ZTE Joins Microsoft Android Patent Licensees

Randy Cheung, Apr 24, 2013 4:46 PM, 112 views, Got something to say ?,

Last week, Microsoft said that the Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, which makes 40 percent of consumer electronics worldwide including a variety of Android and Chrome-powered products, had agreed to license its patents. Now, the software giant announced another patent-licensing deal with ZTE, the fourth largest telecom producer in the world. ZTE makes a whole lot of Android-powered smartphones and tablets. The licensing agreement with the Chinese handset maker marks a major advance in Microsoft’s quest to extract patent payments from all its competitors making Android phones. With the ZTE deal in place, a full 80 percent of Android phones sold in the US have now taken a license to its patents. Unlike Foxconn, the official announcement regarding ZTE does not explicitly say that Microsoft is getting paid. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company’s patent agreements are “generally royalty-bearing.”

Huawei Announces to Back Out of the US Network Equipment Market

Star Chang, Apr 24, 2013 11:39 AM, 133 views, Got something to say ?,

Huawei has decided to stop focusing its priorities on the U.S market, and instead will focus its efforts on bringing its telecommunication products to the rest of the world. The company stated that its change in focus is due to “geopolitical reasons.”The company estimated that the U.S. accounts for about 30 percent of the world’s carrier business. For quite a while now, Huawei has been under fire from the United States due to allegations that the Chinese government is using its network equipments to spy on other nations. While Huawei always insists that its equipment is safe to use. The concerns surfaced again late last month, when the US government reportedly demanded to oversee equipment purchases by Sprint and SoftBank in the US as a precondition for their proposed merger. According to Huawei, the plan to pull out of the US network equipment market won’t affect its smartphone business in the country. They have also outlined plan to regain its share of European smartphone market, after losing up to a staggering 90 percent of its smartphone partners in Europe.

New ZTE Geek Smartphone is Powered With 2GHz Intel Processor

Randy Cheung, Apr 12, 2013 5:18 PM, 361 views, Got something to say ?,

Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has introduced the ZTE Geek smartphone over at Intel Developer Forum (IDF), being held in Beijing this week. ZTE Geek packs in Intel’s latest 32nm Atom processor Z2580. The company had announced this processor at the MWC 2013. Lenovo was the first company to announce the Lenovo K900, which is based on Clover Trail+. Apart from the 2GHz dual-core processor, ZTE Geek packs a 5-inch display with 720p resolution, comes with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. The smartphone will run on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out of the box. For camera, there is an 8-megapixel rear shooter and a 1-megapixel one on the front. Connectivity options include 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS and wireless charging. The battery has a 2,300mAh capacity. It runs WCDMA 3G radio network, and doesn’t support 4G LTE …

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Silicon Valley Just Couldn’t Live Without Chinese Tech

Star Chang, Apr 8, 2013 8:03 PM, 400 views, 1 Comment »,

US congress recently signed into law to restrict government purchase of computer equipment and other IT gear manufactured in China. Silicon Valley is now taking issue with the restrictions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and ten technology trade groups representing some of the large U.S. tech companies, including HP and Intel, fired off a letter to congressional leaders voicing their concern. Tech companies don’t want the language to be included in future spending bills or be expanded to cover other federal agencies. They’re worried an FBI review of tech products would hurt sales to government agencies. U.S. tech companies also worry the spending bill’s language could also cover their subcontractors in China and routine purchases of laptops or other technology. Retaliation is another potential worry, the trade groups warn that China could easily demand similar reviews for items imported from the United States. The tech firms are hoping that lawmakers will “review the security implications and competitive impact” of the provision as it currently stands, and ideally come up with a less clumsy solution. Practically, Silicon Valley’s interest is profit and stay competitive on price, many foreign tech companies just couldn’t give-up the world factory.

US Wants Sprint-SoftBank Deal to Avoid Using Huawei or ZTE Network Equipments

Star Chang, Mar 31, 2013 9:35 PM, 231 views, Got something to say ?,

According to WSJ, the U.S. government is seeking oversight of network-equipment purchases as a condition for approving Japan Softbank’s $20 billion acquisition of U.S. phone carrier Sprint Nextel, a move that appears to be aimed at keeping out Chinese suppliers Huawei and ZTE. Negotiations are continuing on the U.S.’s conditions for blessing the Sprint deal, but the government is expected to require the companies to notify it when they plan to buy equipment for the core of their network and to cooperate if any national-security or public-safety considerations arise. Because of concerns about violating trade rules, any constraints wouldn’t specifically exclude gear from Huawei, which Softbank has used in its home market of Japan …

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Chinese IT Equipment Makers May Lose Business in the U.S.

Star Chang, Mar 30, 2013 2:45 PM, 470 views, 5 Comments »,

US Congress quietly tucked in a new cyber-espionage review process for government technology purchases into the funding law signed this week by President Obama, reflecting growing American concerns over Chinese cyber attacks. The law prevents NASA, and the Justice and Commerce Departments from buying IT equipment overseas unless federal law enforcement officials give their approval. The assessment must include “any risk associated with such system being produced, manufactured, or assembled by one or more entities that are owned, directed, or subsidized” by China. The provision underscores the increasing concerns the U.S. appears to have with China. The impact on Communist China could be great. According to congressional research, the U.S. imports a total of about $129 billion worth of “advanced technology products” from China …

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Major Chinese Handsets Fail to Meet China’s Safety Standards

Randy Cheung, Mar 21, 2013 12:18 PM, 433 views, Got something to say ?,

The Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry & Commerce of China has announced the result of its spot check for 36 different mobile phones in the market. Twenty-seven of them were unqualified, failing to pass the battery heating test which is one of the critical safety benchmarks. Surprisingly all Chinese mobile brands are in the list, which include Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, TCL, Hisense, Vivo, Coolpad and K-Touch. All the sample products were collected from authorized retail outlets of China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – the country’s major telecom operators. Tests were carried out on the products’ general function, battery capability and quality of chargers, and it has been found that most of the defective phones could not pass the heat exposure as required by the national standard …

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So Much News in China… #075

Star Chang, Mar 18, 2013 1:11 PM, 504 views, Got something to say ?,

There are so much news from China that passes by that we couldn’t possibly cover it all. Here are the Chinese tech news that have left behind because we are just too busy or too lazy to post. There are stories on Chinese hacker, HTC one, WeChat on trouble, surveillance on China’s Skype and so on, check them out after the break. Video for this week: a short film about a window cleaners who keep the Shanghai World Financial Centre sparkling … Hope everyone have a fresh start to your week.

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ZTE Grand Memo Debuts with 5.7-inch HD Screen and Qualcomm’s Fastest Chip (Video)

Star Chang, Feb 26, 2013 12:14 AM, 470 views, Got something to say ?,

ZTE had entered the phablet arena with the Grand S device launched at the CES last month. Now, as expected, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer has introduced another new phablet, called the Grand Memo that officially made its debut at this year’s Mobile World congress. The ZTE Grand Memo was earlier teased at an event in Hong Kong last month. Measuring 8.3mm, the ZTE Grand Memo sports a 5.7-inch screen with a 720p resolution and comes with Android 4.1.2 on-board. There’s a 13-megapixel rear camera capable of 1080p video recording. Internally, the device is powered by a Qualcomm quad-core processor, clock speed at 1.7GHz. It is loaded with 1GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The Grand Memo becomes the first Android device to feature Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 800 CPU …

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The First Official Firefox OS Phone Made by ZTE

Star Chang, Feb 25, 2013 2:03 AM, 481 views, 1 Comment »,

Firefox OS is a new smart phone platform for budget phones clearly designed for developing markets. The new ZTE Open is one of the first Firefox phones made by Chinese manufacturer. The new little 3G handset will be powered by the Qualcomm MSM7225A processor (properly less than 1 GHz) alongside 256MB RAM and just 512MB internal storage. It sports a 3.5-inch HVGA TFT display with capacitive touchscreen and connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and Micro-USB. The phone will also come with FM radio and a 3.2-megapixel rear camera and an accelerometer as well as an ambient light sensor. It will carry a 1,200mAh battery. We’re not too sure whether it comes with a microSD card slot, but is almost certainly there given the paltry storage on the phone …

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