Thursday, November 19, 2009
Google’s Chrome OS: “It Just Works”
Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this past July, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said of Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS, “Who knows what this thing is?” Today, he found out. The operating system, a direct challenge to Microsoft Windows, was on display at a media gathering at the company’s HQ this morning, and in the words of Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management, it is intended to make computing a “delightful” experience.
If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain the iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid?
It’s looking more and more likely that Apple is planning a fall refresh of its iMac line. Last week we heard rumors that some new all-in-one, dual-core desktops were already rolling off the assembly lines of Apple’s manufacturing partners. Now comes word of Federal Communications Commission filings that confirm the existence of the new wireless mouse and keyboard that might be paired with them.
Motorola is getting a bit of long lost love from Wall Street today, now that it has unveiled the CLIQ–the Android-powered handset with which it hopes to regain market share in the intensely competitive cellphone business. Shares in the company spiked more than seven percent after the CLIQ announcement Thursday, and today they’re up well over six percent. 
Motorola has finally announced its bet-the-company Android handset. At GigaOM’s Mobilize 09 event in San Francisco this morning, Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s co-CEO and CEO of the company’s handset division, uncrated the CLIQ, a device it describes unremarkably as the “first phone with social skills.”
With Palm’s shares up more than 900 percent since January, two things are clear: Palm’s Pre and webOS operating system are nothing short of a triumph and the run-up in Palm shares is most likely a wee bit overdone. In a research note issued Monday, Jesup and Lamont analyst Kevin Dede says as much, arguing that the company’s shares are overvalued, particularly in light of Pre returns.
Is Google’s Android OS a panacea for the decrepitude and irrelevance that are now the hallmark of Motorola’s handset division? The company is betting that it is. “People familiar with the matter” tell The Wall Street Journal that Verizon and T-Mobile USA both plan to offer Motorola handsets running the OS by the end of the year. 
In a summer of handset debuts that already includes the Palm Pre, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, and soon, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Tour 9630, add one more: The myTouch 3G, T-Mobile’s second Google Android phone. The carrier officially introduced the device today and said customers can begin reserving it on July 8.
Apple and Research in Motion may disagree on many things, but they’re of the same mind when it comes to the the netbook phenomenon: It will be short-lived. Asked about Apple’s interest in the category during a late-April earnings call, COO Tim Cook said the company has none. Turns out, Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie feels pretty much the same way.
As if the Zune weren’t embarrassing enough… Microsoft and Verizon are reportedly discussing a touchscreen multimedia cellphone that could launch on the carrier’s network in 2010. The project is codenamed “Pink” and will apparently involve some ungodly combination of Windows Mobile and Zune software.
Earlier this year, Apple COO Tim Cook said the company would use “whatever weapons we have at our disposal” to pursue anyone who “rips off” Apple’s iPhone intellectual property. He’d better hope those weapons are as effective a defense as offense because the company may soon need them. Elan Microelectronics has slapped Apple with a lawsuit claiming the MacBook, iPhone and iPod touch infringe upon touchscreen patents it holds.
