But that same bet has gotten HTC into trouble as well, most notably a high-profile lawsuit from Apple alleging that a number of HTC’s Android devices infringe patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

Liveblog

11:55 am: How many of you have an Android phone, asks Walt, directing his question to the audience. If you do, it’s likely to have been made by HTC. And with that, Walt welcomes Chou to the stage.

11:56 am: Walt notes that when he first encountered HTC it was an OEM. How did you get from there, he asks Chou, to where you are now, where your brand is actually on the phone?

Chou: It was a great journey for us. We started with a vision of mobile convergence and how smartphones would change people’s lives. That vision excited us, so we focused on innovations in technology and tried to deliver on that vision. Over the years, we began partnering with companies like Microsoft, Google. Then we shipped the world’s first Windows phone, the world’s first Android phone, and this week, we introduced the world’s first 4G phone, the Sprint (S) EVO. So we’ve been in this industry for a while. But we needed a brand identity. Without that, it was difficult to communicate our vision to the market.

11:59 am: Walt–Other than 4G, what’s innovative about the EVO?

Chou: It has a breakthrough display, it’s much bigger, it’s clearer. It has an eight-megapixel camera and a front-facing camera as well. It’s the first device in the U.S. that people can use to make a video call. It’s also a hotspot; you can use it to create a Wi-Fi network.

12:01 pm:: Walt likes the device’s kickstand. It turns it into a sort of mini-TV. He draws a comparison with the Dell (DELL) tablet we saw yesterday and notes that that device’s screen size is not much larger than the EVO’s.

12:02 pm: Walt–So this is an Android device. You’re still making Windows phones, but are you making more Android phones now?

Chou: We’re committed to both platforms. We want to design great products for both. Different people like different things, so what we try to do is get a good mix of technology and design. And Android and Windows cater to different users. Windows users tend to like Windows. They are loyalists. Windows has a lot of value.

Walt: What about Android?

Chou: Android provides a different Internet experience. It caters to people who are interested in things like social networking, he says.

12:05 pm: Walt wonders why, if HTC is committed to both platforms, it doesn’t differentiate its handset design. The company’s Windows phones look a lot like Android phones. There’s an HTC layer on them–HTC Sense.

Chou: Well, what we do is try to add value on top of Android and Windows. HTC Sense focuses on things like the social networking experience. Our philosophy is that we don’t force the customer to take what we offer; they have the freedom to personalize their devices.

Walt: So you can take HTC software off these phones?

Chou: Yes.

12:07 pm: Walt–Is there a consumer awareness of your brand? When customers buy a Nexus One, do they know it’s made by HTC?

Chou says they do. Since last year, the company has been working on brand positioning, and that has bolstered consumer awareness of its offerings.

12:08 pm: Chou offers an anecdote about meeting a guy at an airport and comparing HTC devices with him. “I think the HTC name is getting more awareness.”

12:09 pm: Walt–Do you think it’s confusing to customers that there are now three brands involved in a phone: The carrier, the manufacturer of the phone and then the operating system? Can you have too many brands on a device?

Chou: This is an ecosystem. We have a lot of stakeholders. We’re trying to minimize that a little bit, by putting some of those logos on the back.

12:12 pm: Walt–Talk a bit about this concept of a lower-tier of smartphone device.

Chou: Our vision is to bring the smartphone to the mass market…We believe the smartphone is improving people’s lives, so we’re trying to offer it to more consumers, but sometimes, smartphone prices are too high, even with carrier subsidies. And mass-market consumers sometimes perceive smartphones as overly complex devices, so we’re trying to bring prices down and simplify devices at the same time. We’re doing this with the HTC smart. This is a $150 phone [as opposed to the typical $400 smartphone].

Walt: Is HTC Smart an Android phone?

Chou: No. It uses Qualcomm (QCOM) BREW.

Walt: Does it have a different Web browser? Is it as good as WebKit?

Chou says it’s not–at least not yet. He says the device has been relatively well received though. He also notes that given the low price, it can be offered by carriers at very low prices.

12:17 pm: Walt–Is there fragmentation in Android? Some app developers tell me Android’s landscape is too cluttered. Is HTC Sense making this worse?

Chou: HTC Sense is not causing the problem here. We try not to fragment. All apps can run on HTC Sense. There’s no fragmentation, though there may be confusion there. The operating system itself may cause a bit of a problem. But it’s a small one…and it occurs more with older devices. We try to be careful to do good porting on our devices …

Questions & Answers

Q: What are you doing to improve battery life in these new devices? [Walt notes that the EVO's battery runs down "alarmingly fast"]

A: We understand that if your a heavy mobile user, the battery is a concern. The EVO’s battery is removable–not like the iPhone. [I think he's suggesting that users carry an extra one.] We are trying to innovate here. We’re aware of the problem. I hope someday this won’t be an issue.

Q: Any other phones in your pockets?

A: Chou chuckles.

Q: Can you talk about HTC’s plans to expand into other areas of electronics–tablets for example.

A: We’re very focused on smartphones today. We’re focusing our business on mobile operators. However, as an innovator, one of our defining characteristics is to create new technologies. So in our labs, we’re developing new devices like the HTC Shift [a tablet, I think].

Q: What’s your take on the Foxconn suicides?

A: I don’t know details about this. What I know is from the news. But this is a very well-equipped factory. There must be something there beyond manufacturing or salary issues, something cultural maybe. Times change, China changes and the value system may have also changed, and working long hours under very strict management may be very tough for some people. I’m not in a position to speak about this though, because we own a factory as well. We value our employees, we treat them well, we treat them as an asset. It’s really difficult for me to comment on Foxconn.

Q: Will you list your stock in the U.S.?

A: We’ve thought about it. But we need to think more about timing. These days, I’m spending most of my time thinking about products. Perhaps with some investment bank help, we can do that.

And that’s a wrap.

A note about our coverage: This liveblog is not an official transcript of the conversation that occurred onstage. Rather, it is a compilation of quotes, paraphrased statements and ad-lib observations written and posted to the Web as quickly as possible. It is not intended as a transcript and should not be interpreted as one.

In a research note to clients today, Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley says his checks this month and last suggest the BlackBerry is losing momentum at the country’s largest wireless carriers, mostly to handsets running Google’s (GOOG) Android OS.

“While BlackBerry remains a leading smartphone brand, our checks indicate potential sell-through share losses at AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile,” Walkley writes. “In fact, we believe the Bold 9700 continued to lose smartphone share at AT&T following a price increase last month to $199.”

There’s worse. “In addition, our checks indicated further share losses to Android products at T-Mobile and Verizon. At Verizon, our checks indicated slowing RIM sales, as sales managers continue to push Android products such as the HTC Incredible and Motorola Droid. At T-Mobile, our checks indicate weaker BlackBerry sales due to strong sales of Android products such as the HTC MyTouch and the Windows based HTC HD2.”

But RIM’s situation isn’t dire. RIM is one of the five largest mobile phone manufacturers in the world and it makes only smartphones. Still, these market trends are worth keeping an eye on, particularly the likely arrival of a new iPhone at AT&T (T) this summer and a handful of slick new Android smartphones at Verizon (VZ).

While the new Blackberry Bold 9650 and the Pearl 3G might fend off those devices in the enterprise market relatively easily, they’re likely to have a harder time of it in the consumer market.

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.

As of close of business Monday, Cisco (CSCO) owned all outstanding Tandberg shares. Price: $3.3 billion, a bit more than the $3.0 billion it first offered for the company.

A pricey, but savvy acquisition. Tandberg’s lower-end TelePresence systems and specialized software for managing teleconferences will do much to help Cisco dominate the $34 billion collaboration market, which is growing–and quickly too.

It’s worth noting that last year year, Gartner (IT) forecast that video telepresence could replace 2.1 million business travel flights a year by 2012, diverting $3.5 billion annually from the airline industry.

The service, which runs on TV set-top boxes containing Google software, allows users to find shows on the satellite-TV service as well as video from Web sites like Google’s YouTube, according to these people. It also lets users to personalize a lineup of shows, these people said.

With the test, Google moves deeper into a crowded field of companies, large and small, that have been trying for years to marry the Web and TV and their business models–from rivals Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) to the manufacturers of televisions and set-top boxes.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

If the ship date was to be April 3, why didn’t Jobs say so at the January event?

Obviously, it’s impossible to say. Though it’s certainly interesting that Jobs couldn’t offer a hard ship date for a major product that was just two months out.

Does this mean Apple (AAPL) may have run into a bit of an iPad manufacturing hiccup after all? I suppose it’s possible. Cannaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, who first reported alleged production issues with the iPad, certainly thinks so.

“In our previous note we discussed that the upcoming iPad launch may be somewhat limited as a manufacturing bottleneck has impacted production,” Misek wrote in a research note to clients this morning. “We also suggested that there is a possibility that the launch will be delayed by a month due to a limited number of units available.”

Updating his assessment, the analyst notes, “According to today’s announcement, iPad is delayed by a week in the U.S. and by a month for some international markets. We believe the delay was caused by an unspecified production problem at the iPad’s manufacturer as we indicated earlier this week.”

Or perhaps this is simply about Apple’s level of visibility into its supply chain. After all, you’d think if there really had been production issues with the device, we would have been looking at delays of far longer than just a few days.

Either way, it’s really not of consequence to the company in any material sense. At $218.50, Apple shares are up nearly four percent on news of the April ship date. Obviously, Wall Street doesn’t care whether the iPad is late or not. And in the end, does it really even matter?

UPDATE: John Gruber has some interesting thoughts on all this over at Daring Fireball.

Before Apple lobbed a patent infringement lawsuit at Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC yesterday, we were lucky to get its CEO, Peter Chou, to agree to appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June to talk about its work making smartphones for Google and others.

That interview with Chou (pictured above) obviously got a whole lot more interesting with the epic legal action by Apple (AAPL) alleging that HTC infringed some 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

Wrote Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski:

“The company is asking for a permanent injunction barring HTC from importing or selling infringing phones in the U.S., along with triple damages and maximum interest.

‘We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,’ Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release announcing the action. ‘We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.’”

HTC denied the allegations, not surprisingly, and was backed up in a statement of support by Google (GOOG). That is also not a surprise, since its Android operating system, which is in the HTC-made Nexus One phone, is mentioned prominently in the lawsuit.

Whatever happens, it all makes for what is likely to be a head-spinning technology rumble over the next months and underscores how important the burgeoning mobile arms race and the fight over innovation will be.

Until we get Chou in an onstage interview at D8 to talk about this and much more, here is a video of MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka talking about yesterday’s Apple action on the new Digits Live Show on WSJ.com:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100303/peter-chou-htc-at-d8/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100303/one-obvious-question-for-htc-ceo-peter-chou-at-d8-how-about-them-apple-patents/ http://allthingsd.com/20100303/one-obvious-question-for-htc-ceo-peter-chou-at-d8-how-about-them-apple-patents/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 13:15:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=24982

Before Apple lobbed a patent infringement lawsuit at Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC yesterday, we were lucky to get its CEO, Peter Chou, to agree to appear at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June to talk about its work making smartphones for Google and others.

That interview with Chou (pictured above) obviously got a whole lot more interesting with the epic legal action by Apple (AAPL) alleging that HTC infringed some 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware.

Wrote Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski:

“The company is asking for a permanent injunction barring HTC from importing or selling infringing phones in the U.S., along with triple damages and maximum interest.

‘We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,’ Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release announcing the action. ‘We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.’”

HTC denied the allegations, not surprisingly, and was backed up in a statement of support by Google (GOOG). That is also not a surprise, since its Android operating system, which is in the HTC-made Nexus One phone, is mentioned prominently in the lawsuit.

Whatever happens, it all makes for what is likely to be a head-spinning technology rumble over the next months and underscores how important the burgeoning mobile arms race and the fight over innovation will be.

Until we get Chou in an onstage interview at D8 to talk about this and much more, here is a video of MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka talking about yesterday’s Apple action on the new Digits Live Show on WSJ.com:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100303/one-obvious-question-for-htc-ceo-peter-chou-at-d8-how-about-them-apple-patents/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20100302/apple-sues-htc/ http://allthingsd.com/20100302/apple-sues-htc/#comments Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:30:32 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=35865

“We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design….We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them.”

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Jan. 9, 2007

Asked for his thoughts on iPhone rivals during a January 2009 earnings call, Apple COO Tim Cook said the company would not stand for having its intellectual property ripped off.

“We are watching the landscape,” Cook said. “We like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our IP, and if they do, we’re going to go after anybody that does….We think competition is good; it makes it us all better. But we’re ready to suit up and go against anyone.”

Well, looks like Apple (AAPL) is suiting up, and against a big opponent. This morning, the iPhone maker filed suit against HTC, a Taiwanese handset manufacturer that makes a number of Android smartphones, including the operating system’s marquee device, Google’s Nexus One (Read the suits in their entirety here.)

In a lawsuit filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission and U.S. District Court in Delaware, Apple alleges that HTC infringed some 20 patents related to the iPhone’s graphical user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The company is asking for a permanent injunction barring HTC from importing or selling infringing phones in the U.S., along with triple damages and maximum interest.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release announcing the action. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

HTC appears to have been totally blindsided by the suit. As of this writing, it hasn’t even been served.

“We only learned of Apple’s actions based on Apple’s press release,” the company said in a statement. “We have not been served any papers yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.”

It’s not yet clear whether Google (GOOG) is implicated here. But it certainly seems possible. After all, HTC manufactures a number of Android devices, and while Google insisted at the Nexus One launch that it didn’t design the device, the search giant clearly played a role in its development.

Of course, it could be that Apple is suing HTC because it can’t, for some reason, sue Google. More details to follow once I’ve read through the suits.

Further Reading:

• Apple Sues HTC [Complete Court Filings]
• Why HTC, Apple? And Why Now?
• Apple vs. Google: Game On

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100302/apple-sues-htc/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100107/are-you-ready-for-3d-in-your-living-room-hollywood-cant-wait/ http://allthingsd.com/20100107/are-you-ready-for-3d-in-your-living-room-hollywood-cant-wait/#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:30:09 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=14771 3-D was a big buzzword at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and it’s even bigger this year.

It’s hard to find a TV manufacturer that isn’t showing off sets promising to let you replicate the “Avatar” experience at home. And programmers are promising to produce entertainment you’ll want to see in three dimensions. Sony (SNE), in particular, is making a big bet here.

But even if you believe there’s an audience for this stuff, the 3-D advocates have one big problem in front of them: Lousy timing. American consumers are finishing the end of a major TV replacement cycle, which means it will be some time before they’re ready to plunk down big money again for new screens.

If you want a reality check on 3-D’s impact on consumer electronics and the entertainment industry, check out this brief interview I conducted with DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg yesterday (apologies for crypt lighting and distracted camerawork–you can at least hear him, though).

Katzenberg is definitely a believer–his studio just announced that all of its future releases will be available in 3-D–but even he thinks it will be “a ways down the line” before DreamWorks (DWA) sees a lift from the sale of 3-D DVDs.

Katzenberg, along with Disney’s (DIS) Bob Iger, can afford to wait a bit for the 3-D boom because both studios cater primarily to families who are still buying DVDs, even if those numbers are dipping.

The rest of Hollywood will be more impatient. The industry depends on home video for a large part of its revenue and an even bigger slice of its profits, and those sales have been dropping off dramatically.

The high-def Blu-ray format was supposed to spur consumers to buy more discs, but it took years for the industry to settle a costly format war, and Blu-ray is only now starting to get a little bit of traction. The studios can’t wait that long for 3-D to take off.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100107/are-you-ready-for-3d-in-your-living-room-hollywood-cant-wait/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091213/whats-google-doing-with-its-own-phone-take-a-look-at-this-chart/ http://allthingsd.com/20091213/whats-google-doing-with-its-own-phone-take-a-look-at-this-chart/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:01:40 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=13894 Google is going to sell its own phone, something it has never done before. And it’s going to ask customers to buy the phone without the help of a mobile carrier, something that Americans, at least, almost never do.

What are Eric Schmidt and company thinking? This might help explain things (click on image to enlarge):

The chart, by the way, comes from mobile ad company AdMob, which Google is buying for $750 million, assuming the Feds don’t stop the deal. And both the purchase and Google’s (GOOG) phone plans are aimed at the same thing: Playing catch-up in the market for smartphone ads.

That market barely exists now and it may take some time to really take off. But the fact that Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone already owns half of it (at least in the U.S.) has to be terrifying to Google.

Google’s 20 percent share, by the way, isn’t truly awful. Six months ago, that number was seven percent. And the share will presumably keep increasing as devices running Google’s Android mobile operating system, like Motorola’s (MOT) Droid, get more exposure.

But none of the Android devices that carriers and their manufacturing partners have produced so far have really wowed anyone yet. Google’s thinking, apparently, is that it can pull off that feat by creating a phone on its own (working with Taiwan’s HTC).

But even if Google’s device, which is supposedly going to be called the Nexus One (really?), does strike a chord with consumers, I don’t think Google is going to end up fully committed to the hardware business.

My bet is that the company hopes the Nexus One serves as a working template/kick in the pants for carriers and other manufacturers that want to come up with Android phones consumers clamor for–and help Google catch up to Apple.

[Photo: Purported Nexus One via Cory O'Brien]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091213/whats-google-doing-with-its-own-phone-take-a-look-at-this-chart/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091203/dell-polishes-off-polish-ops/ http://allthingsd.com/20091203/dell-polishes-off-polish-ops/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:07:34 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=30167 Dell is unloading another PC factory. The company is selling off its two-year-old computer manufacturing plant in Lodz, Poland, to Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer, for an undisclosed sum. The facility’s 1,600 employees will keep their jobs and continue to crank out Dell boxes under an outsourcing agreement written into the deal.

For Dell (DELL), which has closed its factories in Ireland and North Carolina this year, this move is one more step toward its goal of slashing $4 billion from its annual operating costs by early 2011. Said company spokesman David Frink: “[This] is part of our ongoing effort to become more efficient. The intent is to leverage the capabilities of (third-party manufacturers) so we can direct our resources to other areas of our supply chain so we can innovate and add value.”

PREVIOUSLY:

• There Once Was a Man Named Dell, Who Told 1,900 Workers “Go to Hell,” Redux
• There Once Was a Man Named Dell, Who Told 1,900 Workers “Go To Hell”…

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091203/dell-polishes-off-polish-ops/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091123/smartphone-price-cuts-ruining-long-term-price-potential/ http://allthingsd.com/20091123/smartphone-price-cuts-ruining-long-term-price-potential/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:32:50 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=29606 As we head into the holidays, smartphone prices are dropping to points that belie their advanced feature sets. While this is great news for consumers, it may well be problematic for smartphone manufacturers.

According to NPD Group’s latest Mobile Phone Track study, price cuts on devices like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and RIM’s (RIMM) Blackberry Curve inspired a three percent decline in the average price for all cellphones in the third quarter of 2009. The overall average purchase price for mobile phones in the U.S. for the period: $85. A year ago it was $88.

An interesting trend given the fast-advancing feature sets and presumably high development costs of the new state-of-the-art smartphones we’re carrying around these days. For while these lower prices mean more sales for smartphone manufacturers and more subscribers for their carrier partners in the short term, they may well be undermining the smartphone’s price potential in the long term. It’s hard not to see the $299.99 Palm (PALM) Pixi for $24.99 on Amazon (AMZN) or the $499.99 Droid Eris for $49.99 on Overstock (OSTK) as having some deflationary impact once those retailers are done with them.

“That impact will continue,” NPD analyst Ross Rubin told me. “The iPhone 3G at $99 has created a benchmark that competitors are responding to with handsets such as the Droid Eris and Palm. Even where a handset is competing closer to the $200 mark, carriers and retailers are using buy-one-get-one promotions (that help lock in family plans). And retailers are discounting even value-priced smartphones further to drive store traffic and accessory sales.”

Rubin’s conclusion: “We will soon reach the point where the handset is a minor expense consideration and the required monthly data fees become the limiting factor in smartphone adoption.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091123/smartphone-price-cuts-ruining-long-term-price-potential/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/20090708/sony-apparently-recovering-from-netbookaphobia/ http://allthingsd.com/20090708/sony-apparently-recovering-from-netbookaphobia/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:50:34 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20871

“If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That’s just a race to the bottom.”

– Mike Abary, senior vice president of Sony’s IT product division, February, 2008

If the netbook market is a race to the bottom, then Sony is bringing up the rear. Not a year after Sony execs disparaged netbooks as undeserving of its premium brand attention, the company announced its token entry into the market: the Vaio W.

Outfitted with a 10-inch screen, an Intel (INTC) Atom processor, 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard disk drive and Windows XP, the machine prices out at $630 in Japan, $499 in the U.S. That’s quite a bit more expensive than rival netbooks. Which is odd since the market for these machines is fairly price-sensitive. Still, Sony (SNE) feels the W is good value for the money, given its design, cheery color palette (white, brown, pink!) and screen resolution–at 1366 by 768 pixels, the W’s display is clearly better than that of its rivals.

Said Vaio chief Nicolas Barendson, “We believe that this screen resolution and design offers our customers a better experience, and that it will be popular with both newcomers to the netbook market looking for a quality portable PC at a netbook price point, and customers wanting to improve their existing netbook experience to date by upgrading their screens.”

Sony’s announcement leaves Apple (AAPL) as the lone major computer manufacturer without a netbook offering, a designation it’s likely to keep for the foreseeable future, according to company execs. “When I look at netbooks, I see cramped keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens,” COO Tim Cook said back in April, noting that it’s “a stretch” to call a netbook a personal computer. “It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on…it’s not a space as it exists today that we are interested in, nor do we believe that customers in the long term would be interested in. It’s a segment we would choose not to play in.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090708/sony-apparently-recovering-from-netbookaphobia/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090701/an-hour-and-14-minutes-on-applecom-wow-try-spending-that-on-dell%e2%80%99s-web-site-without-falling-asleep/ http://allthingsd.com/20090701/an-hour-and-14-minutes-on-applecom-wow-try-spending-that-on-dell%e2%80%99s-web-site-without-falling-asleep/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:20:48 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=20541 Here’s an interesting metric: Apple’s Web site last month drew more than 55.7 million unique visitors, more than the site of any other computer hardware manufacturer, according to a report released this week by Nielsen Online. The number of Apple (AAPL) visitors was more than double that of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which drew 21.9 million people, and triple Dell’s (DELL), which drew 16.8 million. May visitors to Apple’s Web site spent an average of an hour and 14 minutes on it.

Not much of a surprise here, I suppose, given the level of anticipation that typically accompanies the release of a new iPhone. Nielsen says “anticipatory buzz” for the iPhone 3GS was near-deafening. “The new iPhone 3G S sent blog mentions up 1,226 percent week-over-week on June 8, the day of the announcement. After the initial announcement, buzz dipped but again picked up after the phone became available to consumers on June 19, with blog mentions more than doubling compared to the week prior.” The chart, below (click to enlarge):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090701/an-hour-and-14-minutes-on-applecom-wow-try-spending-that-on-dell%e2%80%99s-web-site-without-falling-asleep/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20090522/ces-to-give-apple-25000-sq-ft-of-free-advertising/ http://allthingsd.com/20090522/ces-to-give-apple-25000-sq-ft-of-free-advertising/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 11:55:44 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=18124 If Macworld isn’t on its last legs after Apple’s withdrawal from the event, the Consumer Electronics Association is clearly hoping the annual Apple-only convention soon will be. CEA, which hosts the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas every January, said Thursday that it is expanding the amount of show floor space dedicated to Apple. Once just a paltry 4,000 square feet, the iLounge Pavilion now maxes out at 25,000 square feet. Once populated with iPod, iPhone, and Mac applications and accessories, the Pavilion will this year feature a section for iPhone apps.

Such a drastic expansion of Apple-related show floor space will no doubt inspire speculation that the Mac maker plans to put in an appearance at CES. But that seems unlikely given the company’s reasons for bowing out of Macworld. “Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers,” the company said at the time. “The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.”

In any event, this is unfortunate news for Macworld and IDG, the publishing company that runs it. Without Steve Jobs or even Apple (AAPL) to help it upstage CES as Macworld has done in some years past, the event has far less to offer attendees and presenters than before. Certainly, no one is going to be decamping from Vegas in the middle of CES this year to hit Macworld. There’s no reason to. And with CES ramping up its efforts to woo Apple accessory manufacturers and retailers, well, things aren’t looking too good for Macworld, are they?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Apple Investors: “Philnote” Just Doesn’t Have the Same Ring to It
• Oh My God, They Killed Macworld! You Bastards!
• Macworld Without Steve? That’s Like “Baywatch” Without Hasselhoff

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