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A Look Back at IBM's Palmisano Era and the China Strategy

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:33:14 +0000

Saturday was Sam Palmisano’s last day on the job as CEO of IBM, and Sunday was Ginny Rometty’s first.

The New York Times published something of an exit interview with Palmisano over the weekend. It read a bit like a victory lap, and that’s not undeserved. The record books will show that IBM shares during the Palmisano era (2003-2011) rose by 125 percent; sales grew from $81 billion in 2002 to an expected $107 billion; and annual profits on a per-share basis went from $3.07 to a consensus forecast of $13.38.

But it got me to thinking about one of the highlights of the Palmisano era; one that generated a great deal of attention at the time: IBM’s decision to sell its personal computer division to Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker. It was a relatively small deal, worth less than $2 billion at the time, but it was a controversial move. Despite the fact that IBM wasn’t making much money on the business, IBM PCs, especially its ThinkPad line of notebooks, were generally considered to be pretty good.

Nearly seven years later, it’s worth noting that Lenovo is now the world’s second-largest PC vendor, behind Hewlett-Packard, having vaulted past Dell earlier this year, according to the market research firm IDC. It’s also worth noting that Lenovo is in fifth place in the U.S., behind HP, Dell, Apple and Toshiba, in that order.

IBM initially owned 15 percent of Lenovo and maintained a stake in that company until February of this year, when it sold its remaining 4.3 percent shares at a profit of more than a quarter-billion dollars.

Lenovo’s biggest shareholder is Legend Holdings, of which 36 percent is owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a.k.a. CAS Holdings, a state-controlled entity. The state has pared back its stake, though: When the IBM-Lenovo deal was announced in 2005, Lenovo was 57 percent state-owned.

There was a lot of natural controversy, and even national security concerns in 2005, about selling so red-blooded an American product as the IBM PC to China. But there was also a solid business case to consider. The PC business was a drag on earnings because of downward price pressure exerted by Dell and all the others, and it wasn’t even leading the market, as was the case with Hewlett-Packard, which engaged in some very public contemplation about spinning off its own PC division.

But there was also a potential strategic benefit, which Michael Useem, a professor a the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management, pointed out at the time: Making friends with China.

By selling an underperforming asset to a buyer willing to take it and run with it, IBM got solid access to the exploding Chinese market. In paraphrased remarks to the Times, Palmisano concedes the point:

Palmisano says he deflected overtures from Dell and private equity firms, preferring the sale to a company in China for strategic reasons: the Chinese government wants its corporations to expand globally, and by aiding that national goal, IBM enhanced its stature in the lucrative Chinese market, where the government still steers business.

So how has that worked out? It’s a little hard to tell from reading Big Blue’s Byzantine financial statements. In fiscal 2005, the year the deal closed, IBM reported $18.6 billion, or about 20 percent of revenue, came from the Asia-Pacific region, including China.

And though it declined to provide specific dollar amounts, it said that year that sales in China had dropped by 19 percent, but after after stripping out the PC division, would have grown by 8 percent.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2011, IBM reported that the Asia-Pacific region accounted for exactly the same dollar figure — $18.6 billion — amounting to 24 percent of its overall sales of $77.4 billion, and there’s still a quarter to go. That would put Asia on track to account for a little less than a quarter of IBM’s revenue.

In its earnings statement, IBM also makes a point of calling attention to what it calls “growth markets,” which are generally the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China. These markets combined for 23 percent of sales in IBM’s most recent quarter.

This is about as close to understanding the size of IBM’s business in China as we’re going to get. On balance, it looks to have been a positive move, especially when you consider that if IBM had kept its PC division, it would have likely only gotten smaller and become more of a profit drag on a company that’s increasingly focused on high-margin businesses like services and consulting.

Nor can we judge by IBM’s headcount. Globally, as of the publication of its last annual report, IBM employed 426,751 people. But it has stopped providing a geographical breakdown. A report in the Times of India in 2010, mentioned by The Wall Street Journal, suggested that Big Blue’s headcount in India might be as high as 130,000; which, if true, would make it one of that country’s top 10 employers.

There is no question that IBM’s presence in China has grown. You can tell by the press releases. There was for example, a new IBM Research lab in Shanghai in 2008, and another in 2010. Just last month, IBM announced that it had closed a significant IT deal for a major health-care provider in Hong Kong, and another with a Chinese province to improve the safety of pork (which included a food-safety video I embedded below).

For better or worse, Palmisano will be remembered as the man who traded PCs for access to China. On balance, it seems to have been a good trade, but the jury is still out.

Tomorrow is the first business day of IBM’s Rometty era. Assuming she retires at age 60, a well-established IBM tradition, she’ll have about six years to make her mark. One wonders what she’ll be remembered for most.

Ultrabooks Bring Speed and Light to Windows

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 02:03:14 +0000

Rejoice, Windows users!

If you envy Apple’s sleek, speedy MacBook Air laptop, and yearn for something like it that comes with the Microsoft Windows operating system, your wish has been granted. It’s a new type of Windows laptop called Ultrabook. A handful already are available, and more are likely to arrive in the new year.

[ See post to watch video ]

The Ultrabook concept, which is being driven by giant chipmaker Intel, is governed by a set of specs covering everything from thinness to battery life to start-up times. But it is basically an effort to emulate the MacBook Air, which has been a hot product in a challenging market despite selling for double what some bulkier, but capable, Windows laptops fetch. (Apple doesn’t disclose sales of specific Mac models.)

Ironically, the MacBook Air, which came out in 2008 and now starts at $999, uses the same Intel processors Ultrabooks do, and can, if its owner wishes, run Windows capably along with the Mac operating system. But it now will have much more competition.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, with a sturdy aluminum body, has a superb keyboard and roomy touch pad.

I’ve been testing a couple of the new Ultrabooks, from Lenovo and Toshiba, to get a feel for the category, and I’m a fan. I love the idea of a machine that combines low weight with good speed and battery life, yet doesn’t compromise on keyboard and screen size.

I found some drawbacks to both machines, and to Ultrabooks in general. For instance, like the Apple, they lack internal DVD drives and removable batteries, things that will bother some folks. And, at least for now, the Ultrabooks mostly tend to cluster at around $1,000, which rules them out for shoppers on a tight budget. But, overall, I think the advent of the Ultrabook is a good thing for consumers.

In general, I preferred the Lenovo, but the Toshiba has some advantages as well, and you won’t go wrong with either. In my tests, neither did as well as the Apple in such measures as battery life or start times. But both cost less than the comparable Apple model.

Toshiba’s Portege Z835 is lighter and has more ports, including an Ethernet port, than the comparable Lenovo IdeaPad or MacBook Air.

The idea behind the Ultrabook is to make a light, thin laptop that has a full-size screen and keyboard—unlike a cramped netbook—yet also gets strong battery life, starts up and resumes quickly, and is powerful enough to handle a wide variety of common consumer tasks. It is meant to be good enough to be your main computer, but it isn’t aimed at those who need extra horsepower for things like hard-core gaming.

To be clear, there have been thin and light Windows laptops for many years, but these machines have typically been so expensive that few people could buy them, and they often had poor battery life and other serious compromises.

I tested the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830, and also compared them with the latest, comparable MacBook Air. Both have 13-inch screens, are made of metal, weigh under three pounds, and use a solid-state drive—storage chips—instead of a hard disk. This improves speed, reliability and battery life, but limits storage capacity.

The Lenovo starts at $1,095 with a 128 gigabyte drive, 4 GB of memory, and Intel’s mid-range i5 processor. The Toshiba starts at around $900 for a model with the same specs except for the processor, which is a less powerful chip called an i3. However, both Toshiba and Best Buy have recently put this machine on sale, and I found it on Best Buy’s website for $700.

By contrast, the 13-inch MacBook Air with the same amount of solid-state storage and memory, and the i5 processor, costs $1,299.

Beyond their price and processor differences, I found each machine had its strengths and weaknesses.

The Toshiba weighs just 2.47 pounds, versus 2.91 for the Lenovo and 2.96 for the Apple. It also boasts the most ports, including three USB ports versus two for the others and an Ethernet port the others lack. But I found its magnesium body felt more fragile than the other two, which are aluminum and sturdier.

I also disliked the fact that on Toshiba’s keyboard, using the keys for common things like brightness and muting required you to hold down a second function key. And the Toshiba came in last among the three in my tests of battery life, cold start-up time and reboot time. Plus, Toshiba has pre-loaded an annoying Best Buy promotional app that pops up at launch.

The Lenovo feels sturdy and has a keyboard I found superb, and a roomy touch pad. Unlike the other two, it isn’t tapered at the edges, and my test unit sported an orange color, though it also comes in gray. Also, like the Apple, but unlike the Toshiba, Lenovo offers a roomier, 256 GB solid-state drive for extra money.

However, the Lenovo froze once during my tests; the others didn’t. And, unlike the others, it lacks a slot for memory cards.

Both Ultrabooks did fine at all the common tasks I threw at them. But their screen resolution is less than the Mac’s, meaning less material can be seen without scrolling. The Mac also felt sturdier to me than even the Lenovo.

Both Ultrabooks claim battery life of up to eight hours or so. In my battery tests, where I turn off all power-saving features, crank the screen brightness up all the way, leave the Wi-Fi on, and play a continuous loop of music, they fell well short of that. The Toshiba lasted 4 hours and 36 minutes and the Lenovo 4 hours and 50 minutes.

Still, these are respectable numbers in my harsh tests, and suggest to me that in more normal use with power-saving on, you could get six hours or so easily on these machines. However, the MacBook Air did much better, lasting 5 hours and 51 minutes on the same test—suggesting users would likely achieve Apple’s claimed seven hours of battery life in more normal use.

The two Ultrabooks booted up and rebooted much faster than most Windows laptops I’ve tested in the past, reaching a ready-to-use state, with Wi-Fi fully connected, in about 30 seconds when booting from scratch and under a minute on a reboot. They recovered from sleep in under 10 seconds. But the Mac beat them handily on all three measures.

For Windows shoppers who can afford to spend a little more this season, I believe Ultrabooks are a great choice.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at walt.mossberg@wsj.com.

A New Milestone for the Mac: 5 Percent of the Global PC Market

John Paczkowski — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:17:23 +0000

Apple has finally made it past the PC market’s “magic 5 percent mark.”

Buoyed by increasing sales in enterprise and explosive growth in the Asia Pacific, the company’s share of the global PC market passed the 5 percent mark last quarter, for the first time in 15 years, according to analyst Charlie Wolf of Needham & Co.

Mac shipments grew 24.6 percent in the September quarter, a period during which the broader PC market grew just 5.3 percent. It was the 22nd consecutive quarter that the growth of Mac shipments has outpaced the market. And beyond this, shipments for the past year represented 20 percent of the growth in worldwide PC shipments.

The Mac’s got serious momentum.

In the business market, its growth was a staggering 43.8 percent, more than nine times greater than the 4.8 percent growth posted by the rest of the business market.

And in the home market? There, the Mac saw 25.6 percent growth, compared to overall growth of only 4.0 percent.

Interesting, because in the home market, the iPad was expected to cannibalize at least some Mac sales. In fact, during Apple’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Tim Cook conceded that point. But evidently that cannibalization is minor at most, and far worse for Apple’s rivals. As Wolf observes, Mac sales in the home market have continued to increase, while sales of Windows notebook PCs have slowed.

“The iPad is undoubtedly cannibalizing some Mac sales,” Wolf writes. “But it appears to be cannibalizing PC sales a lot more. In our view, this underscores the power of the halo effect in overwhelming the impact of any cannibalization the Mac might have experienced following the launch of the iPad.”

Which is essentially what Tim Cook said, back in July.

“Some customers chose to purchase an iPad instead of a Mac, but even more decided to buy an iPad over a Windows PC,” he remarked at the time. “There are a lot more Windows PCs to cannibalize than Macs.”

HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang Talks Android, Smartphones and More: The Full AsiaD Interview (Video)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:10:11 +0000

We are now posting the full videos from the recent AsiaD conference, which took place in Hong Kong in October.

Over the next week or so, we’re going to follow the schedule of the actual event. Up now: HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang.

When Cher Wang co-founded the Taiwan-based company in the late 1990s, it made notebook computers. Now, HTC is all about smartphones and tablets — two of the fastest-growing consumer electronic segments in the world — in a close relationship with Google’s Android unit.

But HTC has also been considering using its own mobile operating system, and faces challenges from a myriad of competitors.

Here’s Wang, in an onstage interview with Walt Mossberg, talking about all this and more:

[ See post to watch video ]

HP's TouchPad: The Tablet That Refused to Die

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:45:16 +0000

Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad is back for sale at Best Buy.

Unceremoniously killed under HP’s prior CEO on Aug. 18 after disappointing sales, the device quickly found a market after retailers and HP itself slashed the prices on remaining stock.

This time, according to a Best Buy press release, a 32 gigabyte TouchPad is going for $149, with the purchase of an HP- or Compaq-branded notebook or desktop PC. Sold separately, the price jumps to $599.99.

HP, for its part, has sold out of its internal stock of the device, according to a statement on the company’s Web site. TouchPads can, however, still be found on Amazon and on eBay.

By bundling the TouchPad with PCs at its biggest retail partner, HP is giving itself an arguable edge against Acer, Dell and Toshiba in what is sure to be a cutthroat holiday season for PC and tablet sales. After about a month on the market, and before the product wound up on the chopping block, Best Buy sold less than 10 percent of the 270,000 TouchPads it had in inventory.

It’s hard to know how long the deal can last. Sources familiar with HP’s build plans say the initial TouchPad order was for between 1.8 million and two million units, though a third source disputed that number without elaborating. Regardless of the number ordered, sources familiar with the deal say that HP’s decision to kill the product had no immediate effect on the build plans, as components had already been purchased and manufacturing was under way. A source familiar with the matter says the manufacturer is Taiwan-based Inventec, not Compal, as has been previously reported. HP was contractually obligated to take delivery on the remaining units in the pipeline.

That means the TouchPad is now officially a loss leader. As an IHS iSuppli teardown analysis in August showed, HP’s cost to build a 32GB TouchPad is $328.65. At $149.99, HP takes a paper loss of more than $178 per unit.

HP isn’t exactly crying over the lost money. Remember that as part of the hot mess of news it announced on Aug. 18, the company included plans for a $1 billion charge to account for costs related to shutting down the TouchPad and webOS hardware business.

Whatever happens, this is probably the last hurrah for the TouchPad — for real this time. That is, unless no one takes advantage of the offer to buy one along with a PC. Any stock left over after the holiday season rush will probably wind up in Best Buy’s equivalent of the bargain bin.

Apple: King of All Mobile PCs

John Paczkowski — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:31:52 +0000

If the iPad truly is a PC and not the “media tablet” that some claim, then Apple is the largest mobile PC vendor in the world.

According to DisplaySearch, Apple shipped 10.2 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2010–iPads, MacBooks and MacBook Pros–to claim a 17.2 percent share of the mobile PC market. That makes it the new global leader, a title it wrests from Hewlett-Packard, which shipped 9.3 million units during the same period for a 15.6 share and a second-place ranking. Acer ranked third, with 14 percent of the market and 8.4 million units shipped. Dell ranked fourth, with 5.9 million units shipped and a 9.9 percent market share.

An interesting rebalancing of market power and one that DisplaySearch believes is the result not just of first-mover advantage from the iPad, but notebook shipment growth that exceeds the industry average. Said Richard Shim, senior analyst at DisplaySearch, “Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

Counting Tablets, Apple Is Third in Global PC Sales

John Paczkowski — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 16:44:47 +0000

Apple is now the third-largest PC maker in the world, according to research firm Canalys, which has decided to include tablets like the iPad in its definition of a PC. Cupertino shipped 11.5 million Macs and iPads in the fourth quarter of 2010, vaulting it into third place in global shipments, ahead of Dell and Lenovo and behind Acer and HP. While the industry’s PC sales grew 19.2 percent from the same period in 2009, Apple’s PC sales grew a jaw-dropping 241 percent. The catalyst for that growth: The iPad.

“Each new product category typically causes a significant shift in market shares,” said Canalys senior analyst Daryl Chiam. “Apple is benefiting from pads, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus previously did with netbooks. The PC industry has always evolved this way, starting when Toshiba and Compaq rode high on the original notebook wave.”

And to those who contend that the iPad and similar devices shouldn’t be tallied in the same category as laptops and desktops?
“Any argument that a pad is not a PC is simply out of sync,” said Chiam.

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

Memory Chips Are About to Get Cheaper

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 16:28:00 +0000

Market research firm iSuppli says it expects a “huge drop” in the selling price of computer memory chips this year. After a run-up of more than 77 percent in price for DRAM chips during 2010, it expects a drop of nearly 12 percent this year.

DRAM is the ultimate commodity chip market, and its boom-or-bust cycles are legendary. When demand picks up, manufacturers like Samsung, Hynix and Micron always rush to add manufacturing capacity–prices pick up; chips become scarce.

Everything seemed to be going well for the chip companies until the third quarter of 2010. After five straight quarters where the average price for a DRAM chip increased, it suddenly turned south as demand for notebook PCs slacked. That’s in line with what Gartner and IDC reported yesterday about the PC market.

There’s good news for consumers, however. All that stacked-up inventory has to go somewhere. If you’re planning to buy a notebook this year, the base models will now start shipping with four gigabytes of memory instead of two. And for those who bought a machine with only two in the last year or so, upgrades will be more affordable.

The one bright spot for the memory companies? You got it: Smartphones and tablets. Memory content in phones is expected to increase by nearly two-thirds. And the 57 million tablets that iSuppli expects will ship this year will also need some DRAM. More details here from iSuppli.

Verizon Wireless Touts 4G Network, Shows Off Devices

Ina Fried — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 21:03:21 +0000

Well, we didn’t learn much new about Verizon Wireless’s new network or devices at the Ivan Seidenberg keynote on Thursday, but he did say that the company would have a preview of its LTE device lineup at this afternoon’s press conference.

Here’s hoping there are a few surprises here beyond the previously announced Motorola Atrix and Xoom.

The event is set to kick off shortly and Mobilized will have live coverage here.

1:05 pm: Well, despite timely warnings to get in our seats beginning at 12:45, it’s now five minutes after and the techno is still pumping.

1:11 pm: Okay. Getting started. Loud music gets louder. Cue video.

Tony Melone and Marni Walden take the stage and CEO Daniel Mead (at least I think it is Mead) is doing an intro.

1:15 pm: Another video now playing with partners. Since HTC CEO Peter Chou is in there, I think it is probably safe to say their oft-rumored LTE smartphone will make an appearance.

1:16 pm: Samsung and Ericsson execs also in the video.

1:17 pm: Verizon exec now touting the advantages of its 4G network including its spectrum, which it says will give it the best in-building coverage.

Also talking about how it is sharing its spectrum with rural service providers.

1:18 pm: Mead: “We’re very pleased to be part of bringing broadband to rural America.”

1:21 pm: Mead hands off to CTO Tony Melone to talk 4G and LTE.

Melone says that the company knows there is a lot of skepticism of the company’s move to go straight to LTE but that the bet is paying off with more networks and running faster than planned.

“The customer feedback we are getting is everything we had hoped for and then some,” Melone says.

Melone talks about 4G LTE plans.

Thirty-six months from now we will have the nation covered with LTE, Melone says. Two-thirds of the population will be covered in 2012. This year alone, he says, Verizon will add 140 new markets, including places like Little Rock, Detroit and Sioux Falls.

1:26 pm: On to devices.

Ten devices coming by mid-year being shown on stage: Four smartphones, two tablets, two notebooks and two mobile hotspots.

1:33 pm: LG CEO shows off the LG Revolution, what appears to be a slimmish smartphone.

Next up, Skype’s CEO talks about a new partnership that will allow for Skype to be always on and integrated into the address book of all of Verizon’s LTE smartphones,

1:34 pm: He’s followed by HTC CEO Peter Chou, who introduces the HTC Thunderbolt.

Chou says he’s been personally testing and using the Thunderbolt, which features the new Skype video chatting along with HTC’s Sense user interface.

“Let me tell you, it’s blazing fast,” Chou says.

Other features include a built-in 4G hotspot and a 4.3-inch Super LCD screen.

1:37 pm: He thanks Qualcomm and Google engineers that worked together to create the device, so guessing this one isn’t using Nvidia’s Tegra chip.

Next up is Electronic Arts VP Travis Boatman. EA’s mobile games lineup ranges from Monopoly and Tetris to Need for Speed and the FIFA 11 soccer game.

The new mobile version of Rock Band for Verizon’s LTE network lets people form a band and remotely jam over the network.

Samsung executive goes onstage to show off three devices for the LTE network, One is a mobile hotspot, one is a smartphone and the other is a 4G version of the Galaxy Tab.

Phone packs 4.3-inch Super Amoled Plus display, which is said to boost colors and offer improved display. It’s got an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with HD video and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chat.

The tablet has a 1.2GHz processor developed by Samsung, while the hotspots provide connections to up to five users at a time.

Most impressive is the fact that the Samsung executive pulled all three devices out of various pockets.

Marni Walden shows off the remaining devices–a Novatel MiFi hotpot that works with both 3G and 4G networks.

There is also a Compaq Netbook, an HP notebook, as well as the previously announced Motorola Xoom and Motorola Droid Bionic.

1:47 pm: On to Q&A (hoping laptop No. 2 holds out through the end of question time.)

First question has to do with LTE speeds, which often exceed the 5- to 12-megabit speeds promised. Mead says that the company’s goal is to meet the promised speed range once the network is fully loaded, something that is not the case today.

Next question is on battery life. Melone says the company believes it will be able to meet customer expectations in that regard.

The company says it won’t announce pricing or rate plans for the 4G products, beyond noting its current prices for 4G laptop cards and service.

As for simultaneous voice and data, Walden says the company intends that at least some of its 4G launch devices will support talking and accessing data at the same time.

“It could be on some devices and not all,” Walden says.

Walden also confirms all the phones it showed Thursday are running Android.

1:55 pm: Asked about net neutrality, Mead says that what the industry needs is “unfettered development.”

“We think the free market system works very well, and we don’t need a lot of heavy intervention.”

Forecast: 19 Million Notebooks Lost to Tablet Cannibalization (Meaning iPad) in 2011

John Paczkowski — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:30:33 +0000

If the tablet PC (which has so far been defined by the iPad) isn’t entirely the notebook cannibal it’s often seen as, it certainly has some cannibalistic tendencies. And those are growing stronger as devices like the iPad begin finding more traction among the production-oriented users that were expected to ignore them.

During its last earnings call, Apple noted that over 65 percent of the Fortune 100 have deployed or are piloting the iPad. With that in mind, some analysts have begun reasses the cannibalization rate of tablets on the notebook industry and the number that Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope has come up with is pretty interesting.

He figures tablet unit shipments will jump 54.7 million in 2011 with 35 percent PC unit cannibalization and to 79.2 million in 2012 with 33 percent cannibalization. Overall, he expects 19.1 million notebook units to be lost to tablets in 2011 and 26.1 million to be lost in 2012.

Those are some pretty aggressive numbers. And while Shope concedes they might be difficult to digest given the market’s perception of the tablet as a threat to netbooks only, he does have some recent data to back them up.

“We recognize that it is difficult to accurately predict the cannibalization rate of such a nascent market, but we believe early evidence supports our views,” Shope writes. “In fact, in Goldman Sachs’ recent IT spending survey (published on November 5, 2010), 51 percent of respondents said they expected some degree of notebook cannibalization from tablets. This is an important result because: (1) it’s a corporate survey, and tablets will likely have a more significant impact on the consumer market, and (2) netbooks represent an insignificant component of corporate PC purchases. We suspect December quarter retail data is likely to provide even more interesting tablet cannibalization data points.”

PREVIOUSLY:

IPad: Tonight We Feast on Laptop Flesh!

Apple: The iPad Isn’t Cannibalizing the Mac, But We Sure Hope It’s Cannibalizing the PC

IPad No Cannibal, Says Analyst

Apple’s iPad: Angel or Cannibal?

Let's Get Mobilized

Ina Fried — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:00:20 +0000

Welcome to Mobilized, the latest All Things Digital blog devoted to all things mobile. Mobilized will cover the wireless world from cell phones to tablets, as well as the networks they run on (or drop calls on).

In other words, all the issues raised by having the tiny little machines with us at all times.

If you are reading this on your Apple iPhone, Amazon Kindle, BlackBerry from Research in Motion, Google Android or other non-PC device: Congratulations, you are already Mobilized.

But, if you are sitting in front of a laptop or desktop as you are reading this–you might be a little behind the times, although on the plus side, you don’t have to squint nearly as much.

And, even if you printed this article out, I am happy you took the time to read it (Hi, Dad!).

In any case, I am hoping to cut through the jargon and the hype, so that this will be a spot that both the early adopters and the merely curious will be able to find items of interest.

And whether you are a mobile geek or not, mobile technology is poised to reshape your life. Cell phones aren’t just mini-computers and tablets aren’t just notebooks with their keyboards cut off. These products are reshaping not just how we consume media, but also the ways we interact with each
other.

Let me take a moment to introduce myself.

For those that don’t know me, I spent the last decade at CNET, covering everything from Apple and Microsoft to ill-fated products from the Audrey to the Foleo.

While mobile hasn’t been my full-time beat, I have always been a device junkie. I owned a Windows CE 1.0 device and several of the first attempts to marry a phone with a Palm Pilot. Most recently, I have spent the past several years covering Microsoft full-time and recently did a three-part series on the birth of Windows Phone 7.

I am passionate about technology and telling the stories about the people making the products that are changing the way we live. I hope to find room to tell all kinds of different stories in these pages.

I plan to start things off with an interview I did last week in New York with Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci. I also had a chance to catch up there with multitouch pioneer Jeff Han, who is beginning to shift some of his work from giant touchscreens to mobile devices.

Meanwhile, next week is the inaugural D: Dive into Mobile conference. I’ll be providing lots of coverage, of course, including backstage interviews with many of the speakers.

So, that’s my spiel. Be sure to sound off in the forums, whether you think I am right on track or completely off base. You can also drop me a note at the easy-to-remember email: Ina@AllThingsD.com.

Here's How That $65 Apple iPad DODOcase Is Made (Plus a Look at the New Kindle Cover)

Drake Martinet — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:55:56 +0000

Owners of the Apple iPad are usually looking for a case with a certain analog aesthetic–and, as it turns out, they are willing to pay for it.

Thus, the San Francisco-based makers of DODOcase have managed to sell tens of thousands of their pricey $55 to $65 cases. For many, the signature black faux-leather cover and elastic band give the hard-edged iPad an old-world tangibility and bespoke countenance, looking like–as it does–the famous Moleskine notebook that hipsters favor.

Today, the cult-popular business is releasing its second product, an Amazon Kindle-size DODOcase that wraps the plastic e-reader in its signature book-like binding.

Founders Patrick Buckley (the maker guy) and Craig Dalton (the business guy) have spent the last seven months tweaking the product and building the brand. But they took some time to give us a look into their Dogpatch manufacturing facility, which doubles as an actual book bindery, to see exactly what goes into the product.

As it turns out, the main ingredient is time.

[ See post to watch video ]

MacBook Air Has the Feel of an iPad in a Laptop

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 02:11:38 +0000

Some of the nicest, if little discussed, benefits of using an Apple iPad tablet are that it starts instantly, resumes where you left off, and has a long enough battery life that you aren’t constantly fretting about running out of juice or looking for a place to plug it in. And it can do a lot of things for which people use laptops.

[ See post to watch video ]

What if somebody designed an actual laptop that worked this way—you know, a computer with a real keyboard and a larger screen that could run traditional computer software and store more files than an iPad? And what if it was almost as light and portable as an iPad? Well, somebody has, and that somebody is Apple itself.

The computer in question is the company’s new MacBook Air, which went on sale last week, starting at $999—a price that’s very low for an Apple laptop, though hardly a bargain for a Windows one. The new Air comes in two sizes. The base $999 model has an 11.6-inch screen (versus 9.7 inches for an iPad) and weighs 2.3 pounds (versus 1.5 pounds for an iPad). The larger—but still thin and light—model starts at $1,299, has a 13.3-inch screen, and weighs 2.9 pounds.

I’ve been testing both versions, but especially the 11.6-inch model, and I find that, despite a few drawbacks, they really do offer the different, more iPad-like experience Apple claims they do. Battery life is strong, and the wake up from sleep is almost instant, even after long periods of being unused.

Apple’s new MacBook Air laptop.

Like their predecessors in the Air family, these are gorgeous, very thin and light, but very sturdy aluminum computers. And, like their predecessors, or like iPads and smartphones, they rely on solid-state storage—flash chips—instead of a conventional hard disk to hold all your files. But Apple has dramatically reduced the physical size of the flash storage to make room for larger sealed-in batteries, so battery life is longer. It has also cut the price from the last version of the Air, a 13-inch model that cost $1,799 with a solid-state drive.

Also, the company has re-engineered the way these new Airs sleep, adding a long “standby” period of very low power consumption that Apple says lasts up to 30 days. This standby mode kicks in after about an hour of idle time, and replaces the traditional hibernation system, where your current activity is saved to a conventional hard disk just before the battery dies. With hibernation, getting back to where you were can be slow and somewhat uncertain. With the new “standby” mode, the process just takes a few seconds, only a bit longer than normal sleep.

These are just the first of a number of changes Apple plans in order to make its computers behave more like the iPad and iPhone, without losing their greater power and more traditional keyboards, touchpads and mice, and ability to run conventional programs.

For instance, Apple has said it will soon introduce an “app store” for the Mac, which would make it simpler to find and download programs for the computers, and notify users of updates. And it will also roll out, in its next Mac operating system, called Lion—due next summer—a system of apps icon screens, like those on iPhones and iPads, that you can flick through with the company’s multitouch touchpad gestures.

In my harsh battery tests, I found the two new Air models almost matched Apple’s battery claims, even with all power-saving features turned off, Wi-Fi kept on, the screen on maximum brightness and a continuous loop of music playing. The 11-inch model lasted four hours and 43 minutes, versus Apple’s claim of up to five hours. The 13-inch model lasted six hours and 13 minutes, versus Apple’s claim of up to seven hours.

This means that, in normal use, with power-saving features turned on, you’d be almost certain to meet, or possibly exceed, Apple’s claimed battery life. For comparison, I did the same battery test on a new Dell 11.6-inch model, the M101Z, which costs about $450, but is much thicker and heavier than the smaller Air, and uses a conventional hard disk. It got only two hours and 41 minutes of battery life, which means that in normal use you’d probably get three to four hours.

The MacBook Air 11-inch (left) and 13-inch models have long battery life, but storage capacity is limited.

The new models are designed to hardly ever require a traditional bootup or reboot. The idea is that you’d only reboot if you had a problem, or installed software that required a reboot, or if the machine had been idle and unplugged more than a month. But even booting is very fast.

In my tests, a cold boot took 17 seconds and a reboot, with several programs running, took 20 seconds. By contrast, the Dell I tested took more than three minutes to fully boot up and be fully ready for use.

Unlike on many netbooks, these two new Apples also have high screen resolutions so you can fit more material into their relatively small sizes. The 13-inch model has the same resolution as Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro and the 11-inch Air has greater resolution than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Also, unlike on many netbooks, they feature full-size keyboards, though the 11-inch model has reduced-size function keys.

The new Airs aren’t meant to be the most robust machines. They use last-generation Intel processors and have only two gigabytes of memory in their base configurations, and their storage is well below typical hard-disk capacities.

For example, the 11-inch, $999 model has a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage; the 13-inch model starts at a still-weak 128 gigabytes of storage, and even the high-end version of the larger model, which costs $1,599, has just 256 gigabytes of storage. And neither the storage nor the memory can be expanded once you choose your initial specs.

I’d recommend buyers of the 11-inch model spend $200 more to double the storage to 128 gigabytes. And people doing a lot of video editing might want to double the memory on either model to four gigabytes, for an extra $100.

Also, as with the earlier Air models, these two lack a DVD drive and an Ethernet port. Apple sells an external drive for $79 and an Ethernet adapter for $29. If you add in all these extras, prices can climb quickly.

They also lack ports called HDMI ports, becoming common on Windows PCs, for easy connection to televisions, and their keyboards aren’t backlit. The two new models do, however, have two USB ports instead of the single USB port in the older Air.

I was surprised to find that even the base $999 model was powerful enough to easily run seven or eight programs at once, including Microsoft Office, iTunes and the Safari browser with more than 20 Web sites open. It also played high-definition video with no skipping or stuttering.

So, if you’re a light-duty user, you might be able to adopt one of the new Airs as your main laptop. If you’re a heavy-duty user, who needs lots of power and file storage, they’re likely to be secondary machines.

Overall, Apple has done a nice job in making these new MacBook Airs feel more like iPads and iPhones without sacrificing their ability to work like regular computers. But, as always with Apple, you’ll pay more than you will with Windows PCs.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com.

Apple Reaching for the Cloud With MacBook Air and N.C. Data Center

John Paczkowski — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:30:13 +0000

Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook and the future of the notebook as well. But if that’s to be the case, the machine–and Apple’s ecosystem–needs to evolve a bit more to appeal to that strata of user tethered to the high-capacity hard drives that the Air has summarily dispatched.

This being Apple we’re talking about, that evolution is likely already well under way and perhaps–perhaps–being engineered at the company’s massive new North Carolina data center. With its 500,000 square feet of data center space (currently, sources tell me that Apple is considering doubling that) the facility has been built for something. And what better use to put it to than the cloud services that might completely eliminate the need for high-capacity hard drives and give the Air storage to match its performance characteristics.

Were Apple to create the cloud-based version of iTunes that’s long been rumored–one from which users’ entire iTunes libraries could be streamed–and were it to bolster MobileMe’s iDisk and Gallery services with more-robust storage, even the 64GB Air might seem an attractive option to the high-end user. And Apple’s new N.C. data center, which is nearly five times the size of the one it operates in Newark, Calif., may well make both those things possible.

“We believe it makes sense to have a cloud service linking Apple devices to personal photos, videos, games, music and other entertainment–eliminating the limitations and expenses of excess storage,” writes Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes. “We believe such a service would only enhance the loyalty toward Apple and the benefits of using devices in its vertically integrated model.”

Saving to disk is slowly becoming a fixture of the past and, as Apple’s recently rejiggered Apple TV business model demonstrates, streaming is the future. Which makes perfect sense, when you think of the MacBook Air as the future of the notebook.

Analyst: IPad Competition to "Fall Flat"

John Paczkowski — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 14:05:46 +0000

The iPad has given Apple a wide lead in the tablet market, so wide that rivals will be hard pressed to catch up to it anytime soon.

“We believe Apple’s lead in the tablet market will prove difficult to close by the onslaught of competing products coming over the next several quarters,” Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore wrote in a note to clients today. “Ultimately, we expect the slew of upcoming competition to fall flat from a user experience standpoint while struggling to materially undercut the iPad on price.”

Today, the company’s position in tablet user interface, applications and content availability is unmatched. Add to this the scale advantage that comes from being the world’s largest buyer of flash memory and one of the largest buyers of capacitive touchscreen technology and catching up to Apple in the tablet market becomes a daunting proposition indeed.

“What’s troubling for competitors is Apple’s growing scale advantages and leverage with the supply chain,” Whitmore explains. “Because Apple is leveraging its iPod and iPhone buying power in the tablet market, the traditional PC vendors will not have the same buying power and scale advantages enjoyed in the traditional notebook market…. Apple is the world’s largest buyer of FLASH by a wide margin. We estimate Apple buys about 20-25% of the world’s FLASH due to its large iPhone and iPod FLASH needs….Finally, due to its early investment in capacitive touch technology and lead in selling touch devices, it’s difficult to believe any vendor buys more square footage of capacitive touch technology than Apple.”

Which doesn’t bode well for anyone bringing a tablet to market in the months ahead, Hewlett-Packard most of all. Says Whitmore, “We see considerable risk that HP’s PC expectations are too high (due to severe cannibalization) and its Palm business will ramp too slowly to offset the pressure from the iPad.”

Forget Netbooks, iPad Cannibalizing Entire PC Industry

John Paczkowski — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 10:00:56 +0000

Apple’s iPad may not be cannibalizing Mac sales, but it’s evidently having a deleterious effect on the PC market–and not just the netbook segment. According to UBS analyst Maynard Um, the iPad is having a negative impact on the entire PC industry.

“Sales of traditional notebooks appear to be feeling pressure from the iPad, causing a scramble by vendors to launch iPad-like tablets,” Um wrote in a note to clients. “We believe that a majority of this impact is occurring on the lower end of PC sales as the iPad is priced close enough to this range that it becomes attractive to consumers looking to make purchases within this segment. We are not sold that the iPad is purely cannibalizing PC sales, as the functionality of the iPad can not yet fully match the functionality of notebook PC’s. However, consumers who purchase iPads may be more willing to delay purchases and upgrades of existing PC’s.”

And with few, if any, real iPad rivals at market, this trend will continue well into 2011. While competition in the tablet market is increasing–and rapidly, too–viable threats to Apple (AAPL) will be few and far between, says Um. With that in mind, he expects iPad unit shipments for calendar 2011 to be 28 million, a number that Um says “could still be conservative.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter modestmouse and RBC Capital Markets]

Toshiba Satellite May Double as Handy Labor Day BBQ

John Paczkowski — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:34:26 +0000

If you’re reading this on a Toshiba laptop, you might want to switch from AC to battery power before continuing.

The company is recalling 41,000 of its Satellite computers for fear that they may overheat and injure someone. And while that hasn’t yet happened, there have been 129 reports of the computers overheating and deforming the plastic casing around the AC adapter plug. The affected models are Toshiba Satellite T135, Satellite T135D and Satellite Pro T130 notebooks. If you happen to own one of those, go and download Toshiba’s latest BIOS revision, which will determine whether your machine is overheating, and if so, disable its AC power and contact Toshiba for a free repair.

iPad Doing to the Netbook What the Netbook Did to the Laptop?

John Paczkowski — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:12:00 +0000

Apple’s iPad may not be cannibalizing sales of the company’s Macs, but it is evidently playing havoc with sales of netbooks. According to new research from Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Katy Huberty, growth in U.S. netbook sales has been declining since January, the month during which Apple (AAPL) officially announced its much anticipated slate device.

“US consumer PC, and especially notebook, growth decelerated in January when Apple introduced the iPad and again in April when the iPad launched,” Huberty wrote in a note to clients this morning. “Given the corresponding increase in ASPs in the market, we believe much of the demand shortfall came from netbooks and low-cost notebooks.”

Adding detail, Huberty writes, “What’s more, US retail netbook unit growth decelerated to about 5 percent YoY in April from 25 percent in March and 53 percent in February, according to NPD.”

Quite a change from the first quarter of 2009, when netbook sales leapt 872 percent and market researchers were projecting that they would capture a big share of the worldwide market for the year at the laptop’s expense.

Clearly things have changed quite a bit since then, and while there are surely other factors at work here–a saturated market, perhaps (clearly 872 percent growth isn’t sustainable) and the debut of Windows 7–it’s tough not to look at the chart below (click to enlarge) and conclude that consumers in the market for netbooks just might be reappraising their needs in light of the emergence of the iPad. But whether that is the driving factor in the slowing growth of U.S. netbook sales is clearly an open question.

One final point worth making here: Apple itself is not immune from cannibalization at the hands of the iPad. According to Huberty, the device may soon begin to eat into sales of the iPod touch as well.

Acer Focuses on China and Brazil

Charmian Kok and Ting-I Tsai — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:34 +0000

Acer Inc. is poised for growth in China, a market where the Taiwan computer maker has lagged its global rivals, as it looks to emerging economies to help it leapfrog past Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) as the world’s biggest notebook and netbook computer maker by shipments this year or next, its chief executive said Wednesday.

China, along with Brazil, will be key growth drivers for Acer this year, Gianfranco Lanci said during an interview.

Mr. Lanci sees a world-wide recovery in consumer demand following the global economic crisis. “Recovery is almost there everywhere,” he said.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Morgan Stanley: Apple Will Ship Over Six Million iPads This Year

John Paczkowski — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 11:55:56 +0000

Apple’s iPad hasn’t yet arrived at market, but the device’s suppliers are already raising their build rates in expectation of strong sales, thanks to encouraging pre-order rates.

This according to Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Katy Huberty, who says Apple’s manufacturing partners now expect to ship 2.5 million iPads between March and May, considerably ahead of her previous estimate of 750,000 for the June quarter.

What’s more, they are now forecasting shipments of eight to 10 million iPads in calendar 2010, considerably more than prior expectations of five million-plus.

Current Street consensus is for Apple (AAPL) to sell three to four million iPads, but Huberty figures the company will sell over six million iPads.

“We continue to believe the market under-appreciates longer-term iPhone/iPad demand,” Huberty writes. “Negative investor sentiment on the iPad centers on the lack of a ‘killer app’ or new technology.”

Adding detail, the analysts says that “Near-term, we believe iPad will target the sizeable sub-$800 consumer notebook market, which equates to 30 million units in the US and 120 million units globally. Medium-term, newly introduced content (books, magazines, video) and iPad-optimized apps could broaden the addressable market and strengthen iPad sales momentum later this year.”

FURTHER READING:

Launch Day iPads Sold Out

iPad Available at “Most Best Buy Stores” This Saturday

Apple Grabs iPad Trademark From Fujitsu

Apple Now Accepting iPad App Submissions

Early Supplies of iPad Accessories Dwindling?

Initial iPad Demand Greater Than Initial iPhone Demand

iPad TV?

Apple’s Tablet: Read Different?

Rumored Apple Netbook Actually an E-book?

Coming Soon From Apple: Big Touch?

iTablet: Apple’s Killer App for Higher Ed

COMPLETE IPAD COVERAGE

[Image credit: Bitolithic]

Acer to Apple: Don’t Mind Us. We'll Just Keep Making These "Cheap Laptops."

John Paczkowski — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:01:41 +0000

“Netbooks aren’t better than anything. They’re just cheap laptops.”

— Apple CEO Steve Jobs announcing the iPad

Come summer, Acer will enter the arena for e-book readers, releasing a device with a six-inch monochrome screen. The company will also debut an online applications store from which it will peddle apps for Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows and Windows Mobile operating systems and for Google’s (GOOG) Android platform.

But Acer has no plans to launch a touchscreen tablet to compete with Apple’s (AAPL) new iPad, despite the fact that Chairman J.T. Wang recently told Bloomberg his company was “developing something” along those lines.

Why the sudden change of tack? Acer President Scott Lin says that while the company is entirely capable of building a tablet device, it wouldn’t be worthwhile because it lacks a software ecosystem like Apple’s iTunes App Store. A tablet, Lin, told DigiTimes, does not fit into Acer’s business model.

“Historically, closed platforms are typically limited in terms of scale and are confined to niche markets,” Lin said. “Apple has built its business out of carving its own niche, which means that while Apple could see success with devices like the iPad, other players are unlikely to be able to replicate its result simply by copying.”

An interesting admission, particularly since it seems to openly contradict what Wang said just about a week ago. Of course, at this point, with the iPad not yet released and the tablet market as nascent as it is, Acer’s tentative view of things is understandable. Why mess around with an unestablished, unproven market when the company is doing just fine peddling netbooks and other portables? Better to throw its full weight behind the broad spectrum of notebooks–traditional, ultrathin and netbook–where it’s already quite strong (Lin notes that Acer shipped about 31 million notebooks in 2009).

That said, Acer would do well to keep an eye trained on Apple. Because according to Deutsche Bank (DB), the iPad will give it claim to about seven percent of the low-end computer market by 2011. Said Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore: “We expect the iPad to compete very well against existing low-end notebooks and netbooks, particularly in the segment of the market where surfing, reading, game playing and emailing dominate the usage model.”

Apple's iPad: The Analysts Sound Off

John Paczkowski — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:00:38 +0000

It’s still a bit early to claim any consensus reaction to Apple’s new iPad among Wall Street analysts. That said, there seems to be some agreement that the device has significant market potential, especially with the attractive pricing Apple has given it.

It remains to be seen whether Apple (AAPL) has created an entirely new computing category with the iPad. But at the very least, analysts seem to believe the company has created an enduring growth engine.

Charlie Wolf, Needham & Company
“Because Apple is defining a new category of devices, sales of the iPad are likely to ramp slowly. But the $500 starting price point is low enough to attract a sizable portion of the early adopter crowd, consisting of iPhone and iPod owners. It’s noteworthy that the iPad’s initial price is below the iPhone’s initial price and not much higher than the price of the first iPod, introduced in 2001. Our best guess at this time is the Apple could sell four million iPads in its initial year on the market, which translates into at least $2 billion of revenue.”
Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray
“Originally we were estimating sales of 2m units in the first calendar year at a price point of $600-$800. With the actual $499/$629 price point, we believe Apple will sell 3m-4m units in the first 12 months….After using the iPad, we believe it will cannibalize iPod touch sales, but not Mac sales. The gadget is a premium mobile device, not a computer; as such, we see some iPod touch buyers stepping up to the iPad, but consumers looking for an affordable portable computer will likely stick with the MacBook lineup.”
James McQuivey, Forrester
“The iPad is a grown up iPod Touch. Apple has taken the safe route of offering its existing customers an option that goes beyond today’s iPod Touch in size and capability, but it has not offered a new category of devices that tackles the 5-6 hours of media we each consume every day. With no integrated social media for sharing photos, recommending books, and sharing home video, the iPad misses a big piece of what makes media so powerful. As it stands, by relying on the App Store as the single most important draw of the device besides its attractiveness, the iPod Touch is a significant step toward making tablets respectable. But making tablets respectable should have been the least of Apple’s ambitions. It had (and still has) the opportunity to create a new media experience in consumers’ lives. As it stands, a quick, well-structured response from Amazon in the next version of Kindle could easily be a contender here. That’s why I say that the iPad is priced lower than expected because it is less revolutionary than expected.”
Mike Abramsky, RBC
“Like the first iPod and iPhone, uptake may in time surprise as future versions improve and costs decline. The iPad’s intuitiveness and simplicity at key tasks (browsing, email, media, watching videos, games, reading, working) may appeal to consumers for whom existing PC experiences are intimidating, inadequate, delivering 90%+ of the features of traditional PCs with less complexity than traditional PCs. Uptake however may require in-store demos to truly experience the richness of iPad’s experience.”
Tavis McCourt, Morgan Keegan
“The iPad has been long anticipated so we are not shocked by the lack of stock movement. Given the price point, we suspect initial sales will be strong (this is Apple, and there are many enthusiasts), and then simmer down a bit after a few months. The ultimate success of a new product category will be the unique apps developed for this device, and with the SDK just going out today, it is hard to know how impressive they will be. However, the good news is that aside from maybe modest iPod Touch cannibalization, we doubt that the iPad will cannibalize any revenues from the massive margin pools within the iPhone and Mac product categories.”
Craig Moffett, Bernstein Research
“Longer term, the iPad offers the potential to redefine the boundaries between print and video, turning formerly passive media into active ones, and in the process making what are currently low bandwidth applications (say, reading a newspaper) become much more bandwidth intensive (e.g. by embedding video rather than still pictures).”
Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan
“iPad is not for everyone, and the first-generation product is sure to have its critics given the prelaunch buzz. In our view, the iPad is a smart, nimble device for heavy content users–Apple’s core customer. iPad is a hybrid of sorts, marrying select benefits of the smartphone and notebook. We expect the market to be small at first, but the gamer and education verticals should construct a meaningful growth ramp longer term.”

Meet Apple's iPad: Starts at $500, Supported by AT&T

John Paczkowski — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:25:08 +0000

“Q: What do you think of the tablet PC?
Jobs: We’re not sure the tablet PC will be successful. It’s turned into a notebook that you can write on. Do you want to handwrite all your email? We have all the technology ourselves to do that–we just don’t know whether it will be successful.”

–Apple CEO Steve Jobs, International Herald Tribune, Sept. 2002

“There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards….We look at the tablet and we think it’s going to fail.”

– Steve Jobs, D: All Things Digital Conference, 2003

At a 2007 all-hands meeting to discuss the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs remarked on the company’s product roadmap. The machines Apple will bring to market in the years ahead, he said, would be “off the charts.”

This morning, Jobs made good on his word, unveiling a new multimedia tablet device called the iPad.

As predicted, the Apple iPad is a portable gadget that falls between the iPhone and Apple’s laptop line. So far, Apple (AAPL) has been highlighting the machine’s ability to deliver audio and visual stuff, including a new way to view the New York Times (NYT) via a custom-made app, games designed by Electronic Arts (ERTS), and an iBook store supported by five major publishers and designed to rival Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle platform.

The hard facts: IPad sports full multitouch functionality, includes 16 to 64-gigabyte flash storage, and provides 10 hours of battery life and one full month of standby time. It is one-half inch thick, weighs 1.5 pounds and comes with a 9.7-inch IPS display, which looks quite sharp.

The standard OS X applications look and work much the same as on the Apple laptop and iPhone. Using a pixel-doubling function, the iPad scales iPhone apps to full-screen without losing much in translation. A new iPhone software development kit geared specifically to the iPad aims to encourage development for its larger screen and is being released today.

Jobs unveiled two big surprises: The lowest-priced version of the machine will cost $500, well below the $800-$1,000 price point pundits had predicted. The lowest-priced 3G-capable machine will be $629. The top-priced device, a 64GB version equipped with 3G capability, will be $829.

Rather than go with Verizon (VZ) as a wireless carrier, Apple is sticking with much-maligned AT&T (T). Wireless services don’t come with the device, but will be sold on a monthly basis. A 250-megabyte plan will run $14.99 in the U.S., and an unlimited plan will go for $29.99.

The complete liveblog of this morning’s Apple iPad event can be seen here.

Digital File Cabinet You Can Bring With You Anywhere

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:03:23 +0000

What if you could collect, in one well-organized, searchable, private digital repository, all the notes you create, clips from Web pages and emails you want to recall, dictated audio memos, photos, key documents, and more? And what if that repository was constantly synchronized, so it was accessible through a Web browser and through apps on your various computers and smart phones?

Well, such a service exists. And it’s free. It’s called Evernote. I’ve been testing it for about a week on a multiplicity of computers and phones, and found that it works very well. Evernote is an excellent example of hybrid computing—using the “cloud” online to store data and perform tasks, while still taking advantage of the power and offline ability of local devices.

[ See post to watch video ]

The idea behind Evernote is to be a sort of digital file cabinet. It allows you to create “notebooks” containing items called notes. These notes can range from text to photos to many kinds of attached files. You can locate, group and peruse them quickly, without having to dig through a computer’s file system. When I first reviewed the product, back in 2005, Evernote was a Windows-only, purely local information organizer. Now it’s a multi-platform, Internet-savvy, synchronized place for your ideas.

You can sign up for Evernote free at evernote.com, and use it entirely as a Web-based application, through any of the major Web browsers. But Evernote also comes in customized versions for a staggering array of devices: Windows and Macintosh computers, and for all the major smart phones, including the iPhone; the BlackBerry; phones running Google’s Android operating system; the latest Palm (PALM) phones; and Windows Mobile phones.

This week, Evernote, which is made by a small Silicon Valley company of the same name, is introducing a totally revamped Windows version that brings the platform into parity with the company’s previously more advanced Macintosh version.

I tested Evernote on two Macs and two Windows PCs, as well as an iPhone, a Palm Pre phone and the new Nexus One phone from Google (GOOG). I also tried free plug-ins the company offers that make it easy to insert all or part of a Web page or email into an Evernote note. These are available for the Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome Web browsers, and for the Outlook email program. There are also system-wide Evernote buttons, which make capturing notes quicker, for Windows and the Mac.

I found Evernote works well for gathering ideas for business or personal projects, hobbies, or events you’re planning. When you see something or think of something you want to add, you can do it from whatever computer or phone is handy, and it will shortly appear on all of them.

Here are a few examples of how I used Evernote. I typed notes to myself on my desktops and laptops. I dictated a reminder to myself using the Evernote app on my iPhone. I used the Nexus One’s camera to take a picture of a person’s business card. I also copied text from Web pages, emails, and Word documents, and pasted them as notes. I even attached whole files to notes.

Within a few minutes, all of these notes were available on my personal Evernote Web site and from within all the Evernote apps on my computers and phones. I could search through them, email them, print them, group them with related items, or edit and annotate them.

Every Evernote user also gets a unique Evernote email address, and anything you email to that address goes into your repository as a new note. You also can use Twitter to get a note into Evernote.

The program has a few extra-cool features. If you create a note from a photo that includes printing, Evernote’s servers will try to figure out the words and make them searchable. This worked well in my tests with photos of business cards. And some smart-phone apps can save items directly into Evernote notes. One example I tested successfully was the Associated Press news app on the iPhone.

There are a few minor downsides to Evernote. While there’s no overall limit to the amount of data you can store, you can only upload 40 megabytes a month with the free version, attach certain types of files to notes, and you are forced to view ads. A premium version, which costs $5 a month, or $45 a year, increases the quota to 500 megabytes monthly, removes the ads, allows attaching any file type, and adds more features.

Also, I found the Evernote programs and apps, while similar, differ slightly depending on the capabilities of the platform they run on. Among the phone versions, for instance, the iPhone app is by far the most full-featured, and is currently the only one that can store whole notebooks offline, though the Android version is due to get that feature soon. Finally, the Evernote plug-in crashed Outlook on one of my Windows computers.

But, all in all, I found Evernote to be a valuable, easy-to-use tool that simplified my work and made good use of both the Internet and all my devices.

Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

The Year in Wisecracks

John Paczkowski — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 13:45:01 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]