But Web video competitors like Amazon, HBO and Hulu all say they’re seeing significant growth. So is anyone cutting into Netflix’s lead?

Not really, said Sandvine, the broadband service company that tracks Internet usage.

A Sandvine report out this morning pegs Netflix’s share of prime-time “downstream” traffic delivered over “fixed networks” — that is, wires and pipes — at 32.3 percent. That’s just a hair down from the 33 percent estimate it provided last November.

Meanwhile, Sandvine said Amazon and HBO have seen their share of traffic hold steady, as well. Sandvine said Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent, and that HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to 0.34 percent. But that’s not a lot of movement either way.

The one service that did leap a bit is Hulu, which is up from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.*

Bear in mind that these numbers do include data transmitted from a home network, via Wi-Fi, to iPads, iPhones, Android tablets, etc. And that Sandvine said this kind of “home roaming” accounts for a whopping 20 percent of traffic now, up from 9 percent a year ago.

But Sandvine also tracks streaming traffic to mobile devices over wireless networks. And here it said that Netflix has made a move from 2.2 percent of downstream traffic to 4 percent in the last 12 months. YouTube, though, is still dominant: If you’re on the go, and you’re watching a moving image, there’s a very good chance you’re seeing something hosted by the world’s biggest video site.

So what does any of that mean? Short answer: Netflix is streaming more video than ever — it added at least two million American users between measurements, and likely many more — but so are its competitors. So its lead is staying more or less the same. Sandvine said the average Internet household uses about 18 gigabytes of broadband a month — up from 10GB a year ago.

Still here? If so, you’ve probably read Ashlee Vance’s excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece on the engineering that lets Netflix move all those bits into your house. If not, you should definitely read it now.

* Sandvine researcher Dan Deeth notes that the numbers his company provided last fall were collected in the first two weeks of September, which means that Hulu wouldn’t have had access to a batch of new TV shows from its broadcaster partner/owners. The numbers in today’s report were collected in the first two weeks of March, which means Hulu would benefit from new programming that ran during February sweeps; Netflix would have also benefited from any surge in “House of Cards” viewers.

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. Wondering just how much your new S4 costs? Market research firm IHS pegs the cost of Samsung’s new flagship smartphone at just above $237 per unit.
2. It planned to do so originally, but Google will not roll out a physical credit card later this month to bolster its “Google Wallet” commerce project.
3. Everyone who works in Web advertising seems to be talking about the same video ad lately, and here it is: A three-minute-28-second mini-documentary from McDonald’s Canada.
4. The Onion is best known for its prowess at disseminating false information. But it performed an “awesome” public service this week when it explained in detail just how it got hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army.
5. Brace yourselves: Windows Blue is coming. Yes, Microsoft confirmed this week that an update to the “no compromise” PC-mobile hybrid OS Windows 8 is on the way.
6. In other Microsoft-related news, BlueStacks’ software that lets you emulate Android apps inside of Windows has been downloaded more than 10 million times. And it’s still in beta.
7. Mobile videogames currently cater to easily distracted players, but is there room for more thoughtful strategy games? Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier (a.k.a. the Civilization guy) says yes.
8. Two new iPad apps claim that they can teach children programming skills directly on the tablet. But can they? Lauren Goode puts Hopscotch and Kodable to the test.
9. It hasn’t made a formal bid, but Yahoo has joined the gang of companies meeting with wanna-sell execs at Hulu.
10. Social video startup Viddy is returning most of its Series B round to investors and moving people in and out of its board.

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

Late Friday, the U.S. Defense Department said it expects to green-light Apple devices running iOS 6 for use on its networks sometime next week, granting them the same security approvals it issued to BlackBerry and Samsung last week.

Good news for Apple, though it will be awhile before the company can reap its benefits. Military certification of its iPhone and iPad is the first step in a longer process that also requires the creation of a mobile device management system to secure them. And the contract to develop that isn’t expected to be awarded until early summer.

So the DOD approval of the iPhone and iPad isn’t going to result in immediate product orders for Apple. But it may result in some significant ones in the future. And not just from the Pentagon, which currently has about 600,000 mobile devices in the field, but from any entity with a need for highly secure mobile devices.

As I’ve noted here before, certification by the Pentagon is the gold standard in mobile device security. And it opens the door to all manner of lucrative contracts from customers in government and tightly regulated industries like healthcare and finance.

But on the heels of runaway hits like Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers, the company is off to the races, hoping to give those single-player phenomena a multiplayer-focused run for their money.

(Pardon the barrage of running puns.)

The company’s latest game is Running With Friends, a smart twist on the popular endless-runner genre. As with other games, you swipe on the touchscreen to avoid obstacles, collect powerups and move your character around the screen: Left and right to change into one of three “lanes,” up to jump and down to slide.

The twist comes in the form of some familiar multiplayer features that Zynga has built around this tried-and-true formula. This is asynchronous multiplayer, meaning you can challenge someone to a race without needing to play at the same time as your opponent to compete (as is the case in other “With Friends” titles).

Developed in partnership with Twisted Metal and God of War creators Eat Sleep Play, the game just looks good — the bright Subway Surfers-esque 3-D graphics are streets ahead of the other titles in Zynga’s existing lineup.

Factoring in a bit of luck from a pregame slot-machine spin, Running With Friends awards points to players based on how far they can run and how many bonus items they pick up along the way. And if one of your opponents has run the same obstacles as you already, the game remembers how they moved, sort of like the “ghost” mode in Mario Kart.

That means you might see your friends on the track and can shove them out of the way with a swipe — which, let’s be honest, is pretty fun.

The game is iOS-only to start (so, available on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch), but Zynga’s mobile SVP Travis Boatman told AllThingsD that the company will likely do what it has done with previous games like Zynga Poker and Words With Friends: See how the game does, improve it and then roll it out to other platforms, one at a time.

We own an iPad and we would like to purchase a printer to use with it. We don’t know which to buy.

A:

Apple’s iOS operating system, which powers iPads and iPhones, can print decent-looking documents, using a built-in technology called AirPrint, which prints wirelessly. You don’t need to set up any drivers or other software on the iPad itself. However, AirPrint requires a printer that has Wi-Fi capability and is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your iPad or iPhone. In addition, the printer must be a model that supports AirPrint. All the major printer makers sell these and there are many models. Apple has basic instructions and a list of supported models on its website.

Q:

I have an audio cassette from our wedding in 1978. It is the only recording we have of my father’s voice so it has special meaning for me. I would like to have it transferred to a CD or DVD. Do you have a recommendation of how to transfer it? Who would do a good job?

A:

There are a number of companies that do this. One that I recently tested favorably is called PeggyBank, at peggybank.com. They transfer old video and audiotapes and photos into digital files stored online, or, for an extra fee, they will put them on a CD or DVD.

Q:

In your laptop buying guide last week, you recommended getting at least 500 gigabytes of hard disk space and at least 256 gigabytes of solid-state storage on laptops that use that type of storage instead of a hard disk. Why the difference?

A:

I was bowing to market realities. Solid-state storage, while faster and less likely to fail, is also much more expensive and thus comes in smaller quantities. It is possible to buy 500 gigabytes or more of solid-state storage on a new laptop, and if you need it, and can afford it, you should do so. But many manufacturers offer only a maximum of 256 gigabytes on common models and it’s usually an expensive optional extra for those who offer more.

Email Walt at mossberg@wsj.com

.

This according to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who, in a wide-ranging interview with CNBC, claimed that current tablets suffer from a lack of PC features — features that Microsoft is delivering to them with Surface and Windows 8.

“With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device,” Gates said. “A lot of those users are frustrated. They can’t type. They can’t create documents. They don’t have Office there. So we are providing them something with the benefits they have seen that have made that a big category, without giving up what they expect in a PC.”

That’s the theory, anyway — though an unproven one at best. According to the latest data from research firm IDC, Microsoft shipped about 900,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the first quarter of the year — enough to claim a 1.8 percent share of the tablet market. So if with Surface and Windows 8 Microsoft is finally giving consumers the tablet they really want, consumers haven’t yet realized it. Which is odd, because Microsoft is marketing them with a campaign estimated to cost about $1.5 billion.

You’d think that if a signficant portion of the tablet market really does want the more chimeric device Gates describes, Surface would be doing quite a bit better at market than it is currently. But it’s not. Not yet, anyway.

Perhaps that’s because consumer expectations for what a tablet is and should be have been set by the iPad, and Microsoft needs to change them — not an easy thing to do. Or perhaps it’s because Microsoft has misjudged the tablet market by viewing it through that aging, dusty PC-as-Alpha-and-Omega lens of which it’s so fond.

Gates’s remarks begin at about 7:20 in the video below:

Courtesy 2K Games

When you think of mobile games, you probably think of titles like Angry Birds, Temple Run or Fruit Ninja — not the sort of micromanaging strategy games for which Sid Meier is best known.

And yet the creator of the hit Civilization franchise and his company, Firaxis Games (owned by Take-Two Interactive), are moving more troops into mobile after testing the waters with ported games like Pirates! and Civilization Revolution. Rather than just producing, Meier himself was one of three programmers on a new mobile-first Firaxis game, Ace Patrol.

Although the WWI dogfighting game — scheduled to launch on May 9 — will be iOS-only, Meier acknowledged that “there’s certainly a logic into looking into other platforms and seeing what the possibilities are.” He caught up with AllThingsD on the phone recently to talk about how he sees the changing landscape of games.

CC BY-SA 2.0 Antonio Fucito

Sid Meier: The very early console games were very simple, twitchy hand-eye coordination games. And then, over time, strategy became okay to do on console. I think we’re going to go through a similar evolution with mobile, where initially the games are pretty casual and simple, but that’s not because of any restrictions in the platform or anything, it’s just that the market is gonna evolve and the audience is gonna evolve. There’s definitely a role for more strategy-oriented games on mobile.

And do you think that’ll go mainstream, or will that be a niche audience?

I think [strategy] is probably not going to be the predominant genre on mobile, but it will grow in the same way it has grown in the PC market and the console market. In a lot of ways, it’s more suitable to mobile than console because, on mobile, you could potentially be distracted, so you want a game that’s played at the player’s pace, and not at a pace that’s driven by the game itself — something you can start and stop, and put away for a while.

What about multiplayer? Depending on whom you ask, the future of multiplayer games could be asynchronous and turn-based, or all about playing live, either in the same room or on different devices anywhere in the world. Do you have a dog in the fight?

Since our game is turn-based, we chose to support two of those modes. One is the asynchronous mode, where you can have 10 games going on at the same time with 10 different people. The other mode, which we’re calling “hot-pad” mode, is where you’re playing on the same machine with the same player. Real-time multiplayer is suited to another type of game. I’m playing a lot of World of Tanks right now, and that works really well as a real-time multiplayer game. It might not work so well on mobile, where you might get a phone call, or maybe you’re traveling and you can’t guarantee that you’re going to be able to hang around until the end of the game.

What did you learn from the experience of heading up such a small team on Ace Patrol? Do you think you will do the same thing in mobile again?

I’ve enjoyed the small-team aspect — fewer meetings, and more time to actually work on the game. And I’ve learned really to kind of appreciate some of the unique features of the mobile platform: The touchscreen, the gestures, the swiping, the pinching. That tactile interaction between the player and the game really connects you more closely with what’s happening on the screen. We’re very impressed with just the raw horsepower of the platform. For a flight game, it’s fun to have a 3-D world to fly through … we actually weren’t sure whether we could do that when we started. Also, [we've learned] how many of our core strategy game elements that we’ve used on other platforms seem to work fairly well on iOS.

And that’s interesting because not all games are as mobile-friendly as others. Will Firaxis be doing more with turn-based games on mobile?

I think it works very well, yes. There are certainly some real-time games that work just fine. But the turn-based games that we’ve done, whether it’s Haunted Hollow or Ace Patrol or XCOM, later this summer, just all seem to be a natural fit for the mobile platforms. Is it part of our future? I think the answer is pretty assuredly yes. But we’re not giving up on PCs. They’re our bread and butter, and the new consoles are very interesting, but we definitely see mobile as a significant part of our future going forward.

What do you think about what Microsoft is doing with Windows? Obviously, they have the legacy title for being the home of PC gaming, and yet, in some ways, they’re making their main OS a lot more like a mobile operating system.

That’s a very interesting development. The PC market is splitting into tablet PCs and the traditional desktop PCs. These games that we’re doing cross over really nicely into tablet PCs or any kind of mobile format. That’s another reason why we’re looking really seriously at this market. I’m not sure what’s happening in the PC market, whether it’s going to go toward tablet or continue to be really strong in desktop. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

This week, I tested two new mobile apps, Kodable and Hopscotch, that are aimed at teaching young children the basic skills necessary for computer programming. Both are for iOS — specifically, for iPad — although Kodable plans to introduce an Android version of the app. And both are free to download, but Kodable does include advanced levels that cost $1.99 to access.

What is programming, exactly? Also called coding, it’s the execution of different languages that make computer software, websites and mobile apps run. A series of symbols, like text, are grouped together to imply or prompt something else. A very common example of this is the use of a semicolon to signify a break in a line of code. There are also visual programming languages, which use graphical blocks of code.

Coding tools for kids and beginners are hardly a new thing, but many earlier applications are browser-based, while these apps capitalize on the gravitational pull that tablets seem to have on kids.

Kodable, which launched late last year, is aimed at kids in kindergarten through second grade. It takes a levels-based game approach, reminding me in some ways of a popular app called Cargo-Bot, which lets you move cartoon robotic arms using commands. Or, think Angry Birds, except instead of slinging birds through the air using your finger, you’re moving a fuzzball using arrow commands. Kodable also sprinkles game coins throughout the app as an incentive.

I found it easy to get the hang of Kodable, which is based on Basic, an early and simple programming language. But to say it teaches “coding” is a stretch. It more or less teaches kids how to think logically to get an object moving.

Hopscotch, on the other hand, is more advanced, aimed at kids age 8 and up. It’s based on Scratch, a visual programming language created at MIT. Hopscotch offers colorful blocks of code with which to execute a program on what is basically a blank slate. This means Hopscotch can be as easy or as difficult as you make it, but it also works under the assumption that you already know some programming basics.

Since I’m a few years beyond fourth grade at this point, it’s tough for me to approach these apps exactly as a child would. But I’ve never learned to code, so I can claim beginner status there. Hopscotch was definitely more challenging for me than Kodable was. But I learned more about actual coding from Hopscotch.

Let’s start with Kodable, and then “graduate” to Hopscotch. Once you get past the intro animation with ambient music (maybe meant to lull kids into a total state of relaxation and quietude? Parents and teachers can only wish …), you’re asked to enter your name. From there, you’re taken to a “Smeeborg” of unlocked levels.

Kodable’s main character is a blue fuzzball with eyes and a mouth. There’s a short course laid out for you, littered with coins; as the levels progress, the course gets more maze-like. On the upper right there is a toolbox with arrow keys. On the left, there’s a “script” area where, using the iPad’s touchscreen, you drag the arrow keys to create a command. With each new level of difficulty, a small cartoon hand will simulate the commands for you to give some guidance, but that’s all there is in terms of tutorials.

I dragged a sequence of arrows over to the script and hit the play button. My fuzzball made it through the course, and I went on on to the next level.

I made it through about a dozen levels on Kodable, even unlocking a new fuzzball named Simon Fuzz — he’s green and wears hipster glasses — before I found out that by swiping to the left I could skip to new areas in the game. These are called Function Junction and Bugs Below. Each costs $1.99 and contains 30 new levels of varying difficulty. For example, Function Junction teaches you to create a second sequence of arrow commands under the one you’re already using.

Kodable says it plans to add more curriculum-like education features to the app in the next couple months, including vocabulary exercises, so kids can learn programming words. I think Kodable on the whole could be a bit richer, but I like the app, and there’s no cost to download it and try it.

On to Hopscotch: This app takes you through a quick tutorial at the start, showing how to put together blocks of code to program a little monkey to draw a line. At the top of the app is a plus sign that allows you to choose from one of 10 different cartoon characters, including the monkey. Then, there are “method blocks” of programming on the left, including commands like “move,” “rotate,” “leave a trail,” “repeat” and “scale by.”

You drag these blocks to an empty script on the right, building them on top of one another and squeezing commands in between other commands the way you might play Tetris. Then, you can choose different prompts from a dropdown menu. So, for example, I could tell the app to execute the program I built when I tap the character, or when I shake the iPad, or when I simply press play.

For my first project, I attempted to make a space pod draw a line. I got the space pod to move across the screen, but it didn’t leave a line trail as I thought it would. I tried the same thing with a cupcake character, but still, no line drawn. In another project, I made a gorilla run around the border of the app, scaling up in size every time he turned a corner, but again, I was missing something.

This is where a “debugging” mode — something that lets you see the code being executed in real time to help you pinpoint your errors — would help; Hopscotch says it’s considering adding this feature.

I finally asked the app’s co-creator what I was doing wrong. It turns out that I was putting certain movement-specific blocks outside of the C-shaped “leave a trail” block, instead of inside of it. This kind of troubleshooting might be obvious to some people, but it just didn’t click for me without some basic knowledge of how visual programming languages work. In addition to the debugger, Hopscotch plans to build out more tutorials for this exact reason.

After I completed projects, I could save and share my work with others via email. I still need to hone my Hopscotch skills before I deem anything shareable, but I’ve seen projects by others that are pretty creative, including a chess game in which the Hopscotch characters represent different chess pieces.

These are just two apps in the growing area of coding apps for kids, but both offer value for beginners at varying stages of their learning processes.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130506/can-these-ipad-apps-teach-your-kid-to-code/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130505/google-glass-an-etiquette-guide/ http://allthingsd.com/20130505/google-glass-an-etiquette-guide/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 03:15:32 +0000 Kevin Sintumuang http://allthingsd.com/?p=318399 Congratulations! You’re one of the privileged few who’ve scored a pair of Google Glass, the futuristic eyewear that puts a tiny, voice-controlled, Wi-Fi-enabled computer on your face. It’s the most anticipated gadget since the iPad, iPhone or iAnything, really. And the best part? You members of Google’s “Explorer Program” — mostly app developers and supernerds — will be testing Glass in the wild months before the general public will get to wear it, fingers crossed, at the end of the year.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130505/google-glass-an-etiquette-guide/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130504/ios-7-breaking-the-s4-and-teaching-kids-to-code-10-things-you-need-to-see-on-allthingsd-this-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20130504/ios-7-breaking-the-s4-and-teaching-kids-to-code-10-things-you-need-to-see-on-allthingsd-this-week/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 18:00:10 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=318322

In case you missed anything, here’s a quick weekend roundup of the news that powered AllThingsD this week:

1. Sources say that Apple is pulling engineers from the next version of OS X and assigning them to its mobile OS in order to get a preview ready in time for next month’s Worldwide Developers Conference.
2. By 2017, more than half of companies will require their employees to supply their own devices on the job, according to a new Gartner report.
3. A California court has ruled in Facebook’s favor versus “typosquatters” who benefited from registering domain names with misspellings like “gacebook” and “dacebook.”
4. Speaking of Facebook, it’s growing — but that growth rate has seen a slow decline over the past year.
5. As it tries to convince consumers that the iPhone and Android aren’t the only options, Microsoft released a hard-edged, humorous ad for Windows Phone.
6. Buying a laptop is all about timing; if you can, you might want to wait.
7. “This is just like another language, just a different set of life skills than if you learned French or Spanish.” That’s Krishna Vedati, CEO of Tynker, a platform aimed at teaching children to code.
8. Consumer electronics warranty provider SquareTrade says Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 is more breakable than both the S3 and the iPhone 5.
9. In AllThingsD Must-Reads, Bizo CEO Russell Glass writes, “There is a revolution brewing in the enterprise and it’s starting right at the desk of the chief marketing officer.”
10. To show off its ability to precisely move and manipulate individual atoms, IBM released the smallest movie ever made: An animated short called “A Boy And His Atom.”

To stay on top of the latest, follow AllThingsD on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our daily email newsletter.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130504/ios-7-breaking-the-s4-and-teaching-kids-to-code-10-things-you-need-to-see-on-allthingsd-this-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130503/hearst-gets-its-million-digital-subscribers/ http://allthingsd.com/20130503/hearst-gets-its-million-digital-subscribers/#comments Fri, 03 May 2013 10:00:45 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=318021 Last year, Hearst Magazines head David Carey said his company would have a million people subscribing to its tablet editions by the end of 2012.

That didn’t happen, and they ended December with something like 900,000 subscribers. But now it has: Carey said Hearst hit the one million mark at the end of March.

“I’m glad we got there,” Carey said. “We were just 90 days late.”

In February, at our D: Dive Into Media conference, Carey said he thinks that in 2016, Hearst will have three million digital subscribers, or about 10 percent of his entire base.

As we’ve noted before, tablets aren’t going to save the magazine business, but they are a nice new revenue stream for it. And a million is very respectable, given that the iPad only showed up three years ago, and publishers really didn’t have a way of offering digital subscriptions through Apple’s iTunes until midway through 2011. (That number also includes Nook and Kindle subscribers, and, theoretically, some Android owners, too.)

To refresh your memory on Carey’s take on digital and print publishing, here’s the highlight reel of my chat with him a couple months ago:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130503/hearst-gets-its-million-digital-subscribers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130501/bring-your-own-device-evolving-from-trend-to-requirement/ http://allthingsd.com/20130501/bring-your-own-device-evolving-from-trend-to-requirement/#comments Wed, 01 May 2013 21:30:27 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=317421 Here’s an unexpected twist in the growing trend at companies that support employees who bring their own devices to the office: By 2017, more than half of companies will require their employees to supply their own devices on the job.

The finding comes in a new report from Gartner containing the results of a survey of CIOs around the world. So it’s not for nothing that Gartner calls these BYOD strategies “the most radical change to the economics and culture of client computing” in a decade.

When you think about it, BYOD amounts to a pretty fundamental shift in the way companies handle the knotty questions around supplying employees the tools they need to get the job done. For years, standard operating procedure at pretty much every company was to give a computer and maybe a phone or BlackBerry to every employee who needed them, and for the company to bear the cost. (Gartner, incidentally, includes PCs in its BYOD definition.)

What started with an occasional request for the IT department to support smartphones and tablets with access to work email has blown up into a huge shift in the way that corporate IT services are supplied to employees.

Right now, Gartner said, mid-sized companies of $500 million to $5 billion in sales and 2,500 to 5,000 employees are most likely to be using a BYOD approach. BYOD-friendly companies are twice as common in the U.S. as in Europe, but employees in India, China and Brazil are most likely to be using a personal device on the job.

And if you’re looking for some figures to drive the point home, here’s one: 38 percent of companies expect to stop supplying employees with their devices entirely by 2016. But executives aren’t yet completely sold on the idea: Only 22 percent say they’ve made a good business case for adopting a BYOD move. There are, Gartner said, many benefits, not the least of which are lower costs and a happier work force.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130501/bring-your-own-device-evolving-from-trend-to-requirement/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130430/blackberrys-heins-tablets-are-just-temporary-in-mobile-evolution/ http://allthingsd.com/20130430/blackberrys-heins-tablets-are-just-temporary-in-mobile-evolution/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 19:03:01 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=316909 BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has long said the company won’t compete in the tablet space unless it can do so profitably. While BlackBerry insists it remains committed to the tablet market, Heins has repeatedly made it clear that the level of that committment depends largely on the performance of its BlackBerry 10 platform, and the tablet’s priority in the mobile space. And in his latest remarks on the subject, Heins seems bullish on the former and bearish on the latter.

“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins said in an interview yesterday at the Milken Institute conference, according to Bloomberg. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

They certainly haven’t been a good business model for BlackBerry. The company’s PlayBook tablet was unquestionably a failure, one that forced it to take a $485 million charge to write down unsold inventory in 2012. But for other companies — most notably Apple — the tablet market has been quite lucrative. In Apple’s last quarter, the company shipped 19.5 million iPads — 7.7 million more than it did the year prior.

So what’s Heins’s problem with tablets? There would seem to be two. The first: BlackBerry doesn’t have a good angle on the tablet business yet — something it needs to compete in a market where profits can be tight. The company is reevaluating its approach, because right now the tablet market is a lousy place for BlackBerry and pretty much any company not named Apple or Samsung.

The second: The mobile computing space is evolving very quickly, and Heins seems to have doubts about the viability of tablets going forward. Now, regardless of how much credence you lend that view, you’ve got to concede that five years is an awful long time in tech; few companies know that better than BlackBerry, which saw its early lead in smartphones whittled away in short order by Apple and Google. Who knows? Maybe some new technology will emerge in the next few years that will kick the legs out from under the tablet market. Sounds implausible now, but a few years back, the BlackBerry was widely known as the CrackBerry, and no one was using iPhones.

In any event, BlackBerry’s official position is not to read too, too much into Heins’s dismissal of the tablet market.

“The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10,” BlackBerry spokesman Alex Kinsella told AllThingsD. “We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130430/blackberrys-heins-tablets-are-just-temporary-in-mobile-evolution/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130429/google-now-arrives-on-iphone-and-ipad-in-mostly-complete-form/ http://allthingsd.com/20130429/google-now-arrives-on-iphone-and-ipad-in-mostly-complete-form/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:30:56 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=316241 Google is bringing its most interesting mobile application to its biggest competitor’s phones. Starting today, the Google Now personal assistant application will be added to the Google Search app for iPhone and iPad.

This move was expected, but it is a loud-and-clear demonstration of Google’s and Apple’s differing mobile strategies. Where Apple would never-ever-no-way bring Siri or its other signature apps to Android, Google wants to get people using its services from wherever they are.

Of course, Google Now will still be a better experience on Android, where it is built into the latest operating system and is accessed via an upswipe motion, along with live-updating home and lockscreen widgets. Not gonna happen on an iPhone.

But iOS users will be able to use 22 of the 29 currently available Google Now “Cards” at launch. That includes proactive personalized alerts about upcoming appointments and traffic, sports scores and news alerts, and information about nearby attractions and places where people often take photos.

Nine-month-old Google Now is really only useful if you actively use the Google suite of services — Gmail, Google Calendar and especially Google Search.

It is one of the best examples of an app where people don’t just get tracked and give up personal data for no reason — they do it in order to get the benefit of a service that understands their personal context. And along with voice search, it’s an example of Google’s increasing focus on “conversational search,” where machines start acting more natural.

But Google Now is still an early product, and one that’s explicitly designed to anticipate users’ needs rather than allow them to request and configure their settings. Sometimes its suggestions are irrelevant, and sometimes it doesn’t work that well.

(If you want a non-Google product that does some of the same things, other options include Tempo, EasilyDo and Sherpa.)

And, again, some of Google Now’s most advanced new features — like one that integrates searching for a movie to watch at the theater, buying a ticket on Fandango and then scanning a location-aware mobile ticket that automatically appears in the vicinity of the theater — are still only for Android. We’re told to expect upcoming new Google Now “Cards” on Android first, and then see them added to iOS later.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130429/google-now-arrives-on-iphone-and-ipad-in-mostly-complete-form/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130429/look-ma-still-no-app-seven-months-after-launch-quartz-says-its-web-only-business-site-is-thriving/ http://allthingsd.com/20130429/look-ma-still-no-app-seven-months-after-launch-quartz-says-its-web-only-business-site-is-thriving/#comments Mon, 29 Apr 2013 12:00:11 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=316231 If you are a loyal Quartz reader and you visited the business news site on your PC or tablet last night, there’s a chance you might have noticed something different: A design tweak that made Quartz’s no-frills look even sparser.

Or maybe you didn’t notice it. The Quartz team told me about the change in advance, and even I have a hard time seeing much difference. The biggest change is that a black bar that used to run across the top of the site and then shrink down as you scrolled down is now just preshrunk.

You can see, sort of, by comparing some “before” shots (clicking the images should enlarge them):

And an after:

The more interesting thing to note about Quartz’s overhaul is that it is one of dozens of changes Atlantic Media’s newest property has made since it launched seven months ago. Quartz editor Kevin Delaney says the site has pushed 73 code chages since Quartz first debuted, most of which have to do with the way the site’s guts function.

The reason Quartz can do that, Delaney argues, is because of its decision to rely on an HTML5 design that essentially serves up the same page to every reader, no matter what device they’re using to access the site. If you want to change the way an HTML5 site looks or behaves, you can simply change it — no need to monkey with an app that’s already downloaded to someone’s iPhone or Android.

That runs counter to a lot of current digital distribution thinking, which holds that every Web distributor — from newspapers to Facebook to Netflix — needs to be thinking app-first.

No need to beat the debate into the ground — it’s really only relevant to a few thousand people, and it can take on a religious overtone — but it is worth noting that it seems to be working for Quartz. Delaney said his site is now attracting two million users a month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130429/look-ma-still-no-app-seven-months-after-launch-quartz-says-its-web-only-business-site-is-thriving/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130425/itunes-sales-are-huge-but-growth-may-be-slowing/ http://allthingsd.com/20130425/itunes-sales-are-huge-but-growth-may-be-slowing/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:00:51 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=315401 Apple sold $2.4 billion worth of apps, music, movies and books via its iTunes store last quarter. That’s almost twice what the company was doing two years ago. And no matter how you look at it, it means Apple is a giant force in digital media retail.

That said, it looks like iTunes’ sales growth may be slowing down.

Last quarter, iTunes sales increased 28 percent; in the previous quarter they increased 23 percent. Most retailers would be very happy to see those kind of leaps, but as far as I can tell, they are the smallest increases Apple has seen in the last two years.*

You can see what the last two quarters looked like in context, below:

So what does that mean? Dunno. Maybe nothing more than a statistical blip.

If I had to bet, though, I’d put money on a couple different culprits:

• In the old days, when Apple only sold music, iTunes sales rose alongside iPod sales: Whenever someone bought a new gadget, they spent some money on songs, too. Assume the same is happening here, but for all digital media. And booming iPad sales aren’t enough to overcome more modest iPhone sales.
• The other thing that fuels iTunes sales is the expansion of new markets — new iTunes stores and iTunes App Stores opening up in new countries. And maybe those lines shoot right up again if or when Forbes shows up in China. We’ll see.

* All the data in this chart either comes directly from Apple, via the prepared statements CFO Peter Oppenheimer reads during quarterly earnings calls, or via math I’ve done myself, based on those same numbers. The chart only goes back two years because Apple didn’t consistently provide iTunes sales numbers before then.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130425/itunes-sales-are-huge-but-growth-may-be-slowing/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130425/apple-shares-take-a-wild-ride-as-analysts-recalibrate/ http://allthingsd.com/20130425/apple-shares-take-a-wild-ride-as-analysts-recalibrate/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:02:39 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=315161 There was plenty to chew on for bulls and bears both in Apple’s Tuesday earnings report, and the company’s stock has been more than a little mercurial as a result.

Plans to substantially increase its dividend and share buybacks, an 18 percent drop in net income for the March quarter, flaccid guidance for the June quarter, the promise of “amazing new hardware, software and services” come fall — all these things buffeted Apple’s stock on Wednesday. The company’s shares slipped 2 percent early in the day, but by afternoon they’d recovered their losses. The stock closed down very slightly at $405.46.

We’re likely to see similarly erratic moves today as investors continue to digest Apple’s quarterly reality check. More than 20 brokerages cut their price targets on the company’s stock following the report, slashing them by about 12 percent on average, according to Thomson Reuters. The current range: $400 to $880.

That pretty much says it all.

Analyst reactions are all over the map. For every one that’s praising Apple for its remarkably large capital allocation program, there’s another saying the company is doling out $100 billion to shareholders because it doesn’t have any better ideas about what to do with the cash. Another big point of contention: CEO Tim Cook’s remarks about fall product updates and the new product categories Apple is considering.

Cook’s implication that Apple might not uncrate a new iPad or iPhone until September was met with quite a bit of disappointment — particularly from those who had been expecting a new iPhone this summer. As one large Apple shareholder said, “Great, five more down months. What’d you have to go and say that for, Tim?”

Okay, point taken. That’s an understandable sentiment if you’re an Apple shareholder who has watched the company’s stock price fall from over $700 to below $400 since September. But if you take a pragmatic view of Cook’s remark, it makes perfect sense.

Think about it. The volatility around Apple’s share price is unlikely to subside until it’s clear that the company’s next product cycle is well under way. If investors were expecting new hardware from Apple this summer, but the company wasn’t planning to ship anything new until fall, it was looking at a nightmarish five-month stretch of rumors and doomsaying playing hell with its share price. Given that situation, it was essential that Cook reset expectations.

If Cook’s remarks are on the level, Apple may well be headed for the challenging September quarter that analysts are now predicting. But it won’t be nearly as challenging a period as it might have been had he allowed anticipation for a summer iPhone launch to build. So Cook has given Apple some breathing room, something that will likely come in handy as it buckles down on those “exciting new product categories” he hinted at.

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