Will Blackberry Embrace Android?

BlackBerry Ltd’s move to embrace Android, although geared towards lifting revenue from its software and device management segment, could inadvertently give its device arm a new lease on life.

“From the standpoint of marketing, this is a great way for BlackBerry to get visibility. It really doesn’t hurt them much, and the upside is high,” said Rob Enderle, who runs technology consulting firm Enderle Group.

Enderle and other financial and tech analysts agree that the move by BlackBerry does present its own set of challenges as the company would have to support two platforms and potentially put some resources into marketing an Android device, but with little to lose most agree it comes with little downside.

“If Android has one significant weakness it is security and that’s just the thing that BlackBerry can fix, so it could play out pretty well and I am actually quite surprised that they did not try this sooner,” said Enderle, adding that BlackBerry has to deliver a compelling device in order for the gambit to work.

Reuters reported last week that BlackBerry was considering a move to test run Android on its upcoming slider device, as part of a bid to convince potential corporate and government clients that its device management system, BES12, is truly able of manage and secure not just BlackBerry devices, but also devices powered by Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

“In order for BES12 to succeed it has to be viewed by all as platform agnostic, and what better way to demonstrate that other than by doing it yourself,” said Ramon Llamas, an analyst with technology research firm IDC.

BlackBerry, which once dominated the smartphone market, has seen its market share drop to under 1 percent, as the iPhone and a slew of Android devices from Samsung have captured market share. John Chen, a turnaround expert brought in to fix its slide, is now pivoting BlackBerry to focus more on its well-regarded software and device management business.

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Jawbone Sues Fitbit

Jawbone has filed another lawsuit against Fitbit in less than two weeks, alleging its activity tracking products infringe several of Jawbone’s patents.

The new suit, filed Wednesday in San Francisco by Jawbone parent company AliphCom, seeks unspecified damages and an injunction to block the sale of Fitbit devices such as the Flex, Charge and Surge bands.

Late last month, Jawbone filed another lawsuit, accusing Fitbit of poaching its employees and stealing trade secrets. Fitbit has said it has no knowledge of any such information in its possession.

In its latest complaint, Jawbone says it will also ask the U.S. International Trade Commission to investigate Fitbit, which could potentially lead to an import ban on Fitbit products.

Jawbone says it has hundreds of patents granted or pending, and claims that Fitbit infringes several of them. One patent describes a “general health and wellness management method and apparatus for a wellness application using data from a data-capable band.”

Another patent covers a “system for detecting, monitoring, and reporting an individual’s physiological or contextual status.”

Fitbit didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest suit.

The timing is bad for Fitbit, which is preparing to go public on the U.S. stock markets. It also faces intense competition from a number of rivals, which also include Garmin and Apple with its Apple Watch.

Both Jawbone and Fitbit make wearable bands and associated software that tracks people’s movement, exercise, sleep and heart rate.

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Can MB Challenge Tesla?

On the heels of Tesla announcing a home and commercial battery product line, Mercedes-Benz unveiled its own brand of energy storage products for those with solar systems to store surplus power.

The Mercedes-Benz energy storage plants for private use are available for order now and are expected to ship in September.

The batteries were first developed for cars, but Mercedes-Benz said the energy storage units “meet the very highest safety and quality standards” for home use.

Up to eight battery modules with an energy capacity of 2.5 kWh can be combined into an energy storage plant with a capacity of 20 kWh.

“Households with their own photovoltaic systems can thus buffer surplus solar power virtually free of any losses,” the carmaker said in a statement.

What wasn’t announced by Mercedes-Benz was information about the size of or pricing for the new batteries.

In May, Tesla announced its Powerwall batteries for home use and its Powerpack batteries for commercial use. Today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced his company would double the power output of the Powerwall batteries but keep their prices the same.

Tesla’s Powerwall batteries will go from having a two-kilowatt (kW) steady power output and 3.3kW peak output to a 5kW steady output and 7kW peak output, Musk said. The price of the batteries will remain the same: $3,000 for the 7kW/hour (KWh) daily cycle version and $3,500 for the 10kWh backup UPS version. Total installation cost will run around $4,000, according to Musk.

Up to nine Powerwall battery units can be daisy-chained together on a wall to provide up to 90kWh of power.

The average U.S. household uses about 20 kWh to 25 kWh of power every day, according to GTM Research.

Tesla Energy’s new commercial-grade battery is called the Powerpack, and will sell in 100kWh modules for $25,000 each. Musk said the Powerpack can scale infinitely, even powering factories and small cities.

Mercedes-Benz’s batteries, being produced by subsidiary Deutsche Accumotive, are its first industrial-scale lithium-ion units, and they’ve already been tested “on the grid,” the company said.

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Is Intel Supporting Open-Source?

Intel has suddenly made some interesting hardware less interesting to open sourcers by insisting that its i915 DRM kernel graphics driver for upcoming Skylake and Broxton hardware demands some binary-only firmware blobs.

According to Phoronix these first i915 DRM firmware blobs are for Skylake and Broxton for the GuC and DMC.
DMC is the Display Microcontroller used by Skylake (Gen9) within the display engine to save and restore its state when entering into low-power states and then resuming. It saves and restores display registers across low-power states separate of the kernel.

Intel said that the firmware blobs are required by the DRM driver rather than being an optional add-on.

The license of these firmware blobs also indicate that redistribution is only allowed in binary form without modification. Beyond that, “no reverse engineering, decompilation, or dis-assembly of this software is permitted.”

Basically this will kill off any desire for Open Source enthusiasts to touch Skylake, although we doubt Intel will be too worried – they are a very nice couple. In any event AMD apparently uses something similar to protect bits of its operation.

Still Intel is shipping these firmware files early so everyone knows they are there.

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FCC To Tighten Rules On Robocalls

The top U.S. telecommunications regulator wants to make it more difficult for telemarketers and other businesses to robocall and text messages consumers under changes to autodialing rules being proposed.

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on June 18 on the proposal, which would give legal cover to telephone companies to offer consumers technologies that would block robocalls, regardless of where they originate.

“The FCC wants to make it clear: Telephone companies can – and in fact should – offer consumers robocall-blocking tools,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a blog post.

The wireless carriers have worried that blocking automated calls could be construed as violations of the law that requires them to ensure that all calls placed over their networks reach their intended recipients.

The proposal would also reassert that consumers have to agree to receive automated calls and texts and clarify that they can revoke their consent in any “reasonable” way, including a simple request for calls to stop, without the need to file convoluted paperwork.

Robocalls and robotexts are by far the most common cause of consumer complaints at the FCC, topping 215,000 in the last year alone. Consumer advocates and the majority of U.S. states attorneys general had pressed the FCC to clarify the robocall rules.

Numerous business associations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have also pushed for clarifications, facing a growing number of lawsuits prompted by violations such as calling cellphone users whose numbers used to belong to someone else.

The FCC’s proposal would reassert that companies should try to avoid numbers reassigned to consumers who have not agreed to receive their calls. If they do not know that a number has been reassigned, they are allowed one call to find out.

The business community had also complained that some lawsuits unfairly target them for using dialing technologies that could be modified to become autodialers. FCC officials said any technology with the capacity to dial random or sequential numbers qualifies as an autodialer, even if it would require modification.

U.S. law prohibits telemarketing calls to both landline and cellphones of consumers who have not given written consent.

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Qualcomm Has A Plethora Of Automobile Modems

Qualcomm had an IoT event in San Francisco yesterday and the company wanted to talk a bit more about IoT, also known as Internet of Things. They started off with a catchy phrase – Internet of Hype to Internet of Everything.

Dave Aberle said that up to a billion dollars in revenue is coming from the non-mobile market. More than 10 pecent of Qualcomm revenue will come from the non-headset market. They call this market Internet of Everything, but we believe that not all of that market should be called IoT.

IoT is not just the wearable market; it is car modems, connected speakers, action cameras, some smart SanDisk storage solutions, home automation kit and more.  Aberle mentioned that Qualcomm has 40 car design wins in the market with 15 different OEMs. We saw some names including Audi on the slide, but the list of obviously much longer.

Qualcomm is the leader in connected car and 4G LTE market, while Nvidia is the leader in Infotainment car systems, having some huge customers behind it, including the Volkswagen Group.

Qualcomm wants to expand its presence in IoT, including automotive solutions, and we expect more IoT designs from them in the near future.

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Is The DRAM Market Gaining Traction?

DRAM market conditions will be better in the third quarter of 2015, recovering from the bad first half of the year, according to Inotera.

Inotera chairman Charles Kau said that it was unclear if DRAM prices will stop falling and rebound in the third quarter.

Inotera on May 11 signed a $508 million five-year syndicated loan agreement with a consortium of local banks in Taiwan in the hope of getting a bit of flexibility until things pick up.
The outfit was not thinking of flogging any of the family silver, but plans to start distributing dividends to shareholders in 2016, Kau noted.

In 2014, non-PC DRAM products accounted for 60 per cent of Inotera’s total revenues. The company will continue to improve its product mix in 2015, while making progress in the transition to 20nm process technology.

Kau told Digitimes that Inotera http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20150512PD219.html plans to have 80 per cent of its total production capacity to be built using a newer 20nm node by the end of 2015.

Meanwhile it is not planning any big capital expenditure, he said.

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Intel Rewards RealSense Developers

Intel has awarded  $1m to a number of developers as part of its RealSense 3D App Challenge, which was launched last year.

Announced by Intel president Renee James at Computex 2014, the RealSense App Challenge was part of Intel’s efforts to boost RealSense globally and generate software innovation around the ecosystem.

More than 7,000 software creators in 37 countries applied to compete, and 400 were selected to develop new applications for entertainment, learning and collaboration.

Several hundred developers of creative app ideas in these categories received the latest edition of the RealSense 3D Camera and RealSense software development kit, which included free tools, examples and application programing interfaces with which to develop their ideas.

Intel announced on Thursday that the grand prize winner, who picks up $100,000, is Brazilian developer Alexandre Ribeiro da Silva of Anima Games.

His Seed app requires gamers to use reflexes and rational thinking to solve puzzles. The goal of the game is to guide a little floating seed through its journey to reforest a devastated land.

The second prize of $50,000 was awarded to Canadian developer David Schnare of Kinetisense. His OrthoSense app uses RealSense to help medical professionals remotely rehabilitate a patient who has suffered a hand injury by tracking their range of movement over time.

“This practical application of human-computer interaction is an impressive example of how technology can make our lives better,” Intel said.

Another notable winner was Lee Bamber from the UK, who received recognition for his virtual 3D video maker. The app allows a user to record themselves as a 3D hologram and then transport to a variety of scenes.

Once recorded, they can then change the camera position over the course of the playback to add an extra dimension to a video blogs, storybook or v-mails, for instance.

“The idea of the app is that you can choose the backdrop then set the lighting as you would in a studio then do the acting,” Bamber explained in his video.

Doug Fisher, SVP and general manager of Intel’s Software and Services Group, said in a blog post that now the app challenge is complete “the real work begins”, as Intel Software will continue to encourage all finalists to bring products to market.

“We also will continue mobilising our resources to inspire, educate and advance innovation through programmes such as the Intel Developer Zone, where developers can engage to find new software tools and build industry relationships,” he said.

“Human-computer interactions will no longer be defined by mice, keyboards and 2D displays. Our physical and digital worlds are coming together. When they do, the opportunities for us as consumers and businesses will explode.”

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Text To 911 Has Low Adoption Rate

Only 5% of the nation’s 6,500 emergency dispatch centers are capable of receiving and responding to emergency text-to-911 messages.

That’s not good enough for more than 41,000 signers of a Change.org petition. They want Congress to pass legislation requiring emergency centers to update their systems to accommodate texting.

Text-to-911 would have provided much-needed help for Lisbeth (not her real name), a mother of two who said she was repeatedly battered by her boyfriend in her home over several years. One day three years ago, when he was yelling at her, she tried to call 911 on her cell phone for help, but he broke down the door where she was hiding and demanded to know whom she was calling.

“I was trying to whisper, but he got in and punched me and asked me who I was talking to,” Lisbeth said in an interview. That time, a neighbor overheard the fight and called 911 to bring police to the scene.

“911 works, but I wish it worked with text,” she added. “If they had it back then, it might have made a difference.” Lisbeth later moved into a shelter for abused women in California’s San Fernando Valley and said her life has improved for herself and her children. “Anybody who is going through the same situation as I was should ask for help,” she said.

The Federal Communications Commission last yea rrequired U.S. carriers and makers of some texting apps to provide emergency texting with their services, but the FCC doesn’t regulate the nation’s emergency dispatch centers. Instead, the centers are regulated locally by 3,200 different states, counties and cities, even though many of those jurisdictions receive federal funds for the dispatch centers.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai last August expressed concerns that FCC mandates for carriers might give the public a false impression that they can send texts to emergency responders when so few are prepared to receive texts.

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Intel Talks More About Skylake

A new Intel roadmap suggests the first Broadwell LGA parts will launch in Q2, while Skylake-S parts will come in Q3.

The roadmap was published by PC Online and points to two Broadwell LGA launches this quarter – the Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C. These two parts will be joined by a total of four Skylake-S products in Q3, the Core i7-6700K, Core i7-6700, Core i5-6600K, Core i5-6600 and the Core i5-6500.

Both Skylake-S and Broadwell LGA will replace the current crop of Haswell parts, including Devil’s Canyon products. However, Broadwell LGA sits one tier above Skylake-S and Haswell-based products.

Starting in Q4, we should see more Broadwell LGA parts, but we don’t have any names yet. In the first quarter of 2016, we can also expect new Skylake-S parts.

Speaking of 2016, Intel plans to unleash the Broadwell-E in the first quarter of 2016. Little is known about Broadwell-E, but the new 14nm flagship is expected to sport eight cores. Clocks remain unknown, although the 14nm node promises substantial gains.

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