Apple Demo Crashes: 570 Wi-Fi Networks Live in the Room

Sign of the times: Apple demo crashes. Attendees told to shut everything off. Why? "There are 570 Wi-Fi base stations operating in this room...That’s why our demo crashed.”

But the iPad updates are pretty amazing. About two million iPads were sold in the first 59 days (one every 3 seconds).

Some 35 million apps have been downloaded, about 17 per iPad.

Five of six biggest book publishers say the share of iPad e-books is 22 percent of all ebook sales in the first eight weeks.

There’s now more than 225,000 applications in the App Store and there have been five billion downloads.

About 15,000 apps are submitted every week, and 95 percent are approved in seven days.

AT&T Appears to Allow Some iPhone 3GS Users to Upgrade to iPhone 4 Without ETF

AT&T says it has adjusted eligibility requirements for at least some iPhone owners, allowing them to upgrade to the version 4 model without being slammed with an early termination penalty.

It is not clear to me that "every" iPhone customer will be able to do so. One of the iPhones on my account was replaced in November 2009 and it still appears that the upgrade date remains November 2011.

With some exceptions such as this, it appears AT&T wants to avoid negative reaction from most iPhone users who have gotten their 3GS devices and have had them a year or so.

Last year, AT&T likewise allowed some, perhaps most, iPhone 3G users to upgrade to the newer iPhone 3G S at the same discounted price as new subscribers. The move followed customer criticism about having to pay a $200 fee to upgrade to the iPhone 3G S before their two-year contract was over. Now AT&T is getting ahead of the crowd to make sure recent customers will see the same heavily-subsidized iPhone pricing as new and out-of-contract users.

iPad Gets 22% of E-Book Reader Market in Several Months on Market

Steve Jobs says Apple's iPad already has gotten 22 percent market share of e-book readers. Not too shabby for a product that allows users to read e-books as a feature, not as the primary device function.

Is Microsoft About to Fall Behind in Tablets AND Mobile Phones?

Goldman Sachs analysts caution that Microsoft is at risk of falling behind the iPad in the same way that the company fell behind the iPhone.

"Given iPad’s success, tablet PCs dominate many investor conversations, as it has created the potential of a fourth consumption device (PC, phone, TV and now tablet)," writes Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar.

Microsoft seems to believe the tablet is simply another form factor for the PC. Apple perhaps doesn't agree, and maybe doesn't have to worry about which view is correct. If all Apple can do is make the absolute-best tablet PC, then it wins. If it uncovers the fourth media device, and executes, it also wins, and maybe wins even bigger.

But it is hard to see how Apple can lose, at this point. The bigger question is whether anybody else can win, and if they can, how big they can win.

As Ballmer shrugs off the iPad, Microsoft risks another late start:

Google TV: Still the Business of the Future?

There's no telling what Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, might bring up today at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. He might announce something that would make Apple TV more than a hobby, which is how Apple formally characterizes it.


But that hasn't stopped Google from launching Google TV, its own effort to meld "the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience." Google  TV builds on Google Chrome to allow users to access all of their favorite websites and easily move between television and the web.

Google TV will use an SDK and web APIs for TV so developers can build richer applications and distribute them through Android Market.

Google is working together with Sony, Logitech and Intel to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale in the fall of 2010, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide.

"The TV industry is eventually going to be severely disrupted by the Internet, and eventually, I hope that I'll be able to get everything I want to watch online," says Dan Frommer, Business Insider deputy editor. "But it's going to take longer than it should, because TV companies are still fairly insulated -- especially as Comcast buys NBC -- and can protect their legacy business models for a while longer."

link

Less Apple Hype Than is Typical

Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone on June 7 that is thinner with a flat back, higher resolution display and a front-facing camera. Apple might have additional details about the iAd network and Game Center, the social networking feature, according to Wall Street Journal reports.

There might be less hype for this upgrade than typically is the case, because of the unauthorized leak of a prototype.

A new iPhone OS 4.0 operating system also will be debuted.

Analysts believe that the phone will be priced at a similar range as the current iPhone 3GS, which starts at $199 with a two-year contract, with the iPhone 3GS price cut to $99 with a similar contract.
The new lower price for the 3GS device, combined with AT&T Inc.'s new data prices, which lower the entry-level monthly service rate, could accelerate demand beyond the strong triple-digit growth the phone has been seeing, some believe.

"One of the impediments to smartphone adoption has been the service plan," says Shaw Wu, an analyst for Kaufman Brothers, adding that "when they make a form factor change, it's pretty powerful."

Apple is expected to sell about 36 million iPhones in its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model?

Question: Which Internet access providers will follow AT&T and adopt some form of "bucket-based" access pricing? Answer: Everybody, eventually.

To be sure, Sprint says it has no immediate plans to change its "unlimited" pricing. Sprint Nextel currently has no plans to change its mobile data pricing structure in the wake of AT&T Mobility's decision to move to a usage-based model, according to CEO Dan Hesse, at least for its fourth-generation network and voice devices.

Sprint already has a 5-Gbyte monthly cap for users of its 3G data cards and dongles, though the 4G network has an unlimited plan for dongle and data card users.

Clearwire Corp, 55 percent owned by Sprint Nextel Corp, also plans to keep unlimited data plans. But pricing changes are inevitable.

The reason the WiMAX network can offer unlimited data access across the board is because there are so few users on the network at the moment. That will change.

So Who'll Follow AT&T's Wireless Pricing Model? - Comcast: 'gauging customer interest' in unlimited wireless broadband - dslreports.com

Sprint Says HTC Evo Set a Sales Record

Whatever else the HTC Evo might mean for Sprint, it seems already to have accomplished one thing: settting a single-day sales record for Sprint Nextel. On June 4, 2010, the Evo became the device that has sold the most units in a single day, ever, at Sprint Nextel.

Sprint says the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.

In many cases it appears the Evo, which works on both the 3G and 4G networks, was being bought by customers who actually cannot use the 4G network yet, as Clearwire, which is building the 4G network, strains to add markets in Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.

"HTC EVO 4G has more than lived up to our expectations that it would be one of the most anticipated technology products of the year," said Kevin Packingham, Sprint SVP.

China a High Cost Producer?

China has a "problem," caused by its success. Before the recession it was clearly the low cost provider of goods among the largest nations of the world.

It has only been in the last year or so that China’s cost of labor has spiked up, notes 247wallstreet analyst Doug McIntyre. As did the Asian Tigers and Japan before it, China is on the way to becoming a country that will progressively move up the value chain in its hardware businesses, for example.

The country is the victim of its own success as Japan was, in a sense. It has a large middle class, rising wage rates and will have to create an internal market for its goods, rather than focusing on exporting.

China Becomes The High Cost Provider Of Goods – 24/7 Wall St.

Top-10 U.S. Telecom Sites Suggest

The May 2010 Hitwise report on site traffic has some interesting potential implications for communications service providers.

The top single site was Cricket, a firm historically focused on the wireline replacement market and using value pricing to replicate the unlimited free local calls element of fixed line service.

Verizon has three sites in the top 20, as well as holding spots two and three for traffic.

What is notable is that one of the three Verizon sites is the customer portal, indicating that people are becoming quite comfortable with using the portal for paying bills, asking questions and checking on usage and status information.

AT&T has two sites on the list, and the percentage of traffic for the four leading U.S. mobile carriers mobile sites is in line with their respective market shares.

T-Mobile USA also has two sites in the top 10, one of them its customer service portal, which likewise suggests user comfort with online support, as well as T-Mobile's possible success converting its customers away from paper billing to online-only billing.

Comcast's site in the top-10 also is a customer support portal. Back in the "old" days the top-10 sites were likely to be retail sales and transaction portals. These days, three out of 10 are relatively strictly customer support sites.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry

With the introduction of the iPhone, Steve Jobs achieved something that might be unique in the history of business: he single-handedly upended the power structure of a major industry, argues Chris Dixon, Hunch co-founder.

Before the iPhone, the carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile) had an ironclad grip on the rest of the value chain, particularly, handset makers and app makers. Back in the old days, an application could get access to the customer only by cutting a deal with a carrier.

That mostly is not the case anymore. To a greater or lesser degree, app developers can work directly with handset vendors these days. That's a huge switch.

Steve Jobs Single-Handedly Restructured The Mobile Industry:

Thank you

The only territory the United States gained after World War II...inhabited by the most selfless among us.

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France is located on the site of the temporary American St. Laurent Cemetery, established by the U.S. First Army on June 8, 1944 and the first American cemetery on European soil in World War II. The cemetery contains the graves of 9,387 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations.

Annual Smartphone Shipments will Double by 2014

Smartphone shipments will rise 105 percent to 506 million units in 2014 from 246.9 million in 2010, according to researchers at iSuppli Corp. Smartphones have become the fastest-growing segment of the cell phone market with unit shipment growth of 35.5 percent expected in 2010. Overall mobile handsets are expected to grow 11.3 percent.

At the same time,  video-oriented consumer electronics devices equipped with high-bandwidth wireless video interface solutions are surging as well, though from a low base.

Researchers at iSuppli expect the market for video-enabled consumer devices with high-bandwidth wireless video interfaces will grow to more than 85.2 million units by 2014, up from 606,000 units in 2009. By 2014, more than 53 million of these devices will be wireless-video-enabled digital TVs and netbooks or laptops.

LeapFrog Explorer to Take Advantage of App Trend

LeapFrog Enterprises is unveiling a new "Leapster Explorer" touchscreen gaming system that supports downloading of apps using a wired PC connection.

The Leapster Explorer is a multi-faceted device, allowing kids ages four to nine to play games, read e-books, watch 30-minute videos, or download new educational apps.

 It connects to a computer via a universal serial bus cable. The device isells for $69.

Apple’s iPod Touch seems to be the driver, rather than the iPad, as the Touch has become quite popular with tweens, for example, and many parents will not want to pay $500 for an iPad. LeapFrog has half the market share for the educational gadget market in the United States.

The Explorer comes with its own customizable pet, such as a dog, which the child can name and use as a persistent avatar on the device, and which also can be uploaded to the online site LeapWorld.

About 18 Leaplet apps will be ready for the launch.

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TD-LTE Kills WiMAX

TD-LTE will lead to the demise of WiMAX, with device sales peaking by 2015, say researchers at WiseHarbor. WiMAX has made significant commercial progress by occupying the unpaired spectrum that tends to be much cheaper than the paired spectrum used for CDMA-based technologies including EV-DO and HSPA, the firm notes.

But TD-LTE will eclipse WiMAX because it likewise allows the use of unpaired spectrum as well as the paired spectrum already employed commercially by LTE.

Mobile Broadband Devices Forecast to 2020 Predicts Demise of WiMAX With Rise of TD-LTE in Unpaired Spectrum:

Price is Key to Android Tablet Success

The latest Retrevo Pulse study asked over 1,000 people what phone they planned to buy this year and over 20 percent of the respondents indicated an iPhone. If that number holds up it could be another good year for Apple and the iPhone.

But the bigger issue is whether it already is essentially too late for other contestants to prevent Apple from dominating the category as it does MP3 players. So far, Apple, though a top contender, has not reached the level of market share domination in smartphones that it has in MP3 players. But nobody doubts Apple will try. And history suggests all other suppliers have to be worried about the sudden emergence of the tablet category as well.

Are we looking at another Apple dominated product category like the iPod did with MP3 players?

When Retrevo asked consumers what would prevent them from buying an iPad, the most common answer was “don’t need one,” followed by “too expensive.”

As most would have expected, users that already have an Apple PC or iPhone are more likely to think they need an iPad. When it looked at the iPhone owners, Retrevo found only 26 percent of those users thought they didn't “need” an iPad.

The Retrevo study also suggests that the e-book reader market and the tablet PC markets are distinct, to an extent. The company found a significant number (40 percent) of consumers who own or plan to own an e-Reader also plan to buy an iPad in 2010.

When Retrevo asked consumers what would get them to buy an Android-based tablet over an iPad, the number one answer was “price.”

While 53 percent of  respondents said they weren’t interested in buying a tablet at all, of the other 47 percent who wanted one, a little over half (53 percent of those who said they wanted a tablet PC) said they’d buy an Android tablet if it was less expensive than an iPad.

Also, 33 percent said they would buy if the tablet used the Verizon network.

If manufacturers of Android-based tablest want to grab significant share in the market, the poll suggests there is at least one thing they can do: create a device that doesn't cost as much as the iPad.

read more here

17% of Verizon Mobile Subs Would Switch to an iPhone?

AT&T’s iPhone-exclusivity deal hasn’t yet expired; nor has Apple announced plans to sell the device through a second U.S. carrier, despite what seems to be a constant stream of rumors.

But Morgan Stanley equity analyst Katy Huberty has estimated that nearly 17 percent of all Verizon mobile customers would upgrade to an iPhone when given a chance to do so.

“There is substantial pent up iPhone demand within the Verizon installed base as 16.8 percent of Verizon subscribers said they are ‘very likely’ to purchase an iPhone if offered on the Verizon Network,” Huberty says. “This 16.8 percent is higher than AT&T subscriber’s 14.6 percent extreme interest in the current AT&T iPhone and well above the overall iPhone extreme interest of 7.5 percent.”

Assuming Verizon does add the iPhone to its smartphone lineup and that most of its subscribers who said they were “very likely” to purchase the device do so over a two-year period, Huberty estimates Verizon would sell about seven million to eight million iPhones annually, for a couple of years, at least.

Huberty does not appear to be among those who believe existing iPhone customers on AT&T's network would switch over to Verizon. Sure, there will some switchers, but Huberty does not think it will be a sizable number of subscribers.

In markets where the iPhone has gone from single-carrier to multiple-carrier distribution, such as France, the original iPhone carrier that lost exclusivity hasn’t suffered much at all.

Beyond this, there’s the issue of early-termination fees, which will make it difficult for current AT&T iPhone users to flee, says Huberty: Also, since it appears 70 percent of U.S. wireless accounts, as well as about 70 percent of AT&T's accounts, are part of a family plan, it would be even harder to switch, as the entire family account would have to change.

The early termination fees for a five-line account would be substantial, depending on when in the two-year cycle the switch occurred.

Video Snacking, Not Feasting, is One Impact of New AT&T Tariffs

AT&T's latest realignment of its smartphone wireless data plans based on how much bandwidth they use is hard to characterize in a uniform sense. Heavy users won't like it, but the plans reflect more realistically the value they derive from the network.

Lighter users might find they actually can save money by switching plans. Lots of non-users who believe they are likely to be light users will benefit. Moderate users will have to think about whether to keep their unlimited $30 plans or switch to the $25 plan.

The clearest impact will be on new users signing up starting June 7, as the difference between the unlimited plan and the 2-Gbyte plan will mean users will likely wind up snacking on video rather than feasting. That doesn't mean actual behavior even under the old plan would have been much different. Users likely were mostly snacking, to begin with.

It's just that the 2-Gbyte cap will encourage people to watch their video consumption more closely.

And that likely is modestly bad news for the mobile video industry, to the extent that revenues are based on subscriptions or advertising. In the first case it will be harder to sell a recurring subscription service when users are not sure what it will cost to use the service, in terms of bandwidth charges.

In the latter case people will be watching less video, therefore being exposed to fewer ads, and resulting in less activity that can be monetized.

Even AT&T's high-end, $25 monthly plan, including 2 GB of bandwidth, can be used up in less than a day of watching video. And while AT&T's $10 per GByte overage charges are much more reasonable than previous industry charges, they're still unlikely to be popular.

A two-hour movie, even compressed, could use upwards of 500 MBytes of data. that could mean variable and unexpected charges, and consumers hate that.

 link

Family Plans Now Dominate Mobile Industry

Family plans now dominate consumer mobile service packages. More than two thirds of consumer contract plans are family plans, up from less than 50 percent at the end of 2005, according to Nielsen Co.

According to a new T-Mobile survey, 73 percent of households with both family plans and children 22 or older still have an adult child on their plans.

At T-Mobile, for instance, an individual plan with 500 minutes and unlimited texting costs $49.99 a month with a two-year contract. A family plan with 1,500 minutes and unlimited texting costs $99.99 a month for two lines, or about the same per person for more minutes. Adding two additional lines costs $10 a month, and cuts the price per person to $27.50.

What Will Consumers Do When Bandwidth Comes in Buckets?

AT&T's shift to aligning bandwidth consumption and retail pricing will be an important test of how well consumers actually understand how applications are related to bandwidth consumption, and whether price signals that work in virtually all other businesses also will work for mobile bandwidth consumption.

Lots of people think it will prove too challenging for the typial user. That might not be true if easy-to-use bandwidth dashboards are available. People will quickly figure out that video runs the meter hard while almost nothing else has to be thought about.

The other angle is that people are pretty good about figuring out that if "no additional cost" Wi-Fi hotspots can be used, or similar in-home or in-office bandwidth, they will do so, especially when there is a clear perceived value.

But there is really no way to know for sure until lots of users are on the new plans, and have time to adjust their behavior so they are intentional about bandwidth usage. It's really not that different from learning to be intentional about water, electricity, paper, gasoline, calories or just about anything else with real-world externalities.

The larger issue likely will develop as people start to use iPads and other tablet PCs, as well as netbooks, for the simple reason that people consume an order of magnitude more data on a fixed-line-connected PC than on a typical feature phone, or even a smartphone. But consumption patterns will change as the mix of connected devices changes.

Wireless offload to the fixed network will help quite a lot, and should be encouraged, as will easy-to-use and informative dashboards.

Adopt a Bird

Adopt a bird.....adopt a bird...adopt a bird...

You can adopt a bird here...

We can't save some of them....but we can save many...Associated Press reports after six weeks with one to four birds a day coming into Louisiana's rescue center for oiled birds, 53 arrived Thursday June 3and another 13 June 4.

And, says center spokesman Jay Holcomb, more are on their way from the rookery on Queen Bess Island, near Grand Isle.

About 20 people are working at the center, and so far Holcomb says that's plenty.

He and veterinarians Heather Nevill of Tri-State and Sharon Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say the birds were not yet ready for cleaning. They're being kept in wooden pens with mesh covers, white cloths over those and heat lamps to keep them warm so they won't preen themselves until they can be washed.

Can Clearwire Break Into Top-Five Mobile Ranks?

There being somewhere between 234 million and 238 million mobile customers in the U.S. market, one percent of market share represents about 2.4 million customers.

That means Clearwire now has less than half a percent market share, as it has about a million customers.

WiMAX no longer offering an advantage over Long Term Evolution, despite its headstart in the market for 4G services, one has to wonder whether it is realistic to expect Clearwire to reach the ranks of the top five contenders.

Clearwire is in eighth position at the moment, but with a healthy gap between it and number-seven Leap, which most observers think will become part of another company in the not-too-distant future. MetroPCS is the most-often-mentioned partner.

That would clear the ranks above Clearwire, allowing it to move to spot seven, but with a bigger gap than it now faces for future moves. A merged Leap and MetroPCS would have 12 million to 13 million subscribers.

Clearwire would have to leapfrog US Cellular to take spot number six, assuming US Cellular itself did not wind up as part of one the largest carriers.

One suspects Clearwire's center of gravity will have shifted to wholesale customers, rather than retail, several years into the future, as Sprint and Clearwire's cable customers ramp up sales of 4G services.

Breaking into the  top five retail ranks seems impossibly distant.

Verizon Marketing "Digital Voice" in 11 States and District of Columbia

Verizon now is marketing "FiOS Digital Voice" in FiOS markets in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and California, marking Verizon's initial wave of efforts to transition customers off the legacy voice network and onto the packet voice network.

The transition process could easily last a decade or more, requiring Verizon to maintain dual access and switching infrastructures for the interim period, before being able to decommission the old switching network completely, along with the legacy copper access network.

Verizon touts an easy-to-use, online account-management tool as a key element of FiOS Digital Voice, enabling customers to conveniently use a broadband-connected computer to access and manage the service's integrated features. Customers also have the option to add another FiOS Digital Voice line, with its own assigned number and all the same features, for $9.99 a month.

The service comes standard with 22 features including "Live Voice Mail Screening," which allows users to hear voice mail messages as they arrive and then decide whether or not to take the incoming call.

Call logs list the caller name, telephone number (if available), date, time-of-day, location and duration of every incoming and outgoing call. Users can easily transfer contact information directly into their FiOS Digital Voice personal address book.

"Caller ID on TV" allows FiOS TV customers to see incoming caller ID information displayed for several seconds in the corner of their TV screen.  They can decide to pause their TV programming to answer the call or let it go into their FiOS Digital Voice mailbox.  The feature can be turned on or off from the customer's set-top box.

"Locate me" allows users to program up to three numbers where they might be reached when not at home, and incoming calls will ring at each of those numbers, one at a time. Unanswered calls are sent to voice mail.

Simultaneous ring, do not disturb, voicemail with email notification and virtual numbers also are available.

New customers who sign up by July 24 for FiOS quad- or triple-play bundles that include broadband, TV and FiOS Digital Voice also will receive a guaranteed monthly rate for two years and a $20 monthly discount.

WiMAX and HSPA+ Speeds About Equal, in This Test

At least according to this test of the T-Mobile USA network and the Sprint 4G network in Philadelphia, Sprint's WiMAX network and T-Mobile's HSPA+ network delivered roughly similar download speeds, just shy of 3 Mbps on average.

These are real-world, average speeds, not "up to" numbers. By some estimates, 3 Mbps is easily twice as fast as the typical real-world speed with 3G, and faster than many home DSL connections.

4G Networks Tested: WiMAX vs. HSPA : The Numbers (Phone Scoop):

Sprint HTC EVO 4G gets its First Patch

Sometimes you only have to wait a few hours or days before a bug gets fixed. So it is with the Sprint HTC Evo, on sale today for the first time. Early beta users had reported a memory card issue that now is fixed.

The patch can be completed over the air, manually if required, by going to the "settings" and "system updates" menus and then following the directions.

Also, by this point all the initial units have been sold. As of 8:30 am Mountain time 90,000 units had been sold, leading one store manager to warn his staff that all units would be sold within an hour.

Activation computers appeared to be under strain as well.

Sprint HTC EVO 4G gets its first OTA update, fixes microSD issues

Is Clearwire's Future as a Wholesaler?

Clearwire today is partly a retailer of services under its own name, and a major retailer of spectrum services to cable companies and Sprint. But one wonders, given its continuing capital needs, and the existence of at least one major mobile provider that desperately needs new fourth-generation spectrum (T-Mobile USA) whether Clearwire will not ultimately find it is primarily or exclusively a wholesale provider of 4G spectrum.

Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks are minority investors while Sprint is the majority owner.

A research note from Credit Suisse evaluates the value of mobile satellite spectrum of the sort Harbinger Capital has been touting as the basis for a brand-new U.S. Long Term Evolution network, as being worth something on the order of $0.50 per MHzPOP. That evaluation apparently is derived from prices paid in 2006 for AWS spectrum that mobile providers now are using.

If those prices are sustainable in today's marketplace, then Clearwire might well be sitting on spectrum worth about $20 billion, Business Week has suggested. Some think it might be worth more.

read the Business Week story here

For Clearwire, much is riding on whether its strategy of buying up some 85 percent of the U.S. 2.5-GHz spectrum band will pay off.

The $5 billion Clearwire will pay its license holders for its spectrum over the next three decades is a bargain compared to what its rivals are paying. AT&T and Verizon bought their spectrum that can be used for 4G at government auction in 2008, paying a combined $16 billion, though many would argue those allocations, at much-lower frequencies, have propagation characteristics so much better that the premium is worth paying.

An unfunded business plan also remains an issue. At its current rate of spending, Clearwire will burn through its cash in 2011, according to Steve Clement, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. Clearwire may need $3.8 billion more to reach its goal of building a network that covers 270 million people, Clement says.

Clearwire now has about one million subscribers, double what it had in 2009. It added 283,000 net new subscribers in the first quarter, compared with 133,000 new customers in the previous quarter.

But even that rate of growth is unlikely to get Clearwire close to players such as Verizon Wireless, which had 93 million customers or so in the first quarter, out of 286 million total subscribers. Verizon has 31 percent of the market; AT&T has 25 percent; Sprint and T-Mobile USA both have 12 percent of the market.

Even at five million subscribers, Clearwire would still have only about 1.5 percent to two percent of the U.S. market, by the time it reaches that level, in two years, perhaps, assuming the overall market grows over the next two years about as much as it has been this year, and if Clearwire's growth accelerates.

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YouTube to “Live Stream?"

Max Haot, the CEO of Livestream, believes this screenshot provides”strong evidence that YouTube is about to launch a live streaming feature. The big issue most of us likely will have is how the service might be used, by whom, and what business model YouTube intends to pursue.

Ad support is one option, but it might make more sense to pursue a "carriage fee" option, where the provider would simply buy the equivalent of air time from YouTube.

Screenshot Hints At YouTube “Live Stream” Option

Netflix Outlines How it Will Become a Streaming Video Provider

Netflix was supposed to be "toast" as the world shifted from DVD rental to online viewing of movie content. But Netflix always knew that would happen, and has remained in front of the transition in a way few firms ever do.

Netflix has introduced a $7.99 streaming-only subscription plan in the United States for the first time. The plan, which allows members to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes streamed from Netflix to TVs and computers, is available now to both new and existing members.

The company also announced that the price of its popular subscription combining unlimited movies and TV shows streamed instantly over the Internet and unlimited DVDs delivered quickly by mail, with one DVD out at a time, will increase by a dollar a month to $9.99. Prices of subscription plans allowing for more DVDs out at a time will also increase.

Advertisers Might Be Able to Update Ads Dynamically Using Twitter

Google has quietly invited a handful of advertisers to test a new display-ad integration with Twitter, which essentially allows ads to be updated in real time by changing the content of the tweets.

The layout of the ads places the Twitter bird is in the left-hand corner while the advertiser's latest tweet is featured in a box centered in the unit. A button to the right reads "Follow on Twitter," allowing users to become a follower of the advertiser without leaving the page.

The ads are linked to the client's Twitter account, allowing it to always dynamically insert every tweet. Clicking on any part of the ad other than the "Follow on Twitter" button takes the user to the advertiser's Twitter page. The ads are appearing on sites in the Google content network, ClickZ reports.

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Web Apps or Browser Apps?

In the "battle" between mobile apps and apps that run from inside browsers, Conduit, has found success with its cross-browser web application platform, and has announced support for Google Chrome.

That means publishers will be able to develop an application once for Conduit’s platform and have it work on Chrome and other major browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

Conduit has also made thousands of Chrome-compatible apps available at its App Marketplace, making it the largest source outside of Google for Chrome apps.

From May 2008 to March 2010, the company’s active users rose more than 500 percent, from under 20 million to over 100 million, and its revenue grew tenfold. From August 2009 to May this year, the amount of apps with over one million active users rose from single digits to over 40.

A recent Coca Cola Zero app was shown to over a million users within a day, and within ten days it reached more than 80 million people with nearly 1 million minutes of combined viewing time. That last statistic is worth considering. Many apps are ads, or simply links to web pages.

Conduit announces Google Chrome support for its massive web app platform | VentureBeat

Mobile Web Will Win Over Apps

As intrigued as most people seem to be with mobile apps, mobile browsers not only are likely to catch up, but the attraction of an app--that it executes properly on a mobile screen--will diminish over time as mobile Web devices and browser-based alternatives start to work as they would if the user were on a PC.

"I think its crazy that every brand, company, agency and corporation is having an arms race to pump out their app," says Chris Brashear. "Mobile browsing is cross platform, faster speed to market, less expensive and ready to explode," he says.

Mr Brand Manager: Put down the app and walk away… there are larger opps in mobile

Bill Maher is an Idiot

Bill Maher thinks this is funny?

Content Owners Sour on Ad-Supported Online Video

Content owners seem to be concluding there is no good way to put professional content online and earn a reasonable return based exclusively on advertising. That means more exploration of pay walls, subscription services and ways to tie online consumption to other for-fee services, such as cable TV subscriptions.

"Online pennies compared to network dollars" is one way of looking at the problem. Hulu, for example, seems to be pulling in about $100 million and says it now is profitable, but that's a lot less than its owners had been expecting.

Some products apparently can be monetized and provided to end users for no incremental cost. But it is starting to look as though professionally-created video, with the possible exception of some online video provided as part of existing cable TV subscriptions, for example, is not one of those types of products.

Windows 7 Tablet Demo

Everybody wants to be in the tablet game.

"Smartbook" Category Crushed by Tablets, at Least for the Moment

Whatever became of “smartbooks”? At last January’s Consumer Electronics Show, some big hardware companies were using that name to describe new low-end computing devices that look like small laptops but use different chips and software. But that was before the iPad.

Now industry buzz has shifted pretty dramatically away from smartbooks to forthcoming slate-style devices that are expected to challenge Apple’s latest hit. “It’s fair to say the iPad and tablets are resetting everybody’s roadmap and forcing them to think about they are going to do next in a different light,” says Henri Richard, senior vice president and chief sales and marketing officer for Freescale Semiconductor, which has been marketing chips for smartbooks.

But backers of the concept say it’s not so much that smartbooks are stalled. Rather, there are simply so many new hardware and software options–and consumer preferences are so uncertain–that it’s too early to tell exactly what the most popular designs will be and what people will wind up calling them.

“This market between the phone and the laptop is an area that is undefined,” says Steve Mollenkopf, a Qualcomm executive vice president who is also president of its chip unit. “You will see a proliferation of different devices.”

Whether there is a single tablet category or possibly multiple categories, or whether tablets simply reshape existing categories, is yet to be determined. What does seem to be clear is that all the devices are intended to be "always connected."

From a suppliers’ perspective, companies that make cellphones or components for them want to expand their turf into larger products. That includes companies like Qualcomm, Freescale, Nvidia and others that have offered chips for the handset market based on technology from ARM Holdings. They can’t offer the ability to run conventional PC programs, but can boast long battery life and stress the “instant-on” nature of their machines–two of the chief selling points of smartbooks.

At the same time, makers of conventional laptops and their suppliers are trying to get into smaller devices. Chip giant Intel, for example, has helped popularized low-priced laptops called netbooks that mainly run Microsoft Windows. Intel has also been talking for some time about an even smaller, keyboardless category called MIDS, or mobile Internet devices–a term that seems to have been overshadowed by small-sized tablets.

But another way to look at the situation stems from what tasks a user is tackling. For example, touching the screen is the most efficient way to get some kinds of things done; for some chores–like composing a long document–a physical keyboard is the way to go.

Either way, at least for the moment, tablets have sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

Sprint HTC Evo: the Video

Ad for the new Sprint HTC Evo, coming June 4.

Verizon Says it Has No Immediate Plans to Sell iPhone

The  longest-running rumor many of us can cite at the moment is the nearly-constant expectation that Verizon Wireless is going to carry the Apple iPhone. Alas, the rumors, which have heated up again recently, seem to be equally false. No iPhone at Verizon for the foreseeable future, it seems.

Froyo Feature: Threaded call log | Android Central

Android 2.2 (Froyo) features threaded call logs that collapse multiple calls from the same person or entity into a single pane that can be tapped to expand the list. It saves screen real estate.

Cisco Releases Annual Global Bandwidth Forecast

Cisco's latest visual networking index shows the expected "up to the right" growth curve. No surprise there.

The growth in traffic will continue to be dominated by video, exceeding 91 percent of global consumer IP traffic by 2014. That statistic simply screams for network management to ensure the quality of video experience.

Apple Wants to Replace, Not Compete, in Search

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says his company will not take on Google in the search business. That's a bit of legalese, one might argue. Apple does not so much want to compete in search as to make it irrelevant in a mobile context.

"Competing" implies one wishes to win something. "Displacing and replacing " is more like what Apple wants to do.

Many of Apple’s 200,000 app downloads, for example, are simply shortcuts to the web which eliminates the need for Google’s search functions.

Apple already competes against Google in the mobile phone, mobile advertising and operating systems areas, and soon there will be competition from Google in the music and mobile apps arenas as well.

Apple Says It Will Not Take On Google In Search, But It Already Has – 24/7 Wall St.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Sometimes, when you use a smartphone, the best search result is not a web page, it's an application.

That's probably the reason why Google added an OneBox for iPhone and Android apps. If you enter a query that includes keywords like 'download', 'application' or 'app' on an iPhone or on an Android phone, you'll see a list of results from Apple's App Store or from the Android Market. link

As of today, if you go to Google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for an app, we’ll show special links and content at the top of the search results.

You can tap these links to go directly to the app’s Android Market or iPhone App Store page. You can also get a quick look at some of the app’s basic details including the price, rating, and publisher. These results will appear when your search pertains to a mobile application and relevant, well-rated apps are found.

Google Indexes Mobile Apps

Facebook, Music, Navigation, News Top Smartphone Apps

Though there are some differences by smartphone platform, users tend to use social networking, especially Facebook, listen to music and navigate and search for places on their smartphones most frequently.

(click on the image for a larger view; you might have to click to toggle views onthe new page)

They also seem to use the Weather Channel app frequently, and access news as well.

Dell Shows "Streak" Tablet

The new Dell "Streak" tablet will have quite a different form factor than the iPad.

Steve Jobs Talks about Why It Created the iPhone

Steve Jobs talks about the iPhone and why Apple wanted to create it.

Steve Jobs on Apple's iAd Network

Steve Jobs talks about the iAd network at "All Things Digital."

Steve Jobs on Where Apple is Going

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, expounding on a number of subjects at "All Things Digital." Jobs says Apple is not interested in search or TV. But Apple also said it was not interested in phones. I seem to recall that Apple wasn't all that hot on tablets, either.

No More Windows at Google?

According to the Financial Times, Google has banned the use of the Microsoft operating system, company wide. read the story here.


“We’re not doing any more Windows," said one Google employee. New hires are now given the option of using Apple’s Mac computers or PCs running the Linux operating system.

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Can Google Apps Save a Business Money?

Many enterprises would have a really hard time quantifying the benefits from cloud applications, hosted applications or software as a service.

Google claims it can help businesses quantify how much they can save by switching to Google Apps. Smaller organizations might buy the logic.

Hulu Growth Flattens

Hulu's growth, at least as measured by views, appears to have flattened over the last six months. On the other hand, it appears to be profitable, if not by much.

As it gears up to offer subscription plans, and more content moves behind a pay wall, growth might even dip a bit.

That's the challenge for any content provider that opts for pay walls: fewer users but more revenue.

Games, Music, Social Networking, News and Maps Top Smartphone Downloads

About 21 percent of American wireless subscribers had a smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 19 percent in the previous quarter and significantly higher than the 14 percent at the end of 2008.

About 14 percent of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days. Games, music and social networking apps seem to be high on the list for both smartphone and feature phone users.

News and map applications get much higher use by smartphone users.
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