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Baidu profit up 80 percent, forecasts more growth (AP) : Technet |
- Baidu profit up 80 percent, forecasts more growth (AP)
- HP says it will keep personal computer unit (AP)
- Electronic Arts 2Q loss expands; raises forecast (AP)
- Two Girl Scouts present educational app to big business (Yahoo! News)
- Astronauts play zero gravity tricks aboard the ISS (Yahoo! News)
- Beware the Digital Disruptors: They're Coming for Your Industry (Mashable)
- Baidu sees strong Q4 sales driven by ad spend (Reuters)
- Coldplay keeps 'Mylo Xyloto' off streaming plans (AP)
- Redbox raises prices on DVD rentals (Digital Trends)
- Judge blocks most of SF cellphone warning law (AP)
- Facebook now allows friends to help recover accounts (Digital Trends)
- BlackBerry maker parts ways with another top manager (Reuters)
- Modern Combat 3 tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious)
- Pictures of the Droid 4 leak out (Digital Trends)
- DirecTV complains to FCC about "misleading" Fox ads (Reuters)
- How Steve Jobs Got Away with Not Having a License Plate (The Atlantic Wire)
- Nintendo's losses grow, slashes forecast (AP)
- Here Come ARM-Based Servers (NewsFactor)
| Baidu profit up 80 percent, forecasts more growth (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 08:40 PM PDT BEIJING – Baidu Inc., which operates China's most popular search engine, said Friday its latest quarterly profit jumped 80 percent as strong growth in usage of its site helped to drive advertising revenue higher. Profit for the three months ended Sept. 30 was $295 million, or 84 cents per share, the Beijing-based company said. Revenue rose 85.1 percent to $654.7 million. The company cited strong growth in user traffic and spending by advertising customers. "Spending by large customers significantly outperformed our expectations," chairman and CEO Robin Li said in a statement. The company forecast more strong growth, saying it expects revenues in the current quarter to rise by up to 85 percent. Baidu has steadily increased its market share since Google Inc. closed its China search engine in March 2010 after saying it no longer wanted to cooperate with the communist Beijing government's censorship rules. Baidu had a 75.9 percent market share in the three months ending in June, up from 64 percent in the first quarter of 2010, according to Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing. Google's share has declined from 30.9 percent to 18.9 percent but it still is well ahead of third-place Sogou, which has 2.4 percent. China has the world's most populous Internet market with more than 485 million people online as of the end of June. Beijing encourages Web use for business and education but tries to block access to material deemed subversive or pornographic. Baidu, long seen as a Google copycat, has launched a series of initiatives including a music download service to expand its appeal and differentiate its brand. ___ Baidu Inc.: http://www.baidu.com |
| HP says it will keep personal computer unit (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 07:21 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – Hewlett-Packard Co. has decided against spinning off or selling its PC division — a plan first brought to light in August by the technology conglomerate's now former CEO. HP said Thursday that it reached its decision after evaluating the impact to the company of jettisoning the business unit, which is the world's biggest manufacturer of desktop and notebook computers for consumers and businesses. The unit supplies a third of HP's revenue, and PCs are an area where the company is a market leader. But it is HP's least profitable division, and its disposal was meant to be part of former CEO Leo Apotheker's plan to transform the Silicon Valley stalwart into a twin of East Coast rival IBM Corp.: a company focused on businesses, rather than both businesses and consumers. In an interview, HP's new CEO Meg Whitman said the company determined that, given the lost revenue and cost, removing business "makes no sense." "I have a lot of confidence we've made the right decision and now we're going to go back to work and go execute," she said. Deciding what to do with the unit has been one of the biggest challenges for Whitman, a former head of online marketplace operator eBay Inc. who joined Palo Alto-based HP in September after Apotheker was fired. In August, Apotheker said the PC business would go up for sale in a badly blundered announcement that hastened his demise. At that time, HP also said it would exit the tablet computer and smartphone business and buy business software maker Autonomy Corp. for about $10 billion. Carving out the PC business would have been a tricky kind of surgery, given its enormity. Steve Diamond, an associate professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told The Associated Press last month that "tearing apart a business unit of that size is like taking out organs." "It's very painful. It's like dividing Siamese twins. It's very, very difficult to do and you don't know how it's going to come out," he said. HP appears to have reached a similar conclusion. The company said that its evaluation of the business unit revealed a deep integration across key operations, such as its supply chain and procurement. Ultimately, the review found that the cost of recreating these operations in a single company outweighed any benefits of separating the PC unit. Some analysts cheered HP's decision as the right move, adding they were happy that Whitman made the announcement so rapidly. She had previously said the company would make a determination about the business by the end of the year. "The fact that Meg pushed this decision very quickly is absolutely cleaning up the mistakes of the past," said Gartner analyst Mark Fabbi. Whitman said she wanted to reach a decision on the business as fast as possible because it had "created a lot of uncertainty in the marketplace." Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett said HP never should have considered removing its PC unit, and the move to keep it seems like the right decision given market conditions. "Hopefully it's the beginning of showing they've got the process and people in place to work these things through," he said. "But it is puzzling that it was hard for them to figure out." Gillett said he thinks HP may now be able to thin out its PC family — similar to what Steve Jobs did at Apple in order to resuscitate the company in the `90s — and focus on just a few devices with attractive features. "It's something they have the potential to do that few others do," Gillett said. Analysts said they don't see any long-term consequences for HP now that it has made its decision. But there's still a big question mark: How will HP compete in the rapidly growing mobile device market? As part of its PC business spinoff announcement, HP also said it would stop making tablet computers and smartphones by October — effectively killing flailing smartphone pioneer Palm Inc., which HP bought in 2010 for $1.8 billion. With Palm, HP got the intuitive WebOS software, which ran on several smartphones. In July, HP released a tablet called the TouchPad that also ran WebOS. But the devices never caught on with consumers, many of whom were more enticed by Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad and smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android software. HP still hasn't said what, precisely, it plans to do with WebOS. Todd Bradley, the head of HP's PC unit, said it's "fair to say Apple got a great jump-start in the tablet space" and now HP is trying to figure out its own best approach. Right now, HP is focused on building a tablet that uses Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming Windows 8 software, he said. He added that consumers shouldn't be keeping an eye out for a TouchPad 2, but that the company will "clearly look at what's the right path forward for WebOS." HP shares rose 14 cents to $27.23 in after-hours trading. In regular trading on Thursday, the stock added $1.34, or 5.2 percent, to close at $27.09. |
| Electronic Arts 2Q loss expands; raises forecast (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 03:59 PM PDT LOS ANGELES – Video game maker Electronic Arts Inc. said Thursday that its second-quarter loss expanded from a year ago due to higher costs, even as revenue grew. It raised its sales forecast for the all-important holiday season slightly above analyst estimates. CEO John Riccitiello said sales of "Battlefield 3," which launched two days earlier, were "very strong." The net loss in the three-month period ending on Sept. 30 grew to $340 million, or $1.03 per share. Last year, the company had a quarterly loss of $201 million, or 61 cents per share. EA said costs for marketing, research and development increased from last year. Excluding stock compensation costs, acquisition expenses and other costs, adjusted earnings came to 5 cents per share, beating the adjusted loss of 4 cents per share expected by analysts polled by FactSet. Adjusted revenue, which accounts for deferred revenue from games with online components, rose 17 percent to $1.03 billion from $884 million, helped by sales of its sports games "FIFA 12" and "Madden NFL 12." That also beat the $955 million expected by analysts. "Our results reflected a tremendous performance by our EA Sports titles and a strong showing on a new game on the Facebook platform, `The Sims Social,'" Riccitiello said on a conference call with analysts. "We're now focused on our biggest title for the holiday." The company said it expects adjusted revenue in the current quarter through December of $1.55 billion to $1.65 billion, with the midpoint slightly higher than the $1.59 billion expected by analysts. EA lifted the bottom end of its full-year adjusted earnings. It now expects a range of 75 cents to 90 cents, instead of 70 cents at the low end. Analysts were already expecting 89 cents. The results didn't satisfy investors after a broad rally by stocks Thursday. Shares in the Redwood, Calif.-based company were down 80 cents, or 3.3 percent, at $23.50 in after-hours trading after closing up 11 cents at $24.50 in the regular session. |
| Two Girl Scouts present educational app to big business (Yahoo! News) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:14 PM PDT |
| Astronauts play zero gravity tricks aboard the ISS (Yahoo! News) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 06:08 PM PDT |
| Beware the Digital Disruptors: They're Coming for Your Industry (Mashable) Posted: 26 Oct 2011 05:14 PM PDT James L. McQuivey, Ph.D. is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @jmcquivey. Growing up in the '70s, I was the world's biggest fan of The Bionic Man. Every Sunday night at 7 p.m. you could find me glued to our Trinitron TV to watch Steve Austin battle every villain from Bionic Sasquatch to the evil Dr. Dolenz. The appeal of the show was simple: Amplified by technology, the Bionic Man is better, stronger, and faster than his enemies. [More from Mashable: How to Time Your Facebook Posts to Reach the Most Fans] It turns out to be a morality tale for our own day. But you are not the bionic man in the drama I'm unfolding -- you are his target. Because while you were carefully planning your business strategy, hundreds -- if not thousands -- of individuals and competitors have been exploiting technology to make themselves better, stronger, and faster than you. We call these people digital disruptors. And they're coming right for you. [More from Mashable: Startup Success: How 7 Top Angel Investors Do Business] No matter what industry you are in, you are their target. Where you could once dismiss digital disruption as the sole province of the music or other media industries where it destroyed billions in value, digital disruption has now expanded. These disruptors employ technologies -- and the platforms they enable -- to build better products than you can, establish a stronger customer relationship than you have, and deliver it all to market faster than you ever thought possible. Oh, and it doesn't cost anywhere close to six million dollars for them to get started. I offer Lose It! as one of many case studies worth considering. Targeting the weight loss and fitness business -- one of the most analog industries on the planet -- Lose It! is disrupting the more than $40 billion Americans spend on weight loss each year. It's a costly industry to enter -- think of Jenny Craig's marketing budget alone, then add its hundreds of physical locations, prepared meals, and all the infrastructure to support the entire enterprise. So while franchises like The Biggest Loser have succeeded in entering this business recently, they have done so at great cost. Meanwhile, a single app that helps dieters keep track of the calories they consume on their smartphones has gone from 0 to 7 million downloads in just a few years. FitNow, the company behind the app, pulled this off with four employees, establishing an unheard of customer-per-employee metric of 1.75 million. This is digital disruption at its finest: better, stronger, faster. The app got to market quickly, partly because as a digital disruptor, FitNow could afford to launch something that didn't try to solve all the problems in the weight-loss world. As Charles Teague, CEO, told me recently, "Let's not pretend that we know the endgame here. Let's do the least amount of features to know if it will work. Then improve it if people use it." And improve it they have, adding fitness tracking and more recently a robust social community of like-minded dieters. Because it sounds so easy, a CEO I shared this with asked me why, if digital is so quick and dirty, his company's website redesign was over time and over budget. I told him it was precisely because he staffed up his business under assumptions about design and functionality that were true in 2005 but are no longer the case. Digital disruption has even disrupted the digital businesses that preceded them. While digital disruptors are better, stronger, and faster, they are not untouchable. Their ease of entry comes from the fact that traditional barriers have fallen to zero. That means your direct cost to emulate their practices can also be low. That's why I recommend you steal the digital disruptor's handbook. Use the iPad, the Kinect, and whatever platform is next to build a digital bridge to your customers. Like with Lose It!, your bridge must engage customers more often than your current product can, packaging and delivering benefits that you didn't realize were part of your consumer contract because before now, they weren't. You have to change your understanding of your product so you can then change your customer's understanding of it as well. This will require better thinking than you currently do – I previously explained how digital disruptors take advantage of a type of thinking called "innovating the adjacent possible." It's crucial to generating more ideas more quickly so that you can find the nearby opportunities that will succeed while quickly culling those that will fail. There's more to do, but before you can even begin, you have to know: Are you ready to do this? Does your company have the energy, skills, and policies to turn into a disruptor or are you more likely to be displaced by the digital disruptor nearest you? Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Nikada This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Baidu sees strong Q4 sales driven by ad spend (Reuters) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 08:40 PM PDT (Reuters)- Top Chinese search engine Baidu Inc forecast strong sales that topped Wall Street estimates, after reporting robust quarterly earnings, shrugging off concerns that a weak economy could hit advertisers. Baidu said spending by large customers was significantly better than it expected in the third quarter and its 80 percent rise in quarterly net profit was driven by spending by online retailers. Shares of Baidu were up 7.2 percent at $148.50 in after-hours trade. Chinese Internet companies Sohu.com Inc and Sina Corp were up more than 4 percent. China, with more than 485 million users, is the world's largest Internet market. Yet, with Internet penetration hovering around 36 percent and user sophistication outside the big cities still low, the potential for growth is huge. "Search marketing continues to be very resilient despite the macro uncertainties. Across the board there hasn't been any weakness in any sector and they are really benefiting from the growth in e-commerce, they are firing on all cylinders," said Nomura's Hong Kong-based analyst Jin Yoon. Baidu has solidified its position as the dominant search engine in China since Google Inc's decision in 2010 to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong following a standoff with the Chinese government over Internet censorship. Baidu said it expects fourth-quarter revenue of $691.4 million to $711.0 million, above analysts' forecasts of $649.5 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company's forecast of up to 8.6 percent sequential revenue growth in the fourth quarter outpaced the 4.8 percent increase expected by analysts. "Baidu should be able to grow strongly despite any slowdown in the China economy because online advertising is gaining share from traditional advertising, it's a secular shift," said Collins Stewart analyst Mayuresh Masurekar. For the third quarter, Baidu reported net income of $295 million, or 84 cents per share. On an adjusted basis, the company earned 86 cents a share. Analysts on average expected a profit of 83 cents a share. "One source of strong revenue growth was once again the e-commerce sector. In particular, the revenue contributed by the online retail sector retained impressive momentum, growing over 100 percent year over year," Baidu's Chief Executive Robin Li said on an earnings conference call. Total revenue rose 85 percent to $654.7 million, above its own forecast of $611.1 million to $626.6 million. GROWTH AND COMPETITION Baidu recently launched its mobile application development platform that is seen as a prelude to the firm's full-fledged operating system. The company has expanded into online video and travel to seek out fresh revenue streams. Baidu is facing competition from Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd, the two other Chinese Internet giants seeking to make inroads in the lucrative search market dominated by Baidu. "They are continuing to gain market share in China and their monetization systems are seeing improvement and that is providing some upside too," said Hong Kong-based JPMorgan analyst Dick Wei. In the third quarter, China's online search market grew 77.8 percent to 5.51 billion yuan. Baidu had a 77.7 percent share of the market, while Google had 18.3 percent, according to data from Beijing-based consultancy iResearch. In August, Baidu suffered a barrage of negative publicity after China Central Television ran programs accusing the company of having lax approval processes on its paid-advertising platform and slamming it for not policing its message-board product Tieba for "slanderous" remarks. Analysts said the criticisms did not have a negative material impact on the company and was driven mostly by competitive pressure. Shares in Baidu, whose name is taken from an ancient Chinese poem, closed up 6 percent at $138.39 on Nasdaq on Thursday. They have gained 36 percent so far this year. (Reporting by Melanie Lee in SHANGHAI and Alexei Oreskovic in SAN FRANCISCO; Additional reporting by Soham Chatterjee in BANGALORE; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott) |
| Coldplay keeps 'Mylo Xyloto' off streaming plans (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 05:36 PM PDT LOS ANGELES – British band Coldplay is withholding its latest album, "Mylo Xyloto," from all-you-can-listen streaming services such as Spotify and Rhapsody — making it the biggest band yet to express reservations about a system that pays artists a fraction of a penny every time someone listens to a song. The decision for the hot-selling album, released Tuesday, is a blow to such services, which have millions of tracks available but rely on new tunes to keep listeners interested. Consumers typically pay $10 a month for the right to pick any track or album from a library of millions and listen on demand via online streaming. Users can also download songs to mobile devices. Some services offer lengthy trials or free options with ads. Usually, new tracks are available on the services on Tuesday, the same day they are released for sale. The lack of availability of Coldplay's fifth album on subscription plans could push consumers to buy the album outright. Coldplay's recording company, EMI, said in a statement "We always work with our artists and their management on a case by case basis to deliver the best outcome for each release." Rhapsody president Jon Irwin said he respects the band's decision and needs to do a better job explaining the benefits of the subscription system to artists. In an editorial he wrote for Billboard magazine on Monday, Irwin said he agreed that some reported royalties paid to artists — as low as 0.015 cents per play on Spotify and 0.91 cents on Rhapsody — "seem awfully small." By comparison, recording labels and artists share about 70 percent of the $1.29 per track or $9.99 per album when music is bought on Apple Inc.'s iTunes. Irwin argued that royalties from subscription music plans are recurring, not one-time as is the case with iTunes sales. Thus, he said, revenue will build over time. And in any case, he said it is better than what artists get paid for pirated songs — zero. "Those plays for that artist, they're going to get compensated by it," he said in an interview Thursday. "That goes on forever, and it doesn't end with the sale of an MP3" song file. Spotify said in a statement that it also respects the decision of any artist regarding where their songs are made available. But the company pointed out that its service has "convinced millions of consumers to pay for music again." Spotify said it has paid $150 million to recording companies, artists and publishers since its launch three years ago. Spotify has said it has more than 2 million paying customers globally, while Rhapsody is the leading service in the U.S. with more than 800,000 subscribers. Other popular subscription services include MOG and Rdio. Early indications are that "Mylo Xyloto" will be one of the top-selling albums of the year. Its debut single "Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall" has racked up sales of 763,000 so far, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and Billboard estimates between 440,000 and 450,000 copies of the album will be sold through Sunday. Coldplay's managers did not respond immediately to a request for comment. |
| Redbox raises prices on DVD rentals (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 07:29 PM PDT
Earlier today, Coinstar announced an increase in price on DVD rentals at Redbox kiosks from $1.00 a day to $1.20 a day. The price hike takes effect on Monday October 31 at all 34,000 Redbox stations in the United States. However, two dollar a day video game rentals and $1.50 a day Blu-ray rental prices will remain unchanged for the time being. The company claims that the price alteration was needed due to rising operating costs such as larger debit card fees. However, Coinstar's earnings have nearly doubled due to more people adopting the rental kiosks over alternatives like Netflix. Investors reacted negatively to the news of the price increase as shares of Coinstar fell ten percent today. Coinstar and other rental agencies are also facing a possible increase in the amount of time that DVDs become available to rent. Studios are thinking about moving from a 28-day window to a 60-day window for rental copies. This would force consumers to pay the purchase price of a DVD or spend more money on video-on-demand rentals. Blockbuster is also facing resistance from movie studios. Warner Brothers revoked Blockbuster's ability to rent new releases and the rental chain now has to wait the full 28 days to offer rentals of those films. Blockbuster will be able to sell the Warner Brothers films though. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends
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| Judge blocks most of SF cellphone warning law (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 04:27 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO – A federal judge on Thursday struck down most of a San Francisco ordinance that requires retailers to warn customers about cellphone radiation and its health effects. U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that the required warning is misleading because it implies cellphones are dangerous and unregulated, and he ordered city officials to change the wording on the fact sheet that retailers are required to distribute. The brochures must include a statement that all cellphones must comply with the Federal Communications Commission's safety limits regarding radiation emissions, the judge said. "The overall impression left is that cell phones are dangerous and that they have somehow escaped the regulatory process," Alsup wrote. "That impression is untrue and misleading, for all of the cell phones sold in the United States must comply with safety limits set by the FCC." An industry group called CTIA-The Wireless Association had sued the city after its Board of Supervisors passed the ordinance 10-1 last year. The judge also blocked parts of the ordinance that require retailers to put up posters and affix warning stickers on cellphones. He said those items unconstitutionally compel retailers to broadcast the city's opinion of cellphones. "All consumers who actually purchase a cell phone will receive the handout," Alsup wrote. "There is no reasonable cause for requiring retailers to convert their walls to billboards for the municipal message." Alsup put the entire ordinance on hold until Nov. 30 to give time for an appeal. He also said that if the city refuses to edit the brochures as ordered, then the entire ordinance will be tossed out. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said he will appeal the judge's decision. |
| Facebook now allows friends to help recover accounts (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 08:36 PM PDT
Announced in an official Facebook post this morning, the social network plans to test a method of account recovery that uses trusted friends to provide access to a user's Facebook account. This system is similar to lending out a house key to a neighbor or friend when traveling on vacation or a business trip. Friends can help a Facebook user recover account access when the user forgets their password and doesn't have access to an email account for recovery. Facebook users can choose between three to five friends to trust with account recovery and they will be supplied a code via email to help regain access to the account. Facebook management also touted security efforts from the social network to keep spam out of Facebook feeds. Less than four percent of content shared on Facebook is spam compared to nearly 90 percent of all sent email. Less than half a percent of all Facebook users experience spam each day and only 0.06 percent of the one billion logins per day are compromised. With over 750 million Facebook users across the world, fifty percent of that group logs into Facebook on a daily basis. This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends
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| BlackBerry maker parts ways with another top manager (Reuters) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 07:07 PM PDT TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion has parted ways with a senior executive involved with the company's move into "cloud-based" services, adding to a string of high-level departures from the BlackBerry maker. Jim Tobin, senior vice-president for software and business services reporting directly to co-CEO Jim Balsillie, left the Canadian company months ago, RIM confirmed on Thursday in an email. It has never officially announced the departure. His exit further depletes a management team that has lost a number of top executives in developer relations, sales, and marketing in recent months. The attrition comes as the smartphone maker struggles to regain its competitive edge against Apple Inc's iPhone and iPad and a slew of devices using Google's Android software. RIM has repeatedly delayed its new product releases, and once launched, some of its devices have received poor reviews. Earlier this month a global outage knocked out service for tens of millions of BlackBerry users across five continents. In July RIM said it was slashing about 11 percent of its workforce because of falling sales and profit. Tobin was responsible for a recent move by RIM into cloud services - allowing its enterprise customers to use servers hosted by RIM instead of on-site computers to handle email and other corporate data. He also worked on a team that developed BBM Music, a song-sharing service run on top of RIM's popular BlackBerry Messenger application as well as a wider push to incorporate Messenger into third-party developer applications. Tobin previously worked in product development at Comcast, and at Time Warner in a corporate technology role. He was an associate principal at consulting firm McKinsey, according to his LinkedIn profile, which still shows him as a RIM employee. RIM has parted ways with a string of high-profile employees in recent months, including chief marketing officer Keith Pardy and head of developer relations Tyler Lessard. One of RIM's three chief operating officers, Don Morrison, resigned in July after taking a medical leave. Two members of Pardy's team later left for jobs with rival Samsung, while a member of Lessard's developer outreach unit, Mike Kirkup, resigned in August. A growing chorus of investors and analysts are calling for a shake-up at the very top of the company, where co-founder Mike Lazaridis and long-time partner Jim Balsillie share roles as chief executives and chairmen of the board. RIM's shares have lost some 70 percent of their value since a peak around $70 reached in February. They were trading 2.5 percent higher at $21.24 on the Nasdaq by early afternoon on Thursday. (Editing by Frank McGurty) |
| Modern Combat 3 tops iPhone Games of the Week (Appolicious) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 03:00 PM PDT |
| Pictures of the Droid 4 leak out (Digital Trends) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 05:34 PM PDT
The Droid 4 has gone through what looks to be a complete makeover, and it will not look like its older siblings. First you will see that the corners of the device are missing, much like the Photon or more recently the Droid RAZR. The famous Droid "chin" has also been removed, which is a design choice we can fully support. This will be the first Droid to have a screen the same size as the keyboard underneath. Like the Droid 3 the Droid 4 will have a full five row QWERTY keyboard, and it looks pretty great in the picture. The big rumor with this phone is if it will be an 4G LTE device. That was one of our biggest issues with the Droid 3, so we sure hope that Motorola has upgraded the antenna in this Droid. We would like to think that whenever the next Droid phone is released that it will have LTE. With that being said we have to wonder when is this phone going to come to market. The device in the pictures does not look like an early prototype, it looks like it is ready for production. We can see that there is already some Verizon bloatwear on the device, and there is even a tutorial sticker on the screen. The Droid 3 was launched in July, and it is a little hard to imagine Motorola releasing the Droid 4 so close to the last generation. That being said why would it wait to release what looks to be an amazing phone?
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends More from Digital Trends
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| DirecTV complains to FCC about "misleading" Fox ads (Reuters) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 04:32 PM PDT (Reuters) – DirecTV Group sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) alleging that Fox Broadcasting Co was running misleading ads warning customers that the satellite TV network would pull their access to local Fox stations. In its letter, DirecTV said the dispute over carriage fees with News Corp owned Fox would only result in customers no longer being able to access Fox's cable channels like FX and National Geographic, if the two companies were unable to agree to a new carriage deal by November 1. "Fox, however, is running advertisements asserting that DirecTV viewers 'soon could even lose' the Fox broadcast stations in their local markets," DirecTV said in a letter to the FCC. The current carriage agreement for the cable channels expired on September 30. However, Fox's broadcast stations are covered under a separate agreement, which does not expire until Dec 31. Fox was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Anand Basu in Bangalore; Editing by Anthony Kurian) |
| How Steve Jobs Got Away with Not Having a License Plate (The Atlantic Wire) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 04:18 PM PDT Steve Jobs was characteristically coy when he told biographer Walter Isaacson why he felt no need to have a license plate on his Mercedes. Jobs brushed off the question as if he were invincible, but it turns out he was just exploiting a loophole in California's vehicle laws. Talking about Jobs and his signature Mercedes AMG sports coupe, Isaacson said on 60 Minutes last weekend: I said, "Why don't you have a license plate?" He said, "Well, I don't want people following me." I said, "Well not having a license plate is probably more noticeable." He said, "Yah, you're probably right. You know why I don't have a license plate?" I said, "Why?" He said, "Because I don't have a license plate." I think he felt the normal rules just shouldn't apply to him. |
| Nintendo's losses grow, slashes forecast (AP) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 07:35 AM PDT TOKYO – Japanese game maker Nintendo Co. said Thursday its net loss grew to 70.3 billion yen ($925 million) for the six months through September, battered by the strong yen and weak software sales. The maker of the Wii game console and DS handheld slashed its forecast for the full year through next March to a 20 billion yen ($263 million) net loss, it said in a statement. In July, it had predicted an annual net profit of 20 billion yen. Nintendo, which scored success by courting casual gamers, is now battling increased competition from Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other devices that offer simple games. Competition in portable gaming is also heating up with the anticipated arrival of rival Sony Corp.'s latest portable offering, PlayStation Vita. Vita goes on sale in Japan on Dec. 17, and early next year in the U.S. and Europe. The strong yen has also dealt a heavy blow to the company, which receives nearly 80 percent of its sales overseas. Nintendo said exchange rate losses totaled 52.4 billion yen ($689 million). Overall sales during the half-year tumbled 41 percent to 215.7 billion yen. And the half-year loss was twice as big a loss as the company had projected in July. During the same period last year, it had a net loss of 2 billion yen. Nintendo's 3DS handheld, which offers 3D gaming without special glasses, has been a relative disappointment since it went on sale in February in Japan and in March overseas. The company is fighting to win back customers ahead of the critical year-end shopping season, cutting the price of the 3DS, and is coming out with more games, including 3D versions of its trademark Super Mario games. The price reduction has lifted 3DS sales, the company said Thursday. For the six months, it sold 3.07 million units of the 3DS, and 8.13 million units of software. One title, "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D," sold more than a million units, but the company acknowledged that the 3DS "has yet to have many hit titles." Sales of its regular DS handheld for the half-year fell to 2.58 million units from 6.69 million the same period a year ago. Sales of Nintendo DS software declined to 28.99 million units during the six-month period from 54.84 million last year. As for its Wii game console, sales for the period fell to 3.35 million units from 4.97 million units last year, while software sales declined to 36.45 million units from 65.21 million a year earlier. |
| Here Come ARM-Based Servers (NewsFactor) Posted: 27 Oct 2011 11:37 AM PDT ARM chips are making a big leap from mobile devices to servers. Hewlett-Packard is collaborating with a start-up company to develop servers using the processors from U.K.-based ARM Holdings, according to news reports. The start-up partner is Calxeda, an Austin, Texas-based company partly owned by ARM Holdings. The effort is targeting companies that are looking to lower energy consumption and physical space requirements when they build large data centers. Calxeda is also reportedly in discussion with other server manufacturers, according to reports by Bloomberg News and The Wall Street Journal. Nvidia, Marvell, Dell Calxeda's business goal is the creation of a "silicon and software server platform based on the same energy-efficient ARM processor architecture that powers cellular handsets today," according to its Web site. The company envisions replacing a dozen Web server racks with a single rack and saving 70 percent in direct power consumption. Other companies, including Nvidia and Marvell Technologies, have also indicated that they plan to develop ARM-based processors for servers. Dell has reportedly been researching the possibility. A new ARM chip announced last year, the Cortex-A15, offers greater memory and virtualization support, both of which appeal to server makers. The transition of ARM from the mobile world to the data center world could indicate a major turning point in Intel's position in the computer ecosystem. Currently, Intel-based processors are used in about 90 percent of all servers, and the company has about 80 percent of the overall processor market worldwide. Intel has made a priority of trying to get a better foothold in the world of smartphones and tablets, where ARM chips dominate. But it's going to be a challenge. A recent report from research firm DisplaySearch, for instance, projects about 50 million more tablets sold in 2017 than now, but only about 5 percent will have Intel chips. Atom-Based Servers ARM licenses its design to chip makers such as Texas Instruments, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia, for processors intended for mobile devices. Intel's Data Center Group has seen growth in the last year that was nearly 15 percent more than the company's PC unit, and the server processor market is expected to reach about $9 billion in 2011. Interestingly, H-P is Intel's biggest customer in the Data Center Group. ARM executives have noted that one of the major issues for data centers is power consumption and management, and that they expect their chips to first reside in servers that support Web-based transactions, then move into more complex and powerful environments. But ARM chips, while more energy efficient than x86 chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, are also less powerful. Also, most software in data centers is written for x86. Meanwhile, Intel has aggressively been attempting to reduce the power requirements for all of its processors. Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, said Intel has been pursuing partnerships with companies to build servers based on its power-efficient Atom chips, which have been primarily targeted at mobile devices. He noted that "any x86 app will run on Atom natively," a capability not shared by ARM chips. If you "put aside the server architecture," King said, the coming of ARM-based servers might be more appropriately compared to the Atom-based ones. |
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