Horizons
BlackBerry 10, the newest iteration of the BlackBerry operating system, may not launch until next spring. (Reuters)
RIM's pitch: Earn $1,000 off a BlackBerry 10 app, RIM will pay you $10,000
Last month, at an event in San Jose, RIM demoed a range of select apps for its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system. Today, the company has thrown open the doors of its App World platform to all developers, and begun offering something called a "$10K Developer Commitment." The gist of the thing is pretty simple: build an app for BB10, earn $1,000 in net revenue (in-app payments count), and RIM will pay you $10,000.
"Our goal is to get a mass of apps in the store ahead of launch," Alec Saunders, RIM's vice president of developer relations, told PC Mag today.
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Now a more pressing question: When will BlackBerry 10 actually launch? Well, RIM is officially saying first quarter of next year. That could mean January, but many analysts believe February or March is probably closer to the mark.
"Some simple math tells us that if RIM really does get its BB10 devices to carriers for certifications this month (let's say October 15 for the sake of argument), January 15 is the absolute earliest those devices might be ready for sale," writes Eric Zeman of InformationWeek. "But that's not very likely. It's more likely that it will be February 15 before the devices are certified to run on the wireless networks."
Add in firmware completion, boxing, and shipping lags, Zeman adds, "RIM is looking at late February before it can launch BlackBerry 10, if not early March."
Not particularly good for RIM, obviously. For one, the Canadian company has weathered a brutal few months, complete with widespread layoffs, executive-level shake-ups, and the failure of forgettable products such as the PlayBook. RIM desperately needs a hit, and it needs one soon. A March launch would completely miss the holiday shopping season – a time when electronics manufacturers often get a much needed sales bump.
Moreover, launch BB10 in March, and you risk getting run over roughshod by competitors. Apple recently released iOS 6, and while Apple Maps has been lambasted by critics, the operating system seems to be doing pretty well. Later this month, Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's mobile OS, will go into wide release on phones manufactured by Nokia and HTC, among others.
The window for RIM is closing fast.
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Microsoft Office may soon arrive on iOS and Android operating systems. Here, a boy plays with an iPad on display in an Apple store in Hong Kong. (Reuters)
Microsoft Office reportedly bound for iOS, Android in 2013
Microsoft Office may finally be coming to iOS and Android.
According to The Verge, which has obtained a press release from the Czech offices of Microsoft, a mobile version of the Office suite will launch for the Google and Apple mobile operating systems in March of next year. The Verge reports that Microsoft product manager Petr Bobek separately confirmed the existence of iOS and Android apps at a press conference in the Czech Republic.
Thus far, the Microsoft press team in the US has sought to play down the rumors.
"The information shared by our Czech Republic subsidiary is not accurate," Microsoft corporate communications honcho Frank X. Shaw tweeted today. "We have nothing further to share."
As Gizmodo notes, that's not quite a flat-out denial, but it is "denial-ish."
The launch of an Office iOS app, of course, would be a cause for major celebration. Apple has said there are about 700,000 apps in the App Store – 250,000 of which are native to the iPad. Unfortunately, there aren't many top-quality word processors to be found. (Pages, which bills itself as "the most beautiful word processor you’ve ever seen on a mobile device," is the highest rated of the bunch.)
This is a problem for any iPad owners that want to occasionally rely on their iPad as a replacement computer.
In related news, we're edging closer to the official launch of Windows 8, the long-awaited Microsoft OS. Rachel King of ZDNet says Microsoft is planning to team up with Boingo to provide free Wi-Fi at hotspots across New York; meanwhile, the company will roll-out a range of pop-up stores to show off Windows 8.
To receive regular updates on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
An image captured with a Lytro camera. Lytro released a new firmware update today, which gives users control over a range of manual settings. (Lytro)
Lytro 'light field' cameras launch nationwide, adds new controls
Last year, a small Mountain View company called Lytro unveiled the first-ever light field camera – a device that allows users to focus and manipulate images long after the lens has already snapped. As the Monitor's Chris Gaylord noted at the time, Lytro lists the specs of its cameras not in megapixels, but in megarays, a unit defined by Lytro as the number of rays that are captured in every picture.
"It represents a really big shift in cameras – in capturing an entirely new kind of data," Ren Ng, Lytro's founder and chief executive, told the Monitor.
Now, Lytro is finally launching in the US and abroad, both through the Lytro online store and at Amazon, Target, and BestBuy locations. Meanwhile, Lytro has released a firmware update that will allow users to manually control a range of camera settings, including shutter speed, ISO sensitivity, and neutral density filters.
"Manual controls give Lytro photographers the opportunity to take control of the exposure in a scene," Eric Cheng, Lytro’s director of photography, said in a statement. "We introduced these features as a result of feedback from our most creative camera owners, who are capturing things like subjects in motion or experimenting with artistic styles like light painting. With manual controls, they now have more flexibility as they push the boundaries of the light field."
So does the new firmware really improve the quality of Lytro photos? Well, yes, opines CNET's Joshua Goldman, who says the control over ISO vastly improves photo resolution and color.
"This is a nice start and the update should give early adopters something to be excited about playing with," Goldman writes. "However, if the camera still doesn't have the features you're after, there's always a chance the next update will. Or maybe not, which is part of the problem with buying any unfinished evolving product."
Lytro cameras start at $399, for an 8GB model; the 16GB model will set you back $499.
Got a Lytro? Drop us a line in the comments section. And to receive regular updates on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner goes through a dress rehearsal at Red Bull Stratos mission headquarters in Roswell, New Mexico last week. (Reuters)
Bad weather scuttles supersonic jump from the edge of space
At 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Felix Baumgartner, an extreme skydiver from Austria, was scheduled to jump out of a balloon hovering 23 miles over the New Mexico desert, and plummet toward earth at hundreds of miles an hour – temporarily exceeding the speed of sound. It was a feat dubbed "the greatest action sports exploit yet."
But according to Red Bull, which is sponsoring the so-called "Stratos" project, the jump has been delayed.
"We're on hold, waiting," Sarah Anderson, a spokeswoman for Red Bull, told Reuters in an e-mail. (In an earlier message on the Stratos blog, Red Bull reps said "the wind must be calm enough to allow a safe launch of the 550-ft-tall balloon.") According to Reuters, the Stratos team is hoping that weather will have calmed by 1:30 p.m. EST, allowing the space suit-clad Baumgartner and the balloon to take to the skies.
This is not the first delay for Stratos. On Friday, the launch of the balloon was delayed by a cold front, which would have brought wind and rain, Space.com reported.
In July, during a test run, Baumgartner leapt from a height of more than 96,000 feet (18 miles), and temporarily reached a speed of 536 miles-per-hour. It took Baumgartner approximately 10 minutes to reach the ground from that altitude. "It was a rough couple of days and an exhausting endeavor," Baumgartner said at the time. "I am now really excited. It has always been a dream of mine. Only one more step to go."
Baumgartner is attempting to break the record set by US military pilot Joe Kittinger, who jumped from 102,800 feet back in 1960.
Planning to watch Baumgartner go supersonic? Drop us a line in the comments section. And to receive regular updates on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
A portrait of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is seen on a BMW car parked near an Apple store in Tokyo. (Reuters)
A year after losing Steve Jobs, how has Apple changed?
The Apple homepage today is dominated by a video tribute to Steve Jobs, the pioneering (and notoriously prickly) Apple chief, who died last October, after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. Jobs helped make Apple one of the most valuable companies in history, and certainly one of the most influential – in their own ways, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad each drastically altered the entire tech landscape.
So a year after Jobs's death, where does Apple stand? Well, for one, the Cupertino giant is still raking it in hand over fist. In late August, Apple stock hit $674, an all-time high for the company (it currently hovers around $660); it has approximately $100 billion in cash on hand. That's enough to buy a small country – it's also enough, as others have suggested, to start scooping up scads of smaller tech properties.
Meanwhile, Apple has released a range of new products, including the new iPad (which sold very well) and the iPhone 5 (which sold better than the iPhone 4S, but not as well as many analysts had expected). Interestingly, Apple expanded the size of the iPhone 5, bringing the screen measurements from 3.5 inches corner-to-corner to 4 inches. That went against the famous Steve Jobs dictate that the 3.5-inch screen was the perfect size for consumers.
With the iPhone 5, Apple broke with unofficial Jobs policy in another way: It apologized.
In the wake of a fracas over its botched Apple Maps App, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company was "extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers" – and went so far as to suggest that consumers should download alternative products. By comparison, when the iPhone 4 was slammed for poor reception issues (the so-called "death grip,") Steve Jobs called a press conference, and instead of making amends, he lashed back at his critics.
"This has been blown so out of proportion that it’s incredible," Jobs said at the time.
Recent reports suggest that the next big product for Apple will be a pint-sized tablet called the iPad Mini. The device will reportedly get a 7.85-inch screen and a slimmed-down chassis; analysts expect the Mini to be unveiled this month and launched in November. Remember what Steve Jobs once said about 7-inch tablets? Let us remind you: He said they were dead-on-arrival.
"No tablet can compete with the mobility of a smartphone, its ease of fitting into your pocket or purse, its unobtrusiveness when used in a crowd," Jobs said in 2010. "Given that all tablet users will already have a smartphone in their pockets, giving up precious display area to fit a tablet in our pockets is clearly the wrong trade-off. The 7-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad."
What's next for Apple in the post-Jobs era? Drop us a line in the comments section. And to receive regular updates on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
Microsoft has set October 29th as the launch date for its Windows Phone 8 mobile OS. Here, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (L) and HTC CEO Peter Chou show HTC phones running Windows Phone 8 in a New York event on September 19. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters/File)
It's official: Windows Phone 8 will launch October 29th
After months of dropping hints, Microsoft is finally ready to make its big announcement. On October 29, it'll unveil Windows Phone 8, the company's answer to the dominant Android and iOS phone software. The company sent out press invitations on Thursday to a press event in San Francisco on the 29th.
That means we'll finally learn more about the features of the OS, finally get a good look at the handsets it'll run on, and -- if Microsoft sticks to the schedule -- finally get a software development kit so developers can create apps for Windows Phone 8.
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Keep in mind that October 29th isn't the date you'll actually be able to buy a Windows Phone 8 handset -- that'll be a few days (or weeks) later. But Microsoft has made only vague promises for so long (until recently, we knew only that Windows Phone 8 would be introduced sometime in autumn) that it's nice to have a specific date to look forward to.
Though there are still a lot of things we don't know about Windows Phone 8, Microsoft has made some details public. Here's a quick rundown of what's already known: the OS has a tile-based look and feel, support for wireless payment (think tapping your phone instead of swiping a credit card), and built-in navigation and video chat.
It'll also be relatively easy to port Android and iOS apps to Windows Phone 8, which should make developers happy. And one other plus: users will be able to get software updates directly from Microsoft, rather than having to wait for carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint to release phone-specific updates -- a common complaint among many Android users.
We know a little bit about the hardware, too: Windows Phone 8 will launch, in the US at least, on the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 handsets, which got rave reviews when they were unveiled earlier this year. Those will be out in November, as will models from Samsung (the Ativ S) and HTC (the 8X and 8S). HTC has promised that it's "going big" on the Windows Phone 8 platform, which may mean there are new phones still in store.
There's an interesting rumor bouncing around, too: one that says Microsoft will also make its own Windows Phone 8 handset to compete more directly with Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S III. The rumor started with an article in the China Times, and was corroborated by the rumors site Boy Genius Report, and while it should be taken with an extra grain of salt, it's also worth remembering that Microsoft did basically the same thing earlier this year with the Surface tablet: a Microsoft-branded device that competes with the company's own hardware manufacturers. It's not impossible that the company would want to make its own smart-phone model, too.
Readers, are you looking forward to the launch? Considering a Windows Phone 8 handset, or satisfied with your current smart phone? Let us know in the comments section below.
For more on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
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A man using a mobile phone walks past a Samsung advertisement in Seoul this week. Samsung Electronics reported quarterly profit of $7.3 billion on Friday. (Reuters)
Galaxy S III delivers: Samsung enjoys record sales
Forget all those legal entanglements.
Samsung Electronics announced today that it raked in $7.3 billion in operating profits in the third quarter of 2012 – a record for the South Korean tech giant. Samsung attributed approximately two-thirds of that profit to sales of smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy III, which surpassed even the mighty Apple iPhone in some markets. (Samsung has said it sold a whopping 20 million Galaxy III handsets globally in just over three months.)
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Horizons readers will remember that last quarter, Samsung shipped almost twice as many smartphones globally as Apple – 50 million compared to Apple's 26 million. (In total, 176 million smartphones were shipped in the second quarter of 2012.)
Samsung and Apple are the new "global smartphone heavyweights," Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst at IDC, said at the time.
So yes, things are looking up for Samsung. Which is not to say the company should get too comfortable.
"The biggest risk for Samsung is competitive product lineups from its rivals," Byun Han-joon, an analyst at KB Investment & Securities, told Reuters. "Because handsets drive most of its profits, one misstep in handsets could result in losses for the whole Samsung group."
In related news, Samsung has added the iPhone 5 to a suit previously filed against Apple in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Samsung claims Apple infringed on several of its mobile phone patents; other devices named in the suit include the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch, and the iPad.
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A woman talks on her phone as she walks past T-Mobile and Sprint wireless stores in New York in this July 30, 2009 file photo. Sprint Nextel Corp is in the early stages of considering a counter-offer for MetroPCS Communications Inc to top Deutsche Telekom's bid to combine it with T-Mobile USA, according to reports. (Reuters)
Will Sprint steal MetroPCS from under T-Mobile's nose?
In a joint statement yesterday, Deutsche Telekom, the owner of T-Mobile USA, and MetroPCS, a budget carrier based in Texas, confirmed the two companies would merge under the T-Mobile banner. The merger would boost T-Mobile's subscriber count by 9.3 million subscribers, giving the carrier approximately 40 million subscribers in all. That's far behind the numbers claimed by Verizon and AT&T, but a boost nonetheless.
Now comes news that Deutsche Telekom isn't the only one interested in MetroPCS. According to BusinessWeek, rival Sprint is "crunching the numbers and holding talks with its advisers to weigh the feasibility of a higher offer" for MetroPCS. (Deutsche Telekom was reportedly ready to pay $1.5 billion for MetroPCS; MetroPCS would also have a 26 percent stake in the new company, Engadget says.)
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Sprint reps have declined comment, and Businessweek attributes its report only to three anonymous sources with knowledge of the talks. Still, this seems like the real thing. So would a Sprint/MetroPCS merger make sense?
Kevin Fitchard of GigaOM isn't so sure. As Fitchard points out, both Sprint and MetroPCS operate networks with CDMA technology. However, "many of Metro’s 2G networks and the majority of its 4G LTE networks occupies the 1700 MHz/2100 MHz bands Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) band, to which Sprint is a complete stranger. Sure, spectrum is spectrum: Sprint could just expand into the new band. But it’s not simple."
Moreover – and this gets sticky, so bear with us – the MetroPCS network, Fitchard writes, currently comprises a "patchwork of licenses" that crisscross the country. "In order for Sprint to make full use of Metro’s LTE networks it would need to fill in those holes with new AWS [a type of spectrum band] airwaves," he writes. "But no one happens to be selling. The remaining AWS licenses have been locked up T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Leap Wireless."
So yes, there are some potentially major compatibility issues.
As the Times notes, Sprint was close to a merger with MetroPCS earlier this year, but the Sprint board killed the deal in the 11th hour. There is some industry "skepticism," the Times reports, that Sprint would be able to pull it off this time around.
To receive regular updates on how technology intersects daily life, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.
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It has been a good couple of years for Facebook. (Reuters)
Facebook: 1 billion users. What's next for the social network?
In July of 2010, Facebook hit the 500-million-member mark. Now, some 26 months later, the newly-public company has rattled past a new milestone: A billion users, the most ever for a social network, and a vertiginous leap from Facebook's humble beginnings as the brainchild of Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg. In a letter to users this week, Zuckerberg said the moment was a "special" one for him.
"We belong to a rich tradition of people making things that bring us together," Zuckerberg wrote. "Today, we honor this tradition. We honor the humanity of the people we serve. We honor the everyday things people have always made to bring us together: Chairs, doorbells, airplanes, bridges, games. These are all things that connect us. And now Facebook is a part of this tradition of things that connect us too."
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Some perspective: The total population of the globe is estimated to be 7 billion people. That means roughly 14 percent of the human race uses Facebook. According to Facebook, a majority of those users – 60 percent – access the social network through a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone. (Also, can we backtrack to consider the essential strangeness of Zuckerberg's statement? Doorbells?)
The big question, of course, is what's next for Facebook.
After all, the social network will undoubtedly keep growing, but probably not as it has in recent years. For one, there are only about 2.3 billion regular Internet users in the world, as of March of 2012. 513 million of that number reportedly live in China, where Facebook is banned. So even assuming Facebook does manage to attract the half billion or so remaining users (a big if), eventually it will hit a brick wall in terms of growth.
Moreover, as Aaron Smith, Laurie Segall and Stacy Cowley of CNN note, not all of the billion Facebook users are created equal.
"Less than 20 percent of Facebook's users live in the US and Canada," they write, "but those users account for 48 percent of the $992 million in advertising revenue that Facebook took in last quarter. Facebook makes an average of $3.20 each quarter in revenue off its North American users, versus just 55 cents from those in Asia."
This is important because Facebook's growth in North America has slowed significantly in recent months.
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An Apple store in China. Apple is reportedly close to launching a new tablet called the iPad Mini. (Reuters)
iPad Mini will arrive in November, according to new report
Apple is prepping a pint-sized tablet called the iPad Mini.
That's the news today from the Wall Street Journal, which reports (the link is password protected) that an Apple tablet with a 7.85-inch screen has already entered mass production. LG Display and AU Optronics will build the screen on the iPad Mini, according to new unnamed sources in the Apple chain; the device, meanwhile, could be unveiled as soon as this month, putting Apple in optimal position for the holiday shopping season.
Apple has not commented on the rumors. And it's worth noting that we've been hearing iPad Mini scuttlebutt for a long time now, with little to show for it. Still, it makes sense that Apple would want to build a smaller, 7.85-inch tablet. (The full-size iPad measures 9.7 inches.) The 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire has sold well in recent months, as has Google's Nexus 7 tablet. Apple is unlikely to leave the budget-end of the tablet market to its competitors for too long.
In fact, over at Fortune, Philip Elmer-DeWitt says Apple has already scheduled an unveiling event for the iPad Mini. According to Fortune, invitations will go out on Oct. 10, just a few days away. "If Apple follows its usual scheduling protocol," Elmer-DeWitt writes, "that would suggest a special event to unveil the product on Wednesday, Oct. 17, with a launch day of Friday Nov. 2."
So what will this new iPad look like? Well, as Eric Zeman of InformationWeek points out, the Retina Display is probably out. But if these leaked photos are any indication, the Mini will probably get the same style chassis as the larger iPad – expect also a curved, black back, and the familiar square lines of its predecessor.
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