[MobileRatty] tag: price

Nokia's Reduced Outlook

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:30:00 +0000

Nokia Corp., the world's largest mobile-phone maker, reduced its market-share outlook, causing investors already skittish about a lackluster global economy to send the company's shares sharply lower.

The Finland-based cellphone maker blamed the gloomy news on a weaker economy world-wide and a decision to stay out of a handset price war. It said it now expects its third-quarter market share to be lower than initially signaled in July, when it predicted market share of 40%, unchanged from the previous quarter. It still targets an increase in its 2008 market share.

Friday's warning is the latest sign of the combined impact of spreading economic gloom and fierce price competition between mobile companies.

Nokia rival Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Japan's Sony Corp. and Sweden's Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, barely broke even in the second quarter as average selling prices fell sharply. It has issued two profit warnings this year.

Meanwhile, Europe's largest mobile operator, Vodafone Group PLC, spooked the market in July with poor quarterly results and a wavering full-year outlook that sent its shares sharply lower. At the time, Vodafone cited difficult conditions in important markets including Spain and Turkey, as well as rising costs.

Shares in Nokia were down 13% at €14.03 ($20.10), a near three-year low.

Shares in companies that make chips for mobile devices also fell sharply. U.K.-based CSR PLC fell 18% before closing down 7%, while Switzerland-based STMicroelectronics NV fell almost 6%.

Nokia said the overall mobile-phone sector is being hit by weaker consumer confidence in several markets. It also attributed its lower forecast to its decision to refrain from cutting prices as some rivals have been doing, as well as the temporary impact of a slower ramp-up of its midrange devices.

Still, Nokia said it expects total unit sales of mobile devices to grow by 10% or more this year, boosted by sales in emerging markets.

Research firm Gartner Inc. said late last month that it expects 11% unit growth in handset sales in 2008, but revenue growth of just 9% as competition and the economic slowdown weigh down average selling prices.

To be sure, Nokia's revision was surprising, said Glitnir analyst Michael Schroeder. "However, Nokia keeping its full-year expectation of increasing market share is helping to offset the negative news," he said.

"To some extent this is almost reassuring," said Gartner's research director for mobile devices, Carolina Milanesi, adding the move shows it took longer for Nokia to feel the impact of the weakening economy than its rivals.

Ms. Milanesi said both South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Sony Ericsson made price cuts in Asia during the past month, and Samsung is also aggressively going after the European market.

Samsung's cellphone division had an operating-profit margin of 13% in the second quarter, up from 7.8% a year earlier, but below the first quarter's 16% margin. Samsung executives said the company boosted marketing expenses sharply in the period.

source

Avoca VIP Music Edition lets you sweet talk your system into playing your favorites

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:27:36 +0000

Fancy music servers are great, but you still need to scroll through lists of files to find the music you want. Now, following in the path of Ford's SYNC voice command car system, a company called Avoca has introduced the VIP Music Edition server that you control by talking into a hijacked HP Ipaq. The server's 160 GB hard drive (larger drives are optional) stores your CDs as lossless FLAC files, then downloads metadata and cover art from AMG and displays them on the Ipaq. You can also add an iPod dock, and the server will download your playlists automatically. The main catch I see is the system's steep $3995 price tag.

Avoca Semiconductor

Fujitsu Asia Pacific intros the L1010

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:25:00 +0000

Filed under: Laptops

Like your laptops available in soft, colorful tones? Looking for something a bit entry level? Fujitsu may have just the thing for you. The company has just introduced its L1010 mid-priced laptop (in Asia, at least), and it looks like just the right thing if you're not trying to break the bank or win friends and influence others. The L1010 packs a Core 2 Duo CPU atop the PM45/GM45 Express Chipset, a 1280 x 800, 14.1-inch LCD display, an NVIDIA 9300M GS graphics card with 256MB of RAM, WiFi, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, and HDMI outs. The laptops come in white and pink gold, black, turquoise blue, pink and purple color configurations, though the press release somehow fails to make mention of RAM or hard drive options. Fujitsu is mum on price and release date, but we'd say not too expensive, and fairly soon.

[Via iTech News Net]

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GPS Steals and Deals - 9/7

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:07:37 +0000

I expect a few deals to start popping up due to a couple of factors: 1) Left over inventory from the summer driving season, 2) Get rid of inventory ahead of new launches, and 3) Get rid of inventory ahead of the holiday shopping season that is going to start just 2 months from how.

We have a few examples below in the TomTom ONE XL @ $159, which is being replaced by the TomTom ONE 330 XL. The Garmin 300 series and 600 series are now officially discontinued and they will be moving out of the picture.

Standard Screens - 3.5-inch

Garmin Nuvi 200 at Amazon - $159 - Best Seller today at Amazon. No Text to Speech, Continental US Maps, solid interface and routing. See My Full Review - Nuvi 200 for more info.

Garmin Nuvi 350 - Still $199 this week; very hot prices point for this unit. North American Maps, Text to Speech, and 5+ Million Points of Interest. Want Bluetooth? Get the Nuvi 360 that adds Bluetooth Handsfree, for a few bucks more at - $224

TomTom ONE 3rd ed. - $137 and Free Shipping at Amazon; Entry Level TomTom with Maps of North America, no Text to Speech.

Garmin Nuvi 260 at Amazon - $208 ($269 at Best Buy) Text to Speech, Maps of North America, solid interface. Same quality routing as Nuvi 200, just adds more maps and text to speech.

The Mio Digiwalker C230 is $99 at Staples this week. A second tier brand that offers reasonable performance for the price. Has text-to-speech and US maps pre-loaded. See my Full Review of the Mio C230 for more information.

Widescreen Models

Nuvi 760 - $378 - Thin design with Text to Speech and Maps of North America. Route Optimization - plug in multiple stops and let the unit optimize the route for fastest planning, adds Bluetooth handsfree and built-in TMC traffic. See My Full Review of the Nuvi 760.
Nuvi 750 - $318 Thin design with Text to Speech and Maps of North America. Route Optimization - plug in multiple stops and let the unit optimize the route for fastest planning. Doesn't have the Bluetooth, or the Traffic capability that the 760 has. (Also available at Circuit City for $399 this week!)
Garmin Nuvi 780 - $454 Has MSN Direct 2, with traffic and gas prices sent to your GPS. See My Full Review of the Nuvi 780 for more information.
Garmin Nuvi 260W - $255 at Amazon; Text to Speech and a dead easy interface.
Nuvi 650 at Amazon $249. Text to Speech, North American Maps, See My Full Review - Nuvi 660, which is the same model with the addition of the TMC Traffic, which is the main feature not included on the Nuvi 650.
Nuvi 200W at Amazon $205 - No Text to Speech, Continental US Maps. See My Full Review - Nuvi 200W.
Nuvi 660 at Amazon $299; still best seller at Amazon - Down $30 in recent weeks - Text to Speech, North American Maps, TMC Traffic Capability included. See My Full Review - Nuvi 660
TomTom ONE XL 330 - $229 - Is the new Basic Widescreen for the TomTom line, Maps of North America, new Easy Port fold flat mount, and no text to speech - Move up to the TomTom ONE XL 330S for Text to Speech at $251
TomTom GO 730 - $399 -New IQ Routes, Text to Speech, and more. Maps of North America.
TomTom 920 - $330 - great value for the money. The recent upgrade allows TomTom to offer the older GO 920 for low money. Text to speech, maps of North America, and more - See my Full Review of the TomTom GO 920

Cooler Weather time to get out and exercise! The Forerunner 405 is still very hot, and Garmin announced recently that this reinvigorated Fitness line grew sales by 50% over year ago.

Garmin Forerunner 405 is available now at $349. - the watch-like GPS enabled fitness device has a smaller design with all kinds of functionality, including wireless sharing.
Forerunner 305 - $214 at Amazon - Heart Rate Monitor with wrist-mounted GPS Receiver, tracks distance and keeps your speed and pace. Syncs to computer for training records.
Forerunner 205 - $145 at Amazon - Wrist-mounted GPS Receiver, no Heart Rate Monitor. Tracks distance and keeps your speed and pace. Syncs to computer for training records.

Mitsubishi 65-inch LaserVue Rear Projection 1080p TV Priced (Expensively) [HDTV]

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Last we left Mitsubishi's LaserVue 1080p rear-projection monster, we had size and shape, but price was a mystery. The mystery was solved today, as BitStream discovered the massive HDTV will set you back $7,000 when it ships later this month. There's still no pricing info for the 73-inch LaserVue, which was also revealed in June. The 7k figure is comparable to what manufacturers are asking for similarly sized HDTVs in the space, but this one has frickin' laser beams. And unlike military lasers, these create a feast for your eyes, instead of your stomach. [BitStream via CrunchGear]

Nokia N96 and BBC iPlayer - a match made in heaven!

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:50:58 +0000

I was just mentioning about the SIM-free price-point of the N96, and immediately following that… here comes the fact that the BBC have announced iPlayer support for it!

N96 users will be able to both stream and download programmes from the popular service, which will be delivered in a purpose-built application. Luckily, it will be able to use both 3G and WiFi, to avoid those (potentially, depending on contract) high data costs.

It is said that the app will also be available as a download from the BBC site, though we’ll wait to see if any Operators try and restrict that (or change the N96 firmware for their variants - you never know, it could happen!).

Nokia are making sure the N96 is going to rock Mobile TV, one way or the other - broadcast, 3G streaming, or app-based download - take your pic (depending on your country)!

[Via: Pocketlint.co.uk]

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Longcheer Holding does Mobile TVin a slightly different way

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:41:54 +0000

Remember I mentioned about Mobile TV at IBC 2008 the other day? Well read on, and expect to see a lot more of these types of announcements over the next 2 weeks or so…..

Longcheer Holdings (a Chinese Mobile handset design house) has apparently selected Newport Nedia to provide middleware for multiple Mobile TV variant handsets that it is looking to release on to the market:

TV350 – GSM/GPRS handset that supports the widely deployed DVB-T digital television standard using Newport Media’s NMI305 DVB-T SOC
DT100 – GSM/GPRS handset that supports DVB-H as well as DVB-T using the NMI310 DVB-T/H IC
IT100 – GSM/GPRS handset that supports the Brazilian ISDB-T mobile digital television standard using the NMI320 ISDB-T IC

The TV350, DT100 and IT100 were developed in order to provide a compelling TV centric user experience at price points significantly below competing 3G based products. All three handsets will be demonstrated at Newport Media’s booth (M483), inside the Mobile Zone at IBC 2008, Sept. 12-16, in Amsterdam.

So this is slicing the Mobile TV “bread” up in a different way - this time removing the 3G radio, and covering a number of the popular variants of Mobile TV broadcast - the only one I could see obviously missing is the CMMB (Chinese) standard…..

[Via: 3G.co.uk]

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Nokia UK - a selection of prices

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:22:34 +0000

Tis the season of Nokia madness, when it gets a ton of devices out there for purchase - nope, hang on, that’s all the time!

Anyhoo, just a quick round-up of “prices and devices” on the Nokia UK site right now - check out some keenly priced devices, plus one very interesting pre-order…..

First out of the gate is the E71 - the seriously good-looking emailer device that is going to bring the pressure to the Blackberry Bold. This device is much smaller than it looks, and is retailing online for the princely sum of £330. I’d have one in a hearbeat - ba-dump - oh look, I’ve just clicked on buy on the website!

Moving along swiftly, there are a number of devices that are now established in the marketplace, and hence don’t have such a premium pricetag attached to them any longer. I’d draw your attention to the former top-dog, the N95-8Gb, now retailing at £400. This is one seriously good handset, and to my mind in Top 5 of all-time devices.

But what about that hot pre-order? Well, that would of course be Nokia’s all-singing, all-data-dancing N96. On the UK website at least, it is coming in at an unashamed premium, but certainly not a price that would blow your mind…. how does £535 find you? Could you tolerate that in order to own a device that has universally been praised since pretty much it’s conception?

Part of my point here is to highlight what appears to be Nokia’s very keen pricing in the UK, but also I would imagine, on their other regional sites - it might worth an online trip to your local site to see what goodies they have for purchase. For me, I am getting just a bit excited thinking about the N96……mmmmhhhhhh……16GB of memory, just for me!

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Professional Home Cinema speakers are guaranteed to piss off your neighbors

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:16:53 +0000

While few audiophiles have even heard of Professional Home Cinema, this Huntington Beach CA company makes the kind of speakers you might find in Tom Cruise's home theater. Using the same type of horn technology you'll find in commercial theaters, the systems are actively driven using thousands of watts of digital amplifier power. Here designer L Paul Hales stands next to a new model that could probably be used for building demolition. During a demonstration at the Denver Athletic Club during CEDIA, Hales used the much smaller SCR-15s to shake and rattle everything that wasn't tied down on the third floor of the club. Despite that smaller model's 130 decibel capability, the sound was amazingly clear and undistorted. Price? Think upper five figures for a 5.1 channel surround rig.

Professional Home Cinema

Amazon Retires $38.45 52-Inch Aquos, Puts Orders on Hold [Dealzmodo Schealzmodo]

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 04:22:42 +0000

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Error or scam, Amazon has pulled the page with the 52-inch $38.45 Sharp Aquos, probably overwhelmed by the orders from crazy Giz readers dreaming about a glorious, gigantic HDTV in their living rooms and/or toilets. Reader Max called Amazon to check on his order and they told him there was something weird going on:

Just called Amazon and talked to a lady who seemed confused, as on her end the product was listed at well over $1,000. That's still a major price anomaly, though. She said she would try to contact myOfficeSource. It is now listed as "Currently Unavailable", no less than 5 minutes after I made the call. It's most likely been pulled as a precautionary measure.