Stephen Elop's first quarterly results as Nokia CEO have just come out, and while the company's still growing, others seem to be speeding ahead of it. Nokia's reporting its converged mobile devices (smartphones, to you and us) reached volumes of 28.3 million during Q4 2010, which is a neat bump from 20.8 million at the same time last year and 26.5 million in the previous quarter. However, in the context of the broader smartphone marketplace, that figure now amounts to only a 31 percent share, according to Nokia's own estimates, which is a major dip relative to its 40 percent slice in Q4 2009 and 38 percent in Q3 2010. Elop's perspective on the matter is right after the read more link.
We heard last month when we got our first glimpse of a white Nexus S that it might be headed to Vodafone, and that's now finally been confirmed by Vodafone itself. Details are still pretty light beyond that, but Vodafone says that the phone is "coming soon," and that it will be the only carrier to offer the phone in white -- in the UK, at least.
"Better late than never" has been Nokia's rallying cry when it comes to releasing high-end devices, but we can't begrudge the delay we've experienced with the E7, this phone was gorgeous back in Septemberand it's still a beauty today. The QWERTY-equipped sibling to the N8 brings a 4-inch Clear Black Display -- whose name is no exaggeration, it's as sharp and vibrant as any AMOLED screen we've seen so far -- together with the latest version of Symbian, an 8 megapixel camera round the back, 16GB of onboard memory, and a finely crafted aluminum body. The slideout keyboard on this device is easily among the best we've ever handled, although the same can't be said about the mechanism for opening it up. Nokia hasn't been specific about the markets the E7 will be arriving in over the coming days, but the UK seems a lock and distribution should expand rapidly from there. Jump past the break for a sweet little video promo.
Considering rumors we've heard of a VGA display, we'd assumed that Nokia's E6 would probably have a large touchscreen -- but these shots we've just received look... well, a little different. Instead, it seems that Espoo's planning to gently massage the winning portrait QWERTY formula already well established by the E71 and E72, bumping out a proper big brother to the E5. Around back, you see an 8 megapixel camera (possibly the same EDoF unit that's in the E7) along with a dual LED flash; on front, that could very well be a VGA display, we suppose, considering the uptick in pixel density that everyone's been pushing the past year. If we had to guess, this puppy is a lock for MWC -- but in light of the crazy rumorsfloating around Nokia the past few days, all bets are off.
Sony Ericsson has finally stopped teasing, winking, and nodding knowingly and has just come clean -- the Xperia Play is most definitely real and it'll be one of the first devices announced at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We're treated to a date and time, February 13th at 6PM GMT, a pair of full frontal shots of the Gingerbread-running, gamepad-wearing smartphone, and the full version of thatcreepy ad we saw for it a couple of days back. Missed it on the Super Bowl? Scope it out after the break.
Over the weekend, a surreptitious new photo of the new HTC Desire 2 hit the world wide web, and in addition to the image, the new handset has found its way into Vodafone Germany's inventory system (along with several other goodies) -- meaning that the second coming of the Desire is likely imminent. Word on the street is that it has a Super AMOLED screen of unknown resolution and runs Android 2.3.1 (Gingerbread). Examination of the spy shot reveals that HTC swapped out the tactile buttons of theoriginal Desire for the capacitive variety, added a front facing camera, and made it slightly smaller than its predecessor. It seems that HTC has failed on the 'quietly' part of its slogan, but at least it looks like the company didn't botch the 'brilliant' bit as well. Stay tuned to find out -- Mobile World Congress gets going in under a week, you know.
