HP Adopts Android For Upcoming Mobile Devices

HP To Adopt Android For Upcoming Mobile Devices – ReadWrite: " . . . It’s unclear how many mobile OSes HP will support going forward, but the news that it is going down the Android path is a significant win for Google. Android has been slowly evolving towards the desktop PC market, and HP could be the partner that helps Google turn the corner in that area. “HP supporting Android at this point in time is deeply strategic,” said Ben Bajarin, Principal analyst covering consumer market intelligence and trends for Creative Strategies, Inc. “As any vendor who has history in the PC industry knows, it can be rough when you are completely dependent on only one OS platform provider.” “It worked out well during the PC growth period because Windows was the standard computing platform. That is no longer the case when it comes to mobile computing where Android is the leading licensable mobile OS platform,” said Bajarin. “The reality is that if HP, or any vendor for that matter, wants to have a relevant tablet / mobile strategy, it has to include Android.”. . . "

No Plan B for Microsoft's mobile ambitions: CFO | Reuters: " . . . Given Microsoft's lack of success so far, he was asked if there was an alternative strategy or 'Plan B' in reserve. "It's less 'Plan B' than how you execute on the current plan," said Klein. "We aim to evolve this generation of Windows to make sure we have the right set of experiences at the right price points for all customers." Microsoft now has two versions of its own brand Surface tablet for sale and released its newest Windows phone software last year. But the company has not made big inroads into either market. Gartner estimates that Microsoft sold fewer than 900,000 Surface tablets in the fourth quarter, which is a fraction of the 23 million iPads sold by Apple. Microsoft has not released its own figures but has not disputed Gartner's. Windows phones now account for 3 percent of the global smartphone market, Gartner says, which is almost double their share a year ago but way behind Google's Android with 70 percent and Apple with 21 percent. . . . "

Android phones are connecting without carrier networks: " . . . A new prototype backup network connects Android phones through a mesh network established with the phones' Wi-Fi chips, which can come in handy during emergency situations . . . While the cellphone network in Haiti survived the devastating earthquake in 2010, the added load of international aid workers who arrived in the aftermath caused it to crash. Josh Thomas and Jeff Robble, both working at Mitre, saw this problem and created a working prototype backup network using only the Wi-Fi chips on Android smartphones. This capability won’t be shipped on new mobile phones anytime soon, but it is a really interesting open innovation project to understand and follow, and for some an Android project to which they might contribute. . . . The Smart Phone Ad-Hoc Networks (SPAN) project reconfigures the onboard Wi-Fi chip of a smartphone to act as a Wi-Fi router with other nearby similarly configured smartphones, creating an ad-hoc mesh network. These smartphones can then communicate with one another without an operational carrier network. . . ."

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Skype calls are one-third of global phone traffic

Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic | Ars Technica: " . . . new data, released Wednesday, shows that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes.” At the same time, “cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.”. . . “International providers have to rely on steady growth rates to maintain revenues,” Stephan Beckert, an analyst at TeleGeography, told Ars. “What we've seen is a slowdown in growth rates and some is due to economic trends.” But, he underscored, Skype and other similar “over-the-top” apps and services like Viber, Whatsapp, Google Voice, and many others are really putting pressure on traditional telcos. . . . "

Transition From Windows Messenger to Skype Begins April 8 | News & Opinion | PCMag.com: "The update will start with English speakers and finish with Brazilian Portuguese users on April 30 or later, the company said. It does not affect those in mainland China, where Messenger will continue to be available. Microsoft first announced plans to ditch Messenger in favor of Skype in November. By last month, it reportedly notified customers that the 12-year-old service was officially going away on March 15. But ZDNet said that will only cover a test group for about 1 percent of users. The rest must wait until April."

Microsoft mangles Office 2013 licensing | Office software - InfoWorld: "This week I've faced an avalanche of mail about Office 2013 and, in particular, how it differs from Office 365. The licensing details are a bit hard to swallow, but once you see where Microsoft's headed, they're pretty straightforward. More accurately, they're straightforward if you don't read, or don't believe, Microsoft's own misleading and demonstrably inaccurate posts on the topic. At a very high level, the key difference between Office 365 Home Premium and Office 2013 is rent vs. buy."


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Microsoft Surface Pro tablet disappointing

Wolverton: Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet is a pricey disappointment - SiliconValley.com: "For those eager to embrace the tablet era but who need to keep a foot in the PC past, Microsoft's new Surface Windows 8 Pro would seem to be the perfect device. It's a tablet that runs a full version of the latest Microsoft Windows operating system. It has a touch screen that takes advantage of Windows' new tile-based interface and can run the new touch-centric Windows apps. And it also has a version of the traditional Windows desktop interface and can run all your old Windows programs. But instead of being the ideal computer for the post-PC era, the Surface Pro is a pricey, unsatisfactory gadget that's not well suited for any of its potential uses."

Has Apple redefined the tablet as an 8-inch device? | ZDNet: " . . . If the iPad Mini is selling really well, it may have redefined the "natural" size of a domestic-use tablet as being a smaller device. Apple might have validated the previous decisions by Google to make the Nexus 7 small, and Amazon in making the Kindle Fire tablets small, even though I suspect those previous decisions had more to with the bill of materials than any sense as to the desires of the customer. Microsoft may have a problem here. The smallest Windows 8 or Windows RT tablet that you can buy is "big tablet"-sized and no one is making a small Windows 8 tablet. The problem with Microsoft's positioning of Windows in a post-PC world is its (understandable) obsession with Office and with keyboards. This makes life really difficult for an OEM trying to make a small tablet, as you'd need to make a very small keyboard to go with it. You're then looking at something more like the now relatively-ancient Toshiba Libretto, which might be a tough sell as today, that looks an awful lot like a netbook. Unless one of the OEMs does something amazingly bold, Windows tablets look like they're stuck in a 10-inch or greater world. That would mean that Microsoft has managed to accidentally entirely miss what seems like an obvious and logically-defensible market shift to smaller tablets in the domestic-use space. Fingers crossed for a "Surface Mini.". . . "

Millions Improperly Claimed U.S. Phone Subsidies - WSJ.com: " . . . The Lifeline program—begun in 1984 to ensure that poor people aren't cut off from jobs, families and emergency services—is funded by charges that appear on the monthly bills of every landline and wireless-phone customer. Payouts under the program have shot up from $819 million in 2008, as more wireless carriers have persuaded regulators to let them offer the service. Suspecting that many of the new subscribers were ineligible, the Federal Communications Commission tightened the rules last year and required carriers to verify that existing subscribers were eligible. The agency estimated 15% of users would be weeded out, but far more were dropped. A review of five top recipients of Lifeline support conducted by the FCC for the Journal showed that 41% of their more than six million subscribers either couldn't demonstrate their eligibility or didn't respond to requests for certification. . . . "


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English village does high-speed internet itself (video)

Rural Lancashire shows the way to do it - Arkholme does it itself, lead by Barry Forde.
See http://b4rn.org.uk/ for inspiration.

DIY Broadband Comes To The English Countryside
NPR (blog)
In a fast-moving world, people from all over have demanded faster Internet speeds. But when you live out in the middle of nowhere, you can feel like you're in the Internet slow lane because broadbandjust isn't available. Residents of England's rural ...

A cheap Android phone is now a good phone. Your move, Apple... | ZDNet: " . . . A key part of the "third platform" problem is that the remaining market that these two can move into is already small. In the US in the last quarter of 2012, Android and iOS together had 95 percent of the market. Therefore, both Microsoft and BlackBerry have to fight to get a wedge into that slot and then make it bigger. This means taking proportional market share from either Android or iOS. It's easy to attack Apple on price, but attacking Android on utility could be very difficult. The answer to both the Android problem and the upstarts weedling in to create a third-platform problem from Apple's perspective could be to deliver a cheaper iPhone. That's a scenario so explosive you could describe it as nuclear. But it's now one that I'm considering as being "likely". The iPhone needs a reboot -- cheaper, a more modern look (iPhone is having a fashion problem), and with a bigger screen. And this isn't just about smartphones. . . . "

Ubuntu Phone, Tizen, Firefox OS: The mobile battle for fifth | TechRepublic: "Let’s not pretend that any other OS is going to catch iOS or Android any time soon, but if any one of Firefox, Tizen, or Ubuntu can gain a few market usage percentage points and if a couple of developers are successful enough that they can talk about how they can make a living off of the platform, then those OS ecosystems are viable. It may not be the rivers of gold that the iTunes store is painted as, but it’ll be enough. What I find interesting is the approach that each of the OSes have taken towards developers in their application language selection — choosing the web over a mature, strongly-typed language. Firefox will run apps built in HTML5 and use JavaScript to communicate with the hardware; Ubuntu will have its native applications built in Qt, but HTML5 apps will also have the ability to access the system’s features and be treated as a first-class application; and Tizen is also targeting developers that are familiar with a HTML5 toolkit."

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Psychology of an Internet Troll

The Psychology of an Internet Troll | Visual.ly
By NowSourcing
This infographic provides a deeper look into the psychology of internet trolls.
Visual.ly

The Wild West of the Internet - TED Blog
By tedblogguest
By Shyam Sankar and Gabe Rosen. The Internet is the new Wild West, a frontier big enough for every pioneer and outlaw to roam free. Today, The New York Times revealed that hackers in China had spent the last four months infiltrating its ...
TED Blog

Guy Eymin Petot Tourtollet's Wi-Fi-Blocking Wallpaper
Businessweek
Now Guy Eymin Petot Tourtollet, 46, scientific director of the French pulp and paper research institute Centre Technique du Papier, has invented a snowflake-patterned wallpaper that blocks Wi-Fisignals, while still allowing FM radio and emergency ...

BT upbeat on high-speed broadband
Financial Times
Shares in BT closed on Friday up 6.5 per cent at 265p, only slightly less than an intraday peak of 268p, on the back of better than expected underlying third-quarter profit and an upbeat assessment of the rollout of retail broadband business. A ...

Britain is 'broadband leader' thanks to BT cash, boss Ian Livingston claims
Telegraph.co.uk
BT's pre-tax profits fell 4pc to £628m in the final three months of 2012, as the number of customers using its landline telephone services dipped below 10m for the first time. However, the rapid uptake of its broadband fuelled a 7pc jump in its ...

Telegraph.co.uk

The Internet of 2012 Summed Up in One Eye-Pleasing Image
Mashable
Digital communications agency SYZYGY commissioned Parisian illustrated Niark1 to bring together 20 of the Internet's biggest moments of 2012 in a single picture. Rather than flex our web culture-packed noggins, we'll challenge you to identify all 20 of ...

BT buoyed by broadband success
The Guardian
The company connected 281,000 homes to the internet over both fibre and copperbroadband during that period, bringing the total to 17.4m. Combined with the 4.3m premises served by Virgin Media's cable network, 75% of the UK's estimated 29m homes ...

The Guardian

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Going BlackBerry? What You Will Lose

BlackBerry 10: Right For You? - Mobility - Smartphones -: " . . . If you're coming from Android, you're going to lose device choice. True, the Z10 and Q10 offer a small selection, but Android wins hands-down when it comes to the variety of form factors. Android devices are big and small, cheap and expensive, rugged and high class. You're going to lose access to apps. You're also going to lose access to Google's services. Yes, BB10 supports Gmail and Google Contacts and Calendar, but that's it. No Google+, no Google Maps, no Google Drive, no Google Docs, no Google Voice, no Google Search / Google Now. Some Google services, such as Talk and YouTube, have been ported thanks to BlackBerry, but the vast majority aren't there. If your business has "gone Google," switching to BB10 simply doesn't make sense. If you're coming from iOS, you're losing access to 800,000 apps. BlackBerry World has about 70,000, many of which are ported Android apps. The selection just isn't there, yet. You're also losing access to many of the same Google services that are available to Android. You're losing access to an incredible array of accessories. Devices such as the iPhone have more accessories available than any other device on the market. Being so new, BB10 does not yet have such accessories, and there's no telling if, or when, it will catch up. . . . "

Android and iOS “duopoly” monopolizes 92% of global smartphones in Q4 - SlashGear: "In Q4 specifically, Apple had 22-percent of the smartphone OS marketshare, though that was down 2-percent from the same period a year ago. Still, iOS was up 29-percent annually, having shipped nearly 50m smartphones worldwide. Android, in contrast, rose from 51-percent marketshare in Q4 2011, to 70-percent in Q4 2012."

What Softbank Buying Sprint Means To You | News & Opinion | PCMag.com: "The merger has to clear the U.S. government, but regulators won't care. As this doesn't eliminate any U.S. companies, there's no competitive effect, and U.S. politicians aren't paranoid about Japanese control the way they are about Chinese firms. (That's a real change - anyone remember the 1980s?) Softbank may be a UMTS carrier, but Sprint will not switch to GSM/UMTS. That makes no sense from a cost perspective. Rather, Sprint will do what everyone else is doing - try to roll out LTE as quickly as possible with the aim of becoming an all-LTE carrier by 2017 or so."

The Internet Is A 21st Century Utility And We Deserve Better - Forbes: "According to the latest State of the Internet report from Akamai Technologies, the U.S. ranks 9th in the world for connection speed with an average of 7.2 Mbps. That means the U.S. just needs to double its average speed to get close to South Korea at 14.7 Mbps. You might think that the 7.2 Mbps sounds pretty good, but remember that this is an average, not a baseline."

Watch Out Nokia And Blackberry, Here Comes Huawei - Forbes: "Not only will Nokia, Research in Motion and others have to contend Google/Motorola and HTC as well as Sony (SNE), Apple and Samsung vying for market share but two new players gaining traction according to IDC could pressure margins even further. Those two players are Huawei and ZTE, which took the #3 and #5 spot for 4Q 2012 smartphone shipments. While those two companies had respective market shares of 4.9% and 4.3% in the quarter, they were ahead of HTC, LG, Nokia, Research in Motion and a host of others. While Nokia, HTC and RIM shipped the third, fourth and fifth most smartphones during all of 2012, those three companies were absent from the top five for 4Q 2012. "

Report: Amazon dominates Android tablets, US-based Kindle Fires alone are 33% of global devices - The Next Web: "Research from mobile app analytics service Localytics which goes live tomorrow shows that the Kindle Fire is by far and away the most owned Android tablet on the planet. The company estimates that the number of Amazon Fire devices in the US alone represents 33 percent of all Android tablets worldwide — while the US itself is the world’s biggest tablet market with a 59 percent market share."

Guy Eymin Petot Tourtollet's Wi-Fi-Blocking Wallpaper
Businessweek
Now Guy Eymin Petot Tourtollet, 46, scientific director of the French pulp and paper research institute Centre Technique du Papier, has invented a snowflake-patterned wallpaper that blocks Wi-Fisignals, while still allowing FM radio and emergency ...

Bring Your Own Hassles -- How to manage the explosion of employee-owned devices | MoFo Tech - JDSupra: "Make it easy: “Don’t make it too difficult for employees to comply with the rules, or they’ll actively try to circumvent them,” advises Christine Lyon, a Palo Alto, California-based Morrison & Foerster partner who focuses on privacy and employment law. Train, train, train: “You need to create a culture in which everyone understands it’s in both the individual’s and the institution’s best interest not to have a data breach,” says Daniel Westman, managing partner of Morrison & Foerster’s Northern Virginia Office. "

TeleGeography's gorgeous map of the global Internet.: "At first glance, the lines appear to mirror long-proven global trade routes, with major hubs in global capitals like New York, Amsterdam, and Mumbai. But Mauldin notes that there have been no new cables across the Atlantic since 2003. The growth today is in historically under-served regions like Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Nor are all the hubs located in the big cities you’d expect. That phalanx of cables converging on Brazil, for instance, lands not in Sao Paolo or Rio de Janeiro but Fortaleza, simply because it’s an easier hop from the Northern Hemisphere. Another surprisingly popular destination is Djibouti, whose appeal becomes more clear when you consider the relative business-friendliness of its neighbors at the mouth of the Red Sea: Somalia, Eritrea, Yemen."

Submarine Cable Map 2013

Unlocking Smartphones Rendered Illegal by Librarian's Baffling Decision: "So why has the Librarian of Congress made this rather inconsistent ruling on unlocked phones? The way the LoC reads the DMCA, unlocking the phone circumvents the technological protection of the software in the device. How this came to be interpreted this way is a mystery, since the only purpose for unlocking a phone is to change carriers, not to steal the software. What’s even more of a mystery, given the reasoning of the LoC is that jail breaking is OK, even though that effectively unlocks the phone. But perhaps the most mysterious of all is how the DMCA came to be applied to phone unlocking. Or at least it’s a mystery until you realize that the major carriers have been lobbying the Librarian of Congress for years. The bottom line for all of this is that basically very little has changed for individual owners of mobile phones. . . . "

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Must-Have Android Tablet Apps

Must-Have Android Tablet Apps - Houston Chronicle: "Snapseed Snapseed is one of the few photo manipulation applications worth taking a look at on the Google Play Store. Snapseed is not just an app where the user simply pops some clipart on the top layer of an image. Instead, the app allows users to adjust image brightness, contrast, saturation and exposure along with other numerous features. Snapseed also lets Android tablets grab photos not just from the device, but also from places like Dropbox. DroidEdit DroidEdit is a text editor for Android-based tablets and is one of the most flexible of the bunch so far.  . . ." Read more at link above.

Hands on with Google's new Chrome message center | Computerworld Blogs: "The tech world's been a-buzzin' this week with word of a new Chrome-based message center from Google. Signs of the system first showed up in a Chrome OS screenshot captured by developer François Beaufort and shared on Google+. I've had a chance to play with the system on a Chrome OS device via a demo app built by Google for internal testing. The app -- the same that Beaufort showed in his original screenshots -- also works on traditional PC-based installations of the Chrome browser."

Google's Eric Schmidt: drone wars, virtual kidnaps and privacy for kids | Technology | guardian.co.uk: "In Afghanistan's Helmand province, he said, he had come across the example of two towns that the Taliban had invaded: in one they took the population's mobile phones away, and in the other they didn't. The population revolted against the invaders who took away their phones. "Saddam [Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator] didn't allow mobile phones at all," he noted. He said that the arrival of the internet was always beneficial: "There's no country where the situation has worsened with the arrival of the internet. Citizens can use their mobile phones to raise the cost of corruption. And even in China, the regime can be shamed – when there was a train crash recently the government tried to hush it up, but people began posting pictures on [the Twitter-like chat service] Weibo, and the story got out."

Sprint's coming identity shift offers hope | Mobile - CNET News: "Once Sprint merges with a holding company formed by SoftBank, the resulting company will be known only as Sprint, finally dropping the Nextel name that has hung around the business like a stench that just wouldn't go away. The Sprint Nextel name was part of the merger of equals that combined the two wireless companies -- now regarded as one of the worst deals in the history of the industry. Right off the bat, the executives at the time demonstrated a lack of focus and execution in running the networks, allowing the once-vaunted Nextel service to deteriorate and spur an exodus "

OpenSignal app review - Telegraph: "Free; Android and iOS(coming soon) OpenSignal is a simple concept – in short it lets you see where your mobile signal is coming from and aims to quantify its quality. If you’re in an areas where signal could be better, it provides a quick and simple way to refresh your phone’s connection and then reconnect to what will hopefully be a stronger connection."

http://opensignal.com/

BT finally provides truly unlimited broadband | Which? Conversation: "As of today, BT has followed in the footsteps of Sky and removed its fair usage policy, which it used to apply to its ‘unlimited’ broadband services. This usage policy allowed BT to restrict broadband access or slow it down for those download-happy customers who were making the most of the package they had paid for. For those among you who subscribe to BT Unlimited Broadband, Unlimited Broadband Extra, Unlimited BT Infinity 1, Unlimited BT Infinity 2 or BT Total Broadband Option 3 – ‘unlimited’ will finally mean unlimited."

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BlackBerry and Nokia - collapse and stagnation

BlackBerry, Nokia: Recovering or collapsing? By the numbers | ZDNet:The pattern is clear: " . . . BlackBerry smartphone shipments are going down significantly quarter-on-quarter. BlackBerry has cumulatively shipped, in the nearly two years the device has been on sale, around 1.49 million PlayBook tablets. By comparison, even in Apple's worst iPad selling quarter—the third quarter of 2010—the Cupertino, Calif.-based company sold double that with 3.27 million iPads. And that's just in one quarter alone, and the first quarter the iPad was on sale, where nobody knew if they should buy one or not. Nokia is a tale of two fronts: a smartphone unit—which includes the Windows Phone-powered Lumia range, but is not limited to it—and a feature phone unit, that is slowly being wound down. Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumia smartphones during the fourth-quarter of 2012, at the last earnings report. Compare this to previous quarters and Lumia sales figures remain stagnant at best. Nokia sold 4 million Lumia smartphonesduring the second-quarter of 2012, and a meager 2.9 million Lumia smartphones during the third-quarter. What's likely going to happen is that Lumia and other 'smart device' sales will remain flat or slightly above or below by a few percent quarter-on-quarter, while at the same time feature phones that sit close to smartphone 'status' will continue to dwindle, particularly in emerging markets. By comparison, according to Strategy Analytics, Samsung sold 55 million smartphones during its third quarter. Apple sold 26.9 million iPhones during its fourth quarter. . . . "

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple opinion and news | The Loop: "BlackBerry also announced that Alicia Keys would be the new Global Creative Director. A celebrity endorsement is not what people want, they want a better product. The new BlackBerry received an average response from media, some early reviews were just bad. BlackBerry needed to give users a reason to switch back from the iPhone or Samsung product they currently own — they didn’t do that. At most, they may have caught up to where everyone else already is, but they needed to do more if they planned to get back all of those customers."

Home Depot abandoning BlackBerry platform in favor of Apple's iPhone and iOS: "People familiar with the big-box retailer's plans said the company has already begun the process of abandoning the Blackberry platform for Apple's iOS, specifically for store managers and all corporate level employees. A representative for the home improvement chain confirmed the news to AppleInsider, saying the move will displace roughly 10,000 Blackberry smartphones. "We are replacing our current base of BlackBerry technology with iPhones," the representative said, clarifying that the move applies only to store managers, district managers, other corporate-level staffers, and field ops."

End of XP support: Why so many CIOs are still not ready | TechRepublic: "The reason for the inertia in preparing for the end of support for the OS is attributed to a lack of a business case, which was cited as the key barrier by 79 per cent of the XP organisations polled. The legacy software infrastructure of XP includes a number of business-critical applications, some of which the IT department may not even be aware of, and other programs that are seen as too costly to migrate, according to Avanade."

Comcast, Verizon Wireless, and Time Warner Cable. When Will the Rest of Us Get Google’s Gigabit-per-Second Service? | MIT Technology Review: " . . . a Google spokeswoman says the company “expects to operate profitably” and that Google Fiber is neither a loss leader nor a PR stunt. If that’s true, then why isn’t it being made available everywhere? The answer is that there are no compelling business incentives for the established players, says Blair Levin, a former U.S. Federal Communications Commission chief of staff, who helped write the National Broadband Plan and is now executive director of Gig.U, a consortium of universities trying to deploy very fast networks in local neighborhoods. In parts of the country, slower-speed copper, fast-download cable, and a few fiber networks are already built out. The cable distribution giants like Time Warner Cable and Comcast are already making a 97 percent margin on their “almost comically profitable” Internet services, according to Craig Moffet, an analyst at the Wall Street firm Bernstein Research. As Levin points out, “If you are making that kind of margin, it’s hard to improve it.” And most Americans have no choice but to deal with their local cable company. . . . "

The (Not So) Evil Strategy Behind Everything Google - Forbes: "Perhaps the most ambitious way that Google is making the experience of the internet faster is its ambitious Fiber program that it has rolled out in the Kansas City area. For a one-time fee of $300, customers can get free internet at acceptable current speeds (5GB down, 1 GB up) for a guarantee of seven years. The real action happens at $70 a month for gigabit internet and $120 a month for gigabit internet (“a connection speed 100 times faster than today’s broadband,” according to the website) plus about 200 TV channels."

OSX bug--rdar://13128709: OSX apps (TextEdit) crashing in spell-checker (I think).: "Community bug reports OSX apps (TextEdit) crashing in spell-checker . . ."

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The Android Effect - Developers, Platforms, Manufacturers

Iterations: Silicon Valley Slowly Awakens To Android (On Samsung)
TechCrunch
How will the growth of Android affect the priorities of developers, which mobile platforms they chose to launch on, and the monetization formula for hardware (with Samsung's ability to capture value) and software (apps) in a state of flux? There's so ...

TechCrunch

RIM to launch smartphone fightback with BlackBerry 10 operating system
The Australian
RIM boomed as the maker of 'crackberries', a nickname stemming from the addiction the phones engendered, but it risks becoming a footnote in a market led by Apple's iPhone and rivals who use Google's Android operating system. “The importance of this ...

Say goodbye to the Verizon Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Android Community
We're talking about the 4G LTE powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. Being the first “Nexus” (and I say that gently) to be available with 4G LTE and the nations largest carrier, it was a big deal. Sadly it wasn't a big deal to Verizon and recently ...

Android Community

[Weekend Poll And News Roundup] Would You Buy An Android Tablet In-Dash ...
Android Police
But with a tethered connection, voice search could be a powerful tool. What I'm getting at here is this: if there was a company out there that made a dash mount kit for the Nexus 7 (as an example), in which you provide your own tablet, would you buy one?

HTC loses ranking as world's No. 5 smartphone maker
Focus Taiwan News Channel
27 (CNA) Taiwan's HTC Corp. is no longer among the world's top five smartphone vendors following a drop in sales last quarter, surpassed by Huawei Technologies Co. of China and Sony Mobile Communications International AB of Japan, according to a U.S ...

British retailers recommend Samsung over Apple
Telegraph.co.uk
While some retailers recommended Apple's iPhone 5, rival manufacturers such as ZTE,Motorola, LG, Huawei and BlackBerry-maker RIM had little or no presence. "The mystery shop showed that the most recommended Samsung handsets were the Galaxy ...

Telegraph.co.uk

MSI Introduces Enjoy 71 Budget Android Tablet
The Droid Guy
MSI is also interested in this market as they recently released their Enjoy 71 Android tablet which retails for approximately $172 in Taiwan. Its price point makes it even cheaper than the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD which both are at the $200 price ...

The Droid Guy

Smartphone pioneer RIM looks to put recent hardships behind it with BB10
Winnipeg Free Press
TORONTO, Cananda - Once a leader but now derided as a laggard, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion hopes to regain the confidence of cynical smartphone users this week as the curtain is lifted on its much-anticipated new smartphones. The stakes are ...

Samsung Galaxy S4 to use Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie, Android 4.2 Jelly Bean or ...
News Tribe
“However, in future Samsung could go to test its own operating system to get advantage of being a operating system master like Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phoneoperating sytems,” they added. Keeping in view of latest rumor ...

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LTE users to hit 1 billion by 2016

LTE users to hit 1 billion by 2016
CNET
LTE users to hit 1 billion by 2016. As global 4G LTE wireless subscribers have skyrocketed from thousands to millions in just three years, research firm iSuppli predicts that rate of growth will only speed up. Dara Kerr. by Dara Kerr. January 22, 2013 ...

Samsung tops smartphone and overall handsets market in Q4
InfoWorld
Samsung had a 29 percent share of the smartphone market to Apple's 22 percent and Nokia's 3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. Nokia's portfolio improved with new models like Lumia 920, which runs the Windows Phone ...

Announcing the Firefox OS Developer Preview Phone! Mozilla Hacks – the Web developer blog: "Firefox OS is a new mobile operating system built entirely using open web standards. In Firefox OS, HTML5 apps can do “phone things” – they can make the phone vibrate, make a phone call or send a text message. This week we are announcing our new Firefox OS developer preview phones because we believe that developers will help bring the power of the web to mobile. These developer phones are being developed by Geeksphone in partnership with Telefonica and Geeksphone."

Will Apple, Google and Samsung lose the smartphone market? - Computerworld: "Beyond iOS, Android and Windows Phone, there are other emerging platforms under consideration by some current Android handset makers. In fact, Google's biggest and most profitable Android partner, Samsung, is supporting a new platform called Tizen. (Intel is also a backer.) If Samsung switched from Android to Tizen, the phone platform scene would be transformed overnight. The first Tizen devices are expected within three months. Mozilla, the people who make the Firefox browser, are developing the Firefox OS for smartphones. The first Firefox phones are expected to hit next month. The people at Ubuntu Linux, the most popular client version of that operating system, are building a version for smartphones. HP's WebOS, acquired from Palm, is still a potential factor, especially since HP plans to release an open-source version called Open WebOS. Note that all of these platforms -- Tizen, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Linux and Open WebOS -- are Linux-based and all or most will be relatively open compared with Android. . . . While upstart platforms threaten to take advantage of weaknesses in the iOS and Android worlds, a similar thing is happening in handsets. Right now, Samsung and Apple dominate. But in China and in other markets, Chinese companies are growing faster than the global leaders."
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FCC proposes large public WiFi networks

Tech, telecom giants take sides as FCC proposes large public WiFi networks - The Washington Post: "The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. The proposal from the Federal Communications Commission has rattled the $178 billion wireless industry, which has launched a fierce lobbying effort to persuade policymakers to reconsider the idea, analysts say. That has been countered by an equally intense campaign from Google, Microsoft and other tech giants who say a free-for-all WiFi service would spark an explosion of innovations and devices that would benefit most Americans, especially the poor."

Apple and Samsung have won the smartphone wars. What's next?
The Guardian
Instead, though, the top five smartphone sellers on IDC's measure are Samsung, Apple, Huawei (10.8m), Sony (9.8m), and ZTE (7.5m). It's telling that RIM, Nokia, HTC and Google-owned Motorola have all dropped out of that and that LG, supplier of the ...

The Guardian

Has Apple Lost Its Cool to Samsung?
Wall Street Journal
Samsung Electronics Co. is succeeding where other technology companies have tried and failed: closing the coolness gap with Apple Inc. The deep-pocketed Korean company has used a combination of engineering prowess, manufacturing heft and ...

Wall Street Journal

Apple Rejects Samsung Request To See iOS 6 Source Code In Korea Patent ...
TechCrunch
In one court case, in Korea's Seoul Central District Court, where Samsung has brought a patent infringement case against Apple's mobile operating system, Samsung is putting pressure on Apple to show it the iOS 6 source code, according to The Korea ...

Huawei's Smartphone Sales Eclipse Nokia, RIM
Wall Street Journal
... ANTON TROIANOVSKI. China's Huawei Technologies Co. has jumped ahead of Nokia Corp., HTCCorp. and Research In Motion Ltd. in the world-wide smartphone race, but steep challenges remain for the telecommunications firm as it pursues a bigger role ...

Rugged Android smartphone: Samsung's waterproof Galaxy Xcover 2 unveiled
IBNLive
Samsung has now unveiled a new Galaxy smartphone - Galaxy Xcover 2 - which runsAndroid 4.1 Jelly Bean smartphone. The GALAXY Xcover 2 is said to be optimised to endure against the most rugged outdoor conditions, whether you are at work or play.

IBNLive

Samsung warns of smartphone slowdown
Telegraph.co.uk
It did not provide unit sales figures, but analysts estimated Samsung sold 63 million smartphones in the quarter, including 15 million Galaxy S IIIs and 7 million Galaxy Note IIs, compared to Apple's 47.8 million iPhones. Apple's sales were a new ...

Telegraph.co.uk

Galaxy Note 8, Siri on Android, BlackBerry 10 in Podcast 323
CNET UK
BlackBerry 10, Windows Phone 8 and Firefox OS are all set for a watershed year, but can any of them really tackle the iPhone and Android? And we discuss the week's tech news, including more record Apple profits, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the ...

CNET UK

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DoorBot Wi-Fi doorbell camera lets you see visitors on your smartphone

DoorBot Wi-Fi doorbell camera lets you see visitors on your smartphone | Digital Trends: "Seeking at least a quarter of a million dollars in project funding on Christie Street, a company called Edison Junior has developed a wireless doorbell called DoorBot that transmits an audio and video feed over Wi-Fi when someone rings the doorbell. The homeowner will be able to see who’s standing at the front door and communicate over audio to find out what they want. However, there’s no video display on the DoorBot. The person standing at the front door can’t see where the homeowner is located. Conceptually, it can provide the illusion that the home’s resident is currently in the house even if they are at work or on vacation. For instance, if a delivery driver is dropping off a package, the resident could use DoorBot to let the driver know that the package can be safely left on the doorstep. It could also help people avoid someone standing at the front door by simply looking at the video feed and choosing not to communicate. . . . "

Apple Takes 27% of Global LTE Market - Mac Rumors: "The iPhone 5, Apple's first LTE smartphone, was only released in September but it hasn't taken long for Apple to nab 27% of the global LTE market, according to new data from Strategy Analytics (via Yonhap News). Apple is second in marketshare to Samsung, which registered 40% marketshare, although Samsung's share actually dropped from 50.9% in the previous quarter as Apple in particular entered the market. LG and Motorola also saw their marketshare take a hit, dropping from 15% each to 9.1% and 6.7% respectively. The only gain other than Apple was Pantech, who moved from 5.7% to 5.8%. "

My Dumb Phone Experiment: Week Two | MIT Technology Review: " . . . . Readers have been responding to my month-long experiment in technological regression: I’ve decided to replace my stolen iPhone, for a spell, with an old-fashioned Alcatel feature phone. My hope was to reclaim a corner of my life as saner and less constantly connected. So far, the experiment hasn’t been going great; as I mentioned in my last post on the topic, I miss my iPhone quite a bit. I whined about the indignities of having to type out SMS’s on nine number keys, for instance. One reader wrote something very perceptive: that my problem was that I was trying to fit a smartphone lifestyle into my new “dumb” phone existence. One thing I’ve realized more vividly, in the few weeks that I’ve been a smartphone abandoner, is that the smartphone isn’t just a product; it’s a societal phenomenon. No man is a technological island, and just because I’ve given up on my smartphone doesn’t mean that my friends and coworkers are necessarily willing to join me in my attempt for a more casual relationship with connective technology. Back when everyone had feature phones, a kind of abbreviated caveman speak (“meet bar 5 min”) was in wide currency. It’s the kind of caveman speak that I’m reduced to now. But my friends, with their iPhones’ virtual keyboards and their (let’s face it, more-helpful-than-not) autocorrect, are spouting small novels. I remember conducting SMS repartee as fluently as many an in-person conversation. That’s not possible on a dumb phone, but until I condition my friends not to expect that of me, I just come off as a jerk. . . ."

The 20 Best iOS And Android Apps Of 2012 | TechCrunch: "Google Maps (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android free) While Tim Cook was a runner-up to President Obama for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2012, the app of the year comes from Apple’s primary nemesis. Google Maps was far from broken when Apple, for business reasons, elected to go with its own Map app for iOS 6. When the iPhone 5 came out, users tapping into the iOS 6 Maps app couldn’t see the Statue of Liberty. This was just one of countless Apple Maps fails. Of course, it’s easy to lambaste Apple for laying an egg here. Yet the larger point is that we take for granted the reliability, clarity, and ease of use of Google Maps. This stuff is hard. That is why we are thankful that Apple earlier this month approved a brand-new version of Google Maps for iOS 6 devices. New competition from Apple, which will inevitably improve its mapping capabilities, pushed Google to develop the best map app yet for any device."

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Cable industry criticism - Susan Crawford

What we need is competition--where's the FTC? Oh that's right, busy chasing Google on meritless claims--

Cable industry criticism: Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School professor | BGR: "If you’re unhappy with your cable service, you aren’t alone. And according to Susan Crawford, a communications policy expert and a professor at the Cardozo School of Law,America’s cable companies aren’t just guilty of charging higher prices for sub par service, but also of stifling competition and innovation in the United States broadband market. In an interview with NPR’s Diane Rehm, Crawford makes the case that “a handful of cable companies have become monopolies that stifle competition and innovation,” which is a major reason “why Americans pay more money for worse Internet service than consumers in most other developed nations.” In Crawford’s view, most major ISPs are very similar to the railroad and steel monopolies of the 19th century, in that the providers face minimal competition in areas where they operate and benefit from high barriers to entry for prospective new providers. “If you’ve got a commodity that everybody needs as an input into their businesses, like take railroads for example, and it costs a lot to initially build that network so it’s hard for someone else to enter, and you can cooperate with your colleagues who are also providing that service, and you can divide up markets, you’ve got a monopoly business,” Crawford explained. “We’ve seen this happen with wired Internet access in the United States.”

FCC Chairman calls for gigabit internet in all 50 states by 2015 | The Verge: "Google Fiber is finally bringing gigabit internet speeds to users in Kansas City, but that's not good enough for the FCC. Chairman Julius Genachoski just issued the "Gigabit City Challenge" — he wants to see all 50 states have at least one community with gigabit internet by 2015. "American economic history teaches a clear lesson about infrastructure. If we build it, innovation will come," Genachowski said in a statement. "The U.S. needs a critical mass of gigabit communities nationwide so that innovators can develop next-generation applications and services that will drive economic growth and global competitiveness." To meet Genachowski's aggressive goal, we'll need to see a lot more providers than Google step up their game in the next few years. Gigabit internet remains scarce in the US . . ."

Microsoft pushes ahead with its own take on WebRTC — Tech News and Analysis: "Microsoft has been working for some time on web-based real-time communication, and could one day use this kind of technology to take Skype to the browser, as well as make it interoperable with other messenger platforms and applications. The company started to participate in efforts to standardize this kind of browser-based communication last summer, albeit with a somewhat different take than others. Previous efforts around web-based, plugin-free voice and video chat were largely driven by Mozilla and Google, with the latter contributing a lot of its technology to an effort dubbed WebRTC, which is short for web-based real-time communications. Work on WebRTC had been progressing in 2012, and parts of the technology has already been implemented in Chrome and Opera."


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