The platform wars is over: Apple and Google both won. Microsoft wanted to be the third mobile ecosystem, and it has got clear solid third position, but quite small market share of overall smart phone market. Apple now sells around 10% of all the 1.8bn (and growing) phones sold on Earth each year and Android the next 50%, split roughly between say 2/3 Google Android outside China and 1/3 non-Google Android inside China. So Apple and Google have both won, and both got what they wanted, more or less, and that’s not going to change imminently.
Wearables and phablets will be the big device stories of 2015. I think that the wearables will be the more interesting story of them, because I expect more innovation to happen there. The smart phone side seemed to already be a little bit boring during 2014 – lack of innovation from big players – and I can’t see how somewhat bigger screen size and higher resolution would change that considerably during 2015. CES 2015 debuts the future of smartphones coming from all places – maybe not very much new and exciting.
Say good-buy to to astronomical growth in smart phone sales in developed countries, as smartphone market is nearly saturated in certain regions. There will be still growth in east (China, India etc..), but most of this growth will be taken by the cheap Android phones made by companies that you might have not heard before because many of them don’t sell their products in western countries. The sales of “dumb phones” will decrease as cheap smart phone will take over. Over time this will expand such that smartphones take almost all phone sales (perhaps 400m or 500m units a quarter), with Apple taking the high-end and Android the rest.
The current biggest smart phone players (Samsung and Apple) will face challenges. Samsung’s steep Q3 profit decline shows ongoing struggles in mobile – Customers sought out lower priced older models and bought a higher percentage of mid-range smartphones, or bought from some other company making decent quality cheap phones. Samsung has long counted on its marketing and hardware prowess to attract customers seeking an alternative to Apple’s iPhone. But the company is now facing new competition from low-cost phone vendors such as China’s Xiaomi and India’s Micromax, which offer cheap devices with high-end specs in their local markets.
Apple has a very strong end of 2014 sales in USA: 51% of new devices activated during Christmas week were Apple, 18% were Samsung, 6% Nokia — Apple and Apps Dominated Christmas 2014 — Millions of people woke up and unwrapped a shiny new device under the Christmas tree. It is expected that Apple also will see slowing sales in 2015: Tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has predicted Apple will face a grim start to 2015 with iPhone sales plummeting by up to a third.
In few years there’ll be close to 4bn smartphones on earth. Ericsson’s annual mobility report forecasts increasing mobile subscriptions and connections through 2020.(9.5B Smartphone Subs by 2020 and eight-fold traffic increase). Ericsson’s annual mobility report expects that by 2020 90% of the world’s population over six years old will have a phone. It really talks about the connected world where everyone will have a connection one way or another.
What about the phone systems in use. Now majority of the world operates on GSM and HPSA (3G). Some countries are starting to have good 4G (LTE) coverage, but on average only 20% is covered by LTE. Ericsson expects that 85% of mobile subscriptions in the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa will be 3G or 4G by 2020. 75%-80% of North America and Western Europe are expected to be using LTE by 2020. China is by far the biggest smartphone market by current users in the world, and it is rapidly moving into high-speed 4G technology.
It seems that we change our behavior when networks become better: In South Korea, one third of all people are doing this ‘place shifting’ over 4G networks. When faster networks are taken into use, the people will start to use applications that need more bandwidth, for example watch more streamed video on their smart phones.
We’re all spending more time with smartphones and tablets. So much so that the “second screen” may now be the “first screen,” depending on the data you read. Many of us use both TV and mobile simultaneously: quickly responding to email, texting with friends, or browsing Twitter and the news if I lose interest with the bigger screen. Whatever it is I’m watching, my smartphone is always close at hand. There is rapid increase of mobile device usage—especially when it comes to apps.
The use of digital ads on mobile devices is increasing. Digital ad spend is forecast to increase 15% in 2015, with research saying it will equal ad spending on television by 2019. Mobile and social media will drive 2015 spending on digital to $163 billion, with mobile ad spending expected to jump 45%. “Almost all the growth is from mobile”
Mobile virtual reality will be talked about. 3D goggles like Sony Morpheus and Facebook’s Optimus Rift will get some attention. We’ll see them refined for augmented reality apps. hopefully we see DIY virtual reality kits that use current handsets and don’t cost thousands.
Google glass consumer market interest was fading in the end of 2014, and I expect that fading to continue in 2015. It seems that developers already may be losing interest in the smart eyewear platform. Google glass is expected to be consumer sales sometime in 2015, some fear consumer demand for Glass isn’t there right now and may never materialize. “All of the consumer glass startups are either completely dead or have pivoted” Although Google continues to say it’s 100% committed to Glass and the development of the product, the market may not be.
The other big headliner of the wearables segment was Apple’s basic $350 Watch. Apple invest its time when it released the Apple Watch last quarter, going up against the likes of Google’s Android Wear and others in the burgeoning wearables area of design. Once Apple’s bitten into a market, it’s somewhat a given that there’s good growth ahead and that the market is, indeed, stable enough.
As we turn to 2015 and beyond wearables becomes an explosive hardware design opportunity — one that is closely tied to both consumer and healthcare markets. It could pick up steam in the way software did during the smartphone app explosion. It seems that the hardware becomes hot again as Wearables make hardware the new software. It’s an opportunity that is still anyone’s game. Wearables will be important end-points both for cloud and for messaging. The wearable computing market is one of the biggest growth areas in tech. BI Intelligence estimates that 148 million wearable devices like smartwatches and fitness trackers will ship in 2019.
I see that wearables will be big in 2015 mainly in the form of smart watch. According to a survey by UBS, 10% of consumers said they were very likely to buy a smartwatch in 2015, even though so far, no smartwatches have resonated with consumers. I expect the Sales of fitness wearables to plunge in 2015 owing to smartwatch takeover. In the future you need to look at exercise and fashion products as being in the same space. Samsung, Motorola, LG, and Apple debuted or announced smartwatches in 2014, so it’s no surprise that smartwatches are expected to be huge in Las Vegas at CES January’s show.
The third mobile ecosystem Windows phone has some new thing coming as Microsoft ready to show off Windows 10 mobile SKU on January 21. But it does not well motivating to me. After all, the vision of a unified Microsoft world extending across all screens is great, and it’s what Microsoft has needed all along to make Windows Phone a winner. The problem that hits me: if you fail enough times at the same thing, people stop believing you. It’s not just that Microsoft keeps failing to integrate its mobile, desktop, and console products. But Microsoft keeps claiming it will, which starts to loose credibility.
Mobile will change on-line sales in 2015: Phones have already radically altered both the way Americans shop and how retail goods move about the economy, but the transformation is just beginning — and it is far from guaranteed that Amazon will emerge victorious from the transition (this will also apply to other “traditional” players in that space).
Mobile payment technology reaching maybe finally reaching critical mass this year. Long predicted but always seeming to be “just around the corner,” mobile payments may finally have arrived. While Apple’s recent Apple Pay announcement may in retrospect be seen as launching the coming mobile payment revolution, the underlying technologies – and alternative solutions – have been emerging for some time. Maybe it isn’t going to replace the credit card but it’s going to replace the wallet — the actual physical thing crammed with cards, cash, photos and receipts. When you are out shopping, it’s the wallet, not the credit card, that is the annoyance.
Mobile money is hot also in developing countries: ordinary people in Africa using an SMS text-based currency called M-Pesa. M-Pesa was invented as a virtual currency by mobile network provider Vodafone after it was discovered that its airtime minutes were being used and traded in by people in Africa in lieu of actual money. In Kenya, a critical mass was quickly reached, and today, over 70% of the 40 million Kenyans use M-Pesa.
Mobile security will be talked about. Asian mobiles the DDOS threat of 2015, security mob says article tells that Vietnam, India and Indonesia will be the distributed denial of service volcanoes of next year due to the profieration of pwned mobiles.
Intel is heavily pushing to mobile and wearable markets. Intel is expected to expand its smartphone partnership with Lenovo: Intel will provide both its 64-bit Atom processor and LTE-Advanced modem chips for the Lenovo phones. The 4G phones follow Intel’s announcement in October of its first 4G smartphone in the US, the Asus PadFone X Mini. Now Intel remains well behind Qualcomm — which controls two-thirds of the global mobile modem market — and MediaTek as a supplier of chips for smartphones and tablets. Intel faces tough competition trying to fight its way into mobile — a market it ignored for years. Intel in early 2015 will introduce its first 4G system-on-a-chip under the new SoFIA name. Such chips include both a processor and modem together and are sought after by handset makers because they’re smaller in size than separate processor and radio chips, and use less power (matching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon).
Mobile chip leader Qualcomm will be going strong in 2015. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 is not only a killer part, it has raised the bar on what a mobile SoC has to be in 2015. It can power devices that drive 4K (3840 x 2160) TV, take 4K videos, run AAA games and connect to 5-inch HD display. There are finished, branded products just waiting to be released. I am convinced Qualcomm is on track to deliver commercial devices with Snapdragon 810 in mid-2015. I expect Qualcomm to be strong leader throughout 2015.
More material worth to check out:
New questions in mobile
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/11/20/time-for-new-questions-in-mobile
What’s Next in Wireless: My 2015 Predictions
http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/2015-predictions.htm
1,230 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wireless Charging Awareness Surging
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326975&
Consumers are becoming more aware of wireless charging technology, thanks in large part to its inclusion in recent high-profile products like the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Apple Watch.
According to a recent survey conducted by market research firm IHS Inc., 76% of consumers in the U.S., U.K. and China are now aware of wireless charging technology—more than double the percentage of consumers who indicated they were aware of the technology a year ago.
According to IHS estimates, shipments of wireless power receivers in mobile handsets alone are forecast to top 120 million units in 2015. A large chunk of those receivers are expected to ship in Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones.
In wearable electronics, some 20 million wireless charging receivers are expected to ship this year, according to IHS. More than 14 million of this are expected to come from shipments of the Apple Watch alone, according to the firm.
“This is not just good news for the likes of Samsung,” Green said. “This is good news for anyone involved in wireless charging. The whole point is that people are starting to hear about wireless charging, starting to accept it and starting to see the need for that use case.”
Three’s a crowd
But while consumers on the whole may be more aware of wireless charging technology, the technology itself is still somewhat fragmented based on the fact that three competing alliances—the Qi Wireless Power Technology Alliance, the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA)—have been pushing competing technologies.
While A4WP and PMA agreed June 1 to merge, there are still two different technologies involved, Green said. The two groups will get together and join under one name, Green said, but “the two technologies are not compatible because they work on completely different frequencies.”
“Really, this comes down to the consumers,” Green said. “The consumer doesn’t care what kind of technology is used. The consumer just wants wireless charging that will work with everything out there.”’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Focus on Smart Contacts
Lenses actively refocus
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326966&
Imec researchers hope to deliver within two years active contact lenses. The devices will detect where the user is looking and deliver the correct near or far focus.
Lens makers currently deliver passive versions of multifocal contacts, but they can confuse the user by presenting multiple fields of focus, said Jelle De Smet, a researcher leading the effort. He presented his work updating the 700-year-old technology of traditional glasses at the annual Imec Technology Forum
The current project is an ambitious one requiring several innovations in miniature, ruggedized building blocks. For example, researchers are developing tunable, flexible optics that refocus light, mimicking the eye’s intraocular lens.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Culpan / Bloomberg Business:
Sources: Apple has started early production of new iPhone models with Force Touch, volume manufacturing scheduled to ramp up as soon as next month — Apple Suppliers Start Making iPhones With Force Touch
Apple Suppliers Start Making iPhones With Force Touch
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-26/apple-suppliers-said-to-start-making-iphones-with-force-touch
Apple Inc. has started early production of new iPhone models with a feature called Force Touch, which senses how hard users are pressing down on a screen, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Its newest iPhones, in the same 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch versions as the current iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices, will have a similar exterior design, the people said. Volume manufacturing is scheduled to ramp up as soon as next month, they said.
Apple is bringing Force Touch, first unveiled for the Apple Watch and the newest MacBook model, to the iPhone at least two years after it started working with suppliers to perfect the pressure-sensitive displays. The feature, which lets users adjust the strength of their screen taps to bring up different functions, is Apple’s latest move to stay ahead of rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co., which this year released its latest Galaxy smartphone with a screen that can be viewed from the side.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sun sets on Eclipse as Google looks to Android M development
Android Studio is now stable enough to be the go-to development suite, says firm
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2415426/sun-sets-on-eclipse-as-google-looks-to-android-m-development
GOOGLE HAS ANNOUNCED that it is ending development of its Android Eclipse tools in favour of Android Studio.
The move had been expected for some time, and came in a blog post this morning that outlined plans to phase out Eclipse over the second half of 2015.
The company has made it clear that, unlike some of its other services, Eclipse will remain available and usable, but support and development will cease and be moved to the open source community and specifically the Eclipse Foundation.
There is a clear migration path to Android Studio for users of Eclipse and Android Developer Tools (ADT), and the company will ensure that all the features from Eclipse are migrated.
“Over the next few months, we are migrating the rest of the standalone performance tools (e.g. DDMS, Trace Viewer) and building in additional support for the Android NDK into Android Studio,” explained the blog post.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone Saturation Becomes OEM Conundrum
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1327001&
Smartphone sales are down and OEMs should be worried. Creating new features to enhance brand differentiation is getting harder and harder.
Phones are generally part of our way of life now. No self-respecting teenager is without one, and they are the businessman’s (and soccer mum’s) most valuable tool. Most of us can’t remember life before the cell-phone.
Our somewhat irrational desire for more and better led us to replacing the phone every two years. Telco contracts even encouraged that
Sadly, the days of massive improvements in features in a new release are behind us.
The reality is that phone features are about capped out. There isn’t a whole lot more they can do. Moreover, everything Apple can do, Android does too! (A secret here: It was never the hardware that mattered. It was always software, and the only reason for a hardware upgrade was to get the new software features and perhaps to have enough memory to run them.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Augmented Reality Helps Blind See the Light
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326979&
Three hundred or so visually challenged people are getting assistance in seeing the world around them, thanks to augmented reality goggles developed at the University of Oxford in England. Smart Specs by Va-ST use 3D mapping and depth sensing to provide object and facial recognition assistance.
Many people who are blind actually have a bit of vision capability, said Stephen Hicks, a research fellow in neuroscience at Oxford University. People that are visually challenge could benefit from augmented reality, much like a deaf person can benefit from a hearing aid, amplifying the ability to distinguish shapes or distance.
Hicks said VA-ST is developing its consumer price point, but hopes the final version of Smart Specs will be less than £1,000.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Of Ma And Malware: Inside China’s iPhone Jailbreaking Industrial Complex
http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/06/26/china-iphone-jailbreak-industry/
In late March a handful of the western world’s best-known iPhone hackers were flown business class to Beijing. They were put up in the five-star Park Hyatt and given a tour of the sites
It was a bizarre trip hosted by an equally bizarre and secretive entity called TaiG (pronounced “tie-gee”), which flew the hackers to China to share techniques and tricks to slice through the defences of Apple’s mobile operating system in front of an eager conference-hall crowd. Why such interest and why such aggrandisement of iOS researchers? In the last two years, jailbreaking an iPhone – the act of removing iOS’ restrictions against installing unauthorized apps, app stores and other features by exploiting Apple security – has become serious business in China. From Alibaba to Baidu, China’s biggest companies are supporting and even funding the practice, unfazed at the prospect of peeving Apple, which has sought to stamp out jailbreaking ever since it became a craze in the late 2000s.
Any hacker who can provide the full code for an untethered jailbreak, where the hack continues to work after the phone reboots, can expect a big pay check for their efforts. “Many experts agree the price for an untethered jailbreak is around $1 million,”
More often, sellers of iOS zero-day vulnerabilities – the previously-unknown and unpatched flaws required for jailbreaks – make thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chinese firms, private buyers or governments, in particular three-letter agencies from the US.
Such big sums are on offer due to the explosion of the third-party app store industry in China. There are at least 362 million monthly active mobile app users in China, according to data provided by iResearch. Whilst smartphone owners in Western nations are content within the walled gardens of Apple and Google app stores for their games, media and work tools, the Chinese are fanatical about apps and want the broadest possible choice from non-Apple app stores. Jailbreaks, which do away with Apple’s chains and allow other markets on the device, are thus vital to meeting that demand.
China’s app market industry came to life with Baidu’s 2013 $1.9 billion acquisition of 91 Wireless, which distributes iOS and Android apps, and at the time had shipped 10 billion apps. Its 91.com website openly advertises jailbreak tutorials.
From three per cent of total mobile sales in China in the first quarter of 2013, the iPhone hit 17 per cent in the same period in 2015. That was around four per cent higher than the closest competitor, China’s own Xiaomi.
And to get the biggest slice, the industry’s biggest players are undermining one another with aggressive tactics. To get one up on the competition, some are offering big money to hackers who can bundle stores with jailbreaks, so that when a user goes through the steps of unlocking their iPhone, they’re encouraged to download the sponsor’s app market, commonly known as “assistants” in China.
And yet Alibaba’s 25pp marketplace doesn’t need the phone to be unlocked to install on iOS. It flouts Apple security rules in other ways. FORBES has learned the store breaks Apple policy by using an Enterprise Certificate to install itself on users’ phones.
These certificates are supposed to be used by businesses to disseminate bespoke apps within the confines of the corporate network and are strictly not for commercial use. Apple could simply revoke the certificate, but it would be easy for Alibaba’s subsidiary to obtain a new one and start breaking the rules all over again.
China’s third-party marketplaces have become synonymous with iOS malware and piracy, however.
Even if the iOS cracking market shrinks as Chinese corporations expand and crack down on piracy-linked activity, the jailbreaking game is expected to remain a profitable one.
Apart from Bassen, none of the attendees admit to selling jailbreak services to a Chinese company. But some jailbreakers FORBES spoke with say they have been approached with six and seven-figure offers over the last two years from different sources.
The lack of transparency is one reason selling iOS zero days to Chinese companies is frowned upon by some in the scene, as indicated by Hill’s own antipathy.
Money, it seems, has turned jailbreaking from a hobbyist affair concerned with free and open software, into a hostile game where vast sums are up for grabs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Se Young Lee / Reuters:
Samsung says it sold 1M Z1 Tizen phones, will launch several more in 2015 according to source — Samsung Electronics plans more Tizen smartphones this year: source — Leading smartphone maker Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch more handsets running on its own Tizen operating system later …
Samsung Electronics plans more Tizen smartphones this year: source
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/29/us-samsung-elec-tizen-idUSKCN0P911I20150629
Leading smartphone maker Samsung Electronics Co Ltd plans to launch more handsets running on its own Tizen operating system later this year, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Monday.
Samsung will launch several Tizen smartphones at varying prices, the person said without disclosing other specifications.
The company launched its first Tizen smartphone, the Z1, in India in January and has since been selling the device in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It has sold 1 million Z1s so far in India, the world’s third-biggest smartphone market.
The Z1 was the best-selling smartphone in Bangladesh in January-March
Tomi Engdahl says:
Matt Brian / Engadget:
UK’s Barclaycard launches new wristband, key fob, and sticker for its bPay contactless payment service, confirms it won’t support Apple Pay at launch — Barclaycard steps up its contactless game with three new NFC devices — If you didn’t know, Britain now prefers cashless payments to notes and coins.
Barclaycard steps up its contactless game with three new NFC devices
http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/29/barclaycard-bpay-nfc-devices/
If you didn’t know, Britain now prefers cashless payments to notes and coins. Contactless cards play a big part in the shift away from cash, but as technology evolves, smartphones and wearables are beginning to influence matters too. Barclaycard has long supported contactless technology, via its PayTag NFC sticker or bPay bracelet, but the credit card provider recently pulled the products and warned that something new was coming. Indeed, Barclaycard is back with three “new” wearable bPay payment devices: a wristband, fob and sticker.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kantar Worldpanel:
Android US market share up 2.8 points to 64.9% from March to May thanks to Galaxy S6; LG nearly doubled its share of the US smartphone market YoY
Samsung GS6 US Sales Bode Well For Android June Quarter
http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/Samsung-GS6-US-Sales-Bode-Well-For-Android-June-Quarter
The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech for the three months ending in May 2015 shows the Android OS continuing to reclaim market share in the US, where it has increased by 2.8 percentage points to 64.9%.However, Android is not showing much improvement in the Europe “big five,” where it dropped 2.9 percentage points, compared to the same period in 2014. Europe’s big five markets are Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.
In the US, the momentum of iOS slowed as share declined, both period-over-period and year-over-year. “Sales of Android-based smartphones were fueled not only by Samsung, but also by LG, which was able to nearly double its share of the US smartphone market year-over-year,” Milanesi added. “Other tier-one Android players, such as HTC and Motorola, had a more difficult period, with their share decreasing both year-over-year and period-over-period, raising hopes for competitors – such as Huawei and Sony, who have yet to wow US consumers – that share could be up for grabs.”
Across Europe, demand for the iPhone 6 remained strong, with this model topping the chart in Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France.
“In urban China, the two-horse race became a three-horse race, as the market leader Apple, followed by Huawei now at number two, and Xiaomi in the third spot, are all within a 0.5 percentage point share of one another,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A blow for mobile advertising: The next version of Safari will let users block ads on iPhones and iPads
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/06/a-blow-for-mobile-advertising-the-next-version-of-safari-will-let-users-block-ads-on-iphones-and-ipads/
Think making money on mobile advertising is hard now? Think how much more difficult it will be with a significant share of your audience is blocking all your ads — all with a simple download from the App Store.
Adblocking is coming to the iPhone with iOS 9.
Adblocking — running a piece of software in your web browser that prevents ads on most web pages from loading — has moved from a niche behavior for the nerdy few to something mainstream. A report from 2014 found that adblock usage was up 70 percent year-over-year, with over 140 million people blocking ads worldwide, including 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds. You can understand why that would be troubling to the publishers who sell those ads. But until now, adblocking has been limited almost entirely to desktop — mobile browsers haven’t allowed it.
What this means is, when iOS 9 launches in the fall, you’ll be able to go to the App Store and download an extension that will block ads on most news sites.
Is there any chance that won’t be incredibly popular? The desktop version of Safari currently allows a variety of custom extensions, and what’s the most popular? Hint: It’s called AdBlock.
For me, the arguments for using ad blockers range from the unconvincing (dude, information wants to be free) to the reasonable (I don’t need dozens of tracking beacons on every webpage) to the downright understandable (poorly built ads slow my browser to a crawl). I don’t use an ad blocker, but I do block all Flash by default for performance reasons, which accomplishes some of the same ends. The best arguments for adblocking are even stronger on mobile than they are on desktop — bandwidth and performance and battery life are all at a premium.
This is worrisome. Publishers already make tiny dollars on mobile, even as their readers have shifted there in huge numbers. To take one example, The New York Times has more than 50 percent of its digital audience on mobile, but generates only 10 percent of its digital advertising revenue there. Most news outlets aren’t even at that low level.
If iOS users — the majority of mobile web users in the U.S., and disproportionately appealing demographically — can suddenly block all your ads with a simple free download, where is the growth going to come from? (By the way, a version of Adblock Plus for Android just came out a couple weeks ago, though it appears to be more limited than what Apple is allowing.)
Maybe I’m exaggerating the potential impact here. (Talk me down!) Maybe people won’t download the free app at the top of the Most Downloaded list that promises to make their websites load more quickly, more beautifully, and using less data. But use of ad blockers has done nothing but rise, particularly among young users, and people are about to be given an easy way to do on the devices they use most. For the many news companies who are counting on mobile advertising for their future business model, I don’t see a way that this change won’t shave off a real slice of mobile advertising revenue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jon Russell / TechCrunch:
Xiaomi Sold 34.7M Smartphones In First Half Of 2015, Up 33% Year-On-Year — Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi today confirmed that it sold just shy of 35 million phones in the first half of this year. … Xiaomi, which is valued at $45 billion and is the world’s third largest exporter of phones …
Xiaomi Sold 34.7M Smartphones In First Half Of 2015, Up 33% Year-On-Year
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/01/xiaomi-35-million-sales-in-first-half-of-2015/
Xiaomi, which is valued at $45 billion and is the world’s third largest exporter of phones, this week expanded into Brazil and is thought to have a slate of other international expansions lined up for this year. That’s important because CEO and co-founder Lei Jun previously estimated that the company would sell 100 million smartphones this year. While 34.7 million in the first half of 2015 is impressive — Xiaomi said it represents a 33 percent increase on the first half of 2014 — the company is going to need to kick up its sales if it is to hit Lei Jun’s lofty target for 2015.
The five-year-old Chinese company’s total sales for last year came in at 61 million, which brought in around $12 billion in revenue — Xiaomi did not provide details of its profit or loss for the period. The company has scaled rapidly on account of its international expansion
“Even with the China smartphone market slowing down, we did a stellar job of posting a 33% growth on last year’s numbers. It can be said that we outperformed the market and produced an excellent report card,” Lei Jun said in a statement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
LG Chem develops hexagonal battery
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2015/06/133_181765.html
LG Chem has started shipping hexagon-shaped batteries to global consumer electronics firms in order to help them promote their smart-watch business.
LG said the hexagon-shaped battery improved storage capacity by 25 percent compared with rectangular batteries.
Gartner, a market research firm, expects smart watches to make up at least 40 percent of wearable devices by next year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dear Google: Stop Making Apps
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dear-google-stop-making-apps-domenic-merenda
Dear Google,
Consider this a love letter. Actually, let’s call it “tough love,” because this might be hard for you to hear. An intervention, if you will. Google, you have to stop making apps. Yes, mobile is the future (and no, ChromeOS isn’t going to change that). But you have to stop putting out shovel ware, incomplete implementations, half-hearted UX, and more apps than even an appaholic could download.
As of the writing of this article, Wikipedia reports that on the Android platform alone, Google officially maintains 73 separate applications, from search companions to whimsical creations to track Santa. Chances are, you don’t even know what half of these apps do, and have little to no use for them. I’m willing to bet that there are very few Google employees who could successfully rattle off the entire stable of apps.
So, let’s stop. Pretty please. Instead, consider the following vision for Google’s future in the mobile marketplace:
Let’s build the plumbing that empowers developers to drive meaningful marketplace engagement. What does this mean? Google sits atop the world’s premier data asset. As a company, its consumer touch points have become necessary gateways to everyday life. The aggregate information Google knows about you in its virtual big brain has the ability to tell you what you want before you know you want it.
Google can provide the data-rich API platform, the interconnectedness, the big brain calculations in the cloud. Instead of investing more resources in apps smaller teams could build better, let’s free developers do what they do best: leverage Google services to build new and engaging experiences across a variety of platforms.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Megumi Fujikawa / Wall Street Journal:
Casio is developing a durable men’s smart watch priced around $400, expected by early 2016 — Casio Bets on a Watch That Is Smart — Japanese watchmaker hopes to outmaneuver Apple Watch’s technological wizardry
Casio Bets on a Watch That Is Smart
Japanese watchmaker hopes to outmaneuver Apple Watch’s technological wizardry
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/casio-bets-on-a-watch-that-is-smart-1435816008-lMyQjAxMTA1NjAyMjIwMTI0Wj
Japanese watchmaker Casio Computer Co. is looking to enter the smartwatch fray, four decades after it introduced its first digital wristwatch.
Casio previously put cutting-edge gadgetry into watches that had patchy success at best. Casio has developed watches with schedule managers, heart-rate monitors and communication functions.
“At times we just showed off with quirky features and then pulled those products when they didn’t sell well,” said Kazuhiro Kashio, the company’s new president, in an interview this week.
Now, he said, “we are trying to bring our smartwatch to a level of watch perfection: a device that won’t break easily, is simple to put on and feels good to wear.”
he watch will have an affordable price tag, similar to the lower end of the Apple Watch’s price range, from around ¥50,000, or $400
But Casio’s smartwatch is likely to face a tough fight as it joins a host of other new entrants including the Apple Watch.
Apple Watch shipments are expected to make up 56% of the total smartwatch market this year, according to information provider IHS Inc.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone ‘kill switch’ law takes effect in California
http://www.cnet.com/news/smartphone-kill-switch-law-takes-effect-in-california/
Starting July 1, smartphones sold in the state must come with software that lets users lock a stolen phone so it can’t be used, making it harder to resell. Crime statistics show the tech is already working.
Thieves, consider yourselves on notice: California is now smartphone “kill switch” territory.
The so-called software is designed to make stealing smartphones essentially pointless by allowing owners to remotely lock their device so no one can use it. The technology, which includes Apple’s “Activation Lock” and Google’s “Device Protection,” has become a key selling point among phone manufacturers that offer peace of mind to protect customers’ information if a phone is stolen, and hopefully discourage thieves from stealing it in the first place.
There’s good reason for these features. In the past several years, government officials have noticed an “epidemic” of phone thefts, particularly in large cities. Thieves often steal phones and sell them to cartels and shops that often shipped them to willing customers overseas.
The technology industry’s answer has been to create software that responds to a theft by requiring users to input a passcode before it can be unlocked or restored to factory settings. The technology looks to be working: In 2013, 3.1 million Americans had their phones stolen, according to a study published by Consumer Reports last month. Last year, that number fell to 2.1 million, according to the report.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Watch Tear Down Reveals European Chips
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327052&
The good news for the winners of the design slots – STMicroelectronics and NXP win two chip design slots each and AMS and Dialog Semiconductor one each – is that Yole reckons the wearable electronic equipment market is not just a gimmick and will grow steadily. Yole states that the wearable industry will reach 295 million units in 2020 with a market value of $90 billion.
However, the majority of this market will be consumer applications with healthcare picking up 75 million units of the annual market in 2020 Industrial and military applications will be yet fewer, about 10 million units in 2020, Yole reckons.
This strong consumer growth market needs to be squared away with a survey that indicates about 99 percent of wearable electronics owners stop using them within six months (see Chinese consumers losing interest in wearables?). Nearly 50 percent stop using their wearables within one month, according to the report by Chinese Internet service portal, Tencent.
Impulse buying and fashion can drive a market, which may explain why Yole thinks the wearables market in 2015 is going to be worth about $20 billion as consumer wearable equipment makes a significant spurt of growth to go past the traditional medical wearables such as the hearing aid. The consumer wearables market is mainly fitness bands and smart watches.
The healthcare market, which covers devices like hearing aids, blood pressure monitors and back monitor sensors, is growing more slowly and has lower numbers but with higher value.
Software is key because sensors alone can only produce data that is hard to interpret.
Wearables such as smart glasses/HUD and smart clothing are well suited to industrial and military applications.
Prominent non-European winners in the Apple Watch are Apple itself, which provides the processor as a custom ASIC, Broadcom and Skyworks who provide the Wi-Fi subsystem. IDT wins the wireless charger application and Analog Devices the touchscreen controller. Maxim does audio duties and Elpida/Micron and Toshiba/SanDisk the memory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google releases Material Design Lite, a web framework for making Material Design-style websites
http://9to5google.com/2015/07/06/material-deisgn-lite-release/
Google Developers, the team at Google which creates tools and learning materials for developers to take advantage of, has released a front-end web framework for building sites to the Material Design specification
The new framework, called Material Design Lite (MDL), includes Material Design-style components – like buttons, checkboxes, input fields, custom typography, and more – as well as a responsive grid and breakpoints (i.e. what happens when the window gets too narrow to display all elements side-by-side) that adhere to the Material Design adaptive UI guidelines. Google’s guidelines for how an app or website using Material Design reflows content at different screen sizes and as a screen resizes in real-time make for visual consistency across a range of devices of all shapes and sizes. The company says MDL is tailored towards websites heavy on text, like blogs and marketing pages.
Anyone who has used the Bootstrap web framework will understand MDL right away.
Introducing Material Design Lite
getmdl.io -a library of components & templates in vanilla CSS, HTML and JS
https://medium.com/google-developers/introducing-material-design-lite-3ce67098c031
Back in 2014, Google published the material design specification with a goal to provide guidelines for good design and beautiful UI across all device form factors. Today we are releasing our effort to bring this to websites using vanilla CSS, HTML and JavaScript. We’re calling it Material Design Lite (MDL).
Tomi Engdahl says:
The sad song Samsung’s sung: SEVENTH quarterly fail in a row
Cuts itself deep with Edge, but does pull its SoCs up
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/07/samsung_slumps_seven_quarters_in_a_row/
Samsung has warned the market that it’s going to miss its previous earnings guidance for the April-June quarter. It will be the Korean goliath’s seventh successive quarter of decline in year-on-year terms.
The original guidance of 7.2 trillion won (US$6.38 billion) has been downgraded to a forecast 6.9 terawon ($6.13 billion), on a likely sales revenue of 48 terawon ($42.5 billion, down from 53 tn won or nearly $47 billion).
Reuters attributes the result to limp sales for the Galaxy S6 smartphone, which has among other things suffered early supply shortages.
The smartphone market is also saturated, with Apple camping on high-end sales and Chinese companies like Xiaomi taking a chunk of the low-end business.
Even internal competition hurt the S6. The Wall Street Journal notes that the Galaxy Edge range sold better than expected, which probably harmed S6 sales.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Interesting wearable technology, for real effect or placebo?
Can this Thync device promises to affect human mood with electrical impulses to skin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=73&v=ZklkZz2bgEU
Thync is placed over the skin. Electrical impulses by means of the device is claimed to be able to influence, for example, the stress level.
http://www.thync.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Foxconn manufactures Nokia Android phone
Taiwanese Foxconn produces Nokia’s emerging smartphone. The value or the production volumes of the agreement have not been published. The matter to write Nokia Power User site.
Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri announced in June that the Nokia 2016 brings the second half of the smartphone market based on Goolge Android operating system.
According to the latest data show that Nokia is selling the phone there, where its brand has been the strongest, ie China, India and some European countries, such as Italy, where it once sold a N9 phone.
Pre-global Nokia rumored to be before the end of 2015 a broad launch.
Foxconn is Nokia already its main subcontractor partners, and even today produces its N1 tablets based on Android.
“The smartphone market is saturated and they are difficult to achieve results.”
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/foxconn-valmistaa-nokian-android-puhelinta-3325301
Tomi Engdahl says:
EE Rook offers Android 5.1 Lollipop, quad-core power and 4G for £39
Budget 4G phone has its sights set on the Moto G
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2416581/ee-rook-offers-android-51-lollipop-quad-core-power-and-4g-for-gbp39
UK MOBILE OPERATOR EE has announced the EE Rook, a Lollipop-powered 4G smartphone that costs a mere £39.
The EE Rook, which clearly has its sights set on Motorola’s Moto G, claims the title of the UK’s most affordable new 4G smartphone. It will be available to existing EE customers for £39, and those not yet signed up to the network can expect to pay £49.
The Rook won’t get many people too excited in terms of specifications. There’s a 4in 480×800 screen, Google’s Android 5.1 Lollipop software and a 64-bit quad-core MediaTek processor.
Sharon Meadows, director of devices at EE, said: “At EE, we believe everyone should have access to 4G and the experiences it offers on the go.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Warning: iOS accounts for 18% of all online sales
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2944869/e-commerce/warning-ios-accounts-for-18-of-all-online-sales.html
Almost one in five goods or services bought online are now purchased using an Apple mobile device.
f you are at any level involved in the digital transformation of retail, run a Website offering goods or services, or are in any way involved in any form of consumer-facing business you have no choice but to support Apple’s mobile platforms.
“The continued rise in popularity of the iPhone for making online purchases, coupled with the higher Average Transaction Value from shoppers using iOS, suggest that businesses – especially those that classify themselves as premium brands – should target this valuable demographic in particular,” said Roelant Prins, Chief Commercial Officer, Adyen.
iPhones are used for 10.2 percent of all global online transactions, up from 8.6 percent at the turn of the year. iPads are still in the frame, but they now account for just 28.5 percent of all browser-based mobile transactions, down from almost 50 percent in March 2013. Android smartphones continue to grow their share of mobile transaction volume, increasing from 27.2 percent in the first quarter of 2015, to 28.3 percent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft:
Microsoft announces 7,800 job cuts mostly in phone business, writes off $7.6B from Nokia deal
— Microsoft Announces Restructuring of Phone Hardware Business — REDMOND, Wash. — Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to restructure the company’s phone hardware business to better focus and align resources.
Microsoft announces restructuring of phone hardware business
http://news.microsoft.com/2015/07/08/microsoft-announces-restructuring-of-phone-hardware-business/
Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to restructure the company’s phone hardware business to better focus and align resources. Microsoft also announced the reduction of up to 7,800 positions, primarily in the phone business. As a result, the company will record an impairment charge of approximately $7.6 billion related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia Devices and Services (NDS) business in addition to a restructuring charge of approximately $750 million to $850 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paul Thurrott / Thurrott.com:
Microsoft dramatically scales back on Windows Phone, leaving long-term future of Lumia in doubt as it focuses on “mobility of experiences”
Analysis: Microsoft is Scaling Back on Windows Phone Dramatically
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/windows-phone/4512/analysis-microsoft-is-scaling-back-on-windows-phone-dramatically
Yes, we were right to be worried about Windows Phone. Satya Nadella’s email only touches on first-party phones for the short term, buying Microsoft time to transition to a “mobility of experiences” future in which it doesn’t matter which phones its customers use.
Windows Phone is failing
Actually, that’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. The company that makes over 96 percent of all Windows Phone handsets in use just wrote off $7.6 billion related to its Windows Phone assets, and has announced plans to dramatically scale back its mobile operations. And, yes, Windows Phone has fallen to just 3 percent market share worldwide too. Things aren’t going well. Sorry.
Phone business restructuring means a total loss from Nokia purchase
Nadella said that Microsoft was “fundamental restructuring” its phone business. This includes an “impairment charge” of approximately $7.6 billion related to assets associated with the acquisition of the Nokia devices and services businesses last year, plus an additional restructuring charge of approximately $750 million to $850 million. When you consider that Microsoft paid $7.2 billion for the only parts of Nokia that mattered (minus HERE), this is a total disaster. Nokia was going out of business. Now only a tiny part of what used to be Nokia remains. And I believe the remainder is on borrowed time.
Microsoft’s latest job cuts to hit manufacturing, sales
http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-latest-job-cuts-to-hit-manufacturing-sales/
MIcrosoft’s Finland offices and its Sales and Marketing Organization will both be impacted by the company’s 7,800 job cuts. Here’s COO Kevin Turner’s mail to the troops.
Microsoft will lay off more than half of the Microsoft staffers based in Finland, the home of Nokia, as reported by Yle. That means a maximum of 2,300 jobs will be cut in Finland “as the company shuts down its Salo operation and moves tasks from there to Microsoft facilities in Tampere and Espoo,” according to Yle. Currently, there are 3,200 Microsoft employees in Finland, Yle said.
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that this report is correct.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jeff Elder / Wall Street Journal:
Jawbone files complaint with ITC against Fitbit, seeks to block company from importing fitness trackers into US, in third legal action in two months
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/07/08/jawbone-sues-rival-fitbit-for-third-time-in-two-months/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel’s tablet CPU share to DROP: analyst
Chipzilla will struggle to sell 50 million CPUs into mobile devices says Digitimes
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/09/intels_tablet_cpu_share_to_drop_analyst/
Researchers at Taiwan’s Digitimes have bad news for Intel: it just isn’t going to sell many chips for mobile devices.
Intel’s thrown a lot of time, money and effort at mobile devices, but its efforts have resulted in red ink, a re-org to combine mobile and desktop products, and rumours of imminent layoffs.
Digitimes now says that 2015 will see just 10.8 million Intel-powered Android tablets reach punters, “down from 14.23 million shipped a year earlier.” There’s some growth for Chipzilla in Android handsets, more than 10 million of which are expected to have Intel inside this year.
Both figures are, however, drops in the Great Gadget Ocean. IDC reckons the world will make about 230 million tablets and phablets this year, plus another 1.447 billion smartphones. If Digitimes is right, Intel’s going to win slivers of those markets. And nasty thin slivers at that.
There’s some solace in growing demand for two-in-one typoslabs that blend a PC and tablet, which Digitimes thinks will kick Intel’s overall mobile CPU sales up to 46 million a year.
No wonder the company’s mobile division is bleeding: Intel’s experiencing a famine amidst a feast of mobile device sales and things don’t look like turning around despite its best engineering and ecosystem-building efforts.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Hall / 9to5Google:
Google Glass ‘Enterprise Edition’ brings new larger prism, Intel Atom CPU, optional external battery pack
http://9to5google.com/2015/07/08/google-glass-enterprise-edition-brings-larger-prism-intel-atom-cpu-battery-life-external-battery-pack/
We told you last week that Google is internally referring to its next iteration of Google Glass as “Enterprise Edition” or “EE,” and now we’ve uncovered information about the soon-to-be-launched device’s hardware. According to several sources familiar with advanced prototypes of the device, the Enterprise Edition includes a larger prism display, as well as an Intel Atom processor that brings better performance and moderately improved battery life…
We’ve heard about a few Enterprise Edition prototypes since the beginning of the year, but there are a couple slightly different iterations of the device that are now being more widely tested. Google is introducing a larger prism that extends further, allowing the user to more comfortably look directly up rather than feeling the need to look up and to the right.
The Wall Street Journal reported in December of last year that the device would have a new low-power Intel chip designed to increase battery life, and we can confirm that this is definitely the case in the most recent internal revisions of the device.
Last week, a device by the name of “A4R-GG1″ was caught passing through the FCC. The device, while labeled simply as a Bluetooth device, includes support for 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi on 2.4GHz and 5 GHz bands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oracle and Xamarin flutter eyelashes at suits with native app deal
Come hither, big boys, and C# what we’ve got for you
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/09/oracle_xamarin_mobile_cloud/
Oracle is tapping into the power of native apps and cloud delivery under a development deal with mobile app firm Xamarin.
The pair unveiled the Xamarin SDK for Oracle Mobile Cloud Service on Thursday, to build apps for iOS, Android and Windows.
Xamarin’s tools let you build native apps for the different mobile flavours using Microsoft’s C# language.
The deal gives Oracle access to a massive pool a million devs in the Xamarin community working in C# and Java who are building enterprise and custom apps for different mobile platforms.
For Xamarin the technology collaboration opens the door on more than 100,000 Oracle enterprise customers.
Oracle, like all things cloud, is late to the party, with the Mobile Cloud announced at the company’s annual OpenWorld conference in late 2014.
An agreement with Xamarin potentially gives Oracle’s mobile ambitions a potential fillip.
The secret is Xamarin’s ability to let devs write native apps for different vendors’ mobile devices using the tools and languages they might already know without having to go native for each platform.
Xamarin offers not only own development environment but also a plug-in to Microsoft’s Visual Studio, arguably the default business apps dev suite.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Neil King / Arabian Business:
Sony Mobile CEO Hiroki Totoki on streamlining the unit, IoT strategy, and why the company won’t exit from its mobile business — Billion dollar turnaround: Sony Mobile CEO — The phrase ‘thrown in at the deep end’ might have been invented for Hiroki Totoki.
Billion dollar turnaround: Sony Mobile CEO
http://www.arabianbusiness.com/billion-dollar-turnaround-sony-mobile-ceo-598355.html
The phrase ‘thrown in at the deep end’ might have been invented for Hiroki Totoki.
The CEO and president of Sony Mobile (formerly Sony Ericsson) was appointed to the top job in November 2014 against a backdrop of poor sales, rapidly increasing competition from budget brands and the payment of a $1.5bn impairment charge.
The much written about charge considerably dragged down Sony’s overall financial performance for 2014, leaving the corporation’s top management with some difficult decisions over the future.
Hand-picked by Sony boss Kazuo Hirai to turn around the ailing mobile unit, swift and noticeable changes were expected of Totoki. Suffice to say he’s had his work cut out from day one.
“I’ve been quite busy,”
“So I’ve had to work very hard and I have been busy, but people are very cooperative and have shown a lot of energy to turn around the position, which is a good thing. I’m confident that things will continue to get better.”
Totoki admits, however, that rival companies and brands will always mean that competition is rife.
“Yes, the competition has become severe,” he says.
“The smartphone device consists of a battery and a screen and chips. These are the main parts of a smartphone, and people can easily make them now.
“But it is the user experience that is not the same. Even if the device is the same, the user experience is different. And this is a very important point. People are not buying a smartphone because of the device and the way it looks — they are buying it because of the experience.”
Totoki claims that Sony Mobile is able to stay at the front of the pack thanks to technology developed by other Sony divisions.
He says: “Of course we are using a very good quality of image sensor that our colleagues at Sony created.”
User experience is one of the major talking points for the mobile industry, alongside topics such as wearables and the Internet of Things.
But another conversation that has intensified in recent months is that surrounding 5G, and heavyweights such as Sony Mobile are expected to be on the front lines of developments.
So how close is the company to launching a 5G product?
“The technology roadmap is there,” Totoki states confidently.
“The use of the technology will really be country by country,” he continues. “For example, in Japan, 2020 is an Olympic year — it will be the second Olympics in our history and a very important year for us. Leading up to 2020, the government and major operators would like to demonstrate 5G technology in Japan. That’s the roadmap we have in Japan, and I’m sure other countries will have theirs as well.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:
Amazon Launches AWS Device Farm, Lets Developers Test Android And Fire OS Apps On Real Devices
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/09/amazon-launches-aws-device-farm-lets-developers-test-android-and-fire-os-apps-on-real-devices/
Starting next week, Android and Fire OS developers will be able to use a new cloud-based service from Amazon to test their apps on physical smartphones and tablets. The AWS Device Farm will allow developers to upload their apps and test them on “the most commonly used mobile devices across a continually expanding fleet that includes the latest device/OS combination.” Amazon says. Sadly, the company didn’t say how many devices we are actually talking about.
If this concept sounds familiar, it may be because a number of other companies offer very similar services already. Google announced Cloud Test Lab at its I/O developer conference a few weeks ago, for example (though it won’t launch until later this summer), and Xamarin has already been offering its Test Cloud service (with support for about 1,000 1,600 devices) since 2013.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft’s Band gets RSS-powered web apps that anyone can create
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/9/8921147/microsoft-band-web-tiles
Microsoft has been investing heavily in its Band wearable device recently. Third-party apps, golf tracking, and a series of improvements in recent months have positioned the Microsoft Band as a more powerful fitness accessory. Microsoft is now making it even easier to build apps for the Band by allowing anyone to create RSS-powered web tiles. The tiny apps will pull data from an ATOM or RSS feed and display the content on the Microsoft Band.
You can create the web tiles through an online site that just requires an icon file and an RSS feed. The app can then be loaded onto the Band through the Windows Phone, iOS, or Android versions of the Microsoft Health application that manages the Microsoft Band. It’s a 5-minute process that feels as simple as Microsoft’s web tool that lets anyone create Windows Phone apps. The resulting apps are obviously very basic, but if you’re just looking to pick up news from your favorite websites on your wrist then it’s simple enough for that.
Bring your web site content to Microsoft Band with Web Tiles.
http://developer.microsofthealth.com/WebTile/
Microsoft Band web tile preview allows developers to deliver information to Microsoft Band from virtually any data source on the web, in just a few easy steps!
Write tile code once in simple JSON code and let the Microsoft Health app do the rest for you – adding web tiles to Microsoft Band, periodically fetching web resources and delivering it to the web tile on the Band.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Windows 7 running on an Asus ZenFone 2 is too cool not to share
There’s no real world usage for this kind of hack, but it’s pretty neat to see nonetheless.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2946255/windows-7-running-on-an-asus-zenfone-2-is-too-cool-not-to-share.html
It bears repeating that the neat part about being an Android user is all the tinkering you can do with your phone or tablet.
In this case, XDA Developer forum member ycavan managed to get Windows 7 running on an Asus ZenFone 2. There’s even a video showing how it works
Unlike a majority of other Android phones, the Asus ZenFone 2 utilizes an Intel-based Atom processor. ycavan cited the reason for the hack was because he was curious about “running Windows at near native speeds.” It’s definitely not perfect—there is no Direct 3D support, for instance—but it works, even if the ZenFone 2’s 5.5-inch display seems a bit small for a full desktop operating system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AWS opens gate to fondleslabs-as-a-service farm
Sorry, devs, you just lost a reason to buy one of every phone and tablet you fancy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/10/aws_opens_gate_to_fondleslabsasaservice_farm/
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has opened a farm in which it hopes developer’s will loose their code to graze on lush fields of myriad devices.
Enough with the rural metaphor: the “Device Farm” is a smartphones-and-tablets-as-a-service offering. The idea is that developers today have to run emulators galore, or buy an awful lot of gadgets, in order to test mobile apps. AWS is kindly offering to make that easier – for US$0.17 per “device minute” or $250 per device per month – by letting developers upload code to devices it operates. The service includes testing tools like Appium, Calabash, and Espresso and spits out reports once they’ve run.
AWS hasn’t said how many devices it has, but has revealed its own Fire devices are in the farm. Apple’s aren’t: this is an Android-only farm for now.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jolla Splits from Hardware
Establishing a New Platform Is Hard
http://www.ccsinsight.com/blog/jolla-splits-from-hardware
Jolla — the Finland-based independent developer of mobile platform Sailfish and related hardware — has announced that it will spin off its hardware unit to focus on its mobile platform. Jolla was founded by members of a former Nokia team that developed the Linux-based mobile operating system (OS) Maemo.
The company’s decision to stop hardware development will be a disappointment to its loyal fans after more than 20,000 supporters backed a Sailfish OS tablet via an Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign. The device was scheduled to ship to backers in May 2015, but the company says component supply issues have caused delays.
Jolla’s decision to move away from developing its own hardware highlights the difficulties of establishing something different in the current mobile milieu. The company has a world-class pedigree and a solid fan base, but it’s made little traction in a market dominated by two players.
The smartphone platforms segment is among the most concentrated, with Apple and Google leading in shipments and the installed user base. Android and iOS are so firmly established that companies with much larger resources struggle to make a dent. Microsoft, for example, has seen limited success in making its Windows Phone platform the third major operating system. This led Microsoft to provide the OS free of charge to hardware markers, creating an even less favourable environment for companies like Jolla.
Establishing a niche in today’s highly homogenous environment is tough despite global sales of 1.5 billion smartphones per year. Jolla describes itself as “unlike” everything else on the market, an accurate term to distinguish itself from a crowd of standardised devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Android Candy: Google Photos
http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/android-candy-google-photos
Google has become the company that we love and can’t live without, but at the same time, I think we all worry a little about just how much Google knows about us. With that caveat, it’s hard to ignore Google’s newest offering: Google Photos.
Using unlimited storage, automatic sorting and face/place/event recognition, Google is taking all the manual work of tagging and hiring googlebots to do the work for us. Is that creepy? Maybe a little. Honestly though, it’s hard to scoff at unlimited storage of full-quality photos and videos. Plus, if you’re like me, actually finding the time to sort and tag tens of thousands of photos is something you’re going to get to “any day now”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chinese consumer rights group suing Samsung and Oppo over smartphone bloatware
http://www.neowin.net/news/chinese-consumer-rights-group-suing-samsung-and-oppo-over-smartphone-bloatware
When we buy our smartphones, these devices are usually preloaded with built-in apps, or bloatware, which is a strategy used by phone manufacturers to promote their services, and make a little more cash on the side. Some of these apps can be uninstalled manually, to free up more space, but others are unfortunately locked into the system. While this is already a frequent act by smartphone makers when they release new devices, a Chinese consumer rights group seems to be appalled by this gesture.
The Shanghai Consumer Rights Protection Commission claimed that the said built-in apps consume too much storage space on devices. The commission also tested one smartphone from both companies, and discovered 44 apps installed out of the box on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, while finding 71 preloaded apps on an Oppo X9007.
Furthermore, the lawsuit stated that the companies were unable to inform buyers about the preloaded apps that come with their new phone, as well as regarding instructions on how to uninstall them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MediaTek to Eat up Qualcomm’s LTE Share in China
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1327105&
MediaTek, the world’s third-largest chip designer, is likely to continue market-share gains in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) market at the expense of top-ranked Qualcomm by wielding its strength in China’s growing smartphone market, according to industry analysts.
MediaTek’s LTE market share is likely to double to 40-45% in the second half of this year from 20% in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a July 7 report by Randy Abrams, an analyst with Credit Suisse in Taipei. Abrams forecast that MediaTek’s LTE shipments will fall in a range of 160 million to 165 million units this year, exceeding MediaTek’s own expectations for 150 million unit shipments in 2015.
The company’s LTE application processors “gained good traction in China” during the first quarter this year,
Taiwan-based MediaTek has enjoyed an advantage over other rivals in China, where it established strong business ties with local manufacturers more than a decade ago.
Room to Grow
The smartphone business still has upside, as sales are likely to swell from 1.5 billion units in 2015 to 1.7 billion by 2017, according to Strategy Analytics. While China, India and the U.S. are driving smartphone growth worldwide, India will overtake the U.S. by 2017 to become the world’s second-largest smartphone market, Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said in a July 1 report.
China, which also makes most of the smartphones sold in the rest of the world, is a strategic focus for chipmakers such as LTE market leader Qualcomm, followed by MediaTek, Spreadtrum, Samsung, Marvell and Intel.
Shanghai-based Spreadtrum grabbed the No. 3 rank in the first-quarter 2015 LTE market with a 7% revenue share, according to Strategy Analytics.
“We expect Spreadtrum to gain share in LTE basebands too with its LTE apps processors,”
Lagging Expectations?
MediaTek on April 30 reiterated its earlier outlook for 2015 shipments of 450 million smartphones, of which 150 million will be LTE products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia:
Nokia may bring back mobile phones, but only through brand-licensing model, and not earlier than Q4 2016 because of Microsoft agreement
http://company.nokia.com/en/news/statements/other-statements
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maurizio Pesce / Wired:
Commodore PET Android smartphone with C64 and Amiga emulators launching in Europe this week, coming to US soon; prices start at $300
Commodore Is Back, Baby, With a … Smartphone?
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/commodore-smartphone/
Commodore, the name that helped usher in the PC revolution, is back. With a phone.
For those of you too young to remember, Commodore was a hot company in the mid-1980s. It was a leader in personal computers, shipping thousands of Commodore 64 desktops daily. Guinness has named it the single biggest-selling computer ever—the company sold as many as 17 million of them—and the brand name is still widely remembered. Still, the company went bankrupt in 1994, and the brand saw several fuzzy changes of trademark ownership over the years.
Now it’s appearing on a smartphone created by a pair of Italian entrepreneurs. It’s called the PET—sharing its name with Commodore’s other iconic PC—and its custom Android build includes two emulators so owners can enjoy old C64 and Amiga games.
The new Commodore PET is an Android phone of rather common design.
The phone will feature a 1.7 GHz Mediatek 64-bit octa-core processor with ARM Mali T760 GPU and a huge 3000 mAh battery.
Although nostalgia is not the core of the product, there is of course room for retro gaming. The Commodore PET runs a custom version of Android 5.0 Lollipop and two preinstalled emulators. They weren’t finished on the prototype
customized versions of the VICE C64 emulator and the Uae4All2-SDL Amiga emulator
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Pay beta test shows promise, but the evolution must continue
http://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-pay-beta-test-shows-promise-but-the-evolution-must-continue/
Samsung has begun beta testing its mobile payment system Samsung Pay in its home country of South Korea. ZDNet had the chance to see how Samsung Pay, after numerous demos on trade shows, works in real life.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Filmmaker Casey Neistat’s Beme video sharing app aims for authenticity by not letting users review the ephemeral four-second videos they send
Casey Neistat’s Beme Is a Social App That Aims to Replace Illusions With Reality
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/the-debut-of-beme-a-social-app-that-aims-for-authenticity/
And the real version — the one not polished for social media — is exactly how Mr. Neistat wants you to see him.
This sounds peculiar coming from Mr. Neistat, a short-form video artist and an evangelist of social media in all its forms. Yet it is the premise of Beme, his new app that aims to redefine and simplify the way people express themselves using their smartphones.
The app, which Mr. Neistat and his dozen or so colleagues released on Friday, is essentially an extension of the artist himself.
Part of the strategy is removing all the bells and whistles included in today’s most popular social apps. Beme — pronounced “beam” — is, at its core, a gray and black list of your friends. I
Users capture four-second bursts of video by covering a sensor directly above the earpiece of the iPhone.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Childhood Tech Exposure Is Slowly Killing The Keyboard
http://hackaday.com/2015/07/20/slowly-killing-the-keyboard/
I see the disturbing trend of moving away from keyboards as input devices — and I’m talking about a real, physical keyboard. This isn’t a matter of one decision that kills the keyboard, but an aggregate that is slowly changing the landscape. If you blink, you’ll miss it. We will not find ourselves in a world without keyboards, but in one where most of the available keyboards suck.
Rise of the Virtual Keyboard Generation
Is swipe-style keying the future of coding?
Tablets are great for screwing around, but when you want to get real work done in a reasonable amount of time, you grab a physical keyboard. In this scenario I don’t see the problem being those in the workforce going away from keyboards; it’s how the younger generations are learning to interact with technology that is troubling. The touchscreen is baby’s first computer. Families gather and the kids are handed their parent’s tablets while the grown-ups watch the game. More and more schools are outfitting classrooms with tablets
Keyboard Erosion
We’ve already seen a strong push into touch-screens on laptops as the tablet market has grown. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
The scenario I hope I never see is laptop companies deciding that the market isn’t demanding keyboards at a high enough rate to make them standard. If you’re already manufacturing a touch-screen on your newest laptop, there’s huge cost savings to getting rid of all those keys.
I know what you’re thinking… just get an external keyboard. Most of the die-hard iPad users who I know have a Bluetooth keyboard built into the case so that they can get the typing work done when they need to. These keyboards are better than a virtual one, but are lacking compared to a proper physical keyboard. Call me old-fashioned but this is not the direction I want to see the computer industry enter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple Reports Record Third Quarter Results
iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & App Store Drive Revenue Growth of 33%
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2015/07/21Apple-Reports-Record-Third-Quarter-Results.html
The growth was fueled by record third quarter sales of iPhone® and Mac®, all-time record revenue from services and the successful launch of Apple Watch™.
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Early Apple Watch sales beat the original iPhone and iPad, likely earning over $1B in revenue; June was the best month of sales for the Watch so far — Early Apple Watch sales beat the original iPhone and iPad, but no firm numbers yet — Nobody expected Apple to tell us how many Apple Watches it sold last quarter.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/21/9010781/apple-watch-sales-numbers-apple-quarterly-earnings
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ina Fried / Re/code:
Nokia Plans to Debut Virtual Reality Product Next Week — Nokia is set to unveil its first major virtual reality project next week at a VIP event in Los Angeles, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans.
http://recode.net/2015/07/21/nokia-plans-to-debut-virtual-reality-product-next-week/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Acquires Mobile App Prototyping Tool Pixate
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/google-acquires-mobile-app-prototyping-tool-pixate/
Google has acquired mobile app prototyping tool Pixate today, both companies have confirmed. Pixate had raised $3.8M from Accel Partners in 2013. It had popped out of the Y-Combinator oven previously (YC S12).
The company had previously launched a few tiers of their service, focusing completely on prototyping, but promising at some point to get into “developer handoff”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
The open web can’t flourish if vendors don’t work towards closing the rendering performance gap between desktop and mobile web browsers
The mobile web sucks
It’s going to get worse before it gets better
http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/20/9002721/the-mobile-web-sucks
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nokia Evaluating Hardware Partners for 2016 Reentry Into Phone Business
http://recode.net/2015/06/19/nokia-evaluating-hardware-partners-for-2016-reentry-into-phone-business/
Nokia is in the process of considering which hardware makers might prove worthy of licensing its name and phone designs as it seeks to reenter the phone business as early as next year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Hall / 9to5Google:
Google Glass ‘Enterprise Edition’ is foldable, more water resistant, rugged for the workplace — As we’ve come to learn more about the next iteration of Google Glass, it’s clear that this device isn’t the “Google Glass 2.0″ that many diehard fans of the product — however many there are — have been longing for.
Google Glass ‘Enterprise Edition’ is foldable, more water resistant, rugged for the workplace
http://9to5google.com/2015/07/21/google-glass-enterprise-edition-is-foldable-water-resistant-rugged-for-the-workplace/
resistant, rugged for the workplace
Introduction to Google Glass – YouTube 2015-07-21 09-35-58
Google Glass Explorer Edition
As we’ve come to learn more about the next iteration of Google Glass, it’s clear that this device isn’t the “Google Glass 2.0″ that many diehard fans of the product — however many there are — have been longing for. Google Glass “Enterprise Edition” or “EE,” as the company is referring to it internally, is rather a spinoff of the Explorer Edition and an incremental revision targeted at the workplace. Google is ditching the fashion runways and #throughGlass pictures — and they’re getting into the enterprise where Glass has practical use cases.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:
Microsoft posts $22.2B revenue, $2.1B operating loss in wake of huge Nokia writedown; stock slips 3%
Microsoft’s FQ4 Beats Expectations, Investors Send Stock Lower On Phone Losses
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/microsofts-slips-3-after-reporting-fq4-profit-and-revenue-beat-in-wake-of-massive-phone-writedown/#.b5imzi:m5qp
Following the bell, Microsoft reported its fiscal fourth quarter financial performance, including revenue of $22.2 billion, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.62.
The company took a stiff charge in the quarter relating to its writedown of hardware assets that it purchased from Nokia. Using normal accounting methods, Microsoft had operating income of negative $2.1 billion in the quarter.