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Friday Grab Bag: Tablet Sales Grew 260% in 2011

January 27, 2012 by

Market research firm Strategic Analytics’ latest study of the tablet market shows that global tablet shipments reached 27 million units in the last quarter of 2011 and that Android-based systems captured a 39% share.

The 4th quarter sales represent a 150% increase over the 10.7 million units sold a year earlier. Apple is still the king of the hill with a 58% share, a number that translates into 15.4 million iPads sold.

The report notes that Microsoft has a miniscule 1.5% share of the market, although that may change when Windows 8 hits the market later this year. Overall for 2011 tablet sales reached 66.9 million units, a 260% increase and the company found that increasingly consumers are opting for a tablet rather than a notebook computer.

Onavo lands $10 million in Series B funding

Mobile app developer Onavo has raised $10 million in Series B funding in a round that was led by Horizon Ventures, the private investment arm of billionaire Li Ka-shing. The other new investor in the round was Motorola Mobility Ventures, the strategic equity arm of Motorola Mobility.

Along with the funding the company added Jason Wong from Horizon Ventures to its board. Onavo’s previous investors, Sequoia Capital and Magma Venture Partners, also participated in the round.

Onavo develops a mobile app that can run on both Apple iOS and Android mobile devices and monitors data usage and has the ability to compress data in real time by routing the data through its cloud-based servers prior to its appearing on a mobile device.

Apple loses another round in patent wars

A Dutch court has reaffirmed a lower court ruling that Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet does not violate Apple’s patents and is not a copy of Apple’s iPad. Apple had been seeking to ban sales of the device in the Netherlands.

This follows a ruling in the US where a judge allowed Samsung to sell the tablet prior to the court case that will hear Apple’s arguments regarding the issue. At least Apple was not on the wrong side of one ruling-Samsung has filed its own patent suit and a court is allowing Apple to sell its iPads in the country as well.

Motorola has also gone on the offensive and has asked the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida to ban iPhone sales. It alleges that the iPhone infringe on six of its patents. It is very likely that Google gave Motorola due to terms in its pending purchase of Motorola.

Not to be deterred Apple has also filed a pair of new patent complaints in Germany against Samsung. And so it goes.

Jupiter Research sees a bright future for Ultrabooks

Market research firm Jupiter Research predicts that sales for ultrabooks, a sleek, lightweight notebook style being touted by Intel and partners, will experience very strong sales but will still trail the increasingly popular tablets.

The firm predicts that Ultrabook sales will reach 178 million in 2016, yet that will be significantly lower than the estimated 253 million tablets it expects to see sold in that year.
Ultrabooks in part will suffer simply because they will be later to market, while tablets have already seen very strong sales.

However it notes that due to the demanding engineering challenges in building an Ultrabook they will be significantly pricier than most tablets and that one of the key technologies expected to help sales, Windows 8, is not due until much later this year.

Rival social network companies tweak Google

Google has long been accused of playing favorites, with itself as the favorite. Now Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are striking back with the aptly named browser add-on called “Don’t be evil”

The name is a riff on one of Google’s unofficial mottos and the app will allow user of Google’s search engines to see how a search result page would look using Google’s pure organic search results. They claim that Google is slanting the searches to favor its one social network, Google+.

For an analysis of how search results can be different with and without the app goes to the Search Engine Land web site and read Danny Sullivan’s nicely researched piece on the differences.

Notes from earning reports…

Samsung Electronics has posted a record operating profit of $4.72 billion in its fourth quarter, driven by its surging smartphone sales. I guess those ads are working.

Motorola Mobility reported an $80 million loss for the 4th quarter with unit sales of tablets and phones down from the same period a year earlier, 10.5 million compared to 11.3 million. It shipped only 200,000 tablets in the current quarter.

Nokia on the other hand has a different story to tell. It reported that its smartphone sales dropped 27% in the fourth quarter. Expect it to accelerate the introduction of the Lumina 900, one of its new line of smartphones that run on Windows 7 operating system. However don’t cry for the company just yet, aside from still selling in excess of 20 million phones its deal with Microsoft calls for it to get a quarterly platform support payment of $250 million.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Facebook, Microsoft, Smartphone, Tablets, Twitter

Elemental Technologies Lands Stanford for its Sports Replay Solution

January 25, 2012 by

Elemental Technologies, a startup developing an array of technologies including instant replay for mobile devices, has signed a deal with Stanford University’s athletic department to show replays for events played at the school’s Maples Pavilion and Stanford Stadium.

Stanford is using the Elemental Live product as the basis for its Wi-Fi Instant Replay system that it is deploying on campus. The system will enable fans at events to view an instant replay immediately after the play occurred.

The solution takes input from four different camera sources that is continuously encoded in real time and immediately stores them on a local web server where clips are created and then pushed to fans within seconds after the play. Stanford fans can access the replays on their mobile devices via the school’s Stanford Gameday Live website.

This is just the latest in a line of strategic partners the company has signed deals with, but the first where its technology will be put in front of a cadre of experienced sports fans that have been weaned on instant replay and will know if it meets their needs or not.

The Portland, Ore.-based company was founded in 2006 and has had several rounds of venture funding. The first was in Dec. 2007 when it received $1.05 million from the Oregon Angle Fund. The Series A round of funding closed in July, 2008 with $7.1 million being raised in a round led by General Catalyst Partners and Voyager Capital.

The second round, in July, 2010, raised $7.5 million in Series B funding with Steamboat Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with The Walt Disney Co., joined existing venture funds General Catalyst and Voyager Capital in round.

The company is led by a trio of co-founders starting with CEO Sam Blackman. Blackman had previously has held a variety of positions in the industry including designing integrated circuits for Pixelworks and engineering positions at Intel and Silicon Graphics

Jesse Rosenzweig, the second co-founder, serves as Elemental’s chief technology officer. He also is a former Pixelworks employee and worked on developing software applications at that company. To fill out the triad of co-founders is Brian Lewis, who is the company’s chief architect. He also hails from Pixelworks and previously, he worked as an engineer and team leader at Rockwell Collins developing navigation, guidance and sensor control software for military transport aircraft.

The company has tested its technology with a range of companies in the high tech space and has a number of big-named partners including Amazon Web Services, Intel, nVidia, Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and Microsoft. Apple has been an important partner in helping with the live streaming technology.

Just as important it has a growing range of big name corporate and media customers that now number over 100. In that group are ABC, CBS Interactive, BTN, National Geographic, PBS, Oceanic Time Warner Cable, Comcast, HBO, and ESPN.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, NCAA Football, PBS, Startup

Apple has Record Quarter, iPhones, iPad Sales Soar

January 25, 2012 by

Apple continues to see strong sales for its mobile products as iPhones and iPads witnessed record sales, as did its Macintosh computers, in its fiscal first quarter that ended December 31, 2011. The company had quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and a quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion.

It is interesting to note that in its product lineup Apple’s computers come in a far third place in terms of unit sales with only its iPod platform showing a decline, most likely because its iPhones, with their large storage capacity can easily double as a dedicated music player.

The company sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Those figures are all time highs for the company. It only sold 15.4 million iPods, a 21 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

Another fact that stands out from the results is that Apple admitted that its tablets are cannibalizing sales of its Macintosh computers, even when it has a record setting quarter for the computer.

It will be interesting to see how this phenomenon carries over to the Intel-based PC space. Will the ultrabooks stave off declining sales? If not Intel had better ramp up its push to establish its Atom processor in the tablet and smartphone space.

Apple also reported that it did not believe that the Kindle Fire, and other smaller form factor ebook readers that also had very strong holiday sales, had any material impact on its iPad sales.

While analysts had expected a strong quarter from the company some admitted that they were staggered by the results and predict that the company will be able to maintain its momentum going forward, at least in the near term, as it has just started to expand into the Chinese market. It is also expected to release at least one new generation of iPads as well as a new iPhone later this year, moves that should also help see a surge in demand for its products.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Barnes & Noble, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Tablets Tagged With: , , ,

Restructuring Management at RIM, Corporate Restructure Next?

January 24, 2012 by


Co-CEOs step down, New CEO Named

The top management picture of wireless developer Research in Motion (RIM) has been completely redrawn this week with its cofounders surrendering the position of CEO and the board implementing a new top executive.

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, the co-chief executives and co-chairmen of the company announced that they were stepping down and submitted a succession plan to the company’s Board of Directors that included promoting one of the company’s two Chief Operating Officers, Thorston Heins, as the new CEO and president.

Lazaridis was the company’s founder and he has worked very closely with Balsillie as it grew to a $20 bn player and developer of the first popular smartphone, the BlackBerry.

However both Balsillie and Lazaridis will remain with the company in prominent roles. Lazaridis was named vice chairman of the board while Balsillie will remain as a director. Barbara Stymiest, who formerly served as a member of Royal Bank of Canada’s Group Executive and has been a member of RIM’s Board since 2007, has been named the independent Board Chair. John Richardson, formerly Lead Director, will remain on the Board. Prem Watsa, Chief Executive Officer of Fairfax Financial Holdings, also was named to the Board, expanding it to 11 members.

Declining Market Cap, Revenue and Market Share

The move comes as the once high flying developer of the BlackBerry is facing losses that are expected to extend across the current fiscal year and possibly beyond as demand for its technology continues to wane and the current generation of smartphones and tablets siphon away business.

It suffered a very bad 2011. Its market share has been plummeting in the smartphone segment, dropping from an estimated 30.4% to 16.6% as Android and to a lesser extent Apple iPhones have both expanded the overall market and at the same time eroded RIMs position in it.

The decline in market share has been accompanies by an even greater stock price decline, with a 75% decline in its stock value over the course of the year. It reported a 71% decline in earnings in its 3rd Quarter, it’s most recent. It has been hurt also by a delay in its next generation phones, the BlackBerry 10, now due late this year, and the fact that its tablet, the Playbook, has been a non-starter.

There have been increasingly growing demand from shareholders for vigorous action by the company, up to and including breaking it up or selling it in the last months. The promotion of Heins has not been met with universal approval by shareholders and analysts and is likely to fuel even more negative comments as Heins tries to turn around the company.

Fortune called Heins the wrong choice for CEO. Investopedia wonders if his appointment is simply ‘old wine in a new bottle’ and The New York Times led off with the headline ‘Markets Are Not Convinced by a New Leader at RIM’.

Yet he does have a number of assets in his favor- the company has new generation phones and tablets in the pipeline, it has $1.5bn in cash in the bank and a loyal core of customers that still claim it has the best tools for business. So while Heins has a tough road ahead of him, he has some props to help him along the way.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, BlackBerry, iPhone, The New York Times Tagged With: , ,

Nike Expands Presence in Fitness Tracking Space with Nike + FuelBand

January 23, 2012 by

Nike has entered the fitness tracking and measurement space with a user wearable wristband that tracks a user’s daily activity and uses a Nike-developed metric called NikeFuel to analyze your overall activity and oxygen burned.

There is a growing market for connected activity tracking product, including Motorola Mobility’s MotoActv and Jawbone Up as the most direct competition for this, but also varied other products including those using Ant Wireless’ Ant + such as the range of tools from Garmin and products that are platform specific like iBike.

The Nike+ FuelBand, slated to be released by the end of next month with a $150 price tag, includes a bracelet that the user wears. It features a three axis accelerometer that measures activity, primarily information such as the number of steps a user has taken, the time and distance.

The band has an option of four different metrics to chart: Time, Calories, Steps and NikeFuel. NikeFuel is a newly developed fitness metric from the company that is designed to convert the results based on the motion and the estimated oxygen burned a user can see what their daily activity totals and instead of giving a calorie count that might have large variables according to the persons’ size, sex and shape NikeFuel is a normalized score that awards equal points for the same activity regardless of physical makeup.

The wrist band has a set of 20 built-in LEDs that range from red to green and provide a user with an instant update as to where they are in relationship to their daily goal. This goal is set by the user and they can set it for either total activity of how much NikeFuel they wish to achieve. Each day’s activity is reset at midnight back to zero.

The company has been developing feedback products for some time in the runner category with Nike Plus but this time it is expanding out from that field with a platform that is designed for any type of activity. In addition the NikeFuel feature is a step up for the data that athletes had been able to gather in the past with Nike products. The company will provide NikeFuel feedback for its existing Nike Plus products at some point n the future.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Cycling, iBike, iPhone, Nike, Wahoo Fitness Tagged With: , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Apple to Own iBook Rights?

January 23, 2012 by

Has Google lost control of Android? A piece in the Guardian is suggesting that the OS has gotten beyond the company’s control and that fragmentation will continue to loosen its grip — but it is not going so far as to say that this will harm its widespread adoption due to an uneven user experience.

The post makes some interesting observations about the difference between the Android space and Apple’s iOS market, noting that since Apple has always been fanatical about control it has a relatively minor problem in this space.

It claims that Android is suffering fragmentation in 5 specific areas: user interface, device, operating system, market place and service, and that the fragmentation is severe. However Google, not surprisingly, takes a very different view.


Does Apple own book rights to iBook creations?

That is the position that Ed Bott over at ZDNet, among others, is taking after doing what almost everyone fails to do on a regular basis — read the license agreement that appears at the bottom of the page that you must click prior to using the software.

According to his post Apple’s iBooks Author program’s End User License Agreement (EULA) gives Apple not only the usual rights to the software, but also to the output that has been created by the software, in other words all of the text books that are created using the program!

The document says that you can give a work created with the software for free but that Apple has the right to accept a book or reject any book for sale and that the author must enter an agreement with the company prior to publishing. If you go look at the blog entry, and I recommend that you do, read the responses as well.

Mobile Apps vs. Web Usage — Times are changing

Web analytic company Flurry Analytics’ latest blog post shows some very interesting changes in how people access the Internet, how much time they spend, on average, browsing, and how this relates to mobile app usage.

Using data from the last 18 months there is a growing trend to using mobile apps and away from browsing on both mobile and desktop devices. At the start of the period the average user spent an average of 64 minutes a day browsing and 43 minutes a day using apps on their devices.

Both activities have seen a strong increase, with browsing growing to 72 minutes a day, although that is down from 74 minutes just six months ago. Use of smartphones and tablet mobile apps has jumped to 94 minutes a day, with the six month ago numbers logging in at 81 minutes. I want to know how people keep their average numbers so low!

Are Windows Phones poised for huge growth?

Despite a market share that is currently miniscule at the moment, a market research firm is claiming that phones based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS will see huge growth and over take Apple’s iPhones by 2015.

Computerworld has a good piece using research from iSuppli that shows the analyst firm expects Microsoft’s share to grow from 1.9% of the market in 2011 to 16.7% in 2015, a share that will be good enough to bump iOS to third while both will trail the huge Android market that will encompass 58.1% of the market.

The growth will be primarily driven by new devices such as the Nokia Lumina 900, Nokia’s first 4G device and one that will sold by both AT&T and possibly more importantly, by Microsoft’s extensive sales channel.

Apple vs Motorola Patent update

A judge has narrowed the number of patents that are in dispute between Motorola and Apple. He invalidated two and said that a third was not infringed upon. He did say that five patents had issues the required a trial.

Apple has already lost a US ruling where it had accused Motorola of infringing on three of Apple’s patents and the company has suits against Motorola and others ongoing elsewhere around the globe.

Chevrolet wants you to use a tablet during the Super Bowl

General Motor’s Chevrolet division is one of many advertisers that has purchased multimillion dollar spots that will air during the upcoming Super Bowl broadcast on Feb. 5th, but plans a more interactive effort than any have done in the past.

The division is releasing an app for use with Android and iOS devices and available at their respective stores as well as at chevy.com/gametime it will have a wide range of activities including trivia contests that will enable users to win prizes.

The company said that there will be thousands of prizes, from both Chevy but also from as Bridgestone, Motorola, the NFL and NFLShop.com, Papa John’s Pizza and Sirius XM Radio. This is certainly an interesting method designed to maximize the millions the company will have spent to advertise during the game.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Google, iPad, iPhone, Microsoft, Motorola, Tablets
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