You are hereLatest Technology News
Latest Technology News
-
Regulators take step toward broadband rules
World- Communications authorities on Thursday took a small but significant step toward regulating high-speed Internet in a bid to reclaim oversight, setting the stage for an eventual legal showdown with industry heavyweights.
(Photo)Attendees work on their wireless laptops as FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski delivers an address in San Diego, October 7, 2009.
Big broadband providers like AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Comcast Corp oppose the move by the Federal Communications Commission, fearing the agency may heavily regulate their businesses in ways that could crimp profits and cast a cloud on investments.
The agency voted 3-2 to collect public comments on whether it should reclassify broadband regulation under existing phone rules -- typically considered a stricter regulatory regime.
AT&T questioned the policy and legal justification for the FCC move on Thursday.
"We remain confident that if the FCC persists in its course -- -and we truly hope it does not -- the courts will surely overturn their action," AT&T senior executive vice president Jim Cicconi said in a statement.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and his two fellow Democrats want the FCC to regulate broadband access to ensure the free flow of information and implement recommendations in its National Broadband Plan, which seeks to increase speeds and the number of users in the United States.
"My desire is simply that we restore the status quo and have a workable light-touch framework for broadband access," he said.
Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker, Republican commissioners who voted against the measure, said the move would cast a regulatory cloud over the markets uncertain about investment decisions.
The FCC has tried to calm market fears, saying it will tread lightly by not enforcing rate regulation and line sharing requirements under the existing phone rules.
Despite the assurances, the formal move by the FCC on Thursday could open the floodgates to legal challenges.
FIRST STEP
The measure to collect public comments, called a Notice of Inquiry, could help build a case to give the FCC the authority it lost after a court ruling earlier this year.
The FCC is seeking public comment until July 15 and reply comments are due August 12. Analysts said the FCC could adopt an order as early as October.
"But that strikes us as ambitious and the timing will depend in part on how the negotiations and mid-term election campaigns are going," said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.
In April a U.S. appeals court ruled that the FCC had failed to show it had the authority to stop Comcast from blocking online applications that distributed television shows and other bandwidth-hogging files.
To put its authority on sounder legal footing, the FCC decided it wants to regulate broadband access as a telecommunications service instead of as an information service.
Typically, that framework comes with price controls and competition mandates.
Verizon called the FCC move a "terrible" idea and urged the FCC to let Congress determine the FCC's authority.
"The negative consequences for online users and the Internet ecosystem would be severe and have ramifications for decades," said Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications.
In Congress, U.S. lawmakers are considering changes to the U.S. telecommunications law to possibly give the FCC broadband authority in the short-term and better reflect technological changes.
That process could take several years to reach final legislation.
Tech and content companies applauded the move, believing it will help consumers -- not broadband providers -- determine the flow of online content.
The FCC action will "make sure consumer choice over broadband Internet service is protected," said Markham Erickson, who leads the Open Internet Coalition, representing online companies such as Google Inc, Amazon.com Inc, eBay Inc, Facebook, Skype and Twitter.
Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
Tablets to outsell netbooks in U.S. by 2012
SAN FRANCISCO - Tablets including Apple's iPad are expected to outsell netbooks in the United States by 2012, research firm Forrester predicted in a report released on Thursday.
By 2014, more U.S. consumers will use tablets than use netbooks, or mini-notebooks, Forrester said in the report that outlined the trends in U.S. consumer personal computer (PC) market in the next five years.
As consumers adopt multiple PCs such as tablet to fit their lifestyle, PC sales as a whole in the United States will grow by nearly 52 percent in the next five years, with nearly half a billion desktops, notebooks, tablets and netbooks expected to be sold between now and 2015, the report projected.Stand to take home RM10,000 with Celcom Broadband!
Forrester believed that tablet will be an important factor to fuel the PC sales growth and shake up the PC market shares.
Tablet sales in the United States are expected to surge from a modest 3.5 million units in 2010 to 20.4 million units in 2015, a 42-percent compound annual growth rate.
By 2015, while full-size notebooks are projected to constitute the largest share of 42 percent in the U.S. consumer PC market, tablets are expected to emerge as the second largest category, making up 23 percent of PC unit sales, followed by desktops of 18 percent and netbooks of 17 percent.
"Tablet growth will come at the expense of netbooks, which have a similar grab-and-go media consumption and Web browsing use case as tablets but don't synchronize data across services like the iPad does," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said in a statement.
"Consumers didn't ask for tablets. In fact, Forrester's data shows that the top features consumers say they want in a PC are a complete mismatch with the features of the iPad. But Apple is successfully teaching consumers to want this new device," she added.
The report noted that while desktop sales will drop over the next five years from 18.7 million units in 2010 to 15.7 units in 2015, their role should not be underestimated.
Desktops will remain an important segment, buoyed by consumers' desire for processing-heavy activities such as gaming and watching and editing HD and 3D video and graphics, according to the report.
"Product strategists should align their offerings to capitalize on these market shifts, with chipsets, displays, accessories, software and content that anticipate the growth of tablets and the continued relevance of traditional PCs," Epps said.Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
Chinese experts blast Google for "politicizing" trade rules
BEIJING - Chinese trade and Internet experts have criticized Google's move to declare China's Internet restrictions a trade barrier, saying it was another move by Google to politicize itself.
Despite ending censorship of its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, and redirecting Chinese mainland users to a site in Hong Kong, Google was launching a new move to challenge China's Internet regulation, experts said.
Professor Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore, said Google's attempt to link Internet regulation with trade barriers was, on the surface, an economic issue, but in essence, it challenged China's domestic affairs.
Google was "politicizing" itself again after blaming China for alleged hacker attack in January, said Zheng.
A top Google executive said earlier this month that Google was working with U.S. and European officials to build a case to take to the World Trade Organization that would argue "Internet censorship" acted as a trade barrier, believing it could help U.S. tech companies seeking greater access to Chinese consumers.
Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications, said Google wanted to demonstrate that "censorship" resulted in fewer search pages, which limited the capacity of the country to enjoy fair trade and the ability to operate on a level playing field with competitors such as China's Baidu.
Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
Dutch Layar signs global augmented reality deals
Holland - Netherlands-based Layar, a provider of augmented reality software, signed deals to be distributed on a third of smartphones worldwide and predicted a boost in the use of its technology, which combines real-world images with computer-generated images on a screen.
Layar expects "tens of millions of users" of its technology this year, the company told visitors to an event in one of Amsterdam's historic canalside houses on Friday celebrating its first anniversary.
"We are on the brink of something big or maybe it is even big already," co-founder Maarten Lens-FitzGerald said.
The privately owned company said LG, the world's third mobile phone manufacturer, had signed a deal for worldwide distribution, while Samsung had expanded its relationship to its new mobile operating system Bada.
Layar added a Chinese handset manufacturer had also signed a global distribution deal for Layar software, along with TCT Mobile in Hong Kong.
"We will announce more global distribution partnerships in the coming months with world leading manufacturers ... by early 2011 Layar expects to be distributed by the manufacturer on three out of four new smartphones shipped worldwide," said Matt Miesnieks, responsible for customer development at Layar.
In the past year over 2.2 million people used Layar products at least once, 700,000 in the past 30 days, the company said.
Augmented reality has been around for 15 years and broadcasters were early adopters, using digitized images to enhance TV pictures, commonly in coverage of sports events.
Video game makers, notably Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp, have also adopted augmented reality technology as a way to create more interactive games.
But the technology has garnered increased attention since its availability on smartphones, so someone holding up a mobile phone equipped with a camera, a global positioning satellite (GPS) sensor, compass and the right software can point to a city street and overlay other images and information.
Layar is one of the leading providers of the underlying software that makes possible augmented reality, which is available on Apple Inc's iPhone 3gs and Google Inc's Android-based mobile phones.
The company's main shareholders are Sunstone Capital of Denmark and Amsterdam-based Prime Technology Ventures.
Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
Cuba reports little Internet and telecom progress
Cuba - Cubans' ability to communicate with one another and the world remained well below the norm for the Caribbean and Latin America in 2009, according to a government report released this week.
Despite the legalization of mobile phones in 2008 there were just 1.8 million phone lines in the country, or 15.5 lines for every 100 inhabitants, which was the lowest in the region, according to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union.
Some 800,000 of the phones were mobiles.
Computers numbered 700,000 or 62 per 1,000 residents, compared with more than 160 per thousand residents in the region, and many were in government offices, health and education facilities.
There is no broadband in Cuba and the relatively few Internet users in the country suffer through agonizingly long waits to open an e-mail, let alone view a photo or video. This also hampers government and business operations.
Cuba blames the United States embargo, saying it must use a satellite system and is limited in the space it can buy.
Last year, in a move easing some aspects of Washington's 48-year-old embargo against Cuba, President Barack Obama allowed U.S. telecommunications firms to offer services in Cuba as part of a strategy to increase "people to people" contact.
While Cuba's leaders welcomed the move, they reiterated their demand that Washington completely lift the embargo and to date there has been no progress, business sources said.
The Cuban state monopolizes communications and dominates the economy.
While the National Statistics Office reported on its web page (www.one.cu/ticencifras2009.htm) that there were 1.6 million Internet users, or 14.2 per 100 residents, in most cases this was to a government intranet.
In Jamaica, Internet access was 53.27 per 100 inhabitants in 2008, the Dominican Republic 25.87 percent and in Haiti 10.42 percent, the ITU reported.
Access to satellite television was also severely restricted. In Cuba, satellite TV access is illegal without special permission from the government and authorities regularly raid neighborhoods and homes in search of receptors.
Officials insist the data for individual use and ownership of computers and telephones is misleading, as priority is given to social use of telecoms technology, from health and education to government-operated computer clubs in every municipality.
Cuba and ally Venezuela have formed a joint venture to lay cable between the two countries, but completion of the project is at least a year off.
Cuba's failure to embrace modern telecoms is a major complaint among citizens under 50 years old, who cite it as one of the reasons they seek to migrate abroad.
Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
Motorola and Sprint to sell Windows phone to businesses
World - Motorola Inc (MOT.N) said on Thursday that it would launch a new phone based on Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) software and that No. 3 U.S. mobile operator Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N) will sell the phone to corporate customers.
While Motorola uses Google Inc's (GOOG.O) Android software for its consumer cellphones, it is sticking with Microsoft's technology for devices aimed at business customers.
Motorola said at an event to unveil the ES400 device that the phone will go on sale in September and will run on Microsoft's Window's Mobile 6.5 software.
Microsoft, which has been losing out to Android in the software market for consumer phones, said it is planning an upgraded version of the Windows Mobile 6.5 software for businesses later this year.
This will be branded as Windows Embedded Handheld.
Motorola plans to upgrade the ES400 phones to the next version, a spokesman for the company said without giving a timeline for the upgrade.
Next year Microsoft will launch a new version of Windows Embedded Handheld based on its Windows 7 software, according to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer who made a statement via video at the Motorola event.
Date:Sat, 19/06/2010Tags -
AOL to sell social network site Bebo
US - AOL Inc will sell its Bebo social network site to private investment firm Criterion Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum, as it tries to restructure its business and deal with declining revenue.
(Photo)The AOL logo is seen on the outside of the building housing the companies corporate headquarters in New York May 28, 2009.
Thursday's announcement comes as AOL has been trying to streamline operations since being spun off from Time Warner Inc last year. It has been struggling with a declining Internet access business and weak advertising revenue.
In April, AOL said it planned to either sell or close down Bebo, bought more than two years ago for $850 million.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that the Bebo sale would probably be at a "small fraction" of what AOL originally paid.
AOL said the deal will give it a meaningful tax deduction, and forecast it would record a deferred tax asset and benefit in a range of $275 million to $325 million for the second quarter.
Bebo, founded in San Francisco, gained popularity in the United Kingdom but never gained traction in the United States and has lately also been losing users to competitors' sites like Facebook and Twitter.
AOL in April described Bebo as a business in decline and requiring significant investment which it was not in a position to provide.
Criterion Capital Partners' managing partner Adam Levin, who led the acquisition, said on Thursday that Bebo was an attractive media site due to its "young, highly active user base, revenue history, presence in countries throughout the world and solid technical infrastructure."
Date:Thu, 17/06/2010Tags -
iPhone 4 sets record sale pace despite gaffe
California - Sales of Apple Inc's latest iPhone blew away expectations in its first day on the market despite shortages and an embarrassing online ordering glitch that thwarted many shoppers.
(Photo)A member of the media takes a photo of the new iPhone 4, showing its slim design, following the device's unveiling by Apple CEO Steve Jobs in San Francisco, California in this June 7, 2010 file photo.
Apple shares rose nearly 3 percent on Wednesday after it announced sales of more than 600,000 iPhone 4s, a record for just a single day of pre-orders. That put the device on track to surpass sales of its previous iPhone models as well as its iPad tablet computer, and sounded a strong challenge to rivals like Nokia Corp, which warned of weaker-than-expected sales at its phones unit.
But Apple apologized on Wednesday for having to halt sales temporarily after the surprising volume of online interest overloaded order and approval systems and supplies ran out.
Apple's website said Wednesday afternoon that products ordered then would be shipped by July 14, three weeks after the phone's scheduled June 24 launch in stores and slower than the July 2 shipment promised earlier in the day. The site was still slow on Wednesday, making it unclear if orders were going through.
The phone's exclusive U.S. carrier AT&T Inc said it had halted pre-orders and that sales would resume as soon as inventory becomes available.
The Apple faithful appeared unconcerned. Analysts say the new iPhone would likely surpass sales of the last iPhone 3GS model, about 1 million units of which moved in its first three days. Helping drive that stellar performance will be an influx of new users jumping on the smartphone boom, as well as a two-year replacement cycle for existing iPhone fans.
The first round of carrier contracts signed for the first 3G-based iPhone -- launched in 2008 -- are due to end soon, JPMorgan analyst Mark Moskowitz said in a research note.
"It's easy to forget how early we are in the adoption of this device," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, saying many had underestimated the size of the iPhone's addressable market. "There's only 50 million of them out there. 600,000 is still a drop in the bucket."
One analyst said sales of the device could reach 10 million per quarter, once Apple can meet demand.
"At some point in the next three to four months they'll catch up. That's when they'll start hitting the 10 million per quarter mark," Hapoalim Securities analyst Kevin Hunt said.
"There is probably enough demand (to hit that number) in the third quarter but there's probably not enough supply."
Another analyst, Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros, said his eight million estimate for the quarter is probably conservative.
Some other analysts have raised concerns that Apple supply shortages -- which caused a delay in the international launch of the iPad, for instance -- would drive impatient buyers to rivals.
Apple and AT&T have incurred several recent technical and public relations embarrassments, including a security breach on the iPad that exposed email addresses of public figures, and an investigation into a missing iPhone prototype.
AT&T also said it received complaints that potential iPhone 4 customers were seeing other customers' data on its website. It did not comment on this in Wednesday's statement.
Apple unveiled the slimmer, $199 iPhone 4 last week, kicking off its fastest-ever global product roll-out to try to stay a step ahead of rivals like Google Inc in a red-hot smartphone market.
The device boasts a higher-quality screen and longer battery life, video chat via Wi-Fi, and a gyroscope sensor for improved gaming.
VERIZON ON THE HORIZON?
Shares of Apple, still hovering near a lifetime high, closed up 2.9 percent at $267.25 on Nasdaq. AT&T slipped 0.08 percent to $25.52 on the New York Stock Exchange.
AT&T said orders of the iPhone 4 were 10 times higher in their first day than for the iPhone 3GS on its launch day last year.
It said it chalked up more than 13 million visits to its website on Tuesday, including customers checking to see if they were eligible to upgrade to a new phone. It said eligibility checks were three times its previous record for a single day.
Hudson Square Research analyst Todd Rethemeier said the sales numbers were good news for AT&T, especially because of widespread expectations that bigger rival Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, will soon be able to sell iPhones too.
"It means they're locking up customers into new two-year contracts. Nobody knows when Verizon's going to the iPhone, but there's a lot of speculation this will happen." he said. "Anything AT&T can do to lock up customers now is a good thing."
Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar said the technical snafus were more of a black eye for AT&T than Apple, and reinforced his expectation for a Verizon iPhone late this year. He does not see the problems helping rivals who make phones powered by the Android software from Google.
"People who can't get their phones today, they're not going to go to Android. They'll just come back tomorrow and try to buy the iPhone," he said.
AT&T said the availability of its inventory would determine whether it could resume taking orders. Apple apologized to frustrated would-be buyers and asked them to "try again" online and in stores once the phone is in stock.
"We apologize to everyone who encountered difficulties, and hope that they will try again ... once the iPhone 4 is in stock," Apple said in a statement.
Date:Thu, 17/06/2010Tags -
Russia to fence kids off Internet
MOSCOW - Russian children below 10 years old must be denied Internet access and should surf the web only under adults' supervision, Russian minister for telecommunications Igor Shchegolev said on Thursday.
The minister, who attended the conference "Safe tomorrow of RuNet" held in the town of Urupinsk, said that the idea to limit the Internet access for the minors belonged to the users of RuNet, or the Russian-language sector of the global Web.
"I am happy that this initiative came from bloggers themselves and not from the government; otherwise the idea will be trampled," Igor Shchegolev said, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency.
He spoke in favor of English version of providing the children safety on the Internet that gave the parents full control over the content their kids may watch on the screens.
The minister called this version "promising".
"The more the society switches itself for web technology, the more threats emerge, including the criminals targeting children," he said.
Date:Thu, 17/06/2010Tags -
Nintendo sees life yet in the Wii
Tokyo - Nintendo Co Ltd, confident that its Wii will stand up against rivals Microsoft Corp and Sony Corp, says it feels no pressure to reinvent the pioneering motion-sensing games platform.
President Satoru Iwata said that despite decelerating sales growth, there is life yet in the Wii and that updates of popular games like Metroid, Donkey Kong and Wii Party will keep it moving off store shelves.
But Nintendo keenly understands the importance of getting third-party game developers on board early, much like the participation enjoyed by the 3DS -- the 3D-capable mobile gaming device announced on Tuesday.
"I do not think that there is an immediate need to replace the Wii console. But of course, at some point in the future, the need will arise," Iwata said through a translator on the sidelines of the E3 video game conference in Los Angeles.
"We currently do not have an answer as to what point in the future that need will come."
The Wii -- which employs a stick-like controller that doubles as everything from a tennis racket to a baseball bat in games -- popularized motion gaming and has brought casual users into the gaming population in past years.
But that success was hard-won, Iwata said.
"When we first launched the DS and the Wii, very few people thought that we would have the success that we have had so far. Because of that, Nintendo had no choice but to try to create that market for those two platforms ourselves," he said.
"So when that time comes (for us to release a new platform) and we are able to garner third-party support coupled with our own properties, we will be able to create a very healthy environment for that platform."
Nintendo on Tuesday took the wraps off a new version of its DS handheld device that can play games and show movies in 3D without glasses, as the hardware wars with Microsoft and Sony Corp heat up.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
On Monday, Microsoft said it will begin selling its "Kinect" motion-sensing game system on November 4.
On Tuesday, Sony announced that its Move motion-sensing platform -- which will compete with the Wii and Kinect -- will begin selling on September 15.
The Japanese company rode strong demand for the Wii and DS handheld game player to three straight years of record profits through March 2009, but growth slowed last year after Sony and Microsoft cut console prices and beefed up their software offerings.
Microsoft's foray into motion sensing is, like the Wii, targeted at casual gamers, and is aimed at bringing more of the household into the gaming population, broadening the market beyond the traditional core of young males.
But some like Signal Hill analyst Todd Greenwald argue that blockbuster sales of games like Ubisoft's "Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction" or Take Two Interactive's "Red Dead Redemption" prove the sustained momentum in sales lies more with hardcore players.
That's particularly true as the economy makes casual gamers think twice about buying a console, Greenwald said.
"The reason to buy a Wii has changed dramatically over the past six months or so," he said. "The people who are still buying games are the hardcore-type gamer, and that hardcore gamer is going to buy a 360 or PS3."
"I would say that Microsoft and Sony should get a pretty big boost over the next six months or so versus the Wii."
Nintendo last month forecast a second straight year of smaller profits.
To cheer shareholders, Nintendo has considered a share buyback, but only if a specific need arises.
"(A buyback) is something that we do take into consideration and may do as the need arises," Iwata said.
But the company would not discuss its plans in public.
According to consultants NPD, six of the top 10 games sold last year in the United States were for the Wii, and all were developed by Nintendo, which further boosts its coffers. The top Nintendo Wii game was "New Super Mario Bros Wii."
In response to a question about growing sales of Sony's PlayStation 3, Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President, said: "It is easy to talk about growth when you are working off of a very low base."
"The fact is that when you look at the absolute number for units sold, it is clear that the pace is dramatically better than either of our competitors," he said. "The absolute level of sales has been widening in our favor."
Nintendo said new games for the Wii in coming months include updates to its own franchise hits such as "Legend of Zelda" and "Donkey Kong," as well as "Just Dance 2" from Ubisoft, and a new James Bond game from Activision's "GoldenEye" series.
Date:Thu, 17/06/2010Tags