Information has been appearing in dribs and drabs about Nokia’s last Symbian smartphone, the Nokia 803, but a trusted source of ours has come through with some details that vary a bit from earlier reports. For starters, the Nokia 803 will run Symbian Belle and serve it up on a 4-inch AMOLED display instead of the smaller 3.5-inch screen that had been reported. An HDMI-out port, microSIM support and NFC are all a go as well. We have also been told that the Nokia 803 will feature one of the largest camera...

Smartphone shipments overtook client PC shipments for the first time in 2011, according to new data from market research firm Canalys. Vendors shipped a total of 158.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, representing a 57% increase compared to the 101.2 million units shipped in the same quarter a year earlier. Shipments for the full year of 2011 rose 63% to 487.7 million units, up from 299.7 million shipped in 2010. The PC market only grew 15% to 414.6 million units in 2011, which included an astonis...

ComScore released its most recent U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share report for the three-month period ending in December, 2011. The research firm found that Samsung remained the top mobile phone vendor in the fourth quarter with a 25.3% market share — the same share as it held in the third quarter. LG’s market share dropped 0.6 percentage points to a 20% share for second place followed by Motorola, which fell 0.5 percentage points to 13.3%. Apple had the fourth largest share with a 12.4% market sha...

Enterprise mobile vendor Good Technology published a new study on Thursday revealing iOS’s massive market share in the corporate world. The iPad accounted for 96% of all tablets in the fourth quarter according to the firm, while the iPhone accounted for 53% of all smartphones activated by more than 2,000 companies using Good’s services in the fourth quarter. Good provides push messaging, device management and security products for corporate mobile users, competing against RIM’s BlackBerry E...

Usage of Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android operating system both declined between November and December as BlackBerry and Symbian both showed gains. Despite huge activations over the holidays, new data released by analytics firm Net Applications shows that Internet usage of iOS on Apple’s iPhone and iPad displayed the sharpest decline in December, dropping to 52.10% from 54.04% in November. Google’s Android platform on smartphones and tablets dipped less than half a point to 16...

Usage of Android-based devices has exploded in Nordic countries over the past few months and is set to push Symbian into the No. 3 spot among mobile platforms in the region. Apple’s iPhone managed to knock Symbian out of the top spot some time ago, and according to data from mobile analytics firm CEM4Mobile Solutions, Android usage has grown 6.2% in the region since May while Symbian usage slid 1.7%. Based on the firm’s monitoring of usage in the region, iOS held a 33% share in September while Sym...

Nokia took the wraps off of the Nokia 603 on Thursday, a Symbian Belle-powered smartphone that will target first-time smartphone users. The 603 is equipped with a 3.5-inch ClearBlack display, a 1GHz processor, GPS, Wi-Fi and a 5-megapizel camera. It also comes with a near-field communications (NFC) chip for syncing with accessories or tapping another user’s phone to share contacts, photos or movies. The 603 is expected to launch during the fourth quarter of this year for €200 before taxes and su. It w...

Nokia’s situation may not be quite as “dire” as initially anticipated according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Sue. Despite Nokia’s rough second-quarter earnings, which were called “clearly disappointing” by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, Sue sees Nokia in a better position than most. In a note to investors on Friday, the analyst reiterated his Outperform rating on Nokia stock and set a price target of $9. Sue increased his third-quarter unit shipment estimate to 100 millio...

Nokia announced three new Symbian Belle-powered phones on Wednesday: the Nokia 700, Nokia 701 and Nokia 600. The Nokia 700 is the smallest of the bunch and includes a 1GHz processor, a 3.2-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, 2GB of storage, a 5-megapixel camera capable of recording HD video and support for near-field communications (NFC). The 701 mimics the C7′s industrial design and has the “brightest ever” mobile display, a 1GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting HD video, a ...

Android may be an open source operating system, but it’s not as open as other platforms according to a new research report from VisionMobile. The research firm compared Android, Eclipse, Firefox, the Linux kernel, MeeGo, Qt and Symbian and found that, of those open source environments, Android was the least “open.” According to the report’s “open governance index,” which scored each environment on how open it is, Android scored a 23%. It was far below the others; Eclipse sc...

While the Daytona 500 kicks off a race to the top each year in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, the Nokia 500 is a race to the bottom. Nokia on Monday announced a new Symbian-powered smartphone that will aggressively attack emerging markets and smartphone users on a budget. The €150 ($217) Nokia 500 costs about what most popular smartphones do after subsidies, and it features specs we’re not used to seeing on entry-level devices. Highlights include a 1GHz processor, a 3.2-inch 640 x 360-pixel touchscree...

BGR reported last week that Apple had passed Nokia in the second quarter of 2011 to become the world’s top smartphone vendor by volume. The Cupertino-based company had already been No. 1 in the world by profits for quite some time. On Friday, market analysis firm Strategy Analytics released its second-quarter smartphone shipment figures and reaffirmed Apple’s new position atop the market. Apple shipped 20.3 million smartphones last quarter, up more than 140% from the 8.4 million iPhones it shipped...

Android continued on its warpath this past quarter, once again showing gains as it retained its position as top smartphone platform in the United States. Nielsen on Thursday issued its second-quarter smartphone market share data for the U.S., and Android finds itself atop the list again with 39% of the market. IOS remains in the No. 2 spot with 28% and RIM slid to 20% in the second quarter. Windows Mobile and Windows Phone combined to take 9% of the market, while webOS and Palm OS combined to account for jus...

Nokia recently announced that its Ovi Store has served a record 7.62 million downloads in a single day. The figure is a large jump from the 3 million daily downloads Nokia said the Ovi Store was serving in October of last year. The phone maker attributed its app store’s popularity to the decision to remove a registration and login requirement from the shop. In addition, Nokia said downloads more than tripled in India, the top country in terms of overall download volume. To put the Ovi Store figures in p...