Consumer Electronics Daily News

The HP TouchPad Will Not Die

 

In case you've lost track: Hewlett Packard first announced on August 19 that it was getting out of the tablet-computing game, essentially washing its hands of the TouchPad. Over the following weekend, prices on remaining TouchPad stock dropped from $399 (16GB version) and $499 (32GB version) to $99 and $149, respectively. At this point, the devices began selling like proverbial hotcakes, selling out quickly at the retail level and leading to a feeding frenzy at reseller sites like eBay.

Well, now it appears that HP isn't done making TouchPads, after all. Yesterday, Reuters' Terril Yue Jones quoted the company's Personal Systems Group head Todd Bradley as hinting that the company may revive the suddenly popular tablet, as they contemplated spinning off the division that manufactured it. HP also released an upgrade to the device's native word-processing app, QuickOffice. And now the company has upped the ante again, as a post on Hewlett Packard's blog announced that they were going to produce one final batch for sale to the public:

Despite announcing an end to manufacturing webOS hardware, we have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand. We don’t know exactly when these units will be available or how many we’ll get, and we can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone. We do know that it will be at least a few weeks before you can purchase.

So what's going on, here? Jason Kincaid passes along the widespread speculation that "HP either has, or has committed to buying, a certain number of TouchPad parts, and that it might make more sense for them to assemble and sell them than to scrap them," which certainly makes sense but remains unconfirmed. What can be confirmed, claims Ryan Kim, is that Hewlett Packard clearly doesn't know what it's doing:

Too bad that HP made such a mess of announcing its plans to get out of the PC business and end its webOS devices. With a little more patience and some smarter thinking, the company could be telling a more measured and confident narrative than the confusing one its muddling through. Instead of hinting at a resurrection, HP could have seemed a lot more composed and clear about its plans if it just showed more poise and patience. Now, it’s just adding more confusion and the company’s stock is taking the brunt for all this ham-fisted messaging.

Cellphone Round-Up

• From Tom Schoenberg: "The U.S. government sued to block AT&T Inc.'s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc., saying the deal would 'substantially lessen competition' in the wireless market."
• "Google and Apple continue to eat up more of the smartphone market, while RIM and Microsoft continue to lose ground," reports Ben Parr.
• One possible argument against the notion that Samsung might purchase WebOS from Hewlett Packard: The company already owns its own proprietary cellphone platform, known as Bada, and has just introduced a new series of Bada 2.0 phones.

Morning Round-Up for August 31, 2011

Headlines

• A former employee for the online-content delivery company Akamai "has pleaded guilty to espionage charges after offering to hand over confidential information about the Web acceleration company to an agent posing as an Israeli consular official in Boston," reports Robert McMillan.
• In a complaint filed yesterday in San Jose, Calif., "Oracle accused Hewlett-Packard of committing fraud by hiding its plans to hire Leo Apotheker as CEO and Ray Lane as chairman at the time the two companies were working on a settlement agreement to bring former HP CEO Mark Hurd to Oracle." Josh Lowensohn has the details.
• The public-radio program Marketplace features an interview with reporter Margaret Coker, one of the journalists who discovered the extent to which tech companies worldwide assisted in helping former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi spy on his nation's citizens.
• "A newly unearthed memo posted on Wikleaks details Apple's burgeoning efforts to combat counterfeit goods in China and elsewhere, something the document says the electronics giant began in earnest just three years ago," according to Josh Lowensohn.

Hardware

• Lauren Indvik reports: "In its fiscal Q1 2012 earnings report released Tuesday, Barnes & Noble announced that digital sales were up 37% compared to this time last year, but it wasn’t enough to make up for a loss in store sales." The increase in digital sales is said to be the result of "strong demand for the Nook Color and the recently launched Nook Simple Touch Reader, as well as a quadruple increase in digital content sales over the same period last year."

 

Cool Technology

• In this video (screenshot above), a representative for the Taiwanese manufacturer ITRI demonstrates a two-terabyte USB drive "that's a big as your finger nail or slightly thicker than a penny."
• Canadian company Discovery Air has launched a partnership with Hybrid Air Vehicles to deliver goods and cargo to the Arctic North by dirigible.

Will Samsung Buy WebOS?

In the wake of Google's decision to purchase Motorola, rumors are starting to spread that Motorola competitor Samsung has its eye on WebOS, the operating system originally developed for the Palm line of handheld devices and recently left in a lurch after current owner Hewlett Packard decided to get out of the PC-manufacturing business. As Marguerite Reardon explains:

WebOS has always been considered a strong operating system with innovative features. The products unfortunately never took off. But Samsung could use the software to help differentiate itself not only from is fellow Android handset makers, but also Apple and Nokia, which is it tied to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software.

Samsung may also find WebOS's intellectual property useful in protecting itself against a wave of growing legal challenges in the mobile market. Many experts say that Google wants to buy Motorola not for the products, but for the patents the company holds so it can defend itself from lawsuits aimed by Apple, Microsoft, and others.

Writing elsewhere, Ethan McKinney thinks that the move could turn Samsung into a major player in the mobile environment, not just as a manufacturer but as an operating-system provider:

Conceivably, the market volume of Samsung phones could enable Samsung to establish its own platform with WebOS, if it is willing to make a financial sacrifice and drive WebOS into the market by giving it away for free and building an entire platform that includes phones, tablets, appliances and PCs. Samsung certainly has the means and breadth to challenge Google, Apple and Microsoft/Nokia.

Of course, it's important to note that this is all speculation. Samsung and HP have each offered a firm "no comment" to questions on the subject from the tech press, which could well mean anything. Still... intriguing idea, isn't it?

Cellphone Round-Up

• Bloomberg's Olga Kharif is reporting that a consortium of cellphone providers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, are planning to invest more than $100 million in a new venture called Isis, which would allow consumers to use their phones to make payments:

  The carriers have created the alliance to grab a piece of the market for mobile commerce, which lets consumers buy things by tapping devices against a reader at checkout. The market may reach $670 billion by 2015, Juniper Research says. The carriers may invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the venture if it gains followers, one person said, helping it catch up with Google, which unveiled its own mobile-wallet service in May.

  Marguerite Reardon and Ryan Kim offer further analysis and commentary on the subject.

• Ina Fried and Matt Hamblen look at the effect that Hurricane Irene had on cellphone service along the United States' eastern seaboard.
• And now, the inevitable iPhone round-up: Erica Ogg notes that Apple is likely to produce some 22 million copies of the iPhone 4 in the next quarter. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Nathan Olivarez-Giles reports that Sprint is telling its employees to keep their mouths shut regarding a possible iPhone 5 coming to said carrier. Need more iPhone 5 rumors? Kent German has all you can eat.
• "Nokia has temporarily shut down its developer forums as a security measure after a hacker gained access to users’ records," reports Stan Schroeder.
• Is Blackberry maker Research In Motion finally on the rebound? John Paczkowski investigates.
• According to Stephen Shankland, "Mozilla is expanding development of Firefox for Android with new efforts to improve its performance, lower its power consumption, adapt it for tablets—and keep the browser maker relevant in the hottest area of computing."
• "Most major wireless carriers have instated a tiered pricing structure for doling out data; and though this change won't affect most users now, it will when users' phones get nicer," according to Megan Geuss.

Morning Round-Up for August 30, 2011

Headlines

• The launch of Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet (pictured at right) has been delayed in Australia until at least September 30, due to the ongoing legal tangle with Apple—which kind of makes Samsung's announcement of the forthcoming LTE variants of Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab 8.9 somewhat bittersweet, doesn't it?
• Chris Kanaracus reports: "The start of the trial in Oracle's lawsuit against Google over alleged Java copyright and patent violations in the Android mobile OS could be delayed, according to a judge's ruling issued Monday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California."
• Speaking of Google: "A Dutch company appears to have issued a digital certificate for Google.com to someone other than Google, who may be using it to try to re-direct traffic of users based in Iran," according to Elinor Mills.
• And speaking of security issues, someone's just found a big one in Apple's new OS X 10.7 operating system.
• Dell becomes the latest company to announce the forthcoming launch of a public cloud-computing service.
• Because they just ... don't ... drive content owners and providers into big enough fits of outrage yet, the notorious folks at the Pirate Bay have launched a web-hosting service.

Hardware

• "The tablet that Amazon has yet to mention but which everyone expects to arrive this fall could be a big seller, with Jeff Bezos and Co. moving three to five million units in Q4," according to the Forrester research group. Peter Kafka has the details and qualifiers.
• Robin Kwong looks at Acus' plans to launch a series of MacBook-Air-like thin laptops.

Cool Technology

• Katie Fehrenbacher tours a first-of-its-kind, massive solar thermal farm, currently under construction in the California desert.
• Boeing's 787 passenger jet has been certified for commercial service.
• This just in from Jonathan E. Skillings: "Lighting Science Group and Dixon Technologies India today touted an LED light bulb equivalent to a 60-watt incandescent that they say will hit store shelves with a price below $15."

 

Non-spoilery screenshot from the NASA video linked below.

Miscellany

• Why doesn't NASA make videos like this anymore?
• In case you missed the thousand other links to this floating around the Web at the moment, here's a link to a video featuring two chatbots arguing with one another.

Meet Tim Cook, Apple's new CEO

Left: Steve Jobs. Right: Tim Cook.

 

As reported last Friday, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO, and COO Tim Cook will replace him in that role. Jobs will stay on as Chairman of the Board, but relinquishes the day-to-day running of Apple to Cook. So who is Tim Cook? The obvious place to begin answering that question is, of course, with his biography on Apple's website:

Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Prior to his stint at Apple, Cook spent 12 years at IBM and a period as the Vice President of Corporate Materials for Compaq. But, of course, it's his career at Apple—past, present and future—that has set industry analysts to reading tea leaves and pouring over YouTube videos of corporate presentations, in search on some sort of clue as to how he'll attempt to fill Jobs' oversized shoes.

In building a portfolio of evidence, Exhibit A is probably Cook's letter to Apple employees, following the announcement that Jobs was stepping down:

I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.

Exhibit B may well be the confidence that Apple has in Cook, as best demonstrated by the very generous compensation package given to him by Apple's Board of Directors:

"In connection with Mr. Cook's appointment as Chief Executive Officer, the Board awarded Mr. Cook 1,000,000 restricted stock units," Apple said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Half of the 1 million "restricted stock units," or RSUs, will be awarded to Cook in August 2015 if he is still with Apple, while the second half will be given to him in August 2021, again only if he is still employed by the company.

At Friday's closing price, the 1 million shares would be worth over $383 million.

Hardly the sort of incentive one would give to a temporary caretaker: Apple's executives clearly plan on Cook holding onto his new assignment for quite some time to come. As for the industry analysts, there's no shortage of commentary and free advice for Cook floating around the ether, at the moment. Should you have a few minutes to kill—undoubtedly a few minutes more than does Apple's new CEO, right now—you might want to read Larry Dignan, Johnny Major, Robert Dutt, Christina Bonnington, John Baldoni, and Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows.

Cellphone Round-Up

• U.S. carrier Sprint's release of the Samsung Epic 4G Touch has been delayed by a week, due to Hurricane Irene.
• Serkan Toto reports that Japanese company NEC Casio Mobile is preparing the Medias N-04C (pictured above), called "the world's slimmest smartphone," for export to the United States.
• Rumors that Apple would increase the screen size of the iPhone 5 to at least four inches appear to be unfounded.
• The magic bullet for keeping ever-increasing data usage from swamping cellphone-service providers may turn out to be wifi. Stacey Higginbotham has the details.

Morning Round-Up for August 29, 2011

Headlines

• According to Wall Street Journal reporters Thomas Catan and Amir Efrati, "Behind Google Inc.'s decision this week to settle a U.S. criminal probe into ads it carried for unlicensed online pharmacies lies a previously undisclosed factor: Justice Department investigators believed company co-founder Larry Page knew of, and allowed, the ads for years."
• Speaking of whom: Is Google preparing to turn its Chrome web-browser/tabletoperating system into a gaming platform? Wolfgang Gruener gathers evidence and makes the case.
• Apple has decided to end the rental of television programs in its iTunes store, although there are reports that the company is considering a TV digital-subscription service.

Hardware

• "Google TV will be launched in Europe early next year, despite its rocky start in the U.S., company Chairman Eric Schmidt told an audience in Edinburgh, Scotland, last night," reports Eric Moyer.
• Garett Sloane quotes "a source with knowledge" as stating that Amazon's long-awaited tablet computer "will sell for hundreds less than the entry-point $499 iPad, a feat few tablet makers have accomplished."
• Is Microsoft preparing its Windows 8 tablets for dual-screen usage? An intriguing patent application suggests that the answer might be yes.
• Jonathan Randande catches word that Best Buy may be about to resume sales of the HP Touchpad, which was the subject of a buying frenzy a week ago, after Hewlett Packard announced that it was ending production of the devices and marking down the price of remaining stock.

Security

• "Ever since security giant RSA was hacked last March, anti-virus researchers have been trying to get a copy of the malware used for the attack to study its method of infection." According to Kim Zetter, the malware has finally been discovered, and the story of how one of the most trusted names in online security came to be breached can at last be told.
• John Cox brings word that MIT researchers may have found a way to thwart so-called "man in the middle" attacks against wireless networks, in which a hacker intercepts transmissions from one point and then spoof the receiving device to think that the hacker is the sender. Detailed explanation at the link.

Cool Technology

• "Rice University researchers have built an entire lithium ion energy storage device into a single nanowire thousands of times smaller than a human hair," reports Kevin Lee.
• "At this very moment, researchers at IBM are building the largest data drive ever—a 120 petabyte beast comprised of some 200,000 normal HDDs working in concert. To put that into perspective, 120 petabytes is the equivalent of 120 million gigabytes," according to Amar Toor.

Miscellany

• According to Kevin Murphy, "Hundreds, possibly thousands of celebrities have had their names permanently banned from the new .xxx adults-only internet domain."

Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(PRESS RELEASE) -- Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.

“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple's Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”

“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”

Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.

As COO, Cook was previously responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.