Google Delivers 7-inch tablet, the Nexus 7; Google Q Streaming Media CE device

Google has delivered a host of new features for its Android operating system as well as a co-developed 7-inch tablet and its first consumer electronics device that is designed to unify and play the data that you might have stored in the cloud.

The tablet was developed along with partner Asus and is called the Nexus 7, a 7-inch tablet that will take on everything from products from rival’s Amazon’s Kindle , Barnes and Noble’s Nook, Microsoft’s Surface and Apple’s iPad to just name a few.

The $199 tablet features a Nvidia Tegra 3 quad core processor as well as a12 core Nvidia Tegra application processor that will run the just announced next generation Android operating system 4.1, code-named Jelly Bean and has a 1280 x 800 pixel display.

The Nexus 7 is designed to work with other Android devices so a user can start reading a book on their phone and pick up on where they were on the tablets. It supports interactive articles that enable a user to go from an article in a magazine to say a video showing an exercise being described in the article.

The Nexus 7 is built around using the company’s Google Play store as a center of usage and said that it is available now for preorder with shipment expected for mid-July. It will come with a $25 credit to spend in the Google Play store as well as free books, magazines and others.

The company also showed its Nexus Q, a black ball that is a social media streaming device that a user can control via another Android device and is designed to access data and media that is stored in the cloud.

Designed to be set up from your phone it is essentially jukebox and movie player, and as the ability to serve as a center that allows your friends to add songs or movies from their devices to the playlist, and anyone can take control and rearrange the playlist to suit their tastes. Same with movies and YouTube videos. It will run Android 4.0 and feature 16GB of internal storage and have both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities.

The company displayed its Google Glass project, much to surprise of the audience. The live Google Glass demo started by showing ski divers in a blimp over San Francisco equipped with glasses. They jumped from the blimp and the glasses enabled the audience at the Moscone Center, and online viewers, to follow the divers as they descended onto the roof of the building.

They also employed bikers doing flips on the roof top and then building climbers to drop down the side of the building, all wearing the glasses. It was a very impressive live demonstration and I suspect it will give users of cameras such as GoPro a moment of pause.

But the company does not envision the Glasses to be just for recording information and video for friends but also make it easier to access information via your glasses rather than taking out a smartphone, unlocked it and then do a search for the required information.

The Glasses in Project Glass feature and array of technology including a display, a camera, a processor and memory to store what is being recorded as well as a touch pad, microphone, small speaker, sensors including gyroscopes as well as multiple radios for data communications.

Project Glass is still a work in process and the company was asking for feedback to see what else the audience, which features many of its top developers, would also like to have in the devices. It announced the Google Glass Explorer addition for developers and admitted it was still a rough product. Hopefully some of this will make it to YouTube.

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Google I/O This Week

Google’s Goggle I/O show is this week so expect to hear an onslaught of news from the company and its partners on all things related to Android, smartphones, tablets, Chrome and most likely a host of other issues that they are concerned with.

The show will be held from June 27 to June 29 at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center and most of the keynote sessions will be live streamed for those of you that are interested but don’t want to endure the cold of an SF summer. (editor’s note: 75 degrees here today, Oregon boy.)

One message I would like to hear is how it will deal with the growing fragmentation of its Android operating system. It seems that most of the major manufacturers are only now coming on board with Ice Cream Sandwich, and a new OS is expected this week.

The issue is important for a number of reasons but a major one is that continued fragmentation could lead to developers only focusing on Apple’s iOS and even Windows 8 when that OS is available.

Intel invests in touchscreen developer
Intel Capital was the lead investor in a EUR20 million investment funding round for touchscreen technology developer FlatFrog Laboratories. Invus was also an investor in the round. FlatFrog is developing technology that tracks light traveling inside the cover glass of a screen.

Apple dealt a setback in battle with Motorola
Judge Richard Posner, who is presiding over one of the major patent disputes between Apple and Motorola, has ruled that Apple cannot pursue an injunction against Motorola and has dismissed the case with prejudice.

Posner had previously indicated that this was the direction he was leaning in but relented to allow testimony from both sides of the case last week. Apple does have the option to appeal his ruling.


Apple moving ahead in Samsung patent suit

While losing an important round to Motorola, Apple is continuing to push ahead with its Samsung lawsuit and will have its request to have a court order blocking sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 heard this week.

The judge in the case has also said that she hopes to rule on Apple’s bid to block sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus smartphone at the June 29th hearing.

Microsoft says no to Motorola patent proposal payout
Microsoft has declined to accept the offer that Motorola made that would settle the patent dispute between the two companies that has threatened Microsoft’s ability to ship Xbox 360 consoles into the US and would bar some Android phones from Motorola as well.

Motorola was offering to pay 33 cents per phone that uses Microsoft’s ActiveSync software and wants Microsoft to pay it 50 cents for each device that uses Microsoft’s Windows operating system that uses Motorola’s industry standard video compression patent.

Mobile Carriers agree to alert travelers on roaming charges
Have you ever traveled in a foreign country and used your smartphone and had a slight heart attack when you got your bill at home with the huge roaming charges attached? Now carriers are going to do something about that.

What they are doing is to send you a message alerting you to the fact that your data plan has changed and new rates will apply. Among the 24 that have signed on are AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom-Orange, Hutchison 3 Group, SoftBank Mobile Corp., Verizon Communications, America Movil, and Vodafone Group.

Apple fined over 4G claims
An Australian court has fined Apple $2.27 million over its claims for its iPad that included unsupported promises of 4G support. After the charges were brought Apple changed its advertising and offered refunds. Apple now touts the device as WiFi+ Cellular.

Friday Grab Bag: X Games Coming, Soccer Corruption in China, Bike Lojack

ESPN’s annual summer X Games will begin next week on June 28 and run until July 1. Fans and athletes will descend on Los Angles for the events that will start with the X Fest that runs from noon until 7 pm on the opening day.

ESPN will be spreading the 21 hours of live broadcasting, both on-air and online, between a number of its properties: ESPN, ESPN2, and ABC will have the on-air duties with HD handled by ESPN 3D. For online, the games will also be digitally streamed on XGames.com and WatchESPN.com.

Intel buys InterDigital patent portfolio
Intel has reached an agreement to purchase approximately 1,700 patents and applications from wireless technology developer InterDigital for $375 million. The patents primarily are in the areas of 3G, LTE and 802.11 technologies.

Intel said that the move will be a benefit to its development efforts in the mobile segment, and the unspoken part of the deal is that it will no doubt provide ammunition in the ongoing legal spats over patents that are common in the mobile space as well.

Vungle creates App Fund for developers
Vungle, a startup that seeks to provide a variety of advertising and promotional avenues aside from the traditional pop-up ads has moved to draw more players to its platform. In a very interesting turn the company, which just closed a $2 million venture round last month will use half of that money and create a fund for other developers.

The purpose of the move, according to TechCrunch, is to lure developers to its platform and so gain a boost for its approach to alternative advertising for mobile apps. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

Corruption in Chinese soccer — who knew?
The New Yorker, where I often go for my sporting news, had an interesting piece on corruption in the world of Chinese soccer. League executives, players and refs have all been hauled away and imprisoned due to an apparent widespread match fixing epidemic.

It seems that it has been ongoing for several years and that one top referee received $128,000 to fix seven matches. The country, which is seeking to win the rights to host the World Cup in the future, is cracking down to show that it will not tolerate this type of blatant corruption. What impact that will have on FIFA I am not sure.

Apple and Motorola get chance to push claims
The Apple vs Motorola litigants had the opportunity to speak their piece to US Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner. Apple apparently does not want Motorola to pay royalties but wants it to change its design and also claims that since Motorola’s patent is never used it has no value. Motorola obviously does not agree with either position.

Oracle taking Google lawsuit to next level
Oracle has agreed to accept zero damages for the copyright infringement claims that it ‘won’ in its case versus Google over Java technology. Oracle had been seeking big money in the case, claiming that it suffered up to $6 billion in loses.

However this is not the end of the affair. Oracle has said it will appeal its claims in the case once again, including both the patent infringement and whether its APIs can be copyrighted, to the Ninth Circuit appeals court.

Amazon App Store goes International
I have to say that I was surprised when I read that Amazon had not really extended its App Store to other countries and that it was primarily focused on the US market, a short sighted deal since one of its top developers of Android running devices Samsung is so strong internationally.

But anyway that looks to be a thing of the past as the company has now started opening it up and now developers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain can release games and apps designed specifically for those markets and the company has promised that more nations will be opened up to the joys of apps in the near futire, according to Cnet.

Ever had your bike stolen? SpyBike GPS could track the next one
SpyBike is a product developed by Integrated Trackers that is designed to look like a normal headset cap. It is designed to be activated when the bike is locked and you use a simply arming key and if the bike is moved it starts sending out data via a GPRS message and uses GPS to locate the bike. If GPS fails it has a fall back technology to help locate it.

The device does not come cheap, at $153 as well as a per message charge. The company said that it costs a fraction of a penny per message, but that varies by country. It features a rechargeable battery that can hold a charge of months.

Microsoft is on a roll, but is it a good one?

PC Mag is reporting that the company only gave some of its top OEMs a few days notice prior to announcing its Surface tablet platform earlier this week. As a number of them have made a major investment in developing for the underlying operating system, Windows 8, this seems a bit shortsighted.

Then later in the week it talks about its Windows 8 for smartphones and reveals that customers that buy the current family of smartphones will not be supported by Windows 8. I am sure that cheers up Nokia which has made a major investment in promoting Windows Phone technology.

Microsoft Delivers Surface: Its own Tablet Family

Microsoft used the created hype of a short notice major press event held in the heart of Hollywood to debut a major new product family, and a hardware one at that- welcome to the Microsoft Surface, a tablet family.

This is part of a much bigger effort by the company that when combined with its next generation Windows 8 operating system launch later this year the company hopes will propel it into the midst of two large high tech trends it has missed-smartphones and tablets.

After a day full of rumors, primarily that Microsoft was going to deliver its own tablets, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO took the stage a bit after 4 pm PT and kicked the event off by saying that “Windows is the heart and soul of Microsoft”

He then went on to talk about how the company has been successful with a range of hardware products in its past as well from the Soft Card, different lines of mice and the Xbox. Microsoft Surface will now join that list of hardware products from a company known for its software.

The Surface is designed for Windows and will enable users to use Windows apps and games and is designed for both business and entertainment usage. It will feature an ultra ridged yet light, 1.5 lbs, VaporMG magnesium case. It will support high definition video on its 10.6-inch display and has a built-in kickstand so that you can set it up on a table to watch video.

The company will build them in a variety of colors and will have two basic lines; one will run Windows RT and feature either 32GB or 64GB storage and one that will run Windows Pro and have 64GB or 128GB storage.

Microsoft plans to sell them directly via Microsoft Stores in the US and online around the world. Release dates and pricing were not released but the RT version will be available first with the Windows Pro following about 90 days later.

There has been a growing buzz about Windows 8. Intel has been touting the number of its OEMs that are developing tablets that will be designed to run the operating system while Asus and others have given sneak peeks of their tablets at recent trade shows.

Still Apple’s iPad is firmly entrenched in the top position in this market and market research firm IDC has predicted that it will see its share grow over the next year. For 2013 IDC predicted that 142.8 million will be sold, up from its previous forecast of 137.4 and by 2016 it expects that 221.6 million will be sold. Apple’s iPad is expected to own 62.5% of the market this year, up from 58.2% last year. Android is expected to drop from last years’ 38.7% to 36.5% this year.

It is reported that Google will soon be selling its own tablets running its Android operating system, so that will make the two established platforms, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, soon available directly from the manufactures and Microsoft will expand that group. RIM also sells its own products.

Hard to say how this will come out- a lot of naysayers predicted that the Xbox would flop because Microsoft had no business in that market. I suspect a lot will depend on the Windows experience- it could really be a benefit in the corporate space where established security measures would make it much easier to adopt these products rather than the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) that is now occurring.

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Tablet Sales Forecast Upgraded for Faster Growth

Judge reverses course in Apple/Motorola Patent battle
Just a week after saying that he planned to dismissed the case Judge Richard Posner has ordered an injunction hearing in one of the patent lawsuits that Apple has against Motorola Mobility. The hearing is scheduled for this Wednesday and will enable both sides to argue why he should issue an order barring the other from using their respective patents.

IDC predicts strong tablet demand-Apple to benefit
Market research company IDC has said that it expects that demand for tablets will increase over the second half of this year and has upgraded its forecast from 106.1 million units sold worldwide to 107.4 million, eweek reported.

For 2013 IDC predicted that 142.8 million will be sold, up from its previous forecast of 137.4 and by 2016 it expects that 221.6 million will be sold. Apple’s iPad is expected to own 62.5% of the market this year, up from 58.2% last year. Android is expected to drop from last years’ 38.7% to 36.5% this year.

Facebook points finger at NASDAQ
After the calamitous IPO day and the resulting rash of lawsuits by traders that had issues with buying and selling at the opening of the market, Facebook has responded to the suits by seeking to consolidate them into a single case and by placing the blame on NASDAQ, Mashable reports.

The 30 minute delay in trading due to a software glitch at the opening of the market has been the source of much talk, and legal action. Facebook has requested that six class action lawsuits be combined and heard in the Southern District of New York to streamline proceedings. In addition it said that the 30 minute delay was due entirely to a flaw in the software used by NASDAQ.

US teams with private partners to build ultrafast broadband network
A new public/private effort that will combine corporation, higher education, non-profits and the US government is seeking to develop very high speed broadband networks that will be situated in a number of communities around the country.

The goal of the program, which is called US Ignite, is to enable developer to have a test bed to create new technologies and applications for use in these newer, faster networks that can achieve speeds of 1 gigabit per second.

The program combines the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation, and the GENI Program Office, seeks to roll out the networks in 35 cities within the next six years.

YouTube-Your next cable channel?
We have already reported that YouTube is seeking to create a range of premium video channels, including some sports focused ones, and now it looks as if the site is seeking to expand further into the entertainment business.

The company said last week that it is investigating the possibility of working with cable companies and charging for content that the providers might be seeking to broadcast via other methods in an effort to grow their viewership. YouTube noted that noting is finalized at this time.

Apple patent hints at future iPhone features.
A patent that has been filed by Apple, as noted by PCMag and others shows a smartphone that has a swappable camera lens. The phone would have a replaceable back panel that could be swapped out for one with a different lens allowing for increased options for photographers.

Ebook sales roar past hardcover
Net sales for ebooks has surpassed that of traditionally printed books for the first time, according to a report released by the Association of American Publishers and noted in Mashable. The report covered the first quarter of this year and excluded children’s books.

Ebooks accounted for $282.3 million in that time frame while hardcover books reached a total of $229.6 million. More notably was that ebook sales increased 28.4% over the same period last year while hard cover increased only 2.7%.

Sony gets Ice Cream Sandwich for its Tablet P
Sony has finally upgraded its clamshell Sony Tablet P platform, a device that features a screen that can be used as a single or dual screen display. The software upgrade to the latest available for Android devices has been expected for some time.

ARM preps low cost tablet chip
While Android tablets sales have not met with expectations and continue to lose share to Apple’s iPad, chip developer ARM is preparing a new front in the battle with the development of its Mali platform that is expected to enable the development of lower cost tablets.

ARM does not sell its chips directly to tablet OEMs but rather to developers’ such as Broadcom and others that then create the final processors that go into the tablets, as well as a range of other products including smartphones.

According to Computerworld the Mali-450 family will include the ability to develop eight cores and have double the processing power of the Mali-400 line. The dirt products using the technology are expected in the first half of 2013.

New Windows 8 Tablets from Acer and Asus Just the Start

Windows 8 got a boost at the Computex trade show last week in Taipei when it was talked up by a number of hardware developers ranging from tablet developers to microprocessor purveyors, creating some momentum prior to the release of the operating system.

As we noted last week Intel took the bull by the horns and talked about how 20 of its OEMs have tablets in development using its Atom Z2760 processor family as the company seeks to establish itself as a player in the tablet market.

But some of the Windows hardware developers were a good deal more specific about what they had in development, specifically Acer and Asus, both of which have been working hard in the Android spac to establish themselves as tablet developers and now look to Microsoft for a boost.

Acer is developing a pair of tablets for the market, and will use the letter “W” to indicate that the products are for Windows. The two are the Iconia Tab W510 and the Iconia Tab W700. The 10.1-inch W510 is a hybrid design that can be used as a touch screen and docked with a keyboard.

The Iconia Tab W700 has an 11.6-inch display with 1920 x 1080 pixels and will also include a docking station like the W510. It has the ability to display at a 70 degree angle, much greater than is commonly found in tablets. Both will use Intel processors, although the exact one was not revealed. The W510 is expected top be the workhorse while the W700 is the high end offring in the family.

Asustek has also come to the table last week with the Asus Tablet 600, but it will not be sporting Intel, using an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. The 10-inch tablet will be using a version of Windows called Windows RT. The basic specs are that it will have 2GB of RAM, a 32GB storage capacity and Office 15 software.