Can’t find a socket to charge your phone? IDT’s got a solution.
(Updates with cost details)
Ted Tewksbury wants to get rid your iPhone cable.
The chief executive of San Jose, California-based Integrated Device Technology is pushing a set of microchips he hopes will eventually render “contactless charging” — charging your smartphone by simply placing it on a specific spot — commonplace and eventually make phone-charging cables a thing of the past.
On a recent visit to IDT’s offices, Tewksbury showed me the chips he’s just started selling. They’re IDT”s twist on existing technology, using inductive coupling, which has yet to reach critical mass.
The idea is, instead of plugging your smartphone into the wall when its battery runs low, you toss it onto a wireless charging surface that could be built into your desk, a cup holder in your car, or even the armrest of an airplane seat. And there it would juice up.
If Tewksbury has his way, that sort of inbuilt design will become de rigeur in cars, homes, airports and elsewhere, so people may not even notice when their devices are charging. Competing ”wireless” charging products on the market now require the user to tote around a charging pad that itself must be plugged into a socket, making them less-than-truly mobile and defeating the purpose of going “wireless”.
IDT hopes to grab a slice of a small but potentially sizeable market for wireless smartphone charging chips that he reckons could reach $800 million by 2014.
Content everywhere? More like content nowhere
Will Big Media and Big Tech companies ever stop punishing their biggest fans?
Like many people, I woke up yesterday and reached for my iPad for my morning hit of news, entertainment and information, so I could start my day. (And like many, I’m embarrassed to admit it.) Padding to the front door to get a newspaper still sounds more respectable, but my iPad gives me a far more current, rich and satisfying media experience than a still-warm printed Times could ever produce.
Except, lately, it doesn’t. Yesterday morning, I saw the exciting news that Bill Simmons, ESPN’s most popular, profane and controversial writer, had secured an interview with President Obama. Simmons published his interview in podcast, text and video form on Grantland, a longform sports journalism website he founded last year under the ESPN umbrella. I clicked over to the story from my Twitter feed and saw three YouTube excerpts of Simmons with Obama. And that’s all I saw. When I hit play on the videos, I discovered ESPN had set them to be “unavailable” on mobile devices.
Moving on, I tried to read a New York Post headline that also found its way into my Twitter feed. But when I tapped in, the Post webpage that loaded was not the story I wanted to read. Instead it was a notice, which I took as an admonition, that to read New York Post content on an iPad, I would have to download the app, which retails for $1.99.
I want to make it clear that I’m not against paying for content. But what I’ve just described aren’t paywalls, where publications warn users that they won’t be able to consume content for free.
The situations I’m describing are blanket denials of content because of a choice I made about which device to use. With these tactics, media companies aren’t creating content paywalls, they’re creating content ghettos. Big Media, set my content free! Stop messing with the user experience to deny readers their content simply because you can detect what platform they’re on. And stop punishing users who are investing in the latest devices to consume your output. In other words, grant my hyper-advanced iOS device or my friend’s fancy new Android phone just as much access to the Web as my mother’s four-year-old Windows XP PC. Which one of us do you think wants to watch Simmons talk crossover dribbles with the Commander-in-Chief?
There’s one big issue with your article, and that is it doesnt’ touch on the advertising model of an iPad version vs a web version. Though it’s changing fast, advertisers were slower to adopt iPad platforms, and therefore, to the media company were perhaps less profitable. You can’t have an ad-supported or near-free model if there aren’t advertisers willing to buy on that platform.
So far, most of these digital platforms have not monetized as well as the traditional players, and that has everything to do with the decision making process.
Boycott an iPad advertiser? That’s silly. They’re the ones that are helping you out. You should be boycotting the advertiser that ONLY wants tos how up on their web site. There is also generally less real estate on the screen of an iPad app to unobtrusively show you ads as compared to your mother’s 4 year old XP system.
And $1.99 for a permanent application is hardly “through the nose” … How much does a single print edition to the NY Post cost? I can’t imagine that the app couldn’t pay for itself in a few days.
Maybe the real problem is the group of whiney consumers (and blog writers) not willing to spend $1.99 on an app that gives them full access, when in the old days it would’ve been 50cents/day?
Tech wrap: Apple earnings lay waste to expectations
Apple’s fiscal first-quarter results blew past Wall Street expectations, fueled by robust holiday sales of its iPhones and iPads. Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPad tablets, outpacing already heightened expectations for a strong holiday season. Sales of iPhones and iPads more than doubled from a year ago. Revenue leapt 73 percent to $46.33 billion, handily beating the average Wall Street analyst estimate of $38.91 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Apple reported a net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 a share. Analysts had expected Apple to earn $10.16 per share.
“This is all about innovation, you have to out-innovate and delight the customer. Apple is the only company that knows how to do that. The guidance is phenomenal,” said Trip Chowdry at Global Equities Research.
Yahoo’s net revenue and profit fell slightly in the fourth quarter, the struggling Internet company’s last quarter before new Chief Executive Scott Thompson took the reins. Yahoo said it earned $296 million in net income in the three months ended Dec. 31, or 24 cents a share, compared with $312 million, or 24 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Yahoo, which fired former CEO Carol Bartz in September and appointed Thompson in January, projected that its net revenue in the first quarter would range between $1.025 billion and $1.105 billion.
A Dutch appeals court dismissed Apple’s appeal to have Samsung tablets banned in the Netherlands, confirming a Dutch lower court’s ruling. Apple and Samsung have been suing one another as the two technology giants jostle for the top spot in the booming smartphone and tablet markets.
Verizon may miss analyst expectations for 2012 earnings after posting disappointing fourth quarter results as it was hurt by hefty subsidies for the Apple’s iPhone. The company reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $2.02 billion, or 71 cents per share, compared with a profit of $2.64 billion, or 93 cents a share, a year earlier.
About one in five workers around the globe, particularly employees in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, telecommute frequently and nearly 10 percent work from home every day, according to a new Ipsos/Reuters poll. Telecommuting is particularly popular in India where more than half of workers were most likely to be toiling from home, followed by 34 percent in Indonesia, 30 percent in Mexico and slightly less in Argentina, South Africa and Turkey. But the job option is the least popular in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy and Canada, where less than 10 percent of people work from home. Despite the obvious benefits of telecommuting, 62 percent of people said they found it socially isolating and half thought that the daily lack of face-to-face contact could harm their chances of a promotion.
Tech wrap: Yahoo to cut Asian stake
Yahoo is considering a plan to unload most of its prized Asian assets in a complex deal valued at roughly $17 billion, sources familiar with the matter said.
The former Internet powerhouse’s increasing difficulty in competing with heavyweights such as Google and Facebook have forced it to explore proposals to revamp its business.
Weakening economies and falling prices of rival smartphones are hurting sales of Apple iPhones across Europe, data from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech showed on Thursday.
The October roll-out of Apple’s iPhone 4S boosted its position in Britain and United States, but the new phones failed to excite interest in continental Europe, where Apple’s share of the fast-growing smartphone market slipped.
Staying with Apple, a German court rejected the company’s claims that Samsung Electronics’ reworked tablet PC still looks like a copycat version of the iPad, in a preliminary assessment.
Apple is fighting several rival makers of smartphones and tablet PCs in courts worldwide over intellectual property.
Bloomberg reports that Funny Or Die, the comedy website founded by Will Ferrell, is pointing the way for Web-based entertainment companies by combining the scrappiness of an Internet startup with A-list talent that attracts viewers.
And the Grammy goes to — Steve Jobs!
First it was a bronze statue in Hungary. Now it’s a Grammy.
The accolades for the technology icon who died Oct 5 are still pouring in.
While Jobs is not a musician, his influence on the music industry — good or bad — cannot be denied. And for this, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is giving the co-founder of Apple Inc a Grammy at an invitation-only ceremony on Feb 11.
A formal acknowledgment of his Grammy — part of the 2012 Special Merit Award — will be made during the regular 54th annual Grammy Awards, to be held on Feb 12 at LA’s Staples Center.
“As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books,” the academy said in a statement. ”A creative visionary, Jobs’ innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased.”
In 2002, Apple was a recipient of a technical Grammy award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field.
Honored alongside Jobs were other industry luminaries including musician and composer Dave Bartholomew, and recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder.
I had always suspected that a Grammy was meaningless….this confirms it.
Tech wrap: D.Telekom may be forced to play with Sprint
Deutsche Telekom may be forced into a tie-up of its sub-scale U.S. wireless unit with Sprint Nextel after a $39 billion deal with AT&T collapsed.
AT&T said on Monday it had dropped its bid for T-Mobile USA, bowing to fierce regulatory opposition and leaving both companies scrambling for alternatives.
The collapse of AT&T’s deal to buy D.Telekom’s U.S. wireless unit may be welcome news for network equipment makers, as money earmarked for the merger will be freed up for investments.
Research In Motion’s woes continued as sales in the United States fell for a fifth straight quarter in Q3 even as the BlackBerry maker’s overall revenue jumped by $1 billion from a year earlier, a regulatory filing released on Tuesday showed.
Financial advisers in the U.S. are seeing fewer benefits from their use of social media, a survey by Aite Group showed on Tuesday.
“Social media has been over-hyped and the benefits just aren’t there for a lot of advisers,” said Aite senior analyst Ron Shevlin in an interview.
Electronic Arts invested more money and firepower into “Star Wars: The Old Republic” than it has on any game in its 30-year history. Starting today, the company will find out if the bet pays off.
Verizon vs Apple: A royal battle
By Aaron Pressman The opinions expressed are his own.
Last week’s tiff over the Google Wallet app at Verizon Wireless may seem like just another minor dust-up among hardcore phone geeks. But the debate is an opening skirmish in a potentially huge battle, particularly if, as expected, a new iPhone model arrives that runs on Verizon’s high-speed “LTE” Internet service.
At stake is whether seemingly pro-consumer “open platform” rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission to promote choice and innovation on Verizon’s LTE network have any meaning at all.
The rules were supposed to let customers, not carriers, decide which devices and applications they could use on the LTE network. That would seemingly mean that customers who wanted to use the Google Wallet payment app on the Verizon network via the upcoming Galaxy Nexus phone would be allowed to do so.
After all, the FCC said carriers could not “block, degrade or interfere with the ability of end users to download and utilize applications of their choosing … subject to reasonable network management.” The Wallet app uses a special “near field communication” chip built into the Nexus phone which is designed to talk with the cash register at a local coffee shop, not bring down Verizon’s cellular network.
But, not so fast.
Verizon, which is backing a competing mobile payment service known as Isis, asked Google not to include the app for use on the Nexus phone. Defending the move, Verizon didn’t address the open platform rules directly. Instead, the carrier said the app “needs to be integrated into a new, secure and proprietary hardware element in our phones,” adding that “commercial discussions” with Google on the issue were “continuing.”
This article makes no sense. There will not be any question as to whether Verizon will require Apple to do anything other than confirm that the iPhone “5″ operates as designed.
I’m wondering how the writer came up with an iPhone 6 for next year.
Tech wrap: AT&T, Sprint admit using monitoring software
Phone makers RIM and Nokia denied installing on their mobile devices an app which can monitor what users are doing without their knowledge or consent while carriers AT&T and Sprint admitted to using it. The companies responded after a security researcher demonstrated in online videos how the “Carrier IQ” software worked on Google’s Android operating system and said that phones running RIM’s BlackBerry platform and Nokia’s Symbian OS also had the software installed. AT&T and Sprint said they use “Carrier IQ” to monitor network quality.
Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are preparing a bid for all of Yahoo with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the matter said. The potential bid by the consortium, which would include China’s Alibaba and Japan’s Softbank, has not yet been finalized, the source and two other people familiar with the matter said. E-commerce giant Alibaba, whose primary interest is in buying back a 40 percent stake owned by Yahoo, is keeping its options open and said it has not decided whether to participate in a bid for all of Yahoo.
Apple’s iPhone edged past major news events, celebrities and pop stars as the top searched term on the Web in 2011, according to Yahoo. The media company said the smartphone proved more popular than reality television celebrity Kim Kardashian, pop star Katy Perry and singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, who placed in the top five. Casey Anthony, the woman acquitted of the murder of her young daughter after a highly publicized trial, was No. 2.
Best Buy is recalling about 32,000 Rocketfish battery cases for iPhones because of a fire hazard, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada said. The Richfield, Minnesota, company and the CPSC have received about 14 reports of the Rocketfish Model RF-KL12 Mobile Battery Case overheating while charging in the United States, the CPSC said.
The European Commission joined forces with major technology firms including Apple, Facebook and Google to improve the protection of children online. The coalition, which includes 28 companies, will develop an age-based online ratings system and aims to strengthen privacy settings. It also plans by the end of next year to make it easier to report inappropriate content. Other measures include improving parental controls and enhancing cooperation among law enforcement and hotline authorities to remove online material showing sexual abuse.
Cash, credit or a big smile?
We do everything with our smartphones now: reading, writing, photography, music. And, to paraphrase that old American Express commercial, we never leave home without it. But the one smartphone function that hasn’t exactly exploded yet — and really should have already — is paying for things.
The idea of an e-wallet isn’t especially new, but it did take the advent of the iPhone four years ago to bubble up the sort of possibilities that didn’t depend on storing information in a SIM card (which isn’t the prevalent wireless technology in the United States anyway). PayPal pioneered the notion that you could use a pocket electronic device you always carried to pay a restaurant bill or for a latte from Starbucks. (Sure, the device was a Palm Pilot, which means nothing to most 20-somethings. And yes, PayPal in its infinite wisdom stopped the person-to-person payment functionality very early in their history.)
That’s how far we’ve come — and haven’t.
One of the problems about dumping payment and loyalty cards is that the established credit card players are very well entrenched. Part is a visceral reluctance to believe that using your phone to store and convey payment and bank account information is much safer than brandishing plastic cards with an electronic strip.
This year has seen lots of movement in the credit card disruption space and next year significant numbers of people might finally be emptying their wallets and purses of all sorts of payment and loyalty cards.
Google has made a big bet on mobile payments, backing a technology called “Near Field Communication” which, in a nutshell, allows you to pay for something if you (and your phone) are near an NFC reader — no need to fumble for your card. But NFC requires special hardware, and so far there is exactly one Google Wallet phone. But Google purchased Motorola Mobility this year, so look for every Motorola mobile phone to be NFC-enabled.
With the market share for Android-powered mobile devices now exceeding 50 percent, Google is well on its way to creating a perfect storm to collaborate with those entrenched credit card companies — so far, just MasterCard — and make NFC mainstream.
The 1% are fiddling with their smart phones while America collapses.
Microsoft: mobile getting better, no numbers yet
Microsoft made a big deal of the launch of three U.S. phones running its Windows Phone 7.5 software, the latest upgrade to Windows Phone 7, which represents a complete overhaul of the Microsoft mobile phone software. They built a giant model of a phone in Herald Square, New York City and had rappers and dancers performing around it on Monday, while pizza was handed out to bemused onlookers.
Andy Lees, who leads Microsoft’s phone business, was on hand to talk up the software, which he said has been very well received by consumers.
“When people use it they love it,” he told reporters. “We’re definitely on to something.”
But he was very cagey about how many phone sales exactly this translates to, in the first year of the revamped Windows Phone offerings.
“We sold more than Android in its first year,” Lees said, referring to Google’s Android launch in the fall of 2008. Research firm IDC estimated that about 3.6 million Android phones were sold in its first 12 months, starting in the fourth quarter of 2008. It did not give an estimate for Microsoft’s market share in the third quarter of 2011.
Comscore says Microsoft’s share of the U.S. market actually fell by 0.2 percentage points from the second quarter of 2011 to a 5.6 percent share in the third quarter this year, while Google’s share rose by 4.6 percentage points to 44.8 percent. So Microsoft has a long way to go to establish itself as a major player alongside Android and Apple’s iPhone.
You know what they say about manufacturers who show off their big phones…
teeny, itty-bitty subscriber numbers.
