In 1997 when Amazon went public, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO warned investors that they must have a long-term approach. Today, Amazon takes that same long-term approach where they are willing to sacrifice profits to invest in “seeds” like the Kindle Fire and let them grow over five to seven years (or more).
By taking a long-term approach, they can gain economies of scale similar to Wal-Mart and eliminate or weaken competitors like Borders, Barnes & Noble and Best Buy.
“Amazon, in particular, has been true to its word to manage for the long term,” reports The New York Times. “It remains one of the world’s leading growth companies and its stock has soared 12,200 percent since its public offering. In late October it reported quarterly revenue growth of 44 percent to almost $11 billion, which came on the heels of 80 percent growth a year ago.”
Investors tend to be less patient than Bezos, and the company has faced criticism and falling stock value over the years. “The stock has been bumpy,” explains Scott Devitt, a Morgan Stanley analyst. “Investor trust seems to go in cycles.”
Because of this, Amazon may have to “deliver on its promise of higher margins and profits, however long term that may turn out to be,” suggests the article. “To many investors, long term is a year,” Devitt said. “For Bezos, he’s looking at a 10- to 20-year time line. When he says long term, he means 2020 or 2030.”
LG has announced a 2012 updated version of its Magic Motion Remote Control, which is expected to be on display at CES.
“Last year’s model let you navigate any 2011 LG smart TV like a Wii, and the refresh takes a new ergonomic design and adds voice recognition for text input, a scroll wheel, and Magic Gestures,” reports The Verge.
It has yet to be announced exactly what gestures are supported.
“The remote also has a new 3D button you can push to turn on the TV’s 2D-to-3D conversion software — that’s probably not terribly useful, but might make for a neat parlor trick when you have guests over,” jokes the post.
LG says the new Magic Motion will be available in the first quarter of 2012.
Facebook “can be sued by people who claim showing advertisements that their friends ‘like’ violates a California law regarding commercial endorsements,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek.
U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose has cleared the way for Facebook users to sue the social network over its use of their likenesses in sponsored ads.
The case centers on claims regarding sponsored stories, which use the names and profile photos of users who have “liked” a given brand.
The judge ruled that plaintiffs could claim they had been economically harmed by the ads, but tossed out a claim that Facebook had unfairly profited from the ads.
“We are reviewing the decision and continue to believe that the case is without merit,” wrote a Facebook spokesman in an e-mailed statement.
The number of Americans using smartphones to access TV content is on the rise, according to a new study by research firm Vanson Bourne, on behalf of Motorola Mobility.
Survey results suggest the numbers account for nearly a quarter of U.S. consumers — an almost five-fold increase, reports Connected Planet.
Some 9,000 consumers in 16 countries were polled, with results indicating that trends in mobile networking and social media continue to influence TV viewing.
Consumers spend an average of 12 hours online per week and an additional six hours engaged in social media. “The result of this convergence is Social TV with about 60 percent of global respondents saying that they have discussed a program with friends on social networks.”
“With the traditional broadcast TV industry under pressure, and their adoption of new IT infrastructures generally being almost a decade behind telecom, they should be seriously worried by telcos offering TV type services,” comments Connected Planet.
MySpace is branching away from the social networking scene and is hoping to gain ground as a music site with its 42+ million songs and exclusive access to 30 million songs from independent, unsigned artists.
The new music player, launched yesterday, includes Facebook integration. “Because of the users they have and the integrations with Spotify, Mog, and Rdio it makes sense to open up our catalog to their users,” explains MySpace COO Chris Vanderhook.
The MySpace music player features enhanced music recommendations and built-in search engines. It is free with ad-supported content.
According to new owners Specific Media, MySpace will also undergo a full-scale relaunch in the beginning half of 2012.
“Music is white-hot right now and we want to be able to capitalize on our music catalog and our history in music. It’s something the previous management didn’t really highlight,” Vanderhook says.
It’s official: AT&T announced yesterday it has ended its effort to purchase T-Mobile USA. The company explained it could no longer combat federal opposition to form the nation’s largest cellphone service provider.
“The decision to scrap the $39 billion takeover — which would have been the biggest deal of the year — is a major setback for AT&T, which had pinned its hopes for growth on the acquisition,” reports The New York Times. “The company wanted T-Mobile’s cellular airwaves, or spectrum, to relieve its congested network and offer faster service for data-hungry devices like the iPhone.”
Consumer advocates believe the merger would have led to a powerful duopoly of AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
“Consumers won today,” said Sharis A. Pozen, the Justice Department’s acting assistant attorney general for antitrust. “Had AT&T acquired T-Mobile, consumers in the wireless marketplace would have faced higher prices and reduced innovation.”
AT&T said in a statement that it would continue to invest in wireless spectrum, and suggested that wireless customers “will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled by the regulators’ decisions.”
Google chairman Eric Schmidt told an Italian newspaper, “in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.” He also confirmed that the tablet would incorporate Google’s voice recognition technology to challenge Siri.
“Exact details of the upcoming tablet were not revealed, and it’s unclear whether the slate will be specifically branded with Google’s Nexus nomenclature or be another manufacturer’s model that the search giant will champion,” reports SlashGear.
The tablet will likely run Ice Cream Sandwich (the latest version of Android), which may allow it to better challenge the iPad.
“Android tablets have generally struggled to compete with Apple’s iPad, and even the HP TouchPad managed to squeeze ahead of Android-based models in 2011 sales thanks to its cut-price discounting,” comments SlashGear. “Common criticisms include the somewhat jerky performance of Android 3.x Honeycomb, as well as a shortage of slate-scale apps to suit the larger displays.”
Lantronix has developed an iPhone-sized box called xPrintserver that enables printing from any iOS device. The $150 device supports more than 4,000 printers.
“With automatic printer discovery and no configuration, printing is easy and hassle-free. Simply open the box, plug in the xPrintServer anywhere into the network, and print wirelessly from the iOS device,” explains the press release.
“The proliferation of iPads and iPhones in the corporate world has yielded a potentially tremendous opportunity for providing an easy printing solution free of hassles associated with today’s work-around solutions,” said Kurt Busch, president and CEO for Lantronix. “With more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies slated to deploy iPads by the end of 2011, this is an ideal time to expand into this market.”
The xPrintserver will be available in January 2012 through Lantronix.com as well as resellers such as Amazon, NewEgg, Buy.com, and MacMall.
The company is expected to showcase xPrintServer at Digital Experience during CES in Las Vegas.
Apple is reportedly in talks with media companies to move forward with television plans originally envisioned by the late Steve Jobs.
“In recent weeks, Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies, according to people familiar with the matter,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
Apple is working on a TV that uses wireless streaming. For example, one might watch a program on a TV and continue watching on another device such as a smartphone.
Apple has also described future TV technology that recognizes a user across multiple devices. Users could control it using voice and gestures to make TV more personal and easy to use. The company is believed to be working on integrating iCloud so one could watch a saved or purchased program on different devices. A subscription-TV service has also been discussed.
The article cites the apps and services offered by the likes of Google and Microsoft as well as cable, satellite and phone companies. “The pace of change puts media companies that make TV shows and program TV channels in a dilemma,” suggests the article. “On one hand, they hope that they can increase their profits by selling new services on new devices. But they are worried that a proliferation of new services could undermine the existing TV business, which brings in more than $150 billion a year in the U.S. in advertising and consumer spending on monthly TV subscriptions from cable, satellite and telecommunications companies.”
While monthly data usage for teens nearly tripled from Q3 2010 to Q3 2011, usage for other age groups doubled.
Nielsen recently analyzed mobile usage trends among U.S. teens by evaluating 65,000+ cell phone bills. “In the third quarter of 2011, teens age 13-17 used an average of 320MB of data per month on their phones, increasing 256 percent over last year and growing at a rate faster than any other age group.”
For teens, messaging is the primary use, averaging seven messages each waking hour. Other data intensive activities for teens include mobile Internet, social networking, email, app downloads and app usage. Interestingly, voice use has declined as messaging is perceived as faster, easier and more fun.
“Teen females are holding the messaging front, sending and receiving 3,952 messages per month versus 2,815 from males,” reports MacDailyNews.
The post includes infographics and a link to Nielsen’s “State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report Q3 2011.”
EE Times provides an interesting overview of the technologies and uses of 3D gestural user interfaces in this article by Dong-Ik Ko and Gaurav Agarwal of Texas Instruments.
“Gesture recognition is the first step to fully 3D interaction with computing devices,” begins the article. “The authors outline the challenges and techniques to overcome them in embedded systems.”
Featured sections include: 1) “Limitations of (x,y) coordinate-based 2D vision;” 2) “z (depth) innovation” (such as stereo vision, structured light patterns and time of flight sensors); 3) “3D vision technologies;” 4) “z & human/machine interface;” 5) “Technology processing steps;” 6) “Challenges for 3D-vision embedded systems” (such as two different processor architectures and lack of standard middleware); and 7) “Anything cool after z? (new ways to see beyond, through, and inside people and objects).”
“Gesture recognition takes human interaction with machines even further. It’s long been researched with 2D vision, but the advent of 3D sensor technology means gesture recognition will be used more widely and in more diverse applications,” predict the authors. “Soon a person sitting on the couch will be able to control the lights and TV with a wave of the hand, and a car will automatically detect if a pedestrian is close by.”
Ko and Agarwal suggest that gesture recognition is only the beginning: “Transparence research will yield systems that are able to see through objects and materials. And with emotion detection systems, applications will be able to see inside the human mind to detect whether the person is lying.”
Senior editor Dave Katzmaier and television reviewer Ty Pendlebury of CNET offer their predictions regarding what TV tech trends to look for at CES 2012.
“Dave’s Divinations” include: 1) More passive 3D, cheaper active glasses with a universal standard, better 3D picture quality; 2) LEDs will outnumber non-LED LCDs (“Add CCFL-based LCD TVs to the list of ‘almost dead’ TV technologies”); 3) Better Internet suites, more Web browsers, and Google TV, voice control/search, and built-in Skype; 4) Bigger and cheaper TVs (“Sharp’s resurgence in 2011 with its relatively affordable 70-inch TVs hints that other makers will also strive to make jumbo flat panels more affordable”); and 5) Cameos by bigger OLED and next-gen glasses-free 3D, including a 40-inch-plus OLED from LG.
“Pendlebury’s Prognastications” include: 1) Kinect in your TV (“we’ll see at least one TV featuring technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, which develops the 3D sensors used in Kinect”); 2) Bezel-less TVs (“such as this year’s Samsung D7000…with an incredibly slim bezel”); 3) OLED (“won’t be a viable technology until about 2015, but this year we’ll see more bendy, wacky, and see-through OLED panels”); 4) 1080p passive 3D (“where the TV performs the shutter effect — this is opposed to active systems, which feature shutter glasses”); and 5) Remote viewing apps (“watching content directly from the TV tuner or HDMI input”).
The post includes a fun “Blast from the Past” section for those of you who like to revisit reports from previous CES events.
Gracenote announced it will introduce its second screen content recognition platform at CES.
“The company, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony three years ago, aims to compete with similar solutions from Yahoo’s IntoNow and social check-in services like Miso and GetGlue,” according to GigaOM.
Similar to IntoNow, the app listens to the program’s audio track to identify and link to program information such as actors, music and products. Gracenote’s technology “makes it possible to identify both on-demand movies as well as live TV content,” explains the post.
The company is looking to license its technology to CE manufacturers, broadcasters and developers.
Included in the post: Stephen White, president of Gracenote, provides a 2-minute video demo.
The Mac App Store is now the “largest and fastest-growing PC software store in the world,” according to Apple. About a year after its opening, the Mac App Store has passed the 100 million downloads milestone.
Even so, the Mac App Store has not had the rapid success of the iOS App Store which reached 1 billion downloads only nine months after its debut. The iOS App Store has over 500,000 apps and more than 18 billion app downloads, about a billion a month (Google’s Android Market just hit the 10 billion download mark).
The Mac App Store only has about 8,459 apps but is “still a huge success,” GigaOM reports. “[It] will likely continue to grow as it ships on future Macs and increasingly becomes a go-to resource for customers looking to get new apps on their machines. Apple’s ability to attract top-tier developers away from direct Web distribution models will also be a key factor in helping it expand its library.”
PaidContent has published a compelling analysis of the controversy that has recently arisen over the Stop Online Piracy Act.
“The issue isn’t that complicated,” suggests the article. “At its core, it’s about deciding the role of different industries in monitoring and enforcing intellectual property rights. Unfortunately, the debate so far has been all about hysterics and hyperbole. SOPA supporters are casting opponents as free-loading, unpatriotic criminals. Meanwhile, the bill’s detractors say that brand owners want to bring about Chinese-style censorship and the ‘end of the Internet.'”
ETCentric staffer Phil Lelyveld points out that the article provides a rational assessment of both sides of the SOPA discussion and offers additional context to the Wikipedia blackout story we reported earlier this week.
“The problem with this rhetoric is not just that it’s inaccurate but that, after a point, it’s boring,” suggests paidContent. “The SOPA screaming attracts partisans but few people who want to discuss a balanced approach to the piracy problem.”
The article calls for “a shift not just in substance but in tone” that would lead to a rational public discussion on intellectual property enforcement.
ETCentric‘s Dennis Kuba submitted a related CNN opinion piece written by leaders of Global Voices Online, an international citizen media network. As an example of the passion emerging from this subject, the editorial concludes: “Passage of the Stop Online Piracy Act or Protect IP will send a loud signal to governments everywhere that it is fine to monitor and censor citizens’ online behavior to catch and prevent ‘infringing activity,’ which too often means political and religious dissent. The result will be a world even more dangerous and difficult for bloggers and activists than it already is.”
