Nokia Lumia smartphones doing poorly in Europe, admit carriers

The Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T has been selling like hot cakes despite store employees not putting much effort in promoting the smartphone. However, even though the company's flagship has taken off, Nokia has not been doing that well as of late, and its overall unit sales are pretty disappointing, as it was revealed last week.

In fact, European wireless carriers that have been offering the Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 since Q4 of 2011 are quite underwhelmed. "No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone," said an executive who works for one of them during an interview with Reuters. "Nokia have given themselves a double challenge: to restore their credibility in terms of making hardware smartphones and succeed with the Microsoft Windows operating system, which lags in the market," the executive added. Lack of innovation and insufficient marketing efforts are among the prime reasons as to why the Lumia lineup has been doing poorly in Europe, according to representatives for the said carriers. The battery glitches that the Lumia 800 was plagued by made it even harder to convince customers that Nokia's smartphones were worth picking.

At the same time, Apple's iPhone 4S and Android smartphones made by Samsung are dominating the European smartphone market. If Lumia smartphones are to grab a bigger piece of the pie, European carriers will have to increase subsidies so that customers can have a bigger incentive to buy one. Increasing the marketing budget with a little help from Microsoft could be of help as well, although it is no guarantee that doing so would turn the Lumia brand into a market success.

Samsung now giving Galaxy Note buyers in India a free pair of Sennheiser headphones

Deep down inside, I have a thing for ultra low end phones. How little money can I spend on a device that will do damn near everything my high end smartphone does? Earlier today I was delighted to find out that the Samsung Galaxy Pocket is now available for preorder here in Finland. At 140 Euros it’s an incredible value; for that you get Android 2.3, WiFi, GPS, 3G, and pretty much everything you’d need to be productive. While searching the internets for a review, I stumbled across an article on IBNLive that discusses the Pocket. At the end of said article they talk about the Galaxy Note:

“Samsung also announced an exciting consumer promotion on its premium Galaxy Note. Any consumer buying a Galaxy Note between today and May 31, 2012 can avail free Sennheiser headphones, download free music and games, download full version of Angry Birds Space free and get a free flip cover.”

That’s ridiculous! Sennheiser’s lowest end headphones are likely an order of magnitude better than whatever headphones that most companies package with their device. That’s one thing that deeply troubles me, the amount of garbage that comes with new phones that many people will never use. High end devices are the worst at this. Does Samsung think people who buy a Galaxy Nexus or a Galaxy Note need another charger around the house?
Anyway, if you’re in India, and are thinking of buying a Galaxy Note, now you have more reason to snatch one up. And if you don’t need the accessories, then don’t bother picking them up, since you’ll probably just throw them away.
If on the other hand you’re looking for a low end device, then do check out the Pocket. While I have no personal experience with it, I imagine that it’s probably built better than anything from lower cost Chinese vendors.

Samsung to reveal "the next galaxy" May 3 in London, Galaxy S III launch?

Samsung has started sending out invitations for a May 3 event in London that is cryptically entitled "Come and meet the next Galaxy". That's just 17 days from now and we know the thoughts on everyone's mind - "Galaxy S III cometh!"

We sure hope so, and if Samsung really does reveal its next Android flagship then, we'd say it has managed to be on par with Apple in building excitement and secrecy around its leading phone annual edition launch.

Ok, we know you want to start dissecting the news and speculating whether the picture represents ceramic pebbles, hinting at the rumored glass ceramic chassis, whether it represent drops of liquid, hinting at the alleged waterproof housing, is it both or is it just an artsy background, but we'll leave it all to your imagination.

HTC One X landing on AT&T next week? It is too late !!!!

We knew that the HTC One X would be landing on AT&T at some point in the near future, but you can get it on www.m2cmbile.com NOW, it is completely unlocked, $669.98/each.

When it does become officially available in the US, the One X will be the best phone in the market, by far. The international version’s sleek design will be retained in AT&T’s offering, unlike the WTF different design found on the upcoming Sprint EVO 4G LTE. The One X is just a taste of whats to come this year, and it tastes pretty damn good.
No longer will the NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core CPU be running the show in the US One X devices, and it will be replaced with a dual-core Qualcomm-made chipset to support LTE networks. This doesn’t slow the handset down in any way but we likely won’t see handsets with both a NVIDIA CPU and LTE support until the end of the year.
While the One X is certainly a force to be reckoned with, there’s another phone on the horizon that can steal all the lime light away from HTC’s new One line. Of course, that handset would be the Samsung Galaxy S III. Now that we have the official announcement date – a mere 17 days away, those of you wanting HTC’s new device may want to hold off to see what Sammy’s new flagship handset will be packing. That said, the Galaxy S III likely won’t hit the states for at very least a month after its announced, so if you’re looking for a powerful device in the next few weeks, the One X should be more than enough.
If the One X is set to land on AT&T shelves by next week, we certainly don’t have much time to wait. So in the mean time, you should check out our review of the device here if you haven’t already.

In Brief: How Apple Will Defend Itself in the E-Book Battle

Apple, charged by the Justice Department for alleged antitrust violations, is pointing the finger at Amazon for its e-book pricing.

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In Brief boils down complex events to give you the heart of the matter -- today and what it means for tomorrow -- clearly and simply.
What Happened: Apple stayed silent immediately after the DoJ announced its case against Apple, but now is responding to the lawsuit against it and two publishers for price-fixing in iBookstore.
"The DoJ's accusation of collusion against Apple is simply not true," said Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr. "The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry."
Apple arranged an agency pricing model with five major publishers upon release of the iPad to help combat Amazon and its popular Kindle eReader, which previously guaranteed the lowest e-book prices on the market. Amazon's wholesale pricing allowed for lower pricing, but Apple's agreement with the publishers caused Amazon's market share drop from 90 percent to 60 percent after iBookstore's release.
What Really Happened: In defending its actions, Apple turns the tables on the antitrust allegations and denies any wrongdoing, essentially saying its rival Amazon actually holds the monopoly in the e-books market.
Apple and the publishers' adoption of the agency pricing model did balance out the market by boosting Apple e-book business and may have prevented Amazon from securing a monopoly, but Apple also got a 30 percent cut in the process.
Now, it's up to the Department of Justice to prove Apple actions violated federal antitrust laws. If Apple can prove its agreement with the publishers wasn't a violation of antitrust laws, it could pave the way for new methods of competition in a changing industry.
What's Next: Amazon will likely tread cautiously about lowering its prices in response to the lawsuit, which the retailer is in the process of doing, because it could be subject to the same accusations Apple faces.
And as Apple argues the case, it could bring to light info about Amazon's own pricing models that could result in further investigation of its e-retailer rival. Apple's public defense will likely be its legal position, and the company is expected to point out its relative small e-book market share hardly constitutes the monopoly upon which the DoJ is basing its case upon.
The Takeaway: So far, Apple is not admitting to any wrongdoing in its arrangement with publishers. If Apple wins the case, it could mean such arrangements aren't considered to violate antitrust laws but serve as a vehicle to keep one competitor from cornering the market. But Apple is secure in its industry power, and the ability to undercut others' pricing methods gives it that much more. As the case continues, the court will determine what's right for e-book pricing, likely setting new boundaries and expectations for how the market will evolve in the future.

Girl tells her BF that his Samsung Galaxy S II is s*** after getting Blown Away by Nokia Lumia 800

Smoked by Windows Phone has become a way for Microsoft to show off how fast certain functions can be done on devices using its mobile OS vs. iOS and Android. Nokia has hijacked the promo for its own use as Blown Away by Nokia Lumia. Over in India, the Nokia crew decided to visit a college campus where they figured they would find a variety of smartphones to go up against the Nokia Lumia 800.
As we've told you, there are those iOS and Android users who believe that the whole promotion is a scam, while others point out that if some Android users knew their phone well, they could easily beat Windows Phone at some of the tasks. But let's head back to the Venkateswara Universityu campus in New Delhi where a young man came armed with a Samsung Galaxy S II. This model is considered the greatest Android smartphone produced to date by many, and for its battle against the Nokia Lumia 800 both phones had to snap a picture and upload it to Facebook.

You can check the video below to see what happened, but we feel compelled to tell you that the Nokia Lumia 800 won the contest. So while the young man had to confess on video that his Samsung Galaxy S II was "Blown Away by Nokia Lumia," his girl friend didn't take it as well as he did. After asking him if they could leave a few times, she seemed embarrassed by what she might have considered a wimpy performance by the Android device. This was a female not impressed with those 3000+ scores that the Samsung Galaxy S II has scored on the Quadrant benchmark test. Her comment to her boyfriend? "Your phone is a worthless piece of s***". Not too many people have characterized the Samsung Galaxy S II in this way, but we see a Nokia Lumia 800 in someone's future. Ironically, just the other day Samsung complained that the Nokia campaign was unethical.

Alleged Samsung Galaxy S III photo surfaces, showing a rectangular home button and five row interface

From the confines of a Polish mobile phone blog a picture of something in flesh and blood has appeared, that is claimed to be the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S III. This is no render, as most previous leaks, but rather a dark rectangular handset lying on a desk.

There is the physical home button underneath the display, which we recently learned has made its way into the front design at the last minute, as well as the rumored five row UI, similar to the Galaxy Note layout. In fact, Samsung has an R&D center in Poland, which leaked the Galaxy Note chillaxing in the metro in someone's hands before the official announcement, so this thing might have some dose of credibility to it.

The source says it was sent to them by a guy who claimed he is currently a tester, and who had censored the UI details beforehand. The Galaxy S III has allegedly been kept on the hush-hush for so long, as carriers got a generic box with only the screen and the ports uncovered, so the testers didn't leak the design prematurely.

Yet this thing doesn't look inserted into a case or anything, seems to be running stock ICS, like an early test model, and the app icons columns don't seem particularly aligned with the phone, which might be due to the clumsy 8-bit "censoring" of the interface, though.

Anyways, leaks like these are supposed to keep us warm until the real thing drops, hopefully next month. What do you think about the latest contestant in the Galaxy S III leak show?