Mobility Techzone Week in Review

We will begin our review this week by noting that we send our deep felt condolences to the families of those who suffered through the worst of possible fates from the tragic events that have unfolded in Boston this week. And we send our prayers out to everyone who may have been affected through injuries. The hugely unfortunate events way heavily on all of us, but those directly affected - especially those who sustained injuries - need our prayers the most. We are thinking of you.

OK - let's just get this out of the way quickly. Samsung and its US carrier partners are just about ready to get the S4 launched. We can certainly anticipate all sorts of new sales records being broken - at the very least as far as Samsung is concerned. Whether the S4 manages to achieve iPhone-like sales numbers is another thing, but still it will be impressive. Before you head out to your local carrier store to check it out however, make sure to do your homework and nail down every last feature and detail about the S4. You will need these in hand as we can guarantee the store's employees will not know all that much about it.

The week actually began bright and early Monday morning with the news that satellite company Dish has decided to put a very serious offer on the table to acquire Sprint. As you may recall, Sprint has already agreed to be acquired by Softbank for $20.4 billion, but Dish has now put a deal on the table worth at least $25.5 billion. We ourselves like the deal offer and we hope that Sprint seriously considers it. We do know that the board has created a special group to evaluate it. It will be fun to see how Softbank responds and if we'll be treated to any financial fireworks.

This week Microsoft, along with a slew of other companies, delivered their first earnings reports for 2013. Most of the news - with the unanticipated exception of IBM - met expectations. Last week we spent some time detailing the decline of the PC industry, and this week we had our eyes on Microsoft specifically because that decline in PCs was expected to have some sort of non-trivial impact on Microsoft's quarterly earnings. And yet it did not come to pass. Defying the PC's market dynamics, Microsoft managed to post some rather good numbers. Did Microsoft's Surface tablets - whose sales numbers have been much maligned, perhaps have a hand in this?

We continue to find it quite interesting that Microsoft is able to collect licensing fees from companies that use Android, especially custom manufacturers and mobile device OEMs. This week Foxconn's parent company, Hon Hai, joined Microsoft's growing list of Android licensees. Though these licensing deals are but a drop in the revenue bucket for Microsoft they never the less add up to some serious mobile change for the company. But…it's Android you are thinking. Yes, it is.

Nokia also reported earnings this week. It was no surprise that the company posted a loss, however Nokia actually ended up substantially beating expectations on its loss and revenue. This was exceedingly good news for the company - and delivered a well-deserved morale boost. Verizon also joined in the earnings report fun, and for Verizon it was fun. The company continues to report good financials across the board and it should certainly come as no surprise that mobility continues to play "the" key role here, now delivering 66 percent of its revenue.

Mobile laggard Hewlett-Packard this week is talking to Leap Motion. Why is that? Because Leap Motion happens to have a very impressive gesture motion control scheme to its credit. It is so impressive, in fact, that HP has taken quite a shine to the control system and intends to put it to use. The two companies have struck a deal to do exactly this. It will be interesting to see what HP does with it - initially it will be used on PCs but what might HP do on the tablet front?

We've noted numerous times in the past that Android is subject to all sorts of malware afflictions. But it keeps getting worse. There are new numbers out on this, and the study claims that at least 32.8 million Adroid phones were affected by malware in 2012. That is an awful lot of smartphones - and it is an entirely safe bet that 2013 will prove a lot worse.

But enough of bad news. Here is some good news if you happen to be one of those Facebook lovers. The company will be bringing its new Chat Heads text messaging technology to iOS. Chat Heads was announced with Facebook Home a few short weeks ago and while the mobile messaging app won't take over your iPhone the way Facebook Home takes over Android devices it will be made available through the iOS Facebook app that is fairly tightly integrated with the iPhone. What fun - now you iPhone users can also become Chat Heads.