Alibaba Debuts Smartphone Running Its Cloud OS

Alibaba Group unveiled its first self-developed mobile operating system and smartphone on Thursday in a bid to capture a slice of China’s burgeoning mobile Internet market.

The cloud computing-based operating system, Aliyun, will run the K-Touch Cloud Smartphone, to be launched at the end of July in 10 colors, said Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing, a unit of Alibaba Group.

A tablet PC running the Aliyun OS, which is based on a customized Android system, will also be launched in China by the end of the year, Wang told reporters after a presentation in Beijing.

Handset manufacturer Tianyu will manufacture the K-Touch as well as the tablet, Wang said.

“Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile OS, one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the Internet has to offer, right in the palm of their hand, and the cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that,” said.

The Aliyun operating system will feature cloud services such as email, Internet search and support for web-based applications. Users will not be required to download or install applications onto their mobile devices, Wang said.

Alibaba Cloud plans to integrate the operating system with other devices including mobile phones with larger screens and tablet computers in the coming months.

Wang said the company was looking to launch tablet computers running Aliyun by the end of the year.

The company is currently in talks with Qualcomm Inc to develop a lower-end chipset optimized to run Aliyun OS in lower-end mobile phones, Wang said. The K-Touch phones use a high-end chipset from Nvidia Corp for crisp display of intricate games.

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RIM Cuts 11% Of Workforce

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd plans to slash approximately 11 percent of its workforce to curb costs as it struggles to compete against Apple Inc and Google Inc.

The announcement of 2,000 job cuts on Monday came a month after the Canadian company acknowledged that it would reduce headcount for the first time in a decade.

One analyst said the job cuts were slightly deeper than expected but were key to RIM’s recovery from a slump triggered by product delays and intense competition from Apple’s iPad and iPhone as well as devices powered by Google’s Android software.

RIM’s U.S.-listed stock, already near multi-year lows, was down as much as 2 percent before the market opened. It was trading down 1.8 percent at $27.40 on the Nasdaq
just before the open.

“This is not totally unexpected. I think the size of (the cuts) is a little bit bigger than what they were intimating before,” said Jefferies & Co analyst Peter Misek. “I think this is obviously realigning the cost structure to a new growth, or sales, reality.”

RIM said one-time charges from the job cuts were not included in its outlook for the second quarter or for the full year, and it would explain the financial impact of the cuts when it reports second quarter results on September 15.

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Nokia Had Horrible Quarter

Nokia has just posted very disturbing quarterly results this morning. The European smartphone giant outlook appears to be getting worse and CEO Stephen Elop has acknowledged that things will not turn around overnight.

Elop is reporting that Nokia’s operating profit is down 44 percent since Q1 and sales of mobile devices are down 23 percent consecutively. While the overall sales of mobile phones and smartphones are down, along with average selling prices.

Elop labelled the results as “clearly disappointing” and went on to say that competitive pressures are continuing. He tried to paint a somewhat more positive outlook for the rest of the year, thanks to Nokia’s clear strategy and several major product launches.

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T-Mobile Will Offer Unlimited Data Plans

Wireless telecom firm T-Mobile USA said it will begin offering unlimited data service plans, in a move aimed at snagging customers of bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc which have discontinued offering such plans.

T-mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, said the new plans will become available from July 24. The unlimited plans will be available with a two-year agreement for new and existing customers.

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, said earlier in July it will stop offering unlimited data service plans, meaning higher prices for heavy users of services such as mobile Web surfing.

AT&T had stopped offering unlimited data services last year.

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HP Announces TouchPad 4G Deal

Hewlett-Packard announced it would release a 4G TouchPad tablet with upgraded hardware that will be available on AT&T’s wireless network.

The tablet will have a 1.5GHz processor, which is a change from the dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor available with older Wi-Fi-only TouchPad models that went on sale just two weeks ago.

Last August Qualcomm said that by the start of this year it would ship the dual-core Snapdragon QSD8672 chip that could run at clock speeds of up to 1.5GHz.

The TouchPad will have 32GB of internal storage, GPS and built-in AT&T wireless mobile broadband capabilities, HP said in a statement. Specific pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.

Wireless connectivity will be available through AT&T’s DataConnect mobile data plans for tablets or Wi-Fi hotspots around the country, HP said.

TouchPad users have expressed concerns about the device’s performance, especially the long load times for some applications. HP attributes the performance issue to software problems and said it will deliver an over-the-air software update that should resolve some performance problems.

Some buyers also were concerned about the TouchPad’s weight of about 1.6 pounds (740 grams), which is heavier than Apple’s iPad at 1.32 pounds. The TouchPad includes a 9.7-inch screen and comes with WebOS 3.0, which is also used in smartphones.

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nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones

It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.

Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.

Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.

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Twitter Security Lagging,Says Experts

The fast-growing microblogging site Twitter is lagging behind some other Internet services in using methods to help secure the accounts of users, security experts say.

Weaknesses in Twitter’s security became apparent on the U.S. July 4 Independence holiday as a still unidentified hacker took control of a Fox News Twitter account and tweeted falsely claiming that U.S. President Barack Obama was dead.

While the hijacking of Twitter accounts is not new, the false Tweets about Obama generated headlines around the world.

The Secret Service is investigating the matter. Fox News has said does not know how the attacker gained control of its account, but complained that it took Twitter more than five hours to return control of the account to Fox.

“What Twitter needs to do now is to commit to a thorough review of their security practices,” said Daniel Diermeier, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “For Twitter this is a very serious problem.”

Security experts said the attack might have been prevented if Twitter had offered two-factor authentication technology to secure its accounts.

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Nokia Slashes Smartphone Prices

Nokia has lowered the price of smartphones across its entire portfolio in an attempt to slow the decline of its share in the higher-end of the cellphone market, two industry sources said on Tuesday.

One of the sources with direct knowledge of Nokia’s pricing said the company’s flagship model, the N8, the multimedia phone C7, as well as the business user-targeted E6, saw the steepest cuts of around 15 percent.

Other price cuts were smaller, both sources said. “There are no very big cuts per model, but the scale — across the portfolio — is unseen for a very, very long time,” said one of the sources, who works at a European telecom operator.

A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on specific prices and said changes were part of its normal business. “It’s business as usual,” he said.

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Twitter Toying With Money Making Ideas

Twitter is considering the option of placing ads into the live stream of messages, according to the Financial Times. The addition of “promoted tweets” — a more palatable way to say advertising — within the live Twitter stream is bound to turn off many users, at the same time as it attracts businesses looking to reach some of the company’s 300 million users.

Twitter’s executives have been in discussions with strategists at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France this week to find a way to increase revenues, which disproportionately trail those of social media companies such as Facebook.

Twitter is expected to generate revenues of about $100 million this year. Facebook, by contrast, reaps $3.5 billion from display advertising, according to a forecast by Enders Analysis.

A few other ideas leaked out of these meetings. One was that Twitter would offer mass coupon deals, which hold potential given the real-time nature of interacting on Twitter. A brand profile, which would allow advertisers to pre-schedule their company’s Tweets, is also being considered.

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Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July

We are closer to reaching the end of Verizon Wireless’s limited-time offer of unlimited data, says the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD. The website reports that the wireless carrier plans to introduce new tiered pricing plans next month for new smartphone customers — including those buying Apple’s iPhone 4.

If true, the report hardly comes as a surprise. Back in January, when Verizon became the second carrier in the U.S. to offer iPhone service, the company said it would offer subscribers a $30-a-month unlimited data plan for the iPhone’s launch, but highlighted the fact that the offer was for a limited time only.

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