Samsung has admitted that its much-vaunted sales figures for the Samsung Galaxy Tab did not, in fact, refer to sales to end-users, but were merely shipment figures to retailers and carrier partners. The company had announced 1m sales of the 7-inch Android tablet back in early December 2010, and claimed to have passed the 2m sales point late last week; however, when questioned during Samsung’s quarterly earnings call, the WSJ reports, a Samsung executive admitted that actual customer sales were still “quite small.”
“Well, your question was on sell-in and sell-out. As you heard, our sell-in was quite aggressive and this first quarterly result was quite, you know, fourth-quarter unit [figure] was around two million. Then, in terms of sell-out, we also believe it was quite small. We believe, as the introduction of new device, it was required to have consumers invest in the device. So therefore, even though sell-out wasn’t as fast as we expected, we still believe sell-out was quite OK.” Lee Young-hee, Samsung
The issue appears to be in how Samsung breaks down “sales”, using “sell-in” to describe sales to vendors and carriers, and then using “sell-out” to describe those vendors’ sales to end-users. So far, Samsung appears to have been using “sell-in” figures to describe Galaxy Tab sales without necessarily making that entirely clear.
Samsung declined to give “sell-out” figures during the call, instead suggesting that “the tablet is relatively new and we need to see how the market develops before we give any firm numbers.”
T-Mobile USA has confirmed pricing and availability for the Dell Streak 7, the carrier’s first 4G tablet. The Streak 7 will be priced at $199.99 with a new, two-year agreement and following a $50 mail-in rebate when it hits stores from February 2 2011. Opt for the Dell contract-free and it will cost you $449.99.
That gets you a 7-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, 4G HSPA+ connectivity, NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 dual-core 1GHz processor and a pair of cameras for photography and video calls. There’s also Gorilla Glass up front and both WiFi and Bluetooth.
Previous rumors had suggested that the Streak 7 could be as much as $330 with a new agreement, a price that T-Mobile quickly denied. More information here and at T-Mobile’s sign-up page.
Nokia is secretly readying an updated UI for MeeGo devices, with the Qt developers responsible for the new UI components for Qt Quick announcing that, for the moment, they will not be pushing out MeeGo changes to the public. The decision comes as the new MeeGo UI starts “to become feature complete”; Nokia won’t confirm any timescale at this stage, but with MWC 2011 approaching and new CEO Stephen Elop making his first real public debut to talk about the company’s strategies moving forward, we wouldn’t be surprised if this was intended to keep a Barcelona reveal under wraps.
According to Qt\QML Product Manager Henrik Hartz, the closed operations are “a one-off for business reasons” and not a sign that Nokia plans to make more future development off-the-radar from third-party coders until it’s ready for public consumption. The exact nature of the UI changes are unknown, though Nokia is believed to have been experimenting with significantly higher-powered hardware for MeeGo devices than the relatively mainstream chips used in its Symbian devices.
MeeGo’s early UI was described as underwhelming in one unofficial preview of the Nokia N9, and the company later suggested it needed to “regain the imagination” with updated UI dynamics. “If you look at touchscreen devices today … they’re immersive, they require our full attention” Nokia SVP of design Marko Ahtisaari claimed at LeWeb 2010 back in December 2010, ”we’re not doing good enough for better one-handed use, for better using our devices without them demanding our attention.” The updated UI will have to suit not only smartphone-scale handsets, but tablets as well.
LG’s G-Slate got a teasingly brief show on-stage with T-Mobile back at CES 2011, then flashed its 3D camera array in a K-Pop music video, and now the tablet has cropped up again online. MysteryGuitarMan has managed to acquire the Honeycomb slate but seems reluctant to do more than just whip it in front of the camera while talking about 3D.
Video after the cut
Still, that glimpse is enough to show the LED flash next to one of the camera lenses, here separated by a metal “with Google” strip as on the back of the LG Optimus 2X. There’s also a brief view of the ports on the bottom of the slate.
So, we can add that the presence of 4G and Google Talk support, but we’re still generally in the dark about everything the LG G-Slate will offer. Perhaps Enya will show up with one next, and tell us about WiFi and Bluetooth.
Fresh iPad 2 speculation this weekend, as a new Chinese analyst report lends weight to some of the more common rumors we’ve been hearing, as well as getting specific about what processor the second-gen slate will run. According to Ming-Chi Kuo of Concord Securities, in a report quoted by AppleInsider, the new iPad will use an ARM Cortex A9 1.2GHz dual-core CPU complete with Imagination’s SGX543 dual-core graphics. However, according to Kuo there won’t be a dual-mode iPad world 3G model.
Instead, he suggests “iPad 2 adds one new CDMA model and it could bring more market share to Apple. Project IDs of Wi-Fi, GSM and CDMA iPad 2 models are different. GSM iPad will use Infineon chip and CDMA iPad will use Qualcomm chip. More suppliers could reduce the risk of component shortage.” As with a previous rumor, the iPad 2′s main camera is believed to be around 1-megapixel in resolution, while the front webcam for FaceTime calls is VGA-resolution.
There’s also more RAM, and faster too, with Kuo claiming “iPad 2 has 512MB RAM, same as iPhone 4 and twice as much as iPad 1, but running at higher clock 1,066 MHz for getting bigger memory bandwidth (iPhone 4 memory clock is 800 MHz).” However there won’t be a super-high-resolution Retina Display, with the second-gen iPad sticking to 1024 x 768 and instead looking to improve the viewing experience and thickness of the panel:
“The improvement of iPad 2 display focuses on thickness and anti-reflection, not resolution. iPad 2 display module is 30~35% thinner than iPad 1 and it’s helpful for better form factor. Thanks to anti-reflection, iPad 2 could have better sunlight readable experience and it’s helpful for Apple to compete with Amazon’s fast growing Kindle business.”
Had enough Honeycomb this week? Perhaps — but next week is a whole new week, and Google’s got your back. Mountain View has selected Wednesday, February 2nd for an event that’ll include “an in-depth look at Honeycomb, Android ecosystem news and hands-on demos,” so by all accounts this seems to be more than a mere wrap-up of everything they’ve announced in the past few weeks. New tablets? Honeycomb for smartphones? Android 2.4? Something else entirely? We’ll be there to find out, of course.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker took the top spot at HP following the Mark Hurd debacle, and it sounds like he’s got some big plans for the company — speaking to the BBC, he says he hopes “one day people will say ‘this is as cool as HP,’ not ‘this is as cool as Apple.’” How does he plan on doing that? By speeding up ship times, for starters — unlike the year-long wait for the HP Slate, Apotheker says that “when HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship,” and that the new webOS products announced on February 9 will ship just a “few weeks” later. Speaking of the February 9 event, Apotheker said the new product line of tablets and mobile phones will have a new name that falls under the HP brand, which sounds like the Palm name is done for. (If we had to guess, it’ll be HP webOS, but that’s just a guess.)
On top of all that, the BBC calls February 9 just the “starting gun,” because Apotheker’s “secret answer” and “vision of what HP is capable of in the future” will come on March 14, where he’ll try to pull together HP’s vast product portfolio into a cohesive narrative. According to Apotheker, HP’s size is its “basis of strength,” and no other company sells everything from servers to phones the way HP does. Sounds extremely exciting — and if Apotheker can pull it off, there’s a chance we’ll remember Mark Hurd’s dalliance as the best thing that ever happened to HP.
When it comes to gadgets that hit the market you can count on some taking a shiny new toy and tearing it apart to document what it looks like on the inside and share that teardown with the rest of us. Often the first glimpse at teardown pics we see come by way of the FCC.
Earlier this month when the Notion Ink Adam tablet finally cleared the FCC and started to ship we hadn’t see any of the pics of the innards of the Android tablet we expect from the FCC. Those pics have now surfaced and looking at the inside of the tablet is a stark contrast to the sleek and high-quality internal construction for say an iPad or Galaxy Tab.
Engadget reckons that some of the connections were actually made by hand and that the less than stellar build quality might signal build quality issues in the future. I’m not really one that cares what the thing looks like on the inside as long as it works. I would bet most of you are the same. Still, does the suspect build quality turn you off from the Adam?
HTC has revealed plans to open a chain of retail stores in China, cutting the ribbon on the flagship location earlier this week. The new Taipei store will apparently be the first of more than 100, each offering hands-on time with HTC’s range of devices, sales and servicing, similar to how Apple Stores operate.
There’ll also be tutorials and classes, so that users can get to grips with the functionality of their new gadgets. We’re guessing they’ll come into their own as HTC’s rumored range of tablets – including the HTC Flyer expected to debut at MWC 2011 next month – arrives later this year.
A video demo of Fujitsu’s Stylistic Q550 tablet has been released, and the company seems pretty keen to differentiate the slate from other Windows 7 machines. According to director of mobile product Meinolf Althaus, Fujitsu’s custom UI attempts to mimic the usability of a hammer: not in that you have to thump it, but in that you automatically recognize how to interact with the tablet, rather than needing to remember what does what.
Video demo after the cut
Meanwhile content creation also gets some attention, being more like a stack of LEGO – i.e. you can actually produce documents – than a slab of chocolate. Meinolf does love content consumption, mind. The eagle-eyed might spot what looks to be a QWERTY keyboard dock in some of the sketches on the wall behind him.
Finally, rather than a scratchy kitchen scouring pad, the Stylistic Q550 will be like a soft scarf – somewhere welcoming and warm, thanks to the overlay showing a day-to-day pane of widgets, calendars, RSS feeds and more. We’ll have to actually wait and see how well the Fujitsu holds up in day to day use, but we definitely give the company credit for stepping out of the ordinary when it comes to their promos.
It’s been a few months since Leo Apotheker 
