Tech Industry

The “Wall”, as Michael Scott likes to call it, has a followup to yesterday’s piece on Apple buying Lala.  Today’s adds some more intrigue and background into the affair.  Some points they make:

• Google was in serious discussions to acquire online-music company La La Media Inc. before Apple won the deal this month for $85 million
• Apple tried to buy AdMob as a defensive measure to keep Google from learning details about its App Store.  Google ended up buying Admob
• Google is buying music services to compete with one of Apple’s main businesses.  iTunes.  The Lala purchase could also be seen as a defensive purchase
• As the recession appears to be letting up, the authors anticipate much more buying in the valley

What’s interesting here is that Apple is making purchases as defensive move.  They wanted to buy Admob and now bought Lala so that Google wouldn’t pick them up. 

If there is any PC manufacturer that has been even a little bit creative over the past decade, it is ASUS.  They’ve not only invented the NetBook (which is responsible for most PC growth lately) but also more outlandish things like the ‘computer in a keyboard’ (pictured below). 

Today Digitimes informs us that they’re entering the tablet game with a…

..new device named Eee Pad featuring a 4- to 7-inch panel, and which will offer a combination of tablet PC and MID functions. 

The inspiration for this device?  The non-existent Apple tablet.  Or, at least the rumors of such a device.

Current details of the Eee Pad suggest the product has been inspired by the rumors of Apple’s planned tablet device, the sources commented.

One thing we know about ASUS.  They make inexpensive products.  The Eee Pad will be cheaper than the $499 JooJoo, especially at the 4-7 inch size.

Breaking news: Following announcement of the closure of its flagship store on London

The next-generation iPhone has been developed and a manufacturing order put in place with Apple

It

While we wait patiently for an Apple multi-touch tablet device of some sort, the industry keeps moving along.  The JooJoo didn’t really impress us initially but after seeing some more glowing reviews, we’re warming up to the idea. 

On the monitor front, Dell has introduced a pretty impressive piece of equipment this month.  Their new 22-inch (iMac-size/rez) optical touch screen monitor seems to be turning heads.  It features full 1080P resolution and built-in video camera like their cheaper products.  However the $469 product also offers a full screen multi-touch experience that allows Windows 7 users to do a lot of the things that Apple has touted for multi-touch on Macs.

HP has had lackluster results on its Touch-smart line of laptops and all-in-one products.  Will Dell fare the same?  Is the optical multi-touch (using mini cameras) as accurate as capacitive multi-touch?

Would something like this be of interest to Apple users?  Troll Touch offers a single touch display option for iMacs.  We’re kinda thinking our arms would get tired after a couple of hours of pinching and zooming on a desktop display.

Apple

Apple

iPods and external hard drives seem to be the gifts of choice this season, with Amazon

Apple has rapidly become the gatekeeper for success in the games market, according to games developers speaking during a DiscoveryBeat event in San Frnacisco.

Not bad for a company that maybe three short years ago was characterised as having little footprint in the games market.

Backflip Studios chief executive, Julian Farrior, stressed the point:

Chinorockwell made a cool video using only Google Maps for visuals.  Have a look:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5466191&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Google has today released the Mac beta of its Google Chrome browser, though this release is not feature-identical with the existing Windows version.  For instance, extensions aren’t available to Mac users(yet).  Google also released a Linux Beta as well.

The company promises its browser will run websites and applications at

The battle for the future of publishing is on once again – the last time we saw war like this was at the advent of desktop publishing – today, five major publishers confirmed the last few weeks of rumour with the announcement of a joint venture to develop an

Since the purchase of Lala late last week by Apple, the topic of discussion is how much Apple paid for it and what they plan to do with the music streaming company.  We heard yesterday from Peter Kafka at Media Memo that the price was $80 million and that Warner music alone got $10 million of their investment back. 

Today, TechCrunch is saying that Apple only paid $17 million for Lala and since they had $14 million in cash, the “rest” of the company was only valued at $3 million.  If this information is accurate, it would lend to the idea that Apple is purchasing companies like this for the engineering talent and experience. 

Apple purchased a similar-size organization called PlaceBase earlier this year.  There is some speculation that this purchase was a talent-based purchase as well, as the company had some financial issues.

Nokia is shutting down its posh Regent Street shop following its failure to grab the hearts and minds of consumers.

The company apparently spent

While everyone talks about the iPhone, the mobile device’s non-telephone sibling the iPod touch continues to grow its market share at a clamorous rate, leading mobile analytics firm, Flurry, to call it Apple’s “weapon of mass consumption”.

Flurry estimates that of 58 million iPhones and iPod touches sold by Apple up to September, 24 million are iPod touches.

“The iPod touch is quietly building a loyal base among the next generation of iPhone users, positioning Apple to corner the smartphone market not only today, but also tomorrow,” Flurry

Reliability rankings are fairly subjective and there is always a wide variance on results in these studies.  That being said, Apple’s products (not necessarily their wireless network provider) usually end up on top.  That’s why it was a bit strange to find netbook manufacturer ASUS on top of Syracuse, N.Y.-based Rescuecom’s study earlier this year.

According to Computerworld, however, the stars are back in alignment and Apple is back on top.

Apple’s Macs, which led all rivals in Rescuecom’s rankings during 2007 and 2008, ceded first place to PCs sold by Asustek Computer (better known as Asus) in the first half of 2009, falling as low as third in the first quarter, behind both Asus and Lenovo. But Apple recaptured the top ranking for the third quarter with a reliability score of 374. Behind Apple were Lenovo and Asus with 320 and 166, respectively, followed by Toshiba and Hewlett-Packard in fourth and fifth place.

ASUS plummeted from a first-quarter high of 972 to 166 in the third quarter. 

SquareTrade last month also put Lenovo and Toshiba ahead of Apple’s laptops, which perennially are at the top of most reliability lists, illustrating the wide variance in these studies.

Apple has confirmed reports the company has acquired small digital music service, lala.com.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed by Apple, which closed the deal Friday.

Lala currently enables users to stream any song in its 8-million song catalogue for free and purchase them for 10 cents a piece.

ITunes is the leading music service in the United States with more than 70 percent of all digital music sales and it is the leading music retailer overall.

A brief statement from Cupertino: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said.

An anonymous source familiar with the matter told Reuters Apple is looking to ways to expand iTunes beyond its existing status as a download service for media.

“Apple recognizes that the [business[ model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level,” said the person.

The move follows July reports suggesting Apple plans a move into music streaming services.

The lala.com website continues to function as this story hits the wire.

Bloomberg is already starting to get some mileage out fo their Businessweek purchase.   Today Arik Hessendahl reports for the new company that Intel and Nvidia’s squabbles will now be looked at by the US Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC is trying to determine whether a lawsuit filed by Intel earlier this year is an effort to disrupt Nvidia