AllThingsD » CES

Nokia's City Lens Brings Augmented Reality to Windows Phone (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:02:13 +0000

Seeing the new Lumia phones at Nokia’s booth at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show was interesting, but what caught my eye was one of the apps running on some of the devices.

Nokia was showing Nokia City Lens, a program from its labs that is among the first augmented-reality apps I’ve seen running on Windows Phone.

Microsoft’s phone platform did not initially provide access to the camera app and other features needed to make the app a reality. Support for such programs came with the Mango update released last fall.

City Lens combines map and points-of-interest data with what is seen in the camera’s viewfinder to show what is nearby, and in which direction. The program is a labs project for now, but the company is planning a beta next month.

Along with its hardware, Nokia is counting on software to help it stand out from rivals. The first crop of Nokia phones come with the company’s own Drive app for turn-by-turn directions, as well as a unique-to-Nokia ESPN app.

[ See post to watch video ]

China's ZTE Quietly Becoming a Force in Global, U.S. Smartphone Markets

Ina Fried — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:00:25 +0000

While most of the world’s largest cellphone makers are household names, there’s a pretty good chance that you have never heard of the company at No. 4 on the list.

In part, that’s because ZTE is best known for the phones it sells in China, its home market. In recent years, though, ZTE has begun to make inroads in the U.S. Its progress, however, has been largely invisible to consumers.

ZTE’s phones and hotspots tend to bear the brand of the carriers selling them, rather than its own, but the company said that, in time, it expects to see its name out there more.

“We understand the U.S. market is primarily a market driven by the carriers,” ZTE U.S. CEO Lixin Cheng said in an interview at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show. “Compared with some of our competitors, we are more willing to customize our product.”

In 2011, the company debuted a number of new products, including the Chorus phone for Cricket, and the Android-based Avail smartphone for AT&T.

So far this year, ZTE has introduced just one product — a hotspot for Verizon. In the coming months, though, ZTE plans a number of products for the U.S., including several for fast new LTE data networks.

“We will launch an LTE smartphone, tablet and mobile hotspot, and other data products in the United States,” Cheng said. “That’s our strategy this year.”

The company also plans to support both Android and Windows Phone smartphones, with plans on tap to launch a Microsoft-powered smartphone in the U.S. this year.

“We will make sure we have a wide competence in-house to support both operating systems,” said Cheng, who noted that Microsoft is a key partner for his company for its current “Mango” version of Windows Phone, as well as for its upcoming “Tango” low-end effort. ZTE is also interested in what Microsoft has in store with Windows 8.

ZTE began life in 1998 as an effort to bring telephony to more of rural China.

Cheng said the company sees a similar opportunity in the U.S., where smartphones are still either pricey or tied to expensive contracts.

As has been a challenge for fellow Chinese networking-device maker Huawei, some have raised questions over whether ZTE’s products — particularly networking gear — pose security risks.

Cheng rebuffs such concerns, noting that the company is publicly traded, with a largely independent board. And as for the security of its networks, Cheng notes that ZTE is already the key infrastructure provider behind Gogo’s inflight Wi-Fi.

“Our company’s values (are) very comparable with America’s values,” he said.

CES Fun With Lytro's Light Field Camera

Ina Fried — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:04:31 +0000

It’s a sign of how few truly revolutionary things were shown in Vegas last week that one of the most interesting devices I handled was the Lytro camera that I have been writing about for months.

While I had already seen the light field camera and taken my first picture at AsiaD in Hong Kong back in October, at the Consumer Electronics Show I got a full hour to play around with it.

The demo was part of an event the start-up had at the Wynn hotel, where journalists and a few of the company’s fans could get some face time with the device, which is just starting to ship to customers.

Taking pictures actually did take some getting used to, which surprised me, but it was a lot of fun once I got the hang of it.

Here are some of my more successful efforts. Again, for those who haven’t yet played around with one of Lytro’s “living pictures,” just click anywhere in the frame to put that part of the image into focus.

In this shot, try focusing on the nearest gold ball to get a glimpse of the camera and photographer, and then click on the phone in the back to see it come into focus:

This one is a shot of a MacBook Air keyboard:

And this is a close-up of an iPhone’s home screen:

The product is available for order directly from Lytro’s Web site, with an 8 gigabyte version (enough for around 350 pictures) selling for $399. A 16GB version is priced at $499.

CES Hangover: What You Might Have Missed

Lauren Goode — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:59:28 +0000

The Consumer Electronics Show is over. We came, we saw, we conquered … but we couldn’t possibly write about every one of the more than 20,000 products showcased in Las Vegas last week. Here are a handful that stood out at the show:

Nintendo Wii U
The gaming company didn’t have a spot on the show floor at CES, but Nintendo offered private demos of its upcoming Wii U console, the successor to the popular Nintendo Wii.

The “new Wii” comes with a 6-inch tablet-like motion sensor control that offers a full touchscreen and alternative views of the game being played on the TV set. While using a larger controller to play games might seem cumbersome at first, the interactive options it adds can be fun. The new console also works with the standard Wii controllers, as well as the Wii Nunchuk and Balance Board. It supports 1080p HD output, and the games in the demo were remarkably crisp and clear.

But there are still more questions than answers about the Wii U. Its launch date is still pegged to sometime in the later part of the year, but exactly when and how much it will cost is still unknown. And while Nintendo was the front-runner in motion-sensor gaming with the Wii, Xbox Kinect, in the meantime, has been setting new gaming-console standards with its gesture-control technology, content partnerships and even basic voice command.

When asked about content partnerships in the works, Nintendo declined to comment on any specifics. As for voice-recognition technology, Nintendo also declined to say whether it would be added to the Wii U prior to launch; the company did point to some audio capabilities built into the tablet-like controller, and said it is exploring all kinds of possibilities right now.

Samsung Dual-View 3-D OLED TV
That’s quite a mouthful for a television set, so let’s simplify it: This is a TV that lets you watch two programs at the same time on the same screen — and not by creating separate boxes within the screen. Instead, users wear active-shutter 3-D glasses, and each wearer has a different 2-D image projected to them, or even a different TV show or movie.

What about audio, you ask? Good question: The audio for each program is streamed right through the glasses, so you’ll hear your own program, while your significant other sitting on the other side of the couch will hear his or her choice of entertainment.

A dual-view screen has a certain appeal for gamers, and both Sony and LG have introduced such screens for gaming purposes.

For the average TV watcher, this is notably both high-tech and isolating.

LG’s Blast Chiller
You might have heard about this one by now. We still think it’s cool, no pun intended.

It was apparent at this year’s CES show that appliance makers think we want fridges that tweet and washing machines that send messages to smartphones when the laundry is done. While interconnectivity within the home is still in its teenage — if not even earlier — stages, there was one feature of LG’s refrigerators that seemed quite smart: The Blast Chiller is a compartment that chills cans of soda or beer in about five minutes, and can cool down a larger bottle of wine in about eight minutes. It will be available in LG’s new line of refrigerators — price is unknown, but current models cost around $2,500. The Blast Chiller was definitely a favorite with conference-goers — likely because, by the end of the week, many may have wanted a cold beverage.

Corning Gorilla Glass, the Sequel
You might wonder where glass fits in at a tech show, but this isn’t just any soda-lime glass: It’s the ultra-thin, chemically strengthened Gorilla Glass that forms the displays of many smartphones and tablets, and even coats some laptops. Last week, Corning showed off Gorilla Glass that was 20 percent thinner and just as durable (which I was unable to break with a metal stick, as you can see from the photo here, although you might not want to use my arm strength as your gauge).

Gorilla Glass can be used to create stronger, brighter product displays, the company said. Last year, Corning had also said that it believed the future of glass was “3-D” or flexible glass that can be used in different form factors, including keyboards and kitchen countertops. At CES, the company showed how Gorilla Glass 2 can be used in home appliances and dashboard display systems.

Sleeper Pick: “The Patch”
As anticipated, armbands, accelerometers, exercise gear and health-and-fitness-focused apps dominated the digital-health section of CES this year (and even Jawbone’s UP armband made an appearance). But if you’re not ready for a full-time commitment to some of these devices, BodyMedia and Avery Dennison have come up with a temporary adhesive patch to test your resolve. Meant to be worn on the back of the left tricep for up to seven days, the patch combines the sensors of BodyMedia armbands with Avery Dennison’s wearable tech to aid in weight-loss management.

The patch is still awaiting U.S. regulatory clearance, so it may not be available until the third quarter of the year, or later. I’m told it will be less expensive than BodyMedia’s armbands, which run from $150 to $179 (and now work in conjunction with a new digital-wellness platform from fitness guru Jillian Michaels.)

But in future-form, a potentially inexpensive, disposable patch that has some of the same sensory capabilities of an armband could be an interesting fitness “gadget”: Slap it on, forget it’s there while you exercise, save the data and throw it out.

(Blast Chiller photo courtesy of Flickr/LGEPR)

Three Cameras in Focus at CES

Lauren Goode — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 20:08:41 +0000

Smartphones are munching at many industries, including cameras. And while some camera makers are looking to compete by making their digital cameras “smarter” — which means adding more Wi-Fi capabilities and apps — others are focusing on their core capabilities: Taking pictures. Here are three cameras that stood out at the Consumer Electronics Show last week:

Canon PowerShot G1 X
The Canon PowerShot G1 X follows the PowerShot G12, which will stay in Canon’s product lineup; the G1 X adds the largest sensor to date for a Canon PowerShot model. Bodywise, it’s not as chunky as a DSLR, but it’s larger than the PowerShot G12, and still has a pretty solid composite-material body, weighing in at 19 ounces and measuring 4.98 x 2.93 x 2.12 inches.

The camera uses a 1.5-inch, 14.3 megapixel high-sensitivity CMOS sensor, which is 6.3 times larger than the G12’s sensor. A representative for Canon says it works especially well in low light.

Interchangeable lenses aren’t an option — the G1 X does have a 28mm-to-112mm (4x) optical zoom lens — and for hobbyists, this will be just fine. But for fans of the Canon 5D, 7D, and 60D, the lack of lens options could be what makes them stay true to their DSLRs.

The G1 X also captures 1080p HD video, with optical zooming and auto-focus features. It’s got a pop-up flash, and a fully rotating view screen. While some consumers might prefer not to have an extra view-screen “arm” hanging off the camera, regular video shooters might prefer this to an embedded view screen.

The Canon G1 X will cost $799, and is expected to hit the market at the end of February.

FujiFilm X-Pro 1
Fujifilm’s new flagship product will stoke the fires of your inner photo freak, but will likely leave a big, gaping hole in your wallet.

Fujifilm is touting a brand-new proprietary sensor that is supposed to set this device apart from other cameras. In fact, the new sensor is establishing the X-Pro 1 as the new flagship camera of Fujifilm. The X-Pro 1 has a 16.3 megapixel CMOS sensor, sized 23.6 mm x 15.6 mm. Fujifilm says this new sensor allows for the removal of additional low-pass filters within the camera, and still captures high-resolution images and true colors.

The X-Pro 1 supports three interchangeable lenses, captures 1080p HD video, and has a hybrid multi-iew finder that switches between electronic and optical view.

The body of the camera has a vintage look, which camera buffs will appreciate, and it’s palpably heavier than Fujifilm’s X100 camera.

With the X-Pro 1, Fujifilm is targeting an advanced photographer, and likely one that is focused on taking still images, rather than video. The price point hasn’t been set yet, but it will likely retail for more than the FinePix X100, which retails for $1,200. Fujifilm is aiming for a March 2012 launch of the X-Pro 1.

Nikon 1 Series
The belle of the CES ball this year was Nikon’s D4 camera, which won various awards throughout the week. But the D4 is geared toward professionals — and costs $6,000.

For consumers, the Nikon “1″ series cameras may be the way to go. These cameras actually hit the market last October, but were still getting attention at last week’s big show in Las Vegas.

The Nikon 1 V1, at $849, is slightly bigger than the J1, and has an electronic viewfinder and one other feature that I feel is a real bonus. Otherwise, the V1 and J1 are almost identical. The 1 series cameras are not full-fledged DLSRs, but offer some of the same advanced functionality, and support interchangeable lenses. They pack in a 10.1 megapixel, 13.2 mm x 8.8 mm high-speed AF CMOS sensor, and have a 2.7x lens focal length. Like many digital cameras on the market, they capture 1080p HD video.

There’s one dial on the back for toggling between the four functions of the camera: Still images, video, motion snapshot and smart photo selection. For some users, this makes the V1 and J1 simpler to navigate than other compact cameras; others might not like some of the limits on customization. Bounce-flash accessories, like the SB-N5 speedlight for the V1, are available for purchase, and offer a bit more illumination than built-in pop-up lights.

But there’s one small feature on the Nikon 1 V1 that makes a big difference, in my opinion — the external audio input. Very few point-and-shoots or DSLRs come with a microphone jack; in order to capture good, isolated sound on many cameras, you’d have to slide an accessory into the “hot shoe” at the top of the camera. With the Nikon 1 V1, you could attach a stereo mic and stop apologizing for the bad audio and ambient noise in your videos.

The Nikon 1 V1 retails for $849; the Nikon 1 J1 costs $699.

Nokia's Developer Newsletter More Forthcoming Than Execs, Promises Lumia 900 Set for March Debut

Ina Fried — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 23:49:59 +0000

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop stuck to his script all week at the Consumer Electronics Show, saying only that the new Lumia 900 LTE-capable Windows Phone would ship in the coming months.

Apparently, not everyone got the message, though. Nokia’s developer newsletter site has an article on the new phone and states quite clearly that it will be available in March. Eventually the site will probably be changed, but as of Friday afternoon the date was still stated simply as a matter of fact.

“The Nokia Lumia 900 phone runs Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5. It is the biggest and fastest smartphone yet,” Nokia said on the site, as noted earlier by WMPowerUser and others. “And it will become available exclusively through AT&T in March.”

A Nokia representative said the newsletter was the result of a “misunderstanding” by its developer team and said nothing was final.

“In a nutshell, we are still working on finalizing the Nokia Lumia 900 together with AT&T,” the representative said. “As such, we do not know exactly what the availability date will be with certainty.”

The Chat I Had With Stephen Elop as We Both Nearly Missed Final Ballmer-Note

Ina Fried — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:44:06 +0000

As I noted in my liveblog of Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote, I barely made it in, as the speech was packed.

That they almost didn’t let in a reporter running late is hardly noteworthy. However, also initially rebuffed was the guy I was with — Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. I even managed to snap this fun photo of the former Microsoft division head being turned away:

You’d think Microsoft would have wanted to make sure that their No. 1 Windows Phone partner was front and center — if not on stage — for the speech. That’s doubly true, considering Nokia’s phone was one of the few bits of news Microsoft was making that day.

That said, Elop and I both made it in, eventually. I called someone, but I am quite sure Elop might have been able to pull a string or two, if he wanted to. But, to his immense credit, he didn’t once turn to anyone — as many executives would have — and bellow, “Don’t you know who I am?”

Anyway, that’s the fun cocktail story. Here’s what Elop had to say during our interview:

First off, he said that the Lumia 900, introduced at the show, reflects Nokia’s commitment to designing products specifically for North America. He wouldn’t rule out the large-screen Windows Phone shipping elsewhere, but said its LTE radio and big screen were things that the company knew were needed in the U.S.

“The operators, particularly AT&T and Verizon, are competing on the basis of their new 4G networks,” Elop said.

But, no, I couldn’t get him to say when it would ship, or what it will cost.

“We’re not quite ready to provide the exact date or the exact pricing,” he said. “We clearly intend to be quite aggressive (on price).”

But, he said, the important thing is that the devices are in good shape.

“There are real devices,” Elop said, noting that he has been carrying one of the phones for a while. Elop and Nokia staffers have been using the Lumia 900 devices for a bit now, but have cloaked them to avoid letting the new design leak out. “Now we can take off the rubber devices we’ve all been using, to use the devices in public.”

One of the key next steps, obviously, will be transitioning from a period in which the company wanted to keep the Lumia 900 device a closely guarded secret to one in which it wants other people to discover it.

“The first obstacle — and this is one I think that we’ve nailed — is the product has to be great,” Elop said. “Someone had to do their best work for this platform and that’s clearly what we signed up for.”

Elop said the device packs Nokia’s best screen, best camera and best design.

The next step, Elop said, is getting the devices in the hands of the sales staff — at the AT&T stores and other retailers — who will decide whether to pitch that or another high-end smartphone.

“You have to seed the market with devices,” Elop said. “You have to put the devices in the hands of people. With our launches, to date, around the world, we have seeded more devices than we ever have done by far as Nokia — tens of thousands of devices, in the hands of store managers and sales associates.”

So would Nokia consider opening stores in the U.S.? Elop didn’t rule it out, but he noted that given the role of carriers here, it is probably less critical than in places where devices are sold unsubsidized for use with any carrier.

“Particularly in a market like the U.S., being in close collaboration with AT&T, for example, is, I think, our strongest step forward,” Elop said. “That will remain, in the U.S. market, our principal approach.”

Channel Changer: One-on-One With YouTube Content Boss Robert Kyncl (Video)

Peter Kafka — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 17:41:35 +0000

YouTube is trying to take on TV by beefing up its selection of “premium” content: It’s doling out millions to famous and not-so-famous people to make stuff for the world’s largest video site, and creating “channels” to make that stuff easier to find.

Google announced the plan last fall, but yesterday, YouTube content boss Robert Kyncl held a formal coming-out party for the plan, with a presentation for a packed house at the Consumer Electronics Show. And after that, I talked to him about why YouTube had changed course.

After all, plenty of people seem to like YouTube just the way it is. It attracts 800 million users a month, who watch a staggering three billion hours of clips a day. And while Google has never come out and disclosed the site’s finances, it frequently hints that it is a big business, and perhaps a profitable one.

And if YouTube really wants to get more premium stuff for the site, why not go out and buy the stuff that Hollywood and the TV guys are already making? Google could certainly afford it, and Big Media has gotten very comfortable about putting its stuff online, as long as it’s getting a big check for it. Kyncl knows that well, since he used to arrange those deals at Netflix, before joining Google in 2010.

You can see Kyncl’s answers here — apologies for the extra-shaky cam — and below that, you can see the full CES presentation. And in a couple weeks, you can hear from Kyncl’s boss, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar, at our D: Dive Into Media conference. Registration details here.

[ See post to watch video ]

HP's Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet

Lauren Goode — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:02:37 +0000

Phil McKinney, the former chief technology officer of Hewlett-Packard’s PC unit, is taking a hard stance on Ultrabooks.

“There’s nothing new,” he told AllThingsD in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “And many look the same. If you covered up the label on them, you can’t tell them apart.”

Ultrabooks, in case you’ve missed the ultra-noisy hype this week, are Intel-driven lightweight laptops, with Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Acer getting into the game, to name a handful. In addition to portability, some computer makers are punching up the laptops with features like carbon fiber and Gorilla Glass coatings, flexible bodies, NFC chips and battery boosters.

“At the end of the day, they have Intel chips; they’re running Microsoft Windows operating systems,” McKinney said. He pointed to the HP Voodoo Envy 133, which hit the market in 2008, had a 13.3-inch display and weighed only 3.4 pounds (albeit at a $2,000-plus price point).

McKinney was attending CES as a member of the press — he’s writing a column for Forbes. He was also promoting his upcoming book, “Beyond the Obvious.”

McKinney exited HP last fall, following a tumultuous couple of months that included a CEO swap, the abandonment of webOS hardware, and reports that HP might spin off its PC unit. During McKinney’s nine years at the PC maker, he guided much of the company’s innovation and R&D. More recently, that included the development of Ultrabooks, he said.

McKinney also offered his thoughts on webOS, which HP acquired with Palm back in 2010, and which recently became an open source project. “I was disappointed by the decision to kill the hardware. I still think, though, there’s a lot of life left in webOS,” he said.

He hears from developers and tinkerers, he said, who are still excited to work with webOS, but are waiting for the code, the access and the governance model from HP in order to really begin developing on the platform.

“Ultimately, I think webOS could become the alternative OS that you can download on devices that come with another operating system built in,” McKinney said. “Apps from developers are continuing to grow for webOS. The interest is still there.”

(Photo courtesy of the DEMO Conference/Flickr)

Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)

Walt Mossberg — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 20:04:05 +0000

As noted in this Fox Business News interview, it’s not easy to get around the floor of CES when you have one of the most recognizable faces in tech, but Walt Mossberg dutifully pressed through the throngs, and while nothing really blew him away, he did find a few items intriguing:

Samsung Note: Dubbed a “phablet,” the Note is a cross between a big phone and a small tablet.
One Tablet Per Child: The follow-up to the original One Laptop Per Child computer, this tablet is designed for third-world and developing countries.
Digital health and fitness products: A blood glucose meter and blood pressure cuff that interfaces with an iPhone or iPad.
Lenovo Yoga: This Ultrabook switches between a thin laptop and a tablet and is designed for the upcoming Windows 8.

eBay Predicts Mobile Commerce Will Grow 60 Percent in 2012

Tricia Duryee — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:24:08 +0000

EBay’s John Donahoe has drawn his 2012 mobile predictions line in the sand.

He is forecasting that mobile commerce — purchases made from apps or the browser on a phone or tablet — will hit $8 billion in mobile gross merchandise volume this year, up 60 percent from $5 billion in 2011.

Donahoe made the predictions last night in Las Vegas, where he gave the keynote at a technology dinner for leaders of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Additionally, the company predicted that PayPal will reach $7 billion in mobile total payment volume this year, increasing from $4 billion in 2011.

He made the bold predictions despite the recent unsettling departure of PayPal President Scott Thompson to join Yahoo as CEO, indicating that he is still confident about PayPal’s mobile future.

During the keynote, Donahoe also announced that Best Buy was its newest partner to use the RedLaser barcode scanning app to offer local in-store pick-up services. Other companies that offer it today include Toys “R” Us.

Other big data figures:

EBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of its mobile applications across all platforms.
More than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113 percent increase year over year.
PayPal’s original prediction for 2011 was that it would achieve $1.5 billion in mobile total payment volume for 2011. Instead, it hit $4 billion. A year earlier, it totaled only $750 million.

What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)

Peter Kafka — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:30:43 +0000

Sony has everything you’d need to launch an interesting video service: Its TVs, DVD players and game machines are already in millions of living rooms. It owns a big Hollywood studio. And while it has taken a beating over the past few years, it has plenty of cash to fund big bets.

So no surprise that Sony is yet another company reportedly exploring “over the top” Web video. And even if it doesn’t end up launching a full package of cable-like TV programming, it seems quite reasonable to assume it’s going to be doing something with video this year.

And that’s more or less what Sony executive Tim Schaaff said near the end of the brief chat I had with him yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Schaaff is the former Apple executive hired by Howard Stringer six years ago to knit all his media and electronics businesses together. If you don’t want to hear his thoughts about his new music subscription business, or what the cloud means for Sony versus Google, Amazon, Apple, etc., skip ahead to the four-minute mark on this video.

That’s where Schaaff refuses to say that Sony is looking to get into a Netflix-style subscription business. But he does say he would love to have me “paying for video on a regular basis.”

“We’re certainly talking to lots of different people about some new possibilities, and I hope that we can have some new announcements for you later in the year.”

[ See post to watch video ]

The guy making a cameo appearance in the background, by the way, is Sony VP Michael Aragon, who oversees video and music for Schaaff.

Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market

Ina Fried — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:09 +0000

For the last several years, Fujitsu has been content to be a big mobile player in Japan, thanks to a close relationship with DoCoMo, and yet relatively unheard of in the rest of the smartphone universe.

That, however, is starting to change.

With the market increasingly global — and overseas players impinging on its domestic market, Fujitsu is looking overseas. And when it looks, it sees North America as the place it would most like to be.

“North America is our priority market,” Senior Executive Vice President Hideyuki Saso said in an interview at the Consumer Electronics Show. Fujitsu is also in the process of reacquiring full control of a mobile joint venture that had paired it with Toshiba in the phone business.

Fujitsu, which makes both Android and Windows Phone devices in Japan, isn’t quite sure what market niche it will target, but it is sure it doesn’t want to be just one among the smartphone masses.

“If we try to do same thing as how our competitors because of the competition, it is going to be tough,” Saso said via a translator. “We would like to identify the right way of entering the North American market that would make use of our technology and expertise to make a steady landing.”

Timing is also uncertain, though Saso said the company hopes it will be either later this year or next year. The key, he said, is to figure out where it can stand out from the pack.

“We don’t want to be just another mobile phone,” he said, “We want to be special.”

While the U.S. smartphone market is already crowded, Saso said Fujitsu has several strenghts it can draw on, including a wide range of thin, yet durable and waterproof models. Though not yet a player here, Fujitsu boasts it has the thinnest smartphone approved by the FCC for use in the U.S.

In making its phones waterproof, Saso said, the company had to also make them tough.

“For us to achieve this waterproof (capability), we also had to look at durability again, the rigidness and the toughness,” he said, banging a large pen on the phone’s screen for emphasis.

Fujitsu also has the noise cancellation used in a Formula One vehicle it sponsors — a position that explains the presence of the race car in its CES booth.

All of those, Saso says, could form the basis of Fujitsu’s entry, though the company is still evaluating its product options. Another approach would be to offer a phone similar to the Raku Raku (“easy easy”) phone it offers in Japan — a basic phone, aimed at seniors, that mixes in enhanced calling and health diagnostics such as heart rate, calorie and fat intake, and exercise. Fujitsu has sold 20 million of the devices in Japan.

Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify -- In the U.S.

Peter Kafka — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:00:24 +0000

Jon Irwin is not pals with Sean Parker. He doesn’t hold splashy press conferences. He hasn’t been on the cover of Forbes.

But for now, at least, he can claim a bragging right that Spotify’s Daniel Ek doesn’t have: The CEO of Rhapsody has more paying subscribers than any other digital music service in the U.S.

Probably, that is. We can get into the numbers in a minute. But at the very least, Irwin argues, his company ought to get a bit of the attention that Spotify does.

They’re both doing the same thing, after all — trying to get consumers to pony up $10 a month for an ad-free service that lets you listen to any music you want, on your iPhone or (just about) any other device.

The big difference between the two is that while Rhapsody offers users a free trial period to sample the service, Ek’s company will let you listen to music for free forever.

That offer comes with advertising, and some restrictions — you can only do it for a certain number of hours per month, and you can’t take it with you. But that free offer, in conjunction with a big push from Facebook, is the real reason that so many people have heard about Spotify recently. Free, legal music is a pretty compelling offer.

Why hasn’t Rhapsody gone that route? Irwin has a long answer for that, but the short one is that he doesn’t think Spotify’s freemium model can convert enough subscribers to cover the costs of the music it gives away. The Spotify camp argues otherwise, but we’re not going to get an authoritative answer for some time.

In the meantime, Irwin can take can comfort in the fact that he has more Americans paying for his service than Ek does.

He thinks. Irwin says he passed the one-million mark at the end of last year. And while Spotify hasn’t broken out its U.S. subscriber total, we can guess that it has less than that. At the end of November, it said that it had 2.5 million paying subscribers worldwide. That’s 900,000 more than the 1.6 million it said it had in June, and that growth hasn’t all come in the U.S., because Facebook has been promoting the service everywhere.

Now, back to the future. Spotify is likely to keep growing for a while, thanks to that Facebook firehose, as well as international expansion — my bet is that Ek opens shop in Germany fairly soon.

But Irwin thinks that both companies are going to end up needing help from partners with much bigger reach — cable guys like Comcast, or wireless giants like Verizon — if they’re going to get real scale.

He explains in this interview we conducted yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show:

[ See post to watch video ]

Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES

Ina Fried — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:30:51 +0000

This may be Microsoft’s last year with a keynote and booth at the Consumer Electronics Show, but the company is actually stepping up its investment in the biggest European technology show.

Microsoft is planning an even bigger presence than last year at CeBit, the big trade show held in March in Hanover, Germany. Speaking at a CeBit event in Las Vegas, Microsoft vice president Achim Berg (a German former Deutsche Telekom executive) said that the event provides a good place to reach key customers.

At CeBit, Berg said, Microsoft is able to meet with 10,000 chief information officer-types in just a few days, getting a lot of business done.

And, unlike Vegas, Berg said he doesn’t have to spend two or three hours a day in cabs.

“There is no need to wait for taxis,” Berg said at the event (where I also spoke about mobile security issues). “This is a well-organized German fair.”

Though glad to see Microsoft’s continued investment, CeBit officials said they can relate to the pain the Consumer Electronics Show is having in losing a big name. A few years ago, CeBit lost both Nokia and Hewlett-Packard as big exhibitors. And while the show is bigger than it was a couple of years ago, it is down from where it was five years ago.

Inside the CES Lost & Found

Lauren Goode — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:57:58 +0000

A couple of days ago, just before I headed to the theater at the Las Vegas Hotel & Casino for our AllThingsD FootBallmer dual-blog, I realized I had misplaced my laptop charger. It sent me into a mild panic.

How would I survive CES?

Fortunately, I was able to locate a spare charger (they’re not hard to find in the vicinity of the Consumer Electronics Show). But in case some Good Samaritan had returned it, today I made a trip to the CES Lost & Found.

I made my way down the crowded central hallway at the Las Vegas Convention Center to a dark, elevated booth. A security dispatcher was sitting on a chair in front it; two others worked inside the forbidding-looking structure.

In order to inquire about the lost item, I had to stand on tiptoe and speak through a hole in the protective glass — as if I were making a bank deposit or talking to a cabbie back in New York. A dispatcher shook her head at me through the window when I asked if a charger had been brought in.

No luck for me.

But for most CES-goers, it seems, all is not actually lost: The Lost & Found department at CES has a better than 50 percent return rate, according to the security dispatcher, whose name is Olivia Huguet. During a conference like CES, she said, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority fields about 50 misplaced items a day.

“It depends on what’s going on, obviously. If it’s not so busy, people don’t bring in as many things,” Huguet said. “We try to return every item, even after CES is over. We take the time to investigate if there’s some way to identify the owner.”

“We get a lot of iPhones. Tons of iPhones,” Huguet added. “We’re able to return almost every one. But we get other things, too.”

When I asked what the strangest item is she’s seen so far at CES, she shrugged. “Nothing too off-the-wall. Some tripod case today. But other times, we get everything. We’ve gotten hearing aids, we’ve gotten teeth. Entire sets of teeth. Sometimes we even see drugs.”

No comment on whether visitors try to reclaim those.

FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:13:05 +0000

Julius Genachowski on Wednesday made yet another call for Congress to speedily allow incentive auctions to free up badly needed spectrum for the wireless industry.

But while the content in the FCC chairman’s speech was familiar, his vehicle for delivering it was different. He’s given many speeches reading from a tablet, as he did in Vegas, but this was the first time he had done so on an Android model — a Samsung Galaxy 8.9.

“I’ve only done them on the iPad,” Genachowski said. “On my smartphones I’ve tried to make it a practice to switch them up.”

So how was it?

“It was all good,” Genachowski said, showing off his remarks on the Galaxy tab. His trusty iPad was nearby, which he used to dash off a quick email before our interview. “It was a seamless experience.”

As for the content of his talk, Genachowski focused on several points that are near and dear to his heart — first, that Congress enable the auctions quickly, and second, that it leave the FCC the option of keeping some of the spectrum freed up for unlicensed purposes.

“It would be a very serious mistake to pass incentive legislation and prohibit the FCC from using some spectrum for unlicensed (uses),” he said, echoing comments he made on a Silicon Valley swing late last year.

Such uses, he said, allow innovation that could provide for even more efficient spectrum usage than limiting it only to licensed purposes.

“We may see innovations there that lead to more efficient use,” he said. “To me, it’s a no-brainer.”

Genachowski said that allowing those with unused spectrum to auction it off could allow for the recovery of 100MHz of very high quality spectrum near the 700MHz band used for today’s 4G services.

“The work doesn’t end with incentive auctions, but incentive auctions are a sure way to provide very significant relief to spectrum.”

Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:02:50 +0000

Verizon Wireless isn’t content just having the most wireless subscribers in the U.S. It wants those same subscribers to have multiple different devices on its network.

Over the long-term, the company is aiming for an average of five devices per subscriber.

“We think customers are going to have five devices,” said Colson Hillier, Verizon’s executive director of data applications.

Today, customers often have multiple connected devices, including laptops, televisions and tablets. Even when they are connected, most of those devices are linked to the Internet via Wi-Fi. Over time, though, Hillier said that Verizon sees an opportunity to add 4G.

One of the obvious impediments is today that would require either the use of a hotspot or signing up for multiple rate plans. Verizon, like other U.S. carriers, is looking at offering data plans that allow customers to share a pool of gigabytes among a number of different devices.

“You don’t get there with five plans,” he said.

Verizon’s chief executive said last month that some sort of shared data plan should arrive some time in 2012.

AT&T has also said it wants to offer such plans, but mobility chief Ralph de la Vega said in an interview this week that ironing out the details is taking longer than he had hoped.

Hillier also said that Verizon plans to offer home broadband service using its 4G LTE network in the first half of this year.

“We think it fits very well (for) rural markets and customers that are under-serviced,” Hillier said.

(Image credit: iStockphoto | thesuperph)

Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different

Lauren Goode — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:38:56 +0000

As we expected, Ultrabooks are everywhere this week. And despite will.i.am’s proclamation yesterday at Intel’s press event that they’re the new ghetto blaster, many of them seem indistinguishable from each other.

So HP and Lenovo have added some features to their Ultrabooks to set them apart from all the ultra-noise.

Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga

The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga is named as such because of its flexibility. The 10-finger touchscreen has a full range of motion at the hinge, so when fully folded, the laptop turns into a 13.3.-inch tablet. And it can be propped up in tent mode — or, in this case, downward dog. I could see this being useful for entertainment viewing at home, as well as in small spaces, such as on an airplane.

Other laptops have shown this range of motion before — remember the Dell Inspiron Duo? — but adding this feature to a super-slim, touchscreen Windows 8 laptop is a nice touch.

The Yoga’s cover is solid aluminium; it measures 16.9mm thick and weighs 3.1 pounds. It is, of course, powered by an Intel Core processor, with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 256GB solid-state drive. Lenovo claims the battery lasts up to eight hours.

Since the IdeaPad Yoga runs the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, the laptop likely won’t be available until the second half of the year. A representative for Lenovo said the company hopes to price it around $1,300.

Gorilla Glass is what makes the HP Envy Spectre 14 stand out. The ultra-thin, chemically strengthened material is what coats the exterior and the wrist rest of this laptop, giving it a sleek, reflective look — albeit one that needs to be wiped with a cloth pretty frequently.

HP's Envy Spectre 14

Yesterday at CES, someone lamented to me, regarding the Envy Spectre 14, “But it’s so heavy.” Weighing in at almost four pounds, the Spectre is a bit heavier than other Ultrabooks, but for comparison’s sake, the 13-inch version of the “regular” HP Envy notebook is just about the same, at 3.68 pounds.

The Spectre is 20mm thin, has a 14-inch screen and Intel Core processors, and supports up to 256GB of storage. It also boasts nine hours of battery life, versus Lenovo’s eight. The Spectre also has a backlit keyboard and proximity sensors which detect when a user is approaching the laptop and light up the keys in advance. And it has HP’s Beats Audio built in.

Another interesting feature of the Spectre is that it’s NFC-enabled; theoretically, users can share data from an NFC smartphone by tapping the phone against the Spectre.

The HP Envy Spectre is expected to launch in early February, and will cost around $1,399.

Neither of these Ultrabooks have DVD slots, but the HP Envy Spectre 14 has an expandable Ethernet port, USB 3.0, HDMI and Mini DisplayPort, while the IdeaPad Yoga has USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports, an HDMI port and an SD card slot.

A fun side note about the HP Envy Spectre 14: A company representative says HP actually first displayed a prototype of this Ultrabook last fall, during New York Fashion Week. But it was a “bejeweled” version, with Swarovski crystal designs by Marchesa, and fashion-focused reporters barely batted an eye at the thing. Who knew they were missing one of this season’s biggest CES trends?

(Images courtesy of Blogeee/Flickr)

Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)

Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:38:22 +0000

Walt walks the CES floor with Katie, and finds less “newness” at this year’s event, noting that the absent Apple looms over the show.

[ See post to watch video ]

Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn't Like Your Question

Lauren Goode — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:16:40 +0000

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt stopped by CES today, and sat down with CNET’s Molly Wood for a discussion of the “Next Big Thing” in tech, with a focus on connectivity between devices.

Schmidt is known for his candid (and sometimes odd) remarks, and today’s event didn’t disappoint.

“Google TV’s doing well,” he said to Wood, when asked about the company’s Internet TV efforts (an assessment with which Logitech’s CEO might disagree). Schmidt and Wood talked about the handful of electronics makers announcing Google TV plans this week, and Schmidt said a “whole bunch” of additional partners are expected later this year.

Schmidt then touted Google Music, and said that Google CEO Larry Page is leading the effort to standardize the user interface throughout Google’s properties.

But when asked about Microsoft as a competitor, Schmidt dismissed that company’s efforts. “Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem they may not get through. Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said, feigning chagrin.

Apple, Schmidt said, has done very well, and said, as a former board member, he’s proud of that fact. But he still emphasized Google’s openness compared to Apple’s controlled system. Schmidt said Google is seeing 700,000 Android activations a day, totaling more than 200 million Android phones in the world. “Just do a little math with the numbers I just told you, and Android is on a billion-unit plan.”

In terms of Google’s core strategy for mobile, Schmidt said Google’s plan is to get everybody using its Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and stressed, “We absolutely allow our partners to change the interface, as long as they don’t change user compatibility.”

Regarding the early success of the Kindle Fire — and how the device skirts the Google Android marketplace — Schmidt said, “Kindle Fire has also done well, but they chose — and they did so legitimately — they chose it not to be compatible with Android guidelines and the Marketplace. So it comes with some limitations; on the other hand, it comes with a very low price point.” He noted that, as with the original Kindle, Amazon seems to be taking a books-first strategy.

Later on in the event, Wood asked Schmidt what he thought the most important part of the tech ecosystem is — services, hardware or software.

Schmidt seemed slightly flustered, answering, “It’s all of them,” before going on to suggest, “I’ll answer another question for you, which is, what was the most surprising thing in 2011?”

That got a big laugh from the audience.

But Schmidt paid no mind. He just forged full steam ahead to say that the increasing focus on the cloud platform model means everyone’s a winner; he also said the “secret” in computing in these platforms is to make them “as open as possible.”

T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:02:36 +0000

T-Mobile said on Tuesday that it is expanding its Bobsled messaging service to allow more text messaging and voice calling abilities. The No. 4 U.S. carrier also announced a new Samsung Galaxy S phone, as well as faster HSPA+42 data service in 12 additional cities.

Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 01:00:34 +0000

For years, Intel has talked about using its chips to power smartphones. Now it actually has something in its hands.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel is showing a working reference design that it is offering to any phone maker that wants to use its chips. The phone itself packs a 1.6GHz single-core Atom chip along with an array of sensors and radios.

“The sample platform we have is fully buzzword compliant,” General Manager Mike Bell said in an interview.

The company has been testing thousands of phones internally and says the performance is top of class, with battery life at least as good as most Android devices.

“We are not the best at power, but we are definitely very, very competitive,” Bell said.

Compatibility is another issue that Bell said he is asked about a lot. Nearly all Java-based Android apps should run, as well as a good number of those designed specifically for chips based on cores from rival ARM.

“We think that gets rid of the last argument people have,” Bell said.

Of course, Intel faces plenty of competition in the phone chip space, including existing Android chip providers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Texas Instruments and other challengers, such as Broadcom.

Intel is announcing two phone customers running its chips — a Lenovo phone for China slated to be released in the first half of the year and a multi-year, multi-device alliance with Motorola Mobility that will begin with a phone in the second half of the year.

Although Intel announced only the two customers, Bell indicated more names will be coming soon. (Think next month’s Mobile World Congress for an update.)

“You can imagine our business is all about scale,” he said, declining to say how many phone designs are being built around its chips, or how many customers it has.

In a roundtable with reporters, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said he was attracted to the chipmaker by both its roadmap and its approach, which focuses as much on running multiple instructions on a single chip core as it does on packing in as many cores as possible.

“What they have done is multithreading vs. multicore,” Jha said, noting there is a big debate in computer science as to which is better. Jha said that, along with other innovations like three-dimensional transistors, this will be important as the laws of physics prevent rapid performance gains just by shrinking the size of transistors.

Intel has focused its phone efforts entirely on Android for now, noting that it believes it has more people working on Android than Google does.

[ See post to watch video ]

Motorola CEO: We're Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year

Ina Fried — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:05:22 +0000

While the trend has been for Android device makers to throw new models off the assembly line at a dizzying pace, at least one phone manufacturer is stepping off the treadmill.

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said his company plans to release fewer new models this year, in an effort to concentrate its marketing dollars.

“A lot of products that are roughly the same doesn’t drive the market to a new place,” Jha said on Tuesday in a roundtable meeting with reporters. Of course, it is an interesting statement from a company that released the Droid Bionic and Droid Razr in rapid succession, followed on Monday by the Droid Razr Maxx — a version of the Droid Razr with a bigger battery.

Jha noted that it was a delay in the Bionic that caused that product’s debut to be so close in timing to the Razr.

Asked whether he thinks Motorola would be better off if others also slowed their launches or if he prefers them to continue their current pace, Jha demurred.

“I made this decision independent of what the others will do,” he said. “We’re doing what we think is the right thing.”

Jha also said the company plans to pursue fewer new ideas in an effort to make more things stick.

The shift comes at a key time for Motorola, which is in the process of trying to sell itself to Google. The company also warned last week that fourth-quarter sales would come in below what most analysts had been expecting.

Last year the company introduced the notion of a lap dock in which phones could be plugged into a bigger screen and keyboard to perform many of the same tasks as a laptop.

Jha conceded that the product hasn’t been the commercial success it hoped nor did customers find it delivered the performance they were looking for.

However, Jha said that the company is making further refinements and still believes in the concept for the future.

Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game

Tricia Duryee — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:23:37 +0000

Turns out the big consumer electronics highlight of Microsoft’s final CES keynote last night was the six-year-old Xbox.

Microsoft was proud to announce that over its lifespan, more than 66 million consoles have been sold and that 40 million users have signed up for an Xbox Live membership.

To be sure, the Xbox continues to be one of the top-selling videogame consoles, beating both Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii for the past year.

But breathing new life into the device is the motion-controlled accessory called the Kinect, which was introduced right before the holidays in 2010.

Microsoft provided a sales update last night for the Kinect, saying it has now sold 18 million of the units, which represents about one in four Xbox owners. The last update — that 10 million had been sold — was provided 10 months ago when Microsoft said the Kinect shattered the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest-selling consumer device ever.

But the device’s future is a little hazy.

On the Xbox, one of the most popular use cases has been to play dance simulation games. The controller has yet to break substantially into the more hardcore titles. More recently, Microsoft has made it clear that the Kinect will be an integral part of the user interface by providing a wider selection of entertainment options in the living room.

On Dec. 6, the company rolled out a free update to Xbox Live that allowed people to use the Kinect to conduct a Bing search to find games, music and video across several providers. The user interface also allowed people to control the box with voice commands instead of the game controller.

During the keynote, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer announced the Kinect will be coming to Windows on Feb. 1.

In a follow-up blog post, Microsoft said the hardware will have to be optimized for the Windows platform, and the price will reflect that. The Windows-based device will cost $250, more than double the price of the Kinect for Xbox, currently $120 on Amazon.

Microsoft also points out that it can mark down the cost of the hardware for the Xbox because it is subsidized by the purchase of games.

The biggest change to the hardware perhaps is that the camera will be able to see objects as close as 40 to 50 centimeters away from the device, whereas the Xbox version requires you to stand a few feet away from the TV and use most of your living room.

Microsoft also said Kinect for Windows will support gestures and voice on Windows Embedded-based devices, such as systems in manufacturing, retail and other industries.

There will be a slightly cheaper version, priced at $150, for qualifying educational users, to fuel additional innovation on the platform.

Coming up with compelling reasons to buy the technology will be important, especially since Microsoft is charging such a premium price.