Apple Smart TV: Analyst reveals the next big product from the company

On March 25, 2011, in a note to investors, Morgan Stanley analyst, Katy Huberty, said that Apple is working on a Smart TV. She reached the conclusion after the firm talked with different people in Asia but could not provide any further details.

Huberty speculates that Smart TV is the next rational step for it will help the company to bring together "TV/Video content, gaming, DVR, as well as other features like apps and FaceTime into one product."

Huberty predicts that a Smart TV from Apple would generate approximately $4 billion with 1 percent TV market share captured by 2013.

As Internet based TVs are becoming the latest craze, Apple can take this advantage and Huberty is not alone to make such a prediction. Piper Jaffray analyst, Gene Munster also believe that Apple is going to launch a “connected television” in near future.

Related article:

Apple Insider

Apple, RIM vs. Kodak: ITC will announce its decision today

On March 25, 2011, the International Trade Commission (ITC) will announce if it will review the earlier ruling of an ITC judge who ruled in favor of Apple and RIM.

This is a serious issue for Kodak as the company is losing its business to mobile phone makers. In an interview on March 24, 2011, Antonio Perez, CEO, Kodak, said that his company “deserves to win.” If it wins the ITC ruling, it would receive $1 billion from Apple and Research in Motion.

Kodak filed a complaint against Apple and RIM over patent infringement in January 2010 in the U.S. District Court for the West District of New York. It claimed that iPhone and BlackBerry phones are using technologies developed by Kodak. In February, ITC announced that it would look into Kodak’s allegation.

Apple and RIM also sued Kodak over patent infringement. In January 2011, an ITC judge ruled in favor of Apple and RIM.

Using the same patent infringement claim with the ITC, Kodak gained $550 million from Samsung and $414 million from LG.

Related article:

Bloomberg

Apple revenue will surpass IBM and HP in the next two years

Forrester CEO, George Colony, predicted that Apple will have great sales in the next two years eventually surpassing IBM and HP in terms of revenue. He said that the company will earn $200 billion in revenues and “post sales growth” will exceed 50 percent in the next two years fueled by higher demand of the iPad tablet PC.

He also warned that Jobs’ departure will affect the company’s future because after every two years, they would have to come up with new products. Steve Jobs is the final decision maker in Apple. Whatever comes out of the company, he gives the final decision. Such practice is not seen anywhere in the technology industry. Bloomberg reports:

Hewlett-Packard had sales of $126 billion in the year that ended in October and IBM’s revenue was $99.9 billion last year, making them the largest technology companies, respectively, by sales. Apple ranks No. 1 by market capitalization.

In a survey conducted on analysts by Bloomberg it has been revealed that Apple sales would increase by 54 percent to $100.3 billion in the current fiscal year ending in September. Growth would slow down to 18 percent the following year.

Toshiba Tablet Accessories in the Third World Countries

The title might lead you to thinking that I am perhaps going to talk about different accessories of Toshiba tablet. Well, the reason I am writing this article is a bitter experience that I encountered today at the biggest computer market in my country.

Let me be first to let you know the background of the story (Ops! it is real, not a story). I bought a Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop in January (or may be February) last year and have been using this excellent 16-inch device without facing any technical problem. Then couple of months back, the wire of the adapter was severely damaged by Jimmy (a pet dog of my cousin), and I could not yet buy an original adapter of the laptop.

Well, I have already spent around $100 to buy two China-made adapters; one of which has already been out of order just after one month. Today, I went to the IDB Bhaban, the largest computer market in my country, and it was shocking that I still did not find an original Toshiba adapter yet. So, I had to buy another China-made adapter and I do not know how long would the new one last. I even asked the laptop distributors if they can arrange the original one for me and I was even ready to pay an amount in advance, but they refused.

This experience once again made me realize that I am living in a third world county. This is the age of tablet PC, but in the countries like mine we do not even get laptop accessories easily in the local market.

So, the companies like Toshiba, who are well-aware of Apple’s dominance in the tablet PC market and are in a hurry to introduce their tablets, should pay some attention to the third world countries where conventional PC markets are yet to be unearthed fully, and there are all the possibilities they can get something significant out of these markets.

Features of Huawei S7 Slim Budget Tablet PC

With demands for tablet PCs increasing around the world, users find tablets coming in a flurry. It is no more surprising that tablets are taking the center stage at the Electronics consumer shows like what we have seen at CES 2011 and Mobile World Congress 2011. Understandably, tablet PCs have dominated at the CTIA 2011 too with a number of companies like Samsung, LG introduced their products.

Interestingly, unconventional PC makers like Huawei also appeared with their tablet at CITA 2011. The China-based company has announced a budget tablet with some interesting features. The Huawei S7 Slim tablet comes with a 7-inch display 800 by 480 resolution. The display spec might mislead you to assume all the bad things about the display screen.

However, the reality is that you would find display extremely good with bright color and wide viewing angle. Moreover, the 16:9 aspect ratio of the screen ensure a good gaming experience for the users. The tablet features Android 2.2 Froyo operating system which might not impress you, given that Google already has two upgraded version: 2.3 Gingerbread and 3.0 Honeycomb.

Well, then you should note that Huawei has featured a custom-designed skin ensuring an excellent user interface. The most important thing is that users would not find anything complex in the interface which ensures easy navigation through the menus without having to following a tricky procedure to have a visit inside the device.

Huawei S7 Slim tablet also features a 1.03 MP front-facing camera for video calling and a 2 MP camera at the back for capturing videos and pictures. It also comes with a powerful battery ensuring a long back up.

The company has not revealed that price of the tablet yet, but there were indication that the device would be available for much less than iPad 2 and Xoom, and thus, having an edge over Apple and Motorola tablets in terms of price.

Related article:

PC World

Staples Opens Website on Tablet PC

Tablet PC market is getting more and more important in the technology world with demand for tablets soaring day by day. No doubt, Apple has so far enjoyed the biggest part of this popularity, but now the companies like Samsung, Motorola, LG, RIM, and Toshiba etc. are trying to have a delicious bite on the cake.

Well, the huge demand for tablet PC is not only attracting the PC or mobile device markers, but the other companies who are involved in different business are also being getting excited by the tablet PC market.

For example, Staples, a US-based supply chain store, has now launched a website dedicated only to tablet PC. The website would serve the visitors with different information regarding Tablet PCs. Moreover, you can also get reviews of tablets and receive research-based stats regarding these tiny mobile devices.

Overall, visitors can get information and reviews of the tablets like Motorola Xoom, RIM’s PlayBook, Toshiba Tablet, Dell Streak 7 etc., and these tablets will also be available for sale in the online store of Staples. The address of this website on tablet PC is: http://www.staples.com/tablets.

An Amazon Tablet Could be a Threat for Many

There are rumors doing the rounds regarding a tablet PC from Amazon. The largest online retail store, Amazon, has already seen extensive success with the Tablet-sized e-book reader: Kindle- which is still pretty much popular among the readers.

Tablet PC is now perhaps the most popular product in the technology world. After Apple revolutionized the market with the iPad launch last year, many companies are now entering into this market.

Naturally, Amazon is also thought to be one of those companies to be willing to come up with a tablet PC. In fact, there are many who believe that Amazon has already started planning regarding its own tablet. No doubt, a tablet from Amazon would definitely pose considerable amount of threat for Apple iPad, the dominant force in the tablet market.

How? Well, today I encountered an interesting article on PC World where the writer, Peter Smith, talked about the feasibility of an Amazon tablet and the impact it could have on the tablet market.

The writer believes that a tablet from Amazon would be a threat not only for the likes of iPad, but also for other digital content distributors like Apple app store for applications, Steam and Impulse for gaming, and Netflix for video-on-demand etc.

Amazon is currently selling books, music, movies, software, games etc. online and an Amazon tablet would only facilitate its digital content business.

Starbucks Card Mobile App on iOS devices and BlackBerry is a hit

The Starbucks Card Mobile app is a hit among people. Launched in January 2011, the service was available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and BlackBerry users. 6,800 Starbucks stores in the U.S. started accepting mobile payments.

On March 23, 2011, during the Starubucks Annual Meeting of Shareholders at Marion Oliver MacCaw Hall in Seattle, Howard Schultz, Chairman &CEO, Starbucks, revealed that more than 3 million people paid for Starbucks coffee via Starbucks Card Mobile. Brady Brewer, vice president, Starbucks, revealed that their company currently offers the largest mobile payment network in the country.

The “touch to pay” system allows customers to hold up barcodes in their Starbucks Card Mobile app to the scanner placed in the stores. The program first started in September 2009.

Related article:

USA Today

Apple iPad users can now read 18 million WordPress blogs

18 million WordPress blogs now have iPad friendly interface with features like “touch interactions” and “easy customization.”

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, worked with a NYC-based startup called Onswipe. The start up company works on making contents and ads suitable to run on touch enabled devices. Together, the companies developed a new feature that makes WordPress.com blogs suitable to run on iPad.

In a blog post, Nick Momrick of WordPress, announced the new feature. He said,

“Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend,….It supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation and many other features of the iPad.”

This is great news for tablet PC users and also reveals the growing importance of tablet PCs in the coming years. In 2010, a total of 18 million tablet PCs have been sold worldwide according to IDC Research Group of which, Apple shipped 15 million. This year, IDC Research Group predicts that 50 million tablet PCs will be sold worldwide.

Related article:

Mashable

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play at Verizon in April or May 2011

Sony Ericsson has shocked many observers with this move. The company normally releases a phone in Europe or America but this time, they are making an exception. According to Cnet, Xperia Play will be released in North America first. In fact, Verizon is going to release the smartphone on end of April or early May for US consumers.

Just before that (most probably on 14 April), Rogers is going launch it in GSM mode in Canada. What about Asia or Europe? Still no specific answer on that.

America is the major market for smartphones and that is why it is not surprising to see that Sony Ericsson is going to launch Xperia Play in April or May. Verizon is going to release a number of Android running handsets in the next few weeks.

Xperia Play is a smartphone handset and its major strength is gaming. Sony is a major player in the gaming industry. The Xperia Play from Verizon will contain 6 gaming titles. So, it will attract the consumers who want to have good gaming experience in their smartphone handsets.

There is still no information about price or data plan regarding Xperia Play handset from Verizon. 

Google Chrome Beta 11: Talk to Your Browser

It was the day of Firefox 4 but Google bosses had something else in their mind. They selected the same day to announce a grand plan for Chrome- the Chrome Beta 11. This beta version has one big change- speech to text or speech recognition. You can talk to your browser and it will interpret your speech as text.

Techland wrote:

If you're running the latest version of Google's Chrome web browser, you can now talk to the internet. It won't listen, and it won't do what you say, but it will recognize what words you've spoken. Which is a good start.The beta of Chrome 11 includes support for a speech input technology, part of the HTML5 standard. That means that if someone makes a suitable webpage, you can issue commands and instructions to it just by speaking.

I like Opera because it has nice text to speech feature. In Opera browser, you can listen the English text of a webpage. By giving the speech to text option, Google has caused a major breakthrough for Internet users. 

Firefox 4 got 7 million times downloaded in first 24 Hours

Just the other day, we talked about Internet Explorer 9 becoming popular but now, we can see that Firefox 4 has done much better than IE 9 in the first 24 hours. Can you believe that it got 7 million times downloaded? You better believe that because the version 3 of this browser from Mozilla got 8 million times got downloaded in the first 24 hours.

Google Chrome is gaining popularity these days but it seems that Firefox is still very popular around the world. In Europe, it is now the most popular browser. Chrome is gaining ground more at the expense of IE rather than Firefox. Some people think that Firefox 4 is better than IE 9.

I have not updated my Firefox to version 4 yet. I should do it now. What about you? 

Motorola to Stop Xoom Production by June?

Rumors have it in the media suggesting that Motorola might entirely stop its Xoom Tablet PC production by June 2011 and look to bring out a new Xoom with a different size. Motorola Xoom, the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb based tablet, could not make any significant impact in the tablet PC market after being launched in February.

The release of Apple iPad 2 did not help Motorola in this cause either. Now, a number of other Android-based tablet including Samsung Galaxy Tab and LG Optimus Pad are about to hit the market. Naturally, Xoom is facing a tough challenge in its survival. So, the rumors of Xoom’s production being stopped by June got enough water to be assumed to be true.

However, the company has now cleared all the doubts, ensuring to continue Xoom production beyond June.

Motorola Xoom was thought to be a potential iPad killer before its release considering the array of features it possesses, but the popular handset maker failed to gain enough space in the tablet market which is gradually being crowded with more and more company are jumping into the increasingly popular tablet PC market.

Though Motorola has now denied that media reports regarding the continuation of Xoom production beyond June, the company might have already started planning another Xoom version with a different size.

There is a good possibility Motorola could come up with the next version of Xoom with 4G support in 2011 or early 2012.