Nokia's continued feature phone focus may be one of their smartest moves

I generally focus on the smartphone market here on ZDNet because that is what I use and what most readers seem to be interested in. However, the feature phone market is still relevant with staggering global figures that show over 70% of phones sold in 2011 were actually feature phones. Many, including myself, seemed to shrug off the Nokia world asha series 40 handset announcements, but according to this Forbes article feature phones are now more profitable than smartphones so it looks like Nokia’s strategy of staying in the feature phone business may turn out to be a very smart move.

Many manufacturers that made feature phones in the past, including Motorola, Sony, HTC, and LG, have focused their efforts on the smartphone market. While Nokia is focusing on the smartphone market with Windows Phone, they are also very actively targeting the “next billion” with excellent devices like the Asha lineup that includes the asha 303 Asha 201 and . Nokia actually passed the 1.5 billion this month and looks to rule this market in the future.

New variants of premium rate SMS trojan 'RuFraud' detected in the wild

                                                     
Researchers from AegisLab, have intercepted several new variants of the infamous RuFraud. Premium rate SMS trojan.

How the infection takes place:

In order to earn money from the premium-rate SMS, the trojan will fake itself as a famous app, like Angry Birds; or downloader/installer of well-known softwares, it looks like ‘real thing’. Some of these kinds of apps appear on the third-party download sites, and some will repackage itself, post to the official Android Marketplace, and try to lure innocent people to install it.

The malicious attackers have bundled the premium rate SMS trojan into a fake copy of the popular app Angry Birds. Upon execution, the trojan seems permissions to sent SMS messages. Once the user confirms that the application is free to do so, the trojan will start sending premium rate SMS messages to multiple numbers outlined in AegisLab's post.

CES 2012: AT&T and HTC announce first LTE Windows Phone, the Titan II

Readers know I am a huge Windows Phone fan and I have been debating making a move to AT&T since they get all the latest and greatest Windows Phone devices. It turns out that possible move was just made more compelling with the HTC Titan II LTE announcement made today at CES. Like most announcements here at CES, devices won’t be released for months though so there is time to consider and see what else is announced.

he current HTC Titan is a beast of a phone and IMHO the best Windows Phone currently available. In addition to AT&T LTE, the Titan II sports a 1.5 GHz processor, 4.7 inch display (still WVGA), 16 megapixel camera (WOW!), 1.3 megapixel front facing camera, and more.

Consumers choosing smartphones with iPhone 4S helping close the Android-iOS gap

I purchased an iPhone 4S on Verizon the day it launched and even after taking a look at the latest Android device, the Galaxy Nexus, I still prefer the Apple iPhone 4S. Nielsen just posted survey results that shows the iPhone 4S was a very popular purchase at the end of 2011 and the gap between iOS and Android is narrowing.

The Nielsen report shows that by the end of 2011 46% of U.S. mobile consumers had smartphones and that number continues strong growth. 60% of those who purchased a new device in the last three months chose a smartphone over a feature phone. My wife’s aunt bought her first smartphone last week and it was the Verizon iPhone 4S. Looking at the Nielsen charts, you can see that Android remains the most popular with iOS gaining a bit while RIM is seeing serious declines. Windows Phone 7, my personal favorite on T-Mobile, just can’t seem to gain any market share yet and hopefully 2012 is the year they start making some headway.

Android is a powerful mobile operating system and I enjoy it for the widgets, custom keyboards, and ability to try out different ROMs. However, for day-to-day usage I still prefer my iPhone 4S for its ease of use and well designed applications. I honestly thought the iPhone would top out and flatten given that the iPhone 4 has been out for quite some time, but I think the improvements in the 4S and the launch on Sprint have helped. I know quite a few Sprint customers who purchased an iPhone 4S for Christmas and know I would get one for my wife if the iPhone would ever come to T-Mobile.