Monday, January 24, 2011
Leaked photos of the facade of the ad hoc system of the device webOS Tablet
A new print By GooGle
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Who knows when Apple lanch her Ipad
In most published images from Apple we see that the day located on the program agenda refers to the day of the announcement on the iPad was on January 27 last year, but after updating iOS 4.3 Beta 2, but now the systen suggest to change the date to 9 as it shown on the picture
Friday, January 21, 2011
Camera Ipad 2
Wen already that Ipad 2 will car 2 cameras one in front, but what we don't know what the 9 to 5 Mac website said on his research on version iOS 4.3 that the next verion code will be K94 by the code Ipad name available in market is K48.
and that will carry the camera background is strictly one-megapixel camera and front VGA resolution the same in the iPhone and iPod generally do not know there are those who say that the camera will be precisely 2 megapixel and there are those who say 1.3 megapixel all this will be confirmed not through Apple
Some INformation about IPhone 5 AND IPAD2
At this time America is witnessing with joy overwhelming due to launch mobile phone iPhone 4 and everyone is talking about in most locations technical, but unless they are talking about is that the phone iPhone will use the processor from a company Qualcomm frequency networks CDMA but without the compatibility wizard to GSM networks, which chips using Infineon.
Website engadget says it ahead of release mobile phone iPhone 4 private company Ferrazone that he had heard from a number of its own sources that the device Tablet iPad 2 did end manufacturing it and this means that the launch date will not be obtained as everyone expected, and apparently that form designer and bursa, which we have seen is Only to copy the initial design of the machine Tablet iPad next one so the final design has not yet shown,
and apparently the release date will be in April, but engadget added that the Tablet will transmit more elegant and will carry 2 cameras and new technology for the screen has nothing to do with the screen used in the iPhone 4 as well as the degree of Clearly stronger than it was previously, and 10 in the screen will remain, but Bkamrtin front and rear in addition to a port for SD external memory and the picture below will show you the port and the site says that the port will be internal!
the mobile phone iPhone 5, which will carry a different design altogether, which is expected to be announced in the summer and is test this phone before their high-level working for Apple. There are no much information about this phone but the website says that he would work a processor Apple's new A5, a The words of dual-core processor architecture of the Cortex A9 also that the phone would be like Alaibad 2 where it will be provider of chip company Qualcomm, which will enable him to work on multiple frequencies of CDMA / GSM / UMTS phone, but will not support communication networks LTE.
External iPod Controls
Thursday, January 20, 2011
A trancparency IPHONE !!!!???
What to do if your Iphone fell in water
Volume Solution v1.3 a way to improve you IPHone
Note: this application support Ipod touch and Ipad . requires: IOS 3 Or higher
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Wikipedia celebrates 10 years, but will it survive another decade?
How do I know this? I looked it up on Wikipedia, of course. Is it true? Possibly.
Ten years after its founding, it's hard to imagine what life was like before Wikipedia.
When I was growing up, our family had a dusty set of encyclopedias that were at least 10 years old, which is fine if you're looking up dinosaurs, but not so good if you want to know, for instance, who the current president of the Congo is.
But though the limitations of the old encyclopedias were obvious, they were authoritative in ways that Wikipedia is not.
Mashable: 9 ways to get more out of Quora
Like most people, I'll take the tradeoff. I have no desire to go back to the days of printed Funk & Wagnalls.
If someone would have told me back in 2001 that, within a few years, there would be a comprehensive, free online encyclopedia, I wouldn't have believed them. Why would someone do that? How?
Origins
By now, we all know the story: Two Ayn Rand devotees, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, created Wikipedia in January 2001.
The founding can be traced to a post by Sanger entitled "Let's Make a Wiki" that was intended as a feature to Sanger and Wales's other project, Nupedia. Wiki, Sanger explained in the post, was derived from "wikiwiki," a Polynesian word for "quick."
"What it means is a VERY open, VERY publicly editable series of web pages," Sanger wrote in the post.
As often happens, the feature grew out of proportion with its original intent. Wales, who was originally against the idea of a Wiki, became a strong proponent of it, while Sanger, who became estranged from the project in 2002, now charges that Wales hogged the credit for the venture.
Mashable: The future of the social media strategist
(Wales could not be reached for comment. To his credit, Sanger is mentioned as a co-founder on Wikipedia's entry about its founding.)
Rooted in open source thinking, Wikipedia contributors began penning a voluminous number of entries (the site claims there are now 17 million such articles), which began showing up in Google searches, furthering the site's growth and notoriety.
Meanwhile, a subculture developed around Wikipedia, with self-appointed guardians doing their best to make sure entries were accurate and free of vandalism.
As an authoritative 2006 Atlantic article on Wikipedia noted, "A study by IBM suggests that although vandalism does occur (particularly on high-profile entries like 'George W. Bush'), watchful members of the huge Wikipedia community usually swoop down to stop the malfeasance shortly after it begins."
'Truth' on the internet
All of this made Wikipedia a pretty good reference, but one that you'd be wise not to take completely at face value.
Wikipedia works best as an introduction to a subject. Since the articles usually cite references, readers can investigate further whether the claims are actually true.
Despite this, Wikipedia soon earned a reputation for loopy reportage, an aspect best expressed in The Onion headline "Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence."
Such criticism, though, has it backwards. Wikipedia is, in the best-case scenario, an antidote for the echo chamber of the web. After all, good luck finding "truth" on the Internet.
Facts may be facts, but they're subject to so much spin that it can be hard to get a handle on what's objectively real.
All the more reason why the idea of Wikipedia is laudable, albeit a bit impractical. Though Jimmy Wales could have made a fortune selling ads on the site, he decided to make the Wikimedia Foundation a non-profit charitable organization.
Mashable: 6 web pioneers on what the future looks like
But someone has to keep all those servers running and pay those 50 full-time staffers, which is why Wales appeared in a ubiquitous banner ad on Wikipedia asking for donations. The site eventually collected $16 million.
The future
Can Wikipedia sustain itself for another 10 years? As The Economist recently pointed out, the number of Wikipedia's English language contributors fell from 54,000 in March 2007 to 35,000 in September 2010, but here Wikipedia may be the victim of its own success.
As the site gets more comprehensive, there are fewer entries that need to be written. One thing's for sure -- if Wikipedia ever does go away, it will be hard to believe it. After all, where will we go to confirm such a thing?
The Social Network Filmmakers Thank Zuckerberg During Golden Globes
The film picked up trophies for Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Score and Best Picture at Sunday's Golden Globes, and while acceptance speeches featured the usual thank yous, Zuckerberg also found himself onto those pocketed sheets of paper. “I want to thank everybody at Facebook; Mark Zuckerberg for his willingness to allow us to use his life and work as a metaphor through which to tell a story about communication and the way we relate to each other,” producer Scott Rudin said while accepting the award for Best Picture, while screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's remarks seemed much more personal. “I wanted to say to Mark Zuckerberg, if you're watching tonight, Rooney Mara's character makes a prediction at the beginning of the movie, she was wrong. You turned out to be a great entrepreneur, a visionary and an altruist.”
Has the "Sorry We Made You Out To Be Something Of An Ass" speech finally come? Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Zuckerberg is unforgiving and at times almost scathing, fueled by Sorkin's quick-witted script byway of Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires. Zuckerberg had absolutely nothing to do with the film or the book it's based on, leaving The Social Network a very much unauthorized tale of Facebook creationism, with Zuck speaking out against the story's inaccuracies before finally giving up and taking the entire company to see the film on opening day. (A classy move, in my opinion.)
Still, having real-life inspiration in attendance at big award shows is commonplace and while Temple Grandin, Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund were all Globes attendees Sunday night, Zuckerberg certainly wasn't swapping wardrobe notes with Eisenberg. I doubt even an shot at Oscar attendance could lure him into marketing something that displayed a fictionalized version of every mistake his 19-year-old self made, but the beauty is that he doesn't have to. Everything Facebook seems to touch this year is gold, and that is worth so much more.
Weekends, holidays ripe for bad news from tech giants
That's the pattern many tech companies follow in releasing information that may get them poor publicity or weaken their stock prices.
Apple issued a statement Monday saying CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence, but provided no time frame for his return. The announcement, which sent shockwaves through the tech and business worlds, came on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, a national holiday when the stock market is closed.
Apple's stock won't be able to escape consequences for long. The news is expected to hurt Apple's valuation when Wall Street reopens on Tuesday. However, investors will have more time to mull over the potential ramifications instead of making snap-decision sales of Apple stock upon hearing the news.
This is not the first time Apple has issued bad news on or around a national holiday. Soon after the launch of the iPhone 4 last June, bloggers and news outlets chronicled a problem with the handset that caused it to lose cellular reception when held a certain way.
After more than a week of this, Apple acknowledged this so-called "death grip" in a statement on its website, along with its findings that the iPhone software had been incorrectly reporting signal strength. The unflattering news was announced July 2 -- the Friday before a long Fourth of July weekend.
In 2006, Apple faced a scandal relating to the backdating of company stock options. Apple released a statement, acknowledging lawsuits filed against the company, on the day after the Fourth of July.
Later that year, Apple announced it would shoulder an $84 million charge as a result of that controversy. That news came on December 29, the Friday before New Year's Eve.
Apple also has announced notable strings of unfavorable news on Fridays -- at the end of the weekly news cycle, when the media is presumably heading out for the weekend.
On a Friday in August, Apple released a statement saying the white iPhone 4 had proved to be a major challenge to manufacture and would not come until later that year. (That product has yet to hit the market.)
Apple announced it was entering into defensive litigation against Nokia on a Friday in December 2009. The year before that, Apple said on a Friday in September that a USB accessory it sold had a defect that could cause electric shock and offered to exchange the product. A 2005 Apple laptop battery recall was also announced on a Friday.
By contrast, Apple's good news tends to come when people are more likely to pay attention. The iPad was introduced on a Wednesday last January, while the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS were both unveiled on Mondays.
As for this Monday's statement from Jobs, Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton declined to comment on the timing. "We have nothing to add," she said.
Apple's quarterly earnings conference call will take place on Tuesday, where the company is expected to shatter sales records. Because of that, releasing the news Monday may not be a smart strategy for Apple, said Adam Hanft, who runs a marketing and corporate strategy consulting firm.
"The bigger the sales numbers, the more it puts the spotlight on how important (Jobs) is," Hanft said. "I think they're kind of screwed either way."
News organizations, like most other companies, tend to have fewer people working on holidays. And readership online usually falls off on holidays and weekends, when people are away from computers and spending time with family or friends.
But this strategy may be outdated.
"I think it's sort of an old-school view of the media, which is not for the 24-7 news cycle that we have now," Hanft said. "With news like this, it's hard to make it go away."
Of course, Apple isn't the only company dropping bad news on Fridays.
Google published an apology along with the results of an internal investigation on a Friday last May, saying the company had inadvertently collected data from people's home Wi-Fi networks.
Hewlett-Packard announced the ouster of CEO Mark Hurd on a Friday last year. And during Microsoft's ill-fated courtship of Yahoo, at least four public company statements from both sides were made on a Saturday or Sunday in 2008.
"Politicians do it all the time -- try to bury the news," said Hanft, the marketing expert. "The weekend can serve to create two-day amnesia."
Study: Internet users more likely to volunteer for groups
Internet users, and especially social networkers, are more likely to be active in volunteer organizations than those who don't go online, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
Of all Web users surveyed, 80% participate in groups versus 56% of those who don't use the internet, the report said. On social networks, it's slightly higher, and on Twitter in particular, 85% are active in groups.
For the survey, 2,303 American adults were polled in November and December.
The survey found that Facebook, employed by 62% of internet users, was the most popular digital networking tool used by groups -- much more so than Twitter, used by 12% of internet users. Of those respondents active in groups, 48% had a page on a social-networking site, while 30% had their own blog and 16% communicated with other group members via Twitter.
Pew's research also found that internet users are more active participants in their groups than other adults, and are more likely to feel pride and a sense of accomplishment about their group's activities.
Also, based on the survey's results, the notion that today's perpetually connected culture is exorcising religion may be flawed.
Pew found that internet users are slightly more likely to go to church or participate in organized spiritual functions than people who aren't online. Also, mobile-phone owners are significantly more likely to participate in religious groups than non-owners.
Pope Benedict XVI has expressed conflicting views on the internet. Sometimes he encourages use of the Web to promote Catholicism. Other times, he has said internet use can give us "a sense of solitude and disorientation," especially for young people.
Early on, savvy organizations identified the potential of gathering group-minded people online.
Charity Water started four years ago as a fundraising group promoting clean water in poverty-stricken countries. Because the organization is so new, its roots are in the Web, where expansion is cheap and nets can be cast widely.
By charity standards, the organization has grown quickly. Charity Water has 25 staff members and regularly creates big buzz thanks to online campaigns, using Facebook, Twitter and e-mail. It doesn't send direct mailings or street team promoters.
"Twitter is, probably for us, where we have our biggest audience day-to-day," said Paull Young, the charity's director of digital engagement. "We've always been online-focused. We're finding that's the best way to connect with people."
Twitter's co-founder, Jack Dorsey, likes to underline the importance of how the microblogging service can be used to organize people.
"We've put a lot of emphasis on tweeting" as a promotional tool, Dorsey said recently on Bloomberg TV's "Charlie Rose." "A lot of the value (of Twitter) is actually (in) following people."
Social networks have encouraged more people to share content online, making it easier for them to form groups around common interests, said Murray Milner, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia.
"I think the internet probably is creating more networks," Milner said. At the same time, Milner questions whether, despite broader group participation online, the internet is actually weakening some friendships -- i.e., creating more acquaintances than close friends.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Bringing digital reading to the bus ... or the bathroom
But mobile digital media hold the promise of a return to convenient portable reading. And new statistics from the popular online reading list service ReadItLater indicate that mobile devices are not only changing where people are reading but when.
ReadItLater is a free service that allows internet users to save the full text of articles and other content they encounter online on a personal reading list. It then displays this content in a format that's very friendly to mobile devices.
I use ReadItLater (and one of its competitors, Instapaper) to save longer-format content (like 5,000-word Harper's articles) for later digital reading in a way that I find easier on the eyes than extended reading sessions on a Web browser.
Almost always, this means reading articles on my Android phone -- usually when I'm on public transit or waiting in line somewhere but often also when I'm lying in bed.
According to a recent ReadItLater blog post, users of this service save articles to their lists at a fairly constant pace throughout the day, but they read this content mostly in the evening, from 6 to 9 p.m.
But when ReadItLater took a close look at statistics for its iPhone and iPad users, a different trend emerged.
For iPhone users, there tended to be four peak reading times:
• 6 a.m.: Early morning, breakfast
• 9 a.m.: Morning commute, start of the workday
• 5-6 p.m.: End of the workday, commute home
• 8-10 p.m.: Couch time, prime time, bedtime
"In reality, this really is a graph of whitespace time," says the post. "Whitespace is the time between A and B. It's the time on the subway or bus. It's the time standing in line. It's a spare moment."
For iPad users, ReadItLater noticed one especially huge peak reading time: 8 to 10 p.m. "This time slot is the same one coveted by television. When the majority of people are consuming content it seems perfectly natural that people would use this time to do their reading as well."
ReadItLater also found that "iPad owners are no longer doing the majority of their reading on their computers."
This makes sense to me, since iPads are primarily media consumption devices while computers and smartphones are better suited for communication and content creation.
ReadItLater did not offer statistics for Android devices, but this service does not offer its own Android app. The NewsRoom Android app by Trileet Inc. is supported by the ReadItLater API and is one option for Android users.
WikiLeaks promises Swiss banking secrets revelations
Rudolf Elmer, who describes himself as an activist/reformer/banker, was set to hand over the papers Monday.
"I think as a banker I do have the right to stand up if something is wrong," he said at a news conference in London.
Elmer is due to go on trial Wednesday in Switzerland for violating the country's banking secrecy regulations.
He said he wanted "to let society know what I do know and how this system works because it is damaging our society in the way that money is moved" and hidden in offshore jurisdictions.
He began looking into the issue when he was a banker in the Cayman Islands, he said.
When he first looked into the problems of offshore banking he said it looked like "a mouse tail," but as he investigated in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, it became a "dragon's tail," and finally a many-headed dragon.
Elmer will not reveal names, lawyer Jack Blum said Monday, saying it was not always
possible to determine who, if anyone, had engaged in "criminal tax evasion."
Elmer aims to "challenge Swiss Bank Secrecy at the European Court of Human Rights and the Swiss courts," he says on his website. He has worked at six offshore banking centers, he says.
Elmer and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange worked together on a complaint against Swiss banking secrecy at the European Court of Human Rights in 2008.
Hu questions future role of U.S. dollar
Mr Hu, who arrives in Washington on Tuesday, also delivered a thinly veiled critique of US monetary policy, underlining China's concern about the impact on its own economy of recent stimulus measures taken by the US Federal Reserve.
"The monetary policy of the United States has a major impact on global liquidity and capital flows and therefore, the liquidity of the US dollar should be kept at a reasonable and stable level," said Mr Hu.
Mr Hu made his comments in response to written questions from two US newspapers, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
His unusually blunt comments on the US-led monetary system as a "product of the past" is confirmation that China will continue to take measures to internationalise its own currency, the renminbi.
However, Mr Hu said that "making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process".
Mr Hu rarely gives newspapers interviews, especially to western outlets, leaving most high-profile media public appearances at home and abroad to be conducted by Wen Jiabao, the country's smooth-talking premier.
Although Mr Hu's stiffly worded answers contain little that conveys any of his own personality, their distribution illustrates the importance China attaches to the US trip, which also includes a stop in Chicago.
Despite what he acknowledged as a "sensitive" issue of disagreement between the US and China, he generally struck a positive note on bilateral ties, saying the two sides could work productively together.
"There is great potential for our mutually beneficial co-operation both in advancing Asia-Pacific regional co-operation and in improving global economic governance and promoting sustainable growth of the world economy," he said.
Mr Hu strongly criticised the structural faults in the world's banking system that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
"Its root cause lies in the serious defects of the existing financial system," he said, adding that global institutions had failed to fully reflect the changing status of developing countries in the world economy and finance.
Mr Hu will be feted in the White House with a state dinner on Wednesday, the type of event that the administration reserves for close friends or countries and leaders that it thinks need to be cultivated.
Apple's Mac App Store sparks another software gold rush
Developers with software ready for the store's January 6 opening were met with throngs of click-happy customers.
Mac users have appeared eager to spend money on apps, even for software that was previously available on the Web and in brick-and-mortar stores. Downloads on the first day exceeded 1 million -- out of a pool of about 1,000 apps, Apple said.
Distributed evenly, that works out to 1,000 downloads for each app, although name recognition and how Apple allocates promotion tend to skew results. But some development houses did gangbuster business.
Scott Forstall, Apple's vice president for iPhone software, said last year that the company's iPad would spark "a whole new gold rush for app developers," a prediction that must now apply to the Mac store as well.
App Store winners
One big winner from the Mac App Store launch has been Evernote. The free note-taking app catalogs text and multimedia files; synchronizes them over the internet to be accessed from phones, a website or desktop software; and lets you search through them.
Evernote was downloaded 90,000 times on the App Store's opening day. That's about a 10th of all apps purchased that day. It's been consistently listed in the section of most popular apps.
"Having a well-formed app store is the most important part in getting attention," Evernote CEO Phil Libin said. "We were on the iPhone App Store since that launched as well. We've kind of been through this once before, so we had pretty high expectations of what being in an app store means for getting attention."
The Mac App Store launch, Libin said, "exceeded our expectations."
Being in the Mac App Store helped expose Evernote to 40,000 people who had never used it, he said.
Evernote has also benefited from Apple's promotional efforts in the store. It sometimes gets top billing in a rotating list of featured apps, similar to the top section of the iTunes Store. Apple spokeswoman Jacqueline Roy also listed Evernote among the top five "must-have" apps, which is determined by consistent top performers in downloads and ratings.
Another Mac App Store hit is SketchBook Express, No. 7 on the must-have list. Autodesk, the maker of that free drawing program, says the store "effectively doubled" the number of people using the professional version of SketchBook on opening day. The company declined to provide exact figures.
SketchBook Pro costs $30 on the Mac App Store, versus almost $70 on Amazon.com. It's now among Apple's highest-grossing apps.
A lucrative business model
Apple takes a 30% cut of app sales, which makes its app stores a lucrative business for the company as well as developers. Because of this success, the stores are facing increased competition from Google's popular Android Market, a forthcoming Amazon.com app store and other rivals. This week, Microsoft contested Apple's trademark request for the term "app store."
Free applications benefit from the app store exposure too, even though they don't help Apple's business as directly. For example, Twitter is also on the Apple must-have list. The social networking company launched on the store with its first official desktop client, based on work by the engineer who made the iPhone app.
A Twitter spokeswoman said the company is "pleased" with the results but declined to say how many times the free app had been downloaded.
The App Store program is included as part of a software update for Mac computers running the newest version of the operating system, called Snow Leopard. Further enhancements to the app model will come as part of OS X Lion, which is scheduled to go on sale this summer.
Previously, Mac software could be found on vendors' websites or in stores (in cardboard boxes, no less; how quaint).
For developers, submitting an application to Apple for sale in the Mac App Store can be easier than getting their software on a retailer's shelf, which can require complex business deals. It is also easier to sell through an established app store than through a developer's own website, which can require building payment mechanisms and systems for licensing customers' copies.
Mac owners like the store because it makes software easier to find, manages what's been downloaded, makes it easy to move apps between computers and provides alerts when a new version is available.
Some software makers complain that Apple's rules about what it will accept are too stringent and that the company takes too big a cut of revenue. But Apple doesn't bar developers from distributing their wares in other locations on the Web.
Pros and cons
But are these early success stories sustainable?
Caffeine, a simple utility that helps prevent the computer from automatically going into sleep mode (get it?), did exceedingly well early on. The app has been downloaded more than 135,000 times. About one-third of those sales came on launch day; as for other apps, they have tapered somewhat since.
While daily downloads are decreasing steadily for Caffeine at a pace of about 30% per day, the app continues to attract new customers at a rate several times greater than anytime since it came out four years ago.
"The App Store opens up the opportunity to sell 99-cent apps, which was previously not really feasible, and I think that could bring a lot of new smaller apps," Caffeine developer Tomas Franzen said. "It's a lot easier when they handle hosting and payment for you.
"I'd say I'm a believer" in the app-store model, he wrote. "The App Store makes downloaded software easy for regular people, and it turns out there are a lot of regular people out there!"
However, not every company has the Midas touch for launching app stores. Google, which produced a hit with its Android Market, has drummed up minimal interest in its Chrome Web Store.
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales isn't sold on the app-store concept. At an event in England, Wales spoke out against the idea of app stores, calling them "a threat to a diverse and open ecosystem," according to blog reports.
A magic formula?
But many developers seem convinced that Apple has hit on the right formula.
Scott Gilbert had been planning to build a weather-report app for the iPad or iPhone. The product manager for Swackett immediately changed course when he heard Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveil plans for the Mac App Store in October.
"There's so much competition in the regular App Store," Gilbert said of Apple's mobile software store and its 300,000 apps. "I thought if we could be there on day one in the Mac App Store, we could rise above the noise."
And they did. Swackett was on track to get 100,000 downloads in its first week. The developers are making money from ads, which had been shown 2 million times in six days.
"We would not have come out with a Mac app first if not for the (Mac) App Store," Gilbert said.
And for the 61-person team at Evernote, the App Store is something of a blessing.
"We don't have experts here that think about logistics or channels or distribution or advertising," said Libin, the Evernote CEO.
Evernote had the distribution method in place on its site, but that was created out of necessity, said Libin, who was happy to let Apple take the reins on managing server infrastructure and promotion.
"Before, you used to make a great product, but no one would ever get it or use it or be able to buy it," he said. "The app stores have made the software business more of a meritocracy than it's ever been, which really favors geeks like us."
Saturday, January 15, 2011
U.S. mobile users use e-mail more than Facebook, chart says
The chart only covers mobile and TV, not radio, newspapers, magazines, books, computer-based web access or other kinds of media that remain popular. Still, it's an interesting glimpse into current American media access and usage trends.
Among the key stats:
• As of May 2010, U.S. mobile users spent more time sending or reading e-mail on their phones than any other internet-enabled mobile activity (comprising 38.5% of mobile internet time spent). Social media was a distant second (10.7%) and reading news/current events was third (7.2%).
• Nielsen reports that 31% of U.S. mobile users have smartphones. This figure echoes similar recent research from Comscore and elsewhere, and is probably pretty solid.
• But Nielsen also found that only 37% of U.S. mobile users access the Web from their phones. This figure sounds oddly low to me.
I recently conducted a survey of 84 mobile users in Oakland, California. I found that two-thirds reported accessing the Web from their phones daily -- plus an additional 14% access the mobile Web on most days.
Now, it could be that Oakland is an unusually mobile-Web-savvy town (even though 70% of our survey respondents rely primarily on simpler, cheaper "feature phones"). However, I suspect that Nielsen's statistic may overlook a large portion of mobile Web users somewhere, perhaps feature phone users, since 37% is awfully close to the smartphone-user market share they cite.
Nielsen's chart does not cite the specific source for that mobile Web usage statistic, so at this point I'd simply say this figure should be used with caution. My own study was small, but it did produce a similar ratio of smartphone-to-feature phone ownership -- and yet an enormously different estimate of mobile Web usage.
Oakland is not like every part of the United States, so I suspect the true national average for mobile Web usage lies somewhere in between.
• Nielsen also listed the top-selling mobile phones, purchased by U.S. consumers between January and September 2010, so it ignores handsets bought before that time that were still in use. (Which is a pretty big part of the mobile market. Users on tighter budgets tend to change phones less often -- and the economy was still pretty tough in 2010 for most Americans.)
The top-selling new handset in the first three quarters of 2010 was the iPhone 3GS. Several retailers began offering this older-model iPhone for $100 or less in 2010, and the iPhone is both pretty easy to use and enjoys huge brand awareness among the general population. But the fact that the 3GS, and not the iPhone 4, was the top seller indicates that cost is still a leading consideration in most consumers' handset choices.
I'd be curious to know what proportion of those iPhone 3GS handsets were being purchased for use with AT&T family plans vs. individual contracts. Adding an iPhone to a family plan tends to be much more affordable than using it on a standard AT&T individual iPhone service plan.
The second best-selling handset in 2010, according to Nielsen, was the Samsung SCH-U450 model (branded as the Samsung "Intensity" or "Doubletake"). This is a mid-range feature phone, typical of the models I often see in use around Oakland. It has a slider Qwerty keyboard, a small screen and a standard numeric keypad. It doesn't run apps, but it does include a Web browser, e-mail and other internet-enabled features.
Next came the Motorola Droid (now an older model, which many retailers are offering at reduced prices) and the RIM Blackberry 8500 series (the "Curve"). Blackberries have consistently been the top-selling smartphone since smartphones began, so it's surprising to see it being outpaced in sales by iPhone, Samsung and Android models.
Nielsen did not report sales totals for each phone model, only how they ranked.
• Finally, Nielsen reports that as of November 2010, the RIM BlackBerry operating system, Apple iOS and Android OS are running nearly neck-and-neck. Apple had a slight lead at 28.6%, but it's unclear whether that figure includes iPad users as well as iPhones.
Do Web users fear the digital Reaper?
He wasn't the only one with the idea. Other tech innovators launched their own businesses to serve a potentially vast market of Internet users who might want to bequeath their e-mail accounts, social network identities, blogs, and other websites when they die.
The new businesses quickly generated a media buzz over the concept of the "digital afterlife," highlighting cases where post-death legal battles had broken out over access to online material left behind.
But far from dealing with a tidal wave of customers, the uptake on these services has been slower than expected, with afterlife websites signing up thousands rather than millions of customers.
"As much as I'm told I'm a genius for doing this, you'd think that if I was we should have millions and millions of customers by now, but we don't," he said, stressing that business was still very good.
At Entrustet, another website that allows customers to appoint a digital executor to oversee the transfer and deletion of the deceased's web accounts, business is also growing at a healthy but modest rate.
Founders Nathan Lustig and Jesse Davis say things are going well, with about 3,000 users (none have died yet) having signed up to their service since it launched last April.
With no over-arching rules governing what happens to our online presence when we pass away, it would seem prudent and logical to sign up to a digital afterlife service.
Failure to implement an online post-death plan could mean things like valuable web addresses, treasured photos and even access to online bank accounts may all be lost for good, experts say.
So why are people being so slow to sign up?
Age is one factor, says Wendy Moncur, a computer technology and human behavior expert at the University of Aberdeen who has been researching the digital afterlife concept.
Moncur says most web-literate people are still some way from death's door, statistically speaking, so are not thinking about their online legacy. But there is also a psychological factor.
"Nobody likes to face up to their death at the best of times," she says.
The founders of Entrustet and Legacy Locker agree their potential customers need to overcome a mental barrier before they take the plunge.
"I'm very happy with our progress, but if I've learned anything about human psychology, it's people don't actually want to face or make decisions about death in any way that they don't have to," said Toeman.
Like Toeman, Lustig is confident that there will be a shift in attitude that will manifest itself in the healthy profits (he jokes that his company's unofficial motto is: "Everybody uses the Internet and everybody dies.")
"People need to make the mental leap from considering online accounts as just the main activities that they do all day online to actually real digital assets," he said.
"I do not know the speed or how long it's going to take for that shift to take place but we'll all see it happen before our eyes."
Moncur also believes that the uncertainties of a nascent market place may be off-putting to some, with regulation needed to eliminate bogus operators, stop companies going bust before their customers die and ultimately govern what can be claimed from the deceased's assets.
"Everyone has something they don't want people to know," she said. "When it was on paper they could hide it away somewhere but online it's a lot more difficult and if you were to wholesale pass on online effects to the deceased's nearest and dearest it could expose things that were perhaps best left unexposed.
"These are not straightforward issues which is why research needs to be done."
Toeman agrees with the idea of regulation, saying it could also help eliminate current problems caused by online operators who insist that all digital assets become their property when the Grim Reaper comes calling.
"We believe strongly that it's not okay to offer a service and have hundreds of millions of people use it and decide that the terms of that service expires at death because the content that is created has value beyond death," he said.
"I think companies are going to do the right thing when it comes down to it, I just think they've even thought about it yet."
Friday, January 14, 2011
iPad reading could cut into TV's time
But a new study shows it's moving online reading into primetime TV hours, which is big news. Is evening reading coming back, just in a digital style?
The study comes from internal data acquired by ReadItLater, a web service that lets users bookmark web content for perusal at a different time. Though you may think this slightly colors the dataset, the way this service works gives the company unique access to time-coded data on how iPad users (and traditional computer users) read content online.
By looking at how traffic moves through their servers, normalized for global time differences, the ReadItLater team worked out how traditional PC users spread their online reading out during the day.
As you may expect, given how deeply into our everyday lives the computer has penetrated, the curve of content consumption is pretty stable -- not much happens in the wee small hours of the day, then as people wake and go to work there's more traffic, with a small peak spread out around traditional lunch hours and another around 8 p.m. after the evening meal.
When you look at iPhone and iPad user traffic, distinct from "normal" PCs, everything is suddenly very different.
iPhone users have distinct peaks in their reading habits, timed to correspond with the morning routine of breakfast, then a commute to work, the end of the work day and homeward journey, and then last thing in the evening.
This matches the iPhone's status as a handy, portable, always-on Net browser that's good for quick content consumption.
But it's with the iPad that the statistics get very odd indeed: With minor usage spikes first thing in the morning, at lunchtime and then dinner time, the main bulk of iPad text content consumption is from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m..
Fast Company: iPad 2 rumor round-up
This is prime-time TV's slot, and it seems that as well as settling back on the sofa to watch TV, people are taking their iPad with them too. The data doesn't reveal if folk are multitasking (spending some time ogling their favorite shows, some looking data up on the Web) or are ignoring the TV altogether--but the data will still be of concern to TV execs who expect uninterrupted attention from TV watchers, in order to maximize ad revenues.
Plus it's something of a return to a traditional leisure hour image: People settling down on the couch after the evening meal to read the paper or a book, possibly to listen to the radio at the same time.
Remembering a study last year that showed how much time users devote to reading magazines on an iPad, we have to wonder is the iPad causing a renaissance in reading -- just digitally, and with Web content as well as digital books content?
Fast Company: More technology coverage
If this is true, then Rupert Murdoch's Daily iPad newspaper is arriving with pinpoint timing. And the hordes of Android tablets that have just arrived should accentuate the effect.
This is thus something that PR and advertising executives need to pay careful attention to, because the attention focus of the average consumer may be switching away from the TV to their other (newer) powerful glowing screen--in their laps.
Your next phone or tablet could help you predict the weather
Take a look under the hood of the Xoom, a tablet from Motorola Mobility expected to go on sale at Verizon Wireless stores this spring. Set among the tiny gadgetry inside is a barometer.
Meteorologists use barometers to measure atmospheric pressure and predict the severity of oncoming storms. A drop in pressure means a higher chance of rain, and the larger the change, the more likely you'll be scrambling for an umbrella.
In the latest version of its Android mobile operating system, Google added the ability to recognize and use a barometer, should a hardware manufacturer decide to include one in a device.
Google isn't really interested in using a smartphone to tell the weather. (Though Android engineers have been known to construct hobbyist weather balloons in their downtime.) Instead, Android's software can use a barometer to more quickly get a GPS satellite reading for pinpointing a user's location.
Using air pressure, the barometer estimates the device's altitude. Knowing whether someone is driving on an overpass or is downstairs in a subway gives the system an important parameter and eliminates the need to wait for the gadget's antennas to find four separate satellites in orbit.
With each new phone and tablet that hits the market, hardware makers are constantly adding sensors and doodads.
Multigigahertz and dual-core processors from ARM, Qualcomm, Samsung and others make the hardware snappy. Accelerometers and ambient light sensors, both found in many smartphones and tablets, can tell how you're holding the device and can adjust the screen's brightness based on the light in your room.
Apple deployed a gyroscope in the iPhone 4, which allows it to more accurately detect the handset's orientation. Apple says this is especially useful for games on the device. The Xoom and Google's Nexus S phone also have gyroscopes.
As for the barometer, Google is using the sensor only for reducing the time it takes until you see yourself as a blue dot on a map. But that doesn't mean software developers can't dream up more stimulating uses for the technology.
When support for barometers was introduced in version 2.3 of Android, called Gingerbread, Google made sure to unlock the sensor readings to software developers.
Having this new toy in their toolbox has ignited talk within the Android developer community about a new category of possible applications.
"I guess someone could create some ridiculous weather app," an Android spokesman said.
That's certainly one option.
Scott Gilbert, a product manager for a company that's developing weather apps called Swackett for various platforms, lit up upon hearing about the concept. (The app is for accessing weather reports, not conducting your own meteorology experiments.)
"I LOVE that idea," he wrote in an e-mail. "Currently we don't support it -- but you can bet we will in the near future!"
Fitness apps could also benefit from having sensors that track altitude, because bikers or runners exert more effort -- and thus burn more calories -- when they're moving uphill or exercising at higher elevations.
Motorola Mobility says its engineers aren't developing apps for the Xoom to show off the barometer but instead are focusing on prepping the hardware for release. They are thinking of how the sensor might be used, however.
"The app developers always come back with things that surprise us all," a company spokeswoman said. "But definitely one area of particular focus is indoor navigation."
Because the barometer can help determine which floor you're on in a building, developers could combine that information with other sensors, like the compass and accelerometer, to provide an interactive map of an office building or shopping mall.
Barometers can already be found in some hand-held GPS devices and digital watches from Casio. They're mainly used by hikers to determine how high up the mountain they are, or by meteorology enthusiasts who like to graph the changes in atmospheric pressure.
But when all tablets and smartphones can access real-time weather apps, is a barometer the most practical method of building a forecast?
"The best way to find out whether it's going to rain is to go to National Weather Service.com (Weather.gov)," said Eugene Cordero, a meteorology professor at San Jose State University.
However, a world full of consumers wielding mobile barometers could yield scientific dividends, he said.
The planet is full of "microclimates," small areas that can be rainier or colder than the places surrounding them, and "larger-scale weather forecasters miss a lot of them," Cordero said.
If every smartphone and tablet had a barometer inside, the data collected could be transmitted to weather organizations to better predict storms in certain areas, he said.
"If you had thousands of them, then you would definitely know what the pressure scale looks like," Cordero said. "That would certainly be very interesting. I'm sure meteorologists could use that in ways for regional-scale weather forecasting."
Are we too obsessed with Facebook?
Perhaps that statement's still a bit of an exaggeration, but by the numbers, we (that is, Internet users around the globe) are becoming more obsessed with Facebook by the day.
One out of every 13 Earthlings and three out of four Americans is on Facebook, and one out of 26 signs into Facebook on a daily basis.
We could rattle off stats like until the cows come home, but instead, we'd like to show you this fascinating infographic from SocialHype and OnlineSchools.org.
Here, in a visual nutshell, are some highlights about Facebook usage, 2010 trends, adoption numbers and a great deal more.
Take a good look at this information (or click here for the full-size version), and in the comments, let us know what you think about our global fascination with Facebook.
Is Facebook an amazing connective medium? A plague that preys on the easily addicted? A little bit of both, or something else entirely?
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Gift card exchange websites ring up post-holiday sales
Websites that let users exchange unwanted gift certificates gained major traction after Christmas, as more consumers went online to find a preferred gift, or even cash.
"What we've seen is a trend that begins to accelerate in late November and continues all the way through the holidays with a specific and significant spike post-Christmas," said Bruce Bower, the CEO of Plastic Jungle, one of the most popular websites for exchanging gift cards.
In December, Plastic Jungle experienced a sixfold increase in both the selling and buying of gift cards, compared with the same period in 2009. The company sold more than $10 million in gift cards last year.
For Plastic Jungle and similar sites, the post-holiday season capped a frenetic monthlong marathon that can set the tone for business the following year.
But consumers are finding they have to give up a few plastic dollars in the transaction. Such sites charge a fee to swap gift cards, and if you want cash, you'll get less than the card is worth.
If you still have unwanted holiday gift cards lying around and want to exchange them, the process works like this:
You can register gift cards you want to sell with Plastic Jungle or other sites. The system calculates how much it will pay out based on the store and the value of the card.
Then, you'll be asked to mail the card using a prepaid envelope. Plastic Jungle partners with some retailers that verify the cards instantly and automatically pay to a PayPal account. Shoppers can search the site and get cards at discounted prices.
Plastic Jungle has been around since 2006, when gift cards first achieved their still-current status as the top holiday gift category in the U.S., according to a report by the National Retail Federation. Americans were expected to spend an average of $145.61 on gift cards during the 2010 holiday season, a 4% increase from 2009, according to the survey.
But Plastic Jungle is seeing new rivals emerge, as well as consumers flocking to general online marketplaces like eBay and Craigslist.
eBay lists hundreds of cards for popular retailers that receive bids for pennies less than -- or, in some cases, more than -- the certificate's value. But for those looking to hawk gift cards, eBay's auctioneer pool can be hostile to sellers who haven't already built a reputation on their profiles.
And Craigslist, the free classified ads site, has no mechanism for verifying the card's or the seller's legitimacy.
Other services, like GiftCards.com and CardWoo, offer guarantees to buyers that are similar to Plastic Jungle's -- assurance that a card will work and come with the expected value.
For sellers, Swapagift.com partners with brick-and-mortar stores in many cities to provide drop-off locations, so customers don't have to deal with the Postal Service.
But the potential for crooks using these systems to cash in from stolen credit cards could create problems for these businesses, said Dan Horne, a marketing professor at Providence College's business school in Rhode Island.
Horne said he "can't really figure out the business model" for these companies, "given the [narrow profit] margins and the competition."
Google launches first-ever global online science fair
"It's come up over and over and over again," says Cristin Frodella, a senior product marketing manager in education at Google.
After all, many a Googler has fond childhood memories of explaining the genius of his or her biology experiment to passersby in a school gym. (Frodella and her best friend trained hamsters to ask for food by ringing a bell.)
Today those Googlers and budding scientists worldwide should be ecstatic.
The company launched Google Science Fair, the first global online science competition. It's open to full-time students ages 13 to 18, who are encouraged to use the panoply of Google products to record and share their work.
"We want to let kids use our online tools so they can participate from anywhere in world," Frodella tells Fast Company. "They may be home schooled or live in a remote place or not have a physical science fair in their area."
They do, however, need an Internet connection.
This is a far cry from your typical local science fair. Google's competition kicked off this morning at its New York offices with some showy science courtesy of Syyn Labs, the company behind the Rube Goldberg machine for last year's OK Go viral hit "This Too Shall Pass."
Syyn's machine for Google fired a laser, activating a rover that lifted a red curtain draped over the fair's logo. Then Google brought a riveting cast of scientists on stage to inspire the 100 or so local students in attendance.
Google's partners include National Geographic, CERN, Scientific American, and Lego. Consequently, the judges are not your eighth-grade biology teacher and the football coach who took a freshman chemistry course. They include Vint Cerf, its chief Internet evangelist and one of the fathers of the Web, and National Geographic's explorer-in-residence, the geneticist Spencer Wells.
Cerf gave a brief history of the Internet, telling students that breakthroughs of that magnitude don't "just happen." They require scientists asking questions, forming hypothesis, failing, and then asking more questions. If it seems to students as if all the good stuff has already been discovered, Cerf said, remember that "95% of the universe is unknown to us. It's all Tabula rasa."
William Kamkwamba, a self-taught scientist from Malawi, Africa, talked about the direct impact that science can have, not just on society at large, but on an individual community.
From reading a library book, Kamkwamba, the son of a farmer and one of seven kids, learned how to build a wind mill, which powers his family's house and pumps water in an impoverished area. He taught his neighbors how to build wind mills, too, which have transformed schools and improved conditions in the village.
If his poignant story wasn't enough to spur the young scientists in the room and those watching the live stream of the event online, then that of Tesca Fitzgerald, a 15-year-old dynamo from Portland, Oregon, most likely did.
She began programming computers at age 5, enrolled in community college at 12, and last year was recognized for her skills by the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
One of Fitzgerald's experiments, using artificial intelligence to route robots and assist nurses in a local V.A. hospital, serves as the model project on the Google Science Fair site.
The goal of the Google Science Fair isn't just to give great prizes, including a trip to the Galapagos Islands and $110,000 in scholarships. It's to foster more interest in science worldwide and to come up with much-needed solutions to local and global problems -- if not now, then eventually.
"We want kids to make a difference in the world," says Frodella. "They can be agents of change."
The deadline for submissions is April 4. In July, 15 finalists will attend the awards ceremony at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Visit Google Science Fair to learn more.
AT&T bringing 'hot spot' feature to Android and maybe iPhone too
But a mobile hot spot feature is coming to at least two new AT&T phones running Google's Android operating system. The carrier is also mulling whether it will add the ability to Apple's iPhone through a software update.
Verizon Wireless says its iPhone 4 models, which come out February 10, will have the hot spot feature.
The next version of the iPhone's operating system, iOS 4.3, will have that ability built in, say developers who were provided with access to a beta version. But it's unclear whether AT&T will allow customers to make use of the feature.
"It's something we're taking a look at," said AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel. He declined to comment on negotiations with Apple regarding the feature's deployment.
Once the hot spot feature is enabled, a phone creates its own Wi-Fi access point. Then as many as five devices, usually, such as laptops, iPods, Kindles or other Wi-Fi-enabled electronics, can get online. Enabling the feature generally reduces the phone's battery more quickly.
HTC's Inspire 4G and Motorola's Atrix 4G, two upcoming AT&T Android phones, will allow owners to subscribe to a more expensive data plan in order to utilize mobile hot spot.
Some AT&T phones, including the iPhone, offer a feature called tethering. This uses a phone's USB cable or a Bluetooth connection to share the internet connection to a single computer. The extra monthly fee for tethering is comparable to what AT&T will charge for hot spot.
T-Mobile USA offered a free hot spot feature on Google's Nexus One. However, a T-Mobile spokesman said in June that usage of that is "not something the company encourages." Now, T-Mobile offers the feature, with an upgraded data plan, to MyTouch 4G owners.
Sprint Nextel's Evo and Verizon's Droid phones, among others, can act as hot spots.
For Verizon's 3G phones, the internet signal is cut -- and the connected devices dropped -- when on a phone call. That's a limitation of the type of 3G network Verizon uses, but it shouldn't affect the carrier's upcoming 4G phones.
Verizon, with Mi-Fi, was one of the first carriers out of the gate to offer standalone hardware that connects to its wireless data network and shares that signal with other devices.
AT&T, which has perpetually struggled to meet data demand from iPhone customers in the last three years, began selling a Mi-Fi device in November -- more than a year after competitors.
As AT&T rolls out faster networks, including 4G infrastructure with speeds to match Verizon's later this year, the second-largest U.S. carrier by subscribers is finally ready to encourage heavier data usage. That's especially an attractive proposition for the company now that it has a tiered pricing plan in place to charge heavy users more.
Facebook to show AMBER Alerts
AMBER Alerts have previously been available to many users via their local law enforcement Facebook pages.
But now, Facebook users can receive the announcements directly from state AMBER Alert pages, by choosing which state's alerts they want to see. The District of Columbia and the U.S. Territories also each have an alert page.
"As we all know, social networking has few boundaries, and now AMBER Alerts will benefit from that reach," said Laurie Robinson, the National AMBER Coordinator for the Department of Justice.
The AMBER (America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response) Alert system started as an agreement between broadcasters and law enforcement agencies to quickly release information to the public on child abductions so citizens can assist in the search for the child.
It is named for Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old from Arlington, Texas, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. The Facebook announcement comes on the eve of the 15th anniversary of her abduction.
Facebook users who want to receive the alerts must will sign up at http://apps.facebook.com/amber_alert/.
Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said designers of the program wanted to be sensitive to people who would see the alerts as spam, so users must sign up to receive the alerts.
Once they receive a bulletin, Facebook users can easily share it with their Facebook friends.
An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year. The AMBER Alert program has been credited with the recovery of 525 children since it began.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Why there's no 4G in Verizon's iPhone 4
But it's a 3G version.
And because it runs only on Verizon Wireless' older CDMA network, not the fourth-generation technology, users won't be able to make phone calls and connect to the internet at the same time.
The iPhone 4 will be available in stores February 10, with pre-orders for Verizon customers beginning a week before, the two companies announced in New York on Tuesday.
"The number one question I've gotten is: When will the iPhone work on Verizon?" Apple COO Tim Cook said.
Perhaps the new question he'll get will involve an iPhone 4G. Cook got one of those immediately after the announcement, during a question-and-answer session with reporters.
"Verizon customers told us they want the iPhone now," Cook said, explaining why the carrier will begin selling a 3G version first. The first batch of chips designed for Verizon's 4G network would require Apple to rework the phone's casing and "force design changes we wouldn't make," he said.
Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, Verizon Wireless said it will have 10 devices that take advantage of its faster 4G network, including four phones, by midyear.
Motorola's Xoom tablet, which is coming out in the next few months, will have only a 3G chip to start, but owners will be able to upgrade to 4G at Verizon stores later in the year.
Verizon and Apple gave no indication that the Verizon iPhone 4 can be upgraded. However, images on tech blogs Tuesday suggest that some changes appear to have been made to the phone's casing, including an extra ridge in the top corner.
Apple traditionally releases new iPhones during the summer. When asked when an upgraded version of the phone for Verizon would debut, Cook declined to comment.
By launching an iPhone with 3G first, Verizon may be playing it safe in anticipation of an upgraded phone later, one analyst said.
"Verizon has a very large, very deep CDMA network, whereas their 4G LTE network is still relatively new, not completely pervasive and somewhat unproven," said Dan Hays, a consultant for PRTM who works with major U.S. carriers but declined to say which ones because of non-disclosure agreements. "I think that this opens the door for Apple to have the iPhone 5 be a 4G device."
Apple's partnership with Verizon involves a "multiyear, non-exclusive deal," Cook said Tuesday. "We've been looking forward to today for a long time."
Verizon COO Lowell McAdam said talks with Apple began in 2008. The pair has been testing the phone for a year, McAdam said.
"We have a tremendous 3G network," Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said. He said Verizon hasn't identified a problem with the antenna, which plagued the AT&T model, on its version of the iPhone.
Like on AT&T, the Verizon iPhone will cost $200 for the 16-gigabyte version and $300 for 32 gigabytes.
Verizon did not announce service pricing or say whether customers would be able to purchase an unlimited data plan.
AT&T, which is now no longer the exclusive U.S. carrier for the iPhone, released a statement Tuesday saying Verizon's network may produce slower download speeds and poorer battery life. The statement also pointed out that you can't talk and Web-surf on the Verizon phone at the same time.
"The fact that you can't do voice and data simultaneously on CDMA gives an opening to AT&T for advertising," analyst Hays said. In fact, AT&T and Apple have run commercials touting the ability to talk and access data at the same time.
"I think that Apple and Verizon's choice of using the CDMA network for the initial launch of the Verizon iPhone was actually very much anticipated," Hays said. The first iPhone, released in 2007, could access only AT&T's 2G Edge network.
Because the hardware is CDMA-only, the Verizon iPhone may be impractical for international travelers. AT&T runs on a GSM network, which is common around the world. By contrast, CDMA is not widespread overseas.
However, the 2G network technology Verizon uses is also used in parts of Asia. Apple could sell these models to carriers there, whereas a dual-band handset might not as easily recoup the costs to make it, said Tina Teng, an iSuppli wireless-communications analyst.
Verizon Wireless sells 10 "global-ready" smartphones that pack GSM chips in addition to Verizon's CDMA. Verizon and Apple did not say whether the new iPhone 4 would have a GSM chip, but it's unlikely. Verizon says the iPhone 4 can be used to access data in more than 20 countries, though plans aren't cheap.
"I think that if there was (GSM inside), they would have said so," Hays said. "I didn't expect a world-phone version. I think that would be uncharacteristic for Apple. They tend to have very tightly designed solutions."
Verizon iPhone: The big questions
On Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) end, the iPhone has been a huge success. The company has sold more than 70 million iPhones since the device's launch in 2007. In its its fiscal fourth quarter it sold more than 14.1 million, up 91% from a year earlier.
But for AT&T (T, Fortune 500) -- currently the iPhone's sole U.S. carrier -- the exclusive contract has come at a price. Customers have complained in droves about awful service on their iPhones, culminating in scathing Consumer Reports piece in December that labeled AT&T the worst phone carrier out there.
That brings us to our first question ahead of Tuesday's event.
Will Verizon's network succeed for the iPhone where AT&T's has failed?
It's an open question, and after years of suffering on its own through iPhone users' data demands, AT&T would love to see another network stagger.
"Verizon's network hasn't been battle-tested yet, so you don't know if they can handle the data load or not," AT&T spokesman Larry Solomon told Fortune recently.
But all the wireless phone carriers -- including both Verizon and AT&T -- have been spending billions to build our their capacity. Verizon has had lots of time to warm up for this challenge.
Will the iPhone support Verizon's LTE 4G network, or its CDMA 3G network?
Verizon's new 4G network is just starting its rollout. If the iPhone has to rely on the older CDMA network, that carries some significant drawbacks. Most glaringly: customers wouldn't be able to chat on the phone and surf the Web simultaneously, as they can on AT&T's iPhone.
Data hounds are waiting eagerly for the details.
Will Verizon let iPhone customers sign up for the unlimited data plan?
Back in June, AT&T announced new 3G pricing plans that made iPhone and iPad bills less expensive for most customers, but also ended the carrier's unlimited data option. New buyers can pay either $15 for 200 MB a month or $25 for 2 GB, replacing the carrier's previous $30 all-you-can-download plan.
Verizon currently offers its smartphone customers unlimited data for $30 a month. Will it extend that plan to the iPhone? Stay tuned.
When will the Verizon iPhone be available to customers?
By the end of January, if a Monday Wall Street Journal article and a June piece from Bloomberg are correct.
How much will the Verizon iPhone cost? And will the company offer any incentives to AT&T iPhone customers?
With a two-year AT&T contract, the iPhone 4 costs $199 for a 16 GB device and $299 for the 32 GB version. Verizon's pricing is expected to be the same.
With such a high-demand product, Verizon probably won't feel the need to offer any incentives for AT&T customers looking to switch over. Those who make the jump will have to pay a $325 penalty for termination-of-contract, and they could be subject to other fees.
Will a Verizon iPhone kill AT&T?
Most of the conventional wisdom out there says yes, but many industry analysts say no. The company has locked in millions of customers who upgraded over the past few months.
Furthermore, while lots of customers complain about AT&T, relatively few are likely to follow through with the hassle of switching. Yankee Group estimates that 2.5 million AT&T iPhone customers will defect to Verizon in 2011 -- which represents just 3% of AT&T's base of 93 million customers.
Will Steve Jobs be at the Verizon unveiling? Will he have a white iPhone in his hand!?!
The bright-red invitation CNNMoney received for Tuesday's event lists only Verizon president and COO Lowell McAdam as a presenter. But it's unlikely that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would miss an iPhone event. AllThingsD's sources say a Jobs appearance "isn't 100 percent assured," but it's "likely."
The white iPhone -- the tech industry's Godot -- has reportedly been thwarted by manufacturing issues. A few news outlets have reported on pale iPhones spotted in the wild, but Apple has said not to expect the fabled white device until spring 2011.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)