Lost in the sauce of the national work-from-home debate of last week that engulfed all things Yahoo, was a fascinating tidbit that several employees passed on to me from a recent Friday FYI meeting at its Silicon Valley HQ.

At the gathering, CEO Marissa Mayer talked briefly about the new telecommuting arrangements for some staffers, including the controversial new work-from-home memo that HR head Jackie Reses had issued that day.

But when Reses — who also wears another corporate hat as head of M&A at Yahoo — spoke she mentioned to the crowd that Yahoo was working on two “significant” acquisitions and about six smaller talent “acqhires.”

“It was kind of odd to telegraph it in such a big forum,” said one employee of Reses’ comments at the meeting in late February.

The revelation was unusual, to be sure, but perhaps not a surprise, given the recent run-up in Yahoo stock, its healthy cash position and, most of all, its need to add meaningful growth to the current efforts at turnaround.

And while some of its recent buys have been interesting and focused on improving its moribund mobile efforts, they have also been very small. And, as one high-ranking exec there told me, they “don’t move the needle in the way we need to in bringing in senior talent or loads of users or serious revenue.”

Indeed, while Yahoo shares have benefited greatly from the impressive performance by Alibaba Group in China, which is clearly on a roll, many think that showing actual improvement in its core business will be critical in the months ahead.

While making changes to Yahoo’s homepage and email, as well as cutting products, has been done, it is not yet clear what the impact is; the changes are aimed more at holding on to consumers rather than exciting them with new offerings.

Yahoo could also create its own new products to wow the masses, but that has been harder for it over the years. (Remember Livestand? Yeah, not so much.) In any case, an innovation infusion of such a large magnitude will take some time, given Mayer has to get the right people into place to do so.

Thus, a big purchase of an exciting new company with prominent leadership seems more likely than not and sooner than later. While Mayer has not articulated her vision for the new Yahoo in anything more than general ways, what she buys will say a lot.

Thus, sources said that Yahoo has been looking at a range of such acquisitions, in a number of categories such as advertising tech, mobile monetization and, of course, consumer “daily delight,” which is a phrase Mayer has used a lot.

It would be bold if Mayer went all out and made a mega-buy that would shake up the competitive landscape. My first choice for that is Pinterest, the scrapbooking phenom that was just valued at $2.5 billion in a new funding round. Mayer has also shown a lot of interest in blogging superstar Tumblr, while at both Google and Yahoo, as well as Foursquare, the well-known location app. Of course, there is also the troubled gaming giant, Zynga.

All are very pricey and would face rival interest, but such a move would be akin to Facebook’s billion-dollar blockbuster purchase of Instagram. Many now think that was prescient and cheap, given how important mobile photos are to the current digital ecosystem.

The list of possible big deals goes on: Hulu (which needs a tasty content element to make sense) as a video play; Millennial Media or Jumptap for mobile advertising; Quora for social answers; Flipboard for social media consumption; Rubicon or PubMatic, for ad targeting; and many more.

But all of those begin at the billion-dollar or more range and I have checked with a number of these and come up peanuts. Still, there are a whole lot of choices for Mayer and Yahoo in the $200 million to $500 million price range.

Here, Yahoo has the financial strength to make at least two of these significant purchases that Reses mentioned, as well as developing a much better reputation for Yahoo to keep real talent interested.

As one prominent startup exec, who had told me he never would consider selling to Yahoo in the past, said recently: “They are no longer complete losers, although Facebook and Google and Apple and Amazon are still cooler.”

Hey, it’s a compliment, even if it’s a back-handed one, so it will be interesting to see who finds Yahoo cool enough.

This week in Las Vegas, the new management team running Yahoo — including CEO Marissa Mayer — is at International CES to schmooze with big advertisers and convince them that Yahoo is the place to put large chunks of their marketing budgets.

One of the longtime selling points of the company is the sheer size of its audience, especially for the key money-making parts of the site — the homepage, Yahoo Mail and search.

But private stats from comScore show that those three areas have continued their longtime decline over the last year, in some cases dropping significantly. In November and December, for example, compared to the same two months a year ago, U.S. search was down 28 percent and 24 percent respectively, while mail was down 16 percent and 12 percent.

This matters a great deal, since the troika of homepage, mail and search have been the critical driver of the Yahoo value ecosystem for advertisers.

The impact of those drops is felt all over Yahoo, whose music, movie, games and travel site have also seen massive drop-offs in traffic year over year in those same months.

Stopping the decline is critical for Yahoo, since Mayer herself has underscored the need for size in her pushing for new businesses at Yahoo that are 100 million users in size and/or have revenue prospects of at least $100 million.

While this is a lofty vision, the reality of traffic falloffs on key properties is a vexing issue, especially since they remain its main source of revenue and also an important element in launching future products Mayer is promising will turbocharge the company.

It’s not that Yahoo is not huge, especially compared to most sites on the Web.

As one of the top Internet brands, according to a recent Nielsen report, the average number of total monthly unique visitors for the longtime Silicon Valley Internet company in 2012 was 141.6 million, No. 3 behind Google and Facebook in the U.S. market. Similar rankings were reported by comScore, which placed Yahoo at the No. 2 spot after Google, with 171.4 million monthly visitors in November.

But, for many years, traffic to those important consumer destinations of Yahoo has been on a clear and unstopping decline, statistics (usually from comScore) that the company nonetheless always dutifully puts in its earnings slides — see below — for investors to get some idea of the major and vexing issues facing the company.

That was suddenly ended in the last quarter with the engagement slide removed from Yahoo’s public deck entirely. Not all companies include such stats, so when I inquired as to why the company had made the change, Yahoo PR never returned my phone call.

But it’s not hard to guess the reason for the shift — the numbers were not good and they called more attention to Yahoo’s glaring challenge, which is getting users reengaged with its products by creating what Mayer has dubbed several times “delightful” experiences.

According to numerous sources, that has also been the case within the company too, with the new regime restricting an internal transparency initiative pushed by former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving that shared product performance numbers with the top 100 leaders at Yahoo.

And while it’s an interesting strategic choice, several sources inside the company this week urged me to get ahold of increasingly worrisome numbers from comScore — available to its private clients — comparing November 2011 to November 2012 and also December 2011 to December 2012 at home and work in the U.S.

So I did, getting the same stats from numerous sources — numbers that a spokesman for comScore confirmed were correct.

And, as promised, they are worrisome indeed.

In November 2012, compared to November 2011, the monthly unique visitors to the homepage declined 17 percent to 91.8 million from 110.9 million; Yahoo Mail dropped 16 percent (from 92 million to 77.7 million); and Yahoo search dropped 28 percent (from 93.3 million to 66.9 million).

Also off significantly for all three areas, often by one-third, were a plethora of other stats: Percentage of reach, total minutes, total page views, total visits and more.

One of the only bright spots for Yahoo was the relatively small Flickr sites, which were up 37 percent — 26.7 million versus 19.4 million — in unique monthly visitors year over year. The photo-sharing site — which has been getting a much-needed refresh — was also up in all other stats.

But Flickr — which Mayer (pictured here) has laudably touted and supported after years of inexplicable neglect — is not a money-maker for Yahoo, even if its return does burnish the company’s tech and innovation cred.

In December 2011 to December 2012, the homepage was more stable, gaining four percent in monthly uniques from 109.4 million to 114.2 million, but with other key stats both rising and falling. Total visits were up 14 percent, for example, while average minutes per visit was down 13.6 percent.

But the trouble for mail or search continued, off 12 percent (89.9 million to 78.7 million) and 24 percent (88.7 million to 67.4 million) respectively in monthly uniques, with similarly major declines in all other stats.

Mail recently got a refresh too under Mayer, despite some recent security glitches, so new stats will show if that will help stem the declines. Search is another story all together, with Yahoo in what can only be described as a dysfunctional partnership with Microsoft that numerous sources tell me Mayer is seeking to end.

The homepage, too, is undergoing a redo, with a design that has a decidedly more mobile and social feel, and pushing an ethos of Yahoo becoming a hub for content discovery. It is hoped the new look will boost traffic relatively quickly from its current downward trajectory.

To be fair, there can be lots and lots of reasons for these declines, although most of Yahoo’s competitors are, at worse, seeing a flattening of growth and not outright declines.

And sometimes Internet sites complain that services like comScore undercount, although Yahoo had previously used the firm in its public documents. More to the point, as multiple sources within the company note, the stats are directionally correct in that they closely track with internal Yahoo numbers.

Which is to say, traffic is going down rather than growing. That is clearly why Mayer has loudly stressed mobile since arriving at Yahoo, an area not included in these numbers that many sources said has strong growth to about 70 million monthly unique visitors via its apps and mobile-enabled Web offerings.

But unlike the homepage, mail and search — which push and pull traffic all over Yahoo and are responsible for most of its current monetization — mobile also makes very little money now. And Yahoo — unlike Facebook, which recently did — does not break out mobile results.

So, it will be interesting to see if the company does so when it reports fourth-quarter earnings on January 28 and also if it says anything about continued traffic declines of its traditional Web business in the period and the impact on revenue.

Still, there are lots of ways to counter declining or flat revenues, even with declining traffic — via cost cuts, efficiencies, charging more and selling assets (as Yahoo did in the last quarter). And Yahoo has ably managed to keep its operating margins growing over the years, despite both the declines in traffic and moribund growth in its revenue.

But the real and only fix is the drastic fix to existing tentpoles Yahoo has and the creation or acquisition of products that excite consumers and, therefore, advertisers.

It’s not an easy thing, of course, as well-known venture capitalist Ben Horowitz recently wrote in his blog about the need to focus on products over building and improving culture — one of Mayer’s other big initiatives at Yahoo.

Wrote Horowitz in what I consider one of the clearest articulations of what it takes to win for startups, as well as big companies like Yahoo:

“The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least 10 times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. Two or three times better will not be good enough to get people to switch to the new thing fast enough or in large enough volume to matter. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something 10X better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does.”

If you want to take a gander, here are some more of those old Yahoo quarterly engagement slides, which were recently eliminated from its presentations:

(Note: I reached out to Yahoo’s outside PR firm — since they do respond to queries — and also some company execs to get a comment on this story, but so far there has been none.)

When I asked him to talk to me about why he decided to finally became a director at Yahoo after what was a very long mulling that started even before former Google exec Marissa Mayer became CEO, Max Levchin alerted me earlier today to a very solid post he did on the subject on his blog, which is called “too long to tweet.”

I now remember why I really like that Max Levchin: He blogs! (Also because he is an unapologetic coffee snob.)

In his essay, he breaks down the reasons into three parts: Personal, business and sentimental.

Noting his longtime admiration of Mayer, he noted “her decision to take the top role at Yahoo! was a very ballsy move, and when she asked for my help, I was excited about working with her.” Levchin, a well-known tech entrepreneur, also wrote that he hoped for a strong Yahoo, since it was a “massive net-positive for the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the market in general, and the US economy.”

Most of all, he said, Yahoo “showed me that computer geeks can start companies that create that future. I’d love to do my part in helping the company that inspired me.”

Levchin also emailed me to add: “If she gets the place into shape, it will be the absolute greatest turnaround in Valley’s recent history, possibly ever.”

Indeed.

Sources close to the situation told me that Mayer convinced Levchin to join the board by convincing him that he’d be able to help her inject entrepreneurial vigor into the company.

That would be good, and Levchin’s post is actually one of the best recitations of the kind of spirit Yahoo needs to revive itself that I have read in a long while.

It also tracks exactly on many conversations I have had with Levchin in the past about Yahoo’s troubles. He has long been intrigued by the opportunity despite management woes, innovation doldrums and the relentless talent exodus.

But judge for yourself — here’s the whole thing:

As announced by Yahoo! this morning, I have been asked and agreed to join its Board of Directors. It is an honor to be asked, in and of itself. There are three key reasons I accepted:

Personal: I’ve long respected Marissa’s talent and tenacity. Her decision to take the top role at Yahoo! was a very ballsy move, and when she asked for my help, I was excited about working with her.

Business: a stronger, fast-growing Yahoo!, with its tremendous resources is a massive net-positive for the Silicon Valley ecosystem, the market in general, and the US economy.

Sentimental: Yahoo! was one of the first true giants created by this amazing new thing, the Web. Before Google or Facebook, before almost everything there was Jerry’s Guide, right up there with What’s New page in Mosaic. Through amazing luck, I was a Computer Science freshman at UIUC in ’93, which gave me a glimpse into the fantastic future we are now living. Yahoo! showed me that computer geeks can start companies that create that future. I’d love to do my part in helping the company that inspired me.

The move nearly doubles the iTunes Store’s international footprint, raising the number of markets it serves to 119. And while the service’s offerings will initially be limited to music-only in many of those countries — only Russia, Turkey, India and Indonesia will support movie and video purchases — it’s a dramatic extension of Apple’s reach as a distributor of digital media. The addition of India and Russia alone increases the company’s addressable market by 105 million Internet users. Apple has 435 million iTunes accounts with associated credit card numbers; after today’s expansion, how many more will it have this time next year?

So this is a significant move for Apple. Not only will it boost revenue for the iTunes Store business, which generated total net sales of $7.5 billion during the company’s most recent fiscal year, it also brings important new content elements to the developing Apple ecosystems in those markets.

The addition of music, movie and video purchases increases the value proposition of Apple’s hardware. Remember, when it first debuted, the iTunes Store wasn’t intended to generate profits so much as it was meant to sell hardware. And that’s still one of its more important functions today. Enabling content purchases in these countries gives Apple one more hook with which to pull consumers into its ecosystem and keep them there.

The expansion of the iTunes Store follows the debut last week of iTunes 11, a complete overhaul of the media software.

Here are the newest additions to Apple’s global marketplace:

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua & Barbuda
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahamas
6. Bahrain
7. Barbados
8. Belarus
9. Belize
10. Bermuda
11. Botswana
12. Burkina-Faso
13. Cape Verde
14. Cayman Islands
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Israel
25. Russia
26. Saudi Arabia
27. South Africa
28. Turkey
29. United Arab Emirates (UAE)
30. Jordan
31. Kazakhstan
32. Kenya
33. Kyrgyzstan
34. Lebanon
35. Mauritius
36. Micronesia, Fed States of
37. Moldova
38. Mongolia
39. Mozambique
40. Namibia
41. Nepal
42. Niger
43. Nigeria
44. Oman
45. Papua New Guinea
46. Qatar
47. Saint Kitts and Nevis
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Trinidad and Tobago
51. Turkmenistan
52. Uganda
53. Ukraine
54. Uzbekistan
55. Virgin Islands, British
56. Zimbabwe

As most readers know, I love a good internal memo from Yahoo — and now I have landed a really meaty one.

It’s the “Yahoo! Three-Year Product Strategy” plan, a 21-page report that was completed in mid-2011 by a team headed by former product head Blake Irving.

While it is a year old — and five CEOs ago (no, really) — it’s an important read since it tracks closely to the strategic vision that Yahoo’s latest CEO Marissa Mayer discussed earlier this week at an all-hands employee meeting and, according to sources, is very similar to one she seems to be pursuing.

That includes a focus on personalization, mobile, social, improving Yahoo’s advertising tech platforms and more.

And here’s the centerpiece of goals — called “Five Strategic Elements” — from the Irving memo:

1. Infuse deep personalization using science and data into every consumer and advertising experience we build.

2. Delight our customers with best-in-class products, iterating frequently for constant improvement.

3. Build for connected devices first with localized, in-context, multi-screen experiences in mind.

4. Power real social relationships with features that enable 1:few conversations around content.

5. Build a digital media ecosystem that creates a premium marketplace for advertising and content and distributes Yahoo! experiences across the Web.

Sound familiar?

In fact, at the event’s Q&A part yesterday, one staffer specifically pointed out that her broad presentation to employees sounded a lot like the one Irving had proposed the year before.

Since that was never truly implemented, due to never-ending management crises, the obvious question was asked: “Why would things be different this time?”

Mayer answered that the execution against that strategy wasn’t good and she would have a better model to pull it off.

The memo, embedded in its entirety below, is really instructive to use as a possible roadmap, outlining Yahoo’s challenges, as well as the competitive landscape.

Noted the report, quite clearly: “Yahoo! does not have an audience problem, as we are growing on pace with the Internet. Yahoo! does, however, have an engagement problem, as our share of time spent is flat, relative to our competitors.”

It’s aim is to fix that by building the “One Yahoo! experience, in which each of our current and future products fortifies the whole.”

Easier said than done, especially in building up its ad tech business, as the report adds, zeroing in on its most potent rival:

“To defend and grow our share of the premium advertising market, Yahoo! must continue investing to reach parity where necessary and achieve sustainable differentiation against Google with our premium marketplace and technology stack.”

There’s a lot more than that, so dig in to the document, which suggest a whole lot of spending to turn around Yahoo.

Since Mayer is well on her way in that department — including bouncing CFO Tim Morse, who was very bottom-line wary — more on that, next!

You must now download the full report here, which was removed from DocStoc here after a takedown request from Yahoo’s lawyers.

It’s exactly what it sounds like. Users can choose, mail and pay for real-world, physical gifts — not the lame virtual ones Facebook offered a few years ago — to send to one another, all completely inside of Facebook. They’re tied to the significant event reminders that pop up on occasion — say, a friend’s anniversary, or a birthday. Or even better for Facebook, users can also just buy gifts for others for the heck of it.

It’s a major undertaking for Facebook, tackling an entire new segment of online commerce and adding a brand new revenue stream to its business. And to a degree, we’ve known it was coming for some time — after all, on the same day Facebook went public, it acquired Karma, the social gifting application upon which all of Gifts is based and built.

Perhaps more significant, however, is that users aren’t limited to just the desktop to send and receive gifts; the entire Gifts program is accessible on mobile phones.

“This is truly the heart and soul of Karma, re-imagined inside of Facebook,” Lee Linden, head of Facebook Gifts, told me in an interview. “And it all works perfectly on the phone.”

This is crucial. Since the company first filed for its IPO, we’ve known that Facebook was weak on monetizing mobile. More than half of Facebook’s hundreds of millions of monthly active users access Facebook through a mobile device, signaling a massive shift away from the desktop in just the past few years. But mobile screens aren’t friendly to advertising, which is currently Facebook’s primary revenue driver.

Gifts, however, work just as well on Facebook’s apps and mobile Web site as they do on the desktop. Now, along with notes and photos, users can posts Gifts directly to their friends’ Timelines with the addition of a “Gift” button, squarely placed inside of the text box on each profile.

The selection of gifts is impressive. Facebook is starting strong, joining with over 100 retail partners at launch, from which users can choose gifts to send to others. The selection covers the expected gift-giving bases: Food and drink, fashion, home and kitchen and, yes, kids. So if you want to send, say, a teddy bear to your mom for her birthday, Facebook lets you choose from partner Gund’s selection of stuffed animals. What’s more, if your mom doesn’t like the white teddy bear you chose, she can swap it out for a brown one before it’s delivered.

Starbucks is far and away the biggest launch partner. Starbucks cards are the de facto gift for many on practically every occasion, and can come in relatively low-cost increments. My hunch is that Facebook hopes that users ramp up to gifting larger things by starting small, with users sending five-dollar gift cards all across their friend networks to jumpstart the entire Gifts ecosystem.

From there, users can send gifts to their friends, who will then receive a notification via phone and desktop that there is a present waiting. After the gift is received and accepted, the sender receives a notification in return (again, across both platforms).

The individual retailers handle all the shipping, while Facebook’s payments platform — the same one used for Facebook Games — handles the money-changing part.

Another key component of the process: Just like when you pay for Facebook Games, sending a gift requires that you give Facebook your credit card information. From there on out, Facebook has your credit card on file, streamlining and eliminating friction from the payments process in subsequent transactions. In a nutshell: Buy once, and it’s way easy to buy again.

And voila! In a matter of days, expect a package to show up on your friend’s doorstep (complete with a fancy Facebook card personalized by you, pictured above). Facebook’s online system tracks the process from gift selection to payment to delivery, so both gifter and giftee can keep tabs on the status of the package.

Right now, Facebook is rolling out the launch on a small scale before going wider: It’s live in select U.S. cities as of Thursday, and will roll out to more in the coming months. Additionally, it’ll spread virally as its use widens — once a user sends a gift, the giftee can then start sending gifts to others. (Sort of a Google, Gmail-type roll-out.)

Gifts will first be available on Android devices, the mobile Web and of course desktop, with a wider roll-out to iOS devices in a few weeks.

Facebook obviously has lots of competition in the e-commerce space; Amazon and eBay already dominate, not to mention existing gifting apps like Wrapp and Boomerang. But Facebook’s scale, engagement and the prominent placement of the new Gifting option makes the company a strong contender in the area.

And really, while the e-commerce competition is obviously important to consider, Facebook’s really tough nut to crack is still mobile. The company is slowly rolling out new ad products aimed at mobile devices, but it’s far too early to tell whether or not they’ve proven effective. Gifts is another massive stab at the mobile problem, while also hedging its bets by continuing to invest in revenue streams outside of its core advertising business.

Now it’s up to users to decide whether or not they actually feel comfortable buying and giving gifts inside their Facebook pages.

At the very least, naysayers will no longer be able to say that Facebook is ignoring mobile.

It works with a number of existing Web services like Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and the like. Say someone important like Twitter CEO Dick Costolo decides to tweet something. As a Twitter beat reporter, I want to know what Dick has to say when he says it. Using IFTTT, I can have the service send me an email, an SMS, even a phone call. It’s very useful, especially when, you know, I want to try and get some sleep.

Sadly, in an email today to its users, IFTTT announced that it was ending support for Twitter triggers, one of what I’d call the most useful parts of the service. When I saw the email in my inbox, I was instantly bummed. The way the email was worded, too, made it seem like IFTTT was the latest in a string of companies affected by Twitter’s recent overhaul of its developer guidelines (currently a hotbed of contention in the tech community that relies upon Twitter’s platform to power their services).

“In recent weeks, Twitter has announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter’s data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook.”

In light of recent events and this charged language, a knee-jerk reaction of blaming Twitter was almost to be expected (and, indeed, blame was immediately placed on Twitter). The company recently axed its connection with LinkedIn, and as a product VP outlined in a detailed explanation of its new guidelines, the company won’t be as tolerant of developers who don’t follow the rules of Twitter’s road as it has been in the past.

This time, however, the devil seems to be in the details.

In a footnote to its statement on the change, IFTTT specifically cites a change in section 4A of Twitter’s developer guidelines as the reason for dropping Twitter support. It’s sort of nerdy tech jargon, but it essentially states that outside companies can’t export Twitter content to an outside cloud-based service like, say, IFTTT.

The problem is, that’s not a new rule for Twitter. In fact, according to the archive of Twitter’s developer rules of the road, this has been the case since at least April of 2011, if not longer (that’s as far back as the archive displays “recent changes”). So, essentially, IFTTT is pointing the finger at supposed changes in the Twitter ecosystem that really occurred more than a year ago.

Granted, Twitter did little to enforce many of the guidelines for quite some time. Only in the past few months has Twitter shown more willingness to bring the hammer down on those it sees breaking the rules.

So perhaps IFTTT saw the writing on the wall and decided to drop Twitter support while placing a carefully-worded jab at Twitter’s new hard-line stance on API guidelines. Or perhaps Twitter told IFTTT that it would soon cut them off, and IFTTT beat Twitter to the punch while ultimately making them look bad.

I don’t know either way, as neither company is replying to my emails.

All I know is, it’s an unfortunate loss. IFTTT’s Twitter triggers were invaluable for me, as I don’t spend my every waking minute staring at my Twitter stream.

Fortunately, there’s at least some light at the end of the tunnel. IFTTT says it is “excited to build features that work within Twitter’s new policy,” so perhaps we won’t be long without the feature set. Perhaps the current kerfuffle occurring in the blogosphere is all a tempest in a teapot.

Whatever the case, I expect more of these mini-freak-outs to come as Twitter continues to enforce its rules of the road. Just be sure to read the fine print first.

Update: As it turns out, Drew Olanoff over at TechCrunch noticed the same thing. Guess I’m not crazy.

Actually, if truth be told, Buffalo, N.Y., is one of the loveliest places to visit in the summer, especially if you’re lucky enough to be right next to majestic Lake Erie.

And that is where the Z80 Labs will have its grand opening today in the Queen City, home of chicken wings and lots and lots of snow, by launching its first start-up, called AppVue.

While visiting the Western New York city this past weekend, I paid a visit to the new facility, which is in a large airy room on the first floor of the Buffalo News.

What’s most heartening to see, of course, is the definitely more earnest and rawer kind of entrepreneurism on display, of a kind that is often lost in the slick, well-oiled machine of Silicon Valley.

That was the point by well-known venture capitalist Jordan Levy of SoftBank Capital, who has long split his time between New York City and his home in Buffalo. He founded the incubator with SoftBank’s Ron Schreiber.

“It’s easy for entrepreneurs in places like Palo Alto to get going,” the voluble Levy said to me on my visit. “We wanted to find a way to keep really great techies here to create an ecosystem that would be able to jump-start even more and help this city keep jobs.”

The longtime investor (pictured here) had already made scores of wins from fundings of companies such as OMGPOP (sold to Zynga) and Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce.com). But Levy appears particularly proud of Buffalo-based Synacor, where he serves as chairman. It’s a successful cloud platform service for companies that want to put video online.

As the big tech dog in Buffalo, Synacor is playing a big role in Z80 Labs, which will focus primarily on making investments in digital media and mobile Internet companies.

The tech incubator — which will provide office space, support and mentorship to its start-ups — is also getting an assist from a $4 million Innovate NY grant provided by the state.

Such a solid base is just what the founders of AppVue — which “specializes in mobile apps that make trusted recommendations among social media friends and networks” — told me they needed.

Essentially, it’s another new take on app discovery, which is a vexing issue for both app creators and users.

After AppVue won the University at Buffalo’s Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition, besting 19 other companies, its trio of founders — Matthew Epstein, CEO; Andrew Cassetti, EVP of product development; and Chief Architect Nathan Schiffer — told me that, until now, there have been no other options but to leave the area to make it in tech.

“We wanted to stay here, and now we can,” said Epstein. “And we are getting the kind of attention we need to try to make this a real company.”

Let’s hope so. It’s already looking impressive at its start — both Forbes CEO Mike Perlis and New York power VC Fred Wilson will make appearances today for Z80’s debut.

I’d suggest Frank & Teressa’s Anchor Bar on Main Street — where chicken wings were apparently invented, and an arena in which Silicon Valley will never have an upper hand.

With the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, the iconic but struggling maker of mobile devices, Google has put a huge stake in the ground in this highly competitive market and thereby shaken up the entire ecosystem.

A lot of this is about patents, as Google CEO Larry Page said in his blog post about the megadeal this morning, and about acquiring a bigger portfolio that Google has long sought for its Android mobile operating system and has been unsuccessful at getting for itself, despite onerous efforts. Since Motorola has been in the mobile arena for so long, it has a large trove of important ones.

But the dramatic acquisition by Google is also a declaration that mobile is more important to it than the skein of alliances it has built for Android with phone makers worldwide, as part of its objective of making it the dominant mobile platform for smartphones and tablets globally.

While Google has been reaching out to other hardware partners to assure them, and has said they all will remain the same in Android-land, the large mobile manufacturers who have placed their trust in Google — especially Samsung or HTC — have to be wondering what to do now.

Make no mistake — they already resent Google from time to time, the way Compaq or Dell has resented Microsoft in the PC business.

But, since Google already showed favoritism to Motorola by letting them do the first Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom (although it didn’t do any good), that discomfort will only increase now.

While Google managed to get them into lockstep on today’s announcement, with a whole Web page titled “Quotes From Android Partners,” each of them using the exact same phrase “defending Android” in their quotes feels a little like they are victims of Stockholm syndrome.

Yes, we concur with everything the Borg tells us to! Defending! Android! We’re Droids too! (Calling Patty Hearst, stat!)

The impact on everyone — from Microsoft and its partner Nokia to Apple to Research In Motion and, also, to all the wireless carriers — will be felt immediately.

And, of course, by government regulators, who have watched warily as Google has marched into business after adjacent business to its core search one.

This deal — which will require approval — is sure to even further put all of Google’s businesses in the crosshairs of rivals, who will agitate for fervent investigations.

While Android has been conceived at Google and has an “autonomous unit” with the company — run by longtime mobile vet Andy Rubin — it has now entered a new and perhaps dangerous phase for all involved, including Google.

Because while such a union is not uncommon in the mobile business — Apple and RIM do software and hardware together and Google has released its own Nexus phone (made by others) — no one has done it via acquisition and in such a definitive way.

And what an acquisition it is. Or, perhaps more accurately, could be.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Related posts

• Google: We’re Spending $12.5 Billion on Motorola to ‘Protect’ Android
• Motoogle: BOOM! The Mobile Business Just Got Completely Blown Up
• Google’s Motorola Deal Will Spur Antitrust Regulators to Action
• Watch Google Android Kingpin — and Motorola Acquirer — Andy Rubin Unplugged (Video)
• Defense Spending: Google Arms Itself With Moto Patents
• Is Google’s Motorola Deal the Break That Windows Phone Needed?
• Should Google Keep Motorola’s Patents and Sell Off the Hardware Business?
• Motorola Could Get Google Closer to Your Living Room — If the Cable Guys Play Along
• U.S. Carriers Silent on Motoroogle, but France Telecom Gives It a Thumbs Up
• Google-Motorola Deal Includes $2.5 Billion Reverse Termination Fee
• Google Can’t Say Hello To Hulu Now. (Can It?)
• More Google news
• More Android news
• More Motorola Mobility news

(Image courtesy of the United States Department of Energy)

To those who care intensely about this kind of stuff–which would be pretty much everyone in the tech ecosystem–Apple will hold its much-anticipated event on March 2, where the tech giant seems poised to unveil a new version of its hugely successful iPad, according to multiple sources.

As in, iPad 2! Or, as BoomTown is now officially nicknaming it: iPad Too!

Analysts expect the iPad 2 to be thinner than its predecessor and feature an improved display, as well as front-facing camera and Facetime video chat support. And some reports suggest it will be powered by one of Qualcomm’s multimode chips and will run on both GSM and CDMA-based networks around the world.

In its last earnings calls, Apple said it had sold nearly 15 million iPads, since it went on sale last spring.

This is a very big deal, although Apple will be facing increased competition with the launch of a passel of tablets coming from numerous manufacturers, most of which are using the Honeycomb version of Google’s Android mobile operating system.

According to several sources close to the situation, the Wednesday date in a little more than a week is firm and will take place in San Francisco, the scene of many such Apple events.

In that case, the venue is likely to be the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

It’s not clear when Apple will begin sending out its famous invites for the gathering, but I am guessing soon, in order to get the Apple faithful to the proper level of froth.

(The image above is from one of my favorite previous save-the-dates.)

Now that this date is confirmed–at least by me!–the next round of speculation will be around whether Apple CEO Steve Jobs will appear or not. Sources said he is considering it.

He is currently on leave to deal with ongoing health issues, although has been sighted all around Silicon Valley at various places. In addition, Jobs sat right next to President Barack Obama at a high-profile meet-the-tech-moguls dinner in the area last week.

In other words: Let the media frenzy begin!

So why is the leading Twitter application–the one that many of Twitter’s most ardent users rely on–selling itself for $30 million?

That’s the question lots of people are mulling over since Friday’s news about the UberMedia/TweetDeck deal.

The tech investors and observers I’ve chatted with in the last couple of days generally land in one of two camps. Either:

• TweetDeck is the biggest Twitter client not owned by Twitter, and they sold too early.
• TweetDeck is the biggest Twitter client not owned by Twitter and, given the circumstances, they did okay.

This is basically a more muted replay of last year’s Twittersphere freakout, when it became clear that Twitter wanted to own much more of the Twitter ecosystem itself, and would place more limits on everyone else.

One important variable here is the way you view Bill Gross and UberMedia. A big chunk of the TweetDeck payout–the majority, according to multiple sources–will be in UberMedia stock. So if you think that company–which just raised another $17.5 million itself–has an upside, then the deal looks that much better.

That’s hard to figure, though, because Gross seems to be doing two things: Buying Twitter apps that compete with Twitter’s own products, and building a Twitter advertising system that will compete with the one Twitter is trying to build itself.

And Twitter doesn’t seem any more receptive to any of that now than it did 10 months ago. But Gross and his backers argue that they’re going to pull it off in a way that makes Uber become the Zynga to Twitter’s Facebook–a smaller company built on another bigger company’s platform, that makes both of them more valuable. So if they’re right…

Meantime, this seems like a good time to revisit Twitter investor Fred Wilson’s “inflection point” essay from last April.

That’s the one that precipitated much quaking among third-party Twitter developers and investors, with good reason: In part, it explained that Twitter would be buying or building “hole-filling” services, which meant there wouldn’t be much reason for many of the Twittersphere’s existing apps to exist.

A year later, though, it’s the second part of Wilson’s essay, where he calls on developers to build new apps and services that “create something entirely new on top of Twitter,” that seems more striking.

Because if Twitter really does end up being worth $10 billion or more, it seems like someone ought to be trying to do that. I’m not sure I’ve seen any, though.

Am I missing something? Feel free to weigh in below.

The valuation for the Pasadena, Calif., start-up founded by well-known entrepreneur Bill Gross (pictured here)–which was actually struck some month ago–is $40 million.

Accel’s Jim Breyer will join the board of UberMedia, maker of social media reading and posting tools, which is currently largely aimed at the Twitter ecosystem.

“We are hoping to work very closely with Twitter, which is certainly our goal, as well as other social media platforms like Facebook,” said Breyer in an interview with BoomTown this morning, answering a question about previous tensions between Twitter and UberMedia. “There will be a lot of efforts to monetize Twitter and there is no silver bullet.”

Index Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution Ventures also participated in the round.

The company did not reveal the amount raised, nor the valuation for UberMedia.

But many like him are trying to find a way to monetize the huge microblogging platform–including Twitter–and take advantage of its enormous scale.

Gross founded the start-up last spring.

Armed with $3.5 million in venture funding from a group of leading investors, including Index, Revolution, betaworks, First Round Capital and angel investors such as Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis.

Started in Gross’s Idealab start-up incubator and called TweetUp (and then PostUp), it was initially cast as a keyword-based bidding marketplace akin to Overture/Goto.com, the first paid search system he created a decade ago.

TweetUp also offered an organic search service to surface the best tweets. This put it at odds on several fronts with Twitter, which began to aggressively move to take over key parts of its business that had largely been left to third-party developers.

That still remains UberMedia’s essential goal, and Breyer hopes that the new investment will show Twitter that UberMedia hopes to work in harmony with it, as other developers have done successfully with Facebook. (Accel and Breyer himself are big investors in the social networking giant, so he should know.)

“Like Twitter, we want to drive the customer experience,” he said, pointing out successes such as the Zynga gaming service. “This is a lot like Facebook several years ago and cooperation worked out well for everyone.”

Here’s the official press release:

Accel Partners Leads Investment Round in UberMedia, Jim Breyer Joins Board of Directors

PASADENA, Calif.–February 14, 2011–UberMedia, the leading independent provider of applications for reading and posting to Twitter and other social media platforms, today announced that it completed a financing round led by Jim Breyer of Accel Ventures. Existing investors Steve Case of Revolution Ventures and Danny Rimer of Index Ventures also participated.

“At UberMedia, our goal is to enhance the Twitter experience with functionality in our clients and to be the best partner with Twitter in growing and enhancing their ecosystem,” said Bill Gross, Founder and CEO. “In particular, the addition of Jim Breyer to our board will really enable us to succeed at this mission. His experience on the boards of Wal-Mart, Facebook, Marvel Entertainment, Dell and so many other high-profile consumer brands will be particularly helpful.”

“We’ve been watching closely Bill’s efforts at UberMedia to build upon the ground-breaking communications platform created by Twitter,” said Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “We see a tremendous business in the kinds of innovations in user experience being developed at UberMedia. The result of these efforts will be an expansion in the number and variety of people engaged with Twitter as well as a method for advertisers to reach consumers in highly targeted and relevant ways.”

And here are two video interview I did with Gross last April when the company was founded:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110214/ubermedia-raises-17-5-million-from-accel-index-and-steve-case/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/#comments Sat, 12 Feb 2011 04:02:48 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29687 UberMedia, the holding company that specializes in Twitter-based start-ups, has added its highest-profile company to date: TweetDeck, the biggest Twitter application not owned by Twitter itself.

UberMedia, run by Internet pioneer Bill Gross, will pay $30 million in cash and stock for the London-based company, which has raised less than $5 million from investors in the last two years.

The deal, first reported by TechCrunch, isn’t done yet, but it’s pretty far along, with signed term sheets, etc. All of TweetDeck’s investors will take a portion of their payout in UberMedia equity, I’m told.

Both Gross and TweetDeck founder Iain Dodsworth (pictured here) have been trying to build businesses within the Twitter ecosystem, though it’s never been clear how Twitter felt about that.

Gross, in particular, has had an uneasy relationship with Twitter: Last year, an earlier incarnation of his company tried to launch an “AdSense for Tweets” product at the same time that Twitter launched its own Google-like ad product, and that didn’t go well.

The two companies have other things in common as well. TweetDeck has been shepherded along by Betaworks, the New York-based holding company/platform/incubator that also specializes in the Twittersphere. And Betaworks is also an investor in…UberMedia.

Here’s an interview I conducted with Dodsworth last April, when the Twittersphere was particularly confused about the prospects of Twitter apps, like TweetDeck, that weren’t owned by Twitter itself. Looks like this one turned out just fine.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/tweetdeck-finds-a-home-and-30-million-at-ubermedia/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 12:02:08 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3904

Nokia has already announced the key piece of its strategy–a shift to Windows Phone for future smartphones. Now the company is set to talk about the financial implications of that and go through the rest of its strategy, which includes a mix of Symbian and even a dash of MeeGo.

The investor event is scheduled to start shortly and due to run until about 2 pm London time. Mobilized will have live coverage, providing our battery holds out. I’ll try to mention only the high points, however. Mobilized loves numbers, but it is awfully early for a whole lot of financial speak, especially for the U.S. insomniacs tuning in.

12:02 pm: Still waiting for things to get going. But if you really want something to do, we have plenty of earlier coverage, including the press conference and the YouTube video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, as well as a chat with Elop on how he made his big decision.

12:05 pm: Okay, things are getting going as Elop takes the stage (the same one as the earlier press conference.

12:06 pm: Elop is reviewing things. Lots of talk of both challenges and gems. If you read his memo, or anything else he’s said recently, you have heard this.

Battle of devices to war of ecosystems, etc. Mobilized has this part memorized.

12:09 pm: Smartphone strategy is just one piece.

Reviewing the three alternatives that Elop considered–MeeGo, Android or some partnership with Microsoft.

As for Google, Elop says it is the case there are some advantages for that approach.

“There’s something happening there. There’s no denying that.”

However, Elop says the company was worried it would be late and be just one of many, and was not sure how it could leverage assets like its Navteq location-based services.

“Our sense was differentiation could be a pretty big challenge,” Elop says. “The risk for commoditization would increase dramatically.”

Feels profit would have eventually moved to Google, with handsets becoming a commodity.

“It felt a little bit like giving up and not enough like fighting back,” Elop says.

12:12 pm: As for Microsoft, Elop says both companies are bringing something to the table.

As expected, Elop is characterizing this as more strategic than just taking a license to Windows Phone. Talking about Nokia services like mapping, local advertising and other things that Nokia can bring to the table.

“It’s far more interesting than a simple licensing deal,” Elop says. This was the only strategy that makes it a three horse race with Google and Apple.

Elop says he is convinced that Nokia will be able to differentiate within the Windows Phone ecosystem on a sustainable basis.

12:15 pm: There were some challenges and potential disadvantages, he acknowledges.

Top among these is the fact that Windows Phone 7 is new on the market.

“It’s early,” he says. “Will it succeed?”

12:17 pm: Also, there is the issue of being locked in or a lack of control. Elop does not disclose terms but says the company has flexibility and “substantial control” over the future of the ecosystem.

“This is not your mother’s OEM deal with Microsoft,” Elop says.

12:17 pm: Elop says the deal is at the “term sheet” stage, noting that the companies have yet to sign the “definitive agreement.”

12:18 pm: Already the engineers are working through, and Elop says this deal will allow Nokia to move far faster than it has in recent years.

12:18 pm: He’s also making the cost-saving argument, saying Nokia can focus its investment, which he acknowledges hasn’t been getting the return it should.

Elop earlier acknowledged that the company expects significant cost savings from the move as well as substantial workforce reductions.

“Bottom line: Products that are more competitive,” he says.

12:22 pm: Operators are excited by a third viable option, Elop says.

“A two-horse race is not a satisfactory [situation] for operators,” Elop says.

Elop says that Microsoft-Nokia will be operator-friendly, as compared with Google and Apple.

12:24 pm: Elop talking about differentiation–a key concern of analysts and investors.

Elop talks about Windows Phone as offering differentiation form Apple and Google, but also insisting that Nokia has the assets and business terms it needs to stand out from other Windows Phones. He focuses on camera technologies and “unique relationship.”

Stresses again that this is not a standard handset maker agreement. But he also says that just because Nokia can change lots of things within Windows Phone, doesn’t mean it should.

Nokia, he says, must “resist the temptation to customize just for the sake of customization.”

12:27 pm: Now talking about Symbian. For those that missed it, Elop reiterates this is a transition strategy, but adds that the company still expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices before that transition is complete.

12:29 pm: Strategy is more than just smartphones. He wants the company to be a leading force in connecting the next billion people to the Internet via phones in emerging markets. “The market for feature phones is pushing down the price curve and that is an opportunity for Nokia.”

Nokia will do incremental work in that area–things like Nokia Money for people that don’t have a bank account or telephone. Another, Nokia Life Tools, helps connect, say, farmers to market information.

This area is still a target for innovation, he says, but it also faces competition from Chinese-made phones based on MediaTek chipsets.

Elop says that the company must also plan for the future so that it can be disruptive down the road. “As they say in Finland, it is time to shoot ahead of the duck,” he says.

That’s where MeeGo comes in–the mobile version of Linux that until recently was seen as Nokia’s future. Nokia said that team will ship a phone later this year and then see where the future is headed.

12:35 pm: Want to point out this New York Times article that said both Google and Microsoft were offering hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering and marketing support in order to woo Nokia.

12:36 pm: Elop now talking about cost cuts, including significant job reductions.

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop says, but adds that the company wants to move quickly on that front.

He says that he has made changes to the business to ensure speed, including leadership structure changes aimed at ensuring accountability. “If things go well today, I’ll be the CEO.”

Of note, the two of the three business unit leaders are women–Mary McDowell, who will lead lower-end phones, and Jo Harlow, who will head the smartphone business.

12:40 pm: Nokia looking for a new leader for its services and developer division. The acting head is Tero Ojanpera, but he will soon be looking for other opportunities within Nokia, Elop says.

Also of note, Louise Pentland, who is head of the legal and intellectual property unit, is being elevated to the top leadership team.

“We have one of the strongest patent portfolios out there” he says, adding that he would encourage all players to take a license to said patents. (hear that, Apple?)

New leader of North American sales unit to be named in coming days.

“We are creating a different industry,” Elop says in closing his introductory remarks.

12:44 pm: Elop Brings on CFO Timo Ihamuotila to go through the numbers.

12:46 pm: Ihamuotila acknowledged Nokia didn’t meet the targets it had set out to achieve at its last financial analyst day.

“Our execution did not cut it.” he says.

12:49 pm: Ah, Now on to the good stuff. CFO talking financial impact from Microsoft deal. Says should be good over the long term.

Slide shows royalty payments to Microsoft causing lower gross margins, but says sales and marketing support from Microsoft should lower operating expenses.

“We will receive substantial go-to market support from Microsoft,” he says, without giving numbers.

12:52 pm: Ihamuotila talking now about the company’s long-term targets for devices and services period “after the transition period.”

Device sales to grow faster than the market, with operating margins of 10 percent or more–but this is only after the transition period, which the company has said could last this year and next.

Significant uncertainties in this period.

Ihamuotila shows a slide showing Symbian sales slowly giving way to Windows Phone with lower-end mobile phones remaining about half of sales.

12:57 pm: Ihamuotila shows chart of how it expects to cut R&D with the company investing less in services, more in entry-level phones and far less on MeeGo, though still some. The investment in Symbian will be replaced by a far lower investment in Windows Phone R&D. Overall, R&D should be a fraction of what it was.

1:02 pm: Over long term, Ihamuotila says that the Microsoft deal should help significantly boost the company’s Navteq navigation business.

“We think this new strategy is the best way to maximize long-term value, both to our shareholders and to other stakeholders,” Ihamuotila says.

On to Q&A for financial analysts.

1:03 pm: Question on how Nokia will keep employees motivated, something else and when to expect the first Windows Phone.

“Thanks for the one question” Elop quips, before addressing them in turn.

Elop says that the key is on focused innovation so they see the fresh opportunities (at least for the ones who don’t get cut by the large workforce reductions also promised).

He also pointed to his sharply worded memo, which he said was designed to convey the message that “Here is the truth, we’re making decisions and we’re moving forward.”

Won’t give date on first Windows Phone, but says again that the move will allow a substantially faster pace than the company was on with Symbian.

1:07 pm: Elop is asked about some of the challenges with Microsoft and Nokia each responsible for different pieces of software and services, as opposed to Google and Apple, where things are more integrated.

“We wanted to drive operational simplicity,” Elop says, adding that the companies talked about other arrangements, though not a full-on acquisition. The companies, Elop says, decided not to go with the operational complexity of a joint venture.

1:10 pm: Elop says Nokia has opportunities to differentiate from other Windows Phone devices, but adds it is in Nokia’s interest for there to be other strong handset players supporting Windows Phone.

“We’ve got to make Windows Phone successful,” he says.

Nokia’s mapping technology, he says, will benefit rivals like Samsung and HTC. “We’re willing to make those trades,” Elop says.

1:11 pm: Elop is asked why he feels comfortable with a “bet the farm” strategy on Microsoft, a company he clearly knows well.

Elop points out that it was harder to see how Microsoft would rapidly be successful without someone like Nokia.

“But this is now different,” he says, adding that this is now an ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are jointly helping to build.

Mapping and local advertising were not part of the ecosystem before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership.

As for impact of the transition, it’s hard to say, Elop says. Symbian is strong in some places where Apple and Google are present today.

1:14 pm: Asked whether Nokia will remain profitable during the transition. “It’s hard to say financially, and I am not going to provide any further specific guidance.”

1:17 pm: Elop won’t say when the first Windows Phone will ship, but lots and lots by next year at various price points.

“We’ll be shipping in volume in 2012,” he says.

1:20 pm: Another two-parter! 1) Why will Symbian be supported if it is transitioning away? 2) Why does Nokia think it will be able to have double-digit operating margins using someone else’s platform?

Elop: They recognize Symbian is key to Nokia being able to transition, but he agrees that consumers will have to want the Symbian phones Nokia builds. CFO also notes that less than half of Symbian phones are sold through carriers.

As for question on margins, CFO says the company has opportunities for higher margins around services and advertising.

1:23 pm: Asked about how the company is confident Windows Phone can get to lower prices, Elop says that was a key consideration, down to which chipsets will be supported, etc.

Between the two companies there was a lot of work to get a high degree of confidence.

“That was a critical evaluation,” he says.

That said, Elop agrees there is a smartphone market below Windows Phone that Nokia will manage with an evolution of today’s Series 30 and Series 40 operating systems.

1:31 pm: Elop: Some of the hardware designs that would have run MeeGo or Symbian will be repurposed for Windows Phone. Some devices may come out with similar models for both Windows Phone and Symbian.

1:32 pm: Question again on who pays whom in Microsoft-Nokia. Is there a lump payment from Microsoft?

Elop doesn’t answer and instead refers to slide that shows opportunities on both sides. Saying value going both ways. As for Microsoft’s payments, “That is a significant part of the conversation,” Elop says.

1:35 pm: Two good questions: Can Windows Phone be put on any current devices? What happens to QT development layer that Nokia bought and had sought to unify developer approach?

Elop: It’s not as simple as plugging in and downloading on to current phones, though some technologies can be repurposed.

QT continues to be the development for Symbian and lone MeeGo device. Also could have a role on low-end devices.

However, Elop says, “We are not proposing a QT on Windows Phone” approach. Adding another development environment could fork the ecosystem, which is not good for Nokia or Windows Phone, he says. Development environment for Windows Phone will be Silverlight and XNA–Microsoft’s current tools.

1:38 pm: Asked about branding, he says in some cases you will see both Microsoft and Nokia brands. Examples could include Nokia Search powered by Bing or Bing maps powered by Nokia, though he says those are examples and not final choices.

1:39 pm: Asking about tablets, questioner points out that Nokia had an early lead in tablets, but Apple “stole the show.”

“We are not announcing today a specific tablet strategy,” he reiterates, saying that Microsoft creates opportunities.

Elop notes that there are rumors of Windows Phone and Windows that could power tablets.

“We could do that,” he says. “We might do that.”

Also an opportunity for Nokia to step back into the game using its own software.

1:41 pm: Elop wrapping up.

“We have set a new course for Nokia,” he says, adding that despite what has been written, Nokia is still an incredibly powerful company, though perhaps not in North America. “Today we are diving forward” he says. “We have a strong partner in Microsoft who is incented as are we in making this successful.”

Investor guy closes by reminding there were forward-looking statements. He’s still going as people leave the room.

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/apple-app-happy-sonos-also-goes-android/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/apple-app-happy-sonos-also-goes-android/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 14:00:07 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40613

Sonos–the maker of innovative wireless music systems that has been boosted by its Apple iPhone and iPad Controller app–is set to roll out one for Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The Sonos Controller for Android will officially introduce the app at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, although the Santa Barbara, Calif., company is announcing it today.

“It’s a no-brainer,” said Sonos CEO John MacFarlane in an interview with BoomTown yesterday. “It basically doubles our market space.”

The free app allows you to control Sonos’s various players wirelessly with a smartphone or tablet.

The impact of the iPhone and the iPad on sales of its various devices has been clear enough, said MacFarlane, as registrations of the app have escalated.

“There is more usage of the smartphone, but tablets are clearly happening, said MacFarlane. “But I have the same view of both that these devices are the Holy Grail everyone has always wanted.”

The move to Android will take longer to beta test, he said, since its ecosystem has a plethora of unit types from a variety of handset makers.

The app will be out in March.

Here’s an image of the app on an Android phone and the official press release:

ROCK THE HOUSE: SONOS INTRODUCES SONOS CONTROLLER FOR ANDROID

Wireless Music System for Android Provides Unlimited Music, Incredible Control and Amazing Sound in Every Room

SANTA BARBARA, CA–February 10, 2011–Sonos, the leading developer of wireless multi-room music systems for the home, today introduced the Sonos Controller for Android, a free app that transforms most Android™ smartphones into a wireless music controller for the award-winning Sonos Multi-Room Music System. The Sonos Controller for Android, available in late March as a free download from Android Market™, will make its public debut next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. To watch a video introduction of the Sonos Controller for Android, please visit www.sonos.com/android.

With the award-winning Sonos S5 in any room and an Android phone in hand, music lovers will enjoy an unmatched wireless music experience in the home. You’ll be able to access and play all the music on earth–from the Internet and your personal music library–throughout the home, wirelessly. Use the free Sonos Controller for Android app to control all your music and rooms, all from the palm of your hand. And, Sonos Controller for Android features Sonos’ latest innovation in the home music experience–music voice search–allowing users to find any artist, album or track by simply speaking into the phone.

“Sonos’ mission is to fill every home with music,” said John MacFarlane, CEO, Sonos, Inc. “We are thrilled to bring the joy of music to the homes of Android fans worldwide.”

To get started enjoying music in any or every room of the home, all you need is a Sonos ZonePlayer and a Sonos Controller such as the free Sonos Controller for Android. The most popular Sonos ZonePlayer is the Sonos S5, an all-in-one wireless music system you can plug in anywhere. Now you can play any track you like, anytime you like, in any room you like. Wirelessly play the same song in every room of the house–perfectly synchronized. Or, mix it up and play different songs in different rooms.

When it comes to controlling Sonos, you simply reach into your pocket for your Android smartphone. With Sonos Controller for Android, you can search for songs and stations by typing or speaking, choose the music and control the volume in as many rooms as you like. And because your Android phone is controlling the music, and not the source of it, when a text comes in or you need to make a phone call, the music doesn’t stop.

Sonos connects directly to the Internet so you can access a world of music without ever turning on your computer. Search and play more than 100,000 Internet radio stations, shows and podcasts–from around the world. Play songs, playlists and radio from the most popular music services like Deezer, iheartradio, Last.fm, Napster, Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, SiriusXM Internet Radio, Spotify, Wolfgang’s Vault, and more. And of course, Sonos can play your entire digital music library (such as iTunes) stored on a computer or Network Attached storage drive.

The Sonos Controller for Android is designed to work on any Android smartphone running Android 2.1 or later with a screen size of HVGA 320 x 480, WVGA 480 x 800 or WVGA 480 x 854. Sonos Controller for Android joins the family of Sonos Controllers which includes free apps for iPhone and iPad, a dedicated touchscreen controller, the Sonos Controller 200, and free software for your Mac or PC, included with every ZonePlayer. All controllers work together seamlessly.

Sonos will be demonstrating the Sonos Controller for Android at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 13-17, 2011. For a demonstration in person, you’ll find Sonos at the following locations:
• Android: Hall 8; Booth 8C25
• Motorola: Hall 8, Booth 8A28
• Sonos: Hall 7; Suite 7HS11

For more information about Sonos or to locate an authorized Sonos dealer in your area, please visit www.sonos.com or call 877.80.SONOS.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/apple-app-happy-sonos-also-goes-android/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:00:58 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3790 In weighing the future of Nokia, Stephen Elop has had some tough decisions to make, but at least he has lots of people willing to offer up their two cents.

Whether he is walking the halls of Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland, or even just buying groceries at the market, Nokia’s chief executive is constantly flooded with suggestions for how the company should regain lost ground.

Elop recalled being at dinner just over a week ago and being approached by three young people who wanted to share their suggestions.

“The three of them couldn’t quite agree on what the right strategy was, but they clearly each had an opinion,” Elop said.

For his part, Elop has deeply considered three possibilities for its high-end smartphone business–sticking with plans to develop around MeeGo (a mobile version of Linux), shifting to Android or adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

Without tipping his hand, Elop spoke with Mobilized last week about the pros and cons of the various options. The interview came before releasing his big “burning platform” memo and literally as the final decision was being made.

For Elop, it came down to which approach would offer enough differentiation and yet would also be part of an ecosystem that would be large enough to attract developers, advertisers, carriers and all the other partners.

“It’s not just differentiation but sustainable differentiation,” Elop said. He also said that as big as Nokia is, it can’t afford to go it alone.

It is also critically important to Elop that the company be more competitive in the United States. Although the company ships more phones worldwide than any other company, its presence in North America is basically nonexistent. And yet, he said, the U.S. is where the pace is set for the high end of the market.

“We need to be in the United States in one way, shape or form,” Elop said. “We have to have a viable way to reopen doors.”

So where did that leave the various options?

Although MeeGo left plenty of room for differentiation, that option would also mean trying to be unique at the same time, as the company would have to convince others to build on the platform.

“For it to be a valid ecosystem, that also implies other [phone makers]–our competitors–would be attracted to it as well,” Elop said. “That’s one of the things that give it critical mass and credibility.”

Although Elop didn’t say so in our interview, his comments in this week’s memo suggest that his confidence there was low.

“We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones,” Elop said in his memo to staff. “However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.”

As for Android and Windows Phone, Elop said Nokia could offer a significant boost to either ecosystem.

“Android is growing very nicely; it has significant market share,” he said. “The combination of Android’s existing market share plus the market share that Nokia could bring to the Android ecosystem is a very large number and would signal a very substantial shift in the dynamics of the mobile operating system market.”

As for Redmond’s operating system, Elop said it is early days.

“Windows Phone is in its early formative stages in terms of getting customer traction and so forth. It’s a beautiful product and I say that as someone who is competing with it.”

However, that may not be the case much longer. While Elop was still leaving all doors open when he spoke with Mobilized a week ago, the options appear to have narrowed significantly in recent days. His memo on Tuesday appeared to rule out MeeGo as the best option, while a tweet from Google’s Vic Gundotra suggests Android is out and a tie-up with WIndows Phone is Elop’s final choice.

But, no matter what decision gets made at the high end, Elop said that the company probably needs a separate strategy at the low end of the market, where there is intense competition from Chinese phone makers building phones around low-cost chips from MediaTek.

Friday’s investor meeting will also address other aspects of the company, including its services strategy, its plans for its Navteq navigation unit and its plans to leverage its huge patent portfolio. The announcement also comes just ahead of the cell phone industry’s big trade show, Mobile World Congress, which gets going on Sunday in Barcelona.

Mobilized is here in London and will have live coverage of the meeting, which kicks off at 11 am local time. That’s 3 am PT, so set those alarm clocks early.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/what-to-expect-at-todays-hp-webos-event/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/what-to-expect-at-todays-hp-webos-event/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 17:30:16 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57415 Palm gets its second chance at a rise-from-the-ashes rebirth today–this time under Hewlett-Packard’s aegis. At an invitation-only event in San Francisco (wisely scheduled after the CES tablet deluge of 2011), HP will uncrate its first webOS hardware since its acquistion of Palm. Among the products expected to be unveiled–the long-rumored “PalmPad” and perhaps a new smartphone or two. Certainly that’s what HP Personal Systems Group Executive VP Todd Bradley’s been hinting at recently.

“We are focused on the tablet market and we’re focused on enabling it with webOS,” he said back in January. “But we think of the tablet as one piece of a broader ecosystem, one piece of the connected experience we’re going to create….As we think about webOS and how it enables everything from smartphones to tablets to PCs to potentially other large-screen devices, we see an enormous opportunity, both for ourselves and for our customers, to get the best Web experience, the best content experience, that they can.”

Join us here at 10:00 am PT and find out if he’s right.

9:51 am: HP’s pulled together quite an…Apple-esque event for us today. Herbst Pavilion is adorned with massive HP banners and inside, the media and analysts gathered here are mingling beneath atmospheric blue lights. Noticeably absent: any–and I mean any–sign of the Palm brand.

9:59 am: A quick spoiler ahead of the event, which should start any moment now: The tablet HP will be showing off today is called the HP TouchPad.

10:02 am: One decidedly un-Apple-esque element of today’s presentation: The music selection. No Beatles, Dylan or Clapton. Just borderline unbearable club music/electronica.

10:05 am: Ah. The refrain in the aforementioned unbearable soundtrack: “One touch is never enough…been waiting such a long time.” Wonder if HP commissioned it. If they did, I hope they didn’t pay too much.

10:10 am: Looks like we’ve got a packed room. The Palm developer community in its entirety (snicker)?

10:16 am: And here’s Bradley to kick things off.

10:16 am: Bradley: I’d like you think back to that moment in time when you experienced something for the first time. I vividly recall the first time I drove a whisper-quiet electronic car…my first video conference. We should all witness as many of these firsts as we can in our lifetime. At HP, we’re about creating these firsts.

10:18 am: Bradley talks up connected experiences and claims that HP will soon begin delivering robust ones to folks around the world.

10:19 am: Now a quick historical overview of HP tech: The first pocket calculator, the first ink jet printer.

10:19 am: Talking about HP’s scale now and the size of the market for connected devices. Bradley says the connected devices market is $160 billion and growing.

10:21 am: So how do we bring HP’s scale to webOS development efforts, Bradley asks, before recounting how the company has brought its engineering heft and resources to bear on the OS. “We keep the tools in the garage unlocked,” he says.

10:22 am: Quoting Packard now, “The reason for a company to exist is to make a contribution.”

10:23 am: We’ve seen a proliferation of devices, says Bradley, and an explosion in content and services. But no one before today has come forward with a solution that provides a continuous experience across devices…a solution that gives you access to your digital universe regardless of which device you use.

That’s our intention with webOS devices.

10:24 am: “You know the afternoon I first saw what we can do with WebOS across a range of devices was really one of those firsts I referred to earlier.”

And with that, Bradley welcomes Jon Rubinstein to the stage.

10:26 am: Today marks an important new beginning for us, says Ruby. “We began building webOS five years ago. It’s been a little over two years since we launched the Pre.”

He continues, citing various compliments webOS has received in the media.

10:29 am: Rubinstein remarks that the smartphone industry seems to be headed toward larger and larger devices. HP has evidently chosen to go in the opposite direction.

“We’ve been thinking small,” says Rubinstein. And with that he announces the HP Veer, a tiny credit-card-size webOS phone.

Full slide-out QWERTY keyboard
2.6 inch, 320 by 400 touch display
5 megapixel camera
HSPA+
8GB storage
Snapdragon 7230/800 MZ
HP mobile hotspot

“Never before has a smartphone done so much and felt so little.”

Veer will be available in early Spring.

10:33 am: And here’s another device: The Pre 3, “a powerful smartphone for professionals.”

10:34 am: Pre3 is a thin portrait slider, largest QWERTY keyboard in the line-up. 3.6-inch, 480×800 screen. Supports HD video, HSPA+ and EVDO RevA; world phone; 8GB or 16GB

10:36 am: “This is a phone that’s built for serious speed and serious fun,” says Rubinstein, adding that the device will be available this summer.

Both new webOS phones are Touchstone compatible. They’re also context aware and will display information based on where they’re docked (not entirely sure what that means yet).

10:37 am: Moving on to the Think Big portion of today’s event: The HP TouchPad, the first device in the TouchPad family.

10:38 am: It weighs a little more than a pound and a half, just 13.7 mm thick.

9.7 inch, 1024×768 display
1.3 megapixel webcam
Beats audio
16 or 32 GB storage
Gyro, accelerometer and compass
Uses Qualcomm’s newest dual-core 1.2GZ Snapdragon processor.

“The TouchPad is screaming fast,” says Rubinstein.

10:40 am: So how will the TouchPad distinguish itself in the increasingly crowded tablet market? WebOS is the key here, says Rubinstein, noting the operating system’s powerful multitasking features, “an unmatched email experience” and Synergy.

If you own a webOS phone, all you have to do is enter your webOS user ID into the TouchPad and it will sync all your contacts, calendars, email, etc.

10:42 am: TouchPad comes bundled with Quickoffice for editing Microsoft docs. It suppors VPN, video calling, wireless printing and Adobe Flash.

10:43 am: Content-wise, the device supports the standard fare–movies, TV, books, magazine subscriptions, etc.

10:44 am: HP will roll the TouchPad out with some slick accessories: A case that doubles as a stand and a keyboard.

10:45 am: Rubinstein calls product manager Sachin Kansal to the stage to show off some of these devices’ features in depth.

10:46 am: First up, webOS exhibition mode, which displays photos or calendar while charging on a Touchstone.

10:47 am: Next, the TouchPad. Hardware looks pretty slick

Kansal demonstrates a reply to a text message showing up simultaneously on the TouchPad and Pre3 via Synergy.

10:48 am: Touting webOS’s multitasking features now. Swiping across a range of open applications that have been left open for use.

10:50 am: New feature: Card stacks–the ability to stack related windows on top of one another. A shopping list in notepad and a browser window open to one of the stores at which you plan to shop, for example.

10:51 am: Mail app seems to be having a little trouble rendering HTML

10:52 am: That said, webOS’s mail app does seem to be robust and elegant as well, particularly with Synergy working in the background to sync everything across multiple devices.

10:52 am: Nice multi-select feature in mail that allows for easy inbox purging.

10:53 am: Really talking up multitasking on the TouchPad.

“In webOS, multitasking was not an afterthought, it was a key feature we developed from the very beginning,” says Kansal, in a pointed jab at Apple.

10:56 am: Now a quick Flash demo. “Kung Fu Panda” preview. Looks fine and, remarkably, plays seamlessly without crashing the device.

10:57 am: Now on to in-app notifications. Unobtrusive and easily navigated and managed. Tap a notification and it launches the app you need to address it. Tap it again to delete the notification from the queue.

10:59 am: TouchPad keyboard includes numbers and letters on the same screen. Handy. Also something the iPad doesn’t offer.

11:00 am: Deep social networking integration. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., integrated into not just your address book, but photos as well. Connected photo albums allow users to view Facebook photo albums and the like within webOS’s photo app.

Quick demo of wireless printing from a connected photo album. “It just works,” says Kansal in an unintentional nod to an unmentioned rival.

11:03 am: Kansal says webOS has had a lot of success in building HTML 5 applications, but also a lot of success with Open GL games.

He demos a flight simulator/combat game that looks decent enough. Not Unreal-engine quality, but pretty good.

11:05 am: Moving on now to magazine subscriptions. A quick scroll through Sports Illustrated. “While on the one hand we are partnering with leading publishers like Time Inc. for magazines, we also want webOS to be a great platform for books, which is why we’re partnering with Amazon to bring Kindle to the TouchPad.

11:06 am: Standard Kindle reading experience, quick access to all Kindle controls and syncing with your Kindle libraries.

Ha. Kindle demo interrupted by phone call from Rubinstein. “Hey, you’re doing a great job out there. You know what, let’s switch to video.”

And there’s Rubinstein in a video call. Transition seems absolutely seamless.

11:09 am: Impressive demo so far.

Now this is interesting. Kansal pulls up a restaurant Web site on the TouchPad. He then takes his Pre 3 and places it on the TouchPad screen and the phone automatically launches a browser and directs it to the same restaurant Web site.

Very slick.

11:11 am: Rubinstein returns to the stage to talk about TouchPad partners. Among them: Dreamworks.

Rolling video of Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg recounting his experiences with the TouchPad. “HP has hit it out of the park,” he says before rehashing many of the features we’ve seen on display this morning.

“Seamless, integrated and intuitive.”

11:14 am: Uh oh. The Wi-Fi version of the TouchPad won’t be available until this summer, with a 3G version to follow.

Not the greatest shipping schedule, particularly if Apple brings the iPad 2 to market this spring as expected.

11:15 am: Moving on to the next partner: Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs.

“When you have the scale and size of a company like HP, you can work with anyone. And HP chose to work with us,” he says before rambling on about how fantastic Qualcomm and its wireless chips are.

11:18 am: Allow me to summarize Jacobs’s spiel in three words: Snapdragon is awesome.

11:21 am: Quick update from Jacobs: TouchPad is also awesome–even more awesome because it runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon dual-core solution.

So what’s the device’s battery life like?

11:23 am: Ah. Jacobs just said Snapdragon enables “all day battery life.” Is that a euphemism for eight hours or six?

11:24 am: Rubinstein returns to the stage, talks up Beats by Dr. Dre, the audio system used in the TouchPad, and then welcomes Jimmy Iovine to the stage.

11:26 am: Iovine begins with a complaint about the degradation of audio quality that occurs between the recording studio and the PC. “Paul McCartney can record in the best studio in the world, but when you play his songs through a Dell computer it sounds like you’re listening to it through an old television.”

11:29 am: Today, the PC isn’t just a home stereo, but a tool for musicians–for recording and for performing, Iovine says. We should be demanding a better audio experience.

“HP is stepping forward. It wants to own music….The TouchPad is a musical instrument….Bottom line is that music is still the best app on the Internet and HP’s commitment to making it sound good is unparalleled. Working with them we’ve developed an audio solution that makes music feel and sound like it should….This is an incredible moment for the music industry.”

11:32 am: Steven McArthur, SVP of applications and services, takes the stage to talk about developers and application development.

“We’re expanding our footprint into a portfolio of world-class devices and we’re building the world’s largest platform of connected devices….HP is uniquely positioned to achieve this goal and webOS developers are uniquely positioned to take advantage of it.”

11:34 am: Talking up the Facebook app for webOS now.

Evidently, Facebook users rank the Facebook app for webOS as the best one on the market.

11:36 am: And now, Selfaware Games, purveyor of fine webOS card games enhanced with in-app payments. I’ve never played them, but Selfaware’s games look pretty rudimentary from the images on stage.

11:38 am: McArthur claims that the TouchPad will soon offer the best tablet gaming experience on the market. Hard to believe right now, given the webOS games I’ve seen to date, but you never know.

11:41 am: Rolling another video now. An overview of Time Inc. pubs, presumably with a cameo by a Time exec to follow.

11:42 am: And here’s a very excited Randall Rothenberg, chief digital officer of Time Inc.

11:44 am: Standard “Time and HP are both awesome” preamble.

Ah. Here’s a remark worth noting: “HP really understands the importance of maintaining our direct relationship with subscribers.”

Assume the “unlike Apple” is implied.

11:45 am: Demoing People mag on TouchPad. Talking up the device’s photo rendering and how that jibes with Time’s commitment to good photojournalism (not showcased particularly well by People, but …)

11:47 am: Moving on to Time magazine. Here the photo rendering stands out a bit more. Rothenberg’s right. The pictures look great.

When the TouchPad hits the market place, people will be able to download apps for Time, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated.

11:49 am: An off-script anecdote from Rothenberg: “Thirty years ago when I was a very young journalist, I had the pleasure of meeting David Packard several times. He was very focused on innovation and American innovation, and all I can think of is that this day and devices like this represent his vision for how American innovation would inspire the global economy.”

11:51 am: Rothenberg says one in five adults will own a tablet by 2015.

11:52 am: Bradley returns to the stage to talk about big picture stuff. “We’re thinking beyond today,” he says. “We have a commitment to expand the webOS platform to other devices and form factors you haven’t seen before…. And we’re going to do this across the broadest base of devices we can….I’m pleased to announce today that we plan to extend webOS to the HP PC.”

11:56 am: “Introducing webOS to our PC customers later this year will drastically expand the platform, for us and for our developers.”

11:57 am: 11:57 am: This is obviously a huge shift for HP, which has been a Windows shop for a looong time now.

11:59 am: From a post I wrote earlier this year:

In Palm’s webOS, HP has an elegant OS that it controls, something the company–a longtime Windows shop–has never had before. And with it, it can begin untethering itself from Microsoft and differentiate its brand in a market in which most devices not sold by Apple are all running some variant of Windows. Remember, webOS is scalable. And while Palm lacked the means to scale it, HP does not. It’s one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and once it brings its engineering acumen and marketing heft to bear on the OS, my guess is we’ll see it evolve into a much larger platform that extends beyond smartphones to tablets, ultraportables and other connected devices. And HP, for the first time in its history, will be firmly in control of both its hardware and software.

12:00 pm: Rubinstein joins Bradley to wrap things up. Thanks the company, the webOS team and, oddly, some celebs in the audience–MC Hammer and Serena Williams.

Then another restatement of HP’s commitment to webOS and its plans to create this massive global ecosystem we’ve been hearing about all morning.

“With this versatile operating system on top of HP’s reach, we will create a vibrant global ecosystem for our developers, partners and customers.”

12:03 pm: One last video reel showing off the hardware announced today–Veer, Pre 3 and TouchPad–and the event concludes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/what-to-expect-at-todays-hp-webos-event/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/nokias-stephen-elop-didnt-start-the-fire-but-his-burning-platform-certainly-lights-one/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/nokias-stephen-elop-didnt-start-the-fire-but-his-burning-platform-certainly-lights-one/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 14:15:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40539

Memo to tech CEOs everywhere: Now that’s how to write an internal memo.

That would be the 1,300-word one that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured here) apparently penned for employees at the Finnish telecom giant, which inevitably leaked to the media (in this case, kudos to Engadget for getting the whole thing, which is below).

Elop uses the harsh but cogent metaphor of a burning oil platform to take a bracing opening shot at turning around Nokia, which has lost market share–and, more importantly, mindshare–to both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating system.

This is not breaking news to anyone in the wider tech world, of course. But for the CEO to say it so flatly and brutally to the insular troops at Nokia makes it remarkable.

As you can read, it’s dramatic all right, and just the kind of thing a lot of leaders at troubled companies–Hello, Yahoo!–could learn a thing or two from.

That’s because it’s honest and also genuine, and with enough of a direction and glimpses into pending action–to be revealed later this week at an event to unveil a new strategy–that it’s not just a diatribe by a new manager about how bad the previous managers were.

There is clearly plenty of that, of course, which is no surprise. But with rumors of an imminent significant management overhaul–which few execs ever do enough of at the start of their tenure, when it is easiest–there seems to be teeth to the memo too.

And although the burning platform part will get all the attention, perhaps the most important observation was in one particular passage that outlines exactly the giant challenge Nokia faces to catch up:

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

Because, as it has turned out, it is all about ecosystems and using them to provide consumers with the best and most seamless experience possible.

Walt Mossberg and I will be interviewing Elop–the former Microsoft exec, who is neither a Nokia insider nor Finnish–about all this and more at the ninth D: All Thing Digital conference in late May.

Obviously, there will be a lot to talk about.

But, until then, here’s Elop’s memo below in its entirety.

I also reposted a video interview I did with Elop in April of 2009 in which he talked about making Microsoft a more open and innovative place, the changing business model of software and more.

Also below is a video Elop ordered up while running Microsoft’s Business Division as part of an “Envisioning” series.

These see-into-the-future videos were done by Microsoft Office Labs as part of a “Productivity Future Vision” series that sketched out a landscape of smartphones, touchscreens everywhere and a whole lot of cool interacting.

It would be nice if he can drag Nokia back into that world–although Elop’s memo is a good start.

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times–his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform,” and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion–we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally–taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward–a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/nokias-stephen-elop-didnt-start-the-fire-but-his-burning-platform-certainly-lights-one/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110207/hps-webos-app-ecosystem-is-uncertain-and-thats-a-good-thing/ http://allthingsd.com/20110207/hps-webos-app-ecosystem-is-uncertain-and-thats-a-good-thing/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 23:01:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57318 Hewlet-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker says he doesn’t think the company has been telling its story as well as it could have over the past few years. On Wednesday, he’ll have his first chance to begin retelling it when HP’s Palm division holds an invitation-only event in San Francisco, at which it’s expected to introduce its long-rumored webOS tablet. This will be our first look at HP’s new ecosystem–smartphones, connected devices, apps and the OS that ties them all together–and likely be the beginning of a slow untethering from Microsoft’s Windows OS. And if Palm has done it right, webOS could finally become a viable challenger to iOS and Android–particularly the latter, which has had a mixed reception in the tablet market. But that means coming to market with not just a compelling tablet OS and hardware, but a burgeoning applications and content ecosystem–something not easily achieved. As J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz wrote today, the ubiquity of HP’s related app ecosystem is uncertain. Whatever hardware the company rolls out on Wednesday needs to spur developers to embrace webOS. “Otherwise,” said Moskowitz, “there is risk that HP introduces a suitable device with a strong operating system, only to be deficient in attracting end users’ ‘eyeballs’ because of a weak applications and content ecosystem.”

The caveat here is that HP’s new tablet (or tablets) presents developers with an enormous opportunity precisely because its app ecosystem is uncertain. It’s going to be a lot easier to score a hit there than it is in Apple’s App Store, where developers must compete for users’ attention with hundreds of thousands of apps. And if you do score a hit there, it might even set the stage for you to translate that success to larger mobile platforms that are generally tougher to break into.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110207/hps-webos-app-ecosystem-is-uncertain-and-thats-a-good-thing/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/analyst-meegos-a-joke-nokia-needs-windows-phone-7/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/analyst-meegos-a-joke-nokia-needs-windows-phone-7/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 23:10:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57014 Some unsolicited advice for Nokia CEO Stephen Elop ahead of next week’s big Capital Markets Day gathering: Scrap the company’s Meego OS and forge a Windows Phone 7 hardware alliance with Microsoft. Otherwise, prepare to be eclipsed once and for all by the upstart rivals that have already bested you in the smartphone space.

That’s the gist of Berenberg Bank analyst Adnaan Ahmad’s open letter to Elop and former colleague Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “[Stephen] announce an EXCLUSIVE deal with your ex-colleague, Steve: you get access to their Windows Phone 7 (WP7) intellectual property scot-free and access to the US market where your share has dived to the low single-digit level, and in so doing cut your bloated handset business R&D budget by at least 30 percent,” Ahmad writes. “Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO)–it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google. Focus your high-end portfolio around WP7, and over time you can take the cost down (that’s Steve’s job and cost base) to get this into the mid-range market. Push your Symbian solutions into the low-to-mid-range smartphone market as quickly as possible to defend market share versus Android’s upcoming lowered cost ecosystem.”

An interesting, albeit unoriginal, idea, particularly coming as it does after Elop’s assertion that Nokia “must build, catalyze and/or join a competitive ecosystem” to effectively compete in the handset industry. And it has its merits–for Microsoft, access to Nokia’s massive global market share, and for Nokia, the ability to go to market with an OS that isn’t a joke, as Ahmad notes. That said, while Microsoft is certainly a valuable ecosystm partner, it’s not yet all that valuable in the mobile space. But it could be.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/analyst-meegos-a-joke-nokia-needs-windows-phone-7/feed/ 14 http://allthingsd.com/20110202/microsoft-goes-after-google-again-this-time-on-web-video-formats/ http://allthingsd.com/20110202/microsoft-goes-after-google-again-this-time-on-web-video-formats/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:00:15 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3351

The war between Google and Microsoft is clearly heating up.

After being accused of copying Google’s search results on Tuesday, Microsoft is now going after Google, accusing it of injecting inconsistency and legal uncertainty into the Web video arena by natively supporting only the newly open-sourced WebM video format in its Chrome browser, rather than the H.264 format preferred by Microsoft and Apple.

In response, Microsoft said it will build a Chrome plug-in that will restore support for H.264, an older and more commonly used video format. Microsoft said it plans to support H.264 in the next version of Internet Explorer, although it will also allow plug-ins that enable WebM support.

“Our point of view is totally clear,” Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch writes in a blog post being posted on Wednesday. “Our support for H.264 results from our views about a robust web and video ecosystem that provides a rich level of functionality, is the product of an open standards process like the W3C’s HTML5 specification, and has been free from legal attacks. Microsoft is agnostic and impartial about the actual underlying video format for HTML5 video as long as this freedom continues.”

For its part, Google has said its decision to base its HTML5 video support around WebM is due to the royalties associated with H.264.

“We acknowledge that H.264 has broader support in the publisher, developer, and hardware community today (though support across the ecosystem for WebM is growing rapidly),” Google said in a blog post in mid-January.

However, it said, “To use and distribute H.264, browser and OS vendors, hardware manufacturers, and publishers who charge for content must pay significant royalties–with no guarantee the fees won’t increase in the future.”

Google added that, to companies like itself “the license fees may not be material, but to the next great video startup and those in emerging markets these fees stifle innovation.”

Hachamovitch, meanwhile, encouraged more discussion on the topic.

“Web video is still, in many ways, in its infancy,” he said. “Working through these questions is part of moving the web forward. The web is a product of consensus and open dialog. This post is meant to be part of the dialog.”

Your move, Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110202/microsoft-goes-after-google-again-this-time-on-web-video-formats/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/nokia-ceo-elop-lays-groundwork-for-new-strategy-to-be-announced-next-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/nokia-ceo-elop-lays-groundwork-for-new-strategy-to-be-announced-next-month/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 13:30:28 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3056 Although Stephen Elop is waiting until a Feb. 11 investor meeting to fully outline the company’s new strategy, he offered a few tantalizing hints during Thursday’s earnings conference call.

Specifically, Elop talked about his perceptions of the company’s strengths and weaknesses and what that new strategy must accomplish for the company to turn around its fortunes, particularly at the high end of the market.

“There are clearly some gems upon we will build Nokia’s strategy,” Elop said. At the same time, he said the company must move faster than it has if it hopes to regain lost ground. In particular, Elop said the company must have a better strategy around operating systems.

“The game has changed from battle of devices to war of ecosystems,” Elop said, adding later that “Our industry has changed and we have to change faster.”

Elop hinted at a change in the company’s strategy for the high end, which has focused on the Symbian operating system with a planned shift to the mobile Linux-based MeeGo operating system. He didn’t give specifics, but did draw a distinction between the low and high ends of the markets, suggesting a dual-OS strategy may still be the plan.

At the high end, he talked about the importance of developers and services, while at the low end, he said, the key characteristics are brand, scale, price, distribution and speed. Elop also noted that because of different chipsets, it doesn’t always make sense to serve the lower end of the market with the same operating system as is used for top-end smartphones.

Although Elop didn’t name any names, he did talk about the need for the company to “build or join a competitive ecosystem,” suggesting that it might be open to shifting to a competing platform. And while he wouldn’t confirm such a move, he said that the company could pull off such a switch because of its strong brand and relationship with operators.

Among the possibilities that have been suggested are Android and Windows Phone 7. The company has also canceled or delayed plans for two U.S. smartphones, suggesting that a change may be afoot.

“We made a decision to not proceed as people thought we would proceed,” Elop said.

It has also suffered delays of its E7 smartphone, which was to ship last quarter and now isn’t expected to contribute meaningfully to the bottom line until the second quarter.

The new strategy, Elop said, must be one that can “re-open doors” in markets such as the United States, where the company is weak.

“Clearly there is a pattern of disappointments in the United States,” Elop said.

Earlier in the day, Nokia reported that December quarter profits fell 20 percent as the company “faced significant challenges” and lower margins.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/nokia-ceo-elop-lays-groundwork-for-new-strategy-to-be-announced-next-month/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110125/survey-pre-release-appeal-of-playbook-half-that-of-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20110125/survey-pre-release-appeal-of-playbook-half-that-of-ipad/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:30:44 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=56321 Strong buying intentions are developing around Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook ahead of its presumed March launch. Extrapolating from a post-CES consumer survey, RBC* analyst Mike Abramsky concludes the device could sell four million units this calendar year and in excess of six million units in its first full year at market.

“The data shows PlayBook appealing to early adopters and power users, given its differentiation from iPad,” Abramsky told clients, noting that six percent of the survey group said they were “likely” to buy a PlayBook. Of those, one percent were “very likely” and the remaining five percent “somewhat likely.”

So six percent of respondents are very/somewhat likely to buy the PlayBook once it becomes available. That’s about half the level of interest expressed in a similar survey of iPad-buying intentions ahead of that device’s debut last year. And Apple ended up selling 14.8 million iPads in 2010, far beyond analyst consensus estimates of 3.3 million. So Abramsky four- to six-million forecast might not be that far off–assuming the PlayBook proves to be all that RIM claims.

That said, the tablet market today is very different than it was prior to the iPad’s debut. And with the legion of new tablets headed to market, including the iPad 2, Abramsky’s forecast could prove optimistic. Remember, despite the leverage of RIM’s installed base and the promise of the BlackBerry’s security and manageability, the PlayBook is still missing some of the platform elements that have made the iPad so successful–a thriving apps ecosystem, a vertically integrated platform and iTunes.

*Barbara Stymiest, chief operating officer at RBC Financial Group, sits on RIM’s board of directors. RBC also makes a market in RIM Securities.

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