At the end of 2011, Amazon sold 4.8 million Kindle Fires, showing it was the “right product at the right price at the right time,” ReadWriteWeb suggests. But the online retailer’s luck stopped there.
“According to IDC, Amazon’s share dropped from nearly 17 percent of the tablet market to 4 percent, with fewer than 700,000 units sold compared to Apple’s 11.8 million,” explains ReadWriteWeb.
While Amazon still beats out Barnes & Noble’s Nook by a fair margin, it now sits in third place, lagging behind Samsung Android tablets and Apple’s iPads.
The first quarter of 2012 was good to Apple, which increased its market share to 68 percent (up from 54.7 percent in Q4) with the sale of its new iPad and continued success with cheaper versions of older models.
Overall however, the tablet market has slowed quite a bit. “IDC had predicted overall tablet sales to be 1.2 million units higher than they were this quarter, with the shortfall mostly attributed to Amazon’s slip,” the article states. “Tablet sales have grown 120 percent from last year, but were still lower than IDC’s predictions. Whether tablet sales continue to slow in Q4 will be interesting to see.”
IDC predicts Amazon will try to come back with a larger-screened model. Android continues to stagnate at about one-third of the market, unable to reproduce the same adoption it has secured in the smartphone sphere.
Researchers from Disney Research, Pittsburgh University and Carnegie Mellon have collaborated to develop Touche, a touch-sensitive technology that has the potential to turn anything from doorknobs to kitchen appliances into touchscreens.
“The technology uses Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing, or SFSC, which lets objects interpret the body position and how it is being touched and reacts accordingly,” reports Mobiledia. “Users can coat the surfaces of ordinary objects with transparent conductors programmed to respond to the body’s electronic frequencies, making them touchscreen-enabled.”
“This might enable us to one day do away with keyboards, mice and perhaps even conventional touchscreens for many applications,” suggests Munehiko Sato, one of the researchers.
Touche has the ability to revolutionize smart home technology with the ability to convert regular devices into smart devices. It may also shake up the gaming industry, turning practically anything into a controller.
ESPN has incorporated Twitter’s Web Intents into their website offerings. Web Intents provide pop-ups for users to access Tweet, Reply, Retweet, Follow and Favorite functions.
“For each article ESPN shows a visitor, they have implemented a scrolling/following sidebar that contains its Twitter sharing widget,” reports the Twitter Developers site. “As a user scrolls through an article, the container follows the position on the page.”
“At any point, a user can click the Twitter bird logo to invoke a Tweet Intent to enable a customized sharing experience,” adds the site. “A Tweet box with text pre-loaded by the ESPN editorial staff pops up, enabling a user to quickly share the news with their followers.”
ESPN readers are generating some 1,250 Tweets per day amounting to 10 percent of all Tweets containing ESPN links. These Tweets resulted in an average of 15 clicks back to the website.
The sports site has also developed customized MLB and NFL widgets that highlight Twitter conversations from top writers and allow fans to interact with the writers directly on the page.
In response to consumers who have been quick to embrace the tablet PC, there is a push to make the television experience more like the tablet experience. We’re seeing rapid development of apps from video providers, cable channels and broadcast networks.
“While still in its early stages, the idea has taken off among tech-loving consumers, and companies are trying to satisfy them,” reports The New York Times.
“Already, apps for Hulu Plus, Netflix and Wal-Mart’s Vudu streaming service, among others, are built into Internet-enabled televisions,” explains the article. “Devices like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the streaming video player Roku let viewers watch apps that mimic channels. New sets by Samsung and others come with built-in apps loaded with television shows, movies and sports.”
However, how these apps will impact the TV experience is not yet known.
“The question that hasn’t yet been answered is whether television viewing will consist of a single app that mimics the pay TV bundle or a series of different apps that together form a content experience,” suggests Jon Miller, chief digital officer at News Corp.
“A model built around TV apps, however, could let viewers use favorite apps on the screen on an á la carte basis, thus bypassing cable subscriptions and all the extraneous channels they don’t watch,” adds the article. “And therein lies the tension that has the television industry delicately assessing how to balance the current system with an Internet-based future that some feel is inevitable.”
Regardless, development of TV apps is expected to increase. “I’ve told my bosses, ‘This is beachfront real estate. Buy in now,’” says Lisa Hsia, executive VP of digital media at NBCUniversal’s Bravo channel.
Sony has announced plans to introduce its cloud-based Music Unlimited service this year, featuring a catalog of 15 million songs.
“Music content could be a key factor to revive Sony,” said Takashi Watanabe, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group in Tokyo.“The time is over where an electronics company can excel just because it has a good device. You have to have a very good platform to capture your clients within your system.”
Content from Sony’s own music units includes songs from artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Bruce Springsteen. The catalog offerings also include tracks from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group.
Apple’s iTunes currently offers approximately 20 million titles, while Spotify offers more than 16 million songs.
“Music Unlimited lets users stream songs via Web-connected Bravia televisions, some Walkman models, PlayStation game players, personal computers and Android-based mobile phones. The service was expanded to the PlayStation Vita in March after being enabled on Sony Tablets and other Android-based tablets in October,” according to Bloomberg.
While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that his company is in good shape, Wall Street has its doubts. That concern resulted in Netflix shares dropping 16 percent to $85.45 directly after its first quarter numbers were announced.
Netflix added 1.7 million new streaming subscribers in the first quarter — considered only light growth for the second straight quarter.
Growth for Q2 is predicted to be lower. “During the analyst call, Hastings appealed for calm and said the problem was temporary and seasonal. The second quarter is typically tough on Netflix,” reports CNET. “Skeptics, however, worry that the problems could be more lasting and have more to do with the company’s inability to secure film licenses and growing competition in the streaming-video sector.”
In order for Netflix to remain competitive and elite, it has to secure more content to encourage subscriber growth. “But licensing costs have gone through the roof,” CNET notes, and “Netflix failed to renew a licensing agreement with Starz, the pay-TV cable service that supplied Netflix with films from Disney and Sony Pictures.”
In the meantime, the competition is growing stronger as Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go continue to expand, along with Comcast’s new Xfinity Streampix service.
Google has revealed the results of their work to re-architect their internal network infrastructure around OpenFlow.
Google’s network, which is described as equivalent to “the second largest ISP in the world,” consists of a user-facing network and a second network that interconnects its worldwide data centers.
OpenFlow is a key part of the Software Defined Networking (SDN) approach that separates network equipment from the overall management. The result is the capability to manage the network fabric as a whole and dramatically increase its efficiency.
Moreover, Google which began working on an OpenFlow network in 2010 has actually been designing and building its own network gear as it was not yet available.
The result is a network that operates at almost 100 percent utilization, rather than the 30-40 percent of other networks.
Google is revealing their OpenFlow work with hopes that equipment vendors will begin manufacturing gear that supports it. Google is a member of the Open Networking Foundation, which promotes OpenFlow. Other members include Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom, and Nicira.
Software Defined Networking as represented by OpenFlow is a fundamental change in thinking of complex digital networks that promises to remake the entire network industry, impact how companies and governments manage their networks, and enable new kinds of network applications.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) hopes to fight potential cyberattacks by enabling companies and the federal government to share cyber threat intelligence with each other.
Although the bill has been supported by many big Internet players, the Obama administration is now expressing some hesitation, suggesting CISPA “fails to adequately protect critical national infrastructure, such as electrical grids and water supplies, and could threaten individual privacy and civil liberties,” reports Digital Trends.
According to Caitlyn Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, cybersecurity legislation requires strong safeguards. “Legislation without new authorities to address our nation’s critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security, will not meet our nation’s urgent needs,” she said in a statement.
Some civil liberty and privacy advocates criticize the bill’s broad language, which could “allow companies to hand over private information about their customers and users to the federal government without sufficient oversight or consequences for mishandling the data,” explains the article.
The “Stop Cyber Spying” campaign against CISPA also raises concerns that the shared information could be given to spy agencies with little public oversight.
Although the White House has not made any plan to veto the bill, there is definitely some question as to whether the proposed legislation will do much to protect against cyberattacks.
Nicira, “the most intriguing startup in Silicon Valley” according to Wired, has created a network virtualization technology that enables companies to program their networks as they do with server virtualization.
The technology runs on top of any network hardware which is used only to move network packets. The network virtualization software provides all the intelligence allowing one to reconfigure the network infrastructure. Thus, rather than be locked into a specific network configuration, the entire network architecture can be altered in software rather than hardware to fit the current requirements.
Nicira’s Open vSwitch goes beyond OpenFlow, which requires vendors to incorporate the protocol in their hardware. It can work with any network gear, even inexpensive hardware.
Companies like Google, AT&T, eBay, NTT, Fidelity and Rackspace are already using Nicira to manage their networks.
“We have hundreds of thousands of customers, and that translates into multiple hundreds of thousands of network or network segments that customers want to create,” says John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, which is currently using the Nicira platform for a beta version of its cloud service. “Nicira gives us the ability to put any customer, any end point, any location on one common virtual network.”
Google is already buying inexpensive network hardware from Taiwan and China, thus bypassing more expensive options from Cisco and Juniper. Martin Casado, Nicira’s CTO, thinks over time that network hardware will become less important compared to the network software.
D-Link has launched its new $48 MovieNite video streaming player. The streaming-only player is designed for aspiring cord-cutters, as an affordable alternative to Roku set-top boxes.
MovieNite is being offered exclusively through Walmart with a $5.99 free movie credit from VUDU.
The player features 1080p video and access to services including VUDU, Netflix, Pandora and YouTube. D-Link has also released iPhone and Android apps for controlling the player.
“The closest match to video playback specs in Roku’s lineup of products is the $79.99 Roku 2 XD, but Roku players offer access to wider variety of services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, HBO GO and several sports subscriptions packages,” reports Digital Trends.
Since Walmart owns VUDU, it seems unlikely that the player will expand its offerings to include competitors such as Amazon Instant Video.
“If the user also owns mydlink-enabled network cameras, the feeds from those cameras can be viewed through the MovieNite player as well,” adds the post. “For instance, a user could pause a movie playing on Netflix to launch the mydlink application and view an outdoor camera feed when someone knocks on the front door.”
Pay TV could cost as much as $200 a month by 2020, according to a new survey from NPD Group. Compared to today’s $86/month rate, the rise seems rather drastic, especially when considering the rise of online content services.
“As pay TV costs rise and consumers’ spending power stays flat, the traditional affiliate-fee business model for pay TV companies appears to be unsustainable in the long term,” said Keith Nissen, research director for The NPD Group. “Much-needed structural changes to the pay TV industry will not happen quickly or easily; however, the emerging competition between S-VOD and premium-TV suppliers might be the spark that ignites the necessary business-model transformation of the pay TV industry.”
The majority of pay TV subscribers have stuck with their services despite the trend to cut cords in favor of streaming services. The main reason for staying with their services is lack of content, especially live sports, as well as the convenience of getting all their content from one source.
As prices go up, however, these reasons might not be enough to keep customers. Online options will become even more appealing if consumers don’t have to worry about going over their broadband cap.
“So the question for TV consumers is: Do you keep paying $86 today for access to a walled garden of really good content that will likely to continue to rise in cost? Or do you go outside the walled garden and scramble to get your regular shows while fighting the caps and agreements that will eventually make the world outside the walled garden inhospitable for a TV lover? And the bigger question is whether or not the FCC or anyone in Washington is watching this play out and plans to help the consumers by taking action?” GigaOM asks.
It’s been a year since Larry Page became Google’s CEO. The following are some highlights from his 2012 update published yesterday.
“Google has so many opportunities that, unless we make some hard choices, we end up spreading ourselves too thin and don’t have the impact we want.”
“Creating a simpler, more intuitive experience across Google has been another important focus. I have always believed that technology should do the hard work — discovery, organization, communication — so users can do what makes them happiest: living and loving, not messing with annoying computers! That means making our products work together seamlessly.”
“Getting from needs to actions lightning fast is especially important on smaller devices like mobile phones, where screen size is limited and context really matters. That’s why I’m so excited about Android.”
“We have always believed that it’s possible to make money without being evil.”
“I believe that by producing innovative technology products that touch people deeply, we will enable you to do truly amazing things that change the world.”
Samsung is working with OpenX Technologies Inc. to offer an ad service called Samsung AdHub Market that will enable advertisers to run targeted messages on Samsung phones and tablets.
“The move is part of Samsung’s broader push to bring targeted advertising to electronic devices, including Internet-connected television sets,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “It also will pit the company against other mobile-ad services from Apple, Google and Millennial Media Inc., which held an initial public offering of stock last week.”
“This is the first time any device manufacturer has entered the ad tech space in this way,” said OpenX chief executive Tim Cadogan. “It is becoming very clear to the principals in the mobile space that advertising is going to be a very important part of the revenue mix.”
“According to data provided by eMarketer, spending on mobile advertising in the U.S. is expected to reach $10.8 billion in 2016, up from $2.6 billion this year,” reports WSJ. “Cadogan said he expects that OpenX, which has focused on advertising within desktop computers and is now generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, will move further into the mobile market in the future.”
Grooveshark is hurting. The music streaming site no longer has legal access to the majority of licensed music after EMI terminated its contract.
Of the major music publishers, EMI was the only company that had made licensing agreements with Grooveshark; however, in January, EMI filed a lawsuit against the service, claiming Grooveshark hadn’t paid licensing fees since 2009.
“Grooveshark was recently forced to make the difficult decision to part ways with EMI due to EMI’s currently unsustainable streaming rates and EMI’s pending merger with Universal Music Group, which we consider monopolistic and in violation of antitrust laws,” Grooveshark announced in a statement to CNET. “To date, Grooveshark has paid over $2.6 million to EMI, but we have yet to find sustainable streaming rates. In spite of this, Grooveshark’s dedication to artists and rights holders remains the same.”
Florida-based Grooveshark says it has more than “30 million monthly users who stream more than 15 billion songs per year,” reports VentureBeat. “In November, it rolled out a new design of its online music player that includes a social layer.”
Two analysts are predicting that Apple’s stock will hit the $1,000 mark within a year or two.
Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets says the introduction of the next iPhone and the iTV, paired with expansion into China and the TV market, will surge the stock to more than $1,000 bringing the company’s value to $1 trillion. “Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world,” he said.
“Shares can reach $1,000 based on our belief that Apple will continue to win in global mobile devices,” Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray wrote in a note.
The company has grown over 60 percent since Steve Jobs’ death in October, so these predictions may not be unreasonable. In this year alone, the stock has risen 53 percent.
“Apple investors also are benefiting from a $2.65-a-share dividend, starting in July, and a $10 billion stock buyback plan,” reports Bloomberg. “The company announced both initiatives last month.”