April was a big news month for The New York Times and other national news outlets that covered the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent suspect chase. To accommodate the growing number of readers who turn to their smartphone devices for breaking news coverage, the Times has completely reengineered the front and back ends of its mobile website for the first time since its launch in 2006.

The smartphone landscape was very different in 2006. BlackBerry (along with Microsoft, Palm and Nokia Symbian) dominated the U.S. smartphone market, and the Times' mobile website was designed to accommodate those devices, Alex Hardiman, executive director of mobile products at the Times, recalls.

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EE smartphone owners will soon benefit from average 4G connection speeds of 20Mb in ten cities across the UK, the carrier has announced, doubling the previous speed the network claimed to deliver.

EE has confirmed it is doubling the amount of 1800MHz spectrum bandwidth dedicated to 4G from 10MHz to 20MHz. The move will increase capacity and provide customers with headline speeds of up to 80Mb, up from 40Mb previously.

The ten cities where the supercharged service will be available this summer are Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield, with plans to extend its reach at a later date.

Olaf Swantee, EE Chief Executive, said: "We are ensuring that the UK remains at the forefront of the digital revolution.

“Having already pioneered 4G here, we're now advancing the country's infrastructure again."

Existing EE customers in locations where the speed is being doubled will pay no extra for the faster connections.

According to the UK’s sole 4G operator, 25 per cent of customers are signing up for 4G. The company is targeting 4G subscriber numbers of one million by Christmas.

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Nokia’s slow but steady steps along the road to recovery continued in the first quarter, amid growing demand for its top-end Lumia smartphones.

Sales of the Windows Phone-powered handsets hit 5.6 million during the first three months of the year. That represents a 27 per cent rise from the final quarter of 2012, with two-thirds made up by newer Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

Rising demand for Lumia phones was not enough, however, to arrest a decline in revenue from handset sales, which dropped by 30 per cent to 1.59 billion Euros.

More positively, losses were down to 339 million Euros (£290 million), compared with a loss of 1.57 billion Euros for the year-ago period.

Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at IDC, claimed the figures now point to a promising next 12 months for the one-time smartphone to dogs.

He said: "They are on a right track and we can see a much better year for Nokia smartphones.

“They are far from volumes of Samsung and Apple, but that is not where Nokia is trying to compete now. Nokia is trying to go for the mass market.”

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Samsung’s Galaxy S4 took a bow on UK shores over the weekend.

But while Samsung will doubtless soon be issuing press releases about millions of sales, mixed with tales of satisfaction from a growing fanbase, one key rival reckons the release of the phone has actually boosted sales of its new flagship.

That mobile maker is HTC.

Its North America boss Mike Woodward told Business Insider that a series of reviews which criticised the Galaxy S4’s plastic frame, comparing it unfavourably to HTC’s metal-framed One, has helped the company sell more of its stunning smartie in recent days.

Woodward talked of having a ‘great week’, with ‘brisk sales’. That’s good news for all smartphone fans, suggesting competition is definitely hotting up.

The HTC One’s critical reception has been one of universal adoration, something which can’t be said of the S4.

But is one week’s worth of sales really going to help HTC push its case and help it put Samsung and others in the shade? It’s unlikely.

Because while the hardcore will be scouring reviews and looking at key differences before making their purchase, Samsung will be flexing its financial muscle.

That means heaps of ads, viral campaigns and flooding of social media with sponsored posts about the Galaxy S4.

The fact that Woodward didn’t hand over any concrete numbers is also telling.

HTC’s sales are never going to get close to Samsung. Not right now anyway.

Any figures would surely be batted away by Samsung and made to look paltry in comparison.

It’s been said before, but it’s a crying shame for HTC.

It’s releasing the best phones it’s ever produced and is being outshone by companies with more money and more power.

Critical praise will only carry it so far. Think of the HTC One like a lauded album from an obscure artists that earns endless five-star reviews but sells around 3,000 copies.

The Galaxy S4, on the other hand, is a Mumford and Sons album - millions want it, but savvy people just can’t work out why. It would be fantastic if HTC could really capitalise on its design lead and ram home its advantage.

But unless it suddenly start making millions of dollars, that’s just not going to happen.

The best HTC can hope for is that sales of the One are brisk enough to save it from extinction, or at least being a takeover target for one of tech’s bigger players.

The One, sadly, is only the start of HTC’s bid to get back to the top.

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The BlackBerry Q10 has raced to record sales in Selfridges stores, it has been claimed, in what some are claiming is a sign that the QWERTY keyboard still has a place in a smartphone world dominated by touchscreens.

According to the high-end retailer, unprecedented demand for the Q10 since Friday April 26th in its London, Birmingham and Manchester stores means the handset is now Selfridges’ fastest-selling consumer electronics product ever.

The phone, which was exclusively on sale at Selfridges, purportedly sold out entirely within two hours.

Rob Orr, Managing Director of BlackBerry UK and Ireland, said: “The BlackBerry Q10 represents the next chapter in the BlackBerry 10 story and we are delighted that it has been so well received.

“This initial success at Selfridges highlights the strong consumer demand for a high-end physical keyboard smartphone.”

So. The Q10 is an unqualified success, then? Hmm. Not just yet. Early sales can be a pretty unreliable indicator of a phone’s fortunes. And given that the phone was solely on sale in Selfridges, it’s not terribly surprising that the handset sold out.

That said, we can see the Q10 being BlackBerry’s most successful kit for some time. If only because its physical keyboard means it’s guaranteed a good level of pick-up from the company’s core of enterprise users, as well as the kids who have stuck with BBM over rival messaging services on other platforms

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Looking back at his remarks, it’s hard not to imagine a BlackBerry PR exec tearing their hair out as Thorsten Heins indulged himself in a takedown of the tablet market.

Quoth he: “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore.

“Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

When BlackBerry finally managed to ease Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis out of the door, surely staff in their media and comms team would have thought that the days of firefighting were over.

But alas, it seems Heins hasn’t learned the lesson of his predecessors.

Taken in isolation, Heins’ comments to Bloomberg look downright odd.

Tablet sales show no signs of letting up. The budget end of the market is booming and other players are finally giving Apple a run for their money.

Mind you, the iPad’s nigh-on 20 million sales in the first quarter of the year show Cupertino’s doing pretty well out of the apparently ailing market too.

Consider that the PC market is being battered by tablets and that users are demanding bigger screens to access content, and the idea that tablets will be a goner by 2018 is just plain weird.

Perhaps Heins meant that phablets would take up the slack. But just look at the demand for seven-inch slates like the iPad Mini, Google Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD.

People want more capacious displays for work and play and tablets fulfill that role perfectly.

Look at Heins’ remarks in the wider context, though, and you see a man heading a company that seems to think it’s made it back to the top.

The BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 have clearly been successful, selling better than hoped.

The company’s ambition is to be admired.

But making statements like this only serves to suggest that BlackBerry is still mired in the past, thinking it can dictate the terms of the market.

Those days ended when the iPhone arrived.

Heins seems only to want to dismiss tablets because BlackBerry has only ever released one and it was a total flop.

The PlayBook was the ultimate primer in how not to release a product: delayed endlessly, launched without complete software and lacking in decent apps.

It could have been so much more. In fact, a BlackBerry 10-based slate would probably do well.

In this post-PC world, a secure tablet would surely be the go-to piece of kit for corporations looking to save on IT costs but still offer full laptop functionality.

Now though, Heins’ remarks will follow him everywhere.

If BlackBerry does decide to release a new tablet, what will the reaction be? You can be certain his interview with Bloomberg will be the first thing on everyone’s minds.

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HTC is working up a low-cost take on the glowingly received One handset, reports suggest, as its bids to overturn its weak recent financial performance.

According to PhoneArena, which unearthed a photo of what appears to be a smaller version of the One next to its flagship stablemate, the handset will pack HTC’s UltraPixel camera technology but will swap the premium materials of its bigger brother for a less costly construction.

The phone will also pack a dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage and will run Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) out of the box, the site claims.

Purportedly codenamed M4 (tellingly HTC informally dubbed the pre-release version of the One as the ‘M7’) the fresh addition to HTC’s smartphone range is expected to land at some time this quarter.

News of HTC’s plans come as it announced a 98 per cent slide in profits during the first quarter, despite the release of the favourably received HTC One.

The phone-maker’s profits for the period stood at a pretty paltry $2.85 million compared with $363 million a year ago.

Source:

Phone Arena

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