BlackBerry this morning has announced their 2013 4Q results. The company has managed to return to profitability earning 22 cent per share ($94 million) on $2.7 billion in revenue. This beats analyst projections and is a good sign for the company going forward. The company shipped 6 million smartphones in Q4 2013, 1 million being BB10 devices. Significantly, BlackBerry lost 3 million subscribers in the quarter (79m to 76m).

A key thing to remember that the Z10 has only been on sale for a little over a month overseas in a few markets and the US launch was last week on one carrier. T-Mobile and Verizon sales start this week. BlackBerry’s financial figures for 1Q 2014 will shed clear light on the market reception to BlackBerry’s mobile makeover and their place in it. The Z10 carries with it higher margins which should help BlackBerry continue to turn a profit.

BlackBerry noted it will increase its marketing spending to support BlackBerry 10 by 50%. It is a good sign that BlackBerry is investing even more in marketing their product.

Source: BlackBerry Earnings Live Blog

Mary Jo Foley was the first to report a while back that Microsoft would be providing updates to the core apps in Windows 8. Specifically the calendar, mail and people apps would be receiving updates. A short while ago Microsoft took to the Windows Blog to let everyone know that these much needed updates will be available tomorrow in the Windows Store.

The updates provide both UI and functional changes. If you’d like to get the full story before tomorrow head on over to the Windows Blog here to get the full details.

Mail

Calendar

People

Source: Windows Blog

In case you’ve been living under a rock, or living your life, you might have missed the news that the BlackBerry Z10 launches on carriers AT&T (tomorrow 3/22) and T-Mobile (3/26?) and Verizon (3/28) by the end of March. AT&T pre-orders started on March 12, and Verizon 2 days later. T-Mobile opened up pre-orders for business customers but not regular consumers. With recent reports of how well BlackBerry sales had been exceeding expectation in previous launch markets the hope was that BlackBerry would continue to build on momentum and positive reports to take back marketshare in the U.S.

The latest round of reports paint a more sobering picture. Instead of long lines of consumers camping out it appears if you are in the market for a BlackBerry Z10 you will have a good chance to walk into your local carrier store and pick up a device. Checks indicate U.S. consumer pre-orders for the BlackBerry Z10 “have been light and well below expectations,” says Detwiler Fenton’s Jeff Johnston.

Are you getting a Z10 on day one? Are you even going to give it a try? I’ll be checking out the device and putting it through it’s paces tomorrow and will also gauge consumer reaction. I’m looking forward to see if the device really is as intuitive as people claim and how the RSPs present the Z10 as an option when a customer hasn’t made their mind up before walking into the store.

Samsung has no intentions of letting Apple debut market disruptive products and have the benefit of a couple years to themselves garnering all the profit and mindshare. The latest example is Samsung confirming the development of a smart watch. Recent rumors have pegged Apple intending on releasing such a product at some point this year. Samsung to their credit has realized the mistake their other competitors haven’t. You simply cannot allow someone to launch a disruptive product and think you have the luxury of time on your hands to compete against it. Especially when that someone is Apple who already has mastered the art of locking consumers into their ecosystem and dominating mindshare.

Samsung has become quite bold in their intentions to dominate any and all markets. The smart watch is on their radar and they have taken preemptive action to make sure their customers know they have one on the way. The battle starts in the mind. Samsung gets that and that is why they went on the record to let the world know they aren’t asleep at the wheel.

Source: Forbes

We already know that launch dates for the HTC One has been pushed back due to a struggle to secure vital components for their flagship. In particular the focus has been on the difficulty securing camera parts that their UltraPixel technology relies on. The Wall Street Journal reports that in addition to the camera parts the metal casing is also proving to be a pain to get adequate stock of.

The surprising thing that came out of the WSJ report is that suppliers have dropped HTC from their Tier 1 category of customers and so other orders are getting priority over HTC’s orders. Apparently the cutting of orders throughout 2012 when the One X and other smartphones released by HTC didn’t meet sales expectations have made the suppliers skeptical of prioritizing HTC’s large orders for fear of a repeat.

Unfortunately HTC is suffering from an inadequate supply-chain like many others in the mobile industry. I hope the situation gets resolved sooner than later because the HTC One is a valiant attempt at righting the good ship HTC.

Source: The Verge via Wall Street Journal

Microsoft has made quite a fuss over being Scroogled and how Google “reads” users emails and the dangers of such behavior. Well I have news for Microsoft. Bing Now is a scandal waiting to happen. I’m talking about major device altering scandal proportions. First some info on what Bing Now is to catch you up to speed.

Bing Now is currently a Microsoft Research app in development that is intended to deliver a more visceral search experience to the user. The aim is to help users search for buinesses and locations and get a better feel for the location with the help of crowd sourcing noise levels, music playing and chatter levels. Pretty useful in theory. Just imagine how helpful Bing Now would be in finding a location you can have a quiet dinner or finding the most popular club on a particular night in real time. Bing Now is taking aim at delivering information that is relevant and most important in getting users to a place that meet their needs. So what’s the problem? Privacy issues abound.

In order for Bing Now to capture the metadata that is required to deliver such an enhanced and useful experience the Bing Now app captures 6-10 seconds of background noise to process and feed back to the user. Crowd sourcing is at the heart of Bing Now. So what happens when part of the audio captured is of someone in the background disclosing confidential or private information? Major scandals can be created in both business and personal areas. Seeing how highly rated the Scandal television show is it is fair t say there is nothing people like more than a good scandal.

In this day where Google is getting targeted for privacy issues its worth noting that the one pointing the finger the most, Microsoft, is developing an app that has the potential to shake a person’s life to pieces with this Bing Now app.

Source: WMPoweruser via Microsoft Research

I’ll keep beating this drum. Samsung has become king of advertising and are reaping the benefits. The Galaxy S4 is getting even more attention than its predecessor, the GS3, did from Samsung’s hype machine. Today brings a second teaser video that builds on the first where their super carrier Jeremy tries his best to keep the flagship device under wraps. Remember the world finds out the details and gets our first glimpse of the hardware this Thursday March 14th.

I’m sorry but are we as a society have not gotten to the point where the newspaper reading in a bathroom can be acceptably replaced by an iPad in a bathroom. Certainly not in a public bathroom. Yuppy-central Starbucks doesn’t qualify as an exception. In true spirit of George Costanza allow me to impart some advice. There is no amount of explaining you can do to justify taking an iPad into a public restroom. None!

Wait, did I just call myself a yuppy? Those are the breaks.

I love it, I can already feel the flaming coming! Oh well, what is a little Mobility Digest Monday Apple News to start the week off right for what will undoubtedly be Apples biggest week of 2011. First off, let’s hit the Apple stock that soared over night to over $700.00 per share and eased slightly during trading hours but is still holding at $699 at the time of this writing. This could have to do with the few…MILLION devices they presold in the first 24 hours. Try 2 million to be exact. Where I have no great fan boy love for Apple, I do prefer the iPhone as my daily driver for many reasons. I did in fact preorder my iPhone 5 last week at Best Buy and looking forward to my shiny new 32gb version showing up on this Friday! Yes,, I will be in line early only because I enjoy hanging out with the other tech geeks like me.

Wait! We still have some goodies happening before the Friday launch of the iPhone 5! iOS 6 is due to roll out this Wednesday so we can all get our feet wet before the hardware roll out of the iPhone 5 on Friday. I know there has been tons written bout iOS 6 and many developers already having their hands on it for quite some time, but for the average consumer, you get to upgrade Wednesday!

But how fast will the A6 processor be? According to 9To5Mac the iPhone 5 spanked the iPhone 4S by over 1000 points using GeekBench Browser. The results of the test can be found here:   iPhone5,2 vs iPhone 4S. the iPhone5 scored 1601 where the current model scored 631. Impressive but how does the iPhone 5 compare to other flagship devices?

The Nexus 7 powered by a Quad Core Tegra 3 kicked out a 1591 and the Samsung Galaxy S 3 scored a 1560. It wasn’t until the Quad Core SGS3 with Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) that beats the iPhone 5 hands down with a score of 1781.

All sounds great for Apple until these knuckleheads show up and start waiting in line 5 days before launch. They definitely give Apple device owners a bad name! LOL

Enjoy and have a great week waiting on Apple to kick us out some iOS 6 goodness Wednesday and some iPhone 5 this Friday!

Certain special events only come once a year (or even less) such as the Olympics, LeapYear, January 1st, taxes, and Christmas. Today’s writings will be focusing on something a little different, but equally exciting and definitely of great interest to the entire mobile community.

This is just a global bulletin announcement to make sure that you all remember to wish DOUG a Happy Birthday! Many years ago on August 1st, DOUG was born. This proves that Windows Messenger/Hotmail are good for something, because I might’ve forgot about his birthday if it hadn’t been for that. Be sure to stop in on the StaffNotify email list (or contact Doug if you’re interested in signing up) and leave an “hb” in there as well as the comments section and any of those annoying social network sites you may frequent. Be sure to stay tuned as well for an interview with Doug that we’ll hopefully be able to do over Windows Messenger, and leave any suggestions for good interview questions in the StaffNotify email threads.

If you’re looking for gift ideas, I recently did a “5 Minute Post About Something Cool” on a soon to be banned Mobility product, so be sure to remember him in your August birthday gift shopping and make this birthday his best yet.

Here’s to another great year of Mobility Digest with DOUG.

.:Albert Bunn