Is B.Y.O.D Proving To Be A Headache?

IT managers trying to cope with the growing bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.

As a result, IT shops won’t be able to provide the security necessary to protect company data, says Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.

“The number of devices coming in the next few years will outstrip IT’s ability to keep the enterprise secure,” he said, adding that IT workers are “going crazy” and “get into fights” over whether users should have upgrades.

To help IT cope, software vendors should create what Dulaney called “beneficial viruses” that could be embedded in corporate data carried on mobile devices. These software tools would require users to have licenses in order to access files, just as digital rights management technology does with music and video files.

Beneficial viruses would also “be smart enough” to delete the sensitive data if a device is lost or stolen, or if data winds up on an unauthorized device, Dulaney said, adding, “It’s time for the SAPs and Oracles to begin thinking about doing that, and it’s a lot harder than we think.”

Today, IT shops use mobile device management software to monitor which mobile users are authorized to access applications and whether they can access the data outside the corporate cloud.

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T-Mobile To Make More Cuts

T-Mobile USA will eliminate an additional 900 jobs in a restructuring, on top of a 1,900-job reduction at its call centers that was announced in March, the carrier confirmed on Wednesday.

T-Mobile, now with about 36,000 employees, has faced more than two years of subscriber losses. Last year, the wireless carrier lost out on a $39 billion deal to be taken over by AT&T — federal regulators rejected the deal.

In its first quarter results announced May 9, T-Mobile said it lost 510,000 contract customers. It now serves 33.4 million customers.

Not having the iPhone 4S to sell, compared to the other three major U.S. carriers, also hurt T-Mobile and lead to more contract deactivations, the company said in its first-quarter results.

A T-Mobile spokeswoman said in an email that the elimination of 900 jobs was the result of a “restructuring of key functions and departments across the company, including the elimination of some positions and outsourcing of others.”

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Jury Finds Google Liable

A jury has found Google liable for copyright infringement in its use of Java in Android, but so far has not decided whether that infringement was protected by rules governing “fair use.”

The verdict, delivered Monday after a week of deliberations by the jury, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google. But Oracle will have to wait longer — possibly for a retrial — to see whether Google will escape liability by claiming fair use.

Google’s attorney, Robert Van Nest, immediately told the judge that Google would file for a mistrial. Google’s argument will be that the same jury must decide both the copyright infringement and fair use issues.

The jury also decided that Sun’s public statements about Java might have suggested to Google that it did not need a license for Java.

But in another setback for Google, it decided there was insufficient evidence to show that Google relied on that information.

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LG Only Wants To Support Android

Smartphone-maker LG Electronics has backed off manufacturing Windows Phone devices for now and will instead focus on Android phones, according to a report.

The Korea Herald reported Monday that LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, will take a step back from the Windows Phone platform, though it intends to “continue research and development efforts” on the Microsoft operating system.

LG currently makes the Optimus 7 based on Windows Phone 7 and other WP7 handsets.

LG has noted that Windows Phone 7-based devices hold less than 2% of the global smartphone market, according to multiple market analysts.

“The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure,” an LG spokesman told the Korea Herald.

In 2009, LG had decided to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone OS, with plans for 26 new Windows phones in 2012.

Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said the LG decision to cut its Windows Phone plans, at least temporarily, is likely not an absolute reversal of strategy.

He theorized that LG may be waiting for Windows Phone 8 to materialize late this year before producing more devices on the platform.

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Cisco Hits 50 Million Milestone For Its IP Phones

Cisco Wednesday announced Wednesday that it has sold its 50 millionth IP phone, a significant increase in just two years when 30 million were sold.

The switching technology giant today also said it will make software for presence, instant messaging and Cisco Jabber IM clients available for free to its Unified Communications Manager customers.

The latter move means organizations with UCM can roll out presence and IM to employees simply and cheaply to smartphones and tablets running various operating systems, Barry O’Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco’s voice technology group, said in a blog post.

The supported OSs include Windows, Mac, iPad, Cisco Cius, iPhone, BlackBerry and, later in 2012, Android, O’Sullivan said.

The move helps companies “deploy a unified communications client that is BYOD-ready,” he added. BYOD refers to Bring Your Own Device, a trend where companies allow workers to use devices of their choosing to connect to company data wirelessly.

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Intel Appears To Be Dedicated To Tizen

As we know Intel is not a total Windows 8 and Android shop. Although MeeGo was abandoned by Nokia in favor of huge investment from Microsoft, but Intel will continue to develop MeeGo and it will also add Tizen to its OS effort.

Tizen is a free open source mobile operating system based on Linux and backed up by Linux foundation. Tizen is planned to work on Atom N2800 and N2600 processors or simply said Cedar Trail platform and it was supposed to be out of Beta by end of Q1 2012. If all goes according to schedule it will reach its gold status by mid of Q2 2012. At some point it will also get an application store too, but release schedule is yet to be set in stone.

Intel believes that Tizen combines the communities and best technologies under one unified environment. MeeGo is supposed to have Strong developer community and LiMo should bring broad service provider support to this marriage. They will have strong support for HTML 5 and WAC (wholesale application community).

Tizen is supposed to work on ARM as well as on x86 and we can expect the first devices, or at least prototypes, to show up by the end of the year. Once it gets out it should cover mobile phones, tablets, netbooks, smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment systems.

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Are Medical Implants Vulnerable To Hackers?

Security experts have warned that many medical implants are vulnerable to cyber attacks that could endanger their users’ lives. While an increasing number of patients are being fitted with devices such as pacemakers and insulin pumps to manage chronic conditions apparently the inventors did not think anyone would be evil enough to try and hack them.

For some reason they installed unprotected wireless links so that they could be updated easily. Therefore this means that hackers could gain remote control of such implants because they rely on unprotected wireless links to update them. After gaining access to the device, a cyber criminal could then switch it off or tell it to deliver a dangerous dose of medicine to the patient.

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SanDisk Hurt By Weak Demand, Supply Glut

Flash-memory maker SanDisk Corp warned that tepid demand from mobile phone manufacturers and a glut in supply that has led to lower prices are putting a dent its revenue margins.

The maker of NAND chips — used as storage memory in smartphones and tablets — has recently seen demand taper with some of its key customers scaling back orders.

Smartphones and tablets have caused a boom in NAND production, but SanDisk’s customers have not all done equally well from the explosion in mobile gadgets.

“Anybody who is not a Samsung or an Apple is burning through some (mobile) handset inventory,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman said.

“Until we get the PC market, tablet market and handset market back buying, we’ll see an oversupply situation.”

SanDisk’s weak outlook mirrors warnings from rival flash-memory makers, who have also blamed weak prices and demand for their disappointing results.

Late last month, Micron Technology said it was facing persistently low prices for memory chips and posted a wider loss. Toshiba Corp, Japan’s biggest chip maker, also posted a drop in quarterly sales at its electronics devices business, which includes semiconductors, hit by lower prices for memory chips.

SanDisk in January expressed concerns about weaker demand weighing on sales in the first half of this year and forecast lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter.

The Milpitas, California-based company, which is set to report results later this month, said its gross margins for the January-March quarter will come in below its prior expectations of 39-42 percent, hurt by lower prices for its chips.

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RIM Goes Non-BlackBerry

Research In Motion on Tuesday launched software that will allow its large “enterprise” customers to manage Apple and other rival devices through the same servers as they use for the BlackBerry smartphone and Playbook tablet.

The new Mobile Fusion software, first announced in November, is an acknowledgement of sorts by RIM of a growing preference by many users inside big corporations and government to access professional communications over their personal devices, often the Apple iPhone or iPad, or devices running Google’s Android.

RIM, which long dominated the so-called enterprise market, has watched the BlackBerry’s market share steadily erode in recent years. Unable to arrest the trend, the company now aims to generate a fresh revenue stream from it. Mobile Fusion will cost $99 per user to license and $4 per user a month, with discounts available for bulk orders.

In a second announcement on Tuesday that highlights RIM’s eroding market position, it said its PlayBook tablet now boasts 15,000 applications – still just a tiny fraction of the number available on the iPad. One of the biggest complaints about RIM’s products is the dearth of content and applications.

A recent survey from Appcelerator and IDC showed less than 16 percent of developers were “very interested” in creating programs for RIM, compared with 90 percent for Apple and 80 percent for Android.

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Sprint Ending Lightsquared Relationship

Sprint Nextel will end its planned 15-year 4G network relationship with would-be hybrid network operator LightSquared, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The end of the Sprint partnership, which was due to expire on Thursday, would be nearly as big a blow to the foundering LightSquared as the U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s proposal last month to revoke the carrier’s authorization to build a land-based network.

Since the deal was announced last July, Sprint had been planning to host LightSquared’s radio spectrum on its Network Vision infrastructure. LightSquared was to pay Sprint US$9 billion in cash for that hosting and said the plan would save it $13 billion over eight years.

For its part, Sprint had looked to the partnership for extra spectrum on which to run its own planned LTE network. It would get $4.5 billion worth of credits to use some of LightSquared’s spectrum in addition to its own and that of longtime partner Clearwire. Sprint extended the deal twice to give LightSquared more time to win FCC approval for its network.

Sprint will terminate the LightSquared deal on Friday and return $65 million in prepayments by LightSquared, according to the Journal.

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