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Digital First: Facebook Kills Physical Goods Delivery in Gifting Service

2013-08-24T06:17:00.002-07:00

book’s great gifting experiment has come to an end — for physical goods, at least.
After less than a year on the market, the company plans to ramp down its physical gifting service due to an overall lack of user demand. Instead, Facebook will shift its Gifts product entirely to digital goods and gift cards, a retail category for which the company saw much higher customer preference.
More than 80 percent of gifts sent on Facebook were digital, according to the company.
“We’re really making the decision based on user feedback,” said Lee Linden, Facebook’s head of the Gifts program, in an interview. “The physical stuff is interesting for sure, but our goal is to build stuff that’s really great for the majority of people who are using it.”
The switch is also likely due in part to the extremely complicated system that a physical goods delivery operation requires, including working with many partners to keep up with inventory tracking, fulfillment and delivery, and the incredibly touchy task of providing ample customer service. It is unclear how many people inside of Facebook were devoted to maintaining the physical goods Gifts program.
“Physical gifts do require more work to maintain,” Linden said. “And if less than 20 percent of users are taking advantage of it — the purpose of this redesign is to double down on what people want.”
The pivot to offering digital only certainly makes sense in terms of cutting overhead and complication (not to mention eliminating a physical goods business which likely saw razor-thin profit margins). Users will instead be directed to a gifts center with gift card options from businesses like Starbucks, Apple’s iTunes, Target and others.
Linden also stressed the importance of the Facebook Card — a re-loadable gift card that people can choose to pay with at a number of retail partners, though I’d posit this is somewhat more complicated than it should be. Users are directed to load money into individual retailer accounts on the card — like, say, $20 for Olive Garden and $20 for Target — instead of loading money into one account on the card and spending it wherever they choose. (This is likely due to retailers wanting the customer to be “locked in” to spending money with their establishment.)
The move to strictly digital will also put Facebook in more direct competition with services like Wrapp, a purely digital gifting startup that uses the Facebook platform. Linden said Wrapp continues to be “very welcome on the platform.”
The shift will roll out to 10 percent of users Friday afternoon, and completely turn over to 100 percent of the network beginning next week.

Google and Waze Start Mixing Their Maps for the First Time

2013-08-20T08:56:00.003-07:00

oogle today is introducing the first integrations between its homegrown Google Maps for mobile and its newly owned Waze.

Google adds Waze

The traffic tab on Google Maps for iOS and Android will now include accidents, construction, road closures and other incidents reported by Waze users. Meanwhile, the Waze app now supports Google search, and Waze map editors will have access to Google Street View and satellite imagery.
Google grabbing Waze for more than $1 billion in June kept the hot startup away from other suitors, but also landed the “more wood behind fewer arrows” advocates in Mountain View, Calif. with two map apps.
Given the substantial overlap between Google Maps and Waze, it’s interesting to see what the company does to bring them together and keep them distinct.
Adding Waze incident reports is the obvious choice, but also a substantial one; Waze users report millions of blockages and accidents per month. “I think it will have a pretty big impact,” said Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps. “A big fraction of GMM users will see these.”
As McClendon described it in an interview Monday, Waze will continue to be focused on two core things: its community, and helping people who commute.
As for Google Maps’ perceived strengths? Those are search, exploring, finding businesses around you, and offering more imagery, according to McClendon.

Waze adds Google

“We are cross-pollinating as much as possible,” McClendon said of his team and the Waze U.S. unit, which moved to Mountain View a couple weeks ago (the company’s engineering group remains in Tel Aviv). “We’re learning a lot both ways; it’s a very strong meeting of the minds.”
Though Google Maps won’t credit Waze users by name for their incident reports, it will offer them “a much larger audience listening in on that conversation,” McClendon said.
Given that Google has publicly disclosed that the Waze deal is being reviewed retroactively by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, it’s interesting that McClendon is being quite so forward about these integrations, which he said were the first of many.
“Nothing has changed in our actions based on the FTC,” McClendon said.

Flickr/HeatherMG Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps

Waze users will provide to Google incident reports from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Switzerland, UK and the U.S.
Google Maps for Mobile will also continue to show traffic incidents from other providers including TomTom, McClendon noted.
Another potentially interesting area of overlap between Waze and Google Maps is monetization. Google (duh) has taken a search ads approach — it just added ads on Google Maps for iPhone and iPad, after having them on the Android version for a while. Waze has struck deals to display a smattering of businesses on its map (mainly Taco Bell, it seems) when users are approaching them.
“Waze has a materially different model,” McClendon noted. “But, it’s early days for local advertising and I think we both have good ideas, and right now lots of experiments.”
So will Google really maintain two map apps long-term?
“We would never do anything to hurt the community,” McClendon said, “And right now, having the Waze app is the way to stay focused on it.”
He added, “Long-term speculation, I probably wouldn’t get into, but right now they are two powerful separate applications.”

Kixeye’s Games on Facebook Are Not Cute or Cuddly, Just Like Its Prickly CEO

2012-05-30T05:38:00.002-07:00

Farms don’t have rocket launchers, but games built by Kixeye do.
You also won’t find purple cows or other decorations — just blood.

Kixeye CEO Will Hardin

That’s how Will Harbin, Kixeye’s CEO, described his company’s social games to me last week over the phone. Harbin is passionate about building games for Facebook, but we are not talking about the ones that necessarily appeal to 40-year-old housewives. The company’s titles include Backyard Monsters, War Commander and Battle Pirates, and 97 percent of the company’s audience is male.
Because of the small niche it is serving, the games don’t appear in Facebook’s top 40. But they do monetize extremely well.
Currently, Kixeye is registering roughly one million users every day, and while most social game companies make roughly 4 cents per user, Kixeye claims it makes closer to 60 cents.
The San Francisco company has been profitable for the past two years, and this year it is projecting revenues in excess of $100 million.
It’s similar to the story Kabam and other social game makers have started to tell as Facebook becomes a more mature gaming platform. Developers are starting to see that if they target a more hardcore gaming demographic, with more sophisticated kinds of games, the players will be more engrossed and, therefore, spend more time and money in the game.
Besides, it is these players who are typically used to spending $60 per videogame for a console system, so getting a few dollars out of them is much easier.
But even though this all sounds great, don’t expect Harbin to hype the company’s prospects. Instead of pumping up the company as a prospective IPO candidate or raising millions of dollars in private equity — just because he can — he is fairly pragmatic.
In fact, the lack of sensationalism in his voice would be considered almost boring if the conversation weren’t actually such a breath of fresh air in what’s becoming an overheated sector. And, despite having plenty of good things to say, talking to me seemed like a real chore and only something he was mildly tolerating.
What’s more, when I reacted positively to his disinterest in our conversation — because it is so different from most pitchmen who talk to me — he was almost disappointed, saying that most people think he’s a jerk.
“I’ve had successes under my belt, but more importantly, I’ve had failures,” he said. “I know what I’d be in for, and I’m not in a rush to IPO. It’s got to be the right time. Too many companies go public too early and have ruined their growth trajectory. No one here has incentive to cash out and get out quickly. We love what we are doing, and this has been a passion of mine since I was a child — videogames, that is — and it would have to make real sense for me to change my day-to-day job.”
Without IPO pressures and without being accountable to shareholders on a quarterly basis, Harbin can aim for the fences.
The company, which is on track to have 300 employees by the end of the year (up from 35 a year ago), has raised $12 million in funding and is announcing today that it has opened a development studio in Australia.
Harbin said he was able to pick up employees from 3Blokes Studios, which RockYou acquired and subsequently shut down. He was going to acquire the studio, but when the deal fell through, he was able to hire everyone anyway. So far, there are about 10 people, and he thinks the studio will max out at 20.
A similar occurrence happened closer to home when he was able to hire six employees from Crowdstar when the company shifted gears away from building Facebook games.
Harbin said he sees three areas of focus for the company: building its own game platform so players don’t have to play via Facebook, developing mobile games and expanding internationally.
The first mobile game, Backyard Monsters, is expected to come out for iOS and Android this summer, and will be distributed on Ngmoco’s Mobage network.
Still, he’s reluctant to grow too fast or stretch the company’s resources too thin.
“We are trying to be pragmatic and do what we can with the management bandwidth we have. We don’t want to get too big too fast,” he said.

Best Buy is Selling Nearly as Many iPhones as Apple Itself

2012-03-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Apple’s move to make Best Buy an outlet for the iPhone back in 2008 is proving a wise one — lucrative, too.

Over the past few years, the retail chain has become an increasingly important outlet for Apple extending its reach and distribution via its 1100 stores. About 600 of them host Apple Store-within-a-stores, most in geographic locations that Cupertino feels are too small to support a dedicated Apple store.

And they’re selling a lot of iPhones.

Almost as many as Apple itself, according to new data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

The firm surveyed iPhone buyers in December 2011, and January and February 2012, asking them where they purchased the device. And it found that retail stores accounted for 76 percent of iPhone sales and online stores 24 percent. When the iPhone 4S first launched, retail stores and online outlets accounted for 67 percent and 33 percent of sales, respectively, largely due to online pre-orders.

More interesting, however, was the actual breakdown of the stores themselves. According to CIRP’s data, Apple sold 15 percent of all iPhones purchased in the U.S. during the period of the survey (retail: 11 percent / online: 4 percent). Meanwhile, AT&T sold 32 percent via it’s online and retail stores, Verizon 30 percent — again, online and off, and Sprint 7 percent.

And Best Buy? The big box retailer sold 13 percent, just 2 percent shy of Apple itself. The remaining 3 percent: “other,” which I’m told is a combination of retailers like Radio Shack and Walmart and respondents who received their iPhone as a gift and didn’t know where it was originally purchased.

So when it comes to iPhone distribution, it’s obviously the carriers that drive sales. But retail partners like Best Buy are clearly hugely important as well. Nearly as important as the Apple Store.

“Apple Stores and the Apple Web site are tremendously productive, but they are limited by their relatively small retail footprint,” CIRP’s Josh Lowitz told AllThingsD. “There are 4 times as many Best Buy stores and probably 20 times as many AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint stores, so aggressive distribution through all these channels is critical to Apple’s US strategy.”

Apple’s TV Remote of the Future? It’s Already Here, In Your Hands.

2012-03-23T01:17:00.003-07:00

It’s possible that, one day, Tim Cook will stand

up onstage and show off a “real” Apple TV set
— an integrated box/screen/entertainment device
– that will replace whatever’s sitting in your living
room now.

Another possibility: Over time, Apple simply builds

an Apple TV set right in front of us, in bits and pieces — so slowly that we don’t really notice it.

Take the remote, for instance. PatentlyApple has its hands on an Apple application for an “advanced TV remote” that would offer some cool features. Like the ability to automatically scan your other devices and figure out the right code to control them, instead of requiring users to use a combination of manuals and trial and error.

At least as important is that, while Apple’s patent, filed back in 2010, could be a standalone device, the application makes it seem much more likely that users will use their iPhones, iPods or iPads to control their TVs.

Which makes sense, because Apple is already offering a “Remote” iOS app that handles some basic functions for its existing Apple TV. That is: There’s a good chance you’re just a download away from owning a bona-fide Apple TV remote already.

This kind of incremental building may be even more important on the content side, which is the real key to an Apple TV: If it’s simply a very nice screen that offers the same content choices that TV viewers already have, then it’s just a very nice screen. Andfor years, Apple has been making attempts to wrangle different TV choices, at different price points, without much success.

But instead of one grand, sweeping video package, Apple may end up just cobbling together an array of offerings, piece by piece.

To wit: The latest refresh of Apple TVdidn’t offer any new content, but it did make it easier for Apple users to buy the content that’s already there. Anyone with an iTunes account can subscribe to Netflix, and soon, Major League Baseball’s MLB.TV service, directly from Apple, without having to pull out a credit card again.

Netflix + iTunes + baseball games won’t make up a full suite of programming choices for most people. But now that Reed Hastings and Bob Bowman have agreed to let Tim Cook handle their billing for them, more media moguls will likely follow in their footsteps. Get enough of them in there, and you could end up with something really compelling.

Viral Video: Hollywood Loves Obama Again

2012-03-19T02:31:00.000-07:00

This has gotten to be the mother of all political

ads — directed by Oscar-winning director Davis

Guggenheim, narrated by Tom Hanks and lasting

17 minutes — all part of the campaign of President Barack Obama.

Plus, “The Road We’ve Traveled” video was posted right onto YouTube on its release.

It will be interesting to see how it will be received and if it will work. The Washington Post is calling it a “docu-ganda,” noting it cost $345,000.

What do you think?

The Failures and Fallacies of Mike Daisey’s Apple Attack and the Media

2012-03-19T00:41:00.002-07:00

Who in their right mind would lie to Ira Glass?

That was my first reaction to the revelation that the theatrical monologuist Mike Daisey had lied or fabricated — or in his words, “taken dramatic license” with — certain parts of his stage play, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

When I met people at parties in recent weeks and told them that I write about technology and that I had devoted more than a decade to covering Apple, the first question I used to get was: “Did you know Steve Jobs?” Since about January of this year, that first question has become, “What do you think of Mike Daisey?”

I haven’t had a real answer. I hadn’t seen his show, which was favorably reviewed by the New York Times, nor had I heard the episode of the highly respected public radio documentary program “This American Life” titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,” that had been adapted from his play.

The show — or shows — hit a cultural nerve at a critical moment. Apple is the biggest company in the world, sporting a market capitalization of $546 billion as of Friday, with $100 billion worth of cash and investments on its balance sheet and the most popular stable of consumer electronics products in the world, especially the iPhone and the iPad. All of them are manufactured by workers in China, who labor for wages that are low by Western standards, put in hours that by Western reckoning are long, under conditions that to Western eyes aren’t ideal, doing jobs that by any standard are incredibly tedious.

Daisey’s stage show, which became a sensation among New York’s chattering classes, sought to draw attention to the plight of allegedly oppressed workers at Foxconn, Apple’s manufacturing partner in China. As New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood put it, the play “is a mind-clouding, eye-opening exploration of the moral choices we unknowingly or unthinkingly make when we purchase nifty little gadgets like the iPhone.”

The stage show had been adapted for radio on public radio’s “This American Life,” which is probably the most-respected radio documentary program in the history of broadcasting. And the Daisey episode was presented as documentary, meaning the radio show’s staff of journalists and producers were vouching for it being true.

The problem: Much of it wasn’t.

In the show, Daisey described a trip to China, as well as a visit to Foxconn’s outer gates and other manufacturing companies in Shenzen, where many are located. He delivers a detailed and emotionally riveting account of meeting girls as young as 12, 13 and 14 years old who claimed to work for Foxconn. This would be in violation both of local laws and of Apple policies.

He also told of meeting workers poisoned by a chemical called n-Hexane, used to polish screens.

And, perhaps most movingly, he related a tear-jerking scene in which he showed a working iPad to a man who said he had crippled a hand while making its parts in a Foxconn metal press, yet had never so much as seen one of the devices powered on. Seeing the iPad’s screen in action, he tells Daisey, “is like a kind of magic.”

The word “magic” fits oddly here, because these meetings didn’t happen as Daisey said. “This American Life” yesterday aired a lengthy episode entitled “Retraction,” documenting Daisey’s many liberties with the facts.

To help do so, a reporter for another public radio show — Rob Schmitz of “Marketplace” — did what no one else in the media seemed to be willing to do, which was subject Daisey’s claims to scrutiny. Most damning of all in Schmitz’s report was the testimony of Daisey’s translator, called Cathy. She was found — after Daisey had told TAL he had lost contact with her — and disputed many of the anecdotes taken from the play and used in the radio segment about Foxconn.

Among the fabrications: Daisey didn’t speak to quite as many people nor visit nearly as many plants as he said he did. She disputed finding underage workers. The n-Hexane poisoning incident occurred not at Foxconn in Shenzen where Daisey visited, but at a Wintek facility in Suzchou, more than 900 miles to the north of Shenzen.

The stage show, and therefore the radio show that was derived from it, turned out to be a mixture of facts and fiction. Which might be fine for a production on the New York theatrical stage, where fiction and fact blend readily. And, while it might be okay in entertainment products, you don’t expect it from a prestigious radio documentary program.

And that is where the problems began.

When Daisey’s monologue was adapted for “This American Life,” outrage began to grow among people who wanted to do something about it. It was, Glass says, the most downloaded episode of “TAL” ever, and public radio listeners did what public radio listeners tend to do. For one thing, they started a petition. More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition at Change.org, inspired by the TAL production based on Daisey’s work, demanding that Apple make changes.

That includes crafting a “worker protection strategy” for new products released, as well as publishing data from Fair Labor Association audits.

Feeding the frenzy, Daisey stepped up as the leading voice for worker rights in China’s electronics industry. He was seemingly everywhere in the media. Since the TAL segment aired in January, Daisey has been seen on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” in a report that, like the “TAL” episode, is now going to have to be retracted or at the very least walked back.

Another CBS-owned property, CNET, hosted Daisey as part of “Reporters Roundtable,” alongside Charles Duhigg of the New York Times, co-author of a series of front page stories in that newspaper. Duhigg ended his “Roundtable” appearance by urging people who care about the issue to go and see Daisey’s play.

Daisey also appeared on MSNBC repeating the same anecdotes and tarnishing the usually shiny Apple. And on HBO. And PBS. And C-SPAN.

Needless to say, there will have to be many more retractions in the days ahead.

At this point, it’s hard to determine what’s more outrageous, Daisey’s lies to Ira Glass and his team, or the national media’s willingness to give Daisey a platform to repeat the same lies and fabrications without making the slightest effort to vet them.

The circumstances around Apple’s manufacturing arrangements in China aren’t new. As a columnist for Businessweek I wrote about Apple’s first round of “sweatshop” allegations in 2006, well before the age of the iPhone and the iPad, which had at the time first come to light in part because of the reporting by London’s Daily Mail.

I’ve never been to China. Many people know more about the on-the-ground facts concerning Apple’s factories than I do. But there are many reporters who have been there. In 2010, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Fredrik Balfour wrote a powerful cover story for that magazine, which aimed to get to the bottom of the string of suicides that occurred among Foxconn employees that year.

ABC’s “Nightline” visited Foxconn earlier this year. Its report was criticized in some circles, because at the time of his death, Apple’s late CEO Steve Jobs happened to be the largest shareholder of that network’s parent company, Disney. Also, ABC had been invited by Apple and Foxconn. Even so, “Nightline” anchor Bill Weir, seeing conditions very different from what Daisey described in the course of his reporting, wondered if Mike Daisey’s work was questionable.

At the very least, Daisey is a dramatist who now admits he chose to lie, but for reasons known only to himself. The chance to raise his profile and sell more tickets to his monologue are obvious potential motivations. Whatever it was, his dramatic product is meant to be consumed as thought-provoking entertainment, not as fact-based journalism, which many people assumed it was.

This is the crux of Daisey’s defense for lying to Ira Glass and his fact-checker: That he’s not a journalist and took dramatic license with the events, and now regrets doing the “This American Life” segment.

And that’s the real shame here.

Clearly, people care about how workers who make our electronics are treated, or there wouldn’t have been a market for Daisey’s show, or for an hour-long radio documentary adapting it. And the subject is one we need to discuss at length as a society. The net result of Mike Daisey’s efforts to put self-promotion ahead of the facts has badly muddied the waters, and has probably done more harm to the people he sought to help.

So, instead of illumination on a serious topic, we are left with little. Mike Daisey is an opportunistic fabulist and should be ashamed of himself for lying. Ira Glass and his team are ashamed for giving him wider attention, and have said so. But there are many more people who should be even more ashamed for taking Daisey’s lies at face value. There should be many more retractions and apologies in the days ahead.

But now we have to start the conversation about Apple and Foxconn and workers’ rights all over again, this time with real, verifiable facts at our command. Is that so much to ask?

Twitter and Facebook Are Tomorrow’s News Service. For Now, Though …

2012-03-19T00:38:00.003-07:00

If you’re like me, you increasingly rely on Twitter

and Facebook as your news editors. But that means we’re in a small minority.

Just 9 percent of American adults frequently get their news from their pals at the two services. And those who do end up getting it much more frequently from Facebook than Twitter. That’s according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center and its Project for Excellence in Journalism.

That’s a lot more than a few years ago, when that number would have been a goose egg for both services, because they didn’t exist.

But it’s still a whole lot less than Google and other search engines*, which do the trick 32 percent of the time, or good old fashioned news sites, which account for 36 percent of the audience’s tips. Aggregators — Pew calls them “news organizers” — pick up the rest.

Take off your digital blinders for a minute and this shouldn’t be a huge surprise. It’s easy to extrapolate your behavior, and the behavior you see from your peers, and assume it applies universally. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. (If it was, we’d actually see statistical evidence of cord-cutting.)

At All Things Digital, for instance, we’ve been making a concerted push to bring in visitors via Twitter and Facebook, mostly through the efforts of our social media whizDrake Martinet. But even though our audience hangs out on the right end of the early adopter bell curve, Drake says social services account for about 15 percent of our referrals, predominantly from Twitter. (Which is a whole lot better than it was before Drake started working his magic.)

Wait a minute: Aren’t the Pew people the same ones who told us, a year ago, that Facebook was an increasingly important source of traffic for news site?

Yup. (Good memory!)

But these two reports aren’t mutually exclusive. Last year’s survey pointed out that social media is a lot more important to news sites than it used to be. This one just reminds us that for most sites, other stuff still matters more.

*Okay. Basically, just Google.

Apple Unveils Cash Plan Monday Morning

2012-03-19T00:36:00.003-07:00

Apple has around $100 billion in cash sitting

on its books. What on earth will it do with it all?

Wall Street has been asking the company some

version of this question for years, and now

investors may get some kind of answer. Apple

has announced a conference call to discuss its

cash position — and only its cash position — tomorrow morning, at 9 am ET:

Here’s the entirety of the release:

“Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple® will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash.”

Apple has been hinting for a while that some kind of announcement has been coming. Cook made two public appearances this year — during the company’s earnings call and at a Goldman Sachs-hosted investor conference — and both times he said Apple was debating what to do with its stockpile.

Here’s John Paczkowski’s summary of Cook’s comments at the Goldman event, where Cook spent a lot of time talking about cash:

“We’re in very active discussions at the board level on what we should do,” he said, adding that careful consideration is the guiding principle here. “We are not going to run out and have a toga party.”

“We are judicious in our spending,” Cook said. “We are deliberate. We spend our money like it is our last penny. … I think shareholders want us to do that. They don’t want us to act like we are rich.”

“I’d be the first to admit we have more cash than we need to run the daily business. So we’re actively discussing it. I only ask for a bit of patience, so we can do it in a way that’s best for the shareholders.”

iPhone

2012-03-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

The iPhone Finds Its Voice

The iPhone 4S is one of Apple’s less dramatic updates, but, when combined with the Siri, iOS 5 and iCloud features, it presents an attractive new offering to smartphone users, writes Walt. October 11, 2011 at 6:03 pm PT

Yes, BlackBerry 10 Is Headed to the PlayBook … Someday

2012-03-18T13:17:00.004-07:00

BlackBerry 10, the latest version of

Research

In Motion’s mobile operating system, isn’t

intended for the company’s handsets alone.

It’s destined for the PlayBook tablet as well.

Rob Orr, RIM’s vice president of product management, tells TechRadar that the company will debut a BlackBerry 10-based handset “toward the end of 2012,” and will follow it by bringing “BlackBerry 10 to our PlayBooks.”

Reached for comment, a RIM spokesperson confirmed Orr’s remark: “BlackBerry 10 is being designed for our next generation smartphones, as well as for the BlackBerry PlayBook. Owners of BlackBerry PlayBook today will be able to update their tablet to the BlackBerry 10 OS via a free software update once the tablet software version is available.”

That’s the plan, anyway. And it makes perfect sense, since BB10 is based on the same QNX platform as the current PlayBook OS. The only problem here is the one that’s plagued RIM for months now: The timeline.

The company has repeatedly delayed the launch of BlackBerry 10 and the next-generation devices based on it, while continuing to promote the hell out of it. And the further it pushes them out, the longer it has to rely on its current operating system, which is pretty dusty at this point. And the longer it does that, the harder it is to retain the attention of consumers and developers, both of whom have plenty of other options when it comes to smartphones.

Satisfaction, Thy Name Is iPhone

2012-03-18T12:06:00.001-07:00

Here’s a data point sure to get prominent mention

during Apple’s next big media event. The iPhone has

once again claimed the top ranking in J.D. Power’s

semiannual smartphone satisfaction study.

For the seventh consecutive time.

The iPhone scored 839 out of 1,000 possible points. That’s a point more than it claimed in J.D. Power’s September 2011 survey, and 41 points more than its nearest rival, HTC, which scored 798 (down from 801).

It’s also 64 points more than the industry average of 774, beneath which rivals Samsung, Motorola, LG, Research In Motion and Nokia continue to toil. All five of those companies’ smartphones fell in customer esteem, some precipitously. Motorola’s score slipped to 758, down from 775; Samsung’s to 769 from 777; LG’s to 733 from 760; RIM’s to 733 from 762; and Nokia’s to 702 from 721.

What a sad commentary on the industry that smartphones from five of its seven largest vendors posted below-average scores in customer satisfaction.

Declining scores.

Ease of operation, operating system, physical design and the all-important battery performance — which, according to J.D. Power’s study, consumers identified as the least satisfying aspect of smartphones, by far — are features you’d think the smartphone industry would have pretty much dialed in by now. But evidently there’s still lots of room for improvement.

How Much Is Apple Worth?

2012-03-18T12:00:00.002-07:00

Apple is a juggernaut. Its stock touched $600 on Thursday, which represents $560 billion in market capitalization. Compare this to Exxon Mobil, with a market cap of $400 billion, IBM’s $240 billion and Wal-Mart’s $210 billion. Can Apple really be worth that much?

The easy answer is that the company is worth whatever the market says it’s worth. Well, yes, the market is right every day — but it is right only for that day. What about tomorrow?

Google Apps VP Dave Girouard Leaving to Start a Company

2012-03-18T11:22:00.003-07:00

Dave Girouard, who is Google’s VP of apps, is leaving

the company, Google said today.

Girouard had been responsible for Gmail, Google Calendar

, Google Docs and other cloud applications.

After eight years at Google, Girouard plans to start his own

company, though not in the enterprise space. Google Ventures will be investing in his start-up, alongside Kleiner Perkins and NEA.

(Update: Girouard’s new company is called Upstart, with the tagline “The Startup is You.” According to a splash page, “Upstart lets you raise capital in return for a small portion of your future income.”)

Meanwhile, back at the Goog, Girouard’s responsibilities will transfer to Sundar Pichai, leader of the Chrome and apps team. Pichai is one of Google CEO Larry Page’s septumvirate of product heads, who were established when he took over the company last April. Part of Pichai’s agenda has been to lessen the divide between enterprise apps and consumer apps.

Departures by long-time Googlers are surprisingly rare. Google’s first employee, Craig Silverstein, left to join Khan Academy last month.

Titre dHow to Signal That You Have an iPad 3 (Comic)u message

2012-03-18T11:21:00.002-07:00

New iPad a Hotspot Now for Verizon, Not So Much With AT&T

2012-03-18T11:05:00.000-07:00

So we jumped the gun a bit when we said that the new iPad can act as a hotspot for both Verizon and AT&T.

As our now-corrected story notes, the hotspot feature is ready now for Verizon. AT&T, meanwhile, says it is working with Apple on the feature. However, it won’t be ready for those buying or getting their iPads today, nor is there an ETA for when it will be available.

The hotspot capability lets the iPad serve as an Internet connection for a laptop or other Wi-Fi device.

It’s not immediately clear what the holdup is, as Verizon is offering the feature, and AT&T already offers a hotspot option on its iPhone lineup.

An Apple representative said that the company has turned on the feature at the hardware level, and that it is available to any carrier that wants to offer it.

Meanwhile, a couple of other notes on the iPad models with built-in cellular connectivity.

As a reminder, the iPads in both the AT&T and Verizon options will run on high-speed LTE networks, where available. However, because AT&T and Verizon use different frequency bands, buyers have to decide at the time of purchase which one they want.

Beyond North America, Apple isn’t supporting LTE, but is supporting faster flavors of the HSPA network that are being adopted faster than LTE abroad. Models purchased abroad will support LTE on AT&T’s network, while both Verizon and AT&T iPads bought in the U.S. will be able to roam internationally on 3G.

Apple isn’t making a version of the new iPad that works on networks from either Sprint or T-Mobile USA.

Of course, chances are that none of this was on the minds of the happy folks who lined up this morning for the first units, like this crowd in New York City:

Apple’s New iPad Costs at Least $316 to Build, IHS iSuppli Teardown Shows

2012-03-18T10:45:00.004-07:00

Apple’s new iPad hit store shelves today.

That means that along with the lines at the

stores and the requisite applause of store

employees cheering people who buy them,

there were among the many iPad buyers today

people who just couldn’t wait to get the gadget

torn apart.

The analysts at the market research firm IHS iSuppli, considered by the investment community to be the most reliable of the organizations that conduct teardowns, were among that set. Today, somewhere in Southern California, an iSuppli analyst stood in line at a store and promptly took an iPad to a lab, where it was torn into, initiating the interesting process of estimating what it all cost to build.

Here’s what iSuppli’s team found: First off, there weren’t many changes from the last iPad, in terms of suppliers. “It’s most of the same characters we saw last time around,” analyst Andrew Rassweiler told me today. Wireless chipmakers Qualcomm and Broadcom both reappeared — Qualcomm supplying a baseband processor chip, Broadcom a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chip, TriQuint Semiconductor suppling some additional wireless parts. STMicroelectronics once again retained its position supplying the gyroscope. Cirrus Logic supplied an audio codec chip.

The 16 gigabyte, Wi-Fi-only iPad that sells for $499 costs about $316 to make, or about 63 percent of the device’s retail price. On the upper end, the 4G-ready 64GB model that sells for $829 costs about $409 to make, or about 49 percent of the retail price.

The new cost figures represent an increase of between 21 percent and 25 percent, depending on the model, from the iPad 2, which iSuppli tore down last year.

So what did they find inside? An expensive Samsung display, for one thing. All thosemillions of pixels don’t come cheap. ISuppli analyst Andrew Rassweiler estimates that the display, which cost $57 on the iPad 2, has grown in cost to $87 on the latest iPad.

Rassweiler says that two other vendors, LG Display and Sharp Electronics, have inked display supply deals with Apple for the latest iPad, but only Samsung is thought to have fully ramped up production. Depending on the vendor, the display may cost as much as $90, he said.

One set of components remained essentially the same as before: Those that drive the touchscreen capabilities. Rassweiler says that three Taiwanese companies, TPK, Wintek and Chi Mei, supply parts related to driving the central interface feature of the new iPad, but he says to expect a major shift in how Apple handles the touch interface on future iPads.

The combined cost of cameras, including the front-facing and back camera, is pegged at $12.35, more than three times the cost of cameras found on the iPad 2, Rassweiler says. But it’s essentially the same setup as that on the iPhone 4, he says. As has been the case with cameras, the identity of the supplier wasn’t easy to determine because they try hard to hide identifying information from the prying eyes of teardown analysts. The candidates, however, include Largan Precision Co., a Taiwanese supplier of camera modules to wireless phone companies, and Omnivision. On the iPhone 4S, a research firm called Chipworks identified the supplier of the CMOS sensor in one of the cameras as having come from Sony.

As with other Apple devices, the main processor chip is an Apple-made A5X processor, one manufactured under contract by Samsung. The estimated cost of that chip is $23, up from $14 on the iPad 2.

Another part that’s more expensive than on the last iPad, but also better for a variety of reasons, is the battery. This one is estimated to have cost Apple $32, up from $25 on the iPad 2. But it constitutes a significant upgrade, Rassweiler says, with 70 percent more capacity than before. Apple benefited in part by lower prices in the lithium polymer material used to make the battery, offsetting the cost of adding a vastly improved battery.

ISuppli wasn’t the only outfit conducting teardowns of the iPad today. An enthusiast site called iFixit that encourages consumers to learn how to repair and upgrade their own electronics, flew technicians to Australia to conduct its own teardown analysis.

No New Xbox “Anytime Soon,” Says Microsoft

2012-03-18T09:54:00.001-07:00

icrosoft’s Xbox 360 is selling so well there’s

no need for the company to release its

successor this year.

The company confirmed today that it won’t be

unveiling a new Xbox console at the E3 video

probably shouldn’t expect new hardware for game conference in June, and said consumers

quite a while.

“While we appreciate all the interest in our long-range plans for the future, we can confirm that there will be no talk of new Xbox hardware at E3 or anytime soon,” Microsoft’s Corporate Communications boss Frank Shaw told AllThingsD. “For us, 2012 is all about Xbox 360.”

And for good reason. Shaw notes that the past year has been the best ever for Xbox 360 — a year in which it outsold not just all other gaming consoles, but DVD players and digital media receivers as well.

With demand for the Xbox 360 that robust, Microsoft can take its time bringing a successor to market, milking another year of strong sales out of the 360, which is still riding an upswell of momentum thanks to its Kinect motion-sensor peripheral and a strong lineup of games.

Great App-pectations: When Innovation Leapfrogs Phone Capabilities

2012-03-18T09:47:00.001-07:00

As comic Louis C.K. would say about technology: Everything is amazing and nobody is happy.

Nowhere is that more true than in the world of smartphone applications, as app developers push the possibilities of how to use our smartphones’ location awareness and reach well beyond what our mobile data plans and battery lives seem to be able to support, especially in densely populated spaces.

It’s kind of sad, because for a while the release of new devices has set off rushes of creativity, with developers using touchscreens and accelerometers and other sensors in ways that seemed to make science fiction real.

With every available power outlet in use, a popular FedEx promotion brought a "human charging station" to the street. Thankfully it didn't enlist homeless people.

We see great stuff like phone cameras being used for everything from detecting heart rates totranslating paper menus from one language to another. We watch serendipitous location-sharing tools go from typing in an address five years ago (Dodgeball), to linking with a crowdsourced database three years ago (Foursquare), to ambient awareness this year (Highlight).

The disconnect between app dreams and phone reality was particularly evident at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin this past week, where official attendance hit nearly 25,000, up 27 percent from last year. Combined with everyone else in the hip Texas town, including many SXSW partiers without passes, that made for phone network overload.

And when our phones are constantly searching for a signal or tracking our locations, their battery life tends to suck. Literally.

As most did, I had a hard time getting mobile data during all five days I was in Austin, with ongoing weak 3G service on my iPhone 4 on the AT&T network. AT&T wouldn’t give me a comment on its SXSW performance beyond a map of its event service plan, including 220 Wi-Fi hotspots and a couple of “COW” (cellular on wheels) trucks.

Other outlets also reported that bad data access at SXSW 2012 was a problem for many people. (Although not everyone and not every device had issues: Walt Mossberg waspulling down 18 Mbps back in his hotel room on his new Verizon LTE iPad that he was testing.)

Here’s the problem: SXSW has become a place where app developers come in the hopes that they can persuade a dense, social audience of early adopters to try their shiny new way to find what’s going on and where. Hundreds of start-ups lust after the idea of “winning SXSW,” following past examples of Twitter and Foursquare, and, to a lesser extent, GroupMe.

There was much debate, egged on by tech bloggers, about who would be crowned the SXSW winner this year. I think the consensus was that nobody won, although Mophie battery packs for the iPhone and sponsors who brought charging stations should get an honorable mention.

But I’d argue that one of the reasons it was impossible to “win” in 2012 was that these location and communication apps were hindered by poor service and battery life impact.

Also, as aged as they are in comparison to the newborn location vampires, Foursquare and Twitter still dominate SXSW. There were 755,373 total tweets with the keyword or hashtag “SXSW” during the Interactive portion of the festival, according to PeopleBrowsr. At one point, I had the 3,702nd concurrent Foursquare check-in at the Austin Convention Center.

“Foursquare’s part of the fabric of SXSW,” said Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley in an onstage interview at the event. I think he’s right.

But then Crowley took it a step further: “Foursquare in Austin at SXSW is like Foursquare of the future. It’s going to be everywhere.”

If that’s the case — and I’m not sure it is — I don’t think the future sounds so great. Because using Foursquare at SXSW was actually a total chafe. It often took four tries to send my Foursquare check-ins to the server. The error messages were constant.

More daring apps like the new Highlight — which constantly tracks users and pings them when they are near people with common friends and interests — had even more problems. One morning when I loaded up Highlight, the app told me that I had been in close proximity to 10 people the night before between 1 am and 2:30 am, over on the other side of the river from where I was staying.

Boring as I am, I was home in bed by then.

When I asked Highlight co-founder Paul Davison why the app messed up, he said Highlight had been experimenting with using mobile cell towers to locate users, because GPS has such an impact on their batteries. The cell tower had apparently retained my location while I was sleeping across town, not having opened the app and sent it an updated location.

(Although, to be honest, I don’t really want to share where I am while I’m sleeping — which is a very different concern.)

Thus, I found that a good SXSW icebreaker question was: “So, have you uninstalled Highlight yet?” In an unscientific but anecdotally significant number of cases, the answer was yes. Why? Almost always: Battery drain.

Davison said Highlight — which only launched in January — is working to improve accuracy and decrease battery impact. He added that he’s hopeful people will overlook these issues.

“For many, the ability to see profiles of the people standing nearby is so new and exciting that they want to try it out now, even if the location precision and battery life is not yet where they’d want it to be,” Davison said.

Foursquare’s response was similarly optimistic. As far as service goes, “things have gotten much better [at SXSW] in the last couple of years and are continuing to improve,” said a spokeswoman. “And battery life should be much better next year with the iPhone 5, iPad HD and new Android handsets launching.”

Everything might be exciting, but if your phone’s dead, you’re not using it. That makes me and many others unhappy.

Because while I’m sure better and more expensive services and devices will be on the market next year, I’m also sure SXSW 2013 will be even more jam-packed.

Google Confirms Kevin Rose and Some of Milk Team Will Join

2012-03-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Google confirmed the news we brought you yesterday: Kevin Rose and some of the team from his mobile app incubator Milk will be joining the company.

The word came in two Google+ posts by Bradley Horowitz and Kevin Rose, which speaks to our assumption that Rose will be working on Google’s social team. “I can’t wait to be a part of the amazing team that is shaping the future of the web,” Rose wrote today.

Those joining the company are Rose, noted designer Daniel Burka, biz dev guy Chris Hutchins and designer Joshua Lane. We’d reported yesterday that each of the employees will be receiving on the order of $1 million to $2 million, and investors are getting their money back, plus a little extra.

Kevin Rose Will Join Google

2012-03-18T09:18:00.002-07:00

Digg founder Kevin Rose has been hired by Google, according to sources close to the situation.

Rose’s mobile app incubator Milk yesterday announced it was shutting down its only product, Oink.

Google is not outright buying or “acqhiring” Milk, the sources explicitly said, but Rose and some others from the company have been hired. It’s not clear what will happen to Milk after Rose joins Google.

UPDATE: More people familiar with the deal said the rest of the Milk team is joining Google, with employees netting $1 million to $2 million each. although I’m still trying to nail down the value of the overall transaction. Milk investors are getting their initial investment money back plus a little extra, sources said.

Google declined to comment, and Rose did not reply to multiple requests.

Rose’s first day at Google is to be this Monday, the sources said.

Rose has an avid online following, stemming from his days as a host on TechTV and the long-running podcast “Diggnation.” Though Oink — which was a local recommendations app — may not have succeeded, it was able to hit 150,000 downloads in its first month.

That kind of ongoing fan engagement could be a boon to Google+, which has been criticized for low engagement and tricky user accounting.

Milk had raised funding from a huge group of angel investors as well as Google Ventures (yup), First Round Capital and True Ventures. The total raised was $1.7 million, so I suppose each of them did not have too much skin in the game.

Google had been very close to buying Digg in 2008, but the deal fell apart at the last minute.

Police court order Dotwrong

2012-03-18T05:22:00.002-07:00

Internet tycoon Kim Dotcom's cash, cars and property were seized using a court order which should never have been granted.

A judgment from Justice Judith Potter on Friday declared the restraining order "null and void" and having "no legal effect".

The blunder might now lead to the beleaguered internet mogul getting back everything that was stripped away in the surprise dawn raid on his mansion eight weeks ago.

Police commissioner Peter Marshall and the Government's legal advisers at the Crown Law Office have admitted making an embarrassing "procedural error" when filing documents to seize Dotcom's property.

Potter said Marshall's application for the restraining order had "confused" legal moves by opting for one in which Dotcom was not given a chance to mount a defence. It meant Marshall applied for the "incorrect order".

Potter said he had sought to correct the mistake after the raid by applying for the proper order, retrospectively listing assets already seized.

The new order had been granted on a temporary basis, but Potter said she would soon rule on whether the mistake meant the internet mogul should get his property back.

A briefing on the mistakes has been made to Attorney-General Chris Finlayson - who is also the minister in charge of the Crown Law Office.

It was his legal authority that was used by Crown Law to authorise the seizure of the goods, which was undertaken by police and the Official Assignee.

The raid led to Dotcom's Megaupload sites - which carried 4 per cent of internet traffic - being pulled down and $200m in assets seized. A fascinated public watched as officials took a string of luxury cars from the $30 million mansion in North Auckland where Dotcom, wife Mona and their three children lived.

The seizure left Dotcom with no finances to mount a legal challenge against claims he had overseen the biggest criminal copyright operation in history.

On January 30, Crown lawyer Anne Toohey wrote to the court to explain the wrong sort of restraining order had been applied for, saying a "procedural error" had occurred.

Toohey enclosed new legal papers to seek a replacement restraining order and outlined five errors with the initial application.

Court papers showed Marshall accepted the initial order "may well be a nullity".

However, the Crown submitted that new orders granted meant the previous errors didn't matter as the property was still restrained.

Dotcom's legal team, including Simpson Grierson senior partner Willie Akel, challenged the error, stating the seizure of the property was "unlawful".

Court papers show Akel stating Dotcom's belongings and fortune "must be released" because it was "unlawfully seized and restrained under the order".

A spokesman for the Attorney-General said Finlayson was briefed on the issue, apparently in early February.

Dotcom's legal team were unwilling to comment on the decision.

The move would be seen as a new victory for Dotcom. Earlier, Paul Davison QC had successfully over-turned the insistence Dotcom should be held in jail, rather than bailed, before an extradition hearing expected within six months.

But Dotcom is not guaranteed to get his property back.

Canterbury University professor Ursula Cheer said the law made allowances for mistakes and the case would only be fundamentally affected if Dotcom's lawyers were able to produce evidence showing a lack of good faith.

How Much And How Fast Will Electric-Car Battery Costs Fall?

2012-03-18T04:15:00.001-07:00

You hear both sides of the battery cost question a lot when you cover electric cars.

One side says, "Electric-car batteries will be brutally expensive for many years to come, so electric cars will never be practical."

The other side believes, "With wonderful new discoveries coming out of labs and the pace of progress in electronics, batteries will soon cost just a fraction of what they do today, making electric cars cost no more than combustion cars--or even less."

No Moore's Law

There are elements of truth to both, but it's all about the rate of change.

It's often said, "There's no Moore's Law for electric cars"--meaning that lithium-ion battery cells do not double in performance every 18 months, as processor speeds have done.

Instead, the best proxy is to look to the consumer lithium-ion cell maket, now more than 20 years old.

Tesla Motors - Model S lithium-ion battery pack

The small commodity cells in your mobile phone and portable computers are now just a fraction of the cost of the first lithium-ion cells that Sony launched in a 1989 video camera.

Averaged over that time, the rate of performance increase has averaged 6 to 8 percent a year.

Consumer cells show the way

It hasn't been linear, with improvements in both cell chemistry and process technology leading to notable declines once volume production is achieved, followed by a cost plateau.

But we've talked to half a dozen cell makers over the last 18 months, and all of them accepted a 6-to-8-percent annual performance improvement as appropriate for the large-scale automotive cells used by every plug-in carmaker except Tesla Motors.

A 2010 National Academy of Sciences report estimated pack costs then at $625 to $850 per kilowatt-hour.

So where does that take us? If we assume that the 2011 Chevrolet Volt's 16-kWh pack cost roughly $750 per kilowatt-hour (or about $12,000), then we can project the two rates of decline.

At 6 percent a year, the same pack in 2020 would cost just $430/kWh, or $6,500 in total. At 8 percent, it would be even cheaper, at $354/kWh or $5,200 altogether.

2020: $200 to $500 per kWh?

Those numbers tie neatly to estimates by clean-tech market intelligence firm Pike Research--contained in Electric Vehicle Batteries, a very pricey report--that the installed cost of lithium-ion batteries will fall by more than one-third by the end of 2017.

Estimates of electric-vehicle battery costs (first published in Tech Review, Jan 2012 issue)

Pike also projects that the market for such batteries will grow from $2.0 billion last year to almost $15 billion by 2017.

Even better, the technology magazine Tech Review(registration required) analyzed Li-ion cell cost projections through 2020 from a variety of sources, including financial institutions, industry analysts, and electrification groups.

Their projections for costs in 2020 ranged from a low of $225 per kWh to $500/kWh from the most pessimistic sources--but both high and low estimates declined roughly 7 percent a year.

Real costs? No one will say

The actual cost of lithium-ion battery packs is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the electric-car world. We've not found a single maker willing to go on record and say what their cost per kilowatt-hour is.

That's why a statement by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk that cell cost would go below $200 per kilowatt-hour "in the not-too-distant future" made such news last month. In general, the pack adds another 15 to 20 percent on top of the cost of the cells themselves.

Awaiting the hockey stick

Most industry analysts believe that the "hockey stick" demand curve for electric cars--when the rate of increase in demand starts to accelerate--will come in the later years of the decade

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn says that for his company, it will be in 2016, when the Nissan-Renault Alliance can make up to 1 million battery electric vehicles a year. For the rest of the industry, it's likely to be closer to 2018 to 2020.

Meanwhile, if you hear someone say that electric cars will plummet in cost just next year, raise your eyebrows.

And do the same if you hear elsewhere that plug-in cars will never be practical, because batteries will cost "tens of thousands of dollars" for the next 20 years.

Take the long view. Change is coming, and it will most likely be at a rate of about 7 percent a year.

McLaren On Top After Qualifying At Formula 1 Australian GP

2012-03-18T02:54:00.000-07:00

Not only is McLaren’s new MP4-27 racerone of the best looking in the 2012 Formula 1 field, but after today’s qualifying session at the Australian Grand Prix it also appears to be the fastest.

Both McLaren drivers will be starting at the front of the grid in tomorrow’s race after Lewis Hamilton posted a fastest time of 1:24.922 and his teammate Jenson Button just a whisker off with a fastest time of 1:25.074.

There were some major surprises in Melbourne today, with Lotus-Renault’s relative newcomer Romain Grosjean posting a fastest lap time of 1:25.302 to take third spot on the grid.

Sadly, his teammate Kimi Raikkonen ran off the track on his first round of qualifying following a two year hiatus from Formula 1 racing. His detour on the grass cost him dearly, seeing him relegated to 18th on the grid.

Michael Schumacher showed a stunning return to form by being the fourth fastest in his Mercedes AMG, while Aussie hero Mark Webber rounded out the top five.

Webber’s Red Bull Racing teammate and reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel could only manage the sixth fastest time, while Ferrari’s best driver was Fernando Alonso who was 12th fastest during qualifying.

Surprise! The Best Family Vehicle Isn't An SUV Or Minivan

2012-03-18T01:55:00.002-07:00

Families today have very different requirements and tastes when it comes to buying cars. Knowing this, the editors at Kelley Blue Book have ranked the top 10 cars for families, taking into account how certain cars cater to families in various ways.
"Kbb.com’s 10 Best Family Cars of 2012 helps busy parents navigate a hectic, confusing automotive market, offering suggestions for all types of families," said Jack R. Nerad, executive editorial director and executive market analyst for kbb.com. "After driving and evaluating nearly all of the new cars available on the market today, we identified the vehicles that offer the greatest combination of features and value for everyday families."

Click through to see the best cars for families currently available. These versatile vehicles will make moms and dads happy, as they come with a low starting MSRP, solid gas mileage and, of course, enough room for the kids and their stuff.