One of the key players in that effort is Kazuo Hirai, a longtime game unit executive who is now widely seen as second in command of the entire company behind CEO Howard Stringer.

The company continues to have challenges, though, with its next-generation Vita game player delayed until next year and its first Android tablets just now making their way into the global market.

8:07 am: Just getting started here on the final day of AsiaD.

On his role: If it is a product that is being picked up by a consumer and it’s got the Sony name on it, it’s under my name.

8:09 am: Talking about the TV business.

Hirai says the jury is still out on 3-D, but there is a chicken-and-egg problem.

“It really is dependent on how much good content there is.”

One of the driving factors is probably going to be gaming, he said, because it appeals to a younger set. And, because it is not tied to live content, it is easier to tweak 3-D to make it a good experience.

“Gamers are willing to try new things.”

8:12 am: What about Internet-connected TVs? Those also haven’t taken off all that well, Walt says.

Hirai: “I think that it is a function of several things. Again, it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg.”

8:16 am: On Google TV and Apple TV: Everyone is looking for a prominent space in the living room.

“It’s a very competitive market,” Hirai said.

If it is a fight for the living room, the TV is a natural way to get into that space.

Game consoles are another way, as Sony has done with PlayStation 3.

“That’s another way to make sure we have a place in the living room.”

8:20 am: Walt: Where do things stand with the competition with Xbox?

Hirai: We have a much larger install base in Japan. We were neck and neck in Europe.

In the U.S., though, Xbox has a larger install base.

Hirai says they expect a 10-year lifespan for the PS3, and see it eventually having a greater install base than any console.

8:21 am: What about the impact on handheld gaming of Apple and smartphone apps? How much of a challenge is that to the traditional structure of gaming?

Hirai: Whether we are talking about iPods, iPads or any Android, they’ve had an impact on the traditional videogame business, no question about it.

Not all negative impact, though. It has also introduced new customers to gaming.

Hirai notes that Sony is bringing PlayStation games to Android, and is now opening it up to some other PlayStation developers.

As much as those casual games are fun to play, they’re not the same as a dedicated player like Sony’s forthcoming PlayStation Vita portable videogame device. It’s coming to Japan in December, and to the rest of the world early next year, Hirai said.

It’s optimized for gaming with physical buttons, Hirai said, and allows for input on the back. It can also play HD movies and do other things.

Walt tries putting it in his pocket. Hirai quips that Walt has a stash of devices backstage. “They should have a metal detector.”

It has a 3G card for cellular connectivity (for data). In the U.S., it will cost $299 for the 3G model and $249 for the Wi-Fi-only model.

Walt: Who is the target market?

Hirai: Same people who have bought PSP and PlayStation 3, as well as those who have gotten into gaming from phones and tablets and iPod touch devices.

“If we can convert even a small percentage of those players … then we have also gained.”

8:31 am: Hirai notes that the company just started preorders in Japan, and there were people lining up at stores just to order one.

8:31 am: On to phones — is Sony interested in buying out Ericsson in its Sony Ericsson joint venture?

Hirai: I’m not going to comment on the speculation. After April, when Sony made its latest reorganization, one of the things I’ve done with Sony’s CEO and Sony Ericsson’s CEO is recognize that Sony Ericsson is an important part of Sony’s overall strategy, and that the two are in lockstep, whether it is a joint venture or not. That’s one of the things we are embarking on.

“Those are the kinds of things we need to work on to make sure it is a seamless experience.”

8:38 am: Why did you sell your camera sensors to Apple?

Hirai: Can you really define who your competitors are, these days?

We sell to Apple. We buy from Samsung. We sell to Samsung.

8:42 am: Walt: You are not in the top tier of smartphones.

Hirai: In certain regions, you are right.

Walt: So, are you going to buy out Ericsson in the cellphone space?

Again, Hirai says he won’t comment on speculation. The most important thing is that we are able to work a lot closer with the folks at Sony Ericsson.

Hirai is now showing Sony’s clamshell Android tablet — the Tablet P. Walt notes that when you open it up, you have a tablet with a big black bar in the middle.

Sony also has the slate-shaped Tablet S, which acts as a remote control, and which is already on sale in most markets.

8:48 am: Q&A: What is Sony doing to reinvigorate the videogame business?

Hirai notes that this question comes up every time the industry is in midcycle, and there are lots of sequels.

When we launch PlayStation Vita, we will have new titles.

Next question is on why there are only three PlayStation-certified Android devices — the Xperia Play phone and Sony’s two tablets. Will this expand to non-Sony devices?

Hirai: This is not a case where we want to keep it in the Sony family. We are in discussions with non-Sony makers. We’ll make the announcements as the time comes to go public. “This is not just for Sony devices.”

8:52 am: On cameras, Hirai said that there are continued innovations coming in the point-and-shoot business, despite the rise of camera phones.

“Stay tuned.”

Walt: Are you actually optimistic about that business?

Hirai: “It’s not a growing business. I get that. The numbers speak for themselves.”

8:54 am: Last question, from Joanna Stern of the Verge. What are Sony’s plans to make all the devices work better together? Where are you guys going with that? It seems like that is a software challenge — an area where you have struggled.

Hirai: The point you made is a very good one. He notes there is a new group looking at cross-device strategy, particularly among networked devices.

“I don’t know about clock radios.”

Unfortunately, because this is a hardware business, I’d like to think we can change everything overnight, but we can’t.

Kazuo Hirai Session Photos

It’s because of two tiny parts inside them, one called an accelerometer that detects movement. The other is a gyroscope that is basically used to help maintain orientation of an object or to measure any changes in its orientation.

The first three generations of iPhone had accelerometers, but the iPhone 4 and later the iPad had gyroscopes built into them in order to give software developers — game creators especially — a truly accurate way to measure how the phone is moved and thus change the action on-screen accordingly. Apple’s then-CEO Steve Jobs memorably demonstrated what the addition of gyroscopes meant with an on-screen game of Jenga on an iPhone at an Apple event last year.

The company that made them is the Italian-French semiconductor company STMicroelectronics. Neither company will ever say that out loud, Apple for its own reasons and STMicro out of fear of annoying Apple. However, teardown analyses of both the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 conducted by the research house IHS iSuppli have confirmed this.

I bring it up because STMicro will announce today that it has made its gyroscope chips even smaller than before. The most recent one was about about 17 cubic millimeters, and the new one is just slightly above 10 cubic millimeters. What’s the point in making them smaller? For one, real estate inside a device like an iPhone is precious, so when any one component gets smaller, designers have more space to work with. And often, smaller parts require incrementally less power, which means only good things for battery life.

STMicro has already built more than a billion and a half of these little things — not all of them for use in the iPhone and other Apple iThings, obviously. They do show up in other phones and gaming devices, GPS navigators, robots and scores of other things. ISuppli pegged STMicro’s share of the gyroscope market at 30 percent in 2010, which is pretty impressive considering that it was all of 1 percent the prior year.

Yet as is usually the case with chip companies, the company rarely gets to brag about the identity of its customers, even though it would like nothing better than to shout their names from the rooftops. Instead, you can hear Steve Jobs himself sing the praises of the gyroscope, though without naming the company that made it, in this video excerpt from last year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.

HP shares have been bashed about in recent days, in no small part because of the dismal revenue outlook issued by rival Dell on Tuesday, and also on the heels of a downgrade by BMO Capital analyst Keith Bachman. Word that the TouchPad tablet isn’t selling well at Best Buy didn’t help. Dell shares gave up more than 10 percent of their value, and HP shares appeared to fall in sympathy by nearly four percent, closing at $31.39, or more than 36 percent off their 52-week peak.

So, what to expect? More lowered estimates, if Bachman is to be believed. In a note to clients Wednesday, Bachman cut his rating on HP to “market perform” from “outperform,” even though HP is trading at an inexpensive valuation. “Poor execution, low revenue growth and negative operating income growth” have caused him to slash his price target on HP to $36 from $43.

Bachman said he expects HP to fall short on PC sales, which may cause it to miss its previously issued revenue guidance. “We think HP will modestly miss July top-line estimates, and more meaningfully miss current top-line estimates for HP’s October quarter,” he wrote.

The consensus view of analysts calls for HP to report per-share earnings of $1.09 on revenue of $31.2 billion.

Chris Whitmore, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, wasn’t quite so dour as Bachman, though he wasn’t exactly whistling Dixie about HP’s prospects, either. Saying he expects HP to report results that are in line with the consensus expectations, Whitmore wrote in an Aug. 14 note to clients that he sees a “modest risk to revenue expectations.” The continuing investment to beef up HP’s investment in the services business will put some pressure on future earnings potential, Whitmore worries.

Citing checks of HP’s supply chain and distribution channel, Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee said in a note to clients yesterday that he thinks HP will “meet or exceed” the consensus estimates, and that, as in recent quarters, enterprise hardware sales will be stronger than consumer PC and device sales. “We believe this favorable product mix, in addition to lower component costs, should benefit gross margin,” he wrote. At least there’s one vote of confidence.

Back to services for a moment. HP’s long-term strategy has been to transform itself into a bigger player in IT services, so that it can rely less on sales of personal computers and printers, both of which are subject to violent sales-cycle swings. It’s a strategy that worked out well for IBM, and the $14 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008 was a key part of it.

During HP’s last earnings call in May, Apotheker grumbled that under previous CEO Mark Hurd, now a president at Oracle, HP “over-executed operationally and under-invested strategically.” Essentially, Apotheker blamed Hurd — known as an aggressive cost-cutter — for cutting too deeply without making sufficient investments to fuel growth in higher-profit lines of businesslike services. As a result, Apotheker explained, some expensive investments would be needed over the next several quarters to get that services business where it needs to be, and these investments would eat into results for the next several quarters. (You can hear him explain it himself in a CNBC video from May, below.)

It will be interesting to see if that “Hurd’s fault” narrative is still on the table. If it is, it’s not likely to fall on sympathetic ears. In his downgrade note, Bachman at BMO criticized HP harshly for pressing this message. “We suspect that management will make the point that previous management cut HP too much. However, previous management did not provide guidance, and then miss for three quarters, particularly right after having an analyst event. We would leave blaming the previous administration to politicians — it does not work with investors.” Ouch.

With HP set to report quarterly earnings tomorrow, sources familiar with the matter tell AllThingsD that TouchPad sales are failing yet another critical test: Sales at big-box consumer electronics retailer Best Buy.

According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

A second person who has seen Best Buy’s TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as “consistent with what I’ve seen,” and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be “charitable.” This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We’re also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives.

These numbers are emerging just one day before HP is set to report quarterly earnings. While it’s possible that HP will choose not to disclose any unit-sales results for the TouchPad — because as yet they’re unlikely to be large enough to be material — if it does report anything on the subject, that will probably be a figure known in industry circles as “channel sales,” which are the number of units sold to stores like Best Buy and Costco. Channel sales don’t reflect sales to end customers, known as “sell-through.”

HP declined to comment, as did Best Buy.

There’s more. TouchPad sales aren’t only failing to catch on at Best Buy, but also at other retailers, including Wal-Mart, Micro Center and Fry’s, says analyst Rich Doherty, head of the Envisioneering Group. Doherty says that spot interviews at stores on both coasts show that HP’s “wildcat pricing moves” on the TouchPad have prompted consumers to wait and see what happens in the next few months.

“After the initial surge of interest after the July release, all those price promotions have caused consumers interested in buying a TouchPad to pause, because they think the price is going to fall further,” Doherty told me.

For the record, the TouchPad costs $399.99 for the 16GB model and $499.99 for the 32GB version. Both started at prices exactly $100 higher when first announced in June.

So what’s HP’s next move? Doherty says that with the back-to-school PC buying season underway, HP will likely use its leverage as one of Best Buy’s top suppliers — the other is Samsung — to offer bundle deals: Buy an HP computer, get the TouchPad for a special price.

After our grand tour of Asia last week — with stops in Korea and Japan — it seems like a perfect time to update the speaker list for our upcoming AsiaD conference in Hong Kong in October.

As Walt Mossberg and I said, we are trying to mix both U.S.-based speakers with a pan-Asian selection of speakers from across the region, and the new additions are just that.

For the international confab — this one will be held Oct. 19-21 — we’ve already announced a great lineup, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Google Android head Andy Rubin; Twitter inventor and product guru, as well as Square co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey; Nvidia founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang; and Asus Chairman Jonny Shih.

Now, to add to that terrific lineup:

Kazuo “Kaz” Hirai is widely considered the second in command at the consumer electronics giant Sony, in charge of its key computer entertainment division, as well as now serving as executive deputy president of the whole company. In that role, the dynamic exec is at the nexus of the Japanese company’s efforts around tablets, smartphones, gaming and more. As Sony struggles to reassert its dominance over the arena, Hirai will be a key player in that effort.

Bradley Horowitz — as head of product management for Google+, the search giant’s aggressive effort to break Facebook’s hammerlock on social networking — has a perfect perspective to talk about the fast-growing area and where it is going globally. With locally-based social companies springing up all over Asia, can Google establish one the whole world will use? It’s an important question and Horowitz’s job No. 1.

At Microsoft, Andy Lees is leading one of the software giant’s most important initiatives, as president of its Windows Phone division. His come-from-behind job includes mobile software and hardware, as well as its key partnership with Nokia. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android far in the lead, Lees will need to win in markets globally, especially in Asia.

Peter Chernin is one of Hollywood’s top players and execs. The former top News Corp. exec is now a movie producer — his first effort, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” is a big hit. But he’s also been increasingly active in media investing in Asia of late, and has a lot to say about the global nature of entertainment in the digital age.

John Roese heads the North American R&D team for Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant making everything from heavy-duty gear for networks to mobile phones and tablets. The former CTO of Nortel, he’s heading up global development of Huawei’s cloud services for both businesses and consumers. Roese will also talk about the phenomenon of a Chinese-owned company emerging on the world technology stage.

Even in the midst of an economic downturn, there is no denying that it has been a golden time for Silicon Valley start-ups, which have enjoyed unprecedented growth and funding in the Web 2.0 era. But as they seek to expand beyond the U.S., a critical move for them all, we’ve assembled a panel of entrepreneurs to discuss it, including:

Brian Chesky is the CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, the popular online vacation rental site that recently got a huge dose of funding and an equally large amount of controversy. How Airbnb can take the company to the next level, including across the world, while dealing with the kinds of challenges the small management team has to face, will be an interesting topic for discussion.

After stints as president of Asia Pacific and Latin America operations at Google and co-founder of the online personal finance company Yodlee, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is trying her hand at a small start-up again. She’ll talk about how the recently funded Joyus, a new premium video commerce site trying to pioneer a new way to shop online, plans to expand globally.

Finally, longtime tech exec David Goldberg is now running one of tech’s most successful start-ups at SurveyMonkey, the dominant online survey company. With stints as founder of music site Launch Media, which was bought by Yahoo, and as an Entrepreneur in Residence with Benchmark Capital, he is the perfect person to explain what it’s like being an entrepreneur today in Silicon Valley.

We have even more speakers for AsiaD we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks, so get ready for what’s next.

ComScore said this represented the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth rates, which are being fueled by more Americans choosing to shop online. The number of online buyers was up 16 percent, compared to the year-ago period.

Some 70 percent of all Internet users in the U.S. made at least one purchase during the second quarter.

This quarter’s numbers shouldn’t be a big shock since Amazon surprised Wall Street by reporting a 51 percent year-over-year surge in sales, despite the second quarter typically being the slowest period of the year.

ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said almost $1 of every $10 in discretionary spending is now occurring online. “E-commerce’s benefits of convenience and lower prices continue to be the drivers of the shift,” he added.

Other highlights from the quarter:

• The top-performing categories that grew by at least 15 percent compared to 2010 were: Consumer electronics, computer hardware, software and event tickets.
• Small and mid-sized retailers continued to gain market share, with the top 25 online retailers accounting for 66.4 percent of dollars spent online, down from 67.7 percent a year ago.
• The second quarter represented the seventh consecutive quarter of positive gains year over year. The last time spending online decreased was in the third quarter of 2009.

On our weeklong trip to Asia in preparation for our upcoming AsiaD conference in the fall — including a stop in South Korea earlier in the week — Walt Mossberg and I have spent the last few days in Tokyo.

That’s because while AsiaD will have a Chinese flavor — by virtue of its location in Hong Kong and given how increasingly important China is in the digital arena — we also want to make sure that the focus is pan-Asian.

Of course, Japan has always been one of the key centers of the digital world, especially in the area of consumer electronics, so it was interesting to see what it has been up to.

While here, we visited gaming firms such as Nexon (Korean-born, but HQed here) and Gree; met execs from companies such as Mixi, Japan’s largest social networking site (and not Facebook, which is still small here); and visited the big behemoths like Sony (which is up to some very innovative things, from what we saw this week, including the dorktastic head-mounted video device I am wearing above).

We also went to see what’s up with smartphones and other gadgets in the Akihabara area — often referred to as “Electric Town” — of this bustling city, which is one of my favorites in the world.

That’s why Tokyo’s digital companies will be a big part of AsiaD. We’ll soon be announcing even more speakers for the event, which takes place in Hong Kong Oct. 19-21.

Until then, here’s my video of our tour, which includes a look at the latest in rice cooking technology (you’d be surprised!):

And here is a video from a breakfast talk Walt and I did there:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110806/asiad-adventures-japan-edition-walt-and-kara-visit-digital-tokyo-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110731/foxconns-terry-gou-tells-employees-the-robots-are-coming/ http://allthingsd.com/20110731/foxconns-terry-gou-tells-employees-the-robots-are-coming/#comments Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:35:45 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=104622 By now most people who know anything about the world of consumer electronics know that most of the gadgets they love — their iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and so on — are made in China in huge factories, many of them owned by a Taiwanese company called Foxconn.

Foxconn has in recent years seen its share of negative press. There was an explosion that killed three people at one of its plants in June. Prior to that there was a disturbing string of suicides that so shocked the sensibilities of Western consumers that it prompted demands for better working conditions and two lengthy cover stories in Wired and Bloomberg Businessweek. The concern was significant, in no small part because of the shadow the matter cast over Foxconn’s most prominent customer, Apple, which has done its best to force Foxconn to make the lives of its workers better.

Manufacturing electronics by the millions isn’t exactly mentally stimulating. The Wired story used the phrase “repetitive, exhausting, and alienating,” and it’s not hard to imagine going stir-crazy after doing it for any length of time. That’s why it’s interesting to see the news out of China today that Foxconn is going to boost the number of robots doing those repetitive tasks on its assembly line.

The story from Xinhua News, China’s state-controlled news agency, is headlined “Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years,” and relates that the announcement came from Foxconn CEO Terry Gou himself at a company dance party.

Eerily absent is any comment on the reaction of those employees in attendance. Did they cheer at the thought of being freed up by robots from the least-popular jobs on the line? Or did they begin to worry anew, grasping the economic realities that additional factory automation bring with it?

Robots are efficient, they don’t get tired, and aside from routine maintenance, they don’t take breaks. They also don’t complain about soul-killing work conditions. All of this makes them appealing to Foxconn management and its growing list of clients.

But as anyone who knows even the barest details of the history of factory automation in the U.S. auto industry is aware, robots have a funny way of causing job losses. While Foxconn already uses some 10,000 robots now, the story says, the number is going to multiply by a factor of 100, to one million robots within three years. If those numbers turn out to be accurate, there is simply no mathematical way that some portion of the 1.2 million people currently in Foxconn’s employ can avoid losing their jobs. And that can’t help but cause other unexpected ripple effects throughout the Chinese economy.

(The image is a screen grab from the trailer for the 2004 Will Smith film “I, Robot,” which I obviously selected with tongue in cheek. Real robots used in the assembly of electronics look more like the one assembling cellphone speakers in the video below, from a Florida-based company called AccuPlace.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110731/foxconns-terry-gou-tells-employees-the-robots-are-coming/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110713/jawbones-newest-product-health-tracking-wristband-called-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20110713/jawbones-newest-product-health-tracking-wristband-called-up/#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:34:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=97677 Jawbone, the San Francisco consumer electronics start-up that just grabbed another $70 million in funding, has announced its latest gadget called UP. The new product is described as “an intelligent, wearable wristband with an application that combines tracking, analysis, social and motivational elements.” Jawbone, which makes a popular Bluetooth headset and also the Jambox wireless speaker, said UP will track a user’s movement, sleep patterns and nutrition.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110713/jawbones-newest-product-health-tracking-wristband-called-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110712/jawbone-nabs-70-million-in-a-jammed-box-of-funding/ http://allthingsd.com/20110712/jawbone-nabs-70-million-in-a-jammed-box-of-funding/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:30:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=97072

Jawbone, the maker of elegant mobile and wireless devices, has added $70 million in funding to its coffers, with a new investment from J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

The San Francisco-based company has now raised a total of $170 million, which includes a recent $49 million venture round from high-profile Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz in March.

Jawbone also has raised money from Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures and a number of prominent angel investors.

All are making a big bet on consumer electronics, an always dicey arena, and on Jawbone’s innovative products, such as its initial Bluetooth headsets.

The start-up has more recently expanded its offerings to the Jambox Smart Speaker, which has become a fast-selling wireless speaker.

Both have been particularly popular with Apple users, and Jawbone has been prominently featured in its retail stores.

Jawbone CEO Hosain Rahman certainly sounds like Apple CEO Steve Jobs when he talks about an all-encompassing digital solution.

“We’re going to get into some new categories of products,” said Rahman, about what he plans to do with the new funding, especially around making smaller, embedded and wearable devices. “We want to be an end-to-end experience.”

While he would not be specific, Rahman said that this area of computing is changing to encompass the entire mobile lives of its consumers.

“We want to leverage the power of the tool in your pocket,” he said. “This is just the beginning.”

Here’s the official press release from Jawbone:

JAWBONE SECURES $70M IN GROWTH FUNDING FROM J.P. MORGAN ASSET MANAGEMENT

Jawbone to Expand its Products and Services for the Mobile Lifestyle

SAN FRANCISCO –- July 12, 2011 –- Jawbone, a leading innovator of products and services for the mobile lifestyle, today announced it has secured $70 million in funding from investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

Jawbone is one of the largest privately-held, venture capital-backed consumer electronics companies in the world, and this round brings total investment in Jawbone close to $170 million to date. The funding will allow Jawbone to continue its rapid growth and expand into new markets and categories, building on its successful portfolio of premium mobile products and services.

“We seek to invest in the best high-growth companies,” said Larry Unrein, managing director of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. :Given the widespread adoption of smartphones globally, we are seeing a massive shift in user expectations around having a complete, high-quality and seamless experience wherever they are. Jawbone, with its long-standing expertise in mobile user experience, has been delighting customers by enabling them to get the most out of their smartphones through a combination of cutting-edge technology and great design. We believe Jawbone is poised to be the next great mobile computing company coming out of Silicon Valley.”

“Funding from J.P. Morgan Asset Management is fantastic for us as we continue to rapidly expand our business,” said Hosain Rahman, CEO of Jawbone. “As people’s digital lives become increasingly centered around mobile devices, we see no shortage of opportunities for our technology and products to unlock the potential of a full mobile experience. The support of J.P. Morgan Asset Management will help us be even more aggressive in our pursuit of these opportunities.”

Jawbone’s innovation has resulted in unprecedented demand for its products and services on a global scale. The company is known for leading and disrupting categories with its breakthrough software, strong commitment to design, and award-winning products.

“Jawbone is one of the most important mobile companies with which Sequoia Capital has partnered,” said Roelof Botha, partner at Sequoia Capital and Jawbone board member. “Jawbone’s relentless building of great products that consumers love gives the company a unique ability to redefine established markets. We are delighted to have J.P. Morgan Asset Management on board.”

Jawbone first made its mark in the industry by creating an entirely new class of intelligent Bluetooth® headsets, and has successfully expanded its portfolio of products for the past decade. The JAMBOX Smart Speaker™ is one of the best-selling speakers globally, and the recently-launched Jawbone ERA™ headset is the first to include HD audio and motion sensors.

For more information, images and product demos, please visit www.Jawbone.com/Press, or follow @Jawbone on Twitter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110712/jawbone-nabs-70-million-in-a-jammed-box-of-funding/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/#comments Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:26:41 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=94147

What would the release of a headline-grabbing new consumer electronics device be without a handful of people buying them only to take them apart to see what’s going on inside?

So it goes with Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad, the webOS-based answer to the king of tablet computing, Apple’s iPad. The teardown team at market research firm IHS iSuppli picked one up only to skulk around its insides. The picture at right (which you can click to make bigger) is the exploded view of the device.

ISuppli isn’t the only place that does these teardown reports, but it’s one of the few that also estimates the combined cost of the parts and materials used to build the device. These bills of materials, or “BOM” estimates, as they’re called in industry parlance, are important indicators of the kind of profit margin a company can expect to see on a device on a per-unit basis. The BOM doesn’t take into account other costs that are impossible to estimate, such as software development, licensing of any intellectual property, distribution or marketing.

So what does the TouchPad cost to build? The teardown by iSuppli pegs the cost of the components used in the 16 gigabyte version, which sells for $499 at retail, at $306.65. Meanwhile, the 32GB version, which sells for $599, costs $328.65 to build. (The difference, obviously, is memory.) HP didn’t immediately comment on iSuppli’s findings.

As is often the case with tablets and notebooks, the display is the most expensive component in the device. In this case, HP went with a proven winner. It selected a 9.7-inch display from LG Electronics that is thought to be either identical or very similar to the LG-made display Apple used in the first-generation iPad. Andrew Rassweiler, iSuppli’s senior director for teardowns, pegged the cost at $69.

Internally speaking, the similarities to the iPad end there, Rassweiler told me. The components connected to the display that enable the touch-sensitive interface are different from those on the iPad. Where Apple has favored chips from Broadcom and Texas Instruments, HP has gone with a set of six chips from Cypress Semiconductor to control the touchscreen. It costs $11.75, which makes it one of the more expensive touchscreen driver products on the market, Rassweiler said. Additionally, materials used to build the capacitive glass assembly that overlays the LCD display cost another $63.50. All in, components related to the display come to a subtotal of $144.25, iSuppli estimates.

The next most expensive set of components is the memory. For the NAND-flash memory used for storing data, HP selected SanDisk’s iNAND chips. The iSuppli teardown reckons that HP paid $23 for 16GB, and $45 for 32GB. Samsung provided 8GB worth of system memory (DRAM) for both models, at an estimated cost of $26.

he TouchPad’s main application processor is interesting both for who made it — Qualcomm — and for what it isn’t: A full-fledged member of its Snapdragon chip family. “This appears to be a Snapdragon derivative without the baseband functions that would normally be seen on a Snapdragon,” Rassweiler told me. The chip costs $20, iSuppli estimates. Chances are a fully enabled Snapdragon chip will be used in a future model, he said.

For now, as The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg noted in his review of the TouchPad last week, the device is Wi-Fi only, but a model with the ability to connect to cellular networks is planned.

It’s also clear from the teardown, Rassweiler said, that there’s room for the addition of other components in the future. And other things are missing.

“We noticed there’s a gyroscope chip and an accelerometer, but we couldn’t find any GPS chips,” he said. “Plus, when we looked at the design we noticed there seems to be a lot of breathing room inside to add additional parts without having to change the design.” More stuff to expect from a future 3G-ready TouchPad.

Qualcomm supplied several other chips. Its newly acquired Atheros subsidiary provided the Wi-Fi chips, at a cost of $2.60, and two power management chips that cost another $5 combined. Texas Instruments supplied four chips — three related to power management and one display interface chip — that added $4.50 to the cost.

Of course, the TouchPad is not only intended to be a successful device on its own for HP, but represents a new strategic opportunity. As in, HP wants to license the webOS on the TouchPad to other manufacturers.

That makes it something of a showcase for the software’s capabilities. HP CEO Léo Apotheker discussed this possibility in his appearance last month at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference.

You can see his comments on the subject from the highlight clip below. And you can see the full interview here:

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