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Chinese telecom giant calls off US deal (AP) : Technet |
- Chinese telecom giant calls off US deal (AP)
- Mexico state congress asks ban of video game (AP)
- Seek and Employ: Gamer Jobs Open at Taiwan Game Show (PC World)
- Android, video games dominate mobile confab (Reuters)
- Renren owner eyes $500 million from U.S. IPO: report (Reuters)
- Internet tool shows French web surfers 'Jewish-curious' (AFP)
- Power to the People: 3 Tasty Crowdsourcing Case Studies (Mashable)
- Stanford Researchers Double Wireless Networking Speeds (PC World)
- Apple Buys Up Touchscreens, Limiting Supply for Rivals (NewsFactor)
| Chinese telecom giant calls off US deal (AP) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 07:55 PM PST BEIJING – A major Chinese telecoms equipment maker is scrapping its effort to acquire a U.S. computer company after a security panel refused to approve the deal. Huawei Technologies Ltd.'s bid to acquire 3Leaf Systems came amid concern in some countries about China's growing economic might and political assertiveness. American critics said the deal might allow sensitive technology to be transferred to China's military. Huawei had said it hoped to win White House approval despite the recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to cancel the deal. But in a weekend announcement, Huawei reversed course and said it would withdraw its application. "This was a difficult decision, however we have decided to accept the recommendation of CFIUS to withdraw our application to acquire specific assets of 3Leaf," the company said in a brief statement. "The significant impact and attention that this transaction has caused were not what we intended. Rather, our intention was to go through all the procedures to reveal the truth about Huawei." Huawei said it "will remain committed to long-term investment in the United States." Huawei is one of the biggest makers of network switching gear and reported sales of $28 billion last year. It has struggled to gain a foothold in the United States against rivals such as Cisco Systems Inc. Huawei was founded by a former Chinese military officer, which has fueled speculation about its links to the People's Liberation Army. The company says it is owned by its employees and has no military connection. Companies that fail to receive CFIUS approval usually withdraw proposed deals. In 2008, Huawei and an American partner, Bain Capital, withdrew a request for U.S. government approval of a bid to buy 3Com. The companies said they failed to satisfy national security concerns. Huawei says it failed to apply for approval of the $2 million 3Leaf deal in advance because it bought the company's technology and hired some employees, rather than acquiring the whole company. The Pentagon took the unusual step of demanding that Huawei retroactively apply for a CFIUS review. At a congressional hearing in Washington last week, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said the case highlighted the importance of ensuring that U.S. industry was aware of potential security threats "when we depend on foreign concerns for key components in any of our telecommunications network." ___ Online: Huawei Technologies Ltd.: http://www.huawei.com |
| Mexico state congress asks ban of video game (AP) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 01:47 PM PST CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A shoot-em-up video game set in the border town of Ciudad Juarez has angered local officials who are busy fighting all-too-real violence. Chihuahua state legislators said Sunday they have asked federal authorities to ban a the game, "Call of Juarez: The Cartel," which is based on drug cartel shootouts in Ciudad Juarez. About 6,000 people died in drug-related violence in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 and 2010, making the city, located across from El Paso, Texas, one of the deadliest in the world. The web site of game developer Ubisoft Entertainment SA says the title is due for release this summer. Screen shots from the game show three characters armed with a pistol, an assault rifle and a shotgun ready to open fire on a city street. The game's promotional slogan urges players, "Take justice into your own hands and experience the lawlessness of the modern Wild West." No one answered a message left at the company's San Francisco office. Ricardo Boone Salmon, a congressman for Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez is located, said the state legislature unanimously approved a request this week asking the federal Interior Department to ban the game. "It is true there is a serious crime situation, which we are not trying to hide," Boone Salmon said. "But we also should not expose children to this kind of scenarios so that they are going to grow up with this kind of image and lack of values." State congress leader Enrique Serrano said the main concern was the potential effect on children in Ciudad Juarez, some of whom have already been taught to "duck and cover" if firefights erupt outside their schools. "Children wind up being easily involved in criminal acts over time, because among other things, during their childhood not enough care has been taken about what they see on television and playing video games," Serrano said. "They believe so much blood and death is normal." It is not the first time city officials have been angered by references to Juarez's problems. In 2010, the New York-based MAC cosmetics company abandoned Mexican sales of a makeup collection that raised hackles because it featured pallid, ghostly hues said to be inspired by deaths of women in the city. The collection of lipstick, blushes and other cosmetics uses names like "Juarez," "Bordertown," "Ghost Town" and "Factory." More than 100 women were abused and murdered before their bodies were dumped in Ciudad Juarez's desert between 1993 and 2003. Many of the victims were factory workers. In 2004, the city's then-mayor called for a boycott of the song "The Women of Juarez," by Los Tigres del Norte, one of Mexico's top-selling bands. It blasted Mexican authorities for failing to solve the killings of women. |
| Seek and Employ: Gamer Jobs Open at Taiwan Game Show (PC World) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 06:50 PM PST Over a dozen companies banded together with an online job service in Taipei over the weekend to seek people for the island's computer and online game industries. Some of the jobs even pay gamers to play full-time. Many of the jobs on offer from 15 gaming companies at the 2011 Taipei Game Show were for research and development, game design, graphics art, and software engineering. But some jobs offered the chance to play computer games for a living with a salary of around NT$35,000 (US$1,194) a month, which is about average in Taiwan. "We're looking for around 50 people, including gamers, programmers, graphics artists and research and development," said Jamesina Lin, a representative at Chinese Gamer International, one of Taiwan's biggest online gaming companies. People hired to play games would be heavily involved in game development, she said. Chinese Gamer and other companies teamed with Taiwanese employment website, Job Bank, to host the Taiwan Game Job fair at the same time as Taipei's biggest gaming show. "We had over 2,000 people apply at the job fair on Saturday and over 2,600 applications in all," said Charlene Chang, spokesperson for Job Bank, which ran the job fair. Taiwanese gaming companies are serious about their work. Although the local gaming market in Taiwan is growing at a fast clip, the ultimate goal for most Taiwanese gaming companies is to reach the massive audience in China, which shares a language and culture similar to Taiwan's. Taiwan's game industry was worth NT$42.2 billion last year, up nearly 20 percent over 2009, when it reached NT$35.4 billion, according to figures from the Taiwan government's Industrial Development Bureau. The range of ways to consume games has spurred growth in the industry, from PCs, game consoles and online games, to smartphones, games on social networking sites such as Facebook and more. Taiwan's potential gaming market is much smaller than China's. Whereas Taiwan's entire population is estimated at just over 23 million, China's is over 1.33 billion, with 457 million Internet users at the end of last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. |
| Android, video games dominate mobile confab (Reuters) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 04:25 PM PST BARCELONA, Spain (Hollywood Reporter) – The 2011 instellment of Mobile World Congress, which gathered 60,000 professionals from 200 countries, served as the official coming-out party for the next generation of Google Android smartphones and tablets. Android had a massive, two-floor booth packed with all the new smartphones and tablets shipping in the coming months running off the various Android platforms, including Sony Ericsson's Xperia Play phone, which operates on Gingerbread, and LG's Optimus Pad tablet, which is powered by Honeycomb. The Android booth featured a huge arcade section where developers from around the world showcased the next generation of mobile games. While graphics and gameplay have improved in the mobile space over the years, the new wave of smartphones and tablets will push the capabilities of these devices to the level of PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 -- and beyond even the best iPhone 4 and iPad games that are currently on the market. "Video games drive the mobile business because they're the best showcase of what these new devices can really do," said Gonzague de Vallois, senior vice president of publishing at Gameloft, one of the largest mobile game companies in the world. "Our experience in the console market is helping us deliver quality titles to these new devices for the mobile market." Gameloft, which previously supported Apple's launch of iPhone and iPad with games, had franchises like Asphalt 6, Let's Golf and NOVA running in autostereoscopic (glasses free) 3D at LG's booth on the new Optimus 3D phone. The company also will support the March launch of Xperia Play with 10 titles, including Star Battalion. And the publisher has recently started developing new games to run on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 dual-core technology. Tegra 2 brings PC gaming graphics and speed from just a few years ago to the mobile space on new Android smartphones and tablets, which will run 10x faster than the processors in today's smartphones like iPhone 4. The Tegra 2's dedicated graphics processor also delivers 1080p HDTV playback of movies, TV shows and games. On battery life, Tegra's ultra low-power design delivers over 16 hours of HD video or 140 hours of music on a single charge. "This technology will impact the games we release because it will absolutely increase the available market," said Mike Breslin, vice president of marketing, Glu Mobile. "There will be a lot more people with access to these new smartphones and tablets thanks to the marketing push from Google, NVIDIA and all of the consumer electronics companies, carriers and headset makers." Last fall, Android overtook Symbian to become the top smartphone platform in the world. According to research firm Canalys, global sales of Android phones in the fourth quarter of 2010 was 33.3 million, compared to 31 million Symbian phones, 16.2 million Apple phones, 14.6 million RIM devices and 3.1 million Microsoft phones. Overall, the global smartphone market grew 89% compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, exceeding 100 million units for the first time. And 2011 is poised to be an even bigger breakthrough year for Android. Another new trend showcased at Mobile World Congress was cross-platform gaming on Android and Tegra devices, which will allow players to team up in games like Trendy Entertainment's Dungeon Defenders: First Strike to play across PlayStation 3, PC and mobile platforms. "This is a really profound change in the way mobile games are designed," said Jeremy Stieglitz, development director at Trendy Entertainment. "There will be a huge influx of quality content very quickly on these new Tegra-based platforms, where you basically can have the same game running on a mobile device as you have on a PC or console." NVIDIA showcased brand new Tegra 3 technology at the show, code-named Kal-El after Superman. New phones will ship with this quad-core chip beginning this August and tablets will follow in late fall. NVIDIA demonstrated a game, Great Battles Medieval, that ran at 720p HD and featured 650 enemy soldiers on the field at once. According to Michael Rayfield, general manager of NVIDIA's mobile business unit, over the next three years projects codenamed Wayne, Logan, and Stark will further push the gaming potential of mobile devices. By 2014, when Stark becomes a reality, the technology will feature a 75x improvement over the performance of today's Tegra 2. "Our customers and partners have already indicated that they're confident they can use everything we give them," said Rayfield. HTC introduced a new tablet, Flyer, which will introduce streaming subscription video game service OnLive to the mobile space. Gamers will be able to play games like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, NBA 2K11 and LEGO Harry Potter on the new tablet, or connect the tablet to any HDTV, without needing to buy any new hardware or software. There is a negative side to the increased capabilities of mobile gaming. And that's for portable gaming companies like Sony, which will launch its Next Generation PlayStation (NGP) system this fall. "IHS believes that the market opportunity for a specialist device such as the NGP is shrinking rather than growing, and that short- and medium-term market conditions are less supportive of the release of a high-end handheld console," said Piers Harding-Rolls, video game analyst at HIS Screen Digest. Harding-Rolls said by the end of the fourth year after its release, the NGP is expected to accrue a total installed base of 22.8 million units. In comparison, the PSP achieved a base of 30.7 million, 34.8% higher, during the same length of time. "The competitive landscape for handheld and on-the-move gaming has been highly disrupted in recent times, with disruption occurring on the device, content and distribution levels," added Harding-Rolls. Moving forward, more consumers will use one device for everything, including gaming, multimedia, entertainment and Web browsing. And Android is perfectly positioned to take advantage of this shift. |
| Renren owner eyes $500 million from U.S. IPO: report (Reuters) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 01:14 PM PST NEW YORK (Reuters) – One of China's largest social networking companies, Oak Pacific Interactive, plans to raise about $500 million this year in a U.S. initial public offering, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. Reuters reported in December that Oak Pacific, owner of social networking site Renren, had hired Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG to underwrite an IPO, planned for the first half of this year. At the time, the amount to be raised had not been finalized. Bloomberg, citing three people with knowledge of the plan, said the company was preparing an IPO of about $500 million and that Morgan Stanley had also been hired. Morgan Stanley and Oak Pacific could not immediately be reached for comment. (Reporting by Martinne Geller; Editing by Dale Hudson) |
| Internet tool shows French web surfers 'Jewish-curious' (AFP) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 03:37 PM PST PARIS (AFP) – An Internet tool that flags up popular search words has spontaneously revealed a deeper trend: French web surfers' exceeding curiosity about whether their politicians are Jewish. Observers say the phenomenon betrays an obsession in a country with a sensitive history of anti-Semitism. The device, known as "Autocomplete" on the most popular search engine Google, is designed to save web surfers time by offering, for example, to search for "car parts" or "car rental" to a user typing in "car". But try entering the name of a politician such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn -- the International Monetary Fund head who could challenge for the French presidency next year -- in the French version, Google.fr. As you type, a list of suggestions appears below the search field, revealing what words other web surfers commonly associate with the name. Along with terms such as "IMF" and "2012" -- for those interested in his global finance work or prospects in next year's French presidential election -- the fourth commonest search offered in French is "dominique strauss kahn juif" (Jewish). The "Jewish" term is also offered for searches about France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, his Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and several other members of his three-month old cabinet. The newspaper Le Monde said that a comparison of searches on various language versions of Google revealed that Autocomplete linked Jewishness to politicians far more commonly in France than in other countries. The same effect occurs on the French version of another major search engine, Yahoo! "The auto-completion technology used by Google could in theory reveal the mentality of the country where these propositions originate," said Olivier Ertzscheid, an Internet specialist at Nantes University. "It is not by chance if the word 'Jewish' appears linked to more search queries in France than elsewhere. It goes back to something in the history of the country in question," he told AFP. French Jews' painful history dates to before the Nazi occupation of the 1940s. The so-called Dreyfus affair in the late 19th century became a by-word for anti-Semitism -- a scandal over Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish military officer exiled for treason and later pardoned, which sparked political upheaval. The issue still raises its head in contemporary politics. Allies of Strauss-Kahn, who is Jewish, saw implicit anti-Semitism in a recent claim by an opponent that the IMF chief did not embody "the image of rural France". Autocomplete on the English language Google.com appears not to flag up "Jew" or "Jewish" regularly for prominent US or British political figures, though such words do appear for some foreign leaders. But Google.fr reveals Francophone curiosity about Britain's prime minister, offering "David Cameron juif." Google says that if Autocomplete turns out words judged downright offensive, it removes these on a case-by-case basis -- but merely associating a person and a religion does not necessarily qualify. "The search queries that you see as part of Autocomplete are a reflection of the search activity of all web users," Google France spokeswoman Anne-Gabrielle Dauba-Pantanacce explained in an email to AFP. "While we always strive to neutrally and objectively reflect the diversity of content on the web -- some good, some objectionable -- we also apply a narrow set of removal policies for pornography, violence, and hate speech," she wrote. In Ertzscheid's view, "what complicates things is that we know that Google corrects certain results, but we do not know which ones. "It is possible that on Google.com there is more cleaning-up done to delete offensive keywords" than on the other language versions, he suggested. The Le Monde report's author Stephane Foucart wrote that his findings reflected "a subtle and latent form of anti-Semitism, which seems only to manifest itself when face to face with a computer." Jean-Yves Camus, a Jewish political scientist specialising in anti-Semitism, interpreted the Autcomplete effect differently, seeing it as a natural "phenomenon of curiosity" in a country with by far the biggest Jewish community in Europe. "It is totally normal that the phenomenon is more widespread in France, because there are more Jews, and because there are more Jewish personalities in political life" than most European countries, he told AFP. "The problem is that what you find on the Internet is often rumour and exaggeration." |
| Power to the People: 3 Tasty Crowdsourcing Case Studies (Mashable) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 06:15 AM PST For food and drink brands, crowdsourcing new products and flavors makes perfect sense. Not only does it increase engagement, it gives the people that consume the products a say in their development. That interaction makes them more likely to shell out cash when the item hits shop shelves. Thanks to social media, it's become easier to to ask your customers to contribute to product development or collaborate on other creative endeavors. Not only is it doable, it's been done, and with great success, by major brands. "This trend is a direct reflection of the new meritocracy caused by the rise of the social web. Now everyone had the same power to not only consume but also produce things," said John Winsor, founder of Victors & Spoils, and the author of Baked In and other books about co-creation. "Brands can use the power of their digitally connected consumers to co-create new products or face the wrath of those same consumers as they go into competition with them." We spoke to three major brands -- Ben & Jerry's, Coca Cola's vitaminwater and Dunkin' Donuts -- to find out more about their recent crowdsourcing campaigns. If you are interested in the new people power that connected consumers wield, then read on for some delicious insight into how each campaign went down.
1. Ben & Jerry's "Do the World a Flavor"
Ben & Jerry's is no stranger to fan feedback; some of its best-selling flavors were born from customer suggestions, but in 2010 it took the concept a step further with the "Do the World a Flavor" competition. Fans were able to invent their own variety of the popular ice cream via a fun online "Creation Station." Finalists won a trip to the Dominican Republic to see a sustainable fair trade cocoa farm and the winning flavor was produced as an official Ben & Jerry's product. The specific aim of the contest was to raise awareness for fair trade ingredients, and with around 10,000 new flavor suggestions from the U.S. alone, Ben & Jerry's achieved that goal. We asked Sean Greenwood, "grand poobah" of public relations for Ben & Jerry's about the "Do the World a Flavor" competition: Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign? It's always a tremendous opportunity for us to tap into our fan's passion, creativity and their own interpretation of "Peace, Love and Ice Cream." Our incredible fans come up with some great flavors. Cherry Garcia, Chunky Monkey, Chubby Hubby? Ever hear of those? Yep, all from our fans. The crowdsourcing offers an opportunity for fans to participate and create some fun, and as Jerry says: "If it's not fun, why do it?" How was the campaign a success for you? It was a tremendous global opportunity for us to talk about our belief in the fair trade model. Since then, we've been hard at work making our own flavors using still more fair trade goods and communicating Ben & Jerry's commitment to transition to using all fair trade ingredients, globally, by 2013. Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast moving consumer goods brands to engage their audience? I think any chance that companies have to connect with their fans in a fun manner is golden. For us, in this program, crowdsourcing was the hot fudge, whipped cream and nuts on top of our sundae!
2. Dunkin' Donuts' "Keep It Coolatta 2: Flavor Boogaloo"
Dunkin Donuts has run two very successful "Create Dunkin's Next Donut" contests in the past, allowing fans to design their own perfect pastry product. Last summer they tried something a little different. To promote the "mixology" potential of its Coolatta drinks, Dunkin' Donuts asked fans to collaborate on a playlist of summery songs that would go well with fan's favorite Coolatta flavors. The campaign netted 300,000 new Facebook fans while over 40,000 Pandora users added "The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!" to their list of stations and spent nearly 14,000 hours listening to the station. We quizzed Ben Smith, interactive marketing manager for Dunkin' Donuts, about the "Flavor Boogaloo" project: Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign? Allowing our Facebook fans to help us create an upbeat custom Pandora channel dedicated to playing, "The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!" was a great opportunity to connect with our fans in a meaningful way while highlighting Coolatta mixology. We leveraged Pandora as the home to the "The ultimate Coolatta summer music mix!" because of its reach and appeal. How was the campaign a success for you? The campaign was designed to raise awareness of Coolatta mixology and encourage Dunkin' Donuts fans to try our Coolatta products throughout June and July, while also increasing engagement on the Dunkin' Donuts Facebook page. We found the greatest success engaging with fans through sparking fun discussions of the best songs of summer and Coolatta mixology on Facebook and Twitter. As a result, Dunkin' Donuts was able to achieve and sustain a high level of engagement throughout the campaign. Year over year, Dunkin' Donuts has seen double-digit growth throughout its frozen and iced beverage category. Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast-moving consumer goods brands to engage their audiences? Before jumping into the conversation on our social media channels, we always listen to what our fans are saying. Social communities are interactive by nature and listening to what our fans want to hear is how we have been able to engage with them in a meaningful way. By listening and participating in an ongoing conversation with our fans and followers, we have developed programs and promotions that are fun and interesting, while also encouraging brand advocacy with our fans' and followers' network of friends. We will continue to provide our fans with a superior social media experience, and if we remain authentic and committed to listening to our followers and engage them as we have, I see our number of followers continuing to increase, especially as we continue our brand's growth and expansion throughout the country.
3. Vitaminwater's "Flavor Creator"
Coca-Cola-owned Glaceau brand vitaminwater gave its fans the vote with a "flavor creator lab" on its Facebook page. The goal was to come up with a brand new variety of drink. Fans could vote for their favorite flavor, play games and answer quizzes to help determine which "functional benefit" the beverage should offer and even have their say on the design of the label. The winning flavor -- named "connect" -- hit shop shelves in 2010, after 40,000 Facebook users had interacted with the flavor creator lab. Participants spent an average of approximately seven minutes engaging with the application. Matt Kahn, Senior Vice President of Marketing for vitaminwater, reveals the thinking behind their social strategy: Why did you opt for crowdsourcing for the campaign? Vitaminwater has always had a very loyal, interactive fan base and once the brand joined Facebook we heard more regularly from our consumers. At the time, the vitaminwater flavor creator program was a natural next step -- it allowed for us to bring more exclusive content and real programming directly to our fans." How was the campaign a success for you? The vitaminwater flavor creator was a three month, three step program that allowed us to have a two way conversation with our consumers. We gave our fans the tools to help develop something they were passionate about -- in the end, we heard loud and clear what it was that they wanted when it came to vitaminwater. Do you think crowdsourcing will be big in the future as a way for fast moving consumer goods brands to engage their audience? Vitaminwater was among the first companies to use social networking to give fans such level of control over product innovation -- a variety of vitaminwater was actually made by our fans, for our fans. Crowdsourcing was a great way for us to tap directly into our consumers -- we were able to get them information faster and interact with them directly.
ConclusionFor savvy brands, product development has moved from a sterile lab to the social web and become a fantastic marketing opportunity. If brands want to engage today's connected consumer, they need to get social and start listening. "Today there is no choice. It's either collaborate with your consumers using co-creative and crowdsourcing tools or perish," Winsor said. "There will be collateral damage for those who don't want to play." Did you take part in any of the campaigns above? Do you see crowdsourcing playing a big part in the future of food and drink product development? Have your say in the comments below.
More Crowdsourcing Resources from Mashable- 10 Cool Crowdsourced Music Video Projects - Why Marketers Should Invest in Crowdsourced Research - 7 Captivating Works of Crowdsourced Art - HOW TO: Get the Most From Crowdsourced Design Competitions - 5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Synergee |
| Stanford Researchers Double Wireless Networking Speeds (PC World) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 12:43 PM PST Researchers at Stanford University have shown it's possible to double the data rate of communication networks without the need for additional frequencies, something that could lead to significantly faster wireless networking. Described by its inventors as "simple and effective," the new technique relies on three antennas, instead of the two found in the latest 801.11n wireless devices. It allows full-duplex communications on the same frequency (that is, simultaneous send and receive), something considered before now to be physically impossible. The radio spectrum is becoming increasingly congested and boosting speeds without requiring additional frequencies is the Holy Grail of electrical engineering. When a radio device transmits, its broadcasts are too strong for it to receive any signals. It's like two people conversing; if you're speaking, it's impossible to hear what another is saying. Both parties must take turns to speak, and generally speaking this is how radio transmissions have worked until now. The trick behind doubling speeds is to use something akin to noise cancellation found in some headphones. Because the transmitting device knows exactly what it's sending, it can filter it out in order to hear weaker incoming transmissions. Thus, two-way communications on the same frequency can take place. "Textbooks say you can't do it," says Philip Levis, one of the team behind the invention and assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford. "The new system completely reworks our assumptions about how wireless networks can be designed." The team behind the invention showed it off at MobiCom 2010 last year, a gathering of mobile networking experts, and won a prize for the best demo. Fellow researchers told them they didn't expect it to work and, when it did, said it was so obvious that it had probably already been invented. There's still some way to go before the technology will make it into consumer or business equipment. For example, the researchers are still working on a way for their invention to work over the kind of distances required for typical wireless networking. Additionally, wireless networking relies on standards that are adopted by all manufacturers, which is why you can use an Dell laptop with a D-Link router, for example. These standards are controlled by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the invention would have to be cleared by the 802.11 working group before being formed into a new standard. That's likely to take many years to complete, although progress could be speeded-up by the lack of need to set aside new frequencies. The team is also seeking a patent for its work--which could restrict implementations of the technology--and limit it to those manufacturers who can afford to pay a fee. Because of this, the technology might manifest within future Wi-Fi devices as an extension to the existing wireless standards, usable only if the receiving computing device also has the extension. This isn't uncommon among wireless device manufacturers, It's easy to imagine a company like Apple paying for the technology to be used in its AirPort base station and computers, for example, to double wireless networking speeds and give their products a competitive advantage. Keir Thomas has been making known his opinion about computing matters since the last century, and more recently has written several best-selling books. You can learn more about him at http://keirthomas.com. His Twitter feed is @keirthomas. |
| Apple Buys Up Touchscreens, Limiting Supply for Rivals (NewsFactor) Posted: 20 Feb 2011 06:58 AM PST To keep up with soaring sales of Apple's hit iPad tablet, competitors will have to do more than just design and market a good rival. A report Friday said they may face problems building them. It's no secret that Apple, which sold more than 14 million iPads last year and could see sales of more than 45 million in 2011, hedges its bets by ordering components it needs in massive quantities, ahead of demand. Out of Touch Now Taiwan-based DigiTimes, citing sources from both component and computer manufacturers, says Apple has a grip on 60 percent of this year's expected output of capacitive touchscreens used in tablets. Unless capacity increases, that could put a strain on other companies' goals for the year. "Touch panels are currently suffering the most serious shortage due to Apple holding control over the capacity of major touch-panel makers such as Wintek and TPK, and with U.S.-based RIM, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard also competing for related components, second-tier players are already out of the game," sources told the industry journal. (Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry devices, is actually based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.) News of Apple buying up LCD and OLED touchscreens preceded the release of the iPad at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, fueling rumors about the forthcoming tablet. Insiders say Apple could have sold even more iPads last year if it could have had more touchscreens and won't allow that to happen this year as it gets ready to release the second generation of the device. Touchscreen shortages also reportedly affected the supply of iPhones when the fourth-generation model was released last June. Pattern of Investment "This follows a pattern that Apple has established," said Avi Greengart, consumer-devices analyst for Current Analysis. "When it sees a core component it needs, it places a big financial bet on it to lock up supply." Greengart noted that Apple in 2004 invested in a huge supply of solid-state flash memory chips when it introduced the third version of its iPod music player. Previous versions used hard drives. In 2009 it was reported that Apple bought up nearly all of Samsung's NAND output for the first quarter. "Supply-chain management of core components is absolutely a key factor in consumer devices," said Greengart, noting that last year HTC -- the maker of Verizon's most popular Android phone, the Droid Incredible -- was unable to get enough touchscreens from the division of Samsung that makes them, and turned instead to Sony for its Super LCD display technology. Companies that make touchscreens can't easily ramp up production to meet demand, since that would mean adding facilities and personnel -- long-term investments in a technology that is subject to rapid change and obsolescence. Samsung makes its own displays, the AMOLED, which gives the company a competitive advantage. So it may sell fewer of them this year to ensure its own supply, and may not sell them to rivals. Greengart said Finland-based Nokia is a good example of a company that exercises supply-chain management. "They don't make any components themselves, but they are probably the only company that can make something on the order of 400 million devices a year," he said. |
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