Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Microsoft Ticks off OEMs, Apple to Invest in Twitter?

The China Times, via Endgadget, is reporting the Microsoft is limiting the number of OEMs that can build a tablet that runs the RT version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. This is the version that can be run on a tablet built using an ARM-based processor.

According to the piece the lucky few include Asus and Lenovo, which can use Nvidia processors, Texas instrument processors will be in Toshiba products while Samsung and Hewlett-Packard opting into the Qualcomm camp, with HP later dropping out at least in the near term.

Apple looking to invest in Twitter?
The New York Times has reported that Apple is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter, according to unnamed sources familiar with the talks. It appears that the talks are informal at this point so do not cross your fingers just yet if you like the deal. However it could lead to tighter integration between Twitter and Apple’s operating systems, much like what Apple is doing with Facebook.

Google breaks down Motorola Mobility purchase
Ever wonder what $12.5 billion will get you? Well that is the price that Google paid for Motorola and the company has recently explained what each of the major components was valued. The 17,000 patents in its portfolio were worth roughly $5.5 billion. It paid $2.9 bn for the cash acquired, $2.6 bn was goodwill, $670 million was other assets and $730 million was customer relations. You can look here for more details or head over to its 10-Q filings with the SEC.

Microsoft wins around in Germany vs Motorola
Microsoft has won a round when a German court ruled that Motorola Mobility has infringed on a patent that deals with common names for long and short file allocation tables. The two sides have been battling around the globe on the issues of patents and both sides have won, and so of course lost, various patent rulings in the last six months so if this sounds like a repeat, it is close to one.

Microsoft admits hostility over Surface
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft has said that there could be potential problems with its introduction of a table that would compete with its OEMs that purchase the Windows 8 operating system.

Microsoft said that smartphones and tablets from rivals such as Apple represent a threat to its current business, in part because their increased popularity coupled with declining PC sales makes Microsoft’s existing platforms less appealing to application developers.

Kickstarter favorite Pebble to deliver late
The Pebble smart watch, one of the real success stories in regards to funding via Kickstarter, has said that it will be delivering its product later than it had originally expected, IT Business is reporting. Part of the problem, according to the company, is the very success it had with Kickstarter.

The people that funded the company were to receive watches as part of compensation for their pledge, and originally the company had expected to produce 1,000 watches to meet that demand. Since it went off the rails in terms of funding the company now needs to produce over 68,000 watches for the investors.

Major settlement in patent case brings in major mobile players
The patent holding firm NTP has reached what is possibly an unprecedented settlement with 13 major mobile technology developers over the use of a number of patents that NTP owns. The companies included in the settlement are: Apple, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, HTC, Motorola Mobility (now owned by Google), Palm (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), LG Electronics, Samsung, and Yahoo.

According to a piece in InfoWorld the terms of the deal were not revealed but it did say that all of the tech companies could use a number of NTP’s patents and that NTP will receive a licensing fee from the firms and that in turn it has ended its patent infringement suits against these companies.

Apple vs Samsung starts today in Calif.
The on again off again suit between the two will start in front of US District Court Judge Lucy Koh today as Apple seeks to prove its damage claims against rival Samsung revolving around a number of Apple patents that it claims Samsung has infringed on. The stakes are high as Apple has claimed that it is entitled to $2.525 billion in damages.

Apple Bids $356 million for Security Firm AuthenTec

Apple has made a bid to purchase AuthenTec, a company that develops security solution around its fingerprint reader technology. Apple is offering $8 per share for the company bringing the deal’s value to approximately $356 million.

AuthenTec currently sells its technology into the mobile and networking space and the move could be a step by Apple in providing authentification in its mobile devices such as the i{Phone and iPad as these are increasingly used as digital wallets and credit cards.

According to a blurb on the AuthenTec site the market for worldwide mobile payments is expected to grow from an estimated $240 billion this year to $670 billion by 2015, using data from Jupiter Research.

AuthenTec already has a wide range of offerings for the mobile payment space including products that are low powered and so ideal for smartphones. Current clients include Samsung which uses the technology in its smartphones and tablets as does Lenovo, and it already has a solution for Apple’s PCs

The deal needs to be approved by AuthenTec’s shareholders, having already received unanimous approval by its shareholders. The stock has surged since the bid was made public and Yahoo is reporting that the company can accept higher bids, but that it cannot solicit them. There is an $11 million breakup fee it would have to pay Apple if it does accept a higher bid.

Friday Grab Bag: Kindle Rumors, Odd Olympic Facts

Every Olympics you see some piece about the sports that have come and gone for the games, baseball and shooting live pigeons being two that readily come to mind. However there is something much more fundamental about the games that has changed a great deal as well, mainly how you get your information.

Everybody on the Internet must know by now that this is the most social media Olympics in history (also the 1st?), but think about past games and how you got the news and how they were broadcast. A nice piece in Mashable and accompanying infographic lays it out quite well.

The first modern Olympics, in 1896 had carrier pigeons, first radio broadcasts in 1924, first live telecasts in 1936 but worldwide broadcasts had to wait until 1960. The Internet hit way back in 1996! In my opinion one of the best things is that you can now get all of the games not just the ones that the studios decide I want to see, and no tape delays!

Speaking of Pigeons — get a load of these Guinea Pigs
Ok, this rates as the dumb post of the week but it just cracked me up. It is just a series of six photos that show a set of guinea pigs competing in a number of Olympic events in London. So let the real games begin!

Record iPad sales not enough for Apple to meet expectations
Apple’s revenue for the past quarter and forecast for the current one did not meet with analysts’ expectations despite selling 17 million iPads during the quarter, up 84% compared to the same quarter a year ago and up 44% from the previous quarter. It sold 26 million iPhones, down 26% from the previous quarter.

The company did manage to have $35 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 22% from a year ago and had $8.8 billion in net profit, up 22% from the previous year. Apple plans to update its MacBook line this quarter, release a new Mac operating system and a new iOS later this fall.

Bucs bailing on iPads
The NFL seemed like the next conquest for Apple’s iPad but now a report from JoeBucsFan.com, as relayed by ProFootballTalk, makes it look like one team is backing away from the tablets. Tampa Bay is reportedly discontinuing the use of the tablets to its players according to the blog.

It seems that players were forgetting to charge them, did not update them automatically and the team could not be sure that players were using them. I wonder how they can be sure that the players are reading the 500+ page binders they issue each week?

Elemental streams Olympics
If you are watching the Summer Olympics in London on line, you can give thanks, at least in part, to Elemental Technologies. A product from the company, Elemental Alive, is the backbone to the live streams that will be seen worldwide.

While we have mentioned that NBC will be live streaming all of the events from the Olympics live in the US, it should be noted that the BBC will also be streaming the games to much of the rest of the world, and both rely on Element’s technology to send the video to computers, phones and tablets. That is quite an accomplishment for a company still in startup stage.

Apple, Motorola Mobility both appeal dismissal of patent infringement case
Well here is one thing that the two companies can agree on; both have appealed (separately) the decision from last month by a U.S. federal judge to dismiss their patent infringement case. The case was thrown out ‘with prejudice’ by Judge Richard Posner, who ruled that they could not resubmit the lawsuit.

The case has been ongoing for some time and had increasingly been drawing the ire of the judge, along with the overall US patent system. He has dismissed expert testimony and honed down the number of issues involved in previous ruling prior to his dismissal of the case.

Seattle pushing for new NBA team
After losing the Supersonics, its NBA team a few years ago, Seattle looks to be trying to be back in the mix for a team. The King County Council is about to vote on a proposal that is now in front of it regarding building a new arena, the lack of which was a core cause in losing its last team.

The proposal, from investor Chris Hansen would call for a $490 million new facility with private equity paying $290 million and the rest from bonds by the city and county that would be paid for by arena generated taxes and fees. The issue must also be passed by the Seattle City Council. No word on where the team is going to come from.

Kindle rumors galore
It seems with Google’s entrant into the 7-inch tablet space with its well received Nexus 7 and the possibility of an Apple product in the same space has cause a rise in the rumor mill about future Amazon Kindles to combat the new rivals.

Tom’s Hardware is reporting that the current Kindle’s may see a 15% drop in price, to around $150 as it prepares its new ones for market. The new ones may be here as soon as next week, according to SiliconAngle, which reports that a pair of tablets, a new 7-inch as well as its first 10-inch may be released as early as the 31st of July.

YouTube Deal Will Enhance ACC’s Digital Network

The Atlantic Coast Conference’s digital network has introduced a channel on YouTube that will deliver live content from the ACC as YouTube continues to grow as a force in live sports broadcasting with deals such as this.

We have long talked about the emergence of YouTube as a de facto channel for sports, and YouTube has been working hard to cement that position with the ACC deal as one of its more notable deals. However in case you missed it will also be serving up some nice Olympic moments via a deal with NBC that will enable it to show highlights and live events from the London Olympics.

The ACC and YouTube have been partners to a degree for several years and provided exclusive, but not live content at its site since at least 2009, however this takes it a significant step further.

Between that time and now the ACC started a deal with Silver Chalice that enabled it to launch the ACC Digital Network that provided broad coverage of the ACC schools including news conferences, highlights and analysis that could be delivered to both Apple and Android mobile devices.

Now it will also present live events as well as on demand videos that are created by the ACC as well as a live weekly studio program during football and basketball season. There will also be condensed replays of ACC Network productions of football and basketball games.

The current deal will call for the ACC to provide fan access and interaction to its analysts via Google’s Google Hangout. Fans can view, comment upon and share the programming by visiting youtube.com/accdigitalnetwork, or by searching for ACC Digital Network on YouTube.

Of course others are also working on attracting digital partners. The Big Ten Networks recently expanded to support Android in its broadcast and the Pac-12 is increasingly involved in digital media. Still it is nice that the ACC will be presenting live sports to its fan base and other interested parties.

ESPN’s British Open Coverage Scores on Cable, Internet, Mobile

There must be an algorithm somewhere to write the inevitable press releases for broadcasters after any big event now, that begins with “record viewership” and then plugs in the terms online and mobile. ESPN’s coverage of the British Open last week and weekend certainly fits in, with big gains in just about every measurement category, including a 140 percent growth in the amount of live coverage watched on ESPN’s mobile and online platforms.

But — it could have been a lot bigger. Remember, ESPN limits its mobile access to people who pay for cable plans from Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable, Bright House Networks, and Comcast. How much bigger could the audience be if ESPN allowed non-cable subscribers the right to see things with a one-time fee? (Right now, the WWL’s answer to that is it’s not gonna happen.)

One guess is that since ESPN added Comcast to its list of approved cable-contract partners whose customers get access to all WatchESPN and ESPN3 content, the jump in online viewership was probably a given since the Comcast deal added about 40 million potential new viewers to the number that could see ESPN’s online streams. Even without any new partnerships that number should easily grow again next year, when ESPN should have support for Comcast customers with Android platforms, who were shut out this year.

I still think that ESPN could vastly improve its online coverage of big events, especially golf, by mimicing the excellent presentation done by the folks at the Masters. Right now the event coverage like the British Open is lumped in next to every other thing that ESPN covers, which as you know is quite a lot, so the experience dims. It would also be great to have an integrated chat/social experience on the same screen, so you could perhaps talk golf smack to friends and other fans without having to switch between multiple screens. I’d add in a window to keep track of the excellent ESPN Majors fantasy game, and my online golf experience would be complete. Well, we’d need the TigerCam too. But I’m not greedy.

ESPN Press release on its awesome British Open numbers.

Google, Facebook buy Apple-Focused developers

Hooking onto Apple’s money making bandwagon seems the way to go and two rival giants are doing just that, using their deep pockets to buy up technologies and development teams that will enable them to have more Apple iOS and related development skills in house.

The moves should not be a surprise for many reasons. Facebook and Apple have been moving closer together in recent days. Apple’s latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 6 has a great deal of integration with Facebook.

Google, while there are some signs of discord between it and Apple, particularly in the area of maps, has been a very aggressive company in the mergers and acquisition space for some time and this seems like a natural continuation of that activity.

First up is Google, which has acquired a company called Sparrow that makes email clients for both Apple iPhones as well as for its Macintosh desktop products, as some call a better way to use Google’s Gmail. So the fit seems a natural in many ways as the development team, which will be attached to the Gmail team, will seek to simplify the communications app. The Verge is reporting that the deal may have been worth $25 million.

Facebook’s deal, acquiring the development team at Acrylic Software, is actually more personnel focused. Acrylic is an app design studio that also designs for Apple’s iOS. This move is also following a trend by Facebook, it did not acquire the apps that the company has developed, notably a news reader and a secure wallet app, but rather it gained the company’s two employees, it a move that is called an acqui-hire.