LG may debut a television set with Google software at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, according to “two people with knowledge of the project.”
The move would be a boon for Google in the field against entrants such as Apple and Microsoft.
Google is working to build support for its Google TV software, despite disappointing sales from its Logitech partnership. The company introduced a redesigned version last month after the earlier release failed to meet expectations.
“The revamped version of Google TV service has a simpler interface,” reports Bloomberg. “The upgrade was designed to show the YouTube video- sharing service better and opens up the platform for Android developers to build applications for TV. Android is Google’s software platform for mobile devices.”
LG rival Samsung has also been in discussions to develop a Google TV product.
Mobile analytics firm Flurry has released new estimates based on iOS and Android app-enabled devices.
According to the report, 25 billion apps will be downloaded in 2011, marking 300 percent growth from last year’s six billion.
Five billion Apple and Android apps are expected to be downloaded in December alone, based on the surge typically associated with mobile shopping and people on break looking for entertainment.
Revenue from the U.S. market will reach $2.5 billion, compared with 2010’s $1 billion.
The increase in app catalogs has helped the increase. iOS offers about 500,000 apps and Android is around 350,000.
ReadWriteWeb also points out that only 43 percent of U.S. consumers currently have smartphones, but the number is expected to reach 50 percent by Q3 2012, which will also fuel app downloads.
Epson Japan announced the Moverio this week, a see-through 3D head-mounted display that the company claims is the first of its kind.
“Think of it as a mix of NEC’s transparent HMD Tele Scouter and Sony’s cool 3D OLED head mounted display HMZ-T1, powered by Android OS,” reports TechCrunch.
Epson’s Moverio is lower resolution than the Sony HMD, but at 160g is much lighter in weight.
“The Moverio supports MPEG-4/MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video files, including side-by-side 3D images on its 0.52-inch displays with 960×540 resolution,” indicates the post. “It handles AAC and MP3 audio files, too.”
The HMD is expected to hit Japanese stores later this month at a price equivalent to $770.
According to a new report from analytics service provider Ooyala: “On average, tablet viewers watched videos nearly 30 percent longer than when watching on their desktop.”
Additionally, tablet users are twice as likely to watch their videos to the end. “Videos 10 minutes or longer accounted for 56 percent of the time played on tablets and 84 percent played on connected TV devices and game consoles,” indicates the report.
ReadWriteWeb adds, “non-traditional TV watching devices such as cord-cutting boxes like Boxee and video game consoles tripled the amount of videos they played during the last quarter, although they still have a minute market share.”
And according to results featured on Ooyala’s blog, Apple continues to dominate in this space: “iPads crushed Android tablets in terms of total audience size. iPads accounted for 97 percent of all tablet video plays.”
Ooyala’s “VideoMind Video Index” report is available for download from the company’s blog.
Motorola Mobility has been talking Android-based cable boxes for some time, and now images of a 6-inch Android 2.3 tablet codenamed “Corvair” have leaked.
Reportedly “designed for use in the living room,” the device is currently in testing with cable companies.
Based on the leaked images, features may include a custom version of Android, IR control, RF4CE (a ZigBee-based RF control protocol), and a high-capacity 4,000mAH battery.
According to The Verge: “…the box calls it a ‘dedicated controller,’ but it also seems to show the tablet wirelessly displaying its entire UI on the TV, so we’re guessing it can be used to watch and stream content in addition to serving as a remote control for one of Motorola’s cable boxes.”
Malware has grown dramatically on Android’s open operating system compared to Apple’s closed iOS.
“Juniper Networks says Android malware traffic rose by 400 percent between June 2010 and January 2011,” reports Forbes. “Lookout Mobile Security reported a 250 percent jump in smartphone malware from January to June 2011.”
QR malware codes are becoming increasingly popular. Hackers are looking to acquire personal information, especially banking info.
“Apple has a walled garden, with its curating of apps for its App Store, so it’s had far fewer instances of malware, but Android is far more porous,” John Dasher, McAfee senior director of mobile security, told the Financial Times. “There are more than a dozen apps sites, it’s very easy to download apps and ‘sideload’ apps on to a device, and so it’s far easier for a hacker to get an app published that contains malware.”
Republic Wireless is a new hybrid cellular voice and VoIP service launching November 8. It will offer unlimited voice, SMS and data service over Wi-Fi, and will switch back automatically to regular cellular connections depending on location.
The new service will be offered through Bandwith.com, a North Carolina-based company that has been involved with Skype, Google Voice, Twilio and others.
“The company’s extensive VoIP infrastructure handles much of the heavy lifting for these services, and it also offers some of its own products, like Phonebooth, a premium VoIP service for businesses,” reports TechCrunch.
Other carriers are reportedly in talks, but Sprint is the first on board to serve as the “fallback” cellular network.
According to GigaOM, the $19 per month service will require a special Android handset and “includes unlimited voice and text messaging. It also includes unlimited data without any bandwidth caps.”
Viber Media is a provider of iPhone and Android apps that enable free text and talk capabilities over 3G and Wi-Fi networks. GigaOM points out that the apps are “built upon a foundation of the MongoDB NoSQL database running atop the Amazon Web Services cloud.”
According to a MongoDB press release issued this week: “Viber enables users to talk and text for free with other Viber users without having to sign up, create a separate account, or log in. Once the app is launched, the user simply enters his or her cell number and is automatically part of the community.”
“MongoDB manages the intercommunity data exchange that enables users to call and text one another,” adds the press release. “Each time a Viber user connects a cell phone to the network, MongoDB receives call-related information.”
Viber’s 130 nodes handle a reported “11 million minutes of calls daily by Viber’s 18 million active users.” GigaOM suggests Viber can be viewed as the “prototypical case study for both NoSQL and cloud computing.”
The updated Google Reader was rolled out this week, featuring a revamped user interface and integration with Google+.
“Google has ignored the cries of the niche community of Google Reader sharing enthusiasts and has pushed forward in its plans to remove Google Reader’s native sharing features to promote deeper integration with Google+,” suggests TechCrunch. “While the ability to share with Google+ is an obvious important step forward for Google’s social agenda, it will be disappointing change for at least some of the Google Reader community.”
A community movement made attempts to save the old features, creating a petition that now has 10,000 responses.
Google’s reply: “We hope you’ll like the new Reader (and Google+) as much as we do, but we understand that some of you may not. Retiring Reader’s sharing features wasn’t a decision that we made lightly, but in the end, it helps us focus on fewer areas, and build an even better experience across all of Google.”
Google says an Android app update can be expected soon.
A recent study by EyeTrackshop showed that Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 “drew more glances and held people’s attention longer than Google Android devices from Amazon, HTC, Motorola and Samsung,” reports Forbes.
The study showed participants a picture of six smartphones and five tablets. EyeTrackshop’s software tracked where subjects’ eyes went, in what order and how long, using webcams.
“EyeTrackshop said the results equate to respondents dwelling on the iPhone 4S 42 percent longer than the other phones and on the iPad 138 percent longer than the other tablets.”
Additionally, a follow-up survey indicated that 40 percent found the iPhone most visually appealing; for tablets, 35 percent for the iPad; and disregarding price, 47 percent said they would buy the iPhone and 48 percent preferred the iPad to other tablets.
Yahoo’s personalized reading app for tablets, called Livestand, is expected to launch this week.
“More than Flipboard and Zite, Livestand looks and feels like AOL’s Editions app for iPad,” reports ReadWriteWeb. “It functions as a personalized, magazine-like publication with dynamic content and sleek, often video-based advertisements.”
Propeller, the code name for Google’s challenge to Flipboard, is expected to integrate with Google+ and include several media partners. AllThingsD describes the app as “an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android.”
Yahoo and Google may be arriving on the scene a bit late to compete with the immensely popular Flipboard. However, the two companies may have an advantage with the development of cross-platform support, potentially gaining an audience among smartphone users.
Despite the cross-platform advantage, ReadWriteWeb points out that, “applications like Flipboard, Zite and Pulse have proven very popular among consumers. To compete, the big players will need to offer something truly unique to readers, publishers and advertisers alike.”
There was a time when Apple was a consumer electronics company, Google was a search engine, Amazon was an online retailer and Facebook a place to connect with friends. Now each of these companies is growing into the space of the others as they compete for new and expanding markets in mobile, social and cloud services.
Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire tablet will compete directly with Apple’s iPad. Google+ has taken on Facebook. Android and iOS are direct competitors. And Facebook has been considering its own mobile phone while it also looks to offer content, advertising and retail services.
Fast Company analyzes the “future of the innovation economy” in this regard, with a particular emphasis on the inevitable war and its major players.
“Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will not last forever,” the article suggests. “But despite this oncoming war, in which attacking one another becomes standard operating practice, their inevitable slide into irrelevancy likely won’t be at the hands of one of their fellow rivals. As always, the real future of tech belongs to some smart-ass kid in a Palo Alto garage.”
App downloads on Google’s Android platform now top iPhone and iPad combined, even in the absence of any competitive Android tablets.
The OS accounted for 44 percent of all app downloads for Q2 of this year, according to a recent study by New York-based ABI Research.
In the new Steve Jobs’ biography, the Apple founder rails against Android as a “stolen product,” one that he vowed to go to “thermonuclear war” in order to stop its success. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently derided the OS as well, adding you need to be a “computer scientist” to understand Android phones.
“But a flood of low-priced handsets this summer has catapulted Android ahead of Apple for the first time in terms of app downloads,” reports the Daily Mail.
However, Apple still leads in the per user category. “Android’s app downloads per user still lag behind Apple’s by 2 to 1,” explains Dan Shey at ABI.
Digimarc moves beyond ‘watermark’ to a ‘desireable consumer experience’ with its new Discover app that “lets users capture visual and audio input with a smart phone and search for related information,” reports MIT’s Technology Review.
“Discover combines a variety of media search functions into a single app that will allow users to scan images, audio, video, and even barcodes or QR codes (two-dimensional versions of barcodes) — all without switching between apps.”
The CE manufacturers historically objected to installing watermark detectors because the content industry wanted to use them to stop undesired consumer behavior.
This app and others like it offer consumers a positive experience that could make that argument moot, and it could support new business models.
The free app is available for iOS and Android phones.
According to the new Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, the former Apple CEO was furious over Android’s strong resemblance to iOS.
Jobs told his biographer: “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
GigaOm noted that Apple has followed up on this threat: “Apple has not backed down or granted broad licenses to any of the companies it has sued recently over its mobile patents… Apple’s not giving in to make a couple of bucks, the way Microsoft did, and there will be no tacit approval of the patent infringement in exchange for licensing any of the higher-level patents Apple holds.”
Jobs reportedly told Eric Schmidt: ”I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.”
