9-10: China-based smartphone vendors have become more conservative about placing orders for parts and components 4Q16; Xiaomi, Lenovo, OPPO, vivo have occupied 18.3% market share of Tier 2&3 cities; etc.
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Chipset |
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 (MSM8976Pro) chipset information is leaked. It will be manufactured using the 28nm process, featuring octa-core—4×Cortex A73+4×Cortex A53. (Gizmo China, CN Beta)
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| Taking advantage of technology developed to manipulate light on chips, a team based in Spain and Italy has created an integrated circuit that can be used to generate true random numbers by taking advantage of the thoroughly unpredictable nature of quantum mechanics. (CN Beta, IEEE, Optica)
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| Samsung is apparently in talks with NVIDIA and AMD about licensing their GPU technologies for use in future handsets, indicating that maybe Samsung might be moving away from ARM’s Mali, or at least expanding their options. (Ubergizmo, Sam Mobile, WCCF Tech, My Drivers)
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Touch Display |
| Samsung Electronics is reportedly considering ditching a flat-screen version for its next flagship Galaxy 8 that is expected to come out next year with a curved display only. (Android Authority, Korea Herald, iFeng, ZOL) |
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Camera |
| Apple is predicted to keep the dual-camera setup an exclusive to 5.5” versions of its smartphone line-up in 2017, according to KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. That translates to roughly 30~40% of all iPhone shipments in 2017, the analyst says. (Apple Insider, CN Beta) |
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Connectivity |
| Network provider Everything Everywhere (EE) has announced that it is rolling out Cat 9 devices to a number of U.K. cities as early as 2016. Speeds of up to a massive 450Mbps. (Digital Trends, EE, OfWeek) |
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Smartphones |
| According to Digitimes, China-based smartphone vendors have become more conservative about placing orders for parts and components 4Q16 due to concerns of rising inventory levels and uncertainty due to competition. Current inventories for entry-level are particularly higher in China as most vendors, including Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee and LeEco have been introducing more entry-level models to ramp up sales and market share. (Digitimes, press, My Drivers, iFeng) |
| According to IDC, the leading 30 cities of India registered growth of 10.2% QoQ in 2Q16 over 1Q16. The demand from Tier 2&3 cities is outgrowing Tier 1 cities by clocking +12.9% growth vs 8.1% for the latter. China vendors Xiaomi, Lenovo, OPPO, vivo have occupied 18.3% market share of Tier 2&3 cities. (Ajiadian, Baijing APP, IDC, press)
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| The penetration rate of smartphones in India currently stands at 45%, with local, China- and Korea-based vendors dominating the market. Most vendors have begun setting up retail shops in tier-2 and -3 cities as sales growth rates in these cities are higher than the 10% on average recorded by the top-30 cities in India. (Digitimes, press) |
| Samsung plans to spend as much as USD18 million on marketing in India during the Diwali holiday season. Apple too has similar intentions with a marketing budget north of USD15 million for the same. (CN Beta, Mashable, Economic Times) |
| Apple says it will not disclose opening weekend sales of the iPhone 7, claiming the early sales figures are “no longer a representative metric”. (Reuters, TechCrunch, Venture Beat, Gfan, 163)
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| Microsoft is reportedly ‘preparing to “end sales” of the Lumia range this year, December 2016′. (GSM Arena, Winbeta, Tencent, 163) |
| Huawei has sold 1.5 million Honor 8 units since it launched in China back in July 2016. Honor’s Vice President Zhao Ming also boasted that more than 100 million Honor’s handsets had been sold since the sub-brand was introduced 999 days ago. (GSM Arena, Playfuldroid, Phone Arena, My Drivers, Sohu)
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Tablets |
| The Raspberry Pi has now sold a whopping 10 million credit card-sized computers since it was first debuted in 2012, and to celebrate this momentous achievement, the company has released its “own idea of what the perfect bundle would look like, creating the official Raspberry Pi Starter Kit”. (TechNews, Ars Technica, Digital Trends)
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| ODMs Wistron and Inventec shipped 1.8 million notebooks and 1.7 million units respectively in August, increasing 20.0% and 21.4% on month. (Digitimes, press) |
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Wearables |
| Apple has reportedly increased chip and component orders for the Apple Watch Series 2, with monthly shipment volumes for August and September 2016 surpassing 2 million units. (Phone Arena, Patently Apple, CN Beta, Digitimes, press) |
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Internet of Things |
| Ford announced that it will acquire Chariot, a San Francisco-based shuttle service founded in 2014 that’s currently operating a fleet of Ford Transit vans. (CN Beta, Business Insider, PC Mag)
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| Apple’s autonomous vehicle initiative, dubbed internally as Project Titan, is getting a “reboot” under new project lead Bob Mansfield. Instead of designing and producing a full-fledged self-driving car, the company has shifted focus to work on backbone autonomous vehicle technology. (Apple Insider, New York Times, 163, Leiphone) |
