In the interview, he talked a lot about what had changed in the five months since HP completed its purchase of Palm. A bunch of Palm workers have left, but Rubinstein noted that the unit has made more than 70 new hires and brought over more than 200 people from HP. The company has also shifted its focus to include tablets and printers and other types of mobile devices–something the underfunded standalone company wasn’t even considering doing.

“We were looking strictly at phones,” Rubinstein acknowledged, while maintaining that the webOS itself is designed to scale.

Here is an edited transcript of our conversation:

Mobilized: When you guys were a standalone company, were you focused on phones? Or were you already looking at tablets and other kinds of devices?

Rubinstein: We were looking strictly at phones. We were a small company, but when we designed webOS we designed it to be scalable. To build a great tablet experience on top of it is fairly straightforward. It is work–we’ve got to update the user interface and there are some other things we have got to do.

But the basic system is absolutely scalable to a tablet. While we weren’t working on it, that was one of the real attractions that Palm had for HP, that they could rapidly expand into a variety of different devices.

Obviously their long-term interest isn’t just in tablets and phones even?

Rubinstein: They’ve stated they are moving their printers to webOS. We’re busy working with the guys from the printer division to do that. There are other things going on within various parts of HP that are looking at using webOS or building on top of webOS.

The Labs people are doing some really exciting things. They are very excited to have webOS to build on top of.

What are some of the considerations that come in when you are going to build for a printer or a tablet that just weren’t needed when you were just a phone?

Rubinstein: Well, because webOS was a 1.0 operating system, frankly we hadn’t paid enough attention to machine dependencies. We were doing each product in its entirety. We did have to worry about another division using the code or even having more form factors than a handful at any point in time. So, one of the things we are doing right now is getting webOS to be much more machine-independent.

We were clearly very interested in enterprise, but it wasn’t on as fast a track as we are now. We already had a variety of enterprise capabilities. WebOS 2.0 has got VPN and other enterprise-class features. But we’re significantly accelerating our enterprise capabilities so we can utilize HP’s huge sales channel in the enterprise

You talked about webOS scaling. Is there any reason it couldn’t be powering a low-end notebook?

I think a netbook is fine. I don’t really want to get into the notebook business. We’ll leave that to Microsoft. The notebook business is partnering closely with Microsoft. We’re not focused on that at all. Our plan isn’t to subsume what Microsoft [does]. That’s not our goal. There is a very, very strong business on both the notebook and desktop space–and server space–that’s Windows-based and that makes sense.

With the HP acquisition you got a lot more resources, but you lost a lot of the people that built webOS.

Rubinstein: Yes and no. There’s a large group of us that built webOS. Clearly, anytime you go through a transition like this you are going to lose some people along the way. We lost some. We’ve also been hiring a lot. Since we closed the deal we have hired over 70 people. Two hundred-plus people from HP have joined us, and other divisions at HP are busy working on helping us make webOS successful. So while yes, we lost a few people along the way, we gained a lot of people.

You mentioned on stage you have a variety of products coming next year in several shapes and sizes–phones, tablets. How important will next generations be for some of those products?

Rubinstein: We’re big believers that the more bandwidth the better. I am very excited to get to LTE and HSDPA+ [two faster cellular networks]. We have some really interesting visions on where webOS can go as you get more and more bandwidth.

You were there the other night when [Qualcomm CEO] Paul [Jacobs] and I were talking. The two big issues, we think, are battery life and bandwidth.

More and more bandwidth will enable more and more things that today we cannot even imagine. And remember, we designed webOS to integrate tightly with the cloud. My personal view is that
it’s not about applications. Applications actually [will] bifurcate to where part of them runs on the device and part of them runs on the cloud.

Are you spending a lot of time thinking about how to synch the data that lives in a webOS device with all of HP’s other products?

Rubinstein: We certainly think that a unifying experience around webOS and the ability to access your cloud data across a variety of devices is absolutely crucial

A lot of data is going to be on laptops and desktops. Do you need to build a cloud device to have webOS talk to them?

Rubinstein: Stay tuned.

How do you get the developers you need to create webOS apps?

We have a lot of really interesting ways to develop for webOS. It’s very easy to develop for, and people like developing for it. We are getting a whole new generation of developers.

We had this developer conference in New York. If you look at the audience, a lot of them were under 17 and they were making enough money selling applications to come from wherever they were–they weren’t from New York–to bring one of their parents or both of their parents to come to the developer conference.

And to grow your share of the big-time application developers in mobile. Do you think it’s just a scale question, and if you guys can sell more devices you will get them?

Rubinstein: We have doubled our application base since, from sometime around the acquisition close until now

We’ve got, and it depends how you count it, 5,000 to 6,000 applications….If you look at the Android store, a lot of that is crapware. We’ve focused on delivering quality. We are going to add a lot more stuff over time as well, because obviously there’s a lot of competition about the number of apps. But at the end of the day they don’t use 300,000 apps–they use that dozen apps that are important to them. We need to make sure we have that dozen apps for a broad set of customers.

But you are not there today?

Rubinstein: We’re not there today. I would say we are well on our way. Obviously we kind of stalled for a bit going through the acquisition.

Palm-CEO-turned-HP-exec Jon Rubinstein and Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs faced off with Kara Swisher of All Things Digital at a Churchill Club event last night in an entertaining discussion on the future of mobile tech.

If you missed the live video feed of the event, check back with us–we’re working to repost the video. For those who want to read text, here is my liveblog of the event.

6:48 pm PT: We’re just finishing dinner. It was a chicken in some sort of puff pastry. Nothing is happening onstage, as if that wasn’t clear by the fact I am describing the meal. I think they will get started around 7:15 or so.

7:10 pm: Just about ready to go, with intros going on now. (And I just stole Kara’s seat at the head table.)

Kara: They’re both guys. Paul is taller and they work in tech.

7:14 pm: The plan is to talk about the future, but the event begins with a trip down memory lane as Jacobs holds up the Qualcomm PDQ–arguably the first smartphone combining a cellphone and Palm Pilot. For those who don’t remember, it it was bigger than a Palm Pilot and a huge phone strapped together.

7:20 pm: Digital device history continues. We’ve traced the last decade in digital devices, from the iPod through the Treo and iPhone. Don’t forget ringtones and cellphone bowling, Jacobs reminds us, referring to the Brew operating environment that Qualcomm developed.

The iPhone changed everything, Jacobs says, because it showed that the phone makers just weren’t putting enough work into the phone’s user interface.

7:28 pm: Talk is shifting to where we are today. What are the key things that are shifting? User interfaces, touch, etc. “The other things we are seeing is all of our lives are moving into the cloud,” Rubinstein says. On the limitation side, Jacobs points to the limitations of bandwidth: “We don’t have enough spectrum right now,” Jacobs says, adding that the industry and government are working on it. ‘We are just going to have to be more creative about how we get content to the devices.”

The other big limitation, Jacobs says, is battery life. You can do all this cool stuff on your phone, but then the battery dies three-quarters of the way through the day. He puts in a plug for Mirasol–Qualcomm’s low-power display technology.

Rubinstein concurs that battery and bandwidth are the two biggest issues. “Battery technology has not progressed at the same rate as all of the other things we are trying to do,” Rubinstein says.

7:38 pm: What about all the operating systems out there, Kara asks. Rubinstein: “There’s plenty of room in the market for multiple systems,” he says, adding it won’t be like PCs, where one operating system dominates. “It’s just different today.”

Rubinstein says it’s still the infancy of the major transition. Put on the spot to rank the operating systems, Rubinstein says that clearly Apple and Android are going gangbusters. The battle, he says, is for who is going to be No. 3. “We’d sure like to be that.”

Jacobs: “I agree. It’s very early days to be calling winners and losers.” He sees pretty wide diversity of operating systems, at least for the next five years, unless the operators really clamp down. Even then, there are some alternate distribution channels emerging. Either way, Qualcomm’s in good shape as an arms dealer, he points out.

7:45 pm: Discussion of carriers. While they are immensely powerful, Rubinstein says they won’t be the only distribution channel for every wireless device. “They are not all going to go through the carriers,” Rubinstein says.

More and more screens will emerge, Rubinstein says. If I fast-forward enough years, he says, the walls are going to be big displays capable of talking to other devices.

Jacobs notes that people will be able to use their device with any tool they have access to, from a big screen to a headset to a wireless keyboard. He says Qualcomm is working on a technology that would allow wireless headsets that could work in-ear like a hearing aid.

7:50 pm: Talk about some outlandish things. Rubinstein has already thrown out the idea of a headset in your pillow. Rubinstein points out that there will be a lot of sensors, pointing to the Nike+iPod as a really early example of what we can expect a lot more of.

7:55 pm: Augmented reality is also going to be big, the panelists agree. “The (StarTrek) tricorder is going to happen,” Jacobs says. Health care will also tap mobile technology, particularly in emerging countries where there is less regulation, carriers are trusted and there are fewer skilled health care providers available. “It’s a very efficient way to manage health,” he says. “Over the next few years we will see this happen,” he says. Eventually it will come back to developed markets, but today there is too much legacy and too much regulation in places like the U.S.

8:10 pm: Sorry for the delay–we were fixing some issues with the video coding, which hopefully should be solved now. Anyway, Rubinstein and Jacobs have been throwing out things that they expect in the next five years.

Jacobs’s list includes digital networked textbooks, cellphones as gateways for health care, as well as using augmented reality to translate all the signs and menus in a foreign country.

Rubinstein and Jacobs both see a digital wallet becoming a reality, with Jacobs throwing out the idea of an end to checkout lines as the phone could pay and the store could electronically disable the security on goods, allowing the whole transaction to take place without interaction with store personnel.

“Legal shoplifting, that’s interesting.” Kara says.

The technical hurdles aren’t that big, Rubinstein says. “Clearly NFC (near-field communications) is coming.” It’s more of a social problem than a technical one, Rubinstein says.

8:21 pm: Some good audience questions. One, on what does it take to deliver an Apple-like experience. Rubinstein, who has experience as part of Apple and trying to “out-Apple” Apple, says he thinks that the key is delivering an intergrated experience.

“I don’t think Apple is the only one that can do it, but I do think it is important to have all the elements,” he says.

Another question is on the future of mobile TV–a question that prompts Jacobs to cover his face (Qualcomm spent a bundle on its MediaFlo mobile TV service that saw very limited consumer uptake and Qualcomm is now evaluating what to do with it).

Too few people liked what the service had to offer, Jacobs says, referring to limits on content, screen size, etc. Jacobs said it appears that probably broadcast makes sense for live events, while streaming with TiVo-like controls makes sense for everything else.

“I actually believe strongly in mobile TV, still,” he says.

8:30 pm: Okay. That’s a wrap from me. Thanks for tuning in. If you want to hear more from Rubinstein, he will be speaking at next week’s D: Dive Into Mobile conference.

Last Friday, former Google China head Kai-Fu Lee (pictured here) dialed up BoomTown from that country for a chit-chat interview about his life since leaving the search giant one year ago and plunging into the world of incubation, recruiting and early-stage funding for start-ups there.

Being president of Google’s China operations is far different from being CEO of Innovation Works, which just celebrated its first anniversary.

And, although he left Google (GOOG) on tense terms, said many sources, Lee complimented it as still having the best technology in the world.

Nonetheless, he also added it will only become harder for any U.S. company to compete in China over the next few years for a variety of reasons.

Lee would not specifically talk about Google’s fight with China over censorship issues, but said the bigger problem for it and other U.S. Web companies was actually that they are not local or nimble enough to beat out an increasingly trained Chinese tech workforce.

According to Lee–as well as explained in an interesting deck he sent me that is embedded below–Silicon Valley can no longer rely on a tech edge that it has long had, and China units of U.S. tech companies still will not empower their Chinese employees enough to compete.

“In China, there are a mass of very talented engineers who can attack a long-tail opportunity very quickly,” he said. “This kind of speed is critical in this market now.”

That’s why–unlike most Silicon Valley venture firms with a presence in China–he decided to focus Innovation Works on early-stage companies.

“We see it as a unique opportunity to provide a refreshing accessibility for small, but promising, Chinese companies,” Lee said. “There are a lot of inefficiencies.”

With a heavy focus on mobile–which Lee considers the key arena in China, much of it based on versions of Google’s Android mobile operating system–Innovation Works has focused on a dozen start-ups, including:

Tapas: An Internet smartphone operating system–based on Google’s Android–tailored to Chinese users.

Wonderpod (Wandoujia): A software “assistant” for Android phones to download applications, videos and music without consuming expensive mobile bandwidth.

Umeng: An analytics tool for mobile developers in China.

Photo Wonder: Mobile phone software for enhancing and sharing photos.

Ascending Cloud: A game publisher built on proprietary technology for developing and publishing social and Web games for over 30 countries.

Lee said now that the strategy and investments are in place, next year’s focus will be on nurturing the companies Innovation Works has invested in.

While he said he knows that it is still early, Lee–who has also worked at Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT)–said he thinks that China, specifically Beijing and Zhongguancun, could become the next Silicon Valley.

“There are 300 million Chinese using mobile devices and there is no one or two dominant player, as is the case in the U.S.,” Lee said. “It’s the same across a variety of areas, so the landscape for small, scrappy start-ups is wide open and huge.”

We’ll see how it all turns out. but here is the must-see deck from Lee, as well as a press release on Innovation Works’ first anniversary and a detailed description of it:

Innovation Works Overview (US Press)

Sep 8 Press Release

Incubation Programs

This isn’t news, exactly. But consider it a reminder: AT&T’s (T) switch from an unlimited data plan to a tiered model means that everything iPad and iPhone users stream down to their devices via the carrier’s wireless network comes at a cost, measured in bytes.

So: Streaming a video to your iPad from Netflix (NFLX) or Hulu will chew up a lot bandwidth, and downloading an app will chew up much less. And clicking on an “in-app” ad, like the kind Apple is rolling out with iAd, will cost something, too: Each time you click on an app’s ad, the app makes a real-time call to Apple, which serves up a download.

How much will that cost you, bytewise? Web video producer Eric Spiegelman guesstimates that a tricked out iAd like the Nissan spot that debuted yesterday could require five megabytes.* Translate that into AT&T’s data plans, and you’re looking at something like six cents to 40 cents worth of data per iAd, depending on the package.

So not a bank-breaker! And again, no different than anything else you download to your iPhone or iPad. But maybe, depending on your use case and data plan, worth thinking about before you click.

If the idea of spending any of your precious data budget on ads really rankles you, by the way, you do have a choice. Either make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi connection before you click, or go completely offline, and you won’t see the iAds at all.

*Anyone else want to weigh in on the size of iAd downloads? Happy to hear your thoughts.

This isn’t news, exactly. But consider it a reminder: AT&T’s (T) switch from an unlimited data plan to a tiered model means that everything iPad and iPhone users stream down to their devices via the carrier’s wireless network comes at a cost, measured in bytes.

So: Streaming a video to your iPad from Netflix (NFLX) or Hulu will chew up a lot bandwidth, and downloading an app will chew up much less. And clicking on an “in-app” ad, like the kind Apple is rolling out with iAd, will cost something, too: Each time you click on an app’s ad, the app makes a real-time call to Apple, which serves up a download.

How much will that cost you, bytewise? Web video producer Eric Spiegelman guesstimates that a tricked out iAd like the Nissan spot that debuted yesterday could require five megabytes.* Translate that into AT&T’s data plans, and you’re looking at something like six cents to 40 cents worth of data per iAd, depending on the package.

So not a bank-breaker! And again, no different than anything else you download to your iPhone or iPad. But maybe, depending on your use case and data plan, worth thinking about before you click.

If the idea of spending any of your precious data budget on ads really rankles you, by the way, you do have a choice. Either make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi connection before you click, or go completely offline, and you won’t see the iAds at all.

*Anyone else want to weigh in on the size of iAd downloads? Happy to hear your thoughts.

Says Ratcliffe: “Channel checks by our communications equipment and semiconductor research partners give us greater confidence that Verizon will get an iPhone in early 2011, and we are now incorporating that belief into our models for AT&T and Verizon.”

Interestingly, Ratcliffe doesn’t see the end of AT&T’s iPhone-exclusivity deal with Apple (AAPL) heralding a subscriber exodus at the carrier. While he acknowledges that perception issues with AT&T’s network quality will inevitably drive some customers to flee to Verizon, he believes that many will stay put.

All told, the analyst expects approximately 500,000 to one million “switchers,” a relatively small portion of the nine million iPhones he says Verizon will activate in 2011 (click on charts below to enlarge).

“We don’t believe that the addition of a Verizon iPhone will be a seismic event in the wireless competitive environment, although we do expect it to result in a modest spike in AT&T churn, as customers who love their iPhones but have become unhappy with AT&T’s network take advantage of the alternative,” Ratcliffe writes.

“Overall, however, we believe that smartphone customers are relatively sticky, particularly given that (a) 70% of AT&T postpaid customers are on family plans (which would necessitate a group switch), (b) switching cost for customers currently in contract would be $375-525 per handset, (c) approximately 40% of handsets are covered under corporate discount arrangements, many of which may not have VZ equivalents, (d) for many, if not most iPhone customers, the service quality being delivered on the AT&T network is in reality comparable to what they’d receive on Verizon’s network, and (e) switching will likely result in accepting a bandwidth-capped data offering, since (we believe) that Verizon is likely to launch tiered bandwidth pricing prior to the launch of an iPhone.”

So, while the expiration of AT&T’s iPhone-exclusivity deal certainly won’t be good news for the carrier, it’s not going to be a disaster. Ratcliffe figures the carrier will still activate six million iPhones in 2011, which is quite a bit fewer than the 10 million he says it will activate this year, but a sizable number nonetheless.

First, the company won’t allow two-way video to work over its data network. Second, AT&T just made bandwidth-intensive video expensive by dropping iPhone and iPad’s $30 per month unlimited data plans and replacing them with a two-tiered plan of $15 a month for under 200 megabyte usage or $25 for two gigs. Not that I have a problem with AT&T charging me or the two percent of its customers who are heavy data users. I can always sign up with a competitor. Oh, wait. There are none. AT&T has an exclusive contract with Apple.

AT&T can easily build out enough capacity to handle heavy data users. But it may be playing a game of chess with the FCC over its attempt to impose “network neutrality” rules. The FCC (plus Google and friends) wants all users to have free rein to do what they want on the Internet and smart phones. AT&T just wants users to pay for excess bandwidth.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The app, demoed onstage at Apple’s developers conference by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, will be available later this summer. Like the company’s iPad app, it will be free, though you’ll have to be a Netflix (NFLX) subscriber to actually access the company’s catalog of digital movies and TV shows.

And like the iPad app, the app will stream video via both Wi-Fi and AT&T’s wireless service. I checked with Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey to see if Apple (AAPL) or AT&T (T) would limit the amount of bandwidth the app could chew up, and he said no: “Same catalog. Unlimited. It will be Netflix as you know it and love it, but in your pocket.”

No caching, though. Like the iPad, you’ll need to be connected to the Web to use the app.

But that’s still pretty cool. And it’s also going to be a lot of strain on AT&T’s network. Which is, um, still pretty strained. I doubt many of you are going to watch all of “District 9” on your phones, but you may well watch an episode of “Weeds” (first couple seasons are pretty good, but then…). And if the carrier can’t handle phone calls, how is it going to keep up with that?

So: Either AT&T really is going to resolve its capacity problems by the end of this summer, as Steve Jobs semi-promised last week at D8. Or everyone involved assumes that AT&T’s new data plans will cut down on the number of people using iPhones to do all the cool, cutting-edge stuff Jobs showed off today.

Comcast (CMCSA) shares were down almost four percent in early afternoon trading, while Time Warner Cable (TWC) fell by nearly six percent. Cablevision (CVC), which also reported earnings Thursday, was down more than six percent as well. Telecom companies, which also could be affected by the plan, fared better, with Verizon (VZ) down less than one percent and AT&T (T) down about one percent.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed adopting “net neutrality” rules, which would prevent Internet providers like the cable companies from restricting traffic to certain sites, the Journal’s Amy Schatz reported Wednesday.

The Internet providers want the ability to limit traffic to sites that use a lot of bandwidth, or to charge for bandwidth usage. Consumer groups and companies such as Google (GOOG) favor net neutrality, fearing that without it cable companies would degrade access to competitors’ sites or boost access to sites of partners.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

During my recent sojourn in Los Angeles, BoomTown dropped in on the Melrose Avenue HQ of Clicker, the Web site trying to make search sense of premium video on the Web.

I had a chat with Jim Lanzone, former CEO of Ask, the fourth-place search service owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), about whether such a service could survive with giants like Google (GOOG) around.

Lanzone is certainly trying to differentiate Clicker, which aims to steer clear of both copyright issues and huge bandwidth costs by simply being a helpful friend to consumers in search of good video from television, movies and the Web itself.

As Katherine Boehret’s review of the Clicker service in November described it:

[Clicker is a] free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site–like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.

To try to improve its Web search efforts, Clicker raised another $11 million in venture funding in February in a round led by Jafco Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The funding follows an $8 million round announced last fall.

Here’s the video of my interview with Lanzone, who also gave me a short tour of Clicker’s HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100415/clickers-jim-lanzone-talks-about-tv-on-the-web-and-shows-off-l-a-digs/feed/ 14 http://allthingsd.com/20100331/youtube-saves-money-with-text-only-video/ http://allthingsd.com/20100331/youtube-saves-money-with-text-only-video/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 06:14:20 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17969 I’m down on this stuff in general, but have to admit I liked this one quite a bit. It helps if you’re into writing about the business of Web video, I guess: A memo from Google (GOOG) CFO Patrick Pichette explaining that the company has figured out how to save bandwidth costs at YouTube.

The rest of it is self-explanatory. But if you don’t want to read, you can go check out this sample video I’ve queued up for you.

Note that this doesn’t work on all of YouTube’s videos. And I can’t figure out how to make it embeddable. Enjoy.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100331/youtube-saves-money-with-text-only-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100319/the-numbers-behind-the-worlds-fastest-growing-web-site-youtubes-finances-revealed/ http://allthingsd.com/20100319/the-numbers-behind-the-worlds-fastest-growing-web-site-youtubes-finances-revealed/#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:30:39 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=17601 There’s no smoking gun in the YouTube-Viacom papers, but there is some great stuff. Like these documents, which offer an unprecedented look at the finances behind the world’s most successful video site.

I’m not exactly sure why Viacom dug up YouTube’s profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet from its pre-Google days, but I’m glad it did. You can see the entire thing, which covers YouTube’s birth in the spring of 2005 through August 2006, at the bottom of this post.

But these excerpts give you a very good snapshot of what was going on in the company’s early days–hypergrowth, followed, eventually, by revenue (click to enlarge):

Some context: Chad Hurley registered the YouTube domain in February 2005, but the site wasn’t up and running for a few more months. Co-founder Jared Karim uploaded YouTube’s first video, “Me at the zoo,” in late April 2005.

By December 2005, users were uploading 6,000 clips a day, and the site was streaming 2.5 million videos a day. By February 2006, those numbers had jumped to 20,000 and 18 million, respectively. In July 2006, YouTube users uploaded 2.1 million clips and watched three billion of them.

Which explains the skyrocketing Web-hosting bills. But do note the burst of revenue from direct sales in August 2006, which allowed the company to generate a gross profit. A lot of people assumed that YouTube had to find a buyer like Google (GOOG) a few months later because it couldn’t pay its own bandwidth bills. But these numbers suggest that this may not be the case.

Also of note for Web video and Web ad nerds/historians: Check out the detailed breakdown of YouTube’s ad revenue and hosting costs, both real and projected, circa December 2005.

youtube pl

balance sheet

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100319/the-numbers-behind-the-worlds-fastest-growing-web-site-youtubes-finances-revealed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100223/apple-bandwidth-may-not-be-the-issue-for-att-iphone-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20100223/apple-bandwidth-may-not-be-the-issue-for-att-iphone-users/#comments Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=21603 Ars Technica over the weekend published a fascinating piece which theorizes that a lack of raw bandwidth may not be the real issue behind the trouble the Apple (AAPL) iPhone is creating on the AT&T (T) network in densely populated areas like New York and the Bay Area.

The real problem, Ars Technica says, is that the iPhone–and other modern smart phones–disconnect from the network whenever possible to save power.

“The fact that almost all of the complaints from iPhone users come from the U.S. suggests that AT&T’s network is at least partially to blame,” the story asserts. “In fact, users in other countries have told Ars that they don’t experience the kinds of problems that U.S. users often report. Well, other countries except one.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100223/apple-bandwidth-may-not-be-the-issue-for-att-iphone-users/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100205/ipad-tv/ http://allthingsd.com/20100205/ipad-tv/#comments Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:31:38 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=34375 Could Apple’s (AAPL) future as a multichannel video distributor lie not with AppleTV but with the iPad? Might the “best of TV” iTunes subscription offering the company has been pitching to TV networks since last November be primarily intended for that device, which Apple is positioning as the successor to its sleeper AppleTV platform? With company executives still dismissing AppleTV as a “hobby” and TV itself becoming a more personal, intimate experience, it’s worth thinking about.

Consider this scenario from Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett.

Imagine a portable set top box, but with its own killer screen. When in the home, it would be docked in a cradle connected to iTunes via a wired broadband pipe. Navigation of programming guides and iTunes listings would occur on the iPad, using an intuitive touch interface. Output would go directly to the wide-screen TV on the wall…until you left the house. Then, you’d simply pop the device out of its cradle and take it with you. And in the process, you’d be taking your TV with you as well. A 3G (and eventually 4G) wireless connection would allow you to keep watching live TV in the back of the car or cab. Once you got on the airplane you could choose from a library of your favorite shows saved on your DVR…which also happens to be a half-inch thick ergonomically gorgeous high definition tilt-sensitive screen that fits comfortably in your hands.

A dockable, portable set-top box with LED-backlit widescreen display? Seems a bit of a stretch at this point. And it would be enormously bandwidth-intensive. But it’s not entirely inconceivable, is it?

UPDATE: Mark Sigal recently made a similar observation over at O’Reilly Radar, using MLB’s iPad app as an example:

Similarly, MLB (Major League Baseball) showcased their MLB app, which overlays graphics, information feeds, video clips and live game programming in a way that is simultaneously immersive, interactive and highly entertaining. It is both suggestive of a media-centric killer app for the IPad and a bellwether for the future of TV Anywhere, yet another reason that I believe Apple’s ambitions with respect to Apple TV remain very much alive.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100205/ipad-tv/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100122/tablet-bandwidth/ http://allthingsd.com/20100122/tablet-bandwidth/#comments Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:00:56 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=33153 If the bandwidth-guzzling iPhone is truly the “Hummer of cellphones,” as the New York Times dubbed it last year, you might figure that Apple’s coming tablet will swill data like an Airbus. And that could be true eventually. But at first, analysts say, the tablet is not likely to put much strain on the mobile broadband infrastructure of whatever carrier it ends up with, whether Verizon (VZ) or AT&T (T).

Why? Do they expect the tablet to be Wi-Fi-only like the iPod touch? That would certainly make things a lot easier for the carriers.

No. Most analysts I spoke to said the probability that Apple’s new offering will support mobile broadband is quite high. “I can’t imagine it not having it,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told me.

There are other good reasons not to fear the tablet as a bandwidth hog. First, the device will presumably rely heavily on Wi-Fi to off-load wireless traffic onto the wireline network, the assumption being that it will be used most often in locations with Wi-Fi access–homes, schools, libraries, cafes and whatnot. Moreover, a mobile broadband plan will likely be optional.

Second, despite all the hype and hoopla, initial unit sales of an Apple (AAPL) tablet are likely to be too low to have much of an impact.

As Munster told me: “…turn the clock back and look at the iPhone and the first year Apple sold 5.5 million units in the US and the ASP was $475. At that time there were no issues with AT&T’s network. The issues began occurring last year, right around the time we saw the hockey stick in iPhone adoption.”

Regarding the tablet, Munster says, “If this device is $800-$1000, I think adoption is going to be much lower than the hype would lead you to believe. So the bottom like is this: on a per-unit basis it might put a lot of stress on the network, but there will be too few of them on the street to collectively have a real negative impact.”

Presumably, that will give the carrier, whatever company that may be, time to build out in anticipation of increased adoption. A good thing, since a tablet may well pose unique network challenges, particularly if it is used as a streaming video viewer, says Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett.

“Streaming video is uniquely demanding traffic, as it is both bandwidth intensive AND latency sensitive,” Moffett explained. “That’s a recipe for disaster. For that reason, it’s unlikely that carriers would invite that type of usage. A large screen tablet would likely rely heavily on download-to-watch-later to sidestep the latency problem, and would almost certainly provide incentives to shift the most bandwidth-intensive applications to the wired network via Wi-Fi.”

But that’s a future scenario. “I don’t see this as a device that will in the next 12 months inspire people to save their money to buy it, the way they have with the iPhone,” says Munster, who sees Apple selling about 1.4 million tablets in calendar year 2010, assuming it ships in March.

“Certainly, it will take off in due time–this is the future of publishing,” Munster concludes, “but it takes 2-3 years for these things to really get going.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple Announces Jan. 27 Special Event: “Come See Our Latest Creation”
• Major Apple Product Announcement Set for Wednesday, Jan. 27
• Apple Pitching Tablet to Publishing Industry; Spring Launch Expected
• Time (Finally) for the Tablet? Apple Developers Supersizing Their Apps for January Event.
• The Apple Tablet Is Delayed? So What?
• $1.9 Billion in Capex? What’s Apple Planning?
• Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?
• Imaginary Demand for Mythical Apple Tablet Exceeds All Estimates
• Apple Tablet Coming to AT&T?
• New From Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster: The Apple iPad
• Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-Book?
• iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed
• iFugly

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100122/tablet-bandwidth/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100112/gdrive-actually-google-docs/ http://allthingsd.com/20100112/gdrive-actually-google-docs/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:01:28 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=32504 Google is adding some storage embellishments to its Docs service, essentially transforming the Web-based productivity suite into something akin to its long-rumored cloud storage service, GDrive, though the company disputes this comparison.

“This is not the ‘GDrive,’” a Google (GOOG) spokesperson explained. “We’ve been continuing to expand on the types of files that can be uploaded to Docs. We started with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Later we enabled upload, view and share of PDFs. This launch builds on internal work that we’ve been doing for some time.”

And indeed it does. Until yesterday, Google Docs was limited to office-type documents. Today, those limits are gone and you can upload any file you like as long as it’s not over 250 megabytes. The service will provide up to one gigabyte of free storage, with additional space costing 25 cents per gigabyte per year.

How this is different from the following description of GDrive culled from a 2006 Google presentation for analysts escapes me.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100112/gdrive-actually-google-docs/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100104/yahoo-can-relax-a-little-but-just-a-little-this-years-boomtown-obsession-might-have-to-be-att/ http://allthingsd.com/20100104/yahoo-can-relax-a-little-but-just-a-little-this-years-boomtown-obsession-might-have-to-be-att/#comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:03:09 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=22528

Of all the major issues to think about in the digital sector over the next year, perhaps the most important to focus on will be the mobile space.

That’s why the swirl of controversy around the inability of AT&T (T) to maintain a reliable network for users of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone–especially in New York and San Francisco–is perhaps the flashpoint story of the coming year.

It’s not only an appalling predicament for consumers who have paid for promised service and been denied it, as well as a future Harvard Business School case study in corporate incompetence (or malfeasance, depending on your mood), it is a really bad development for tech in general.

In other words, failed calls and glitchy apps are more than just annoying–they’re holding back a key spark of future innovation for computing.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens way too much in the digital space.

In fact, this AT&T debacle actually reminds me a lot of AOL’s busy-signal crisis of 1997, when the then-high-flying online service signed up too many consumers for its all-you-can-eat access and did not have the equipment in place to deliver what it sold.

At the time, AOL CEO Steve Case used the same lame excuses as AT&T, pretty much asking users to buck up during the shortfall. But he quickly retreated, apologized and fixed the situation.

That particular self-inflicted mess is now but a distant memory and certainly did not stop the progress of either AOL or Internet use overall. But it was a stark reminder that the relentless march of innovation should not be throttled.

That’s truer than ever as computing moves into what I consider an entirely new era of development, all centered on portable “smart” devices, whose standard-bearer is the iPhone, iPod touch and–soon–iSlate.

That’s purely my opinion, of course (hey, Scoble, Web 3.0 is still mobile!)

But, as Walt Mossberg and I wrote before our seventh D: All Things Digital conference last summer:

“So what’s the seminal development that’s ushering in the era of Web 3.0? It’s the real arrival, after years of false predictions, of the thin client, running clean, simple software, against cloud-based data and services. The poster children for this new era have been the Apple iPhone and iPod touch, which have sold 37 million units in less than two years and attracted 35,000 apps and one billion app downloads in just nine months.”

This means there’s plenty of need for strong networks that can handle all the wireless data that are going to be pumped through them in ever-increasing amounts.

Perhaps this looks like a bandwidth hogfest by customers, but it’s the landscape now and AT&T must adapt or, well, you know.

So, following in the footsteps of a lot of really terrific work done pretty much by bloggers on the mess AT&T has created, it is probably a given that–as I have obsessively done with Yahoo (YHOO) and its management woes–other journalists and I should stop making jokes about it and spend a lot more time monitoring what the telecom giant and others are doing or, really, not doing.

As usual, all tips and delicious memos appreciated, as well as suggestions of stories to look into.

Until then, here’s a short and mostly silly video I did recently of some dropped calls I had on my iPhone, as well as an interview Walt did with AT&T President, CEO and Chairman Randall Stephenson at D7 last summer about these very issues:

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