In naming female CEO, IBM passes gender milestone (AP) : Technet

In naming female CEO, IBM passes gender milestone (AP)
Amazon 3Q net income sinks, missing analyst views (AP)
Google faces more government demands for user info (AP)
Just Show Me: How to create an Apple ID (Yahoo! News)
Transforming dining room table doubles in size with the push of a button (Yahoo! News)
Weiv Puts Concert Visuals into Audience Hands With Wii Remotes (Mashable)
China vows stricter controls on social media (Reuters)
Cain video ad blows smoke in unorthodox campaign (Reuters)
Amazon profit forecast disappoints, stock slumps (Reuters)
Nokia to unveil first Windows phones (Reuters)
New risk for Occupy Wall Street: less media interest (Reuters)
Carriage, a la carte are focus of pay: TV earnings (Reuters)
Android Market surpasses iTunes App Store in app sales for the first time (Appolicious)
Apple awarded patent for unlocking touchscreens (Digital Trends)
iTar Kickstarter project will turn your iPad into a playable guitar (Digital Trends)
Broadcom sees revenue decline, stock falls (Reuters)
RIM delays PlayBook update (Reuters)
Women who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies (AP)

In naming female CEO, IBM passes gender milestone (AP)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 09:06 PM PDT

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer Jordan Robertson, Ap Technology Writer – 26 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – IBM Corp. has passed a milestone, naming the first female CEO in the company's 100-year history.

The selection of Virginia "Ginni" Rometty, announced Tuesday, is also a statement about the growing influence of women in the top tiers of the technology world.

Two of the biggest technology companies will have female leaders when Rometty's appointment takes effect Jan. 1. Last month, Hewlett-Packard Co. named Meg Whitman, former eBay Inc. chief and candidate for California governor, as its CEO.

Their appointments are "setting a fabulous example" in the promotion of female executives, said Jean Bozman, an analyst with IDC who has followed IBM and HP closely for years.

"It does create an environment in which more of these high-ranking women executives can see that's within reach," Bozman said. "The more that happens, the more normal that will be. I think this might be a great sign that we've turned a corner. Certainly the Baby Boomers have wanted this for a long time."

Rometty, IBM's sales and marketing chief, is taking over from Sam Palmisano, who this year turned 60, the age at which IBM CEOs have traditionally stepped down.

Rometty, 54, will be among more than a dozen female CEOs in the Fortune 500. Another prominent female CEO of a technology company is Ursula Burns of Xerox Corp., who has held that title since 2009.

HP, of course, had another female CEO, Carly Fiorina, but her tenure ended in acrimony when she was forced out in 2005 over disappointing financials and the fallout from her hard-fought battle to buy Compaq Computer.

HP and IBM are bitter rivals that have followed somewhat inverted paths for years.

When IBM was near collapse two decades ago with the eroding dominance of its mainframes, HP thrived with the advent of personal computing and Silicon Valley's dot-com boom. Now the tables are turned — IBM is thriving while HP is hurting.

Two of technology's most powerful women will square off from sharply different positions.

Rometty will inherit a company in a sweet spot.

IBM, which is based in Armonk, N.Y., has proven resilient in the downturn because of hard decisions it made in the 1990s to focus on the high-margin areas of software and technology services, moving away from computer hardware. Rometty played a leading role in the transformation.

She was instrumental in the formation of IBM's business services division, including overseeing IBM's $3.5 billion purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting business in 2002, which is a key element of a strategy that has made IBM a heavily copied company. Rometty joined IBM in 1981 as an engineer.

She is "more than a superb operational executive," Palmisano, who is keeping his job as chairman, said in a statement.

IBM's stock has more than doubled since the depth of the recession in 2008. Meanwhile, HP stock has fallen by about 50 percent.

A series of scandals has led to turmoil at the top of HP, with former CEO Mark Hurd resigning under pressure last year over ethical violations, and his successor, Leo Apotheker, being fired after less than a year on the job after fumbling an important restructuring.

One of Whitman's first moves was to accelerate a decision about whether HP will sell, spin off or keep its personal computer business, the largest in the world by sales. Investors seem undecided about what course they want HP to take. Some analysts worry that Apotheker did irreparable harm to the brand by announcing it was for sale before a buyer had been found, making it potentially hard to sell and hard to keep.

Analysts have generally said that both women are right for their roles — HP needs Whitman's star power to woo Wall Street while IBM needs a steady operator with broad experience like Rometty to continue IBM's predictable, steady growth.

IBM dates to June 16, 1911, when three companies that made scales, punch-clocks for work and other machines merged to form the Computing Tabulating Recording Co. The modern-day name followed in 1924.

It had a boys' club image but shed it long ago. Rometty's status as a front-runner for the CEO job was a poorly kept secret. Industry insiders have whispered about it for years, and Tuesday's announcement was only a mild surprise because of its timing.

IBM CEOs have traditionally stepped down at 60 years old, but Palmisano had tamped down talk of his retirement, insisting that he wanted to stay on as chief. In rare public comments, he said last year that he was "not going anywhere" and that there's no formal policy at IBM dictating when a CEO should retire.

Bobby Cameron, an analyst with Forrester Research who has worked with IBM in various roles over the years, said that in meetings with Rometty is "engaging" and inquisitive. Her interest in emerging technologies, not just the established sales leaders, is an important characteristic. Cameron thinks she's an ideal choice to continue Palmisano's work.

"I think she's smart. She asks questions; she doesn't just come in with an agenda, and she's interested in the leading edge, not just what's driving volume — all those things are important for a CEO to have," Cameron said.

Palmisano has the same characteristics, Cameron said.

"I think it will be more of the same, and I think that's a good thing," he said.

Nevertheless, investors' reaction was muted. IBM shares fell $1.16, or 0.6 percent, to $179.20 in extended trading Tuesday, after the announcement.

Amazon 3Q net income sinks, missing analyst views (AP)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:31 PM PDT

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer Rachel Metz, Ap Technology Writer – Tue Oct 25, 7:31 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Amazon's spending on expansion will eventually help its bottom line, but right now it's costing the online retailer on Wall Street.

The Seattle-based company's third-quarter net income fell 73 percent despite revenue growth as Amazon built sales fulfillment centers at a rapid clip. Neither that drop nor its revenue outlook for the current quarter made investors happy.

Its stock fell more than 12 percent after hours.

Amazon.com Inc. earned $63 million, or 14 cents per share, for the quarter, compared with $231 million, or 51 cents per share, a year earlier.

Analysts polled by FactSet had hoped for much more: 24 cents per share in net income, on average.

Revenue climbed 44 percent to $10.9 billion, in line with the nearly $11 billion analyst were looking for.

Sales in the company's media business, which includes books, CDs and DVDs, rose 24 percent to $4.2 billion. Its revenue from electronics and other general merchandise rose 59 percent to $6.3 billion.

But Amazon's operating expenses rose 48 percent to $10.8 billion. The increase came mainly from a higher cost of sales. This is the third consecutive quarter in which Amazon's expenses have cut into its bottom line.

To support its growth, Amazon is building 17 new fulfillment centers this year, adding to the 52 it had at the end of last year. This ensures that the company can keep up as it sells more of everything from stuffed animals to power tools. The company also is investing in its Kindle e-reader line and digital-content business.

"You have to go back to year 2000 to see those kind of growth rates," Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak said during a conference call with reporters.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave some details about the health of the company's family of Kindles. In the Amazon's earnings release, Bezos said the Kindle's "biggest order day ever" was Sept. 28. That day, Amazon trotted out several new Kindle models, including its first-ever tablet computer, the $199 Kindle Fire. Amazon began selling a $79 model and took advance orders for others.

The Fire, which will begin shipping in November, is Amazon's answer to Apple Inc.'s popular iPad. Amazon sees the Kindles as a way to spur more sales of the digital content it sells, which include e-books, music, games and apps.

Bezos said advance orders for the Fire are so high that Amazon is making "millions more" than it had intended, and other models have been selling twice as fast since Sept. 28 as they did after the last launch of a Kindle device.

As in the past, Amazon did not release details about Kindle sales, but the company undoubtedly expects the device to help its holiday results.

Amazon expects revenue of $16.5 billion to $18.7 billion in the October-December quarter — usually the biggest quarter for retailers in terms of revenue. Analysts expect $18.1 billion in revenue.

In the conference call, CFO Szkutak said the company "feels very good" about demand thus far. But Amazon gave a large range for its guidance, as usual.

Amazon's stock sank $28.47, or 12.5 percent, to $198.68 after hours. It had finished regular trading at $227.15, down $10.46, or 4.4 percent.

Google faces more government demands for user info (AP)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:50 PM PDT

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke, Ap Technology Writer – Tue Oct 25, 7:50 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Google is dealing with more government demands to turn over information about its users as more people immerse themselves online.

The mounting pressure on the Internet search leader emerged in a statistical snapshot that Google Inc. released Tuesday of its dealings with authorities around the world. Google provided a country-by-country capsule of its legal sparring with authorities during the first six months of the year.

This is the fourth time Google has disclosed a six-month summary of government requests since it started reporting the numbers last year following a high-profile showdown with China's communist government over online censorship. In Tuesday's update, Google included the total number of user accounts targeted, instead of just the number of requests made by police, prosecutors, courts and other agencies at all levels of government worldwide.

Google received more than 15,600 requests for user data in January through June period, 10 percent more than during the final six months of last year. The requests in the latest period spanned more than 25,400 individual accounts worldwide — a tiny fraction of Google's more than billion users.

Google became a caretaker of sensitive personal information through its dominant search engine, which processes about two of every three online queries in the U.S. and an even larger share of queries in parts of Europe. The company also vacuums up information about what people are doing and thinking through its YouTube video service and increasingly popular Gmail service for communications. Meanwhile, Google is trying to get users to share even more tidbits about their lives on a social networking service called Plus, which has attracted more than 40 million accountholders since it debuted in June as an alternative to Facebook.

All that information makes Google a potentially valuable resource for authorities fighting crime, terrorism or other activities.

The highest volume of government demands for user data came from the U.S. (5,950 requests, a 29 percent increase from the previous six-month stretch); India (1,739 requests, up 2 percent); France (1,300 requests, up 27 percent); Britain (1,273 requests, up 10 percent); and Germany (1,060 requests, up 38 percent).

Google also listed how many times governments sought to censor video on the company's widely watched YouTube video site or demanded some other piece of content be removed for reasons ranging from privacy concerns to laws prohibiting hate speech.

The volume of worldwide censorship demands from governments remained at roughly the same level it reached in the previous six months, although there were sharp spikes in some countries. In Britain, for instance, the government asked Google to remove 220 videos from YouTube during the first six months of this year, compared with 40 videos during the previous six months. The British government wanted most of the videos taken down for "national security" reasons.

Google declined to provide more details on the videos that the British government saw as national security risks. Britain's Home Office would only say that "the government takes the threat of online extremism or hate content very seriously."

Google acquiesced to 82 percent of the British government's censorship demands in whole or part, according to Tuesday's breakdown.

The company usually complies with at least a portion of most government demands. Google has said it often has little choice because it must obey laws in the countries where it operates. The alternative is to leave, as it did last year when it shifted its search engine to Hong Kong so it wouldn't have to follow mainland China's censorship requirements.

In the U.S., Google gave federal, state and other agencies what they wanted 93 percent of the time. The nearly 6,000 requests affected more than 11,000 user accounts in January through June.

In India, Google honored 70 percent of the 1,739 requests, which targeted more than 2,400 users, the second-highest totals.

Google, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., rejected the most government demands for user information in Argentina, where it denied 68 percent of requests. It complied with less than 50 percent of government requests for user data in Canada, Chile, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Netherlands, Russia, Turkey and South Korea.

By disclosing how many government requests it receives every six months, Google hopes to encourage the passage of new laws that will give the company more leverage to deny government access to people's online communications and activities.

___

AP Writer Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed to this story.

___

Online:

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

Just Show Me: How to create an Apple ID (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 06:27 PM PDT

Transforming dining room table doubles in size with the push of a button (Yahoo! News)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 06:17 PM PDT

Weiv Puts Concert Visuals into Audience Hands With Wii Remotes (Mashable)

Posted: 24 Oct 2011 03:24 PM PDT

Sarah Kessler Sarah Kessler – Mon Oct 24, 6:24 pm ET

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Weiv

[More from Mashable: A Flash Sales Site for Fashion and Charity]

Quick Pitch: Weiv makes concert visuals that are controlled in real-time by Wii remotes.

Genius Idea: Bringing live visuals to live entertainment.

You don't go to a concert to listen to a pre-recorded audio, reasons Josh Larson, so why would you want to watch pre-recorded visuals?

"When you listen to music that is pre-recorded that thereâ€™s a certain energy you miss," he says. "I think thatâ€™s true when the visuals are performed live as well."

In order to bring live-performance energy to concert visuals, Larson and two co-founders have developed an interactive software solution called Weiv. Users who download the program (right now, the technology can only be used on Macs with Snow Leopard) can control visuals in real-time with up to seven Wii remotes. No Wii console is needed.

A free version of Weiv comes with three "scenes" that look like the abstract short videos you might see at a rock concert. Each remote controls a different aspect of the scene. In the "galaxy trails" scene, for instance, one remote creates ribbon-like trails, another controls where those trails connect together, and another can rotate the scene. Larson and his cofounders have developed more than 20 of these interactive scenes that can be purchased for the $200 paid version of the product.

During development, the software has been used mostly in churches and with youth groups, and the startup has not yet begun filling its pre-orders.

Eventually, however, Larson thinks the technology could be applied to larger scale performances. A limit of seven remotes makes this most likely in situations where performers are controlling the software -- which, to be honest, doesn't sound much different than watching pre-recorded visuals. But Larson also says that Weiv is working on a way to turn any smartphone into a controller. In that case, individuals in even large audiences could help shape a performance's visuals.

In a way, the foundations for such a participatory visual system have already been set.

"Waving a lighter to the music, that's a way that you can respond visually," Larson says. "We're allwoing a richer way, a more expressive way to do that."

Weiv in action at a Finn Miles concert in Des Moines, Iowa

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

China vows stricter controls on social media (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 08:30 PM PDT

– 1 hr 2 mins ago

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will intensify controls of online social media and instant messaging tools, the ruling Communist Party said in an agenda-setting document that marks the government's highest-level reaction so far to the explosive growth of microblogs.

Beijing's vow to strengthen Internet administration and promote content acceptable to the ruling party appeared in the communique of a recent party leadership conclave published in the official People's Daily on Wednesday.

Communiques from the Communist Party's Central Committee, which held its annual meeting this month, set the broad agenda for policy-makers. This one made clear that party leaders are looking for ways to better control, not snuff out, the microblog services that have become wildly popular channels for spreading news and opinion that can unsettle the government.

"Strengthen guidance and administration of social Internet services and instant communications tools, and regulate the orderly dissemination of information," said the communique, which made no reference to microblogs as such.

"Apply the law to sternly punish the dissemination of harmful information," added the document. It did not give details of what form firmer regulation may take.

The announcement builds on a stream of warnings in state media that has exposed how nervous Beijing is about the booming microblogs -- called "weibo" in Chinese -- and their potential to tear at the seams of censorship and controls.

Chinese microblogs, especially Sina Corp's dominant service, carry plenty of gossip and harmless fare. But they also offer raucous forums for lambasting officials and reporting unrest or official abuses. It is their potential to stoke popular discontent that most worries Beijing.

Microblogs allow users to issue bursts of opinion -- a maximum of 140 Chinese characters -- that can cascade through chains of followers who instantly receive messages, challenging censors who have a hard time monitoring the tens of millions of messages sent every day. Inventive users adopt alternative words to get around censorship filters.

The number of Chinese users registered on domestic microblog sites reached 195 million by the end of June, a more than threefold increase on the number at the end of 2010, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.

A top Chinese Internet regulator this month also called for stricter policing of microblogs while encouraging officials to use them to engage with citizens, indicating that Beijing was looking to better control such services, but not shut them down.

Sina and other Chinese microblog operators already deploy technicians and software to monitor content and block and remove comment deemed unacceptable, especially about protests, official scandals and party leaders.

This year, China has been looking to regulate its largely private and free-wheeling Internet industry more firmly. Last week, the Ministry of Commerce said it was looking at more rules to monitor the e-commerce sector after thousands of small business owners launched an online protest against the Taobao Mall website.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Cain video ad blows smoke in unorthodox campaign (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 08:27 PM PDT

– 1 hr 5 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A campaign video showing Republican presidential front-runner Herman Cain's chief of staff blowing smoke from a cigarette at the camera drew heavy play on the Internet on Tuesday.

The video, which logged more than 100,000 views on Cain's YouTube website, kept up the former pizza executive's unpredictable playbook in a campaign for the presidential nomination that has soared in the last month.

In the video, his chief of staff Mark Block makes generic statements touting Cain's candidacy and then sucks on a cigarette and blows a little smoke into the camera.

"We've run a campaign like nobody's ever seen, but then America's never seen a candidate like Herman Cain," Block says.

As he inhales, a female vocalist sings: "I am America."

Cain, a former lobbyist, conservative radio talk show host and Baptist preacher who has never held public office, has jumped to the top of polls among Republican candidates vying for the nomination to try to unseat President Barack Obama, a Democrat, next year.

Supporters bill him as a blunt-speaking political outsider and alternative to fellow Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.

"It got watched, so it worked," said Mark McKinnon, a former communications strategist for George W. Bush, said of the Cain video. "The message: We are different and don't play by the rules," he said.

The video, which was posted days ago but gained Internet traction on Tuesday, was called "bizarre" and "strange" in some media reports. It also features a serious-looking Cain breaking into a grin in the last 10 seconds.

Cain, who is scrambling to assemble a team with just 10 weeks before the first crucial nominating contests in January, has said he would bring a sense of humor to the White House if elected president in 2012.

However, one former Cain activist in Iowa, who declined to be named, said: "Maybe he hasn't noticed, but smoking isn't the in vogue thing to do these days."

Block, who joined the campaign in January, stood by the advertisement, which he said was straightforward.

"You walk into a veterans' bar in Iowa and they're sitting around smoking, and yeah, we are resonating with them. I'm not the only one that smokes in America, for God's sake. It's a choice that I made, and was at the end of the ad," Block told Fox News.

(Reporting by Eric Johnson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Peter Bohan)

Amazon profit forecast disappoints, stock slumps (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 05:50 PM PDT

By Alistair Barr Alistair Barr – Tue Oct 25, 8:50 pm ET

(Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc shocked investors with a far weaker-than-expected outlook for the crucial holiday season quarter as it spent heavily on its new Kindle Fire tablet computer.

The stock tumbled 12 percent Tuesday in extended trading as the news raised concern that Amazon was losing some of the revenue momentum that had helped investors overlook its razor-thin profit margins.

Amazon forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $16.34 billion to $18.65 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $18.15 billion as compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Amazon's forecast would mean 27 to 44 percent growth from a year earlier. In the third quarter, sales grew 44 percent, less than the 51 percent gain in the second quarter.

The company also said it could report a $200 million operating loss to a $250 million operating profit in the holiday quarter as it spends on the Fire and other initiatives.

That forecast, which includes $200 million for stock-based compensation and intangible assets, was "materially" below Wall Street expectations, according to UBS analysts Brian Pitz and Brian Fitzgerald. They were looking for $374 million in operating profit in the fourth quarter.

"We're not seeing the investment pay off yet, but I think investors are impatient as to how long will it take before you will start to see this pay off," Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena said. "When are we going to start to see some signs?"

Amazon's fourth-quarter forecast implies a profit margin of "effectively zero," Youssef Squali, an analyst at Jefferies & Co, noted during a conference call with the company.

KINDLE FIRE COST

Amazon said on Tuesday its third-quarter net income was $63 million, or 14 cents a share, versus $231 million, or 51 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue was $10.88 billion, up 44 percent from the third quarter of 2010, it added.

Analysts had expected earnings per share of 24 cents on revenue of $10.95 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"Lower profit margins would be acceptable, but for the lower-than-expected revenue growth numbers," said Fred Moran, an analyst at The Benchmark Co.

Moran had expected third-quarter revenue growth of as much as 50 percent.

The company unveiled its new Kindle Fire tablet in late September and many analysts think it is being sold close to the cost of making it, or even at a loss.

"The revenue is a little light, but margin is where the biggest variance is from Wall Street's expectations," said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, a software company that helps merchants increase online sales. "This is largely due to Amazon's investment in the Kindle Fire."

Amazon is also investing in video content and other publishing deals to support the device, while spending on datacenters for its cloud computing business and fulfillment for its online retail operations.

Wall Street has accepted such spending because Amazon has proved in the past that it can generate higher growth from such investments. However, analysts have been on edge about Amazon's third-quarter results and fourth-quarter forecasts because of the recent increase in expenditures.

SPENDING TO SUPPORT GROWTH

Amazon Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak said on a conference call after the results that the company has had to add fulfillment capacity to handle the growth of its main online retail business.

The company is planning to build 17 new fulfillment centers this year, two more than its previous plan, the CFO noted.

Szkutak also said Amazon is increasing production of the Kindle Fire by "a few million units," citing strong demand.

Nokia to unveil first Windows phones (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:02 PM PDT

By Tarmo Virki Tarmo Virki – Tue Oct 25, 7:02 pm ET

LONDON (Reuters) – The world's largest cellphone maker Nokia will unveil its first phones using Microsoft software on Wednesday, hoping they will kick-start a rescue of its ailing smartphone business.

Nokia is widely expected to launch two to three new models using the software, including the Searay which was first shown in a leaked video months ago and looks very similar to its current N9 handset.

The Finnish company, left in the dust by Apple and Google in the booming smartphone market, decided to ditch its aging Symbian platform in favor of Microsoft's software in a risky deal in February that spooked investors.

Nokia has not rushed with the new phones. Nimbler rivals HTC, Fujitsu and Samsung Electronics have beaten it with models using the latest Windows software, Mango.

Nokia and Microsoft have said they would focus on close co-operation with operators to support the platform.

"Operators really want to have another company on the scene: they don't want Google and Apple to rule the mobile universe," said Magnus Jern, chief executive of Barcelona-based mobile app development firm Golden Gekko.

Analyst Carolina Milanesi from research firm Gartner said Nokia should price its first models below those of Samsung and HTC, and then market them heavily.

"Price is going to be the key -- you need to give a bit of the carrot to consumers and developers," she said.

Nokia's market value has halved since February as investors are unsure whether it can ever regain the market share it has lost.

Its third-quarter results beat low expectations, sparking hopes that the company can survive a painful revamp, but smartphone sales still dropped 38 percent from a year ago.

Nokia said last week that its first Windows phone would reach selected markets this year, but declined to say whether more than one model would be launched this week.

With Microsoft software, Nokia hopes to gain the kind of attention Apple and Google have attracted from software developers that enrich their devices.

There are some initial positive signs.

"We are seeing Windows being acknowledged as platform No 3," said Golden Gekko's Jern, adding that Microsoft and Nokia, are subsidizing app development to kick-start the new platform.

"We are working on 10 applications of which five are paid by Nokia," Jern said.

Research firm Strategy Analytics expects Microsoft to double its share of the Western European smartphone market during 2012 to 12.3 percent, helped by the Nokia partnership.

The 12.3 percent forecast for Microsoft's software refers to its use across several mobile phone makers and compares with the much higher market share Nokia's Symbian platform alone previously enjoyed -- it controlled 41 percent of the West European market as recently as the first half of 2010.

The annual Nokia World media and industry event in London on Wednesday includes speakers from the world's largest carriers: China Mobile, Vodafone, Orange and MTN.

(Editing by Erica Billingham)

New risk for Occupy Wall Street: less media interest (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 02:04 PM PDT

Carriage, a la carte are focus of pay: TV earnings (Reuters)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 04:22 PM PDT

By Yinka Adegoke Yinka Adegoke – Tue Oct 25, 7:22 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – DirecTV Group and News Corp have one week to reach a new programing agreement before the satellite TV service's more than 19 million U.S. subscribers lose the media conglomerate's popular Fox television channels.

The squabble is the latest of the increasingly contentious public feuds between pay-TV distributors and content creators. At times, the disputes have led to blackouts of popular programing or sports events that, in turn, lead subscribers to drop cable service or satellite subscription in frustration.

Indeed, while Wall Street expects pay-TV providers to post solid earnings this quarter, the results will be driven by broadband rather than video growth, as they continue to win market share from telephone companies. Overall, the U.S. video market is expected to remain flat this quarter.

Key to these so-called carriage disputes is what distributors see as unreasonable annual increases in programing costs, which they say get passed on to consumers. Programmers counter this argument by saying good content costs money. That is especially true for sports programs, where price increases have outpaced prices for other content.

"We are at a crossroads with the programmers, cable networks rates are rising dramatically," said a senior executive at a top five cable operator. The executive, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the carriage negotiations, said the entire relationship between distributors and programmers needs to be overhauled before consumers start fleeing to Netflix or bypassing pay-TV altogether for over-the-top services such as Roku or Apple TV.

Now, according to Brean, Murray, Carret & Co analyst Todd Murray, a la carte is "a realistic possibility." But Murray was quick to note that upending the old business model is "going to take a while because there's a tremendous amount of forces against change."

Even pay TV executives concede it is currently economically unfeasible to sell individual channels to customers. Instead, they are pushing for smaller and cheaper packages, but even that may not be an easy.

Smaller packages are already being tested by cable operators such Time Warner Cable Inc, which offers a TV Essentials package. Company insiders say the package has so far not been picked up by many consumers.

"There needs to be a dismantling of the current system, but it's unclear to me how many consumers will take lower packages," said Thomas Eagan, an analyst at Collins Stewart.

Moreover, most programing contracts restrict distributors such as DirecTV from moving the more popular channels from widely available programing. For example, if a cable company unilaterally decided to move a network to a lower-reach tier, it could trigger a contract clause allowing the programer to charge the cable company more per home.

ESPN, the number one sports network, is the target of most of the complaints about rising costs, particularly after the Walt Disney Co owned network reached a $15 billion rights deal with the National Football League over the summer. The network is easily the most expensive cable network on most basic packages and some executives resent having to pay for programing that only a minority of subscribers watch.

But Ed Durso, an executive vice president at ESPN, disputes that notion, saying: "It's been proven that ESPN provides great value for consumers and the cable business."

He said ESPN contracts require that its main channels are covered in the first or second tier that reach the most homes.

Durso also hit back at the suggestion ESPN overpays for content and passes on costs to the operators, who then have to charge customers more. Without ESPN, which usually charges around $4 per subscriber per month, there is more opportunity for cable to charge less for a TV package.

"Sports rights are hugely attractive because Americans love sports so there's always competition," Durso said. "We've never underestimated how much value these rights provide."

Durso further noted that "prudent" bids for the U.S. rights for such events as FIFA World Cup Soccer were trumped by Fox and Telemundo.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; editing by Peter Lauria and Andre Grenon)

Android Market surpasses iTunes App Store in app sales for the first time (Appolicious)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 11:37 AM PDT

Apple awarded patent for unlocking touchscreens (Digital Trends)

Posted: 25 Oct 2011 05:26 PM PDT

Mike Dunn Mike Dunn – Tue Oct 25, 8:26 pm ET

Apple might have just been awarded the patent to rule all other mobile patents, and made all future legal battles more interesting. As of this morning Apple is officially the only company that is allowed to unlock a touchscreen device by using a sliding motion. We see this used on Apple devices as the familiar "slide to unlock" screen, but almost every other touch screen phone or tablet on the market currently use some form of sliding to unlock the device.

Apple originally applied for the patent way back in December of 2005, but it did not appear on a device until January 2007 when Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone. Seeing how every single Android device uses some form of sliding gesture to unlock the device this might be a momentous patent in the ongoing legal battles.

Samsung has been very publicly fighting Apple over patents in the recent months. Google recently purchased Motorola Mobility to protect Android from patent attacks from Apple or Microsoft. After reviewing the 18 most important patents involved in the Motorola purchase we can see that none of them protect them from Apple's latest patent.

The language of the patent is very open, and basically any sliding motion used on a touch screen to unlock a device will infringe on the patent. It will be very interesting to see how this newly awarded patent will impact the future legal battles among touch screen operating systems. Read the description of the patent below.

A device with a touch-sensitive display may be unlocked via gestures performed on the touch-sensitive display. The device is unlocked if contact with the display corresponds to a predefined gesture for unlocking the device. The device displays one or more unlock images with respect to which the predefined gesture is to be performed in order to unlock the device. The performance of the predefined gesture with respect to the unlock image may include moving the unlock image to a predefined location and/or moving the unlock image along a predefined path. The device may also display visual cues of the predefined gesture on the touch screen to remind a user of the gesture. In addition, there is a need for sensory feedback to the user regarding progress towards satisfaction of a user input condition that is required for the transition to occur.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Technet

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

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