The threat comes at a sensitive time for European telecommunications-equipment suppliers, which are looking to increase their business in China.

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Microsoft said on Tuesday it has struck a deal with China’s ZTE covering any Android or Chrome OS devices it makes. That follows a deal last week with contract manufacturer Foxconn.

With the latest deals, Microsoft now has arrangements in place with the bulk of the leading Android players including Samsung, HTC and LG. Google’s Motorola unit and ZTE rival Huawei are the remaining significant holdouts.

“Much of the current litigation in the so-called ‘smartphone patent wars’ could be avoided if companies were willing to recognize the value of others’ creations in a way that is fair,” Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said in a blog post. “At Microsoft, experience has taught us that respect for intellectual property rights is a two-way street, and we have always been prepared to respect the rights of others just as we seek respect for our rights.”

Gutierrez noted that Microsoft has paid out more than $4 billion in licensing fees over the last decade.

Microsoft hasn’t said how much it is collecting in revenue from its deals or how that compares with the revenue it gets from its own Windows Phone efforts.

The phone will be featured in the upcoming “Iron Man 3” film, and Alcatel One Touch is also running several “Iron Man”-themed promotions, including one with RadioShack.

“The partnership with Marvel’s ‘Iron Man 3’ allows the Alcatel One Touch brand to connect with a broader audience, many of which may be introduced to our brand for the first time,” said Nicolas Zibell, Alcatel’s president for the Americas and Pacific.

The company recently decided to bring two of its higher-end models to the U.S., the 6.45-millimeter-thick Idol Ultra and the five-inch-screen Scribe HD. Alcatel hasn’t said when the devices will debut, whether they will have a carrier subsidy, or what they will cost.

Speaking at Mobile World Congress in February, marketing chief Dan Dery said that Alcatel has been working to build its U.S. presence.

“We are extremely serious with the U.S. market,” Dery told AllThingsD. “It is a big investment.”

Alcatel One Touch is a brand of TCL Communication, a broader Chinese consumer electronics firm.

The company is one of several Chinese companies (along with Huawei and ZTE) hoping to find space in an already crowded U.S. smartphone market.

Alcatel One Touch is focused in the U.S. on building products for GSM carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile. Dery said the first step has been building a reputation for delivering quality products on time.

“First we need to be a credible player in the U.S.,” Dery said. “It’s not just because you are an existing player somewhere else that you are credible.”

That has meant being willing to sell products under the carrier’s brands and at the low end of the market, but now the company wants to bring a broader range of smartphones — and maybe even tablets — to the U.S.

“I think we have been under the radar for too long,” Dery said.

The company is also trying to find a niche as a mass-market brand that can offer perhaps not the latest and greatest, but a lot of technology at a good price. That’s something that can even appeal to superheros, apparently.

“Our One Touch Idol smartphone aligns well within the innovative gadgets that Tony Stark has in his arsenal, as it provides consumers with enabling technology, a well-designed slim form factor, at a smart price,” Zibell said.

Who knew Iron Man was so budget-conscious?

U.S. treatment of those suppliers has inflamed tensions between the U.S. and China, which are already sparring over accusations of computer hacking and trade issues. After the House intelligence committee concluded in October that Huawei and Chinese rival ZTE Corp. pose national-security risks because their equipment could be used for spying, China’s Commerce Ministry lashed out, saying the report violated the U.S.’s free-market principles and warning it could undermine cooperation between the countries.

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For nearly 14 years, since the simultaneous births of online forums and Tencent — China’s largest Internet company and owner of the country’s largest social networking platforms — Chinese netizens both within and outside of China have been experimenting with social media. Over the past few years, the surge in popular channels, such as Weibo, Renren, Weixin and others, have also revealed a transformation in people’s online behaviors as their ages, social statuses and offline needs change.

Online Social Lives Start Early

Many Chinese first encounter social media during their teenage years and sign up for a QQ and a Qzone account. Both created by Tencent, QQ is the top instant messaging platform in terms of the most active user accounts (784 million as of September 2012), while Qzone is a social networking site where users can write blogs, share photos and listen to music. Based on a May 2011 report released by Credit Suisse Bank, Qzone has the highest penetration rate across all user segments compared to its competitors. The most active users of QQ and Qzone are those below the age of 18. Young, open and enthusiastic, users during this age are usually outgoing and social, eagerly expanding their networks with classmates and people who share common interests. Students leading jam-packed schedules, trying to juggle their time between studying and school-related activities, spend a lot of time online, with the majority logging on through their mobile phones when not on a computer.

As some of the users enter universities, their online behaviors start to change. Influenced by their peers and aggressive on-campus marketing activities, college students start to view Qzone as childish and immature. Many migrate to Renren, the social networking site touted as the Facebook of China. In 2011, Renren reported 170 million registered users, of which about 95 million were active, with the majority being college students and recent graduates. College students love the features of Renren, as it serves as an ideal resource for accessing news about their respective universities, including curriculum updates, supplementary materials and class discussion boards. In many cases, the students will keep their Qzone and QQ accounts — usually, they will log in to QQ to stay in touch with their old friends, parents and classmates, but neglect their Qzone pages and use Renren instead. Based on Frog’s design research, college students filter their messages and feeds shown on Qzone and QQ (where their parents are online), while being more transparent and honest on Renren.

Sina Weibo, one of China’s most active microblogging sites, has seen a significant increase in popularity, with many Chinese youths opening new accounts. Rich in content and celebrity gossip, students browse the news on Sina Weibo and form networks outside of their immediate social circles. It is during these teen and young-adult years that students start gaining exposure and forming opinions about brands and public figures that are active on Sina Weibo, from local brands such as VANCL and Tsingtao to foreign players like Starbucks, LVMH and Adidas.

Same, Yet Different: Social Networking Among Young Professionals and the Working Class

When students graduate from college and enter the workforce, their social statuses, rising incomes and increasing maturity will start to shape their online behaviors more dramatically. As they become new professionals, these individuals tend to have relatively established social networks, comprising university friends, family, colleagues and clients. Young professionals also have a stronger sense of self-identity than students, and are careful of how that identity gets presented online. During this life stage, according to McKinsey, Sina Weibo emerges as the predominant social media outlet among consumers in higher income brackets (earning more than 8,000RMB monthly) who live in Tier 1 cities. These users seek more relevant news and topics concerning their interests, while curating the outbound content that is shared with the public.

As users’ incomes, educational levels and management positions rise, Sina Weibo increases in its stickiness and becomes a powerful outlet to help users connect, influence and engage with the community. Huawei’s CEO of Consumer Business, Yu Chengdong, uses Sina Weibo to communicate Huawei’s strategies and thinking directly to the public about its consumer electronics products. Dr. Lee Kai Fu, former head of Microsoft and Google China and founder of Innovation Works, leverages Sina Weibo to actively engage with China’s entrepreneur community. Foreign public figures, such as Gary Locke, U.S. Ambassador to China, use microblogging via Weibo to win the hearts and minds of Chinese netizens.

China’s Masses and the Next Generation of Social Media Users

While the majority of the press and brands focus on China’s educated class and users in the Tier 1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen), it’s also worthwhile to examine other user segments as they exert more influence on the connected world.

Given the significant inroads from local manufacturers and software companies such as Baidu, Oppo, Huawei, Qihoo and ZTE, more and more Chinese consumers outside the Tier 1 cities, including the rural population and blue collar workers, are getting their hands on low-entry Android smartphones (priced below 1,500 Yuan). According to a report released in July 2012 by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC), over 50 percent of the year’s new Internet users were from rural areas. For these emerging segments, the smartphones serve as their primary communication device. When Frog’s research teams observed the workers’ lunch breaks, we found people quietly sitting side by side, watching videos, chatting on QQ and listening to music instead of conversing with their colleagues. These lunch breaks served as rare windows of opportunity for the rural population and blue collar workers to connect with the outside world. With limited free time, and being somewhat ashamed of their working-class lifestyles, their usage of social platforms such as QQ and Qzone is mainly for one-on-one communication and less for sharing insights and information.

At the same time, as these working-class users become increasingly tech-savvy, many have already turned to microblogging sites to vent their grievances and disputes to the public. In 2011, the villagers and farmers in Wukan protested against the local government for selling land without fair compensation and for the suspicious death of Xue Jinbo, one of the village representatives. Several people from Wukan broadcasted the incidents on Sina Weibo, and when the word “Wukan” was censored, the villagers used the letters “WK” to continue to report the incident and leak the news to foreign media. Since the Wukan incident, other villages have followed suit, such as the recent uprising in Zhejiang province’s Cangnan country. During the end of July 2012, when Beijing was experiencing a major flood disaster, the residents of Fangshan, Beijing’s worst-affected district, took matters into their own hands and published their own deathtoll numbers using public and private chat rooms.

Embracing Openness Online

Chinese consumers across all segments are becoming increasingly connected. In May 2012, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that the number of mobile phone users in China exceeded 1 billion. Additionally, the number of Internet users in the country recently reached 538 million, with mobile Internet users now up to 388 million. As more users access the Internet, many are also accessing social media services and applications. McKinsey found that 95 percent of Chinese living in Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are registered on a social media site, and that Chinese consumers spend 46 minutes a day visiting social media sites, compared with only seven minutes in Japan and 37 minutes in the United States.

While the social landscape in China remains crowded with many different players, these rich communication channels are allowing Chinese consumers to connect in multiple ways. While censorship does kick in, if one tool suddenly becomes unavailable, it has been shown that the Chinese will simply find another means to interact with one another. As more and more Chinese go online, digital connectivity — which started off in the ’90s as an inevitable consequence and supporting tool for the “socialist market economy” — is now being shaped by a wide variety of consumers. As they find new ways to exchange dialogue, their voices will only become louder and clearer.

This article is from Frog’s publication Insights_China, a new report that offers direct, in-the-field discoveries of consumers’ habits and aspirations, combined with deep, data-driven analyses of contemporary trends in China. Emily Chong is Frog’s AVP of Marketing, Asia, and Rocky Liu is an associate creative director in Frog’s Shanghai studio.

Today, at a event in New York City (with a concurrent event in London), Taiwanese handset maker HTC unveiled its new flagship phone, the HTC One.

As rumored, the aluminum-backed, Android-based phone is running on a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor. It has a 4.7-inch 1080 display coated with Gorilla Glass, and front-facing speakers that play Beats Audio. It comes with an NFC chip, although currently there are no pre-installed apps that are utilizing the technology.

The phone was also displaying a new version of the user interface known as HTC Sense. It includes something called “Blink Feed,” which transforms the home screen into a constant feed of social updates, emails and news, as well as ESPN content through a partnership with ESPN.

And much emphasis was placed on the phone’s “UltraPixel” camera — which, the company said, means the megapixels are bigger. As HTC pointed out, the megapixel count on a camera doesn’t matter; it’s the size of the pixels.

In addition to “ghost” HDR and burst-shot modes, the HTC One is meant to capture better pictures in low light, and comes with a built-in video-editing solution, dubbed “Zoe.”

The LTE-enabled HTC One will begin shipping in late March; price has not yet been announced. The company has named AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile as its U.S. carrier partners.

The phone comes in silver or black, with 32 gigabytes or 64GB of storage.

HTC president Jason Mackenzie says HTC saw a “massive opportunity” to bring excitement back to smartphones and bring HTC’s offerings to another level. “This is not just another set of incremental improvements,” he said.

As my AllThingsD colleague Ina Fried wrote this morning, the launch of the One comes at a particularly tough time for the company, which found fast success on the back of Android, but just as quickly lost ground to other rivals in the high-end smartphone market, particularly Samsung.

According to Gartner Research, HTC’s share of the global smartphone market slipped to 4.7 percent last year from 9.1 percent in 2011 — even falling below flailing RIM (now, BlackBerry), which had 5 percent of handset market share last year. Samsung, meanwhile, soared from 18.7 percent of the market to 30.3 percent during the same time frame, topping both Apple and Nokia.

On the back of Android, the former contract manufacturer rose to become one of the world’s largest smartphone makers, earning praise for its design and ability to rapidly incorporate new technologies.

But after years of dramatic growth, the company saw its fortunes fall even faster than they rose. Last year, HTC put much of its attention on the high end of the market, where much of the industry’s focus and profits are found. In doing so, though, it ran smack dab into the marketing and manufacturing prowess of larger rivals, particularly Korea’s Samsung.

On Tuesday, the company is launching what most expect to be the company’s latest flagship model. The company itself has been giving out some hints at the product, while tech sites have posted various other rumored details and pictures of a product code-named M7.

Whether HTC can find ways to out-innovate in 2013 remains to be seen, but its story should provide a cautionary tale for other device makers that have found success at the low end and are now seeking to move higher up.

There is fierce competition at the low end, to be sure, but there are lots of niches to be found, especially in making devices customized to the needs of a particular carrier, even selling those devices under those carrier’s brand names.

It’s the part of the market that has proved lucrative for Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE. Both of those companies, though, have aimed to move upmarket, producing higher-end devices and seeking to elevate their own brands.

That’s a similar tack to the one taken by HTC — one that worked great, right up until it didn’t.

Now the company is aiming to boost its marketing efforts, but even with a louder voice, it still risks being drowned out by Apple and Samsung — both of which have a fortune to spend on ads.

Those are not unreasonable excuses. But the frequency with which they’re being issued is, and that makes it tough to trust claims that HTC is emerging from a tailspin that’s well over a year long now. Certainly no one takes it as writ when CEO Peter Chou says, “The worst for HTC has probably passed; 2013 will not be too bad.”

Particularly after Monday, when HTC reported a net profit that declined for the fifth consecutive quarter, dropping to its lowest level since 2006. Add to that a new IDC study that says that HTC’s global smartphone market share slipped to 4 percent in the third quarter of 2012 from 10.3 percent the year prior, and Chou’s reassurances begin to sound pretty empty. HTC is in a tough spot these days. Quarter by quarter, it’s slipping deeper into the mud, and its days of being the largest Android handset provider in the U.S. — or anywhere, for that matter — seem unlikely to return anytime soon.

HTC is beset on all sides. It’s being pummeled at the market’s high end by Apple and Samsung, while manufacturers like ZTE kick it in the knees at the low end. And its big bets to put forth a flagship device for two different mobile operating systems — Android and Windows Phone — haven’t quite panned out. Samsung has Android locked up, and while there’s still room to throw a few elbows in the Windows Phone market, Nokia has its flag firmly planted there.

HTC’s task, then, is to differentiate itself enough from those rivals to gain traction in the high-end market, while scrapping with second-tier players like ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo that are challenging it in Asia and other emerging markets. And to do that, it cannot “drop the ball” anymore. It must introduce innovative devices, competitive with those of its rivals and market the hell out of them, marketing-budget constraints be damned.

The telecommunications equipment maker is starting with about a 5 percent market share in the U.S., a reputation mostly for budget phones, and fierce competition from companies such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. But success in the U.S. and China is key to its ambitions, Executive Vice President He Shiyou said in an interview, adding that ZTE hopes the U.S. will leapfrog China to become the company’s No. 1 source of smartphone revenue.

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European officials are now debating whether to take the next step: an investigation that would risk igniting a trade war with Beijing.

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Nokia ranked as the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in IDC’s second-quarter survey. But in the research firm’s third-quarter report, it didn’t even place in the Top 5. And the company’s share losses have bolstered the gains of the smartphone market’s two juggernauts: Samsung and Apple.

During the third quarter, Samsung shipped 56.3 million smartphones globally, for a 31.3 percent share of the market. That’s up from 22.7 percent in the third quarter of last year. Meanwhile, Apple shipped 26.9 million smartphones to claim a 15 percent share, up from 13.8 percent a year ago.

Rounding out IDC’s smartphone Top 5: Research In Motion, ZTE and HTC, all three with relatively piddling market shares. RIM claimed third place, with a 4.3 percent market share, down from 9.6 percent last year. ZTE took fourth, with 4.2 percent. And HTC managed to nab fifth, with 4 percent.

Looking at the broader market, smartphone manufacturers shipped 179.7 million devices in the third quarter, up 45.3 percent from 123.7 million units in the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, the overall mobile phone market grew 2.4 percent year over year, with shipments of 444.5 million.

A little more than a week after the House Intelligence Committee issued a stinging report that fanned the flames of official worry about Huawei and another company, ZTE, it emerged today that the White House ordered a separate review that found no evidence that equipment produced by either company had been used to spy for China. Reuters moved a story on the report a few hours ago.

Rather than spying, it turns out that Huawei’s gear suffers from the same kind of arguably unintended security vulnerabilities that occasionally crop up and that could in theory be exploited by hackers with the proper knowledge. The trick question — which is sort of an indicator of the multi-layered gray areas that make these questions so hard to answer — is whether or not someone put those vulnerabilities there on purpose.

What tends to happen in the cloak-and-dagger world is that multiple layers exist between the people who would want certain actions taken — poking around a sensitive network — and the people who actually do the work. Some freelance hackers in China — or practically any other country for that matter — just might, the theory goes, be working for China’s People’s Liberation Army but not even really know who’s paying them. And if you read enough spy novels you can probably imagine a bunch of other theoretical scenarios in which a vulnerability that’s there “by mistake” could be put to use by someone with a certain amount of plausible deniability.

The review was pretty detailed and was conducted by asking questions of more than 1,000 people in the telecom industry, people who would have noticed any serious and overt funny business going on with the equipment.

So now two government reviews have expressed reservations about Huawei, but neither has been able to say exactly what makes them so uneasy.

I’ve already expressed my theory: That it’s the U.S. government’s own history in this area and its direct knowledge of what can be done. Examples include malware like Stuxnet, Flame and Gauss, to name but a few.

Huawei maintains that it would never allow its equipment to be misused for the benefit of a third party. And even though it is now the world’s largest manufacturer of telecom equipment, its hopes to expand more widely into the U.S. market just got incrementally more complicated.

ZTE’s profit warning, amid fierce price competition in the industry hurt by the global economic slowdown, also came after a recent U.S. Congressional report linked the Chinese company to a national security threat for the U.S.

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A spokesman for China’s Commerce Ministry said in a brief statement late Tuesday that the report against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. “is merely based on subjective conjecture and untrue foundations, and made groundless accusations against China.”

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The year-long investigation by the House intelligence committee concluded the firm, Huawei Technologies Inc., and a second firm, ZTE Inc., pose security risks to the U.S. because their equipment could be used for spying on Americans.

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Ross

Among the companies banding together are AT&T, Clearwire, Hewlett-Packard, KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, SK Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, and ZTE. The effort is coordinated by Via Licensing, a spinoff of Dolby Laboratories that is in the business of managing patent pools.

Via Licensing isn’t disclosing the exact pricing for the LTE patents, which varies based on volume, but it is on the order of a few dollars per device.

One of the major challenges, though, is that the group only accounts for a small part of the patents essential to incorporating the LTE standard.

Via Licensing president Roger Ross said that it is difficult to put a precise estimate on how much of the intellectual property is behind the LTE standard, but estimates maybe 20 percent is represented by current partners. Via hopes eventually to have entities representing up to half of all the related intellectual property.

“We expect participation in this program to grow significantly once the patent pool is announced, even in the next few weeks,” said John Ehler, director of wireless programs for Via.

Some big names aren’t part of the group, though, including Qualcomm, Ericsson and Nokia. Nokia, for its part, says it has already licensed its LTE essential patents to more than 40 companies, noting that it has more than 400 families of patents related to the technology.

“This has been estimated by independent sources to represent around 50 percent of the total patents declared essential to LTE by all companies,” Nokia said. (Clearly, if you ask all the parties what percentage of LTE patents they hold, you will get an answer that adds up to more than 100 percent.)

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told AllThingsD on Tuesday that he sees intellectual property licensing as one of five key businesses for the company, alongside basic phones, Windows phones, location services and network infrastructure.

While Nokia is actively licensing its LTE patents, there is concern that other parties might use their LTE patents as bargaining power in an increasingly litigious wireless industry that has seen an array of lawsuits.

Ross said that it is frustrating to see so much litigation over standards-essential patents, especially when intellectual property holders are supposed to commit to reasonable licensing of their technology as part of the standards-setting processes.

Licensing efforts such as Via’s offer a way for the industry to save money while still allowing companies to get paid for their intellectual property.

“Every dollar companies don’t have to spend on litigation is a dollar they can spend on LTE innovation,” Ross said.

The move is the latest indication that handset makers are looking beyond Google Inc.’s dominant Android mobile operating system as they try to diversify the software platforms for their smartphones and other mobile devices. While Apple Inc.’s iPhone uses its own iOS software, most other smartphones sold around the world are powered by Android.

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The long-talked-about arrival of the $100 Android phone, without a contract or carrier subsidy, is now a reality.

T-Mobile on Thursday announced plans to start selling the T-Mobile Concord, a low-end Android device from China’s ZTE. The phone is basic for a smartphone, running the older Gingerbread flavor of Android and packing just a two-megapixel camera and a 3.5-inch screen.

Still, that’s certainly plenty of smartphone for some, and it breaks new ground when it comes to its starting price. It’s available now at Walmart, and starting on Aug. 26 at Target.

But smartphone ownership dominates by just a slim margin, which means a lot of people are still using regular old cellphones. Some people may not feel the need to run lots of apps or to be connected to email all the time, while others may not be able to afford high-end smartphones, which can cost hundreds of dollars — not including the monthly data plans.

Stripped-down, inexpensive smartphones — known as “budget phones” — do a lot of the same things that fancier smartphones do, but make some sacrifices that impact performance.

I’ve been testing one such smartphone: T-Mobile’s new Prism, which is aimed at first-time smartphone buyers and costs just $20 for contract customers after a $50 mail-in rebate. The Prism is made by Huawei, and was introduced in early May. It’s currently available through T-Mobile’s retail stores and Web site, as well as through Walmart and Best Buy stores. It runs Android’s Gingerbread operating system, which isn’t the newest flavor of Android.

After five days of testing the Prism, I found it to be a pretty decent phone with good call quality, a device that first-time smartphone buyers would probably find easy to use. But it runs on T-Mobile’s slower 3G speeds, Web browsing was slow, and its build felt cheaper than some other budget phones. Also, it’s really not meant for heavy media consumption, so those with an inclination toward that will want to steer clear of this phone.

For two-year contract customers, T-Mobile has Value Plans and Classic Plans that offer up to 10 gigabytes of data service per month for around $65 dollars.

Month-to-month call and data plans are also available for this phone, ranging in price from $30 for 1,500 minutes or text messages using as much as 30 megabits of data, up to $70 for unlimited talk, text and Web, with the first 5GB of data at faster speeds.

Here’s where it gets confusing: Most of these month-to-month schemes, called Monthly4G plans, are designed for phones with faster 4G speeds, even though the T-Mobile Prism is a 3G phone. T-Mobile confirmed that with the Prism, users can get unlimited data — just at a much slower speed. After you surpass that data usage, you’ll be notified that you’ve reached your limit and the phone will switch to basic 2G service.

I ran speed tests in various locations around New York City, comparing the performance of the Prism, a competing Sprint budget phone, and a Verizon iPhone. The average download speed with the Prism was 0.71 megabits per second, and the average upload speed was 0.17 Mbps; the Sprint LTE ZTE Fury averaged download and upload speeds of 0.77 and 0.55 Mbps. The average download speed with the 3G Verizon iPhone was 0.88, and the average upload speed was .93 Mbps.

In terms of hardware, the Prism is about the same size as an iPhone, though with its curved plastic back it’s not as angular. It has a 3.5-inch touchscreen display. This 4.4-ounce featherweight phone felt much less solid than something like the Sprint ZTE Fury, another $20 budget phone of about the same size but with more substantial hardware.

People who are used to tactile “push” keys on a phone or fatter touchscreen keys will probably bristle at using the tiny touchscreen keys on the Prism. However, the keypad does have Swype, an input method that lets you drag your finger from letter to letter and formulates the words for you.

The 3.2-megapixel camera on this device isn’t great. I took side-by-side photos with this phone and an iPhone, which has a five-megapixel camera, and the Prism’s photos didn’t look as crisp as the iPhone’s.

But one thing this phone doesn’t sacrifice is call quality. I made and received several calls from it, and never had trouble hearing anyone; it really didn’t sound that different from an iPhone or a sleeker Android phone.

The Prism also works with T-Mobile’s built-in Wi-Fi calling app, which allows you to make phone calls over an Internet connection, provided you have access to Wi-Fi. This worked fine for me, but the person’s voice on the other end sounded much less clear than it did with non-W-Fi phone calls.

The Prism also has good battery life. I first charged it on a Sunday morning, and it lasted until early Tuesday, after I’d made several calls, checked email consistently, and used a couple of social-networking apps. T-Mobile says the Prism should get 6.5 hours of talk time.

A first-time smartphone user would likely find it easy to get the hang of email on this device, both through the native email app on the phone and via email apps that are available for download through Google Play, the new name for the Android app market.

In addition to checking email incessantly, as I do, I also downloaded Twitter and Instagram and tested those apps, along with Facebook. This experience wasn’t much different from using these apps on a high-end smartphone. T-Mobile has put its stamp on the phone by cluttering the interface with some carrier-branded apps, but those can be moved or deleted.

The biggest drawback of the Prism was its sluggish Web browsing. I found myself on a street corner one evening, looking for a nearby grocery store and a wine store, and cars whizzed by for a few minutes before I could pull up some pertinent results. The Prism has a processor that’s on the slow side, compared with both high-end phones and some other budget phones.

The Prism is a decent starter smartphone, but, as one might expect for the price, it’s not a genius phone. Some of these budget phones require an ounce of patience, and reasonable expectations about what they can and can’t do. Also, if this phone doesn’t float your budget-friendly boat, there are plenty of other budget smartphones on the market from Nokia, Samsung, Sony, LG and others that you might want to consider.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120528/t-mobiles-20-prism-sacrifices-speed-but-not-call-quality/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120511/huawei-aims-to-be-smarter-about-its-phone-branding/ http://allthingsd.com/20120511/huawei-aims-to-be-smarter-about-its-phone-branding/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 12:00:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=206820 China’s Huawei has been a rapidly growing force in the global smartphone market, but remains little known to most U.S. consumers.

The company hopes to change that — not just by stepping up sales, but also through a big marketing campaign set to kick off in the second half of the year.

In an interview at the CTIA trade show in New Orleans on Thursday, Huawei Executive Vice President James Jiang said the company has high hopes for the American market.

“We have ambitions to be one of the top players in this market and globalwise,” Jiang said. The company last year sold $1 billion worth of devices, double that of the prior year. It has said it hopes to ship 60 million smartphones globally this year.

Like fellow Chinese phone maker ZTE, Huawei has been steadily building its business from unbranded phones and laptop cards to smartphones bearing the company’s own name.

The company introduced a range of new phones at Mobile World Congress, ranging from mid-range and youth-oriented devices to its high-end quad core Ascend.

“We hope to bring the entire line to the U.S.,” Jiang said. “It takes some time.”

Its planned advertising campaign hasn’t yet been set, but Jiang said it’s leaning toward a tag line that has something to do with “smart”-ness, given its focus on smartphones. In addition to advertising, Huawei plans concert sponsorships and other promotions.

The company also plans to start selling Windows Phone-based devices later this year, though it will probably start outside the U.S., Jiang said. Huawei has started making its own chips for phones and tablets, though Jiang said that the company has no plans to sell to other device makers for now. It also will remain a big buyer of chips from Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, he said.

Outside the U.S., Huawei sells a large amount of network infrastructure gear, but security concerns from the federal government have kept the company from being able to do so here.

“The U.S. is our developing market,” North American R&D chief John Roese said in an interview earlier this month. “It’s the place we have to figure out how to navigate.”

In the meantime, Huawei is building up a business selling networking gear to businesses, one that it hopes will eventually become significant. It has already grabbed 18 percent of the global router market, having launched in major markets.

“It makes us relevant to the discussion,” Roese said. “People have to at least consider us.”

Huawei announced this week that it has signed its first U.S. distributor for its enterprise gear.

“Getting that distribution is big statement,” Roese said. “This market is not out of reach.”

Roese spoke at last year’s AsiaD conference in Hong Kong outlining the company’s opportunities and the challenges it has faced in cracking the U.S. market. Check out the video below for the highlights, or here for the full interview.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120511/huawei-aims-to-be-smarter-about-its-phone-branding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120329/sales-up-profits-down-at-chinas-zte/ http://allthingsd.com/20120329/sales-up-profits-down-at-chinas-zte/#comments Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:00:56 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=191034 Fast-growing Chinese smartphone maker ZTE said on Thursday that it had revenue of 86.25 billion yuan in 2011 ($13.67 billion), up 23.4 percent from the prior year.

The company said it was the second-fastest-growing smartphone maker in the world, and the fourth-largest mobile phone maker overall.

ZTE said it gained in its home market as well as other markets, including the U.S., where the company has been steadily increasing its presence.

Despite the increased sales, though, ZTE saw its profit drop by more than a third, to 2.06 billion yuan ($326.5 million).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120329/sales-up-profits-down-at-chinas-zte/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120309/zte-unleashes-its-fury-a-low-end-android-phone-for-sprint/ http://allthingsd.com/20120309/zte-unleashes-its-fury-a-low-end-android-phone-for-sprint/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2012 15:06:00 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=182340 Sprint on Friday announced plans to start selling the Fury, a low-cost Android phone from fast-growing Chinese manufacturer ZTE.

The phone, which will go on sale Sunday, features a 1GHz Qualcomm processor, a 3.5-inch screen and the ability to act as a wireless hotspot, and will sell for $19.99 with a new contract. Sprint is aiming the phone in particular at families, touting its family-locator service as one option to pair with the phone.

“We realize that there are a lot of choices in the market when it comes to choosing the right cell phone that fits the needs of both a working parent and their family,” Sprint VP David Owens said in a statement.

It is the second tie-up this year for Sprint and ZTE, which earlier announced plans for the Optik, an Android tablet that will sell for $99 with a new two-year contract.

ZTE is among the top five phone makers in the world, but has been relatively unknown in the U.S., something it is working quickly to change.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120309/zte-unleashes-its-fury-a-low-end-android-phone-for-sprint/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120227/intel-announces-more-phone-customers-plans-for-speedier-chips/ http://allthingsd.com/20120227/intel-announces-more-phone-customers-plans-for-speedier-chips/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:23:01 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=178364

Intel, which is looking to crack the phone market, announced a few new partners on Monday, as well as plans to speed up its chips.

France Telecom’s Orange unit and Indian cellphone maker Lava International both plan to sell devices based on the reference phone design Intel created. China’s ZTE will also use Intel chips as part of a multiyear partnership, with its first Intel-based device slated to ship in the second half of this year.

“This is the first step,” ZTE Executive VP He Shiyou said at an Intel press event in Barcelona.

The Orange phone will go on sale first in France and the U.K. this summer.

At January’s Consumer Electronics Show, Intel announced that Motorola and Lenovo would use its processors. Intel had promised it would have more to say in Barcelona.

The announcements with Orange and Lava, in particular, show that Intel is having some success with its strategy of not only offering chips, but also a ready-to-go phone design that customers can use to get quickly into the Android smartphone business.

The company also offered up a look at where it is headed on the chip side.

“It wouldn’t be an Intel presentation if we didn’t show a road map,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini quipped at the briefing with reporters.

Intel said its Z2460, formerly code-named “Medfield,” will run at up to 2GHz. Meanwhile, the company announced a successor chip, which will sample in the second half of the year and ship in products next year. That chip, the Z2580, is designed to double Medfield’s performance. The company also announced plans for a lower-end chip aimed at “value” smartphones that can sell for less than $150 unsubsidized.

Otellini promised that his company will bring its legacy of performance, but won’t sacrifice on battery life, promising 14 days of standby time.

“We take battery life seriously,” he said.

Intel has also inked a deal with Visa to ensure that its phones are ready for mobile commerce, and Visa has certified Intel’s reference design as working with its payWave effort.

Intel faces steep competition in the mobile chip business from current leaders Nvidia, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm, in addition to others looking to crack the market, such as Broadcom. The company has been trying to get into the business for some time, but last year began showing a slim Android design it said would, at long last, get it into the game.

Asked what might prompt more bigger-name cellphone makers to adopt Intel chips, Otellini said that the initial products from some of these smaller partners should “light a fire” under the likes of Samsung.

“We have ambitions to not be a minor player here,” he said.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120227/intel-announces-more-phone-customers-plans-for-speedier-chips/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120202/worlds-top-3-phone-makers-nokia-samsung-and-apple/ http://allthingsd.com/20120202/worlds-top-3-phone-makers-nokia-samsung-and-apple/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:51:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=170846 IDC’S latest mobile rankings are out today, and they show a strong, continued shift in the industry. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the world’s top five handset manufacturers were Nokia, Samsung, Apple, LG and ZTE — in that order.

Nokia shipped 113.5 million units during the quarter, down from 123.7 million during the same quarter a year earlier, according to IDC. Meanwhile, Samsung shipped 97.6 million, up from 80.7 million a year ago.

That’s a nice jump, but nowhere near as impressive as the one charted by Apple, which shipped 37 million iPhones during the quarter — up from 16.2 million during the same quarter a year earlier — for a more than 128 percent increase.

That spike gave Apple an 8.7 percent share of the mobile phone market in the fourth quarter. Which really is astonishing, when you think about it. Recall that when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone in 2007, he said Apple hoped to someday claim 1 percent of the overall handset market. Five years later, the company has far surpassed that humble goal, and is well on its way to claiming 10 percent.

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