Nokia witnessed its global mobile phone market share drop significantly over the course of last year while Apple and Samsung continued to grow.
According to analyst firm Gartner the Finnish manufacturer saw a year on year drop of 4.7 per cent, with a larger 5.4 per cent decline in the final quarter of last year.
Apple and Samsung on the other hand managed to increase their dominance in the market, with the firms now controlling 52 per cent of all smartphone sales.
Record breaking smartphones
Smartphone sales were at a record high during the fourth quarter of 2012 with 207.7 million units being snapped up by consumers, which is up almost 40 per cent over the same period in 2011.
On the flip side feature phones continue to decline, partly due to the swath of affordable Android smartphones now on the market, with sales down almost 20 per cent year on year.
Possibly the biggest winner from these results is Chinese firm Huawei which now sits comfortably in third place in the global smartphone sales ranking, although there's quite a gap between it and second place Apple.
Adobe has released a patch for two Flash player vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited against Windows and OS X users to install malware on their systems. The first of them, CVE-2013-0633, works by tricking Windows users into opening a Word document containing malicious Flash content, while the bug, cataloged as CVE-2013-0634, can be exploited via Apple’s Safari or Mozilla’s Firefox browsers in both platform as well as Word documents booby-trapped with malicious Flash content on Windows.
Adobe credited members of the Shadowserver Foundation, Lockheed Martin's Computer Incident Response Team, MITRE, and antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab for their help in discovering the vulnerabilities. Although only OS X and Windows have been reported to be under attack, Linux and Android received an update as well.
Users are warned to update their software as soon as possible using the in-built updater or standalone installer.
Ars notes Adobe’s advisory came the same day the company announced that a future version of Flash will make this sort of embedded attacks in Microsoft Office documents more difficult to achieve. Namely, it will introduce a "click-to-play" prompt for users of Office 2008 and earlier so content only runs with user approval. Office 2010 and later already has a “Protected Mode” that limits the privileges of content within a document.
Mozilla also announced a similar security feature for an upcoming version of its Firefox browser. The change will happen gradually and eventually plug-ins like Silverlight, Adobe Reader, Java will be blocked by default. Flash will still be allowed to run but only when the most recent version is installed.
Time Warner CFO and chief administrative officer John K. Martin recently revealed during an investors call that the company is planning a strong games release this coming year which will include a new game under the Batman: Arkham franchise. Not much else was revealed during the chat but it certainly gives Batman fans something to look forward to in the coming months.
The fact that a new game in the franchise is on the way isn’t a real shocker at this point. Last month it was revealed that Warner Bros. registered some 15 new Arkham-related domain names. The company used MarkMonitor to register the domains, a brand protection firm that they have worked with in the past.
The list of registered domains include arkhamuniverse.com, dcarkhamverse.com, batmanarkhambegins.com and batmanarkhamstories.com. It’s likely that most of these were picked to throw off any guesses about the true title of the upcoming game but at least one of the URLs could give some credit to a rumor from last year pointing to a Batman prequel.
VG247 said their own sources were able to confirm that Rocksteady Studios, the company behind Arkham City and Arkham Asylum, is not making this new game. Furthermore, it is widely known that Paul Dini, the writer for Arkham City, won’t be returning for a follow-up job.
Based on Martin’s wording, the title could come this year or sometime in 2014 as part of the company’s next financial year.
Apple made the screen bigger last time. Is an even bigger iPhone on the way?
When Apple unveiled the iPhone 5, the reaction was a bit muted: where previous phones were massive leaps forward, the iPhone 5 was a bit longer and a lot easier to scratch.
So what can we expect from the next iPhone, the iPhone 6 or 5S? Let's see what the crystal balls are saying.
The iPhone 6 and the iPhone 5S are two different phones
The rumour mill doesn't seem too sure whether the next iPhone is going to be the iPhone 5S or the iPhone 6. Given the iPhone's history - from the 3G onwards, there's always been a half-step S model before the next numbered iPhone - we'd bet on an iPhone 5S first and an iPhone 6 a few months later.
The iPhone 6 might have a plastic case
Multiple rumours say Apple's working on plastic cases for its next iPhone, mixing plastic and metal in such a way that "the internal metal parts [are] able to be seen from outside through special design."
It's unclear whether such cases would be for the iPhone 5S or iPhone 6, or if Apple is simply considering making cheaper iPhone 4s to sell when the iPhone 3GS reaches the end of its life.
Pretty, yes, but also horrifically scratch-prone. Will your next iPhone have a plastic back?
The iPhone 6 will finally do NFC
That's what iDownloadblog reckons, quoting Jefferies analyst Peter Misek: it'll have a better battery too, he says.
The iPhone 6 will run iOS 7 and the iPhone 5S probably won't
Developers are seeing new iPhone model identifiers in their server logs: the device identifies itself as the iPhone 6,1 (the iPhone 5 is 5,1 or 5,2) running iOS 7, and its IP address is an Apple one. If the two-phones strategy is true, we'd expect Apple to unveil the next major revision of iOS at its WWDC conference in June, with it shipping on the iPhone 6 a few months later.
The iPhone 6 release date is September 2013, probably
Some pundits predict a spring release for the iPhone 6: Money Morning reckons that the iPhone 5's lack of NFC and Jumbotron display is because Apple's got a proper iPhone ready for a springtime release.
It's quite likely that Apple is moving to a two-phones-per-year upgrade cycle, but we'd bet on a springtime S model and a bigger update in the Autumn.
Even Digitimes reckons a springtime iPhone 6 is unlikely: it's predicting a summertime reveal for Apple's next generation phones, which again fits with a WWDC unveiling.
Apple may have a new roadmap, with new phones every spring and autumn
The iPhone 6 will have 128GB of storage, and it'll cost a fortune
We've already seen a 128GB iPad, so why not a 128GB iPhone 6? Yes, it'll cost a fortune, but high-spending early adopters love this stuff.
The iPhone 6 may not have a home button
According to Business Insider, of the many iPhone 6 prototypes Apple has made, one has a giant Retina+ IGZO display and a "new form factor with no home button. Gesture control is also possibly included".
The iPhone 6 screen may be bigger
Take this one with a pinch of salt, because China Times isn't always right: it reckons the codename iPhone Math, which may be a mistranslation of iPhone+, will have a 4.8-inch display. The same report suggests that Apple will release multiple handsets throughout the year over and above the iPhone 5S and 6, which seems a bit far-fetched to us.
You'll probably still be able to see the camera lens in the iPhone 6
The iPhone 6 processor will be an Apple A7
Not a huge surprise, this one: the current processor is a dual-core A6, and the next one will be a quad-core A7. The big sell here is more power with better efficiency, which should help battery life.
Expect to see it in the 2013 iPad first, and expect to see an improved A6 processor, the A6X, in the iPhone 5S.
The iPhone 6 camera should have more megapixels
Apple's bought camera sensors from Sony before, and this year we're going to see a new, 13-megapixel sensor that takes up less room without compromising image quality.
The iPhone 6 will have better 4G LTE
On its UK launch, just one UK network had 4G LTE: Everything Everywhere, which currently offers 4G on the 1800MHz band. In 2013, all the other big names will be coming on board, offering 4G in other frequency bands. International iPhones already work across different 4G bands to the UK, so you can expect the UK iPhone 6 (and possibly the iPhone 5S) to be more promiscuous than the iPhone 5.
The iPhone 6 Wi-Fi may be 802.11ac
Apple likes to lead Wi-Fi standards adoption - its Airport really helped make Wi-Fi mainstream - and there's a good chance we'll see ultra-fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi in Apple kit this year. It's faster than Lighting, and not very frightening.
The iPhone 6 may get wireless charging
Wireless charging still isn't mainstream. Could Apple help give it a push? CP Tech reports that Apple has filed a patent for efficient wireless charging, but then again Apple has filed patents for pretty much anything imaginable.
The tasty bit of this particular patent is that Apple's tech wouldn't just charge one device, but multiple ones.
A new rumor indicates that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of three products that are making up Samsung’s “Project J”. What are the other two devices? Apparently the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini and some kind of companion device for both the Mini and standard S4.
That’s right, seems like the S4 is getting the “Mini” treatment right out of the gate, at least if the rumor mill proves correct. So who is the source of this rumor? It comes from SamMobile, and while it should be taken with a grain of salt, I wouldn’t be that surprised either.
If the Galaxy S4 is getting a larger 4.99-inch 1080p display, it makes sense that Samsung might want to position the S4 Mini as an alternative for those that just don’t want a screen that big. So what can we expect from the S4 Mini? Hard to say, but hopefully it delivers a heck of a lot more than the Galaxy S3 Mini. Except in styling and name, the S3 Mini was more along the lines of Galaxy S2 then an S3.
If Samsung follows this pattern, the S4 Mini might have close to the same specs as the Galaxy S3. Here’s to hoping that the Galaxy S4 Mini is quite similar to its bigger brother, though odds are it will probably feature a 720p display over a 1080p.
What about the third device? The rumor mill says it is currently called “Fortius” and is designed to work with a number of accessories like a bike mount, arm band and more. This isn’t a smartphone, but it is unclear what exactly it is– maybe some kind of smartwatch?
Hopefully we learn more on March 15th, when Samsung is supposedly set to unveil the Galaxy S4. Would you be interested in a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini or not?
