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Early 5G adopters will pay a high price for phones

4 May 2020 by Steve Blum
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Huawei 5g ces 9jan2020

5G phones won’t come cheap in 2020. Although the Consumer Technology Association expects manufacturers to ship 20 million 5G-enabled smartphones to U.S. carriers and retailers this year, that’s not enough volume to drive prices down into the typical Android phone range (although iPhone users might not feel as much sticker shock).

The first 5G smartphone to hit the U.S. market last year was priced around $1,300 – that’s what high tech toys cost when they’re really just toys.… More

5G is about video and gaming, says Qualcomm exec at LG press event

7 January 2019 by Steve Blum
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Lg rollable tv 7jan2019

The big benefits of 5G technology and networks will be old benefits, just more of them. 5G will be sold to consumers as a way to watch high bandwidth video and play fast twitch games. Judging from LG’s opening press conference at CES in Las Vegas this morning, 5G service is all about 8K video streaming, instant 4K video downloads and low latency multiplayer gaming.

This limited focus might be industry-wide. The 5G announcements were made by a Qualcomm executive, Jim Tran, vice president of product management.… More

Connected, automated homes are the new frontier for big consumer electronics companies

12 January 2018 by Steve Blum
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Home automation, powered by cloud-based artificial intelligence, is now a mainstream product category, taking center stage at the major consumer electronics companies’ booths at CES. The huge 4K and 8K screens that dominated Samsung’s display the past few years were stuck in a back corner, while the main aisles were lined with home appliances with voice recognition systems and driven by artificial intelligence.
LG led its press conference with artificial intelligence, via both its in-house platform and Google Assistant.… More

ZTE turbocharging Firefox mobile OS with two new phones

6 January 2014 by Steve Blum
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LG is in the Firefox game too.

The Firefox OS smart phone universe is expanding. ZTE, which launched the Open last year, essentially as a software developers’ kit, will be unveiling two new phones based on Mozilla’s open source, HTML5-centric operating system. The expected Wednesday announcement will launch the Open C and Open 2 smart phones, which are pegged to move up the value chain with more features than the $80 Open.

Two other Firefox phones were on display at the Pepcom event at CES this evening: the LG Fireweb, which is currently available in Brazil, and the Alcatel One Touch Fire.… More

Firefox OS performing as well as it can on ZTE Open SDK

29 November 2013 by Steve Blum
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Twitter top pick on Firefox app store.

The Firefox mobile operating system is clearly a work in progress, but that said, it works well enough already. I’ve been using a ZTE Open Firefox phone for three months, and can do most of the things I need to do and, as time goes on and software is released, more of the things I’d like to do.

The OS performs better than Bada, which I used for about a year on a Samsung handset.… More

LG and Samsung give Apple a case of the bends

8 October 2013 by Steve Blum
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LG and Samsung muscle their flex.

LG and Samsung are firing press releases at each other, each claiming to have the first flexible OLED smartphone screen. Samsung teased their new technology at CES earlier this year, while LG unveiled its flex screen yesterday. Regardless of who is first, it’ll create marketing buzz for both companies as they build speed through the fall selling season.

A flexible screen means you can do cool things with design, like offering more useable screen real estate in more interesting ways.… More

Mobile OS buzz for some, deafening silence for others

3 March 2013 by Steve Blum
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Firefox hasn’t quite landed yet.

Firefox has sharpened the debate over prospects for HTML5. The open source, connectivity-centric mobile operating system developed by the Mozilla Foundation gained a lot of attention at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Sceptical attention, mostly.

When the OS landscape is so thoroughly dominated by two superpowers – Apple and Google – it’s risky to bet on a challenger. Several mobile carriers expressed support, but manufacturers lagged behind. Geeksphone, a small Spanish company, had demo units to show at Barcelona, but missed its February ship date for SDKs.… More

Samsung ready to be crowned King of the Elephants

The “four elephants” of the mobile electronics industry – if not the entire tech world – are Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung, as Tae Hea Nahm, founding general partner of Storm Ventures put it at a recent Wireless Communications Alliance event. They’re prepared to do “whatever it takes to win.”

Samsung is positioned to take honors as lead bull at CES next week, if only by default. Apple and Microsoft won’t be there. Google is relying on partners like LG and, maybe, Intel to build buzz.… More

Embedded impulses

12 October 2011 by Steve Blum
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The machine-to-machine sector is getting a lot of attention this week at the CTIA Enterprise and Applications conference in San Diego. The growth of M2M figured into CEO keynote speeches and panel discussions. AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega called connected devices “the next big thing for mobility.”

The growth is driven in part by the decisions taken by service providers to back out of the hardware and hosting ends of the M2M business, and just provide connectivity.… More

The chips are about to fall

5 January 2011 by Steve Blum
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So far, the only close-to-really-new announcements have come from ASUS. That might be because the 2011 CES story is about incremental improvement and minor innovations, not radically new products or services. Or it could be a question of chipsets.

Everyone is hinting or outright pimping upcoming tablet computer announcements, but not actually saying what it is. That’s a little unusual for press days at CES, but it could be because Intel has what it thinks is a huge announcement to make in a few minutes, and they’ve turned the screws on their customers with the idea of managing some kind of coordinated roll out.… More