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4,155 'Tech Industry' stories June 2007 - January 2010
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"…and one more thing

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 25 2010 - 10:56 am PT
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The NYPost’s sources say that Verizon will be a carrier of the tablet and may in fact be announced as an iPhone partner on Wednesday, though might not be available as a carrier until the exclusivity agreement ends in June.

Apple is expected to name Verizon Wireless as one of its carriers with its anticipated unveiling of a new tablet device on Wednesday, sources told The Post. That means Apple head Steve Jobs will probably introduce a Verizon iPhone, ending AT&T’s exclusive hold on the hot smartphone. “It’s almost a certainty,” said telecom consultant Dunston Almeida. “AT&T losing iPhone is the worst-kept secret on Wall Street. The only question is whether Apple announces a Verizon iPhone this week.”

They went on to add what everyone has known since forever:

Apple has been “extremely frustrated” with AT&T’s iPhone service, which regularly drops customers’ calls, especially in high-traffic New York and San Francisco, said a source close to AT&T.

Don’t get your party hats and streamers out just yet.  You’ll have to wait until June.

AT&T’s exclusive deal with Apple ends in June, sources said.

Then there is poor AT&T who’ve apparently been unable to gain customer growth outside of iPhone users.  What will they do when iPhone users have other carrier options?  Drop prices?  Improve service?

Publishers talk about Apple's tablet

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 25 2010 - 8:31 am PT
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We had a chance to speak with a few friends in the publishing business last week.  Both work in Manhattan for companies not previously quoted by the Wall St. Journal or Bloomberg but who were recently contacted by Apple with tablet information in the past two weeks.  Here’s what they’ve both corroborated:

  • Apple has been moving very aggressively over the past month and has stepped it up since the event announcement last week.   Both said they’d be surprised if Apple doesn’t have a deal of some sort worked out by launch.  This wouldn’t necessarily be a nuts-and-bolts type of deal, but one where they agree to work together. Apple can say at the event we’ve signed up “all of the major publishers”.
  • Apple has been pitching itself against Amazon’s model specifically to the publishers.  Apple’s “Agency model“ gives publishers more control and freedom for pricing vs. Amazon who’ve recently restructured a small part of their publisher offering to compete with this surge by Apple.   We received the exact same wording from both people so we think this is the type of thing that Apple is touting to all publishers.  We might hear about “the Agency Model” vs. Kindle’s at the event.
  • Scrollmotion, the biggest current book contributor to the App Store, isn’t part of this deal and Apple is dealing directly with the publishers who are already signed up with Scrollmotion.  The deals would cut Scrollmotion out of the loop or as one exec put it: “The smaller outfits are going to get screwed”.  We’ve reached out to Scrollmotion for comment and will report back anything we hear.
  • Apple was looking for content to bring to the event — perhaps one example — but doesn’t expect to have large libraries of material in their book store until “mid 2010 at the very earliest”
  • Separately, one source said that no prototypes were brought to the meetings, but the tablet was described as “a very-readable 10-inch glass screen smaller in size than the Kindle DX with a similar weight.”  The Apple people also mentioned that the “software was the key to the experience and it would be the game changer”.  Apple also made the analogy of the shift from B&W televisions to Color with respect to the Kindle vs. the Tablet.
  • One other big thing: They say it isn’t going to cost anywhere near $1000 as has been reported elsewhere.

Remember, the EBook reading functionality is just one part of this device.  The tablet is also expected to be a game playing, media watching, netbook-competing powerhouse as well.

See you Wednesday!

 

Gene Munster gives AAPL forcast: 3.1+million Macs, Android hurting iPhone

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 22 2010 - 11:06 am PT
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From BusinessInsider, Gene Munster gets us ready for the earnings forecast next week:

  • Apple has been consistent in beating its guidance (VERY consistent)
  • Gene Munster thinks they’ll do so again 
  • As always, the whisper numbers are much higher than the printed estimates 
  • iPhone sales were only “okay” because Google’s Android stole some thunder 
  • Munster: The iPhone ultimately is going to become the biggest selling phone in the market 
  • Note: Since this taping, Munster has raised his iPhone estimates. He now thinks Apple could report 9.3 million iPhone shipments for the Dec. quarter, above the Street’s 9.1 million consensus.

Hate Flash on YouTube? Google now lets you see video in HTML 5

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 21 2010 - 7:37 am PT
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Google/Toutube last night released an opt-in option of the Youtube.com site that plays videos by default in HTML5 instead of Flash.  The opt-in only works at Youtube.com, not on embedded Youtube videos.  Also, Chrome and Safari are the only browsers supported at this time (no Firefox or IE). 

If you want to stay Flash free on embedded Youtubes, you can use ClicktoFlash.  

Adobe can’t be pleased with this.  via DF

Update: Unsurprisingly, commenters report seeing significant CPU usage drops when using HTML5 vs. Flash.

 

Amazon opens up Kindle to developers in Apple tablet war

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 21 2010 - 5:20 am PT
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Amazon has opened up its Kindle device to developers, promising launch of its very own App Store offering developers 70 per cent of the take, the latest in a series of moves on the part of the company as it attempts to combat the upcoming Apple tablet.

“We’ve heard from lots of developers over the past two years who are excited to build on top of Kindle,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “The Kindle Development Kit opens many possibilities–we look forward to being surprised by what developers invent.”

Amazon will release a set of programming guidelines that other companies

Guardian: Apple has been approaching UK mobile providers to carry tablet (in a few months)

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 19 2010 - 1:28 pm PT
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The Guardian reports that Apple has started looking for carrier partners in the UK.

Apple is understood to have approached several UK mobile phone networks, including Orange, about selling its forthcoming tablet computer to British customers.

As we reported earlier, this late move may mean that Apple waits a few months before it sends the tablet overseas.  The Guardian says:

British gadget fans will have to wait until much later in the spring, according to UK sources, but the price of the device could be reduced if Apple can persuade a mobile phone company to subsidise it.

The Guardian then goes a bit obvious on us. 

Apple is looking for mobile partners willing to bundle a mobile broadband contract with the iSlate. The UK’s mobile phone networks, meanwhile, also have deals that allow their mobile broadband customers easy access to thousands of public wi-fi hotspots across the country.

It will be interesting to see what US providers Apple has partnered with and what kind of deals they will provide -especially for those already on an AT&T iPhone plan.

Apple tablet unlikely to be OLED -Ars

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 18 2010 - 9:26 am PT
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Ars tackled one specific feature of Apple’s tablet this week: The Display and specifically would it be OLED-based or traditional LCD?  Their conclusion?  Not OLED.

Based on the assumption that it would be a 10-inch variety (and that’s been reported often), they talked to part suppliers who noted that there were only two producers of AMOLEDs that size.  Samsung, the biggest producer and also an Apple supplier, can only produce about 150,000/month.  And those are apparently more than accounted for.   Another Apple partner, LG, makes about one fifth of what Samsung can produce.  Neither of these companies, nor both of them together could possibly supply the amount of displays that Apple would need.

Therefore, they conclude that the tablet wil be a traditional LCD.

That’s not to say the iPhone 4G won’t have OLED however.

New York Times to coordinate pay site with Apple tablet launch?

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 17 2010 - 4:11 pm PT
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New York Magazine reports that the New York Times is going to a paid model in the coming months and the time frame coincides with Apple’s tablet launch, which also is expected to go public in the coming months.  That’s not the only really vague correlation, however.

Bill Keller, Executive Editor for the New York Times recently told an internal meeting of NY Times employees:

“I’m hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate…“

Finally, Apple CEO Steve Jobs often uses the New York Times when demonstrating the iPhone’s web browsing capabilities.  In fact, at the original introduction of the iPhone (below), when demonstrating mobile Safari the first time, the New York Times was the first real site that he demonstrated.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vBUjiG7e20&w=600&h=385]

While the NYTimes may have content specifically for the tablet, there will of course need to be other means by which readers can purchase and view Times articles.  Most notably, on any Web browser out there.

In Internet speed, the USA is # 1…8

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 16 2010 - 9:46 pm PT
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CNET reports on Akamai’s latest survey of Internet speeds throughout the world.  All of the big players are there, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, etc.  

The bad news?  The US comes in 18th — which is pretty sad.  Didn’t Al Gore invent the Internet right here in the good ol’ US of A?

The most surprising part, however, is that speeds actually decreased somewhat (2.4%) over the previous year.  How can our Internet speeds be getting slower?  Are people going back to dialup because of the recession?  Are the cable/phone companies slowly turning down our speeds?  We don’t get it.

On a personal note, I had 100mb up and down fiber in France in 2007 for

LG ePaper is flexible for the sake of being flexible

Avatar for Seth Weintraub Jan 15 2010 - 12:15 pm PT
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Apple last year announced it had spent $500 million upfront to to get first shot and better prices from LG over five years.  This is what lead to Apple getting that gorgeous 27-inch iMac display before any other company (Dell now carries one).

We say that because LG announced today that they’ve revolutionized flexible display technology with that dandy over there->

Could Apple use this technology in an upcoming product?  Perhaps as early as next year?  That’s probably unlikely

While it is cool to look at, it isn’t clear that people want their displays to be flexible like their newspapers were.  What would be cool, especially for larger, full color displays is a display that is bent around the user so that the edges were the same distance away as the middle.  Or ones that were so flexible that they could be rolled up and put in your pocket like a newspaper.

More pictures below: