Tuesday, May 5, 2015
My Apple remote with biometric fingerprint concept
I was reading the news of Apple's new remote control and I remembered a concept drawing I did a while back. CrucialTec was the first to make a biometric remote control. We showed our device at CES 2013. Our timing was a bit off, we were to ahead of the curve. :)
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The e-book e-reader market, and a step up
Headline
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Date
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Description / Comments
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Kindle
Fire 2 And Next- Gen Kindle Revealed In FCC Documents; Amazon Hedging Its
Tablets Across Markets (LatinosPost)
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08-22-2012
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A look at Amazon's
filings with the FCC has revealed that the company could be launching an
Amazon Kindle sometime in the near future to go alongside its Kindle
Fire 2. NPD DisplaySearch analyst Peter Shim has even stated that there will
be multiple Kindle Fire 2 versions, some with a camera or without, the choice
between a 7-or-10-inch screen, and even 4G capabilities.
Amazon has around 5% of the tablet market. It has 60% of the e-reader
market. It sells the most e-books. I suspect this e-reader will be thinner
and likely priced under $100. There was talk that the “mirasol” display was being
licensed, who knows maybe we’ll see a color display for the Kindle, but one
thing is for sure, Amazon intends on keeping its lead in the e-reader market.
The kindle fire will most likely have a bigger screen, 4g capabilities and a
high resolution camera. It was having
some issues with its touchscreen capabilities, even after a software update
was said to have fixed it.
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Google Nexus 7 review(TechRadar)
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08-14-2012
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Google paired with Asus
to design and manufacture its slender tablet. Nexus 7 by Asus is more of an
effort to stomp out Amazon's unwelcome (and forked) version of Android
more than an attempt to dethrone Apple's reigning tablet champ.
Amazon was selling more apps than Google Play. Google doesn’t get a
dime from licensing its software; it gets its money from apps and selling
other content from Google Play.
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iPad Mini Is Coming: 10 Ways It Could Change the
Tablet Market(EWeek)
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08-16-2012
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According to other
reports, the iPad Mini will ship with a 7.85-inch screen and come in at a
much lower price than Apple’s larger slate. From a strategic perspective,
launching the iPad Mini could help Apple stave off any attempts by its
competitors to grab too much market share at the lower end of the tablet
market.
“Within the media tablet space
the market is fragmenting into two segments value products largely serving as
"consumption-type" portable media players, and higher-performance
units incorporating more complex applications and stronger processors. Much
of the growth in the future will come from the value segment”(HIS iSuppli
Market Research)
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A Solution to Barnes & Noble's International
Problem(Forbes)
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08-21-2012
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Microsoft‘s recent investment in Barnes & Noble might turn into an
acquisition. While the
retailer is not in danger of shuttering any time it faces some really tough
challenges: – Pressure on the bricks-and-mortar retail business – Fierce online competition from Amazon and others – The inherent difficulty in launching a digital content and device business (Nook) – Lack of an international foothold B&N has to sell a ton of Nooks in a lot of countries — and quickly — to start building its content business internationally. How does it do that? With a strong bricks-and-mortar retail partner, of course! And therein lies the rub in the UK, because the two largest booksellers in the country are already partnered up with Amazon and Kobo. |
Apple as Most Valuable U.S. Company
Ever Has Room for Growth(SFgate)
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08-22-2012
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Already the most
valuable U.S. company in history, has room to grow further as its stock
trades at a discount to the Nasdaq Composite Index and the company prepares
an upgrade to its best-selling iPhone.
Investors value Apple at
15.4 times trailing 12-month earnings, while the average company in the
2,495-member Nasdaq trades at 16.5 times, according to data compiled by
Bloomberg. The company rose to a record $665.15 on Aug. 20, giving it a
market value of $623.5 billion, the highest-ever for a U.S.- based company.
Apple has the resources to stop rivals with either lawsuits or new
segment products.
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Only About A Third Of Apps
Downloaded From App Store: Apptrace(MediaBistro)
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08-01-2012
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Apple chief Tim Cook
announced that the App Store has 650,000 apps and 30 billion app downloads.
But according to research from the German startup company Adeven, almost
400,000 apps in the App Store are not downloaded. This would mean that
only 250,000 of these apps in the App Store are accounting for the majority
of the 30 billion app downloads.
Apps deliver a richer experience around content consumption, thanks
to the ecosystem they support. The richer the ecosystem, the stronger the
pull for consumers. Maybe not, it seems that App stores may
only need the most used apps. This may be good news for Microsoft.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Samsung, Microsoft, and Future
Headline
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Date
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Description / Comments
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Samsung to Spend $4 Billion to Boost Texas Chip
Output(BusinessWeek)
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08-21-2012
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Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), the world’s
largest maker of memory chips, said it will invest about $4
billion in its Austin Texas factory to boost output of processors
increasingly used in smartphones and tablet computers.
Samsung is shifting away
from chips used to hold memory in personal computers and digital gadgets to
more complicated, yet lucrative processors acting as the brains of devices. Apple
accounts for 8.9 percent (AAPL) of Samsung’s revenue, making it the company’s
largest customer.
It seems so many companies are rushing to Austin. But the trend now
seems to be that foreign manufacturers are investing in high tech chip
manufacturing within the U.S.
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Samsung, Asus Gains Help Keep
Tablet Market Growing(TabletPCReview)
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08/-21-2012
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Tablet sales for Samsung
and Asus are coming on strong with good yearly growth. Samsung
sales rose 117.6% year-over-year to 2.4 million units, while Asus
jumped 115.5% to 855,000. Amazon entered the fray this year with 1.2 million
Kindle Fires sold for 5% market share.
The big losers? Pretty
much everyone else. Acer plunged 38.7% year-over-year, and the Other
category, which is pretty much all of the Android competitors, fell 16.4%.
The overall picture is that Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Google will
invest in this industry no matter the profits. They see this as a crucial segment
for their growth.
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Early Success of Windows-Based Tablets has
Everything to do with Price, Finds ABI Research Analysis (heraldonline)
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08-21-2012
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Windows-based tablets will commence shipments at the
end of October and capture an estimated 1.5% of total tablet shipments for 2012. Pricing for
Windows tablets will be a key consideration for end-user adoption. If priced
aggressively towards current Android tablets, Windows tablets could see 2013
shipments increase 10-fold year-over-year
Look to see a GREAT LOW
price for the windows surface tablet. Microsoft has been slow to manufacture
on the latest trends. It’s far behind and it needs to make up for this lost
time. It will most likely offer the surface tablet at a low price in hopes of
taking market share away from its rivals. This will position the company to
offer app developers an incentive to write code for its platform.
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Platform wars(TheEconomist)
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02-22-2012
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The ongoing platform wars
may have the same outcome similar to the one in the PC industry: Only
one thing seems certain: the PC's dominance in the computer industry is
coming to an end.
Or is it?
This could be the beginning of a new era. If Microsoft is able to offer a
modestly comparable tablet, then its software and clients are what will drive
their line. It was once said that PC’s were for business and Mac’s were for
hippies. Who can forget the commercials where the dressed down young
generation X guy would poke fun at the middle aged man dressed in corporate attire?
The PC never went away. It was used for business. Having a cool surface
tablet to use for work and play…hmm. Dangerous!
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Management the Microsoft way(TheEconomist)
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08-21-2012
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At the center of the
cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every
current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack
ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that
drove out untold numbers of employees.
“If you were on a team of 10
people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone
was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get
mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former
software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each
other rather than competing with other companies.”
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Turning the page(TheEconomist)
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05-05-2012
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LAST July Barnes &
Noble gave a presentation to the antitrust division of America's Department
of Justice. In slide after slide, the bookseller laid into Microsoft. The
software giant, it thundered, was guilty of “anti-competitive behavior.
Nine months later, the
bookworms and the geeks are the best of friends. On April 30th Barnes
& Noble said it was creating a subsidiary, called NewCo for now, into
which it would put Nook and its “college” business, which has 641 bookshops
on American campuses. Microsoft is putting up $300m for 17.6% of NewCo.
Microsoft knows that the age of consolidation is here. Everyone needs to pick sides or use counterweights
to stop their rivals.
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