This is a follow up post to 8 Reasons Why I Hate my iPhone 5. The reader’s digest summary is that I started my smartphone journey with Android and became accustomed to the Android way of doing things. It was a difficult jump into the Apple ecosystem. I’d wager that the vast majority of smartphone users stay with their initial platform,… Read More
Tag: smartphone
Beneath the Surface lies the first real test
At CES 2011, Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft stepped on the stage and went off the map of proven Windows territory. Announcing the next version of Windows would support the ARM Architecture, including SoCs from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and TI, set a new course for Microsoft.
But Windows, being the battleship-sized behemoth that it is, would… Read More
How Big is Mobile? Twice as many people use mobile phones than use a toothbrush
How big is mobile? Well, sometime early next year (or maybe even in the Christmas surge) there will be more mobile phones than people. Technically that is subscribers, so some of those “phones” are actually spare SIM-cards in international travelers’ pockets. But even so that is an incredible statistic. Also,… Read More
Smart mobile SoCs: Made in China
One of the comments to previous installments of this series was that there isn’t much left for the merchant suppliers of smart mobile SoCs, considering Apple and Samsung have majority share and design their own parts. The theory is this makes it hard for many suppliers to continue investing at the resource levels needed to bring … Read More
CEVA-XC4000 new DSP IP core
The CEVA-XC4000 offers unparalleled, scalable performance capabilities and innovative power management to address the most demanding communication standards, including LTE-Advanced, 802.11ac and DVB-T2, on a single architecture. Building upon its highly successful predecessors, the CEVA-XC4000 architecture sets… Read More
CEVA is the undisputed DSP worldwide leader
Anybody working in the wireless handset segment probably knows that CEVA is the provider of DSP IP cores, and if you are simply a wireless handset user, you should know that the baseband digital signal processing is the function allowing your phone to process the RF (analog) signal coming from the outside world. If you have been involved… Read More
Linley Tech Mobile Conference
I went to part of the Linley Tech Mobile Conference. This is the current incarnation of what started life as Michael Slater’s Microprocessor Report, and the twice-yearly Microprocessor Forum. These very technical analysis organizations seem to work well when they are a small group of analysts working together to cover… Read More
The best graphics chip is the one seen the most
If I say “graphics chip”, most techies will say NVIDIA or AMD. But in the new post-PC world , neither of these players holds the key to the future. One that does is a little company making 43 cents on every latest version iPad and iPhone. Another is designing their own approach. Should you care what graphics is in your phone?… Read More
No, gosh darn it, I said the NFC is near!
Getting a feature to take off in today’s smartphone market is tricky. It requires a combination of hardware support, OS support, app integration, and maybe most importantly carrier adoption. Ideas that seem ready technologically, like NFC, get stopped in their tracks by silly things like the William J. LePetomaine Thruway… Read More
Smartphone shipments in Q4’11, the Milky Way the new limit!
In a previous blog, I was forecasting smartphone shipment to reach 430 million units in 2011. I was wrong! Apparently, I am not better than other analysts, as the actual figures for the smartphone shipment in 2011 are more than slightly different, as these have topped 491.4 million units! After 304 million in 2010, that’s a 61.3 percent… Read More