The Sony range of Xperia phones will soon be joined by a new budget minded device, if these leaked photos and rumored specifications are found to be genuine.

According to the leak, the S39h will be a 4.3-inch 720p Android phone, and will go on sale in China to compete in the fiercely competitive smartphone market. A full specification sheet hasn’t been made available yet, but tipsters suggest the phone to offer dual-sim support, and either a 5 or 8 mega-pixel rear camera. The Xperia S39h might even end up being powered by a quad-core Mediatek chip, if reports in China are to be believed.

Personally I’m not a fan of the design of the S39h and believe Sony will need to improve their styling to compete with high spec, low-cost phone offered by local Chinese brands. What do you think of the S39h, how does it compare to other Chinese-marketed handsets out there?

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Let’s start out with some of the basics. According to the rumors circulating around the Internet, the Galaxy S4 Mini will follow in the footsteps of the S3 Mini that came before it. The idea is that it’ll take many of the design cues and features from its larger 5-inch Galaxy S 4 cousin and shrink them down to a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED form factor. It’s not the same resolution, of course, getting bumped down to just 540 x 960 pixels. It’ll have either a dual core or a quad core processor and will ship with Android 4.2.2.

The main thing that will determine whether it has dual core or quad core is likely the presence of LTE. And that’s where the four versions will come into play. There will be an LTE model of the Galaxy S4 Mini that’ll likely get the dual core chip. Then, there’s an HSPA+ model that probably gets the quad core chip. Third, there’s a version designed specifically for the Chinese market and the fourth will be a dual-sim model.

The expectation is that the Galaxy S4 Mini, possibly in all four of its incarnations, will be launching in June or July of this year.

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HTC has been watching the popularity of smartphones in China very closely, and we can expect to see a number of low cost, Chinese-only Android phones from the Taiwanese phone maker over the coming year.

The first to launch are the HTC Desire Q and P, both of which are dual-core smartphones with 1GB RAM, 8 mega-pixel cameras, SD card readers and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The major difference between the two phones is that the Q offers users a low-cost 4-inch display, while the P has a larger 4.2-inch WVGA panel and a price tag of $365.

We honestly don’t think many Chinese phone fans will be too excited about the Desire Q and P, as local phone makers are producing quad-core , Full 1080, Android 4.2 handsets with 13 mega-pixel cameras for just $160. What do you think of these two ‘budget’ handsets?

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If you have ever spent any time in a major Chinese city, you would be under the impression that everyone is connected to the Internet in some way or another, whether through mobile phones or Internet cafe’s or home Internet. And you would be right, as the majority of Chinese do have access to Internet, but there is still (a lot) of room for growth.

For 2013, China has pledged to increase home broadband coverage by 70%. The new initiative plans to bring extra connectivity throughout China’s more rural areas and schools, and will see the erection of 180,000 new 3G base stations along with 1.3 million addition Wi-Fi hot-spots.

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We will naturally have to take this leak with a grain of salt, but it looks like we are getting our first look at the upcoming fifth-generation iPad from Apple. There aren’t too many surprises here, as it has been rumored for months that the next iPad would borrow much of its design inspiration from the smaller iPad mini.

This is just a look at the back plate and the leak comes by way of a China-based iPad accessories maker. The back looks like it will have the same black and slate appearance as its smaller cousin, along with thinner casing and chamfered edges. We’re also hearing that the overall footprint will be smaller, because Apple will be shrinking the bezel around the 9.7-inch display. You’ll also notice the top portion of the back plate, which seems to indicate that this would be the LTE model.

When can we expect to see the iPad 5 announced and hitting the market? There are two conflicting rumors at this point. On the one hand, some people are saying that the fifth-gen iPad could launch as early as March. On the other hand, with the 128GB version of the iPad 4 just launching now, it is possible that the iPad 5 isn’t quite ready. Given that, we’re hearing an October launch window is more likely.

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Even though the Huawei products may not exactly be the flagship smartphones offered by your local cell phone carrier, Huawei has made its presence known and let’s not forget about the massive market that it can enjoy in its home China. Indeed, Huawei’s year-over-year change for units shipped in Q4 was a remarkable 89.5%. That being said, it still only has a 4.9% overall market share as of Q4 2012.

The overall smartphone market continues to grow, so even though the market share numbers have only moved a few percentage points, the year-over-year change for units shipped has increased almost across the board. Samsung is sitting in the top spot with 29.0% market share with a 76.0% increase in units shipped. Apple is second with a 21.8% market share and a 29.2% increase in shipments. Sony is fourth with 4.5% market share and interestingly enough, another Chinese company, ZTE, rounds out the top five with its 4.3% market share.

Yes, Apple and Samsung continue to dominate the smartphone world with a combined 50% of the market and Huawei is a distant third with its 4.9%, but it really is amazing how this seemingly “second tier” brand has propelled itself onto the smartphone podium in such a short amount of time. Remember that they’re beating out what we may otherwise consider to be heavy hitters like HTC, LG and Motorola.

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The U956 mimics the specification of its pricier brother, the ZTE Grand S, and offers customers a 5-inch display and powerful quad-core processor, however the screen is a 720HD rather than 1080HD and the processor is from Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek.

Other highlights include dual-sim support, an 8 mega-pixel rear camera and Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. No announcement if the ZTE U965 will be available internationally, but Chinese shoppers can expect to pick one up before the Chinese Spring Festival holiday.

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Both iPad’s will go on sale through Apple stores across China and more than likely through China Unicom branches, although this has yet to be confirmed.

Although both iPad’s support LTE, current Apple products’s are not compatible with the countries current TD-LTE network which is operated by China Mobile, and only available in a few select cities, but from personal use I can confirm the iPad Mini works flawlessly on China Unicom’s 3G network.

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Recently we reported on a resurfaced rumor suggesting that Apple might be working on a cheaper version of the iPhone. At the time we said it seemed out of character for Apple, and unless it was aimed at the Chinese market, it was probably not too likely.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, has now come forward to say there will NEVER be a cheaper iPhone model in Apple’s future. Seapking to the Chinese newspaper Shanghai Evening News, Schiller said that they aren’t work on such a device.

In Schiller’s own words:
“We are not like other companies, launched multiple products in one breath, then pinning his hopes on a product to get the favor of consumers,” said Schiller.

“Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple’s products. In fact, although Apple’s market share of smartphones is just about 20 percent, we own the 75 percent of the profit,” he adds.

Doesn’t get much straightforward than that. Honestly, I doubt anyone is too surprised by this statement. While Apple is hoping to break further into the Chinese market, going against their “premium status” could hurt their overall global image and might turn off fans.

What do you think, should Apple reconsider the idea of having multiple flagship devices at different price points or should they keep doing what they do best?

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The WSJ and now Bloomberg are both pumping out new rumors suggesting Apple might be working on a lower-tier smartphone to go alongside its flagship (currently iPhone 5) model.

Now, this isn’t the first time that we’ve heard rumors like this, with the earliest rumors about a low-end iPhone going back to February of 2011. So what has changed to bring this news back? Nothing, at least not that we are aware of.

Apple is a premium brand, love it or hate it. They don’t cater to the low-end market and I honestly can’t see them releasing such a handset in Europe or North America. Sure, the iPad Mini is a cheaper iPad, but in reality it is a very expensive device for a 7-incher.

The latest rumor claims that such a budget iPhone could cost as little as $100-$150.

Now Bloomberg doesn’t indicate whether that’s subsidized or not, but if it is the outright price– let’s just say that is pretty much impossible unless Apple makes some major concessions such as going with a Chinese chipset instead of its own, going all plastic, etc.

That said, it isn’t impossible that Apple could consider something like this for developing markets, such as China. The company continues to attempt to push into the Chinese market, realizing there is a lot of potential money to be made here.

Unfortunately, not all Chinese customers can afford the iPhone 5 or even the older iPhone 4S or 4.

Having a plastic-body iPhone for the Chinese market that runs on Chinese standard parts wouldn’t be that strange. It still probably wouldn’t hit the $150 outright price point, but $200-$250 would certainly become possible.

Still, it’s hard to see Apple catering to the low-end after all the work they’ve done to establish themselves a premium (read: over-priced?) brand. What do you think, would a lower-end iPhone targeted towards the developing world be a wise move for Apple or do you think there is no way in hell Apple would do this?

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