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Barnes & Noble May Look to Spin Off the Nook E-Reader

January 6, 2012 by

High production costs may mean partners or a spin-off

After a worse than expected quarter and with the growing realization that developing hardware and keeping it competitive is a costly business executives at Barnes & Noble have indicated that it may seek to separate the e-reader business.

The red ink is expected to continue and the company said that it expects to double its losses this year. According to the Wall Street Journal the company does not appear to be seeking to kill the platform but rather to put it on its own to sink or swim as the market dictates.

With its mainstream book selling business being hurt by digital competitors it has been slow to exploit that space, and ceded it to growing rival Amazon with its Kindle and to other tablet makers’ primarily Apple and its iPad.

It had strong holiday sales, with a 70% increase over last year, but failed to meet expectations in sales over the holiday season and that has had a domino effect on sales of related products that are used with the Nook, the company said.

The Nook Color

Barnes & Noble said in a release that it is in discussions with strategic partners including publishers, retailers, and technology companies in international markets that may lead to expansion of the Nook business abroad.

However the company cautioned that it will create a separate Nook business. William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble said “we have a NOOK business that’s growing rapidly year-over-year and should be approximately $1.5 billion in comparable sales this fiscal year.”

A top rival to the Nook is Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which came out of the door hot and sales have been tremendous since then, with it being Amazon’s top selling product the last 13 weeks. Amazon’s ability to tout the platform every time you visit its web site certainly had to help in the marketing of the platform.

However a tear down by iSuppli, that is the disassembly of the product to determine its component cost, shows that it costs more to build a Kindle Fire than Amazon sells it for, and that does not account for the software engineering and other aspects of the device.

It will be interesting to see how this shakes out in the next year or so. The product appears to be a strong platform that performs as users would want. Right now it seems likely that it will find a system manufacturer to partner with to help shift costs, but only time will tell.

Filed Under: Amazon, Apple, iPad, Tablets, Wall Street Journal Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Kindle Sales Still Burn Bright

January 2, 2012 by

Tablets the tops for Small and Medium businesses
According to market research firm NPD Group, the demand for tablets is expected to grow in the small and medium business market, which is companies with less than 1,000 employees, over the next year with Apple’s iPad leading as the most popular tablet choice.

According to the group’s SMB Technology Monitor for the third quarter 73% of respondents said that they intend to purchase a tablet in the next 12 months, up from 68% in the second quarter survey. 90% said that they plan to spend the same or more than in the previous year.

The largest firms, 501 to 999 employees, in the survey are the most likely to purchase tablets, with 89% indicating intent to purchase while in the smallest group, under 50 employees, only 54% expect to buy.

Amazon reports Kindle sales still sizzling
Amazon reported that it sold over 1 million Kindles each week of December, making it a very happy holiday for the on-line retailer. While other tablet manufacturers have struggled to gain traction in a market that has been dominated by Apple and its iPad since its introduction, Kindle has been a nice exception.

Amazon said that since the introduction of the Kindle Fire it has been the top selling product on its site for 13 consecutive weeks. It should be noted that Apple is expected to sell 61% of all tablets in the quarter but Amazon is starting to make a dent in Apple’s overall market share.

Will the next generation Android OS work in my device?
Always a good question. At first it seemed (maybe just to me) that 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich, would work on any existing Android device. ICS, built to work on both smartphones and tablets, will apparently not be backwardly compatible with all current devices. The people at International Business Times have gone to the trouble of listing many of the devices that will and will not be upgradeable.

Dell steps back into the Venture Capital market
Dell has returned to the venture capital market, its second effort in this space. During the heyday of the dot com boom and beyond Dell was an active investor with its Dell Ventures effort and reached over $1bn invested at one time. It started departing the space when it sold off the bulk of its portfolio in 2005 and then quietly exited afterwards.

Well now it is back with the formation of Dell Capital Ventures and has hired Northwest Venture Partners executive Jim Lussier as managing partner and Ingrid Vanderveldt, who has experience in founding and spinning off startups as the ‘entrepreneur in residence.”

The investment effort will focus on early stage companies and Dell has not indicated what type of funding the effort will initially receive. According to the Wall Street Journal Dell will seek to eventually establish the program as its own business unit inside the company with its own resources and budget.

Microsoft’s new mobility
Will 2011 be the year that is remembered as the time when Microsoft breaks the tether of its desktop software/Windows business and embraces mobility and a more flexible software development approach as eWeek posts? If so that would make for an interesting company- you have to wonder how many solid products have been killed over the years due to turf wars dominated by the Windows team.

Cnet chimes in with a list of 5 things to look for from Microsoft in 2012, and includes its Windows 8 tablets due to the company’s decision deliver its tile-based OS rather than the Windows interface users are accustomed to. The piece also expects an increase in litigation from Microsoft towards Google’s customers for its Android and Chrome software.

This week in lawsuits
An intellectual property firm claims that Apple could make $10 per device in royalties from the vast array of Android manufacturers if it dropped its lawsuits and went the licensing route. Just over the holidays there were nearly 4 million Android activations. But where is the fun in settling? Intel and AMD once spent over $1 bn in legal fees in their dispute over x 86 technologies.

Do nice phones finish last? Or do people just not want Microsoft phones?
Is Microsoft’s lack of an intimate relationship with carriers the reason the Windows handsets have not been flying off the shelves? Well that is the position put out by former Windows Phone General Manager Charlie Kindel in a blog posting. A few interesting takes on his comments here and here. If you feel like it you can find more comments on the posting.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Dell, iPad

NFL: Thursday Night Games Average 450,000 Online Viewers

December 26, 2011 by

In case you were still wondering whether or not online access hurts regular-television audience numbers, here’s another data point to confirm that it doesn’t: The NFL said Monday that TV views of its Thursday night NFL Network games is up 8 percent over last year, while its online audience is averaging 450,000 unique views per game.

The 450,000 number isn’t broken down between viewers of the streaming coverage at NFLNetwork.com or folks watching via Verizon Wireless’s NFL Mobile app, but either way the aggregate total is impressive, and a signal that there may be even more of an appetite for NFL content than was previously thought.

With the Super Bowl slated for online streaming, it is the guess of MSR that the days of online access being a novelty have ended and now an online outlet will become the norm rather than the exception. How that plays into rights contracts and teams’ marketing campaigns is something still in its infancy, but it will be a compelling story we’ll follow closely in 2012.

Filed Under: iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NFL, NFL Mobile, NFL Network, Super Bowl, Verizon Wireless Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Who likes Motorola’s Xyboard?

December 19, 2011 by

BlueSprig lands $10 million investment round
Mobile security software startup BlueSprig has secured $10 million Series A funding and has debuted a beta version of its forthcoming app for Apple iOS and Android devices. The funding came from IDG-Accel’s China Growth Fund.

The beta app, AirCover, is designed to protect users from a wide range of issues including malware, viruses and even theft. Aversion can be downloaded at its web site-www.bluesprig.com. Among the features the software offers are cloud backup, and system security. The company has also released full versions of its system utility tools, JetBoost and JetClean.

The company has offices in both San Francisco and Chengdu, China and is headed by CEO Jason Johnson who has a history of successfully launching companies and then selling them to larger concerns such as Global IP Solutions which Google purchased and InterQuest Communications which was purchased by Darwin Networks.

Nielsen study tracks smartphones rise
In “State of the Media: The Mobile Media Report”, one of its latest studies market research firm Nielsen has tracked the rapid rise of smartphones in the United States and highlights the growing impact they have on the consumer market.

Among the interesting facts is that the number of smartphone subscribers using the mobile Internet has grown 45% since last year and that 87% of app downloaders have used deal of the day websites such as Groupon.

In a related report it is noted the impact that teens are having on the mobile data market, tripling mobile data consumption and showing that teens between the ages of 13-17 use an average of 320 MB of data a month, a 256% increase over last year.

Saudi Prince invests $300m in Twitter
Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has continued his history of major investments in high tech companies this week with a $300 million stake in social micro blog company Twitter, Forbes has reported.

The investment was lead by Kingdom Holdings Co. an investment firm that he owns 95% of and which has invested in companies such as Apple, GM and News Corp. According Forbes the Prince is the 26th wealthiest billionaires’ in the world with a estimated fortune of $19.6bn.An interesting note is that he does not use Twitter.

Did the iPad kill the Netbook?
That is the point of a recent piece by Business Insider that says that Dell’s recent decision to kill off its Inspirion Mini line of netbooks is a sign that the netbook market segment is dead, and said that it sees the iPad as having killed the platform.

Dell has also recently killed its Streak tablet business but has indicated that it will most likely rejoin that space at some future date, for the time being it wants you to buy a notebook.

A look at Motorola’s latest tablet
Motorola is replacing its Xoom tablet, one of the original entrants into the current tablet market with a second generation product called the Droid Xyboard. There is two distinct models are the 10.1 a fast powerful model for the Enterprise and power users and a scaled down version called the 8.2.

Reviewers are pretty positive about the devices, with the one failing possibly being price. You can go to eWeek or Cnet for a look at the 10.1 review and to Engadget for an 8.2 review.

This and that
Amazon reports that it is selling 1 million Kindles a week.
Rumor has it that Apple is planning to release a 7.85-inch version of the iPad for release later this year?

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Dell, iPad, Nielsen Ratings, Startup Tagged With: , , ,

Xfinity Develops TV Sports Remote for iPhone

December 15, 2011 by

Have you ever been channel surfing and wished that you could simplify the process and just have a set of buttons that take you to live sports or scoreboard updates? Well if you are a subscriber to Xfinity, and use Apple’s iOS mobile devices there is an application that will meet your needs.

Called the Xfinity TV Sports Remote, it is a free, downloadable app available from Apple’s iTunes store that can turn your iPhone or iPad into a remote control for your TV that enables you to just move between sporting events.

It currently is designed to work with a large number of major sports and includes NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, NCAA Football, and NCAA men’s basketball and the company said that it is working on expanding the app to support additional broadcast sports.

It serves as a remote control and not as a technology that converts the iOS device into a viewing platform but rather makes it a focused remote control that you can program to meet your sports viewing needs.

It is easy to use but does require that you know your Comcast ID or e-mail address, which I did not initially and had to look it up which was not as easy as I would have thought. Once logged-in it checks what cable box you have, what channels you have access to and then takes you to the initial set-up page.

Enables Fans to select Favorites

This page has lists of sports events being broadcast today in your area. You need to temper your enjoyment by realizing that you may not subscribe to all of those that are displayed. It shows the channels that they will be broadcast on, and that should be the clue.

You can select a league by simply tapping on its icon and that will give you a list of games, so for the NFL it will list the Thursday, Sunday and Monday games, and then on the right had side show the channel for the ones that will be broadcast in your area. Unless the NFL uses it’s flex programming of course. In each of the leagues sections, just visiting will give you current scores for teams that are playing.

It is also very simple to add favorites although one step stumped me initially. You just click the small + by a team and it’s a favorite the first time you go to the favorites section. The second time you need to go to edit to add or subtract a team, otherwise it just tells you the status of any games your favorites are playing on that day.

The favorites section will show you the time and channel that your favorite teams are playing on the current day, if they are playing that is and if it is broadcast The only limit to favorites is the number of teams available, you can favor them all if you wanted to.

Other features include the ability to select which TV you are watching and the ability to record sports on DVRs. A caution on this feature, it will preempt any other recording setting so you might delete someone else in the houses setting to record a non sports event, hard as that might be to believe.

The program will show the sports packages available in your area but you need to directly call to sign up for one- no on-line option available.

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, Baseball, Comcast, iPad, iPhone, Live Sports Video Consumption, Major League Baseball, NBA, NCAA Football, NCAA Hoops, NFL, NHL, Tablets, Xfinity Tagged With: , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Barnes & Noble Enhances Nook Color

December 12, 2011 by

OnLine’s new apps mean Tablets can be gaming consoles
Cloud gaming developer OnLive has developed a set of apps that bring console gaming to tablet and mobile (i.e smartphones) platforms. The company said that this will open up top ranked, high performance games that were once only available on consoles to a market that is at least 500 million strong.

The Universal OnLive Wireless Controller enable a player to use a Wi-Fi network to play a program that is stored in the cloud and streamed live to the tablet, phone, PC or Mac. A user must own the program and once purchased it can be used on any device.

OnLive currently has a stable of 25 games that have been adapted to work with touch screen devices including L.A. Noire, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Lord of the Rings: War in the North, and Defense Grid Gold. The Universal OnLive Wireless Controller uses technology that the company is expected to be available soon for a list price of $49.99.

Barnes & Noble enhances Nook software
Barnes & Noble has released a software upgrade for its Nook Color, a move that brings the low cost device closer in features and capabilities to its more expensive Nook Tablet as well as rivals from other developers.

Among the new found features is access to Barnes & Noble’s huge Marvel graphic novel collection via Nook Comic, streaming movies and TV shows via Netflix as well as the Flixster app for on-the-go access to digital streaming media.

In all the company said that it added 100 enhancements that ranged from increased font size to the ability to read books in either landscape or portrait mode. Head over to Cnet for a fuller listing of features as well as some issues with the product.

Microsoft to offer Open Source Apps for Windows 8
ExtreameTech has reported that the advocates for Open Source software have won an unexpected ally with the announcement that Microsoft will allow open source apps at its Windows 8 app store.

Microsoft has long been a foe of the open source movement, but entering the app space much later than rivals Apple and the Android lineup it needs a boost and it appears it is taking a chance that one of its rivals is willing to take.

While Apple prohibits open source apps for its iOS in its store Microsoft has stated that it will allow apps developed under a license from the Open Source Initiative and that the OSI license will trump the Microsoft Standard Application License Terms that have tough sharing provisions.

The lack of open source apps has not seemed to hurt Apple yet as it just reported that it just had its 100 millionth app downloaded from its Mac App Store.

The Patent wars heat up
Motorola won an important ruling in German courts last week that could shackle Apple and force the company to pay out royalties and make changes to its technology. The court ruled that Apple has failed to license one of Motorola Mobility’s patent technologies.

Motorola could seek an injunction preventing Apple from selling products that contain the technology in dispute, which basically means no iPhone or iPad sales in Germany if granted. Apple said that t will appeal the ruling.
If Motorola wishes to have a sales injunction enforced against Apple it will need to post a $133 million bond to cover costs in case Apple later prevails in court. Motorola has licensed the technology in question to others but wanted to charge Apple at a higher rate.

Looking for an Android to call your own?
Not exactly what Harrison Ford was in a search and destroy mode in “Blade Runner”, but not like any phone you have used before, a strange new communications technology is emerging from the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) .

Called the Elfoid P1, it is a prototype tele-operated android that will, in the future, mimic motion and appearance of that of the users, hopefully conveying a more human sense to phone conversations.

Sadly it is not a machine that you can send to work in your place but rather a pint sized device that stands in as a phone and resembles, well here is a photo you can decide for yourself what it resembles. Not sure I would want to whip one of these out of my pocket at a business meeting to update my calendar.

CES
If you have an interesting product or app showing at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show that you think we might be interested in drop us a line.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apps, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Motorola, OnLive, Tablets, Wi-Fi Video Streaming Tagged With: , , , , ,
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