Speaking at its annual shareholder meeting Allen Horng, chairman and chief executive of long time iPhone chassis maker Catcher Technology , said Apple will make its 2017 iPhone using a glass casing.
Breaking down the radical shift, Horng said using a glass chassis would prove expensive and that Catcher requires “advanced processing technology” to pull it off. He also explained that the chassis would need to be reinforced by a metal frame.
All glass iPhone concept by Martin Hajek, courtesy of nowhereelse.fr
All glass iPhone concept by Martin Hajek, courtesy of nowhereelse.fr
The move is expected to go far beyond Apple’s previous glass backed iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and rival Samsung’s recent Galaxy S and Note lines by using a single piece of glass for the whole exterior. Pull that off and Apple would certainly have a smartphone that looked like no other.
But it isn’t all good news.
Horng said that “As far as I know, only one [iPhone] model will adopt glass casing next year” and, given the range’s pricing, that would suggest the iPhone 8 Plus (Apple is expected to skip the iPhone 7S moniker for the iPhone’s 10th anniversary) or even the hotly rumoured iPhone Pro. 

On top of this the iPhone 8 is tipped to transition to an OLED like many of its rivals, and feature an ‘Edgeless Display’ that eliminates the phone’s famously large top of bottom (chin and forehead) bezels.
All of which adds up to a device which sounds like it will more than makeup for the increasingly controversial omissions and depressingly familiar design of the upcoming iPhone 7…

China's Huawei 'Growing Up' To Become The World's No. 1 Smartphone Brand

Dumping their previous business model of flooding the planet with cheap, unbranded cellphones, China’s Huawei has risen to become a globally recognizable brand and a serious contender for Apple AAPL -0.06% and Samsung. Advancing rapidly into new markets worldwide, Huawei is now the world’s number three smartphone brand, with an 8.3 percent market share. Europe, in particular, has been receptive of Huawei, where the company is growing at an unprecedented clip on the back of better products and a new brand image.
Rising up from humble beginnings in Shenzhen in 1987, Huawei started out as a producer of phone switches. Growing up with the city’s nascent electronics industry, Huawei would became the global leader in telecommunications networks by 2012 — despite a ban by the US government and its knee-jerk ramifications.
An attendee views a gallery of pictures taken on a P9 smartphone, manufactured by Huawei Technologies Co., at its launch event in London, U.K., on Wednesday, April 6, 2016. Huawei’s profit surged 33 percent in 2015 after China’s largest maker of telecommunications gear grabbed market share with premium smartphones and mobile carriers expanded their high-speed networks globally. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
However, where Huawei now stands to make the most waves is with its prime consumer product: smartphones. Last year, the company sold 108 million of them — which is still far behind Samsung and Apple, at 324 and 231 million units, respectively, but the gap is closing fast. This year, Huawei’s trajectory is looking even steeper, as quarter one saw 28.8 million phones sold, more than a 10 million unit year-on-year increase, while Samsung stayed flat and Apple actually went into decline.
This new global market position was obtained through a very active initiative to drastically increase the quality of their feature phones as well as major ad campaigns designed to let the world know that Huawei has arrived.
Huawei once found their niche selling handsets cheaper than the big brands of the world, reaching for low hanging fruit rather than the premium tiers soaring at the top of the consumer tree. My first Android device was a $100 Huawei that I picked up in 2012 in Jiangsu province. It was mediocre but cheap — a tagline that could sum up public sentiment about the brand at that time. But all of this has changed for Huawei.

China's Richest Man Unveils Plan To Take Down Disney

Wang Jianlin, chairman of property giant Wanda Group, attends the China Brand Forum in Beijing. ( STR/AFP/Getty Images)
This weekend China’s massive real estate and entertainment conglomerate, Dalian Wanda, is unveiling the first of a series of “Wanda Cities”. The company, headed by China’s richest man, Wang Jianlin, has overtly taken aim at the foreign entertainment and theme park interloper, Disney (who are slated to open their $6 billion Shanghai Disney theme park on June 16, though a soft opening period is already underway).
Located in the eastern Chinese city of Nanchang, the first of 15 planned Wanda Cities slated to open across China over the next five years (a further two Wanda Cities will also open in undisclosed overseas locations), is the latest offering in Wanda’s ever-increasing arsenal of entertainment products – a key sector in China as the economy shifts to a consumption driven model and the middle class grows to 630 million consumers strong by 2022 (according to research by McKinsey).
The key to the success of this and future Wanda Cities, according to a Dalian Wanda spokesman, is that it is more than simply an amusement park, with the 200-hectare culture and tourism project including an outdoor amusement park, a giant indoor “Wanda Mall”, with indoor ocean park, film park and children’s zones, a total of ten Wanda hotel resorts (including one billed as “six star”), more than 50 dining options and a commercial shopping district. The company estimates the Nanchang project cost a total of 20 billion yuan, or $3.05 billion at current exchange.
If anyone was under the impression that the timing of the first Wanda City opening, just weeks ahead of Shanghai Disney’s long-awaited launch (Shanghai’s local government first approved plans for the park way back in 2009), comments on Chinese state television last weekend from chairman Wang Jianlin should eliminate any doubt as to the deliberate nature of the competition being stoked by Dalian Wanda.
“One tiger is no match for a pack of wolves – Shanghai has one Disney, while Wanda, across the nation, will open 15 to 20,” the 61-year-old said.
And just in case there was still any confusion as to whether Wanda is directly taking aim at Disney, Wanda spokesman Liu Mingsheng followed up with a statement to media.