Shadowing a fund manager at CES
More than 140,000 people descended (or will descend) on Las Vegas this week to kick the tires on a new wave of consumer electronics gadgets. Of those, a relatively small contingent (estimared? 3,500) are portfolio managers and other financial professionals earnestly seeking to place informed bets on the Next Big Thing.
We tagged along as Hampton Adams, head of research and a portfolio manager at Pasadena, California-based Gamble Jones Investment Counsel, hiked around a CES showfloor spanning 30 football fields in a pair of comfortable loafers, taking a first-hand peek at the technology industry’s latest offerings.
Inevitably, Apple always features high on Adams’ agenda even though the consumer electronics trendsetter isn’t even officially there. He wants to see what might be gleaned about Apple from its competitors.
Here’s a photo log of some of the highlights of our nine-hour odyssey. We’ll publish more details of his discoveries on Reuters.com.
Chipmakers most creative, drugmakers least?
Chipmakers including Intel and Qualcomm make up the world’s most innovative industry, according to a new analysis of patents by Thomson Reuters that is equally notable for some of the companies it does not include.
Thomson Reuters has just released its “Top 100 Global Innovators” list, which it compiled by scrutinizing patent data around the world using a peer-review methodology it developed.
“We tried to take an objective look at technology innovation and apply a composite measure not just of volumes, but also of influence in terms of citations of later published patents, in terms of globalization of patenting,” says Bob Stembridge, the lead analyst behind the study.
Other companies related to semiconductors on the list include Samsung, Analog Devices, SanDisk and Applied Materials, which invents and builds the equipment used to manufacture chips.
But a handful of companies currently seen as leading players in the chip industry are missing from the list.
Britain’s ARM Holdings, whose intellectual property has taken the tablet and smartphone industry by storm in the past few years, was absent from the compilation.
Also missing was Texas Instruments, the world’s No. 3 chipmaker and leader in analog semiconductors.
Tech wrap: Companies continue patent buys
Tech giants continued attempts to shore up their patent portfolios continued on Wednesday, with InterDigital being targeted by Apple, Nokia and Qualcomm.
Bidders have been eager to get their hands on InterDigital”s 8,800 patents — including crucial 3G and 4G/LTE patents to strengthen operating software for smartphones.
Key potential bidder Google, who earlier this week acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion, has not formally withdrawn from the auction but it is unclear whether they will bid for the company.
In related news the head of Google’s rival Nokia warned that phone makers depending on Android software should worry about the Web search leader’s deal to buy Motorola Mobility.
Analyst concern about whether Motorola will get preferential treatment over rivals Samsung and HTC are justified said Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop.
Finally, want to buy a tablet but don’t want to break the bank doing it? Beetel Teletech has launched a 7-inch tablet priced at $220. The Beetel Magiq runs on Google’s Android operating system and supports both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, Beetel said in a statement.
Tech wrap: Biggest series of cyber attacks exposed
Security company McAfee uncovered the biggest-ever series of attacks on the networks of 72 organizations including the U.N., governments and companies around the world and claimed there was one “state actor” behind them but declined to name it. One security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.
Some of the victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the U.S. and Canada; the International Olympic Committee; the World Anti-Doping Agency; and various companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.
RIM unveiled two new versions of its touchscreen BlackBerry Torch, including an all-touch model. The three touchscreen phones, running on the new BlackBerry OS 7, boast improved screen displays and pack a 1.2 GHz processor from Qualcomm, the most powerful ever for a BlackBerry phone. They also have a dedicated graphics processor that should make video and gaming sharper and more responsive. The browser is 40 percent faster than the original Torch, RIM’s last major phone launch, which hit shelves almost a year ago. All three devices will be launched by carriers around the world by the end of August, RIM said. The slider Torch will be exclusive to AT&T in the United States, the carrier said.
Initial impressions of RIM’s new smartphones vary. Engadget’s Sharif Sakr says the typing on the Torch 9810 is akin to the good old days with Bold 9700 but browsing is a mixed-bag. Electricpig’s Ben Sillis says sliding around the badly designed home screen of the Torch 9810 is nippy and the phone is “ugly as sin”.
Apple’s South Korean unit was fined 3 million won ($2,855) by the country’s communications regulator after the iPhone and iPad maker collected location data from users without proper authorization. The fine, though small, marks the first time Apple has been punished by a regulator over the controversial location data collection which has sparked criticism in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Mobile developers more than ever want to devote their energies to writing apps for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms at the expense of their less popular rivals, a study showed. Apple and Google are likely to gain even more traction thanks to game-changing new services, according to the survey from research firm IDC and Appcelerator, a company that works with app developers. Google recently introduced its social network Google+ and Apple is building momentum for its iCloud storage service.
The number of respondents who said they were very interested in developing for each platform was little changed from last quarter, with iPhone at 91 percent and iPad at 88 percent. Android for phones rose slightly to 87 percent and Android for tablets recovered to 74 percent. Interest in specific platforms drops off sharply after that, with 30 percent very interested in Windows Phone, 28 percent for BlackBerry phones and 20 percent for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, 18 percent for HP’s webOS-based TouchPad and 12 percent for its phones.
The IDC “study” had 216 developers. Quite a sample size.
And they gave the same weights to developers of apps with 100 downloads a months had the same weight as developers with 10K downloads per month. Uncool.
CES: HP demos Android smartbook
The nascent smartbook market got a big nudge forward on Friday, courtesy of Hewlett-Packard, the world’s biggest personal computer maker.
Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s PC division, turned up on stage at the Consumer Electronics Show during a keynote address by Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs to demo a device based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chip and running Google’s mobile Android software.
There was no formal product unveiling, but HP showed off a smartbook with multitouch capability, and Bradley spoke with apparent interest on the category, which is just beginning to build steam.
“We’re not going to make any announcement today but you know how interested and focused and frankly committed we are to this space,” Bradley said.
Smartbooks run on low-power ARM-based processors like Snapdragon or Nvidia’s Tegra, as opposed to netbooks, which run on Intel’s x86-based Atom platform.
There was certainly some buzz around smartbooks at CES, following the unveiling of Lenovo’s innovative Skylight device, and its IdeaPad U1 (which also run on Snapdragon.) Nvidia showed off a number of prototype mobile computing devices, but made no formal announcements about any products, as some had anticipated.
Intel likely isn’t sweating just yet; its dominance of the traditional PC CPU market isn’t under imminent threat. It remains to be seen how consumers will react to the smartbook phenomenon. The battery-friendly devices offer less processing power than Atom, but plenty of juice to do things most folks want to do, like surf the Web and watch movies.
ARM Holdings is a rising star in the field of Micro Processors to power the Mobile Internet Device. ARM have an advantage over it competitors such as AMD and Intel. ARM only design it the processors and the license the technologies to host of other vendors, such as ST Micro Electronics, Toshiba, Nokia, Apple, Nvida and to many, many more companies. The list can really go on and on.
Source:
http://www.contract-mobile-phones.org
Las Vegas telecoms show fizzles out
The CTIA’s annual U.S. wireless technology showcase in Las Vegas was quieter than usual this year as vendors sent fewer employees and rented less floor space for their booths in an effort to crimp spending due to the recession.
Aside from a lot of talk about cellphone applications and a software store launch from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, the show offered few surprises.
A handful of operators and vendors, however, offered insights into their technology strategies — even if they were less than keen to indicate how their businesses were faring exactly. Some even launched new gadgets. AT&T, the exclusive operator for the iPhone, used the show as an opportunity to talk up application sales for its less fancy phones, which have brought it $1 billion in revenue in the last few years. In comparison, it does not get a revenue share for iPhone apps, which kicked of the craze for application stores when they launched last year.
However, the carrier noted that its more traditional phones are a much bigger business than high-profile, advanced devices like iPhone.
“About 25 percent of our portfolio is smartphones. That means that 75 percent of them are not,” AT&T chief marketing officer David Christoper told reporters at a lunch on the sidelines of the show on Thursday. AT&T, behind only Verizon in subscriber numbers, also talked about the need to offer new pricing options for mobile data in future. It is expected to be a year or more behind Verizon Wireless in upgrading its network to a high-speed technology known as “long term evolution”.
But when it does, likely in 2011, it expects to cut data access fees and stop charging for phone calls by the minute. Instead it may charge data access fees based on how much netwok capacity a customer uses up.
“It will be an environment where people buy the amount of data they need,” Ralph de la Vega, the head of AT&T’s mobility business, told reporters. “We’ll be able to sell them a lot more data than we do today for a lower price.”
Great article on CTIA. I wish you would have mentioned Zer01 Mobile http://www.zer01mobile.com/ because their new cellular offering has the potential to completely change the way we think about cellular phone calls.
First, you can use most any GSM handset you like – including those really cool handsets that are not currently available in the US.
Second, the pricing is just right. No monthly contract. Unlimited calling, texting, email, web, etc, for $69.95 per month and that INCLUDES ALL TAXES.
Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc will all be forced to change their business model if Zer01 is successful.
