AllThingsD » Conferences

Nancy Lublin on Tackling That Toughest of Emerging Markets: Teenagers (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 22 May 2013 22:15:56 +0000

When it comes to reaching teenagers, you have to speak their language.

And these days that also means communicating on the platforms they use. An email is likely to gather virtual dust, while a text message on the other hand will probably get read.

A text can be incredibly powerful, too. Nancy Lublin heads DoSomething.org, a non-profit group that has used text messages to educate on everything from financial planning to pregnancy.

On the latter front, the group had a text message program that sent teens a text message every time their “child” was crying — starting at 6:30 am.

“If you can’t take care of a pretend baby on your phone, you might want to keep your zipper closed,” Lublin said during her appearance at D: Dive Into Mobile.

After being inspired by a teen who texted in that she was being abused by her father, DoSomething is in the process of launching a crisis hotline over text messaging.

While much of her work has been on the educational front, marketers could learn a thing or two from how Lublin and her team have been able to reach the youth market. Here’s the complete video of her interview with AllThingsD’s Ina Fried.

[ See post to watch video ]

Ushahidi's Juliana Rotich: The Greater Global Lesson Is Local "Context Intelligence" (Video)

Liz Gannes — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:00:57 +0000

After emerging from an ad-hoc group of technologists and bloggers around Kenya’s contentious and violent 2008 elections, the nonprofit organization Ushahidi now provides open-source tools for crowdsourced mapping that are used around the world. And that includes for Kenya’s largely peaceful 2013 election.

Ushahidi is a small organization that has had a global impact, with more than 44,000 public crowd maps created so far around environmental monitoring, corruption, election and crises. Contributors come from over 159 countries, and the platform is available in more than 33 languages.

Juliana Rotich is co-founder and executive director of Ushahidi, and she says that perhaps the most important lesson to learn from her experience at home in Nairobi and abroad is the notion of “context intelligence.”

We’re reposting the full video from Rotich’s D: Dive Into Mobile session today.

What does Rotich mean by “context intelligence”? Essentially, it is using a deeper understanding of and appreciation for different market needs and local culture to build relevant products.

For instance, the mobile advertising company InMobi pulled out of Kenya last year. Rotich said the problem was that smartphone penetration in Kenya wasn’t yet at the level to support a traditional mobile advertising business.

But a less traditional approach is actually working much better, Rotich said at Dive Into Mobile. She told the story of a company called FlashCast, which displays advertisements on local buses using a simple GPS chip that target particular locations. So what’s the mobile play? People riding the buses can earn FlashCast points by texting a number shown on the ad.

That’s not to say that global brands aren’t effective in Kenya, or in Africa more broadly; Rotich pointed to the strength of WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter at finding real markets and monetization in Africa.

She also said she sees lots of mobile technology opportunities ready for the taking, especially around payments and open APIs from mobile carriers. Watch the full interview for details on which local technology efforts she thinks are most promising.

Rotich also previewed the BRCK, “the backup generator for the Internet,” which is Ushahidi’s first hardware device. That project is now on Kickstarter, where it has raised $105,000 of its $125,000 goal.

[ See post to watch video ]

Talking Mobile With Two of Facebook's Key Chat Heads (Full Dive Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:00:27 +0000

Facebook Home has come under attack both for not doing enough and for taking over too much of an Android phone.

But the folks behind Facebook’s mobile project say that, like many engineering efforts at the company, the goal was to get out a product that did a set of features, and then tweak things from there.

Speaking at the recent D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer and Cory Ondrejka talked about how Home came to be, and also hinted that the software could soon span areas beyond the home screen and messaging, with photos and dialing among the areas of interest.

Facebook also used the appearance to announce the arrival of the Chat Heads feature for the iPhone.

In the wake of the challenges that Facebook Home has faced, it’s worth taking another look at where Facebook’s top executives say they plan to take the product from here.

[ See post to watch video ]

Bill Gates on Steve Jobs on "60 Minutes"

Kara Swisher — Mon, 13 May 2013 07:57:51 +0000

This week, CBS news program “60 Minutes” had an interview with Microsoft co-founder and now major philanthropist Bill Gates, called “Bill Gates 2.0.”

It also included some discussion of his longtime relationship with the late Apple legend Steve Jobs.

Here’s the interview in full, in which he talks mostly about eradicating diseases like polio by improving vaccine delivery and his other efforts to alleviate suffering worldwide.

And here’s a special report by “60 Minutes,” in which CBS’s Charlie Rose talks about the Gates-Jobs part, which includes parts of the joint interview the pair did at our fifth D: All Things Digital conference in 2007:

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum Hates Advertising and the Tech Rumor Mill (Full Dive Video)

Liz Gannes — Fri, 10 May 2013 16:31:39 +0000

It’s safe to say that WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum does not crave the spotlight. But he does have a lot to say.

Koum’s mobile messaging app now has more than 200 million active monthly users around the world — a larger audience than Twitter’s last public number.

But WhatsApp has largely resisted the public eye, ignoring most press requests and conference invites, and operating with a relatively tiny team of 40 people out of an unmarked office in Mountain View, Calif.

That’s not to say there aren’t questions about WhatsApp’s long-term viability. Can it make enough money to survive? Will carriers try to destroy it? Since its service is so simple, won’t fickle users switch to the oh-so-many free alternatives? Why hasn’t it expanded beyond basic messaging to become a platform?

So we were very interested to have Koum join us last month at D: Dive Into Mobile to answer those questions and explain a bit about how WhatsApp got to where it is today.

In a half-hour onstage interview, Koum addressed his antipathy toward advertising, his disinterest in selling WhatsApp to an acquirer and his dislike of people publishing rumors about that possibility, the business of selling 99-cent apps, WhatsApp’s relationships with carriers, the strategy of building native apps and many more topics. We’re republishing the full video below.

For instance, Koum said, after 10 years working at Yahoo, he developed a deep distrust of how ads corrupt the relationship between a company and its users. “The user experience would always lose, because you always had to provide a service to the advertiser.” That’s even more acute on mobile. “Cellphones are so personal and private to you that putting an advertisement there is not a good experience,” he said.

[ See post to watch video ]

Eric Schmidt on the Future of Android, Motorola, Cars and Humanity (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:00:50 +0000

Eric Schmidt is a man with a lot to say.

He just penned a 300-page book covering, you know, the future of technology and humanity. Speaking at last month’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Schmidt talked about those issues and more.

After beginning with reflections on his recent trips to North Korea and Myanmar, Schmidt also talked about the first crop of Motorola products due in the coming months, the impact of driverless cars, and where Android is headed.

“Our goal with Android is to reach everyone,” Schmidt told Liz Gannes and Ina Fried. “We’ll cross one billion Android devices in six to nine months. In a year or two, we’ll hit two billion.”

As for those Motorola products, Schmidt didn’t give away too much, saying only that they represent “phones-plus,” and that they are both “phenomenal” and “very, very impressive.”

We’ll hope to get a lot more specific when Motorola head Dennis Woodside takes his turn in the red chair at our upcoming D11 conference.

[ See post to watch video ]

More D11 Speakers: Meet the Managers of Bieber (Braun), Gaga (Carter) and Madonna (Oseary)

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:00:09 +0000

Last week we added Apple CEO Tim Cook and SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk to the speaker roster at our 11th D: All Things Digital conference, which takes place in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on May 28, 29 and 30.

Along with those important tech leaders, we also have onstage Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside, Pinterest CEO and co-founder Ben Silbermann, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, new Google Android chief Sundar Pichai, Sony’s Kaz Hirai, the San Francisco 49ers’ Jed York and more.

And because we want to ratchet up the interviews to 11, we are now announcing a trio of top entertainment managers, who have also been investing in tech in a big way: Troy Carter, Chairman and CEO of the Atom Factory; Guy Oseary, partner of A-Grade Inc.; and Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects. Respectively, the three manage Lady Gaga, Madonna and Justin Bieber.

In a recent Billboard piece about the three, it noted: “Billboard Boxscore calculates their 2012 touring revenue at $582 million combined, and the trio’s combined album sales stand at 83.5 million units and digital singles at 89.1 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.”

That’s a big deal, but perhaps more potential could eventually come from their other activities.

Braun, who has engineered Bieber’s enormous social media presence online (close to 39 million followers on Twitter), has also spent a lot of time perusing the investing scene. Among his investments: Stamped (sold to Yahoo), Spotify, Uber and Pinterest. He also represents perhaps the most viral of entertainers this year: Psy, the infectious Korean pop star, whose video and music hit “Gangnam Style” now has 1.6 billion views on YouTube. It’s not a surprise that Universal Music Group has recently appointed Braun entrepreneur in residence.

Oseary has had a similarly varied career, from managing Madonna to co-founding Maverick Records to the most recent creation of an investment fund with actor Ashton Kutcher and businessman Ron Burkle, called A-Grade. That group has invested in a number of interesting startups, including Airbnb, Path, Fab.com and Tinychat. Oseary has put his own money in a number of other ventures, too, and has been outspoken on the changing nature of the entertainment business.

Carter is certainly no slouch. In addition to engineering Gaga’s massive online presence, via the Little Monsters fan site on Backplane, a social networking platform, he has also invested in a range of companies, from Rap Genius to Warby Parker to Pop Chips to Summly (the news reader that just sold to Yahoo). Atom’s motto on its site is perhaps both appropriate and also refreshing from a music industry player: “Discover. Develop. Disrupt.”

Carter was so good onstage at D: Dive Into Mobile that we invited him to big D immediately and asked that he up the game by bringing along his two colleagues. It should make for an very disruptive session.

Until then, here’s our recent interview with Carter to prep you:

[ See post to watch video ]

Windows Phone Boss Terry Myerson on Microsoft's Challenges, Android's Messiness (Video)

Ina Fried — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:00:16 +0000

Windows Phone head Terry Myerson is happy to talk about the limitations of his rivals.

From Microsoft’s way of thinking, the iPhone is too closed, and Android is too open.

Or, as Myerson puts it, Android “is still kind of a mess.” So why then is Windows Phone still struggling to expand beyond the single digits in market share?

Myerson did his best to address that, and more, while in the hot seat at D: Dive Into Mobile. He also foreshadowed more aggressive ads that take direct aim at rivals, as well as the need for Microsoft to better compete on price.

As for whether Microsoft needs its own phone, Myerson didn’t explicitly rule it out, but suggested that — for now, at least — Redmond is happy with the work being done by Nokia, HTC and others.

Here’s the full video of his chat with AllThingsD’s Ina Fried:

[ See post to watch video ]

Ushahidi Raising Kickstarter Funding for Rugged Hotspot BRCK

Liz Gannes — Sun, 05 May 2013 23:08:18 +0000

Ushahidi, the non-profit tech company best known for disaster mapping, is branching out into hardware.

The Nairobi-based organization just launched a Kickstarter campaign today for the BRCK, described as “a backup generator for the Internet.”

Ushahidi Executive Director Juliana Rotich had dropped the news of the device at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference a couple weeks ago.

You can think of BRCK as sort of a hardier MiFi device. It’s built to automatically adapt to the changing availability of power and wireless signal by switching between AC power and an eight-hour battery, as well as Ethernet, Wi-Fi and mobile (via a SIM card). According to Ushahidi, the BRCK will support up to 20 devices within a generous signal area, with on-device software to help with collecting and managing data.

The impetus for the device came from frustration with Ushahidi’s own office connectivity, said Director of Software Philip Walton. “We envisioned the BRCK being plugged into our office network sitting silently until some aspect of our connectivity failed and then seamlessly failing over to its own connectivity and power ensuring that our resources stay productive.” Their concept grew to include connectivity for people working in the field and sensors and robots associated with “Internet of Things” devices.

Still, people who are working at offices in Kenya or in the field in a disaster zone may not compose a large part of the Kickstarter demographic. To compensate for that mismatch, Ushahidi is offering all sorts of schwag for backers, with the device itself associated with Kickstarter donations of $150 or more and the overall campaign trying to hit a goal of $125,000 to start manufacturing.

And people may think of other uses for the BRCK. As Rotich told us at D: Dive Into Mobile, Ushahidi likes to say, “If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere.”

When People Live Their Lives Online, the Concept of Sharing Changes, Says Snapchat's Evan Spiegel (Video)

Liz Gannes — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:00:55 +0000

In yesterday’s world, we went about our offline lives and selected pictures of moments we wanted to share that projected how we wanted other people to perceive us — the pretty sunsets, the contorted angles to make us look skinny, the smiling family posed for a group portrait.

In tomorrow’s world, we’ll already be living online all the time, so the notion of “sharing” may change. And you can already see that future on Snapchat, the mobile app where millions of young people send disappearing images, taken in the moment and then deleted within 10 seconds of being viewed.

“We think it captures a broader use case,” said Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel, contrasting Snapchat with Facebook and Instagram in an interview at D: Dive Into Mobile. “It’s less about ‘I’m cool, I look really good,’ and it’s a lot more about communicating where you are, what you’re doing, how you feel. It’s more about chatting and messaging than putting yourself on display.”

Wait, what? Is he arguing that this weird niche-y notion of impermanent photos is actually a bigger opportunity than regular photos? He is. Broadly speaking: Communicating with photos is potentially a bigger market than scrapbooking.

Spiegel pointed to daily upload numbers that show that Snapchat is already bigger than Instagram, at least by one metric: Users upload 150 million Snaps per day, versus 40 million daily photos on Instagram.

Said Spiegel, “I think there’s definitely a place for permanence; we’re not anti-permanence by any means. We just believe ephemeral should be the default.”

Here’s the full video of the interview with Spiegel, in which he also discusses norms for teenagers in social media, potential Snapchat business models (a.k.a. ads) and the virtues of running a startup from Los Angeles:

[ See post to watch video ]

To Infinity and Beyond: Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla Motors Added as Second-Night Speaker at D11

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — Thu, 02 May 2013 22:39:15 +0000

Earlier this week, we posted on the addition of Apple CEO Tim Cook as our opening night speaker at the 11th D: All Things Digital conference.

Now we are thrilled to announce that Elon Musk will take to the stage on our second night. For those who have not been paying a lot of attention, Musk is the founder of both electric-car maker Tesla Motors and SpaceX, a private space-exploration pioneer.

The South African-born entrepreneur is someone well known for shooting for the moon in his huge ambitions, and he also doesn’t mind getting into it to defend his efforts (his epic PR brawl with the New York Times over the cold-weather performance of the new Tesla Model S electric car was riveting).

At SpaceX, in addition to being CEO, he is listed as the chief designer, “overseeing development of rockets and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and ultimately to other planets.” At Tesla, he is CEO and chief product architect. Musk is also the largest investor and chairman of SolarCity, a major provider of solar power systems.

Previously, Musk was one of the co-founders of PayPal, which was sold to eBay in 2002; he also co-founded Internet media software provider Zip2.

In other words, the visionary Musk has been a very busy man, so there’s a lot to talk about regarding innovation, pushing forward change, and a whole lot more.

Along with Cook, Musk will join a long list of stellar speakers slated to appear onstage at D11 from May 28 to May 30, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility’s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Jeff Immelt of GE, new Android chief Sundar Pichai, Sony’s Kaz Hirai, ABC’s Anne Sweeney, and more.

And we still have a few more speakers to announce, so stay tuned.

(D11 takes place May 28 to May 30 in Palo Verdes, Calif., and is sold out, although we will provide coverage and videos here throughout the conference.)

Google's Jason Spero and Millennial's Mollie Spilman Talk Dollars at Dive Into Mobile (Video)

Ina Fried — Thu, 02 May 2013 12:00:15 +0000

There’s no question that people are spending more time staring at their phones. However, there are still lots of questions about how to turn those eyeballs into dollars.

Not surprisingly, those in the mobile ad business are quite bullish. At our recent D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Google’s Jason Spero and Millennial Media’s Mollie Spilman made the case for why the small screen is a real and present opportunity.

Here’s the full video:

[ See post to watch video ]

What Do We Need? Cheap Smartphones. When Do We Need Them? Now, Says Movile's Bloisi. (Video)

Liz Gannes — Wed, 01 May 2013 16:58:33 +0000

Movile founder and CEO Fabricio Bloisi Rocha has some insights into the Latin American mobile market for y’all.

“We can’t have the same approach that we have developed in services in California and sending them to the whole world — because the realities in countries like Brazil or Argentina are completely different,” he said in an interview at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference in New York City two weeks ago. We’re publishing the full video now.

In a mobile-first economy, the importance of 1) getting people phones, and 2) getting them online can’t be understated, said Bloisi.

But in Brazil an iPhone costs $1,300. “The point is the price,” said Bloisi.

In a society where the smartphone is many people’s first experience with banking, email, the Web and Facebook, said Bloisi, “as soon as we have a price reduction, I think you’ll see very fast growth in user adoption — and impact in society bigger than you see here.”

Some things are driving down prices in Brazil: Local production of phones, and finally some government changes to tax structures around electronics. Also, Android.

The other aspects of the mobile experience that can’t be forgotten are connectivity and payments, Bloisi said. With Movile’s help, users have created an index of 200 million Wi-Fi networks in the world, 20 million of them open. When possible, Movile tries to automatically offload data transfer onto Wi-Fi, and its mobile video apps cache content to ensure users don’t have to stream on the go. And for payments, Movile is integrated into carrier billing across Latin America.

Now it is taking those relationships in new directions — for instance, with the acquisition of a food delivery company similar to GrubHub. Bloisi said that in just a few months, 37 percent of food orders already come from phones and tablets — despite the fact that penetration of such devices is much smaller than that.

So what does the emerging-market phone of the future look like? Actually, it will be pretty similar to Facebook Home, said Bloisi. He argued that a cheap Android phone shaped around brands and services will be very compelling.

“Facebook opened a trend,” Bloisi said. “We will probably see 50 to 100 new launchers for other brands — like Movile.”

[ See post to watch video ]

Apple's Tim Cook Returns to D Stage to Open 11th Annual Conference

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 21:36:08 +0000

Although we are only about a month out from our 11th D: All Things Digital conference, we still have a few big speakers to announce, not the least of which is Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook, who made his debut at D10 last year in his first major interview as the new leader of the iconic and powerful tech giant, will be kicking off the proceedings with an interview with us on the opening night of the conference.

There’s lots to talk about, from the explosive growth of the mobile market to intense competition from a range of rivals, most especially Google’s Android, as well as innovative offerings from Korea’s Samsung. It will also be interesting to talk about the changes at Apple under the leadership of Cook, who took over from the late co-founder and industry legend Steve Jobs, as well inquiring about what new products are in the pipeline and how the company is faring in an increasingly high-pressure market.

Cook joins a long list of stellar speakers slated to appear onstage at D11 from May 28 to 30, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Motorola Mobility’s Dennis Woodside, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, Jeff Immelt of GE, new Android chief Sundar Pichai, Sony’s Kaz Hirai, ABC’s Anne Sweeney and more.

But we are not quite done yet, so stay tuned for announcements of out final speakers. And, while we never reveal them before the event, our D11 demos are among our best ever. (Special note: D11 has been sold out for months, but we provide coverage and videos from it throughout the conference.)

Until we get them all in person, here’s the full Cook interview from D10 to peruse:

[ See post to watch video ]

Bin Lin Shows Dive Into Mobile the Power of Android in China (Video)

Ina Fried — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:30:24 +0000

Even many people who follow mobile technology haven’t heard of Xiaomi, but the company literally can’t make enough of its phones.

Xiaomi sells out its supply in minutes each time it makes them available on its website.

At D: Dive Into Mobile, Xiaomi co-founder Bin Lin talked about the company, its sell-at-cost strategy and how it hopes to make money on services.

Lin, who previously worked for Microsoft and Google, also talked about the challenges that non-Chinese companies face in that market.

Here’s the full video of his interview with AllThingsD’s Ina Fried:

[ See post to watch video ]

Maps Are for Mobile What Search Is for the Web, Says Waze CEO Noam Bardin (Video)

Liz Gannes — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:00:36 +0000

Of course the CEO of a mobile mapping company is going to say maps are super important. But Waze CEO Noam Bardin has an interesting way of putting it.

“What search is for the Web, maps are for mobile,” Bardin said at our D: Dive Into Mobile conference last week.

The latitude and longitude of a location, he argued, are the equivalent of the URL for a Web page.

Doing maps well is quite hard, as demonstrated by Apple’s troubled iOS mapping app launch last year. People really, really don’t like it when their maps are wrong — and rightly so.

Bardin argued that crowdsourcing is the cheapest and most effective way to keep maps up to date, as well as provide real-time navigation. Waze’s 44 million users, who both actively and passively contribute to its maps, are its biggest weapon versus market leader Google and its infinite wallet.

Bardin also mapped out an interesting theory of “meta operating systems” for mobile phones. Where Apple and Samsung want to build fully integrated platforms, other players like Google, Facebook and Waze are building apps that reach across all sorts of different phones.

But then, where Google is building nearly every sort of app, and Facebook is increasingly extending its tentacles with Facebook Home, Waze is still just a mapping app.

So, what about those acquisition rumors? Is Waze preparing itself to be a strategic asset of some larger company? You’ll want to watch the video to see Bardin’s answer, where he’s unusually willing to not rule out a sale.

Also in the interview, Bardin discussed advertising on Waze, relations with Google and Apple, and recent legal threats to using phones in cars:

[ See post to watch video ]

Troy Carter Loves Stars Crossing Media (Video)

Liz Gannes — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:46:40 +0000

Atom Factory CEO Troy Carter manages artists — most famously, Lady Gaga — and invests in tech founders like those at Uber, Fab, Spotify and Summly.

“My portfolio is schizophrenic,” said Carter, “but the common denominator is dynamic founders.” At that moment, he was talking tech, but he may as well have been talking music — where he also manages John Legend and new sensation Lindsey Stirling, who plays violin over dubstep.

At D: Dive Into Mobile, Carter described the evolution of the music industry as a continuing power shift from labels to artists to fans.

Now artists find relationships with their fans across different mediums, be it on Twitter or YouTube or by touring the world.

Carter agreed that everything is going mobile — though it’s not there yet. Lady Gaga’s next album will be released in the form of a free app with in-app music downloads, as well as on iTunes and CD.

“The physical CD will take a while to go away,” Carter said — but not really that long. “The whole experience will be mobile within three to five years,” he said.

Carter described a balance between artists using larger social media services and creating their own online spaces for diehards to connect (which is what his other company, Backplane, does).

“The likes are cheap, and it doesn’t really mean it’s a real relationship,” Carter said. “The way we’re looking at it is how do we own that relationship … [But] they’re complementary. You don’t live on an island.”

Here’s video of the full interview:

[ See post to watch video ]

Kara and Walt Talk Mobile, Gates-Jobs Interview and How They Met -- Blame AOL -- On "Charlie Rose" Show (Video)

Kara Swisher — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:24:18 +0000

Last week, while in New York for our D: Dive Into Mobile conference, Walt Mossberg and I went on the “Charlie Rose” show to talk about the fast-growing mobile arena and where it is headed next.

But Rose also asked about our memorable joint interview with Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs in 2007 at D5 and we told him what happened between the two icons in the greenroom before their onstage appearance. He also asked Walt and me how we met, which I did not realize was being recorded — after all, who would care but us! — although it turned out to be a pretty good story (and a great partnership, too).

Here is a link to the video on the “Charlie Rose” site and it is also embedded below:

[ See post to watch video ]

Firefox CEO Kovacs Makes Case for Firefox OS at Dive Into Mobile (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:05:32 +0000

Gary Kovacs may be stepping down as chief executive of Mozilla at the end of the year, but he’s still got big hopes when it comes to the future of the mobile Web and Firefox OS.

Here’s what the outgoing CEO had to say at D: Dive Into Mobile, in an interview with Walt Mossberg and me.

You’ll want to watch just to see his response to Walt’s blunt, “Firefox OS: What the f**k?” question.

Kovacs also confirmed the first Firefox OS phones will start arriving in five countries in June, with 11 more slated before the end of the year (though not the U.S., which is slated to get its first taste of Firefox OS in 2014).

In the meantime, if you want to see the latest Firefox OS build in action, check out this post from Lauren Goode.

We’ll be posting the rest of the full video interviews from D: Dive Into Mobile in the coming days, so check back to see what you missed or relive the highlights of what you saw in New York.

[ See post to watch video ]

Google Glass, Workday and "WTF, Firefox OS?" -- 10 Things You Need to See on AllThingsD This Week

Eric Johnson — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 19:00:05 +0000

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

It’s been a long, hectic week for news — so it’s understandable if you’ve missed a couple stories on the technology side of things. Here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

In an essay in AllThingsD Voices, Jan Chipchase writes that Google Glass is the company’s “unintentional public service announcement on the future of privacy … it threatens surreptitious, unexpected or continuous recording from the perspective of the human-eye/ear view.”
At D: Dive Into Mobile, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum announced that his messaging app is now bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users.
Also announced at our mobile conference were Facebook’s updates to its iPhone and iPad apps to incorporate the “Chat Heads” from Facebook Home. As of Wednesday, those changes have started rolling out to users.
In an interview with Arik Hesseldahl, Workday co-CEO and Greylock Partner Aneel Bhusri said, “it’s the most disruptive time in 25 years” for enterprise, and that landing HP as a customer at Workday “gives people more comfort that the cloud is real.”
Peter Zatko, a computer hacking expert better known as Mudge, is leaving his post at DARPA, where he was tasked with helping government agencies fend off cyber attacks. Mudge’s next stop? Google.
If the netbook wasn’t dead already, it will be soon. New data from research house IHS iSuppli say shipments of the mini-computers will fall to zero by 2015.
Maybe you’ve heard of this small company called Microsoft? Windows Phone head Terry Myerson is casting his division as an underdog and going on the offensive against Google: “[there is] clearly mutiny in the Starship Android,” he said.
Facebook would love to put its new Home overlay on Apple’s iPhone and iPad. Apple almost certainly doesn’t want it there. In this interview, Kara Swisher asked Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer and mobile head Cory Ondrejka to explain the two companies’ complicated relationship.
If you haven’t heard of Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi yet, you will soon. With 7.19 million handsets sold in 2012, Xiaomi president Bin Lin said the company expects to sell twice as many this year.
And finally, one of readers’ favorite quotes of the week came from AllThingsD’s own Walt Mossberg. He kicked off Dive Into Mobile by asking Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs about Firefox’s mobile operating system: “So … what the f**k?”

To stay on top of the latest, you should follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Shuttered Ad Tech Startup Team Lands at Intel's Web TV Project

Peter Kafka — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:42:22 +0000

Earlier this year, we told you that advertising exchange AdBrite was shutting down and selling itself in pieces.

Now we know where one of the pieces has gone: Intel’s TV-over-the-Web project. Intel Media has picked up five members of AdBrite’s core engineering team, according to a person familiar with the move.

In what was essentially an “acqhire,” Intel grabbed AdBrite’s CTO, along with four other former employees; I’m told they will work on data and analytics projects, which will include everything from ad systems to content recommendations.

Intel Media is a small but very ambitious project from the chipmaker, which is trying to do something that tech/media heavyweights like Google and Apple have yet to attempt. Intel Media head Erik Huggers says he plans to start selling pay TV, delivered over the Internet, sometime later this year, in conjunction with an Intel-built set-top box.

In order to do that, Intel has to clear a lot of hurdles, including getting programming deals with all or most of the big TV networks. So far we haven’t heard any of them say that they’re on board, but Intel keeps insisting that it is making progress.

Here’s a highlight reel of Huggers’ interview with Walt Mossberg and myself at D: Dive Into Media earlier this year, where he first outlined his ambitions in public:

[ See post to watch video ]

Eric Schmidt Will Take Your Questions Now (Video)

Peter Kafka — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:23:03 +0000

Eric Schmidt sat down with Liz Gannes and Ina Fried for nearly an hour yesterday, and if you didn’t watch the livestream, you can see the whole thing over here.

Slightly time-pressed? Then watch the last 17 minutes of the talk, when the Google chairman took questions from the audience at D: Dive Into Mobile. It’s a freewheeling session, and one where Schmidt did everything from hyping Motorola’s next product launch to lecturing a reporter on the way he would like questions phrased. Good stuff.

[ See post to watch video ]

WhatsApp, Snapchat and the Real "Second Screen" — 10 Things You Missed at Day Two of Dive Into Mobile

Eric Johnson — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:13:50 +0000

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

And that’s a wrap! After Monday’s half-day kickoff to D: Dive Into Mobile — Global Edition, Tuesday saw a full day of great speakers on topics ranging from messaging to activism to driverless cars. In case you missed it, here’s a good place to start:

Starting at the end: “We’re big believers that this [phone] screen is the first screen,” said Bob Bowman, president of Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media, in the conference’s final interview. “Anybody that doesn’t believe that is living on another planet or doesn’t have children. Reality is the second screen.”
“Our goal with Android is to reach everyone,” Google chairman Eric Schmidt said. “We’ll cross one billion Android devices in six to nine months. In a year or two, we’ll hit two billion.” Schmidt also talked about Google’s self-driving cars and the company’s new gadgets.
Intel said it is getting the hang of mobile — which is good, because the company also reported bleak Q1 earnings today, with a 25 percent drop in profit as demand for PCs declines.
WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said his messaging app is now bigger than Twitter, which officially claims 200 million monthly active users. WhatsApp has eight billion inbound and 12 billion outbound messages per day, Koum said.
Meanwhile, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said his photo- and video-messaging app has grown by three times in four months, and that users are now sharing 150 million ephemeral photos per month, versus 40 million permanent pictures per month on Instagram.
A mobile app called Better launched onstage, promising to provide 24/7 concierge medical care to paying users. Better’s offerings include the ability to directly contact doctors and nurses, through a partnership with the Mayo Clinic.
Twitter’s VP of Product Michael Sippey said the site is heavily investing in and focusing on improvements to Twitter’s once-poor search and discovery experience.
Microsoft’s Terry Myerson said Windows Phone is a global competitor, because it has had stronger momentum in markets where carriers do not subsidize phones. He also aimed more than a few potshots at the likes of Android and Facebook.
Nonprofit activism organization DoSomething’s Nancy Lublin announced that the company had reached one million teens via weekly text messages, with a 97 percent open rate.
And lastly — mobile security provider Lookout demonstrated how phones can be hacked via phishing emails with phony app-download links, urging users to be wary of unfamiliar download sources.

These 10 blurbs only scratch the surface, though. For more, please check out our full list of stories from D: Dive Into Mobile.

bKash Offers Mobile Banking for Bangladesh, a Country With Few Bank Accounts

Eric Johnson — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:43:25 +0000

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

Fewer than 10 percent of the people in Bangladesh have bank accounts, but bKash, a joint Bangladeshi-American venture, says its mobile banking and payments platform fills the gap.

BKash’s CEO Kamal Quadir made the case for the e-commerce company at D: Dive Into Mobile, during the last of three “Global Voices” sessions. Quadir said the company is growing rapidly in Bangladesh, a country with 95 million mobile phones, but said nothing similar has caught on in the developed world.

“Fundamentally, it’s designed for poor people,” he said. “In the U.S., one of the reasons this kind of service hasn’t kicked in yet is because we have so many alternatives.”

BKash oversees a network of 45,000 agents across the country who let people connect to its service like mom-and-pop ATMs. That way it gets around the overhead expenses that a traditional bank would have to pay.

So, a merchant who lives far from a bank can use his or her mobile phone to send virtual money and go to a local agent to receive money. BKash uses middleware technology from Visa called Fundamo to hold onto people’s transactional information.

BRAC Bank, a subsidiary of the development agency BRAC, owns 51 percent of bKash, with the rest owned by Money in Motion, which Quadir said brings capital, tech and know-how to the table.

Check out the full video from Quadir’s session below:

[ See post to watch video ]

MLB.com Boss Bob Bowman Is Still an Apple Man. But Samsung Is on Deck. (Video)

Peter Kafka — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:37:57 +0000

The last time we asked MLB.com boss Bob Bowman for his take on mobile platforms, it went something like this: He loved Apple and Apple users, supported Android because he had to, and thought BlackBerry was still a viable market.

That was two years ago. What do things look like now?

Well, Bowman, who runs Major League Baseball Advanced Media, baseball’s digital business, is still a big Apple fan.

But he has acknowledged that his users are increasingly picking up Android devices — particularly the high-end Samsung units. And BlackBerry? Gone but not quite forgotten: “We hope BlackBerry comes back.”

Some details from Bowman’s chat with Walt Mossberg at D: Dive into Mobile today:

His user base, which used to split 80/20 in favor of iOS over Android, has now moved to 70/30. “The Samsung phone is quite a good Android phone,” Bowman said.
But the uptick in Android users, he said, doesn’t track with revenue. That still splits 80/20 in favor of iOS users. “Maybe even 85/15.”
Bowman figures this is because iOS users are still, on average, paying more for their phones than Android users, and that means they’re more willing to pay for content like his apps/subscription service, which starts at $20. (Note that other developers have told me that when you compare high-end Android buyers to iOS buyers, the differences in behavior patterns tend to go away.

[ See post to watch video ]