Chinese smartphone makers Huawei, ZTE aim for the top

China's Huawei, little known to consumers just a couple of years ago, is now leading the pack of smartphone makers chasing Apple and Samsung, with ZTE, another Chinese company, snapping at its heels.

Huawei, which sold 32 million smartphones in 2012, up 60 percent on 2011, unveiled its new flagshipAscend P2 smartphone in Barcelona, boasting a connection speed of 150 MB per second, the fastest on the market.

The company was third in smartphone sales in the final quarter of 2012, according to research firm IDC, with ZTE in fifth place and Sony sandwiched in between. Samsung and Apple, however, were far in front with half the market between them.

Wan Biao, chief executive of Huawei Device Co, said the Ascend P2's faster download speeds would make a difference to customers using 4G networks in countries such as Japan.

The device also includes power-saving technology, developed using expertise from its networks business, which Biao said helped it stand out against other high-end phones running Google's Android software.

"Our target is for Huawei to provide the best smartphones in the world, better than the iPhone, better than Samsung," he said in an interview on Monday. "Our target is top three in market share."

Huawei, which became established by selling unbranded phones to operators, said the Ascend P2 would be available from the second quarter priced at 399 euros, hundred of euros less than flagship devices from its rivals.

Biao said that the company was still establishing itself as a brand in the minds of consumers, so its phones did not attract high subsidies from network operators.

"Operators give a high subsidy to Samsung and Apple," he said. "We have a very high quality product but the price we set is not as high as these two smartphones; we have to develop differentiated products."

Analyst Carolina Milanesi at Gartner said the Ascend P2 was a notable step forward for the Chinese company, showing a focus on the most important aspects for consumers, such as speed, an impressive screen and longer battery life.

ZTE, which also developed its technology by making devices for others, is equally ambitious. On Monday, it said it expected to increase smartphone revenue by 30 percent this year.

"We at ZTE consider ourselves as not tier one yet, we see ourselves as tier two, comparable to HTC, Sony and Motorola," He Shiyou, head of mobile services division, said in an interviewer via a translator. "We have to be as aggressive as possible."

He said ZTE would reduce its product range to achieve larger sales of fewer models, and focus on the strongest markets for smartphones - the United States, China, Europe and Australia.

It previously took ZTE six months to catch up with the Samsung's software and hardware specifications, he said, but now it only took a quarter. "We need to close that gap," he said.

"By 2015, we are hoping to achieve the top three by market share, but in terms of branding image and also pricing segmentation, we want to reach the top five," he said.

ZTE unveiled a 5.7 inch Grand Memo handset in Barcelona, firmly in the "phablet" screen dimensions that Samsung has popularised in its Note range, and the ZTE Open, a smartphone running on Mozilla's Firefox OS open ecosystem.

Aliens: Colonial Marines review

You're entering a tight corridor filled with menacing shadows. Is that breathing you hear? Well, don't run. Clanging metal walkways and staircases always give your position away.

You might be playing a first- or third-person shooter or watching the film "Aliens."

Every science fiction/horror game of the last 20 years from the granddaddy of them all, Id's "Doom," to recent titles such as Electronic Arts' "Dead Space" series - owes a debt to the first two films in the "Alien" franchise, Ridley Scott's moody 1979 original and James Cameron's action-packed 1986 sequel, "Aliens."

"Aliens: Colonial Marines" (Sega, for Xbox360, PS3, $59.99; for PC, $49.99) is the follow-up that fans have been craving. (Forget about "Alien 3" and "Alien: Resurrection.") Developed by Gearbox Software, maker of the fantastic "Borderlands" series, it offers a strong story that fits perfectly within the mythology of the franchise.

Taking place shortly after the events of Cameron's sequel, "Colonial Marines" puts you right into the thick of the action on the planet LV-426. You play as Cpl. Christopher Winter, who arrives with his Marine unit at the planet in response to a distress call from the U.S.S. Sulaco - the ship Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley is aboard at the close of the second film.

Your mission is to find out why the Sulaco is still orbiting LV-426.

If you can survive the xenomorphs.

Some attack you from the ceiling. Some spit acid. Some explode when you get too close. When a face-hugger leaps at you for the first time, it'll make you jump out of your seat and laugh at the same time.

There are many nice touches drawn from the "Aliens" film. You can cut open and seal doors with welding torches. Your main weapon is a pulse rifle - complete with pump-action grenade launcher - and you can also track down "Legendary" weapons that pack a bit more punch, such as Cpl. Hicks' shotgun and Lt. Gorman's pistol. The ships and vehicles are spot-on with those in the movie, and sparring with a xenomorph while strapped into a power loader is as fun as it sounds.

And then there's my personal favorite: the motion tracker. When a horde is closing in from all directions, you may feel the urge to say, "There's something moving and it ain't us."

As you progress through the 8- to 10-hour campaign, you earn points that can be spent on weapon upgrades or your character's appearance. These upgrades apply across all the content in the game - including the multiplayer, which allows you to play as a xenomorph in several modes.

The settings are the real meat of the game. You spend some time aboard the Sulaco before reaching the planet's surface and fighting your way through the Hadley's Hope colony, both of which boast a strong attention to detail when it comes to the set designs from the film. Perhaps the most satisfying segment takes place aboard the derelict spaceship, complete with egg chamber and - yes! - the "space jockey."

The ominous Weyland-Yutani Corp. hovers over everything, and you may even pick up on a small reference to Scott's sort-of prequel "Prometheus." And series veterans Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen provide voiceover work.

Truth be told, the mechanics are pretty standard, the load times seem a bit long for this generation and the closing segment with the alien queen falls very flat. Still, "Aliens: Colonial Marines" should satisfy the average shooter fan and will enthrall those who love the films. Three stars out of four.

US seeks to tackle trade-secret theft by China, others

Faced with the growing theft of U.S. trade secrets, the White House said on Wednesday it was stepping up diplomatic pressure and mulling tougher laws to stem the threat to American businesses and security from China and other nations.

The plan includes working with like-minded governments to put pressure on bad actors, using trade policy tools, increasing criminal prosecutions and launching a 120-day review to see whether new U.S. legislation is needed.

"A hacker in China can acquire source code from a software company in Virginia without leaving his or her desk," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a White House event to unveil the strategy.

Although the White House report did not cite China by name, many see the Asian giant as the main threat. A study released this week by a private security firm accused the Chinese military of orchestrating numerous cyber attacks against U.S. businesses, a charge Beijing has denied.

The Obama administration said its strategy aims to counter what Holder called "a significant and steadily increasing threat to America's economy and national security interests."

"As new technology has torn down traditional barriers to international business and global commerce, they also make it easier for criminals to steal secrets and to do so from anywhere, anywhere in the world," Holder said.

Last week, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said U.S. companies suffered estimated losses in 2012 of more than $300 billion due to theft of trade secrets, a large share due to Chinese cyber espionage.

The White House report listed 17 cases of trade-secret theft by Chinese companies or individuals since 2010, far more than any other country mentioned in the report.

U.S. corporate victims of trade-secret theft have included General Motors, Ford, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Motorola, Boeing and Cargill. A target company can see the payoff from research investment evaporate as a result of corporate espionage and lose market position, competitive advantage and efficiencies.

"We have repeatedly raised our concerns about trade-secret theft by any means at the highest levels with senior Chinese officials and we will continue to do so," said Robert Hormats, an undersecretary of state.

Those cases cited mostly involved employees stealing trade secrets on the job rather than cyber attacks.

Victoria Espinel, the White House intellectual property rights enforcement coordinator, said the effort aims to protect the innovation that drives the U.S. economy and job creation.

Mixed response
Cyber-security and intelligence experts welcomed the White House plan as a first step, but some said much more needed to be done.

"You've got a nation-state taking on private corporations," said former CIA Director Michael Hayden. "That's kind of unprecedented. We have not approached resolution with this at all."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's largest business lobby, offered a lukewarm statement of support, while other industry groups expressed more enthusiasm for the effort.

"We strongly endorse and applaud the administration's focus on curbing theft of trade secrets, which poses a serious and growing threat to the software industry around the world," said Business Software Alliance President and CEO Robert Holleyman.

The report that laid out the strategy repeated a 2011 White House recommendation that the maximum sentence for economic espionage be increased to at least 20 years, from 15 currently.

Another part of the solution is promoting a set of "best practices" that companies can use to protect themselves against cyber attacks and other espionage, Espinel said.

The report also said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was "expanding its efforts to fight computer intrusions that involve the theft of trade secrets by individual, corporate and nation-state cyber hackers."

In an interview, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the problem of trade-secret theft in China was a factor in the decisions of some U.S. companies to move operations back to the United States.

The companies have "had very frank conversations with the Chinese, (saying) 'You know it's one thing to accept a certain level of copyright knock-offs, but if you're going to take our core technology, then we're better off being in our home country,'" Kirk told Reuters.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

NASA Mars rover ready to eat, analyze rock powder

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, dispatched to learn if the planet ever had ingredients for life, drilled its first bit of powder from inside a potentially water-formed ancient rock, scientists said on Wednesday.

The robotic geology station, which landed inside a giant impact basin on August 6 for a two-year mission, transferred about a tablespoon of rock powder from its drill into a scoop, pictures relayed by the rover Wednesday showed.

"We're all very happy to get this confirmation and relieved that the drilling was a complete success," Curiosity engineer Scott McCloskey of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters on a conference call.

On February 8, the rover used its powerful drill, the first instrument of its type to be sent to Mars, to bore inside a flat, veined piece of bedrock, which appears to contain minerals formed by flowing water.

The sample, retrieved from at least 2 inches (5 cm) beneath the surface of the rock, will be sieved and portions of it processed inside two onboard science instruments.

The gray powder is strikingly different than the ubiquitous red dust that covers the planet's surface, a result of oxidation from solar ultraviolet radiation.

"Having a rock-drilling capability on a rover is a significant advancement," said Louise Jandura, chief engineer for Curiosity's sample system.

"It allows us to go beyond the surface layer of the rock, unlocking a kind of time capsule of evidence about the state of Mars going back 3 or 4 billion years," Jandura told reporters.

The drill is the last of Curiosity's 10 science instruments to be tested since the rover landed inside Gale Crater, located near the planet's equator.

The site was selected because of a three-mile (5-km) high mound of what appears to be layered sediments rising from the crater's floor.

Rather than driving directly over to the mountain, scientists decided to explore an area in the opposite direction that showed intriguing signs of past water.

Water is believed to be a key ingredient for life.

"The rocks in this area have a really rich geologic history and they have the potential to give us information about multiple interactions of water and rock," said Curiosity scientist Joel Hurowitz, also with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The fine-grained rocks are filled with veins and spherical deposits, including what appears to be calcium sulfate, a mineral which forms on Earth when water flows through fractures in rock. Mars is the planet in our solar system most like Earth.

"When you find exactly these sorts of conditions on Earth ... and everything still goes right, it's still an accident of fate to preserve organics," Curiosity's lead scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena told Reuters.

"So we'll have to separate at some point the pursuit of what may have been a habitable environment from what may or may not be an environment that preserves organics," he said.

"Obviously we're interested in the organics but right now we're sort of on the pathway to hopefully characterizing this place as a habitable environment," Grotzinger said.

© Thomson Reuters 2013

Foxconn freezes hiring at largest plant

Apple Inc's manufacturing partner Foxconn Technology Group has frozen hiring at a Shenzhen plant that makes gadgets including the iPhone 5 and put the brakes on recruiting for other factories across China, but said the move was not linked to any single client.

Foxconn runs a network of factories across the world's No. 2 economy that make products for tech companies from Hewlett Packard to Dell. It sought to pour cold water on a Financial Times report that it had imposed a hiring freeze while it slows production of Apple's latest smartphone.

"Due to an unprecedented rate of return of employees following the Chinese New Year holiday compared to years past, our company has decided to temporarily slow down our recruitment process," the company said in a statement.

"This action is not related to any single customer and any speculation to the contrary is false and inaccurate."

Like other Chinese contract manufacturers, Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, relies on a large number of migrant labourers from across the country who journey home for the most important holiday of the year. Many do not make it back to work, but Foxconn spokesman Louis Woo said this year they saw as many as 97 percent of employees return.

A Foxconn recruitment centre in an industrial suburb of Shenzhen, where job-seekers register their names and mobile numbers, was closed on Thursday.

"I've waited here four days now and I've spent a lot," said Yang Jun, a hopeful migrant from Shanxi province, in northern China. "I'm not sure how long I can hold out. If they don't contact me soon I'll have to leave."

Apple sold a less-than-expected 47.8 million iPhones in the 2012 holiday quarter, fanning fears that its dominance of consumer electronics is on the decline as Samsung Electronics Co and other manufacturers that use Google Inc's Android software gradually gain market share.

The iPhone is Apple's most important product, accounting for half its revenue. The company's shares slipped almost 2 pct on Wednesday to $451, and are down about 34 percent from their September peak above $700, as investors fret about sliding margins and intensifying competition.

Implications for Apple
Apple watchers often take cues from its component suppliers and manufacturing partners. In January, CEO Tim Cook took the unusual step of warning investors that it is difficult to extrapolate from limited "data points".

RBC estimates that just 70 to 80 percent of Chinese workers return to factories it tracks.

"This year we believe the return rates have been closer to 90 percent, which may minimize the need to hire," RBC analyst Amit Daryanani wrote in a Wednesday research note.

"Given the timing of the freeze, it may have more to do with higher return rates of employees versus what was expected by Foxconn and other supply chain companies."

Foxconn's latest statement contradicts another Foxconn spokesman, Liu Kun, who is cited in the newspaper on Wednesday as saying, "Currently, none of the plants in mainland China have hiring plans."

A check on Foxconn's recruitment website on Wednesday showed the company's Taiyuan and Hangzhou plants were hiring. But its factory complex in the southern city of Shenzhen is its single largest production base.

The Shenzhen plant "is not hiring at the moment because workers' return rate after Chinese New Year is very high this year, reaching 97 pct", Woo said.

"We replenish each year depending on the return rate." 

© Thomson Reuters 2013