All About Smartphone Makers

choi

Tomorrow Taiwan's HTC will release a preliminary quarterly report, so I will wait one or two days to report back about HTC.

(1) Motorola sold itself in August 2011, which, looking back, was the perfect timing for Motorola (and not so good for its buyer, Google).

Rolfe Winkler, Google's Win Comes With a Catch. Wall Street Journal, Jan 5, 2013 (in the half-page Heard on the Street)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 21730001328290.html
("lost in the celebration [by Google that Federal Trade Commission wouldnot bring an antitrust case against Google's search engine] was the [FTC] verdict on another legal front. The regulators significantly limited Google's ability to use certain Motorola patents to pursue injunctions against other companies")

(2) Colum Murphy, China's ZTE Targets iPhone. Wall Street Journal, Dec 29, 2012.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 07593883982984.html

Quote:

ZTE cellphones (both budget--read: cheap--phones and smartphones) has "about a 5% market share in the US [according to ZTE], a reputation mostly for budget phones * * * But success in the US and China is key to its ambitions, Executive Vice President He Shiyou said in an interview, adding that ZTE hopes the US will leapfrog China to become the company's No 1 source of smartphone revenue.

"At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas beginning Jan. 8, it is expected to unveil its Grand S, a smartphone running Google Inc's Android mobile software. The Grand S carries a five-inch screen and a 13-megapixel camera—an effort by ZTE to move beyond budget phones in the US.

"In the third quarter, the company shipped 7.5 million smartphones world-wide—almost double the amount in the same period last year—putting ZTE in fourth place with a market share of 4.2%, behind Apple, Samsung and Research In Motion Ltd, according to IDC, which cited 'notable progress' in North America for ZTE's performance.

"ZTE anticipates revenue in the US will hit $1 billion in 2012—around 90% of that coming from mobile devices. Overall revenue from the market last year was around $400 million. Currently, around 40% of ZTE's handset revenue comes from China. ZTE didn't disclose specific figures for handset revenues in China, saying only they were 'a little bit higher than double' US handset revenue.

"In China, ZTE is hoping to reposition itself in the highly competitive Chinese handset market by launching a separate brand, called Nubia, aimed at high-end users. 'Nubia is intended to change people's perception of ZTE as low price,' said Mr He, adding that he considered the value of the ZTE brand underestimated by Chinese consumers.

Note: In print but NOT online, there was a crucial paragraph right after quotation 4:

"ZTE posted third quarter net loss of 1.94 billion yuan ($311 million) compared with a net profit of 299.27 million yuan in the year[-]earlier period, as the global economic downturn hurt demand. Revenue fell 13% to 18 billion yuan."