Business News Holding

Blog

  • iPhone Ousts Razr As Smartphones Dominate US


    Apple’s iPhone has overtaken Motorola’s Razr to become the best-selling consumer cellphone in the US in the third quarter of 2008.

    Results from research firm NPD show the Razr, which has been the top-selling phone for the last 3 years, now sits second, with RIM’s BlackBerry Curve in third place, followed by two LG phones, which rounded out the top five.

    NPD’s report doesn’t include sales figures, but Apple’s exclusive US carrier partner AT&T said it activated 2.4 million iPhones in Q3. Motorola said it shipped more than 3 million Razrs worldwide in Q3, but didn’t specify its US sales.

    The iPhone’s success is all the more impressive considering it costs upwards of USD $199, while the RAZR has been virtually free with a signed contract for the past few years.

    It’s US achievements follow recent reports that Apple has overtaken RIM as the number two smartphone vendor globally.

    The success of smartphones – four of the top five are high-end handsets – also underlines the trend in the US market towards more powerful, full-featured devices.

    Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD, said: "The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality."

    Overall domestic handset purchases by adult consumers declined 15 per cent year-over-year in Q3 to 32 million units.

    Consumer handset sales revenue fell 10 per cent to USD $2.9 billion, even as the average selling price rose 6 per cent to USD $88.

    NPD consumer cellphone ranking for 3rd Quarter 2008:

    1. Apple iPhone 3G
    2. Motorola RAZR V3 (all models)
    3. RIM Blackberry Curve (all models)
    4. LG Rumor
    5. LG enV2

  • Wow-factor Converting New Fans To Mobile Gaming


    Show most non-gamers an iPhone running the 3D fighting game Kroll and the reaction is usually some variation of "wow".

    What surprises them is that a game of such quality and with such stunning graphics is on a handheld device.

    That’s an experience Xavier Carrillo, CEO and founder of Digital Legends Entertaiment (DLE), the games and technology developers that created Kroll, is getting used to.

    He told smartphone.biz-news.com that the technology available on today’s handsets means sophisticated games previously only possible on consoles are now feasible on smartphones.

    The proof of that has been people’s reaction to Kroll ever since it was announced at the Worldwide Developer Conference by Apple earlier this year.

    "People are not aware what you can do on a mobile – what’s possible and how capable it is," he said. "It’s an eye-opener and it will attract a lot of people."

    Head-quartered in Barcelona, Spain, DLE has served as a Nokia N-Gage First Party Developer since 2004 and began publishing games for Apple’s this year.

    Kroll was specifically designed for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

    Content Is King


    With the latest smartphones now capable of running such advanced games, Carrillo said having excellent content was essential.

    He believes this will drive the sale of handsets as consumers seek out everything from games and music to maps.

    "People will buy a handset because of the game in much the same way as someone will buy a laptop for gaming," he said.

    In the case of the iPhone, Carrillo said the big publishers were now treating it as a console-standard gaming device.

    This means they can cross-market big movie releases – as they did with Indiana Jones – along with games for the PS3, the Xbox 360 and mobile devices.

    "We believe it’s going to be a huge opportunity," he said.

    Interestingly, smartphones have become such attractive platforms for gaming almost as a by-product of the drive to create multi-media handsets.

    The demand for more megapixels on cameras led to more RAM, the popularity of mobiles as music players required more storage capacity and the addition of TV functionality led to improved hardware accelerators.

    For gamers, Carrillo said it means someone playing a game on a smartphone on the train to work can now expect a quality similar to that on their PS3 at home.

    And while he doesn’t believe mobile gaming will replace consoles such as the PS3, it’s opening the whole gaming world up to a new market.

    "The mobile consumer audience is much wider – and it’s a different consumer," he said. "People that have never played games are discovering them now."

    The appeal to the mainstream was borne out in a recent Newsweek article.

    It compared the quality of games from Apple’s App Store more than favorably to desktop PC or console games and claimed the iPhone and iPod Touch were well on their way to becoming important forces in handheld gaming.

    Price A Factor

    That success will possibly owe a great deal to the price of games as well as their quality, according to Carrillo.

    He said experience in the PC gaming market had shown that several "micro" payments are a better pricing strategy than a higher one-off purchase price.

    Charging just a few dollars a time to download games from the Apple app store ensures people aren’t put off and make them more likely to take a chance on a game.

    Where developers can increase revenue is by offering extra content – often in the form of additional characters, weapons or scenarios – that players can buy separately.

    "People prefer games with less content that they can then add to," he said. "They can play the game and if they like it, they can pay more. If they don’t, then they don’t have to.

    "So it’s much better for them to spend a small amount several times than one large amount."

    Carrillo said mobile gaming will evolve in tandem with technological advances. So features such as touchscreens, accelerators and GPSs are being incorporated in developing location-based and community-oriented games as well as music and head-to-head games.

    But he said games developed for consoles can not just be copied over to a mobile platform.

    Aside from the hardware differences, PC games are played in very different settings to mobile games and that requires the content and controls to be adapted to that environment.

    DLE seem have got that right with the graphically-stunning Kroll – so expect to see a lot more people glued to their handsets.

  • Canon Upgrades High-End HD Camcorders


    Canon is to launch a pair of updates to its pro HDV tape camcorders in December.

    The XH A1S and XH G1S have had their 20X zoom lenses upgraded, with improvements to focus, irising and zoom.

    They are also to get upgraded camera firmware that allows users to adjust the zooming speed during pull-in or pull-out shots.

    Audio has also been improved overall, including two XLR inputs at varying sensitivity and the ability to record with external and built-in mics at the same time.

    The two cameras continue to share long-range optical image stabilization, an SDHC card slot for sharing footage, extreme customization of white balance and other settings to generate particular effects.

    There is also the option of shooting in film-grade 24FPS progressive, 30FPS or a 60FPS interlaced mode. An optional hard drive connection allows for longer shooting than normally possible on HDV tape.

    Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Imaging Group, Canon USA, said HDV tape format continues to be the most cost-effective medium for high-quality high definition video capture and storage.

    "With the new XH A1S and XH G1S HD camcorders, professional user-requested refinements have been incorporated to provide even easier on-camera usability and operation," he said.

    The XH A1S is designed for serious amateurs or entry-level professionals who need only standard input and output and should be available in late December for USD $3,999.

    The G1S, which will go on sales at USD $6,999, adds HD- and SD-SDI output, timecode input and output, as well as Genlock sync input for multi-camera shooting.

  • iPhone Beats Blackberry In Business Smartphone Survey


    It may lack some vital business tools – no cut-and-paste, for starters – but it seems that Apple’s 3G handset is gaining followers who see it as more than just a fun device.

    The iPhone has received the highest customer satisfaction marks in the most recent JD Power & Associates customer satisfaction survey of business smartphone users.

    Out of 1,000 possible points, Apple’s smartphone received the high score of 778, with Blackberry-maker Research in Motion and Samsung coming in second and third with scores of 703 and 701.

    The iPhone scores high marks for its design, features, and ease of use, but owners of Apple devices also paid the highest average price for their smartphones, at USD $337.

    While the survey success doesn’t mean the iPhone is suddenly going to be enterprise phone of choice, it is yet another feather in the Apple camp’s cap following a couple of other positive news items over the past few days.

    At the weekend, independent warranty provider SquareTrade released a report showing that iPhones are more reliable than either BlackBerry or Palm Treo devices.

    The report, titled "iPhone More Reliable than BlackBerry, One Year In", analyzes failure rates for more than 15,000 new cell phones covered by SquareTrade warranties.

    SquareTrade found that after one year of ownership, iPhone owners were half as likely as BlackBerry owners to have a phone failure, and one-third as likely as Treo owners.

    After 12 months, slightly over 16% of Treo owners had experienced a failure, while just less than 12% of BlackBerry owners had their smartphone die on them.

    Only 5.6% of iPhone owners had a critical failure.

    Then at the end of last week, Canalys reported that Nokia’s market share dropped down to 38.9 per cent in the third quarter; which is down from 51.4 just a year earlier.

    On the other hand, Apple jumped to 17.3 per cent, and RIM increased to 15.2 the same quarter.

    Canalys credits some of the Apple and RIM increases to new phones and new marketing strategies.

    In a statement, the firm said: "The introduction of the iPhone 3G in July and Apple’s expansion into many more countries helped propel the vendor to second place globally.”

    The researchers went on to say that “it was ‘quite feasible’ to expect RIM to take the second place from Apple in the holiday sales fuelled fourth quarter, helped by new products—Bold, Storm and clamshell Pearl 8220.”

  • JAJAH Available For T-Mobile G1


    JAJAH has confirmed the availability of its service for owners of the newly released T-Mobile G1 Google Android phone.

    The announcement came as the IP communications company was named in the annual FierceVoIP "Fierce 15" list.

    Compiled by the editors of FierceVoIP, the list identifies the best-performing companies in the sector, following a review of hundreds of organizations.

    JAJAH has continued increasing its consumer business this year, while rolling out its JAJAH Managed Services platform for cable, telco and Internet companies.

    Earlier this year the company released its data-only EM-ONE ultra mobile device released in Japan, and JAJAH Babel, the world’s first free, real-time, English-Chinese translation phone-in service.

    Daniel Mattes, JAJAH’s co-founder, said its platform drives its own consumer business as well as many of the world’s most popular VoIP services, such as Yahoo! and Gizmo5.

    JAJAH’s is offering users of the G1 phone have a number of options for making a JAJAH call:

    • Option 1) JAJAH Mobile Web: On your mobile browser go to mobile.jajah.com, then type in the number you want to call or select the number in your JAJAH address book and your call will be connected. No WiFi or broadband connection required.
    • Option 2) JAJAH Direct: JAJAH provides a local number for each of your international contacts. Save these numbers to your G1 address book and dial them directly.

  • Job Losses Expected At SanDisk


    SanDisk is about to announce job cuts of around 15 per cent of its staff – or between 450 to 500 employees.

    Quoting unnamed industry sources, Engadget reported today that the job losses were to reduce costs following a USD $155 million Q3 loss and sales that have sunk by 21 per cent year-on-year to USD $281 million.

    SanDisk has just announced a new technology that will allow solid state disk (SSD) drives to perform up to 100 times faster than they can now.

    Called ExtremeFFS (Flash File System), it will accelerate random write speeds by up to 100 times over existing systems.

    The technology will appear in SanDisk SSD drives from next year.

  • Interxion To Expand London Data Center


    Carrier-neutral data center expert, Interxion, is to expand the capacity of its London City data center for the second time this year.

    Growing customer demand for high power density infrastructure is behind the expansion.

    The new 400 m² of equipped space, scheduled for completion in Q1 2009, will have access to the data centers 13 megawatt power supply, allowing it to deliver exceptionally high density power configurations of up to 17.5 kW per cabinet position.

    In April, Interxion completed a 1,250 m2 build-out. The Interxion London data center also hosts a Point of Presence for the London Internet Exchange (LINX).

    Greg McCulloch, MD of Interxion UK, said the mix of City of London location, power and connectivity was proving highly attractive to customers.

    “The site is served by some 28 carriers and network partners in total, giving a wide range of connectivity options, and customers can reduce latency while enhancing network resilience and availability by peering directly to LINX.”

  • HDTV Was Too Far From HP's Core Business


    Hewlett-Packard is just the latest PC OEM to learn a lesson about straying from its core business, according to Michael Wolf, Digital Home research director at ABI Research.

    Wolf’s comments follow reports that suggest HP is about to cease production of its HP MediaSmart LCD TV range in favor of focusing efforts on their HP MediaSmart Connect extender.

    Citing the experiences of Dell and Gateway, he asserts that it’s hard for a PC company to make a business in living room consumer electronics.

    "What was interesting about HP’s business was their focus on next-generation network connected HDTVs, adding Media Center functionality and IP connectivity to all of their devices," he said in his blog.

    "I don’t think this exit is so much a judgement on the idea of Internet connected HDTVs as it is on the ability of a PC OEM to enter a business that is much different than its core PC business.

    "PC brands, particularly around high-end systems like an HDTV, haven’t been successful at transferring their brands."

    Wolf’s advice to others considering entering new markets is to start a wholly new brand.

    He said this allows consumers to develop their own fresh connotations around the new brand – rather than associating it with established brands linked to "IT" or "PC".

    Do you agree? Please send us your comments.

  • IT Decision Makers Unclear About Unified Storage

    Unified storage has yet to make an impact on IT decision makers, with few even able to define what it stands for and even less aware of the business benefits of implementation, according to a survey.

    The study was conducted by Gartner and ONStor among 1600 IT and business decision makers from four continents and over 37 countries who attended the recent Gartner Data Center Summit and SNW Europe.

    It found that only 58 per cent of those questioned were familiar with the term unified storage.

    Unified storage has been defined as a single integrated storage infrastructure that functions as a unification engine to simultaneously support Fibre Channel, IP Storage Area Networks (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) data formats.

    Despite this, of the 50 per cent who said they could define it, 43 per cent thought it referred to virtualised storage and 56 per cent believed it was a combination of back up and storage.

    Narayan Venkat, vice president of corporate marketing at ONStor, said more had to be done to ensure IT professional were better briefed about unified storage.

    “What is absolutely clear from these top line survey findings is that the market needs more education on the benefits of unified storage, and that is where the vendor community needs to join forces with analysts to drive this message home," he said.

    Other key findings highlighted:

    • 21 per cent of the same who had heard of unified storage believed it would deliver a lower total cost of ownership

    • A further 21 per cent believed it would provide a more flexible network moving forward

    • The ability to protect the current investment in infrastructure was only cited by 8 per cent and only 6 per cent felt it would reduce operating costs and capital expenditure