Google’s new mobile ambitions

A slew of new product announcements will put Apple under more pressure than ever. Matt Warman reports

Mobile phone manufacturers claim their handsets are designed to last four years – but consumers will be asked to change their phones faster than ever over the next few months as a host of new devices is released onto the market.

Last week, just days before the announcement of Steve Jobs’ death,Apple announced the iPhone 4S, an upgrade rather than a revolution for its world-leading model; two days later HTC announced its new device, focusing on audio performance. Google is soon to unveil its new flagship model, likely to be called the Nexus Prime, and major announcements are expected from the newly resurgent Motorola. The pace of change is dizzying.

One theme, however, emerges clearly: both Google and Microsoft want to respectively maintain and establish their positions alongside Apple as major smartphone powers. Google has numbers on its side, with more than half of all new phones sold now running the company’s Android operating system. But its problem now is to establish the operating system as a real rival to the ease of use the Apple iOS has pioneered.

Google’s next major mobile announcement will see it launch a new version of the Android operating system, codenamed “Ice Cream Sandwich”. This will be the first that, like Apple’s iOS, provides a unified experience across both tablet devices and mobile phones. The effect, the company hopes, will be to galvanise the app developers who make an OS feel vibrant. Thus far, it’s been Apple that has hogged their attention because iPhone and iPad users remain much more likely to download paid-for apps rather than free ones.

That means Google’s announcements are likely to focus on software rather than hardware. The Nexus Prime will be manufactured by Samsung - their current flagship is the S2, and according to some surveys more customers aspire to own an S2 than an iPhone. It’s a top handset because it’s very slim and light, but packs an excellent screen and adequate battery life: if Samsung keeps up those standards, it can credibly claim to rival Apple’s equally impressive but considerably heavier iPhone 4S.

So it’s likely to be software where Google will focus, but that doesn’t mean new features per se. The company has Google Wallet in some parts of America, where its phones can replace credit cards and be used to swipe on touchpads to pay for goods or services, and it has voice recognition already launched in many more countries than Apple’s new rival Siri service.

Consumers can expect bumps to features, but the major emphasis for Google needs to be on the ease of the user experience: Apple continues to feel slicker, and even more so thanks to the 4S’s new superfast processor. In fact, it’s the general sense of an intuitive interface that Google will seek to give: that doesn’t mean radical changes, it means a tightening up of all the little details. In essence, Google needs to learn how to make its software feel like it’s more than the sum of its parts. And if it can do that, the march of the Androids could yet take a real bite out of Apple.

Obama fundraiser took active interest in Solyndra loan, emails show

A top fundraiser for President Obama was far more involved in the $535-million loan guarantee to now-bankrupt solar equipment maker Solyndra than the administration had previously disclosed, according to newly released emails.
Steven Spinner, a former Energy Department official, was supposed to be recused from the decision to select Solyndra to participate in the agency's $25-billion program to back loans for renewable energy projects because his wife's law firm represented the company.

Emails released late Friday by the White House indicated that while he did not weigh in on granting Solyndra its loan guarantee, he may have done more than simply monitor the progress of government aid to the Fremont, Calif., company, which fired 1,100 employees and closed its doors at the end of August and filed for bankruptcy protection a week later, leaving taxpayers as a major creditor.

Solyndra has since become the target of FBI probes and congressional investigations.

The emails also stoked concerns voiced by critics of the loan program that the Obama administration gave out guarantees without adequate due diligence in its effort to create jobs in the renewable energy industry.

Spinner, a Silicon Valley investor who had raised at least $500,000 for Obama in 2008, joined the Energy Department in April 2009 as an advisor on the alternative energy loan programs authorized by the $787-billion stimulus program.

Administration officials said then that Spinner did not have any role in the selection of applicants for the loan program. The Energy Department said Spinner was specifically recused from "engaging in any discussions on decisions affecting specific loan applications" because his wife's law firm represented Solyndra.

The emails obtained from government officials late Friday showed that although Spinner avoided weighing in on the merits of granting a loan guarantee to Solyndra, he actively monitored the status of Solyndra's application.

He expressed frustration with the pace of the approval process and fielded questions from administration officials about whether the investor community was wary of Solyndra.

On June 15, 2009, he wrote to his boss, Matt Rogers, a senior advisor at the Energy Department who oversees stimulus spending: "here's the Solyndra checklist of all of the 60-70 items that need to be done for closing."

A flurry of emails from early August to early September 2009 portrayed Spinner as impatient to show that the stimulus act was producing jobs, especially at so-called clean technology firms such as Solyndra.

He was deeply involved in coordinating a "big event" to announce the approval of Solyndra's loan guarantee, which he envisioned involving "golden shovels, bulldozers, hardhats, etc," according to an Aug. 20, 2009, email.

In addition, the emails showed that he was in close contact with Solyndra executives to plan the event.

In late August 2009, Rogers wrote to Spinner in another email exchange: "Thanks for driving Solyndra."

Federal records show that Allison Spinner's firm, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, received $2.4 million in federal funds for legal fees related to the Solyndra loan guarantee.

Another Spinner email pointed out that his wife's law firm structured her pay so that she didn't earn anything from any work her company did on Solyndra.

The federal agency noted that the firm has said that Allison Spinner "had no role in any firm business involving Solyndra or any other client matters involving the Energy Department while Spinner was in office."

The Energy Department said that career ethics officers made sure that Steven Spinner did not overstep the constraints of his recusal from Solyndra.

Administration officials also noted that recusal from analyzing the merits of the Solyndra loan guarantee did not bar Spinner from working to publicize it or monitoring the decision-making process.

But U.S. Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who are leading the House investigation into the loan guarantee program, were critical.

"The paper trail released by the White House portrays a disturbingly close relationship between President Obama's West Wing inner circle, campaign donors and wealthy investors that spawned the Solyndra mess," they said in a joint statement.

The emails, obtained from government officials, also show former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's interest in the loan guarantee program.

In an Aug. 17, 2009, email, Aditya Kumar, an Emmanuel aide, said that Vice President Joe Biden'schief of staff, Ron Klain, had said that Obama wanted to attend the groundbreaking for the new Solyndra plant — or perhaps that Emmanuel wanted him to.

"Ron said this morning that the POTUS [President of the United States] definitely wants to do this (or Rahm wants the Potus to do this)?"

How Jobs Put Passion Into Products

In the early 1990s Compaq Computer was the technology darling of the day, and PC sales were surging. Dell was promoting its build-on-demand model, Gateway computer shipped its products in boxes with Holstein cow markings, and I.B.M. had introduced the ThinkPad with its Little Tramp marketing campaign. Apple’s Macintosh was introduced during the 1984 Super Bowl but was considered a marginal outlier with its quirky proprietary operating system.

About this time I had lunch with Bill Gates, who dismissed PCs as nothing but components held together by plastic and screws manufactured on low-cost assembly lines, a commodity business with narrow profit margins. The future belonged to software and semiconductor makers like Microsoft and Intel, where the real innovation was going on.

This made sense to me, and as the years unfolded, Mr. Gates seemed prescient. The PC makers were mostly reduced to commodity producers; I.B.M. sold off the ThinkPad, Hewlett-Packard bought Compaq and may now abandon the business; Gateway was sold off and the brand has all but vanished. Apple nearly went under. But today, the exception is so glaring as to have stood Mr. Gates’s prediction on its head: Apple’s operating profit margins have grown (to over 33 percent), and Apple’s market capitalization of $347.3 billion this week is bigger than that of Microsoft and Intel combined.

Of all Steve Jobs’s accomplishments, this, to me, remains both the simplest and the most astonishing. How did he take a commodity — to borrow from the novelist Tom Wolfe, the “veal gray” plastic boxes that once weighed so heavily on both our desks and spirits — and turn it into one of the most iconic and desirable objects on the planet?

“Steve Jobs and Apple never — ever — wanted to be a low-margin commodity producer,” Donald Norman, a former vice president for advanced technology at Apple and author of “Living With Complexity,” told me this week. “Even the Apple II had some charm to it. It was the first personal computer that had professional industrial designers. Before that they were designed strictly by engineers, and they were ugly. Steve was always, if not an artist, then someone who was charmed by style. He had this dream of something beautiful. If it was going to cost more, it didn’t matter. This was in his genes.”

Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, recalled buying a 1990 Macintosh Classic and taking it back to Italy. “When I got home, I took it out of that brown, padded carrying case with the rainbow-colored Apple logo on it and put it on my desk in Milan. It was like a little pug dog looking at me. It wasn’t just something I worked with; it kept me company. It had such personality and such life.”

My own conversion came much later. When I came across the MacBook Air, I thought it the single most elegant technology product I’d ever encountered, and not just because it looked good. Its light weight and paper-thin design made it easy to carry while offering all the functions and keyboard of a full-size PC. Even the packaging was so beautiful that I couldn’t bring myself to discard it. Now I refer to it as my third arm and can’t imagine life without it.

Mr. Jobs “had an exceptional eye for design, and not just an eye, but an intelligence for design,” Ms. Antonelli said. “We don’t talk just about the looks, but how objects communicate: The specific shape, how it feels in the hand, under the fingers, how you read it in the eye and the mind. This is what Steve cared passionately about.”

MoMA has 25 Apple products in its permanent design collection. And like many great artists, Mr. Jobs’s near-dictatorial control of Apple made possible the pursuit of perfection. “If you’re a visionary, and a dictator, you can take risks and be consistent,” Ms. Antonelli said. “NeXT was a risk and a beautiful failure. It brought him back to Apple. The dynamics of Apple and Steve’s personality and the course of history made for this perfect alignment of the stars.”

Also like many artists (Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind), Mr. Jobs was legendarily difficult at times. “He has always been focused, driven, demanding and, as a result, very difficult and abrasive,” Mr. Norman said. “This abrasiveness in the early days was too extreme and was destructive of the company. John Sculley had to fire him. When Steve came back, he had matured. He still had a demanding vision of perfection, but he brought focus. He was slightly less abrasive. He was brilliant at understanding what a product should be and he was a dictator.”

Shooting star shower to pass over Britain

Britain's skies could be lit up by an array of shooting stars on Saturday night as the Earth has a rare encounter with the tail of a comet.


As many as 750 meteors an hour are expected to streak across the sky from dusk until about 10pm, according to NASA experts.

Space scientists are worried that the shower, known as the Draconids, could damage satellites by frying their electronics and sending them out of control.

The light show comes as Earth passes through a cloud of dust left behind by a comet called Giacobini-Zinner, with previous storms occurring in 1933 and 1946.

There were also high rates of meteors seen in 1985, 1998 and 2005, but unlike the Perseids shower in Summer the Draconids are not an annual event.

In most years the Earth misses the stream of comet debris and nothing is seen at all.

Streaks left by meteors could appear in any part of the sky but their paths will trace back to the constellation of Draco, the Dragon, which gives them their name.

Many of the meteors may be lost in the glare of a waxing Moon that is approaching its Full phase, but Britain is well placed to view the shower if skies are clear, unlike America where it will still be daylight when it happens.

Robin Scagell, of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "The UK is perfectly placed to witness this rare spectacle. Stargazers will have their fingers crossed for clear skies so that we can see just what happens."

NASA experts mapped the cloud of dust left behind by the comet, which orbits the Sun once every six and a half years, and found that on Saturday night our planet will pass through a stream of debris dating back to 1900.

The predictions are thought to be sufficiently strong that scientists will fly aboard two Falcon 20 aircraft over Scandinavia to photograph the event.

Others from NASA and Japan have travelled to Germany and Uzbekistan for a ringside seat.

The shooting stars will burn up in Earth's atmosphere but astronomers will also be viewing the Moon, which has no atmosphere, through their telescopes to see flashes from Draconids hitting its surface.

Some fear the shower will threaten orbiting satellites and even the International Space Station as they orbit the Earth.

Though the meteor particles will only be the size of grains of sand, electric charges given off when they hit a spacecraft at high speed could short-circuit satellites' sensitive electronics and send them spinning out of control.

The Draconids' dust particles travel through space at around half the speed of other meteor streams and scientists are hopeful that this will make them less of a threat to their spacecraft.

With Pixar, Steve Jobs changed the film industry forever

There's never been a movie studio with an unbroken streak of hit movies like Pixar. From the original "Toy Story" to "Finding Nemo" to "Cars," "Ratatouille," and "Toy Story 3," the animation wizards at Pixar have won over the industry, forcing Hollywood to change how it makes films, and it's made billions in the process.

And it never would have happened without Steve Jobs.

Pixar began as a division of George Lucas' LucasFilm, working on the development of imaging technology and its own imaging computer. But inside, some were more interested in making animated films than expensive machines, and LucasFilm soon lost interest in the project.

And along came Jobs to save the day. Brandishing a $5 million check, the Apple founder--by then kicked out of his own company--bought Pixar on January 30, 1986, setting in motion a string of events that would generate some of the best-loved films of the late 20th century and result in Disney's 2006 acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion. Jobs' initial $5 million purchase price, plus the additional $5 million in capital he invested in his new baby made him Disney's largest shareholder and instantly one of the most powerful people in Hollywood.

Won over
To Price, Jobs was an "accidental visionary" in the film industry. Speaking to CNET by phone Thursday, the author said that though Jobs had at first bought Pixar mainly because he was enthralled by the outfit's computer technology, he was soon won over by the passion of John Lasseter, an animator who had flamed out in an initial stint at Disney in the 1980s, but who found a home at Pixar. Lasseter, Price said, "wanted to build an animation studio, and it's a great tribute to [Jobs'] genius that he was flexible enough to put aside his original idea of being a computer company owner with Pixar [and to] turn it into the incredible artistic powerhouse it is."

Still, it may well be that Jobs' general approach to completing projects, his insistence on waiting until something was good enough to be released, was what gave Lasseter and Catmull the confidence to put in the time and energy to make so many of Pixar's films as good as they are.

"Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend, and the guiding light of the Pixar family," said Lasseter and Catmull in a public statement upon news of Jobs' passing. "He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer-animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply 'make it great.' He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity, and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar's DNA."

Creating a new industry
In the 1990s, Pixar was "not the only [studio] working on [computer animation] for movies," said David Cohen, an editor at Variety. But "they were the ones that succeeded and showed everybody how to do it, both technologically and creatively, and the extent [to which] that changed the entertainment landscape is hard to overstate."

After all, Cohen explained, until "Toy Story" hit theaters in 1995, Disney had been pretty much the only maker of animated films in the United States. And based on the success of "Toy Story" and subsequent Pixar films, a whole animation industry was born in Hollywood. Today, Cohen pointed out, there's a Best Animated Feature Academy Award, meaning that there is at least one such film released a month on average. "That's a completely different world than before Pixar," Cohen said. "Would that have happened without Pixar? Well, somebody had to come along and show it could be successful."

Driving Pixar
Because Jobs had a creative team at Pixar led by Lasseter and Catmull, there was no need for him to try to drive that process. Over the years, Jobs was known to spend about a day a week at Pixar's Emeryville, Calif., headquarters, just across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco. But he most likely wasn't sitting in animation meetings, or working on scripts. "Steve's major impact was on the strategic direction of the company," Price said. "He had the crucial insight that Pixar could one day be the equal of the Walt Disney Company in animation. He made this vision a reality by overseeing the IPO of Pixar stock in 1995, a week after 'Toy Story' was released. He foresaw that if they had that capital, it would give them the independence to create a body of work and to become a brand that would become as powerful in entertainment as Disney. He was very explicit about this."

And obviously, he was able to pull off that vision. Over the years, Pixar's 12 feature films have generated about $7.2 billion worldwide, according to The-Numbers.com. And Jobs succeeded in selling the studio to Disney, a move that was celebrated within the ranks at Disney's animation house. Lasseter's and Catmull's arrival at Disney was "greeted with cheers," Price recalled. "People within Disney animation knew that the studio had fallen on terribly hard times, and that its films were not doing well. And they knew that they needed something and they rightly saw John Lasseter and Ed Catmull as their best hopes in bringing Disney animation back to life."

Yet even without the library of films and influence on the wider computer animation industry, Pixar's impact on Hollywood may still have been profound. That's due, said Cohen, to RenderMan, the computer rendering software that the company developed in 1987. Today, that software is not only used in-house at Pixar, but also at studios throughout Hollywood and the global film industry and the software alone "would have made Pixar a significant company to the movie business," Cohen said.

Still, what will always be Pixar's calling card is its long history of turning out top-quality films that make hundreds of millions of dollars--notwithstanding the mediocre reviews for 2011's "Cars 2." And the studio's ability to succeed again and again and again, when almost everyone in Hollywood falters most of the time, is likely due to the ethos that Jobs instilled there--and at Apple--that Pixar would take whatever time was necessary to get each film right.

"His experience with Pixar was representative of the same kind of acumen and vision that he showed at Apple," said Doug Seibold, president and publisher of Agate, which will soon release "I, Steve: Steve Jobs in his Own Words." "One of the things that comes up over and over again in 'I, Steve' is his belief that in order to really satisfy what people wanted, you had to look beyond what people were doing right now, and even beyond what people were telling you they wanted, in order to see the next thing."

That may manifest, Cohen explained, in Pixar's challenge to traditional Hollywood business rhythms. "The movie industry has to fill a [release] pipeline, and Steve Jobs and Pixar have not been willing to put something out just to fill a pipeline...and meet a release date," Cohen said. "They've always been willing to [wait until a film] was great. I think that's a huge challenge to Hollywood, because Hollywood doesn't run that way. James Cameron works that way [and] there's a handful of powerful auteurs that work that way, but for the most part, it's [usually] good enough, get it out the door, get it into theaters. There's a lot of settling, and [Jobs] didn't settle."

Yet, despite Pixar's tremendous success, that model may not have the lasting influence some might expect. That devotion to quality--without worrying so much about the bottom line, or tight schedules--is not compatible with most corporate structures, which is how Hollywood tends to operate. "It is very difficult for corporate environments...to adapt to the Pixar model," Cohen said, "because it's artist driven. The artists have control."

As such, Cohen lamented, "I wish I could say that all of Hollywood had looked at Steve Jobs, [at] his absolute conviction in his own vision, his passion for what he did...and determined [it would do the same]. I don't think that's remotely true."

Still, Jobs' reach in the world of film is vast, and will likely continue to grow, long after his death. His commitment to the development at Apple of devices like the iPad, as well as cloud services like iTunes and the increasing availability of streaming movies, will almost certainly be felt in consumers' living rooms and inside studios for years. "I think the influence that Steve Jobs had on Hollywood has not even been fully realized," Cohen argued. "I think we won't fully appreciate it for 10 or 15 years....He was a master of disruptive technologies. His innovations were feared as much as admired [in Hollywood], and for good reasons."

Nuance Communications snaps up Swype, eyes bigger mobile pie

Speech recognition and digital imaging software maker Nuance Communications Inc bought rival Swype Inc for $102.5 million to enhance its offerings for the red hot smartphone and tablet market. Nuance's acquisition comes on the heels of Apple Inc releasing its latest iPhone 4S featuring "Siri" voice recognition software. Siri uses Nuance's speech recognition technology. "Nuance is bulking up on the mobile front so that they can have a bigger presence on the next-generation handsets," FBR Capital Markets & Co analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters. "They can't just stand by and just stick to their core competency of being a voice recognition technology player on mobile." Android, the most popular mobile operating system, has its own voice recognition software -- Google Voice Actions. Microsoft also has its own speech recognition technology. Swype, founded by Cliff Kushler, makes a keyboard that allows users to input words on a touchscreen device by sliding a finger or a stylus from letter to letter. It is one of the most popular alternative keyboards for devices running on Google Inc's Android and Nokia OYJ's Symbian mobile-phone operating systems. Nuance already offers the FlexT9 keyboard -- which lets users speak, trace, write or tap in information using its Dragon dictation and T9 predictive text input technologies -- on Android. It is a crowded market, with Swype and FlexT9 going toe to toe with TouchType Ltd's SwiftKey X Keyboard, Dasur Ltd's SlideIT Keyboard, Beansoft's Thumb Keyboard and Dexilog LLC's Smart Keyboard Pro. "Right now the name of the game is patents. This is Nuance trying to own more patents," analyst Ives said. "Ultimately, the company is going to have a much more integrated software set that they can sell to OEM and handset providers." KUSHLER AGAIN This is the second time Nuance has bought a company founded by inventor and entrepreneur Cliff Kushler. In 2007, Nuance bought Tegic Communications -- a company co-founded by Cliff Kushler -- that created the T9 predictive input software used on mobile devices. The Swype deal marks Nuance's fourth acquisition this year. In August, Nuance bought Telecom Italia's speech technology unit Loquendo for about $74.66 million. Last year, Nuance bought ShapeWriter, an application similar to Swype, from an IBM Research spin-off. Nuance said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission that it has already paid $77.5 million to Swype shareholders and will pay the remaining amount 18 months after the deal closes, provided certain key executives do not terminate their employment with Nuance. Shares of the Burlington, Massachusetts-based company were trading flat at $21.75 on Friday morning on Nasdaq. Nuance shares have risen about a fifth this year on speculation that Apple may expand its licensing deal with the company

Samsung: Smartphones to drive growth

 Samsung Electronics said its quarterly profit should top the most bullish market forecasts, with smartphones becoming its main profit engine despite intense competition from bigger rival Apple.

Indeed, analysts expect Samsung to report record profit from handset sales in the third quarter and overtake Apple as the world's biggest smartphone vendor in unit terms.

The South Korean firm estimated its quarterly operating profit at 4.2 trillion won ($3.5 billion) versus a consensus forecast of 3.4 trillion won by analysts surveyed by Thomson ReutersI/B/E/S. That would be down 14 per cent from a year ago but up 12 percent from the preceding quarter.

The estimate released on Friday was higher than even the most bullish street view of 3.95 trillion won. Detailed earnings for July to September will be released later this month, Samsung said.

"Samsung's estimates are far better than expected," said Park Jong-min, a fund manager at ING Investment Management. "Its telecommunications business is seen very positive as shipments of smartphones and other high-end handsets expanded."

Investors are looking for signs the telecoms business can sustain strong growth for the year-end holiday season as its flagship Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets squares off against Apple's new iPhone, which goes on sale next week.

Stellar growth and strong profit margins from its telecom business mark a big transformation for a company, which has relied for years on its mainstay computer memory chips to boost profit. It had a negligible share of the smartphone market until early last year.

Samsung shares held steady on Friday, while the broader market rose 2.6 percent , an underperformance that analysts blamed on the prospects for a tougher fourth quarter owing to weak prices for memory chips and flat screens. However, Samsung shares had risen sharply in September as the wider market fell.

Earnings at the world's biggest technology firm with sales of $130 billion last year, are set to slide to 3.4 trillion won in the fourth quarter, consensus estimates show.

Profit from Samsung's telecoms division is widely expected to top earnings from the semiconductor business at the world's biggest memory chip maker.

Analysts say Samsung is one of the best placed companies to deliver something fresh and exciting to rival Apple, which has released a string of big-hit products in the past two decades.

It already makes the closest competing tablet by sales to Apple's iPad.

Samsung sold 19 million smartphones in the second quarter and shipments are expected by analysts to have risen to more than 28 million units in the third quarter compared to the 60 million units Samsung is targeting for 2011.

Samsung sold about 1 million fewer smartphones than Apple in the second quarter.

It plans to release its first smartphone based on the latest version of Microsoft's mobile operating system this month, while a 5.3-inch screen Galaxy Note, a hybrid of a smartphone and a tablet, is set to go on sale later this year.

Samsung leads a pack of companies selling phones on Google's Android operating system. "The Galaxy S II probably played a key role in boosting the company's earnings and it will continue to do so pretty much unchallenged, until Apple unveils a better new version of iPhone," said Kyung Woo-hyun, a fund manager at Daishin Asset Management.

Samsung, which worked out how to make black and white TVs in the 1970s by tearing apart Japanese models, has become a top global brand over the past decade.

It boasts a market value of $118 billion, much bigger than the combined value of Sony Corp , Nokia , Research In Motion , Toshiba and Panasonic Corp

Expectations for further momentum in Samsung's smartphone business grew after Apple's newest iPhone, unveiled this week, left investors and Apple's fans wishing for more than a souped-up version of its previous device introduced more than a year ago.

"I previously thought Apple's new iPhone would slow Samsung's handset earnings momentum, but there was no iPhone 5, and the iPhone 4S will not be a burden on Samsung in the fourth quarter," said Ahn Seong-ho, an analyst at Hanwha Securities.

But an intensifying legal battle with Apple over patents and designs threatens to dent growth of Samsung's handset and component business. Apple is also Samsung's biggest customer, buying mainly chips and displays.

"I am very surprised at the (profit) numbers. I am guessing either a particular lineup of products with higher margins sold well, or cost cutting measures were aggressively implemented," said James Song, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.

Some analysts expected one-off gains such as reduced provisioning costs relating to royalty payments to Microsoft

over smartphones and tablets using Android, or a cheaper won currency to boost profitability.

The South Korean won tumbled 9.4 per cent against the dollar in the third quarter, making Korean products cheaper to overseas consumers.

Chips and flat screens are underperforming as consumers delay buying TVs and computers in a slowing global economy. This has pushed down prices of key components.

Prices of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips used in PCs tumbled about 50 per cent in the third quarter and many analysts, including those at Citi and UBS, believe Samsung was the sole profitable DRAM maker in the third quarter.

Major global technology companies from Hynix Semiconductor to LG Display and Sony Corp are expected to report operating losses from their core businesses in July-September.

Ice Cream Sandwich Launch Delayed

Google and Samsung mysteriously pulled the plug Friday on the expected release of a new version of the Android operating system code named Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).

The new release of Android is highly anticipated because it is expected to tie the smartphone version of the operating system, known as Gingerbread, and the tablet flavor, called Honeycomb.

An event billed as "Samsung Mobile Unpacked" was scheduled by Google and Samsung for next Tuesday at the CTIA show in San Diego where ICS and a new Samsung phone running it were expected to be unveiled. However, the companies have canceled the event.

“Samsung and Google decide to postpone the new product announcement at CTIA Fall," the companies said in a statement. "We agree that it is just not the right time to announce a new product. New date and venue will be shortly announced."

While the companies didn't elaborate on their reasons for the cancellation, a number of events could have influenced it.

The companies may be concerned that the death this week of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs could cast a pall over the event.

They may have expected Apple to release a revolutionary iPhone 5 instead of the evolutionary iPhone 4S and want to reconsider their marketing strategy.

Some last minute hang-ups popped up with the operating system, phone or both and they just need more time to iron them out.

Even with the postponement, the companies still have plenty of time to fulfill Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt's promise that ICS will be released in the October/November time frame.

The companies' announcement coincides with release of a video purportedly showing the new Samsung ICS phone in action. The phone, referred to by some Android watchers as the Nexus Prime or Galaxy Nexus, doesn't have any physical or capacitive buttons. Instead, they've been replaced by on-screen icons. In addition, the appearance of widgets on the device is similar to their appearance in Honeycomb.

Although Google has kept its cards close to its vest about ICS, a number of things have been reported about it.

Widgets will be richer and resizable, as they are in the tablet version of Android.

More multitasking will be added to the system and the OS will be open source.

The system will be tailored to take advantage of devices that use the Texas Instrument's OMAP chip.

As with any Android upgrade, what Android devices will be eligible for the new system will remain with the manufacturers, but two good bets for the upgraded OS are the Samsung Nexus S and the Motorola Xoom.

HP Investigating Android TouchPad Mystery

When HP discontinued the TouchPad this summer and started selling the tablet at rock-bottom prices, a few customers got more than they bargained for. Some people who bought their $99 TouchPads apparently received a unit running not the webOS software they were expecting, but Google Android. Now HP appears to want to know where this mutant strain of Android TouchPads came from.

The existence of Android running on a TouchPad was a big deal. A whole mess of developers have been working hard to port the OS to the the tablet, with some success, since HP's decision has left webOS all but dead as a developer platform, and Android could be a path for the TouchPad to remain a useful device for years to come. Developers approached HP about the rogue tablets, claiming that Android's open-source license requires HP to release the source code for them.

In a response to a developer that was posted to an online forum, reported by DailyTech, the director of HP's open-source program office, Phil Robb, responded to the issue of the alleged Android TouchPads. He also says that HP has begun an internal investigation about them, and that HP never authorized the distribution (but, notably, not the creation) of any version of Android on the TouchPad.

According to an internal review, Robb says, all TouchPads shipped by HP were loaded with webOS and that none of were shipped with Android, even by mistake. It's not clear how Robb knows this, but the note says he suspects "some person or persons unknown" is responsible for sending out the Android TouchPads.

Robb goes on to tell the developer that HP isn't obligated to release any code since HP never authorized the distribution of any TouchPad running Android. He does say that HP "applauds" the efforts of developers to port Android to the device, but that the company (obviously) believes webOS provides a superior experience.

According videos posted online, the TouchPads running Android display the logo of the Qualcomm Innovation Center, a subsidiary of Qualcomm, which makes the processor that drives the tablet. Qualcomm hasn't confirmed any involvement. 

Oracle: Java 8 will be revolution, not evolution

JavaOne Mark Reinhold, chief architect for Java at Oracle, gave details on developments in Java 8 and beyond, and announced the release of JavaFX 2.0 during his turn on the keynote stage at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco.
Oracle cut back on its plans for Java 7 in order to get the new build released in July, adding three of the five key improvements it had planned: Project Coin, InvokeDynamic, Fork/Join framework, Project Jigsaw and Project Lambda. The latter two functions were cut from the JDK 7 release and will be bundled in version 8.

“Java 7 was an important release, but in the history of Java it was more evolutionary than revolutionary,” Reinhold told the crowd. “Java 8 will be more revolutionary.”

Project Jigsaw looks to make handling larger chunks of code more flexible, and will allow for sections of application or platform software to be used and reused in larger operations. Project Lambda will enable Java to work much more effectively with multicore processing systems – the most likely hardware used by Java going forward.
“Some would say adding Lambda expressions is just to keep up with the cool kids, and there’s some truth in that,” Reinhold said. “But the real reason is multicore processors; the best way to handle them is with Lambda.”
Other improvements in Java 8 will be JVM convergence, the addition of type annotations, a Date/Time API (JSR310) and support for sensors to widen the deployment options for the code.
Looking ahead to Java 9 and beyond, he explained, Oracle is already identifying key areas of development: a self-tuning JVM, improved native integration and big-data support, reification, adding tail calls and continuations, a new meta-object protocol to improve cross language support, multi-tenancy, resource management for cloud applications, and the building of heterogeneous compute models.
Oracle also announced the availability of JavaFX 2.0, and early access for the Java FX SceneBuilder. The whole package has CSS support deeply embedded, a FXML system for defining interfaces that will be popular with those with markup experience from web programming, richer graphics, and more-integrated web content.

iPhone 4S preorders start, unlocked GSM-only handset available in November

Apple's recently announced iPhone 4S is now available for pre-order on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. The device will be publicly available beginning next Friday, October 14. Apple will also offer an unlocked version in November starting at $649, though it will be limited to GSM carriers only.

iPhone 4S preorders began in the middle of the night for most US users, kicking off at 12:01am PT on Friday, and both Apple and AT&T servers were quickly hammered into oblivion for a few hours. It appears that the bulk of preorders were from AT&T iPhone 3G and 3GS users, as many iPhone 4 users report not qualifying for an early upgrade. We also heard several reports that Verizon and Sprint websites had no problem handling what was apparently lighter traffic.

Another factor that seems to favor previous AT&T iPhone users is that any unlimited data plans that are still in effect can still be transferred to a new iPhone 4S. New iPhone 4S users won't be able to get unlimited data plans from either AT&T or Verizon, although the newest US carrier, Sprint, is more than happy to oblige data-hungry users.

All iPhone 4S preorders come with a two-year contract on their respective carriers. However, as we mentioned earlier, Apple says it will offer an unsubsidized, unlocked iPhone 4S later in November. The unlocked iPhone 4S can be used internationally by getting a micro-SIM card from any GSM carrier and won't require signing up for any contract. Unfortunately, it will be limited to AT&T here in the US—it won't be compatible with Verizon or Sprint, according to Apple. The full retail price for an unlocked iPhone 4S starts at $649 for 16GB, so you'll pay a pretty penny for the ability to move between carriers (but only outside the US).

Texas Instruments, CORE launch education tech solution in India

STEMpower, which works on TI-NSpire technology, connects a teacher's computer in a classroom with handheld devices designed by the company for the use of students.

This will facilitate personalisation of teaching methodologies to fit classroom needs and promote student collaboration, besides instant assessment, CORE India President Anshul Sonak said.

The companies have implemented trials of the technology in nine schools across the country and are targeting private CBSE schools to drive STEMpower's growth.

STEMpower enables teachers to ensure that every student has an opportunity to explore, learn, apply and succeed by integrating real-world data, simulations, pictorial aids and multiple representations such as graphs, spreadsheets, equations and questions, Texas Instruments Education Technology President Melendy Lovett said.

According to CORE, the solution is cost-effective and would reduce schools' investment on a science and math labs, which approximately is around 10 lakh each, by 50 per cent.

"STEMpower is a portable solution... (with) few infrastructure needs and can be shared by many classrooms," Sonak said.

CORE will train teachers to effectively use the technology.

Lovett said, "At TI, it is our mission to ensure that every student has an opportunity.

Chip-maker Texas Instruments, in association with CORE Education and Technologies, launched its STEMpower education technology solution in India, which promises to facilitate a better, tailor-made learning experience for students in classrooms across the country.

STEMpower is touted as combining Texas Instruments' (TI) education technology solution with CORE's content, teacher education programme and support in one integrated solution that enables effective teaching and learning of math and science.

Wanted: 10,000 Social media experts

If you love spending time on Facebook or Twitter, you may soon land a plum job. Companies are planning to take on board social media specialists as they tap the platform to launch products, undertake consumer research and interact with customers.

Sanjay Verma, a 2010 commerce graduate, early this year landed a job at a leading BPO as executive (social media). He says his job is to create "excitement" on the Facebook page of his client, which is in the consumer electronics space. "I post updates on forthcoming product launches or the latest ones, monitor feedback from people and respond to them, and even try to look at ways to grow traffic to the page," says Verma, who is logged on to the client's Facebook page for nearly eight hours everyday. During his college days, Verma was an avid social networker and was always live through his mobile.

These days, he admits, he barely gets a few minutes a day to check his own Facebook page. But his is just the profile companies are eyeing. ITeS firm, 24/7 Customer, has hired over 1,000 social media experts in its facilities in Bangalore and Hyderabad over the past nine months and plans to take on another 5,000 specialists over the next one year.

Genpact this month acquired a media research firm, EmPower Research in the US, where 75% of the 360 employees are working in the social media space. Marketers like the UB Group, LG Electronics, Canon and Future Group too are forming dedicated social media teams and hiring aggressively.

"The rold of social media expert is set to become niche and specialised in India," says Ma Foi Randstad MD & CEO E Balaji. The trend is growing in consumer-oriented sectors like aviation, retail, telecom, consumer goods, banking and financial services, he says, adding, BPOs too are hiring experts to beef up their customer service function.

Nearly 10,000 jobs for social media specialists will be created in India by 2012, according to Ma Foi estimates . In the West, hiring of social media specialists has matured over the past two to three years. America's largest airline, Southwest Airlines has a chief Twitter officer who tracks Twitter comments and monitors a Facebook group.

Computer maker Dell made headlines last December when it launched the Social Media Listening Command Center in the US where it monitors more than 22,000 Dell-related topic posts in social media sites. The Centre has a dedicated team of more than 5,000 social media specialists who track the company, engage with consumers and even undertake customer service.

And now, Dell plans to expand such centres. In India, the demand is hotting up. While a few specialised social media marketing firms have come up over the past few years, corporates have started to hire such specialists to beef up their internal strengths.

Liquor major UB Group, whose Kingfisher page in Facebook has the second largest global following in the beer segment, has poached digital media experts from Yahoo India and other Indian websites to form a dedicated social media team.

The group is investing around 2% of its marketing budget on social media, which will be increased to 5% next year, says senior VP (marketing ) Samar Singh Shekhawat. "We want to become the largest liquor brand in social media and are now using such websites for consumer research.

For instance, before launching Heineken in India, we got 500 responses for a consumer study within two hours," he says. Imaging company Canon is using social media to work out camera launches and even decide product colours.

"The average customer age for gadgets is 20-25 years and a lot of transactions are happening online. So, it makes sense to create a separate team for social media," says Canon India senior vice president Alok Bharadwaj. ITeS companies too are planning to offer social media services to clients. Social media services is expected to grow at 50-80 % next year, which will lead to similar growth in hiring, says Genpact's senior vice president (analytics & research) Pankaj Kulshreshtha . "With the explosion of activity in social media, companies are increasingly feeling the need to globally track social media conversations so as to understand consumer preferences and perceptions towards their products and services.

Social media is one of the fastest growing research domains and will create jobs," says Kulshreshtha. One need not be a techie to join the social media teams of these companies. For instance, 24/7 Customer is looking out for young graduates with a flair for customer service, English-speaking skills and an analytical mind to understand the context of customer queries.

B-schools like the IIMs and ISB are warming up to the market demand by drafting courses on social media. ISB Hyderabad, for instance, has partnered with web product company Directi to roll out an elective, while NIIT Imperia has started an advanced programme in social media marketing.

Google ranked world’s No.1 employer

Internet search giant Google has been ranked as the best company to work for by management and engineering graduates in two separate surveys, which term the company the world's "most attractive employer" of 2011.

According to the survey conducted by global employer branding firm Universum, Google has been ranked at the top of its 2011 list of the top 50 global businesses and engineering companies to work for -- the third year in a row.

The search giant has been dubbed the most attractive employer by more than 160,000 people from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, the UK and US looking for the right place to work.

"For the last three years, we have been seeing Google leading the pack and it will take a strong player with a clear talent strategy to steal this number one spot," Universum Head (Research and Consulting) Lovisa Ohnell said.

The search giant is followed by auditor KPMG, where most B-Schools students want to work, while engineering graduates picked tech giant IBM as their second choice.

For engineering students, software giant Microsoft is the third choice, followed by car-maker BMW (fourth), chip-maker Intel (fifth), electronics company Sony (sixth), tech firm Apple (seventh), GE (eighth), Siemens (ninth) and consumer goods group Procter & Gamble (10th).

The other technology firms that were favoured by engineers are HP, Cisco, Oracle, Nokia, Dell, and Lenovo.

"The software industry is highly dependent on its human capital, hence the efforts to attract and retain the brightest minds in the world," Universum Global Account Director Carlo Duraturo said.

"There's a new working culture paradigm today -- the relaxed and creative office -- and part of it we owe to this industry. Generation Y feels very comfortable working in this new environment and it's clearly reflected in the attractiveness of the software industry," Duraturo added.

Meanwhile, in the list of top 50 employers for business students, KPMG is followed by rivals PwC, Ernst & Young and Deloitte at third, fourth and fifth spot, respectively.

In addition, B-Schools students seeking the best employer ranked Microsoft sixth in the list, followed by Procter & Gamble (seventh), financial services entity JP Morgan (eighth), Apple (ninth) and financial services major Goldman Sachs (10th).

Among the other notable names in the list, soft drink major Coca-Cola figured at 12th position in the list, while Citi occupied 29th place and beverages firm PepsiCo bagged 30th place in the list for business students.

In post-Jobs era, its over to 'Armani of Apple'

His name may lack the broad brand recognition of Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs, but his touch on Apple's popular line of products is unmistakable.
Jonathan I ve, Apple's head of industrial design, has played a key role in Apple's success, dreaming up the distinct look and feel of the phones, computers and other gadgets that have become consumer must-haves.
With Apple's executive team now rallying around newly-appointed Chief Executive Tim Cook in the wake of Jobs' death on Wednesday, it will be up to Ive and his studio of designers to carry on the artistic legacy that has proven so vital to Apple.
"Jony brings the form factor" for Apple products expected by consumers, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis. "That's critical. It's their look."
"The key thing is you don't want to lose him. You want to keep the team together," said Gillis.
A native of Britain, the 44-year-old Ive is said to be soft-spoken and private, with a knack for blending the aesthetically beautiful with the functional.
"He just has a wonderful eye of making things that are simple and elegant. But he also understands that it has to be usable by people," said Don Norman, the co-founder of usability consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group.
Norman, who served as Apple's Vice President of Advanced Technology in the mid 1990s, recalled working with Ive at Apple on efforts to make it easier for PC users to open the machines and swap out computer memory.
Among the iconic Apple products on Ive's resume are the translucent, colorful iMac computers that marked the beginning of Apple's revival after Jobs returned to the company in 1997, the iPod music player and the iPhone.
Apple declined to make Ive available for comment.
Dubbed the "Armani of Apple" in a 2002 BBC profile, Ive lives in San Francisco, drives a Bentley and opts for a casual work attire that typically includes a dark T-shirt and sneakers.
"He's quiet but insightful. He's not this big booming personality," said one industrial design expert who has worked with Ive in the past.
At the heart of Ive's aesthetic is an obsession with materials. Ive once traveled to Japan to meet with a master Samurai swordmaker and to observe first-hand the painstaking process of creating the beautifully polished, razor sharp and extremely durable steel blades.
In awarding Ive its product design award in 2007, the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum cited his "sculptural, desirable objects."
Much of that high-tech oeuvre is the result of a close partnership with Jobs, who, like Ive, was famously obsessive about details and design.
The industrial design team that Ive leads works out of a large, open studio on Apple's campus inCupertino, California, with music blaring through giant sound system and access strictly limited to a small portion of Apple's employees, according to a 2006 profile of Ive in Business Week.
"They prototype a lot, to the level which is ten times what anybody else does," said the industrial design expert who has previously worked with Ive and wished to remain anonymous.
"They are there to break the rules and then propose ideas," he added. "They were kind of the muse for Jobs."
As Apple enters its new era, it will be up to Ive and his team to find new ways to inspire.