HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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HP sells webOS operating system to LG Electronics

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co said on Monday it will sell the webOS operating system to South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, unloading the smartphone software it acquired through a $ 1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010.

LG will use the operating software, used in now-defunct Palm smartphones years ago, for its “smart” or Internet-connected TVs. The Asian electronics company had worked with HP on WebOS before offering to buy it outright.

Under the terms of their agreement, LG acquires the operating software’s source code, associated documentation, engineering talent, various associated websites, and licenses under HP’s intellectual property including patents covering fundamental operating system and user interface technology.

HP will retain the patents and all the technology relating to the cloud service of webOS, HP Chief Operating Officer Bill Veghte said in an interview.

“As we looked at it, we saw a very compelling IP that was very unique in the marketplace,” he said, adding that HP has already had a partnership with LG on webOS before the deal was announced.

“As a result of this collaboration, LG offered to acquire the webOS operating system technology,” Veghte said.

Skott Ahn, President and CTO, LG Electronics, said the company will incorporate the operating system in the Smart TV line-up first “and then hopefully all the other devices in the future.”

Both companies declined to reveal the terms of the deal.

LG will keep the WebOS team in Silicon Valley and, for now, will continue to be based out of HP offices, Ahn said.

HP opened its webOS mobile operating system to developers and companies in 2012 after trying to figure out how to recoup its investment in Palm, one of the pioneers of the smartphone industry.

The company had tried to build products based on webOS with the now-defunct TouchPad tablet its flagship product.

HP launched and discontinued the TouchPad in 2010, a little over a month after it hit store shelves with costly fanfare after it saw poor demand for a tablet priced on par with Apple’s dominant iPad.

WebOS is widely viewed as a strong mobile platform, but has been assailed for its paucity of applications, an important consideration while choosing a mobile device.

(Additional reporting By Paul Sandle and Alistair Barr; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Tim Dobbyn and M.D. Golan)

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Apple signals emerging-market rethink with India push

NEW DELHI/BANGALORE (Reuters) – As BlackBerry launches the first smartphone from its make-or-break BB10 line in India, one of its most loyal markets, the company faces new competition from a formidable rival that has long had a minimal presence in the country.

More than four years after it started selling iPhones in India, Apple Inc is now aggressively pushing the iconic device through installment payment plans that make it more affordable, a new distribution model and heavy marketing blitz.

“Now your dream phone” at 5,056 rupees ($ 93), read a recent full front-page ad for an iPhone 5 in the Times of India, referring to the initial payment on a phone priced at $ 840, or almost two months’ wages for an entry-level software engineer.

The new-found interest in India suggests a subtle strategy shift for Apple, which has moved tentatively in emerging markets and has allowed rivals such as Samsung and Blackberry to dominate with more affordable smartphones. With the exception of China, all of its Apple stores are in advanced economies.

Apple expanded its India sales effort in the latter half of 2012 by adding two distributors. Previously it sold iPhones only through a few carriers and stores it calls premium resellers.

The result: iPhone shipments to India between October and December nearly tripled to 250,000 units from 90,000 in the previous quarter, according to an estimate by Jessica Kwee, a Singapore-based analyst at consultancy Canalys.

At The MobileStore, an Indian chain owned by the Essar conglomerate, which says it sells 15 percent of iPhones in the country, iPhone sales tripled between December and January, thanks to a monthly payment scheme launched last month.

“Most people in India can’t afford a dollar-priced phone when the salaries in India are rupee salaries. But the desire is the same,” said Himanshu Chakrawarti, its chief executive.

Apple, the distributors, retailers and banks share the advertising and interest cost of the marketing push, according to Chakrawarti. Carriers like Bharti Airtel Ltd, which also sell the iPhone 5, run separate ads.

India is the world’s No. 2 cellphone market by users, but most Indians can’t afford fancy handsets. Smartphones account for just a tenth of total phone sales. In India, 95 percent of cellphone users have prepaid accounts without a fixed contract. Unlike in the United States, carriers do not subsidize handsets.

Within the smartphone segment, Apple’s Indian market share last quarter was just 5 percent, according to Canalys, meaning its overall penetration is tiny.

Still, industry research firm IDC expects the Indian smartphone market to grow more than five times from about 19 million units last year to 108 million in 2016, which presents a big opportunity.

Samsung Electronics dominates Indian smartphone sales with a 40 percent share, thanks to its wide portfolio of Android devices priced as low as $ 110. The market has also been flooded by cheaper Android phones from local brands such as Micromax and Lava.

Most smartphones sold in India are much cheaper than the iPhone, said Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta.

“Where the masses are – there, Apple still has a gap.”

‘I LOVE INDIA, BUT…’

Apple helped create the smartphone industry with the iPhone in 2007. But last year Apple lost its lead globally to Samsung whose smartphones, which run Google‘s free Android software, are especially attractive in Asia.

Many in Silicon Valley and Wall Street believe the surest way to penetrate lower-income Asian markets would be with a cheaper iPhone, as has been widely reported but never confirmed. The risk is that a cheap iPhone would cannibalize demand for the premium version and eat into Apple’s peerless margins.

The new monthly payment plan in India goes a long way to expanding the potential market, said Chakrawarti.

“The Apple campaign is not meant for really the regular top-end customer, it is meant to upgrade the 10,000-12,000 handset guy to 45,000 rupees,” he said.

Apple’s main focus for expansion in Asia has been Greater China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong, where revenue grew 60 percent last quarter to $ 7.3 billion.

Asked last year why Apple had not been as successful in India, Chief Executive Tim Cook said its business in India was growing but the group remained more focused on other markets.

“I love India, but I believe that Apple has some higher potential in the intermediate term in some other countries,” Cook said. “The multi-layer distribution there really adds to the cost of getting products to market,” he said at the time.

Apple, which has partly addressed that by adding distributors, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Ingram Micro Inc, one of its new distributors, also declined comment. Executives at Redington (India) Ltd, the other distributor, could not immediately be reached.

BlackBerry, which has seen its global market share shrivel to 3.4 percent from 20 percent over the past three years, is making what is seen as a last-ditch effort to save itself with the BB10 series.

The high-end BlackBerry Z10 to be launched in India on Monday is expected to be priced not far from the 45,500 rupees price tag for an iPhone 5 with 16 gigabytes of memory. Samsung’s Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2, Nokia’s Lumia 920 and two HTC Corp models are the main iPhone rivals.

Until last year, Blackberry was the No. 3 smartphone brand in India with market share of more than 10 percent, thanks to a push into the consumer segment with lower-priced phones. Last quarter its share fell to about 5 percent, putting it in fifth place, according to Canalys. Apple was sixth.

(This story is corrected in para 16 to make clear that Google owns Android software)

(Additional reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in MUMBAI and Poornima Gupta in SAN FRANCISCO; Editing by Tony Munroe and Mark Bendeich)

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Hearing is believing: People don’t realize how important great sound is until they experience it

Sound quality is a hugely important part of the multimedia experience on mobile devices that often gets overlooked. It’s not easy to convey how big the impact of good sound quality is on the overall experience, but a new Parks Associates study commissioned by Dolby set out to do just that. The study’s findings, set to be published later today by Dolby, show that the majority of smartphone owners consider sound quality to some degree when choosing a smartphone or tablet. After hearing an audio demonstration from a device that features enhanced sound, however, the overwhelming majority of users acknowledge that audio quality is an important feature on mobile devices.

[More from BGR: Apple called a ‘bubble’ that will likely follow Microsoft]

Parks Associates interviewed 1,000 smartphone owners in each of four countries — China, France, Germany and South Korea — and 1,152 smartphone owners in the United States when conducting the study. The concept was simple: smartphone owners were asked if audio quality was a consideration when purchasing a mobile device. Then they were played an audio demo on a mobile device featuring enhanced Dolby sound, and asked the same question again.

[More from BGR: Samsung looks past Apple, takes aim at BlackBerry]

Prior to the demo, a healthy number of the study’s subjects said sound quality was a factor when buying a smartphone or tablet, including 74% in the U.S., 74% in France and 70% in Germany. After the audio demo, those numbers jumped significantly — 91% of smartphone owners polled in the U.S. said audio quality would be a purchase factor, as did 86% of French smartphone users and 81% of German smartphone owners.

The percentage of subjects who said sound quality was a consideration in China jumped to 97% from 94% following the demo, and in South Korea the figure climbed to 90% from 72%, a huge 18-point differential.

The Dolby sound demo had a similar impact on the answers to a follow-up question. When subjects were asked to rate how important audio quality was when purchasing a mobile device on a 10-point scale, ratings climbed across the board following the Dolby demo.

In the U.S., 53% of smartphone owners rated sound quality between 8 and 10 before the demo and 67% gave it a top rating after the Dolby demo, up 14 points. In France the figure jumped 12 points to 56% from 44%, in Germany it climbed 11 points to 55% from 44%, in China it jumped 12 points to 77% from 65% and in South Korea it went up to 64% from 39%, a monster 25-point swing.

Sound quality might not be an easy sell on paper, but enhanced mobile audio from companies like Dolby has a clear and immediate impact on the smartphone experience. This is a big part of the reason companies like HTC (2498) are making serious investments in mobile audio, and we’ll likely continue to see investments made in this space in the years to come.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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The U.S. Postal Service Is Getting into the ‘Wearable Electronics’ Business?

Yes, you read that headline right. Strapped for cash and obviously desperate, the United States Postal Service is launching a new line of “‘smart apparel,’ — also known as wearable electronics.” The mailmen-turned-fashionistas will call the new line Rain Heat & Snow, first for men and later for women, and while it’s unclear exactly how smart the apparel gets, reports suggest that you’ll  be able to plug your iPod into your new Postal Service jacket. The agency’s licensing manager, Steven Mills, says that the new line “will put the Postal Service on the cutting edge of functional fashion.” Which is basically true. When was the last time you plugged your iPod into your jacket? That said, when was the last time you used an iPod? Or the U.S. Postal Service?

RELATED: Snail Mail Is Still Too Fast for the U.S. Postal Service

It’s hard to not to give the old USPS a slow clap for this one. It would be one thing if the Postal Service wanted to sell some t-shirts and Dad ties with pictures of stamps on them — they actually tried that back in the 80s, and it didn’t work — but it sounds like they’re actually going after serious outerwear brands like North Face and Burton Snowboards with this one. It’s unclear if the Postal Service can keep up, though. Burton, for one, has a head start, since it partnered with Motorola and released a Bluetooth-enabled snowboarding jacket with a matching, headphone studded beanie back in 2005. The geeks at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) loved it, called it “space age.” The Postal Service, by contrast, opted not to take the fancy brand-name strategy, instead teaming up with the Cleveland-based Wahconah Group. You might know them from their Legends line of men’s clothing, but you probably don’t.

RELATED: The U.S. Postal Service Lost $ 3.3 Billion Last Quarter

The big question remains: Will it work? The Postal Service lost $ 16 billion last year and plans to halt Saturday mail service in an attempt to cut costs and dig itself out of debt. Unfortunately, the drastic measure will cut 22,000 jobs, but it will only save the agency $ 2 billion a year. Suffice it to say that the Postal Service needed to get creative with their revenue streams — and you can’t get much more creative than cyborg jackets. After all, the new ad campaign last year didn’t work, and the Simpson’s stamp venture definitely didn’t work. So why not get into the outdoor gear business? If anybody knows anything about being outside, it’s those letter carriers, right? You know the riff: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

RELATED: Your Pants Are Lying to You

Here’s a little bit of encouraging news. Other companies have tried the apparel route in the past, albeit without the whole sexy wearable electronics angle. Apple released its own clothing line in 1986, and look at where the company is now!

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Burger King apologizes after Twitter hacking

Somebody hacked Burger King‘s Twitter account on Monday, posting obscene messages and changing its profile picture to a McDonald’s logo.

The tweets stopped after a little more than an hour, and Burger King said it had reached out to Twitter to suspend the account. A Twitter spokesman did not immediately respond to a phone message left on Monday.

Late Monday, Burger King tweeted: “Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we’re back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!”

Burger King, which usually tweets several times a week, typically does so to promote sales on chicken sandwiches, or to ask questions such as how many bites it takes to eat a chicken nugget.

But just after noon EST on Monday, someone tweeted via Burger King’s account, “We just got sold to McDonalds!” They also changed the icon to rival McDonald Corp.‘s golden arches and the account’s background picture to McDonald’s new Fish McBites.

About 55 tweets and retweets followed over the next hour and a quarter, including some that contained racial epithets, references to drug use and obscenities. The account tweeted: “if I catch you at a wendys, we’re fightin!”

Monday’s appropriation of Burger King’s Twitter account was a relatively mild example of cybersecurity problems, which are causing increasing concern in Washington and for industry. Media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have all said this year that their computer systems were breached, while several NBC websites were briefly hacked in November. White House officials and some lawmakers are pursuing legislation that would make it easier for the government and industry to share information on how to defend against hacking.

Burger King didn’t know who hacked the account, and no other social media accounts were affected, said Bryson Thornton, a spokesman for Miami-based Burger King Worldwide Inc. Its social media team and an outside agency manage the Twitter account, but Thornton declined to say how many people knew the account’s password. Late Monday, Thornton issued an apology to the company’s Twitter followers.

“Earlier today, our official BK Twitter Account was compromised by unauthorized users,” Thornton said in a statement. “Upon learning of this incident, our social media teams immediately began working with Twitter security administrators to suspend the compromised account until we could re-establish our brand’s official Twitter page. We apologize to our loyal fans and followers, whom might have received unauthorized tweets from our account. We are pleased to announce that the account is now active again.”

Twitter acknowledged on Feb. 1 that cyber attackers may have stolen user names and passwords of 250,000 users. It said at the time that it notified users of the breach.

Competitors were sympathetic.

McDonald’s responded on Twitter that it empathized with its Burger King counterparts. “Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”

“My real life nightmare is playing out” on Burger King’s twitter feed, wrote Wendy’s social media worker Amy Rose Brown.

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Can Vanilla Ice, Hardwick take Streamys to the mainstream?

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Nerd god Chris Hardwick, 1990s rap icon Vanilla Ice and a gallant troupe of YouTube stars have the same mission this weekend – to turn the unknown Streamy Awards into the Golden Globes of online video.

That’s why Tubefilter, which conceived the show to honor the best in online video and helped produce its first two iterations, has partnered with Dick Clark Productions, the company that produces the Globes, as well as the American Music Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards.

Unlike those events, this show will not be broadcast — it will stream online — but DCP and Tubefilter have planned the event like a major awards show.

They recruited Hardwick, a popular figure with the young, male online community. A former radio DJ turned stand-up comedian and creator of Nerdist Industries, he is something of a professional emcee, hosting podcasts and TV shows — and an unavoidable presence at Comic-Con in San Diego.

They’ve set it at the Palladium, square in the middle of Hollywood, with an after party on the Sunset Strip.

Deep-pocketed companies like Coca-Cola have agreed to sponsor the show, adding a veneer of credibility to a show three years removed from disaster.

Technological glitches, tasteless jokes and streakers marred the 2010 edition, prompting the board of directors of the International Academy of Web Television, which produced the show, to pen a self-lacerating memo.

“Last night in the end was a step backwards for all of us,” Michael Wayne, the board of directors for the IAWTV, wrote. “Like you we watched the show with great embarrassment as our industry was ridiculed and debased.”

He concluded with: “I hope you will judge us not by how hard we have fallen, but by how well we get up, dust ourselves off, and learn from our mistakes.”

Yet IAWTV abandoned the show, launching its own awards that occur during January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Streamys took three years off, and Tubefilter brought in DCP to, in the words of DCP’s Ariel Elazar, “reinvigorate the brand.”

Still, doubts remain.

“An awards show should highlight the best of what it’s honoring for the public outside of that community to have an understanding of what’s going on. Because of problems over the last few years of shows attempting to do that and failing miserable, we may still be too early,” Rafi Fine, who with his brother Benny constitute popular YouTubers The Fine Brothers, told TheWrap.

The Fine Brothers created original video content for each of the first two shows, and though apprehensive, expressed some optimism that the show has found the right formula. They are nominated nine times and are also presenting.

Tubefilter co-founder Drew Baldwin said the first two shows suffered because they were tailored to people in the industry rather than outside fans.

Taking a cue from the Grammys and AMAs, they hope to overcome that problem with Hardwick and memorable musical performances. The lineup mixes well-known musical acts like Vanilla Ice and Soulja Boy with YouTube talent, such as DeStorm and Mike Tompkins.

“At the Golden Globes, Dick Clark brought out Bill Clinton, and it was one of those moments where everyone was freaking out,” Baldwin said.

While few would equate Vanilla Ice with the former president, the goal this year is to inspire through collaboration. Just as the Grammys pair iconic musicians with up-and-comers, Streamy producers hope pairing nouveau digital stars with more mainstream talent will push the awards toward the mainstream without alienating its core audience.

The third edition of the Streamys arrive at a golden time for the online video industry. Premiere Hollywood talent has jumped into the space, writing, directing, producing and starring in shows for YouTube, Yahoo and others. YouTube stars like The Annoying Orange and Fred have amassed enough fans on YouTube — with millions of subscribers — to cross over into television and film. Successful shows like Yahoo’s “Burning Love” are screening at film festivals like South by Southwest.

“The YouTube culture, in a way, does shun television culture and other forms of media,” Corey Moss, vice president of digital at Principato-Young, which manages talent and produces shows, told TheWrap. “There are fans of KassemG and Toby Turner who don’t want their idol to start popping up on TV or awards shows. On the opposite end of that, there are people making great digital content with A-list Hollywood talent who would appreciate that their talent is recognized.”

To please both sides, Dick Clark and Tubefilter have created separate awards for user-generated content and higher-budget series.

So, for example, in the Best Host category, old media stalwart Larry King will compete against YouTube sensation KassemG and the relatively unknown Mark Malkoff.

The Best Comedy Series category pits “Burning Love,” a Yahoo series whose backers include Ben Stiller and Paramount, against “MyMusic,” a channel from the Fine Brothers, YouTube pioneers unknown to wide swaths of the population.

“Every time I’ve seen the nominees list for the Streamys or IAWTV it made me go ‘we’re nowhere,’” Benny Fine told TheWrap. “Until the Streamys this year where I felt OK. It could be the first time outsiders looking in have something to really look at.”

(Editing by Chris Michaud)

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Steam for Linux Is Here, Valve Celebrates by Discounting Entire Catalog

Time to do a little happy dance, Linux-heads: Valve’s Steam client for Linux is finally with us, and I don’t mean the beta. Valve’s digital gaming client for the Unix-like open-source operating system is officially official, and Valve’s celebrating by discounting the entire catalog — over 50 Linux titles — anywhere from 50% to 75%. Not too shabby, guys.

Some of the more notable titles in that list include Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Counter-Strike: Source, Half-Life, Team Fortress 2 and World of Goo. The sale runs until Feb. 21 at 10 a.m. PT.

Valve notes that in addition to cracking open the Linux game chest, it’s including its “Big Picture” mode — the company’s way of streamlining the living room experience, if you want to drag your box over to your TV, by adding game controller support. It’s in keeping with the company’s recently announced Steam Box strategy, which involves putting a Steam-branded console in the living room. That box, when we finally see it at some undisclosed future point, is expected to be Linux-driven.

I haven’t run a Linux machine in ages, mostly because as a game machine, it’s been like showing up to the party after everyone’s gone home (settle down Linux wonks, I don’t mean the operating system itself, which I’ve always been partial to — the MacBook Pro I’m typing this on, running OS X, is just Unix with a pretty overlay, after all).

But with an official Steam client serving as a central games distribution point and the fact that this is Valve we’re talking about — arguably the single most important force driving PC gaming today — Linux game development could finally make the kind of splash open-source advocates have long hoped it might.

MORE: Tesla Motors Pours Cold Data on New York Times ‘Model S’ Review

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Rovio’s games are losing revenue generation power rapidly

The most famous mobile app franchise in the world has generated more than 1 billion downloads over the past three years — yet it currently has no games in the United States top 50 revenue chart for either the iPhone or iPad. On Wednesday, Angry Birds Star Wars dropped to No. 66 on the App Annie iPhone app revenue chart. This happened just three months after the game launched with massive download volumes and an avalanche of media coverage. Angry Birds Star Wars spent just two months in the top 20 iPhone revenue chart despite generating 50 million downloads in just 35 days.

[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]

The original Angry Birds hit the top 5 of the iPhone revenue chart in April 2010. It spent 22 months in the top 20 iPhone revenue chart, as opposed to the two months that its Star Wars sequel managed. The application market is growing strongly and the revenue generation power of top games increases every year. Yet it’s hard to believe that the No. 66 position on the iPhone revenue chart in February 2013 does not mean lower revenue than the No. 1 position Angry Birds held in February 2011.

[More from BGR: New purported Galaxy S IV details emerge]

A look at other Rovio games reflects the same pattern of steady revenue generation deterioration. Bad Piggies held onto a top 20 revenue position for five weeks on the U.S. iPhone chart last autumn. It has now slipped out of top 100.

Of course, Rovio is no longer mainly an app company. The company probably gets more than 50% of its revenue now from licensing and franchising contracts and this stream is growing rapidly. Sources in Helsinki indicate that the percentage may already be more than 60%, or even 70%. Nevertheless, it is striking to see that the download king of the application world is losing app sales generation power this quickly. It is quite possible that Rovio is simply opting to focus on lucrative licensing opportunities with strong partners like Mattel, Hot Topic and Walmart. But it’s hard to avoid the feeling that the company is missing out in a big way by allowing the explosively growing in-app revenue market to slip from its grasp.

Rovio’s fading presence in the iOS revenue charts demonstrates how rapidly the iOS ecosystem is evolving. This week, Minecraft is the only paid iPhone app that has managed to break into top 40 iPhone revenue chart. The other 39 apps are free and their designers have had to devise ingenious in-app item purchase strategies in order to squeeze dollars from their users. Paid apps like the Angry Birds franchise have relied on download fees and may have lacked the drive to develop optimal monetization formulas.

Rovio is seeking to become the next Disney. Its grand animation, theme park, fashion, education and beverage strategies are soaringly ambitious and have already paid off handsomely. Yet it could be tricky to position Rovio for a likely IPO before the company finds a way to recapture the app revenue generation power it possessed in 2010 and 2011. As Rovio’s games have faded rapidly in American revenue charts over the past two months, it has stared at an ironic, down-home reminder of the changing iOS app landscape. Another Helsinki company, Supercell, has held an iron grip on the No. 1 positions of both iPhone and iPad revenue charts all through the early 2013.

Supercell’s flaghsip free download called “Clash of Clans” is now a top 10 revenue-generating app in 91 countries across the world. Angry Birds Star Wars? It no longer places as a top 10 revenue app in any country. It just slipped to #35 in Finland this week.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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What to Expect at Sony’s #PlayStation2013 Event on Feb. 20

Officially, Sony‘s not saying anything about what it’s going to reveal at the “Meeting 2013,” hashtagged #PlayStation2013. All its video trailer shows is a date — Feb. 20 — and the floating symbols of the PlayStation logo.

Most people, however, are expecting the next PlayStation console, whether it’s going to be called the PlayStation 4 or the Orbis. The staff of Edge Online even claims to have spoken with “Sources close to the hardware,” and recently wrote what they’d learned about the upcoming PlayStation.

You already know it’s going to be more powerful than the PS3. Here’s a look at some unexpected possible features, plus a preview of things to come for the PS Vita handheld console.

Built-in sharing

In an apparent attempt to be hip to the “social networking” thing people are doing these days, Sony’s new PlayStation console will supposedly have “A new Share button on the controller,” which will let you post screenshots and videos online straight from the console.

The PlayStation 3 could upload pictures from its Photo Gallery, but it could only send them to Facebook or Picasa, and most games lacked a built-in screenshot feature. In contrast, the new PlayStation console is said to keep a running video record of your last 15 minutes of activity, which you can edit and share parts of at any time.

No backwards compatibility

It was already a persistent rumor that the new PlayStation console wouldn’t be able to run PlayStation 3 games. The Edge’s article suggests a reason for this: That Sony “made a mistake in creating such esoteric architecture for [the] PS3,” meaning the PS3′s Cell Processor was hard to develop games for. The new console is supposedly much easier for game developers to work with, but it may not support games written for earlier consoles.

Because of a similar situation, the PS3 needed to have the PS2′s hardware chips inside it — literally a console within a console — in order to play PS2 discs. This was a large part of the reason why it cost so much at its launch, and why later (and cheaper) PS3 models dropped backwards compatibility. Sony may have decided to just start with a clean slate, rather than go through this all over again.

Vita price drop

A separate article at GamesRadar sums up a Seeking Alpha report of Sony’s recent earnings call, at which Sony CFO Masaru Kato talked about how “we have to do a better job” promoting the PS Vita. Much of what he said amounted to “needs more marketing,” and “it’s all the game developers’ fault” (not his actual words). But he also talked about the “pricing of the product,” and while he refused to commit to talking about specifics it’s possible that the notoriously pricey PS Vita could see a permanent price drop.

No PSP-2000 style redesign was mentioned, however.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Authorities post $1 million reward for ex-Los Angeles policeman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A record $ 1 million reward was posted on Sunday for information leading to the capture of a fugitive former Los Angeles cop suspected of targeting police officers and their families in three killings committed in retaliation for his 2008 firing.

Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said the reward, raised in part from private donations, police unions and contributions from businesses, marks the biggest sum ever offered in Southern California in a criminal investigation.

The reward was posted as law enforcement agencies across the region pressed their search for the suspect, ex-LAPD officer and U.S. Navy reservist Christopher Dorner, 33, for a fourth day. Beck described it as the largest manhunt ever mounted in the Los Angeles area.

He called the spate of revenge-driven killings Dorner is suspected of unleashing “an act of domestic terrorism,” adding, “This is a man who has targeted those who we entrust to protect the public. His actions cannot go unanswered.”

An LAPD spokesman also said that police would be providing extra security for the recording industry’s Grammy Awards ceremony being held on Sunday at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angles.

The search for Dorner has been focused in the snow-covered San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles since a pickup truck belonging to Dorner was found abandoned and burning near the popular ski resort community of Big Bear Lake on Thursday.

The truck turned up in the mountains hours after police say Dorner exchanged gunfire with two officers, grazing one, and later ambushed two more policemen in their patrol car at a stoplight, killing one and badly wounding the other.

A rambling, multi-page manifesto posted on Dorner’s Facebook page last week claimed he was wrongly terminated from the LAPD in September 2008 and threatened numerous police officers and their families with violent revenge.

A former Navy lieutenant, Dorner also is suspected in last weekend’s shooting deaths of a campus security officer and his fiance, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain singled out for blame in the manifesto for Dorner’s dismissal.

The retired LAPD captain had represented Dorner in disciplinary proceedings that led to his termination after a police inquiry found that he had made false statements accusing a superior officer of using excessive force against a homeless person.

Beck announced on Saturday a reopening of the inquiry to “reassure the public that their police department is transparent and fair.”

The police officer who was shot to death in an ambush on Thursday was publicly identified on Sunday as Michael Crain, 34, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served on the Riverside Police Department for 11 years.

LAPD spokesman Andrew Smith said “an army” of police officers would be providing security for a public memorial service planned on Wednesday for Crain.

In addition to continuing a manhunt in and around Big Bear Lake on Sunday, police were searching areas around the homes of more than 50 Los Angeles police officers whose families authorities believe Dorner has targeted as potential victims.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman. Editing by Christopher Wilson)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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RIM shares up on upgrade

TORONTO (AP) — Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion rose 3 percent Thursday with Wells Fargo saying that better gross margins from the company’s new phone will offset potentially limited demand.

THE SPARK: In a morning research note, analyst Maynard Um upgraded the shares to outperform. Um said the current valuation already discounts the potentially limited demand for RIM’s new BlackBerry phone that was unveiled last week.

THE BIG PICTURE: RIM shares have more than doubled from nine-year lows in September on optimism and mostly favorable reviews off the new BlackBerry. The software has a fresh interface designed for touchscreens. The once pioneering smartphone has been overshadowed by the iPhone and Android phones in recent years.

THE ANALYSIS: UM said the outperform rating is predicated on the view that gross margins will improve with the release of the new much-delayed phones. He upgraded the valuation target to between $ 19 and $ 20, versus the prior range of $ 11-$ 13 under the previous analyst’s call.

“While it may very well turn out that demand for BlackBerry 10 is limited, we believe the valuation already discounts some level of failure and think the risk/reward at this juncture of the BlackBerry 10 cycle is attractive,” Um said.

BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said the stock has risen lately on optimism around the launch and mostly positive reviews, but cautioned it’s not based on hard sales data.

“Some of the optimism may get tempered when they report,” Gillis said in an interview.

Gillis said it’s a big problem that a physical keyboard version might not arrive in the U.S. until May or June, a month or two behind other parts of the world. RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins told The Associated Press this week that the keyboard version will likely come out eight to 10 weeks after a carrier releases a model with only a touch screen, the BlackBerry Z10. The Z10 is expected in the U.S. in mid-March, so eight to 10 weeks brings the U.S. date for the BlackBerry Q10 to mid-May to early June.

“The big thing is the keyboard. That’s a long time,” said Gillis, who noted it will go up against a new phone from Google and maybe a new iPhone refresh. “People were expecting April.”

Such a delay would further complicate RIM’s efforts to hang on to customers tempted by Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and a range of devices running Google’s Android operating system. Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many BlackBerry users have stayed loyal so far specifically because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen found on the iPhone and most Android devices. But the temptations to switch grow with each additional delay, despite favorable reviews for the new operating system.

SHARE ACTION: Research In Motion Ltd., based in Waterloo, Ontario, rose 57 cents, or 3.5 percent, to $ 16.62 in afternoon trading. Shares had risen to a 52-week high of $ 18.32 on Jan. 24 from a nine-year low of $ 6.22 on Sept. 24.

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New BlackBerry to be released in US in mid-March

TORONTO (AP) — The chief executive of Research In Motion said he’s disappointed the new BlackBerry won’t be released in the United States until mid-March, but he said early data suggests sales in the U.K. are above expectations.

Thorsten Heins said in an interview Monday with The Associated Press that he was disappointed in the mid-March U.S. release date. But he said the U.S. and its phone carriers have a rigid testing system.

“We need to respect that. Am I a bit disappointed? Yeah, I would be lying saying no. But it is what it is and we’re working with all our carrier partners to speed it up as much as we can,” Heins said in an interview at the Ritz Carlton in Toronto.

RIM unveiled new BlackBerrys last week after excruciating delays allowed Apple, Samsung and others to build commanding leads in the industry. The stock fell 12 percent after Wednesday’s kickoff, despite positive reviews about the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. There’s concern the phone isn’t coming out sooner after RIM announced a March U.S. release date last week.

Heins told the AP that it will be mid-March.

The first device in the new crop of the much-delayed revamped BlackBerrys will be the touchscreen Z10. Black and white versions were released in the U.K. last Thursday and will be released in Canada on Tuesday.

Heins said a substantial number of U.K. users are moving from other platforms to BlackBerry and said that’s an encouraging sign because they first targeted longtime BlackBerry users.

“It’s beyond expectations,” Heins said. “White is sold out already. The black is hard to stock up again. It’s very encouraging. I won’t share the number because I need to verify it, but we are getting a substantial number of users moving from other platforms to BlackBerry. That is an interesting data point.”

Shares of RIM closed up 15 percent Monday on initial reports of strong U.K. sales and after an analyst upgraded the stock.

Heins said they have to retake market share in the U.S. for BlackBerry to be successful. The U.S. has been one market in which RIM has been particularly hurting, even as the company is doing well in many places overseas. According to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the U.S. market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012. The iPhone and Android now dominate.

Heins, who one year ago replaced longtime executives who had presided over BlackBerry’s fall, said he’s confident BlackBerry can become the third ecosystem behind Apple and phones running Google’s Android operating system.

“We need to win back market share to be relevant,” Heins said. “We have to be aggressive in the U.S. market.”

The new BlackBerrys are a make-or-break product lineup after the pioneering brand lost its cachet not long after Apple’s 2007 release of the iPhone, which reset expectations for what a smartphone should do.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. But it has taken more than two years to unveil new phones that are redesigned for the new multimedia, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers are now demanding. RIM initially said the new BlackBerry with the revamped software would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed back further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

As RIM previously disclosed, the first phone will have only a touch-screen keyboard, like Apple Inc.‘s trend-setting iPhone and most phones running Android, including Samsung Electronic Co.’s popular Galaxy line.

The Q10 will follow and will have a physical keyboard, a feature that has kept BlackBerry users loyal over the years because it makes typing easier. RIM said last week the Q10 will start going on sale on some global carriers in April, but didn’t say when U.S. carriers will have it.

Heins told the AP it depends on the carriers, but said keyboard versions will likely be released eight to 10 weeks after a carrier releases the touch version.

That could mean the Q10 keyboard version might not be released in the U.S. until much later than mid-March or April.

Some analysts have questioned RIM for releasing a touch version first considering its most loyal users love the physical keyboard for typing.

Heins said the full touch screen was more complicated and they needed to focus on releasing that first. He has also acknowledged that RIM failed to quickly adapt to the emerging “bring your own device” trend, in which employees bring their personal touch-screen iPhones or Android devices to work instead of relying on BlackBerrys issued by their employers

Heins said they want to participate in that trend by releasing a touch version first.

Heins also addressed possible interest other companies might have in RIM should BlackBerry 10 prove successful and whether the Canadian government might block a foreign takeover.

“The recognition for BlackBerry 10 and what we built is pretty high. We got good reviews,” he said. “That moves you into the middle of the radar screen so I expect some activity around it but we’ll look at it one by one. We’ll assess it and we’ll make decisions with the board on what make sense.”

Heins recently chatted with top Canadian government ministers, including the industry minister, at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“These guys are reasonable, rational people. At the end of the day it’s about employment, it’s about economic health, it’s about Canada playing a major role,” Heins said. “If the right logic and rational applies I don’t think they will just block it for their own sake. They could have done it with Nortel and the patents.”

Several months ago RIM’s decline evoked memories of Nortel, a former Canadian tech giant, which declared bankruptcy in 2009 and was picked over for its patents.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Looks Like Alicia Keys Will Play Piano During Super Bowl National Anthem

Alicia Keys woke up on Super Bowl Sunday and apparently had the urge to tweet, sharing a rehearsal photo of herself behind a piano in an empty Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Keys, who was just named Blackberry’s global creative director, will sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before kickoff and the photo suggests she’ll do so while playing piano.

[More from Mashable: Super Bowl 2013 Commercials: Watch Them All Here]

If Keys does pound the keys tonight, she will be the first musician to do so during a Super Bowl national anthem performance since Billy Joel in 2007 (see video in gallery below).

Update: Keys also tweeted the red dress she’ll wear during her performance.

[More from Mashable: Beyonce’s Super Bowl Show in 10 Fierce Photos]

Kelly Clarkson sang the national anthem in 2012, a year after Christina Aguilera flubbed the song’s lyrics at the previous Super Bowl (watch below). Other past performers include Whitney Houston, Garth Brooks, Mariah Carey, Faith Hill, Neil Diamond, Diana Ross, Jewel, Harry Connick Jr., Dixie Chicks and Cher.

Keys, a 14-time Grammy winner, will embark on a North American concert tour in March. Her fifth studio album, Girl on Fire, debuted atop the Billboard 200 albums chart in November.

Keys is set to perform the national anthem at 6:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

Click here to view the gallery: Previous National Anthem Singers at the Super Bowl

Image via Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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5 Fascinating Facts We Learned From Reddit This Week

Click here to view the gallery: Reddit Facts 2/2

If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to game the French lottery of 1728 (and who hasn’t, amirite?), you’ve come to the right place. This week’s edition of Reddit Facts has some delightful tidbits about the Fab Four, a famous photograph and a funky fruit.

[More from Mashable: 10 Quirky Etsy Finds to Celebrate Groundhog Day]

Homepage image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

[More from Mashable: 10 Valentine’s Day Gifts for the Special Geek in Your Life]

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nintendo says it won’t cut Wii U price despite slumping sales

Nintendo (NTDOY) has a lot riding on its latest video game console, but sales have been slow thus far. Gamers have not responded to the bulky new GamePad controller, which could be considered the biggest point of differentiation on the Wii U. As a result, Nintendo recently slashed its sales outlook on Wii U consoles for the March quarter. Following some speculation that Nintendo might cut the price of the Wii U in an effort to bolster sales, the company confirmed alongside its third-quarter results that dropping the console’s price is not an option.

[More from BGR: BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day]

“With Wii U, we have taken a rather resolute stance in pricing it below its manufacturing cost, so we are not planning to perform a markdown,” the company said. “I would like to make this point absolutely clear. We are putting our lessons from Nintendo 3DS to good use, as I have already publicly stated. However, given that it has now become clear that we have not yet fully communicated the value of our product, we will try to do so before the software lineup is enhanced and at the same time work to enrich the software lineup which could make consumers understand the appeal of Wii U.”

[More from BGR: Mark Cuban unloads on American patent system, says bad patents are ‘crushing small businesses’]

Nintendo stands firm behind its new console, and the company says it will gain traction once consumers become more familiar with the new GamePad controller and other Wii U features.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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BlackBerry World is off to a decent start, but it’s missing some big-name apps

When BlackBerry (RIMM) announced that more than 70,000 BlackBerry 10 applications would be available when its new platform launched, users were ecstatic. That big number was too good to be true, unfortunately, as we and many others noticed in our time spent with the BlackBerry Z10. While the app store includes some big names such as Rovio’s Angry Birds and various titles from Electronic Arts (EA) and Gameloft, it still leaves much to be desired. The company is said to be “in talks” to bring popular apps such as Netflix (NFLX) and Instagram to the platform but nothing is certain. Despite all of this, BlackBerry has announced that more than 1,000 of the top app developers are developing for BlackBerry 10.

“Being able to announce 1000 of the top app partners is a testament to the strength of BlackBerry 10, the ease of developing for this powerful new platform, and the remarkable opportunity that it represents for developers and brands alike,” said Martyn Mallick, BlackBerry’s VP of global alliances and business development. “We have focused on bringing the most relevant apps to BlackBerry 10 – whether they are global leaders in their categories, or whether they are regional must-have apps. We are thrilled and want to thank all the developers that have shown such strong support of a platform before it has commercially launched. We share in their excitement and belief in BlackBerry 10.”

Some of the big-name apps that aren’t available on BlackBerry 10 include YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, Hulu and perhaps most importantly, Google Maps.

BlackBerry’s press release follows below.

BlackBerry 10 Customers Will Have a Great Selection of Top Apps in Every Category
BlackBerry welcomes more than 1000 of the top app partners with relevant, local content from every region of the globe

WATERLOO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Jan. 31, 2013) – A phenomenal lineup of top brands and applications have committed to the BlackBerry(R) 10 platform, giving the new platform the strongest content offering of any first generation mobile platform at launch. Yesterday at the BlackBerry 10 launch event in New York, BlackBerry(R) (NASDAQ:RIMM)(TSX:RIM) announced that 1,000 of the top app partners will be making their applications available on the BlackBerry(R) World(TM) storefront. The partners range from leaders in social media to the top games, sports, productivity, lifestyle apps, and more.

BlackBerry Vice President of Global Alliances and Business Development, Martyn Mallick took to the stage yesterday to showcase some of applications committed to BlackBerry 10, and attendees were able to play with some of the applications for the new platform.

“Being able to announce 1000 of the top app partners is a testament to the strength of BlackBerry 10, the ease of developing for this powerful new platform, and the remarkable opportunity that it represents for developers and brands alike,” said Mallick. “We have focused on bringing the most relevant apps to BlackBerry 10 – whether they are global leaders in their categories, or whether they are regional must-have apps. We are thrilled and want to thank all the developers that have shown such strong support of a platform before it has commercially launched. We share in their excitement and belief in BlackBerry 10.”

Here are just some of the apps and games committed to BlackBerry 10. Many of these apps will be available at launch with others to follow:

Business and Productivity
– Bloomberg, BMC Service Desk & Remedy, Box, Cisco WebEx Meetings, Citrix Podio, CNBC, Dictionary.com, Emirates NBD, Harmon.ie, IBM Notes, Traveler, ING DIRECT Canada, Nat West, RBC, RBS, SAP, TD Bank Group and Thomson Reuters

Gaming
- 10tons: Sparkle, Joining Hands, Azkend, King Oddball, Azkend2, Ironworm, Dragon Portal and Boom Brigade 2
- Disney Mobile Games: Where’s My Water? and Where’s My Perry?
– Electronic Arts: A great selection of their top games including, Mass Effect(TM) Infiltrator, Flight Control Rocket, The Sims(TM) FreePlay and MONOPOLY Millionaire
– Fishlabs: Galaxy on Fire
– Funkoi: Alpha Zero
– Gameloft: A great selection of their top games, including Asphalt 7:Heat, The Amazing Spider-Man(TM), Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, The Dark Knight Rises(TM)
– Halfbrick: Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja
– JoyBits: Doodle God & Doodle Devil
– Rovio: Angry Birds Classic, Angry Birds Star Wars, Angry Bids Space and Angry Birds Seasons
– Square One Games: Square One and InXile
– SEGA: Sonic4(TM) Episode 1
– ZeptoLab- Cut the Rope, Cut the Rope: Experiments
Lifestyle
– AccuWeather, Air Canada, Air France, DStv Mobile, Dr. Oetker Rezeptideen, Easyjet, FlightAware, Flixster, KLM, Manulife Financial, President’s Choice Recipe Box, SkyScanner, Spotcast, StubHub, The Weather Channel, The Weather Network, Tim Hortons TimmyMe(TM), United Airlines, Wikitude, WisePilot, Yellow Pages Group and Zara

Multimedia
– Absolute Radio, Al Jazeera, Allocine, Astral Radio, BBC Worldwide- Top Gear, BubblePix, Channel 4, Corus Entertainment- Radio, Deezer, E! Online, eMusic, Europe 1, Kiss Kube, MTV Italia, Nobex Radio, NOS, N-TV Nachrichten, Occipital 360 Panorama, OxygenLive, Pacemaker, PaperCamera, Rdio, Shahid.net, SiriusXM, Slacker, Songza, SoundHound, TuneIn, and Volu.me
Published Media
– AFP News, Amazon Kindle, CBC (News, Radio, Music, Hockey Night in Canada), Economist, elmundo.es, El Pais, Grazia Italy, Handlesbaltt, kicker, Leo Dictionary, MailOnline, Maxim, News24, New York Times, NU.nl, PressReader, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The London Evening Standard, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and Wirtschaftswoche
Social
– Badoo, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, ooVoo, Skype, Tuenti Social Messenger, Twitter, Viber, Whatsapp and Xing
Sports
CBSSports.com, ESPN ScoreCenter, Goal.com, L’equipe, Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment’s Maple Leafs Mobile App and Raptors Mobile App, MLB.com At Bat(R), NHL GameCenter, PGA Tour, Runtastic, Sports Tracker and UFC

Continuing to build out a rich and robust content offering for BlackBerry 10 customers, on January 28, BlackBerry announced content partnerships with leading music labels, movie studios and TV broadcasters making BlackBerry World a one stop shop for all app, games and multimedia content for BlackBerry 10.

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Facebook’s mobile ad revenue doubles in fourth quarter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc doubled its mobile advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, a sign that the No.1 social network is seeing early success in expanding onto handheld devices as more of its users migrate to smartphones and tablets.

Investors want to see evidence that CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s 8-year-old company is delivering on promises to develop a full-fledged mobile advertising business, a challenge facing many of today’s technology leaders including Google Inc.

But the growth trailed some of Wall Street‘s most aggressive estimates. Shares of Facebook were down roughly 3 percent at $ 30.21 in after-hours trading on Wednesday, regaining ground after falling more than 8 percent immediately after the numbers were released.

Mobile revenue estimates among some analysts and investors were unreasonably high, said Sterne, Agee & Leach analyst Arvind Bhatia.

“As a result the stock was set up for disappointment,” he said. Overall, he said, Facebook’s results were encouraging.

The company’s overall advertising business grew at its fastest clip since before its May initial public offering, helping the company’s revenue expand 40 percent and surpass Wall Street targets.

Facebook has rolled out a wide variety of new services in recent months as the company seeks to stay ahead in the fast-moving Web market and to convince Wall Street that it can turn its audience of more than 1 billion users into a sustainable business.

Zuckerberg said the company plans to spend heavily to recruit talent in 2013 as the company pushes forward with new product development, particularly “mobile-first” services.

“We aren’t operating to maximize our profit this year but we’re doing what we think will build the best service and business over the long term,” Zuckerberg said during a conference call with analysts on Wednesday.

The strategy makes sense for an Internet company, said Stifel Nicolaus Jordan Rohan. But it will force Wall Street analysts to “ratchet down” their profit expectations.

“The conference call was a bit of a sobering event,” said Rohan. “The company advised analysts and investors to expect lower margins, and downplayed the near-term opportunity for revenues from Gifts,” Facebook’s recently-launched online commerce service.

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

Facebook shares, which lost more than half their value following a rocky IPO, have regained ground in recent months as concerns about its mobile ad business and insider selling have eased. Shares have surged roughly 60 percent since mid-November.

Zuckerberg said that recently introduced products such as Gifts, which allows Facebook users to purchase retail goods for their friends, as well as its new social search tool could become important businesses in the future. But in the near term he said that Facebook’s advertising efforts will be the core of its business.

The number of monthly active users on the social network reached 1.06 billion at the end of last year, with 618 million daily active users, Facebook said. But much of that growth again came from emerging markets like Asia, rather than the United States or Europe, where revenue per user is several times higher. For instance, average revenue per user is $ 13.58 for the United States and Canada, but just $ 2.35 in Asia.

Overall fourth-quarter revenue came to $ 1.585 billion, up 40 percent versus $ 1.131 billion a year earlier. Analysts were looking for revenue of $ 1.53 billion.

Executives said some revenue from its payments business dating back to September 2012 had been booked in the October-December quarter, inflating the number somewhat. Excluding those deferred sales, overall revenue would have been up just 34 percent in the quarter.

But it was the fledgling mobile business that dominated Wednesday’s discussion on the call. Finance Chief David Ebersman said Facebook had “basically doubled” mobile ad revenue from the third quarter to the fourth quarter.

“Two quarters ago we really had no mobile revenue,” Ebersman told Reuters in an interview. “In the course of a pretty short period of time, we’ve dramatically ramped up our ability to monetize mobile.”

Facebook said net income in the fourth quarter was $ 64 million, or 3 cents a share, compared to $ 302 million, or 14 cents a share a year earlier.

Excluding certain items, Facebook said it earned 17 cents a share, compared to the 15 cents a share expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Facebook expects expenses — excluding stock-based compensation for employees — to jump 50 percent in 2013, likely outpacing revenue growth. Capital investments may climb to $ 1.8 billion, up 14 percent from last year’s $ 1.575 billion.

“They’re going to have to continue to develop new products, which will cost them,” said Bhatia of Sterne, Agee & Leach.

But he said, “the market would be less happy if they were not finding enough opportunities.”

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Ryan Woo)

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Critical, long-overdue BlackBerry makeover arrives

TORONTO (AP) — BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. will kick off a critical, long-overdue makeover when chief executive Thorsten Heins shows off the first phone with the new BlackBerry 10 system in New York on Wednesday.

Repeated delays have left the once-pioneering BlackBerry an afterthought in the shadow of Apple’s trend-setting iPhone and Google’s Android-driven devices. There has even been talk that the fate of the company that created the BlackBerry in 1999 is no longer certain.

Now, there’s some optimism. Previews of the BlackBerry 10 software have gotten favorable reviews on blogs. Financial analysts are starting to see some slight room for a comeback. RIM‘s stock has more than doubled to $ 15.66 from a nine-year low in September, though it’s still nearly 90 percent below its 2008 peak of $ 147.

RIM redesigned the system to embrace the multimedia, apps and touch-screen experience prevalent today. The company is promising a speedier device, a superb typing experience and the ability to keep work and personal identities separate on the same phone.

Most analysts consider a BlackBerry 10 success to be crucial for the company’s long-term viability. Doubts remain about the ability of BlackBerry 10 to rescue RIM.

“We’ll see if they can reclaim their glory. My sense is that it will be a phone that everyone says good things about but not as many people buy,” BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis said.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek called it a “great device” and said RIM does have some momentum just months after the Canadian company was written off for dead.

“Six months ago we talked to developers and carriers, and everybody was just basically saying ‘We’re just waiting for this to go bust,’” Misek said. “It was bad.”

The BlackBerry has been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and crossed over to consumers. But when the iPhone came out in 2007, it showed that phones can do much more than email and phone calls. Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient. In the U.S., according to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

RIM promised a new system to catch up, using technology it got through its 2010 purchase of QNX Software Systems. RIM initially said BlackBerry 10 would come by early 2012, but then the company changed that to late 2012. A few months later, that date was pushed further, to early 2013, missing the lucrative holiday season. The holdup helped wipe out more than $ 70 billion in shareholder wealth and 5,000 jobs.

Although executives have been providing a glimpse at some of BlackBerry 10′s new features for months, Heins will finally showcase a complete system at Wednesday’s event. Devices will go on sale soon after that. The exact date and prices are expected Wednesday.

Regardless of BlackBerry 10′s advances, though, the new system will face a key shortcoming: It won’t have as many apps written by outside companies and individuals as the iPhone and Android. RIM has said it plans to launch BlackBerry 10 with more than 70,000 apps, including those developed for RIM’s PlayBook tablet, first released in 2011. Even so, that’s just a tenth of what the iPhone and Android offer. Popular service such as Instagram and Netflix won’t have apps on BlackBerry 10.

Gillis said he’ll be looking to see when RIM releases a keyboard version of the new phone. The first BlackBerry 10 phone will have only a touch screen. RIM has said a physical keyboard version will be released soon after. He said a delay could alienate RIM’s 79 million subscribers.

“The No. 1 feature that they like is the physical keyboard,” Gillis said.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Cómo se desarrolló el Linux de las netbooks educativas

La elección de un sistema operativo para una computadora es una situación que, en situaciones cotidianas al ingresar a una tienda de venta de artículos electrónicos, está marcada por la presencia de la plataforma Windows de Microsoft. Nada de esto impide que los usuarios puedan optar por software libre, sin costo alguno al momento de realizar la descarga e instalación, con propuestas como Ubuntu, Fedora o Mint , por mencionar sólo algunas de las alternativas disponibles en Internet.

Esto mismo ocurrió con el plan Conectar Igualdad, que busca desarrollar su propia plataforma basada en GNU-Linux adaptada a las necesidades de la comunidad educativa, tanto para los docentes como para los alumnos.

La inciativa comenzó a tomar forma en 2010, cuando Javier Castrillo comenzó a trabajar en Conectar Igualdad, el programa del gobierno nacional que distribuye computadoras portátiles para alumnos y docentes de escuelas públicas. Desde aquel momento, con el antecedente de haber coordinado la implementación de estas iniciativas en el ambiente educativo, impulsó con su equipo el desarrollo de Huayra, el sistema operativo libre basado en GNU-Linux de las netbooks escolares.

“Debido al porte de este programa era necesaria una plataforma estable, libre, un estándar y sobre todo con soberanía tecnológica, para no depender de ninguna corporación. Con nuestro sistema nos aseguramos que va a ser constante en el tiempo, que va a ser gratuito para todos aquellos que lo quieran descargar y, por sobre todas las cosas, libre. Todo el código está publicado a disposición para que cualquiera que tenga los conocimientos lo pueda auditar y modificar”, asegura Javier Castrillo, coordinador del Proyecto Huayra.

En una entrevista exclusiva con LA NACIÓN , Javier Castrillo habla sobre la plataforma, sus características y los prejuicios que aún existen sobre el software libre.

¿Qué es Huayra?

Es el sistema operativo libre que las netbooks del Programa Conectar Igualdad van a traer instaladas a partir de este año. Además cualquier persona puede descargarlo en su máquina desde huayra.conectarigualdad.gob.ar

Está basado en Debian GNU/Linux, es seguro, ágil y con un desarrollo realizado en la Argentina, teniendo en cuenta las necesidades tanto de estudiantes como de docentes, y manteniendo nuestra identidad nacional.

¿En qué instancia se encuentra el desarrollo?

Está en fase Beta pero ya se puede bajar y utilizar.

Un mito presente en este tipo de plataformas es que muchas personas creen que no hay virus porque no se conoce mucho. Esto no es verdad, no hay virus porque el sistema no admite virus porque, como dije, está todo a la vista. Los servidores de la bases de datos de los bancos, las grandes bases de datos importantes son de código libre, Google es libre, por ejemplo.

¿Por qué pensaron que era necesario desarrollar un sistema operativo basado en software libre?

Porque se estaban dejando tres millones y medio de máquinas en manos de una corporación, que tiene intereses económicos y sus tiempos. Asimismo, por ejemplo, si queríamos hacer un procesador de texto para las comunidades aborígenes no podíamos hacerlo porque no es posible traducir el Word o si necesitábamos adaptar la placa de red, según el tipo de servicio de determinada zona también teníamos inconvenientes. Tener un software de una empresa es como comprarte un auto y tener el capó soldado.

¿Cuáles son las ventajas que presenta utilizar Huayra frente a Windows?

Es libre y puede ser utilizado por cualquier persona de la comunidad; es gratuito, y ofrece la libertad de poder administrar ese código y hacer las reformas que queremos. Uno de los problemas que veíamos era que los profesores traían un programa para compartir con los chicos y ponían el pendrive en cada computadora y lo bajaban, sin darse cuenta que podían utilizar la red de la escuela. Lo que sucede es que configurar una red no es algo trivial. Huayra, en cambio, autoconfigura la red entonces el profesor deja el programa directamente en una carpeta especial que comparte y los alumnos entran allí para utilizar el programa.

¿En qué se benefician los alumnos al utilizar Huayra?

Que el Estado les brinde su propio sistema operativo libre es un beneficio implícito es más seguro y mucho más rápido. Además, está pensado para que corra en las máquinas más livianas y también funciona bien en las máquinas más viejas.

Otra gran ventaja para los chicos es que tienen una herramienta que sale de la propia escuela, con las necesidades y el aporte de su institución. Hay cientos de aplicaciones del equipo de Huayra y aportadas por las comunidades escolares. En total son casi 30.000 piezas de software.

¿La interfaz es similar a la de Windows o los usuarios verán muchos cambios?

Es similar y además encontrarán programas que no tenían en Windows porque son muy caros. En Huayra, por ejemplo, hay un software para hacer animaciones en 3D que si tuviéramos que comprarlo saldría muy caro. También hay editores de fotos similares a Photoshop.

El procesador de textos de Huayra permite guardarlo en un formato de Word. En el pasado había grandes problemas de compatibilidad entre el software libre y el licenciado pero ahora todo ha evolucionado y ya no existen esos inconvenientes.

Las netbooks de Conectar Igualdad son de diez fabricantes distintos, y tuvimos que trabajar bastante para el desarrollo del sistema operativo, cuenta Javier Castrillo, responsable del proyecto Huayra

Todavía nos falta un buen programa de Autocad 3D, pero tenemos Autocad en 2D. Pero tenemos son muchas herramientas de programación y de robótica incluidas dentro de Hayra.

¿Cómo se realizará la capacitación?

Las netbooks de nuestro programa, a partir de 2012, incluyen TV Digital abierta y allí incluye un montón de tutoriales y paso a paso para poder aprender a utilizarla.

Por otro lado, todas las instancias de capacitación que tiene Educar y el Ministerio de Educación van a tener cursos de Huayra tanto para alumnos como para docentes. Y ya se han formado comunidades de Huayra en Facebook y en Twitter que hacen su propia formación y su aporte a la comunidad.

¿Qué obstáculos tuvieron que sortear?

La principal fue la compatibilidad de hardware. Las netbooks de Conectar Igualdad son de diez fabricantes distintos y tuvimos que trabajar bastante para hacer funcionar nuestro sistema en todos los equipos. Después debimos luchar con los prejuicios que difunden los propios monopolios, que dicen que Linux es difícil, por ejemplo.

Pero ahora estamos muy entusiasmados porque las pruebas están saliendo bien y estamos dentro de los tiempos previstos.

¿Cuáles son los principales proyectos?

La primera etapa de Huayra es que funcione bien en todas las netbooks y en eso estamos abocados. Luego estamos pensando en que funcione en tablets y celulares.

También queremos trabajar para que la TV digital no sirva sólo para ver canales sino que podamos interactuar y brindarle, a través de ella, información útil para el ciudadano.

Y queremos fomentar el desarrollo para que los chicos programen, dándoles herramientas para que puedan programar aunque no sepan hacerlo, para que puedan, por ejemplo, hacer sus propios juegos con las características de su región, de su lenguaje, sus costumbres y que lo compartan con la comunidad.

El software libre en Conectar Igualdad

Huayra toma su nombre del vocablo quechua que significa viento, una analogía que los responsables del proyecto buscan reflejar con la filosofía del proyecto, relacionada con la independencia tecnológica y la libertad que ofrece el software libre. “Es una práctica habitual dentro de la comunidad para que cada programa esté ser representado por un animal. Linux eligió el pingüino, nosotros una vaca”, explica Javier Castrillo.

El equipo de trabajo de Huayra consta de 13 personas, divididos en tres áreas: Desarrollo (programadores), Diseño (artistas, historiadores del arte, diseñadores gráficos) y Sistematización (Sociólogos y estadísticos).

Además de Huayra existe la iniciativa de la comunidad de software libre Tuquito, con sendas versiones para las computadoras de las iniciativas OLPC y Conectar Igualdad .

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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