AllThingsD » LG Electronics

Microsoft, LG Sign Patent Agreement Covering Android, Chrome OS

Ina Fried — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:36:15 +0000

Microsoft and LG Electronics said on Thursday that they have signed a patent agreement covering LG devices running Android and Chrome OS. It’s the latest in a string of such deals that Microsoft has signed, though it has also sued both Motorola Mobility and Barnes & Noble over Android-based devices.

Google Says LG, Samsung, Vizio, Sony Planning Google TVs

Shara Tibken and Don Clark — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:44:33 +0000

Google Inc., seeking to reboot its flagging efforts in television, said consumers will soon have a broader choice of TV sets using its software — with lower prices also a likely outcome.

The Internet giant said Thursday it has lined up LG Electronics Inc. to join its roster of TV makers supporting Google TV. It also provided additional details about plans for the first products from Samsung Electronics Co. and Vizio Inc., which had previously said they would adopt the Google technology.

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TV Makers Seek Fatter Profits in Thinner Sets

Evan Ramstad and Jung-Ah Lee — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:06:10 +0000

Television manufacturers, stung by steep profit declines this year, will start making TV sets that are even thinner and lighter in hopes of sparking new consumer interest and driving average prices higher.

LG Electronics, the world’s second-largest TV manufacturer, said Friday it will sell a 55-inch TV that is just 3/16 of an inch thick and weighs only 16.5 pounds. Crosstown rival Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of TVs, is expected to unveil a similarly sized TV at the industry’s big trade fair, called the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas in early January.

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LG Electronics to Raise $940 Million in Rights Offering

Jung-Ah Lee — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:50:57 +0000

LG Electronics Inc.’s board approved a plan to raise $940 million via a rights offering, news that sent shares of the South Korean consumer electronics firm down by more than 13 percent Thursday.

LG said the move will allow the company to secure funds to invest in key businesses including smartphones and it also plans to hire more workers. The company plans to issue 19 million new common shares at 55,900 won ($50) each, representing a 9 percent discount to their Thursday closing price of 61,600 won. LG’s shares had their biggest one-day drop in more than three years Thursday, closing down 13.7 percent as investors were concerned about share dilution. The new shares will begin trading on Jan. 9.

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HP's TouchPad Teardown: Its Deepest Secrets Revealed

Arik Hesseldahl — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:26:41 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ See post to watch video ]

New iPad Could Help, Hinder Asian Players

Yun-Hee Kim — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:02:26 +0000

Apple Inc.’s latest iPad is a mixed blessing for many of Asia’s electronic companies, which stand to benefit from a surge in demand for components but will see their already battered ambitions to make their own tablets challenged further.

Companies from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Display Co. to Japan’s Toshiba Corp. supply key components such as memory chips and flat-screens used in the iPad. But LG Display’s parent company, LG Electronics Inc., as well as Samsung and Toshiba compete with Apple in the burgeoning tablet space with their own devices.

If the new version of the iPad launched Wednesday is as successful as the original version, these component makers stand to benefit from an increase in sales, analysts say. But their profit margins could slip in tablets given their late entry into the market and because more devices are being launched this year, intensifying competition.

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TVs Make Play for Web Games

Daisuke Wakabayashi — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:47:08 +0000

Hammered by ever-slimming profit margins, TV makers are turning online to videogames as another way to incorporate Web-delivered entertainment.

At this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, many television manufacturers touted videogames as an important entertainment category for Internet-connected televisions. Many are forming partnerships to play videogames on the TV without the need for a dedicated game console, and many are courting developers to create apps for the TV.

LG Electronics Inc. unveiled a range of smart, or Internet-connected, televisions while showing off a new motion-sensing remote control. The new remote only has six buttons and is similar to Nintendo Co.’s Wii game controller.

“Videogames are one of the categories that we hope app developers will take to with the new Motion remote,” said Tim Alessi, director of new product development at LG’s home electronics division.

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Google TV Going MIA at CES?

Peter Kafka — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:02:53 +0000

Conventional wisdom on Google TV: Not ready for prime time. Google apparently agrees: It has asked Toshiba, LG and Sharp not to show off their versions of the Web TV platform at the Consumer Electronics Show next month, the New York Times reports. But Samsung will display a new Google TV set on the show floor. And if you ask nicely, Vizio will show you one in private. Here’s Walt Mossberg’s November 17 review–”No Need to Tune In Just Yet.”

LG Electronics CEO Takes the Fall for Falling Behind

Voices — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:34:01 +0000

Failure to keep up in the smartphone race has cost another CEO his job. Today, just a week after Nokia bounced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the board of South Korea’s LG Electronics, the world’s third-biggest maker of mobile phones, said that “Nam Yong offered to resign as CEO to take responsibility for the flagging performance.” He’ll be replaced by Koo Bon-joon, the younger brother of LG Group chairman Koo Bon-moo.

Sony Ericsson Says China Is Embracing Smartphones

Loretta Chao — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:42 +0000

Sony Ericsson Chief Executive Bert Nordberg said Tuesday that he expects smartphone use in China to expand to half of all mobile-phone users in the country within five years, as the company joins other global handset makers in shifting its focus to higher-end devices.

In an interview, Mr. Nordberg also said Sony Ericsson, a joint venture between Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson of Sweden and Sony Corp. (SNE) of Japan, is unlikely to create its own tablet-style personal computer even though competitors Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. of South Korea are planning tablet launches. Sony is likely to produce any tablet that Sony Ericsson sells in the future, he said.

Tablets are “very interesting,” Mr. Nordberg said, adding, “I have focused very hard on devices you can have in your pocket.”

Mr. Nordberg said that as the price gap between smartphones and phones with fewer capabilities narrows in China, purchasing a smartphone will “not be unthinkable” even for less-wealthy consumers. Smartphone penetration “will quickly grow to 50 percent of the market…by 2015″ or earlier, he said.

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Amazon Loses E-Book Deal

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:09:53 +0000

A month after jolting the book industry with a deal to give Amazon.com Inc. exclusive digital access to some of the country’s best-known literary works, literary agent Andrew Wylie is largely abandoning the agreement.

The Amazon (AMZN) deal was struck after Mr. Wylie failed to agree to terms with publishers for electronic rights to his authors’ existing titles. It was a notable step in the battle between Amazon and its two main rivals in e-books, Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS)

But Bertelsmann AG’s Random House, which published 13 of the 20 titles at issue, had disputed Amazon’s right to sell the titles in digital form. It boycotted new offerings by all of Mr. Wylie’s clients, putting some of the New York agent’s famous authors, including V.S. Naipaul and Dave Eggers, at a disadvantage.

Random House will now distribute the electronic versions of the works to all retailers after Mr. Wylie reached a truce with the publisher and agreed to terms for the titles.

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NTP Sues Apple, Google, Microsoft and Others Over Wireless Email

John Paczkowski — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:45:57 +0000

NTP, the holding company that used its wireless email patents to squeeze a $612.5 million settlement out of Research in Motion via an excruciating intellectual property battle, is back again, this time to shake down six of RIM’s competitors.

On Friday NTP filed patent infringement lawsuits against Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft (MSFT) and Motorola (MOT) claiming–just as it did in the suit that nearly shut down RIM’s BlackBerry service–that their mobile wireless email devices infringe upon its technology. The suit asks that the companies be prevented from selling and operating such products and slapped with punitive damages (see document below).

“Use of NTP’s intellectual property without a license is just plain unfair to NTP and its licensees,” NTP co-founder Donald Stout said in a statement. “We took the necessary action to protect our intellectual property.”

And wring every last bit of value out of it. NTP’s key patents expire in 2012, so this really seems a last-ditch attempt to use them to win one last big payday.

And if it does, the big names in the smartphone industry could find themselves in the same unpleasant position RIM (RIMM) Chairman and co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie found himself in back in 2006.

“It’s a lot of money for patents that will not survive, for sure, but that doesn’t do us any good if there’s a court that doesn’t wait,” Balsillie said after agreeing to a $612.5 million settlement with NTP. “No question, we took one for the team here. It wasn’t a good feeling to write this kind of check.”

070810ntpapplesuit –

[Image credit: Bob MacNeil / WIPO Magazine]

Samsung No. 1 Among U.S. Mobile Phone Makers, Apple No.6

John Paczkowski — Thu, 06 May 2010 22:00:50 +0000

The latest metrics on the U.S. mobile market from comScore, published Thursday, are about what you’d expect. Among mobile network operators, Verizon (VZ) ranked highest with 31.1 percent of the market during the three-month period ending March 2010. It was followed by AT&T (T) with 25.2 percent, Sprint Nextel (S) and T-Mobile with 12 percent, and Tracfone which captured 5.1 percent.

Among mobile phone manufacturers, Samsung narrowly beat out Motorola (MOT) for the top spot with a fraction of a percent more than the 21.9 percent its rival claimed. LG Electronics ranked second with a 21.8 percent market share and Research in Motion (RIMM), and Nokia (NOK) ranked fourth and fifth with dueling 8.3 percent shares. (See tables below; click to enlarge.)

And where does Apple (AAPL) and its iPhone, which seems to have such broad mindshare these days, figure in the U.S. mobile OEM market? Andrew Lipsman, senior director of Industry Analysis at comScore (SCOR), tells me it ranks sixth with a five percent share. (Hear that Adobe?)

Clearly, Apple has some way to go before it cracks the Top 5, but the fact that the company has managed to claim so significant a share of the entire mobile phone market with a single smartphone that’s been available for less than three years is extraordinary.

Two Laptops Take Images to Another Dimension

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:37:58 +0000

If switching from standard to high-definition television wasn’t confusing enough, there’s another wave of TV technology on the horizon: 3D. But 3D TVs and much of the 3D content won’t be available until later this year, and even then most of these sets will be pricey and will require people to wear special glasses for viewing. If you can’t wait for a 3D TV to hit your living room, you can get a preview of what’s to come with the latest in 3D laptops.

[ See post to watch video ]

I feasted my eyes on 3D laptops this week, testing the $770 Acer Aspire 5738DG and checking out the $1,700 Asus G51J 3D. These two computers are aimed at different crowds and each uses different technology to display enhanced images. The Acer is designed as a laptop first and a 3D game player second, and it’s priced for mainstream consumers—only about $70 more than the model without 3D. The Asus laptop is meant for serious gamers who care about a high-quality 3D experience. Unfortunately, you still need to wear the 3D glasses with both.

The Acer Aspire laptop applies a slightly older 3D method known as micro-polarized display, often referred to as “micropol.” It combines software, a film layer on the computer screen and 3D glasses to make videos and photos pop out. This laptop can take 2D videos and photos and display them in 3D; it also plays about 150 3D games as well as 3D movies, of which there aren’t many.

Acer converts 2D content to 3D by using a third-party software program called TriDef 3D, which people must use to see their photos and videos in 3D. Using this program is a bit clumsy and I tested it by loading my own photos and videos onto the Acer. A faster way to see photos or videos in 3D is by right clicking on the file from anywhere else on the PC and selecting an option to see it in TriDef’s 3D player. It was fun to see old images and videos in this 3D simulation.

I looked through a friend’s photos from a trip to Petra, Jordan, and the 3D sight of him riding a camel through a rock valley was spectacular. Files that were in the Windows Media Video format played without issue, and I watched two such videos including one of a bear lumbering around in a stream. But when I had trouble playing QuickTime and MP4 video files, a spokeswoman for Acer checked and confirmed that the TriDef program won’t play all QuickTime or MP4 video files; TriDef is working on fixing the MP4 problem.

Another problem with the Acer’s technology is that the laptop screen must be tilted at just the right angle—about 120 degrees—to see 3D properly. Otherwise the image looks blurry.

Eight photos and nine short videos come loaded on the Acer Aspire. All of these looked really good to my eyes, which were covered by the included black 3D shades. A clip-on piece for prescription glasses also comes with the laptop.

The Acer Aspire can be loaded with an Intel (INTC) Core 2 Duo processor, discrete graphics, 4 gigabytes of memory and a 320-gigabyte hard drive. Its keyboard includes a 10-key number set on the right, like that found on most desktop keyboards. Its bright screen measures 15.6 inches diagonally and it weighs 6.2 pounds.

The pricier Asus G51J 3D laptop comes loaded with Nvidia’s (NVDA) 3D Vision, considered to be a much higher quality 3D experience. This technology was originally only available on a desktop PC with several different necessary components. Now on a laptop, it displays 3D images to people as long as they’re wearing special battery-powered glasses and are standing no more than 40 feet away. These Nvidia glasses deliver the highest resolution possible per eye and enable wide viewing angles. The screen also has a high refresh rate of 120 hertz compared to the Acer’s 60 hertz.

Unlike the Acer Aspire, 2D photos and videos can’t be viewed in 3D on the Asus. Instead, this laptop depends on originally produced 3D content, including photos or videos that are captured using special technology like that found on 3D cameras such as Fujifilm’s FinePix REAL 3D W1, which are rare. As is also true on the Acer Aspire, movies only play on the Asus if they were created in 3D.

Games are another story. Nvidia 3D Vision will convert 2D games to 3D in real time using the computer’s graphics processor. Nvidia has tested some 430 games that work with this technology today.

Asus couldn’t send a G51J 3D laptop to me in time for this column, but I got a look at it in January while wearing the battery-operated Nvidia glasses, which work for 40 hours before a recharge and can fit over prescription glasses. This laptop has an Intel Core i7 processor and can have a hard drive of up to 500 gigabytes. It comes with 4 gigabytes of memory and its screen measures 15.6 inches. But it weighs 7.3 pounds, or about a pound heavier than the Acer.

Later this year, Acer also plans to make a laptop with Nvidia’s technology. (Acer currently uses Nvidia’s technology in its monitors.) Nvidia has announced plans for using its 120-hertz 3D Vision capability with laptops from Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.

It’s obvious that, right now, 3D technology isn’t necessarily something most mainstream consumers want or need. Gamers will see Asus’s G51J 3D as an exciting mobile alternative to what was once only available in a desktop. And the Acer Aspire will appeal to casual gamers and people who want a trusty laptop and/or the ability to view some photos and videos in 3D. One thing’s for sure: Wearing the special glasses—no matter how stylish—is still a wearisome part of seeing things in 3D.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Blu-ray Player Makers Embrace Online Movie Delivery

Miguel Bustillo and Bobby White — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:37 +0000

Some of the biggest companies backing the Blu-ray format for high-definition movies are hedging their bets by introducing players that can also show Internet video, which is making surprising inroads in the home-entertainment market.

Electronics retailers and manufacturers including Best Buy Co. (BBY), Samsung Electronics America Inc. and LG Electronics USA Inc. are selling Blu-ray disc players that tap into movies from online rental companies. The devices provide an alternative to pay-per-view cable services.

The hybrid movie players tap a growing library of online movies and television shows from Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), which screens movies for as little as 99 cents, and from Netflix Inc. (NFLX), which allows unlimited movie streaming for $8.99 a month.

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iPhone Headed to South Korea in November

John Paczkowski — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:30:13 +0000

The iPhone is finally coming to the world’s most wired country. South Korean regulators on Wednesday cleared the iPhone for sale, amending a rule that requires all cellphones sold in the country to use domestic location-based services.

“The commission has endorsed the local sale of the iPhone and the launch of its service within the limits of the law,” said Lee Tae-hee, a spokesman of the Korea Communications Commission. “If Apple includes location based-related details as a form of an agreement to its strategic partners such as KT, Apple’s iPhone can give location-related services here.”

Great news for Apple (AAPL). The South Korean market is a robust one, and analysts say that with the right carrier partner, Cupertino could be looking at sales over the first year ranging from 500,000 to two million. That said, they note that competing with the likes of Samsung and LG on their home turf won’t be easy. Between them, they control about 70 percent of the South Korean handset market.

“There seem to be a lot of people waiting for iPhones to go on sale here but it will not be easy for Apple to crack the Korean market as Samsung and LG already dominate the market with competitive phones,” said Jae Lee, analyst at Daiwa Securities in Seoul. “It will be difficult for Apple to steal market share significantly from the Korean makers in the short term but the iPhone could still be a threat to Samsung and LG in the long term.”

When the iPhone finally does arrive at market in South Korea, it will likely be with KT (formerly known as Korea Telecom) as a carrier partner. As Dan Butterfield over at iPhonAsia notes, KT CFO Yeon-hak Kim suggested as much this past summer. “Apple iPhone will be in our smartphone line-up,” he said in August. “iPhone will help to expand the smartphone market and will contribute to increasing the ARPU (average revenue per user).”

KT officials are telling the Korea Times that they’re looking at a November launch date. “KT has been in talks with Apple to introduce iPhones,” said a KT official. “Sometime in November, the latest iPhone model dubbed as ‘iPhone 3GS’ and its previous model will be commercialized. KT and Apple will decide on the coverage of location-based services.”

Apple to Offer $899 Tablet With OLED Screen?

Eric Savitz — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:11:06 +0000

The rumors of the much-anticipated, yet-to-be-confirmed Apple (AAPL) tablet continued to pile up.

The latest version comes from that old rumormonger, Trip Chowdhry, proprietor of the boutique research firm Global Equities Research. Once a month or so, Chowdhry publishes Silicon Scorp, a roundup of chatter he’s hearing around the Valley. And one of things he’s been hearing lately is that Apple by the end of the year will announce an $899 “SmartBook,” with 8-10 inch OLED screens from LG Electronics, and an ARM Holding dual core Corex9 chipset. He writes that his contacts are “almost positive” that such a device is coming, that Apple wants to launch this year, but that widespread availability isn’t likely until Q1 2010.

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Yahoo Widgets Lend Brains to Boob Tube

Katherine Boehret — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:30:03 +0000

Your television set may be the most expensive, eye-catching piece of electronic equipment in your home, but compared to a computer with Internet access, it’s just a dumb box. With their low-tech IQs, TVs encourage a lot of family-room multitasking: While watching the big screen TV, lots of people are looking away to surf the Web with the computer on their lap or the mobile device in their hand.

But television manufacturers are sick and tired of sharing your attention with another device. So this week, Samsung Electronics introduced a television with truly integrated Internet smarts: the $3,000 Samsung LED TV 7000 with the Yahoo Widget Engine. It lets people watch TV and access the Web on the same big screen at the same time, with special on-screen applications that appear on a strip at the bottom of the screen and fetch online content. By this summer, Sony (SNE) and LG Electronics also will offer TVs with the Yahoo Widget Engine, and Vizio will offer models soon thereafter.

[ See post to watch video ]

I’ve been testing the Yahoo Widget Engine on a 46-inch Samsung TV, and I found it to be a lot of fun to use. It’s easy to navigate, thanks to special color-coded shortcuts on the TV’s remote control, and I didn’t have to abandon the show I was watching to look up a few things online. Widgets, which are small, easily downloadable computer applications, typically expand to a semitranslucent, overlaying panel on the left, or your program can be resized so you don’t lose any of the picture. The one major downside was that it uses a virtual keyboard rather than a physical keyboard for text entry. (You use the remote control to select text from an on-screen keyboard.) A good keyboard is essential for social networking widgets like Twitter, allowing quickly typed reactions to shows as you’re watching them. Samsung is planning to introduce a remote-control-based input method for next-generation TVs.

Samsung’s LED TV 7000 uses the Yahoo Widget Engine to access Web content, like Flickr.

If you’re reading this and thinking that Internet on the TV has been tried before with limited success, you’re right. For years, companies have designed external boxes that bring some form of the Web to your TV. These include Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Xbox, Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) Apple TV and some features of TiVo (TIVO). But the Yahoo Widget Engine differs from these boxes in two ways. First, Yahoo’s widget system works simultaneously with your TV programming, so you don’t have to turn off the college basketball game to pull up a news story about a star player. Second, it will include widgets with video content that directly competes with live programming.

This second point is noteworthy because television manufacturers in the past have quashed applications with Web video content for fear of these programs competing with live shows. Yahoo (YHOO) says it won’t block widgets from its Widget Engine, so you could, say, run a Showtime widget that plays an episode of “The Tudors” instead of watching a live show.

The Yahoo Widget Engine comes preloaded on TVs with four basic widgets to start: Flickr (Yahoo’s photo service), Yahoo News, Weather and Finance. When prompted, these widgets appear in a horizontal dock along the bottom edge of the TV screen, along with Widget Gallery and Profile. (If you just want to watch TV, you can hide the widget dock easily.) Yahoo expects to offer 20 to 30 widgets within two months, and estimates that it will offer around 100 by the end of the year.

Samsung lent me an LED TV 7000 loaded with the four basic widgets and some extras that will be available in the Widget Gallery by early April: Twitter, Yahoo Video, USA Today Sports and three games (Sudoku, Texas Hold’em and QuizzMaster).

The Yahoo Widget Engine follows a model that encourages developers — even Yahoo’s competitors — to make widgets for its store-like Widget Gallery, where they will be available to download free directly on the TV. The system is similar to Apple’s highly successful App Store for the iPhone, and, like iPhone apps, these widgets will take seconds to download and are fun to try. The Yahoo widgets will work across all enabled televisions, regardless of manufacturer.

Yahoo Widget Engine displays tidbits of information on a TV, like news and weather, without interrupting programming.

Samsung and Yahoo each have their own sub-stores of widgets within Widget Gallery. But users most likely won’t know or care which widgets are coming from what source because they’re all grouped into categories like Latest Widgets, Community and Messaging. Other TV manufacturers will be able to follow this model with their own stores, as well.

The Samsung LED TV 7000 connects to the Web via a wired connection or by using a wireless USB device, which Samsung sells for $80. Currently, Samsung offers four models with built-in Web access, which it calls Internet@TV. By June, the company plans to offer a total of 17 models with Internet@TV. All TVs with the Widget Engine will have remote-control shortcut buttons to pull up widgets.

With a local news station on in the background, I used the Yahoo Widget Engine to pull up Flickr in a left-side panel. After using the painfully slow virtual keyboard to sign into my Flickr account, I quickly skimmed through categories like Your Photos, Your Groups and Explore. I browsed photos from one of my Flickr groups, both in the side panel only and in full-screen slideshow mode, and tagging favorites with a yellow button on my remote control.

With a few steps, snippets of information, or shortcuts, can be created for certain widgets, like Yahoo Weather and Finance, to save you from opening the widget to see more details in a left-side panel. I created a Yahoo Finance snippet for McDonald’s (MCD) stock so I could see this stock’s status at the bottom of my screen without opening the Finance widget. People who have Yahoo accounts can synchronize their account settings with the TV, such as stocks saved in Yahoo Finance.

The Twitter widget automatically refreshes its content roughly once a minute, so you can see new tweets (updates) from the people you follow right in the horizontal dock. You also can see a list of the most popular phrases on Twitter, search Twitter and save searches.

Individual Widget Engine profiles can be created for up to eight people so that a 16-year-old doesn’t have to see his dad’s stock-market news in his profile. Widgets can be moved around in the horizontal dock so you can line them up according to your personal preferences.

The Yahoo Widget Engine is still in its early stages, and there are plenty of changes and widgets to come, not to mention televisions from manufacturers other than Samsung. But it’s easy to navigate and its remote-controls buttons — especially those with color coding — bring the Internet to your TV screen with just one click. If you want a smarter TV, the Yahoo Widget Engine will do the trick.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://solution.allthingsd.com

CES: Netflix on the Hunt

Nick Wingfield — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:01:04 +0000

Reed Hastings is prowling CES for deals. Already, in the past year, the CEO of DVD rental service Netflix Inc. has cut at least a half-dozen partnerships with consumer electronics makers to make a Netflix service that streams movies and television shows over the Internet watchable on television sets via game consoles, digital video recorders and other gadgets.

This week at CES, Netflix announced Korea’s LG Electronics will let viewers tune into the Netflix service through an upcoming line of HDTVs. A Netflix deal also announced this week with another television maker, Vizio, could be even more interesting because some of those sets will be able to get onto the Internet wirelessly, a technology that will make it much easier to get online than sets with only wired Internet connections.

“I think it will double or triple the percentage of people who have those devices and hook them up to the Internet,” Hastings said, over a cup of gelato at a café in the Venetian hotel.

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iPhone to South Korea: ?????

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:38:51 +0000

Since 2005, the South Korean government has required all cellphones sold in the country to support WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability), the country’s cellular middleware platform. And for Apple (AAPL), as well as other handset manufacturers like Nokia (NOK) and Sony Ericsson (ERIC), redesigning their devices to do so is a costly proposition. So costly, in fact, that they didn’t bother, leaving the country’s handset market to Samsung and LG, which now dominate it.

On April 1, 2009, that will all change. The Korea Communications Commission today agreed to lift the WIPI requirement, opening the South Korean market to the iPhone, BlackBerry and other devices to which it had been effectively closed. “Mobile-phone operators have been required to use the WIPI mobile platform on their handsets, but considering global industry trends toward the use of general-purpose mobile operating systems, we concluded that there was a need to allow carriers the freedom to decide whether to use WIPI or not,” Shin Yong-sub, the director of KCC’s policy bureau, told the Korea Times. “Consumers will also be able to choose from a wider variety of products and benefit from increased price competition from handset makers.”

Top among those products, the iPhone, which carriers K Telecom and KTF are both said to be interested in adding to their lineups.

iPhone to South Korea: ?????

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:38:51 +0000

Top among those products, the iPhone, which carriers K Telecom and KTF are both said to be interested in adding to their lineups.

iPhone to South Korea: ?????

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:38:51 +0000

Top among those products, the iPhone, which carriers K Telecom and KTF are both said to be interested in adding to their lineups.

Weighing Devices for Your Netflix Delivered via Web

Nick Wingfield — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:18:03 +0000

Netflix was a pioneer in the business of movie rentals — getting consumers to rent DVDs online and mailing them out in cheery red envelopes. Recently, it has put a lot of effort into a service that delivers movies digitally over the Internet to subscribers, preparing for a day when getting movies on a physical disc will become outmoded.

People today use the Netflix service on their computers, but Netflix (NFLX) has cut a series of deals with hardware partners to make the service available on TV sets through an array of devices.

Most of these devices were designed to do other things: a videogame console, high-definition Blu-ray disc players, a TiVo (TIVO) digital video recorder. So to see how well the service works on these devices, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks comparing the Netflix experience on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 game console, on LG Electronics’ BD300 Blu-ray disc player and on a set-top box from Roku called the Netflix Player. The last, as the name implies, is designed mainly for Netflix service.

The devices suffer from a relatively skimpy selection of videos on the Netflix Internet service. Netflix has more than 100,000 titles for rent on disc, but about 12,000 titles for viewing through its Internet service at the moment, and there’s often a months-long delay after a movie’s release before it shows up online. Television shows generally turn up more quickly, with a handful, like NBC’s “Heroes,” watchable the day after they air.

Still, I find the Netflix service very appealing, especially for catching up on episodes of TV series, such as “30 Rock,” that I missed when they aired. Unlike the iTunes Store and other sites that charge users $1.99 per TV episode and $3.99 to rent a movie online, the Netflix Internet service is free to subscribers to its DVD service on one of the company’s “unlimited” rental plans, which start at $8.99 a month.

Depending on how fast your Internet connection is, Netflix videos begin playing almost instantly, though you can’t keep permanent copies.

Connecting the devices to Netflix through my wired home network was easy in all three cases. I used a wireless home network — more common in homes than the wired variety — with the Roku device, the only one of three products that comes with built-in Wi-Fi (it worked well in this mode). People who want to use the Xbox 360 with a wireless network will have to spend $70 or so on an external Wi-Fi adapter. LG recommends people use only a wired home network to connect to Netflix from its player, including adapter kits that cost about $100 for transmitting data over home power lines.

All the devices require you to create a list of movies you want to watch from a computer, just like Netflix subscribers set up “queues” of DVDs to be delivered by mail. The Xbox 360 offered by far the most elegant-looking interface for browsing through videos in my Netflix queue, letting me glide through a long row of cover art representing the movies and TV shows I selected on my PC.

In contrast, the Netflix menu on the LG Blu-ray player and Roku device were more static, making it more awkward to navigate the expanse of titles. Netflix became available on the Xbox 360 in November as part of a more sweeping software upgrade, delivered over the Internet, that remade the graphical look of the system.

The quality of most of the videos on Netflix is, to my eyes, about DVD quality, though Netflix is adding some titles in high-definition to its Internet library. HD titles were available for viewing only through the Xbox 360 when I was testing the service. Roku and LG say they will make software updates available online this month that add HD support to their devices.

The Xbox 360 also has some annoying quirks when using it as a movie player — including a noisy fan I found distracting. The game controller that comes with the Xbox 360 is clunky for playing movies, so users will need to invest in an inexpensive additional remote-control design for media. The Roku and LG players, in contrast, were totally silent and had acceptable remote controls for watching Netflix videos.

I experienced the most serious glitches with the LG Blu-ray player, which occasionally dropped the video signal to my television set as I was watching a movie. LG says the loss of video signal could have been due to the connection I used to hook the player to my TV, though I’ve never had a problem with other devices using the same connection. The LG Blu-ray player also took the longest of all the devices to install software upgrades from the Internet.

While there are some differences in the Netflix experience on the Roku device, Xbox 360 and LG Blu-ray player, none of them is so great that they should trump other considerations — like a desire to play videogames or watch HD Blu-ray movies — in deciding which system is the best fit.

The LG Blu-ray player is available online for about $300. The cheapest Xbox 360 model is $199. (To get Netflix through the Xbox 360, users must be “gold” members to the $49.99-a-year Xbox Live game service.) But if what you’re after is primarily Netflix movies, and you’ve got room near your TV for another box, the $99.99 Roku product is the best value.

Walt Mossberg is on vacation.

Write to Nick Wingfield at nick.wingfield@wsj.com

Nokia Announces Symbianese Liberation Army

John Paczkowski — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:24:50 +0000

The mobile market is heating up to a roiling boil, isn’t it? This morning Nokia (NOK) said it plans to acquire the 52% of mobile software outfit Symbian that it does not already own in a cash deal valued at about $410 million. But rather than roll up the company’s operations into its own, it’s turning them over to the newly formed Symbian Foundation.

A not-for-profit venture, the Symbian Foundation–which includes Motorola (MOT), Samsung, Sony Ericsson (SNE) and LG Electronics (LGERF.PK)–will steward the Symbian OS as a royalty-free open mobile platform. And that’s a pretty big deal, because Symbian is by far the world’s leading smart-phone software platform. It controls a 60% share of the market with 200 million handsets running its software.

Strategically, the formation of the Symbian Foundation and the opening of the Symbian platform is an aggressive pre-emptive strike against Google (GOOG), its Open Handset Alliance and its open-source Android mobile platform. Perfectly timed too, since Android seems to be falling behind schedule. “It offers us an opportunity to innovate faster on a bigger, united, more widely accepted platform,” Kai Oistamo, head of Nokia’s devices business, told Reuters. “It also enables us to deliver new products, we believe, faster to the market. I’m convinced we will sell more products.”

Microsoft Does Not, Uh, Yahoo

John Paczkowski — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:00:05 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]