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Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

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Posts by Stefan Constantinescu

WSJ: Nokia to close half their sales offices in China

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Nokia is going to close two of their four sales offices in China. To be more specific, the offices in Chengdu and Shanghai will be shut down and people will get laid off. Nokia isn’t saying how many people will lose their jobs, or when the offices are closing, but they did say that their two remaining offices in Beijing and Guangzhou will increase in size. Oddly enough, The Wall Street Journal report goes on to say that these closures were … Read more

china 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Rumor: Nokia is “sitting somewhat idly” waiting for Windows Phone 8

There’s a term in the consumer electronics industry called the “Osborne effect“. Without getting into the whole story, once upon a time there was a company that launched a product. People loved said product. The company said the next version would be even better, so people decided to just wait. Sales dried up to such an extent that the company went out of business. When Stephen Elop, Nokia’s CEO, got up on a stage in London in February 2011 and said that Symbian was dead, so was MeeGo, and that … Read more

salo 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Nielsen: Nokia’s Windows Phones capture just 0.3% market share in the USA

Ask Nokia how the Lumia 900 is doing in the United States and they’ll tell you that it’s been getting great reviews on Amazon. Ask them to give you some sales numbers, and they’ll just dodge the question and point you to a consumer survey that says Lumia owners are very satisfied with their purchase. In less than a week Nokia will report their Q2 2012 financial results and then we’ll finally have some data to judge their performance, but until that happens all we have are just guesses from … Read more

elop 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Guessing Nokia’s Q2 2012 Windows Phone sales

Three months ago I took a shot at guessing how many Windows Phones Nokia sold during the first quarter of 2012. Using some simple multiplication, a few statistics published by a couple of analyst firms, and after making some assumptions, I cranked out the number 2.2 million. The actual result? 2 million. Nokia is going to post their financial results next week, on the 19th, so I’d like to try and guess their sales numbers again. Let’s begin with the data I’m going to use. Last quarter I started by … Read more

elop3 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

London: NFC is too slow for us to put in the Underground

This year the city of London is hosting the Olympics, which means they’re going to invest tons of money into their infrastructure to make a lasting impression on the millions of tourists who will come and visit the old empire. The London Underground, which at close to 150 years old is one of the oldest public transportation systems in existence, recently got WiFi connectivity and additional 3G capacity, but what about NFC? According to GigaOM, London conducted NFC trials in 2008 and 2010 and came to the conclusion that it’s … Read more

underground 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

JPMorgan: Samsung sold 6.5m Galaxy S III units in Q2, will sell 15m in Q3

Samsung’s Galaxy S III is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most advanced Android smartphone on the market today. According to the French newspaper Les Échos, the analysts at JPMorgan estimate that Samsung sold 6.5 million GSIII units during the second quarter (April through June) of this year and they’re on track to sell 15 million more during the quarter (July through September) we’re currently in. That’s over 20 million units in just six months! Will their estimate turn out to be correct? Let’s look back at the Galaxy … Read more

gs33 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Interview: Jussi Hurmola, the CEO of JollaMobile (audio and text available)

Jussi Hurmola, the CEO of JollaMobile, the company that will continue the work that Nokia started with MeeGo, but then abandoned to go with Windows Phone, sat down with me for 20 minutes this morning to answer a few questions. If you’d like to listen to the interview, then I suggest you check out the podcast I do on the side called “The Voicemail”. If you would rather read, then the following transcription is for you. It should be noted that some light editing has been done for clarity. Stefan: … Read more

n9pics 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

FCC ready to let Verizon buy AWS spectrum, but the DoJ may say no

Verizon Wireless, like any other wireless operator around the world, will tell you that in order to build the biggest and baddest network they can, they need spectrum. That spectrum is normally auctioned off by governments. What companies do with the spectrum after they buy it is up to the companies to decide, for the most part. Way back in October 2006 some of America’s largest cable operators joined forces and bought up huge amounts of spectrum with the goal of competing with the wireless guys. Instead of doing that … Read more

celltower1 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

TED Books for iOS now available, $15 buys you 3 months worth of inspiration

Ever heard of TED? It’s a yearly conference where bright people get up on stage, tell a story that’s anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes long, and then everyone in the audience dies because they’ve just had their minds blown. Sounds awesome, right? If you want to go to TED, then just forget about it. Tickets run upwards of several thousand dollars, and they sell out fast. Why is it so expensive to go to TED? We could say they’re elitist, but the real answer to that question is to … Read more

tedsign 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Next Issue: Like Netflix, but for magazines; now available for the iPad

All you can eat subscription services are growing in popularity, and it’s easy to understand why. Give Spotify $10 per month and you can listen to just about every song ever recorded. Give Netflix the same amount of cash and you can instantly start streaming thousands of movies or television shows. When it comes to the printed word though, people are a bit apprehensive because it’s just so damn easy to find “articles” written by “journalists” that are essentially rewritten pieces from The Wall Street Journal or The New York … Read more

nextissue 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu

Leak: T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S Blaze Q America USA GI-Joe spotted in the wild

According to TmoNews, T-Mobile is going to launch a device called the “Samsung Galaxy S Blaze Q” on August 15th. No, we didn’t make name that up. As you can see from the photo below, it’s quite … nasty. Under the hood though it’s quite a capable device. There’s a dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon inside purring at 1.5 GHz (S3 or S4, we don’t know yet), Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, a 720p display of an unknown size, and a 5 megapixel camera. What makes the Galaxy Barbecue GI-Joe Edition … Read more

2-22-09-t-mobile-store-650x366 10 months ago

Stefan Constantinescu