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The Emperor Only Wears Underpants

I’m starting to get concerned that the marketing hype surrounding 5G will struggle to meet the reality of the situation. Beyond any technical reservations (we’ll get to those) there seems to be a growing sentiment that 5G will cause fundamental upheavals in society and business – the like of which have never been seen before. Consider me a skeptic.

The Huawei Challenge

There are dark times ahead for Huawei, due to the U.S. Government’s decision to blacklist the vendor. And while the move was inevitable, it will now not only impact the network infrastructure side of the business, but also its ability to support Android smartphones.

Your Signal May Vary

Traveling across some of the more rural parts of America has given me a healthy dose of reality when it comes to national coverage of U.S. mobile carriers. While the movement towards national mobile coverage has been around since Craig McCaw in the early 80s, I still found pockets of emptiness on my travels.

MWC and The U.S. Unlocked Market: A Shining Opportunity for OEMs Squeezed by Top Vendors

MWC19 is upon us and it’s poised to be an exciting show thanks to the hype around 5G and revolutionary hardware innovations, such as foldable displays. While 5G will be the buzz word of MWC19, we are unlikely to see many consumer-oriented 5G device/service unveilings because of the premature state of the technology in terms of network deployments and device hardware developments. Nevertheless, there will still be a lot to get excited about at the show.

When Walls Start To Crack

Apple caused a stir this week with the warning that it was going to miss smartphone sales expectations for the past quarter. While much of the focus was placed on the Chinese market, there’s far more to digest here. Fundamentally, consumers are not upgrading their iPhones as frequently as Apple had expected, but this should hardly be a surprise. And there are greater concerns looking forward.

Foldables Are Coming

The smartphone market has become rather boring over the past few years. But that may be about to change as we enter the era of foldable screens, potentially giving consumers a reason to lust after the next smartphone innovation.

The best phone you cannot (easily) buy

Huawei launched its latest smartphones today, the Mate 20 and the Mate 20 Pro; and while we don’t usually focus on a single product launch in a blog, this one is worth the attention for a couple of reasons. Huawei has managed to upstage the typical flagship smartphones with this latest launch; and the U.S. market will probably not even notice, despite the fact that this is a major smartphone launch from the second largest smartphone manufacturer worldwide.

Flashback Friday

We’ve entered the time of year when the latest and greatest smartphones are revealed, just in time for the upcoming holiday season. And, as usual, we’re going to be seeing some pretty neat enhancements in power management and camera specs. But… we’ve all been saying that for years.

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