Surface Selling Like Hot Cakes?
No wonder then that most IT journalists are taking Microsoft’s latest “sold out” pronouncements for the Surface tablets with huge bundles of salt.
About a year ago today, Microsoft was saying exactly the same thing. The original Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets were selling faster than you could say “hot cakes,” the company’s spokesmen said. Although met with the usual incredulity, some IT journalists and market analysts chose to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.
With Microsoft’s admission a few weeks ago that Surface sales were not that hot and that it had to shell out some $900 million in writing off the value of unsold inventory, I do not think a lot of critics would be as believing as they were last year.
Symbian Is Nokia’s XP
Finally, Nokia is doing a Microsoft.
The Finnish mobile phone maker recently told Symbian and Meego app developers that starting on January 1, 2014, they will “no longer be able to publish any new content or update existing content” for the soon-to-be-retired mobile platforms.
Although its lifespan is not as long as that of the Windows XP operating system, Nokia’s Symbian mobile OS has chugged along merrily for a decade of interesting and colorful existence. Until now, it has legions of fans, many of whom are quite vocal about their displeasure with Nokia’s “kill order” for the platform.
Some are also concerned that with Nokia’s no-update policy for Symbian-based apps, consumers who use Symbian smartphones will see their gadgets virtually cut off from social media sites and services once these online destinations upgrade their application programming interfaces.
LG Bends It Like…Samsung?
LG said it plans to start producing en masse the other South Korean electronics giant calls “the world’s first flexible OLED panel for smartphones.” Similar to a conventional OLED screen, the flexible OLED, however, is built on plastic substrates instead of glass, which endows it with flexibility.
About a month ago, Samsung also made similar announcements about its plan to launch a smartphone with flexible display. And a few days ago, the better known Korean electronics company released the Galaxy Round, a version of the Galaxy Note 3 that comes with a curved display.
Other tech companies are also reportedly interested in curved or flexible displays, with Apple having filed for a patent for an “electronic device with wrap around display.”
That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time, as we keep on watching IT. (October 14, 2013)
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