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Google Expands Hardware Offerings with Latest Trio

October 29, 2012 by 1 Comment

Google did not let the cancellation of its New York event due to Hurricane Sandy get it down and came to market today with a trio of new products including a pair of tablets as well as a new smartphone all running the latest version of Android.

Starting smallest first is the latest in its smartphone lineup, the Nexus 4, built by partner LG. It features a quad core processor, a 4.7-inch 320 ppi screen with wireless charging capabilities. On the software side there are several new or enhanced products starting with the latest version of its Android operating system, Jelly Bean 4.2., support for Gesture Typing and a new photo technology called Photo Sphere.

The 8GB version is available for $299 while the 16GB for $349; available unlocked and without a contract on November 13. The 16GB version will also be available through T-Mobile for $199, with a 2-year contract

It has revamped its existing Nexus 7 to make it slightly thinner and lighter and with expanded communications capabilities with HSPA+ mobile data plans from carriers such as AT&T. The Wi-Fi-only versions will larger storage options: 16GB for $200 for the original version or 32GB for $250. The 32GB HSPA+ version of the tablet will cost $300.

The company has also broken into the 10-inch tablet space with the debut of the here’s also the Nexus 10, built in partnership with Samsung. With a high end display with a 2560 x 1600 resolution display and a battery than can support nine hours of video playback. It has a range of interesting features including support for multiple users with their own profiles and apps. The Nexus 10 will be also be available on November 13 in two storage capacities- the 16GB for $399 and the 32GB for $499.

The move comes days after Microsoft entered the 10-inch tablet space with the first of its Surface tablets. A host of third party Windows 8 tablets are expected in the next few weeks and months. Apple has also just expanded its iPad franchise with the release of the iPad mini last week. It was just a few weeks ago that Amazon expanded its Kindle lineup.

One thing is for certain-consumers looking for a tablet this holiday season will have a much broader, much better built lineup of products from a much bigger range of developers.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Google, iOS 6, iPhone, Kindle, Microsoft, Samsung, Smartphone, Surface, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Amazon Kindle Sales Soar after iPad Mini Launch

October 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

After Apple‘s executives disparaged rival 7-inch tablet makers, at least one has struck back. If you have visited Amazon’s home page you see a pretty good comparison between the Amazon Kindle HD and the Apple iPad Mini highlighting the advantages the Kindle has over the iPad.

In addition Amazon has announced that sales of the Kindle have spiked upward after Apple introduced the iPad Mini. Is the iPad Mini the hardware version of Apple’s Map apps — a second poorly thought out project that would have benefited from more time?

Apple sales soar also
However the news out of the Apple camp paints a slightly different picture as it has reported that the iPad Mini has almost sold out in pre-order. Mashable is reporting that four of the six Mini iPad SKUs are sold out at the Apple Store, and shipping dates have been pushed back because of the high demand.

It was rumored that Apple made an initial order of 10 million of the tablet devices and so if that is true the company has to be very happy about the results so far.

Samsung also claims sales increase after an Apple event
First high tech companies were planning events to steal a rival’s thunder and now it seems they are releasing press releases that claim that a rival’s new product actually help their sales. Amazon has done it with the iPad Mini (see above) and Samsung also now claims that sales of its Galaxy S3 smartphones took off after the iPhone 5 was announced. Well I guess this is better than a vaporware war.

No Google Android Event today
Google’s planned Android and possibly tablet announcement that was slated for today was rained out due to Hurricane Sandy. The event was planned for today in New York City hours prior to Microsoft’s Windows Phone Event in San Francisco.

That is too bad in one way. There have been a number of rumors and teaser videos that appear to show a 10-inch tablet that has a better screen resolution than Apple’s iPad and I would have been interested to see what they actually had in store. I am sure I will not have to wait long.

Apple working to improve Maps app
Apple has taken a good deal of heat over the quality, or lack thereof, of its new apps program that it is now using rather than Google Maps in the recently released Apple iOS 6.0. The company took time during its recent quarterly report to say that it is working night and day to improve the app and that more changes should be expected soon.

Motorola drops a few charges in Xbox case
In the ever changing set of lawsuits between Microsoft and Motorola you can now subtract a few issues, and amazingly it was not after a ruling by a judge. Motorola has asked the Federal Trade Commission to drop the Wi-Fi related patent infringement claims that involved in its lawsuit with Microsoft. The request does not affect the rest of the issues at play in the two’s global lawsuit battles.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Apps, FTC, Google, iOS 6, iPad, iPhone, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Tablets, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report Grab Bag: MLB Man Cave, Red Bull Crash

October 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Last fall ESPN rolled out a new stat that it claimed would be the be-all and end-all in quarterback ratings called the Total Quarterback Ratings or (QBR). The company said that it went much further than other rating systems by adding in such important features as how clutch the performance was.

Now fast forward a year and use of the number has fallen off a cliff at ESPN. A good look at this is provided by The Classical which provides a good overview of the inner workings of how QBR is figured. I guess they can put this next to the last attempt at creating its own stats – Productive Outs in baseball.

Samsung wins another round vs Apple
A Dutch court has ruled that Apple’s multitouch patent was not infringed on by Samsung last week. The Court of The Hague ruled that the patent that describes technology that prevents smartphone users from pushing two on-screen buttons at the same time is not the same as the technology that Samsung does use in its Galaxy products.

As part of the ruling the court has ordered Apple to pay Samsung court costs, which are in excess of $422,000, according to CIO.com. Where this leaves the overall case, with each player winning and losing versions of it around the globe is anybody’s guess.

MLB taking applications for 2013 Fan Cave
If you think that the Fan Cave contest is a waste of time consider the case of Ashley Chavez, Ricardo Marquez and Kyle Thompson who are all at the current World Series and one will be declared Fan Cave Champion.

Sound interesting? Well it is too late for this year obviously but MLB is accepting applications for 2013 to be part of the “Fan Cave.” After the application process is closed there are elimination rounds and then a final lineup of nine fans. Did I mention they also went to the All Star Game this year?

Miscellaneous earnings reports
Earnings reports were in and it was a very mixed bag. HTC reported sales down 23% from previous quarter to $2.4 billion and said that it expects a weaker Q4 at approximately $2bn. Samsung however saw a huge spike in sales of its Galaxy that helped it set a new all time highs in sales and profits, driven by an estimated sale of 56 million smartphones in the quarter. It had net profit of$ 5.9 billion.

Apple reports 24% increase in earnings at $8.2bn and a 27% increase in revenue at $36bn, and disappointed Wall Street. The company said that it shipped 26.9 million iPhones in the quarter and was still heavily backlogged. Amazon when back into the red for the first time in four years when it reported a $274 million loss on sales of $13.81bn. The company took a $169 million write down on its stake in Living Social, a daily deal site.

Cost of Instagram deal drops
When Facebook purchased Instagram for an estimated $1 billion in April quite a few in the market were astounded at the price tag. Now that the dust has settled, and the deal paid for, the price tag has dropped quite a bit.

According to a filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission Facebook’s final cost for the deal was $715 million that consisted of $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of stock. The original price was based on Facebook’s estimated $30 per share stock price, pre-IPO.

Looking for a great crash video? Red Bull has the answer
Here is a video taken from the helmet cam of extreme mountain biker Cam Zink taken during an attempt to cross a 68-foot canyon. Guess how he fared.

Is RIM, among others, doomed?
Digi Times is reporting that due to mounting losses Research in Motion may be broken up and sold to other high tech companies. This is not that really surprising if it happens, its management has said in the past that all options are on the board and the company’s losses continue to mount.

What is surprising is that the article goes on to say that both Nokia and Motorola may also be on the chopping block for exactly the same reasons, even though Motorola is now owned by Google. I suspect that Google will want to keep the patents at the very least.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Baseball, Cycling, ESPN, Facebook, FTC, HTC, Instagram, iPhone, Major League Baseball, Motorola, Nokia, Outdoor Activities, Red Bull, Samsung Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: New Nexus, Windows 8, iPads on Horizon

October 22, 2012 by 3 Comments

This should be the start of a great couple of weeks for techies. Apple has its event on Wednesday, purportedly to announce the new iPad Mini but with Apple they could have an entirely different product to surprise the market, although I doubt it. Then Microsoft takes center stage the following day in New York to announce its Windows 8 operating system and show off its Surface tablets, along with the offerings from its OEMs.

The following week Microsoft unveils Windows 8 Phone along with Nokia and other partners in San Francisco. At the same time Google is hosting an Android event in New York. After all of this settles it will be time to look for the holiday gifts, at least the ones that you are going to get for yourself to keep your mobile sports jones going.

The Google announcement looks as if there will be several major components, according to Cnet. The next generation of the Android operating system, 4.2 will be on the table as well as a Nexus 4 phone from LG and a larger Nexus tablet, the Nexus 10, this time made by Samsung.

Google to settle with FTC?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google is considering settling a case with the Federal Trade Commission over claims its Motorola Mobility unit violated antitrust laws. It has to do with how it licensed patents that were listed as industry standards.

Acer’s 7-inch tablet priced at $230
According to a report in the WebProNews Acer will be listing its 7-inch Iconia Tab A110 at $230. Slated for release on Oct.30 the tablet will have a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage while powered by a Nvidia Tegra quad-core processor.

4K is now Ultra HD
If you have been looking at cameras, televisions and other devices that list among their features that they are 4k you probably know that it means that they have a horizontal resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Well now the Consumer Electronics Association has decided to toss that into the trash and use the term Ultra HD when used with televisions that support 4k.

The minimum requirements to use the Ultra HD tag will be resolution of at least eight million active pixels, which is a minimum 3,840 x 2,160 resolution. Displays must have an aspect ratio of at least 16×9 and must have a digital input capable of carrying native 4K video, instead of relying solely on up-converting.

Apps bolster smartphone usage
Market research firm NPD has studied the issue of whether additional apps lead to more time on a smartphone. It found that yes, the connected consumer does spend additional time using the smartphone. The company’s Connected Intelligence SmartMeter found that when comparing monthly usage of minutes per day for August 2012 versus August 2011, Android smartphone users spent nearly one-fifth more time on their smartphones daily – 247 minutes, or over four hours versus 210 minutes or 3.5 hours. While I think many intuitively have believed this it is very nice to have someone actually do the research to back up opinions.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Google, iPad, Microsoft, Samsung, Surface, Tablets, Wall Street Journal, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: YourSport-The Facebook for Sports? Kindle 4G Gets OK

October 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

YourSports: The Facebook for sports?
A new online sports publication is coming into being called YourSports and it is a customizable sports page that is designed to enable fans to get the sports news that they want, including local sports that might be missed by the larger rivals.

While currently in beta it is open to all for the first time to take a look, it claims that it will fill in sports that is not currently handled by its rivals such as ESPN, BleacherReport and others by using social media to help fill in what is not available on broadcast sports while also providing news feeds on your favorite teams.


Amazon gets FCC approval for 4G Kindle
While Amazon announced its 4G Kindle Fire HD tablet last week it was only this month that the company obtained permission from the US Federal Communications Commission to actual sell the high end Kindle Fire HD that has the ability to connect to high speed 4G cellular networks.

The FCC approval is required for any device that has wireless communications to ensure that it does not create interference with other wireless devices. The product has been on preorder and is expected to ship Nov. 20.

Microsoft accuses Motorola of map stealing
As if Apple’s map problems are not enough now Microsoft is claiming that the Android phones from Motorola that use Google Maps, infringe on a mapping patent that Microsoft owns. The patent in question covers a method of obtaining the map from one database, resource information such as Starbucks locations from a second database, and overlaying the two sets of data.

The lawsuit is just one of several that Microsoft has filed in Germany regarding patent issues with the Google-owned Motorola Mobility as Microsoft increases the pressure to get Android phone makers to pay it royalties, according to Computerworld.

The Hank Aaron Award

Time to vote for the Hank Aaron award
While League MVP, Cy Young and other awards seem to always dominate the off season, the Hank Aaron award, for each league’s best all around offensive player, is one award that fans can have an impact in by voting.

The fans, along with an all-star panel that includes Aaron, ony Gwynn, Paul Molitor, Joe Morgan, and Robin Yount will vote on which of a slate of players is the best in each league. Voting closes Oct 16.

Lenovo now top PC maker
Market research firm Gartner has found that Hewlett-Packard has been unseated as top PC seller worldwide by Lenovo. HP, the top gun in this space for the past six years owned a 15.5% share of the market while Lenovo grew to 15.7% of the market.

This comes at a time when overall PC sales are declining. Gartner reported that in the third quarter of this year sales fell 8%, but it looks like some of that decline is simply buyers waiting for the Windows 8 release later this month. Dell, Acer and Asus make up the top 5 PC makers.

HTC departs US tablet market
While there is a growing rumble about a host of new tablets expected to be announced in conjunction with the Windows 8 rollout by Microsoft later this month, HTC is jumping off the bandwagon just as others are jumping onto it.

The company has announced that it is dropping its HTC Flyer and other tablet products from the US market. It said that the products were at the end of their lifecycle and the company has said it will watch the tablet space but does not want to have an offering that is a “me too” offering.

RoboCup Soccer gets champion robot
Don’t know what RoboCup Soccer is? Well join the club but an interesting piece in Gizmag talks about the state of modern robotics and how a league of five teams competed in the league that uses what it calls TeenSize robots, ones that are three to four feet tall.

They use an open source platform and cost roughly $26,000 apiece. The leagues goal is to develop a team that can beat the human champions, by 2050 that is.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Amazon, Android, Asus, Dell, Facebook, HTC, Lawsuit, Lenovo, Major League Baseball, Microsoft, Motorola, Tablets, YourSports Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: New Tablets from Google, Acer

October 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

The latest rumor, about Google anyway, is that it is preparing to release another member of its Nexus 7 tablet family. The latest is expected to have 32GB of storage, a big leap up from the 16GB that is the current maximum storage available for users. For those looking to mark their calendar the rumor mill says it will be Oct. 24.

AT&T is planning on selling Windows 8 tablets
AT&T has announced that it will be offering a pair of tablets that will be running on the soon to be announced Windows 8 operating system. The company will offer the Asus VivoTab RT, a tablet that will be able to handle 4G LTE cellular communications. The second tablet will be the Samsung ATIV SmartPC, a system that has a removable keyboard and can be configured as either a clamshell notebook or a tablet.

AT&T is also venturing into selling antivirus by offering an app and a service that will work to keep smartphones free from infection. While AT&T Mobile Security is now only offered to businesses it has plans for a consumers offering as well.

Motorola wins one in Germany against Microsoft
The Mannheim Regional Court has ruled that Motorola Mobility did not violate a Microsoft patent on a “method and radio interface layer comprising a set of application programming interfaces (APIs).” The court gave no reason for its ruling and Microsoft is expected to appeal. This is only one of the issues that the two are fighting about in court.

Oracle readies for next round in fight with Google
Oracle has appealed the Google case, the one where the jury found that code in the Android operating system was not stolen, as Oracle had claimed. The case dealt with both patent and copyright infringement and while the jury found very minor infractions the court did not award anything to Oracle.

Acer’s Iconia W700 Tablet to cost $799
We have been a bit lax on reporting on the upcoming AcerW700 Iconia tablet so here is a quick snapshot. The Tablet will be released on Oct. 26 as part of Microsoft’s Windows 8 launch. With an expected $799 price tag it will feature an 11.6-inch display with 1920 x 1080 resolution. The tablet will include a Bluetooth keyboard, a choice of Intel processors including a Core i5 chip and will have 64GB or 128 GB of solid state storage.

Alcatel joins tablet space
Speaking of tablets it looks like communications player Alcatel has developed a 7-inch tablet that will compete with the likes of Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire families. The One Touch T10 Android tablet looks like it is designed for budget users and will include a 800 x 480 display and 4GB of flash storage.

MobileCon 2012 is this week
For the mobile minded the show formerly known as Fall CTIA has been renamed to MobileCon 2012 and will start Oct. 9 and run until Oct. 12 in San Diego. It should be good for some interesting handset offerings as well as most likely a host of product leaks.

One reason there might not be quite as many new products as expected is because just a short time later, on Oct. 29 to be exact, Microsoft will be officially launching its Windows 8 phone platform, a few days after it introduces Windows 8 for tablets.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Amazon, Android, Asus, AT&T, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , , , ,
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