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Facebook gains Mobile App Developer Team ahead of IPO

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Mobile consumer app developer Lightbox, known for its Lightbox Photo mobile app, has announced that it is joining Facebook, but that Facebook did not purchase the company. Still it looks as if it is shutting down its operation and will release as open source portions of its code.

Seven employees will join Facebook but no user data or technology will come with them. The deal, is not that surprising although before the IPO is a bit of a surprise. Facebook is just days away from its IPO and it has talked about mobile apps pretty much non-stop for the last few weeks.

Demand to be included in the IPO is great, and it was recently reported that the company recently is raising its initial public offering from $34 to $38 a share, a move that will raise as much as $12.8 billion and give the company a valuation of as much as $104.2 billion.

Some cracks in the IPO facade
While it has been relatively smooth sailing for Facebook and its executives doing its pre-IPO road show, they have run into a few issues and more seem to be bubbling to the surface. At the most obvious level is its admission that it has almost no revenue from its huge mobile presence and that will be its top priority going forward.

This of course is very important to app developers looking to leverage Facebook’s huge presence in the mobile space. How will Facebook seek to monetize this area and will it tap app developers as a potential source?
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As should be expected with an event that has generated as much attention as the IPO, there are two sides to the analysts positions on the company, with some saying that the valuation is simply too high for a company with this type of business model while others say it is not high enough. Will it have the staying power of AOL and Second Life or Apple and Microsoft? Who knows and we will probably not know for years to come.

Of course the fact that Facebook’s offer of 337.4 million shares is already oversubscribed says a lot about the impact of these types of warnings. Hold on, it has just been reported that the company is adding an additional 85 million shares to the offering, bringing the value of the IPO to an estimated $16 billion.

However its mainstream model has taken a high profile hit this week when General Motors said that it would cease advertising on Facebook. The giant car maker revealed that it had spent a total of $40 million on advertising, with $10 million going directly to Facebook, yet it sees no real results from that effort. Instead it will continue its use of the free pages that Facebook provides.

A second troubling sign could be seen in the results of this recent Associated Press/CNBC poll that shows a large number of people see Facebook as a fad. Of course I have to wonder if that was also true with the automobile and the telephone? Still 51% also have a favorable opinion of the company and the difference in opinion on a wide variety of topics facing the company is strongly divided, with users much more favorable to the company than non-users. The poll has a wealth of data that can be seen here.

So why do we care about Facebook here at Mobile Sports Report? Well take a look for a sports league on it. It has the usual such as the NHL and NFL but also a huge number of sports that might not readily come to mind such as Foosball and Disc Golf. Many sites list apps or other programs in links. It presents a huge opportunity for app developers to leverage social media to enhance and advertise their products.

One recent example of that opportunity is that the Facebook travel app Gogobot has just hit 1 million registered users, according to Mashable. Now fad or not but 900 million users, or whatever the number is now, is a huge market and something that a developer wants to exploit. As with all markets it is good to know the positive as well as the negative.

Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, Mashable, Sports Social Media, Sports Social Media Data, Startup, Top News Tagged With:

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is here-Let the iPhone Comparisons Begin!

May 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Samsung is the leader in the tablet space- the non-Apple tablet space that is, and has expanded its offerings with the full size Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, a 10.-1 inch device that will naturally being comparisons to Apple’s iPad offerings.

However it seems that it is much more than just a competitor to Apple, it has to shone above the existing Android tablets and hold its own above the hope that will start coming from the Windows 8 tablet crowd.

The tablet uses the latest Android 4.0 operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich) is powered by 1GHz dual-core OMAP processor from Texas Instruments and has a 1280 x 800 display and has a 3.2 megapixel rear camera and a VGA front facing camera. An entry level model with 16GB of storage will have a $400 price tag.

It is doubtful that the big selling point for the tablet is going to be the hardware since it is pretty clos to what Samsung offered in its Galaxy Tab 10.1 but rather the full package which means lot of Samsung software and apps as well as the fact that it is $100 less than an iPad with the same storage at least a new iPad.

Among the software app that is included in the tablet are Peel smart remote, AllShare and Samsung Media Hub, and SoundAlive. In a review over at including Mashable the Peel app was rated pretty poorly, but there are a number of additional programs on the device as well.

Most sites that have reviewed the tablet give it at least a lukewarm approval rating, but I believe that Samsung should have shot for more. Its display is not as good as Apple’s nor is its camera. While it has a strong position in the Android space, it is about to face a huge wave of competition very soon.

PC World does a very nice job providing a roundup of what is expected throughout the summer, based on statements from the companies involved as well as rumors that seem to have some creditability. New or improved offerings from Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble and Amazon are all expected.

Then there will be the Windows 8 players sometime around the end of the summer. Hewlett-Packard has said it will be there as has Dell, although neither has said when. Then Microsoft’s new relationship with Barnes & Noble could bring that popular platform into the fold. Lenovo is making a major research and development effort n this area and could come in as an Android player, a Windows 8 or both with future offerings.

With this in front of it I am surprised that Samsung did not deliver a stronger offering although I suspect that this is a stopgap effort and that by the back to school season we may see yet another tablet from the company.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Barnes & Noble, Dell, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, iPad, Kindle, Lenovo, Mashable, Microsoft, Nook, PCWorld, Samsung, Tablets Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: HP is Back with New Tablets

May 14, 2012 by 4 Comments

Study finds that 74% of smartphone owners use location services
A report from the Princeton Survey Research Associates shows that 74% of smartphone owners use their device to get real time location-based information. The study also found that 18% used a geosocial service to check-in to locations.

With roughly half of all Americans using a smartphone this is very good news for companies that take advantage of the variety of services that provide information about local businesses such as Yelp.

Hewlett-Packard vows return to tablet market this year
PC World is reporting the Hewlett-Packard executives are touting the company’s imminent return to the tablet space, something that they said will occur later this year. It plans to so with models that will support the Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft.

It is expected that HP, along with other Windows 8 tablet developers will focus as much on the business market as the consumer space .The company famously left and then reentered the hardware market and the tablet space over the last year, highlighted by the failure of its TouchPad tablet with HP’s own operating system.

I suspect that we will start seeing a great deal more –preannounced intentions to use Windows 8 as the launch date gets closer and it could make for an interesting dog fight in the tablet space. Will Windows 8 be accepted, will it erode Android and Apple’s iOS appear? Or maybe just make inroads in one of the two rivals space? It is too early to tell but it will make for an interesting end of the year.


Do people share too much info on-line? Intel study says yes.
A recent study conducted by Ipsos Observer and sponsored by Intel on the dual topics of “Mobile Etiquette” and “Digital Sharing,” reaffirmed what I believe many feel intuitively, that 90% of Americans adults believe that online users are sharing too much information.

This is the third such survey conducted by Intel and had some interesting results including a total of 85% said that they share information online while one-third surveyed said they are more comfortable sharing information online than in person and half said that without mobile information they would not know what was happening with friends and family.

Slow Internet Connection top issue for mobile users
In a mobile survey conducted by Prosper Mobile Insights focused on smartphone and tablet users the top issue that is a cause for concern is slow Internet connections with 36.9% listing it as the top service provider issue. Others that rated highly in the complaint list were cost of data plan at 32% (that low?) and dropped calls at 24.1%. Head over and see where your pet peeves were ranked.

Facebook’s Instagram purchase could be delayed
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has started a competition probe into Facebook’s $1bn purchase of Instagram, a move that could push the deal beyond the second quarter and so cause some heartburn at Facebook. The probe was expected as it is usual for deals of this size; the issue is that t could take as long as 12 months and Facebook has been telling people at its IPO road show that it would close in the second quarter.

Microsoft gets delay in German court
Microsoft, already on the end of a major losing patent battle with Motorola Mobility had its current case delayed by a German court. This trial has to do with a different patent that Motorola claims that Microsoft has infringed on, in this case one that deals with two way communications devices.

Facebook updates data use rules
Facebook has update its data use policies about what it gathers from users of its popular social site and how it uses that information. The move was motivated by an audit performed last year by Irish data protection authorities, Facebook said.

New charge in Oracle vs Google
Oracle has managed to get back on the winning track last week in its copyright and patent infringement case against Google over use of the Java technology. Oracle’s request for a judgment as a matter of law regarding an additional eight files copies directly into Android’s code base was granted, giving Oracle an additional copyright infringement win against Google. However as with its first win it still needs the matter of ‘fair use’ to be resolved.

Le Pan now Matsunichi-New Tablets due
Matsunichi has eliminated the Le Pan named that it was using earlier this year and has self labeled its tablet offerings as it enters into the cost effective tablet market. The company now has the MarquisPad MP977, a 9.7-inch table that is powered by a dual core 1.2GHz processor from Texas Instruments.
The $249 device features a 1024 x 768 display and will use the Android 4.0 operating system. There is 4GB of storage if you include the microSD card, or 2GB internal without the card. It has a front facing VGA camera.

The company has an additional tablet in the works, the MarquisPad MP979 that will have a more powerful dual core 1.5GHz processor with 8GB of storage as well as an additional 2GB MicroSD card, and it supports up to 32GB. The 9.7-inch device will also have 1024 x 768 resolution.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, FTC, Google, iPad, iPhone, Lawsuit, Mashable, Microsoft, Motorola, Oracle, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Viddy Lands $30m in Series B-Is it the next Instagram?

May 11, 2012 by 2 Comments

Viddy, an increasingly popular mobile video app developer has closed an impressive round of funding with a deal that raised $30 million from industrial investors, a sum that matches its 30 million registered users.

This is the second round of funding with Viddy closing its Series A last February after raising $6 million in a round that was led by Battery Ventures and included Qualcomm and Greycroft Ventures. The funding came from a number of high profile venture capital companies with New Enterprise Associates, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, and Battery Ventures all contributing to the current round.

The company said that the additional funds will be used to help it grow by hiring additional engineering talent, develop additional products and expanding its offerings overseas.

Viddy is one of the leading players in the mobile video market, fighting with rivals Socialcam, Klip and Mobli for the crown, but with this type of funding interest it seems likely that more will enter the field or at least seek to raise the level of awareness for their technology.

Currently the company’s app is only available for Apple’s iPhones and even with only that segment of the market its appeal is very strong, with an estimated 30 million users, a tremendous achievement for a one year old company.

The comparisons to Instagram are growing, and speculation has the company’s valuation at anywhere between $200 and $340 million, depending on what time of the day you look. There is no doubt that a technology like this would be very nice as part of a larger overall offering from Facebook, Twitter or even something browser related like Bing or Google.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Battery Ventures, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Khosla Ventures, Klip, Mashable, New Enterprise Associates, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Startup, Venture Capital, Viddy Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Are Replacement Refs in the NFL’s Future?

May 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Mashable does a nice job showing how fast eight technologies have penetrated the US market since the telephone was patented in 1876. The speed upon which each succeeding generation of technology grows is interesting as many of them piggybacked on older technology. I mean you cannot have these technologies until electricity reached all of the country.

I was interested to see how relatively slowly the Internet caught on compared to mobile phones, but I guess that is partly due to a number of issues from slow connections early on, lack of a substantial amount of meaningful content ( I mean at one time one of the most popular site on the internet was watching a coffee pot) and emerging rival modem standards that helped confuse non-technical users.

From the charts it looks as if it is possible that the two emerging fields, tablets and smartphones are headed to being the fasted technologies adopted to date. Smartphones make sense since they are an extension of an already known commodity but tablets are a relatively fresh start. The data covers the past five years and the numbers from the next five look to be very interesting.

NFL still not produced evidence on Saints bounty program, NFLPA claim
The NFL Players Association continues to claim that it has not been given “specific, detailed evidence of player involvement in a pay-to-injure program.” Domonique Foxworth, president of the NFLPA has an opinion piece in USA Today in which he stated that punishment demands evidence and the league is not willing to produce it.

He claims rather than produce the evidence the league has used media leaks, pr campaigns and character assignation to manipulate public opinion.

Apple wins one
Apple, on a recent losing streak in the legal department won a case this week when a judge threw out the Proview Electronics Co.’s trademark lawsuit against Apple. The case, which has bogged down Apple in China, has ruled that Proview cannot sue Apple in California.

The case revolves around Apple’s purchase of the iPad trademark from Proview and then Proview claiming it did not sell the rights to the iPad name in China. The two are reportedly looking at a cash settlement but are far apart on the terms.

St. Louis Blues sold
The NHL Board of Governors has approved the sale of the St/ Louis Blues hockey team to Tom Stillman, a beer distributor, for an estimated price of $130 million. Stillman has been a minority owner of the team since 2007, Yahoo! reports.

The team has been for sale for the last two years, ever since the current ownership group, led by Dave Checketts and his Sports Capital Partners Worldwide, started to look around. It had originally been looking for investors to buy out Towerbrook Captal Partners which held 70% of the team but could not find investors.

Google wins a bit more in trial versus Oracle
After a jury ruled that Google did infringe on Oracle’s API copyrights but could not reach a decision on if that action was protected by the ‘fair use’ doctrine that allows copyrighted material to be used Oracle asked the judge to throw out Google’s ‘fair use’ defense.

The judge declined saying he did not think that it would be correct for him to rule in favor of Oracle. Experts now expect at least a partial retrial of the first portion of the case.

Who do Crowdfunders Invest in?
We have started talking a lot about crowdfunding, but mostly in relation to just a very few efforts, and yet that industry is starting to emerge as a huge source of funding for startups, enabling a wide variety of developers to get seed money and more to launch products.

Well if you were interested in a breakdown by category of where the money is going at Kickstarter wonder no more because there is now a great graphical breakdown of the effort. A few interesting facts-50,000 projects have sought funding since it opened its doors in 2009 and film and video is the top pledge earner, with $60 million pledged to date. There is a host of interesting information so head on over and take a look.

Replacement officials in the wins for NFL season?
Fox Sports is reporting that the NFL has started to look at replacement officials for the upcoming season in case it cannot reach a new agreement with the NFL Referees Association- currently the talks are at an impasse.

The league is asking its officiate scouting department to help identify potential replacements with an eye out for recently retired college officials as well as current officials at a variety of levels of the sport including semiprofessional leagues. The NFL used replacement officials in 2001 at the start of the season.

Smart Shoes the next trend in computing?
Computer scientists from e Telekom Innovation Laboratories, the University of Munich, and the University of Toronto have taken a step forward on a research paper on the next generation of wearable computing with the publication of a joint paper entitled “ShoeSense.”

The gist of the paper apparently calls for the development of sensors that would be placed in shoes that have the ability to understand customizable hand and arm gestures that are then relayed as commands to a smartphone. Users would be able to then send messages without appearing to while in meetings, at dinner and other places that it is not always appropriate to do so on the handset.

Nielsen looks at smartphone owners in US
A recent report from Nielsen shows that smartphone ownership continues to rise in the US and is now the preferred handset of more than 50% of Americans, actually 50.4%, up from 47.8% in December 2011.

Android is the dominate operating system with a 48.5% market share then followed by Apple’s iOS with 32%. Research in Motion’s Blackberry platform has 11.6% followed by Windows Mobile, Windows Phone and then others.

Filed Under: ABC, Android, Apple, Fox Sports, Google, Kickstarter, Lawsuit, Mashable, NFL, NHL, Nielsen Ratings, Oracle, Smartphone, Yahoo Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Is Android in Trouble?

April 30, 2012 by 3 Comments


The Kindle Fire Rules Android Market
A recent study by comScore shows that Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet has remained a hot property, doubling its market share in just two months. According to the study the tablets share of the Android market jumped from 29.4% in December 2011 to 54.4% in February 2012.

The report does not count Barnes & Noble’s Nook due to classifying it as an ereader and not a multipurpose tablet, but if you combine the two they have a huge share of the Android market, and it appears that Android users opt for the lower cost offerings from Amazon and Barnes & Noble rather than the pricier ones from players like Asus.

So with Apple dominating the high end and these two at the low end of the tablet market what else is there. I suspect lots of room to grow in both. Many of the first generation Android tablets were touted as iPad killers and were not. They should instead seek to meet specific market needs and stop worrying about other players’ products.

Google Patent Trial shows past expectations.
One piece of evidence that has come out during the Oracle vs Google trial around Java patents has been the revelation of what Google’s expectations for Android were two years ago according to a presentation at the trial.

Some of the information listed was highlights that included device activation and searches while the lowlights noted that the company was behind in music, video and books and said that Apple was maintain momentum with strong product launches.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of information available from the trial, and The Verge has a full readout on what is going on as well as a great deal more data on Android sales and expectations.

Has Google lost control of Android?
Joe Wilcox over at Beta News makes a strong argument that Google has lost control of Android and that it could have very negative repercussions to the developer if it does not actively and quickly reassert control over the platform.

Fragmentation is occurring, and as he noted the most successful implementation of Android that used by Amazon in its very popular Kindle line, does not greatly resemble the version that is available elsewhere. Proprietary versions of the operating system can cause big problems.

The old saying that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” certainly resonates here. This issue occurred with DOS before Microsoft exerted control over the OS. Then again with Sun Microsystems’ Java, which it just barely managed to prevent fragmentation, interestingly enough, at the hands of Microsoft.

So I imagine that Google’s first priority if to get the Oracle lawsuit finished prior to any work on the OS but I would not be surprised if shortly afterwards the company announced a developer conference and new guidelines for developing on the platform.

Samsung is the King-of smartphones
Samsung released its sales figures last month and it has knocked off Nokia as king of the hill in smartphone sales. Samsung has shipped 93.5 million phones in the first quarter and of that number 44.5 million were smartphones.

Nokia had been top dog for 14 years, with a very brief sojourn at the top for Apple. In the first quarter Nokia is estimated to have shipped 82.7 million phones while Apple shipped 35.1 million in the same period.

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics Samsung’s strong quarter helped move its overall market share to 25.4% from 19.3%, year over year while Nokia went in the opposite direction falling from 30.4% to 22.5%

For the quarter Samsung posted a $5.2 billion profit on $39.8 billion in revenue. Aside from the strong growth in handsets the company also experienced strong sales of its tablet products such as its Galaxy Note.

Winklevoss twins announce venture capital firm
The Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame have launched a venture capital firm called Winklevoss Capital. The firm will focus on early stage, disruptive startups. They said that they expect to close a couple of deals within the next few months.

A $20 trillion rock?
I love all of this space mining talk. The value of what they are doing just keeps going up and up. In case you missed it a company called Planetary Resources and bills itself as an asteroid mining company was announced last week.

Among its backers are Ross Perot Jr., James Cameron, some Google billionaires and Microsoft. The plan is to develop not only the capability to mine asteroids but also to have space-based refilling stations for spaceships.

I have no idea if this will get off the ground but I really hope it does because it sounds like it will be very interesting to follow. The first asteroid that it has its eye on has an estimated value of $20 trillion dollars.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Asus, Barnes & Noble, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Lawsuit, Mashable, Samsung, Tablets Tagged With: , ,
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