As the TV business continues to suffer from thin margins due to stiff competition, LG Electronics is betting on its mobile business to drive earnings growth in the coming quarters. The company plans to take a more aggressive approach this year on marketing spending and expand the number of its retail stores in emerging markets, as it seeks a stronger global presence in smartphones. Analysts say it will take a couple of years for the company to see any meaningful profit from its next-generation TV models using organic light-emitting-diode displays.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Executive Vice President Kim Ki-wan said in a recent interview the company plans to increase the number of overseas retail stores this year from more than 3,000 currently and open new stores in India, the Middle East and Africa. The number of LG brand shops will likely grow by as much as 20 percent this year, the company said, and they will display and sell the South Korean company’s products ranging from smartphones to televisions to home appliances.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Several major Asia-based smartphone manufacturers are talking up their growth plans. South Korea’s LG Electronics says its smartphone shipments will jump 50% in year-on-year in 2013. China’s expects to post a 50% increase in shipments too. Huawei Technologies says it will ship 60 million smartphones this year, up 88% from 32 million in 2012.

The global market is certainly expanding quickly, but not that fast. Between 2010 and 2011, total global shipments increased 64%, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. In 2012, the pace of shipment growth slowed to 43% year-on-year. In 2013, growth is expected to slow down further to 36%, Strategy Analytics says.

With the overall market growing at a slower pace than what individual manufacturers are forecasting, something’s got to give.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

I just got off the phone with Bill Veghte, executive VP for software and solutions at HP, and Dr. Skott Ahn, president and CEO of LG Electronics’ mobile operations.

Veghte told me that the acquisition grew out of a series of discussions that HP and LG held around a potential partnership. It wasn’t long before LG simply offered to acquire webOS outright. The deal, Veghte said, will include the source code, documentation, a license to all the associated patents (HP won’t be letting those go) and the remaining user experience team. People associated with the cloud services infrastructure that had been part of the webOS operations will stay with HP. Veghte wouldn’t comment on exactly how many people will be moving from HP to LG. Financial terms aren’t being disclosed.

Ahn told me that webOS will become a “core technology of LG,” and that “we would like to incorporate it first into our Smart TV platform, and then in the future in other devices.”

What other devices? Probably not phones and tablets. LG is pretty firmly in the Android camp there. But there are other appliances that might benefit from webOS, Ahn said, like refrigerators and other appliances and also smart signage.

So there you have it: webOS will appear first in TVs, and then perhaps later in other household appliances from LG.

LG has a technology called Smart ThinQ that it embeds in some models of refrigerators, laundry machines and kitchen ranges. I found a video from CES demonstrating what Smart ThinQ is like now. So maybe down the road you’ll see the legacy of webOS there.

Update: The official press release just moved. Here it is:

LG Electronics Acquires webOS from HP to Enhance Smart TV

LG to License HP IP, Integrate webOS Technology into Next-Generation Devices

SEOUL, Korea, and PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 25, 2013 – LG Electronics Inc. has acquired the webOS operating system technology from HP, the companies announced today.

To support its next-generation Smart TV technology, LG has entered into a definitive agreement with HP to acquire the source code, associated documentation, engineering talent and related websites associated with webOS. As part of the transaction, LG also will receive licenses under HP’s intellectual property (IP) for use with its webOS products, including patents acquired from Palm covering fundamental operating system and user interface technologies now in broad use across the industry.

Today’s announcement paves the way for continued innovation on the webOS platform and on LG’s roadmap of innovative solutions for many years to come, while allowing HP to focus its resources on strategic business opportunities such as cloud computing.

“This groundbreaking development demonstrates LG’s commitment to investing in talent and research in Silicon Valley, one of the world’s innovation hotbeds. It creates a new path for LG to offer an intuitive user experience and Internet services across a range of consumer electronics devices,” said Skott Ahn, president and chief technology officer, LG Electronics Inc. “The open and transparent webOS technology offers a compelling user experience that, when combined with our own technology, will pave the way for future innovations using the latest Web technologies.”

Ahn explained that LG Electronics’ investment in webOS technology and its acquisition of the innovation team’s R&D capabilities are expected to extend LG’s leadership in bringing Internet services directly to consumer electronics devices. “Integrated with LG, this team will be the heart and soul of the new LG Silicon Valley Lab, focused on bringing innovative technology solutions to market through the most popular platforms for sharing and consuming content and experiences,” he said. With the transaction, LG will add the Sunnyvale and San Francisco sites to its global R&D locations, in addition to its existing U.S. sites in San Jose and Chicago.

Also under the agreement:

LG will assume stewardship of the open source projects of Open WebOS and Enyo. HP will retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.

HP will continue to support Palm users.

“WebOS and its associated community deliver market leading platforms for the next generation of connected devices. We are constantly looking for opportunities to accelerate the delivery of this platform from the community,” said Bill Veghte, HP’s chief operating officer. “LG’s track record of innovation and broad distribution provides this opportunity, while enabling HP to accelerate our Cloud efforts. In particular, with the cloud assets that will remain with HP, we will focus on delivering innovative solutions that will enable our enterprise customers to mobilize their workforce.”

HP and LG do not expect this transaction to have a material impact on either company’s financial statements. Terms were not disclosed.

IBM said today that it was granted 6,478 patents in 2012, which is also a record. The company has about 8,000 researchers and inventors working in 46 states in the U.S. and 35 countries around the world. The full tally of patents over 20 years amounts to nearly 67,000.

The next nine companies in the Top 10 list of patent recipients are:

• Samsung, which received 5,081 patents
• Canon: 3,174
• Sony: 3,032
• Panasonic: 2,769
• Microsoft: 2,613
• Toshiba: 2,447
• Hon Hai : 2,013
• General Electric: 1,652
• LG Electronics: 1,624

So what does IBM do that other companies don’t? I had a quick conversation with Katherine Frase, IBM’s VP for Industry Solutions and Emerging Business. “The process of getting to so many patents means that inside the company there’s a mindset that’s geared toward writing down what you do when do something that’s original and that has business value. There’s a tangible focus on writing things down. And you’ll write down five to 10 times the number of things that actually pass muster toward getting a patent. But that process keeps the notion of innovation at the front of your mind, not at the back of the mind,” she says. “It shows up in patents, and that’s an indicator, but the cultural assumption that innovation isn’t an accident but is made up of lots of little things that you remembered to capture along the way is more important than the patents themselves.”

So, what sorts of things did IBM receive patents for in 2012? Here’s a sampling:

U.S. Patent #8,275,803: System and method for providing answers to questions. Remember Watson? The talking supercomputer that cleaned humanity’s clock on the TV game show “Jeopardy,” and then followed it up by going to medical school and becoming a big-shot doctor working on treating cancer? This would be the patent on how Watson takes in questions expressed in natural language and returns an answer.

U.S. Patent #8,250,010: Electronic learning synapse with spike-timing dependent plasticity using unipolar memory-switching elements. If Watson weren’t enough for you at mimicking and improving upon humanity, IBM is working on something even more complex: Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, or SyNAPSE. It’s a project focused on cognitive computing aimed at emulating the workings of the human brain.

U.S. Patent #8,185,480: System and method for optimizing pattern recognition of non-Gaussian parameters. I don’t have the slightest idea what a non-Gaussian parameter is, so I’m not going to even try to explain this one, beyond saying that it has to do with recognizing patterns in data as the volume of information grows. One example IBM gives is traffic data: If you’re measuring traffic patterns, every day you get more data, and thus the patterns change and evolve, or existing ones become more pronounced and predictable.

There are 6,475 more or these patents from 2012 and, no, I won’t even try to list any more. Here’s a short video that IBM produced on the subject:

The European Commission said LG Electronics Inc. along with Philips and Samsung participated in both cartels, while Panasonic, Toshiba Corp., MTP — a Panasonic subsidiary — and Technicolor, formerly Thomson, participated in the cartel for television tubes.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The company also warned that its operating profit will likely narrow in the third quarter compared with the second due to slowing sales of home appliances and air-conditioners, as demand for such goods usually peaks in the second quarter. It said higher marketing expenses to promote its new TVs and smartphones could also weigh.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110303/new-ipad-could-help-hinder-asian-players/ http://allthingsd.com/20110303/new-ipad-could-help-hinder-asian-players/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 18:02:26 +0000 Yun-Hee Kim http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=37211 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110303/new-ipad-could-help-hinder-asian-players/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110107/tvs-make-play-for-web-games/ http://allthingsd.com/20110107/tvs-make-play-for-web-games/#comments Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:47:08 +0000 Daisuke Wakabayashi http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=34963 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110107/tvs-make-play-for-web-games/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101219/google-tv-going-mia-at-ces/ http://allthingsd.com/20101219/google-tv-going-mia-at-ces/#comments Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:02:53 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=27224 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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101219/google-tv-going-mia-at-ces/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100917/lg-electronics-ceo-takes-the-fall-for-falling-behind/ http://allthingsd.com/20100917/lg-electronics-ceo-takes-the-fall-for-falling-behind/#comments Fri, 17 Sep 2010 09:34:01 +0000 Voices http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=29887 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100917/lg-electronics-ceo-takes-the-fall-for-falling-behind/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100901/sony-ericsson-says-china-is-embracing-smartphones/ http://allthingsd.com/20100901/sony-ericsson-says-china-is-embracing-smartphones/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:42 +0000 Loretta Chao http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=29094 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100901/sony-ericsson-says-china-is-embracing-smartphones/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100825/amazon-loses-e-book-deal/ http://allthingsd.com/20100825/amazon-loses-e-book-deal/#comments Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:09:53 +0000 Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=28747 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100825/amazon-loses-e-book-deal/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100709/ntp-sues-apple-google-microsoft-and-others-over-wireless-e-mail/ http://allthingsd.com/20100709/ntp-sues-apple-google-microsoft-and-others-over-wireless-e-mail/#comments Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:45:57 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=44441 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]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100709/ntp-sues-apple-google-microsoft-and-others-over-wireless-e-mail/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100506/samsung-no-1-among-u-s-mobile-phone-makers-apple-no-6/ http://allthingsd.com/20100506/samsung-no-1-among-u-s-mobile-phone-makers-apple-no-6/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 22:00:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=39972 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.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100506/samsung-no-1-among-u-s-mobile-phone-makers-apple-no-6/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100302/two-laptops-take-images-to-another-dimension/ http://allthingsd.com/20100302/two-laptops-take-images-to-another-dimension/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:37:58 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/?p=1090 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.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100302/two-laptops-take-images-to-another-dimension/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091103/blu-ray-player-makers-embrace-online-movie-delivery/ http://allthingsd.com/20091103/blu-ray-player-makers-embrace-online-movie-delivery/#comments Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:00:37 +0000 Miguel Bustillo and Bobby White http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=17340 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091103/blu-ray-player-makers-embrace-online-movie-delivery/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090923/iphone-headed-to-south-korea-in-november/ http://allthingsd.com/20090923/iphone-headed-to-south-korea-in-november/#comments Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:30:13 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=25313 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.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090923/iphone-headed-to-south-korea-in-november/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090812/apple-to-offer-899-tablet-with-oled-screen/ http://allthingsd.com/20090812/apple-to-offer-899-tablet-with-oled-screen/#comments Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:11:06 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=14327 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.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090812/apple-to-offer-899-tablet-with-oled-screen/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090324/yahoo-widgets-lend-brains-to-boob-tube/ http://allthingsd.com/20090324/yahoo-widgets-lend-brains-to-boob-tube/#comments Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:30:03 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20090324/yahoo-widgets-lend-brains-to-boob-tube/ 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.

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

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090324/yahoo-widgets-lend-brains-to-boob-tube/feed/ 0