Samsung (005930:KS) co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun has today hailed the company’s new Galaxy S4 phone as its fastest ever selling gadget. It’s expected to hit 10 million in sales next week, a mere three weeks after it first launched. JK Shin also told The Korea Times:

We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3.

He added that the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy S4 could ultimately reach 100 million units sold, a feat which would represent double the global sales of its predecessor, the Galaxy S3, which reached 50 million sales. Indeed, the S3 took 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark.

The Galaxy S4 went on sale in South Korea on April 26, and promptly landed in the US, China, and India the next day ahead of a massive global roll-out backed up by major offline and online marketing. The big-screened S4 launched in Indonesia on May 3rd.

Samsung is the top smartphone brand in China, where it sold 30 million phones across various models in 2012.

(Source: Korea Times; via The Verge)

Here are the newest rankings and China market share (where available) data from Canalys:

• 1st: Samsung, with 20 percent market share
• 2nd: Coolpad
• 3rd: Huawei
• 4th: Lenovo
• 5th: Apple, with eight percent market share

Samsung (005930:KS) and Apple are the only non-domestic brands in the top ten, continuing a trend that’s been going on for a couple of years. Canalys notes that 68 percent of all shipments within China are from domestic brands. Lenovo (HKG:0992) is aiming to outsell Samsung within China in the near future.

In contrast to the 82 million smartphones shipped in China (yes, Canalys focuses on units shipped, which admitedly doesn’t correlate with devices bought; many might be still sitting on shelves or in warehouses), the US market saw 27 million smartphones shifted.

For a rough idea of actual units sold, it’s worth noting that Samsung sold 30 million of its phones in China in 2012.

(Source: Macworld/IDG News)

The Samsung Galaxy S4 officially launched today in Indonesia. Kompas today quotes Febri Rusli, the product marketing manager of Samsung Indonesia, as saying that the 5,000 stocked phones for pre-orders are all sold out. The pre-order period started two weeks ago, but Febri said that the stocks of new Samsung Galaxy S4 phones was effectively snapped up in the first week of that period.

In contrast, around 7,000 Blackberry Z10 and iPhone 5 phones were sold during pre-orders here. But that is because the two companies stocked more phones in the country during the period.

Samsung (005930:KS) claims to be the king of the smartphone market in Indonesia, saying that four out of five Android phones sold in the country are Samsung devices.

Of course, the more Samsung Galaxy S4 models sold here means bad news for makers of cheaper big-screen smartphones, such as the Chinese handset maker Oppo, which expanded its company reach to Indonesia recently. Will they still get a lot of buyers here in Indonesia?

Samsung top in Indonesia?

Research firm IDC gave us an overview about the Indonesian mobile phone market. Here’s what they had to say:

IDC can say Indonesia’s mobile phone market is a very good market with a very healthy year-on-year growth, which we can see already from 2011 to 2012 when we booked 15 percent year-on-year growth. IDC also forecasted that the Indonesian mobile phone market shipments will reach close to 60 million units – and 14 percent of them being smartphones.

We also asked IDC about how popular Samsung handsets really are in Indonesia. An IDC representative explains to us:

As for Samsung, they are definitely one of major players in the Indonesian market. They will be in the top five smartphone players in Indonesia. They have been one of the global vendors that are able to target every market segment in Indonesia, from screen size, and price point. from the recent IDC Indonesia mobile phone tracker data, we can see Samsung has recorded 10 percent drops due to the slower demands in the market and it is expected to bounce back in Q1 2013 with a very strong growth in the smartphone segment.

IDC didn’t verify if Samsung is top in Indonesia. But Andreas Rompis, vice president of Samsung Indonesia told Detik that Samsung is already the number one mobile phone brand in Indonesia. He also mentioned that research firm Gfk backs the claim. The company also claimed to be the biggest vendor based on sales generated from both feature phones and smartphones.

Don’t forget about Blackberry

I’m curious what Blackberry’s next move will be, especially for the middle and lower tier market. The handset’s domination on the lower and middle tier is waning thanks to the existence of affordable Android handsets like the ones Samsung sells. If there are fewer people using Blackberry, then the Blackberry Messenger (BBM) ecosystem which binds people into sticking to that phone becomes weaker too. Don’t forget that chatting apps like WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk are becoming more popular here too, and they can act as alternatives to using BBM. Those apps now have their own BBM-like data packages from mobile telcos too.

With the Blackberry Z10 already launched, the next move will be its hard keyboard phone, the Q10, which might appeal to the nation’s hardcore messagers. We’re eager to see what will happen then.

(Sources: Kompas and Detik)

A powerful earthquake struck the city of Ya’an in Sichuan province over the weekend, not too far from the site of the larger and even more catastrophic quake in 2008. Now, with rescue teams already on site, it’s time for donations to flood in to help sustain survivors and rebuild the area. Tech companies are keen to be philanthropic too. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has pledged RMB 50 million (US$8 million) this morning for the Chinese victims; and rival gadget-maker Samsung (005930:KS) had earlier vowed to donate RMB 60 million ($9.63 million).

Apple pledged its quake relief funds via public relations channels, while Samsung rather more effectively posted its offering on the Samsung China official Sina Weibo page. The Weibo post came with a statement from Samsung China president Zhang Yuanji who said, “Samsung China is always with the Chinese people through thick and thin, to tide over the difficulties.” Plus, local media reports that Samsung has set up ad-hoc free phone repair centers in the affected quake zone.

Apple has a memorial image for the quake victims on its homepage right now (pictured above). According to Sina Tech, the Cupertino company released a statement that also pledged new gadgets for quake-hit schools:

At this difficult time, our hearts are with the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Aside from the cash donation to help the affected people to tide over their difficulties, we are committed to providing new Apple devices to schools in the disaster area, and Apple employees in the locality are on stand-by at any time to help.

With Apple under pressure in China in the past couple of months – state-run media last week claimed that 60 percent of Chinese consumers now think less of Apple than they did previously – the company will be privately hoping to make no mis-steps with this pledge.

China has about 85 million active iOS users, and 160 million on Android. Since Samsung is the preferred brand of Chinese Android buyers, the Korean company and Apple are quite closely matched in terms of smartphone sales in the country. Samsung sold 30 million smartphones in China alone in 2012. The great rivalry between the two – in stores as well as courtrooms – will inevitably lead to comparisons of the amount donated by each. But, hey, they made sizable charitable donations, and there are biggers issues in Sichuan right now – such as the nearly 200 dead and the very many still missing.

(Sources: Sina Tech (1) and (2); Hat-tip to reader @Geoffrey_Wu for tipping us)

Samsung (005930:KS) built its first manufacturing plant in Vietnam in 2009, pumping in US$700 million to build it. In 2012, the value of the exports from this plant exceeded $12 billion, that’s up from $7 billion the year before. That’s a return of $17 for every dollar invested. It represents a whopping ten percent of the value ($114.6 billion) of all exports out of Vietnam. To say the least, electronics manufacturing is becoming the new backbone of the Vietnamese export economy.

Following this quickly growing trend, and significant government-level support, Samsung is pumping another $3.2 billion into building another factory in Vietnam’s northern province of Thai Nguyen. Construction started yesterday. The huge project will see the building of a major handset and hi-tech electronics plant and a microchip manufacturing plant.

If this new plant performs as well as the first, it may end up producing well over $40 billion in Samsung exports per year. Samsung expects the first plant to produce $16.5 billion worth of exports by year’s end.

Although there have been rumblings of Samsung opening up plants in Nigeria and neighboring Indonesia – and many existing plants in China – it’s possible that the Samsung in your hand was made in Vietnam.

Now that the new Samsung Galaxy S4 is out, let’s take a quick look at what could be the world’s next best-selling smartphone – with some help from this Samsung infographic. According to the Guardian, the Galaxy S4 will eventually reach 327 mobile operators in 125 countries. Here are some feature highlights:

S Translator - Provides instant translation, using text or voice translation on applications including email, text message, and ChatON (Samsung’s answer to Line and KakaoTalk).

‘Smart Pause’ and ‘Smart Scroll’ - Basically it’s an eye control sensor so that a video stops if you look away, or the webpage will shift in sync with your eye movements.

Better photo features - Equipped with a 13 megapixel rear camera, the new Galaxy S4 allows you to add frames in photos, and blend photos (with some built-in design options). You can also record voice and sound within the picture.

Find the full Galaxy S4 specs here or check out the review by The Verge team which suggests that the eye-tracking feature is mostly a gimmick. Here are the specs in infographic form:

Source: Samsung Tomorrow

Nokia Indonesia country manager Martin Chirotarrab winning one of the awards at Selular Awards 2013.
Credit: News.Viva.co.id

Indonesian gadget news site Selular ¹ held its annual gadget prize ceremony, the Selular Awards 2013, on Friday night. Three of Samsung’s four awards that night came from its flagship phone, the Galaxy SIII. It was crowned the best smartphone and the phone of the year.

Although 2012 was mostly a quiet year for Blackberry, the brand’s Bellagio 9790 was still able to secure the best messaging phone title. Local handset manufacturer Cross Mobile wins the local handset brand battleground based on the awards.

Here are a some of the winning awards in the handset category:

• Best entertainment phone: Sony Xperia Acro S
• Best camera phone: Nokia Lumia 920
• Best smartphone: Samsung Galaxy SIII
• Best messaging phone: BlackBerry 9790 Bellagio
• Best design phone: TiPhone T20
• Best tablet: Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
• Best touchscreen phone: HTC One X+
• Best android phone: Samsung Galaxy SIII
• Best local brand: Cross Mobile
• Best valuable phone: Smartfren Andromax-i
• Phone of the year: Samsung Galaxy S III
• Best tablet local: Axioo PicoPad 7 3G
• Best local Android phone: Pixcom Andro Note II

With the Samsung Galaxy SIII winning the hearts and minds of many Indonesian critics, will there still be enough room for the upcoming Blackberry Z10 to regain its dominance? If the answer is no, then surely it’s only a matter of time until BBM falls out of favor as well.

Elsewhere, the largest Indonesian telco Telkomsel dominated the operator category by winning five out of ten of its subcategories. TokoBagus’ app won the online shop app subcategory, and Inspira Solusi Indonesia’s Soccer Ticker app (which also won the Blackberry JamHack Asia event recently) was crowned as the best local mobile app at the ceremony.

For a full list of the Selular Awards 2013 recipients, you can take a look here.

(Source: Detik)

These days on the subway in Shanghai, I seem to see more people stretching their palms around a massive Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or a Galaxy SIII than clutching iPhones. So I’m not too surprised to learn that Samsung (005930:KS) has maintained its domination in China, selling – according to a new report from Strategy Analytics – 30.06 million smartphones in China last year. That’s three-times higher than it managed (10.90 million units) back in 2011.

The report adds – in Yonhap, via TheNextWeb – that Samsung’s market share in China is now up to 17.7 percent, a rise of 5.3 percentage points from the previous year. That’s in a smartphone landscape where about 210 million were sold in 2012.

Strategy Analytics has only bad news for Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), where its aging Symbian phones and fledgling Windows Phone devices resulted in another huge net loss in users. Nokia is now said to be China’s seventh-largest phone-maker with just 3.7 percent market share (calamitously down from 29.9 percent in 2011).

In the same data, Lenovo is second with 13.2 percent share, a rise of four percentage points. Apple is third (11 percent), then Huawei, and the very uncool Coolpad is in fifth spot.

We’d point out that new rivals emerge all the time. The young phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.1 million smartphones in 2012 and plans to sell 15 million this year. That could take a sizeable chunk from Samsung.

As we noted last month, Lenovo is gunning to outsell Samsung in China, its home nation, this year. Could this be the end of the Samsung’s Galaxy series’ reign in China?

(Source: Yonhap; via TheNextWeb)

As with recent stats from Animoca for its native Hong Kong, the smartphone landscape in Singapore is dominated by Samsung. The top five Android phones observed in Singapore are all Samsung models, with the lead four all being big-screen models. It’s not a total whitewash, as Sony and HTC get a look-in as well. Here’s the top ten in full:

Good news for all app developers is that this mature market is keen on the latest software as well, with versions of Android 4.0 and 4.1 on 52.8 percent of all those phones. But there are still plenty of older – or budget – phones in use, with 16.5 percent of Singaporeans on Android 2.3.6. However, Hong Kongers are more on the cutting edge, where 58 percent are rocking Android 4.0+.

Earlier today we looked at statistics from game developer Animoca that show the Samsung Galaxy range of phones totally dominating in India. While that’s not quite the case in Hong Kong, the same research reveals that eight of the top 10 Android phones observed on Animoca’s games in Hong Kong were made by Samsung.

The only two interlopers were smartphones made by Sony, with the Xperia Arc S being the sixth most popular phone in this survey. But on the whole, Samsung’s big-screen phones are performing well in Hong Kong, led by the sizeable Samsung Galaxy Note 2 as the Android market leader. The newest Samsung Galaxy S3 hasn’t quite surpassed its predecessor, the S2 (see table below). As a whole, the Galaxy S series have racked up over 100 million in sales, and Hong Kong is clearly one of the developed markets where consumers want high-end new smartphones.

Hong Kongers’ desire to be on the cutting-edge is shown by the versions of Android OS that are being used. On Animoca’s gaming platform, the developers found that most Hong Kong mobile gamers – a full 21.2 percent – are on Android 4.1.1 (jelly bean) right now; a further 19.3 percent are on Android 4.0.4. The game developer says that these statistics show that companies making apps and mobile services need to look carefully at particular markets and not just think of averages across Asia; that’s because countries where consumers opt for older and cheaper phones (like India or the Philippines) can really skew the data and cause you to underestimate the demands of customers in more developed markets.

Here are the top 10 phones in Hong Kong in this study, which took place from January 15th to February 15th:

(Image: HongKongHustle)

We’ve all seen the big-screen Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or SIII phones being clutched in one uncomfortably stretched palm, but India’s Android market reveals that the smaller and cheaper Samsung Galaxy devices are actually more popular. Indeed, in new statistics released by game developer Animoca, they observed that every single one of India’s top 10 Android phones carry the Samsung Galaxy brand – and that the top one is a budget phone with a mere three-inch screen.

An Animoca representative explains to us that this this is from a sample base of 500,000 Indian gamers on the developer’s many titles, such as Pretty Pet Salon. It’s great news for Samsung (KRX:005930), whose budget Galaxy Y phone (pictured) is far and away the most popular Android phone in India.

Of course, this doesn’t equate with sales in India, but statistics from these kinds of mobile platforms often give a good picture of what folks are using. I asked Animoca’s Matt McAllister if these stats (see the full top 10 below) might be skewed towards younger gamers, and he responded:

Yes, the demographic is mobile gamers, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a younger demographic. Animoca publishes over 300 games that attract many different audiences, so I’d say it’s fairly representative of the overall populations at large.

There are plenty of other budget Android phones in India, such as the fairly powerful Micromax A85, so Samsung might soon find its dominance weakened by telcos shipping cheap phones from such Chinese OEMs.

The game startup says that the most popular Android OS version in India is Android 2.3.6 (gingerbread) with 39.1 percent market share, which proves that cheaper phones – which often come with outdated software – rule the roost. But, more promisingly, Android 4.0.4 (ice-cream sandwich) is next up, with 17.9 percent share.

Here’s the phone list:

Stay tuned for stats later today from Animoca for their native Hong Kong as well.

We reported last year that Chinese-brand smartphones make up 60 percent of sales in China, but Samsung remains the top brand. For now. Lenovo (HKG:0992) CEO Yang Yuanqing said this week that it’s “definitely our aspiration” to surpass Samsung (005930:KS) to become China’s top smartphone maker.

Yang put no timeframe on that aim. It could happen soon, as according to Canalys data last summer, Lenovo was China’s fastest growing smartphone brand in Q2 2012, increasing sales by 2,665 percent to stand as China’s third-biggest phone seller. ZTE was second. Samsung was top in China in both 2012 and 2011 thanks to its Galaxy S and SII phones along with a range of cheaper Android-powered options.

More recently, newer figures from Gartner showed that Lenovo had edged into second place in China. At the same time, Apple dropped to sixth position and the relatively unknown CoolPad brand rose to third.

It’s possible that Yang’s aspirations could be realised by the end of 2013.

The Lenovo boss voiced his thoughts during Wednesday’s earnings call with Chinese and international media. Amid all the talk of growing PC sales and doing well in the US, it’s worth remembering that Lenovo has strong mobile ambitions in its home country.

Keeping his options open, Yang also said that Lenovo “will assess whether we should launch [on] the Windows Phone” platform as well, joining rivals such as Samsung, HTC, ZTE, and Huawei in hedging their bets on Microsoft’s WP as well as Google’s Android.

Taiwan’s Digitimes Research believes that 189 million smartphones were sold in China in the final quarter of 2012, with 86 percent of those being Androids. It’s conceivable that 300 million smartphones will be sold in the country in 2013.

(Source: MorningWhistle)

That’s the most surprising finding in recent figures from Gartner which show that CoolPad’s Android-based phones have soared to third place in terms of the number of smartphones sold in China at the end of the previous year. CoolPad is one of four Chinese brands in the top six, a phenomenon we first noted last year when Canalys pointed out that domestic phone-makers now account for 60 percent of sales in China.

The CoolPad 8060, one of the phones now outselling the iPhone in China. (Image: ZOL.com.cn)

Going back to the Gartner numbers, China’s smartphone top six now looks like this:

• 1st - Samsung

• 2nd - Lenovo

• 3rd - CoolPad

• 4th - ZTE

• 5th - Huawei

• 6th - Apple

So how did CoolPad phones, made by the relatively tiny China Wireless Technologies (HKG:2369) which used to make PDAs and very unimaginative feature phones, manage to leap past the over-hyped and hallowed iPhone? And that’s despite Apple doubling iPhone sales in the country in 2012. As anyone following the progress of Android in China, you’ll have figured out how already. Android is one big reason, and price is the other. Basically, CoolPad is making a lot of serviceable – if not very trendy – phones for a mere 10 percent of the cost of an iPhone 5. The CoolPad 8060, for example, sells for just 500 RMB (US$80) unlocked, and is a highly affordable gateway to the smartphone world [1].

300 million smartphones to be sold in China in 2013

With smartphone sales at an estimated 189 million in China in 2012, and expected to reach 300 million by the end of 2013, Apple can no longer ignore the entry level market. To do so, some might say, would be to replicate the mistake of decades past that made Apple’s Mac OS into a fringe platform, dwarfed by the widely-used Windows. Apple might have an addressable market at the moment of a few hundred million Chinese middle-to-upper income individuals, but the larger potential market is people who can’t afford to pay out one, two, or three months’ salary for the current iPhone.

Although Apple would never go as low as CoolPad’s price points, there are rumors that Apple is pondering a lower-cost iPhone that could better help it battle Android in China and other important developing markets. Even if Apple aimed at half of the cost of the full iPhone, that would create a smaller iPhone priced at 2,500 RMB in China. That would at least put it closer to more well-specced Android devices in China (not CoolPad’s), such as the Xiaomi Mi2. The young phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.19 million of its Android-powered phones in 2012, mostly to Chinese consumers.

In some ways, Xiaomi is the cool equivalent of CoolPad. While Xiaomi phones seem to be sold mostly to younger people, with 70 percent of them sold online, CoolPads are sold to a wider – and maybe less affluent – range of consumers from electronics retailers such as Gome and Suning.

CoolPad, then, represents the huge amount of people in China who’re ditching Nokia and feature phones, and jumping onto the cheapest thing that lets them play Temple Run 2. Apple needs to decide whether it wants to bring Xiaomi and CoolPad buyers closer to its price range, or forever push them – all half a billion of them – out of its exclusive club.

photo via dientutieudung.vn

It all started in 2010. Intel built its $1 billion chip manufacturing plant in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam. Vietnam’s electronic manufacturing dream had arrived. Gone would be the days of textile and food exporting. People were saying hello to a hi-tech Vietnam.

But later in 2011 and early 2012, the dream was dwindling, as the economy was shot and there was an environment that didn’t play well for foreign investors, and that was turning people off.

The latter half of 2012 has seen a change, with electronics factories popping up everywhere as you can see in the list below (dollar figuress indicate amount each company has committed to its Vietnamese factory):

• Bujeon Electronics (from South Korea), $10 million, October 2012
• Brother Vietnam (Japan), $25 million, December 2012
• Nidec Seimitsu (Japan), $40 million, July 2012
• SOC Vietnam (Japan), $62.5 million, November 2012
• JBL (USA), $100 million, June 2012
• Terumo BCT (USA, Japan), $94 million, May 2012
• Fuji Xerox (Japan), $120 million, November 2013
• Nokia (Finland), $300 million, early 2013
• Samsung Electronics (South Korea), $2.2 billion by 2020, November 2012

Of course, the most significant newcomers in this list are Samsung and Nokia. Nokia is still the dominant player in the Vietnamese mobile market and Samsung contributes 10 percent of Vietnam’s exports.

Besides Nokia, most of these electronics manufacturers are from South Korea and Japan. The main draw for companies from these two countries is the low labor wages. In some cases, Vietnamese workers can be paid as little as one-third of Chinese labor costs. Cheap labor is Vietnam’s new brand.

And so armed with this low-cost labor, Vietnam will soon become known for hi-tech manufacturing. Textiles are no longer Vietnam’s biggest export. With small companies like Setech Viet building small consumer domestic products and bigger companies like TOSY building robots for the global market, we’re on the cusp of a hardware-oriented Vietnam. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2016, a major Vietnamese hardware maker will build and operate its own factory.[1]

[1] This of course assumes that Japanese managers and technicians will transfer knowledge and experience to their Vietnamese counterparts.

Taiwan’s Digitimes Research has a new report out looking at the smartphone landscape in mainland China. It states that sales of smartphones in China – across all platforms, like iPhone and Android – are expected to grow 137 percent year-on-year to 189 million devices in 2012.

It’s expected that 86 percent of fourth quarter sales in China will be Android phones (with 50.8 million Androids sold in Q4). For the year as a whole, that amounts to an impressive 157 million Android smartphones sold in China during the whole year, which is up 260 percent from a year ago.

The new report also signals a shift towards Chinese consumers favoring domestic smartphone brands, with local brands expected to account for 61 percent of China’s smartphone market in 2012 led by Lenovo. That syncs with Canalys data we saw last month which pointed out that China’s top five smartphone brands are, in descending order, Samsung, Lenovo, CoolPad, Huawei, and ZTE. That’s very bad news for the once-beloved HTC; as for other overseas phone-makers, only Samsung and Apple appear to be making a strong showing this year.

This all seems to be on a par with what Canalys said earlier this year. It found that China “accounted for 27 percent of the 158 million global smartphone shipments” back in Q2 alone.

[Source: Digitimes and Digitimes Research]

Samsung Galaxy S3, Docomo’s Tokyo launch

According to forecasted numbers from analysts at iSuppli, 2012 will see Korean manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS) took the lead in the mobile manufacturing race. Preliminary figures for 2012 global shipments put Samsung as the top OEM, displacing Nokia which previously held that position for 14 years.

Samsung is expected to account for 29 percent of the mobile market in 2012, which is up from 24 percent in the previous year (see chart below). Nokia, on the other hand, drops to an expected 24 percent from 30 percent last year. Wayne Lam, senior analyst at iSuppli, elaborated on this changing of the guard in the mobile space:

Samsung’s successes and Nokia’s struggles in the cellphone market this year were determined entirely by the two companies’ divergent fortunes in the smartphone sector.

According to preliminary figures from iSuppli

How will Apple fare? The Cupertino company is forecasted to be a distant third, accounting for 10 percent of all global shipments. ZTE and LG round out the top five with six percent and four percent respectively.

If we drill down to the smartphone space, which iSuppli says has grown by 35.5 percent this year, you’ll see exactly where Nokia has failed. Where the company accounted for 16 percent of all smartphones in 2011, it will only account for five percent this year. Samsung, in contrast, will jump from 20 percent market share of smartphones to 28 percent in 2012. Its success this year has been largely due to its flagship Galaxy S3, which Samsung announced in November had surpassed 30 million units sold.

As for Apple’s smartphone shipments, those will stay about the same, up one percent in 2012 to 20 percent.

Google Zeitgeist map

It’s that time of year again, when we see all sorts of media publishing a barrage of year-in-review pieces. Obviously some are better than others, and one of my favorites so far is Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) extensive presentation of hot topics from the past year. Its Zeitgeist 2012 page is a fun overview of what the world was searching for over in 2012, as is its video summary which is included below.

So what was big in Asia over the past year? Google points out that all things mobile proved to be very hot this year. Asia’s fascination with mobile, if it wasn’t apparent already, was hard to miss in 2012, as Apple’s iPad 3 was a trending search in China, but so were ‘Android games.’ The iPad Mini and iOS 6 were popular in Japan, as were searches about popular chat app Line, and how to use it. Samsung had a successful year in 2012, and in Vietnam the Samsung’s Galaxy was one of the most popular searches. Even in India, the perpetual vaporware Aakash tablet was a trending search.

As for the most discussed topics, it’s pretty fascinating to note that while PSY’s infectious Gangnam Style was the second most popular search worldwide (behind the late Whitney Houston), that certain Asian regions proved practically immune from this viral video, notably India, Japan, and Taiwan.

If you’d like to drill down to see more insights about your own country, do head over to Google’s Zeitgeist page and give it a try. It’s pretty fascinating.

Google isn’t alone in its efforts to summarize the past year for us. Twitter has an insightful overview of what the world was talking about in the past year, as well as a function that lets you view your own personal year of Tweeting via a Vizify page. In much the same way, Facebook has a clever personalized Year-in-Review page where you can see a summary of all your 2012 activity.

What will you remember most about 2012? Let us know in the comments.

The Sydney Morning Herald cites numbers from Japan’s Camera and Imaging Products Association that say global shipments of digital cameras from Japanese companies are down 42 percent in September compared to the same time the year before. While some of this is due to a high yen and widespread boycotts of Japanese products in China, the effects that smartphones have had on the industry shouldn’t be underestimated.

But as smartphones up their camera capabilities, camera companies will try to make smarter point-and-shoot models, with features like wi-fi connectivity, cloud storage, and social sharing becoming more common on cameras.

Samsung’s recent Galaxy Camera is a good example of this. But the Korean maker is in a good position to experiment with smart features given its dominance in the smartphone business so far. Other traditional camera makers likely won’t be as quick (although it’s good to see Nikon trying).

But given that many high-end smartphones are beginning to rival the photo quality of many compact camera, it a hard for manufactures to expect consumers to buy both. Just like many casual gamers have made a choice to move away from consoles, smartphones are only going to become a more attractive choice for casual photographers.

It hardly needs to be said that Samsung’s (005930:KS) Galaxy S3 has been a success for the Korean electronics maker. It was just this past Monday when the company announced that its flagship smartphone had surpassed the lofty milestone of 30 million units sold.

And now research firm Strategy Analytics says that according to its estimates, the Galaxy S3 sold 18 million units in the third quarter of 2012, exceeding the 16.2 million iPhone 4S units shipped by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) during the same period. That makes it, for the time being, the most popular smartphone on the planet in the galaxy!

Of course, Apple’s shiny new iPhone 5 was only released in September, so Samsung’s moment in the sun will likely be short lived. Strategy Analytics expects that the iPhone 5 will outship the Galaxy S3 in the fourth quarter, putting Apple right back on top.

[Source: Strategy Analytics]

Today, Indonesia’s biggest telco Telkomsel, together with Samsung Indonesia, launched a BBM-like package deal for popular third-party chat apps called ‘Chat and Share’. The package deal would make online messaging costs separate from regular data plans in Indonesia, which is great for serious chat app fans. The new package deal is available only for Samsung Android devices.

The ‘Chat and Share’ package deal offers integration with Facebook and Twitter, and allows 500MB of monthly [1] data for third-party chat apps like Line, KakaoTalk, WhatsApp, and ChatOn. This is similar to the ‘Blackberry Lifestyle’ deal Telkomsel offers Blackberry users, which gives the same social media integration and also unlimited usage of BBM. The big difference lies in the price, as ‘Chat and Share’ is a lowly IDR 20,000 ($2) per month whereas the ‘Blackberry Lifestyle’ costs more than twice as much, at IDR 45,000 ($4.70) for the first month of usage [2].

Detik cites Ririn Windaryani, the marketing VP of Telkomsel Group today as saying that Telkomsel has around 5.1 million registered Blackberry customers at the moment. She also acknowledged the rising popularity of Android, as it now has two million Android customers, a number that has soared 200 percent over the past year. The VP of Samsung Indonesia explained via Detik that 40 percent of all Indonesian smartphones use Android, and four out of five of those are Samsung devices.

Beginning of the End for RIM?

It was just yesterday that we noted that RIM would have cause to worry if chat apps receive BBM-like package deals. And that has happened already. The biggest telco in the country seems to be leading that movement by offering two package deals now for unlimited chat apps usage (the other is here and was launched back in July). These deals will be strong challengers to Blackberry’s exclusive BBM services.

So what are the reasons customers might jump from Blackberry to Samsung or other Android smartphones? First, users can now get the free calling service that’s also part of KakaoTalk or Line on Android, which is unavailable on Blackberry. Second, Android has a bigger array of games and other fun apps, all more attractive to young Indonesian users.

This might only be the beginning of the upheaval for RIM’s BlackBerry in the country, since the other Indonesian operators will likely consider offering similar deals as well in the future. Blackberry 10 may well be RIM’s final chance to save itself.

[Via Chip.co.id, original image: images.wikia.com]

Kompas wrote up an interesting interview with three big gadget vendors during the annual Indonesian IT exhibition, Indocomtech, which finished yesterday after running for a week. The verdict: Android phones are becoming more popular compared to Blackberry devices this year – and that’s proved by Android winning the event’s sales race.

First, the Indonesian gadget vendor Erafone said that out of 1,200 gadgets sold at Indocomtech up to Saturday, 800 of them were Android devices, with Blackberrys making up the remaining 400. A second vendor, Global Teleshop, said that during this year’s event, the ratio/percentage of Android and Blackberry devices sold was 60:40, compared to last year when the sales numbers were equal. The third vendor is OkeShop, which said that Blackberry has been dethroned by Samsung for the number one position as the most popular mobile gadget in terms of sales at the event. The rising popularity of Samsung devices was also pointed out by Erafone. And so that’s a 3-0 win for Android among those retailers.

But of course these event-specific numbers still do show that Blackberry remains quite popular in Indonesia. And we need to consider that many gadget brands are using the Android platform, whereas the Blackberry platform appears only on RIM-made hardware. But Indonesia’s geeks – the kind that would attend Indocomtech – are clearly starting to be more open to trying out the Android platform in the country.

SOS For Blackberry?

The danger might lie in the future, when people who have tried out both Blackberry and Android devices will come to the conclusion that Android, having more games and more fun entertainment apps, is simply a better platform for them. And the blinding progress of chat apps in the country, such as WeChat and KakaoTalk, points to BBM becoming overshadowed too.

RIM seriously needs to worry about one of its biggest markets (if not the biggest). Especially if one of those chat apps can convince mobile telcos to start selling BBM-like packages whereby online messaging is separate from your mobile data allowance. Now THAT would be the beginning of the end for RIM, unless the long-awaited Blackberry 10 can turn a lot of heads – and change a lot of minds. Because right now, Android is looking like the most appealing mobile OS of all for Indonesia’s most clued-up gadget fans.

[Image source: freshtechweb.com]

The Samsung Galaxy Note II will start selling in Indonesia this Saturday in five cities: Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Medan, and Makassar. Samsung Indonesia announced that the handset will be sold at IDR 7.5 million ($780). Every buyer will receive a bundled starter-pack from one of the three operator partners (Telkomsel, Indosat, and XL), and get free data for up to 12 months.

There will be a promotional discount offered on launch day. Credit card users will receive an IDR 500,000 ($52) discount, while BCA credit card users will receive around IDR 1.1 million ($114) [1] off of the price tag.

The Samsung Indonesia customer service representative tells me that usually it will take two to four weeks before the newly launched device will be available in nearby stores. The quantity of Galaxy Note II is limited during the launch, but Samsung has not revealed how many will be available. With the launch of other Samsung phones in the past – like the Galaxy SII last summer – proving to be very popular, it’s likely that all the Note II phones will sell out.

Meanwhile, Erafone offers better discount deals on the Samsung Galaxy Note II pre-orders, which run until today. You can check those out here.

[Via Kompas]

Photo: Erafone

Samsung Indonesia is now ready to open its first pre-orders for the new Samsung Galaxy Note II. Erafone, as one of the biggest phone retail stores in Indonesia, is running the pre-order scheme. Samsung is offering a big cut in the price from Rp7,499,000 (over $780) to Rp5,299,000 (over $550) – but the discount comes only by paying for it via credit card installments for 12 months at a zero percent interest rate. This price promo is valid only for credit card holders of BCA, BNI, Mandiri, and Citibank.

For carrier bundling, you can pick either Telkomsel or Indosat. If you choose Indosat, you will have to subscribe to Indosat services for 12 months for Rp200,000 (over $20) each month. Yet you can get the benefit of 4GB of 3G data per month with speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps, and voice credit lasting 1,800 minutes for calling other Indosat subscribers.

In contrast, if you opt for Telkomsel, the contract plan for 12 months will cost Rp250,000 (over $26) each month. That gives you 4GB of 3G per month, 175 minutes of free talk, 10 minutes worth of international calls, and 350 SMS.

The down payment for both carriers is Rp500,000 (over $52). The pre-order period runs to the 10th of October. The first Galaxy Note II devices in Indonesia will ship from the 12th to 21st of October. The pre-order process can be started here on the Erafone site.

Meanwhile, if you love quizzes (or free stuff), Samsung Indonesia is giving away a Galaxy Note II for free every day with different challenges. You need to create a doodle, write something, or submit a photograph in response to daily challenges set by the company on Twitter with specific hashtags. Part of the judging process has been assigned to three local creative talents: Iwet Ramadhan (fashion designer) for #Note2draw, Adib Hidayat (music journalist) for #Note2write, and Renny Fernandez (film-maker) for #Note2capture.

To join the competition, you first need to link up your Twitter account by accessing the 1 Day 1 Note website. The Samsung Galaxy Note II freebies are up for grabs until October 12th.

After Apple’s partner Foxconn recently looked into Indonesia to build a manufacturing plant, here comes Samsung following the same route. The Indonesian unit of South Korea’s Samsung Group, PT Samsung Electronics Indonesia, was stating its interest in building a mobile phone plant in Indonesia on Friday.

Samsung (005930:KS) already has an electronic devices factory in Indonesia, but it’s apparently not enough. According to Kompas, the head of Samsung’s unit in Indonesia, Lee Kanh Hyung, expressed Samsung’s intention after a meeting between several Korean companies and Indonesian Industry Minister M.S. Hidayat.

Mr. Hidayat said that the ministry will support Samsung’s plan and provide incentives to set up the plant. Hidayat also explained that the government needs to convince potential investors that overlapping regulations and red tape won’t hurt their investments.

Last month Hidayat also welcomed Taiwan’s Foxconn investment to spend around $10 billion to set up manufacturing centers in the country. Hidayat said that the new Foxconn plant will officially launch on July 6th, 2013.

The consumer electronics business director of Samsung Electronic Indonesia, Iffan Suryanto, said in April 2012 that Samsung targeted mobile device sales of $1 billion in Indonesia this year. For 2011, Samsung Indonesia contributed approximately 0.5 percent of Samsung’s worldwide total revenue, which reached $145.2 billion. He added:

Until now, mobile devices are still the flagship product [in Indonesia] with a contribution of 65 to 70 percent of Samsung Indonesia’s total revenue.

We’ll look out for Samsung hopefully confirming this in the near future.

The latest quarterly report from global market intelligence firm IDC shows that the second quarter of 2012 isn’t the happiest one for the PC market in both the Philippines and particularly Indonesia. The PC market in the Philippines saw a little growth of only 1.5 percent (total shipments of 551,000 units); but the country didn’t record any decline on the previous quarter.

The report showed that the growth in the Philippines’ market can be mainly attributed to the smaller PC vendors’ growth in the country. They were able to take advantage of in-demand mini notebooks not yet fully fulfilled by the top two vendors, Acer and Samsung. The trend is predicted to continue with the top two vendors facing stiff competition for the rest of the year.

What to expect in the third quarter? The launch of Windows 8 soon will affect the Philippines market quite significantly. Vendors would want to hold their old stock because of that. But modest growth could still be recorded, IDC reckons, as a result of projected government and enterprise spending.

In Indonesia

The same can’t be said for Indonesia as the country suffered a decline of 6.5 percent (total shipments of 1,300,000 units), as there was a fall in demand in the market, as much as 22 percent. IT project delays by the government in the education sector and the volatile currency also did not help much during Q2. Deddie Sionader, the client devices market analyst at IDC Indonesia, said that consumers’ attention was also distracted by the mobile phone and tablet markets.

Acer and Asus are still the number one and two PC vendors in Indonesia. HP was able to take the third position from Toshiba, which now drops to fourth place.

[Source: IDC #1 and #2 via Kompas, Original picture source]

The latest report from analysts Canalys says that China is going to own almost 50 percent of the 594 million smartphones that are shipped in the Asia Pacific region in 2016. That number equates to almost 25 percent of the worlds’ projected smartphone shipments in that year. The researchers explained that superb phones from the likes of Apple and Samsung have helped sparked this smartphone domination. The growth and low-cost chipset providers will also help the country’s feature phone companies to migrate their businesses to the smartphone category.

Smartphone sales in China are already remarkable this year. Nicole Peng, Canalys research director for China, explained further about how smartphone sales will penetrate beyond the first- and second-tier cities in China in the coming years – out into smaller cities and the countryside. She said that the GPRS smartphones will gain momentum with consumers in the third- and fourth-tier cities, where 3G coverage would still be limited, mainly due to the low costs of some smartphones. The report expects a dramatic increase in first-time smartphone users in the country over the next year.

In terms of tablet shipments, the US is expected to retain its number one position, beating China by a factor of four in terms of the number of tablet shipments in the country. The report also shows the power struggle between iOS and Android in smartphone and tablet platforms over the next few years. You can check the full report here.

[Source: Canalys via Bisnis, Image Source]

(Image via 591hx.com)

The hi-tech manufacturing hub around the city of Shenzhen, in southern China, is set to be hit with a rise in the minimum wage of 13.3 percent in 2013. According to Wired, that could cause something of a shockwave through gadget manufacturers in that area – Taiwanese OEMs like Foxconn [1], for example, which does the final assembly of so many Apple products – that might result in inflated costs for the phones, tablets, and other gadgets we love to buy.

But after weighing up the figures and considering the changing manufacturing landscape in China, we don’t think this’ll make too hard an impact on consumers. For one, Shenzhen saw its minimum wage go up in February this year already, by 13.6 percent, to stand at 1,500 RMB (US$236) per month. The anticipated hike for 2013 shouldn’t be a surprise, as the China Daily points out that, “Local governments are required to raise their minimum wage levels at least once every two years.” If it does rise 13.3 percent next year, probably again in February during Chinese New Year, then it’ll stand at 1,700 RMB ($268).

Other factors come into play, too. Shenzhen is not quite the manufacturing hub that it once was, and it seems that the international media haven’t yet followed the trail of gadget guts to newer tech hubs in, say, Jiangsu province in eastern China – where a great deal of Samsung, Apple, and Nokia components are made – or to much poorer inland areas where land and labor costs are significantly lower. And so minimum wages in other regions of the country are more of a factor than ever before.

Taiwan’s Foxconn (LSE:HHPD; HKEX:2038; TPE:2354) has blazed this trail, and it has already had a profound – and positive – impact on one town in central China’s Henan province where Foxconn’s two-year old plant now accounts for 48 percent of the province’s total exports. And others have moved too. Acer was making about 30 to 40 percent of its notebooks in the municipality of Chongqing by the end of last year; Philips opted for Chengdu in neighboring Sichuan province; others, such as Dell, are shifting to central China too, and are even looking towards ‘shipping’ by train directly to Europe from China’s amply hilly bosom.

So, the Shenzhen minimum wage hike is good for its factory workers – so long as greedy local landlords don’t screw them for extra rent once again – in an area that’s definitely not cheap to live in. But labor costs in other areas of China need to be taken into account as well, and so gadgets shouldn’t see noticeable or alarming price hikes in the coming year.

Japanese mobile carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) held a small press event today to show off a few new mobile devices. Perhaps the most notable among them, I thought, was the NEC Medias Tab UL N-08D. This is a razor-thin 7.9mm thin tablet, with a 7-inch, 800 x 1280 resolution display. It weighs in at just 249 grams. Running on Android 4.0, the tablet is powered by a 1.5 GHz processor; more or less par for the course.

But what was especially fun about this tablet was that it features haptic feedback, or in other words, when you press buttons on the touchscreen, you feel a slight vibration response. So when you dial numbers, or when you type using the on-screen keyboard, you feel a response. There’s even a fun super-ball game that demonstrates the function, making the tablet vibrate when the ball hits the sides of the box (see picture). I had a chance to try it out briefly, and it works pretty well and is an interesting experience. Personally, I’m a big fan of touchscreens with haptic feedback, and hopefully in the future we can see it integrated into our mobile games.

As for the rest of the specifications, the tablet is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera on the rear, and a 2 megapixel camera on the front. It will be compatible with Docomo’s Xi LTE network, and will also feature one-seg television. The Medias Tab UL N-O8D is set for release in September or October. No word yet on the price tag for this one.

NEC Medias Tab, superball game with haptic feedback

NEC Medias Tab, side view, 7.9mm thin

I’ve noted before that there might be an opportunity for tablet makers in Japan to succeed with the 7-inch form factor where they might not overseas. The ability to hold and operate a device with one hand is important for many consumers in Japan, since many people spend so much time commuting on crowded trains.

Similarly, Docomo also showed off the Samsung (005930:KS) Galaxy Tab 7.7 Plus tablet, which is also 7.9mm thin, and is said to be the world’d largest organic EL display at 7.7 inches. It will also feature a 1.5 GHz dual core processor, and comes with a 3 megapixel camera on the rear and a 2 megapixel camera around the front.

It will also be the first Galaxy model with support for Docomo’s NotTV streaming video service subscription service, which recently surpassed 100,000 users.

The Galaxy Tab 7.7 Plus tablet is scheduled for release in October or November.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 Plus SC-01E

2G vs 3G vs Wifi

Among all the mobile visitors to Baidu, we also see a strong trend in greater 3G usage, now up to 15.6 percent of pageviews, up from just 6 percent exactly a year ago. If those visitors are broken down by iOS and Android versus everyone else, it should be no surprise that 3G usage wins out:

Phone brands

Apple accounts for a strong 8 percent of such visits to Baidu sites, which is impressive for just a few models of iPhone and iPad. That makes it the third most-used brand of mobile device, by Baidu’s observations. Nokia still (though not for much longer) reigns over Samsung:

Breaking down the Android space, it should be no surprise that Samsung and HTC rule the roost. Huawei is a very strong third, with 9.8 percent; but that’s down a bit from the previous quarter. The smaller homegrown phone-maker Xiaomi sure is making an impact, with its one single model now accounting for 4 percent:

But the iPhone remains the king, just as it was when I last looked in 2011 Q4. At that time, the iPhone was the biggest model observed visiting Baidu, with 4.48 percent, but now it has rocketed to 9.6 percent in the newest stats. The Xiaomi M1 makes an appearance as well:

Mobile OS

Android is, as we expected, now bigger than ever before – the new stats show that 21.4 percent of all Baidu’s mobile hits were on Android devices. The Symbian S60 platform, as seen in many recent Nokias, holds on to a shrinking third spot. But the presence of the generic “feature phone” label, and other JAVA-based OSes like MTK and S40, shows that non-smartphones – like the Nokia 5233 that’s ranked second only to the iPhone in terms of popular models – are still widespread across China. That gives smartphone makers a lot of scope for growth.

Changing Telcos

The search giant is seeing a sea change in the dominance of China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) – it’s now seriously ebbing away, flowing to a rising China Telecom (NYSE:CHA; HKG:0728):

For the full PDF report, head to the ‘Baidu Open Mobile’ page.

Photo: news.mydrivers.com

According to new figures from Chinese research firm Analysys International, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad is doing very, very well in China’s tablet space. For the second quarter of 2012, iPads accounted for 72.6 percent of the entire tablet market, which is up 20 percent on the previous quarter (see interactive chart below).

The folks over at iDownload Blog point out that Apple’s global share of the tablet space was about 68.2 percent for Q2, citing recent numbers from IDC.

Analysys notes, of course, that Apple’s third generation (aka ‘new’) iPad went on sale in China in the second quarter, so sales leading up to that would have been slower.

Interestingly, Chinese manufacturer Lenovo (HKG:0992) snagged the second spot behind Apple, accounting for 8.38 percent of the tablet market. It was followed by eBen eRen (who I confess, I’ve never heard of) at 3.63 percent, and then Samsung with a surprisingly low share at 3.59 percent.

Download image version of chart

The Top Brand Awards 2012, conducted by Frontier Consulting Group and Marketing magazine, wrapped up last night at Hotel Mulia, Jakarta. The award lists extensive brand categories in Indonesia ranging from food products to automotives. Here we bring to you a brief overview of the tech category winners:

Online Shopping Category

The winner for the new category ‘online shop’ is Tokobagus.com with an astounding 47.5 percent of the vote, making it a clear winner compared to runner up Kaskus with 15.6 percent. It’s quite interesting that e-commerce giant Multiply didn’t make it into the top four. Third place goes to Berniaga.com with 9.2 percent and fourth place to Bhinneka.com with 3.3 percent.

On this occasion, Ichwan Sitorus, the PR manager of TokoBagus shared some of their recent stats via Kabar Bisnis:

• There are millions of advertisement listings, with about 70,000 to 100,000 new daily ads.
• Daily number of visitors is 800,000 to 1,000,000.
• Monthly transaction value is reaching IDR 1.4 billion ($148,000) to 1.5 billion ($158,000) in 2012.

Mobile and Smartphones Category

In the mobile phone category, Nokia is champion with an impressive 54.2 percent, leaving the rest of the pack behind. The other runners-up didn’t even reach ten percent. They included second place Huawei with 8.5 percent, third place Samsung with 4.8 percent, and fourth place Nexian with 4.6 percent.

Now on to the smartphone category, did Samsung or the iPhone win it? No. Indonesia definitely loves Blackberry as it is the victor against Nokia in that category with 40.7 percent and 37.9 percent respectively. Samsung and Nexian took third and fourth places with 6.6 percent and 3.9 percent. Apple’s iPhone was fifth place in the vote with 3.8 percent.

The winners didn’t change much for both the mobile phone and smartphone category from the 2011 awards. The only difference in the mobile phone category is that Sony Ericsson fell from third spot in 2011 to fifth spot in 2012. iPhone had a similar fate in the smartphone category, dropping from third place in 2011 to fifth place in 2012, overtaken by new player Nexian.

Notebook Category

In this category the resounding champion is Acer with 42.1 percent. Second and third places go to Toshiba and HP with 15.9 percent and 13.8 percent respectively. Apple is in fourth place with a meager 6.1 percent. They’re all in the same exact positions as in 2011.

About the Top Brand Survey

The Top Brand survey was conducted among a total of 3,250 random respondents from eight big cities in Indonesia: Bandung, Jakarta, Makassar, Medan, Semarang, Surabaya, Balikpapan, and Pekanbaru. Respondents are aged 15 to 65 with an average expendable income per month of between IDR 750,000 ($79) and IDR 3,500,000 ($370). For the complete list of winners, you can see it here.

It has been another record-breaking quarter of smartphone sales in China with more than 42 million shipped in the country in Q2 2012. That’s from the newest report by the analysts Canalys. That represents 199 percent year-on-year growth in smartphone sales in China, and 32 percent up on the previous quarter.

Canalys also notes that:

China accounted for 27 percent of the 158 million global smartphone shipments, compared to 16 percent for the United States.

Samsung (005930:KS) remained the top smartphone vendor in China with 17 percent market share of sales. (Backing up web impressions stats we looked at last year showing that Chinese consumers love the Samsung Galaxy SII). But it can’t be complacent, as its sales were pretty flat. In second-, third, and fourth-place are, respectively, ZTE, Lenovo, and Huawei – all local brands. Lenovo saw astonishing 2,665 growth in shipments – but then it’s always easier to improve on a previously crappy performance. Apple fell to fifth place despite being up 102 percent year-on-year. HTC grew 389 percent, mainly on the back of its new Desire V phones which look to be replicating the success of the first Desire model. Nokia and Motorola both fell sharply.

Here’s all that condensed into our one simple graphic for China [1]:

The one primary winner among all this is Android, Google’s mobile OS, which is now on 68 percent of all smartphones sold globally. Apple’s iOS, by contrast, is on just 26 million of them.

Samsung is on top worldwide with “over 45 million” smartphones sold – that’s 35 percent of the pie. Apart from Taiwan’s HTC, no Chinese brands cracked the top five. Yet. Interestingly, that differs from IDC recent report for the same period that declares ZTE a new-comer in the global top five smartphone brands.

[Source: Canalys; via TechCrunch]

Samsung Galaxy S3, Tokyo launch

Samsung’s Galaxy has reportedly sold more than 6.5 million units since its launch six weeks back. The flagship handset from Korean manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS) is in high demand, and according to a Reuters report today, it could mean unprecedented quarterly numbers in mobile shipments for the company.

The report says that Samsung may have sold as many as 50 million smartphones in the quarter, led by the Galaxy S3 and its predecessor the Galaxy S2. In contrast, Apple is expected to sell 30.5 million iPhones, although the iPhone is late in its product cycle, and a dip before a refresh is to be expected. As you can see in the interactive chart below, the rise of both Apple and Samsung in the smartphone space has been pretty remarkable when compared to other prominent competitors [1].

In Japan the S3 went on sale on June 28, and since then has sold over 200,000 units according to local carrier Docomo (NYSE:DCM), with hopes to sell over a million this year.

Meanwhile in China, the company has targeted the entry-level smartphone market with a couple of low-cost handsets, following a market trend that is becoming ever more intriguing as more companies put forth budget smartphone offerings.

[Download image version of this chart]

This year and last has seen a wave of smartphones and mobiles OSes being launched by Chinese web companies such as Alibaba (Aliyun), Qihoo, Shanda, Baidu, and Xiaomi. All those are very familiar names to web users in China, and the phones – some of which I recently looked into in detail – are pretty sweet. In fact, these represent a huge threat to hardware makers who’re currently doing well in China – namely Apple, HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. Hey, they might even threaten other Chinese phone-makers such as ZTE and Huawei.

Here are six reasons why I think these (mostly) Android-based phones from Chinese web companies could soon by depriving Samsung et al of tens of millions – and, later, hundreds of millions – of Android smartphone sales:

1. Cheaper - Starting with the dramatic Xiaomi phone launch that emphasised its 1,999 RMB (then $313) price tag with giant numerals, getting your hands on one of these is generally a lot cheaper than mid-range new products from the likes of HTC, Samsung, or Motorola. For example, HTC unveiled the Daren phone for China after the Xiaomi release, but it was a low-end, smallish-screen handset that cost a few bucks more than the dual-core Xiaomi with the four-inch screen. Motorola has been trying a bit harder to make models that are adapted to local consumers, but they’re not able to compete on price either. To make it even tougher, the new Shanda Bambook phone has taken dual-core, hi-res screen prices down to as little as 1,299 RMB.

2. Better pre-installed software - Being web and/or software companies, the makers of these new Chinese smartphones make some superb apps – light years ahead of what the hardware makers tend to pre-install. It’s all useful stuff from popular services – like Baidu’s Ting for music streaming, or Shanda’s Mknote for cloud note syncing – and none of the undeletable crapware that users have suffered in the past.

3. Brands are more recognizable and accessible - Allied to that last point, web companies like Alibaba and Baidu are well known, and feel a lot more familiar – and perhaps trustworthy – to consumers than the more abstract moniker behind a hardware maker like ZTE or Motorola.

4. Not pre-flashed - On a more obscure point, it’s worth noting that a lot of people in China buy grey-import phones that have been smuggled into China. They tend to be cheaper, having avoided import taxes. But then these “grey” phones almost always – especially for the easily tweaked Android platform – get “flashed” with a different ROM by some shady middleman who gets a cut for preinstalling some apps or third-party app stores on it. Needless to say, having random people who work outside of the law tweaking your phone is a very bad idea in terms of digital security.

5. More likely to get updates - As a corollary to that previous point, those pre-flashed phones will never get software updates from the manufacturer as they have been too heavily modified. But these new breed of smartphones will get updates. Xiaomi pushes monthly minor updates, and will eventually update its M1 phones to Android 4.0, and Alibaba has pushed Aliyun 2.0 to its customers.

6. Chinese consumers prefer unlocked phones - And it’s unlocked phones that the web companies are dishing out, avoiding the telco contracts (and telco crapware; see #2) that are not a popular choice.

What’s your take on these new competitors? Hit the comments, and add your own points in favor – or against!

On Thursday morning in Tokyo, NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) held a pair of launch events for the flagship handset of its new summer lineup, the Samsung Galaxy S III. I had a chance to swing by the Yurakucho Bic Camera event, where Docomo’s recently appointed CEO Kaoru Kato made an appearance to make the occasion.

For Korea-based manufacturer Samsung (005930:KS), the Galaxy S III represents the strongest Android challenger to Apple’s iPhone on the market, and it will be interesting to see not only how Japanese consumers take to it, but also how consumers around the globe respond.

J.K. Shin, the president of Samsung mobile communications, recently noted that the handset will sell better than previous Galaxy models, and should pass the 10 million unit milestone by July.

The Galaxy S III went on sale in the United States on June 21, and then on June 25 in its home market of South Korea. Today’s launch marks the phone’s official entrance into the Japanese market.

The U.S.-based cloud storage site Dropbox has today launched a Korean-language version of its service. Users in Korea can make use of this right away on the web app (pictured above) and on Android [1]. Updates to the PC, Mac, and iOS software will come in due course.

The Korean support is timely, coming just before the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III next month. Dropbox and the Korean Samsung (005930:KS) brand have a deal wherein buyers of the new flagship Sammie phone will get 50GB of free space for two years – something that’s normally worth US$200.

Dropbox head of mobile business develpment, Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, said this morning:

Korea has been a leader in mobile technology adoption and innovation for many years. We are particularly thrilled to work with global partners, like Samsung, to jointly offer a localized version of Dropbox to the Korean people. We look forward to launching with millions of new Android phones and tablets this year.

That free extra storage promotion will apply to selected other Android-powered Samsung phones as well, giving Dropbox the potential to reach a lot more of the nation’s keen smartphone buyers. The new language support will help a lot, despite many youngsters being good at reading English. Samsung recently surpassed Nokia as the world’s top phone-maker, thanks in no small part to the success of its Galaxy S series – and to the loyalty of its compatriot customers.

Apps Foundry has officially released its SCOOP app on the Android platform. SCOOP was initially an iPad-only app that allows users to download and read magazines. Its debut on Android comes eighteen months after its launch.

SCOOP for Android has a different user interface than its iOS version, but it also has adopted some features that aren’t available on iOS, such as a payment options for bank transfers or PayPal, and optimization for low-end Android phones.

Willson Cuaca, the CEO of Apps Foundry, explained more:

This is a significant improvement because there aren’t many mobile applications in Indonesia that are using bank transfers to sell digital content and this is running without e-currency. This system is needed to adapt and fill users’ need in Indonesia. For this Apps Foundry has worked together with Finnet, a subsidiary of Telkom. SCOOP is also optimized for low-end Android phones with slower processors and smaller memory and it is available for 16 different Android phone screens.

In terms of content, the SCOOP team says it has added around 90 80 percent (Correction: 80 percent is the correct figure, as informed by the company.) of local magazines in Indonesia and plans to add to that in the future. It has brought some well known publishers such as Gramedia Majalah Group, MNC Group, and McGraw-Hill from the United States. The startup also powers the Samsung eReading app in Indonesia.

Apps Foundry now has four products on the market:

• SCOOP for iOS – which has successfully distributed more than 1 million magazines via iPads and iPhones.
• Samsung eReading powered by SCOOP – an exclusive Android app for Samsung, the newest version of which will be released together with the Samsung Galaxy S3 in the country.
• SCOOP Interactive – an interactive iOS newsstand based on HTML5 that will carry over 10 magazines.
• SCOOP for Android – the new baby, now available for tablets and smartphones runing Android 2.2 to 4.0.

With plenty of funds and claiming to be already profitable, Apps Foundry has also acquired media startups/blogs Makemac and GameSaku. Though it initially built a reading platform, those two media acquisitions suggest that Apps Foundry is trying to build around its own content, although it’s still unclear what its next steps and products will be.

Get the new SCOOP Newsstand for Android from Google Play.

Disclosure: Willson is part of East Ventures, an investor in this blog. See our ethics page for further details.

Before we get to the shiny charts: a quick reminder that this is data gathered based on Baidu pageviews, so it doesn’t apply to the entire Chinese mobile web browsing market. That said, Baidu has such a huge percentage of China’s overall search market share that Baidu’s numbers are likely very representative of overall internet trends in China.

OK, let’s get to it! Here are the top twenty handset models in China, by percentage of Baidu pageviews (note the Android handsets in green):

That iPhone stat has nearly doubled since we looked at Baidu’s previous report for 2011 Q4. At that time the iPhone’s lion’s share was at 4.48 percent.

It’s interesting to look at the massive contrast between this and the data we saw yesterday, which indicates that iOS users account for just 5.8 percent of mobile web browsing. Of course, the data is not contradictory; rather that big iPhone bar is the result of Apple’s limited handset offerings — there is only the iPhone. In contrast, note that while no single Nokia handset is anywhere near as popular as the iPhone, eight of the top twenty handsets are made by Nokia.

Diving more specifically into Android handsets, the fastest-growing segment of China’s smartphone market, we can also see some interesting things:

One of the most interesting things about this graph is the popularity of Xiaomi’s mi-one (also called M1) handset, apparently the fourth-most-popular handset model despite being only available in limited quantities and being generally difficult to find. That certainly bodes well for Xiaomi’s future device launches. Also of note are HTC and Samsung, whom eagle-eye readers (or just readers who can count) will note each have five devices on the top twenty list. Overall, there’s no one handset that’s blowing any of the others out of the water here. It will be very interesting to see how this graph looks a year from now, once the market has been flooded with the low-priced, Android-based smartphones we’ve been writing so much about lately.

Samsung looks for more success in 2012 with Galaxy III

A new report from Gartner claims that because of decreased demand from Asia, worldwide sales of mobile phones dropped two percent in the first quarter of 2012 on the same time the previous year. The overall total for the first quarter was 419.1 million units shipped, according to the research firm.

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, explained:

Global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region. […] The first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia – which is driven by Chinese New Year, saw a lack of new product launches from leading manufacturers, and users delayed upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving later in the year.

Looking at the breakdown of mobile vendors (see interactive chart below), however, it should be noted that not everyone did poorly, far from it in fact. As we mentioned previously, Samsung (005930:KS), who displaced Nokia as the top mobile maker in the quarter, saw a whopping 25.9 percent increase in units shipped over last year, accounting for 40 percent of the Android market while no other vendor could surpass 10 percent. Not to be outdone, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) saw a very productive quarter as well with its sales growing 96.2 percent thanks to strong iPhone sales in China.

Gupta noted when speaking to Business Week that the market for feature phones and low-end handsets has declined significantly with consumers waiting for better smartphone deals. We hate to point fingers at Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) again, but its sales dropped 22.7 percent. The breakdown of operating systems (as you can see below) shows that while Android and iOS have skyrocketed, Symbian has plummeted. It’s notable that RIM didn’t have a particularly good quarter either.

While it may have looked like a good strategy to target the so-called ‘next billion’ by focusing on feature phone offerings for emerging Asia markets (again, sorry Nokia…), it appears as though consumers in those markets might just be waiting for something a little ‘smarter.’

Samsung (005930:KS) recently surpassed Nokia to become the global leader in mobile phone shipments, but apparently the company still wants more. According to a China Daily report over the weekend, the Korean handset maker intends to take a third of China’s entry-level smartphone market this year.

Of course this makes a lot of sense considering two important factors which we have noted here on this blog recently: 1) China is expected to overtake the US as the world’s biggest smartphone market this year [1], and 2) the typical smartphone user in China earns a comparatively modest income, making about $12,698 per year on average.

The company announced on Friday that it is offering two models – the S6102E and S6352 – priced at 1,158 RMB ($183) and 1,599 RMB ($253) respectively. China Daily quotes Wang Tong, Samsung China’s senior vice-president and CTO on the move:

There is a strong market trend that prompts us to provide lower-price smartphones in China … and I think it’s time now […] We are sure that about one-third of [a predicted 60 million entry-level phones in the market this year] will be produced by Samsung.

Both these new entry level models (pictured below) will be powered by Android 2.3, and the hardware specs are fairly modest.

In other China smartphone news, Baidu’s NASDAQ:BIDU vice president of engineering recently told Reuters that it has a few partnerships to announce soon, and that it is talking with “global” handset makers to produce smartphones with Baidu’s mobile OS. Could one of these makers be Samsung? That would be an interesting combo.

So while Xiaomi is making sweet looking Android phones affordable for Chinese, it looks like it will be facing huge competition. The phone costs 1,999 RMB ($317) which is a little on the high side compared to Samsung’s — although the specs are far better. But Samsung also doesn’t have Lei Jun, who has founded/led a series of successful businesses in China, including Joyo.com, Kingsoft, MIUI, and Vancl. Chinese consumers appear to be very interested in Xiaomi too, so this is certainly going to be a fun race to watch.

[Lead image: it.sohu.com]

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

Mobile ad platform InMobi has been busy these past few days crunching ad impressions stats from across Asia, giving us insights into growing smartphone usage in various countries. Now it’s Hong Kong’s turn, where mobile advertising grew 656 percent from Q4 2010 to the same period at the end of 2011. But the picture in Hong Kong is a bleak one for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), whose iOS presence in the Chinese SAR fell 16.1 percent; in contrast, Android seemed to grow by a staggering 36.8 percent, and is now the dominant mobile OS in Hong Kong by some margin.

Smartphones as a whole now account for 80 percent of all of InMobi’s observed advertising impressions, squeezing down features-phones – or “advanced phones” as the company calls them – from 38 percent at the end of 2010 down to just 20 percent at the end of 2011.

It’s all in interesting contrast to InMobi’s stats for Vietnam, which we looked at last week – but of course, Hong Kong is a technologically much more advanced market.

There’s also good news for Samsung (005930:KS) in there, as it now has the first- and third-most popular phone in Hong Kong. Here’s the full infographic, which you can click to enlarge:

Sony was perhaps the most consistent brand, ranking in the top ten in most regions

Japan’s Nikkei BP Consulting has released the result of an interesting Asia-wide brand survey today. Its “Brand Asia 2012″ rankings span many industries, but has a number of insights into key trends surrounding the movers and shakers in tech in the region.

The survey focused on 60 global brands, as well as 40 regional for seven of the eight countries (regional brands for China, for whatever reason, were not included) [1].

Given the recent woes of Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), it may come as a surprise to many that the company ranked atop the brand rankings for India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and second in Thailand. This was observed last year as well, and expect Nokia to continue to hold significant mindshare in emerging markets as it tries to win over ‘the next billion.’ But in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, Nokia did not appear in the top ten.

It’s interesting to contrast this with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), which was the standout in more mature markets, ranking as the top brand in China [2], Japan, and Taiwan, and ranking second in South Korea. Compare that to India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand, where Apple didn’t crack the top ten.

We’ve talked about the diversity of Asia before, and certainly these result seem to indicate a sort of economic dichotomy. Surprisingly, it was only Sony (NYSE:SNE) that was consistent across all regions, as it was the brand that was ranked in the top ten in the most regions, seven of the eight. According to the report, “Although the company continues to be a source of downbeat news… in Asia Sony has a global brand asset to be proud of.”

As much as we talk about market share for these players, particularly in the mobile space, studies like this are certainly an interesting reminder of how the general population sees these brands. The rankings are below, but I encourage you to check out the full report for even more details.

Samsung says these unused components are "old" and dumped by an unknown customer, not the company itself. (Image credit: ShanghaiScrap).

Yesterday we looked at photographic evidence that suggested that some manufacturers – namely Samsung, HP, Panasonic, and AMD – were dumping new but defective gadgets and parts in the notorious Guiyu landfill in southern China. Now Samsung (005930:KS) has reached out to us, and denied that it was done directly be the company, and that the semi-conductors found in the dump (pictured above) were “old” and ditched there by an unknown user – not by Samsung or its “recycling partners.”

We still have no explanation for this sent for "repair" Panasonic PC display found at the Guiyu landfill. Click to enlarge. (Image credit: ShanghaiScrap.com).

The Samsung-branded parts were the ones most difficult to pin down, as they lacked documentation that explained how the apparently unused components got to the toxic landfill. But there was paperwork attached to items from HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Panasonic (TYO:6752) which still suggest a more direct path from the factory or repair center to the trash heaps at Guiyu. Neither HP nor Panasonic, however, have explained how the “out of warranty” and sent for “repair” parts made it to the vast and dangerous landfill.

To give Samsung a full right-of-reply, here’s the Korean manufacturer’s official response to us from its Seoul HQ:

Samsung Electronics actively promotes the take back and recycling of electronic products as part of its commitment to environmental stewardship. As an inaugural E-Stewards Enterprises member with the Basel Action Network, Samsung is committed to enforcing strict global standards for proper e-waste management to protect the environment, people, and developing countries from the hazards of electronic waste. Samsung has established recycling programs all over the world to comply with global recycling laws, and we are expanding voluntary programs, regardless of legal requirements, to continue to minimize electronic waste.

Based on our internal investigation, we confirmed that the boxes were not discarded by Samsung Electronics or by one of Samsung’s recycling partners. Furthermore, the semiconductor components contained in the boxes were manufactured in 2004 and had been shipped to a customer overseas. In the case of components – unlike finished products – all rights and ownership are transferred to the customer after a sales transaction has been completed.

That last part is the most crucial, claiming evidence that the components were not put there by the company itself. Samsung also promised it “will continue to investigate this matter and share new information as it becomes available.”

We’re reaching out to HP and Panasonic as well, and hope that they can shed some light on all the documentation attached to the dumped items, which seem to suggest a more direct link to those companies.

Note that the original discovery was made on the Shanghai Scrap blog, which is worth reading if you’re interested in e-waste as a global consumer and environmental issue.

These HP hard-drives went straight from HP to the dump at Guiyu in China because they were defective. (All images from shanghaiscrap.com).

An investigation into what makes up the e-waste that’s piling onto China’s massive Guiyu landfill has found that it contains not just old computers and gadgets from consumers around the world, but also nearly-new but defective items from HP, Samsung, and Panasonic; some of them were returned for repair, but seem to have been scrapped instead. In addition, there were unused or returned parts from chipmaker AMD (NYSE:AMD). The find was made by Adam Minter, author of the Shanghai Scrap blog, in a visit to the vast dump in southern China’s Guangdong province.

[UPDATE on April 19th, 24 hours after publishing: Samsung has responded, saying that the parts found at the landfill were "old" and put there by a third-party, not directly from the company. See the full story here].

[UPDATE on April 23rd, 5 days after publishing: HP has now also responded to the images of its "out of warranty" hard-drives at the dump (albeit with no supporting evidence of its own), stating that it "remains committed to the responsible disposal of e-waste and is thoroughly investigating this matter. HP aims to prevent e-waste from entering landfills through a variety of vendor reuse and recycling programs"].

The blogger, who’s researching for a book on the global scrap trade, was able to photograph the bar codes and other paperwork attached to some of the nearly-new parts. In a box of HP (NYSE:HPQ) hard-drives, many had been labelled as “Disqualified: Out of warranty” (pictured above), while on a Panasonic (TYO:6752) computer monitor there was a hand-written pink slip (pictured below) saying that it had come in for repair due to display issues. In both those cases, the origin seemed to be Singapore:

From Samsung (005930:KS) there were countless boxes of semi-conductors still in the original Samsung-branded boxes in which they left the factory [Update: Samsung says it has investigated, and the parts are old and were dumped by an unknown third-party. See more here]:

According to the Wikipedia page on the Guiyu landfill, the recycling methods (if they can be called that) used on the vast site are “toxic and dangerous to workers’ health” and cause “88 percent of children suffering from lead poisoning” in neighboring villages. Essentially, workers at Guiyu salvage whatever’s worth money in the gadgets and parts – such as gold, copper, silver, scrap metals – using primitive acid baths and other simple tools, with pretty much no protective equipment. To clarify: Guiyu is not a reprocessing factory – it’s just an ad-hoc outdoor dump spread across four villages where some of China’s poorest forage through the parts and make a living from what they can sell off.

This revelation of new but somewhat defective parts going straight to the dump raises many questions, principally why HP, Samsung, Panasonic, and AMD can find no better method to make use of the working parts that exist in these new components and gadgets. Also, does the dumping not contradict their own so-called green policies? With a great deal of media attention always focused on what Apple does at its Foxconn partner plants, it’d be a media disgrace for this to go ignored simply because some less headline-grabbing brands are involved in this.

Lamentably, HP and Samsung evaded questions from the Shanghai Scrap blogger for months, and did not respond to our queries today.

See the full report with more photos over on the Shanghai Scrap site.

EXTRA: So you can see the full horror of Guiyu, here are three images of the wider landfill area taken from across the web:

Chinese phone maker Meizu has just announced that its new Meizu MX Quad-core will launch in June, thereby becoming the first smartphone to rock Samsung’s (005930:KS) own Exynos A9 quad-core processor. It’ll also mark the first appearance of Android 4.0 on Meizu’s phones, overlaid with its own Flyme OS and app store.

Samsung’s Exynos A9 CPU is small – 32nm – and so will use up less power when you’re on the move. Meizu reckons it can save “up to 20 percent” of your juice. To make that go even further, the upcoming MX Quad-core will have a fairly sizable 1700mAh battery. Samsung has said it’ll generally run at 1.5GHz, but Meizu didn’t specify in its announcement today.

Other MX Quad-core standout specs include a high-res 4-inch screen – at 292 PPI – that’s close to the pixel intensity of the iPhone 4S or its Android brethren, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Plus, there’s an eight-megapixel BSI camera upfront. Upon its summer launch date, folks can choose from 32- or 64GB models which will be priced at 2,999 RMB and 3,999 RMB (US$475 and $633) respectively in an unlocked state. Separate Hong Kong prices have been set at HK$3,099 and HK$4,099.

The phone will hit Meizu resellers and its official stores in June. To prep for the launch, Meizu is today making its current MX model a bit cheaper.

Meizu will also get the satisfaction of stealing thunder from Xiaomi, the other Chinese upstart manufacturer that’s trying to make powerful yet affordable Android smartphones. Not to mention beating Samsung to market using the Korean giant’s own processor.

Reuters is reporting that its poll of analysts indicates that Samsung’s (005930:KS) cell phone sales for the period of January through March exceeds those of Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK), supplanting the Finnish phone maker as the industry’s top manufacturer for the first time in 14 years. Reuters says that on average, analysts estimate Samsung’s sales for the period to be about 88 million handsets, trumping Nokia’s reported 83 million.

For a closer look at how this shift in power took place, Horacio Dediu has estimates for Samsung’s per-quarter sales to compare with those reported by Nokia [1]. Dediu says that Samsung is estimated to have shipped about 85 million phones, surpassing Nokia’s 83 million, in line with Reuters afore mentioned estimates on the conservative end of the scale. As you might have guessed by now, Samsung’s big growth advantage over Nokia is represented almost entirely by its growth in the smartphone space. See Dediu’s chart below which breaks each makers sales down into feature phones and smartphones:

What’s remarkable here is that in a time when one would expect all handset makers to be gradually shifting energies away from feature phones to smartphones, Nokia’s smartphone business has shrunk from 24 percent of its total handset portfolio in Q3 2010 to just 14 percent in Q1 2012, according to Dediu. He adds:

The bet Nokia made many years ago was that there would be a continuing, substantial business in the “low end”. And low end meant feature phones. This strategy was still in evidence last year under the moniker “the next billion” users.

With regards to Asia, there is of course potential in that strategy. But as we’ve written here before, Nokia has found difficulty in China over the past year, and will be looking to new leadership and Windows Phone 7 to help it bounce back. But don’t be surprised to see Samsung get comfortable in the number one spot. It’s hard to imagine Nokia rebounding to overtake them given the current trajectory of both companies.

Hedy is the English branding, while the Chinese name is ‘Qi Xi’ which is actually the official local brand for the soda drink 7-Up, so not even that is original.

Ripping Off HTC

The Hedy H701 (pictured above) is a very blatant rip of the HTC Desire S. On Hedy’s own Tmall online store (see it here), which links to individual Taobao product pages, it’s selling for 999 RMB (US$158). But I’ve seen prices vary wildly from 669 to 1999 RMB on other sites, so it feels like they’re just picking random numbers.

As is always the case with such ‘shanzhai’ phones, the software shown in the screenshots might bear no resemblance to what’s actually in the phone. But the heavy Android branding on the H701, and the general ease of sticking an Android ROM into a device, means that it could well actually be running a HTC Sense-flavoured version of Google’s mobile OS. The text claims that it’s running Android 2.3, but, very suspiciously, many screenshots on the store’s item page show a much older version with that white toolbar at the top. Live photos of the device only show it switched off, which is probably not a good sign.

The H701’s specs are nowhere close to the actual Desire S, sporting only a low-res 320 by 480 pixels screen, no 3G support, and a wheezy 640MHz processor.

Note that it’s probably stuff like this that keeps Alibaba’s Taobao on the US government’s piracy blacklist, despite the company’s repeated claims of it being an unjust assessment.

Ripping Off Samsung

We’ve seen that the real Samsung Galaxy phones are proving to be China’s top choice of Android handset, so it’s not too much of a surprise that Hedy’s other smartphone clone is of Samsung’s popular product. Dubbed the Hedy H601 (pictured above), it’s priced at 559 RMB and cunningly incorporates a few style elements of the iPhone 4, thereby sort of metamorphosing the Galaxy with Apple’s much-loved phone. Clever. Specs are something of a mystery, but it comes in either white and black.

Some photoshopped images of the device show the logo at the top, while on others it’s between the one hard-button and the screen – again a clear indication that veracity is tossed to the wind when you’re a shanzhai cloner. Live photos show the logo is up top, and also reveal a very grainy screen. You pay your money and you take your chance.

Ripping Off Nokia, Lots of Japanese Feature-Phones, etc etc

Hedy also makes a huge array of feature-phones. I’m not so familiar with these devices, but I spot one Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) clone amongst its lineup, and my colleague in Japan sees another that’s strikingly similar to Emobile’s Smart Bar phone. There are probably more. The Nokia fake is the Hedy V001 (pictured above) which actually launched way back in 2009.

Although we’ve previously reported that the shanzhai phone industry might be dying out in China, there are still some audacious cloners who’ll fake, package, and sell whatever resembles the most popular phones out there. Cloning smartphones is tougher than doing so with feature-phones, but Hedy shows that it’s worth a shot, with apparently no copyright protection in sight. Unless you’re a Chinese company up against a western one.

This Chinese-made G'Five G303 has triple SIM card support - just the kind of thing that used to be really popular in India.

Indian consumers’ love affair with cheap and gimmick-packed Chinese phones seems to be over, as reports emerge that all ‘shanzhai’ phones are seeing sales figures drop to hundreds of thousands per month rather than the millions that were being bought in the recent past. About 10 million mobiles are sold in India each month.

To back that up, the most successful Chinese phone manufacturer in India, G’Five – an unknown brand in China itself – has seen its own sales plummet in 2011. The Shenzhen-based company – which makes about 300 handsets, and claims to launch a new phone every two weeks – caused a stir in 2010 when it soared to second place in terms of phone sales in India, claiming an astonishing 21 percent market share, surpassing Samsung (005930:KS) and threatening to usurp Nokia (NYSE:NOK). But G-Five’s 2011 sales were a sorry ebb from that zenith, down to 8 percent [1], with Samsung rising to second in its place.

If G’Five slips any further, it’ll fall back into the obscurity of hundreds of other struggling Chinese and Indian cottage-industry manufacturers. But it does plan a fight-back, expanding its feature-phone line-up – albeit some with very large screens – to encompass some proper 3G-enabled smartphones. These are expected to hit shelves sometime this spring.

If shanzhai phones do fail in India, they’ll be following the pattern set in China, where Shenzhen-based phone makers are shutting in huge numbers, forced out of business – or forced out of the city, perhaps – by a mixture of police clampdowns, quality concerns on the part of consumers, and fancier cheap phones from major brands.

The cause of the downfall of shanzhai in India is harder to pin down. A Sina Tech report speculates that although the Indian government brought in new security legislation in late 2009 to require all phones sold to have a legitimate IMEI number, that wasn’t the sole reason for the fall. Yes, that would’ve squeezed out some of the shadier operators, but that’s no explainer for why G’Five and some other legitimate manufacturers have fallen out of favour with Indian consumers. In April 2011, Nokia filed a lawsuit against G’Five [2] for allegedly copying certain Nokia hardware design elements, which might have put off some buyers.

A quick search of India’s leading e-commerce site, Flipkart, is very revealing of the future of phone brands in India. In the Flipkart category listings there are 509 feature-phones and smartphones, but not a single one from G’Five. Instead, the product line-up is dominated by Samsung and Nokia, with a good amount of telco-branded phones from Spice and Micromax as well. Not counting which telco phones might’ve been made by Chinese OEMs, there are only two Chinese-brand phones for sale on the site, both from ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063).

But the rise and fall of shanzhai phones will not be decided on middle-class Flipkart, and will instead lie in the fate of the crush of punters who pack the Karol Bagh-area electronics markets, looking for bargains.

[Source: Sina Tech news - article in Chinese]

China’s largest mobile ad platform, Madhouse, has released new stats which give a fresh picture of the smartphone landscape in China. It shows that, up to the very end of 2011, there has been a recent strong surge in Android usage, and that consumers are buying both cheaper and more high-end phones as iOS and Android phones spread across the social (and wage) spectrum.

The stats were taken from a very broad range of apps and websites that make use of Madhouse’s mobile ad platform, allowing the Chinese company to collate geographic, handset, and software data. And so this relates to observed usage, not sales figures. Some highlights include the 64.2 percent market share of Android devices (more than double that of all iOS ones), and another stellar quarter for Samsung (005930:KS) thanks to its range of Android phones.

You might like to contrast the Android aspects of the data with those sourced from Umeng, a rival Chinese ad and referral platform, which collects usage sessions data in the same way. Last time we looked at stats from Umeng, we crowned Samsung’s Galaxy S as the king of Android phones in China, but the Madhouse figures beg to differ.

Here are the five key areas of iOS and Android usage in China, whipped into graphic form by the Madhouse crew:

By Region and Province

It’s a bit of a surprise that Beijingers cause so few ad impressions. Perhaps the capital’s residents don’t browse the mobile web so much, are resistant to clicking ads, or can’t see their smartphone’s screens through the smog. No surprise, though, that the wealthier provinces make up the top four.

By Handsets and Phone Brands

But that doesn’t mean that only those with fancier phones go online, of course. Though Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 4 is the leading single model (albeit down 13.1 percent on the previous quarter), second place goes to the lowly Huawei C8500. In contrast to the data from Umeng, the Samsung Galaxy S is only the fourth most popular phone.

By Cost of Phone

As a corollary to the previous graph, we see the greatest growth in cheap phones costing from 1,000 to 1,499 RMB (US$159 to $238), such as the afore-mentioned Huawei C8500.

By Size of Screen

Meanwhile, higher-resolution screens were booming as well, presumably among more monied folk. Phones that have screens wider than 640 pixels include the likes of the Motorola MT917 and the HTC Sensation.

By Android or iOS Version

This data being from Q4 2011, we see that most iPhone users were on the fairly recent iOS 4.3, which was the last before iOS 5 rolled out. However, on the Android platform we see the effect of all those budget phones as the relatively ancient Android 2.1 was still (by a tiny margin of 0.4 percent) the most used version. The newest iteration for phones at that time was 2.3 (with 3.0 being for tablets).

But the headline news is that, judging by these metrics, Android is well over twice as popular as iOS in China – and a broad price range of handsets will accelerate that even further as yet more people snap up, say, the Galaxy S II and new budget phones from local brands Huawei and ZTE in the coming year.

As a side-note, Madhouse observed that just over half – 52 percent to be precise – of its tallied ad impressions were done over wifi, not 2G or 3G. Grab the full report from the Madhouse newsletter for February.

Note that this method is better than taking a poll, as asking an invited audience for their opinions can be very self-selecting and reductive. So by taking these stats from popular product searches, we get a free-form and realistic view of what Chinese consumers are keen to buy with their own money. Of course, that doesn’t translate into sales, but it gives a good picture of which smartphones are the most likely to be parting cash from consumers.

So here, in reverse order, is the top ten:

10th. Lenovo A60

Lenovo (HKG:0992) smartphones won’t be too familiar to overseas readers, but they’ve been a low-end to mid-range mainstay in China for years. This A60 is one of the better efforts, with Android 2.3.3 and a 3.5-inch HVGA screen. Lenovo’s custom UI, with those huge round icons, is not exactly classy though. But it seems plenty of Chinese netizens are keen to read-up on the phone with a view to buying it. Afterall, with a China Unicom (NYSE:CHU; HKG:0762) subsidy, it’s a cheap ticket to the smartphone club, costing just under 1,000 RMB (US$158).

9th. Meizu MX

Another local kid makes the list, as Shenzhen manufacturer Meizu generates a lot of hype and excitement for its newest MX. The Meizu MX comes with a highly-customized Android 2.3.5 (which it now calls Flyme OS) which looks good on its 4.0-inch screen and is powered by its dual-core processor. The screen is higher-res than many others on the list, at 960 by 640 pixels. Starting at 2999 RMB for the 16GB version, this could be a headache for the more established brands in 2012.

8th. Motorola Defy (ME525+)

Despite Motorola (NYSE:MMI) pushing some high-end business-oriented handsets in China, its cheaper phones are proving to be of interest too. This ME525+ runs Android 2.3.4, has a 3.7-inch screen, and costs about 1,900 to 2,200 RMB.

7th. HTC Wildfire S

And now things get a bit lame, with the ridiculously under-powered Wildfire S from HTC (TPE:2498) – known as the G13 in China – with its small, low-resolution screen that makes it obsolete and unable to run a lot of newer, funkier apps.

Despite running the older Android 2.2 OS, its small form-factor combined with the Sense UI makes this pretty popular around here. It costs about 1,300 on the grey-import market, but it’s a very bad deal via more official channels where it costs 2,000+ RMB.

6th. Samsung Galaxy SII

Samsung’s (005930:KS) new flagship – dubbed the i9100 around here – is the impressive follow-up to the best-selling original Galaxy S. In a recent analytics report, we found that the first version was now the most popular single Android phone model in China, usurping the HTC Desire. But, frustratingly, it seems Samsung might deny all those consumers an upgrade to Android 4.0, which ought to be the decent thing to do for a mere year-old phone. Shame on you, Sammie!

Anyway, Chinese consumers seem to like the TouchWiz UI and other local customization such as a Chinese app store which accepts local payment methods. The Galaxy SII is currently about 3,400 RMB on the grey-import market.

5th. Nokia N9

Halfway through the list, and we finally encounter Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK). This beautiful-looking device seems popular in product searches, though I’m very skeptical that this will translate to sales once people realise it runs a moribund OS – MeeGo – for which there are few games or apps. The 16GB models costs about 3,500 RMB in most gadget malls, although the official local price is a not-so-reasonable 4,888 RMB.

4th. HTC Sensation XE

HTC’s most impressive release this year was perhaps the Sensation XE, which launched in China last month with all the usual Beats ephemera such as branded in-ear headphones and better music software. Its 4.3-inch qHD screen was a welcome feature, as Android phones were so slow to rise to the challenge of Apple’s ‘retina screen’ iPhone. The 1.5GHz dual-core phone, complete with the updated Sense 3.5 UI, costs about 3,500 RMB on unofficial sales channels.

3rd. Apple iPhone 4

Daddy’s home! Yes, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) ubiquitous iPhone makes the list of popular product searches, but only in third place. With the iPhone 4S still not on sale here officially, it seems the older but aesthetically identical previous model is still in vogue. The 8GB model costs 4,000 RMB when schlepped over the border tax-free from Hong Kong, or 4,500 RMB direct from Apple or China Unicom.

2nd. Nokia N8

Grandpa’s home! Pull up a comfy chair, make a mug of hot chocolate, and get out the medication – because Symbian has just arrived on our list. The creaky old OS is still soldiering on in Nokia’s N8, which is proving popular amongst those who’re familiar with Symbian and its still significant catalog of apps and services.

There have been a lot of bad omens for Nokia in China this year, but the interest in the N8 is a ray of hope at a time when middle-income Chinese have been turning to Android smartphones and the iPhone. The N8 costs about 1,800 RMB.

1st. Xiaomi M1

Regular readers of PO won’t be too surprised to find the much talked about dual-core, Android-powered Xiaomi phone at the top of the list of searches in 2011. It launched with a bang and a breath-taking price tag – just 1,999 RMB – back in August of this year, and ends the year being talked about in the Chinese tech press pretty much everyday, snagging a supply deal with China Unicom, and attracting a further US$90 million in funding – some of which is coming from Yuri Milner’s own pocket.

In October, we dropped into Xiaomi HQ in Beijing to get a hands-on demo of the phone on the same day that it hit shelves across China; here’s the video:

[Hat-tip to QQ Tech news (article in Chinese) for collating the list data; Motorola Defy image from Whatmobile.net, and the Lenovo one from Zol.com.cn]

2011 has been a big year for Android in Asia, hitting milestones in Japan and South Korea, whilst also expanding the smartphone ecosystem across the region thanks to its open-source tweak-ability.

Here are a dozen of the most significant Android-related stories we’ve covered at PO in the past year, in no particular order.

Android Market Expands to 131 Countries – But Not China

In a good, early omen for Android in Asia, the Android Market expanded to accept payments for apps in 131 countries across the globe. But a noticeable absentee was China, where Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) still seems to be marked out for its going public with claims of State-backed hacking in 2010.

Google Android Outgrows Apple in Japan Smartphone Market

But in Japan, Android has been having an easier ride and gaining momentum far earlier. To that end, it outgrew Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS platform in March of this year as Android soared to 4.6 million users across Japan.

SK Telecom Splashes US$924 Million for 4G LTE Spectrum

In neighboring South Korea, the rolling out of 4G networks is bound to be great news for Android, as no iPhone models support the faster mobile web system. Samsung (005930:KS) and LG (066570:KS) are the first to benefit.

Samsung Indonesia Scores Another First Day Sell-Out With Galaxy S2

Speaking of Samsung, it’s helping push forward Android in Indonesia, a country that has previously only been keen on BlackBerry-flavour smartphones.

Games Back in South Korea’s Android Market

Returning to South Korea for a moment, all game apps were barred from the local Android Market by a regulatory ban because of a lack of age ratings (well, the same fate befell Apple’s iTunes store too). But by November, the issue seemed resolved in the Market, and South Korean mobile gamers could get their thumbs back into the action.

Baidu Launches Android-Based Mobile OS

In September, China’s leading search engine, Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) unveiled its Android-based mobile OS, called Baidu Yi. But we’d have to wait a few months to see it in the flesh – indeed, just yesterday, Dell launched the first Yi-powered phone.

Chinese-made Android Spyware Can Record, Upload Users’ Phone-Calls

But things have not been all rosy in Google’s low-walled garden. And a Chinese-made form of Android spyware was detected in the wild, hidden inside pirated and repackaged apps, that could listen in on people’s phone-calls.

Major HTC Android Security Flaw Revealed

It got even worse for HTC (TPE:2498) when it was discovered that every single phone running the newest and shiniest version of HTC Sense – like the HTC Incredible – was hiding a critical security flaw.

Samsung Dominates Android in China, But Tablets Growing Less Popular [INFOGRAPHIC]

To compound HTC’s woes – to say nothing of the ongoing legal wrangles with Apple – Samsung’s Galaxy S seems to be China’s favourite and most popular Android smartphone this year – stealing the crown from Taiwan’s HTC.

$50 Android Smartphones? Coming Next Month to China

Despite all the headlines devoted to slim and sexy gadgets, budget Android phones have been the secret sauce/source of its huge growth in Asia this year. And a new chipset by the Chinese manufacturer Spreadtrum (NASDAQ:SPRD) could bring the cheapest ones down to as little as US$50.

Asia Loves Android Apps, Has Most Downloads Per Capita [INFOGRAPHIC]

This month, Google celebrated its 10 billion apps milestone in its Market with a fancy infographic which revealed that the world’s top three app downloaders are all Asian nations.

Co-founder of Xiaomi Demos New Smartphone, Just Released [VIDEO]

Lastly, one of the most talked-about Android phones in China this year was from a small startup called Xiaomi, which made a home-grown dual-core Android beast for just 1,999 RMB. It’s based on Android and makes use of the team’s own MIUI UX, which has become popular amongst ROM lovers and modders around the globe. Our own Willis Wee went to Xiaomi HQ for a hands-on demo.

By the way, catch our full series of 2011 round-ups that we’re adding to throughout December.

And this year's Android winner in China is... Samsung! Especially this Galaxy S, which seems to be China's hottest Android smartphone this year.

The Infographic of the Day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

The Chinese mobile analytics company Umeng has released new stats which give us a clear picture of the Android user-base and the devices being used in China.

It shows us that in Q3 2011 Samsung (005930.KS) and HTC (TPE:2498) dominated the Android scene here, together accounting for about 53 percent of all phone traffic detected by Umeng. Bizarrely, it also reveals that Android tablets have become less popular this quarter, with decreased usage from Q2 to Q3.

Umeng only covers apps which utilize its mobile ad network – which we reviewed before – so this is not a measure of sales, more of active usage. But that’s actually fine, as it covers over 10,000 common apps that are downloadable from a range of sources and alternative Android app stores. And so it gives a pretty representative view.

Android Tablets vs Android Phones
Yes, Android tablets – which seem to be as popular as stale cakes – saw even less usage in China in Q3. The Ionesco-esque rhinocéros in the room is that the iPad is still booming, whilst Android tablets are not quite so appealing to consumers. Meanwhile, in the graph on the right, we see the top ten Android phone brands in China:

Phone Models
Samsung’s GT-I9100 – better known as the Galaxy S – is the most popular single model of Android phone in China. Huawei snuck into a surprise second place with its cheap but low-end C8650:

Tablet Models
Another victory for Samsung in terms of tablet models, with its seven-inch Galaxy Tab taking the top spot. It’s another home-grown competitor in second place, but this time it’s from Lenovo (HKG:0992):

Powerful Androids
It seems people are more likely to have really powerful tablets than phones. The processor speed (the CPU) of most phones is spread quite evenly, suggesting a broad price range of devices. The afore-mentioned Galaxy S phone has a 1 GHz CPU, making it pretty speedy:

Phone Screen Resolution
Further indication that many people in China are on budget handsets comes from the fact that about 40 percent of people are using phones with a resolution of 320 by 480 pixels or less. Higher rez screens, such as seen on the new Motorola MT917 for China are creeping in slowly, meaning that local developers need to remember to create more detailed graphics for apps and games:

Tablet Screen Resolution
Here’s the same scenario amongst tablet users here:

Pricey vs Cheap
From looking at the models that are on the Umeng network, the company has figured what kind of money people are currently spending on their Androids:

Across China
No surprises here, where the richest areas in China show the most usage of these smartphones and tablets. In descending order, the provinces are: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Shanghai, which are highlighted in that blue rectangle:

How Has All That Changed From 2010?
Good question, dear reader. Looking back at Umeng’s report from Q4 2010, we see that Motorola (NYSE:MMI) and HTC had the most popular models. So it has not been too great a year for either of those to have been usurped by Samsung in 2011. Here’s the old view from 2010:

Download the full reports – and others from the archive – from Umeng at the link below.

[Source: Umeng report - page and report in Chinese]

Here’s an excerpt from PC World that briefly described what it would be like:

Samsung has shown flexible OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays inside rigid cases that kept the screens curved. The technology has material within each pixel that generates light, making it perhaps more suitable for flexible screens than LCDs, which would require both a flexible screen and a backlight.

Wow.

Though fascinating, I quickly forgot about the idea. But this concept video circulating around the web has caught my attention. It’s the Samsung’s flexi-screen demo, and while it looks very CG it does help people to visualize what Samsung is trying to work on.

Some might be wondering why do we even need a flexible screen? Well, for starters, the idea of a phone screen that doesn’t crack is certainly appealing. And I also like the thought of a bendable, wrist-band style mobile device like TDK’s flexible screen concept from last year.

Samsung stated that mobile phones with flexible display will launch sometime in 2012. So watch out for this flexi-screen device.

Featuring an impressive, clean design on its homepage, the website is divided into four different sections: Recent, Popular, Photos, and My Profile.

While the Recent section allows you to browse through all the current panoramas that are being uploaded onto the website, the Popular section allows you to browse through only popular panoramas, based on comments and favorites.

The Photos section displays all non-panoramic photos in a magazine-like layout, and My Profile shows all your uploads along with notifications on favorites and comments that you may have received.

Upon clicking on any of the photos, you will be taken a customized photo viewer where you can view it in full glory. The viewer also provides you an option to zoom in or zoom out of the photo, enter full screen mode, favorite any photo, or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Elaborating on the new 3D photo viewer, Vineet Devaiah, the CEO of TeliportMe, said that they have been heavily working on improving it and the viewer can now effortlessly render any large image within a matter of few seconds.

He further added that TeliportMe is currently the only company which has the ability to display both panoramas and photos in a single viewer.

In addition to the gorgeous new website, the company has also rolled out few improvements to its Android app based on user feedback. The app now features:

• Portrait mode capture, resulting in high definition panoramas.
• Additional capture modes, allowing users to choose a faster capture mode with a slight quality loss in the picture.
• Improved photo-taking abilities.

Vineet announced that the app has doubled its userbase to around 100,000 users in the last two months. They have also tied up with Samsung to preload 360 app on the latter’s future Android devices. He also hinted at prospective partnerships with other companies but refused to divulge any specific information.

The new website can be accessed at TeliportMe.com. You can download the new 360 panorama app for free, through the Android Market.

Apple's brand value rose 58% since last year according to Interbrand

Interbrand has just released its annual Best Global Brands Report, and not surprisingly Coca-Cola tops the list again. But here at Penn Olson we’re more interested in how the tech companies fared, specifically the ones from Asia. The report looks at a number of factors, including financial performance and the “strength of a brand to continue to secure earnings.”

If we look at the global overview, only ten of the top 100 brands listed are from Asia. 52 are from the Americas (almost all from the US), and 38 are from Europe. Here’s a quick visualization of the top 100. Companies who improved brand value on the previous year are in orange. Notice how orange Apple is? Nice work Steve!

*data is brand value in millions of dollars, and change in brand value since last year

[Download static image | View on ManyEyes]

Drilling down further to the ten Asian companies who made Interbrand’s cut, we see that the majority are tech companies. Japanese companies placed well with Canon at 33, Sony at 35, Nintendo at 48 (down from 38 the previous year), and Panasonic at 69. Korea’s Samsung is the highest-ranking of all Asian electronics companies on the list in 17th spot. Noticeably absent from the top one hundred are any brands from mainland China.

Taiwan’s HTC is perhaps the standout performer from Asia breaking into the top 100 for the first time at 98. Interbrand’s APAC CEO Stuart Green explains that this is a good sign for the region, saying “I have no doubt that in the years to come, more top Asian brands will break into Interbrand’s global top 100.

For more information, I encourage you to click over to Interbrand for details.

But if Samsung has indeed copied/borrowed its designs from Apple, it certainly looks as though that was a good idea. The company’s expected year-on-year smartphone growth for 2010 to 2011 is about 190 percent.

We noted earlier this week that Huawei’s new Honor smartphone bears a pretty striking resemblance to Apple’s iPhone as well. Perhaps Huawei was as much inspired by Samsung’s success as with Apple’s initial design ideas? Assuming you can get away with it, following Cupertino’s lead looks like good business.

[Via TUAW]

Aside from a slight variance of dimensions the phones are essentially the same, except for the latter HD version featuring a Super AMOLED display with 316 pixels per inch. Samsung describes it as a ‘HD theater in hand,’ ideal for watching movies. A 180-degree viewing angle ensures that the whole family can gather around your smartphone with a bucket of popcorn if so inclined.

Samsung boasts that the LTE Galaxys will enjoy transmission ‘five times faster than 3G,’ and they both include fancy NFC functionality as well.

According to Engadget the Galaxy S II LTE will be exclusive to SK Telecom, the Korean carrier which recently dropped $924 million on a key chunk of 4G spectrum. The HD version will be available on SK Telecom, LG U+, and KT.

[Samsung]

Huawei Honor

We just received an announcement that Chinese manufacturer Huawei is planning to release an intriguing new smartphone in the fourth quarter of this year. The design looks very sharp (pictured right), bearing more than some resemblance to the iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy, whichever you believe came first.

The Huawei Honor will be powered by Android 2.3.5 and a hefty 1.4 GHz processor. It features 512 megabytes of RAM, 4 gigabytes of on-board storage supporting expansion of up to 32 gigabytes via a memory card slot. The 8 megapixel rear-facing camera is HDR-enabled, and there’s a 2 megapixel cam around front for chat. The company is touting it as one of the phone’s strong points, claiming that you can ‘share and connect’ for up to three days on a single charge. Chief marketing officer Victor Xu said in a statement:

Honor provides a package of features that elevates the smartphone user experience, including an ultra-long battery life, so critical to the performance of smartphones but yet is often downplayed.

With such solid specs, this phone could attract a lot of buyers. The a representative tells Penn Olson that Huawei isn’t targeting a specific region, although it will first be available in China, Russia, and the Middle East with other regions to follow.

Digitimes Research recently speculated that Huawei would lead the smartphone industry in growth this year, and a phone like this one would certainly help the company on its way. That report said that Huawei was expected to ship 400 percent more units on the previous year.

Intrigued, I googled its Smart TV and found it looks really sexy. I’ve not yet had any chance to see or touch it live, but this video review by T3 makes me drool (below).

For Samsung to pick Singapore is an interesting choice, because we don’t have that many developers here. But apparently, Samsung Asia really wanted localized content from this little island.

Irene Ng, VP of sales and marketing at Samsung Asia, explained:

To encourage learning, particularly in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, is core to Samsung’s values and heritage […] Samsung aims to provide the platform and support for developers to create entertaining, intuitive, social and visual apps.

So what’s Samsung looking for? Basically, for developers to create educational apps for its Smart TV app platform. I have broken down the process into three simple and understandable steps for impatient developers to understand the procedure quickly:

• Step 1: For developers who are interested, you can attend Samsung’s developer meeting on September 26th, 6pm, at Genexis Theatre, Fusionpolis, Singapore, to find out more details.

• Step 2: Submit your Smart TV app proposal to Samsung. You have about five weeks, until October 31st.

• Step 3 (aka: the carrot): If you’re shortlisted, Samsung will provide you with 24/7 access to Samsung’s Developer’s Forum (SDF), which includes their SDKs and support resources. In other words, you will have full support to test your apps with Samsung — straight from the company itself.

Statistics

Developing apps for Smart TV sounds new and that is why I decided to pick up the story. It’s about being part of the new trend, assuming that you believe Internet TV is going to be one of the upcoming trends for the next decade.

The statistics aren’t as pretty as Samsung’s Smart TV, though. There are currently more than 900 apps designed for Smart TV, generating an average of 140,000 downloads per month.

Nonetheless, Internet TV is pretty new to the world. There aren’t many users to generate the downloads, putting you right at the start of the curve. But no risk, no gain. I’m throwing the information out so our Singapore readers have at least this information available to make an educated choice.

Good luck to any app devs who decide to rise to the challenge.

Xi demo area at Docomo

A report from Kyodo cites ‘sources close to the matter’ saying that Docomo is planning to partner with Samsung to “design and develop a chip for regulating wireless signals to be mounted on handsets for the LTE standard.” Other Japanese firms would be included in the alliance, including Fujitsu Ltd., NEC Corp., and Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. The planned cooperation is also being reported by the Nikkei business daily.

Docomo is said to be putting in the majority of capital for the project, amounting to $390 million dollars. Techcrunch noted that the partnership between companies is likely more about self-sufficiency than anything else:

At the heart of their alliance is their need for baseband chipsets. It’s one of the most important components in a phone, as it allows the device to connect and transmit signals to network towers. Qualcomm owns nearly 80 percent of the baseband market, and this hegemonic hold is exactly what the alliance hopes to break free from.

Docomo recently rolled out the first two tablets for its high speed LTE network, with offerings from the afore-mentioned Samsung and Fujitsu. The company has big plans for its Xi service which it claims is ten times faster than its FOMA 3G service.

We’ve reached out to Docomo for comment on the planned partnership, but have yet to receive a reply.

Galaxy Tab 10.1 at Docomo launch event Thursday in Tokyo

Yesterday we told you about the Docomo rollout of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on its zippy LTE network. We’ve since learned that Apple has filed suit to halt the sales of certain Samsung devices in Japan, alleging patent violations.

The first hearing was on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report. Of course on the following day was the afore-mentioned Docomo launch of the Galaxy Tab. But Docomo president Ryuji Yamada seemed confident that things would be ok:

We have heard from Samsung that it’s all right… At this point we don’t think it will harm our sales.

The suit, which is in fact a countersuit to when Samsung filed suit against Apple in Japan in April, aims to ban the sales of the Galaxy S, the Galaxy S II, and the Galaxy Tab 7.

A previous Apple suit filed in Dusseldorf, Germany resulted in a ruling today that says Samsung Germany cannot sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the EU (although other European divisions of the company can.)

Docomo promo display for Samsung on XI network

Quite often at events like this you’ll see models showing off the product and today was no exception. But to my surprise the lady holding the new Fujitsu Arrows Tab was clad in a fluffy white bathrobe. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that this wasn’t a case of undressing – but rather she was highlighting one of the main features of the Fujistu Tablet: it’s waterproof.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	Fujitsu Arrows Tab

The device is powered by Android 3.2 and sports a dual core processor. It weighs in at 597 grams and has a profile of 11.3mm. It also features one-seg mobile TV, as well as hand-gesture control, which uses the camera as a means of letting you interface without actually touching. The company says in its announcement that this will come in handy for checking recipes while cooking when your hands might be dirty.

Built for Speed

Given that these two new tablets will be running atop Docomo’s high speed LTE network, it makes sense that it would roll out some four new broadband applications that can take advantage of that. The two most notable additions were Qik and Hulu. Qik of course, is a popular live-streaming video service. And Hulu, which recently opened an office in Japan, will now be available on both these tablets providing lots of great video entertainment for local users.

The folks from Hulu came over for the event

A report from Digitimes is claiming that Samsung is considering buying Hewlett Packard’s webOS in order to strengthen its position against Apple and Google. As you’re probably aware by now, HP recently announced it was looking to offload its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which is responsible for the development of webOS devices.

Digitimes adds that the Korean manufacturer has already brought on HP’s former VP of PSG marketing Raymond Wah for its own PC sales.

Many speculate that Google’s recent pickup of Motorola could mean that many vendors – including Samsung – are uneasy about the future of the Android platform.

WebOS could make for an interesting contingency plan for either Samsung or HTC, both of whom have a lot riding on Android. According to an IDC report earlier this year, Samsung and HTC led the smartphone industry in year-on-year growth after the first quarter, improving 350 and 229.6 percent respectively over the same period last year. That growth, of course, directly coincided with the explosive growth of the Android platform.

Korea might enjoy the world’s – yes, not just Asia’s, but the world’s – best broadband, with average speeds of 13.7 Mbps, but its mobile networks have been lagging somewhat. But 4G smartphones across Korea are now a solid step closer to reality.

On Sunday, SK Telecom spent an astonishing 995 billion won (US$924 million) to secure a key 4G/LTE frequency. The telco giant is the biggest spender thus far in ongoing 4G spectrum auctions. The 20 megahertz of digital horsepower on the important 1.8 GHz band that it has just bought is strategically important. It’s enable SK to deliver the kind of speeds and bandwidth that it’ll need to try grab the lion’s share of 4G switchers.

Korea’s second largest mobile operator, KT Telecom, seems to have dropped out of the running over the weekend as prices soared for this 1.8 GHz spectrum. But has SK Telecom splashed out too much cash for this? One analyst, Park Jong Soo of Korea Securities, thinks not:

The company previously did not have a suitable long term evolution (LTE) spectrum. So for the company it’s better in the long term to pay this high price now than to lose it.

SK Telecom (SEO:017670; NYSE:SKM) shares in Seoul are currently up nearly 4 percent on the news. The NYSE has yet to open.

Not too far away, India is getting its 4G network together. This month, some key moves were made by both Indosat, with a new LTE testing lab, and Bakrie, with its purchase of a smaller operator that holds a national 4G license.

Expect some sweet Samsung and LG Android-powered 4G phones (pictured above) to be falling into the hands of some lucky people in Seoul later this year, or early 2012. But SK Telecom subscribers nationwide will likely have to wait until 2013 if they’re not based in the capital.

[Source: QQ Tech news - article in Chinese]

The Mobile Indian reports that the Eee Pad Slide will arrive here in October. The release will be a boon for Indian consumers and will add to the already varied choices they have in iPad competitiors. But we need to think: who will buy these tablets, and why?

The tablet era

Previously, only higher-income consumers and corporate users could have thought of owning tablets. But now with increasing competition and the introduction of low-priced tablets, they’re within anyone’s grasp. After all, tablets in India are as cheap as $99. Yes, the recently launched series of tablets by Bangalore-based Lakshmi Access Communications Systems (LACS) are priced at $99 and are marketed towards lower-income groups. They run on Android and have a 7-inch screen. The names of the tablets are suitably locaized: such as Paprika, Tamarind, and Mirchi.

People are perhaps buying tablet PCs because it is easier for them to read on a tablet than on a smartphone, and to give more appeal and utility to their favourite apps. The slates are also creeping into the workplace, and have become an essential feature in many boardroom meetings for sharing information. In companies, the higher-end tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab and the Apple iPad 2 are used more. But overall, consumers in India are attracted to tablets for all the same reasons as consumers worldwide – but more varied price-points are welcome.

Lower prices = happy customers?

Tablets are now starting to get cheaper. But the profit margins on tablets are still around 20 to 25 percent whereas it is far less on PCs, more like seven to 10 percent. So, initially the first companies to come up with tablets in India launched them at a relatively higher price. But, since the margins were large, the companies who came after them have been able to lower prices to win over consumers. Most of them aim at replicating the success achieved by Micromax, Lava, or Karbonn in the mobile handset market by reaching to the non-metro small-town markets of India.

The low prices have most certainly caught the eye of consumers. Plus, with more products, they also have a variety to choose from. It’s still not clear whether people would take the lower-priced tablets. Here’s what Ashish, a customer on his way to buy a new tablet PC, had to say:

If I were to buy a tablet, I’d buy it for the status quotient and the utility that comes with it. So, it’s certain that I won’t buy the cheapest tablet as I assume cheap tablets are synonymous with lesser features. I might consider buying a moderately-priced one with all the necessary features as I’m not too sure whether the cheap ones will be easy-to-use or not.

Those words would most certainly comfort the folks at Samsung, Motorola or Apple. So, there you are – powerful features still rule the roost for a lot of people. If a customer is planning to buy a tablet PC (most of them would be buying one for the first time) he or she would almost certainly go for a known brand.

If you want to enjoy your favorite TV dramas whilst still keeping track of what’s going on in the world, then you might like to try the My Headline app for your Samsung Smart TV. The new app from App Foundry now enables you to catch headline news from your favorite websites without missing a second of your beloved TV shows.

For Indonesian users, this cool app will connect your Smart TV automatically to various news portals like Tempointeraktif, OMG! Yahoo Indonesia, Antaranews, or OkeZone, once it has been installed. Users can also add their favorite RSS feeds manually in the app’s menu. The headlines will appear as running text on the screen, and you can then select a news item to go visit the site for the full story.

User can add RSS feeds in the 'settings' and click on the on-screen headlines to read the news.

Smart TV users can download this app from the Samsung Smart Hub. Unfortunately, the My Headline app can only be used in Indonesia right now. But not to worry, as there is the possibility that this app will be available globally in the near future, as many Samsung Smart TV users worldwide would surely love to have their favorite news sites’ stories scrolling as headlines across their TV screen.

As Internet TV gains in popularity, this app makes it easier for people to connect with the world without missing out on their favorite TV shows.

The large Indian mobile market is estimated at around Rs. 33,000+ crores (~$7500 million) and the leading players are Nokia and Samsung.

Maxx sold 3.6 million units in the last fiscal year, and aims at six million units this year. Ajjay Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director of Maxx group told The Economic Times (PTI):

We plan to launch around 40 models by March 2012. We will be launching 4 models in the next quarter in the smartphone series. The configuration and specification of the [smartphone] product is under planning right now. The price of the smartphone would be in the range of Rs 5,000-8,000.

The company reportedly invests 0.5% of its revenues in research and development, and is already working on a mobile payments platform. At present Nokia is the only mobile manufacturer which has its own mobile payments platform. Adding to this Mr. Agarwal said:

Mobile payment is the future. Right now, it is new for us, but after one year it will be a basic requirement for us. We are investing in it. Our team is working on it. ‘Til we have something substantial, we cannot share the details.

Maxx is trying to compete with international counterparts like Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry and recently is spending Rs. 2,500 crores in expansion and brand positioning. As per a recent report from Gartner, the mobile payments market is about to touch 141 million in 2011.

For more information, check out our recent infographic on the future of the mobile payments market. It will be interesting to see how successfully Maxx Mobiles can perform in one of the most competitive and vast mobile markets.

[Sources: Economic Times, TechKnots ; Image Sources: CMAI Events]

Fabiant Kayatmo, product marketing senior manager at Samsung Electronics Indonesia, explained that people started queueing at 2pm on Friday. The line grew to 1,200 people – which was the number of smartphones available at the event – by 0:30am on Saturday. Not wanting to lose their spot in line, they slept there until the event started at 9am. He added:

Indonesians started to believe in Samsung since the Galaxy Tab launched last year. After that, we become the top in customers’ minds in terms of Android-powered smartphone and gadgets.

Kayatmo also referred to a report by market research company GFK that stated the company has won 79 percent of the Android smartphone market share in Indonesia, as of June 2011.

A 'sold out' sign indicates no more Galaxy S2 phones are left. Photo taken by the author.

This was the fourth time Samsung made a first day sell-out. The Korean giant started with the seven-inch Galaxy Tab last year, and followed with the Galaxy Mini, the 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab, and now the Galaxy S2. Interestingly, both the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 were released in the same month – yet the two devices still sold out.

As we reported previously, Galaxy S2 overseas sales have hit three million units. While the South Korean sales numbers alone went past one million units in mid June. Considering what has been happening in Indonesia, it should mean a significant bump to Samsung’s overseas sales figures.

[Lead photo: courtesy Samsung Indonesia]

The last time we encountered DianXin OS it was in connection with rumors of a Baidu mobile OS being readied for launch this year.

The HaiPad’s launch today at a consumer electronics show in Qingdao in eastern China, saw the usual exhibition theatrics – there were plenty of ‘booth babes’ on hand to show off the device and even explain some its features (pictured below). You don’t get that at an iPad launch.

The new HaiPad will go on sale in August. The specs, however, are not too impressive: besides the smallish 7-inch screen, there’s a Samsung 1GHz (single core) processor, dual cameras, W-CDMA 3G (ripe for China Unicom, should users want it), and Android 2.2.

Despite not running the latest version of Android – 3.0 Honeycomb for tablets – it looks like Haier will be selling the tablet on the strength of its DianXin-made theme, which brings some very un-Android enhancements, such as dragging apps together to make a folder, which sounds more like an iOS gesture. The emphasis seems to be on social media and streaming movies on it, rather than games. Haier has its own app store, to complete the total disconnect from Google in its own flavour of Android.

Haier might find it difficult to shake off the cheap perfume of shanzhai-ness about its tablets. Indeed, the haipad.net domain is owned not by Haier, but by a Shenzhen-based shanzhai outfit selling cheap, nondescript Android 2.1 or lower tablets.

[Image sources: Tech.Hexun.com, and Haier's page on Sina Weibo]

According to a report from Voice & Data, Indian consumers purchased over 120 million handsets in the 2010-2011 fiscal year, on average that’s a remarkable 10 million phones per month. India also added 18 million mobile subscribers for the year, as handset market revenue grew 15% on the previous year.

Nokia still holds the largest share of the market at 39%, but posted a meagre growth rate of 0.2% on the year. When we attended the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing this year, Pankaj Choudhury, the managing director of iFree India explained:

India is getting hit from all sides in India. From NTK, Micromax. In India you need to roll out handsets very quickly, and Nokia isn’t doing that.

While Samsung holds the second spot at 17%, things get interesting after that with homegrown maker Micromax taking third posting 43% growth on the previous year, a Voice & Data explains:

Its success can be attributed to its strong distribution network and ‘good-looking’ phones at an affordable price. Certain credit can also be given to its brand promotional activities. It spent more money than any other mobile phone company in India on brand building.

Taiwanese manufacturer HTC led the field in growth at 99.1%, but companies like G7Five, Intex, and Maxx are also doing surprisingly well.

For more on the rapidly growing mobile Industry in India, check out this recent infographic that summarizes some key numbers.

Chart: Revenue in crore for 2010-2011 (% growth on previous year), dark green = high growth, light green = low/negative growth)

Photo: Phones.com