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TV of Tomorrow: Will the iPad Prove to Be the Future of Television?

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December 14, 2012

During the TV of Tomorrow conference in New York, industry executives discussed how tablets, particularly the iPad, could be the future of television. Tablets and iPads have turned into the second screen for television viewing, and served as the focus of many of the talks at the conference. The second screen trend is both promising and troubling for television execs, as it presents new opportunities while also taking eyes away from advertisements.

People spend 22 minutes on second screens during a traditional 30-minute show, and 38 minutes during a 60-minute show, according to TVPlus co-founder Randy Shiozaki.

Dijit CEO Jeremy Toeman points out that second screen viewing works best for reality shows and other light entertainment. The technology does not work as well for more engaging dramas. Some challenges with second screen viewing involve the different technologies on the market, and the assorted apps for the various tablets.

Some executives maintain that while second screen viewing is exciting, television content is still the most important aspect of the television experience. “What’s been left out of the multiscreen conversation is the first screen, and that will come full circle,” said Lawrence Brickman, VP of smart TV app developer Accedo.

“But if Apple can leverage the incredible amount of energy the TV industry has already invested in the iPad, it may not matter if anyone else can do it better — Apple’s platform will hit scale across multiple screens before the industry even knows it’s happening,” suggests The Verge.

TIME Lists Top 10 Gadgets of the Year: iPhone 5 Takes Top Spot

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December 13, 2012
  • Although Apple may have to cede the top spot on smartphone sales, its iPhone 5 still sits at No. 1 in terms of overall device and operation system quality, earning the coveted TIME Magazine ‘gadget of the year’ award.
  • “TIME’s Harry McCracken calls the iPhone 5 ‘one of the most artfully polished gadgets anyone’s ever built,’ adding that ‘when it comes to melding hardware, software and services so tightly that the seams fade away, Apple still has no peer,'” VentureBeat reports.
  • “Despite 5 million units sold in its opening weekend, and stellar sales results that catapulted iOS back into the mobile operating system lead in November, the iPhone 5 probably can’t catch the Samsung Galaxy S III, which launched in the summer and reached 18 million units by early November,” the article continues.
  • Apple did not, however, gain recognition from TIME for its iPads, even though the new iPad mini earned a warm welcome by many in October.
  • TIME‘s top 10 gadgets are as follows: 1) iPhone 5, 2) Nintendo Wii U, 3) Sony Cyber-shot RX100, 4) Raspberry Pi Model B, 5) Lytro, 6) Apple 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 7) Microsoft Surface with Windows RT, 8) Samsung Galaxy Note II, 9) Nest, and 10) Simple.TV.

Mobile Trends: Should Laptop Makers Shift Their Focus to Tablets?

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December 13, 2012
  • Tablets are set to outsell laptops by 2015, according to a new report from IDC, underscoring the necessity for PC makers to focus on designing attractive slates.
  • “This forecast further emphasizes the massive shift toward mobile, which has been underway for several years: Smartphones began outselling PCs last year and will easily continue to do so as consumers and enterprises do more computing on the go,” reports GigaOM.
  • “Many PC makers were either late to the mobile device game, or not part of it at all, and have watched sales dollars filter to those making smartphones at first, and now tablets,” the article continues.
  • While the IDC report suggests that laptops won’t entirely go away — just as desktop PCs have remained — GigaOM suggests the model of computing that relied heavily on these PCs is changing, and IDC’s predictions could be “too conservative.”
  • The report also notes the decline in unit revenue for mobile devices, compared with the revenue of desktops or laptops. “That means computer makers will have to make up the difference in volume and the best chance to do that is by seizing momentum early, much as Apple did with its iPad,” the article states.
  • “Additionally, tablet hardware is improving quickly, and perhaps more importantly, so are the applications that run on tablets,” GigaOM continues. “Activities that once sounded absurd on a tablet just two or three years ago are now possible on an iPad, Android slate or Windows RT device. Instead of looking back at ‘old-school computing,’ laptop makers should be looking ahead at potential software and cloud services that tablets will benefit from.”

Larry Page Talks Future of Search and Company Projects

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December 13, 2012
  • Google CEO Larry Page, who rarely agrees to interviews, sat down with Fortune to discuss the future of search, clashes with Apple, the company’s numerous Google X projects, and more.
  • Page acknowledges the change in advertising models, but views disruption as a good thing. Google still devotes 70 percent of its effort into search and ads.
  • “The perfect search engine would really understand whatever your need is,” he says. “So one of my favorite examples I like to give is if you’re vacation planning. It would be really nice to have a system that could basically vacation plan for you. It would know your preferences, it would know the weather, it would know the prices of airline tickets, the hotel prices, understand logistics, combine all those things into one experience. And that’s kind of how we think about search.”
  • On Google’s competition with Apple, Amazon and others: “I’d like to see more cooperation on the user side. The Internet was made in universities and it was designed to interoperate. And as we’ve commercialized it, we’ve added more of an island-like approach to it, which I think is a somewhat a shame for users,” Page says.
  • “I think it would be nice if everybody would get along better and the users didn’t suffer as a result of other people’s activities. I try to model that. We try pretty hard to make our products be available as widely as we can. That’s our philosophy,” he notes.
  • The remaining effort at Google is split between apps (20 percent) and new projects (10). “I think investors always worry about this. You know, ‘Oh my God, they’re going to spend all their money on self-driving cars.’ I feel like no matter how hard I try, I can never make the 10 bigger, because it’s actually hard to get people to work on stuff that’s really ambitious. It’s easier to get people working on incremental things.”

Tech Industry Calls on Congress to Allocate More Mobile Spectrum

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December 12, 2012
  • A team of tech companies including Apple, Samsung, and Nokia has submitted a letter to Congress requesting that it allocate more spectrum for mobile data, reports The Verge.
  • The letter argues the spectrum addition “is timely and relevant” to discuss alongside fiscal cliff debates.
  • “Now is the time to ensure the incentive auctions are as robust and successful as possible at liberating spectrum,” reads the letter. “We should also turn our collective attention on ways to reap the economic benefits of underutilized federal spectrum assets.”
  • “Other signatories include Intel, RIM, Qualcomm, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, and Ericsson, all of which are members of the High Tech Spectrum Coalition,” notes the post. “The group believes that upcoming spectrum auctions won’t meet the demand for wireless broadband, nor will it be possible to ‘engineer our way out of this problem’ with more efficient technology.”
  • The letter asks Congress to urge spectrum holders to “become more efficient, to share with one another, to vacate, or to lease their spectrum.”
  • An earlier report this year also recommended the government consider sharing spectrum with commercial partners, since it’s “increasingly difficult to find desirable spectrum that can be vacated by federal users.”

Mobile Video Calling Creates New Frontier as Technologies Improve

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December 11, 2012
  • “As the cameras and screens of smartphones and tablets improve, and as wireless networks offer higher bandwidth, more companies are getting into the business of enabling mobile video calls,” reports The New York Times, noting that the rise has been so quick that analysts have yet to compile numbers.
  • In 2011, Microsoft acquired video calling service Skype. Similarly, Apple developed its own FaceTime feature to sell the iPad and in September expanded the service beyond just Wi-Fi to cellular networks.
  • Google’s free video calling service Hangouts on its social network Google Plus allows up to ten people to video conference, and it features more than 200 apps. Just last week, Yahoo purchased its own video chat service OnTheAir. Tango Mobile is yet another video calling service, which has attracted 80 million active users and sees 200,000 join daily, according to CTO and co-founder Eric Setton.
  • Microsoft has incorporated Skype into its Windows 8 mobile phones, allowing people to receive calls even when the app isn’t running. Google is interested in “making money on the applications, but in learning more about them so it can sell more ads by getting people to use [Hangouts],” notes the article.
  • “Don’t expect video calling to improve productivity. Tango uses the same technology that enables video calls to sell games that people can play simultaneously,” the article states. “Google says some jokey applications on Hangouts, like a feature that can put a mustache over each caller, seem to encourage people to talk longer.”
  • “Tango’s average video call used to last six minutes, Mr. Setton said, but when the company started adding other applications to go with the videos, like games and designs that float over people, the average call length rose to 12 minutes.”

Debunking Tech Perceptions: If TV not Broken, Why is Everyone Trying to Fix It?

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December 7, 2011
  • Apple, Google, Microsoft, Roku and Boxee are just some of the companies working on ways to re-imagine the TV experience.
  • “But nobody seems to be able to answer the big question: what exactly is so broken about TV anyway?” writes Matt Rosoff in a commentary for CNN, part of a series designed to “debunk commonly held perceptions about technology.”
  • Rosoff acknowledges that channel guides are inefficient… “But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most TV viewers simply won’t care enough about any of this stuff to shell out $1,500 for a new Apple TV, or spend a few hundred bucks and countless hours fiddling around adding a new box to their TV set and figuring out how it works.”
  • He notes that while the tech industry wants to optimize the television experience, it is important to remember that TV is passive. We don’t want to work at it. It’s not too difficult to turn the set on, find your channel and you’re done. Even Steve Jobs sometimes just wanted to watch TV and vegetate.
  • “That’s why we love TV just the way it is,” writes Rosoff. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

New IDC Study: Will Microsoft Purchase Netflix and LinkedIn?

By
December 6, 2011
  • A study from IDC predicts that Microsoft may consider purchasing Netflix and LinkedIn next year in an effort to cash in on “the convergence of mobile computing, social networking, cloud services, and big data analytics.”
  • “Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content,” says Frank Gens, senior VP and chief analyst at IDC.
  • Gens refers to the platform built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics as the “3rd Platform.”
  • “The industry’s shift to the 3rd Platform will accelerate in 2012, forcing the industry’s leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions,” predicts Gens. He suggests companies including Apple, Microsoft, HP, SAP, RIM and others will face “crossroads moments” next year.
  • Is Computerworld blogger Preston Gralla convinced? Not really. “Building an app store directly into Windows can serve the same purpose. If the price is right, buying Netflix might make sense. But I don’t expect the price to be right.”

Windows App Store on the Horizon: New Competition for Apple?

By
December 6, 2011
  • Apple’s App Store may face some competition now that Microsoft is planning a digital store of its own.
  • “Microsoft has been firming up its answer to Apple’s user-friendly and easily navigable platform for digital computer downloads,” reports TG Daily. “When Windows 8 comes out next year, it will have a standardized outlet for consumers who want to buy direct downloads of PC applications.”
  • The Windows App Store (not a confirmed name) will be offered some time next year, and developers will be able to post free and premium applications for downloads.
  • “As of now, it appears this digital storefront will be focused on new software, so legacy programs and applications will not be available,” indicates the post. “It’s just one of many major overhauls expected out of Windows 8.”
  • Microsoft has a media event scheduled in San Francisco, where additional details are expected to be released.

Safe Internet Coalition Established in Europe Aimed at Protecting Children

By
December 5, 2011
  • Apple, Google, LG, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Facebook are among 28 tech and media companies that are joining forces to “deliver a better Internet for our children,” reports TheNextWeb.
  • “The group was put together by the European Commission (EC) and the priority actions set out include making it easier to report harmful content, ensuring privacy settings are age-appropriate, and offering wider options for parental control,” according to TNW.
  • “This new coalition should provide both children and parents with transparent and consistent protection tools to make the most of the online world”, says Neelie Kroes, vice president of the EC. “The founding coalition members are already leaders in children’s safety online. Working together we will be setting the pace for the whole industry and have a great basis for fully empowering children online.”
  • The coalition has created a statement of purpose covering five key areas: create effective reporting with simple, robust tools; enable age-appropriate privacy settings; develop age-rating through widespread content classification; extend parental control; and effectively remove child abuse material through improved cooperation with law enforcement.

Mossberg on iTunes Match: Store Your Songs without Slow Uploads

By
December 1, 2011
  • Walt Mossberg favorably reviews Apple’s iTunes Match service. For $25/year, you can create a music locker in the Cloud that allows you to play your music collection on up to 10 devices.
  • In contrast to similar locker services from Google and Amazon, you do not have to upload your entire collection — iTunes Match scans your iTunes library and matches it with its 20 million song library.
  • The service only works for digital music currently, and not for movies, TV shows or audiobooks.
  • Your locker can include up to 25,000 songs. It’s worth noting that, “Match is an optional addition to an existing free service called iTunes in the Cloud, which covers only songs you bought from Apple’s iTunes store.”
  • “In all, I like iTunes Match, and can recommend it to digital music lovers who want all their tunes on all their devices,” writes Mossberg. “It’s another nice feature of iCloud, priced reasonably.”

Beta Release: Cinefy App Provides Video Editing and Effects for the iPhone

By
November 29, 2011
  • Chairseven and App Creation Network recently announced the beta availability of Cinefy, “a mobile video editing and effects platform for iPhone where users create and share videos mixed with high quality visual effects,” according to the press release. “Cinefy empowers users with no editing skills to quickly insert footage, add music and apply visually stunning effects with its intuitive and simple interface.”
  • The app offers branded effects packs which opens a marketing opportunity for TV and game studios to promote in an engaging way and possibly draw “massive viral exposure.”
  • Users can export their videos to their device’s camera roll in addition to Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo. Cinefy will eventually be available for iPads and Android devices.
  • To help create soundtracks, Friendly Music has teamed up to provide a catalog of songs, “offering 100 percent legal and all rights-cleared music for personal and custom online media creations.”

Rumor Update: Apple to Partner with Sharp, not Samsung, on 2012 iTV

By
November 28, 2011
  • Add the following news to the growing collection of Apple rumors we’ve heard in the last month…
  • Mashable reports: “Apple’s relationship with Samsung has deteriorated, and the Cupertino giant may be working with Sharp on the next generation displays for upcoming devices such as the iPad 3, iPhone 5 and a little something called iTV, claims Jefferies analyst Peter Misek.”
  • According to Misek, the mythical Apple smart TV, which has been a popular subject of recent speculation, is not just a rumor. “Sharp is working on modified amorphous TFT LCD panels for the device,” indicates the post.
  • Misek places commercial production as early as February with a mid-2012 release date. The new HDTV will reportedly feature some use of Siri, Apple’s voice-activation feature.
  • While Apple has not made an official announcement yet, competitors are scrambling to prepare for another player in the market, suggests a related BGR post.

New Exhibit at U.S. Patent Office Museum Pays Tribute to Steve Jobs

By
November 28, 2011
  • An exhibit paying tribute to Steve Jobs recently opened in the atrium of the U.S. Patent Office Museum in Alexandria, Virginia.
  • The exhibit is open to the public, free of charge, and will run through January 15.
  • It includes a row of 30 giant iPhone panels, designed by non-profit group Invent Now, which display information about more than 300 patents credited to Jobs as co-inventor.
  • “This exhibit commemorates the far-reaching impact of Steve Jobs’ entrepreneurship and innovation on our daily lives,” said the Under Secretary of Commerce for IP, David Kappos. “His patents and trademarks provide a striking example of the importance intellectual property plays in the global marketplace.”
  • Additional photos are available at GeekWire.

Retail Strategy: Exec Discusses What He Learned Building the Apple Stores

By
November 23, 2011
  • Ron Johnson, the new CEO of J.C. Penny and the former SVP of retail for Apple, talks about what he learned building the Apple Stores, the leading U.S. retailer with sales of $5,626 per square foot, nearly double the sales of Tiffany & Co, its closest competitor.
  • People come to the Apple Store for the experience, the most important part of which is the staff. The philosophy is NOT focused on selling, but on building relationships and making the customer’s life better, a model that worked for Apple.
  • “The staff is exceptionally well trained, and they’re not on commission, so it makes no difference to them if they sell you an expensive new computer or help you make your old one run better so you’re happy with it,” explains Johnson. “Their job is to figure out what you need and help you get it, even if it’s a product Apple doesn’t carry. Compare that with other retailers where the emphasis is on cross-selling and upselling and, basically, encouraging customers to buy more, even if they don’t want or need it.”
  • The Apple model is not easy, and has required persistence. The Genius Bar, for example, was not popular in the beginning, but Apple stuck with it as the best way to help customers. “Three years after the Genius Bar launched, it was so popular we had to set up a reservation system,” writes Johnson.

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