Cisco Offers Free iPad/iPhone Video App

Cisco announced improvements to its video product line Thursday to make it easier for businesses to create and share video, including a free app coming soon for iPhone and iPad devices.

The free app will make Cisco’s existing Show and Share software available for iPad and iPhone in late October through the Apple App Store, Cisco officials stated via a Webcast earlier this week.

Show and Share is Cisco’s video-sharing software, which allows users to search and watch videos as well as record and upload their own videos. That software has been available on other hardware, but until now not for the iPhone and iPad.

Also, Cisco said it is integrating its existing Show and Share with its Media Experience Engines 3500 and itsTelePresence Content Server, although it didn’t yet name the products that will provide the integration. Also, a new software release of the 3500 allows it to support Flash, H.264 and Windows Media formats.

An existing software tool called Pulse Video Analytics will soon allow searches of video content by keyword or speaker in the Cisco Show and Share product.

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Most Tegra 2 Tablets Will Get ICS

Sources have confirmed that most Tegra 2 tablets you know will get Ice Cream Sandwich. We are still sniffing around to find out if the ICS is going to end up as Android 4.0 but it will bring phones and tablets much closer and should ship in October or November.

Many Asus, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and any other Android 3.x compatible tablets on market will have a chance to get the new one. The upgrade will come as manufacturers get it ready and customized for its tablets but most tablets will ship with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, probably early next year at the latest.

This is good news for many who were brave to buy the first generation of tablets not based on Apple’s architecture and it will help Google to gather even more momentum for 2012. 2012 looks like a year when Google will be ready for real war against Apple, but at the same time, Android supporters fear that Windows 8 will get a lot of attention when it ships in late 2012.

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Samsung’s New Chip Line To Boost Flash Memory

Samsung Electronics, the world’s No.1 memory chip maker, said it began mass production at a new $10 billion chip line, as it seeks to raise its profile in the booming flash memory chip market fueled by robust demand growth in mobile products.

Samsung’s new production line, its first in about five years, will help the company sharply lower production costs of the chips and could exacerbate oversupply in the market, stifling smaller rivals.

Apple Inc, the maker of popular iPhones and iPads, and Sony, which joined the crowded tablet market last month with two new devices, buy flash memory chips from Samsung.

The cost-competitive facility will make it difficult for its major customers to shift away to other suppliers.

Apple, Samsung’s biggest customer locked in a series of patent legal battles with the South Korean firm, is trying to reduce sourcing from the emerging competitor.

“The new line won’t have any immediate impact on the supply side, as it will take some nine months to fully raise capacity run rates, but it shows Samsung’s attempt to take more share in the flash chip market,” said Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.

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Is HP Going To Court?

HP and its top executives have been accused of misleading investors before a slump in its stock price.

HP is facing a class action lawsuit filed by Robbins Geller Rudman and Down alleging that CEO Leo Apotheker and CFO Cathie Lesjak misled investors before making announcements that included the possible spin-off of its PC business, dumping WebOS devices and the purchase of British software outfit Autonomy.

Those announcements, all made in one afternoon, led to a 20 per cent drop in HP’s share price the following day. That, according to Reuters, was the largest one day decline in HP’s share price since 1987.

The lawsuit against HP does not specify damages but it serves to highlight the growing concern at the way Apotheker is leading HP. The firm’s announcement that it was considering leaving the PC business was a shock to many, but its decision to dump its WebOS devices was perhaps the biggest shock of the lot.

While HP’s PC business was always seen as a low margin operation, WebOS was viewed as a core part of HP’s future strategy. The firm kept banging on about slipping WebOS into as many devices as possible, however all that talk evaporated, just like HP’s Touchpads when it sold them off at fire sale prices for a massive loss.

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Should HP Reconsider The TouchPad?

Hewlett-Packard Co (HP) should re-think its decision to dump its TouchPad tablet since the device could double the value of the PC division HP plans to spin off, technology research firm Canalys said in a statement to clients.

HP stunned markets in August by saying it may shed its PC business — the world’s largest after the $25 billion acquisition of Compaq in 2002 — while at the same time killing webOS-based phones and the TouchPad tablet which was launched only six weeks earlier.

HP slashed the price of its tablet to $99 the weekend after announcing the TouchPad’s demise, igniting an online frenzy and prompting long lines to form at retailers as bargain-hunters chased down a gadget that had thus far failed to excite consumers.

“The TouchPad was overpriced at launch and did not sell. This led HP to draw a premature conclusion that the product category had failed,” Canalys analysts said in a research note.

Canalys said the price cut had helped make TouchPad the hottest brand in HP’s entire portfolio, gathering more interest than anything from HP in more than 10 years.

“The TouchPad has become the ‘must-have’ technology product of 2011. Perhaps no other technology vendor, apart from Apple, has ever created such hype for a technology product,” the research note said.

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Will Cisco CEO Get The Boot?

Cisco has slashed its forecast revenue increase by more than half, while rumours circulate about the possible departure of its long-serving CEO.

Cisco previously expected to increase revenues by 12 to 17 per cent over the next three years, but it has revised this figure downwards to a much smaller five to seven per cent, according to the BBC. It expects profits, however, to be seven to nine per cent for this three year period, which is a healthy profit forecast for a company that has been struggling in the recent economic climate.

Cisco’s original optimistic outlook appears to have been founded on an overall view that the global economy would recover quickly, a view that is swiftly changing as many fear another dip into recession, particularly with the debt crisis in Europe. This negative outlook has likely had a strong impact on Cisco’s forecast, resulting in its far more modest growth expectations.

Cisco has also had some problems of its own to work out over recent months. In July it announed that it would axe as many as 15 per cent of its workforce, or 11,500 people, in addition to selling a Mexican set-top box factory to Foxconn. It also abandoned its Flip video camera business, with the loss of 550 jobs.

In April the company’s CEO, John Chambers publicly acknowledged that Cisco had lost its way, with fiscal third quarter profit down a massive 18 per cent. He called for a refocusing on areas in which the company is highly successful, such as networking, servers and cloud provisioning.

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Dell & Baidu To Create Mobile Devices

Dell Inc and China’s top search engine Baidu Inc plan to join forces and develop tablet computers and mobile phones, targeting the Chinese market dominated by Apple Inc and Lenovo.

China is one of the fastest growing markets for tablets and is home to more than 900 million cell phone subscribers, but analysts were skeptical that the partnership would knock Apple from its dominant perch in the market.

“I suspect this is just Dell, who has a lot of problems on the mobile and tablet front, grasping at straws to get any kind of publicity that it can to make its product more attractive,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director of technology consultancy RedTech Advisors.

“Ultimately in China, I still think it is Apple’s game, still for the iPad and iPhone.”

Dell declined to give a timeline for the launch of the devices, but local media reported on Tuesday, quoting sources, that it may be as early as November.

Baidu launched a new mobile application platform last week and offered a glimpse of its upcoming mobile operating system, which it hopes will serve a growing number of users accessing the Internet from smartphones and tablet computers.

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Analysts Expect Flood of Cheap Tablets This Fall

Analysts are predicting that a whole slew of $200 to $300 tablet computers will hit the market this fall, prompting the essential question: Which device will come out on top?

Several analysts are betting on Amazon.com to be at the top of the pile with an expected $299 Android-based tablet introduced sometime in October. The reason it will do
well is only partly because of the low price, which is below the market-leading iPad 2, starting at $499.

But analysts also expect Amazon to offer content for its 9-in. tablet thats comparable to or even exceeds the content that Apple can offer for the iPad. Amazon will make money on the content it sells, which is expected to more than make up for any loss it incurs in selling the tablet at a price below the cost of making it.

“Amazon has an ecosystem like Apple, with its own app store that offers music, movies and videos, and a bookstore,” said Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at IDC. “Not only would you get a cheaper device [than the iPad], you would get the integrated Amazon experience. That’s what makes Amazon’s tablet the most interesting and where other [Android] tablets will be challenged.”

In effect, Amazon’s approach will be to entice buyers with a much lower price, “but have all the services of Apple,” O’Donnell said.

Other Android tablets with which Amazon would likely compete include a $199 Lenovo IdeaPad A1 tablet announced Thursday, the cheapest 7-in. Android tablet from a top device maker. Another contender is the original Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is being sold on Amazon for $279.99, after having first appeared late in 2010 for $600.

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iPad Expected To Dominate Until 2013

Apple’s iPad will maintain its dominance of the tablet market through at least 2013, research firm IHS iSuppli said today.

El Segundo, Calif.-based iSuppli bumped up its iPad sales forecast for 2011 from an earlier estimate of 43.7 million to 44.2 million, citing Apple’s ability to solve its supply issues and the blunders by rivals, including Hewlett-Packard.

“Apple has resolved the iPad supply issues,” said Rhoda Alexander, senior manager of tablet and monitor research in an interview today. “It was never a demand problem.”

Earlier this year, Apple struggled to produce enough iPad 2 tablets to meet a surging demand for the new device. Those problems have been addressed, and Alexander said that Apple is in the cat bird’s seat for the second half of the year.

“All the momentum in the media tablet market is with Apple right now,” she said. “The competition can’t seem to field a product with the right combination of hardware, marketing, applications and content to match the iPad.”

iSuppli also boosted its forecast for overall tablet sales this year from 58.9 million to 60 million units, meaning the iPad will account for nearly three-fourths of all tablets sold in 2011.

That dominance will continue through 2013, said Alexander, noting that iSuppli previously expected Apple to fall under the 50% share mark in 2012.

“They’ve taken every lesson they’ve learned with previous products and applied them to the iPad,” said Alexander. “Their whole production process is a marvel to watch.”

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Best Buy Stuck With TouchPads

Best Buy is sitting on a boatload of 200,000 HP Touchpads and wants to send them back to HP.

According to Allthingsd, Best Buy stocked its warehouses with around 270,000 HP Touchpad tablets. However, the retailer has been unable to sell the tablets and has only sold at most 25,000, even with a $100 discount, so Best Buy is requesting that HP take back all of the unsold devices.

Furthermore, it is being said that things are so bad that HP EVP Todd Bradley might have to go to Best Buy’s headquarters and plead with executives to exercise patience. It appears that the Touchpad is suffering from poor sales in many stores across the country, with Wal-Mart also said to be an unhappy camper.

Update…HP will stop making the HP Touchpads…….

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