Samsung Galaxy S4: Plenty to like, but nothing to love

Samsung has high expectations to meet with the Galaxy S4, its latest flagship phone and main competitor for Apple’s iPhone.
In an increasingly crowded smartphone market, Samsung has tried to set its phones apart by adding stronger software features to its already impressive hardware.

With the S4, Samsung has taken that strategy and run with it, by offering a wide variety of new features meant to appeal to tech enthusiasts and novices alike. The result is a solid phone that still lacks a killer feature to propel it to must-have status.
Samsung certainly comes through on the hardware. The most remarkable part of the Samsung Galaxy S4, by far, is its screen. The company has managed to pack in a whopping 5-inch display while actually making the phone a hair smaller than its predecessor, the Galaxy SIII. That, combined with Samsung’s signature screen quality, gives users more real estate to browse or watch video.
The phone is also very smooth and very fast — it moves easily between apps, doesn’t lag while browsing and doesn’t stutter during video playback.
Its 13 MP camera takes stunning photos in normal and low light, and could easily replace a point-and-shoot for casual shutterbugs.
The phone has a plastic body, which has earned it criticism from those who would like to see Samsung offer a more finished, metal smartphone, but the plastic body helps to make the S4 thin and light.
The phone’s screen does eat up a lot of battery, but Samsung has given the S4 a bigger battery to keep users from having to top up in the middle of the day. The company has also opted to give the phone a removable battery, meaning that users can keep a spare around in case they run out of power. The phone will also support a microSD card to expand on the 16 GB or 32 GB models that Samsung is launching in the United States.
Despite those technical strengths, the phone’s software features are more hit and miss. Some features are genuinely useful, such as a photo-editing feature that can remove passersby from snapshots. The phone can also shoot video and photos simultaneously, and users can hook the phone up to a cable box and use it as a television remote.
While these are good features, there are also some downright strange features — such as the face-slimming “Beauty Face” photo filter — that will probably get very little use.
And other promising features, such as an auto-scrolling feature that detects when you’re looking at the phone, don’t work consistently enough to be useful. As Samsung improves its technology, these kinds of features may change how users interact with their phones but currently are more fun to play with than to actually use.
For those who are interested in the Galaxy S4 but may feel intimidated by all of its new features, Samsung has added an easy mode that strips out some of the bells and whistles to leave you with a fast, basic phone. The company said it included the option so the S4 can be a good fit even for those who feel less comfortable with smartphones.
All in all, the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is a great phone and users who pick it up will be happy with its performance — but it still lacks a certain polish that dampens its wow factor (Washington Post) )

Nintendo expects to sell 9 million Wii U consoles in year to March 31

(Reuters) - Nintendo Co Ltd said on Wednesday that it expects to sell 9 million of its new Wii U game consoles in the year to next March 31, after a disappointing start since their launch in November.
In the latest business year that ended on March 31, the creator of Super Mario sold 3.45 million of its successor to the hit Wii machine. It initially forecast sales of 5.5 million but later lowered that to 4 million.
Nintendo, which began by making playing cards in the late 19th century, is counting on the Wii U, its first console in 16 years to come with a dedicated Super Mario game title, to revive its fortunes as sales of the six year-old Wii slacken.
The Japanese gaming company forecast sales of its handheld 3DS console to rise nearly 30 percent to 18 million.

Apple to return $100bn to shareholders

Profits decline due to rivalry in smartphone and tablet markets, but company's cash reserves burgeon to nearly $145bn.

California-based Apple faces tougher competition from South Korea's Samsung and others [EPA]

Apple Inc has reported that its quarterly profit dipped for the first time in nearly a decade as it earned less money  in the competitive smartphone and tablet markets. The maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macintosh computers quickly stepped in to bolster its stock price by announcing a plan to more than double to $100bn the amount it will spend to buy back its stock and pay out dividends. Apple raised a coming stock dividend by 15 percent to $3.05 per common share. While Apple's coffers bulged with $144.7bn, the company said most of that money is offshore and it will be shrewder to borrow cash to implement the stock buy-back plan. "We will fund the capital return programme from operations and borrowing," said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's chief financial officer. Apple shares jumped briefly on the news in after-hours trades but slid back down to $403.95, about two dollars below where it was at the close of the Nasdaq. Sales decrease The California-based company posted a profit of $9.5bn on revenue of $43.6bn in the first three months of this year, compared to a profit of $11.6bn on $39.2bn in the same quarter in 2012. It said its gross margin, or the amount of money it makes in profit from its devices, shrank to 37.5 percent from 47.5 percent. The number of iPhones sold in the quarter rose to 37.4m from 35.1m during the same quarter last year. The number of iPads sold surged to 19.5m from 11.8m a year earlier. Meanwhile, sales of iPod MP3 players dropped by more than a million to 5.6m and Macintosh computers sales slipped about two percent to just below four million, according to Oppenheimer. The company's chief executive Tim Cook said that the decline in Apple stock in recent quarters has been "very frustrating for all of us". Shares in Apple are well below their 52-week peak above $700 in September as the tech giant faces tougher competition from South Korea's Samsung and others. 'Optimistic about future' "Although we've achieved incredible results, we acknowledge our growth rate has slowed," Cook said during an earnings call with financial analysts. "We will continue to focus on the long term and we remain very optimistic about our future." Cook remained adamant that Apple was well-positioned in the booming smartphone and tablet markets. "We have a lot more innovations in the works," Cook said, promising "some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014". "For the size company it is, Apple is plugging along very nicely," said Forrester analyst Frank Gillett. "The question we are asking ourselves is whether they can bust out a new category. My hunch is there are a bunch of new things brewing." Revenue in China was up 11 percent to $8.8bn, with iPad sales more than doubling despite Apple reporting that growth had slowed there. China served as an example of an Apple strategy to win over smartphone buyers with affordable prices on iPhone and iPad models, letting margins shrink in order to build ranks of loyal customers. "China has an unusually large number of potential first-time smartphone buyers and that is not lost on us," Cook said. He cited data showing that Apple ranks impressively when it comes to customer loyalty and the willingness of users of its gadgets to spend money on digital songs, music and apps at the iTunes store. "We do want to grow faster, but we don't look at it as the only measure of our health," Cook said. The iTunes shop pulled in more than $4bn in revenue in the first three months of the year, setting a new record, according to Oppenheimer.

Source: AFP

Who cares about HTC ONE?

HTC One looks great. But will anyone care?

analysist CNET looks at the fundamental problem plaguing the company: the lack of marketing muscle.

The HTC One. 

(Credit: Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive)

As sexy as the HTC One is, it is doomed to failure if the company doesn't quickly shake things up.

HTC's design and software teams did their jobs in creating an attractive, unique, and premium-feeling phone, taking Apple's love for metal construction and taking it to the next logical progression.

But guess what? HTC's One family of phones met with similar critical praise last year, yet failed to reverse its flagging revenue and profits. While HTC has had a history of showing off buzz-worthy products, dating back to the first Android smartphone in the G1 and the first 4G phone in the Evo 4G, the company has more recently shown a troubling trend: the tendency to get ignored in the marketplace.

It's the reality of the smartphone business and a key dilemma for a company like HTC, which lacks the marketing firepower that larger rivals Apple and Samsung enjoy. This year will be a critical one for HTC, which needs to prove that it can still compete in the increasingly duopolistic market. History has already shown that a sexy, new product just enough anymore.

"HTC is going up against two of the biggest spenders in the world with intensely loyal followings," said Avi Greengart, an analyst at Current Analysis.

So HTC needs to do a few things it hasn't been comfortable doing in the past. For one, it'll need to get more proactive with its own marketing. It's something the company has always half-heartedly done in the past, but it will need to work harder to develop both the One brand and the HTC name. Apple and Samsung are household names, and while HTC was seemingly on its way to becoming one just a few years ago, it lost its way.

"I think they need to invest a tremendous amount in marketing," Greengart said.

The company will also need to break from its traditional reliance on the carriers for support, and stop kowtowing to all of their needs. That's a particularly difficult one because that had been HTC's tentpole strategy for so long. But as Apple and Samsung have moved beyond carrier exclusives and customizing phones, HTC must do the same.

HTC appears to be on the right track. The company plans to roughly double its global marketing budget from a year ago, as it embarks on a new campaign, according to Erin McGee, vice president of marketing for HTC's North American business. The company plans to be the second or third largest advertiser in the industry during the launch period.

But in acknowledging the relative limits of HTC's marketing resources when stacked against its rivals, McGee said the company would target tech-savvy adults aged 18 to 34 through digital advertising and social media. While the company wouldn't talk about the details of the campaign, McGee said that in the U.S., HTC would run its promotions alongside music events it plans to organize through its Beats partnership.

 (Credit: Sarah Tew / CBS Interactive)

HTC executives also conceded that they had relied too much on the carriers in the past, and vowed to take more of a direct role in the purchasing experiencing. McGee said a lot of the advertising would focus on generating awareness and demand before the consumer went into the store, so there would be less reliance on a carrier salesperson.

"This is by far our best device, and it's our job to make sure people know about it," she said, noting that the campaign would be much more focused than before.

HTC plans to get some support from Best Buy, which it mentioned as being another distribution outlet beyond AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA.

Best Buy plans to jointly run some national commercials featuring the HTC One, according to Alistair Jones, head of marketing for the big-box retail chain's connectivity business group. He added this was the most resources that Best Buy has put behind HTC in at least 18 months.

Likewise, the HTC One will be featured prominently in Best Buy's stores, occupying one of the coveted "end caps" of the mobile area, where the latest and greatest are displayed.

Jones conceded that he was really worried about HTC's products over the past few years, but said he was excited about the One.