Images of an unannounced Android smartphone from HTC have been published online ahead of a possible announcement at the Mobile World Congress trade show later this month. The nameless device features a design similar to Verizon Wireless’s DROID Incredible line of phones, leading phoneArena.com to speculate that it could hit the market as the DROID Incredible 3. The smartphone is running Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich along with Sense 4.0 — just like the HTC Ville — and other notable specs include a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera and 4G LTE connectivity. Given the timing of the leak, we may see HTC introduce the phone alongside the ultra-thin HTC Ville and the flagship quad-core HTC Edge at MWC in late February. A few more images of the phone follow below.

Read

HTC announced on Thursday that an Ice Cream Sandwich update will be available for select devices by the end of March. The announcement came through the company’s Facebook page and states that the first devices to receive the update will be the Sensation, Sensation 4G and Sensation XE, followed shortly after by the Sensation XL. The Rezound, Vivid, Amaze 4G, EVO 3D, EVO Design 4G, Incredible S, Desire S and Desire HD will all be updated “later this year,” as previously reported. HTC is expected to launch multiple new Android 4.0-powered smartphones later this month at Mobile World Congress, including the HTC Ville and HTC Edge.

Read

Mobile Web usage is on the rise, with users who access the Web through mobile devices having nearly doubled every year since 2009 according to analytics firm StatCounter. Web usage on mobile devices grew to 8.5% in January of 2012, up from 4.3% in the same month a year earlier. “While global Internet usage through mobiles is still under 10%, the pace of growth is remarkable,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. Apple leads the way in both the United States and United Kingdom, however Nokia is still the global leader — driven by its dominance in India — with nearly 40% of mobile Web browsing. In North America, Apple has a massive share of 59.11%, with Samsung and RIM coming in at 11.43% and 10.06%, respectively. Apple comes in second globally with roughly 30%, followed by Samsung with a 14% share. Android manufactures combined to account for less than 25% of mobile Web usage, with Research in Motion falling to roughly 8%. The Blackberry maker ranks second behind Apple in the U.K., however. Read on for StatCounter’s press release.

Mobile internet usage is doubling year on year

Nokia global leader, Apple king in US and UK

Boston, USA and Dublin, Ireland; Monday, 6th February, 2012: Global internet usage through mobile devices, not including tablets*, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to free web analytics company StatCounter. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats highlights the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet with market share doubling year on year since 2009 (Table A below).

“While global internet usage through mobiles is still under 10%, the pace of growth is remarkable,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter.

StatCounter has also announced that new stats regarding mobile vendors are now available on its Global Stats website. The firm has been compiling and refining these stats for some time and has now made the beta project public. Based on initial research covering all traffic to the StatCounter network, Nokia leads worldwide, most probably driven by its dominance in India. Apple is second globally but leads the US and UK markets. In the UK RIM is second only to Apple.

“Following repeated requests, we’ve decided to make our new mobile vendor stats publicly available,” commented Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter. “As the mobile space is constantly evolving, we keep our detection under constant review.” Anyone wishing to contribute to the detection project can submit feedback using the detect tool: http://gs.statcounter.com/detect

StatCounter (http://statcounter.com/) provides free website traffic analysis. This allows website owners, developers and bloggers to capture website intelligence in real time e.g. number of visitors, visitors by country/region, search terms, popular pages, download stats, exit links and other data.

————————————————–
Table A:
Global use of mobile devices to access internet
(excludes tablets*)

Jan 2009: 0.7%
Jan 2010: 1.6%
Jan 2011: 4.3%
Jan 2012: 8.5%
Source: StatCounter Global Stats
—————————————————–

* StatCounter defines mobile device as a pocket-sized computing device, typically having a display screen with touch input or a miniature keyboard.

HTC on Monday reported that the company’s fourth quarter earnings missed analysts’ estimates. While speaking on the vendor’s earnings call, HTC’s chief financial officer said that the manufacturer ”dropped the ball” with its 2011 devices, SlashGear reports. Winston Yung admitted that the company’s LTE handsets were too thick, offered insufficient battery life and that there was plenty of work to be done to improve both “design and components.” Products launched in the fourth quarter “are not selling as we expected,” Yung said. New phones are on the way, however, and HTC’s next-generation smartphones are expected to be revealed later this month. BGR exclusively reported this past November that HTC will unveil the Ville at Mobile World Congress along side the company’s quad-core flagship HTC Edge.

Read

Last Monday, the HTC Ville was shown off running Android 4.0 and Sense 4.0 in a leaked video. Four new images recently published by ePrice reveal the handset’s thin design and give a slightly clearer look at HTC’s new Sense 4.0 UI, which features a revamped clock and icon dock. As BGR exclusively reported in November, the Ville is expected to debut at Mobile World Congress later this month and sport a case that is less than 8 millimeters thick. The smartphone will feature a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display and will be powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor. Other expected specs include a 1,650 mAh battery, Beats audio and an 8-megapixel rear camera with 1080p HD video capture support. Additional images of the HTC Ville can be seen after the break.

Read

HTC on Monday reported earnings for the fourth quarter last year along with guidance for the first quarter that missed analysts’ estimates. Further highlighting the slump that began in October with the launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S, the Taiwan-based vendor posted fourth-quarter revenue of NT$101.42 billion, or approximately $3.5 billion USD, down 2.5% compared to the same quarter in 2010. Gross profit slid nearly 12% in the fourth quarter to NT$27.5 billion, and HTC’s total assets on hand at the end of the year slid more than 33% to NT$254.59 billion. In the first quarter of 2012, the vendor expects the rough patch to continue ahead of new product launches due later in the first half. HTC said first-quarter sales will likely fall between NT$65 billion and NT$70 billion while Wall Street expected guidance of approximately NT$85 billion.

Read

HTC has acknowledged that some the company’s handsets contain a security hole involving the handling of certain data requests while connected to a Wi-Fi network. Security researchers Chris Hessing and Bret Jordan discovered the vulnerability, which could use the android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE permission to create a command to view all Wi-Fi credentials while connected to the network. The researchers discovered the flaw in September, however over the past few months they have worked with HTC and Google to patch things up before going public. The hole could have been used to transmit information to a remote server using the Internet access permission. Read on for more.

“HTC has developed a fix for a small WiFi issue affecting some HTC phones,” HTC posted on its support site. “Most phones have received this fix already through regular updates and upgrades. However, some phones will need to have the fix manually loaded. Please check back next week for more information about this fix and a manual download if you need to update your phone.”

Four Froyo devices are vulnerable to the exploit — the Glacier (myTouch 4G), DROID Incredible, Thunderbolt 4G and Desire HD — and four Gingerbread devices are vulnerable — the Desire HD, Desire S, Sensation and EVO 3D.

[Via TheNextWeb]

Read

HTC’s upcoming smartphone code-named the HTC Ville just stared in a leaked video ahead of an official announcement, which is expected to come at next month’s Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain. BGR exclusively reported this past November that HTC will unveil the Ville at MWC. We said the device would be thinner than Apple’s latest iPhone and would feature Android 4.0, Sense 4.0, a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display, a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon Series 4 processor, an 8-megapixel display, HSPA+ and a 1,650 mAh battery. This new video confirms much of our report — HTC Hub’s footage shows Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich and Sense 4.0 running on a sleek and slender smartphone with a gorgeous display. HTC is also expected to announce the quad-core flagship HTC Edge at the show next month according to our sources. The HTC Ville video can be viewed after the break.

Read

Global smartphone vendors including Samsung, HTC, Nokia and LG are expected to launch new smartphone models in the second quarter to avoid competing directly with the iPhone 4S, according to Digitimes. “Mainly due to hot sales of the iPhone 4S, Apple recorded the largest global smartphone market share of 23.9% in the fourth quarter of 2011, followed by Samsung with 23.5% and Nokia with 12.6%,” the publication’s supply-chain sources said citing data from Strategy Analytics. “Based on previous experience, sales of iPhone 4S will remain at peak in the first quarter of 2012 and then begin to decline.” Samsung, HTC, Nokia and LG are all expected to unveil new smartphone models this year’s Mobile World Congress on February 27th, but devices supposedly won’t begin rolling out until the second quarter.

Read

HTC said recently that it will focus on the quality of its top-of-the-line “Hero” smartphones moving forward instead of pumping out a large number of devices across multiple price points. “We have to get back to focusing on what made us great – amazing hardware and a great customer experience,” HTC’s UK head Phil Roberson said in an interview with Mobile Today. “We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much… We make great phones, but it is hard to do that when the portfolio is spread too much.” Roberson also noted that he wanted each customer to be purchasing “something special” when he or she buys a new HTC device. The company is currently expected to unveil a quad-core smartphone during Mobile World Congress, which kicks off next month. If it does announce the phone, it will no doubt be one of the company’s first “Hero” devices moving forward. 

Read

Sprint has updated the company’s end-of-life list to include two of its tablets. Shipments of the carrier’s BlackBerry Playbook and HTC EVO View 4G will come to a halt and supplies will run down within the coming weeks, according to the EOL list obtained by SprintFeed. Both tablets will be phased out by the end of of January, possibly leading to the announcement of an LTE tablet from the Overland Park-based company. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, Sprint announced two new LTE-powered smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper, which will launch some time this spring. The company is looking to roll out its 4G LTE network by mid-2012 in select locations. 

Read

Apple recently filed to appeal a December 19th ITC ruling that found HTC was infringing on just one of Apple’s patents. Patent expert Florian Muller of FOSS Patents said that Apple filed for the appeal on December 29th, and that it is likely Apple wants a more favorable ruling on the original case that includes a judgement on whether or not HTC is infringing on a real-time API patent. “It’s clear that Apple’s appeal of the ITC ruling at least aims to broaden the scope of the import ban by including the ’263 patent,” Muller explained. “If Apple succeeded, this would greatly increase the business impact of the import ban.” The original ban, which involved patents related to “data tapping,” is set to go into effect on April 19th, but HTC said it already has workaround ready to be deployed that will allow the company to circumvent the ban. “Whatever the scope of Apple’s appeal against the ITC may be, I believe Apple has realistic chances of winning a better outcome,” Muller argued.

Read

While AT&T’s Nokia Lumia 900 could be an excellent option for someone in the market for a 4G LTE Windows Phone, there’s also the HTC Titan II — which we exclusively revealed — that will soon be available as well. AT&T is currently planning to launch the HTC Titan II for $199.99 with a two-year agreement on March 18th. The carrier is also getting ready to launch a Sony tablet for $409.99 called the Crystal, though it will feature HSPA+ and not 4G LTE. Rounding things out for the latter part of the first quarter is the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD, the Samsung Exhilarate and Sony Xperia ion, though pricing and availability are still unknown.

Apple’s monster holiday quarter is the talk of the tech world, with the technology giant having just reported the second most profitable quarter ever among U.S. companies. The company’s $13.06 billion in fiscal first-quarter profit on revenue that surpassed $46 billion is staggering, and iPhone shipments that surpassed 37 million units played a huge role in Apple’s record-setting quarter. While market share is a statistic many deem unimportant, another impressive entry in Apple’s laundry least of first-quarter feats may be one of its most impressive yet: with just three models currently available, Apple’s share of the smartphone market may have surpassed that of Android in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011. Read on for more.

According to new data from analysts at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the record-breaking launch of Apple’s iPhone 4S drove iPhone sales that surpassed combined Android smartphone sales in the fourth calendar quarter last year. Apple shipped 37.04 million iPhones last quarter, which lifted the company’s smartphone market share up to 44.9% according to Kantar analyst Dominic Sunnebo. The figure is roughly double Apple’s market share in the same quarter a year earlier.

In the same quarter, Kantar estimates that the combined market share of all Android phones slid to 44.8% from 50%. ”Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover,” Sunnebo told Reuters.

Samsung become the No.1 smartphone vendor by shipment volume in the third quarter last year, but that title is expected to have been retaken by Apple by a wide margin in the fourth calendar quarter of 2011. Samsung is scheduled to report earnings for its holiday quarter on Friday.

IBM and HTC are working together to make Android a more attractive platform for the enterprise market. Executives from both companies recently demoed IBM software running on HTC smartphones and tablets during IBM’s Lotusphere and Connect conference, TechWeek Europe said recently. “It’s only been really relatively recently that HTC has broken into the enterprise space,” HTC’s executive director Global Enterprise and Services David Jaegar said. “We’re driving toward that magic 100-million device number globally. We see IBM as the gold standard for an enterprise partnership. We want to make sure if IBM is talking about Android or tablets, HTC is in the conversation.” HTC is focusing specifically on security applications, Jaegar explained recently. The Taiwan-based phone and tablet maker also said it is working with third-party developers and businesses to help firms create custom applications for HTC tablets.

Read