Smartphone Brands Take on Apple iPhone 5 and MS’ Phone 8

Taipei, Sept.25, 2012 (CENS)--As Windows Phone 8, a smart phone developed by Microsoft, will be on market in October, smart phone vendors including Nokia Inc., HTC Corp., Samsung Group, and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. are launching their own to take on Apple’s iPhone5 and Google Android.

Samsung announced a WP8 model “ATIV S” in August to be the first WP8 manufacturer globally, which is equipped with a 4.8-inch AMOLED (Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) panel and a 1.5-inch dual-core processor to target business professionals and expected to be released in the end of October.

Nokia’s WP8 model “Lumia 920” features wireless battery-charging, along with electronic wallet, NFC (Near Field Communication) capabilities, making many market watchers optimistic about WP8’s development.

Huawei’s WP8 models will be named “Ascend W1” and announced on September 25, to be priced about RMB$2,000 (US$316.48) each.

An institutional investor indicated that WP8 has speech recognition (SR), mobile e-wallet, a faster IE 10 (Internet Explorer) browser, multi-core processor compatible with PC and tablet PC, and security upgrades, which are likely to boost market share.

IDC Corp., an U.S-based market researcher, reveals that Android phones still led the smart phone market with 68.1% market share in the second quarter, up 106.5% year on year (YoY) in shipments; Apple iOS came second with 16.9% with a 27.5% YoY growth in shipments; following Microsoft with 3.5%, but shooting up 115.3% YoY in shipments.