PMP Today

A week after RAmos announced its iTV PMP with CMMB support, Teclast has its own CMMB-enabled PMP to offer visitors and locals during the Beijing Olympics. CMMB TV is already available in 37 Chinese cities and with common Chinese PMP functionality like RMVB / RM / AVI / FLV / MPG / WMV / DAT video supportand PlayFX and additional TV Out and speakers, the 4.3-inch 480 x 272-pixel Teclast M55 is one rivalRAmos cannot discount, pending price announcement of course.

[via imp3]

Nokia has made a move that may be seen as a war declaration to rivals Motorola and Sony Ericsson. The latter two cellphone manufacturers have been hemorrhaging revenues and market share this past year or so and Nok-Nok’s recent across-the-board price cuts may hasten the two companies’ demise.

Reports Reuters:

Nokia made the steepest price reductions of up to 10 percent for selected music and media phones, while it made smaller cuts across the portfolio, a European telecom industry source said.

Though Nokia shares fell some 2 per cent, it will go a long way in cementing Nokia’s lead as the top cellphone manufacturer. Former close rivals Motorola and Sony Ericsson have been falling rapidly in market share, while Samsung and LG, current second and third in the market have little chance of catching up.

[read the rest: reuters]

Fujitsu’s MVA screen offers wider viewing angles and is considered to be better than any other TFT LCD screens in the market. You can view up to 170 degrees. Besides the MVA screen, the Teclast M31 also employs an FM transmitter for wireless music sharing. From these information, we can hardly wait till someone makes a video review of this product. With the M26, Teclast has shown that it can make very interesting MP4 players and maintain low costs. The M31 is some more Teclast goodness in that vein. It supports RMVB, RM, FLV, AVI, DAT, MPG and has TV out. No pricing yet.

[imp3 via b4tech]

Sony is serious about entrenching itself into the Chinese PMP market. Its PMX series are on the higher end of the Chnese market but are reachable for consumers willing to pay a little more for quality products. The new Sony PMX-M80 series adds a feature that pushes the envelope for the entire Chinese market: maps. It’s no iPhone GPS by any means but the map browser suite supports electronic maps with points of interest, much like Google Maps on the original iPhone. The company does not have a demo yet for us, which is rather unfortunate but here are the rest of the specs: 4.3-inch 480 × 272 screen, 16GB storage, support for SRS 3D audio, MP4, AVI, WMA, MP3, AAC, mic, memory stick and up to 6 hours of video. Price is 2,260 yuan or $331 USD. Pricey but it’s a Sony.

[via zol]

It looks like cut/copy/paste may soon be hitting the iPhone and iPod Touch. No, it’s not an Apple update, but rather a 3rd party application from a company called Proximi who finally decided that it was high time to incorporate such a feature into the device. MagicPad, as it’s called, is the first rich-text editor of its kind for the iPhone which, aside from the cut, copy and paste feature; also allows you to resize, change color, and add enhancements to fonts such as bold, italic, underline and strike-through. The only drawback is that the cut/copy/paste functionality is limited to the program itself since Apple doesn’t allow transfer of data between two or more applications. It’s still currently under evaluation, but once it gets the go signal, watch out for it in Apple’s AppStore.

 [via unwiredview]

The Nuviphone from Garmin, a great device in every sense, is going to avoid the getting slaughtered by iPhone 3G’s wake. Nuviphone (or Nuvifone) was expected late this year but due to carrier requirements still unresolved, Garmin has postponed launch date to 2009.

The Garmin Nuviphone is a quadband GSM phone with HSDPA, WiFi and of course GPS with maps preloaded. It will retail for $500 without contract.

[via slashphone]

We have yet to hear about the availability of iRiver’s W7 outside of Asia. The iRiver W7 is not the perfect iRiver PMP but it’s not bad either and the unique combination of stylus-based touchscreen and joystick would no doubt tempt quite a few people looking for a portable video player. What we know is that the W7 is only available in Korea and China and in the latter, consumers get a bonus 300-yuan price cut sending the W7 to just under 2000 yuan ($293 US) category.

Just to recap, the iRiver W7 has a 3-inch 480 × 272 screen, support for WMV, AVI, SWF, MP3, WMA and Flash games. It has 8GB of onboard storage with microSD slot for memory extension.

[via zol]

We like portable gaming devices, but this is the first gaming device that enables you to earn serious money… or lose it. Cantor Gaming gives you Las Vegas on-the-go with eDeck. The eDeck has WiFi and with an account, users can play Vegas games for real money whenever there’s a HotSpot around. Roulette, blackjack, baccarat, video poker and other casino games are supported as well as Cantor’s own patented games like Bonus Roulette, XtraOdds Baccarat and Statjack. No pricing yet but from the looks of it, it’s a very effective way of going from happily employed to a homeless whino. Cantor Gaming is still testing the device, obviously a crucial phase in the production since people’s money are going to be involved, lots of people’s money. No price yet.

[via newlaunches]

Another sad day for Motorola. It’s not official yet, but according to Bloomberg, LG may have sold more than Moto in the last quarter, which means LG is 3rd, while Samsung remains in second place after Nokia. Moto sales fell 26% and Bloomberg pegs actual sales at 26.1 million handset. Sony Ericsson, which have also been slipping very steeply, may soon find itself ahead of Motorola as well with 24.4 million sales. If you see a silver lining in Motorola’s handset business, send us a message via the comments section.

[via moconews]

If there is room enough in the MP3 player market for another player, a company like Dell would be a shoe-in. Dell may have been out of the MP3 player business for some time (they haven’t been in it too long) but that doesn’t mean they have lost interest. In fact, if the Wall Street Journal’s info is correct, the Dell MP3 player will have WiFi and Internet radio integration, priced at a very attractive -$100. This under-$100 MP3 player may also be a touch screen. Now, I’m wondering if Dell can reasonably sneak in video codec support in this -$100 PMP? Now that would really be something.

[reuters via crunchgear]