Memo to Flipboard, as well as Pulse, CNN’s Zite and AOL’s Editions: You might want to make some room in the already-crowded news and social reader space, because you’re about to get some bigfoot company.

Next Wednesday, according to sources close to the situation, Yahoo will finally officially unveil its offering, called Livestand.

And perhaps as early as next week or in the weeks soon after, Google will also weigh in with its version of the genre — code-named Propeller — which also might be the product’s name. Another moniker under strong consideration: Currents.

As I have previously reported, Google Propeller is an HTML5 reader for the Apple iPad and Android — essentially a souped-up version of similar apps such as Flipboard, AOL’s Editions, Zite (which was just bought by Time Warner’s CNN) and Pulse.

All these apps are part of the drastically changing habits of media consumers, helping users better navigate numerous social and media feeds — such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as news sites and more — using handsome interfaces and touch technologies on tablet devices.

Flipboard, the most prominent and elegant of these offerings, is now available only on the Apple iPad.

Flipboard’s traction among elite users, along with its high-level design ethos and strong reviews, is why Google tried to buy the well-funded company last year, sources said.

But Flipboard — which is backed by some of tech’s biggest venture players, who have invested more than $60 million at a $200 million valuation — declined the kind offer.

At the time, sources said, Google told Flipboard execs that if it did not buy the start-up, it planned to do a version of its own.

Hence, after I heard about the product earlier this year, I dubbed it the Flipinator.

According to sources, Propeller will launch with a plethora of media partners, as well as integration into the Google+ social network. The aim of the search giant is to offer media companies easy tools for publishing content on these devices, as well as a better path to monetization.

That is essentially the same plan at Yahoo, which has been working on Livestand with hopes of it being a product that will woo publishers into tight collaboration with the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Livestand was announced by Yahoo’s now-fired CEO Carol Bartz in February, at a speech at the World Mobile Congress in Spain.

At the time, Bartz demoed a magazinelike platform that would allow publishers to put up content easily and give users the ability to personalize their selections based on search history and interests.

Bartz called it “content in context.” (You can see the demo video below.)

But while Bartz promised the product within three months, development has been slowed by its complex technologies, bugs and the need to sign on publishers.

Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is pushing the product hard as a way for the company to reinvigorate its media products.

It’s not clear how many publishers Yahoo will have at launch, and neither are the distribution plans, beyond flacking it from the Web site and being present in app stores.

Google, on the other hand, has its Android platform to push out Propeller, although it all must work as well on Apple’s iPad, which is the dominant tablet on the market.

But just because both Yahoo and Google are big companies is by no means a guarantee of success — think Yahoo 360 or Google Wave or Buzz — and their lateness might be a hindrance.

And, in fact, other news reader apps are much further along. The leader, Flipboard, has already had four million downloads and 50 partnerships with leading publishers.

It also has started to introduce rich advertising products and, perhaps most importantly, has tight social integration with Twitter and Facebook.

There will be social elements on both Yahoo’s Livestand and Google’s Propeller. But news reading will be stressed more, making them more like Pulse, a tiny but highly innovative start-up.

Each of the existing apps will presumably compete by adding on more features. Pulse recently added cross-platform, cross-device syncing, while Flipboard is close to unveiling an iPhone version it has said it was working on.

Yahoo and Google PR declined comment.

Here is the Livestand demo video from February:

Think about the federal government’s blocking of the $39 billion AT&T and T-Mobile merger and you might want to reread Google’s blog today, penned in reaction to the news that the Justice Department is making a second request for information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This is pretty routine,” wrote Google’s Motorola integration exec Dennis Woodside. “We’ve gotten these kind of requests before.”

Maybe Google has (and it has with other purchases) — but in actuality, only four percent of transactions got such a follow-up request from regulators.

To be fair, it is much more common in high-profile, big-money deals like this one, but it means a longer closing period and more uncertainty around the Android mobile ecosystem until it’s done.

Still, Google has good reason to be patient. Despite tough criticism and brutal lobbying, it won approval from Justice for its $700 million deal to buy flight data service ITA Software in April, after nine months of scrutiny and a number of conditions imposed.

And the search giant waited out an intense six-month Federal Trade Commission approval process last year for its $750 million acquisition of mobile advertising start-up AdMob. It had an even harder time with the FTC’s nod of its 2007 DoubleClick purchase for $3.1 billion.

One that it lost — an obvious bridge too far that I dubbed Yahoogle — was Google’s 2008 effort to meld a troubling partnership with Yahoo in search advertising.

So, we’ll see soon enough which way D.C. — which just had Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt up to the Senate for an antitrust hearing chit-chat — will go.

Until then, here’s Woodside’s whole blog:

An update on our Motorola acquisition

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 5:30 PM ET

Posted by Dennis Woodside, SVP Google

Since we announced our plans to acquire Motorola Mobility, we’ve been excited about the positive reaction to the proposed deal — particularly from our partners who have told us that they’re enthusiastic about our defense of the Android ecosystem.

And as David Drummond said when we announced our plans in August, we’re confident that this deal will be approved. We believe very strongly this is a pro-competitive transaction that is good for Motorola Mobility, good for consumers, and good for our partners.

That said, we know that close scrutiny is part of the process and we’ve been talking to the U.S. Department of Justice over the past few weeks. Today we received what is called a “second request,” which means that the DOJ is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal. (This is pretty routine; we’ve gotten these kind of requests before.)

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

Late last month, BoomTown posted about a huge venture funding effort by the high-profile and even more highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, Flipboard.

Today, its co-founder and CEO Mike McCue confirmed the $50 million round at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, in a wide-ranging interview at the start-up’s Palo Alto, Calif., HQ.

“We’re obviously thrilled, because we think it confirms our focus that people want a beautifully designed way to interact with content and to share it,” he said. “And there is a lot more to come–on a scale of one to 10, we’re just at a two or three.”

The bulk of the new second round of funding–Flipboard had previously raised $10.5 million–came from New York-based Insight Venture Partners.

Insight’s Jerry Murdock said in an interview that he was excited about the idea of “social endorsement” that Flipboard was pioneering.

“We back great entrepreneurs and Flipboard is that and also in an obviously unique position to solve a problem of media consumption in the digital age,” he said. “The sky is the limit. Or more precisely it is the best environment to consume curated real-time content for Twitter and Facebook, because of the user experience and social endorsement integration with the content.”

Insight is also an investor in Twitter.

Also stepping up in the new Flipboard round is Comcast’s venture arm, as well as previous investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and a spate of well known angels, such as Twitter co-founder and product guru Jack Dorsey, Facebook co-founder and Asana dude Dustin Moskovitz, the ubiquitous Ron Conway, actor Ashton Kutcher and the investment company of former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin.

“From a Comcast perspective, we’re intrigued with Mike and what he’s doing with content aggregation,” said Amy Banse, Comcast Interactive Capital’s new head. “We think we can learn from him and he from us.”

Co-founded by longtime entrepreneur McCue (Netscape, Tellme) and former Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll in January, Flipboard launched to much attention in July.

The elegant Flipboard–which McCue recently told me in an onstage interview at the South by Southwest conference in Austin had zero revenues thus far–has changed the game on the consumption of social media.

Its innovative social magazine concept is attempting to make the social networking universe more accessible, consumable and, perhaps most importantly, visually arresting via its rich app.

Essentially, Flipboard pulls information from media RSS feeds and sites such as Twitter and Facebook data streams and then reassembles it in an easy-to-navigate, personalized format in a mobile tablet touchscreen environment.

In its current offering, there are pull-quotes, photos, videos, status updates and even the first paragraphs of linked-out content. There is also the ability to comment and share, as if one were on a social networking or microblogging site.

McCue said the new giant pile of cash will be used to increase its 32-person staff to about 50, international expansion, small acquisitions and more product development on more platforms.

The next in the arena will be the iPhone version of Flipboard, said McCue, followed by one for the Google Android mobile operating system eventually.

Left unsaid, of course, was the need for funding to fight the likelihood of increased competition in the hot space for delivering both professional and social content to consumers on a wide range of devices.

Rivals are varied, such as Silicon Valley’s most adorable news reader start-up Pulse and also Zite, a news reader which was recently sued for copyright infringement by a group of major publishers.

There are bigger potential players, such as Google, which is trying to find various ways to move into the social space.

In fact, said several sources, Google and others have made acquisition approaches to Flipboard, which has instead opted for raising more funding and staying independent for now.

McCue declined to talk about that, but did note that he is not surprised by publisher interest, especially of the worried and wary kind, in the arena.

“Anyone not respectful of others’ content is going to get in that kind of trouble,” he said, noting Flipboard has struck deals with 17 big publishers so far, including this morning’s announcement about a partnership with Oprah Winfrey’s and Discovery’s OWN cable network. “There is not one half to this equation.”

Right now, the Flipboard app is free and the business plan is advertising and some possible subscription scenarios.

McCue said advertising will be the key to Flipboard’s business plan in the future, although it’s not clear if the company will ever sell advertising itself.

Rather, it will partner with publishers seeking better distribution in the explosive tablet and smartphone market, where Flipboard has been gaining traction quickly.

But until that is sorted out, there is now $50 million more in the Flipboard kitty to figure it all out.

“With this funding, we can grow at the right pace and have a lot of flexibility to get the product right,” said McCue. “And, that’s the most important thing.”

After it struck its online advertising and search partnership with Yahoo, Microsoft tapped longtime Internet exec Brett Wayn (pictured here) to work with Greg Nelson during the integration.

Well, Wayn must have liked what he saw at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, since he is bouncing there from his job at the Redmond, Wash. software giant to help run local efforts at Yahoo.

[UPDATING local roles at Yahoo.]

Wayn will be working for Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and will be responsible for product management of Yahoo’s local “horizontal.”

He will work closely with whoever Yahoo finds as a replacement for Matt Idema, a longtime Yahoo exec who shuttled over to Facebook as a director of business operations, working on the local arena.

Luke Beatty, who heads up Yahoo’s Americas region community and local businesses, including Flickr, Groups, Answers and hundreds of local sites, is doing Idema’s job for now within Americas head Ross Levinsohn’s unit.

Local is a hugely hot space right now, with a spate of Web focus from giants like Google and Facebook to powerful start-ups such as Foursquare and Groupon.

Wayn has more recently been working on international for Microsoft’s MSN portal. The Australian native has also worked at AOL and, interestingly, has an actual medical degree.

In other words: Paging Dr. Local, stat!

AOL will begin rolling out its plans to overhaul its panoply of content sites as early as today, a key part of its integration with the Huffington Post, sources familiar with the situation said.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will be sending out an internal memo on the topic soon, said sources with knowledge of the moves.

He will outline how the New York-based Internet portal, which paid $315 million to acquire the high-profile news and opinion site, will essentially close down dozens of its dedicated content sites–some being shuttered completely and others integrated with existing Huffington Post sites.

One example of the first is Politics Daily, as has been previously reported; it will no longer exist as a brand. Its staff is being integrated into the Huffington Post’s more robust political offerings.

It goes both ways, though–the Huffington Post’s travel site will be closed in favor of AOL’s stronger offering in that arena.

And still other well-known AOL brands, such as its PopEater celebrity site and its StyleList fashion and beauty site, will keep their names but no longer exist as separate destination sites. PopEater will be integrated into HuffPo’s entertainment and StyleList to its similar site.

[UPDATE: StyleList's status was shifted just this morning--it will remain a standalone brand and AOL's Shelterpop will become StyleList at Home, integrating into StyleList. Plus it will all now be called Stylist--losing the "e" and capped "L."]

The changes are causing some tension within AOL, given it is a drastic shift from relatively recent efforts to expand its portfolio of editorial sites.

In fact, some insiders are calling the recent vetting of which content sites to close and which to keep as “death panels,” a somewhat dicey reference to controversies over the Obama administration’s healthcare plan.

Also on deck for tomorrow will be letters sent out to freelancers about new plans to hire some–though not all–of them. According to several sources, AOL content head Arianna Huffington outlined the plan to editors recently, stressing the need to focus on staff-generated and more journalistically focused content.

One thing that is not happening is the appointment of a new editor-in-chief for AOL’s flagship tech news site, Engadget.

BoomTown reported on the recent departure of Engadget’s top two editors, Editor-in-Chief Josh Topolsky and Managing Editor Nilay Patel.

The news rocketed around the small echo chamber that is the tech blogosphere, which is no surprise since Engadget is one of the largest sites on the Web covering the tech sector.

In the interim, staffer Darren Murph has been appointed managing editor of Engadget. He reports to Joshua Fruhlinger, editorial director for Engadget, Switched and AOL Tech. Brad Hill is the business director for the properties.

Engadget is one of the largest in tech, with 14 million unique visitors a month. Its main competitor is Gawker’s Gizmodo. AOL also owns TechCrunch, another tech news site.

An email to AOL for comment has not yet been returned.

There’s no question it’s a jarring contrast–layoffs versus champagne and cookies.

But that’s the reality at AOL as its acquisition of the Huffington Post closes this week, even as it sheds employees as part of its ongoing turnaround effort.

Sources said the New York-based Internet portal could announce layoffs as early as today.

[UPDATE: Layoffs will not come until after the Huffington Post deal is closed said other sources, although they are coming.]

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong indicated job cuts were definitely coming at a paidContent conference in New York yesterday.

“There will be job changes,” he said, when asked about layoffs.

Perhaps sooner than later.

BoomTown received several emails from worried AOL employees, noting that human resources staffers were taking steps to initiate the layoffs at 10 am ET/7 am PT this morning and that there would also be employee meetings then too.

I followed up with several sources close to the situation, who confirmed that the layoffs are imminent. Nonetheless, they could not specify the timing, size and scope of them.

[UPDATE: There will be an all-hands meeting for AOL staff with Armstrong, as well as new content head Arianna Huffington.]

The last time AOL laid off employees a year ago, it was a large action with job cuts of 2,300.

The latest slashing comes just as AOL management will try to aggressively tout the closing of its $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post.

The integration of the well-known news and opinion site will mean a significant change for AOL’s editorial efforts, as well as an opportunity to impress advertisers.

Thus, AOL is prepping boxes with Greek cookies and pricey champagne to send out to key advertising clients, to celebrate the deal’s close.

Why Greek cookies? Because it’s the original country of Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.

I have emails into AOL for a comment.

Yes, it’s actually called Mogwee, which was the codename for the new mobile social communications service being launched tonight by Ning, the high-profile social networking platform co-founded by Silicon Valley icon and investor Marc Andreessen.

Part Twitter, part SMS, part Path and any number of such social start-ups, Mogwee actually stands for “more great weekends,” said CEO Jason Rosenthal, who has been focusing Ning on premium offerings.

BoomTown interviewed Rosenthal and Andreessen–who is also chairman of Ning–at an overpriced tea salon in San Francisco last week about the latest entrant into the crowded socializing of smartphones market.

The Mogwee app was approved today for the Apple iPhone and iPad. The Google Android version is coming in about a week and the one for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry is to come after that.

Also on deck: Integration with big social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Currently, the only way to bring in friends is via your cell phone’s address book.

Once loaded, you can use Mogwee to chat live, share photos, play games, make analog plans and–horrors–throw sheep.

As you can see from the video and screenshots below, a user creates any series of “Hangouts”–such as a whiskey one by Andreessen–for real-time groups or one-to-one chat.

Here is the video interview I did, as well as a look at the service (click on the images to make them larger) and a blog post Rosenthal did about Mogwee:

I’d like you to meet Mogwee.

In January I talked to you about the custom social revolution that is fueling our business as more and more customers come to us to create powerful, custom social websites for their group, band, cause, classroom or business. Since then we launched the Ning Design Studio, major enhancements to the Ning Engagement System, and are in beta with our next killer feature, Paid Access. We have more on the way as Jonathan shared in his recent road map post, and I can’t wait to see Ning help even more customers bring their websites and brands into the social age.

With our road map in place, our business growing and the team humming–I spent some time last fall working with Diego, our CTO and Marc, our Chairman, to think about the next major area for Ning to tackle. We have this awesome team, a deep bench of talent, and 5 years of experience in group and social dynamics. We also knew that with the advances in smart phones mobile was going to be a critical part of the next break through services.

Enter Mogwee–with a very small team (just 2 at first) we began work on a new product–it would be both mobile and social at its core–not an adaptation of an old service for mobile. It would also rethink the modes in which we communicate for the modern age–a native app with chat as the backbone, real time and asynchronous sharing, additional mobile services built in–and it would be fun. A fun, consumer social product, that would be great for anyone to use!

I’ve been asked a few times–how does this relate to Ning? I believe that innovation (not the word, the act) is critical to making Ning a great company, not just building one great product, but a host of amazing new products for the future. Is Apple just the iPod? Google just Search? HP just a printer? We need to be pushing into new businesses that make sense and relate to our “social” DNA. We have an extremely talented engineering team–giving them new challenges and the freedom to invent makes Ning a better company and one that attracts and retains amazing people who want to do amazing things.

After several months of preparing we take Mogwee on its maiden voyage, launching today in Apple’s App Store, and very quickly after for Android and the web, we’re feeling excited, and for the 6 people now working on Mogwee–pretty tired.

Mogwee is a new social communication service that brings together all of the things you love to do with your friends and family on your phone. From chatting live and sharing photos, to planning a night out or playing a game, with a single tap, Mogwee gives you instant access to everything that makes life fun. I can’t wait for you to give Mogwee a try!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110228/video-nings-andreessen-and-rosenthal-talk-about-new-social-chat-service-mogwee/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hp-will-put-palm-print-on-windows-pcs/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hp-will-put-palm-print-on-windows-pcs/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:40:19 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57861 Finally, a bit of clarity on Hewlett-Packard’s plans to “drastically expand” its webOS operating system to the PC and their implications for Microsoft. HP may be going all-in with webOS, but not to the eventual exclusion of Windows.

HP CTO Phil McKinney says the company is working on bringing an integrated webOS experience to the PC. “There’s a huge user base that still wants the [Windows] PC,” he told the Seattle Times. “The key is that even on their PCs, people want to have it integrated with their devices. We have our PCs, you have your pads, you’ve got your phones. How do they work together? In today’s world they all act as individual information islands. What webOS does is bring all that together.”

In other words, HP isn’t dumping Windows, it’s enhancing it–at least for now. A wise move, since the former would be suicide at this point, even though it’s unclear how HP will pull it off. McKinney said the integration will not be done via virtualization, but rather through “a combination of taking the existing operating systems and bringing webOS onto those platforms and making it universal across all of our footprint.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/hp-will-put-palm-print-on-windows-pcs/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/htcs-one-button-facebook-phones-headed-to-att/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/htcs-one-button-facebook-phones-headed-to-att/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:08:40 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4180 AT&T said on Tuesday it will have HTC phones later this year that include the Facebook button the Taiwanese cellphone maker showed off here in Barcelona.

The phones may not be the exact Cha Cha and Salsa models that were unveiled at HTC’s press conference, but the devices will have similar abilities, including a context-aware Facebook button that allows photos and links to automatically be shared and lights up when such an option is available.

“In the U.S., AT&T and HTC are exclusively bringing this unique user experience to the market later this year,” an AT&T representative told Mobilized. However, the carrier said that full device plans have not been finalized.

AT&T has said it plans to offer at least a dozen Android devices this year as part of a major push to feature devices with Google’s operating system. Products announced so far include phones from Samsung and HTC, Motorola’s Xoom tablet and its Atrix smartphone, which can act as a laptop when plugged into a custom dock.

“It goes without saying this is part of our commitment to have the industry’s best Android portfolio this year,” the AT&T spokesman said.

HTC and AT&T aren’t the only ones at Mobile World Congress looking to harness the power of Facebook. INQ Mobile is showing off its cloud line of Android phones, which feature heavy Facebook integration, while Gemalto has a SIM card that features built-in Facebook support.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/htcs-one-button-facebook-phones-headed-to-att/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110215/live-htc-shows-off-first-tablet-android-phone-with-facebook-button-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20110215/live-htc-shows-off-first-tablet-android-phone-with-facebook-button-and-more/#comments Tue, 15 Feb 2011 08:55:15 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=4140 HTC on Tuesday became the latest cellphone maker to “friend” Facebook in an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the social network.

At a press conference due to start any minute, the Taiwanese cellphone maker is set to show off a pair of Android phones–the Cha Cha and the Salsa–as well as its first tablet and several other Android devices.

HTC’s move follows that of INQ Mobile, which last week announced two Android models that feature heavy Facebook integration. Gemalto also announced Monday it plans to integrate Facebook into SIM cards, allowing users of low-end phones better access to the social network.

Like many others’ news here at the show, most of HTC’s had leaked out well ahead of the event.

One particularly nice touch–HTC planned ahead and ran Ethernet cables to each seat in the theater. (Unfortunately, Mobilized left the MacBook Air Ethernet adapter back in the apartment.)

Mobilized has live coverage of the event below.

9:58 am: Still waiting for the press conference–which was due to start a half hour ago–to get under way. We do have comfy seats and soothing music, but would have prefereed an extra half hour of sleep.

9:59 am: Apparently all I had to do was complain. Now it’s getting started with CEO Peter Chou taking the stage.

“2011 is going to be an amazing year,” Chou promises.

Some analysts predict smartphones will outsell feature phones, Chou says.

“Features that were once fancy, extra, are now becoming standard,” he says. “‘Nice to have’ is turning into ‘must have.’”

Hardware is important, but so are software and services like Sense and HTCSense.com. Company plans new versions of HTC Sense for phones with keyboards, larger screens, etc.

10:04 am: Some stats from Chou:

25 million smartphones sold last year, more than double the prior year, with revenue up 93 percent.

The company’s global brand awareness reached 50 percent, up from 13 percent a year and a half ago. (Of course, that means half of consumers still don’t know HTC, but a big improvement nonetheless.)

10:05 am: On to 2011: 4G networks will change everything again. HTC Thunderbolt, its first LTE smartphone, shipping this week with Verizon.

10:07 am: Company is announcing five phones today, the most it has ever announced at one time. Chou says.

“I hope you agree it has been worth the wait,” Chou says, bringing out John Wang, HTC’s chief marketing officer.

10:07 am: Talking about HTC Sense. Location-data for 83 countries. HTC spent a year and a half building the maps product. You can preload, so travel won’t cost a fortune in roaming charges.

Weather is another good example, Wang says, where the company aimed not just to provide information, but also offer an emotional experience.

“When it is sunny you almost feel the warmth on your body. When it rains, you almost want to wipe your phone dry.”

10:10 am: First demo fails as video he wants to show won’t play.

“Well, maybe later on,” Wang says, moving on to the new phones.

And another fails as whatever was supposed to happen isn’t happening.

Okay, here we go. HTC Desire S. And, we’ve got some more demo fail going on.

10:12 am: “We apologize for this,” Wang says, annoucing a few-minutes pause.

10:15 am: And we are back, with HTC Desire S, Incredible S and Wildfire S.

Desire S doesn’t have front and back. Machined out of a single block of aluminum. “It feels solid in your hand,” Wang says. Also has full HD video recording.

Wildfire S, smaller and in three colors. “It can almost disappear into your pocket. (Mobilized hates it when that happens. We’ve put two iPod Nanos through the wash.

10:20 am: HTC Incredible S. As you rotate the large Android phone, the icons on the buttons also rotate. 8-megapixel camera, integrated video chat with front-facing camera. “Incredible S combines premium design with premium experience,” Wang says.

So, essentially these are updates to the existing product line.

Next up, the Facebook phones.

10:22 am: There are 500 million Facebook users worldwide, but 200 million check it on their phones. Those users are twice as engaged. Many young people check Facebook right when they wake up with a significant number doing so from their phones before they even wake up, Wang says.

Now showing a video of HTC’s work with Facebook to build the new phones.

10:24 am: Video of Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg touting the device.

“A lot has been made about a Facebook phone,” Zuckerberg says, but adds that there will be more than a dozen phones this year with deep social integration. “HTC is doing that here.”

Mobilized is apologizing in advance, but I may not make it through the whole press conference.

10:26 am: The new phones–the Cha Cha (with keyboard) and Salsa (touch-only) both have a dedicated blue Facebook button at the bottom.

10:27 am: Can use button to post updates, but also if taking a picture can use that button to share social network. “When you press this button, the photo is instantly uploaded to Facebook,” Wang says. Button blinks also when reading an article on the Web. Press the Facebook button and it will share that on Facebook. Similar, when you are listening to a song, pressing the button will share that information.

If you hold button down, you check in on Facebook Places.

Both phones also support Facebook messaging and chat.

“We did not just add social networking to the phone,” Wang says.

10:30 am: Bringing up Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya to talk about the partnership.

“I’m just frankly very thrilled we are taking this very important step, which I think will be the first of many,” he says, saying he expects Facebook and HTC to do more things together.

10:32 am: Chou back up, saying he could just stop with five great phones and ensure another great year. But he’s not. There’s a tablet coming.

10:34 am: Chou says the company could have rushed out another “me too” experience, but says that wasn’t what the company wanted to do.

Showing video of how the company came up with its tablet, the HTC Flyer.

10:37 am: Chou holds up the Flyer, then hands things back to Wang. Flyer also has unibody design, which he says makes the tablet feel solid but keeps it lightweight.

HTC wanted it to be comfortable to hold in hand. At 415 grams it is about the same weight as a paperback book.

Here are a few features: 1.5GHz chip, 6-hour battery life, dual cameras, Flash 10 and HTML 5 support, along with new 3-D-based HTC Sense experience.

10:40 am: Also has a stylus–unique among Android tablets–HTC Scribe technology.

Allows you to share things more easily, Wang says. Just scribble “let’s go” on a restaurant Web page and press a button and it is sent.

You can also use it to do audio note taking–a la Livescribe, where notes are synchronized to the audio.

Mobilized has to jam to our next meeting, but I think we have hit the high points.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110215/live-htc-shows-off-first-tablet-android-phone-with-facebook-button-and-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 21:51:35 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57612 It might lack a firm launch date and hard pricing details, and its application and content ecosystem might need further work, but Hewlett-Packard’s forthcoming TouchPad looks like it’s got a real shot at becoming the frontrunner in the massing horde of tablet hopefuls trailing Apple’s iPad.

Certainly the hardware and OS seem formidable enough to at least differentiate the device in an increasingly crowded market. And if HP’s integration story proves to be as good in practice as it sounded on stage in San Francisco yesterday (printers, phones, PCs and tablets all connected via webOS), the TouchPad could mount a decent challenge to the iPad–even if it doesn’t arrive at market until after the debut of the iPad 2.

Though he feels the summer ship date is just too late, Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes was impressed by the TouchPad’s hardware and OS. “[The TouchPad] appears to have very good software and syncing capabilities (HP Synergy feature) and some promising features,” he said in a client note today. “Also we point out that HP is clearly still investing not just in tablets but its smartphone business, which provides a good link between products for the future. Along with a nice OS, we believe that HP’s channel strength, link to its printing franchise, and overall brand strength could enable it to be one of the few relevant tablet players far behind Apple over the long-term.”

J.P. Morgan’s Mark Moskowitz had good things to say as well. “Our initial take on the TouchPad: better than expected,” he said. “Beyond Apple’s iPad, we previously had not been impressed with the other tablet entrants. HP’s TouchPad moderately changes this view.”

Interstingly, Moskowitz doesn’t seem quite as concerned about the device’s launch date. His feeling is that with the TouchPad, HP isn’t taking on Apple as much as it is the conga line of vendors chasing it. “For HP,” he said, “we believe the initial mission is to capture meaningful share among the non-iPad tablets, i.e., Android and Windows-based devices.”

Which is an interesting way of looking at the company’s strategy. Perhaps HP isn’t trying to out iPad the iPad–it’s trying to out iPad the iPad’s imitators, a far less daunting task.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/analysts-dub-hp-touchpad-a-legitimate-contender-for-second-place/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110209/inq-mobile-friends-facebook-and-spotify-for-new-android-phone/ http://allthingsd.com/20110209/inq-mobile-friends-facebook-and-spotify-for-new-android-phone/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:03:35 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3681 It’s not the Facebook phone, but it is a phone with a whole lot of Facebook.

INQ Mobile on Wednesday is announcing its new Cloud line–Android phones that have Facebook features deeply integrated into their core as well as a dedicated music service from Spotify. The Cloud’s home screens feature a trove of Facebook options ranging from a visual news feed with images and video to one-button access to features like Facebook Chat and location-based check-ins.

“We want to do for the Facebook generation what BlackBerry did for the enterprise market,” INQ Mobile CEO Frank Meehan said in an interview in San Francisco last week. “For someone under 30 this is the stuff you want to see all the time.”

The Cloud line comes in two models–one with a keyboard and the other with a pure touchscreen. The bad news for you Americans (Mobilized is feeling very British here in London) is that the phone is coming to the U.K. in April, with no firm plans yet for when it might arrive stateside. INQ Mobile currently sells phones with Telus in Canada, but its devices are not yet sold in the U.S.

INQ Mobile made their announcement just ahead of Mobile World Congress, the cell phone industry’s big trade show which gets under way on Sunday in Barcelona.

There have been rumors of an INQ-built Facebook phone for some time–rumors that have been conflated with an official Facebook entry into the mobile market. HTC is also expected to debut a Facebook-heavy phone, though it has yet to announce its plans.

For its part, Facebook praised the INQ device.

Facebook mobile head Henri Moissinac said in a statement that the Cloud phones “bring Facebook to people with a single touch while they are mobile and demonstrate the power of socially aware devices.”

Although the selling point of the INQ Mobile phones are the connections to Facebook and Spotify, the Cloud line is pure Android. The Facebook features themselves are just elaborate home screen widgets tied to the social network, while Spotify replaces the default music player.

In doing so, INQ is looking to strike a balance between offering something unique while maintaining compatibility with Android.

“People haven’t had an emotional attachment to Android,” Meehan said, noting that users have such an affinity for the iPhone, and to some extent even the BlackBerry, or at least its messenger program.

The Cloud phones use a modest 600MHz processor from Qualcomm and feature version 2.2 of Android (a.k.a. Froyo), though the devices are designed to be upgradeable to the Gingerbread version. Meehan said that INQ is deliberately keeping the devices low-cost so they can sell for just a fraction of the iPhone’s price tag, making them attractive to a different segment of the market.

“We’ve taken very much a mass market approach,” Meehan said. “We’re going after the LGs, the Samsungs. We’re not going after people who are going for an iPhone.”

He also sees an opportunity to nab some BlackBerry Curve users.

“The Curve market is ripe,” Meehan said. “They have been sitting there with a terrible browser.”

There are also some family ties involved in the phone’s direction. INQ Mobile is owned by Li Ka-shing’s Hutchison Whampoa, which, through a subsidiary, is also an investor in both Facebook and Spotify. INQ Mobile started in 2008 and has grown to more than 200 employees, said Meehan, who also is a member of Spotify’s board of directors.

As for when the company might bring the Cloud line (or any phones for that matter) to the U.S., Meehan said it could be as early as the second half of this year.

“Let’s see how it goes,” he said. “I’m not rushing into it.”

Of course, it might also help if Spotify launched in the U.S., something that always appears to be on the verge of happening “in the coming months.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110209/inq-mobile-friends-facebook-and-spotify-for-new-android-phone/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110208/dells-got-a-10-inch-windows-7-tablet-in-the-pipeline/ http://allthingsd.com/20110208/dells-got-a-10-inch-windows-7-tablet-in-the-pipeline/#comments Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:10:10 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57394

Hewlett-Packard’s not the only company with an enterprise-ready Windows 7 tablet. Dell’s got one as well and plans to launch it later this year. “The upcoming tablet is designed for end-users who need greater mobility, as well as IT organizations that demand control, security, manageability and integration with existing infrastructure investments,” the company said. “Dell’s tablet will empower a more mobile workforce in a way that offers customers the business applications and corporate data they need, while meeting regulatory mandates and IT requirements.” Dell showed off the Windows tablet at a media event in San Francisco this morning, where it uncrated 24 new pieces of business-geared hardware.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110208/dells-got-a-10-inch-windows-7-tablet-in-the-pipeline/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110207/liveaol-explains-its-huffington-post-deal-to-wall-street/ http://allthingsd.com/20110207/liveaol-explains-its-huffington-post-deal-to-wall-street/#comments Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:55:58 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=29429 Tim Armstrong and company spent yesterday explaining their $315 million Huffington Post purchase to the press. Now they’re doing the same for Wall Street, via a conference call.

AOL CFO Artie Minson prepped investors for the call with a memo laying out expectations. Short version: AOL thinks HuffPo will earn about $10 million on revenue of $50 million this year (as long as you’re okay with using “adjusted OIBDA” as a proxy for “profit”). It also thinks the purchase will save it $20 million a year, but it’s going to spend around $20 million on restructuring charges when the deal goes through.

I’ll liveblog the call below:

8:02 am: Greetings! About to start now.

8:03 am: On the call: Tim Armstrong, Arianna Huffington, Artie Minson.

8:03 am: Armstrong makes a Super Bowl joke that I can’t quite follow, and I like football. But now praising Arianna, co-founder Kenny Lerer and outgoing AOL CEO Eric Hippeau.

“The Huffington Post is one of the best properties on the Internet.” Armstrong, Huffington and Minson are all BlackBerry users.

8:06 am: On revenue: This gives an opportunity to serve more brand marketers, who are “very interested” in the scale this gives us.

8:07 am: Spending next 30 days on integration. “Really synergies to be had.”

Next steps: Next 72 hours communicating with employees, talking to partners. 1,500 AOL workers on the phone this morning explaining deal to others.

“This may be the smallest disruption” internally of any deal I’ve worked on. Majority of integration done within 35 to 40 days.

8:09 am: We’ve looked at a bunch of companies, though we’re mainly going to concentrate on organic growth. But Arianna is great [many superlatives] and she “also happens to be a woman.”

8:10 am: Here’s Arianna.

8:11 am: “Amazing” how aligned two orgs are.

8:11 am: HuffPo was profitable last year. We were thinking about bringing in additional investors last year, and an IPO down the line. But this made perfect sense.

8:12 am: This deal provides a “dramatic acceleration” for the plans we already had.

8:13 am: Some praise for Patch, AOL’s local strategy.

8:14 am: Can’t wait to start!

8:14 am: Alrighty, then. Here’s Artie Minson with some nuts and bolts.

Actually, it’s some color on the deal. But a lot of it is in the prepared remarks he put out earlier this morning.

8:15 am: Again, $20 million in cost savings here. And again, we’ll have to pay up for restructuring: $20 million for cuts, and $10 million for purchase price.

8:17 am: Still basically reading from prepared remarks. Some bookkeeping talk re: compensation accounting.

8:18 am: Remember, display ad growth coming will finally start showing up second half of this year.

8:19 am: Q&A:

Q: Talk about content strategy. Does HuffPo become hub for content going forward? Does it replace Seed? And how long is Arianna’s contract?

A: “The press” has been talking about our content strategy, so let me be clear–we’re focusing on premium content. Things like Seed and StudioNow are platforms–you can do whatever you want with them, different quality levels, at different types of scale.

And then the other thing that is important about those platforms is the ability they give us to work with advertisers.

One of our main interests in HuffPo is their technology and publishing system. So now we have multiple systems [which he is saying is a good thing]. “Our content strategy hasn’t changed.” The “stuff that was out in the press about the AOL Way” was just one way of doing things. [This is not very convincing]

Arianna, tell us how long you’re going to stay.

8:24 am: Arianna: “I’ve told Tim I want to stay here forever. I want this to be the last act of my life.” Anything I want to do I can do here.

[Sorry, missed next part but it was a defense/explanation of content strategy.]

8:26 am: Armstrong: Arianna has a multiyear contract, but it’s open-ended.

8:27 am: Arianna: By the way, we’re going to bring back commenting to AOL stories, and socialize them.

8:28 am: Q: Why buy instead of partnering? Were there other bidders? Also, how will HuffPo politics affect AOL?

8:28 am: Armstrong: We do partnerships where there is “limited upside to those arrangements” so ” we can really spend time on the areas we want to win”–i.e., we don’t care about sports, we do care about women.

“Arianna is somebody we’d rather have inside our building than outside our building.”

“If there were or weren’t bidders on the other side,” I think we got the right price.

8:30 am: Arianna. “As we’ve said, again and again, Huffington Post was not for sale….Nobody was in a hurry to cash out, everybody believed that we could do an IPO down the road.” It’s just that Tim gave us a great offer. [hrrrm.]

On politics–we used to be all about politics, now we’re not. Just 15 percent of our traffic. We have a divorce section now.

Talking up AOL’s “college” section.

8:33 am: Q: For Arianna: More on Patch, please. What do think about what AOL’s done with it, and what you can do with it?

8:33 am: [Every time Arianna says "local level" I think she's saying "locker level." It's happened at least twice, maybe more, on this call.]

There’s a “greatest person of the day” feature we have, and I think Patch should use that. [Or maybe vice-versa, sorry.] I also like their five percent “giving back” rule, cause marketing, etc.

8:35 am: Armstrong: Again, we can do national and local. That’s important. NFL rights are important, and so are local news stories.

8:36 am: Q: Who’s going to sell what? And can you talk about pricing disparity between AOL and HuffPo?

8:37 am: Armstrong: “We would like to maintain all the people from both sales forces [except for Greg Coleman!]. I think we will end up with a large-scale, large-property organization–I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like, though.

On sell-through rate: Slightly lower at HuffPo, because they’ve been ramping up traffic, and sales force. On CPM, same story. So we can bring up sell-through rate and CPM, and have a larger sales force. [This is pretty much the best argument for the deal that Armstrong can make.]

[BTW: Good back-channel discussion on Twitter right now about AOL's SEO skills, and the people behind it. None of that coming up during this call right now.]

[Sorry, I meant HuffPo's SEO skills, much of which stem from blueprint BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti set out.]

Q: Why not use equity for this deal?

A: Because our equity is priced too low, essentially. But HuffPo employees did roll over 25 percent of deal consideration into AOL options. So as that equity gets more valuable, they’ll get upside.

8:45 am: Q: In your statement, you talked about OIBDA growth in 2013. More on that please.

Minson–probably going to stick to my prepared remarks on that one.

8:46 am: Last Q: Your acqusitions have been about toolsets or content. As you think about others going forward, what else do you want?

Armstrong: We have long-term vision. On plumbing: We’ve wanted to get platforms and plumbing straightened out, and we’re doing that now. Think about the bones or foundation of a very large property. That’s why we’ve been doing infrastructure, like with video–5Min and GoViral and StudioNow.

Going forward, we’ll be doing infrastructure. And we’ll continue to look at “media properties and media brands” that fit our strategy. [Remember, Web site owners: HuffPo just got 10x revenue.

8:50 am: Minson: But we're very price sensitive and we've walked away from deals.

8:50 am: Arianna: And we like women!

8:51 am: Armstrong sums up: Success "in the Internet space" requires vision and execution. That's this deal. And remember, content and brands become more valuable as tech gets faster, more advanced. And "expect us to stay on strategy and on point" going forward. "We're going to overcommunicate" with both sets of employees as we integrate. [You've been warned!]

And we’re done. Thanks for reading.

[Photo credit: Arianna Huffington]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110207/liveaol-explains-its-huffington-post-deal-to-wall-street/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20110201/viral-video-happy-100th-birthday-to-ibm/ http://allthingsd.com/20110201/viral-video-happy-100th-birthday-to-ibm/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 08:33:58 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=40032

Here is a very clever video by IBM for its centennial birthday in June, using 100 people representing every year of innovations in its existence.

For those unfamiliar, the famed tech company was incredibly fast-forward on a lot of social issues, including women and racial integration in the workplace.

Oh, yes, and those computers.

While the company it is now and the company it was then are very different, International Business Machines Corp. still deserves kudos for all it has given to the tech industry.

And, of course, for its perfect motto: Think.

In these noisy days, it’s still a pretty terrific idea to keep in mind.

Here’s the video:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110201/viral-video-happy-100th-birthday-to-ibm/feed/ 9 http://allthingsd.com/20110127/netflix-gets-social-extensive-facebook-integration-is-coming/ http://allthingsd.com/20110127/netflix-gets-social-extensive-facebook-integration-is-coming/#comments Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:00:57 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=2859 Netflix revealed it is in the process of implementing “an extensive Facebook integration” on Wednesday, marking a significant change from its previous absence from the social Web.

Netflix’s dramatic growth in user base and market cap have had a lot to do with the company anticipating market changes and making audacious bets, but it has been relatively plodding and hesitant about getting social.

Netflix explained in the shareholder letter (PDF) accompanying its quarterly earnings report that its Facebook integration will accompany an effort to split household accounts into multiple personal accounts.

In part because of the company’s history as a DVD mailing service, a Netflix account is affiliated with a particular address. That’s also the way traditional television providers measure their market: In terms of households.

But online video, Netflix notes, “is more naturally individual, since it is watched on personal screens like phones, tablets, and laptops, as well as on shared large screen televisions.”

In addition to helping identify discrete people within a household, Facebook integration would presumably allow Netflix to help users do things like share their personal viewing history in their newsfeed and recommend videos to friends. Understanding social networks could improve Netflix’s famously honed recommendation algorithm. It might also be an opportunity for Netflix to create social viewing experiences.

Currently, Netflix lacks much in the way of social features; it had yanked a previous effort to offer social sharing last year after saying that relatively few subscribers used it.

However, the company has recently staffed up for a renewed social effort.

Mike Hart, previously Netflix’s director of engineering for APIs, is now director of engineering for social. Hart told Fast Company in November that Netflix sees social as an international user acquisition strategy and an opportunity to avoid disruption by a competitor that is more social.

Netflix also appears to view personal accounts as an opportunity to charge more money. The company said in the shareholder letter that later this year it will start offering new account options that include multiple simultaneous streams. (So, for instance, you could stream TV episodes in the bedroom on your iPad while your spouse watches a movie in the living room through the Roku.) The streaming-only plan Netflix recently launched costs $7.99 (which some industry watchers say is too cheap) and allows just one stream at a time.

Netflix noted in the letter that its new grand internal vision is to target the number of active mobile phones in an area, rather than the number of households (though that might be a bit ambitious in places where it’s common for people to have more than one phone!).

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110127/netflix-gets-social-extensive-facebook-integration-is-coming/feed/ 7 http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/ http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/#comments Wed, 26 Jan 2011 19:25:34 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3013 Rumors of the Facebook Phone are once again back in the news, this time with a report that the social network will announce a deal with HTC at next month’s Mobile World Congress that will have the Taiwanese mobile device maker building Android phones with the Facebook name and color.

Previous rumors had the company building a phone with INQ Mobile. One of the challenges is that in addition to any true Facebook-designed phones, there are also a whole lot of phones with deep Facebook integration–including plenty of Android devices and the entire Windows Phone 7 product line. So it’s not clear where exactly the line is between a phone with good Facebook connections and a true “Facebook Phone.” However, I’d say if it is blue and bears the Facebook logo, that would count in my book. For its part, HTC declined comment.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110126/facebook-phone-rumors-make-the-news-feed-again/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/ http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/#comments Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:00:33 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=2225 Zendesk, the Web-based help desk outfit, says its revenue has grown 300 percent in the last year (though it didn’t disclose an amount). It has also tripled its number of business customers, who use it to keep track of help desk calls, to 5,000. Add in iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps, as well as integration with Salesforce.com and Twitter, and Zendesk has touched some 22 million end users, the company says.

No surprise then that it’s beefing up its executive team. Zendesk named Zack Urlocker chief operating officer. Urlocker is currently a former executive in residence at Scale Venture Partners. Before that he was an executive vice president at MySQL, and helped boost its sales to $100 million before it was acquired by Sun Microsystems.

Among the new Zendesk customers are Groupon, OpenTable and Zappos Insights, as well as established brands like Adobe and Sony Music. This news comes on the heels of its $19 million round of funding led by Matrix Partners late last year, along with Charles River Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/zendesk-growing-like-mad-adds-a-coo/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/analyst-all-the-ipad-contenders-are-pretenders/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/analyst-all-the-ipad-contenders-are-pretenders/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:23:26 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55516 There were dozens of tablets on display at CES last week, but none matched the iPad, which, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore, will retain its lead in the space for the foreseeable future. “We found nothing at CES that reduces our optimism for Apple and its growing lead in the converged mobility market,” Whitmore said in a note to clients today. “In the tablet space, [the] iPad remains the gold standard and we believe the 50+ tablets coming to market this year will battle for second place.”

Taking first place is highly improbable, because by launching the iPad when it did, Apple claimed the lead not just in the tablet market, but in a handful of other areas on which that market depends–user experience, content acquisition and integration, and supply chain and build cost.

Whitmore figures Apple has a 12-18 month lead versus competitors on content and apps, and a multiyear lead on other media acquisition and integration through iTunes. He suggests that its early investment in capacitive touch technology and prepayments to touchscreen suppliers in order to guarantee supply will give it a meaningful cost advantage for some time.

And then, there’s the obvious: The iPad has been shipping for nearly a year, and its successor is already in the pipeline. “We expect iPad 2 to ship this spring, before most vendors will be introducing their first generation tablet,” said Whitmore. “For instance, Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb will ship in late 1Q at the earliest, suggesting meaningful [tablet] volumes won’t ship until 2H-11. We expect HP to announce its Palm Tablet in early February with significant volume shipments ramping in 2H-11. By then, iPad 2 will have been shipping for 3-6 months and its massive developer support lead will have expanded.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/analyst-all-the-ipad-contenders-are-pretenders/feed/ 19 http://allthingsd.com/20110105/qualcomm-makes-it-official-grabs-atheros-for-3-1-billion/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/qualcomm-makes-it-official-grabs-atheros-for-3-1-billion/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 16:42:04 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=1358 Qualcomm, the chipmaker devoted to the wireless handset business, announced today the first major tech acquisition of the year, and the biggest deal in its history, saying it will pay $3.1 billion in cash for Atheros, a chipmaker whose business is in wireless networking.

As I noted yesterday, there are lots of reasons for Qualcomm to want Atheros, not the least of which is its extensive customer list.

Qualcomm’s specialty has always been in CDMA technology, the flavor of mobile phone technology favored by Verizon Wireless and Sprint, and it collects considerable royalties around its patent portfolio there. It has struggled to penetrate other markets, and last year shuttered its FloTV operation amid minimal demand. The good news was that it sold its FloTV spectrum to AT&T for $1.93 billion, which is no doubt offsetting the cost of this deal. Add that to the $10.3 billion in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet as of Sept. 26 and this is an easy deal to do.

It’s also the biggest deal in Qualcomm’s history and the first significant one under CEO Paul Jacobs, who is the son of founder Irwin Jacobs.

Atheros shareholders have plenty of reasons to smile today as well. The company’s stock price surged by 19 percent yesterday. At $45 a share, Qualcomm is paying more than Atheros has ever been worth in its entire history as a publicly held company. As Shira Ovide over at Deal Journal notes, its highest price before yesterday was $43.90. Happy New Year, indeed.

I caught up with Qualcomm Executive Vice President Steve Mollenkopf and Atheros CEO Craig Barratt to talk about the deal.

NewEnterprise: Steve, let’s start with you. What got Qualcomm interested in Atheros?

Mollenkopf: Historically Qualcomm has been focused on the cellular phone, though recently we’ve done much more than that. We had some integration relationships with some companies that allow us to deliver a platform to our customers. They’re essentially technical relationships, and one of those companies was Atheros. So we were familiar with them. But the real reason, the why Atheros and why now question comes down to this. We think the industry is moving to a place where a lot of the technology and use cases that are being created as part of the shift to smartphones will be used outside of just phones, and will move into many adjacent spaces. The requirement of technology and different customers overlap a lot with Atheros. They’re a leader in their space, we’re a leader in ours and we want to go into markets that will require the expertise from both of us. It seemed natural, actually.

Craig, the idea for the acquisition seems to have grown out of an existing partnership. When did the talk turn from being Qualcomm’s partner to becoming part of Qualcomm?

Barratt: The partnership has gone on for about five years, where we’ve cooperated on joint reference and designs and software and feature integration. Over the years we’ve broadened out from Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, powerline and optical networking. We do have a much more horizontal business. Qualcomm has a very strong vertical business. Through our partnership we saw the teams had a good cultural fit, the engineering teams really respect each other. When we looked at our own strategic imperatives over the long term, we saw that cellular technologies are going to be applied in a much broader markets over time, beyond just smartphones and tablets. There’s an intersection between the Qualcomm technology and our technology, and that’s only going to increase. You’ve probably heard that set-top boxes and things like that are going to start to run Android. So a lot of these mobile technologies are going to start showing up in things like the connected home. Strategically it all started to make sense.

And what will your new job be at Qualcomm?

Barratt: After the acquisition closes, which should be in the first half of 2011, my role will be president of Qualcomm Networking and Connectivity, reporting to Steve.

Steve, if I’m not mistaken, this is the biggest deal that Qualcomm has ever done.

Mollenkopf: You’re correct. For us on the Qualcomm side this is a big step toward expanding our business beyond our traditional platform business and we’re doing it in a way that is in line with how the industry is changing. A lot of the things we’ve been doing with Atheros are things we’ve already been doing as part of our relationship, so this is a natural next step.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110105/qualcomm-makes-it-official-grabs-atheros-for-3-1-billion/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110105/ipad-is-ipod-of-tablet-market/ http://allthingsd.com/20110105/ipad-is-ipod-of-tablet-market/#comments Wed, 05 Jan 2011 13:01:16 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55102 More bullish prognostications in advance of Apple’s next earnings report.

In his preview of CES, Barclays’ Ben Reitzes claims the company need not worry much about the conga line of iPad rivals expected to be announced at the show. If CES shows us anything, he says, it will be just how great Apple’s lead in the tablet space really is.

“At CES we believe that we will see many players attempt to mimic Apple’s model, with promises of content integration, battery life and software that will ultimately fall short,” Reitzes writes. “Outside of Apple, we believe many tablets will not meet bullish sales expectations. Like MP3 players, we believe some investors may learn the hard way that Apple’s ability to marry content, software, hardware design and style is unmatched in the tech sector. We believe that the evolution of the tablet market will look more like the iPod market than the phone market-–with Apple set to dominate.”

That seems a relatively safe prediction given what we’ve seen of the market to date–more so given the next-generation iPad will likely arrive at market around the same time as a lot of these new first-generation tablets. Reitzes figures the iPad 2 will be announced in the next six weeks, along with an April ship date. And he also expects it to feature front- and rear-facing cameras, a USB port and a higher-resolution display.

As far as 2011 tablet sales go, Reitzes is looking for upward of 38 million units, with the iPad accounting for about 60 percent. That’s about 23 million, which Reitzes says is likely quite conservative.

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