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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Higher Netflix prices equals fewer subscribers (AP) : Technet

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Higher Netflix prices equals fewer subscribers (AP) : Technet

Higher Netflix prices equals fewer subscribers (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 02:09 PM PDT

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – Thu Sep 15, 5:09 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Netflix's decision to raise prices by as much as 60 percent is turning into a horror show.

The customer backlash against the higher rates, kicking in this month, has been much harsher than Netflix Inc. anticipated. That prompted management to predict Thursday that the company _the largest U.S. video subscription service_ will end September with 600,000 fewer U.S. customers than it had in June.

It will mark just the second time in 12 years that Netflix has lost subscribers from one quarter to the next. The last downturn occurred during 2007 when Netflix lost a mere 55,000 from March through June.

The current hemorrhaging exacerbated fears that Netflix is losing the magic touch that increased its stock 10-fold in the three years leading up to the company's July 12 announcement about its higher prices.

Since then, Netflix has turned into Wall Street's equivalent of a box-office flop. Its shares plunged $39.46, or about 19 percent, to close at $169.25 on Thursday, leaving Netflix's stock price more than 40 percent below where it stood before the company unveiled the higher prices. The cost to shareholders so far: more than $6 billion in paper losses.

It could get uglier if the worst-case scenarios play out. Netflix suffered another setback earlier this month when Starz Entertainment ended talks to renew the licensing rights to a key part of Netflix's video library for streaming over the Internet. The fallout from that decision will hit in March when Netflix will no longer be able to stream the popular mix of recently released movies and TV shows that it got from Starz, raising the specter of another onslaught of customer defections.

"Netflix isn't looking like it's as good a deal because their prices are getting higher and their content isn't getting any better," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who thinks the company's shares could fall as low as $110. "It's like they have taken the beef away from the buffet."

The customer exodus still hasn't convinced Netflix to reverse its course and lower its prices as it did in 2007 when it was engaged in a cut-throat battle with Blockbuster Inc. In announcing its lowered subscriber forecasts Thursday, Netflix emphasized it consider its new prices to be "the right long-term strategic choice."

The new pricing structure was driven by Netflix's desire to build up its service that streams video over high-speed Internet connections, even at the risk of hurting the DVD-by-mail rentals that used to be its main business. Netflix management believes the convenience of Internet video is the main reason that it has added 17 million U.S. subscribers during the past three years, establishing the company as a major player in the entertainment industry.

As the streaming service took off, Hollywood studios and other video distributors such as Starz have been demanding higher fees for the licensing rights to their content — a trend that caused Netflix to dig deeper into its subscribers' wallets.

Even with fewer subscribers, Netflix expects to bring in $10 million to $25 million more from its customers than during the July-September period than it did April-June.

Netflix revenue won't keep rising, though, if more subscribers flee. Pachter thinks that could still happen because some customers won't be billed at the higher rates until the end of the month.

Besides being more expensive, Netflix's new pricing structure is also more complicated for subscribers who want to stream and rent DVDs from the service.

Until Sept. 1, Netflix offered plans that bundled DVD rentals and unlimited video streaming for as little as $10 per month. Those options are now sold separately, resulting in a cost of at least $16 per month for people who want streaming and DVDs. Having both choices is appealing because Netflix's streaming library primarily consists of old TV shows and movies, leaving DVDs as the main way to see recently released films.

To hold down costs in a tough economy, millions of Netflix customers are either limiting their subscriptions to a streaming-only or DVD-only plan. Other customers are canceling their accounts to protest the new pricing scheme. Those canceling are following through on threats that were made on Facebook and Netflix's own blog after the higher prices were announced.

Despite the vitriolic reaction, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings still thought the company would be able to add subscribers. In late July, he issued a forecast that indicated Netflix would end September with 25 million U.S. subscribers, up from 24.6 million in June. That prediction was lowered Thursday to 24 million. The revision mostly reflects Netflix's expectation that it will have 800,000 fewer DVD-only subscribers than it previously thought.

Many of the people no longer renting DVDs from Netflix will get their discs elsewhere. That could be a boon for Redbox, which rents DVDs for $1 per night through 33,330 kiosks in supermarkets and other retailers, and Blockbuster, which still has 1,500 U.S. stores after emerging from bankruptcy protection under the ownership of Dish Network Corp. Investors are betting Redbox will be the main beneficiary; the shares of Redbox owner Coinstar surged $3.33, or more than 7 percent, to close at $48.55 on Thursday. Dish Network's shares edged up 11 cents to $25.82.

This could be an opportune time for would-be rivals to attack Netflix's streaming service too, BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield wrote in a Thursday blog post. Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched a free streaming service for subscribers to its two-day shipping service earlier this year. Greenfield and other analysts believe Google Inc., already the owner of YouTube, is eager to expand its Internet video offerings to include more movies. One way Google could achieve that would be to buy Hulu.com, which has been put up by for sale by the television network owners that supply its video content.

"Netflix made a bad move, raising prices as much as they did," Pachter said.

MOG adds free music gas tank to subscription plan (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 03:29 PM PDT

By RYAN NAKASHIMA, AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima, Ap Business Writer – Thu Sep 15, 6:29 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – All that tweeting and sharing of photos on Facebook could finally have a tangible reward: free music.

MOG, a subscription music service based in Berkeley, Calif., says it is introducing a free music service that will supplement its $5-a-month unlimited streaming plan and $10-a-month unlimited mobile music offering.

Starting immediately, MOG is giving new users a kind of digital gas tank they can use to listen to tracks from its library of 11 million songs.

Sharing songs, making playlists and other actions get users more gas while listening uses it up. Having more friends or followers multiplies the gas-earning effects of a user's activity.

MOG's free system revamps what had been a 14-day free trial and puts it in competition with Spotify, a Swedish subscription music plan that is popular in Europe. Spotify launched in the U.S. in July and has a free service that is limited by listening time caps in some countries. Rdio, another subscription music service, also said Thursday it would expand its free trial service soon.

The moves come ahead of an event on Sept. 22 at which Facebook is expected to announce a new set of tools for music services that the social network hopes will bolster it as a platform for sharing musical tastes with friends.

MOG and services such as Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and Muve Music allow paying customers to download an unlimited number of songs to mobile devices — most of them for $10 a month. Users can listen to the tracks outside of cellphone coverage areas, but access disappears if the subscription is dropped. Music companies are licensing songs to these services in order to promote the fledgling business since purchases of tracks and albums over services like iTunes and Amazon.com have not made up for a decade-long decline in CD sales.

So far, the services haven't attracted enough subscribers to turn the music industry around. Rhapsody, the market leader, has some 800,000 paying subscribers while Muve Music, which bundles its plan with Cricket cellphone service, has doubled its subscriber base in the last two months to 200,000.

David Hyman, chief executive and founder of MOG, said the key for users who want to obtain free music is to prove they are engaged and finding others who may eventually sign up for a subscription.

"Conceptually, if you're a taste-maker, an influencer, you will never have to pay. It'll be free forever," Hyman said. He added that if one of a user's followers or friends is converted into a paying subscriber, the user would be entitled to about three to five months of free music.

MOG's free service will be supported by advertising revenue. For the first 60 days, however, it will come without ads to give users a chance to test it without interruption.

Hyman wouldn't say how many subscribers MOG has or if the company is profitable. MOG, founded in 2005 originally as a network of music bloggers, launched its subscription music plan in late 2009. Its backers include Menlo Ventures, Balderton Capital, Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

Tokyo game show turns to cell phones, has new star (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 12:08 AM PDT

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama, Ap Business Writer – Thu Sep 15, 3:08 am ET

CHIBA, Japan – A startup little known outside Japan that offers games for cellphones is emerging as the new star at this year's Tokyo video game exhibition, usually dominated by big-name console makers like Sony and Microsoft.

Gree Inc., a social networking service that began just seven years ago in the founder's living room, had its first booth ever at the sprawling Tokyo Game Show, which previewed to media Thursday ahead of its opening to the public later this week at a hall in this Tokyo suburb.

Its stardom underlines the arrival of so-called "social games" aimed at casual users passing the time on smartphones and tablet devices rather than the sophisticated plots, imagery and controls found on gaming devices.

With Gree, mobile games are an additional feature to its social networking service, similar to those already common in the U.S. and other nations with Facebook and Twitter, although those don't focus as much on gaming.

Yoshikazu Tanaka, the 34-year-old founder and chief executive of Gree, said he was serious about expanding business overseas, targeting 1 billion users in the next several years.

Gree already has drawn 140 million users worldwide, and has opened overseas offices, including San Francisco and London.

Gree's booth was among the biggest at the annual Tokyo Game Show.

And it was drawing just as much of a crowd as Sony Corp., which exhibits every year, and was showing off its new portable machine, PlayStation Vita, set to go on sale Dec. 17 in Japan and early next year in the U.S. and Europe.

In Japan, PS Vita will face off this holiday season against DS3, the portable from Nintendo Co., which features glasses-free 3-D imagery.

Both Nintendo and Sony executives, in presentations earlier this week, expressed worries about keeping growth going in the gaming business, perhaps because of competition from devices like smartphones, Gree's specialty.

The shift to smartphones was affecting game-software makers as well.

"The network itself is the new platform," said Yoichi Wada, head of Japanese game software maker Square Enix. "Game developers need to keep in mind that gaming is spreading to casual users, including newcomers."

But the advantage of offering gaming on cellphones is simple: Almost everyone in the industrialized world owns a cellphone, and as more nations join that fold, people in those nations are bound to buy cellphones, too.

Tanaka said the advent of social gaming had changed the industry because people were always connected to networks with smartphones and tablets like the iPad, and people aren't necessarily going to go out and invest hundreds of dollars in a special game machine.

Tanaka said he envisioned a time whencell phones would become plentiful in places like Africa and South America for low prices, and people, who would never dream of buying expensive game machines, would be accessing Gree services from cellphones as gaming newcomers.

"What is coming next is very important," he said as a keynote speaker, a good indicator of his spot in the limelight. "Gree is targeting all cellphone-users."

Takashi Sensui, general manager at Microsoft Japan Co., said Microsoft sees social gaming as an opportunity to grow, as it is strong in games for cellphones and computers, as well as with those for its Xbox 360 home console.

What computer device people may want to use merely depends on where they are, such as whether they are on the move or they are at home, he said.

"You can use Microsoft's platform anywhere, anytime and everywhere, on any type of device to enjoy entertainment," he said.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Rdio announces ad-free, no-charge streaming music (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 07:41 PM PDT

Just Show Me: How to download a picture in Windows 7 (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 07:23 PM PDT

MOG FreePlay Gives Free Music Streaming A Klout-Like Boost (Mashable)

Posted: 14 Sep 2011 03:06 PM PDT

Christina Warren Christina Warren – Wed Sep 14, 6:06 pm ET

[More from Mashable: Miramax Adds Content to Netflix Latin America]

Music service MOG is rolling out a free version of its subscription-streaming offering on Thursday, Sept. 15.

Users will have access to MOG's entire catalog of 11 million songs. Like Spotify, MOG FreePlay will be ad-supported. For the first 60 days however, fans can enjoy MOG FreePlay ad-free.

[More from Mashable: Renewal Talks Break Down Between Starz and Netflix]

The launch of MOG FreePlay will also coincide with the broader launch of the new MOG website and web player. Last December, MOG released a Google Chrome web application. Its design has since been carried over into MOG for Mac [Mac App Store link] and the MOG Boxee app.

The new interface works well, in conjunction with MOG FreePlay, especially when it comes to the Facebook integration. If you attach your MOG account with Facebook Connect, MOG will show you music recommendations based on what you listen to and what what bands you like on Facebook.

Earn More Free Tunes

MOG's CEO David Hyman told us that the company has been working on the free version of its service for over a year. One of the main goals for the service was to figure out how to make the experience more social.

Like Spotify, MOG will limit how much free music a person can listen to each month. Instead of a time-based limit, it's track-based. MOG isn't disclosing how many tracks a user can listen to in a month, but visualizes how much music is left using a gas tank motif in the MOG player.

The twist, however, is that MOG will allow users to earn more free music for continuing to use and share the service with friends. For instance, creating and sharing a new playlist will give a user more free music. Referring friends will also add to the tank.

Hyman compared MOG's approach to the strategy Dropbox has employed. Dropbox spread virally in its early days thanks to space incentives users would get for successfully signing up another Dropbox member. Dropbox is an apt comparison, but we would say the implementation is more similar to Klout. The size of users' social graphs and their influence can decide how much free music is used. Hyman tells us influential social users can easily never run out of free music.

MOG has gone on to stress they are putting systems in place to limit MOG messages from being spammed out to users of social networks. The idea is to reward people for actively using the service.

Of course, users who want to listen to an unlimited number of songs, get mobile access and use MOG on connected devices can upgrade their free MOG accounts to paid accounts, called MOG Basic or MOG Primo.

Standing Out From the Crowd

It's increasingly difficult to differentiate one subscription streaming music service from another. Most of the services, including Spotify, Rhapsody, Sony Music Unlimited and Rdio, offer users access to a similar catalog of songs and similar sharing and socialization options.

What we like about MOG's approach to its free service is that the company is actively rewarding its most engaged and social users, encouraging the viral spread of the service.

Facebook is expected to announce its new music service at its f8 developer conference next week. It will be interesting to see how MOG FreePlay aligns with some of coming social changes poised to hit the digital music landscape.

MOG FreePlay will be available to users at 9:00 A.M. on Thursday. Give it a shot and let us know what you think of the free offering and the ways users can earn more free music.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Grandparents with webcam become new online stars (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 08:48 PM PDT

By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press Nigel Duara, Associated Press – 42 mins ago

McMINNVILLE, Ore. – It slowly began to dawn on Esther and Bruce Huffman that perhaps they were being filmed.

"Warning," the gray-haired, bespectacled grandmother reads off the screen. "You must stop recording before trying to close cyber link."

Pause. "Maybe this recorded us," says the neatly coiffed, rosy-cheeked man next to her.

"Aw, gee," Esther replies.

The realization came toward the end of a nearly three-minute video that has launched the retired Oregon couple to YouTube stardom. They had unwittingly captured their first attempt at learning how to work the webcam on a new laptop.

The Huffmans met a couple of years after Bruce's first wife died, at the retirement complex in which they both lived. She liked his vivacity; he thought she would be a sturdy rudder to his boundless energy.

In the video, she plays the straight man as she tries to make a serious attempt at the request of their children and grandchildren. He's bouncing in his seat next to her, making monkey faces.

Esther had bought a laptop late this summer. Already a Facebook user, she was asked by her family to try recording videos for the amusement of the grandchildren.

In mid-August, the couple sat in front of their laptop, fiddling with the controls of a video recording program. Somehow, they got the program running. Somehow, they pressed "record."

It was filming as Bruce jokingly fretted about his appearance. "I'm so sad, Esther, I'm so sad," Bruce says with a sad-clown expression. "Look at all the wrinkles up there and the cracks in my head."

There is singing.

"Hello my darling, hello my baby, hello my ga-doh-go," Bruce intones, sliding from Looney Tunes into gibberish. "Lala-te-ki-ka."

Bruce makes faces, leaning close to the laptop screen and blowing out his cheeks: "Now look at the monkey. That's a pretty good monkey!"

When the couple realizes the webcam might have been recording their antics, they stiffen. But their 21-year-old granddaughter, Mindy, saw the video's potential. With their permission, she uploaded the file, dubbing it "Webcam 101 for Seniors." By Thursday, it was nearing 3 million views on YouTube.

In the crush of media that has descended on them, the Huffmans struggle to explain what made the video so compelling. After all, it was just a couple minutes of two Oregonians in a retirement community doing ... well, not much.

Perhaps, Esther said, people were attracted to its joy. We're under such a negative news barrage daily, she said. War, crime, natural disasters — wouldn't people rather watch an 86-year-old man singing Looney Tunes?

Lynette Paulson, Esther's daughter, ventured that the unmitigated happiness in the video resonates with viewers.

"They want to see that joy," Paulson said. "It just brings you up."

Or maybe, said 27-year-old grandson Luke Erickson, it shows the possibility that age doesn't mean infirmness or discontent, but that two spectacularly unself-conscious people eight decades on are capable of happiness and supporting and loving each other.

"I don't know how to do this," Esther complains in the video.

Bruce leans in to her.

"Whatever you do," he says, "you do fine."

___

Nigel Duara can be reached at www.twitter.com/nigelduara

___

Online:

http://youtu.be/FcN08Tg3PWw

Both sides rest in blogger's Conn. threat case (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 06:12 PM PDT

By DAVE COLLINS, Associated Press Dave Collins, Associated Press – Thu Sep 15, 9:12 pm ET

HARTFORD, Conn. – When a New Jersey blogger urged readers to "take up arms" against Connecticut lawmakers and suggested that government leaders "obey the Constitution or die," his words went above and beyond the usual threats public officials receive, two Connecticut officials testified Thursday.

The testimony came in the trial of Harold "Hal" Turner, 49, of North Bergen, N.J. Turner is charged with felony inciting injury to people and misdemeanor threatening and is already serving a three-year sentence for making death threats against federal judges in Illinois. If convicted of the state felony charge, he could get up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The state trial began Thursday morning and by the end of the day both the prosecution and defense had rested their cases. Turner represented himself and didn't testify or call any witnesses. But he noted in his questioning of prosecution witnesses that no one was hurt by his blog two years ago and that the prosecution did not produce any evidence that anyone planned violence because of his blog.

Andrew McDonald, general counsel to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, and Thomas Jones, a state ethics enforcement officer, testified that they were concerned for their safety. McDonald was a legislator at the time.

"I wish you would never have entered my life," McDonald told Turner. "I felt threatened by you, and I felt you were a volatile individual."

McDonald said he had received threats before. But "this was an extraordinary document that far exceeded any other threat I had ever received. I thought that this was a very real threat."

Both McDonald and Jones testified they were worried about Turner writing in the blog that he would post their home addresses.

"I interpreted this as people were going to be coming to my house within 24 hours with bullets and guns," said Jones, who also said Turner's blog was more serious than other unrelated threats he had received. "This was real. This was tangible. This was electric."

Turner insists his comments were protected by the First Amendment right of free speech and has called his remarks the kind of "political hyperbole" often heard on news talk shows.

He wrote the blog posting June 2, 2009, in response to state legislation withdrawn three months earlier that would have given lay members of Connecticut's Roman Catholic churches more control over parish finances. Turner believed the bill flew in the face of separation of church and state.

Turner's blog urged Catholics in the state to "take up arms and put down this tyranny by force."

"It is our intent to foment direct actions against these individuals personally," Turner wrote. "These beastly government officials should be made an example of as a warning to others in government: Obey the Constitution or die."

He also wrote that if authorities tried to stop his cause, "I suspect we have enough bullets to put them down too."

Police said Turner's targets were Jones; McDonald, then a state senator; and Michael Lawlor, then a state representative who now is the governor's undersecretary for criminal justice planning. McDonald and Lawlor were co-chairmen of the legislature's Judiciary Committee, which handled the legislation.

Prosecutors say Jones was targeted because he had written Catholic Church officials, saying some of their activities at the state Capitol could possibly be considered lobbying and they weren't registered as lobbyists.

Judge Carl Schuman rejected Turner's request for acquittal, saying that the case wasn't about free speech. The judge said the issue was whether Turner broke state law.

Closing arguments before the jury in Hartford Superior Court were set for Friday.

The federal case for which Turner is serving a prison sentence stemmed from Turner's online criticism online after a 2009 ruling made by a federal appeals court that dismissed lawsuits challenging handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park, Ill. Turner said: "These judges must die." He was sentenced in December after two previous trials ended in hung juries.

Also, in 2005, federal authorities questioned Turner after U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow found her mother and husband shot to death in her home in Chicago. Lefkow was targeted by a white supremacist who objected to her ruling in a trademark dispute. Turner said he became a focus because he had said on air two years earlier that Lefkow "was worthy of being killed."

RIM results, outlook stun investors even after warning (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 04:32 PM PDT

By Alastair Sharp Alastair Sharp – Thu Sep 15, 7:32 pm ET

(Reuters) – Research In Motion reported a steep drop in quarterly profit on limp sales of its smartphones and tablets, and offered investors little hope of a turnaround anytime soon, sending its shares tumbling.

RIM, which launched a string of refreshed BlackBerry phones in recent weeks, painted a dismal picture for its current quarter and said it now expects to reach only the lower end of an already reduced full-year outlook in a quarterly financial report issued late Thursday.

"This report is another nail in the coffin of management," said Edward Snyder, an analyst at Charter Equity Research. "Even though they guided down for this quarter, they still fell short of that."

The flagging performance by the one-time smartphone leader shows how far BlackBerry, once a byword for corporate communication, has fallen out of favor with both consumers and investors as Apple's iPhone and devices running Google's Android software take oversized bites out of the booming market, especially in the United States.

"It's pretty clear the BlackBerry platform is now in decline, said analyst Tavis McCourt at Morgan Keegan. "They really need QNX to reinvigorate the business."

RIM is hitting the labs to get the QNX software powering its PlayBook tablet onto its next generation of smartphones, possibly as soon as early 2012.

The limp numbers pile pressure on senior executives, who have been cajoled to step aside by investors and analysts worried about repeated failures to execute on strategy.

"If QNX is a bust that's when RIM needs to make strategic decisions as to whether it can go it alone," McCourt said.

RIM shipped just 10.6 million smartphones in the second quarter, as carriers struggled to sell year-old devices with limited processing power compared to newer rival products.

"I was stunned that the device number was below their guidance," said Peter Misek from Jefferies & Co.

Perhaps more ominously, RIM shipped only 200,000 PlayBook tablet computers, which went on sale globally in June after weathering some scathing reviews at a North American launch in April.

Analysts had expected RIM to ship almost 12 million phones and 600,000 tablets. RIM's own outlook was for BlackBerry shipments of between 11 million and 12.5 million.

Highlighting a widening gap, Apple sold more 20 million iPhones and more than 9 million iPads last quarter after virtually creating the tablet market last year.

CEO PROMISES

RIM's co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie took turns explaining RIM's performance on a conference call after the results for a second straight quarter. Balsillie had previously taken the call on his own.

"We understand that the past few quarters have been challenging and we are confident that we are on track to return to growth in Q3 and beyond," said Lazaradis, who founded the company in 1985.

Acknowledging disappointing PlayBook shipments, Balsillie promised a software upgrade he dubbed PlayBook 2.0 and hinted it would be available by the time RIM hosts its developer conference in October.

Investors and analysts have largely lost patience though, and Balsillie and Lazaridis have a tough path back.

"Given management's consistent history of over-promising and under-delivering, we lack faith that the company can successfully hit the guidance that they've set," said technology analyst Bill Kreher at Edward Jones Investment.

He said he wouldn't be surprised if QNX-based phones are either delayed or pushed out to market with some functionality omitted.

BLACKBERRY REBOUND EXPECTED

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company's adjusted net profit fell 47 percent to $419 million, or 80 cents per diluted share, on revenue of $4.2 billion.

Analysts had on average expected RIM to earn 88 cents a share on revenue of $4.47 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company, which issued a profit warning in June, earned $1.46 a share on sales of $4.62 billion in the year-earlier period.

RIM expects profit and BlackBerry shipments to rebound in the current quarter as upgraded, touchscreen versions of its Bold, Torch and Curve smartphones, plus a Torch-branded touchscreen-only device, start selling in volume across the world. But its outlook did not go beyond what analysts had anticipated.

RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares fell as much as 18 percent to $24.20 in after-hours trade following the results.

RIM expects to earn between $1.20 and $1.40 a share on sales between $5.3 billion and $5.6 billion in the three months to late November.

RIM said it had more than 70 million subscribers and sell-through was 13.7 million, meaning it was able to clear some excess inventory that had been lying unsold in carrier stores.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto, additional reporting by Euan Rocha, Allison Martell and Pav Jordan in Toronto and Sinead Carew in New York; editing by Peter Galloway, Janet Guttsman and Bob Burgdorfer)

106 & Park tops Android Apps of the Week (Appolicious)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 02:30 PM PDT

Most Asian nations realizing Internet cannot be tamed (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 05:30 PM PDT

By Raju Gopalakrishnan Raju Gopalakrishnan – Thu Sep 15, 8:30 pm ET

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – It's not just dictators. Governments around the world, many of them popularly elected, have tried for years to control the Internet and social media, dismayed by their potential to incite violence, spread mischief and distribute pornography and dissent.

But in Asia, home to everything from free-wheeling democracies to totalitarian regimes and others in between, many governments are increasingly realizing that controlling online content, including dissent, just will not work.

Even China, which strongly regulates the Internet and is grappling with how to deal with the extremely popular microblogs read by hundreds of millions of its people, is highly unlikely to block them completely.

"Governments are committing quite a bit of resources and time to block websites and I think it's a panic reaction," says Phil Robertson, Bangkok-based deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

"They have some temporary, immediate discouraging effect but over the longer term, they won't be effective because people will still find a way to get the news they want to hear.

"Once people have been exposed to the Internet and see the power of getting information free to your computer, it's a very addictive feeling of empowerment."

That snowballing of sentiment has played out this year in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, where governments have been overthrown by movements bolstered by the Internet. The United States tried to block dissemination of the Wikileaks cables and British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to temporarily censor social networking sites after riots last month.

Asia is also learning first-hand about the ubiquitous power of the wired world.

In India, authorities were taken aback last month when an anti-corruption campaign multiplied on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites and drew tens of thousands of people to protest sites.

But there were no signs the government tried in any way to crack down on the online crusade, even if it could have.

"At the rate in which it gained momentum, I don't think the government actually had the time to ban the movement," said Vijay Mukhi, a cyber-security expert.

FUTILE

Mukhi said the government did selectively block some sites, but added Internet users in a nation with millions of tech-savvy engineers and software developers could easily bypass controls.

"The Indian government doesn't realize that blocking websites is a futile task because nowadays it has become so easy to find other means to get access to banned sites," he said.

"They are just helping to popularize those particular sites and inviting more traffic."

South Korea, the world's most wired nation with 80 percent of households having access to the Internet, is one of two electoral democracies in the world to substantially block access to some sites, said a study on 37 countries this year by U.N.-funded watchdog Freedom House. The other is Turkey.

South Korea heavily filters online content involving North Korea, with which it is still technically at war. But its citizens continue to lobby the government for more access.

"No healthy democracy is possible where free speech is not tolerated," said a letter earlier this month from the Electronic Frontier Foundation organization to the president.

"The expansive controls on online speech established in South Korea lack oversight and prevent citizens from accessing valuable expressive, historical, political and artistic online content," the letter said.

Singapore blocks a symbolic list of 100 mostly pornographic sites but does not to bar any site for political content. And despite strict controls on open political discussion, it allowed freewheeling criticism of government policies in the run-up to general elections this year.

The ruling People's Action Party easily won the election, but it scored its lowest ever percentage of the vote, and the opposition made historic gains.

Neighboring Malaysia pledged in 1996 not to impose controls on the Internet and was rewarded with investments from foreign technology companies such as Microsoft Corp and Cisco Systems.

The decision led to vibrant online political commentary. Analysts say the government had since quietly considered some form of filters on the debate, but decided against it.

"The government feels largely helpless in trying to manage online dissent because methods such as threatening to close down newspapers and targeting bloggers makes netizens angrier and more likely to lash out against the government," said Ong Kian Ming, who teaches at UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur.

"Netizens have clearly been emboldened and it is hard to see how the government can try to turn this tide without reaping a lot of negative reaction," said Ong.

Across much of Asia, the feeling is growing that imposing any sort of controls on online political debate backfires.

"Usually all it does is draw attention to the person and the message, who tend to be small players anyway," said Cherian George, an associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

"The general pattern is that the blogger who gets censored becomes far more famous than he otherwise might be.

"The only situation where it might work in the short-term would be highly volatile, fast-moving situations. Governments can shut down all communications during violence or a riot, but this can't be a long-term solution."

(Reporting by Charmian Kok and Kevin Lim in Singapore Jeremy Laurence in Seoul; Annie Banerji in New Delhi and Razak Ahmad in Kuala Lumpur Editing by Brian Rhoads)

RIM Sold Just One Playbook for Every 23 iPads Apple Sold (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 03:11 PM PDT

Adam Clark Estes Adam Clark Estes – Thu Sep 15, 6:11 pm ET

Research in Motion (RIM) terrible horrible year is getting worse. In their second quarter earnings report, the BlackBerry manufacturer reported that their profits had plummeted 47 percent; sales for their BlackBerrys devices fell 1.3 million under analysts' predictions; and they'd sold only 200,000 of their PlayBook tablets. That amounts to one PlayBook for every 23 iPads sold during the same period. (It's actually one per every 23.45, but we rounded down.) The figures fell well below analysts estimates and RIM share price sunk by 18 cents late in the day. In total, the company's stock has lost half its value so far this year.

Related: Consensus: New Curves Aren't Good Enough to Save BlackBerry

Whether trying to be optimist or struggling with denial, RIM's chief executive Jim Balsillie tried to spin some movements in BlackBerry sales in a positive direction. "On the plus side, the company said it is seeing strong interest for new products running an updated version of its BlackBerry OS," Balsillie said. "We successfully launched a range of BlackBerry 7 smartphones around the world during the latter part of the second quarter, and we are seeing strong sell-through and customer interest for these new products." 

Related: BlackBerry's New Social Music Service Would've Been Rad in the '90s

Not to hammer the point home too much, but RIM sold 10.6 million BlackBerrys in Q2. Apple sold 20.3 million iPhones.

Gum Drop! leads iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 02:00 PM PDT

LG Elec plans to restructure Korean mobile unit: source (Reuters)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 07:00 PM PDT

– 2 hrs 29 mins ago

SEOUL (Reuters) – LG Electronics Inc (066570.KS) plans to restructure its domestic mobile operation by reducing marketing staff to improve the struggling business, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The move comes after LG, the world's No.3 handset maker, has recorded five straight quarterly losses from mobile phone sales and as cutthroat competition pressures it to speed up restructuring.

"(LG is) speeding up the adjustment...(by) boosting the research pool and slimming down the marketing structure," the source said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

LG had around 10,000 mobile staff in Korea as of end-June and the source declined to provide the size of the adjustment.

The Maeil Business Newspaper reported quoting an unnamed industry official that LG planed to realign some 1,000 jobs, or between 10-15 percent of its domestic mobile staff, mainly marketing positions.

LG declined to comment on the report.

Koo Bon-joon, a member of LG's founding family, took over as chief executive a year ago and has been cutting the portion of unprofitable phone models to focus on high-margin smartphones, bolstering research staff in an attempt to catch up to rivals such as Apple (AAPL.O), Samsung (005930.KS) and HTC (2498.TW).

Shares in LG rose 2.3 percent early Friday morning, in line with the wider market's (.KS11) 2.4 percent gain.

(Reporting by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)

Rdio: More free music coming without ads (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 03:34 PM PDT

– Thu Sep 15, 6:34 pm ET

LOS ANGELES – Rdio (AR-dee-oh), a subscription music service that offers unlimited song plays on mobile devices for a monthly fee, plans to replace its seven-day free trial with one that offers more free listening.

Rdio CEO Drew Larner said the system would be "dynamic" and tailored to each user. The free trial will come without ads.

He said most users will get more time to try out the service, while heavier users will have free listening cut short and be prompted to pay for a subscription.

Rdio offers access to more than 11 million songs for $10 a month on mobile devices and $5 a month on computers only.

Its expanded free offering comes after competitor MOG added a digital gas tank to its free service that can be filled by recommending songs to others.

It also puts Rdio more directly in competition with Spotify, another subscription music plan that offers a long free period with explicit listening caps. The free services of both MOG and Spotify will come with ads, although MOG is offering an ad-free period for the next two months.

Larner declined to comment on its integration with Facebook. The social networking site is expected to launch an expanded music offering in partnership with several licensed music services at a developers conference next Thursday.

It's Going to Take More Than Windows 8 to Kill Flash (The Atlantic Wire)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 12:55 PM PDT

Rebecca Greenfield Rebecca Greenfield – Thu Sep 15, 3:55 pm ET

Microsoft has joined Apple in its shunning of Adobe Flash, sort of. With its release of the new coolest operating system on the block, Windows 8, it has forgone the Adobe platform, reports AllThingsD's Ina Fried. "The touch-friendly version doesn’t work with plug-ins or extensions, meaning it can’t run Adobe Flash." With both Windows and Macs opting for HTML5, it might look like the computer big-wigs have pushed the platform to the fringe, ushering along its slow death. But that's delusional--lots of things still run on and depend on Flash, including Windows 8, which still supports Flash for the desktop version of Internet Explorer. It's not dying, it's just losing its annoying dominance.

Related: Here's Why You'll Ditch Your iPad for Windows 8

Flash is particularly good at some things that alternatives just don't do, like videos, explains Jeremy Allaire Founder and CEO of BrightCove--which incidentally uses Flash--in a post at TechCrunch.

In particular, this includes online video, rich media advertising and marketing, and online games (casual games). All of these kinds of applications are highly focused on having a great and immersive experience that just works, and the creators of these apps are very focused on audience reach--anything that impedes 100% consumer acceptance is a significant concern. Here, Flash is dominant.

Hulu and YouTube both use Flash. Favorite Facebook games, like Farmville, also depend on it, explains Social Times's willm. "Flash is incredibility important to the social games craze sweeping social media. Flash is literally the engine powering the social games revolution." There are also plenty of flash based ads. Oh, and there's also porn. 

Related: Microsoft's Zune Is Dead; Let's Relive Its Finest Moment

But, given that many popular devices, like all those iGadgets we love, don't support the platform, many of these services offer both flash and HTML 5 capabilities. And Microsoft gets that, explains PC World's Ian Paul. "Microsoft said it examined the plug-in requirements for the top 97,000 sites worldwide and discovered that 62 percent can already offer HTML5 video to non-Flash devices. Many of these sites can also serve non-Flash ads as well." Even Allaire admitted he uses both for "pragmatic" reasons. 

Related: A Computing Milestone: Apple's Profits Pass Microsoft

While some might like to see the end of Flash, it won't experience a violent death, but rather a little bit of an ego deflation and a peaceful coexistence with HTML5. At least for now. 

Investors fail to bite at Microsoft Wall Street pow-wow (Reuters)

Posted: 14 Sep 2011 10:23 PM PDT

– Thu Sep 15, 1:23 am ET

ANAHEIM, California (Reuters) – A rising tide of investor agitation over Microsoft Corp's static share price and bulging cash hoard made no mark at the software company's annual meeting with Wall Street analysts and fund managers on Wednesday.

Despite recent calls for a big dividend increase, and the head of Chief Executive Steve Ballmer -- who has presided over a halving of the company's share price in his 11-year tenure -- investors left the matters of management and cash distribution untouched at the three-hour meeting in Anaheim, California.

"Nobody asked the question," one fund manager, who had earlier identified Microsoft's use of its $53 billion cash hoard as the most important issue facing investors, said after the meeting. "We want to see more of a bank dividend," said the fund manager, who asked not to be named.

Microsoft currently pays a 2.5 percent dividend, which stands somewhere in the middle of large, established technology companies but lags other established industries.

The company is expected to raise its quarterly dividend modestly next week -- as it does most years -- but has shown no indication that it will bow to investor demands to double its dividend or make another special payout as it did in 2004.

Chief financial officer Peter Klein said returning cash to shareholders was one of the company's main goals, but gave no indication of great changes ahead.

"They are restricted in what they can do," said Sid Parakh, analyst with money manager McAdams Wright Ragen, who attended the meeting, pointing out that most of Microsoft's cash pile is sitting overseas, preventing any easy distribution to shareholders.

"It was a reaffirmation of what they have been saying, they've been pretty clear," said Parakh, who believes the tension between shareholders and the company is largely a media invention.

In a half-hour Q&A session with executives at the conclusion of the event, questions predominantly from Wall Street sell-side analysts focused on the new Windows 8 and broader strategic questions on how Microsoft is tying together its software for PCs, tablets and phones in the age of "cloud computing."

Ballmer, whose tenure as CEO has included the collapse of the tech stock boom shortly after he took over, did not address recent remarks by influential hedge fund manager David Einhorn. Einhorn called for Ballmer's removal and demanded the sale of the online services unit, including Bing. The unit has lost more than $6 billion in the last three years.

Neither did Ballmer talk about a letter from an anonymous investor that was widely circulated over the summer, calling for the company to issue $40 billion of debt to fund a massive share buyback and to direct all its domestic cash flow toward paying dividends, which the investor calculated would increase the share price by more than 50 percent.

Ballmer gave no indication he was thinking of selling Bing or dropping its slow-growing smartphone business.

"I'm not saying I love where we are," he said of the phone business. "We've just got to kick this thing to the next level," he said, referring to the agreement with Nokia to make Windows phones, expected on the market later this year.

The previous day, Microsoft showed off progress on its Windows 8 operating system, expected to be released next year, to generally good reviews from developers and tech blogs. More than 500,000 people downloaded a test version of the new system overnight, Microsoft said.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Gary Hill)

Sun owner Greenspun Media lays off 12 employees (AP)

Posted: 15 Sep 2011 03:27 PM PDT

– Thu Sep 15, 6:27 pm ET

LAS VEGAS – The parent company of the Las Vegas Sun says it's laying off 12 employees as it struggles with the recession and an evolving media landscape.

Greenspun Media Group President and CEO Brian Greenspun said Thursday the company's joint operating agreement with the Las Vegas Review-Journal exposes it to that newspaper's fortunes. The Review-Journal has had two rounds of layoffs this year.

The newspapers are delivered together. The Sun says (http://bit.ly/mXQ1Yv) it draws most of its revenue from the Review-Journal as part of the agreement.

Greenspun says the company is trying to diversify but progress has been slow. He says the family-owned media group must operate more like an innovative startup than an entrenched newspaper.

Greenspun Media Group also publishes magazines and an alternative weekly and runs travel destination website Vegas.com.

___

Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com
at 9:44 PM

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