Samsung’s Galaxy S II lineup is getting Ice Cream Sandwich in early 2012

In just a few weeks, Samsung will start shipping Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich over the air to Galaxy device owners.

 

“We know you have been waiting, and we’re thrilled today to announce that we’ll start serving Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to Galaxy Note and Galaxy S II in the first quarter of 2012,” wrote a Samsung representative on the company’s mobile division Facebook page.

 

The rollout will start with the company’s Galaxy S II, its latest high-powered smartphone, and the Galaxy Note, a stylus-enabled gadget that’s either a huge phone or a wee tablet — the jury’s still out.

 

Samsung also was the chosen manufacturer for the Android 4.0 lead device, the Galaxy Nexus. For that launch, Samsung got early access to Ice Cream Sandwich and a distinct time-to-market advantage.

 

Other Ice Cream Sandwich-upgradeable devices are set to include Samsgung’s Galaxy S II LTE, the Galaxy R (another Android smartphone), and the Galaxy Tab 10.1, 839, 7.7 and 7.0 Plus tablets.

 

With the upgrade, these tablets will be some of the first to run Ice Cream Sandwich; other models boasting the slick new OS have so far been sold out or available for preorder only.

 

Ice Cream Sandwich’s new features include a one-size-really-does-fit-all approach that makes the OS suitable for phones, tablets, TVs — just about any connected device, according to Google. Previously, Google had offered separate forks of the OS for different devices — the 2.X line was intended for smartphones, while the 3.X line (a.k.a. Honeycomb) was meant for tablets.

 

And in addition to all that delicious behind-the-scenes harmony, the OS brings consumers a flashy new interface with new colors, large images, and even a homebrewed typeface, the elegant humanist sans, Roboto.

 

Samsung is racing Sony to the finish line where Ice Cream Sandwich is concerned. The latter company announced last month it was bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to the entire Xperia line.

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Samsung expects 15% rise in handset sales in 2012

It looks like owners of Samsung’s first Galaxy S devices didn’t take too kindly to the news that Android 4.0 won’t be made available as an upgrade.

 

Thanks to the massive outcry from customers, Samsung is now apparently reconsidering making Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich available to the Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab, reports Korea’s ajnews. As the Verge explains it (the original report is in Korean), Samsung is looking into ways to fit Android 4.0 on the devices, even though it previously said that its TouchWiz software made that impossible.

 

The news is a good sign for Galaxy S owners, but even if Samsung does manage to squeeze Android 4.0 on the devices, it will likely be much later than when the Galaxy S II family gets it early next year.

 

Additionally, but unrelated, the company expects a 15 percent uptick in handset sales next year, given the current popularity of its Android lineup.

 

Samsung is apparently aiming to sell 374 million handsets next year, up from projected sales of 325 million units this year, Reuters reports. 150 million of those devices are expected to be smartphones. The news comes from industry officials who divulged Samsung’s plans to the Korea Economic Daily, so there’s a chance Samsung’s actual plans could even be more ambitious.

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BlackBerry 10 OS is already being called a failure

Research in Motion has become the mobile industry’s punching bag lately and today is no exception, with a new report saying its upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS is all-around awful.

 

A new report from Boy Genius Report asserts that the upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, which has already been pushed back until late 2012, is basically a failure and won’t be able to compete with other  smartphones operating systems. This is especially true when you consider more advancements to iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 will come before BB10 hits shelves.

 

BGR’s anonymous inside source said that the PlayBook 2.0 OS, which will be released in February, is a window into what BlackBerry 10 will be. Looking through the window isn’t a pretty thing, though, because crucial things like native e-mail and BlackBerry Messenger still don’t work. “Email and PIM [is better] on an 8700 than it is on BlackBerry 10,” the source said. ”RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don’t have a working product yet.”

 

RIM, however, has responded to the report by saying it is inaccurate and says it that BlackBerry 10′s release date has been pushed back to ensure everything, including e-mail and Messenger, runs smoothly. The company’s (lengthy) official response is below:

 

“RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chip set architecture. As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed. As RIM has previously explained, and as Mike Lazaridis reiterated on the earnings call, we will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. We appreciate the interest in our future platform and we will continue to work hard to deliver that platform as soon as possible. At the same time, we also remain very excited with the success of our recently launched BlackBerry 7 smartphones and we believe these products offer a very compelling choice for both new customers and the almost 75 million BlackBerry users around the world.”

 

It’s hard to tell what exactly is happening behind the scenes, but at this point, I’m willing to give RIM the benefit of the doubt. Yes, at this point, the BB10 OS is probably terrible and undercooked. But RIM has already set expectations low and has another year to deliver its savior OS on time within company projections.

 

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Windows Phone is still in trouble

Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform now has more than 50,000 apps available — a significant milestone, but one that still puts it far behind Apple’s 500,000 iOS apps and Google’s more than 380,000 Android apps.

At least things seem to be picking up for the platform on the app front. It took Microsoft over a year to reach 40,000 apps on Windows Phone, but only 40 days to add another 10,000, reports All About Windows Phone. But apps alone won’t sell consumers on Windows Phone, especially during its do-or-die year of 2012.

So what’s keeping the platform, which is reportedly still seeing slow sales, from finding the success of the iPhone or Android? As former Windows Phone general manager Charlie Kindel sees it, the real problem with Windows Phone doesn’t stem from hardware or software (which he deems “superior” to the competition), but instead is due to Microsoft’s inability to play nice with carriers.

The company has imposed strict hardware restrictions on hardware partners, which has led to only a few devices being developed, and it has removed carriers entirely from the Windows Phone update process. Those two elements have led to carriers preferring to push Android and iOS devices, instead of Windows Phone.

“Carriers own the marketing money and spend billions a year,” Kindel wrote in a blog post yesterday. “The money is provided by the other sides of the market: OS providers & device manufactures, but the carriers get to spend it; they are the aggregation point where the money actually gets spent. The carriers choose what devices get featured on those TV ads.  They also choose what devices to train their RSP (retail sales professionals) to push.”

While I don’t deny that carrier marketing efforts have influenced Windows Phone sales, the situation seems much more complicated. First of all, Microsoft was way too late to the game, launching Windows Phone at the end of 2010, while the iPhone and Android hit the market in 2007 and 2008 respectively. MG Siegler argues that particular point nicely.

Kindel also fails to mention the explosive failure of Microsoft’s Kin phones earlier last year, which surely turned off many consumers to any future Microsoft mobile platform. I also think consumers are more savvy than the marketing sponges Kindel takes them for. He assumes people will buy what carriers tell them to, when in reality having a product that is clearly superior to the competition (which Windows Phone certainly isn’t) is more important.

You can say that Windows Phone is superior as much as you like, but so far Microsoft has failed to prove that to consumers.

One of the big reasons Microsoft has failed to make much of a splash with the platform is that it’s going after the same market as the iPhone and Android, when it should be focusing more on users who haven’t yet considered smartphones. I previously argued that Nokia’s Lumia 800 is an incredibly important device for Microsoft, but in many ways its cheaper sibling, the Lumia 710, is just as significant.

The Lumia 710 opens the door to a wider market of users who don’t want to spend over $100 on a new phone (T-Mobile will offer it in the US for just $50 with contract). And its inexpensive hardware also makes it more suitable to the prepaid market, a quickly growing segment in which Microsoft desperately needs to find a foothold.

Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia also makes it well positioned to expand Windows Phone into international markets as well — though those will admittedly be less lucrative than dominating the U.S., Europe and Asia.

 

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