Nokia

The first mobile phone call was placed 40 years ago. So on Wednesday, we were treated to several “History of the Mobile Phone” articles by American journalists, most of them orgies of chauvinism and astonishing nationalistic bias. One pure product of this navel-gazing genre is the Wired magazine piece called “The 12 Cellphones That Changed Our World Forever.” In the revisionist history of the mobile phone, the actual nature of the device is obscured completely. More →

Does the world really need another “phablet?” Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean it would be a bad idea for Nokia (NOK) to release an oversized smartphone of its own. In an interview with Bloomberg, IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo says that big-screen devices are “a trend that can’t be missed” because “people are using smartphones in different ways now, consuming media by streaming over faster mobile networks.” CCS Insight research director Ben Wood similarly thinks that “phablets” are an important trend and tells Bloomberg that “Nokia needs to make sure they don’t miss the boat” by not building one of their own. More →

The first wave of Asian smartphone vendors launched LG (066570) and Samsung (005930), the latter of which ended 2012 as the No. 1 vendor in the world. The second wave began with the emergence of the Chinese powerhouses Huawei and ZTE: Huawei has become the No. 3 smartphone brand in the world with 5% market share. The third wave consists of Indian vendors that have started surging in South-East Asia and have grand designs for expansion from South America to China. More →