Mobiclip quietly confirmed Monday that it had been bought out by Nintendo. The new subsidiary of the console giant didn't explain details, including the value of the deal or what it would be producing with Nintendo's help. The company has been making primarily video codecs for the console universe, including Microsoft and Sony.
A mix of suppliers and unnamed Korean press mentions have claimed that Apple is planning a dramatic increase in iPad shipments for 2012. Shipments for the new LCD panel, believed designed by Sharp but being manufactured by LG Display and Samsung, were said by the Commercial Times to be already booked to the order of 65 million to 75 million units for the year. Versus production of about 40.5 million in 2011, it would represent 60 to 73 percent higher shipments than last year.
New shots intercepted from a BlackBerry 10 ad briefing may have given some of the first detailed visuals of the OS. The CrackBerry images showed a device that at once had a shrunken parallel to the PlayBook interface but with traces of similarities to other platforms. It would use an always-up grid of all apps, like the iPhone, but have home screen widgets similar to, if more organized than, Android.
Sprint's board of directors has reportedly chosen to adjust executive bonuses, allowing the company's leadership to avoid the financial fallout due to iPhone subsidization. In a recent regulatory filing, the company noted that it is not considering the negative impact of iPhone sales when calculating employee bonuses.
TiVo has announced that it has established a licensing agreement with AT&T's advertising division, AdWorks. The deal will enable TiVo to access data detailing household viewing habits of AT&T's U-Verse television subscribers.
EyeNetra, a start-up working with technology developed by the MIT Media Lab, has developed a smartphone app that promises to bring low-cost eye examinations to poverty stricken populations. The Netra-G app is used in conjunction with a hardware attachment costing less than a dollar. The system checks for nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, and then displays a prescription for eyeglasses on the smartphone.
Panasonic has finally stopped making VCRs for its domestic market. The company disclosed that it ceased production of the outdated tape-based recording and playback devices at the end of last year. Once its existing inventory is exhausted, the company will stop selling the players in Japan.
Roku is reportedly working to broaden its partnerships with cable providers to expand the range of TV channels that can be accessed from the company's set-top box. The new content is expected to arrive through official apps that are currently available for subscribers who already pay for traditional cable service.
Apple CEO Tim Cook will address the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco tomorrow, February 14th, with Apple providing an audio webcast of the presentation. While video or audio recordings of Apple executives speaking at industry conferences are not unheard of, it is unusual for Apple itself to be hosting a live broadcast of its CEO speaking to an industry group. Cook is expected to discuss Apple's financial performance.
The US Department of Justice in a brief said it had approved both Google's acquisition of Motorola, the joint purchase of Nortel patents by Apple, Microsoft, RIM, and others, as well as a similar Novell patent sale. Antitrust regulators in both cases had decided it was "unlikely" that the deals would hurt competition. It was partly reassured by Apple, Google, and Microsoft all promising to license standards-based patents based on FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory) terms.
Apple is aiming to "quadruple" the amount of money it spends in India, claims local publication The Economic Times. In January the company's CIO, Niall O'Connor, is said to have visited the city of Bangalore, where he was met by senior officials from two technology companies, Infosys and Wipro. O'Connor is reportedly deciding which firms in India will get lucrative software and maintenance contracts worth about $100 million.
RIM director Roger Martin in an unusual interview with the Globe and Mail defended RIM's decision to hold for years before bringing in a new CEO. He saw there being no option for an outside CEO until RIM had groomed one from the inside, with outsiders being "morons from the outside" who would inevitably gut the BlackBerry designer. Martin went so far as to liken the departing Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to the late Steve Jobs, insisting that only the two were talented enough and that RIM couldn't afforded an involuntarily exodus.
Apple has taken first place in a Harris Interactive poll on corporate reputations. The company scored a quotient of 85.63, giving it enough to beat out last year's winner, Google, which in the new poll has claimed second place with 82.82. Remaining companies in the top five include Coca-Cola, Amazon, and Kraft Foods.
Mobile analysis firm Xyologic may have gauged the real size of Google TV's user base and shown a problem getting adoption of its support for third-party apps. Of the 64 apps exclusive to the TV-sized platform in Android market, only 4,793,300 people have one or more of these apps installed, making it possibly representative of the entire Google TV base. The number could be lower given that only 4,441,000 have the six preloaded apps on their devices.
Samsung's AV product lead Chris Moseley in an interview Monday was dismissive of the threat posed by a possible Apple TV set. In the chat with Pocket-lint, he insisted that image quality was the primary factor and that Apple wouldn't have the image scaling or "world-renowned" picture quality. He downplayed the interface and software features, normally the highlight of Apple's devices, as backseat elements.
As anticipated, the European Commission on Monday approved Google's $12.5 billion buyout of Motorola. The approval was without conditions after the EU body decided that it wouldn't hurt smartphone competition or patent issues. Commissioner Joaquin Almunia was aware there was a chance Google might abuse patents to shelter Android, but he promised legal action if that was the case.
TI kicked off the week with a new all-in-one wireless chip that could make NFC (near-field communications) much easier. The WiLink 8.0 is the first of its kind to build NFC into the chip alongside Bluetooth, FM radio, GNSS positioning, Wi-Fi, and even ANT+ for exercise and . It both shrinks the size of a chipset with NFC by as much as half and, as a complete design, can offload much of the work that would normally go to the main processor.
Sony Music briefly inflated the price of a Whitney Houston album -- The Ultimate Collection -- only hours after the singer's death on Saturday, a Guardian report notes. The company is said to have initially raised the album's wholesale price at about 4AM on Sunday, causing its price to automatically jump at places like the iTunes Store. At the UK iTunes Store, the cost rose from £5 to £8; the album is actually an old one, a best-of compilation dating back to 1997.
When its fiscal year ends in March, Japanese camera maker Olympus is expected to post a 32 billion yen net loss (about $412 million), BusinessWeek reported on Monday. This is worse than analysts expected and largely due to writing off equipment in the Thailand factory floods that affected camera and hard drive makers alike. Company president Shuichi Takayama said Olympus may want to find a partner in order to boost capital.
Apple now represents about a fifth of all technology sales in the US, new NPD data showed Monday. By the end of 2011, 19 percent of revenue in the US was related to an Apple product. The company was now the top company selling technology in the US, topping HP, Samsung, Sony, and Dell even when the others could include their sales from all categories.
UK broadcaster ITV has written a new letter to Apple warning it not to use the name "iTV" for its upcoming TV set, claims The Telegraph. The newspaper notes that ITV CEO Adam Crozier first raised the issue with Apple when he took office in 2010. At the time, Apple is said to have reassured ITV that it wouldn't use the name, at least not in the UK.
Apple on Monday took the step of asking the Fair Labor Association to orchestrate "special voluntary audits" of its last-stage suppliers. The investigations, which include Foxconn plants in Chengdu and Shenzhen, began the same day. They include both interviews with "thousands" of workers over conditions as well as inspections and document reviews.
Officials in the Chinese city of Shijiazhuang raided an unnamed Apple reseller over the weekend, reports claim. In all 45 iPad 2s are said to have been confiscated; despite the limited scope of the raid, Chinese news sources indicate that a number of other vendors have decided to hide their iPad stock rather than risk losing it. Shoppers should nevertheless still be able to buy iPad 2s from official and unofficial sources in the city.
A tentative rumor has had Pegatron allegedly forced to choose between manufacturing ASUS' Zenbooks and Apple's iOS devices. Taiwan's Commercial Times had heard that Apple was supposedly unhappy with the similarity to the MacBook Air and didn't want one of its own contractors to be making what was perceived to be a clone. If it happened, production wouldn't stop until at least March and would be outsourced to a nearby contractor like Compal or Wistron.
An investigation into Google's public records has hinted that the company is planning large expansions that would be incubators for multiple secret projects. The Mercury News sleuthing found that Google was spending over $120 million in construction around its Montain Vew headquarters for both public and private work. Secret projects would reportedly play a part, including for the Android@Home wireless audio device and Google's well-known but still secretive Project X labs.
Microsoft's India web store (currently down) was hacked this weekend in a move that also just revealed how vulnerable its data was. As relayed to WPSauce, the page was originally overwritten with a page giving credit to the Chinese group Evil Shadow and merging images both of the classic Activision game Hacker and Anonymous' well-known Guy Fawkes mask. Anonymous hasn't taken any credit, suggesting the use of the mask was strictly an instance of riding on Anonymous' reputation.
As part of a larger study, comScore has shown that e-mail is making a large shift away from the web. Among teens and those aged 18 to 24, webmail use dropped by about a third in December from where it was one year earlier. Declines also appeared among the 35 to 44 set (down one point) and 55 to 64 (by seven points).
AT&T's efforts for shared data plans came closer to fruition Sunday after leaks from its Telegence account management system. Staffers showed Engadget that the interface for family plans was being changed to include a data section so that staff could add the eventual data plans at the same time as voice and text. No clues appeared for when shared data would take effect.
The Recording Academy in its annual pre-show ceremony gave Steve Jobs its promised Lifetime Achievement award. The posthumous award was accepted on behalf of Jobs and family by Apple Senior VP Eddy Cue. In the acceptance speech, Cue highlighted how music was a central part of Jobs' existence; he was an outspoken fan of The Beatles and Bob Dylan, and often made music a focus of Apple's work.
Saturday Night Live made technology an unusual target after it poked fun at Verizon in a pre-recorded skit (below). A customer (Fred Armisen) comes in asking about the carrier's 4G LTE network and is barraged with an increasingly technical and nonsensical sales pitch. By the end, LTE is likened to orange juice, and Verizon is described as an "old person's nightmare."
Google quickly reacted to mounting Google Wallet security issues by putting a temporary freeze on new prepaid cards. While at least some existing users could keep paying with theirs, Google was preventing new uses as a "precaution" before it could get a surefire fix, Wallet VP Osama Bedier said in a post Saturday. He nonetheless insisted that Google Wallet had multiple security layers, ranging from its own PIN code requirement to an auto-wipe of local Wallet data if the phone is rooted after the Android app is installed.
An expansion upon what few details have been available from Apple's new Samsung lawsuit has suggested that it reaches more at the core of Android and less at Samsung's specific actions. Along with accusing Samsung of violating a newer unlock gesture patent than what was covered in Germany, a second patent for a "universal interface" for retrieving data appeared to Florian Mueller to accuse Samsung of violating Siri-style searches, where stitching together keywords presents just the immediately needed results. While Android on a base level doesn't do this, it would prevent Google from providing a narrower search method in Android.
Netflix has let a low-profile SEC filing reveal that it had privately settled a lawsuit. The dispute, which was resolved last year but would only be settled with a $9 million payment this year, accused Netflix of breaking the Video Privacy Protection Act and other consumer protection laws by keeping subscribers' video rental histories even after they cancelled. Customers who had resubscribed later found their past histories and queues intact, even though the VPPA required that it be purged in less than a year.
Microsoft's Windows leader Steven Sinofsky picked an interview this week to reveal that Windows 8 on ARM wouldn't support plugins. He explained to AllThingsD that Internet Explorer on these chips, even in the regular desktop, wouldn't run Flash or any similar browser add-ins. Mobile devices were moving away from Flash as a whole, he said.
A joint research paper from the Departments of Economics at both Wellesley College (Brett Danaher) and the University of Minnesota (Joel Waldfogel) has suggested that BitTorrent movie rips and other Internet piracy wasn't hurting movies after they were exported to other countries. In instances where a US movie hadn't been pirated in advance of its international release, revenue from the movie was typically seven percent lower than it was when those abroad could bootleg the material. US sales also didn't necessarily go down with torrents in effect, the authors found.
Two new job listings have hinted that Amazon will be the next commercial Internet video service to produce some of its own content. Its studio division is hiring for the People's Production Company to create comedies and children's shows. Unlike its counterparts, though, it would be developing for traditional formats as well.
Using a network of Facebook event pages, a wiki and a spreadsheet in Google Docs, the anti-censorship group Fight for the Future is planning to launch large-scale crowd-sourced protests on Saturday against what they call the "European version of SOPA," known as ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). Over 200,000 people have committed to participate in 200 cities, mostly in Europe but with scattered protests in Canada, the US and elsewhere.
The FCC has scheduled a reverse auction to help facilitate a build out program to expand 3G services to rural regions. The agency has compiled a $300 million Mobility Fund for Phase 1 of the project as it aims to give US citizens ‘universal broadband and advanced mobile coverage by the end of the decade.’ The money has been made available as part of the Connect America Fund.
After its ups and downs, the Moxi DVR hardware is slowly being phased out at retail, maker Arris announced. The hardware cannot be purchased anymore, and program guide data and technical support for the DVRs will go dead at the end of the day on December 31, 2013. Arris will focus on its partnerships with cable providers, such as with Shaw Cable in Canada.
Apple's lawsuit retaliation continued on Friday after it sued Motorola in the US over 3G patent issues. The iPhone designer sought to block Motorola from making patent violation accusations based on its use of Qualcomm's MDM6610 cellular chipset as well as any others it might use. It came after Qualcomm confirmed to Apple that it was already paying for a license to Motorola's 3G patents, which Apple took to mean that it was exempt from paying itself.
An escaped USA Today presentation has uncovered some of the real results of mobile news app downloads. GeekWire's copy showed a wide gap between downloads for the iPad and Android tablets: at over 2.9 million downloads, the iPad version had more than seven times the downloads of Android, which had 390,000 combined. The ratio on Android was heavily skewed by the Kindle Fire, which at 260,000 downloads had managed twice as much interest as every other Android tablet combined.
Penguin's recent decision to pull its e-books and digital audiobooks from libraries is because it didn't have permission to distribute the borrowed books by forwarding users to Amazon, INFOdocket said. OverDrive only had relationships in place with publishers, who can store and serve library end users' e-books. It doesn't have the authority to send users to Amazon or any other retailer to actually check out the book, the report continues.
Microsoft reportedly has plans to open four more dedicated stores than reported earlier, with one of them marking its first international expansion. The Canadian store is due to open in Toronto before the holidays, The Verge has learned. It will reportedly be joined by another international store this year, with more to follow early in 2013.
On and off rumors of a major MacBook Pro redesign were supported on Friday with leaks supporting a complete overhaul. The AppleInsider hints had Apple's high-end notebooks being overhauled over the course of 2012 to more closely resemble the MacBook Air, dropping optical drives and slimming down. Rumors of a 15-inch Air were more likely references to Apple repeating what it did with the unibody MacBook Pro, where the 15-inch model led the redesign and other sizes followed later.
Amazon won't split its streaming video service from Prime Instant Video in the near future despite rumors to the contrary. Brad Beale, Head of Digital Video Content Acquisition at Amazon, said during a Wednesday interview with GigaOM that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Previously, a letter to shareholders from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings mentioned that he expects Amazon to introduce a service that would undercut its own.
Two insiders claimed Friday that the European Commission was likely to approve Google's acquisition of Motorola. In sync with talk of a likely US approval, Reuters understood that the EU regulatory body would greenlight the deal in "unconditional" form. The EC had reportedly decided that the takeover wouldn't be anti-competitive.
Google is readying to release a so-called "next-generation personal communication device," as revealed by FCC documents. The files don't reveal much, other than that both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are onboard and the company is getting ready to begin testing 102 of the devices in various regions in the US. The hardware is listed as being in the prototyping phase and employees in LA, Mountain View, Cambridge, and New York will test them at home.
Apple scaled up its legal attacks late this week with lawsuits against Samsung both in the US and in Germany. The American complaint, details of which were filed in a Northern District of California court in San Jose on Wednesday and published on Friday, accuses Samsung of violating two patents that it had only just obtained in December. Samsung was accused of copying iOS' techniques for heuristic information finding as well as its method of suggesting a replacement word when a misspelling is highlighted.
New Chitika traffic data has seen Apple possibly cross a milestone for web use online. As of February, 8.15 percent of all web traffic being monitored was coming from an iOS device, passing the Mac for the first time with OS X share at 7.96 percent. The two platforms had been converging since October, with the Mac losing share mostly as Apple's other OS gained prominence.
Germany is holding off on joining 22 other EU member states in signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Spiegel Online reported. It has changed its mind, as it previously said it would join. The failure of Germany, Europe's largest economic contributor, to sign the agreement is a huge stumbling block. The powers-that-be in German are said to be holding off on a decision until the EU Parliament makes its own decision in the matter.
