You can measure how well a market is doing in a number of different ways. IDC takes the ‘macro’ view – researching hard to work out what the long term patterns look like. At the other end of the scale, IC Insights watch the the fabrication plants (FABs) and they know who has bought which chips. Cross-referencing these stories brings a new kind of accuracy. Tecnobitsholds one set of data in its left hand and another in its right – while wearing a ‘slightly pervy blind fold of justice’. Which one’s heavier?

While Qualcomm has managed a massive increase in semi-conductor sales, those chips are mostly helping to fuel the mobile market. Specifically, the arrival of multi-core Snapdragon designs are being, er, snapped up by phone manufacturers – eager for an alternative to the Samsung produced chips powering Apple’s rise. Ironically, some of Samsung’s own anti-Apple designs also use Qualcomm. Nice.

Off the back of Qualcomm’s new launches, analysts are predicting that Qualcomm’s shares will bounce up by a least 10% in value. That will make them very attractive, given that banks themselves are in the ‘suffering huge loses business’ right now with the collapse of the Greek economy.

While Samsung’s dominance in the phone market is not as strong as Intel’s is in the PC business – the Korean giant still commands around 60% of the multi-core mobile market.

Which brings us back to the title of this article, which is based on the latest info from market gurus IC Insights.

If we add together the chip shipments for Intel, nVidia and AMD – comparing Q1 2011 to Q1 2012 – then we see an overall increase of just 0.18%

That’s as close to zero as makes no difference.

The wonderfully flexible April demonstrates the kind of growth curve we'd like to see from AMD, Intel and nVidia – but it looks like there won't be enough stimulation in the market until next year – according to IDC

Tecnobitssays: While the phone market is booming now and the PC chip business is flat – IDC is predicting a big jump next year. The entire industry is hoping that IDC is right about growth patterns for 2013/14. This industry needs some good news.

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With Samsung in the driving seat as far as the summer Olympics goes, it won’t take much from Apple to usurp the Korean sponsor – given the fervour of its fans. Scanning the interwibble for info, Tecnobitshas come across a credible shot of the iPhone 5, but is it real? We don skin tight Lycra shorts and make the Usain Bolt pose while checking.

The best PR always trumps the best advertising.

Even if the advert is amazing, wonderful and fantastic – you still had to pay for it.

Apple knows that by leaking tiny shots of the upcoming iPhone 5, it can easily match the coverage that Samsung will buy for the Galaxy S3 – without spending a penny. Worse, they can get coverage even when the shot is not a shot.

A tiny, weirdly angled, pic has emerged on the interwibble, which encouraged us to install Photoshop CS6 for a quick play.

Having done the usual blowing up, de-speckling, angle adjusting and bi-lateral warp drive phase variancing – we dropped a suitably strong background in and ended up with this shot.

Which leaves us with just 3 questions: Will this be the new iPhone 5?  When will it be available?  Do we want one?

His ghost wants you, but do you want it?

Tecnobitssays: Probably, soon and yes. That’s what we say.

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Reporting on a phone’s official accessories is not some we would typically do, but Samsung has offered up some interesting accessories for the Galaxy S III flagship that was there are many accessories that should be available around the European launch later this month or in early June.

Starting off with the C Pen, which is essentially a fatter version of the capacitive stylus found in Samsung’s own Galaxy Note. It should be much better to use as well, taking on the look of a Parker pen more than anything, plus the ink will never run out.

Next up is the flip cover and while at first it may seem rather pointless, it actually replaces the Galaxy S III’s back cover entirely. Meaning it doesn’t add any major bulk to the 8.6mm thickness while protecting the 4.8 inch Super AMOLED display.

The stand pictured above fixates the phone in an upright position but doesn’t actually do much more than that. To add some value to it though, the stand opens up to restore a battery’s charge. If it had a proper dock it would be high up on my shopping list; and this is something Apple has actually come to realise.

Finally, there is the Wi-Fi Display Hub which on the surface seems to act much like HTC’s Media Link HD. It basically projects content from your phone to the monitor without the need for a 5m long HDMI or MHL cable.

When Tecnobitsreported the analysts’ feelings about HTC at the start of April, it was very much a ‘doom and gloom’ picture. Sales were down 35% while profits plummeted a massive 70%. In general, the feeling from places like Morgan Stanley was that HTC had ‘nothing useful coming to fight this drop’. In the wake of the monster launch of the Samsung Galaxy 3S, HTC has decided to leak the Desire C to try and stem the tide of fleeing Android lovers. Will they be successful?

The first leaked shots of the new phone seem to have come from the desk draw of an Orange store owner in Romania.

Vodafone’s new catalogue for Portugal seems to include the first official photo.

In the unlikely event that you wish to purchase the new HTC handset without a contract, it seems likely that your local store will demand around €200/£170/$250 for the pleasure of ownership.

This is what your pocket full of shekels will be buying:-

• Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
• 3.5-inch screen (480 x 320)
• 600MHz CPU (single core)
• 512 MB RAM
• 4GB Internal memory
• MicroSD card slot
• 5MP rear camera
• Front facing, low res, camera
• Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc
• Beats Audio

Anyone wanna borrow Blackberry's designs?

Comment below or in the Tecnobitsforums.

The Samsung Galaxy S III was revealed to the public last week surrounded by iPhone levels of hype, but with that came iPhone 4S levels of disappointment. One of the main complaints was the 4.8 inch HD Super AMOLED display having a Pentile matrix, even though it has a 720p resolution and a rather high PPI count of 306.

Samsung decided to use a Pentile display in the Galaxy S III to increase the lifespan of the display

Samsung has defended its use of the Pentile sub-pixel arrangement that has one red and one blue pixel for every two green ones, over the more traditional RGB stripe. The Pentile effect can cause issues with text clarity and image colour. The Korean mobile giants says that they chose a Pentile matrix based display because they tend to have a longer lifespan.

While Pentile displays have been improving over the years and a decent analogy would be the early teething issues Plasma TVs encountered, how much more playtime are we going to get out of a phone if it has a Pentile matrix? Most people don’t keep the same phone for more than two years, plus the first thing to fail is unlikely to be the display.