Electronics, Mobile | featured news

Wounded cellphone maker Nokia has turned on one of its former allies in the patent protection battlefield by filing lawsuits against rival smartphone maker HTC as it steps up its efforts to raise funds.

Soaring sales of smartphones lifted Samsung Electronics's profit to a record and apparently pushed the South Korean company past Nokia as the world's biggest cellphone seller—and perhaps past Apple as No. 1 in smartphones.

The evidence continues to mount that the mobile phone business is evolving into a two-horse race. It’s Apple, Samsung, and a host of desperate hangers on. In the first quarter, according to Raymond James analyst Tavis McCourt, Apple accounted for about 80% of all profits in the mobile phone business, with Samsung accounting for the rest. The two companies combined, he figures, had 74% of mobile handset industry revenues.

Contract handset maker Foxconn International its loss in this year's first half to widen significantly from a year earlier as demand from major customers like Nokia weakened further in the period.

Standard & Poor's has cut its credit rating on Finnish cellphone maker Nokia to junk on expectations of lower sales, following a similar move by Fitch Ratings earlier this week.

When Verizon Wireless started selling the iPhone, AT&T sounded a defiant note, saying that its customers would remain loyal. A year later, it's clear that the Verizon iPhone has crimped AT&T's stride. Verizon had little problem attracting new customers before it started selling the iPhone. In fact, it was the only wireless carrier that managed to keep up with AT&T's iPhone-fueled growth.

Moody's ratings agency downgraded Nokia's debt grade to near junk status on Monday, citing a sharp decline in first-quarter cellphone sales that led to a 35 percent fall in revenue.

Kazuo Hirai said he would focus Sony’s resources away from its unprofitable television business and more toward mobile devices, cameras and games.

Nokia says that a bug is causing its latest smartphone to occasionally lose its data connection and is offering customers $100 (£63) in call credits. The Finnish manufacturer said a fix for the Lumia 900's "memory management issue" would be issued on 16 April.

Microsoft, struggling to dent the dominance of Apple and Google in the smartphone market, is aggressively courting app developers for its Windows Phone.