Tech wrap: Adobe scraps Flash for mobile browsers
Score a point for Apple. Software maker Adobe scrapped its Flash Player for mobile devices after a mutli-year battle with Apple over the merits of the technology, which is used to view videos and play games on the Web. Take a look back at the legendary tech spat in this blow-by-blow timeline that stretches back to January 2007 when Apple launched its iPhone with a browser that was not compatible with Adobe’s Flash player. The company said in a blog post it plans to focus its future mobile browsing efforts on HTML5, a competing technology that is now universally supported on all major mobile devices.
Online business reviews site Yelp has hired bankers to lead an intitial public offering that could value the company at up to $2 billion, several people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Evelyn M. Rusli. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup will participate in the offering, which is expected in the first quarter of next year, one of the sources said.
Cisco Systems singaled a turnaround on Wednesday when it raised its forecast revenue and earnings above Wall Street expectations as demand from government and enterprises for its network equipment remained resilient despite global economic troubles. Earlier, the company reported quarterly earnings per share that beat estimates, signaling that efforts to revive growth are beginning to pay off.
Delays were being reported by some BlackBerry customers on Wednesday, but Research in Motion said it’s not experiencing problems on the scale of an outage last month that knocked out service for four days. “There is no system-wide outage,” a company spokesman told Reuters, adding that the delays being reported are limited to Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa.
Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt reassured its Android partners embroiled in lawsuits that it will continue to support them in their disputes with other firms. That support takes the form of information sharing, industry expertise and access to Google’s patents for licensing and legal purposes, Schmidt said during a visit to Tapei on Wednesday.
Reuters tech correspondent Bill Rigby strolls the streets in Seattle’s South Lake Union district, an emerging technology hub that calls to mind Silicon Valley to the south. In addition to long-time tenant Amazon.com, the neighbourhood has seen a rush of newercomers setting up shop, including cloud computing firm Salesforce.com and online gaming company Zynga. Facebook also recently set up its new Seattle offices nearby.
(This post’s original headline was changed to make it clearer)
Sony: Our tablets are coming… eventually
Sony teased out a few more details about its new Android tablets — codenamed S1 and S2 — and let reporters briefly handle prototypes.
AT&T will be the exclusive U.S. carrier for the S2, a double-screened device that bears a close resemblance to Nintendo’s DS handheld gaming device. Sony showed off how users could turn it into a book.
Executives stressed that the tablets can connect to other Sony products, such as Blu-Ray players, TVs and PlayStation content, something Apple can’t offer. Like the Sony Ericsson Experia Play AKA, “the PlayStation phone,” the Adobe-Flash enabled tablets will come pre-loaded with the retro game“Crash Bandicoot”.
Sony once again vowed to take the No. 2 tablet spot behind Apple despite still not revealing when its new tablets would come out or how much they would cost. That news could be more than a month away but the tablets should be released this year, the company said.
Why would a customer choose a Sony tablet over an iPad? Phil Molyneux, Sony Electronics president and COO, said customers looking for a faster, smaller device that can fit in your pocket will turn to Sony’s dual-screen S2 tablet.
“You can’t do that with other devices unless you have bigger pockets,” he said.
from DealZone:
A deal in need of a touch-up?
Adobe Systems, the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat, hopes its $1.8 billion purchase of fast-growing business software maker Omniture will turn around its declining sales.
Adobe reported lower quarterly sales and profit after unveiling the deal. A snazzy new acquisition is a welcome distraction.
The purchase will give Adobe a new stream of revenue to offset a decline in customer upgrades of older versions of its programs. Omniture charges customers fees based on monthly web site traffic, so it is less sensitive to economic swings than Adobe. "There is no way Adobe can grow organically. This is a smart move," said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
But not everyone is convinced. Larry Dignan at ZDNet said he slept on it and, at 4:52 this morning, said in his Between the Lines column that he couldn't see the logic. He quoted a couple of negative analyst notes.
"Adobe's Omniture purchase isn't a slam dunk. The burden of proof regarding synergy, product roadmaps and (CEO Shantanu) Narayen's vision where analytics meets content creation rests with Adobe," he wrote.
from Commentaries:
Revolution?
Video compression technology can be interesting, really.
Most people forget how online video worked before YouTube popularized the embedded Flash video player. Remember the frustration of making sure you had the right video player to play this or that web video? It was YouTube that popularized giving people one-click access to videos.
On Wednesday, Google said it had agreed to acquire On2 Technologies, a maker of video compression technology, in a deal that could have sweeping effects for how video works on the web. The Internet search leader has a bland blog post about how it intends to use On2 to innovate in how video working on the Web, but it isn't at all clear how far it Google is ready to go.
There's lots of speculation that Google may choose to open source, or give away, On2's video compression technology, undercutting royalty-bearing video compression technologies in use across the Web. That could undermine Adobe and its widely used Flash player, Microsoft, with its Silverlight alternative, not to mention Apple Inc and RealNetworks. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider spells out how far-reaching the Google gambit could be. As a counterpoint, Dan Rayburn of StreamingMedia.com argues the Google move is no big deal.
Google is only paying $106.5 million in stock for the American Stock Exchange listed-firm based in Clifton Park, New York. Because the deal involves two public companies, there's an outside chance that a competitor may want to mount a rival bid. The On2 board would have to consider a richer bid for fiduciary reasons. Google might have more on its hands that it bargained for.
(Images: Beet.tv, Google Finance)
http://wayonda.com/index.php?page=videos §ion=view&vid_id=100106 Interesting historical perspective on the company and it’s investor relations leading up to the deal.
