Wireless Archive

What makes the Fire Phone a particularly troubling adventure, however, is that Amazon's CEO seemingly lost track of the essential driver of his company's brand. It's understandable that Bezos would want to give Amazon a premium shine, but to focus on a high-end product, instead of the kind of service that has always distinguished the company, proved misguided. "We can't compete head to head with Apple," says a high-level source at Lab126. "There is a branding issue: Apple is premium, while our customers want a great product at a great price."

Fast-growing Chinese tech firm Xiaomi Technology Ltd Co booked 74.3 billion yuan ($11.97 billion) in pre-tax sales last year, up 135 percent from 2013, the firm's chief executive Lei Jun said on his official microblog account on Sunday.

Xiaomi sold a total of just over 61 million phones in 2014, up 227 percent from a year earlier, Lei added in a post on his Sina Weibo microblog account.

The post did not give a related profit figure, although a filing last month showed that the firm was grappling with razor thin margins as it rapidly expands. A part of the business made around 347.5 million yuan net profit last year on revenue of 26.6 billion yuan and an operating margin of just 1.8 percent.

David Wood, one of the founder executives of Symbian - and the one who saw it through to the bitter end - has written a book. A very big book.

Smartphones and beyond: Lessons from the remarkable rise and fall of Symbian tells the entire story from Symbian's conception, to world domination, to its rapid demise, and it must be one of the most candid and revealing books a technology executive has ever written.

We've been wondering for a while what is up with Palm.com domain, and it's looking more and more certain that HP sold the brand and trademarks to Alcatel Onetouch.

It's been almost a year since John Chen was appointed to save Blackberry and it's clear that his grand plan has, at least, stopped the company losing money hand over fist. In the Canadian outfit's latest three month report, it reveals that losses have been trimmed from $4.4 billion last year to a much more manageable $148 million. Of course, it's clear that as the business reinvents itself as a software-and-services company, manufacturing smartphones has increasingly become a side project.

The wait is over. The BlackBerry Classic has now arrived, and it brings the promise of the speed and performance of BlackBerry 10 with the familiar and classic navigation keys you know and love. All that in a package that is 'designed from the ground up to meet the needs of productive people who appreciate the speed and accuracy that can only be found with a physical QWERTY keyboard'.

It's a device purposefully built to be reliable, durable, made with high-quality materials, and that delivers on quality and fits neatly in your pocket. From the official announcement of its eventual release back in February at Mobile World Congress 2014 to now, many folks have been waiting for the BlackBerry Classic and now that it's here, it's time to take a look and see if it delivers on all those points.

• Video games continue to dominate the App Store charts and drive the vast majority of App Store revenue (est. 75%+) for AAP
• Similar to the last two years, non-gaming apps remain under-represented at the top of the charts, with just one of the top 10 grossing apps, two of the top 20, four of the top 30, and five of the top 40 in the App Store for 2014
• The App Store alone reached nearly $10 billion in sales in FY 2013 and we think that this can grow to nearly $20 billion by FY 2015
• Net App Store revenues to pass gross iTunes revenues in dollar terms (both as-reported) in the second half of FY 2015.
• Of the $1 in App Store sales, 24 cents is operating income while remaining 6 cents are spread across operational expenses and costs-of-goods-sold.

Anyway, as I was reading the news of the Nokia tablet, a thought hit me - maybe it's time for Nokia and Jolla to kiss and make up. When you think about it, it makes sense. First of all, Jolla employees are used to seeing "Nokia" on their paychecks. Sure they took some time off, but at least they were being productive with their time.

Among the topics discussed, why John Chen took the CEO job at BlackBerry, how the company has progressed since his arrival, the NSA and his plans for the future of BlackBerry. Even if you've heard some of the information before, it's still an interesting and deeper look into the man now in charge of BlackBerry.

Google's Project Ara isn't the only hope for phones with replaceable and upgradeable parts. Finland's Circular Devices is developing an alternative concept called the Puzzlephone, which breaks the handset down into three constituent elements. The phone's Spine provides the LCD, speakers and basic structure, its Heart contains the battery and secondary electronics, and its Brain has the processor and camera modules."

One day, for the fun of it, I started writing a list in my notebook of all the things that are different between apps here and those I'm accustomed to using and creating back in the US. When I finished, I was surprised by how long the list was, so it seemed fitting to flesh it out into a post.

Samsung's mobile business has been having a rough year - it's still one of the biggest and most profitable players in the Android ecosystem, but profits are down. That can be attributed at least in part to lower than expected sales of the company's flagship Galaxy S5. The Wall Street Journal reports that Samsung increased production by 20 percent relative to last year's Galaxy S4, but that it actually sold 40 percent less than it expected to. The S4 sold around 16 million phones in its first three months on the market, compared to just 12 million for the S5.

The Note Edge is a really novel idea, and for what it is it's executed quite well, particularly in terms of hardware and display technology. Samsung manages to introduce a rounded portion without compromising image quality, the software is fairly limited but speedy, and the rest of the phone is exactly the same same as the well-liked Note 4. But unfortunately that doesn't mean that the Note Edge actually makes any sense as a complete package.