Mobile Tech Today

Analysts See iPad Price Drop, with Some Cannibalization

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:27:43 -0500

Just weeks before Apple officially rolls out the iPad, financial analysts are making pricing predictions. But could the analysis itself hinder the initial demand for the pricey tablet computer?

The much-anticipated iPad is priced at $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for the 64GB model -- all available in March. The 3G models won't be available until April and will sell for $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB model and $829 for the 64GB model.

Credit Suisse analysts said Apple will stay "nimble" with its pricing strategy and may even discount the devices if customers aren't buying. Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, sees irony in the reports: The comments could actually cause the result.

The Pricing Graveyard

"We certainly saw people rush out initially and buy the iPhone. When the demand dropped off after the first couple of weeks, Apple dropped the price sharply," Enderle said. "Of course, the iPhone over time has gone from about $600 to around $200, which is a fairly substantial drop in price."

Enderle predicts the iPad will go through a similar price drop, but adds that the coverage of Apple's willingness to stay nimble may actually slow initial sales -- especially among consumers who feel burned by buying the first iPhone too quickly.

"The $600 price range has been a graveyard for products, starting with the original iPod, which had to drop its price point very rapidly, all the way to the Sony PS3, which also died at that price point," Enderle said. "I expect they will drop out of that price area fairly quickly."

The Cannibalization Question

Will the iPad cannibalize Apple's other product lines? In a publicized note, Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope indicated cannibalization is not as large a concern as some may believe because there is...

Nook E-Reader Heads to Barnes & Noble Stores

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:55:35 -0500

Barnes & Noble said Monday that its popular nook e-book reader is back in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of the bookseller's U.S. stores this week. Customers also will be able to enjoy exclusive Valentine's Day-themed online content this month, the company said.

The nook differs in several ways from many of the e-readers announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, which suffer from either high prices or little access to consumer channels, said Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey.

"The nook, despite its slow start, is priced right, targeted to book readers rather than skipping off to focus on magazine or newspaper readers, and, most importantly, the nook will be featured in front of millions of book buyers every month as they walk through the store," McQuivey said. "You can't underestimate the power of that."

A Real Shot at No. 3

The nook is the first e-reader to offer digital lending for a wide selection of e-books, and the company's latest software update now places a LendMe flag next to the eligible e-books in the user's My Library folder. Though the machine's LendMe technology only applies to select books and only lasts 14 days, McQuivey considers this to be a huge step forward, given that people often share books and then spend a considerable amount of time talking about them with friends and family members.

"This fact is so critical to the way people read books that it is amazing that none of the e-readers yet offered to the market have any meaningful book sharing built into them," McQuivey wrote in a blog.

Among all the e-reader launches beyond Sony and Amazon, McQuivey thinks the nook has a real shot at becoming the third key player -- but not because of its social features.

"The social features...

Survey Suggests iPad Blitz Hasn't Won Over Buyers

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:26:46 -0500

The good news for Apple is that it has clearly accomplished its objective of getting the word out about its new iPad tablet computer. The media blitz that began weeks before CEO Steve Jobs' Jan. 27 launch in San Francisco garnered front-page coverage in 47 states and 24 countries. So you'd practically have had to turn off your TV and computer and avoid newspapers to not know about it.

The bad news is that with about a month until the product starts shipping, people aren't likely to line up to get their hands on an iPad, according to a follow-up survey from Retrevo Pulse.

No, Thanks

The company's survey of 1,000 people found that the number who had heard of the iPad nearly doubled from 48 percent in the days before the launch to 80 percent in the Jan. 27-Feb. 3 period immediately following. But the number of those who knew about it but were not interested doubled from 26 percent to 52 percent. The number of definite buyers rose from three to nine percent.

The participants are users of Retrevo's electronic marketplace. The number of people who were hiding under a rock and hadn't heard of the iPad shrank from 35 percent to just 18 percent, but the number of people taking a wait-and-see attitude was statistically unchanged, from 19 to 21 percent.

A ChangeWave Research survey released about the same time found that just 14 percent of respondents said they were likely to buy the device. Both surveys found that a majority would not pay more than $700 for the iPad.

So when Jobs announced that the price point for the basic iPad model was $499, some boost in interest might have been expected.

But after learning the price and many features, the number of people who said they didn't feel they need an...

Apple Bans Location-Based Ads for iPhone Apps

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:12:12 -0500

Location-finding applications that give iPhone users information about weather, restaurants or traffic are fine. But if they give information to third parties for targeted advertising, the deal is off.

That's the message Apple sent to developers this week. The computer giant posted a message on its Developer Connection blog encouraging its partners to use the core location framework, but only for programs that provide "beneficial information," such as the weather forecast or where to find ATMs.

Back to the Drawing Board

"If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store," Apple warned.

The company didn't explain its position, and a call to Apple's media-relations center was not returned by publication time.

"My internal optimist says they are trying to protect the users," says Jeff Burstein, program manager for Florida-based developer Mobile Applications. "My pessimistic side feels that Apple could be working on their own ad-delivery system for the mobile platform. Time will tell if altruism is their true motivation or just a way of keeping out the competition."

Applications and advertising are increasingly joined at the hip, said Joe Berkowitz, founder of Interactive Moxie, a digital strategy and incubation company, and a consultant to media companies building and launching mobile apps.

"Out of the three billion apps that have been downloaded from the App Store, the bulk of them are free. [The developers] are making money either by getting you to upgrade to the paid version or, in other cases, using AdMob to be able to market their other apps."

But Berkowitz said it appears Apple's new developer policy is intended less for commercial gain than to screen out apps solely intended to...

With No Killer App, Apple's iPad Is a Hard Sell

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:53:33 -0500

With the introduction of the iPad, Apple's status as a cultural icon reached new heights. Based on an unscientific survey of newspapers archived by The Newseum, pictures of or stories about the tablet-style computer appeared on front pages in at least 47 states and the District of Columbia and no fewer than 24 countries on six continents -- in places as varied as Bulgaria, Uruguay, Turkey, and Portugal.

When is the last time you saw a company command that kind of attention without first filing for bankruptcy, contributing to the collapse of the global financial system, or building a car with a gas pedal that sticks? The media's crush on Apple is not just alive and well, but it has gone global.

In the last decade, Apple has revolutionized the music and wireless industries with its iPod and iPhone, respectively. The recent buzz around Apple reflects high hopes that with the iPad, Apple can similarly transform a third industry: publishing. But based on early reviews, the iPad as introduced may not deliver.

Newspapers look to the iPad to reinvigorate their rapidly shrinking industry by spurring demand for whiz-bang downloadable applications that feature content you can't get on the Web. Book publishers see the iPad as a vehicle to stimulate buying of electronic books and fuel competition that forces e-book leader Amazon to give publishers more leeway on pricing. Software developers who have been successful selling apps on the iPhone hope to cash in even more on new ones that take advantage of the iPad's larger screen.

Challenge of Building a New Market

Yet it's hard to see how the iPad, in the form unveiled last month, will come close to transforming daily life as much as the iPod or iPhone. When the iPod arrived in 2001, consumers were already well-acquainted with personal music players...

Bar Codes Go Mobile, Get Hip Again

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:01:59 -0500

Bar codes are getting hip. For decades, retailers and manufacturers have used these patterns of black dots, lines, and squares to encode pricing and other data onto products and supplies. Now, bar codes are gaining currency as an easy way for cell-phone users to view ads, coupons, and other information instantly.

The Weather Channel is using bar codes to deliver maps, forecasts, and severe weather alerts. Universal Pictures is using mobile bar codes to promote its coming thriller Repo Men. Later this month, a Hearst magazine will use the technology to provide additional information to readers. And mobile bar code technology in various forms has recently been used by search engine owner Google, Web portal Yahoo!, sportswear maker Nike, and packaged foods maker Frito-Lay.

In Japan, advertisers for years have used bar code technology on magazines, posters, products, tourist sites, and business cards to deliver information wirelessly. But the features can be glitchy or cumbersome and haven't taken off in the U.S.

Microsoft and a handful of startups including Scanbuy and JagTag are trying to turn the tide. On Feb. 2, Motorola was among a group of investors that made an undisclosed investment in Scanbuy. Bar code tech "makes the world [around us] clickable," says Marja Koopman, a marketing leader at Microsoft. Lately, bar code scanning is being more widely used in part due to the broader adoption of Web-enabled smartphones and prevalence of cameras, now in about 90 percent of cell phones.

Special Software or Just the Camera

In the case of the Weather Channel, viewers hold their cell phones up to the TV screen to scan a bar code displayed at various points throughout the day. The feature, which works with handsets including the Motorola Droid and Google's Nexus One, downloads one of the Weather Channel's mobile apps. Since the TV promotion...

AT&T Will Let Revised Sling Player Use 3G on iPhone

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:13:40 -0500

The trend toward TV anywhere took another step forward Thursday as AT&T announced that it will support Sling Media's mobile application on its 3G network. Sling, whose player app is already in use on the carrier's Wi-Fi network, released a player for the iPhone late last year.

The announcement reverses a decision by AT&T last spring not to allow the Sling iPhone app because it would increase congestion on its 3G network. In Thursday's announcement, AT&T noted that Sling has developed its wireless app to "make efficient use of 3G network bandwidth" and to "conserve the finite wireless spectrum available to the wireless industry."

Overwhelmed AT&T

AT&T and Sling are saying that the new app has been optimized for its network, the result of a cooperative effort between both companies. AT&T mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has indicated that his company will be working with developers to make data-intensive apps more "bandwidth-sensitive."

The Sling app is only useful for consumers with a Sling box. The app allows the user to watch streaming TV from cable, satellite or DVRs from the Sling hardware over the Internet, as well as control the TV sources.

AT&T's bandwidth capacity has become an issue with consumers recently, so the carrier wants to make clear that it is paying attention to bandwidth in adding new video-player capability for the iPhone.

In late December, blogger Dan Lyons -- aka Fake Steve Jobs -- promoted an effort to overwhelm AT&T's network by having thousands of users run data-intensive applications at the same time. The intent was to protest the network performance, but the protest was called off after a warning from the Federal Communications Commission.

iPhone Is 'Test Case'

According to industry observers, AT&T may have underestimated the iPhone's appeal and the bandwidth needs of those customers. The initial projections by the real...

Adobe Fires Back at Apple's Snub of Flash on the iPad

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:04:22 -0500

What's Apple's problem with Flash? Three years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple's refusal to include Flash on its soon-to-be-released iPad has sparked another kerfuffle between Apple and Flash maker Adobe Systems.

In a lengthy blog post, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch railed against Apple's Flash avoidance and detailed why Flash has become successful on the non-iPhone part of the web. From its humble start allowing low-bandwidth vector animations on the web, Flash now includes animation, streaming audio, rich interactivity, arbitrary fonts, two-way audio/video communication, local storage, and "enabling the video revolution on the web," Lynch wrote.

The explosion of smartphones and the imminent wave of tablet devices -- including the iPad -- means an "important crux for the future of Flash," Lynch wrote. In the mobile near future, a plethora of devices with different web-browsing capabilities threatens to break up what Flash largely built -- "seamless, consistent and rich experiences," he added.

Flash for Smartphones

Adobe is attempting to manage the transition to the mobile web with a version of the Flash player for smartphones -- which will be deployed by "all but one of the top manufacturers," Lynch wrote.

Guess who that is.

Flash works just fine on Apple's devices, Lynch wrote. Adobe is developing stand-alone apps built on Flash that are currently available on the App Store. "This same solution will work on the iPad as well. We are ready to enable Flash in the browser on these devices if and when Apple chooses to allow that for its users, but to date we have not had the required cooperation from Apple to make this happen," Lynch charged.

HTML5 Won't Replace Flash

Apple is a supporter of the open-standard HTML5, which it says will eventually replace Flash. Lynch doesn't think so. "I don't see this as one replacing the other, certainly not today nor...

'Dead Simple, Dirt Cheap' JooJoo Tablet Shipping Soon

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 06:58:26 -0500

The JooJoo, a Web-browsing tablet device that is the subject of a high-profile Silicon Valley legal dispute, appears on track to reach early buyers at the end of February.

The flat touch-screen computer was known until December as the CrunchPad, after the technology blog TechCrunch. It was born from a post by the blog's well-connected and outspoken founder, Michael Arrington, that called for collaborators on a "dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen Web tablet."

Singapore-based Chandrasekar Rathakrishnan stepped up. His software startup, Fusion Garage, worked with Arrington and his team until November. At that point the project imploded, with Fusion Garage announcing it would sell the device under a new name -- and without Arrington's involvement.

Despite a federal lawsuit filed by Arrington, Rathakrishnan said Wednesday that production of the JooJoo is under way. CSL Group, a Malaysia-based mobile phone and netbook maker, is subsidizing production costs in exchange for an undisclosed revenue share, Rathakrishnan said.

Arrington is seeking damages and to keep Fusion Garage from selling or profiting from the JooJoo device. His lawyer didn't return a message seeking comment about whether they might take further legal action.

CSL, which makes Blackberry-like phones it calls "Blueberry," will also be an investor in the startup's next round of funding, expected to close in the next two weeks. Late last year, Fusion Garage said it raised $3 million in a first round.

In an interview, Rathakrishnan would not say how many people pre-ordered the $499 tablet. But "a good part" of those who did will receive their devices at the end of this month, he said.

The tablet landscape has changed dramatically since the JooJoo was first unveiled. At the International Consumer Electronics Show in January, Hewlett-Packard Co., Dell Inc. and others presented tablet prototypes. Less than a month later, Apple Inc. took the wraps off a...

Text4Baby Campaign Sends Messages To Mom

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:13:16 -0500

Expectant mothers are getting a new tool to help keep themselves and their babies healthy: pregnancy tips sent directly to their cell phones.

The so-called text4baby campaign is the first free, health education program in the U.S. to harness the reach of mobile phones, according to its sponsors, which include Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, WellPoint and CareFirst BlueCross and Blue Shield. Wireless carriers including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have agreed to waive all fees for receiving the texts.

Organizers say texting is an effective means of delivering wellness tips because 90 percent of people in the U.S. have cell phones.

"Especially if you start talking about low-income people, cell phones are the indispensable tool for reaching them and engaging them about their health," said Paul Meyer, president of Voxiva, a company which operates health texting programs in Africa, Latin America and India.

Studies in those countries have shown that periodic texts can reduce smoking and other unhealthy behaviors in pregnant mothers.

Meyer said the U.S. program, run by Voxiva, will be the largest health-related texting program ever undertaken.

Under the new service, mothers-to-be who text "BABY" to 511411 will receive weekly text messages, timed to their due date or their baby's birth date. The messages, which have been vetted by government and nonprofit health experts, deal with nutrition, immunization and birth defect prevention, among other topics. The messages will continue through the baby's first birthday.

Text4baby is expected to be announced Thursday morning by officials from the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. Government officials will be publicizing the campaign in speeches and promotional materials.

Organizers hope the effort can curb premature births, which can be caused by poor nutrition, excessive stress, smoking and drinking alcohol. About 500,000 babies are born prematurely in the U.S. each year, and 28,000 infants die before their first birthday, according...