Symbian plans fightback as phone share slumps
The biggest losers in Admob’s latest survey of smartphone usage, released on Thursday, were Symbian operating system phones, with their share falling from 43 per cent to 18 per cent over the past year as iPhone and Android traffic boomed.
But don’t write off Symbian just yet. Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, gave a glimpse of two forthcoming revamps that could revive its fortunes when he visited us en route to the CTIA show in Las Vegas. Read more
AT&T turns to femtocells to offload surging smartphone traffic
When femtocells first appeared several years ago, they garnered little interest from mobile network operators which mostly saw them as expensive, difficult to manage and unnecessary.
Then the smartphone wave broke, mobile data consumption soared and some carriers including AT&T suddenly faced a capacity crunch in smartphone-heavy urban markets including New York and San Francisco. Read more
China benefits from open network links to the rest of the world. An FT editorial says any big step now in the direction of restricting access could have longer-term repercussions.
Its repressive stance has set a dubious leadership for regimes elsewhere, with the open internet under attack in many parts of the world. Diplomatic and economic pressure may have more effect elsewhere. If the global drift towards a more restrictive internet is to be halted, now is the time to draw a line in the sand. Read more
Mediatek, the biggest supplier of mobile phone chips to China, just became SAP’s newest client, hiring IBM to install the European software company’s Enterprise Resource Planning system globally.
This is welcome news for technology bulls, who will see it as concrete evidence of the return of corporate IT spending. After strong consumer spending on netbooks and smartphones helped lift the industry last year, there is considerable debate on whether this year and the next will see corporates lead a second wave in the global tech recovery.
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Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
