It has been a touch few years for Blackberry who have failed to commercialize their devices and operating system beyond the business community and a few thousand anarchic UK rioters.

So with the terrible two seemingly gone from the top, how are Blackberry going to emerge now that they have had a little time to reflect on the future?

The answer to that seems to be that they will focus on their core corporate clients and turn their back for now on trying to muscle in on consumer orientated Apple and Android markets.

Reality has set in at RIM:

In the statement yesterday, the spokesperson also stated that the would be looking to partner with other technology providers in software and other areas that will allow RIM to move quicker and more cost effectively into areas that the are less experienced in.

CEO at RIM Thorsten Heins said:

“We can’t do everything ourselves, but we can do what we’re good at,”.

Build on strengths:

Heins said a turnaround required “substantial change.”

“We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody’s darling and all things to all people…therefore, we plan to build on our strength.”

With a huge strategic review underway at research in motion, the new RIM will see a fair few stalwarts of the company who were there at the beginning leave in various ways.

Co-CEOs Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were replaced by Heins after they had recently lost the company tens of billions of dollars on their share value.

Along with the demise of the CEO’s David Yach the chief technology officer for software and Jim Rowan, chief operating officer for global operation are also leaving.

But business world demand iPhones and Android:

There is a major issue that RIM face right now and that is if there new version of the blackberry operating system, Blackberry 10 does not offer the option of running third part apps, then their new software could once again prove problematic as the shift is already underway and I would imagine that the longer this sea change occurs the harder it will be for corporations to justify yet another change back to a new device and O/S when so much is at stake during such a migration.

Apple alone sold some 37 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011, which is 3x more than what RIM shipped in the last three quarters combined.

And with the Playbook flopping despite being hailed as a good quality device, you can see that the path out for RIM is going to be uphill and more than likely take a few wrong turns on the way.

So how long can RIM take to bring about the change that is needed?

Well RIM shares have seen a decline last year of quite a significant margin, but the ship does seem to have stabilized some what since then.

With Net loss at around $125 million for the fourth fiscal quarter, this is an obvious loss, but not as much as the nearly $1 billion hit ($934 million) they took a year ago.

And revenue has fallen short of expectations at some $4.2 billion from $5.6 billion. This has been reflected in the share price with RIM shares falling by 33 cents to $13.40 which see a 2.4% drop.

The Wi-Fi contract for the London Underground that has been the target for a number of companies has been awarded to Virgin Media, giving them permission to install their services at 120 stations.
The Internet Service Provider (ISP) is committing to providing the Wi-Fi service to 80 of the stations as a minimum by the time July comes around for the 2012 Olympic Games. The service will be free to use for all passengers whilst on the platforms but not on carriages.

How long will the Free access last?

Despite the fact that the Wi-Fi access will be free to all customers during the period of the 2012 Olympic games the ISP have no intentions of letting that remain. Once the games have come to an end the service will only be accessible through two methods currently on the table, one of which is as you would expect if you are a Virgin Media customer you get access free of charge and the second option is a pay-as-you-go “contract”.

A spokesperson from the ISP has mention it is also looking into other options to grant access to people through renting out the equipment it is due to install to other providers.

Boris Barks:

“It’s vital that we harness the massive opportunities stemming from the digital revolution, by creating a vibrant, world class industry to attract investment and create jobs for Londoners,”

said Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

“Millions of passengers will now be able to connect to their work, friends or access the latest news and travel information whilst on the move. This is a fabulous new and free resource which will be in place from this summer when London is being showcased on a global stage and playing host to millions.”

The CEO of Virgin Media Meil Berkit said that the company’s fibre optic infrastructure will be the key component to the service.

“We’ll help people make the most of the city and will continue to evolve the service, ensuring everyone can benefit from a service London will be proud of,”

Berkett added.

There had been a lot of competition for the contract, of which claims had been made that it was dropped in 2011. Huawei was the initial front runner with an offer of £50 million to setup the Wi-Fi. It would seem though that they have been beaten by Virgin Media.

Thanks to TheNextWeb for pointing out this little gem courtesy of a website called Chill.com.

A clever site that hooks into facebook and features an option to create collections, the site now has a page dedicated to Steve Jobs videos it can be found here, and was collated by one of the founders of Chill, Scott Hurff.

So, if you are a bit of an Apple head or worship the Jobster like he was some kind of messiah, get your butt over to Chill and pay homage, there are some rare treats on show.

As someone who seriously values the power of video, it is amazing to see just how much Steve Jobs was involved in promoting using this medium especially as most of the footage was not seen by the majority of people until later on.

I like the interview when he was 31 talking about how the Apple 2 came to be and inspired him to move forward with Apple.

What is yours?

As much as I dislike BT in many ways, I can not help but sense that they are the only ones looking to invest some real time and money into the roll out of 4G across the UK, this includes first of all giving UK customers a decent Wi-Fi experience, and with this in mind it seems that they have now hit a milestone of 3.5 million public Wi-Fi hotspots across the UK and Republic Of Ireland….mainly donated by you of course!

Those hotspots by location:

[arrowlist]

• 380,000 in London
• 25,000 in Leeds
• 25,000 in Birmingham
• 20,000 in Manchester
• 20,000 in Edinburgh
• 20,000 in Sheffield
• 11,000 in Liverpool
• 11,000 in Brighton
• 11,000 in Bristol
• 11,000 in Cardiff
• 320,000 in Scotland
• 170,000 in Wales

[/arrowlist]

BT’s consumer managing director John Petter said:

“Millions of BT broadband customers are enjoying free access to one of the biggest Wi-Fi networks in the world,”

With over 900,000 downloads for the BT hotspot app that finds the nearest connection suitable for your mobile device (to paying BT customers) it woudl seem to be a success in terms of numbers, but is the experience any good?

Well reports are mixed but I have to say fair play to the company, at least they are trying to push technology where others are more cautious in a share and share a like kind of manner….who cares so long as it works.

The hotspots are currently free to BT’s six million home and business broadband subscribers and the new BlackBerry App will provide users with easier hotspot login. BT has released apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices which locate and connect customers to their nearest BT hotspot.

You can now ever get Wi-Fi underground at Charing Cross as a subterranean trial gets under way as well as 100 pubs in the London area after a deal with Heineken.

Are you happy to let your own BT wireless connection be used as part of the growing network in order to get your free access?

When your evangelist lead head of developer experiences, Brandon Watson, jumps ship for Amazon, you probably should start to worry, especially as you are far from out of the Jungle yet as can be seen from the amount of heads Amazon are collecting right now.

3 Windows phone developer heads gone in quick succession:

This comes on the back of similar moves by Matt Bencke who was general manager for the developer marketplace in the Windows division as well as Mike Nash, the vice president of the Windows platform and Andre Vrignaud who was the director of their games platform strategy, all leaving in the last couple of years, it seems that the good ship Windows may well be sinking yet again.

In many ways the departures of the last two years could be put down to insecurity or lack of fulfillment in their roles at Windows, when so many other entrants to mobile technology are kicking their ass currently.

But seeing someone with such clout as Brandon Watson leave just as Windows are seemingly turning a corner with the imminent release of Windows 8 as a do all O/S and cross purpose platform, is potentially something that could pose a little more concern at Microsoft?

Watson will be leaving to join the team who will both promote and work out the road map for the cross-platform Kindle team, a role he undoubtedly will suit after his work for the Windows phone team.

Source: TheReg

Windows phone 8 will be an operating system that brings a whole host of technologies the mobile sector has been looking forward to seeing, one step closer.

According to Paul Thurrotts’s excellent blog over at WinSuperSite the news of the leak has meant that he can now talk more openly about what we can expect from the Windows 8 and the Windows Phone 8 operating system.

In term so of applications it has been noted that at the expected time of launch the Windows phone 7.5 operating system will have some 100,000 apps available and these will all be backward compatible for the new Windows Phone 8 operating system meaning that new devices will be able to tap into this existing application market with no problems (in theory of course)

Talking of Windows Phone 8, he also states that this new O/S will be based on the new Windows 8 kernel and not on the previous version called Windows CE, all this falls into the realms of “Windows Reimagined” and by god did it need some reimagining after various attempts to create a solid, sleek and useful operating system has essentially failed on so many occasions.

So onto the key new features of Windows Phone 8:

[arrowlist]

• Wallet: Apollo will support removable microSD card storage and NFC radios, with Microsoft pushing contactless payments also referred to as the “Wallet experience.”
• App-to-App communication. Because Windows Phone 8 apps, like Windows 8 apps, are sandboxed from each other, this new system will provide a Windows 8 contracts-like app-to-app communications capabilities.
• Data Smart. Will switch you to cheaper Wi-Fi networks that you may have joined automatically thus in theory saving you MB’s and also money if your data provider charges a lot and you run out of your quota monthly.
• Internet Explorer 10 Mobile. Windows Phone 8 will use to use a version of IE which utilizes the latest web technologies.
• Shared components with Windows 8. The kernel, multi-core processor support, sensor fusion, security model, network, and video and graphics technologies are all coming to Phone from Windows 8.
• Companion experiences with Windows 8. Microsoft is offering a very similar user experience across phone (Windows Phone 8), PC (Windows 8), and TV (Xbox vNext). Pocketnow says there will be a new sync client, and not Zune PC software, though I can’t confirm that part, and a set of common cloud services that will work across all three. This includes the ability to sync content (photos, music, movies) between the three screens, phone management from PC or web, shared content between each device, and Xbox LIVE games, entertainment, and more.
• Skype app. Still a separate but better app and not integrated into OS. Still optional.
• Camera improvements. New “lens apps” and a far more powerful camera experience.
• SkyDrive integration. SkyDrive will allow access to all content on your Microsoft platforms.
• NFC and Wallet. Windows Phone 8 will allow users to securely pay and share via NFC and manage an integrated Wallet experience.
• Business features. A new angle that Windows wish to push more and more, Windows Phone 8 will include full-device, hardware-accelerated encryption with BitLocker and always-on Secure Boot capabilities, just like Windows 8. Also, it will support additional Exchange ActiveSync policies and System Center configuration settings and inventory capabilities. Businesses will be able to distribute phone apps privately as they can with Windows 8 apps.
• Local Scout. Now with personal recommendations.

[/arrowlist]

What do you think of this feature list?

Some of it appears pretty much as you would expect from a modern cross platform operating system that will compete with iOS/Android, though perhaps some areas are starting to look quite juicy such as the NFC capability which I will return to at a later date.

Your thoughts? What appeals most with Windows Phone 8 so far?

Having recently been picked up for using the term PC to not mean tablets in reference to tablets replacing the humble desktop, news in from Toms Hardware indicates that a research firm going by the name of Canalys, has used the shipment of tablet PC’s (pads) in the same data collated as your old school desktop PC and variants such as laptops, using this controversial technique of data collection leads to Apple being the worlds largest PC company according to their statistics.

Now obviously this terminology is a grey area, with tablet PC’s already being a term in many peoples vocabulary, but perhaps not quite getting into the parlance of the statisticians, it is however fair to say that this figure marries up to Apple’s current valuation which rivals Exxon with one beating the other in terms of capital value every quarter currently.

The statistics:

Q4 of 2011 saw 120 million “client” PC’s shipped, these include:

[arrowlist]

• Desktops
• Tablets
• Netboks
• Notebooks

[/arrowlist]

This represents a 16% annual growth, but if you take tablets out of this equation you can see that the “traditional” PC shipments actually contracted by 0.4% showing just how disruptive the likes of Apples iPad and the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble Nook have become for companies such as HP.

On this note, both Acer, Dell and HP lost market share while Apple saw significant gains, with 5 millions Mac’s and 15 million iPads shipped in Q4 contributing to a 6% year on year extra market share, now up to 17% for Apple.

Canalys analyst Tim Coulling has stated that HP will see difficult times ahead as they focus on a business model that may not work for the company:

“Currently, HP is pursuing a Windows strategy for its pad portfolio, producing enterprise-focused products, such as the recently launched Slate 2, until the launch of Windows 8, however, questions remain over Microsoft’s entry into the consumer pad space. While early demonstrations of the Window 8 operating system seem promising, Microsoft must focus its efforts on creating an intuitive user experience that is far less resource intensive.”

Lenovo are seemingly also doing well with gains of 2 market points largely based on their decision to join the consumer and enterprise tablet market using Android as their O/S.

With tablets equating to a 22% share of the overall PC shipments in Q4 of 2011 it can be seen that if you are not doing well in this niche you may well see your core sales drop and see difficulty with bottom lines in the short/medium term.

Canalys’ Tim Coulling noted:

“The consumerization of IT continues to be a significant disruptive force in the PC industry, but many of the leading vendors have failed to capitalize on the trend to date, this year will be a pivotal year for those vendors that were slow to launch pads. It is not just the product that they need to get right, business models are equally important – driving revenues from content delivery can help vendors reach lower price points in a market that is incredibly price sensitive.”

Now maybe a good time to show an old video produced showing this trend in video form…enjoy:

According to a report in techweekeurope IBM now targeting the mobile enterprise market with more fervor, perhaps awakened by the BYOD (bring your own device) trend, we take a look at what the technology giant will be doing in this niche in years to come.

Security issues and more:

With more and more people accessing data via their mobile devices for the companies they work for, IBM have seen that there is a gap in the market for a service that will ensure that all mobile devices accessing company data will have a management system wrapped around them that will ensure that sensitive data remains safe when needed.

All but Research In Motions Blackberry O/S is supported in terms of mobile operating systems, perhaps leading some to think that this is a cunning move from IBM who are looking to team up with HTC to enter the mobile enterprise device market as direct competitors to RIM who have already captured this market more than most in terms of devices sold and presence of mind.

Bob Sutor, vice president of IBM Mobile Platform said:

“The new offering from IBM will help organisations manage personal and enterprise-owned mobile phones and tablets across IT networks in order to minimise risk, increase productivity and enhance innovation,”

The endpoints in question are as expected: tablets, smartphones, laptops, desktop PCs and servers.

Talking of the Big fix software acquisition back in 2010 IBM stated:

“BigFix will really help us fulfill what is really a critical need for many of our clients, and that is dealing with the endpoints that make up the core point of access for many of their IT systems and services,”

Adding mobile onto their acquisition of the Big Fix software in 2010, which was designed to remotely manage desktops, secure servers, laptops and POS devices, the addition of a mobile centric endpoint manager brings the circle of demand to a close for most organisations who need to consider these kind of issues internally with the growth of mobile device use.

So what can you do with this mobile endpoint manager:

[arrowlist]

• Identifying potential data compromises
• Selectively wipe data from compromised devices
• Enforce passcode policies and encryption on devices
• Configured to require employees to use a VPN when accessing the enterprise network
• IT staff will be able to identify devices that are not complying with corporate policies and take appropriate action
• This could be in the form of denying email access or by issuing notifications to the user device as a reminder on what remedial steps need to be performed

[/arrowlist]

With young professionals and college students preferring to lose their wallet than their mobile devices, according to a Cisco funded poll, it is clear to see that the world of business needs to wake up to the importance we bestow our mobile devices, and the sheer amount of private data they contain.

IBM are also reported to have purchased an Israeli mobile technology firm called Worklight who specialise in smartphone and tablet software, which is hoped will help speed up the entrance IBM are making into a solution that will provide their clients with a platform that will allow control over multiple devices mobile and fixed.

Picking up an article over at computer weekly we take a look at the European level policy on cloud computing and wonder what is being done to push this technology into wider use.

Speaking at the Davos Economic Forum meeting over in Switzerland, Neelie Kroes, the woman in charge of Europe’s digital agenda has been discussing the option of having everyone involved in cloud computing to join in a harmonious partnership to bring the benefit of this technology to more people, businesses and governments throughout Europe and quicker.

The calls were for European local authorities, industry in general, cloud buyers and suppliers to create the partnership to effectively orchestrate the mass migration from hardware based processing, backup and file storage to the cloud based option on the grounds of scale, security and efficiency.

Kroes said:

“Cloud Computing will change our economy. It can bring significant productivity benefits to all, right through to the smallest companies, and also to individuals. It promises scalable, secure services for greater efficiency, greater flexibility, and lower cost,” she said.

But with issues such as standards, agreed certification, data protection, wide ranging legal issues between member states, and data kept in the cloud and interoperability, the currently slow progress is seemingly hampered by these issues, but why the need to push this technology so quickly.

Is the cloud really all that beneficial?

Let us face it the cloud is potentially very dangerous to any business, as it leaves more and more control of your data and communication in the hands of other corporations and governments and will be a significant cost positive to implement, with negligible gains in the short term.

So what will Kroes do to overcome these shared feelings towards the cloud?

With the barriers in question a rather vague answer was offered:

“Where these barriers exist, I am determined to overcome them,”

With the EC’s new rules regarding data protection on the regulatory side making some small progress, she did stress that these moves forward would include provision for cloud based storage legal issues.

“In the first phase, the Partnership will come up with common requirements for Cloud procurement. For this it will look at standards; it will look at security; it will look at ensuring competition, not lock-in. In the second phase, the Partnership will deliver proof of concept solutions for the common requirements, and in the third phase, reference implementations will be built,”

€10 million initial investment from the European Cloud Partnership:

Exactly what the suggested €10 million investment from the European Cloud Partnership aims to achieve I am unsure but it sounds like a pathetic amount of money to achieve such widespread aims as she has suggested.

Looking at the plan it appears that aiming small is the agenda to start with a plan which appears to be one of bringing the initial idea of procuring cloud computing technology to local government level throughout the EU who are all open ears to anything that can save money, yes it would appear that the Bilderberg group sure now how to steer policy from the outside in in very intriguing ways.

Talking of the strategies for the next year and beyond, Kroes states:

“We are already talking to potential partners and working on setting up this European Cloud Partnership. No doubt the concept will evolve as more details are fixed. These will be set out, together with other elements, in the European Cloud Computing Strategy later this year. A strategy as a whole to ensure Europe becomes not just Cloud-friendly, but Cloud-active,”

Questions still remain:

Speaking around the business community I sense that many business owners are very skeptical on cloud computing for the simple fear that it removes some control (albeit in the disguise of safety) from the owners of software, applications and data into a managed and paid for service where you are in less control of that very supply line that you need to run an effective business.

As a business owner what do you think to adopting cloud computing?

There are obvious benefits in some areas, but there seem to be some questions still remaining on the full extent adoption that should be considered.

So if standards and other areas of legal greyness were ironed out and more transparent would this help you in your decision to go fully cloud or partially cloud based as a business?

Discussing the article on computer weekly one commentator going by the name of Hogspace states that:

What rubbish is this, I wonder who set the guy up to say this. No company of mine will be using storage that isn’t 100% owned and controlled by me, Internet/Intranet connected or not.

Not sure as he read the article fully though as he is a she!

As the New York Times slates Apple over their apparent lack of duty of care to workers at China’s Foxconn production plant within Apples enormous supply chain, and with Tim Cook coming out to defend all things Apple, as you would.

Can we all perhaps learn from this current upsurge in “Apple the bad man” talk?

When your at the top of the tree your easier to spot:

Yes we all know that any corporation, music act, TV show, etc that either courts the limelight or simply happens to be centre of attention in their industry and therefore often appears seemingly omnipresent while their crowning glory lasts, will attract critics.

One of the main reasons this happens is this, it sells papers and gets eyeballs.

China love to play with the big boys:

The truth may also lie in how a company gets to be so big, and this is where the murky waters of speculation crop up.

In the modern world, corporations such as Apple have choices on how to go about doing all parts of their production process right through to the sale and packaging of the goods they peddle us.

But what is perhaps unclear to so many of us who are not involved in acquisition, procurement, international trade, HR, logistics, marketing, hi tech manufacturing etc is just what choices we have in that massive selection process that ultimately produces an iPad or an iPhone.

What is clear to many is that China would appear to come out tops as the place to go for the mass manufacture of specialist technology, at least this was what we all believed until China started to flex its muscle a little, and scare some companies with its attitude to workers rights.

Now when you have a country the size of China, I for one am under no doubt that a form of dictatorship is probably the best way to be able to effectively manage such a vast amount of people, but I am unsure exactly what kind of “dictatorship” really exists in China.

China as cost effective as we think?

One thing is for sure, where once China was highly competitive to obtain cheap manufacturing in an outsourcing sense, I now know from first hand after looking into the cost of outsourcing work myself that after all associated costings and risks are taken into account, doing business with China is a lot less attractive than I once thought.

Now imagine having a publicly available ethics policy (other wise know as the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct) to ensure all suppliers were held to account to some degree, now this would add another layer of risk.

I am not for one minute saying that all Chinese manufacturing plants operate under barbaric conditions, I have no idea first hand whatsoever, but it would appear from reading around the lines that some would possibly be classed as less than perfect when ethics and workers rights are taken into consideration.

China in 2012 = UK in 1800’s

But you know what, this is China in its ascent, and here in the West we all have to take stock and look at what we here in the UK and the US have done globally to ensure we are competitive in marketplaces over the last 100 years in terms of a “get our own way” attitude we lead the world in barbaric acts and underhand tactics, we effectively teach the world to screw morals.

I am from the mill areas of the north of England and the stories that can be told of hate filled mill owners are possibly best left forgotten but are numerous.

This was in the days when we were the engine room of the world, and with China taking over that role and the west moving towards a knowledge and service based economy, where does that leave us when bottom lines need to be addresses and our shiny western corporations need to compete with other foreign upstarts?

It has to be seen as pretty rich when we come along and expect all countries we deal with to operate exactly as we want, when we have the benefit of massive GDP’s ensuring that 100 year old strategies and policies (fought and won) to gain supposedly better working practices are put in place.

So where does this leave Apple?

Now I am sure Apple have some pretty lucrative deals going on with their suppliers such as Foxconn, but where does that leave the Cupertino company if things start altering within the suppliers hierarchy and at what point do the Government of China step in to look into suspected employment issues for foreign companies who work out of China like Foxconn who are Taiwan based?

There is definitely some dodgy ground to be potentially navigated when looking to build a company that extol the virtues of high morals and yet wants to keep production costs down and as low as possible while still selling their products at premium prices on the basis of quality and a certain ethic that Apple proclaim they stand for.

Indeed as the article in the New York Times states, there are a number of areas that have more power than Apple currently has:

1 – Foxconn

2 – The Republic Of China

3 – The Consumer

So with all those variables in place (which are not unique by any means) Apple do need to ensure that they tread a path of pleasing a lot of entities all at once which can be very tough when you rely on foreign highly skilled workers and high tech plants which operate in very different conditions to what they would perhaps like them to do, but then again come 50 years time it will all shift anyway and we will see US and UK workers doing China’s and India’s bidding…..perhaps.

On the topic of China and the way Chinese industry treats their own staff who work for non foreign entities, one commentator Helena discussing the New York Times article states:

“In China, Foxconn is quite proper already. They don’t delay wages and provide insurance. A lot of people attack Foxconn for fun, but how do domestic factories treat workers? Some barely make enough to survive after working for months. They can’t get pay, and are fired for being pregnant. Our countrymen are so strict with foreigners, but can let our own misbehave.”

And some lay the blame at the Chinese government more than Apple:

A Caixin reader writes:

“While Apple’s supervision is important, the government’s supervision is key, because they should play the role of carrying out the law.”

Either way I think it is tough to slate one company when there are so many variables, and this is perhaps where the potential for Apples downfall could very easily stem from.

It has been relatively quiet from those guys at Taiwan’s HTC corp, and perhaps we have a reason why.

Both IBM and HTC are looking to team up and try to corner the business sector with Android devices.

Flying in the face of Apple and Blackberry devices who currently seem to be the favored operating systems and choice of device for enterprise clients, it would be a shame for Android as an O/S to miss out on this highly lucrative niche and it will be unwelcome news that the new CEO of research in motion will not be looking to hear right now.

Is Android safe enough?

It has to be said that the Android marketplace is a little tatty to be seriously given the kind of access that a big corporation would allow their staff with malware continually creeping in unchecked, but that is not to say that these two will not be bring out their own version of Android with more restricted access to applications in the market or totally bespoke ones as is suggested by the original article, where IBM have developed business applications that can work in Android and HTC provide the conduits in terms of devices.

With the iPad being such a runaway success with no real competitor to note, and both the business world and consumers opting for Apples offering over Android tablets by and large, you can see why IBM and HTC could potentially be a nice combination, with IBM’s access to a vast range of global business clients who already use their huge array of services and products and HTC being a very well liked device manufacturer, could it work?

Time will tell on that front but it must be worrying for the new CEO of RIM as they try to find a new tack and either get back into the enterprise market with their new operating system and a sweet super device or two, or focus more on other avenues that will take them away from the wrong path they have chosen over the last few years.

Bespoke applications key to success?

It looks like HTC will be bringing out both smartphones and tablets for business users, and will allow businesses to work with third party developers to create bespoke applications for the devices running on Android.

With Apple not allowing this kind of free reign with their operating system it could be an avenue that works for large corporations who truly do want full control of their technology used in the workplace.

But, could we see RIM make their new operating system a little more open in which case this market could well and truly start to crowd with more than two fighting for your attention!

Source : TechWeekEurope

O2 are going to get a hammering over this and rightly so.

The situation appears to be that if you have been browsing on your mobile phone using an o2 data connection in the last 15 or so days, you will have been unwittingly sending your mobile phone number to that websites database in the HTTP requests which usually contain pretty useless info about who you are in terms of location and IP address etc.

o2 stupidly to let every website you visit on your mobile know your phone number:

This is absolutely great news if you like your mobile phone being shared with every site you visit, but is astonishingly bad news if you visit sites that could have questionable methods of making money (rather a lot) or where the owners of sites could perhaps be easily persuaded to channel a few of those numbers to unscrupulous marketing firms for a little extra dosh. Think injury lawyers, or worse still spammers who make you pay £’s every time you reply to texts to stop them sending the damn f***ers.

Yes I think it IS that bad.

Any site you visited will be able to sell your number knowing its working and live and on o2.

Thank you O2:

Thanks a lot you set of halfwits.

Now when you ask me those security questions in order for me to remove my ridiculously high insurance that would never pay out in most circumstances anyway, why dont you just forget that part and simply tell me/them who I am and where I live and ask me “have I had an accident in the last few years”.

o2 you have right royally pissed me off….again.

Questions that need answering:

The following questions have been answered do the o2 blog but not particular fully in my opinion but they maybe useful as a start:

Q: How long has this been happening?

A: In between the 10th of January and 1400 Wednesday 25th of January, in addition to the usual trusted partners, there has been the potential for disclosure of customers’ mobile phone numbers to further website owners.

Q: Which of my information can website owners access?

A: The only information websites had access to is your mobile number, which could not have been linked to any other identifying information we have about customers.

Q: How do I know this won’t happen again?

A: We take the security of our customers’ data extremely seriously. This was a one-off incident, which has now been fixed. We have fixed the problem and we are putting in additional measures to prevent a re-occurrence.

Q: Why did this happen?

A: Technical changes we implemented as part of routine maintenance had the unintended effect of making it possible in certain circumstances for website owners to see the mobile numbers of those browsing their site.

Q: I want to leave O2 with immediate effect because you have breached T&Cs / shared my data without my consent. Can I?

A. In this instance, and as acknowledged by the Information Commissioner, there has been no immediate breach of the Data Protection Act. This was a technical error that has now been rectified. In light of this, customers’ contracts remain valid and O2 shall continue to provide you a service in accordance with your terms and conditions.

Q: Can I opt out of O2 sharing my mobile number with these partners?

A. It is not possible to opt out of our age verification process, which exists for child protection purposes.

You can choose not to visit our trusted partners whose sites offer you ringtones, wallpapers and content direct to your phone. These sites require your mobile phone number in order to complete the purchase and charge it to your mobile bill.

Q. Who are your trusted partners?

A. There are two instances where we share your mobile phone number with websites:

We share mobile numbers with two age verification partners, for child protection purposes. For those customers that have not verified with us that they are over 18, we share your number with Bango.net and Eckoh.com who then verify your age before you are able to access sites with over 18 content. Your number is not shared further than these two partners and is only used for this purpose.

Q: Who can I complain to?

A: Please contact O2 through our normal channels, details of which can be found here.

Q: How are you compensating customers?

A. As part of our usual business practice, we consider compensation claims where you can demonstrate material loss. Customers wishing to speak to us should do so through our normal channels, details of which can be found here.

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Apple have just published record profits for 2011, even in the face of naysayers who reckon that Android is finally catching up and Amazons Kindle Fire is picking off iPad sales by the day, especially in the run up to Christmas.

But all that now looks like hokum as Apple have told the world that they are now indeed the most profitable corporation on the face of the globe and sell more units than HP.

Some statistics from Apples 2011 Q4 reports:

[arrowlist]

• Apple sold 37.04 million iPhones
• 15.4 million iPads
• 5.2 million Macs

[/arrowlist]

With Apples revenues and profits both being double what Microsoft could boast, and Apple increasing their iPad sale predictions by around 2 million in that last quarter of 2011 it can be clear as day that Apple are doing something very right indeed.

And what makes them continue to grow even after so much competition from Android devices and the likes of cut price tablets?

Innovation

Indeed in a report on Apple Insider Tim Cook, Apples relatively new CEO states that his whole intention to stave of attacks from imitators and other device manufacturers is to quite simply “innovate like crazy.”

And while some say that Apple are not innovative I would argue that to be utter tosh, and what is more, where Android tablets have a few hundred natively built applications, Apples iPad iOS has around 170,000, and with tools and apps like the Akai MPC Fly coming out, is there any reason to ever save a few pennies and go for an Android tablet, I personally would not be in the market for a high end Android tablet over an iPad 2 if I had to choose one over the other right now.

Customer service:

Let us not forget that Apple continue to raise the bar of expected customer service as they open more and more stores for those taking the plunge and buying their first ever Apple product or iPad and trust me this matters, like it or not (and sickly it can be) Apple make a mockery of the likes of Currys or PC world when compared on customer service, and people like to feel special at the end of the day.

Don’t lose sight of the prize whatever it is:

Now I hope they do not do what Google has done and keep pushing out nonsense after nonsense and then cull things later, I hope that they stay focused on the areas that the layman loves Apple for, useabilty and style.

Subjective I know, but it is what most Apple converts say as the main selling points, and these appear to be growing.

Well done Apple now stay focused and don’t turn to pith, in your dizzying heights of success, they all fall eventually in tech land!

With the news that Kim Dotcom is very possible going to get 20 years in the slammer after his Megaupload site was seized by the feds, it seems that sites similar to the file sharing site have taken to clarifying or completely shutting down their operations.

In new moves targeted at the owners of sites rather than users of file sharing websites, the ripples that have gone through tech land are quite enormous, with Anonymous promising to take revenge and Kim Dotcom getting a free photo shoot by the US’s finest law enforcers and a nice few extra snaps of this rather enormous mansion and insane amount of Mercedes which we gather came from the proceeds of what is being described as an illegal file sharing business.

Megaupload Mega Huge:

To give you some scale of how big Megaupload was, it routinely got 50 million users per day, this amounts to around 1,500,000,000 visits per month (1.5 billion), and god knows how many actual page views (assuming people click more than once)

This figure is quite simply staggering, and goes some way to show how the founders could have amassed such wealth, even from Google adsense you could be earning a small packet with this amount of traffic, never mind also offering premium subscriptions for faster downloads.

An interesting point made by techdirt in relation to the adsense matter, is that Megaupload was actually making cash from Google Adsense and against most peoples knowledge they actually pulled their ads from the site as it was indeed against their policy to allow adds on a site with so many questions over legality.

This quote taken from the indictment of Megaupload:

On or about May 17, 2007, a representative from Google AdSense, an Internet advertising company, sent an e-mail to DOTCOM entitled “Google AdSense Account Status.” In the e-mail, the representative stated that “[d]uring our most recent review of your site [Megaupload.com,]” Google AdSense specialists found “numerous pages” with links to, among other things, “copyrighted content,” and therefore Google AdSense “will no longer be able to work with you.”

Though the date is pre-Hollywood Google bashing!

The aftermath of Megaupload:

Even though Rapidshare has been voted legal relatively recently in Germany and the US, seeing competitors like this taken down by US law enforcers in another jurisdiction must on one hand look like a fantastic opportunity, but on the other hand the question still remains that with the US department of justice still reeling over not getting SOPA and PIPA to play with legally, maybe they are showing the world a little flex and making a show of not really needing these amendments to enforce their own agendas against global copyright theft.

Now let us take a look at Dropbox, a similar kind of site and service that uses a system for data storage and retrieval, and though we all know Dropbox as more of a personal storage system, it is now used as a means of sharing and allowing access to content via passwords or other settings on your account if you so choose.

Example: Certain news websites offer access to their Dropbox account easily so you can add images and video for stories that may be hot topics.

Others use their site and allow people access on a read only basis, so you can browse content and download, some with passwords, and some without, choice is yours.

In many ways very different than Megaupload, it still sits pretty close to the potential issues that cause Hollywood and the FBI to shout loudly on occasions.

Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA:

The truth is that if Megaupload had complied with repeated requests to remove various copyrighted content, there could have been a chance that the US dept of justice would have backed off, indeed the way US law currently works on this matter is to give ISP’s and web hosts a form of legal protection that meant if they comply with “reasonable” requests to remove certain copyright infringing material and do as they are told, then they will not be taken down and will be allowed to continue trading or providing their service, this process and protection is called the Safe Harbor provision and is part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

It is this current state of legal play that SOPA and PIPA would perhaps allow US government to circumvent to some degree and apply take downs to websites they did not like with much more will.

Mega big-boots:

It was only last month that Megaupload cheekily tried to sue UMG over the video they produced to market Megaupload.

And in response to requests to remove copyright infringing material it is reported that rather arrogant conversations internally such as this were commonplace:

Email sent from Warner to remove content:

Internal email regarding the above request from Megaupload CTO:

“We should comply with their request — we can afford to be cooperative at current growth levels.”

Now you can perhaps see how they may have dug their own grave to some degree?

All about scale:

Talking about the difference between Megaupload and Rapidshare BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones states:

“The two key differences are the scale of unauthorised sharing, and secondly what seems to be a complete absence of legitimate uses,”

With other similar sites obviously getting advice from niche lawyers right now, it seems that it was the shear scale of the infringements that Megaupload were involved in that caused so many issues and finally lead to their demise, sites like Swiss based Rapidshare also have grounds for concern, but they do attempt in a few ways to show that they “want” to appear legitimate whereas Megaupload pretty much stuck fingers up all over the site when it was up and running.

Speaking to the BBC, Michael Moore, a partner at law firm Marks & Clerk, said:

“This is all a trend of going towards the facilitators, the organisers of this, I think in the future we will see a small number of very high-profile large actions against these facilitators….hand-in-hand with that we will see this public relations battle to show people that file-sharing is bad.”

Currently rival file sharing site FileSonic have this statement on their site, such is the concern they have that they too will become the next Kim Dotcom boom!

“All sharing functionality of FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally,”.

The end of file sharing?

Many of you will have used Megaupload or similar sites for one reason or another in the past, so do you think we are starting to see the law catch up with this online piracy and have we all perhaps lost our minds that we assume we can simply get away with accessing content that is explicitly written into a legally binding agreement between a company and an artist or producer and only available to purchasers or rights holders?

Whatever your viewpoint, and whatever your thoughts on file sharing or Mr Kim Dotcom, the truth is that this is a landmark case for international copyright law and US law enforcement globally and will also go down as a pretty good yarn to tell the kids, and for that last reason alone I kind of like the tale and must say that the likelihood is that when one site closes another one will open in its place.

But you know what, the US government would have more of a problem with employment if they did not have fiends such as Mr Dotcom to chase and we would not get stories of fast cars and millions of dollars of stolen money to report…yeh the world would perhaps be a bit more dull!

I have said before that Data is the new Gold for networks, minutes and texts are going to be less of a burden in cost terms to the networks and more of a giveaway as time goes by.

But data is where the real costs and opportunities currently lie for mobile operators.

With the above in mind AT&T has released revised plans for data charges to its customers, but in it they are hoping to provide a little more room to manoeuvre and give more choice for heavy users.

The new plans will come into effect on Sunday and is on the back of AT&T stating that they have had to totally rethink their data policies and pricing due to heavy demand which is only increasing month on month.

Users can move to the new plan if they are on existing contract or they can stay put if it would suit them better to do this based on the information given below.

I think this is pretty fair and one o2 could have offered in the UK when they forced their unlimited data subscribers onto a capped data plan with force, even though people had signed up to a full unlimited data deal.

The deals:

[arrowlist]

• $20 a month you can buy 300MB of data
• Data Pro package 3GB costs $30
• Data Pro 5GB $50 GB this includes the mobile hot spot capabilities and tethering

[/arrowlist]

This compares to previous options of:

[arrowlist]

• 200MB for $15
• 2GB for $25
• 4GB for $45

[/arrowlist]

The company is seen to be encouraging users to use data proved by their own Wi-Fi hot spots at over 29,000 locations across the US, so all in all it seems like an expected move, and one that you will just have to swallow I am afraid, unlimited was never really unlimited anyway!

AT&T also make use of alerts to keep their customers in check if they are close to going over their data allowance, as we all know this can be costly!

So as you can see it is going to be more costly in general but if you are a power user you get a little more for your money than you did before, so it is a little bit like the low end users subsiding the larger consumers of data on the go, but they get a touch more thrown in also….good deal or a deal breaker?

We knew it was coming, as Research In Motion informed the world that the two CEO’s who have come under a fair amount of criticism of late will finally step down.

The WSJ broke the news, conveniently delivered at the height of a very important game of football on Sunday evening, though it will obviously make pretty big headlines Monday….is there a good time to deliver news like this?

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, will step down to be replaced by the German born, Thorsten Heins who will be accompanied by financier Barbara Stymiest, the lady we tipped could be somewhere near CEO level when this move took place.

So what happens to the ex RIM CEO’s?

It appears that Lazaridis will become vice chairman leaving Balsillie still with a place on the board, with Barbara Stymiest as chairman.

This leaves the new CEO Thorsten Heins as man at the helm, and it has to be said that at 54 his background appears to be one of highly competent in this industry having worked for Siemens AG and various other wireless and consumer electronics companies over the last 27 years, his last tenure was as COO of RIM and Senior Vice President of their hand held unit. He studied in Hanover, Germany, his native country, and came over to Canada after being impressed by the methods of the two CEO’s when things were more rosy at RIM.

And let us not take anything away from the achievements of Lazaridis and Balsillie, who took a fledgeling tech company that started in 1984 from literally nothing to a multi billion pound shining light of Canada and North America in around 20 years.

All not over at RIM….yet:

The reality right now at RIM is that they actually have quite a healthy balance sheet and with control over all parts of their eco-system they should be able to implement sweeping changes relatively quickly. Changes that are needed to appeal to their core market and perhaps steal new customers if all were to work out well…so things are certainly not over at RIM.

Speaking of the current financial situation at RIM Heins states:

“We have a strong balance sheet with approximately $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt. We reported revenue of $5.2 billion in our last quarter, up 24 percent from the prior quarter, and a 35 percent year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million,”

Now I am not a financial analyst but with no debts of note and a huge $1.5 billion in cash in the coffers seems like room for movement at least for a while.

But adding to this it has to be said that RIM have lost two thirds of their stock value in the last 14 months so things are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

What happened to RIM?

Taking the last 10 years as the tipping point from a company that was moving forward and upwards, to a company that stopped innovating and got caught well and truly in the tech headlights with apples being thrown at it left right and centre.

Research In Motion had managed to conquer a niche, and still do command a huge vantage point in the enterprise market, built on technology that made governments and institutions of a certain size feel “safe”. This technology was related to secure emails and texts, and was important for communication hungry corporations to put their concerns with one firm who sated all those fears.

RIM fitted the bill and in many ways still does.

However, a couple of wacky companies from California were sniffing around mobile tech land with curiosity at what could now be done in this field and eventually the big Apple decided to take a bite of the mobile pie and create something that revolutionised the mobile device market with the arrival of the iPhone, the daddy of the modern smartphone, and with it bring in something even more powerful.

Applications.

Applications are RIM’s worst enemy:

I know many users of blackberry devices (they can not even be called smartphones) and they all say the same thing in 2012….

I wish “they” would replace it with an iPhone.

This implies that personally they would not be seen dead with a blackberry phone and it is only their companies who they work for that are either still stuck in a lengthy contract or still feel the need to stay secure with RIM’s technology, either way these numbers are falling and quickly.

And why? Because there are so many more things you can do with an iPhone, simple.

The world wants functionality, and Pandora’s box was well and truly opened, now we all know there is never any going back once this happens.

Double whammy is sods law:

As the saying goes that when you want a bus none come along and then two arrive at once, this seemingly was the case with Google and Apple (on a seemingly much more disastrous road), both bringing in new entrants to the blackberry market that would influence company IT departments choices on which device to furnish colleagues and staff.

Android was an open source iOS and wanted to make smartphone functionality available to the masses, so where the iPhone and iOS stood as a benevolent dictator, Google’s Android O/S was to be the free loving tart of the smartphone world.

Looking back at 2011 they also had the acutely embarrassing issue of days long blackberry outages, and the crazy plane antics of RIM employees making headlines.

Things needed to change.

With two very powerful offerings taking the globe by storm RIM and Blackberry have now basically started to look crap.

So how can RIM get back to where they perhaps deserve to be?

With the arrival of their new operating system called Blackberry 10 in a few months time, and a new playbook tablet that will run their new operating system, could it be that this will see RIM find a niche within the growing smartphone and tablet market?…Not just yet I imagine.

But, as Microsoft and Nokia have managed to get their focus back after being hit hard by Google, Samsung, HTC and Apple and have finally stepped back into the game with Windows Phone 7 and the Lumia Series, there is time left for RIM, but I suspect not much.

Single Superphone or Licensing could save RIM:

One of a few options open for Research In Motion is to make the new operating system much easier for other device manufacturers to develop on, so they could open source the operating system to a degree, or fully, this would then give them a chance to compete with Android and Apple and perhaps still focus on their core business of enterprise clients.

Having more devices with one operating system opens up the market to app developers who otherwise have enough on their plates with Android iterations and conflicts and iOS demands.

And in my mind what they need to make this new O/S work is applications.

It was Androids tough hill to climb and continues to be Windows task to win, and will certainly be RIM’s main challenge.

Indeed we have already covered the potential for licensing the new Blackberry 10 operating system out to the likes of Samsung and HTC and I for one see this as a serious proposition worthy of a few late night talks.

They could easily start with having a plan of updating their operating system as is the current focus with their current clients in mind, knowing that Samsung and HTC are all missing out on this lucrative enterprise market to some degree so will be more than happy to potentially partner with a company such as RIM if the plan was indeed to create a specific O/S for this market so everyone knew where they stood.

And let us not forget that the likes of Samsung And HTC sometimes worry about being too reliant on the big G for their operating system so diversification in this area may help alleviate concerns moving forward that they are not putting all their eggs in one basket.

Indeed we reported that the South Korean government were prepared to finance the creation of a brand new operating system for Samsung (and South Korea) to combat this potential issue.

Another way to compete with Apple and others is to make a Superphone of a smartphone that can actually compete with an iPhone and be a real contender to the Apple device, this option I would love to see but probably comes with more risks attached.

Now check out Thorsten Heins interview about his new role at RIM:

With the new operating system likely to show at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona next month it will indeed be one hell of a year for the new people at the helm of Canada’s once mighty RIM, what a job…;)

Do you think they can come back and conquer again, if so how, if not why?

It has been confirmed by myself that Anonymous have indeed taken down the DOJ website as reported on The Next Web.

It would appear that Universal music is also affected and that AnonOps is claiming responsibility for them both so far on twitter.

The DOJ website last tested was probably taken down by a DDoS attack as it has been rumored to have been slow all day, the same is likely of universal music.

Follow the conversation by checking out the hashtag #OpPayBack on twitter.

The attacks follow the take down of the megaupload site and the indictments of seven people who are thought to be key players at Megaupload. 4 have so far been arrested including founder Kim Dotcom.

We have already reported that Kodak was due to apply for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, which will allow them to continue to trade until a restructuring and funding exercise went ahead and hopefully saved all or part of the core business.

After weeks of speculation Mr Perez, Kodak’s CEO under siege stated:

“After considering the advantages of Chapter 11 at this time, the board of directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak,”

Kodak assets and debt:

With assets of some $5.1 billion and debts of some $6.75 billion, the debts are made up of some 40 entities who each lay claim to small to large debts owed by the company, these range from Walmart being owed a measly $11.4 million right up to Bank of New York Mellon which is owed a rather huge $668 million.

Hollywood debts:

People forget that Kodak worked with the movie industry and were not just based purely in print, and with these relationships in mind it has been noted that they owe Warner Brothers and Disney large sums of money also.

Citigroup to the rescue?

So with such a large company bowing under such a large amount of debt, who in these money worried times would want to lend to a company that seemingly needs so much restructuring and guiding to a new profitable path?

Well Citigroup has committed nearly $1 billion in credit to help aid the company restructure their finances under chapter 11, and this should help to alleviate concerns of the 17,000 string global workforce who are obviously concerned about the safety of their jobs with the news.

At its peak Kodak employed some 130,000 globally in the mid 1980’s.

4 objectives while under chapter 11:

Mr Perez has stated in a video on the Kodak website that they have four main aims to achieve while under chapter 11 protection and they are:

Kodak Press Release from process supplies on Vimeo.

[arrowlist]

• Obtaining the financing to reassure its employees, customers and other stakeholders that the company will stay in business.
• Enabling it to pursue patent infringement claims against major companies including Apple Inc.
• Adjusting its “legacy costs” to a fairer level.
• Driving growth in the printing businesses which MrPerez has declared is Kodak’s future.

[/arrowlist]

Kodak want to sell patents but feel better positioned with help:

While under court supervision it seems Kodak feel better positioned to sell patents that could fetch some serious money, with a rumoured $3 billion potentially up for grabs.

“The business reorganization is intended to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the company to focus on its most valuable business lines,”

With some 27,00 retirees in Kodaks home county of Rochester alone, some are worried that these veterans will be affected most by the move but many feel that it is the best direction for the company with many firms emerging after Chapter 11 protection in a better shape than they were prior, and continue to trade in some capacity where otherwise they would have simply gone under.

Times they have a changed:

I remember the days, back in the early 90’s when I thought I was really cool with my Super 8 mm on Bournemouth beach taking arty shots of all my friends smoking, drinking and messing about, then sending my Kodak pre-paid three minute super 8mm film back to a development lab in order to wait for three weeks until it was processed and dutifully sent back to watch on any white wall via a small projector, oh how times have changed.

I do hope Kodak find a way out of this predicament but am not convinced that they have the dynamic nature in their core business to really come out fighting and forge a path in a market so competitive and difficult to compete in as the print industry, but then again I know nothing much about it in all honesty!

Want to look at a history of Kodak, take a look at our infographic here:

What do you think Kodak should do, and are you worried about your job if you work for the firm?

If you have not heard of Free yet, you will do, especially if you are French.

When you are hailed as the French equivalent to Steve Jobs you know you have to be doing something that people take note of. And while I can see that Mr Niel is indeed a self starter and a champion of the people and free market economy, I personally put him down as more of a slightly sleazy Richard Branson than Steve Jobs, but hey who worries about splitting hairs between two well respected pillars of the business world.

In a bid to shake the stagnant and over priced French mobile sector and in typical French style Mr Niel talks of “liberation” of the mobile sector using his Free telecommunication company as the focus.

Jail bird set free:

And with a background in adult chat services I am sure he knows his way around liberal quarters already. Mr Xavier actually got fined some 250,000 Euros and spent two years in jail for laundering money via sex shops.

Mr Niel is not one of the well healed from established universities in the country, he is more your grass roots, at the coal face kind of guy.

Indeed in 2002 he started what was called Freeview, a set-top-box which was offering combined Internet, TV and calls, this concept of bundling was brought to the French market with full intention of bringing down prices all round, which it did.

Talking about his new adventure into shaking up a nascent mobile market that is seen to be ripping off the French public, he states:

“We are sick and tired of being ripped off with the highest prices in Europe,”

Speaking of the plans, Jessica Ekholm an analyst from Gartner said:

“This is some much-needed competition coming in to the French market…. They’re obviously trying to shake things up,”

Mobile phones the target now:

So with a pedigree of aggressively entering established markets and bringing in new pricing models and packages, Mr Neil now wants to enter the French mobile sector to help bring prices in line with the rest if Europe.

French mobile users pay high price for services:

French mobile networks currently charge the most for their mobile services and sees pricing set at much higher levels than European neighbours in per capita average costs.

The package that Mr Xavier currently wants to offer consumers in France looks like this:

[arrowlist]

• Unlimited calls, messaging and up to three gigabytes of data for €19.99 euros ($26) per month.
• 60 minutes of calls and 60 text messages for €2 euros per month.

[/arrowlist]

After this announcement, the Free website was said to have crashed with the deluge of interest.

At an Apple inspired launch event Mr Xavier went on to proclaim:

“Free believes that up until now you have been used as cash cows. We will give the [other operators] a lesson.”

But with Free not expected to have full network coverage until 2018, and already aggressively stepping on bottom lines of the very networks they need to rent from to provide the service free is offering, this move may not be without some pain to the rather shrewd businessman who sold his reverse directory service on France’s Minitel back in 2000 for 40 million euros.

Mr Xavier has now also been found to have jointly bought the French newspaper La Monde, despite President Sarkozy putting in his opposition, he has also paid for 50% of the rights to the song “My Way”, which may well point to his own perception of self in this maddening world!

So while this all sounds fantastic for consumers in France, time will tell where the devil in the detail lies and how long Free can sustain such cut price deals when they do not really have the kind of power in the market when still reliant on rental relationships from competitors to ensure service levels are met.

The UK’s shadow minster for media Helen Goodman has been sharply critical of the UK governments handling of the UK 4G auction that is expected at the end of this year.

UK taxpayers losing out:

The Labour Councilor claims that UK taxpayers are losing out the longer the auction drags on, According to Goodman, money raised form the auction should be bringing in some £2 billion and £4 billion in capital, and with license fees expected to bring in some £300 million per year, the UK is seemingly short changed the longer this process drags on.

There is also a knock effect to the UK economy with improved communication and speeds meaning increased productivity and associated revenues.

In a statement related to the issue, the minister said,

“The auction could have taken place in 2010 but this government decided not to give Ofcom the backup to go ahead with the sale of 4G,”

She then went on to state that with so many mobile and internet users in rural areas looking for improved communication options, the delay was not helping these people either get online with faster speeds or have an improved mobile device that will help to bring them more freedom with communication but also more revenue for the government.

Networks to blame:

It is thought that that the battle to gain the best possible license between the networks is at the heart of the delays coupled with the delayed responses from government, as a result it looks likely that one of the biggest countries in Europe will actually be the last country to gain a 4G spectrum option.

Kettle black?:

This statement could be construed as sounding pretty rich, coming from an ex government who got some £23 billion from the sale of the 3G spectrum and to which the UK taxpayer now seems to be pretty seriously in the red despite….who cares about a few hundred million now…!?

This Friday, Apple published their 2012 “Supplier Responsibility Progress Report” which contains data from 229 audits taken from their supply chain in 2011. This figure is up from 127 audits conducted 2010.

In light of major issues reported about the Apple supply chain over the last few years, and a whole host of human labour rights and environmental practices of these companies, Apple has now finally published a list of suppliers that are involved with the manufacture of the iPhone, iPad and other devices that Cupertino design in California and manufacture in China. (by and large).

It makes for interesting reading and goes some way to showing Apple in a better light and understandably it is good to see that the company have indeed moved towards better ethics, this is not to excuse Apples bad choice of certain suppliers, and with the serious issues that have been going on in some of these places it is difficult to excuse.

Apples commitment to social responsibility:

Apple is committed to driving the highest standards for social responsibility throughout our supply base. We require that our suppliers provide safe working conditions, treat workers with dignity and respect, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made.

The results of the report:

On reading the report it can be seen that the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct is essentially disregarded on many many occasions, this has to be an issue that Apple address and some would say that this has taken too long, we all know corporations can hide behind all manner of cloaks when it suits, and it would be pretty difficult to believe that no one at Apple knew nothing about these breaches of pretty key operating policies.

Apple Supplier Code of Conduct

The report highlighted many areas, and at 26 pages long, I am only summarizing what was said, suffice to say every part of Apple’s code of conduct was broken in some way or another at various times. Here are some main points from various sections:

Ethics:

There are a number of ethical violations committed by Apple suppliers according to the report and these include falsifying audit information, rosters, unsavory behavior towards foreign workers and other generally bad practices that are not nice to hear about in the workplace.

Environment:

Problems found at Apple suppliers in the report range from poor disposal of hazardous material to a lack of proper environmental impact assessments, air emissions, and other areas, it was seen that many of the suppliers in the audit appear to have breached various guidelines from the Apple Supplier Code of Conduct

Worker Heath and Safety:

Explosions that killed 4 at the Foxconn factory and another explosion at the Ri-Teng (a subsidiary of Pegatron) factory which injured scores, highlighted that there was a flagrant disregard to the health and safety of staff who worked with combustible materials and dust, and supplied Apple with key componenets.

Apple have gone on to say that they have worked with Foxconn who are a major supplier to Apple and have put in place various measures to help staff and the company comply better with Apples code.

Too little too late?

Taking a look at the amount of audits taken place over the last 5 years, it is quite shameful considering the attention that the Apple supply chain has had over issues such as worker rights, suicide and health and safety, that it has taken so long to finally do this PR..ahem, supply chain audit exercise, now they have got to the dizzy heights of success that they obviously wanted to achieve with the iPhone and iPad.

What do you think to Apples eventual audit report?

You can read the full Apple report here:

With the demand for mobile data expected to increase by 500% over the next five years in Western Europe, 4G is seen as the next step in offering speed and efficiency in delivering the kind of services we all expect for our mobile devices.

With the UK going pretty much fully digital by the end of this year, spectrum in the currently used 800MHz range is now becoming free, and along with a 2.6GHz band, will be auctioned off in Q4 of this year to networks to help facilitate 4G mobile services.

Ofcom amend original ideas about 4G:

Ofcom have amended their 4G spectrum coverage quota to include coverage to at least 98% of the UK population.

Could this finally mean that the UK eventually gets a 4G network that the globe can admire, while the UK currently languishes behind with pilot projects and can only look at areas such as the US and Asia with anticipation, Ofcom aim to bring 4G mobile to the masses some time soon.

Speaking about the decision an Ofcom spokesperson states:

“We are proposing a significant enhancement of mobile broadband, extending 4G coverage beyond levels of existing 2G coverage – helping to serve many areas of the UK that have traditionally been undeserved by network coverage.”

So how will Ofcom do this?

Ofcom want to be seen to promote two things;

Competition in the marketplace, and coverage for UK citizens who want access to high speed mobile internet.

Instead of forcing network operators to deliver the originally proposed 95% coverage to the UK population, which was the original guidelines for at least one of the networks who gained access to the 800MHz frequencies.

Idea number 1:

Ofcom will now possibly extend that requirement to a larger 98% UK coverage stipulation, this aims to make networks continue to build infrastructure in less economically viable areas which will benefit those who are living in such regions.

The extra coverage requirement comes on the back of a donation made by the UK government of £150 million to build extra infrastructure in these “hard to reach” or “economically less viable” areas, so Ofcom are hoping to make the networks add to this original percentage rather than take from this seemingly helpful situation.

Idea number 2:

This idea could be used in conjunction with the above proposals and would mean that one of the 800Mhz operators would have to provide 4G coverage that at least matched 2G coverage but also extended into the less viable areas.

Ofcom want current competitiveness to stay the same:

“The UK benefits from being one of the most competitive mobile phone markets in Europe. This means that consumers pay less for mobile communications services and have the choice to shop around for packages that suit them best. As the UK enters a new generation of mobile communications, Ofcom’s objective is to promote effective competition and to stimulate both investment and innovation.”

Ofcom believe that the UK need at least four network wholesalers of mobile services need to be in the UK marketplace to ensure that the price stays competitive in the marketplace.

Everything everywhere unhappy:

In the new proposals, Ofcom have also halted plans to reserve some of the sub 1GHz spectrum for Everything Everywhere, one of the three big wholesalers of mobile services in the UK.

Everything everywhere has said that they are unhappy that Ofcom have failed to realise the importance of the sub 1GHz spectrum which they say could be used to

“The importance of sub 1GHz spectrum, which delivers service and cost benefits, has been recognised by other regulators across Europe and supported by economic analysis. All of the regulators bar Ofcom have made vigorous efforts to support healthy and sustainable competition by ensuring that the imbalance of sub 1GHz holdings is redressed.”

Ofcom also stated that the are looking into reserving some of the spectrum from a fourth national wholesaler other than, Telefonica, Everything Everywhere, Vodafone.

A Three spokesperson said:

“Today’s proposals appear to be a pragmatic step towards bolstering the prospects of a competitive market for mobile data which would benefit all UK consumers.”

A Vodafone spokesperson said:

“We welcome Ofcom’s revised proposals, which bring the UK closer to a fair and open auction that will benefit the wider economy, increase competition and ultimately lead to the creation of innovative and exciting new services for consumers.”

An O2 spokesman said:

“It is good to see Ofcom’s latest publication, which details modifications in its terms for the forthcoming spectrum auction. This comes as a result of the first consultation process, which we took the opportunity to contribute to.”

4G will mean money for the Government:

The UK government is expected to make around £3-4 billion from the new eventual auction of the spectrum available late this year or early next year.

Ofcom is also no longer looking at reserving some of the 800Ghz spectrum to a 4th bidder in the most valuable of spectrum spaces on offer.

With Apple now having five Apple stores in NYC with the new arrival of the Grand Central Apple Store last month, it is rumoured that the Cupertino corp is going to be organising a new event that will perhaps see the arrival of a new device or more than likely be used to showcase technology related to iBooks, Apples venture into online publishing that it hopes will revolutionise the way people consume content. Or indeed be used as a platform to discuss a new advertising platform/technology that could be mobile related.

Not iPad 3 or AppleTV news update or launch:

According to AllthingsD the event will not be a stage for anything Apple TV related or iPad 3 release date related.

Eddy Cue, who just so happens to be Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services is involved, so it is anyone’s guess which part of the Apple corp will be getting news delivered to the masses.

West Coast home of product launches, East Coast the home of publishing:

Let us face it, it’s Hollywood and neighbouring silicon valley that has all eyes peeled when it comes to technology in the US.

But, New York delivers the news.

So it would seem very possible that New York could be the setting for news related to publishing as mentioned above.

What do you think this new event will be used to deliver?

It will be something of note that is for sure, though as usual Apple like to keep anticipation high and were seen to refuse all chance to set the record straight from various journalists who have asked for further news.

When a company is sliding down the pan, it is sometimes not that useful to have two people at the top making decision.

RIM have been under fire from many sides for having an unconventional leadership style of two CEO’s, and in a report in Canada’s Financial Post it would appear that Barbara Stymiest, who joined RIM’s board as an independent director in 2007, is thought to be the person who may be the duos replacement.

The new “Iron Lady” of RIM:

Could the current state of RIM be reminiscent of the position Britain was in back in the late 70’s when it “arguably” took a strong woman to steer a faltering country back from despair?

A committee including Ms Stymiest has been looking at the state of play of having an unconventional two man CEO lead the good ship RIM, and it would be pretty clear that if they find (which I Suspect they will in a round about way) that this was not effective, then it would seem like a pretty obvious step to make to discuss a replacement by Ms Stymiest who appears to understand the company fully.

Up until the end of 2011 the seven independent directors were staunchly supportive of the Balsillie and Lazaridis combo, but after a disastrous end to the year which saw share prices drop by as much as 75% there are obvious ruptions at board level and questions now need to be answered.

This is in spite of the gesture that both Lazaridis and Balsillie would reduce their take home salary to that of a token $1 a year as a result of the poor management of the company and the disastrous quarterly results and PR gaffs that has plagued RIM.

Would an ex-banker be the right person for the job at Research in Motion?

Many though would argue that Stymiest has no huge real world experience in the tech sector coming from a financial banking background and that this move could be disastrous if she was appointed, as RIM need to innovate much more than audit the company, and fears are that she could be the wrong person for the job.

According to the report, RIM will take 2012 by storm marketing wise now that Blackberry 10 will arrive:

During a conference call in December, RIM’s leaders said the company plans to go on an aggressive marketing blitz in the first half of 2012 to reinvigorate the BlackBerry brand.

What do you think the problem with RIM is let us know all in your comments below.

Here is a nice little human interest story for you all, just to prove to you that Mobile Inquirer was born out of a need for intriguing technology stories on the net and not just “news” updates, great as they are for traffic, and advice giving when possible, I am slightly tired of reporting on the negative problems that people are having with the Nexus S update in particular, so have decided to find some oddball news related to tech and mobile.

So here it is, courtesy of The Next Web:

Yes, it would appear that some innovative guys over in the US including PayPal founder Peter Thie, have seen an issue that faces people from foreign lands such as myself, who want to start up a tech business in the US, the problem:

Lack of availability of work permits and visa’s.

The solution: “Seasteading“

BlueSeed will build a ship designed for tech start ups, and moor it offshore (12 miles) in international waters, the ship can accommodate a load of technology loving guys and girls and let them work slavishly on their new projects before they get a real chance of being a part of US life proper.

The ship will be a short ferry ride away from gaining access as a visitor to Silicon valley minus the need for a Visa, so people can mix, mingle and network almost as if they were living in the same area.

Man, this is seriously Matrix style living if you ask me, now I do not doubt the potential benefits that networking in the silicon valley area can have for your new tech business, and I adore the novel approach to a loophole in the law to solve a problem that many face.

But, it just stinks of desperation to me, however I am sure it will actually be a hell of a lot of fun, in the same way as going to university is, and will force you to mingle with lots of new people, and potentially catch new and strange diseases.

And, I am sure that this incubator will work in a similarly “positive” way.

For that, I give it a thumbs up for innovation, and highlighting an area that perhaps needs addressing especially as the US is set to fall pretty sharply from its once mighty peaks over the next decade, perhaps the US government should be nurturing more tech start ups who have foreign beginnings more readily, instead of forcing them to live on ships offshore for a period before they can prove themselves worthy, the US may not be that appealing in the years to come you know!

After the pretty huge news this Friday that HP will be giving their webOS operating system out to the open source community.

Memo from Meg Whitman CEO of HP to employees on Friday:

Today, we announced that HP will contribute our webOS software to the open source community and support its development going forward. We believe that this is the best way to ensure the benefits of webOS are accessible to the largest possible ecosystem.

It appears that HP will however be returning to mobile device manufacturing, and eventually these will also be based on webOS.

The proof comes from an interview with Meg Whitman on the Verge and seems to show that HP plan to create further webOS based mobile devices in the near and distant future.

Contained within the interview are some clear statements suggesting that HP will return to device manufacture at some point in the future, though the initial return to mobile device manufacturing looks set to be with a tablet running on Windows 8 O/S for now.

HP will build a Windows based tablet for 2012:

Yes HP are planning to build a windows base tablet for release in 2012.

Whitman is quoted saying:

“We’ll continue to invest in the existing tablet ecosystem” and in the near term “will bet heavily with Windows.”

HP will make webOS mobile devices in the future

Asked if they will create new webOS devices also, Meg Whitman HP CEO states:

“The answer to that is yes but what I can’t tell you is whether that will be in 2012 or not,”

Offering no clear dates or times it would however appear that there is a desire or capability to return to device manufacture, something which looked unclear only recently, but it looks likely to be later rather than sooner.

Whitman went on to say:

“…we will use webOS in new hardware, but it’s just going to take us a little longer to reorganize the team in a quite different direction than we’ve been taking it in the past.”

Hewlett Packard more interested in Tablets for now:

According to dialogue on Techcruch, a new HP webOS based tablet device could appear as soon as 2013.

It is looking like HP will be sticking with the more PC related side of the business that they are known for, as opposed to smartphones, which they perhaps do not have the best reputation for or presence in peoples minds and thoughts when thinking about HP in general.

It would appear that HP are starting to get some drive, focus and commitment back within their ranks after a really tough 2011. And it also seems that Meg Whitman is the right person for the job after all.

We all know that mobile technology is white hot right now, but the figures that are being released on a monthly basis make for seriously interesting reading.

Smartphone ownership doubles:

Smartphone ownership in the UK is now at 37% which is nearly double the figure from the same period in 2010.

In July 2011, Ipsos MORI polled over 1,000 people over the age of 15 and asked them about their smartphone and tablet ownership and how they use these devices.

Some of the findings show that owners of iPhones and Blackberrys are generally under 35, and in the UK both manufacturers have around 13% of the market share.

16% of adults are now accessing the internet via a TV.

The iPad and tablet market is still relatively young in comparison, with just 6% of the adult population owning one, though 7% of males over 35 own one, perhaps showing that gadgets are still a “mans” thing by and large.

The way we access the internet is changing dramatically:

Over 1/3 of UK adults access the internet using their mobile devices, with people citing the desire to check their email as the main reason they go online and we assume this will hold true for PC and mobile.

We have already discussed the growth in Internet access from mobile devices and how this is killing the humble PC.

This trend can only continue, as we ditch our PC’s and start using our mobile devices to access the internet wherever we are.

I expect this data to have an upward trend in most areas.

Like a Phoenix from the flames, the fate of Hewlett Packard’s WebOS seems to have finally been sealed, and thanks to HP it will be an open source operating system rather than simply killing the O/S dead.

Many thought that HP would simply ditch the operating system, so this altruistic gesture comes as somewhat of a surprise, in a good way, to many tech observers and commentators.

In an interview on the Verge with Meg Whitman and Marc Andreessen they discuss the long term plans for WebOS though make no clear indication about job losses, but do mention that they intend to make the whole O/S open source, with Enyo included, which was free to developers anyway.

Do HP have a medium term 3/4 year plan for WebOS?

Meg Whitman is quoted here saying:

“Well first I want to set expectations about time frame. This is going to take some time. If you look back at the history of Mozilla or Red Hat — these things did not become giant platforms over night. This in my view is a 4 or 5 year timeframe, and I want to make sure we really communicate that.”

So we can see that it looks very likely that they will be putting some effort into this O/S, and with 600 people employed globally in HP’s WebOS division, these people will be hoping that they do not abandon it as was feared since the earlier notification that HP were ceasing production of their tablet and smartphones back in August.

WebOS’s future in the hands of developers and device manufacturers:

With HP now moving further into the software market, and ditching device manufacturing for now, the move to make the highly praised WebOS software open source will put the operating system in quite an interesting position, essentially sitting alongside Android, with hopes that it will be improved and added to over time.

WebOS was built for mobile:

Praising the WebOS software HP CEO Meg Whitman states:

“WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.”

And HP have have stated that they will personally work on the operating system and be an active partner in its development. They also claim that they will offer:

“good, transparent and inclusive governance to avoid fragmentation,”

Avoiding O/S fragmentation (which the Android O/S suffers from), is a desirable future for the well liked WebOS software.

The idea is that there will not be lots of different names and versions floating around every year, so the software stays capable and robust on all devices.

Indeed many software developers claim that WebOS is one hell of a platform so this could be a really interesting new beginning for the O/S.

We will keep you posted on further news on HP and WebOS as always.

In a massively bold move by Apple, they are going to be bringing their newest store to the big Apple right at the heart of it’s Grand Central Terminal.

A huge 23,000 square foot of space will be dedicated to the Apple store, with Apple rumoured to be earning more per square foot than their nearest rival Tiffany’s by a factor of 4 or 5, this will surely only help Apple line their insanely profitable coffers even more.

The owner of the electronics retail area in the terminal is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and they state that Apple will be paying $180 per square foot, just less than the top figure which they pay for their Manhattan train hub store at $200 per square foot.

Apple make use of Grand Central’s East balcony:

It was deemed by the MTA that obtaining rent for an under used area of the station would make total sense, and this contract will quadrupled the rent collected for the East balcony area at Grand Central Station, which is famed for it’s night sky ceiling.

Footfall to increase in general:

There will be pass on benefits to the other businesses who operate in the terminal, as footfall is expected to pass the current 750,000 daily figure that it currently delivers, such is the attraction of Apple stores.

Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant was the last tenant in that space and was paid a handsome $5 million to leave the position for Apple to sign their 10 year lease, Apple will then invest another $2.5 million to make the store look, well pretty much like all the rest, but we are sure there will be some key glass features and such like that will add a signature element to the homogenised nature of all Apple stores.

Apple will be “anchor” tenant:

Apple will serve as an anchor tenant in the station meaning that the store will be considered an attraction for people who are not even using the terminal for travel purposes, this will be seen to benefit the area for the tenants in general but in typical Apple ways they will not be tied into a revenue share model for the turnover the store creates unlike the other tenants in Grand Central Terminal, and why would you, if you could get away with it, when you earn more per square foot than any other retail space on the planet, and command silly amounts of people daily just to gawp at your products!

As of 4pm GMT you can now get hold of the obviously sex related .xxx domain name.

Yes it is likely that many of the large sites that offer pornography and some chancers hoping that there will be a gold rush will be snapping up the single word names that have the .xx appended to them.

Legal efforts try to stop the sale:

The move has not come without criticism and there are still legal issues with the sale and battles taking place to halt the new domain name.

The first pages went live this September in a pre trial restricted sale of the names, where some 100,000 were snapped up, so any hope of getting sex.xxx is pretty much scuppered.

Accusations of over charging:

The ICM registry who administrate domain name licenses along with ICANN have been criticised for being “anti-competitive” and creating a monopoly where they control prices and extort money out of certain groups.

They claim that the year long license for a.xxx domain name which stands at around $60 or £38 is around 5-10 times larger than the usual domain names like .net and .com

ICM Registry chief executive Stuart Lawley has said plenty of good things about the new move and sees the decision and open market on the .xxx domain names as the right thing to do for many reasons.

One of which is claimed that parental controls should be easier to apply once pornography sites choose the .xxx name though this is hardly a guarantee by any stretch, with 250 million pages already being classified with help from the .xxx domain name.

There does seem to be a case that the new domains are a little bit pricey when compared to others but in their defence, the ICM Registry have stated that economies of scale are present and where .com domains sell like hotcakes and in there millions every year, there will not be as many people or companies wanting the .xxx variety.

Mr Lawley states:

“There are economies of scale here, bear in mind that .com sells 100 million names a year,”.

Companies and individuals can remove their names from the .xxx name registry:

For companies or individuals who do not want to be seen with a “porno ending” there is an option to remove your name for a fee of between $150 to £300 depending on who you choose.

10 year wait:

There has been talks of obtaining a .xxx domain name for ten years now and so this recent opening up of the market looks set to create a new face to the world wide web and sell a fair few million domain names we have never seen as a result.

It will be interesting to see what merit Google will put into the domain name from an SEO perspective and how large and smaller online porn sites and companies go about getting their traffic in the future if these domain names do take hold.

Talking of the ensuing legal issues Mr Lawyer stated:

“We will contest them vigorously. There are some incumbents who would like to keep the status quo but how can a top-level domain name be anti-competitive?”

So there you go, at long last the .xxx world has opened up on the internet, so get yourself off to GoDaddy and find that perfect saucy domain to keep hold of and sell at extortionate prices to a porn mogul in years to come.

Good luck!

You know that a technology has hit a head when its source of fuel is offered for free!

Yes, Tesco the cut price supermarket who claim to offer great value at the tills are offering visitors the option to tap into their own network for free.

Clubcard users get full access:

In a move to encourage more people to sign up to the clubcard scheme, current members will be able to access the store Wi-Fi at Tesco Extra’s for free and also access their account to see how current rewards are shaping up via the online points and e-voucher scheme.

If you are not a clubcard member you will be able to access the wi-fi network for fifteen minutes once every 24 hours, so all shoppers should be able to access reviews and compare prices while they shop assuming they have access to an internet enabled device.

Easy registration:

Simply walk into the participating stores which are currently only the “Metro” variety and check your wi-fi connection for “Tesco Wi-Fi”, once you choose this option, you simply open your browser using your smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc, and the Tesco landing page will load, this will then ask you to register by entering your clubcard details and postcode.

If you are not registered you will be given 15 minutes for free every 24 hours though clubcard members will only have to go through this process once as the network is run by o2’s Wifi platform, meaning that you will easily be able to hop onto another stores connection after you have registered your device once with the network.

Tesco are obviously very excited about this new offer with Mike McNamara, CIO at Tesco stating that:

“People are increasingly using a variety of digital services and we’re excited by our customers’ reaction to the new service.”

Trial showed 82% would use again:

The trial has shown that a massive amount of people who used in-store internet access would do so again, with 82% saying that they found the ease of use and usefulness of a decent internet connection a real winner while shopping.

Most people used smartphones to access the free internet in the trail with 71% using this method, the runner up was tablet pc’s at 11% with some people even bringing a laptop to help them shop at a supermarket with 9%.

Obviously having free wi-fi in stores such as coffee shops and pubs is nothing new, but Tesco have really been quite daring with this option as people will no doubt be using their devices to access price comparison sites to check what they are buying is value, especially the bigger ticket items that cost over £10-50 pounds.

The way we shop looks set to be changing dramatically month by month!

On Friday, Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office reached the decision not to pursue claims that Daum (Korean internet search specialist) and Google, actively collected illegal data of smartphone users.

Yonhap News reports that the legal challenge did uncover that Google and Daum were collecting location data, but this was only the position of the user and not any further details about them.

This comes as news from the US shows that Carrier IQ could be reporting information back to companies who want to learn about a smartphone or device users specific actions including messaging and keystrokes.

Admob was the accused platform:

It was thought that Admob was the platform that could have been reporting user data back to Google. Earlier in the year the offices of Google were raided by Seoul police in order to secure hard drives and learn more about how the Admob platform was being used.

GPS coordinates OK but not personal information:

One prosecutor admitted that it would be tough to use a smartphones IP address as people moved around suggesting that it was OK to obtain location data through GPS but nothing more than this.

Deeper murky waters:

In news related to the relationship between Daum and Google, it has become apparent that Daum was also separately cleared of capturing data this Friday, after law enforcers also raided their offices in May.

Google also have other pressing issues with the Korean law agencies, as they are accused of blocking and banning search rivals from including third-party applications on Android handsets.

I have often said that the technology industry is the new Rock and Roll, and Uber-Geeks are tech lovers idols.

So it is with great delight that I hear of two Canadian jackasses proving me right with some downright disgraceful behaviour on a flight to China from the Motherland.

Yes, two respectful RIM executives, have got so blotto on an Air Canada flight that they had to be handcuffed to the seats in order for the staff to feel in control. I wonder if they were arguing over which whisky to sample, such are the difficulties of having two people of power as key decision makers at RIM, surely this is just issues with research in motions managerial style filtering down to lower levels?

Not how RIM bosses feel:

Not in RIM’s eyes. Research In Motion are said to be acutely embarrassed by George Campbell and Paul Alexander’s behaviour, and both have been banned from flying during a probation period and have also been suspended from the company while investigations take place into the unruly on-board conduct.

Fines of $72,000:

As the flight had to make an emergency landing prior to reaching Beijing, Corporal Sherrdean Turley said of the incident:

“They were far too intoxicated and were just being unruly. The flight crew was asking them to smarten up, but they weren’t listening to anything they were being told,”

As a result the flight deviated hugely from it’s natural course and as a result had to change flight crews for safety reasons at the cost of well over $70,000, I assume this tab is going to be picked up by the ejected, grog devouring RIM reps.

RIM spokeswoman Marissa Conway said:

“Based on the limited information available at this time, RIM has suspended the individuals involved pending further investigation,”

We shall wait and see what will happen to the two workers in question later, and update you if any further news is worth reporting.

The credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s has downgraded HP’s (Hewlett-Packard’s) overall credit rating last week.

The main reasons cited were a high turnover rate, an unclear strategy moving forward and poor overall policies.

We have already touched on HP’s misfortunes in an earlier article this week, as they promise to make a statement over the sale or non sale of the stricken mobile operating system “webOS” which they bought from Palm for $1.2 billion back in April 2010, and subsequently in August 2011 HP decided to ditch the mobile O/S and proceed to back out of manufacturing phones and PC’s to concentrate on software, so you can understand S&P’s current decision, however, the move only goes to compound HP’s problems further and here is why:

HP needs direction:

The downgrade means that HP’s long term debt rating for local and foreign debt is set at BBB+, a minor but considerable shift from the earlier figure of A. This will now make it more expensive and tougher for HP to borrow cash on the markets.

S&P also slashed their short-term rating to A-2 from A-1. S&P analyst Martha Toll Reed said in a statement:

”We have concerns that HP’s inconsistent growth strategies and high levels of board of director and senior management turnover have elevated the level of operational and execution risk in the near term,”

S&P also took into account the firms questionable takeover of “Autonomy” and said that this had reduced the companies overall liquidity and financial flexibility, and was a contributing factor to the downgrade.

Company CEO Meg Whitman today revealed in French newspaper Le Figaro that they are looking to make a full statement relating to the stricken mobile operating system in the next couple of weeks.

With HP stopping all production of their mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones and retailers selling them off at a discount, many are still unsure exactly why this occurred and what the future holds for what many thought was a technically decent mobile O/S.

HP still needs a change of direction:

After the departure of Leo Apotheker and Whitman coming in as replacement, the task at hand for the new CEO is quite simply to steady the ship and take HP into more profitable and lucrative long term waters.

Though in a statement recently he has admitted that the company still remains in a state of flux, and that HP was still figuring out what they stand for as an organisation and the best move(s) going forward.

600 people in limbo:

When asked in an interview what HP would do with webOS, Whitman replied:

We should announce our decision in the next two weeks. This is not an easy decision, because we have a team of 600 people which is in limbo. We need to have another operating system.

When Whitman does decide to make the statement, after many more meetings relating to the future of the mobile arm of HP. He does stress that whichever way it goes it will affect the lives of 600 people who are currently in limbo.

Apple to overtake HP in PC sales

As if bowing out of the mobile device market before they had really got going was not bad enough, it appears that sales of actual PC’s (if you class the iPad as a PC) would force HP into second place as Apple do a fine job of yet again making and breaking records.

Whitman stated that they do however need a new O/S in order to move forward effectively.

Meanwhile, Oracle could be interested in a sale of the webOS product and patents if HP were looking to sell.

The New York Times have revealed in a report that Rovio have turned down a stupidly large amount of cash for their company, madness or wise owls, birds…whatever?

With Rovio’s insane Angry Birds series making the company a cool fortune in the last two years or so.

The success of both Rovio and Zynga as software producers is largely down to their games social appeal, but in the case of Angry birds it was also perhaps a simple, fun and cutesy idea executed with aplomb, much like Tetris in its day….and well know cutesy makes a good film…etc etc!

With Zynga being extremely quiet about what went on, in what is being described as a pre-IPO “lip-sealed” period, no one at Rovio can confirm the story either, though the New York Times has suggested three sources that were “briefed on the situation” in an aim to add validity to the story.

Zynga fail to acquire other game companies:

It would appear that Zynga are not very good at acquiring other companies either after there failed attempt to get hold of PopCap Games who create Plants V’s Zombies and Bejewelled, in this case PopCap rejected a sum of $750 million, though in their case getting snapped up by EA for around $1 billion shortly after means that they made a very wise choice.

Rovio intend to go even bigger with the overall brand with ambitions on becoming a full on media company that will probably look to incorporate many more media entertainment conduits than just applications and games.

Zynga and Rovio a good match?

There may be many reasons not to join forces from Rovio’s point of view in relation to there core business models.

Where Rovio go cutesy and social, Zynga sway a little more into the “gangster” territory, with more adult based revenue models based on casino games and such like with the added area of “virtual currency”. There also appears to be a pretty tough “go get em” culture at the “darker” of the two companies. This may not have sat well with the Rovio board who see a perhaps slightly different future.

Well it has been a bit of a debacle since its inception many months ago, and now the strong opposition to the proposed takeover coupled with other factors are now likely to lead to the collapse of the proposed takeover.

US regulators oppose the anticompetitive nature of the takeover:

One of the main issues that presents corporate takeovers in the US is when they decide to takeover or merge with similar companies. In these cases the anti-trust legislators, and other Government bodies set up to ensure that monopolies and oligopolies are not stifling job growth, and reducing a marketplaces overall competitiveness at the detriment to consumers starts to make life tough, if they suspect the issues raised will be a factor should the desired outcome go ahead.

A number of key opposer’s to the takeover:

There is a couple of key bodies who oppose this move and they are affecting the takeover, they include the Department Of Justice (DOJ) and The Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The FCC is quoted saying:

Any such merger….“would result in a massive loss of U.S. jobs and investment”.

This is backed up by the fact that there would only be three main carriers left in the US, with a lack of competition in such a huge marketplace thought likely to lead to job losses.

Application removed for now with $4 billion charge:

With approval of the $39 billion takeover still in the balance, both companies still look to pursue the sale eventually, though both have decided to remove the application for now and look to a later date to resubmit this. It has to be said that this is not guaranteed until the FCC has approved the removal of the application, and even if it does get approved the DOJ could block the resubmission at a later date.

The actual decision to postpone events comes at a cost of $4 billion to AT&T who appear to have lost confidence that the deal woudl get approved and perhaps looked set to lose more money the longer the process went on.

Though both companies would go back to the FCC process if approval was granted from the DOJ

“AT&T Inc and Deutsche Telekom AG are continuing to pursue the sale of Deutsche Telekom’s U.S. wireless assets to AT&T”.

Chief Executive of AT&T Randall Stephenson was seen to be very optimist back in March when the deal was first muted, and taking this charge shows just how shaky the US recovery is right now, if the talk of job losses as a result of this merger was to be believed.

Some talk of AT&T selling its wireless spectrum before full collapse:

There is however some talk that AT&T may look to sell some of it’s existing wireless spectrum to MetroPCS Communications (PCS) and Leap Wireless (LEAP) to appease competitive issues .

The nine month long trial is starting this week and will run up until the summer of 2012 when the Olympics will be in town. The areas covered will be the most densely populated parts of the capital and will include: Canary Wharf, Soho, Westminster, South Bank and Kings Cross. This will take in 25 base stations and will put O2 firmly on the map as pioneers for the UK in terms of a 4G LTE network.

O2 UK chief Ronan Dunne said in a statement.

“Today’s launch of the UK’s first 4G London trial network demonstrates our commitment to delivering 4G to our customers at the earliest opportunity, the work we are doing now will lay the foundations for our commercial 4G network when it launches in the UK.”

But is this really 4G or a “just passed version”?

LTE was not considered part of the 4G criteria until December last year when the ITU said that LTE and WiMax and “other evolved 3G technologies providing a substantial level of improvement in performance and capabilities with respect to the initial third-generation systems now deployed”.

Basically they were saying that until 4G proper comes along you can now market this technology as 4G, even though it is more closely related to improved 3G.

LTE 4G a bit of a con?

Unlike LTE advanced which will offer around 100mbps and should be able to work “in motion” the o2 trial of LTE in London starting this week will only offer half those speeds and will still struggle “in motion”….this basically means that using the connection while walking or travelling in your car will be problematic in the main.

Those who are involved in the trail will be using mobile dongles from Samsung: model: B3730 which are supposed to support speeds up to a huge 100 Mbps. Portable hotspots and headsets will also be trialled, they will utilise the 2.6Ghz spectrum which is said to be capable of delivering speed of up to 150 Mbps.

Mobile Vidoecalls and HDTV to the masses?

With the pressure on data rates being pushed all the time, there are current limitations that occur for the average user when they are out and about. One of the main power hungry platforms is video. The move to improve the amount of data that can be transferred on a mobile connection will be welcome news to TV lovers and networks.

4 year delay caused by disagreements between networks including o2:

4G was suppose to be available in the UK in 2008, yes 4/5 years ago, and it still looks like the spectrum will not be put on the wholesale market for another year or more after these tests and other issues between mobile networks are resolved.

Who is involved in the trial?

The O2 trial will use technology from Nokia Siemens and also Cambridge Broadband Networks and NEC, with other smaller “trials” already taking place in the UK in Cornwall and Slough earlier this year it is not until the London trials really bring in some hard data that companies can finally see how the technology has worked on a mass scale in a dense urban environment where its ability to pass through buildings due to the particularly high bandwidth offered at this frequency will be of serious interest to businesses and consumers.

The trial will bring in the John Lewis department store, members of the institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and people visiting the o2 arena in London’s Docklands.

UK behind on 4G and costs business nearly £1 Billion a year

With the UK languishing behind the US, Australia and Germany with the 4g roll out, an Open Digital study has claimed that UK businesses are losing out on more than £730 million a year in productivity due to the slow introduction of 4G to the UK.

Yes there seems to be no abating the shaking and changing of the ground in the mobile landscape, and it seems now that head hunting is ripe between certain firms trying to glean more information and access more knowledge than there competitors.

The newest head to move rather than roll comes from Gavin Kim, the Samsung vice president of consumer and enterprise service, who is set to leave the company and defecting to Windows in a general manager roll of the “phone team”.

Gavin Kim was seen as an instrumental in the launch of the Galaxy S2 Android Phone and the Galaxy Tab.

Kim’s New Mission:

The challenge that Kim faces is to make the Windows Phone more attractive to developers and consumers, a pretty hefty challenge when so many options keep emerging from Windows and other companies in the mobile arena.

“I will be responsible to help set the future direction for the Windows Phone platform and to accelerate Microsoft’s trajectory to win the hearts and minds of consumers, carriers, device manufacturers, developers and partners,”

With the UK’s o2 stating that the Nokia Windows range is too expensive, we wonder how big the challenge of getting carriers on board will also be. Although the above matter is not entirely related to Windows, and could be seen as Nokia not wanting to lose face, could the new breed of phones bring a price point war in the market?

Of the departure, Samsung have said:

“Gavin Kim has departed Samsung Mobile and we look forward to working with him in the future. In his new capacity, he will continue to be part of the larger Samsung family through our partnership with Microsoft.”

With the new release of four new “Mango” based Windows Phones, we see Microsoft try to keep at the right side of value while Nokia are potentially pushing at the wrong end of expensive with their new Windows Phone range including the sexy looking Nokia 800.

So what will become of the new marriage between the two giants? And what will become of them individually as they forge ahead in a marketplace with little loyalty and one tarnished with litigation issues in every nook and cranny.

As anyone who has ever watched “the wire” will know, dumping your mobile phone and SIM costs pretty much nothing in order to replace.

But we are not talking dumping your mobile for the convenience of Baltimore drug dealers escaping the fuzz here, this is much less sinister and a whole lot stranger.

SIM Dumping the new buzzword:

SIM dumping is fairly odd in its make up, here is how it seems to work:

Quiet simply rival mobile virtual network operators (MVNQs) are buying up vast quantities of competitor SIM cards in order to stop the SIM getting activated and therefore earn the SIM company money.

But why do such a self inflicting injury to your bottom end?

Put simply, it appears that the micro economics of this particular part of the mobile industry (virtual network operators) means that buying and destroying your rivals’s SIM cards gives greater chance that your own will be used and more importantly earn you more money.

It appears that one CEO of a SIM company has claimed they were targeted via their distributors within weeks of setting up, the buyer wanted to buy a large order but alarm bells were sent, and the order was pulled.

New retailers are being limited in terms of how many SIM’s they can order in bulk in order to stop the practice causing a massive issue in this particular part of the mobile industry, proof of activation is also being asked for in order to increase further sales to unknown retailers.

If more news appears related to this area please let us know and I will make sure any news that comes my way will be relayed to you guys also.