The report shows that Google inserted code into display ads shown by its DoubleClick subsidiary that got around the default setting in Safari that prevents cookies—the basic building block of web advertising—from being installed on computers and letting ad companies track your movements across the Internet in order to show you ads they believe are relevant to your interests. Safari makes an exception for websites that ask you to submit a form, allowing them to install cookies. Google simply added code to certain ads that mimicked a form submission in order to determine whether Safari browsers were also logged into Google+ so that those users could “+1” ads and share them with their Google+ contacts.
Google acknowledged using the code (which Facebook actually considers a “best practice” for its developers, according to the WSJ) and has stopped using it, but claims it did nothing wrong. “The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why,” Google said in a statement accompanying the report. “We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It’s important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information.”
So what really happened here? Once again, you, the user, are a pawn in the fight for data among giant computer companies.
Google (and a large part of the web advertising economy, points out Federated Media’s John Batelle) depends on these types of cookies to sell relevant display advertising, allowing it and other web publishers to provide many services for free. Safari ships with cookie-blocking technology enabled by default, which Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) believes is a privacy protection but is not necessarily something that iPhone users have agreed is in their best interest. And since it is a default setting, it’s safe to assume a fair proportion of iPhone users never even checked those settings.
But bypassing those privacy controls—willingly enabled or not—is a sneaky move that again shows how willing Google is to compromise some of its core principles in order to get Google+ off the ground. Is there really a huge percentage of Safari users who are desperate to “+1” web advertising in order to share those ads with their friends but just can’t figure out why that function isn’t available? I find that hard to believe.
For Apple’s part, it can contend that the Safari settings offer greater protection to its users, but as Batelle also points out, it reinforces the notion that Apple users belong to Apple and no one else. If traditional web advertising methods are not an effective way of reaching iOS users, then those advertisers might just have to go to Apple and its iAd in-app advertising system to promote their interests. And denying Google that data makes Google a less effective advertising machine, slowing its growth and its ability to invest in other mobile products, like Android, that threaten Apple.
But you have to wonder exactly what was slipped into the water in Mountain View over the 2011 holiday break, with Google how having managed to shoot itself in the foot multiple times during 2012 with clumsy and ill-advised attempts to promote its services.
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]]>Read the full post on GigaOm...
]]>Last year’s free-to-view March Madness on Demand was wildly popular for CBS and Turner, which in 2010 teamed on a 14-year, $10.8 billion broadcast license for the premiere post-season event for collegiate basketball. In 2011, usage across platforms for early-round games was as high as 3 million unique users daily.
This year, however, the newly christened “March Madness Live” distribution plan will more closely resemble the TV Everywhere authentication model being championed by Turner parent Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Corp.
Games broadcast on CBS will still be available for free on CBSSports.com on Macs and PCs, but there will now be pay walls on other digital viewing.
Turner will stream all tournament games shown on both networks on personal computers through the TV Everywhere authentication model, with subscribers to all major TV service providers except Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) able to access games shown on TBS.com, TNT.tv and truTV.com
Mobile viewing will require a premium payment.
For $3.99, consumers will be able to access all tournament games not just on Macs and PCs, but iPads, iPhones and Android devices.
It’s not the first time mobile users have had to pay a premium—before it defrayed much of its March Madness licensing costs by partnering with Turner, CBS in 2009 charged iPhone users $4.99 to stream live video of tournament games.
The $3.99 all-access price is being criticized by media analysts, who note that loyal cable and satellite subscribers actually pay more for authentication and don’t have the benefit of mobile device access.
“We would like to have seen CBS/Turner offer a much higher fee for non-authenticated subscribers ($20 or more) who want the full March Madness on Demand with the authenticated price at $3.99,” wrote BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield. “Turner/CBS should want to enhance the value perception of a multichannel video subscription in consumers’ minds and at the same time put extreme pressure on MVPDs like Time Warner Cable who are not yet authenticating.”
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]]>Before the change, publishers had to choose AdSense for Mobile as a completely separate option and many of those ads were designed for older mobile browsers. The new code will automatically adjust to different smartphone browsers and publishers will see the option for mobile ad units appear alongside other standard ad unit options in their AdSense consoles.
More information is available on Google’s site. While in-app advertising through AdMob is certainly one of Google’s main mobile ad opportunities, a shift toward mobile Web usage and the tendency for those in developed markets to focus less on apps and more on local Web sites means there are significant opportunities for mobile Web ads, according to research from MobiThinking.
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]]>Reuters reported, citing Chinese media reports, that stores carrying the iPad in cities like Shanghai and Qingdao have been told to stop selling iPads until the dispute can be resolved. Proview Technologies claims that it owns the rights to the “iPad” trademark in China, and while authorities in Qingdao said they hadn’t ordered a halt to sales, authorities in other cities have intervened on Proview’s behalf, including the town of Shijiazhuang earlier this week.
Apple told China Daily (via 9to5Mac.com) that it had actually purchased the rights to use the trademark from Proview in the past, but that Proview is refusing to honor that agreement in mainland China despite a court ruling in Hong Kong in Apple’s favor. Given that the “one country, two systems” policy means mainland China operates under different rules, Apple may have trouble keeping one of its fastest growing products ever launched on store shelves in one of the biggest consumer electronics markets in the world, one cited as vital to Apple’s future growth by Cook in comments to financial analysts earlier in the week.
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]]>Tim Bray, Google’s head of Android developer relations, addressed Android’s take on the Path-inspired mess that forced Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) to acknowledge that it should have done a better job policing apps that uploaded address-book data from users without explicit permission. “Reading contacts on Android requires explicit OK,” he said on his Twitter feed, pointing to two Android development articles that address how Android deals with granting permission to access personal data.
A Google representative confirmed that Android can’t access any personal information on a user’s handset unless the user consents before the app is installed through any means, whether through the Android Market, a third-party app store, or side-loaded onto a phone. “A basic Android application has no permissions associated with it, meaning it can not (sic) do anything that would adversely impact the user experience or any data on the device,” Google wrote in one of the development articles cited by Bray.
When an Android user goes to install an application they are presented with a list of permissions that the app developer has requested the user grant the app for various reasons, most of which are benign. For example, when you try to download Path on Android, you’re asked to confirm that you’re willing to allow the application to “prevent phone from sleeping,” access “coarse (network-based location, fine (GPS) location,” and “read contact data.” The more detailed description of that last permission says that you’re allowing “an application to read all of the contact (address) data store on your phone. Malicious applications can use this to send your data to other people.”
Unless you agree to all grant the app those permissions, you can’t install the app. “No checks with the user are done while an application is running: it either was granted a particular permission when installed, and can use that feature as desired, or the permission was not granted and any attempt to use the feature will fail without prompting the user,” the company said in that article. (emphasis Google’s)
There’s still the matter of how those applications store data that users have agreed to share with developers, as Twitter raised a few eyebrows by asserting it would store address-book data shared with its service for 18 months. Google responded to those inquiries by pointing to a blog post from 2010 that declared “if you have to handle user data, ensure that the data remains on the device whenever possible. … Sending data outside the phone, even if done for the user’s benefit, tends to draw suspicion.”
To be clear, those are merely guidelines: the free-for-all environment that is Android development means that anyone can create an app that sends data off a device without encryption, even if Google frowns on such practices. Android users are much more susceptible to malware than iOS users, especially if they don’t read the fine print associated with those applications. And if you’ve rooted your device, you’re kind of on your own.
Still, it seems that assuming they actually read the permissions screen provided to them before they install an app, Android users shouldn’t be surprised by what their apps know.
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]]>Several reports confirm that other mobile app companies that depend on social connections—most prominently Twitter and Foursquare—also deserve scrutiny for their policies around the handling of address book data. Companies want this data to make it easier for their users to find other friends on the service, as users with wider social networks tend to be more active on those services and to share more data with others.
The problem, as demonstrated by Path’s debacle, is that they haven’t always done a very good job telling their users that they are accessing this data. Path now explicitly asks its users for permission to access their address books and has deleted data it obtained before tweaking its app, but it wasn’t alone: Foursquare also uploaded address book data without telling its users (although it didn’t store the data) upon the creation of an account, according to The Verge, and it has since apologized and inserted a clear notification. (The Verge identifies several other mobile apps with differing policies on how they handle such information.)
Twitter drops hints that it is accessing address book data, but doesn’t tell users that it is actually uploading that data and that the company reserves the right to store that information on its servers for 18 months, according to The Los Angeles Times. It plans to tweak the language involved in the “Find Friends” feature to make it clear the data is being sent to Twitter and that it is being stored.
In the end, it’s Apple’s fault. Apple has always said that its very strict app review policy is in place to prevent iOS users from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous developers, and in fact it prohibits this kind of activity in the guidelines that govern iOS development. But Apple doesn’t force the application to ask the user to grant permission for access to address book data, something it does each and every time when an app wants access to location information, for example.
So these apps should have been rejected for violating Apple’s guidelines, but the company also needs to treat address book data with the same degree of sensitivity that it does other personal data. This probably isn’t too complicated a fix on Apple’s part, but it’s still an oversight.
Two members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook Wednesday asking for more information on how this was allowed to happen, so expect an iOS update with a fix sooner rather than later.
And perhaps it’s time to see exactly how Android apps treat this kind of data.
Updated: Apple has responded to inquiries regarding this issue, telling AllThingsD: “Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.”
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]]>The app allows those to check out what’s happening in the world of music during the commercial breaks for Jersey Shore by ranking a top 100 list of artists and providing biographical information, song samples, and information about touring dates. Shannon Connolly, vice president of digital music strategy for MTV, says the app was downloaded 1 million times after it launched last year, “introduced millions of viewers to music they may not know they love yet.”
Like trending lists on Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or Twitter, MTV’s app merely measures which artists are enjoying a surge in interest over a given day, as to not permanently ensconce Justin Bieber at the top of the list. It is available for both iOS and Android and the latest version features the ability to sort artists by genre.
A publisher like MTV that has to operate at scale might be a prime candidate for a mobile Web strategy, but MTV is still focused on app development for now, said Mark Mezrich, senior director of product development. That being said, MTV’s mobile Web site incorporates some HTML5 technology and the apps are just the first installment in creating “a mobile experience around the artist experience,” he said.
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]]>AdAge reported Tuesday that Apple is now asking advertisers to commit just $100,000 in order to place advertise within iAds, down an enormous amount from the $1 million required when the program was first unveiled in 2010 and a significant discount from the $500,000 spend that Apple was asking for as recently as last year. According to the report, Apple also now plans to let developers keep 70 percent of the revenue they generate through advertisements within their ads and has dropped a cost-per-click charge, reverting to the familiar cost-per-thousand-impressions model.
iAd was a compelling idea when it made its debut. Mobile advertising has a ton of promise but ad formats created for other devices don’t necessarily work on the small screen found on the iPhone. Apple’s iAd allowed advertisers and brands to create compelling ad experiences with video and rich graphics, but the simpler quick-and-dirty in-ad formats favored by companies such as Google’s AdMob (coupled with the ability to spend limited amounts as advertisers experiment with mobile) has proven more compelling.
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]]>Of course, it’s no surprise to anyone how mobile-centric Apple’s business has become five years after the debut of the iPhone. But Cook said that the iPhone is now the halo product that is turning the iPad into the fastest-growing product launch in Apple’s history, with 55 million units sold to date, an accomplishment that the Mac didn’t achieve until 22 years after its debut. That’s how people used to describe the effect that the iPod, a huge seller, had on potential Apple customers who were suddenly willing to take a second look at the Mac.
“The iPad has stood on the shoulders of everything that came before it,” Cook said. A generation of technology buyers already understood concepts like the iTunes Store, the App Store, and the iOS navigation system through their exposure to the iPhone to instantly grasp the potential of the iPad, he said.
Still, Cook doesn’t think the iPad will lead to the death of the personal computer as we’ve known it for the past 25 years or so. “I don’t predict the demise of the PC industry, I don’t subscribe to that,” he said, although admitting that tablet sales were eating into Mac sales and were likely having the same effect on the PC industry, which is essentially stagnant. It seems pretty clear that Cook thinks of the iPad as a different product from the PC/Mac, unlike some industry observers who would prefer to lump the two together.
Cook drew hearty laughs for describing the 37 million iPhones sold during the three months ending in December as “a decent quarter,” but said the company is much more focused on the overall opportunity for smartphone sales, which could reach 1 billion units a year within a few years. “When you take it in the context of these numbers, the truth is this is a jaw-dropping industry, it has enormous opportunity to it.”
And emerging markets will account for a huge chunk of that growth, he said. About one quarter of those billion smartphones he referred to will come from sales in China and Brazil, and Apple has invested a great deal in making sure that its economic activity in China involves more than its supply chain, Cook said.
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]]>First things first: the iPad 3 (let’s assume that’s the name while being mindful of what happened to the iPhone 5) looks set for a March 7th introduction, according to a report from iMore.com that was confirmed by The Loop. We’ve been pretty sure for a while that it would arrive with a higher-resolution screen and a more powerful processor, but the Wall Street Journal (NSDQ: NWS) weighed in with a report that the next iPad would also run on AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon’s LTE networks.
Apple has been skeptical about LTE networks to date, but it makes more sense to tackle the increased drain on the battery caused by LTE radios in the iPad, which can accommodate a bigger battery and which isn’t used in quite as mobile a fashion as the iPhone. And for some people, an LTE connection may be faster than the broadband available in their area. Bloomberg also reported that LTE was coming to the iPad earlier in the year, so this rumor looks like it has some legs.
But is Apple really planning to release a smaller version of the iPad? A separate Wall Street Journal story indicates that it is at least testing such a device with an 8-inch screen.
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) has (sort of) proven that there is demand for a smaller tablet, but the appeal of the Kindle Fire likely has much more to do with its price tag than its size. Still, a smaller iPad would likely allow Apple to hit a smaller price target and put a little pressure on tablet upstarts like Amazon and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), although at the moment it doesn’t seem that smaller, cheaper tablets are denting iPad demand.
We’re learned from several books released on Apple over the past year that the company tests multiple versions of upcoming products almost like a bake-off, pitting internal teams against each other before settling on the best combination of features, design, and price. So while it’s not hard to believe that Apple is at least kicking around the idea of a smaller iPad, such a device could easily never make it past the multiple layers of security doors in Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters.
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]]>The audits will cover Foxconn facilities in Chengdu and Shenzen, where the first audit was conducted Monday, Apple said in a press release. Foxconn has come under fire several times over the years as people started to learn more about the working conditions endured by those building gear for the entire consume electronics industry, but the pressure intensified in January following two articles published by The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) focusing on Apple and its willingness or unwillingness to use its financial might to change conditions on the ground.
In truth the problem is much more widespread than any one factory or really any one industry, as we’ve argued in the past. But while Apple can’t singlehandedly reverse two decades of global macroeconomic policy, it can continue to hold its suppliers to a higher standard than demanded by the government of the country in which they operate.
The audits will be conducted by the FLA, which counts companies like Nike and Adidas among its members. Apple was the first tech company to join the group, and said the FLA will post the first results of these audits in early March.
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]]>Sammy Hub, an unofficial all-things-Samsung blog, reported Monday that new device will arrive soon in the U.K. and the Scandinavian countries. It was a rough go in 2011 for tablets that weren’t named iPad, but Samsung will continue to try its hand with 7-inch models, as compared to the 9.7-inch screen found on the iPad but in line with the Kindle Fire’s 7-inch screen.
If only the new Galaxy Tab were priced in line with Amazon’s effort. Sammy Hub reported that a basic Wi-Fi-only version of the device would sell for $450 in Sweden, which isn’t quite aggressive enough to make most people shopping for tablets these days think twice about the iPad. (Samsung confirmed the new tablet launch in a press release but did not provide pricing.) It’s possible pricing could be quite different in other countries, however, as has been the case for Apple’s iPad according to this chart.
Still, it’s good that Samsung, one of the more aggressive Android tablet vendors, has started to update its tablet lineup to Android 4.0, which is the first version of the software that brings together separate versions previously designed for smartphones and tablets. Expect to see more later this month at Mobile World Congress.
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]]>In the latest installment, Apple today sued Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Mobility in an attempt to force the Google subsidiary to stop using its patents against Apple in Germany. Or more simply, Apple filed an American lawsuit to stop a German lawsuit. Got that?
This latest ripple in the smartphone sagas grows out of Motorola/Google’s decision to sue Apple over one of its German FRAND patents.
For the uninitiated, FRAND (Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) rules are used when a group of companies decide to create an industry-wide standard. To prevent one company in the industry group using a patent to extort the others, all the companies will agree that any patents related to the standard must be shared at a fair price.
In the Apple case, the FRAND patent at issue relates which to a broadband processor made by Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) that Apple uses in the iPhone 4S and other devices.
Motorola claimed the Qualcomm chip infringes one its patents and briefly obtained an order to stop Apple from using the chips. That order was suspended and today it appears to have been overturned.
In the action filed today in San Diego, Apple seeks a declaration forbidding Motorola from suing over the Qualcomm patent in Germany. The company also wants to declare that Qualcomm has a license to the Motorola patent in question and that Motorola breached a contract when it sued Apple.
Here’s the complaint:
Apple Motorola_ San Diego _Germany_
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]]>With the debut of the “consumer preview” version of Windows 8 now expected later this month at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft’s Steven Sinofsky wrote an epic blog post Thursday on Windows 8 and ARM chips. After Microsoft introduced Windows 8 last year confusion rose over whether or not applications for the ARM versions of Windows 8 devices would be able to run in the legacy “Desktop” mode, and Sinofsky used the opportunity to explain why Microsoft included that Desktop mode on the ARM version of Windows.
“Some have suggested we might remove the desktop from WOA (Windows on ARM) in an effort to be pure, to break from the past, or to be more simplistic or expeditious in our approach. To us, giving up something useful that has little cost to customers was a compromise that we didn’t want to see in the evolution of PCs,” Sinofsky wrote.
But only Microsoft will be able to write applications for that Windows Desktop experience on ARM tablets and PCs: all other developers who want to write applications for Windows ARM devices will have to write them in the Metro style, which also means they’ll have to distribute those applications through Microsoft’s Windows Store. Windows-on-ARM devices will be able to access the legacy Desktop mode from their Metro “Start” menus, but the only things they’ll be able to do in that legacy Desktop mode is run a new version of Microsoft Office (Office 15) designed for touchscreen devices and manage files in the old familiar way.
It’s sort of the best of both worlds for Microsoft. This approach allows it to postpone the creation of a Metro-style of Microsoft Office—perhaps the most useful set of Windows applications—until a later date while encouraging those who want to target Windows 8 devices to focus on Metro.
Windows 8 devices that will run on Intel (NSDQ: INTC) and AMD’s chips will be able to run applications written for the legacy Desktop mode, but developers will be able to use the same development tools to create Metro-style user interfaces for devices using either Intel or ARM (the back-end code, of course, would need to target a particular chip). Given the trends in the computer market these days, focusing just on the Desktop user interface means you’ll be concentrating on the slow-growing portion of the market.
But this is a classic problem for Microsoft; during each technology transition it finds it very difficult to make a clean break from the past given the huge installed base of consumer and corporate applications that run on older technologies. Windows 8 on ARM is an important step forward in that regard, in that anyone who wants their app to run on those devices will have to suck it up and move forward at Microsoft’s speed because older applications written for Intel’s chips won’t run on the ARM devices.
But it seems that even Microsoft can’t do all the heavy lifting to move Office to Metro, at least not right away. That means users will have to switch back and forth between Metro and Desktop in order to access some of Microsoft’s most valuable applications, and that could be jarring, although the Office 15 preview shown off Thursday does indicate that Word and Excel, among others, have been tweaked to more closely resemble the Metro design language.
The company also said that its partners plan to release Windows-on-ARM devices at the same time Windows-on-Intel devices are released, dispelling some fears that the ARM version of Windows might be delayed due to the technical complexity of the project. Most industry observers think those devices are scheduled to arrive around the end of the year, perhaps in time for the holiday shopping season, but Microsoft hasn’t directly addressed a launch schedule.
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]]>You could argue that 2011 was the year of Android, given that the number of Android devices activated daily doubled from 350,000 to 700,000 between April and December 2011. Or perhaps it was the year of the mobile operating system war, with Nokia’s strategic shift to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Phone OS. So what are the trends that will shape the mobile landscape in 2012? Let’s look at them in four categories: business, ecosystem, consumer expectations, and technology.
Mobile Is A Key Business Enabler
Professionals who hope to increase the sophistication of their mobile strategies will need to:
» Develop a scalable approach to delivering mobile services. Organizations will need a strategic approach to building and spreading institutional knowledge as well as governance for the development of mobile services. It will be increasingly important to define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of mobile initiatives.
» Craft a mobile strategy that extends beyond phones. The emergence of tablets in particular will require a different approach than smartphones.
» Differentiate on the delivery rather than the content of mobile services. In 2012, “how” mobile services are delivered will differentiate them—not what they offer.
Success In The Mobile Ecosystems Will Elude Incumbents And Embrace Newcomers
Expect incumbents across a range of industries to look to hold or gain share as mobile revolutionizes their business. Key 2012 mobile ecosystem trends include:
» The emergence of mobile digital wallets and their ability to go beyond payment. New technologies are converting mobile handsets into digital wallets that combine not just payments but also receipts, vouchers, and loyalty schemes. As well as gaining the convenience of using the phone for payment, consumers will benefit from post-transaction elements such as location-based coupons and enhanced product information at the point of sale.
» The continuation of the smartphone OS bloodbath. If you need a native application, iOS and Android are “must-haves.” However, there is still room for a third major OS platform. Windows Phone is a good candidate, but Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft will have to execute perfectly to stay in the game longer term, even with a larger portfolio of devices in 2012.
» Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Facebook becoming disruptive distribution forces. We don’t expect Amazon to succeed in replicating its Kindle approach in the crowded smartphone space—nor do we expect Facebook to invest in hardware. While their respective roles in the mobile space are still unclear, they could become disruptive forces that enable the distribution of products and services in new ways. Think about the use of social recommendations and personalization tools to facilitate the discovery of mobile services.
Consumer Expectations Will Be Both High And Conflicted
Professionals developing mobile services should take the following into account:
» Consumers will expect more contextual experiences. Phones will have the ability to collect a phenomenal amount of information about a consumer. They will offer new product and service opportunities, both on their own and when combined with others. Mobile phones will be the hub of consumer interaction—not only with other people but also with other services and machines, such as TVs, cars, and even medical devices like heart monitors. Physical products will increasingly ship with companion mobile services.
» But they will also worry about privacy and security. When the press realized that several players were tracking user location to improve services, there was a public outcry. Location is the least of it. The mobile phone will know everything about an individual. Consumer concerns here will center on: 1) the commercial use of this information, and 2) security issues, given the increased use of mobile devices for banking and buying.
Emerging Technologies Need Standards And Scale To Succeed
New native technologies will enable new services, products, and navigation techniques that are unimaginable on the PC. Professionals excited by these new technologies should note that:
» HTML5 has made phenomenal progress, but it is not a panacea. Adobe’s abandonment of Flash at the end of last year and support for HTML5 from heavyweights like Apple, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Amazon, and Microsoft are elevating HTML5’s potential as a solution. Two key things continue to hold back this potential cure-all: 1) the experience and performance differences between native and web applications are noticeable, and 2) realizing the full benefits of HTML5 requires device- and OS-specific optimization.
» Near Field Communications (NFC) will fail to live up to the hype. We expect dozens of millions of NFC devices to ship from a wide variety of device makers — including, eventually, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We expect events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London to serve as marketing catalysts and help showcase the numerous potential uses of the technology. However, a poor out-of-the-box experience, minimal consumer education, and the lack of NFC infrastructure will inhibit growth.
» The cloud is still too congested or too thin. The consumerization of the enterprise IT notion of cloud computing is already a reality, with services such as Dropbox, Spotify, and Apple’s iCloud. The cloud will grow in importance, enabling cross-device services, but will be inhibited by limited network capacity and congestion.
Thomas Husson is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @Thomas_Husson
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]]>The Wall Street Journal, citing those all-knowing “people familiar with the matter,” said the DOJ might approve the deal as early as next week. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has pledged to operate Motorola as a standalone company, and so the government’s main focus on Google has been whether or not it will use the patents acquired from Motorola in an offensive fashion.
Mobile rivals are already complaining that Google plans to uphold Motorola’s patent-licensing strategies on what have been deemed “essential” patents by asking for a royalty rate above what they consider fair as well as its willingness to leave the threat of an injunction on the table, which other companies have pledged not to employ for standards-essential patents. The report said regulators will watch closely to see how Google uses the Motorola patents post-acquisition.
And in related news, the DOJ plans to approve the $4.5 billion purchase of Nortel’s patent portfolio by a group of mobile companies that included Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), denying Google a chance to solidify its patent holdings for far less money than it will pay for Motorola. That event prompted Google to open talks with Motorola and to lash out at its rivals for playing the patent game more effectively than Google.
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]]>AllThingsD didn’t have an exact date, but said Apple has settled on the first week of March to introduce what most people are calling the iPad 3. Less is known about the device itself, but it’s expected to feature a more powerful processor and a higher-resolution display than its predecessor.
This will be the company’s first major launch event since Jobs’ death last October, as January’s iBooks launch event was a much smaller type of introduction. Apple continues to dominate the market for modern tablet computers, and despite upstarts like Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) finally getting traction for tablet other than the iPad, Apple sold 15 million of the current model in the fourth quarter, far more than any other company.
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]]>Sponsorship on the license-funded BBC in the UK is strictly forbidden. But the workaround, for Accenture, was to build a mobile app…
]]>Sponsorship on the license-funded BBC in the UK is strictly forbidden. But the workaround, for Accenture, was to build a mobile app…
Back in January, the RBS 6 Nations tournament anointed Accenture with “official technology partner” status. That’s a relatively new trend, but not entirely - 12 months ago, the Barclays Premier League gave Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) the same status.
To earn the status, technology partners must each provide a service to the tournament. EA provided match data. Accenture built the official Six Nations mobile application, with tournament news, live scores, squad lists, tables and video highlights.
Broadcasters are frequently bound, by the terms of their contracts with tournaments they air, to show the brands of these supposedly integral tournament partners. EA got to show its logo alongside live on-screen match facts on Sky Sports. Accenture’s logo is displayed along with rugby scores broadcast to by the BBC, Ireland’s RTE etc. Many other broadcasters do the same for many other sports.
What’s interesting here is Accenture is not just providing a private partner service to the tournament but, through the mobile app, is itself providing to the tournament’s end audience the same kind of content media consumers might expect to obtain from an organisation like the BBC
BBC Sport gave paidContent this statement…
“Accenture are the official data supplier for The Six Nations and as a technology company are responsible for providing the statistics for The Championships. This ‘facility’ is available to all partners/media covering the event.
“The relationship is between ‘Six Nations Rugby Limited’ and ‘Accenture’. In accordance with BBC and EBU guidelines (which provide for the crediting of official data processing and timing suppliers) the BBC credits Accenture as official data supplier on a number of occasions throughout the match.
“For television, a corporate logo accompanies a select number of statistical match graphics. This is common practice, industry wide, and should not be confused with reflections given to event title sponsors.”
We run this story in the interest of clarification and curiosity and not necessarily as a BBC-bashing piece.
How come the BBC are allowed to show the Accenture logo during the stats coverage in the rugby? #sixnations #England
— Toby Morris (@tobym20) February 4, 2012
]]>How did Accenture advertise on BBC Sport, when the Editorial Guidelines specifically prohibit it? More: mediauk.com/tv/discussions…
— James Cridland (@JamesCridland) February 4, 2012
In yet another case of the tricky line between sharing, mobile data, and transparency, Arun Thampi, a developer for Anideo, discovered Tuesday that Path was uploading the contact information of his iPhone address book when he created an account. Path’s intention was to make it easier for users to find friends using that information, but Thampi and several others found it “a little creepy” that the company felt entitled to the data in one’s personal address book without explicitly warning them first.
On Wednesday, Dave Morin, CEO and founder of Path, apologized (sort of) in saying “we are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts.” A new version of Path has been released that no longer uploads that data unless you explicitly choose to do so, and the data collected from current Path users has been deleted, he said in a blog post.
Once again, we see the dance that mobile apps tied to location and social networks have to do around show they handle of private information. Path’s misstep is just another signal that people are willing to share information with mobile service providers up to a certain point but they are not pleased when that sharing happens without their knowledge.
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