Friday, July 31, 2009
FCC Chairman Hopes to Bring iPhone, Pre to East Nowheresville
The Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to determine whether exclusive handset deals are promoting or hindering innovation in the wireless market are moving ahead with a focus on rural areas. That’s the word from agency Chairman Julius Genachowski, who says he’s concerned not just with the competitive ramifications of carrier-exclusivity deals but with their tendency to limit customer access to top smartphones.
Apple’s voracious appetite for NAND flash RAM has proven a boon to Toshiba. Discussing Apple’s latest earnings on a conference call with analysts Tuesday, company COO Tim Cook revealed that Apple and Toshiba have inked a flash memory deal worth half a billion dollars.
Research in Motion best get to work refreshing its shopworn BlackBerry line, and fast, because growing competition from new rivals like the iPhone 3GS and Pre are cutting into its market share. According to retail checks conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley, the BlackBerry slowed as the summer kicked off and AT&T and Sprint began peddling new smartphone offerings from Apple and Palm.
So Google has finally copped to developing an operating system–Chrome OS, a software platform “created for people who spend most of their time on the Web, and…designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems.” It is an extraordinary market play. And an unsettling one. For it seeks to place Google, which already collects vast amounts of data about our Internet use, at the very center of our information experience. The privacy implications of that are, of course, horrendous. 
Earlier this year, Christine Varney, the new antitrust chief at the Department of Justice, said she planned to return the DOJ to a policy that led to landmark antitrust suits like the one against Microsoft in the ’90s. And she delivered on that promise in short order. Since her confirmation in late April, the DOJ has seen a sort of Trustbuster renaissance. It has begun inquiring into potentially anticompetitive recruiting practices in Silicon Valley. It’s opened an investigation into the Google Books settlement. And now it’s scrutinizing cellphone exclusivity deals, like the lucrative one between Apple and AT&T.
Looks like the fireworks have begun early in Mountain View. On Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice officially notified Google that it is investigating its book deal for violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The notification after the jump.
After four beta versions and nearly as many release candidates, Firefox 3.5 is finally here. This latest version of the browser offers a number of new features. Among them: Private browsing, location aware surfing, support for emerging HTML 5 standards such as plug-in-free video and audio playing, and better JavaScript performance.
Looks like Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster’s second estimate of Apple’s weekend iPhone sales underestimated demand just as badly as his first. Apple didn’t sell 500,000 units of the iPhone 3GS over the weekend, as Munster first predicted. Nor did the company sell 750,000 as he said in a research note this morning. It sold over one million. Moreover, downloads of Apple’s new iPhone 3.0 software, launched last Wednesday, have already reached six million.
Welcome news for folks who love the iPhone, but hate AT&T: The increasing prevalance of exclusivity agreements between wireless carriers and cellphone manufacturers, like the one between Apple and AT&T, is drawing some government scrutiny. Four U.S. senators are urging the Federal Communications Commission to review such deals with an eye toward determining whether they unfairly restrict consumer choice and hamper competition. 
Microsoft’s proposal to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe may put the company in compliance with European law, but it’s not going to lead to better competition in the browser market. That’s the word from Microsoft’s rivals at home and abroad who say the “must-carry” provision the European Commission has been mulling as a solution to the company’s antitrust indiscretions is the only one that will work.
What a brilliant move. The European Commission claims Microsoft’s practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows violates European competition laws, so the company strips IE out of European versions of Windows 7. Now the Commission can’t argue that Microsoft’s behavior distorts fair competition in the browser market because, well, there’s no browser.
