LG Buys webOS From HP

Hewlett-Packard has sold some of the rights to its webOS mobile operating system to LG Electronics for use in smart TVs manufactured by the South Korean electronics giant.

LG has agreed to acquire the source code, webOS engineering team and other assets from HP, in a deal announced on Monday. LG will also license HP patents related to webOS and cloud technology, the companies said.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

HP acquired the mobile operating system, along with device maker Palm, in February 2010. HP used the OS on its short-lived TouchPad device, which debuted in mid-2011 then disappeared weeks later.

HP announced a new tablet, the US$169 Slate 7, on Sunday. The Slate 7 will run the Android operating system.

LG will lead the Open webOS and Enyo open-source projects as part of the deal, the company said. HP will retain ownership of all of Palm’s cloud computing assets, including source code, talent, infrastructure and contracts.

HP said it will also continue to support Palm users.

LG will use the technology to expand the Web capabilities of its smart TVs, said Sam Chang, LG vice president and general manager of innovation and Smart TV, in an interview.

LG bought the webOS assets in part for the engineering team, which includes user experience engineers, he said. The webOS engineers who remained at HP — the companies aren’t saying how many there are — are to join LG’s Silicon Valley labs.

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Intel Partners With WMware

Intel has teamed up with Microsoft’s rival VMware to deliver a platform for “trusted cloud.”

The technology will mix Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) and VMware’s vSphere 5.1, platform for building cloud infrastructures. Intel said its hardware-enhanced security capabilities integrated directly into the processor combined with vSphere 5.1 would provide a hardened and high-integrity platform to run business-critical applications in private and public cloud environments.

Intel thinks that the biggest barrier to cloud adoption is the fact that companies are worried about security. Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel’s Cloud Infrastructure Group, in a statement that Intel TXT provides hardware enforcement to help overcome some of the most challenging aspects of cloud security, including detection and prevention of bios attacks and evolving forms of stealthy malware, such as rootkits.

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Dell’s Cloud Plans Falls Behind Schedule

Dell announced an aggressive schedule last year to roll out cloud-based application services, but it appears that the schedule was a little too aggressive.

Dell said last August that it planned to launch an online analytics service in the first half of this year for small and midsized businesses, but that service isn’t due now until early next year, a Dell executive said.

“Like a lot of development projects, it can take a bit longer than you think,” Paulette Altmaier, general manager of Dell’s Cloud Business Applications group, said in an interview Thursday.

Dell also said it would launch a platform-as-a-service offering this year based on Microsoft’s Azure platform. On Friday, a Dell spokeswoman said the company no longer has a delivery date for that service.

The delays are a setback for Dell, which is trying to reduce its dependence on PCs and build more profitable businesses in services and software. But a lot of companies are moving slowly to the cloud, so the hold-up isn’t a disaster, said Peter Ffoulkes, an industry analyst with 451 Research Group.

“The move to the cloud is not a fast journey and for most people it is still largely a future. I would not expect a quarter or two to make a big difference in practical terms,” he said.

Dell has also made a string of software acquisitions in the past year that might be causing it to rethink its software-as-a-service strategy. It updated press and analysts on its software plans Thursday.

When it does arrive, the analytics service will offer “cross-app” analytics, meaning customers will be able to import data from one or more applications to a data warehouse that Dell will host for them online, and then perform analysis on that data.

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IBM Goes Social

Responding to increased use of tablets within business settings, IBM will launch on Wednesday several mobile applications designed to let employees use IBM enterprise social collaboration software with iPads and other mobile devices.

The new applications, free to customers with active licenses of the IBM software, have been built specifically for tablet interfaces and have security, IT management and compliance features.

“The apps are very lightweight and talk directly back in a secure manner to the enterprise systems that people who don’t have these devices are using inside the company,” said Rob Ingram, senior manager of IBM’s Mobile Collaboration Strategy.

One of the applications lets employees use IBM Connections via iPads, while another one is for LotusLive Meeting users to participate in online meetings using iPhones or Android, BlackBerry or iPad tablets.

For IBM Sametime, another application lets employees engage in one-on-one or group instant messaging sessions on iPad and Android tablets. There is also one application for Lotus Symphony Viewer that lets users view ODF-based files, including documents, spreadsheets and presentations, on iPads, iPhones or Android devices.

There are also applications for managing telephony tasks within IBM Sametime from tablets and for Android device users to add widgets to home screens as shortcuts to their Lotus Notes mail and calendar.

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Did Hackers Attack Water System?

Federal investigators are investigating a report that hackers managed to remotely shut down a utility’s water pump in central Illinois last week, in what could be the first known foreign cyber attack on a U.S. industrial system.

The November 8 incident was described in a one-page report from the Illinois Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center, according to Joe Weiss, a prominent expert on protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks.

The attackers obtained access to the network of a water utility in a rural community west of the state capital Springfield with credentials stolen from a company that makes software used to control industrial systems, according to the account obtained by Weiss. It did not explain the motive of the attackers.

He said that the same group may have attacked other industrial targets or be planning strikes using credentials stolen from the same software maker.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examining the matter, said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard.

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Want A $19/Month Mobile Plan?

A new wireless operator is gearing up to launch next week with plans offering unlimited data, voice and texting for $19 a month and no contract.

Republic Wireless, a division of Bandwith.com, will provide the service through Voice over IP using the nearest available Wi-Fi hotspot starting Tuesday, Nov. 8, a spokesman confirmed via email.

When a wireless phone user is traveling, the service will be provided through traditional cellular connections, initially over the Sprint network.

One important catch: Republic will require that its users have a new Android-based smartphone equipped with hardware and software that supports automatic switching from Wi-Fi to cellular. The device must have single phone number that works on both networks.

Republic hasn’t disclosed further details on phones the network will support. The company said more details will be made available on the launch date.

Republic calls its Wi-Fi and cellular mixture “Hybrid Calling,” a strategy it said reduces the costs for network services and makes the $19 flat monthly “membership” rate possible.

Republic estimates that smartphone users are within reach of Wi-Fi over 60% of the time, said the spokesman, Kevin LaHaise.

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Sprint Sues To Stop AT&T-T-Mobile merger

Sprint on Tuesday announced it has initiated a lawsuit against AT&T and Deutsche Telekom to block the two companies from merging “as a violation of Section 7 of the Clayton Act.” Section 7 of the Clayton Antitrust Act bars any person from acquiring “the whole or any part of the stock or other share capital” that would “substantially … lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly.” In its suit, Sprint argues that the proposed merger would violate this act because it would lead to AT&T and Verizon’s controlling 75% of the wireless market while taking in 90% of the profits.

Sprint’s antitrust suit comes less than a week after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against the merger with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In its suit, the DOJ similarly argued that the proposed merger would significantly damage competition in the wireless industry, especially since T-Mobile has historically offered low-cost wireless voice and data services for customers. The DOJ also contended that any efficiencies gained by combining AT&T and T-Mobile spectrum would not be enough to offset the damage done to U.S. consumers by further consolidation of the wireless industry.

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Poor Get Online With Cloud Phone

Start up firm Movirtu has made plans to help 3 million or more people in poor countries use mobile services by giving them personal phone numbers, not phones.

Working with a U.N.-affiliated initiative called Business Call to Action (BCtA), Movirtu will offer the numbers, which it calls mobile identities, through commercial carriers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. People in those countries who typically borrow phones from others will be able to log into the carrier’s network and use their own prepaid minutes and bits of data. The service is called Cloud Phone, though it operates within a carrier’s own infrastructure rather than on the Internet as a classic cloud service would.

Having a personal mobile identity can save users money in two ways, according to Ramona Liberoff, executive vice president of marketing, strategy and planning at Movirtu. First, they can use mobile services without buying a phone, which is a luxury even at US$15 or $20 for people making $1 or $2 per day. Second, the cost of prepaid service from a carrier typically is less than what consumers in those countries pay someone to borrow a phone, she said.

Though it’s customary in many of these countries to lend a phone to someone in need, the borrower is also expected to pay the lender for the usage. The average savings from using regular prepaid service instead is estimated at about $60 per year, Liberoff said.

The service will help people to use mobile banking, insurance and farming assistance services as well as make phone calls, Liberoff said.

Some of these services currently can only be delivered to individuals and not to someone sharing a phone. Personal mobile identities could be a boon to NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that want to use mobile technology. “In many cases, there are great NGO programs that can’t reach 80 percent of their base,” because those people don’t have their own phones, Liberoff said.

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Mobile Networks Near Capacity

Mobile networks in North America are using 80 percent of capacity, with 36 percent of base stations facing capacity constraints, according to a survey by investment firm Credit Suisse.

Networks in other regions also are more than 50 percent utilized, with the global average at 65 percent, Credit Suisse said after surveying carriers around the world. That level of use matches the average “threshold” rate that would trigger the service providers to start buying more network equipment, the report said. Looking ahead, on average the carriers expected their utilization rate to grow to 70 percent within 12 months.

Credit Suisse used the results to predict new sales by makers of cellular equipment, such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. But at a certain level, heavy use of a base station can also affect the mobile experience of individual subscribers. The survey found that 23 percent of base stations worldwide had capacity constraints (defined as a utilization rate over 80 percent during busy hours), while 36 percent in North America were under that kind of pressure.

The North American networks were 72 percent utilized two years ago. The region’s carriers expect the rate to ease back down to that point within two years. North American service providers are likely to buy more equipment soon, because having their networks 74 percent filled is the threshold rate in that region, the survey said.

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NY To Investigate AT&T’s T-Mobile Acquisition

The state of New York  has indicated that it will investigate AT&T’s proposed take over of T-Mobile USA for anti-competitive effects, including possible increases in mobile broadband costs for New York residents and businesses, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said.

New York is the first state that has committed itself to probing the $39 billion deal, which was announced on March 20 but is expected to take 12 months to close. At their current sizes, the combined telecom companies would have 130 million subscribers, dwarfing the next-biggest operator, Verizon Wireless, with 93 million. In a press release on Tuesday, the attorney general’s office raised the possibility of Verizon responding with an acquisition of Sprint Nextel, which has about 58 million subscribers.

“The proposed merger could start a process of consolidation that would lead to two firms -AT&T and Verizon – controlling nearly 80% of wireless subscribers nationwide,” Schneiderman stated.

Schneiderman said mobile service has changed from a luxury to a basic necessity and T-Mobile currently is a low-cost option for many New York residents. People in some areas, including Albany, Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse, already have limited wireless choices, he said.

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