Manufacturing behemoth Foxconn (Hon Hai) has announced a record net loss of $226 million on turnover of $2 billion for the first half of the year. Unsurprisingly, it attributed the loss to the European debt crisis, global economic slowdown and its customers "continuous struggle" for market share. While it made a big push to encourage new customers, capacity far outstripped demand. In order to stem the tide, it's relocating some of its … [Read more...]
Until self-driving cars become mainstream, it's best to keep eyes on roads and hands off phones. With this in mind, Samsung's debuting Drive Link, an app that balances in-car essentials with driver safety, complete with approval from the no-nonsense Japanese Automotive Manufacturers Association. It's all about the bare essentials -- navigation, hands-free calling and audiotainment from your phone-based files or TuneIn. Destinations can be pulled … [Read more...]
MasterCard has switched up its NFC and Mobile Payments deal with T-Mobile and Orange to include corporate parent / sibling Everything Everywhere. The pairing will leverage the existing Orange Cash standard to get users onto the service, building out a person-to-person payment system similar to Pingit as they go. It's reportedly angered rival networks Vodafone and O2, still smarting from last week's 4G news, who were co-operating on a unified … [Read more...]
It seems the newest member of HTC's mid-range smartphone line-up -- previously known as the Proto -- is actually the Desire X, according to several Scandinavian retailers (see coverage). Also, Hong Kong blog ePrice, who gave the new model the blurrycam treatment, claims that the specs line up with all the rumors: a 4-inch, 800 x 480 display, Android 4.0 with Sense 4.0, Beats Audio, dual-core 1GHz processor and 5-megapixel camera. HTC should … [Read more...]
India's Department of Telecommunications has issued guidelines for the forthcoming 2G spectrum auction, penciled in for November 12th. While the subcontinent has already flogged off its 3G bands, it withdrew 122 licenses in the 1,800MHz and 800Mhz waves due to allegations of serious corruption. The country has set the starting price of $2.5 billion, a figure that the networks have balked at, saying that it'll cause tariffs to increase -- but is … [Read more...]
LG has been teasing its upcoming Optimus G smartphone for weeks after promising LTE phones that would be "second to none" and now we finally have the full specs. When it arrives in Korea next month it will be the first with LTE mounted to a quad-core CPU, thanks to the 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 at its center. The display is also groundbreaking, featuring LG's fully integrated touch technology -- sounds like its new in-cell touch to us … [Read more...]
