When Motorola announces its new Android handsets at a scheduled Sept. 10 event in San Francisco, AT&T isn’t likely to be among their carriers. Sources close to the company tell MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen that AT&T balked at Motorola’s Sawgrass and Heron handsets, allegedly because of their dated display technology.
Apple has repeatedly characterized its forthcoming Snow Leopard operating system as an under-the-hood upgrade to the Mac OS, one that focuses on performance enhancements rather than new features.
The week ending Aug. 21 began Aug. 17 with another round of digital musical chairs–BoomTown reported that David Dickman, VP of West Coast sales for Yahoo, will be leaving the company at the end of the month for Warner Bros. to work in digital sales. Also, after a five-month tour of Europe and its finer Web establishments, Yahoo seems poised to name a new international head.
“Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it.” So begins Apple’s response to the FCC’s inquiry into its rejection of the app and of its App Store approval process. Seems Google Voice was withheld from the App Store not because of any ill feeling toward Google or a nefarious request from AT&T, but because it too closely mimics the iPhone OS.
Microsoft is prepping a slimmed down version of the forthcoming Windows 7 operating system to work on so-called netbooks. Asustek is mulling a mini-laptop that runs on Google’s Android OS. Now, Nokia is looking with interest at the netbook market as well.
No wonder cellular carriers rejected Dell’s first smartphone offering for its “lack of differentiation.” Unveiled in China this morning, Dell’s “proof of concept” handset looks like the chimerical offspring of Apple’s iPhone and the Palm Pre, but lacks some of their more powerful features.
Microsoft best get Windows Mobile 7 to market, and soon, because its delay may be causing the company to lose traction in the enterprise market. In a note to clients Thursday, UBS Securities analyst Maynard Um noted that Apple’s iPhone is making some inroads in the enterprise space and that they’re coming at Microsoft’s expense.
Looking over Motorola’s latest earnings, it’s hard to imagine that the company once claimed more than a fifth of global handset sales. Reporting a surprise second-quarter profit of a single cent per share this morning, Motorola said it shipped 14.8 million phones last quarter–down nearly 50 percent year-over-year.
Microsoft has signed off on Windows 7. On Wednesday, the company released the final version of the operating system to manufacturers, a piece of software that it hopes will restore the engineering reputation that Vista so badly tarnished.
Microsoft might worry more about Google’s new Chrome OS if it knew what it was. At the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans today, CEO Steve Ballmer said he was mystified by the dual-OS strategy Google seems to have adopted with Chrome. “Who knows what that thing is,” he said.
When Windows 7 arrives at market in October, it will be ignored by more businesses than adopted. That’s the conclusion of a new survey conducted by Quest Software’s ScriptLogic unit, which polled 1,000 corporations on their plans for Microsoft’s forthcoming operating system. While 5.4 percent of respondents said they plan to deploy Windows 7 this calendar year and 34 percent by the end of 2010, 59.3 percent said they had no plans to deploy it at all.
After a bit of reflection, the Street is beginning to have its say about Google’s new Chrome operating system, and the consensus seems to be that while Chrome is obviously the company’s most direct assault on Windows to date, it’s not likely to be all that disruptive to the ubiquitous OS. “It’s not good news for Microsoft,” said FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal. “The real question right now is how bad can it be?”
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.
Nokia will not debut a new Android-based handset at its annual Nokia World conference in early September because the company has no new Android-based handset to debut. That’s the word from Nokia, which vehemently denied reports this morning that it is just months away from launching its first mobile phone based on Google’s mobile OS.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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