BlackBerry Falls Behind In Workplace

More workers use iPhone and Android smartphones combined than BlackBerry devices, according to a survey of 1,681 U.S.-based workers released today by Forrester Research.

That finding highlights what many have known for a while about the entrenched workplace smartphone veteran: the BlackBerry faces trouble from its competitors.

The BlackBerry, made by Research in Motion, still leads among U.S. workers, with 42%, the survey said, with Apple’s iPhone accounting for 22% and Android devices, 26%.

The survey also found that nearly half, or 48% of the group, said that they chose the primary smartphone used for their work without considering what their company supports. Only 29% said they chose the smartphone from a list of phones the company supports, while 23% said they had no choice in the matter.

Often, corporate IT shops will choose BlackBerry smartphones when requiring a worker to use a specific smartphone, partly because of the perceived security benefits, many analysts, including at Forrester, have found. The growth in Android phones and the iPhone — many of them brought to workplaces by workers independently — are forcing IT shops to rethink that decision, however.

Ted Schadler, a Forrester analyst, said the survey points to two major trends. The first is that more workers than ever are bringing consumer-focused devices, such as Android and iPhone smartphones, to use for work, and more companies are supporting those devices.

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Did Google Increase Microsoft’s Ad Rates?

Google might have increased Microsoft’s ad rates 50 fold, a Bloomberg report says.

Someone familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into the rate increase.

It will also be looking into other allegations against Google about advertising as a result of complaints from Microsoft.

This is part of a larger antitrust probe into Google that began earlier this year, the source told Bloomberg.

An antitrust lawyer at Doyle Barlow & Mazard PLLC in Washington, Andre Barlow, told Bloomberg that, if true, the Microsoft allegations could be used to help the FTC build a case showing that Google has abused its power as the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, violating the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws.

He said, “A lot of this conduct, when put together with a firm with market power, could be viewed as a violation” of antitrust laws.

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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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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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iPad Rivals Have Better Chance In Europe

Would-be rivals to Apple’s iPad have a better chance in Europe than they do in the United States, but they need to drop prices fast to grasp the opportunity, IT research firm Forrester said on Tuesday.

Apple’s relatively small retail presence in Europe — with 52 stores compared with 238 in the United States — offers a chance to the likes of Samsung, Acer and Research in Motion, Forrester said.

But their prices cannot yet compete with Apple, which has far larger scale in the tablet market and an efficient supply chain. Forrester said emerging challengers from China and Taiwan would likely step in soon with cheaper offerings.

“There is this opportunity for iPad challengers, but the competition is very fragmented. Competing with Apple will require a different approach from what we’ve seen so far,” said analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, the author of the Forrester report.

Apple still has the tablet-computer market almost to itself after launching the iPad a year and a half ago. It has sold close to 30 million iPads, whose prices start at about $500.

Forrester expects Apple to sell 80 percent of all consumer tablets in the United States and 70 percent in Europe this year.

It expects 2011 worldwide tablet sales to reach 48 million units, with half of those sold in the United States, 30 percent in Europe, 15 percent in Asia and 5 percent in Latin America.

Forrester surveyed almost 14,000 online adult consumers in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Britain, and also interviewed product strategists from manufacturers, telecommunications operators and retailers.

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ISPs Close Internet Gap

Broadband speeds on average are within 80 percent of what major Internet service providers advertise, an appreciable increase from two years ago, according to a government study.

The Federal Communications Commission studied cable, DSL and fiber-to-the-home services at 13 top U.S. broadband providers.

The FCC found Verizon Communications Inc’s fiber network was best at meeting or exceeding advertised maximum download speeds, while Cablevision Systems Corp came in last place.

Overall, the numbers were a big boost from 2009, when data indicated download speeds were often about half of Internet service providers’ (ISP) maximum advertised speeds.

“Most major ISPs are providing service close to what they’re advertising. This represents a significant improvement over the findings from two years ago when we first shined a light on this issue,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, unveiling the study’s findings at a Best Buy Co store in the District of Columbia.

During peak consumer usage hours when networks are busiest, actual download speeds varied from 114 percent to 54 percent of advertised speed among the different ISPs, the FCC said.

The complete findings of the report, its raw data and an FCC-prepared guide for consumers will be made available online. The FCC says the data will help consumers decide which Internet speed, service and provider best meet their needs.

“This report pretty well dispels the myth … that there’s a huge gap between advertised and actual speeds, and in fact we do pretty well here in the United States,” said Richard Bennett, a senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Not everyone was impressed with the study’s findings.

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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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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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Japan Takes 1st Place On Supercomputer List

A Japanese computer has earned the number one spot on the Top 500 supercomputer list, ending China’s short reign of just six months. At 8.16 petaflops (quadrillion floating-point calculations per second), the K computer is more powerful than the next five systems combined.

The K computer’s performance was measured using 68,544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores, almost twice as many as any other system on the Top500 list. The computer is still being put together, and when it enters service in November 2012 will have more than 80,000 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs according to its manufacturer, Fujitsu.

Japan’s ascension to the top means that the Chinese Tianhe-1A supercomputer, which took the number 1 position in November last year, is now in second spot with its 2.57 petaflops. But China continues to grow the number of systems it has on the list, up from 42 to 62 systems. The change at the top also means that Jaguar, built for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), is bumped down to third place.

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Intel Developing Thunderbolt Technology

A new interconnect technology being developed by Intel could be ready for market by 2015 and will be able to move data between computers at up to five times the speed of its recently launched Thunderbolt technology, an Intel researcher said earlier this week.

The new technology uses silicon photonics, which combines silicon components with optical networking, to transfer data at up to 50 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters, said Jeff Demain, strategy director of circuits and system research at Intel Labs, at a company event in New York.

Intel expects the technology to be ready for use in PCs, tablets, smartphones, televisions and other products by 2015, Demain said. As well as being faster than today’s interconnect technologies, it’s expected to lower costs because the components will be built using existing silicon manufacturing processes.

The technology could possibly be used in TVs and set-top boxes to carry video streams at much higher definition than those available today. Image resolution is likely to quadruple by the middle of the decade, when successors to 1080p have arrived, and that will mean more data has to be pushed to the TV.

It should also enable faster data transfers between smartphones, tablets, PCs and peripherals such as external storage drives.

The technology still has a way to go, but Intel showed its progress at the event in New York Wednesday. It showed what it said were working prototypes of the silicon chips used to transmit and receive the laser signals.

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