BoomTown was looking over Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong as I blogged the conference call after Yahoo released its fourth-quarter earnings after markets closed today.

It’s pretty! But Yahoo’s revenue growth–still, not so much.

Let’s begin:

2:02 pm PT: Yahoo turned in earnings that were slightly better than expected, although no big shakes either, so the call was likely to sound exactly like the last several quarterly calls.

Bingo! We’re trying! It’s encouraging! You’ll see!

In fact, “encouraging” was just the word that CEO Carol Bartz used as she tried to focus on a doubling of operating income, operating margin and earnings per share.

Impressive, the revenue at Yahoo is still stubbornly not moving, which the company continued to attribute to the new search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft.

“This is all part of our plan to turn Yahoo around,” said Bartz, who added a new buzzword, “personalized content,” to its offerings.

She turned the call over to Yahoo CFO Tim Morse, who ran through the numbers, which pretty much came down to this: Display advertising up 16 percent from last year, while search revenue dropped 18 percent.

As in previous quarters, Morse talked about how “headwinds” will soon lessen and it will be smooth sailing for Yahoo ahead.

After the stormy seas of recent years, that would be nice, since investors have gotten pretty seasick owning Yahoo shares.

Morse offered that, “while there is still much to do, we are still executing well against our plan” and went on about how good things are.

Finally, we have a “unified purpose,” which he characterized as personalized content too.

It’s a nice new catchword for Yahoo, and I liked Morse’s strong tone and gumption, which for an accountant was like hollering.

His big Achilles’ heel: The revenues projections ahead remain soft.

2:24 pm: Back to Bartz, who focused on the future success of the Microsoft advertising alliance and also Yahoo’s leadership in display advertising.

She listed some big offline brands, such as Wal-Mart and Macy’s, noting when looking for online ads, “That’s right, they all came to Yahoo.”

Bartz moved on to its stake in China’s Alibaba Group and noted it was a “great investment with a bright future.” Translation: We are not selling for now.

But noting its investment in Yahoo! Japan, Bartz had a slightly different take, mentioning talks to “unlock” the value of the stake. Translation: Maybe we’ll sell if we can figure out how not to pay all those taxes.

Bartz did the same with all of Yahoo properties, putting a sunny spin on what is still a turnaround situation.

It’s a good strategy, but it is one that is starting to sound like a broken record, especially when Google, Facebook and others seem to be like a house on fire.

2:35 pm: Now on to Q&A, in which Wall Street analysts ask softball questions of executives.

And so they do, asking queries that include small details about its operating margin, questions on tiny changes in numbers due to accounting changes. And very little about larger strategy.

You can read about this stuff in the press release, but whatever.

I am thinking of starting an investment bank, so I can jump in on these calls and ask some questions that have actual substance.

The United Bank of Swisher? Goldman Sucks?

Ooh, I was wrong, because one analyst asked a good one about possible future layoffs.

Bartz noted the company would be adding people, um, after laying some employees off.

It’s all about “re-allocating” staff, which Yahoo did earlier today by laying off one percent of its workforce, after an earlier four-percent cut.

Next, a question about search share, with Morse noting there will be search volume growth in the future.

Big message: We are in this to grow the share.

Except it has not been growing, as the last several months of surveys of search share have shown.

But Bartz firmly declared: “We’ll be up” in 2011.

A question focused in on mobile, and Bartz pointed out that Yahoo had the disadvantage of not having a mobile operating system such as Google does with Android.

Good point!

2:59 pm: Another terrific analyst comment about the disconnect between the execs encouraging comments and the actual financials, which show a downturn in, yes, revenue.

It is exactly the point here, which Yahoo has been trying to spin. Morse went through the list of excuses, from bumpiness of the search transition to weakness in affiliate sales to whatever.

Bartz jumped in and blamed the search alliance again, noting that moving advertisers over to the new platform was hard to do.

“I will not back down on the fact that we are gaining momentum,” said Bartz about search. “There is a lot going on here.”

Morse chimed in, noting he was the one using “gaining momentum” in his script. “I really believe that,” he said, going through the terrific plans.

“You’re correct the top line is not showing that yet,” said Morse in an increasingly loud voice. “There’s an awful lot there to be optimistic about.”

The accountant that roared.

Encouraging.

But then came the last question about the growth of Facebook, the Silicon Valley social networking phenom that is clearly going to be Yahoo’s biggest rival over the next years.

Bartz acknowledged Facebook’s explosive growth, but declared the company more compatible than competitive.

“There’s room for everybody here,” she said.

Presumably, that’s the hope for Yahoo.

(Also, you can see a slide deck of the financials here.)

The move is a response to a call by the Federal Trade Commission for a “do not track” mechanism to let users decide not to allow advertising cookies to track their online movements for the purposes of personalizing the ads they see on the Web.

The Keep My Opt-Outs add-on installs easily enough in Chrome, though a few people who have installed it are complaining of problems with the Chrome browser in comments on the add-on’s Web site.

Given Chrome’s relatively small share of the browser market, on its face this is a marginal move. Google however says there will be more to come. It wants to make its add-on available for other browsers and will share the code with the rest of the world on an open-source basis.

The Pasadena, Calif.-based company also acquired the independently developed BlackBerry application UberTwitter, adding to its acquisition of Echofon (the Twitter client for iPhone and other Mac devices) at the beginning of the month and Twidroyd (Twitter for Android) in September. Update: On Monday UberMedia said it had acquired an additional company, Mixx, the former competitor to Digg that now curates social media channels for brands.

UberMedia, despite its seemingly perpetual identity crisis, has particular notoriety because its founder and CEO, Bill Gross, first popularized paid search advertising with his company GoTo.com in the late ’90s. When Gross first launched the company last April, he said he’d do the same thing for Twitter.

Since then, Twitter has launched its own ad system and tightened up on permissions for rival ad networks.

UberMedia has let its Twitter account recommendation widgets languish, but says they will be relaunched soon as a new product called FollowMe. Meanwhile, the Twitter clients the company has acquired have a combined three million active users. They are some of the leading independent options, despite somewhat precarious positioning now that Twitter has launched its own official clients for most every platform.

Gross is traveling in Europe this week, but UberMedia COO Jon Kraft got on the phone with NetworkEffect over the weekend to say that there is indeed a method behind all this name-changing and client-acquiring madness. Here’s an edited transcript:

NetworkEffect: Why the name UberMedia?

Kraft: Obviously we’re very excited about the acquisition of UberTwitter, and we felt like our mission had expanded a bit since we first launched. It was really all about this paid search platform, and PostUp was a great name….

And before that you had another name, TweetUp.

Yes, but as we started to grow our business on the client side, we saw ourselves increasingly as a media company. We’re not crazy about the fact that we’ve changed our name twice now, but hopefully we’ll build a company around that brand.

How did this acquisition strategy come about?

We first bought Twidroyd seven months ago, and we really loved what we learned about the way consumers use Twitter.

What is the involvement of the founders of the companies you bought? Are they all running their respective apps?

Obviously a big part of what makes those companies exciting is the passion of the founders, so we encourage them to operate fairly independently.

Who is the staff of UberMedia?

We have some business development to create partnerships, but the vast majority is engineers. We have a little over 40 employees as a distributed team.

And what’s happened to the sponsored Twitter accounts and tweets?

We’re still very excited about what we’re doing with the marketplace, but there are a number of other innovations that we’re planning. The bigger vision is to innovate inside the Twitter ecosystem.

What does that mean in the context of Twitter competing within its ecosystem, especially through Twitter clients? That doesn’t seem like a category other start-ups and investors are investing in as much today.

It’s not easy to organically grow a new Twitter client from scratch, it’s a real challenge. But I think the Twitter platform is still greatly under-leveraged, and there’s surprisingly low penetration of Twitter users today.

But it’s not as if Twitter allows application makers to just make whatever money they want on its platform.

Twitter has been understandably conservative about wanting to protect the user experience across their platform, so we’re being conservative as well and thinking of other ways to innovate and monetize.

What is your company’s relationship with Twitter?

It’s a great relationship. I can’t talk details about what we’re discussing, but the relationship is quite good.

Are you raising more funding? [UberMedia, which launched out of Gross's Idealab, had previously raised $3.5 million from Index Ventures, Betaworks, Revolution, First Round Capital and others.]

We’re not talking about our funding right now, but obviously you have to raise money in order to grow aggressively.

Will you keep acquiring? It seems like you have Twitter clients for most of the major platforms now.

It is possible, but not top of our priority list.

One things you have not had is a problem with agility.

That’s a concise way to put it.

What about Bill Grosss involvement? Is he still CEO or is he doing other Idealab stuff?

Absolutely. He’s head-down 100 percent on this project.

If Apple COO Tim Cook were to portion it out, he’d divide it in two–iPad and Not-iPad– and it wouldn’t be an equitable division. Asked during Tuesday’s Apple earnings call for his thoughts on the horde of tablets unveiled at CES and now hurtling their way to market, Cook summarily dismissed them all.

“If you look at what’s shipping today, there’s really not much out there,” he said. “Generally speaking, there’s two kind of groups that are on the market today. The ones that are using Windows-based operating system, are generally fairly big and heavy and expensive, have very weak battery life, and require a keyboard or a stylus as an input device. And from our point of view and what we’ve seen, consumers aren’t really interested in them.

Then you have the Android tablets which are running an operating system that wasn’t really designed for a tablet. Google has said this, and so this is not just an Apple view by any means. And so basically, you wind up with a sort of a scaled-up smartphone, which is a bizarre product in our view. So frankly speaking, if a customer does a side-by-side comparison of one of these with an iPad it’s hard for me to understand why they wouldn’t select the iPad.…There are no rival tablets in the market right now that we’re concerned about. The next-generation Android tablets aren’t shipping yet, and so today, they’re vapor. We’ll assess them as they come out.”

And continue to innovate in the market.

Said Cook, “We’re not sitting still. And we have a huge first-mover advantage. And we have an incredible user experience from iTunes to the App Store, and an enormous number of apps and a huge ecosystem. We’re very, very confident with entering into a fight with anyone.”

And with an 87.4 percent share of the worldwide “media” tablet market, according to IDC, who wouldn’t be?

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

“We know people care more about what they do than where they do it,” Microsoft Office unit Vice President Takeshi Numoto said in a blog post published on Tuesday. “Whether it’s on a PC or Mac, a mobile phone or online through the Web Apps on multiple browsers, we continue to bring Office to the devices, platforms, and operating systems our customers are using. It should be about the ideas and information, not the device, right?”

Of course, OneNote is just one piece of Office–and one of the newer and least used of the main components at that. It’s also an interesting choice, since OneNote isn’t available natively for the Mac. But Microsoft seems to be leaving the door open to bring other pieces of Office to the iPhone.

In an interview, Microsoft senior director Jason Bunge said that the company had been working on OneNote for the iPhone for the past 18 months. Bunge wouldn’t say whether other Office components are also in the works, saying only that the company had no other apps to announce at this time.

“You can absolutely expect Office to expand its presence across other platforms,” Bunge said.

As for whether Microsoft plans to eventually charge for OneNote or other iPhone apps, Bunge said he didn’t know how long OneNote would remain free and had no other details on Microsoft’s pricing plans.

The goal in bringing OneNote to the iPhone, he said, is to allow those who do use the program on the PC to have it with them wherever they are. Rival programs, such as Evernote, have already been available on the iPhone.

Bunge did put in a bit of a plug for Windows and Windows Phone, saying, “We want Office on our Windows devices to be the best productivity experience that’s possible.”

OneNote is not Microsoft’s first app for the iPhone. Redmond already offers a Bing app, as well as Windows Live Messenger and the Microsoft Tag barcode reader, among other programs.

Update, 12:15 pm PT: Some people, including Mobilized, are getting an error message when they try to log in with their Windows Live ID. Since OneNote for the iPhone requires a Windows Live account, it effectively means those encountering the bug can’t use OneNote for the iPhone at all for now.

Microsoft says it is aware of the issue and is investigating.

1:45 pm PT: Microsoft has posted a blog noting the issues and says they are appearing intermittently as a result of high demand, with the recommended approach as “just keep trying.”

Among the phones that Sony alleges are infringing on its technology are the Accolate, Encore, enV Touch, Glance, Lotus Elite, Neon, Quantum and Rumor Touch.

The latest legal challenge adds to an already crowded docket of wireless competitors making patent-related claims. Just a partial list of the court battles has Nokia against Apple, Motorola against Microsoft, Apple against HTC and Oracle against Google.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith predicted last month that the various players will probably agree on some sort of appropriate royalty streams covering modern smartphones. in the meantime, it looks like the lawyers for all the cellphone makers will remain gainfully employed in 2011.

Yesterday, star venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins forked over $150 million in funding to Twitter.

At at $3.7 billion valuation, that got him a big chunk of the San Francisco microblogging site.

But what it didn’t get him was a seat on the board of Twitter, which many figured he would be given for after handing over so much moolah.

According to sources familiar with the situation, that’s due to Doerr’s being a director on another board: Google.

Several sources who BoomTown spoke to, after breaking news of the massive funding, said that his being on the board of the search giant was seen as too much of a conflict of interest.

A conflict because Google has plans to wade deeply into the social space. And also, of course, because it is the No. 1 potential acquirer of Twitter, as the Silicon Valley company seeks to gather more tools to fight its latest rival, Facebook.

Doerr has very deep ties at Google, having been on its board since mid-1999.

He got that seat, along with Sequoia Capital’s Mike Moritz, after he ponied up a critical $25 million equity round for Google in June of that year.

Interestingly, no other Kleiner partner was named to a Twitter board seat either.

But, some speculate, it might make sense for Mary Meeker–who just joined Kleiner to head up digital investing efforts, after a long-time stint as a Wall Street analyst for Morgan Stanley–to eventually become a Twitter director.

Meeker has, of course, deep IPO and M&A experience.

And, frankly, after adding Flipboard’s Mike McCue and former DoubleClick exec David Rosenblatt yesterday and former Netscape exec Peter Currie recently to its all-boy board band, a woman director might be a good idea to consider.

Other directors at Twitter include Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Venture’s Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, Co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey and CEO Dick Costolo.

I reached out to Doerr for a comment, but he has not yet replied; Twitter declined to comment.

Even more interesting to consider is what Kleiner will invest in next after this mega-funding, given how aggressively many sources said Doerr had pushed to lead the Twitter round.

And, in fact, sources said that Kleiner is looking closely at new funding rounds for both the Spotify music streaming service and Groupon, the social buying start-up that recently decided to turn down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and an earlier $3 billion one from Yahoo.

Groupon is now seeking more funds to remain independent and hold onto its lead in the fast-growing local discounting market, sources said.

(Bloomberg also reported on Groupon’s new fundraising efforts, although it was written about after it turned down the Google offer.)

And Spotify, which is hugely popular outside the U.S., is trying to enter this market, but needs more funding to expand and perhaps strike better deals with music labels.

Both are the just the kind of companies Doerr has targeted in what looks like a serious effort to compete with other firms–especially Andreessen Horowitz and Russia’s DST Global.

They have garnered the heat Kleiner used to have, largely by backing more of the top entrepreneurs recently.

Doerr has already put money into social gaming phenom Zynga and also started an sFund for social-focused investments.

Add Twitter to the pile and you can see where this is headed: Except for the board seat, John Doerr will no longer be denied.

“We are hearing that Verizon…may be willing to pay for exclusivity to itself and AT&T. For these reasons, Verizon could be more willing to give in to Apple’s terms,” Wu said in a note to clients this morning, adding that the iPhone’s continued success has undoubtedly given Apple the upper hand in its negotiations with the carrier. “Apple is back in the driver’s seat with a record 14.1 million iPhone shipments in the September quarter helping AT&T gain share against Verizon over the last two quarters as Android starts to lose some of its luster (at least at Verizon). In addition, our sources indicate that Verizon does not believe the pending launch of BlackBerry 6 on its network is likely to have a material impact.”

An interesting bit of speculation. If Apple were to win concessions from Verizon and AT&T to keep the iPhone exclusive to those carriers, it might be able to drastically expand the device’s distribution in the States and keep its margins in line at the same time. As Wu writes, “This is important as many, including ourselves, have been concerned that Verzion iPhone economics could be less favorable given the strength of Android and higher cost of components, particularly those associated with CDMA.”

That said, with Google’s Android OS gaining market share so quickly it might be a better move strategically to sacrifice a bit of margin to bring the iPhone to more carriers and temper its rival’s growth.

For the past 18 months, mobile payments start-up Zong has had the enviable prime spot on Facebook Credits as its sole option for users wanting to use their cell phone number to buy virtual goods for social gaming and other services.

But, according to multiple sources, that’s about to change later this week, when the social networking giant starts A/B testing its rival, Boku, as an alternate payment method to Zong.

The face-off on Facebook to allow consumers to charge virtual purchases to their wireless bills is just another point of conflict, among many, between the two top Silicon Valley mobile payments companies.

Both have received large amounts of venture funding from prominent investors–$38 million for San Francisco’s Boku and $15 million for Menlo Park, Calif.-based Zong.

And there has been acquisition attention as well from big companies–such as Apple, Google and more–who are mightily interested in the fast-growing space of late.

Sources close to Facebook said the move to include both on its king-making platform is a natural one for the company, giving its users a range of options in the mobile payments area.

One person noted that Facebook execs told both Zong and Boku that it was important to enable people to buy Facebook Credits via whatever means they choose.

The plan is to use both for a while, said another source, gauging how users like them, although it was not considered “a horse race between them” by Facebook.

Nonetheless, that’s just what both Zong and Boku think it will turn into on Facebook.

“It is all about performance,” said one person with knowledge of Boku’s strategy. “Facebook is testing the landscape, especially outside the U.S.”

Indeed, mobile payments are currently much more important internationally than in the U.S. market, although that is changing fast, especially as smartphone usage booms.

Zong CEO David Marcus, in an interview with BoomTown today at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco, said that competition was inevitable.

“Every single large-scale mobile process needs to have a backup, especially as mobile payments reach the scale everyone expects it to,” he said. “But we are confident that we have the best product for the Facebook platform.”

Performance and distribution will be much on the minds of potential acquirers, in much the same way Apple and Google snapped up mobile advertising companies Quattro Wireless and AdMob, respectively.

Most expect both Zong and Boku to eventually be bought, although both companies have said they intend to remain independent.

Selling out might also have its downside–if, for example, Boku were bought by Google for its Android mobile operating system, it would quickly become less attractive for the search giant’s growing archrival Facebook to feature it.

The same goes for Apple, since it also has its own agenda with the iPhone.

But there are other possible buyers, such as Amazon, eBay’s PayPal and a spate of credit card companies.

Whatever happens, the new battle on Facebook will surely be an interesting one to watch.

To get up to speed, here is a video interview I did with Boku’s top execs–CEO Mark Britto and Ron Hirson, SVP of product and marketing–in July, followed by a more recent one I did with Zong’s Marcus:

Investment bankers and stock markets can calm down–Microsoft and Adobe are not in talks about an acquisition.

Spurred by a story in the New York Times that Microsoft was eyeing the software company for purchase, Adobe (ADBE) stock went wild today, up 11.5 percent to $28.69.

Except, according to numerous sources at both companies with whom I talked today, it’s “nonsense.”

Sure, it might be an interesting idea–kind of like AOL (AOL) and Yahoo (YHOO) merging–but that’s not the case at this point either.

Chalk this one up to blabby bankers and stock speculators–this might be a good rumor for regulators to look into.

Of course, as is typical, the execs at both companies talk a lot–you might have noticed that Adobe has a lot of software that is popular on the Windows operating system.

So, they had a meeting!

But it is kind of hard to do an acquisition when “Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, recently showed up with a small entourage of deputies at Adobe’s offices to hold a secret meeting with Adobe’s chief executive, Shantanu Narayen.”

Memo to the Times: When there is an acquisition afoot–in my experience–it’s all private airplanes and law offices and not a company HQ visit by the very loud and very noticeable Ballmer, the exact polar opposite of a shrinking violet.

In any case, it is not a big surprise at this point if longtime rivals like Adobe and Microsoft (MSFT)–which makes a competing video technology called Silverlight to Adobe’s Flash–talk about trying to stop the explosive growth of Apple, especially in the mobile space.

Microsoft is about to launch its Windows Phone 7, after many cloddish efforts in the arena have failed, and Adobe has been subject to a withering attack from Apple (AAPL) and its CEO Steve Jobs.

Jobs, in no uncertain terms, has dissed Flash relentlessly as a technology.

Others have not, such as Google (GOOG), which recently showed strong support for Adobe’s Flash in its recent launch of Google TV.

In fact, it is Google that is more mentioned in Silicon Valley as the logical acquirer of Adobe, if there were to be a sale.

Along with all its various assets, such as the Photoshop and Acrobat software that dominates online publishing, Adobe’s Omniture unit is one of the more powerful and popular analytics companies on the Web, which is right in Google’s wheelhouse.

Personally, that’s the one I would bet on, although that’s entirely me speaking.

Until that happens, here is a video interview of Jobs smacking around Adobe and Flash at the eighth D: All Things Digital conference in June:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101007/adobsoft-nonsense-on-the-microsoft-adobe-rumor-in-any-case-itd-more-likely-be-goodobe/feed/ 13 http://allthingsd.com/20101004/official-t-mobile-on-board-for-windows-phone-7-launch/ http://allthingsd.com/20101004/official-t-mobile-on-board-for-windows-phone-7-launch/#comments Mon, 04 Oct 2010 20:51:40 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=50059 When it debuts on October 11, Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 OS will be available on devices from T-Mobile, as well as AT&T.

And that’s official.

Moments ago, the carrier–whose name was mysteriously removed from a Windows Phone 7 launch event invitation earlier today–confirmed its participation in next week’s WP7 festivities. “T-Mobile has indicated support for Windows Phone 7 and will announce details of our Windows Phone 7 offering on Oct. 11,” the company said in a statement.

Thank God for that. Because with Microsoft’s now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t invitations, it was getting difficult to tell.

This morning the agenda for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 worldwide launch event read:

T-Mobile reps will be present for device showing and their service offering discussion / Microsoft developer architect will demonstrate Windows Phone 7 applications

But after word of T-Mobile’s inclusion in the event spread, Microsoft removed the carrier’s name, changing the text to:

We will present a Windows Phone 7 device / Microsoft developer architect will demonstrate Windows Phone 7 applications

It’s not clear why Microsoft (MSFT) changed the text, though I imagine AT&T (T)–the company’s “premier partner” for the WP7 launch–couldn’t have been too happy sharing billing with a rival carrier.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101004/official-t-mobile-on-board-for-windows-phone-7-launch/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100927/rim-unveils-blackberry-playbook-tablet/ http://allthingsd.com/20100927/rim-unveils-blackberry-playbook-tablet/#comments Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:30:34 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=49437 Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis had his “one more thing” moment today at the company’s 2010 DevCon conference. Near the end of his opening keynote address, Lazaridis–after making a number of big announcements, including in-app payments for BlackBerry apps, a BlackBerry Advertising Service and the opening of BBM as a social platform–uncrated the PlayBook, RIM’s long-rumored tablet.

Lazaridis described the device as “the first professional tablet,” able to access the “full Web” (the fashionable euphemism for supporting Adobe’s Flash). The PlayBook will be able to display content from a paired BlackBerry smartphone, and, in a departure for RIM, will be “an amazing gaming platform,” Lazaridis said. Leaving no superlative unturned, he said, “This will enable a new world of computing that you can hold in the palm of your hand.”

Thankfully, he stopped short of calling it “magical and revolutionary.”

The PlayBook has no cellular connection of its own, though it can connect to wireless networks through a paired BlackBerry. There are plans for 3G and 4G versions of the device, though RIM volunteered little in the way of a time line for them–“some point in the future” was as close as Lazaridis got to a hard and fast date.

Interestingly, PlayBook doesn’t use RIM’s new BlackBerry 6 OS. Instead, it’s built on a new platform created by QNX, which RIM (RIMM) acquired earlier this year.

Here are the specs:

• 7″ LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)

Say what you will about RIM following the puck again, that’s an impressive list. In spec, PlayBook looks quite promising, certainly more so than the other iPad rivals we’ve seen to date. And RIM’s leadership clearly has high hopes for it.

“We are bringing mobility to the Web, not asking the Web to reformat for mobility,” RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie told Reuters. “I can’t think of anything more architecturally game-changing that we’ve done, other than the launch of the original BlackBerry.”

The PlayBook is expected to arrive at market in the U.S. in early 2011 and abroad in the second quarter. No word yet on pricing (or a few other details, like battery life).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100927/rim-unveils-blackberry-playbook-tablet/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091112/frostys-winter-litigation-wonderland-att-demands-verizon-pull-holiday-iphone-ads-with-full-complaint/ http://allthingsd.com/20091112/frostys-winter-litigation-wonderland-att-demands-verizon-pull-holiday-iphone-ads-with-full-complaint/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:58:55 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=28842 As clever as it is, Verizon’s reimagining of a Rankin/Bass animated Christmas television special as a criticism of AT&T’s wireless network coverage did not go over well with Ma Bell. On Wednesday, the carrier amended its complaint against Verizon, asking a federal court in Atlanta to force its rival to immediately pull the ad and two other holiday-themed spots that debuted with it.

Once again, AT&T (T) argues that coverage maps featured in Verizon’s (VZ) ad are misleading and falsely suggest that AT&T offers no coverage in areas where it actually does service.

“Contrary to the image presented in the Verizon ads, our wireless network is pervasive,” said an AT&T spokesman. “It covers over 300 million people, or 97 percent of the U.S. population. Our fastest, or 3G, network covers approximately 233 million people, or 75 percent of the U.S. population….[Verizon's] use of white space is misleading.”

While AT&T is deadly serious about this accusation, the fact that it must make it by referencing creatures like the Abominable Snow Monster and a pink spotted elephant makes it, well, hysterical.

“The ‘Island of Misfit Toys’ television advertisement is a parody of the ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ television special that depicts an island to which Rudolph travels after escaping an attack from the Abominable Snow Monster,” AT&T argues in its complaint. “The advertisement begins with outdated, discarded toys expressing surprise at the arrival of an Apple iPhone. The red Charlie-in-the-Box says ‘Hey! Check out the new guy!’ The spotted elephant, in a surprised manner, asks the iPhone ‘What are you doing here? You can download apps and browse the web!’ and a Dolly for Sue asserts that ‘Yeah. People will love you [the iPhone].’”

The complaint continues: “In response, a blue AT&T coverage map depicting large swaths of ‘white’ or ‘blank’ space across the United States appears above the iPhone. All the toys exclaim ‘Oh . . .’ in dismay, while the iPhone wilts and its screen turns dark. The toy airplane then assures the iPhone that ‘you’re going to fit right in here!’”

Finally, as AT&T describes it, “AT&T’s and Verizon’s coverage maps then appear and the announcer states, ‘with five times more 3G coverage than AT&T, Verizon Wireless is your destination for great gifts.’ The image of the sad and wilting iPhone on an island of misfit toys falsely communicates that the iPhone is a broken device because it cannot browse the web or download applications when outside of AT&T’s depicted coverage area. Further, the maps in the advertisement deceive consumers into believing that AT&T’s customers have no coverage whatsoever when they are outside of AT&T’s depicted coverage area and thus cannot use their wireless devices in many parts of the United States.”

Verizon’s attorneys are probably doubled over with laughter at this very moment.

Below, AT&T’s amended complaint in its entirety:

VerizonAmendComp _3_ –

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091112/frostys-winter-litigation-wonderland-att-demands-verizon-pull-holiday-iphone-ads-with-full-complaint/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20091007/microsoft-yahoo-deal-regulatory-update-eh/ http://allthingsd.com/20091007/microsoft-yahoo-deal-regulatory-update-eh/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:31:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=19165

Unlike the gripping back and forth of the fight over Yahoogle last year, the approval process for the search and online advertising partnership of Microsoft and Yahoo is chugging along slowly but surely as the Justice Department has deepened its investigation by reaching out to a broad range of publishers, advertisers, public interest groups and rivals for comment recently.

A month ago, the government agency lobbed in a “second request” for information about the deal the pair struck earlier this summer.

This kind of regulatory review is typical in deals of this magnitude.

But so far, there is no significant external challenge to the MicroHoo deal, even–according to many sources BoomTown has interviewed over the last week–from Google, the likeliest company to try to scuttle or, at the very least, slow down the deal.

“Is it worth fighting a big fight over?” asked one person close to the thinking of Google (GOOG). “Not really.”

Said another source, surveying the state of play: “It’s eh, kind of inevitable and not that interesting on a lot of levels.”

While none of the key constituencies wanted to comment or make predictions about the outcome of the regulatory scrutiny, most seem to agree that MicroHoo is more likely to be approved than not.

At the time the partnership was announced in July, execs at both Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) said a lot of investigation was likely from Justice, although they said they were also confident that it would be allowed go through by year’s end.

So far, several sources said, the key issue raised by the Justice Department has been whether the argument Microsoft and Yahoo are making–that they need scale to compete with Google–is valid or not.

Currently, Google has just under 70 percent of the search market in the U.S., while Microsoft and Yahoo together have about 28 percent.

Google has been arguing that huge scale is not necessary to be successful in the search ad market, although its execs have often said bigger is better when it comes to natural search and in spurring more clicks on ads.

Meanwhile, Microsoft and Yahoo have said they need all the firepower they can muster together to battle Google’s hegemony.

In a related concern, some regulators are worried–as they were when Google and Yahoo were trying to get approval for a similar deal last year–that any hookup of big players in the market will effectively take Yahoo out of the search business.

“With only three big players, going to two is not desirable to the government,” said one source. “Yahoo has to reassure everyone that it is focused on a sustainable business model beyond search.”

In a blog post yesterday, in fact, Yahoo said it was committed to search innovation.

In any case, most expect another month of investigation at least, although the lack of any loud voice in opposition could shorten that time frame.

And, added some sources, unlike with Yahoogle, there is not likely to be any kind of Congressional hearing on the deal.

Nonetheless, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google remain concerned that deals like this will lead to more focus on privacy issues, specifically around behavioral targeting.

That would be more a matter for legislators or the Federal Trade Commission and would probably come well after the deal is cleared and as part of a bigger topic.

Rep. Rick Boucher (D., Va.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, said he will consider consumer privacy legislation this fall.

Boucher led hearings on the subject this summer, and there might be more, especially as Web companies garner a lot of personal information from consumers with little oversight of what they do with those data.

If Boucher does call for hearings, he might want to replay this particularly boneheaded (but funny!) video from Yahoo’s U.K. ad staff, which classifies various Yahoo customer types–such as “disco-dancing heart surgeons from Nantwich”–as farm animals:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20091007/microsoft-yahoo-deal-regulatory-update-eh/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20090615/google-gripped-by-fear-of-bing-oh-really/ http://allthingsd.com/20090615/google-gripped-by-fear-of-bing-oh-really/#comments Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:01:41 +0000 Eric Savitz http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=12662 The New York Post yesterday ran a squishy story with the nifty headline “Fear Grips Google,” (GOOG) that seems to be the talk of the tech blogosphere today on a fairly news-less Monday. The thesis is that the search giant has sprung into action out of concern of some of the early kudos Microsoft (MSFT) is getting for Bing, its new search engine.

Here’s an excerpt from the Post story:

“You’d think nothing would get under the skin of search giant Google.

But co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft’s rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service, The Post has learned.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090615/google-gripped-by-fear-of-bing-oh-really/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20090520/pre-shortages/ http://allthingsd.com/20090520/pre-shortages/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 11:00:23 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=17937 One of the simplest ways to create a shortage, and the buying frenzy that typically accompanies it, is to announce that there will be one. And this is precisely what Sprint CEO Dan Hesse did for the Palm Pre Tuesday. Speaking at J.P. Morgan’s Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference shortly after Sprint announced the handset’s street date, Hesse said he anticipates that supplies will be limited, at least initially. “We don’t intend to advertise it heavily early on because we think we are going to have shortages for a while,” Hesse said. “We won’t be able to keep up with demand for the device in the early period of time.”

Interesting thing to say in advance of a product launch on which so much is riding, don’t you think? Unless you’re already trying to foster the perception of excess demand. As Gartner analyst Hugues De La Vergne noted last month, “It’s important to have a success like selling out. The Pre has to live up to the hype or else they’ll lose their momentum to rival products coming out soon after.” And clearly, that’s a very real danger here. Though, to be fair, there are other possible explanations. It could simply be responsible production scheduling. It might also be that Palm’s financial situation has forced the company to temper its launch run-rate in order to retain adequate capital for marketing and customer service. Or it could be that Pre really is the blockbuster device Palm (PALM) and Sprint (S) believe it to be and no amount of supply will be enough to meet the initial and overwhelming demand for it. It could be that the Pre is the next Apple (AAPL) iPhone.

“What the iPhone has shown is that if you really do have a compelling device that is revolutionary then customers will switch to your service,” said Hesse. “We think the Palm Pre stacks up very well against the iPhone.”

We’ll find out come June 6.

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