WebOS: Are we there yet?
It looks like the 600 employees in Hewlett-Packard’s WebOS division will only have to wait a bit longer to know their fate.
New Chief Executive Meg Whitman told French newspaper Le Figaro that she plans to announce her decision on the operating system in the next two weeks.
“This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo,” she was quoted as saying in French, as per the translation by Google Translate.
HP, which acquired WebOS when it bought Palm in 2010 for $1.2 billion, has been looking to sell the mobile software platform, sources have told Reuters.
WebOS employees have been in a limbo ever since HP decided to kill its webOS-based TouchPad tablet following poor sales.
Whitman, in the interview, also acknowledged that HP may lose its crown as the No.1 computer seller next year to Silicon Valley neighbor Apple, thanks to roaring sales of iPads. Apple will be anointed No.1 only if tablets are counted as PCs, of course.
The former eBay CEO, who has so far gained points for making quick decisions and communicating more clearly with investors, expects any significant changes that are implemented at the company to translate to visible results in three to five years, given the size of HP.
HP’s answer to the MacBook Air
HP’s answer to Apple’s MacBook Air is in, and it’s called the Folio13.
The company is one of the latest PC firms to launch an “Ultrabook” — a name chipmaker Intel gave to the new super-thin laptops that use its processors — but this time, it’s targeting the business user.
The launch must come as a relief to the Silicon Valley company’s PC unit employees, suspended as they were in limbo for over a month as HP considered whether to jettison the division or not. HP decided only late last month to keep the leading seller of PCs within its fold.
The Folio13 starts at 3.3 lbs, has a battery life up to 9 hours and includes a backlit keyboard, a popular feature on the MacBook Air.
Starting at $899, it’s $100 cheaper than Apple’s laptop. Rival Acer also is selling its latest Ultrabook for $899.
The laptop is slightly heavier than Apple’s, however, and few think that the company would be able to dislodge the Cupertino company in that category.
“We applaud HP’s competitive pricing and view HP’s Folio13 as a solid entry in the Ultrabook category, but believe MacBook Air will still maintain its market share lead,” said Brian Marshall, analyst with ISI Group.
Autonomy CEO’s terrifying prediction: the rise of the surveillance society
As a general rule, senior executives at technology companies tend to try to make the public feel excited about the future and about technology’s role to improve it.
Mike Lynch, the CEO of Autonomy, must not have gotten that memo; or he decided to ignore it.
During a talk at the Techonomy conference on Monday, Lynch described a dark world in which today’s celebrated technologies, such as social networking and smartphones, become the nefarious tools of a surveillance society.
This vision, Lynch explained, is not some dystopian, parallel universe, but rather the inevitable end-product of era in which technology becomes ever-cheaper, smarter and ubiquitous.
“There are going to be sensors everywhere. We’re all carrying the most incredibly sophisticated devices that can see and hear and learn where they are,” he said. While governments have long had the resources to build an Orwellian state, Lynch said the real danger lies in what “any arbitrary group of people” will soon be able to do with the technology.
Imagine a smartphone app that automatically reads every car license plate that appears in front of it, Lynch hypothesized. Use social networking to connect a group of people wielding the same app, he posited, and suddenly that group has the ability to track almost anyone in a city.
“I can’t conceive of how privacy is going to survive the ability of the machines to actually understand the data they’re getting,” he said.
Tech wrap: Yahoo finds interclick, pays $270 million for it
CORRECTION: The original headline falsely stated that Yahoo will pay $240 million for interclick. The correct amount is $270 million.
Yahoo will pay $270 million for interclick as it tries to revive its ailing online advertising business, even as the search and advertising giant continues to scout for potential bidders. Yahoo is paying $9 per share, or about a 22 percent premium, for the online advertising technology firm. “It’s not a transformational acquisition, but it helps Yahoo in a market they are not strong in … they have to take some steps to keep pushing forward,” BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis said. Among the parties interested in Yahoo are private equity firms Silver Lake, TPG Capital, Bain Capital, Blackstone, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Providence Equity Partners, Hellman & Friedman, Carlyle Group, and Russian technology investment firm DST Global, apart from rivals Microsoft and Google.
Olympus named six men, including a former Japanese supreme court justice, to investigate past M&A deals at the core of a scandal engulfing the endoscope and camera maker in a bid to stem an exodus of irate investors. None of the six have had any previous association with the company, an Olympus spokeswoman said. As yet, no deadline for the group to report its findings has been set, she added.
HP unveiled plans to develop extremely low-energy servers, partnering with companies such as chip designers ARM and AMD in a move that could threaten the dominance of Intel. The new servers will significantly reduce both power and space requirements, HP said. HP’s first Calxeda-based pilot server platforms will be available in the first half of next year, the company said, but did not reveal when HP expects to sell the production version. Explosive growth in data centers that drive the Internet is taking up increasing amounts of electricity and tech companies are looking for ways to make servers more efficient and trim their energy bills.
Britain and the U.S. rejected calls from China and Russia for greater Internet controls at the opening of a major cyberspace conference, but Western states faced accusations of double standards. While Western states worry about intellectual property theft and hacking, authoritarian governments are alarmed at the role the Internet and social media played in the protests that swept the Arab world this year. Around 60 countries, including China, Russia and India, are represented at the conference as well as tech industry figures such as Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and senior executives from Facebook and Google.
Tech wrap: Autonomy a done deal
Hewlett-Packard completed its $12 billion buy of British software firm Autonomy on Monday, the centerpiece of a botched strategy shift that cost ex-chief executive Leo Apotheker his job last month.
HP said its 25.50 pounds-per-share cash offer — representing a 79 percent premium that many HP shareholders found excessive — had been accepted by investors representing 87.34 percent of the company’s shares, well ahead of the 75 percent threshold needed.
The rushed announcements and concerns about the lofty price offered for Autonomy sent HP’s stock, and Apotheker’s credibility, plunging. But according to analysts, it would have been nearly impossible under British takeover rules for HP to extract itself from the Autonomy deal.
Tim Cook finally gets his chance to stride out from under Steve Jobs’ shadow, and he could not have picked a better time or device to mark his unofficial debut as Apple Inc’s CEO. The latest generation of the iPhone — still the smartphone industry’s gold standard after four years — is expected to see the light of day this Tuesday, just in time for the holidays.
FT says Apple’s iPhone 5 debut is “the latest sign that Silicon Valley is taking on a fresh mantle of Smartphone Valley.”
WSJ MarketBeat editor Mark Gongloff says that there is little pre-event buzz ahead of the iPhone 5 event and believes a factor is that Apple’s competitors such as Google and Amazon are catching up.
Rhapsody, which is the largest U.S. digital music service with 800,000 subscribers, said Monday it would take over Napster, which is currently owned by retailer Best Buy Co Inc.
Tech wrap: Oracle and HP keep sparring
Oracle and Autonomy escalated their war of words on Thursday, sparring publicly over whether the British software firm had ever been shopped to the U.S. technology giant.
Autonomy, which Hewlett-Packard this year agreed to buy for $12 billion, is at the center of a debate on Wall Street over the tenure of fired HP CEO Leo Apotheker and the future direction of the company he once ran. The spat comes at an inopportune time for HP, fighting to salvage its reputation with investors.
Entrepreneur, venture capitalist and HP board member, Marc Andreessen, referred to Oracle as an “oldline” software company and took a jab at outspoken CEO Larry Ellison: “Larry is one of my idols,” Andreessen said. “I wouldn’t quite say my role model.”
Despite losing two more senior executives, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion brushed off suggestions on Thursday that it would discontinue production of its PlayBook computer tablet as “pure fiction.”
Fortune’s annual ranking of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” was released on Thursday and former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was a noticeable omission. HP’s new CEO Meg Whitmen made the list at No. 9 and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg came in at No. 12. Google was well-represented with two women: Susan Wojcicki (No. 28) and Marissa Mayer (No. 38).
Travel search provider Kayak is the latest Web company to delay its IPO plans, reports AllThingsD’s Tricia Duryee.
Tech wrap: Amazon fights iPad with Fire
Amazon.com Inc introduced its eagerly awaited tablet computer on Wednesday with a price tag that could make it the first strong competitor in a tablet market that has been dominated by Apple Inc’s iPad. The new device, priced at $199, may have the biggest impact on other makers of tablets and e-readers, such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Barnes & Noble Inc, maker of the Nook.
“It’s a Nook killer,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more on websites including Amazon.com. “And it’s a very compelling offering if you’re not in the Apple ecosystem already.”
See how Amazon’s Fire stacks up to Apple’s iPad 2. Also a cool graphic breaking down the top 4 tablets.
Amazon’s debut of the Fire came on the same day that reports escalated that Apple will unveil a new iPhone next week. The new iPhone would be the first major product launch under Tim Cook, who took over full-time as chief executive after co-founder Steve Jobs resigned last month.
And just as Amazon was taking aim at Apple, Groupon launched its online retail arm Groupon Goods for its American subscribers, moving beyond daily group discounts to compete with leaders like Amazon.
Is Meg Whitman the right person to lead Hewlett Packard? Entrepreneur, author and former venture capitalist Peter Sims doesn’t think so. He writes about Whitman: “Those who have worked closely with her have a lot of respect for her intelligence, yet the picture that consistently emerges is that she is most interested in power, rather than purposeful leadership.”
Tech wrap: Facebook strikes a chord
Facebook unveiled new features that center on the way users listen to music and watch TV, offering tie-ups with the likes of Spotify and Hulu, as it attempts to make media an integral part of its service. The features, which also include ways for users to spiff up profiles in a magazine, photo-heavy style, were introduced on Thursday during Facebook’s annual f8 developers’ conference in San Francisco by Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg.
For Facebook, a deeper integration of music, movies and other media into its service makes it more likely that users will spend more time on its site, enabling the company to generate more advertising dollars.
Serial entrepreneur and Stanford professor Steve Blank believes the moves by the world’s dominant social network are more of a threat to Apple than to Google.
Yahoo also debuted a new service on Thursday that lets its users share Yahoo news articles they and their Facebook friends have read, according to NYT’s Bits blog.
Hewlett-Packard Co named former eBay Inc Chief Executive Meg Whitman as its new president and CEO, replacing unpopular leader Leo Apotheker at the helm of the largest U.S. technology company.
Reuters reporters Poornima Gupta and Peter Henderson argue it’s easy to blame Apotheker for HP’s troubles, but “experts paint a picture of an ever-changing roster of board directors who lacked a good grasp of the company’s fundamentals and vacillated over what its business should be.”
Full Tilt Poker is upping the ante in its high-stakes fight with the U.S. Justice Department, decrying the government’s assertion that it operated as a “Ponzi scheme,” according to the WSJ.
Tech wrap: HP shake-up?
A change could be underway at the top at Hewlett-Packard. The company’s board convened on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of ousting CEO Leo Apotheker after less than a year on the job and may appoint former eBay chief Meg Whitman to fill in as interim CEO, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. HP’s board of directors has come under increasing pressure in recent months after a raft of controversial decisions has left investors uncertain of the company’s leadership.
Newly minted Apple CEO Tim Cook will try his hand as star presenter at an October 4 company event widely expected to include the launch of the latest version of the tech behemoth’s iPhone handset, according to a report on AllThingD. Sources told the website that the plan is to make the iPhone 5 available to consumers within weeks of the event. Apple has yet to officially announce or even acknowledge that the new device exists at all. For those tired of yet another story about a rumored release date, there was something akin to a confirmation on Wednesday from an unlikely source: former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Gore, an Apple board member, apparently told a tech conference that the next-generation phone will indeed be available next month. Oops?!
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt traveled to Washington on Wednesday to face critics who say his company has become a dominant and potentially anti-competitive force on the Internet. Schmidt told a Senate antitrust hearing that his company has not “cooked” its search results to favor its own products and listings, despite accusations to the contrary from senators and other Web companies. “Google is in a position to determine who will succeed and who will fail on the Internet,” said Republican Senator Mike Lee, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel. Google has been broadly accused of using its clout in the search market to stomp rivals as it moves into related businesses, like travel search.
Dust your library cards off, Kindle users. Amazon announced on Wednesday its Kindle ebooks will now be available for borrowing from more than 11,000 libraries across the U.S. Borrowing a book seems pretty simple: customers find the book they want on their local library’s website and choose the “Send to Kindle” option, which will then redirect them to Amazon.com where they must log in to complete the check out. Amazon then gives customers the option of delivering the book wirelessly to their device of choice – the books are compatible with all Kindle models and mobile apps – or transferring it manually using a USB drive.
Netflix and Discovery Communications reached an agreement to bring episodes of popular TV adventure shows including “Man vs. Wild” and “River Monsters” to the streaming service, the companies confirmed to Reuters correspondent Paul Thomasch on Wednesday. The two-year deal covers only material from prior seasons of the TV shows and is limited to Netflix subscribers in the United States. Discovery has an option for a third year.
Tech wrap: HP TouchPad’s second coming?
In an interview with Reuters, the head of HP’s PC business Todd Bradley gave the throngs of people who lined up outside stores to snap up discontinued and deeply discounted TouchPads hope that the company wouldn’t abandon them, saying the tablet could be resurrected. This, as the TouchPad was on track to become the second-best selling tablet of all time behind Apple’s iPad.
GigaOm’s Ryan Kim says HP’s revelation muddies the waters, making the biggest maker of PCs in the world seem indecisive, which hurts it’s stock price.
There are lessons to take away from HP’s TouchPad firesale, argues Jon Collins of The Register. Chief among them is that there’s a massive pent-up demand for tablets from any manufacturer at the expense low-end PC and netbook sales.
Barnes & Noble forecast sales of its Nook e-reader and e-books would more than double this fiscal year to $1.8 billion. Sales of the Nook group of devices, which includes a standalone as well as a touch-screen reader, rose 140 percent to $277 million in the quarter, comprising nearly 20 percent of the company’s total sales and making it a larger business than the College Bookstore chain of 635 stores, where sales fell. CEO William Lynch said that the bookseller has 26 percent to 27 percent of the e-book market, the same market share he claimed last quarter.
Apple’s iCloud isn’t what it’s made out to be, writes AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka. In a demonstration of Apple’s upcoming music service iTunes Match, what looked like streaming, whereby files are stored remotely and accessed online, was actually just an option to listen to songs while they are downloaded to the device used to play them. And that eliminates one of the main advantages of a cloud: freeing up much needed space on users’ devices. Kafka suspects legal and licensing issues with big music labels and publishers are behind the move.
Google’s board of directors faced a lawsuit for previously allowing Canadian pharmacies to advertise prescription drugs to U.S. customers via the Web search leader. The civil lawsuit claims the ads — which Google stopped displaying in February 2010 — led to what it calls the “illegal importation” of the drugs. Last week, the Department of Justice said Google agreed to pay $500 million to settle the investigation into ads it accepted for online Canadian pharmacies selling drugs in the United States.
Steve Jobs made Apple great by ignoring profit, Clayton Christensen and James Allworth argue. Disruptions, or incumbents moving upmarket and leaving the bottom of the market completely open for scrappy upstarts to enter, can explain the rise and fall of many great companies. But, despite being perceived as a premium, high-end player, Apple under Job’s leadership has not only managed to avoid being disrupted by others, it has disrupted entire industries. Even more impressive, it’s disrupting itself, Christensen and Allsworth add.
“…what looked like streaming, whereby files are stored remotely and accessed online, was actually just an option to listen to songs while they are downloaded to the device used to play them….”
Duh. That’s what streaming is. Playing it while it downloads. Not waiting til it’s finished. If you don’t want to keep the downloaded copy then you can delete it. But if you aren’t given the option to keep it, then you have no choice but to redownload every time you stream.
