amnesty, Apple and Microsoft said they could not verify whether the cobalt in their products originates from the DRC, or whether the cobalt is processed by CDM or Huayou. Samsung SDI, which supplies batteries for Samsung and Apple, said it is "impossible" to determine whether its cobalt is sourced from the DRC, and that both CDM and Huayou are not in its supply chain. It acknowledged having a relationship with L&F Material, a South Korean battery maker that was also implicated in the report, though it claimed that its materials were sourced in Japan. Volkswagen, Daimler, and Huawei denied doing any business CDM or Huayou. Volkswagen acknowledged a relationship with Tianjin Lishen, a Chinese battery maker implicated in the report, while Daimler could not confirm whether cobalt in its parts originates in the region "due to the high complexity of automotive supply chains."

"We are currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labor and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change," Apple said in its statement. "As we gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with cobalt we believe our work in the African Great Lakes region and Indonesia will serve as important guides for creating lasting solutions."

Mitsubishi To Use Military grade Tech For self-driven Cars

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, the electronics arm of the Mitsubishi group will adopt technology used in Missile guidance systems for use in automated cars. According to a Bloomberg report, Mitsubishi Electronics, which supplies the air-to-air missiles to the Japanese armed forces, is looking to use the technology it used for military purposes to help automated cars detect and avoid obstacles.

Mitsubishi will use components such as millimeter-wave radars, sonars, sensors and cameras which are used in missile guidance systems to help guide automated cars that will be on the roads by 2020. Katsumi Adachi, Senior Chief Engineer at Mitsubishi's Automotive Equipment Division told Bloomberg, "All we have to do is to put together the components that we already have. None of our competitors have such a wide array of capabilities."

Millimeter-wave radar is used to see through fog and other battlefield obscurants—fitted on cars, it can help cars see (and avoid) other cars through inclement weather. Sonar, meanwhile, has already fitted to cars, letting them "hear" objects and determine their distance by bouncing sound waves off of them. It's particularly useful for self-parking applications.

Mitsubishi is a titan of Japanese industry, a manufacturer of everything from space rockets to rice cookers. Mitsubishi is also one of Japan's key defense contractors, building the Type 10 main battle tank and Soryu-class attack submarine. Its AAM-4B medium range air-to-air missile was the first with advanced electronically scanned array radar, making it even more advanced than the American AMRAAM missile.

Now Mitsubishi wants to get into self-driving cars, and it reckons that its military technology will give it a leg up on the competition. According to the article, Mitsubishi Electric is planning on using sensors developed for defense applications to give autonomous cars the eyes and ears to navigate the road.

Most autonomous cars use more than one sensor: Google's driverless cars use sonar, stereo cameras, lasers, and radar. As a defense contractor, Mitsubishi Electric provides sonar for submarines, stereo cameras for tanks, and lasers and radar sensors for all kinds of ships, armored vehicles, and aircraft. Theoretically, that's about all the ingredients it might need.

Mitsubishi is playing catch up in the self-driving car field, but believes that since it produces most of this technology in-house it can quickly catch up. It just better be sure not to accidentally include anything that explodes.

IBM's Cloud Battle strategy in the Acquisition of Optevia

IBM has announced that it has acquired Optevia, a privately owned Software as a Service, (SaaS), systems integrator specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for public sector organizations. Optevia will join IBM Global Business Services and help meet the increasing client demand for CRM SaaS solutions within the public sector.

Industry experts estimate that the world-wide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) opportunity is in excess of $23B, with cloud-based CRM solutions expected to surpass 50 percent of that total. The acquisition of Optevia, will help IBM establish itself as a premier SaaS and digital consultant and accelerate leadership in CRM solutions.

Optevia’s main focus on UK Emergency Services, Central Government, Local Government, Health Authorities and Housing and Social Enterprises, allows them to offer their clients highly differentiated solutions. Optevia’s client base includes ministries, councils, regulators, licensing and grant management organizations, transport authorities and social housing organizations.

“By acquiring Optevia, IBM will be able to provide Public Sector clients and prospects with a range of unique, industry focused CRM based solutions,”said Joanna Davinson, IBM Public Sector Leader - Europe. “This strategic acquisition will help strengthen IBM as a SaaS provider and Global Software Integrator.”

It’s the rapid growth expected in the CRM and SaaS (software-as-a-service) space that has prompted IBM to pursue Optevia. According to the Cisco (CSCO) Global Cloud Index, SaaS is expected to be the fastest-growing cloud service segment through 2018, as the above presentation shows. SaaS is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (or CAGR) of 33%, whereas the cloud market as a whole is expected to grow at a CAGR of 24%.

CRM is the largest component of SaaS, which explains Salesforce’s continued double-digit revenue growth. Taking a look at Gartner estimates, though the CRM software market is expected to grow only at a 14.8% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) by 2017, SaaS CRM is expected to grow at 22.6%.

The growth in the CRM space that pushed IBM to acquire Optevia also propelled Oracle (ORCL) to speed up its effort and initiatives in this space. In its latest fiscal 3Q16 earnings release, Larry Ellison, founder and executive chair of Oracle, stated that the company’s positioning “should make it easy for Oracle to pass Salesforce.com and become the largest SaaS and PaaS cloud company in the world.” Oracle stated that it’s growing faster than Salesforce (CRM) in the SaaS space and has ten times more customers than Workday

It’s Salesforce’s dominance in the CRM space that made it a potential target for Microsoft (MSFT) though the acquisition did not happen. Salesforce leads the CRM and SaaS space. Investors interested in gaining exposure to IBM can consider investing in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which has an exposure of 8.7% to application software and invests ~0.7% of its holdings in IBM.

Since its founding in 2001, Optevia has rapidly established itself as a trusted partner for Public Sector and Social Enterprise clients. The acquisition will allow IBM to scale Optevia’s solutions across other areas worldwide, where Optevia's software, assets and highly skilled, industry-focused workforce, coupled with their expertise will significantly increase IBM’s current capabilities.

Apple engineers to quit if forced to unlock iPhones

If Apple ends up losing their impending court battle with the FBI, and are compelled to help unlock the 'San Bernardino iPhone' through the creation of a custom software update, the engineers set to work on this task may throw up some roadblocks.

According to The New York Times, which talked to "more than a half-dozen current and former Apple employees", engineers tasked with breaking in to the iPhone may refuse to complete the work, while others may quit their jobs entirely. For some, quitting the company is a better option than helping defeat the security measures they designed in the first place.

This may present some issues for the FBI. While a court order can force Apple to help break into the iPhone, there is nothing stopping Apple employees from quitting rather than helping the FBI. If enough engineers decide to leave, it may take a very long time for others to force their way inside the device.

Apple is already on the offensive against the FBI in regards to the San Bernardino iPhone. The company has stated that circumventing the security measures they implemented is completely against their values, and they will fight to prevent the FBI from forcing their way in and creating dangerous precedents in the process.

In the event that the courts decide against Apple, the company believes it would take a team of around six to ten engineers between two and four weeks to develop the update needed to break the iPhone. If any of these engineers decide to resist or quit, that timeframe would extend.

It's looking likely that this case will drag on for years, so engineers at Apple can continue to work as normal for a while yet. But when the time comes, it's not going to be a straightforward task to comply with the FBI's demands.

Apple is gunning for PC users, but does Microsoft have anything to fear?

When Apple introduced a smaller iPad Pro on Monday, vice president Phil Schiller didn’t mince words when he discussed which customers Apple is targeting with the product, along with its 12-inch sibling.

“When [users of old PCs] see the features and performance and capabilities of a product like the iPad Pro, designed for the modern digital lifestyle, many of them will find it is the ultimate PC replacement,” Schiller said during a press conference on Apple’s campus.

It’s unlikely that Microsoft executives are quaking in their boots, however. Apple’s position is clear: Windows is the past, and there are plenty of people with old PCs who are ripe for being turned into iPad users. Schiller said that Windows was designed for a world before the Internet, app stores and social media. What’s more, he said that there are more than 600 million PCs that are at least five years old and still in use.

But it seems unlikely that Apple will manage to commandeer massive swaths of the Windows user base. Businesses appear to be doubling down on Windows with massive, earlier-than-expected rollouts of Windows 10, while consumer interest in iPads appears to be waning, not growing.

“So far, we haven’t seen any real impact from the iPad Pro on Windows 10 uptake with enterprises,” Gartner analyst Steve Kleynhans said. “I’d say generally, enterprises are moving very rapidly towards Windows 10, and nothing from Apple has slowed that down. I don’t think a smaller version of the same device is going to really change that."

Enterprises, which are in a position to make large-scale purchases of devices like iPads and Windows tablets, are usually slower to adopt things that they aren’t familiar with. IDC Vice President Lauren Loverde said it’s still easier for businesses to manage Windows devices than ones running iOS. That may lead companies to stick to the platform they’re comfortable with.

As Gillen pointed out, people with old PCs may not be in the market for an iPad anyway, since they likely already have some newer device that they’re using as well.

“Rather than buying a new PC, they went and they bought a tablet, and whether it’s an Android tablet or an iPad or something else, chances are good these customers have bought something they’re using as an alternative to the PC,” Gillen said. "They still have that old PC for the times when you really need to have that functionality of a full screen, a keyboard and mouse dexterity, that sort of thing."

Even if all those millions of old PC users were to leave Windows for iOS, it wouldn’t be a complete disaster for Microsoft.  One of the tenets of Microsoft’s strategy under Satya Nadella is that it's trying to make its products more broadly available, so it’s still making money from people who use Office 365 on the iPad Pro, along with applications powered by its Azure cloud services.

And there's also another outstanding question: how many people actually want a new iPad these days? Apple’s financial results over the past year have shown continually shrinking iPad sales. The company still sells millions of tablets every quarter, but sales aren’t as good as they used to be.

Apple is far from doomed in the tablet market, but interest in the iPad has, objectively, cooled. And Windows tablets have the benefit of being appealing to companies that want to upgrade aging technology but still rely on legacy applications built to run on Windows.

If there’s one arena Apple still has an advantage, it’s with consumers who want to make sure their tablet has dedicated mobile apps built for it. Schiller touted that the iOS App Store has over a million applications for the iPad, a not-so-subtle dig at Microsoft’s Windows Store, which is growing, but still missing key applications.

Get ready for Microsoft to fire something back at Apple soon, when the company holds its Build developer conference in San Francisco. It’s not yet clear what the folks from Redmond have up their collective sleeve, but odds are good that the Windows Store and Windows adoption in general will be on the menu.

The worst, most irritating smartphone features ever

Courtesy: https://recombu.com

Lets run down the most baffling and pointless smartphone features we've ever had the misfortune of battling with, from eye-tracking shenanigans to face-warping weirdness.

It's probably no surprise to users of Samsung phones that about half of this list contains annoying features found on Galaxy handsets throughout the ages. Samsung is the king of adding pointless crap to its mobiles, seemingly on a whim - although those days appear to be over after the pleasingly lean and user-friendly Galaxy S6 landed just a month ago.

And of course it isn't just Samsung who's guilty of throwing irritating and useless features onto its phones...

Knuckle mode

For instance, Taiwanese company Huawei recently got our hackles up with the infuriating 'knuckle mode', dumped merrily on to the P8 flagship phone. This ill-advised display feature was supposed to determine between your fingertip and knuckle, and if it thought you were dragging your knuckle across the display, it would capture that part of the screen so you could share it around or paste into documents.

Problem was, it was a bit shit. So occasionally the P8 would mistake your swipes as knuckles jabs and end up tracing blue lines around the screen instead of doing anything useful, like below.

Chances are this will happen while you're playing a game which requires fast actions to avoid death - so not only will your game character meet an unfortunate and avoidable early demise, but so will the P8 as you hurl the bloody thing at the nearest brick wall.

And the best part? As far as everyone can tell, knuckle mode is impossible to disable. Cheers fellas.

 

Beautify mode

This baffling camera feature plagues almost every Asian smartphone and never fails to amuse, turning us into some kind of bizarre anime character/grey alien hybrid. Rather than making us drop dead gorgeous, the beauty or beautify mode often makes us look like the result of decades of inbreeding.

Torch mode

Rarely found these days, but a fair few early smartphones boasted the highly useful 'torch mode'. This essentially turned the screen white, to help you stumble your way around at night. Because phone screens apparently don't pump out enough light already.

3D

Attempted back in the day by LG's Optimus 3D, glasses-free 3D wizardry was a really nice gimmick for about ten minutes. Then you realised that practically no apps and movies supported it, and now you were stuck with this chunky handset for two years.

Amazon seemed to forget that 3D was a crap idea when it released its first own-brand handset, the Fire Phone, which went on to sell about three units. We're taking bets on which manufacturer will try and fail in another couple of years to resurrect this pointless tech.

Dual camera/focus shifting

HTC's One M8 was a great handset, boasting plenty of nifty features and a gorgeous design, but we still wonder what the point of the dual-lens Ultrapixel camera was. HTC bigged up the fact that you could do 'focus shifting', i.e. change the focus of a photo after you've already taken it. Which is all well and good, but the only time we ever used it was to test it out for the review, after which we promptly forgot it was even a thing.

Heart rate sensor

We're sure that some people do actually use the heart rate sensor crammed onto the back of recent Samsung flagships and pretty much every wearable ever conceived. And to those five people, we say: fair play.

Samsung's Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, etc.

It's impossible to choose just one Samsung-birthed eye detection feature to pick on, so we've lumped them all together into one steaming heap of smartphone fail.

The Galaxy S4 was absolutely stacked full of irritating tools that were supposed to track your eye motions using the front-facing camera. Smart scroll, for instance, could allegedly work out when your eyes reached the bottom of a web page and then scroll down automatically for you. Because swiping with your finger is so 2011.

Needless to say, it worked about as well as a chocolate tractor and was immediately disabled by every user.

Galaxy Beam projector, K Zoom camera and other phones that aren't really phones

Okay, look, we didn't mean to pick on Samsung this much. It just happens to plough a lot of rubbish features into its phones - or at least, did. 

Like glasses-free 3D, the Galaxy Beam - which packed in an actual projector - was great fun for a number of minutes. But as soon as we got bored of projecting cat videos on the wall, we realised that we were stuck with a fairly bog-standard mobile that was also far too chunky to fit in our pockets. Ditto with the K Zoom, which was basically a decent digital camera with a crap phone attached.

Curved edge

We'd be the first to big up how sexy the Galaxy S6 Edge looks, with its unique and innovative design. However, while those curved edges are a sexy addition, they're also completely pointless. The best excuse Samsung could find for them is flashing coloured lights when the Edge is face-down, so you can tell who's calling during meetings and quiet moments. Because that's not at all distracting.