Samsung Electronics Co said on Monday it would unveil the third-generation of its flagship smartphone Galaxy S on May 3 in London, banking on a heavy marketing campaign heading into the summer Olympics in the city.
Samsung became the world’s top smartphone maker last year on the back of strong sales of Galaxy lineups and the latest edition comes after it released Galaxy S II in late April last year.
The South Korean firm sold over 40 million Galaxy smartphones since the model was released in June 2010.
Samsung, which dominates in the top end of smartphone market along with Apple Inc, estimated earlier this month that its first-quarter operating profit would hit a record 5.8 trillion Korean won thanks to strong sales of Galaxy series smartphones.
Its current sponsorship deal with the International Olympics Committee runs out in 2016. It has said its market share in China doubled after the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
It was reported earler this week that Samsung Electronics Co, Apple’s biggest competitor in the market for iPad-sized tablet computers, is updating its line to include a feature that lets a tablet act as a universal remote control for an entertainment center.
The storage space on the new Galaxy Tab 2 will also be expandable with small memory cards. The tablets will come in two sizes. The 7-inch version will cost $250 and goes on sale April 22. The 10-inch version will cost $400 and goes on sale May 13.
India-based cellphone maker Lava International has launched world’s first Intel’s Atom processor based smartphone Xolo X900.
Announced at the Mobile World Congress in Spain in February end, the feature-packed Xolo X900 has been priced at Rs 22,000. Intel now plans to launch a number of other Atom-based smartphones in partnership with Motorola, Lenovo, Orange and ZTE beginning later this year, all of which will run on Google Android.
Lava Xolo X900 is based on Intel’s smartphone reference design of Atom Z2460 micro-processor with Intel’s hyper-threading technology and has a clock speed of 1.6 Ghz. This makes it the world’s fastest processor in any mobile device in the world, claims Intel.
Lava Xolo X900 smartphone features 4.03-inch LCD display and an 8 megapixel rear camera. There’s also a front-facing camera for video chat. Other features include Near Field Communication ( NFC), HDMI connectivity and full 1080 HD video shoot and playback. Lava also promises a good battery life of up to five hours of 3G browsing, 45 hours of audio and 8 hours of talk-time on the phone.
It promises fast browsing, multi-tasking, top-of-the-line graphics, and an intuitive user interface developed in close partnership with Intel.
Xolo X900 also supports HSPA+ and Intel’s XMM 6260 Platform. The phone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, capable of over-the-air upgrade to Android Icre Cream Sandwich later this year.
Significantly, Intel India’s engineering team in Bangalore played a major role in designing and development of Lava Xolo X900.
The launch of Xolo X90o marks Intel’s entry into the smartphone business which has so far been overwhelmingly dominated by lesser-known microprocessor makers like ARM Technologies and Qualcomm, besides other players like Nvidia, Texas Instruments and Broadcom.
Lava has also entered a long-term retail partnership with Croma for promotion and sale of the XOLO X900.
“Through Xolo X900, we are happy to bring to the Indian market a device that addresses the needs of those for whom speed and performance matters. After our success in feature phones with over 10 million happy customers in under three years, Xolo will be a differentiated player in the fast-growing smartphone segment. The initial reviews have been very positive and independent benchmarks clearly point to the fact that when it comes to speed and performance, Xolo X900 is the gold standard,” said Vishal Sehgal, co-founder and director, Lava International.
“The first smartphone with Intel inside is now available to Indian consumers,” said Mike Bell, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of the mobile and communications group. “The boundaries of personal computing are expanding. As we enter the India market with our first smartphone from Lava, the device not only showcases the rich capabilities and user benefits of Intel computing, but also highlights the exciting possibilities of what’s still to come.”
Xolo X900 will be available for buying from Croma stores and online at Xolo.in from April 23, followed by availability in other retail chains, general trade and online stores from early May.
Canadian smartphone maker Research In Motion on Wednesday launched its youth-oriented Curve 9220 in India.
Priced at Rs 10,990, the latest Curve is an affordable low-end smartphone targeted at young consumers as against the enterprise BlackBerry consumers.
The Curve 9220 is a basic, entry-level BlackBerry phone, however it will have to compete against a number of feature-rich Android touch-phones already available in the market in the same price bracket.
But RIM officials are confident that Curve 9220’s user interface, the BBM advantage and longer battery life will attract the young buyers to this model. RIM does not have any immediate plan of bundling the handset with data plans from various telecom operators.
BlackBerry Curve 9220 features a 2.44-inch (320×240 pixels) TFT display with QWERTY keypad. Other specifications include a 2 megapixel camera, FM radio, Wi-Fi connectivity, expandable memory up to 32GB using a microSD card and a 2.44-inch QVGA display.
Well, the good news is that Nokia has finally started shipping its new Symbian Belle based smartphone which the company announced last month. Two handsets including the Nokia 700 and Nokia 701 are expected to hit the Indian market in the coming few weeks.
LG has expanded its Optimus series with the unveiling of QWERTY slider Optimus Q2. Sporting a 4-inch WVGA touchscreen with 800×480 resolution, the phone features In-Plane Switching (IPS) technology for brighter display.
Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the popular BlackBerry smartphones, on Wednesday launched a high-end model, BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone, priced at Rs 28,490, featuring the new BlackBerry 7 operating system.
“The BlackBerry Torch 9860 features many new enhancements, including the next generation BlackBerry 7 operating system and we think customers will be particularly thrilled by its faster performance,” RIM India Managing Director Frenny Bawa said.
Google’s third-generation ‘Nexus Prime’ smartphone is all set to hit the market in October. According to a report in Korean-language Electronic Times, the smartphone will feature the latest version of Android operating system Ice Cream Sandwich.
LG Electronics has refreshed its Optimus series with the addition of LG E730 or Optimus Sol. Running on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Optimus Sol sports a 3.8-inch “Ultra AMOLED” display.
According to LG, the new Ultra AMOLED display has a two-fold advanced reflection rate compared to standard AMOLED displays, which reduces image quality degradation.
Yahoo Japan, which apparently is the largest website in Japan, and one of the largest online assets of Yahoo has recently announced a new smartphone for the market. This is an Android powered device which is a rebranded version of a Sharp manufactured smartphone.
Yahoo Japan has partnered with mobile carrier SoftBank who would be shipping the Yahoo Phone sometime in the end of September. The device is originally the Sharp AQUOS PHONE THE PREMIUM SoftBank 009SH however, it comes with some additional Yahoo integration.
Bangalore-based Lakshmi Access Communications Systems unveiled tablets built on Android platform in the price range of Rs 6,250 to Rs 35,000.
“The base price for the tablet is $99 but with taxes it goes up to Rs 6,250,” Lakshmi Access Communications Systems (LACS) MD Mahendra Kumar D Jain said.
