Mobile

Mobile Ad Spend Is Starting to Look Like Serious Money
April 18, 2013

Internet advertising experienced double-digit growth in 2012 for a record $37 billion in revenue, according to a report from the Internet Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coopers. The largest increase was in the second half of the year, where both the third and fourth quarters topped previous records.Interactive ad revenues for the third quarter totaled $9.24 billion.

Wireless: Fertile Ground for Wheeling and Dealing
April 18, 2013

Thanks to countless conversations with reporters, I have developed a crystal clear idea of why Dish Network and SoftBank want to acquire Sprint Nextel. It has less to do with wireless carrier ambitions, and much more to do with the future -- being leaders in a new space that's still largely under the radar. When wireless took off, it is was all about voice calls. Then the industry realized if it wanted to continue strong growth, it had to be about more.

PC Slump Chips Away at Intel's Q1
April 17, 2013

Intel released a quarterly earnings report Tuesday that fell slightly short of already low expectations, thanks to weak worldwide PC sales. The world's largest computer chip manufacturer reported first quarter revenue of $12.6 billion, a 2 percent drop from the same time a year ago. Net income was $2 billion, or about 40 cents per share, compared with $2.7 billion, or 53 cents per share a year earlier.

Safety, Privacy Issues Temper Google Glass Coolness
April 16, 2013

Google on Tuesday released the tech specifications for Google Glass, which will sport 720p resolution for the eyeware's video camera and 16 GB of onboard flash storage. The forthcoming availability of the Web-connected glasses, however, is also raising questions about health/safety and privacy. The glasses will include the ability to take 5 MP still camera images and have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity.

EA Spurns Social Game Wallflowers
April 16, 2013

Electronic Arts will shut down three of its less popular games on Facebook, citing waning interest in some of the company's social network offerings. Starting June 14, The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society will not be available to Facebook users. It was a difficult decision to kill the games, EA said, but user interest had plunged despite an initial positive response after the games launched.

Dish Stirs the Pot With $25B Sprint Bid
April 16, 2013

Dish Network set up a battle with SoftBank for ownership of Sprint after it bid $25.5 billion for the company on Monday. The bid consists of $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. That works out to a combined premium of 13 percent over what SoftBank is offering. The merger will create an industry-leading spectrum portfolio, Dish Network said.

Google Takes Another Step Toward Omniscience
April 16, 2013

Google has engaged the Behavio team in a "hiring exercise." The startup uses mobile sensors to collect data and predict behavior. Its technology recognizes data such as location, contacts, nearby destinations, recent phone activity, daily movement, and surrounding physical information. Data can be analyzed to let consumers know anything from whether their morning coffee stop is unusually crowded to which traffic routes are clear.

The Rebirth of PCs, or Telling IT to Frack Off Again
April 15, 2013

I've been watching the horrid numbers surrounding the PC market with double digit declines and folks increasingly talking about the "death of the PC," but I don't think the PC is dying any more than computing was dying when the PC was created. What we are seeing is a rapid evolution of the platform -- a shift to where the calculations are made back to a centralized resource, but the end result is at least as personal as we have always had.

The 6 Secrets of Highly Successful M-Commerce
April 15, 2013

If we take a page out of our not-so-distant past, we can see that on the web, both commerce applications and functionality have contributed to the demise or success of mobile apps. The success of business models, return on investment and viability of mobile initiatives all depend on how well m-commerce is managed and handled.

VCs Throw Foursquare a Hail Mary Pass
April 13, 2013

Foursquare, the poster child for check-in tech when the trend was hot, announced this week that it has raised $41 million in a new financing round. The funding was provided by private-equity firm Silver Lake and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures. What is striking about this transaction is that the funding was debt -- specifically convertible debt -- rather than equity.

LinkedIn's Mobile Strategy Gets a Pulse
April 12, 2013

LinkedIn on Thursday announced the $90 million acquisition of newsreader app Pulse, as the professional social networking site looks to add to its content and mobile strategies. Pulse, launched in 2010 by two Stanford University students, allows users to browse multiple media sources, including social networks, to choose the content they want to read.

Good Earth, Good Apps
April 12, 2013

When Leslie Sturgeon wanted to identify some brown spots on cucumber leaves in her greenhouse, she pulled out her phone and consulted the app she herself developed, iVeggieGarden. Before long, she'd identified the culprit -- angular leaf spot -- and could begin treating it. "We use it ourselves as a reference," said Sturgeon, owner of Moorit Software and Little Rest Farm in Brimfield, Mass.

Tripit Trips Up at the First Sign of Anything Tricky
April 12, 2013

Tripit is a frequent flier travel organizer. It claims to sculpt your mishmash of itineraries, dinner arrangements and meetings into a functioning, unified whole -- all accessible through your mobile device. The idea is that you email your airline, and other itineraries to it, and it then "does the rest." That's a big claim, and in my experience big claims in new technology concepts often don't deliver.

The Hidden Risks of Mobile CRM, Part 1
April 12, 2013

As mobile marketing evolves, so do its risks. The Federal Trade Commission last month released its updated "Dot Com" guidelines. An update long in coming -- the first since the report was released in 2000 -- the guidelines take special note of mobile. In short, they state that the same rules that apply to ads in newspapers, radio and television apply to mobile devices -- and social media too, for that matter.

Facebook Slices, Dices Consumers to Refine Ad Targeting
April 11, 2013

Facebook added another level of targeting to its advertising strategy Wednesday with the introduction of partner categories, a self-service feature that uses data collected from other channels to deliver ads on the social network. Partner categories will let advertisers target Facebook users based on browsing and purchase history, occupation, a wide range of specific interests, and location.

The Wild and Wonderful Future of Wireless
April 11, 2013

The wireless industry is in the middle of a transformation. That means there are many new opportunities going forward, but there are many new challenges as well. Which ideas, companies and sectors will win is the question. As a wireless and technology industry analyst, I have followed and worked with many companies as they changed the industry -- and change continues.

Google Gives Play a Spring Cleaning
April 10, 2013

Google has revamped its Google Play Android app with designs on making it easier to use and better for discovering content. The search giant is also thinning its app catalog by removing what it considers to be low quality offerings. In what has become the rage in digital design circles, text will take a back seat to images at the new Google Play.

New Mobile Marketplace Blends Apps, Ads and Analytics
April 10, 2013

Mobile app measurement provider Flurry on Tuesday opened its mobile Flurry Marketplace advertising platform, a real time bidding offering that will help publishers adjust their ad prices by backing inventory with analytics data. Advertisers will be able to use the data to target ads in smartphone and tablet apps by segments such as device, location or even interests.

Microsoft Leads Anti-Google Antitrust Chorus in EU
April 09, 2013

Google is the subject of another antitrust complaint in Europe, this time filed by FairSearch, a coalition of companies that allege the search giant is using its Android operating system to unfairly promote its own apps and data. One of the well-known FairSearch members is Microsoft, no stranger to past regulatory antitrust actions regarding its browser and operating systems.

Eggs in HTC's One Basket Showing Some Cracks
April 09, 2013

HTC announced earnings for the first quarter of 2013 that were decidedly not pretty. Its net profit dropped some 98 percent -- the lowest quarterly earnings for the company since its launch in 2006. HTC posted $1.4 billion in revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2013, a 37 percent drop year over year. Simply put, these numbers are dismal, said Andreas Scherer, managing partner of Salto Partners.