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Apple has Sold 55 Million iPads

February 15, 2012 by 1 Comment

Company believes that they will soon outpace PC sales
The pace at which new technology gets adopted seems to be faster than ever, or it might be more accurate to say that once it is popularized it gets adopted faster than ever, as Apple showed when it revealed the sales numbers of its popular iPad tablets.

The iPad is not the first, or even the second tablet to hit the market, attempts have been ongoing for more than a few decades including Alan Kay’s Dynabook computer concept, Motion Computing’s Tablet PCs, and the Microsoft PC Tablet to name just a few.

There are a number of failed attempts over the past years, in part because the technology was just not there in terms of enabling developers to create fully functional devices that were lightweight, tough and yet could rival a computer.

However that issue is a thing of the past and tablet sales have been growing at a tremendous rate- according to a recent report from market analyst firm BI Intelligence, tablet sales are expected to hit 500 million units a year by 2015. The firm estimates that tablets will be a $100 billion market and surpass PC sales by a good percentage- it believes PC sales will be approximately 360 million units. No wonder Intel is working so hard to enter this space.

So how is Apple doing in this space you wonder? Well according to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO the number is around 55 million units. He revealed the number during a presentation at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

He attributed the healthy ecosystem for the iPad platform as being very important for the growth and said that there were 170,000 apps that have been optimized for the platform as well as peoples previous experience with the iPhone.

He said that since its introduction he and others at Apple have believed that in the long run tablets would outsell PCs. As a user he said that he now spends between 80-90% of his time on an iPad. He said that it is cannibalizing Mac sales but if someone is going to do that he prefers it be Apple.

To put the sales figures in prospective with other Apple products Slashgear points out that it took Apple three years to sell that many iPhones and 22 years to sell that many Macintosh computers.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , , ,

Motorola/Google Deal Gets OK-With a Warning

February 15, 2012 by 7 Comments

The deal gets approval but EU said it is watching

As expected both the EU and the United States Department of Justice have given Google’s $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility the go-ahead. At the same time the US approved the purchase of Nortel wireless patents by an Apple-Microsoft led consortium.

From the outside it looks like this sets up a battle royal in the patent space as both now are armed with a host of additional patents and the players on both sides have shown a very ready willingness to go to court to enforce them.

Apple has been strongly going after a number of Android smartphone developers, in particular Samsung, HTC and Motorola. Motorola has been returning fire at Apple, with Google’s approval, while https://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2012/jan12/01-12LGPR.mspx has been quietly but efficiently getting developers’ to pay it for select patents.

However hopefully we will not see a yearlong battle in this space, something that could temporarily blunt the strong growth of smartphones and tablets. No one wants what happened in the last years of dial up modems when conflicting technologies made for incompatibility.

According to a careful analysis of the agreements published in Foss Patents, Florian Mueller said that the approvals are not without caveats. The EU said specifically that it will be looking at future and past enforcement of patents by Google and that it is ready, willing, and able to step in if it believes they are being abused.

He said that the end result of these deals will be business as usual, which currently means a series of lawsuits working their way through court. At the same time he notes that just because no action has been taken to date does not mean that none is forthcoming.

From the European Commission’s press release announcing approval is this important paragraph. “Today’s decision does not mean that the merger clearance blesses all actions by Motorola in the past or all future action by Google with regard to the use of these standard essential patents. Our decision today is without prejudice to the legality under EU antitrust law of Motorola’s past and Google’s future actions. However, the question whether Motorola’s or Google’s conduct is compliant with EU antitrust law cannot be dealt with in the context of the merger procedure.”

So while it may be business as usual in the short run, the court cases could result in the addition of another player, and one that has a lot more clout than any of the individual players involved, or all of the players for that matter.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Microsoft talks Windows 8 Tablet

February 10, 2012 by 2 Comments

The top Windows exec at Microsoft, Steve Sinofsky, has published a huge blog entry that details Microsoft’s plans for Windows 8 on low-powered platforms driven by processors built around the ARM processor technology.

Since that is the primary chip technology driving most tablets, this blog entry shows how the company sees the space and what it believes it can bring to the market that its rivals cannot, or are not doing well.

A few of the key talking points are that versions of Windows for ARM platforms will carry a Windows for ARM branding; there will be a special version of Office for this platform and there will be a major effort to have the hardware and software tightly integrated, much like Apple does with the various iOS products.

Phoenix Suns latest to grab tablets as in-game tool
If you happen to watch closely the next time you are viewing a Phoenix Suns game expect to see branded products from Samsung and Verizon Wireless on the sidelines in place of the old school chalkboards.

The team has signed a deal that will provide the players, scouts and coaches with Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tab tablets and Verizon 4G wireless service. The team plans to use them for a winde variety of tasks including in-game play calling by head coach Alvin Gentry.

While the NFL and Major League Baseball have been very aggressive in developing and deploying tablets as part of a training regime the NBA has lagged behind. This is probably going to be watched very closely and probably imitated by a number of other teams in the off season.

Asus admits bug in Transformer Prime
Asus has released a firmware update that will fix the random boot problem that has plagued some but not all owners of its Eee Pad Transformer Prime Tablets. The move comes after a flow of negative comments on line and at least one retailer, UK’s Clove to cease selling the product.

The tablet has had several flaws since it was debuted last year including simple lack of product available and a GPS accuracy issue. In the past the company has denied that there was a reboot issue but has now finally admitted it.

Patent Wars
Apple continues to battle and seems to be losing ground at a slow and steady rate. Its latest setback was a German court ruling that Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, called the Galaxy Tab10.1N in the German market does not appear to be a copycat version of the iPad.

Apple had won an initial ruling preventing Samsung from selling n the German market last September and the 10.1N is a work around that has been found acceptable by the court, reopening the market to the Apple rival.

Apple has been particularly aggressive pursuing Samsung in both the iPad but also iPhone space claiming that it carefully copied its devices. So far its success has been lackluster in courts but that does not seem to have changed Apple’s determined drive in the patent space.

Google’s bid for Motorola Mobility likely to be approved next week
Multiple sources are reporting that the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility by Google will get antitrust approval from the United States Justice Department sometime next week. Among other assets that Google will acquire is a patent portfolio that is 17,000 strong in the mobile phone area.

This patent portfolio is likely to be used for both offensive and defensive purposes by the company. It is aggressively seeking huge payments from Apple over all iPhone and other iOS devices, but will likely also be used to simply be leverage in cross patent licensing agreements.

At the same time the Justice Department is likely to approve of the purchase of Nortel by a consortium of Apple, Microsoft Sony, Research in Motion, EMC, and Ericsson AB. This deal will include 6,000 wireless patents.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Amazon, Android, Apple, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, Motorola, NBA, NFL, Samsung, Smartphone, Sony, Tablets, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Smartphones Outsell PCs, Tablets

February 6, 2012 by 2 Comments

There was a battle of opinions last week between Symantec and Lookout Security in regards to a bit of code that is attached to a select number of apps as to if it was malware or not. Symantec said that the code, called Android.Counterclink was malicious software and warned users off a number of apps that contained the offending code.

Meanwhile a rebuke came from Lookout Security which said that it was simply an aggressive pierce of adware and that while it could be annoying, was not really bad enough to be termed malware.

Well apparently Symantec has come over to its rival’s side of thinking and agreed that its original diagnosis was incorrect and that the code in question is just annoying. In case you are wondering what Google is doing about malware go over to iTWire to see.

Smartphones outsell PCs
According to market research firm Canalys, smartphone sales in 2011 outpaced that of all PCs. It showed that there was 487.7 million smartphones sold in the year compared to 414.6 million PCs of all stripes from desktops to tablets.

The pace of sales for smartphones appears to be increasing with 158.8 million sold in the 4th quarter of 2011, a 57% increase over the 101.2 million sold the same quarter a year before. Contrast that with PC sales that grew 15% for the year, in part buoyed by a 274% increase in tablet sales.

Of course comparing sales in a mature market to sales in a emerging one is comparing apples to oranges but it is interesting to see how mobile computing, both smartphones and tablets are soaring.

Apple sees the light on iBook licenses
Apple has reversed its position regarding who owns the rights to text books that are written for ts iBook textbook effort. The company has changed the End User License Agreement so that it no longer reflects a claim that Apple owns the rights to works developed with iBook Author software.

As reported by SlashGear the new EULA states that books developed using the .ibooks format may only be distributed by Apple but that they can be distributed in other formats by the author.

Windows 8 details leaked
A leaked video is showing a great deal of the details that customers and developers can expect with the forthcoming Windows Phone 8 released according to any number of sites. Shown first at PocketNow.com the video was reportedly made for Microsoft partner Nokia, a company that has been an aggressive partner in the phone space.

Included in the release, which it said was code-named Apollo, are support for multicore processors, a total of four screen resolution options for developers, and a removable microSD card for additional storage.

With digital payments from mobile devices becoming increasingly important Microsoft looks to be positioning the phones to be a prime platform for what it calls the ‘wallet experience’ and the OS will allow carriers to brand and control the payment features. Drop over to see what else was discovered about the forthcoming phone. Also head out to Wired to see how Android, iOS and Windows 8 compare and contrast.

The Apple/Motorola patent battle continues to range in Germany.
Motorola managed to get some Apple products banned in Germany, but Apple has countered and won a suspension from an appeals court at the last minute. Apple is claiming that Motorola is not playing fair “Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

According to Foss Patents, Motorola is asking for 2.25% of Apple’s sales in return for the license, which it is presumed would cover a range of Motorola patents and not just the one in question. However Apple is countering that it has a license due to its cross licensing agreement with Qualcomm, who in turn has one with Motorola.

This sound a lot like the licensing issues that Intel and Advanced Micro Devices fought over more than a decade ago. That battle was estimated to have cost more than $1 billion to the players involved and was settled with a cross licensing agreement.

Mobile football in the offseason
Now that the Super Bowl is done and finished and it is some time prior to the NFL deraft there are still a few options for the sports fans. An example is this promo that started Super Bowl Sunday and not clear when it will end-EA Sports slashes price of Madden 12 for Android to 99 cents, down from $4.99 for a limited time.

However there are a range of additional options for playing games on a smartphone and luckily for you Cnet has gone to the trouble and created a list for Android and iOS users. Sorry no listings for BlackBerry.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, BlackBerry, Microsoft, Research in Morion, Smartphone, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Friday Grab Bag: Tablet Sales Grew 260% in 2011

January 27, 2012 by 4 Comments

Market research firm Strategic Analytics’ latest study of the tablet market shows that global tablet shipments reached 27 million units in the last quarter of 2011 and that Android-based systems captured a 39% share.

The 4th quarter sales represent a 150% increase over the 10.7 million units sold a year earlier. Apple is still the king of the hill with a 58% share, a number that translates into 15.4 million iPads sold.

The report notes that Microsoft has a miniscule 1.5% share of the market, although that may change when Windows 8 hits the market later this year. Overall for 2011 tablet sales reached 66.9 million units, a 260% increase and the company found that increasingly consumers are opting for a tablet rather than a notebook computer.

Onavo lands $10 million in Series B funding

Mobile app developer Onavo has raised $10 million in Series B funding in a round that was led by Horizon Ventures, the private investment arm of billionaire Li Ka-shing. The other new investor in the round was Motorola Mobility Ventures, the strategic equity arm of Motorola Mobility.

Along with the funding the company added Jason Wong from Horizon Ventures to its board. Onavo’s previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Magma Venture Partners, also participated in the round.

Onavo develops a mobile app that can run on both Apple iOS and Android mobile devices and monitors data usage and has the ability to compress data in real time by routing the data through its cloud-based servers prior to its appearing on a mobile device.

Apple loses another round in patent wars

A Dutch court has reaffirmed a lower court ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet does not violate Apple’s patents and is not a copy of Apple’s iPad. Apple had been seeking to ban sales of the device in the Netherlands.

This follows a ruling in the US where a judge allowed Samsung to sell the tablet prior to the court case that will hear Apple’s arguments regarding the issue. At least Apple was not on the wrong side of one ruling-Samsung has filed its own patent suit and a court is allowing Apple to sell its iPads in the country as well.

Motorola has also gone on the offensive and has asked the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida to ban iPhone sales. It alleges that the iPhone infringe on six of its patents. It is very likely that Google gave Motorola due to terms in its pending purchase of Motorola.

Not to be deterred Apple has also filed a pair of new patent complaints in Germany against Samsung. And so it goes.

Jupiter Research sees a bright future for Ultrabooks

Market research firm Jupiter Research predicts that sales for ultrabooks, a sleek, lightweight notebook style being touted by Intel and partners, will experience very strong sales but will still trail the increasingly popular tablets.

The firm predicts that Ultrabook sales will reach 178 million in 2016, yet that will be significantly lower than the estimated 253 million tablets it expects to see sold in that year.
Ultrabooks in part will suffer simply because they will be later to market, while tablets have already seen very strong sales.

However it notes that due to the demanding engineering challenges in building an Ultrabook they will be significantly pricier than most tablets and that one of the key technologies expected to help sales, Windows 8, is not due until much later this year.

Rival social network companies tweak Google

Google has long been accused of playing favorites, with itself as the favorite. Now Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are striking back with the aptly named browser add-on called “Don’t be evil”

The name is a riff on one of Google’s unofficial mottos and the app will allow user of Google’s search engines to see how a search result page would look using Google’s pure organic search results. They claim that Google is slanting the searches to favor its one social network, Google+.

For an analysis of how search results can be different with and without the app goes to the Search Engine Land web site and read Danny Sullivan’s nicely researched piece on the differences.

Notes from earning reports…

Samsung Electronics has posted a record operating profit of $4.72 billion in its fourth quarter, driven by its surging smartphone sales. I guess those ads are working.

Motorola Mobility reported an $80 million loss for the 4th quarter with unit sales of tablets and phones down from the same period a year earlier, 10.5 million compared to 11.3 million. It shipped only 200,000 tablets in the current quarter.

Nokia on the other hand has a different story to tell. It reported that its smartphone sales dropped 27% in the fourth quarter. Expect it to accelerate the introduction of the Lumina 900, one of its new line of smartphones that run on Windows 7 operating system. However don’t cry for the company just yet, aside from still selling in excess of 20 million phones its deal with Microsoft calls for it to get a quarterly platform support payment of $250 million.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Microsoft, Smartphone, Tablets, Twitter

Elemental Technologies Lands Stanford for its Sports Replay Solution

January 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

Elemental Technologies, a startup developing an array of technologies including instant replay for mobile devices, has signed a deal with Stanford University’s athletic department to show replays for events played at the school’s Maples Pavilion and Stanford Stadium.

Stanford is using the Elemental Live product as the basis for its Wi-Fi Instant Replay system that it is deploying on campus. The system will enable fans at events to view an instant replay immediately after the play occurred.

The solution takes input from four different camera sources that is continuously encoded in real time and immediately stores them on a local web server where clips are created and then pushed to fans within seconds after the play. Stanford fans can access the replays on their mobile devices via the school’s Stanford Gameday Live website.

This is just the latest in a line of strategic partners the company has signed deals with, but the first where its technology will be put in front of a cadre of experienced sports fans that have been weaned on instant replay and will know if it meets their needs or not.

The Portland, Ore.-based company was founded in 2006 and has had several rounds of venture funding. The first was in Dec. 2007 when it received $1.05 million from the Oregon Angle Fund. The Series A round of funding closed in July, 2008 with $7.1 million being raised in a round led by General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital.

The second round, in July, 2010, raised $7.5 million in Series B funding with Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Co., joined existing venture funds General Catalyst and Voyager Capital in round.

The company is led by a trio of co-founders starting with CEO Sam Blackman. Blackman had previously has held a variety of positions in the industry including designing integrated circuits for Pixelworks and engineering positions at Intel and Silicon Graphics

Jesse Rosenzweig, the second co-founder, serves as Elemental’s chief technology officer. He also is a former Pixelworks employee and worked on developing software applications at that company. To fill out the triad of co-founders is Brian Lewis, who is the company’s chief architect. He also hails from Pixelworks and previously, he worked as an engineer and team leader at Rockwell Collins developing navigation, guidance and sensor control software for military transport aircraft.

The company has tested its technology with a range of companies in the high tech space and has a number of big-named partners including Amazon Web Services, Intel, nVidia, Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Microsoft. Apple has been an important partner in helping with the live streaming technology.

Just as important it has a growing range of big name corporate and media customers that now number over 100. In that group are ABC, CBS Interactive, BTN, National Geographic, PBS, Oceanic Time Warner Cable, Comcast, HBO, and ESPN.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NCAA Football, PBS, Startup
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