Is Verizon Interested In Clearwire?

Verizon Wireless reportedly has offered $1 billion to $1.5 billion to acquire some of Clearwire’s spectrum leases, possibly complicating Sprint Nextel’s attempt to buy out the company in conjunction with its acquisition by Softbank.

Clearwire is struggling financially but owns broad swaths of spectrum, the lifeblood of wireless networks. The April 8 bid from “Party J,” which Clearwire disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday, is the latest in a series of offers for its spectrum licenses. Unnamed people familiar with the matter identified “Party J” as Verizon Wireless, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Clearwire is a key part of a complicated set of possible transactions that could make a much stronger competitor out of Sprint, the country’s third-largest mobile operator. Sprint already owns roughly half of Clearwire and is bidding about $2.2 billion to buy the rest of its stock. That deal depends on Softbank’s planned $20.1 billion offer for 70% of Sprint, which is still undergoing regulatory review.

Clearwire holds 150MHz of spectrum or more in most major markets of the U.S. Verizon would buy only a portion of that spectrum. “Party J offered to acquire Clearwire spectrum leases generally located in large markets,” Clearwire said in the Friday filing, a proxy statement to shareholders on the Sprint buyout bid. The proposed gross price of $1 billion to $1.5 billion would be reduced by what Clearwire pays for the leases, which could be substantial, according to Clearwire’s filing. The company said it would discuss the offer with “Party J” and Sprint.

Source

6 of 10 Companies Approve BYOD

More than six out of 10 companies allow or mandate the use of employee-owned mobile devices for work in order to increase productivity, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

While the BYOD (bring your own device) push has been at the forefront of press coverage, the majority of companies still provide at least a subset of devices to employees. One third of companies strictly mandate which devices can be used for work purposes and don’t allow any type of device provided by the employee, according to the survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a nonprofit trade group.

The online survey of 502 U.S. IT and business executives was conducted in February. It also found that the most popular option, at 58%, was to have a mix of corporate-owned and employee-owned devices.

For 53% of those surveyed, the top reason for allowing employees to use or select their own devices was to increase productivity while employees are away from the office. Another reason was that employees like to use familiar devices.

Twelve percent of the respondents stated it was simply too difficult to stop employees from using their own devices.

CompTIA’s report said that companies looking to maximize the benefits of a mobile device-enabled workforce must “look beyond simply which devices are used and re-examine business processes and workforce needs.”

Companies should assess the specific needs of workers, rather than just deploying one device over another on a corporate-wide basis, said Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, at CompTIA.

Source

IBM’s Next-gen Transistors Mimick Human Brain

IBM has discovered a way to make transistors that could be turned into virtual circuitry that mimics how the human brain operates.

The new transistors would be made from strongly correlated materials, such as metal oxides, which researchers say can be used to build more powerful — but less power-hungry — computation circuitry.

“The scaling of conventional-based transistors is nearing an end, after a fantastic run of 50 years,” said Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow at IBM Research. “We need to consider alternative devices and materials that operate entirely differently.”

Researchers have been trying to find ways of changing conductivity states in strongly correlated materials for years. Parkin’s team is the first to convert metal oxides from an insulated to conductive state by applying oxygen ions to the material. The team recently published details of the work in the journal Science.

In theory, such transistors could mimic how the human brain operates in that “liquids and currents of ions [would be used] to change materials,” Parkin said, noting that “brains can carry out computing operations a million times more efficiently than silicon-based computers.”

Source

Google Fights NSL Over Data Privacy

Google is fighting a National Security Letter (NSL) issued by the US government, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) acknowledging it is one of the first firms to do so.

Google took the unusual step last month of revealing, albeit in vague terms, the number of NSLs it received from the US government. At the time the company said it was working with the authorities to improve transparency around the subject, but according to court filings it is also fighting against handing over users’ data.

In March, Google filed a petition to set aside a legal process. Kevan Fornasero, a lawyer for Google said in the filing that petitions “filed under Section 3511 of Title 18 to set aside legal process issued under Section 2709 of Title 18 must be filed under seal because Section 2709 prohibits disclosure of the legal process”.

Fornasero’s reference to Section 2709 refers to the ability of the FBI to issue NSLs and force the handover of user data. According to the EFF, Google is one of the first communications companies to fight an NSL, but because Section 2709 doesn’t allow firms to disclose the legal process, few people can be certain that others haven’t tried to stand up to the US government.

Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer for the EFF said, “The people who are in the best position to challenge the practice are people like Google. So far no one has really stood up for their users’ among large Internet service providers.”

Google has tried in recent years to provide users with some information on how it deals with government agencies’ requests for user data. If the firm can succeed in its fight against NSLs then it could open the floodgates for others to stand up against a law that some see to be nothing more than a snooper’s charter.

Source

Windows RT Devices To Drop In Price

Prices of Windows RT devices have started to decline, signaling an attempt by PC makers to quickly clear out stock after poor adoption of tablets and convertibles with the operating system.

Microsoft released Windows RT for ARM-based devices and Windows 8 for Intel-based devices in October last year. The price drop is an acknowledgement that Windows RT has failed, analysts said.

Prices of popular products usually don’t fall, but Windows RT devices were not in demand, and prices fell, analysts said.

The starting price for Dell’s XPS 10 is now US$449 for a 32GB model, scalping $50 off the original launch price. The 64GB model is $499, which is a drop from the original $599 price. By comparison, the price of the Latitude 10 tablet with Intel processors and Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS remained stable at $499.

Asus’ VivoTab RT, which is largely sold through retailers, is being offered by Amazon.com for $382 with 32GB of storage, which is a heavy discount from the $599 launch price. Retailers like Best Buy, Staples and Office Depot have also dropped the price of the tablet by $50, now selling it for $549.

Newegg is listing VivoTab RT as having been discontinued. Asus did not respond to a request to comment on whether the company was still offering the tablet.

Lenovo is offering the IdeaPad Yoga 11 for $599 as part of a seven-day deal, which is a drop from the original $799 price. However, TigerDirect is offering an IdeaPad Yoga 11 model for $599 on its website, while Amazon is selling a model for $499.99.

Samsung did not ship its Windows RT tablet, Ativ Tab, to the U.S. market.

However, the starting price of Microsoft’s Surface RT remained consistent at $499 on its online store. Microsoft also offers Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 11 through its store, but has stopped offering tablets like the VivoTab RT on its website. The company last month said it stocks its store with RT devices based on availability and demand.

Source

Court Sides With Aereo

Streaming television service Aereo does not infringe the copyrights of over-the-air TV stations, and a request from several stations to shutter the New York-based service isn’t warranted, an appeals court has ruled.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was right to deny a request for a preliminary injunction from Fox, ABC, WNET and other TV stations, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Monday.

The TV stations had argued Aereo, a service that allows subscribers to record and play over-the-air TV programs on Internet-connected devices, violated their so-called public performance right, their exclusive right in U.S. copyright law to “to perform the copyrighted work publicly.”

But Judge Christopher Droney, writing for the appeals court majority, noted that Aereo makes use of technology already found by courts to be legal. The service combines Aereo-designed mini TV antennas, DVRs, and a Slingbox-like streaming service, he noted.

Aereo users, by making personal copies of TV programs for their own use, were not creating public performances, Droney added.

The TV stations “have not demonstrated that they are likely to prevail on the merits on this claim in their copyright infringement action,” Droney wrote in rejecting the request for an injunction against the service. “Nor have they demonstrated serious questions as to the merits and a balance of hardships that tips decidedly in their favor.”

Aereo praised the decision. The decision “again validates that Aereo’s technology falls squarely within the law, and that’s a great thing for consumers who want more choice and flexibility in how, when and where they can watch television,” Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s CEO and founder, said in a statement.

Lawyers for the TV stations weren’t immediately available for comment.

Digital rights group Public Knowledge cheered the ruling, saying it is a “victory for consumer choice and video innovation.”

Source

Blackberry Plans New Tablet

BlackBerry plans to roll out a larger tablet and two phone-tablet combos, or phablets, over the next year, according to a leaked road map presentation slide.

The three devices will run the BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system, which powers the Z10 smartphone and the upcoming Q10, which features a physical qwerty keyboard, according to the slide, which first appeared over the weekend on Twitter as @BB10Leaks.

BlackBerry officials didn’t comment on the road map. However, in comments to analysts last Thursday, CEO Thorstein Heins said repeatedly that the company will introduce more BlackBerry 10 devices this year, though he didn’t indicate what form factors the products would feature.

The three new devices shown in the slide include a BlackBerry 10 tablet with a widescreen aspect ratio, as well as a “U10″ phone-tablet, which some call a phablet, and an “R10″ phablet with a physical qwerty keyboard.

The slide indicates that the B10 tablet will ship in the third or fourth quarter, while the two phablets will be released later, with the U10 shipping at the end of the year and the R10 in spring of 2014.

There are no specifications on the slide, but the devices appear to be shown roughly in proportion to one another, with the phablets appearing to be wider than the existing Z10 and Q10 smartphones.

BlackBerry already has a 7-in. tablet called the PlayBook that is more square in shape than the widescreen look of the B10 in the slide. Some analysts and bloggers said it’s possible that BlackBerry is developing a competitor to the various 9-to-11-in. tablets already on the market, including many Android tablets, as well as the 9.7-in. iPad.

“BlackBerry wants to be a full-line competitor, particularly for business users, so they have to have a full line of products to compete head-on with Apple and Android, primarily Samsung,” said Jack Gold, an analyst at J.Gold Associates. “I would expect any viable competitor to establish a full line of products touching on all the various preferences of the marketplace, which includes smartphones, phablets and tablets.”

Gold couldn’t confirm whether any of the details in the leaked slide were accurate, but he noted that it doesn’t appear to include the mid-priced smartphones that Heins and other executives have hinted that BlackBerry may launch over the next few quarters.

The PlayBook tablet first went on sale in April 2011, running on what BlackBerry then called the BlackBerry Tablet OS, based on QNX. BlackBerry later said it would merge that tablet operating system into BlackBerry 10. The company also released a major update to the PlayBook tablet operating system in February 2012.

The first release of the PlayBook was criticized for not having native email.

Analysts are not sure that BlackBerry can keep up with production demand for so many new devices that depend on a relatively constrained supply chain for displays and other components. But to boost its global smartphone market share, currently at less than 10%, BlackBerry will need a product lineup with a variety of options.

Source

Lenovo To Buy NEC’s Mobile Phone Unit

Japan’s NEC Corp is in negotiations to sell its struggling mobile phone unit to its PC venture partner Lenovo Group Ltd, a source familiar with the discussions said, confirming media reports of the negotiations.

NEC is also in talks with potential domestic buyers, the source said on condition that he wasn’t identified.

NEC has until now said its mobile business is an important part of its overall operations. But after two years of losses the company is shedding assets to bolster profitability.

“Amid the rapidly changing market we are considering a number of ways to bolster the competitiveness of our mobile phone business, but nothing has been decided,” NEC said in a statement through the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Friday in response to the media reports.

Lenovo officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Japanese phone makers have struggled to gain traction overseas inmarkets dominated by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Apple Inc where they are also being challenged by upcoming Chinese makers. In Japan, the two foreign giants are whittling down their share of cell phone sales.

Last October, NEC cut its mobile phone sales target for the year ending March to 4.3 million from a previous estimate of 5 million units. Lenovo, the world’s No.2 maker of PCs, is cranking up overseas expansion in smartphones after solid growth in China.

Japan’s biggest cell phone maker, Sony Corp, is vying with China’s Huawei Technology Co and ZTE Corp to be No.3 in the global smartphone market.

NEC also plans to sell its mobile services subsidiary NEC Mobiling Ltd for as much as $850 million, separate sources told Reuters this month.

Marubeni Corp’s telecommunications unit and TD Mobile, a joint venture between Toyota Tsusho Corp and Denso Corp, are vying for the 51 percent stake, the sources said.

Source

LinkedIn Beefs Up

LinkedIn has re-tooled its search engine with changes designed to make it easier for members to find information on the business networking site, whose volume of content has increased and grown more diverse in recent years.

Launched in 2003, LinkedIn initially focused on giving professionals a place to feature their resumes and career bios, as well as connect with peers and colleagues, but the site has progressively become more interactive and houses a much larger repository of data beyond individual profiles.

For example, almost 3 million companies have set up corporate pages, more than 1.5 million groups have been created, the site features a jobs section, and individuals and publishers are able to post and share comments and links to articles.

So it’s not surprising for LinkedIn to focus on improving its search engine, which fielded 5.7 billion queries last year.

LinkedIn members have until now had to run separate queries for groups, companies, jobs and other professionals, but that’s changing with the upgraded search engine.

“Now, all you need to do is type what you’re looking for into the search box and you’ll see a comprehensive page of results that pulls content from all across LinkedIn including people, jobs, groups and companies,” Johnathan Podemsky, a LinkedIn product manager, wrote in a blog post on Monday.

Users can still segment results, so as to see only job results, for example.

The LinkedIn search engine is also gaining auto-complete and suggested-searches functionalities to help people fine-tune query terms. In addition, the search engine will log members’ search queries and “learn” from them in order to deliver more relevant results.

It will also be possible for users to save search queries and be alerted about new or changed search results. The advanced search option has also gained more search filters, including location, company and school.

However, the search engine still doesn’t include content from the company’s SlideShare site, which about 60 million monthly visitors use to upload, share, rate and comment on primarily slide presentations, but also documents, videos and webinars.

Also, the search improvements are being applied to the main site, not to the mobile apps, although doing so is something the company is looking into, according to a spokeswoman.

LinkedIn started to roll out the new search features on Monday, and expects to finish delivering them to every member worldwide in the coming weeks.

As of the end of 2012, LinkedIn had topped 200 million registered members located in more than 200 countries.

Source

Is Android Safer Than iOS?

The general consensus is that iOS apps tend to be somewhat safer than their Android counterparts. Apple goes to great lengths to have apps vetted and as a result far fewer iOS apps end up with malware or security issues.

However, a new report fresh out of Appthority claims iOS apps have their fair share of issues and in some respects then can pose an even greater security risk than Android apps. The report covered the top 50 apps from the Apple App Store and Google Play and found that iOS apps exhibited riskier behaviour.

“The majority of iOS apps track for location (60%), share data with advertising or analytics networks (60%) and have access to the user’s contact list (54%). A small percentage of iOS apps also had access to the user’s calendar (14%),” the report found.

However, Android fans shouldn’t be too happy since their platform is not far behind. Half of them share data with ad networks or analytics companies, while 42 percent tracked location. Slightly better, but nothing to be proud about.
One of the most worrying findings is that both Android and iOS apps don’t do much to prevent personal data from leaking from our devices. Not a single iOS app analyzed in the study used encryption to send and receive data, and neither did 92 percent of Android apps.

So while it might seem that Android is a somewhat better platform for users with privacy concerns, both Google and Apple are pants at that sort of thing.

Source

« Previous Page — Next Page »