A looking glass into the post-smartphone era
Permit me to not act my age.
I was all grown up already when the Internet became a big deal, scarcely two decades ago. I was like a kid in a candy store. Still, I’ve only had a couple of heart-stopping moments in those 20 years in which everything has changed.
My heart skipped a beat (along with probably only thousands of others) when I downloaded Mosaic, the first Web browser, on the first day it was released. It consistently froze up. But that small, terribly flawed piece of software was really a time portal, showing me the future, and I could barely breathe.
Two years ago I got my hands on the first iPad on the first day it went on sale. My unboxing was unceremonious because I had to rush and show it off during a couple of TV interviews. But when I got home late on that Saturday in April and finally had a chance to put it through its paces, it took my breath away. I was a kid again: full of wonder and utterly immune to negativity.
Call me childish, but I had the same primal reaction to the video, and the reporting of my Wired colleague Steven Levy, on Google’s Project Glass. As Levy writes, Project Glass is “an augmented reality system that will give users the full range of activities performed with a smartphone – without the smartphone. Instead, you wear some sort of geeky prosthetic (one of those pictured is reminiscent of the visor that Geordi La Forge wore on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but Google has also been experimenting with a version that piggybacks on regular spectacles).”
The augmented reality features in Glass aren’t new. Bionic Eye brought AR to the iPhone in 2009: You held up the phone at eye level and nearby points of interest floated through the camera’s lens. Sekai Camera, an augmented reality smartphone app, not only provides a heads-up display of information but also adds a social element. Yelp tossed in Monocle, another augmented reality feature, as an Easter egg in its app. Heck, in December 2009 Wired highlighted the seven best augmented reality apps for iPhone and Android.
Apple iPhone 4S: Believe the hype?
As Apple reports quarterly earnings based largely on the number of iPhones it sold, the honeymoon continues for the lucky millions able to get their hands on the newest 4S model, which was initially criticized for not being new enough. Apple went on to sell 4 million of them in 3 days.
So, after the initial sales storm, is Apple’s iPhone 4S living up to the hype?
First, here’s a graphic on how the baby compares to its older sibling:
Corrected: The graphic, above falsely stated that the iPhone 4S had 1GB of memory. As Ben Pingel pointed out, it actually has 512MB.
After getting some time to play with the Apple iPhone 4S, owners and bloggers are weighing in on its key selling features:
Display:
I think the iPhone 4S has proven it deserves the hype now! I’m a big fan of the iPhone 4S camera. The accessories you can get for it are amazing too. The Olloclip is genius!
Tech wrap: Microsoft’s Office shines, Windows lacks luster
Microsoft reported a greater-than-expected 30 percent increase in fiscal fourth-quarter profit, helped by sales of its Office software, but profit from its core Windows product fell on soft PC sales. Microsoft posted net profit of $5.87 billion, or 69 cents per share, compared with $4.52 billion, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. That easily beat Wall Street’s average estimate of 58 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
“These are great results given a slower PC environment and it highlights how the company has multiple revenue streams. The $17 billion unearned revenue, which is a forward indicator of business, shows they signed a lot of deals this quarter,” said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis.
AT&T posted better-than-expected subscriber growth for the second quarter, pushing its profits and sales past Wall Street estimates despite the loss of exclusive U.S. rights to sell the Apple iPhone.
Nokia’s outlook for its handset business to be profitable in the current quarter brought some relief to its battered share price but analysts doubted it would dispel fears about the future of the onetime cellphone leviathan. Nokia said it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the quarter, falling behind Apple’s 20.3 million iPhones. Its quarterly phone sales volume were down 20 percent from a year ago, missing analysts’ forecasts, at a time when the overall global market grew around 10 percent.
After a brief hiatus and an FBI takedown of several alleged “hacktivists,” two groups that claimed responsibility for a recent wave of cyber vandalism said they are back. A statement was posted online on Thursday jointly by the groups, Anonymous and Lulz Security, after U.S. authorities arrested 16 people earlier this week for several attacks, most prominently Anonymous’ attempt to cripple eBay’s PayPal site after it stopped accepting donations to the WikiLeaks organization.
Groupon’s privacy and data-collection policies came under congressional scrutiny, the latest sign of regulatory pressure on the largest online daily deals company. Representatives Joe Barton and Edward Markey, co-chairmen of the House Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, said they sent a letter on Thursday to Groupon CEO Andrew Mason asking about the company’s new privacy and data collection policy. Groupon unveiled new policies earlier this month in an email to its more than 80 million subscribers. The company said it collects subscribers’ contact details and information on their Groupon transactions, financial accounts, location and relationships and shares that data with merchants in some instances.
RIM’s PlayBook received the green light for use in U.S. federal government agencies, the BlackBerry maker said. It is the first tablet computer to receive Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 certification, RIM said in a statement. FIPS 140-2 is used to judge the security of mobile devices, servers, routers and firewalls, for use by federal agencies such as the FBI. Apple has applied for certification for both the iPhone and the iPad.
Tech wrap: LinkedIn shares skyrocket in debut
LinkedIn made its remarkable debut on the New York Stock Exchange, at times trading more than 171 percent above its IPO price of $45. The stampede to buy the stock had some remembering back to another time when investors also loved tech stock IPOs: the 1990s and the dotcom bubble.
Does the response to LinkedIn suggest investors are in for another bubble that bursts when the fundamentals overtake the hype? Or is it a sign that investors are hungry for any piece of the social media pie and LinkedIn’s happens to be first out of the oven? While Facebook, Groupon, Twitter and Zynga are still expected to go public, LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner cautions that his company’s spectacular debut should not be seen as a proxy for them.
While American social media companies are testing the IPO waters, their European counterparts at Viadao, Mind Candy, Sulake and Telmap are expressing skepticism at the Reuters Global Technology Summit about the sky-high valuations of U.S. start-ups and the potential for another bubble.
Smartphone makers should take heart. Analysts do not think that Google and Apple have a stranglehold on the industry because the owners of other platforms like Windows Phone, webOS, bada and MeeGo have deep pockets.
And good news for those who don’t have room for built-in bookcases. Amazon says it is now selling more digital e-books than print books on its best-selling Kindle e-reader.
Tech wrap: Sony admits PlayStation Network privacy breach
An unauthorized person stole names, addresses and other personal data belonging to about 77 million people who have accounts on Sony’s PlayStation Network, Sony said. The person gained access to people’s names, addresses, email address, birthdates, usernames, passwords, logins, security questions and more, Sony said on its U.S. PlayStation blog.
Amazon.com’s quarterly sales beat expectations but earnings fell steeply as it spent heavily on everything from online multimedia services to its Kindle e-reader. Net income for the world’s largest online retailer was $201 million, down 32.8 percent from $299 million, a year earlier. Revenue was $9.86 billion. “This is another investment year…It’s probably not going to be until Q4 that we see some leverage from that,” Lazard Capital Markets’ Colin Sebastian said.
Facebook began offering users in five U.S. cities Deals coupons, offering discounted prices or access to limited-availability goods. Facebook became the latest Internet heavyweight to jump into the daily deals market pioneered by Groupon. Last week, Google began marketing a new daily deals service called Offers to users in Portland, with plans to expand to San Francisco and New York, and Amazon.com invested $175 million in LivingSocial in December. Facebook will take a cut of each transaction, though declined to say how much.
Google’s Android beat out Apple’s iOS in a Nielsen survey of smartphone operating system market share. In March, 50 percent of smartphone owners who bought one in the past six months said they had chosen an Android device; 25 percent said they bought an iPhone; and 15 percent said they had picked a Blackberry phone. Of current smartphone owners, 37 percent owned an iPhone; 27 percent owned an iPhone; and 22 percent owned a BlackBerry. The numbers mean Apple’s market share is “dead in the water“, writes Business Insider’s Henry Blodget.
Sony launched its first tablet computers in an ambitious attempt to grab the No.2 spot from Samsung in a fast-growing market dominated by Apple’s iPad. Sony is banking on the unusual, off-center design of its “S1″ tablet and access to first generation PlayStation games and other networked content to differentiate its products from the flood of tablets in the market. Sony gave no clues on how much it will charge for its glossy black slate or clamshell tablet.
Zynga poached COO of Electronic Arts John Schappert, sources familiar with the matter said. The social games company, which has enjoyed explosive growth with games such as FarmVille and CityVille, is gaining an executive with deep experience in leading a publicly traded video game company, which could help it gear up for an initial public offering, analysts said.
Verizon iPhone gets dinged by Consumer Reports (Update)
“Antennagate” again?
The reception problem that plagued AT&T’s iPhone 4 last summer is also found on the Verizon version of the iPhone, according to Consumer Reports. The influential nonprofit organization, which publishes guides on everything from cars to TVs, said Friday that holding the Verizon iPhone “in a specific but quite natural way” can cause the phone to drop calls.
Consumer Reports tested the device against five other Verizon smartphones — Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid 2 Global, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally, and Motorola Droid X — and said “the only phones in which the finger contact caused any meaningful decline in performance was the iPhone 4.”
The Verizon iPhone 4 launched earlier this month, but there has been no hue and cry about its reception, as there was with the AT&T device. “There has been no such outpouring of complaints about the Verizon version of the phone,” Consumer Reports noted. However, the tech blogosphere did take note of the problem when the phone went on sale.
Last July, a few weeks after the launch of the iPhone 4 with AT&T, a clearly irked Apple was forced to hold a special press conference to address the issue. Although it denied there was any problem with the phone, Apple gave out free cases — which fix the problem — to anyone who wanted them. The executive in charge of iPhone engineering left Apple weeks after the controversy erupted.
Consumer Reports said because of the reception issue, it will not include the Verizon iPhone in its list of recommended smartphones, despite its high ranking. “The phone performs superbly in most other respects,” the magazine said.
UPDATE: Verizon Wireless says the Verizon iPhone is seeing less than one-half of 1 percent of calls dropped in major cities such as New York and San Francisco: “Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 customers are experiencing stellar network performance.”
I had this problem before too, but since I use the sleeve from GETPOWERPAD this problem has gone, moreover I can charge my iPhone 4 wirelessly!
Verizon’s iPhone antenna ‘death grip’ proof?
On the face of it, the iPhone 4 unveiled by Verizon Wireless on Tuesday is pretty much the same device that AT&T has been selling. It costs the same, and features essentially the same bells and whistles — with the nice addition of a personal Wi-Fi hotspot, that allows up to five other devices to share its wireless signal.
But the blogosphere quickly picked up on one intriguing change in Verizon’s iPhone: the all-important antenna, which wraps around the device. You can see some pics from Gizmodo here, highlighting the differences between iPhones offered by Verizon and AT&T.
You will recall that the antenna for AT&T’s iPhone was the source of quite the uproar last summer, when some users complained of poor reception and dropped calls when holding the device a certain way. The issue unexpectedly snowballed, giving rise to such memorable phrases as “Antennagate” and “iPhone 4 death grip.” Of course, none of it seemed to dent iPhone sales.
Last July, weeks after Apple rolled out the iPhone 4 for AT&T, the company was forced to hold a press conference to address the issue. Apple ended up offering free cases to users, but a defiant Steve Jobs maintained that the issue had been blown out of proportion and rejected any suggestion that the design was flawed. But the executive in charge of iPhone engineering left the company weeks after the controversy erupted.
In a statement on Tuesday, Apple acknowledged that the antenna design on the Verizon iPhone 4 is different. Although it declined to provide any details or specifics, the company said the antenna was built to work on Verizon’s network, which uses different technology than AT&T’s: “iPhone 4 has a great antenna that allows it to have an amazingly thin design, great battery life and reception. We designed the iPhone 4 external antenna to work great on Verizon’s CDMA/EVDO network.”
Bloggers were quick to begin testing the reception of the Verizon iPhone, mimicking the famous “death grip.” But so far, there have been no reports of problems. The true tests begin Feb. 10, when the device goes on sale.
(Photo: Reuters / Apple COO Tim Cook (l), Verizon Wireless COO Lowel McAdam (r))
VZW uses CDMA which operates differently and in a different frequency band than the GSM technology ATT uses.
GlobalMedia-Gaming giants differ on mobile, social games
Much of the buzz in gaming these days revolves around two small but fast-growing areas: social games and mobile ones played on smartphones. But two titans of the video game industry have decidedly different takes on those markets.
There are already tens of thousands of game apps available for the iPhone and competing Android smartphones, and tens of millions of people playing free games on Facebook.
Still, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick (pictured) sounded less than enthusiastic about those markets when he spoke to the Reuters Global Media Summit in New York on Tuesday. And that represented a stark contrast from what Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said just a day earlier
Kotick on apps: “We don’t view the App Store as a really big opportunity for dedicated games.”
On tablets: “I think it is a different device than a mobile device, but from a gaming perspective it is probably not a big opportunity for us just yet.”
On social: “I don’t think there is any question that people are playing Facebook games. The hours speak for themselves. But monetizing those hours is very different than just serving up free games… I think you will see a lot of investment there, continued investment there. But that is different. There is a different question, assessing it as a business opportunity. I think right now we don’t see an opportunity for us to participate in that market.”
Contrast that with the words of Riccitiello, who spent plenty of time in his summit appearance making the case that the future of gaming — the expansion of the customer base — would be fueled in part by mobile and social.
Facebook Mobile Event on Nov 3: Is this the secret Facebook Phone?
Here’s something to keep the rumor mills churning through the weekend.
Facebook has just sent out an invite to the media for a “mobile event” at its Palo Alto, California headquarters on Wednesday November 3.
Could this be the unveiling of the much-speculated about Facebook phone? You may recall that technology blog TechCrunch reported last month that Facebook was secretly developing a special smartphone.
Facebook then issued a carefully-worded response that said the company was not “building” a phone, but that it had projects focused on “deeper integrations with some manufacturers.”
The response was reminiscent of the tack taken by Google <GOOG.O> last year when rumors were rampant that it was about to release a smartphone. In January, of course, Google began to sell the Nexus One phone, which it developed alongside handset vendor HTC, on its website.
The Facebook invite provides no details whatsoever other than to say that the event begins at 10:30 am on November 3 and will be followed by lunch.
But the invitation sports an image of two shaded figures alongside what appears to be the old string-and-Dixie-cup phones that kids in treehouses have long used to communicate. One hopes the actual Facebook phone, if there is one, is slightly more high-tech.
No facebook phone but making all phones more social is a good look, good on facebook for being a team player
Will Blackberry “Torch” catch fire?
The makers of the Blackberry, Research In Motion, unveiled a new version of the smartphone with a touchscreen and slideout keyboard, which is aimed squarely at the iPhone. It runs on AT&T’s network and is called “Torch” –but will it catch fire in world of popular consumer gadgets?
The event occurred as attendees and analysts also wondered how Research in Motion would respond to questions about the security of its messaging system.
Check out the live blog that we conducted during the Blackberry event — with a little help from our friends using Twitter — with lots of opinions and fact about the new product.
