Strategy Analytics'
devices team (WDS service) is this week
on the showfloor at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2015 -- the world's largest tradeshow for the wireless industry -- in Barcelona, Spain.
We blogged yesterday on
Day 1 (Sunday).
These are the "big three"
events that took place on
Day 2 (Monday 2 March):
1. HTC ONE M9 : The new flagship M9 offers an aluminum-unibody, 5-inch screen and
Android Lollipop OS (which some wags have labelled "Lolliflop", due to weak sales). The formfactor is thin and pretty and the
hardware specs are suitably premium, such as 3GB RAM and a Qualcomm octocore CPU. The M9 will be launched commercially worldwide in Q2 2015. HTC's slick smartphones have long been popular among
critics and device testers... but they are
rarely popular among mass-market consumers. Can the M9 reverse this trend and strike a chord with mass-consumers? In our view, probably not -- because HTC's brand has lost a lot of its shine in recent years -- but the M9 does give the vendor a good tool in its arsenal to stabilize the struggling ship this year;
2. MICROSOFT LUMIA 640 / 640XL DUAL-SIM : The 640 and 640XL are
two of the world's first dual-SIM LTE smartphones to be launched commercially in H1 2015. This is an
impressive technological feat -- especially when we recall how Nokia (now Microsoft) was one of the
last major hardware manufacturers to deliver 2G or 3G dual-SIM phones in the 2000s and 2010s. Along with WP8.1 and dual-SIM 4G capability (mostly for emerging markets), Microsoft will also give buyers US$69 of complimentary access for one whole year to
Office365 in the cloud. The US-Finnish vendor is quietly
improving the quality of its hardware, software and services, as it seeks to make Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows Phone 10 the mobile industry's
"third ecosystem". But while its products are markedly better, there are still questions about Microsoft's limited retail
distributionchannels in China, the US and other major countries;
3. LG URBANE LTE : The South Korean company has launched almost 20 new products at MWC this year. But
the Urbane LTE stands out most because it is
one of the world's first LTE smartwatches and because it uses
LG Wearable Platform for its OS (not Android Wear). Adding 4G to smartwatches -- without making the formfactor too thick -- is technologically complex right now, due to component immaturity. And LG is taking
a bold step by dimissing Android Wear for its top wearable model in H1 2015. LG is obviously attacking the global smartwatch market very aggressively this year, and -- along, with Huawei and Xiaomi --
LG is "one to watch" in wearables throughout 2015.
That completes Day 2.
Check back tomorrow for Day 3!