Can iPhone's Carrier-Switching Magic Be Replicated?
The iPhone 3G has enough power to lure people over from other carriers. Nearly a third of iPhone users abandoned their mobile providers for AT&T in order to get their hands on the 3G, some new research shows. So can T-Mobile's upcoming G1 Android-based device come anywhere close to replicating that magic?
iPhone Inspiration
The numbers, released Monday by the NPD Group, indicate 30 percent of iPhone 3G owners made carrier switches in the first three months following the phone's launch. The vast majority -- 47 percent -- came from Verizon. Nearly a quarter jumped from T-Mobile, and 19 percent left Sprint behind. All together, the defections shot the iPhone into the top-selling smartphone spot, at 17 percent of the U.S. market. It's now the second-highest overall selling phone in America, trailing behind only the Motorola RAZR V3.
Understanding the Forces
To predict the G1's relative carrier-hopping success, one first has to understand the forces driving the iPhone's impressive record. The researchers break it down to two main factors: price and speed. Smartphones on the whole dropped in price 26 percent from summer 2007 to summer 2008, and the iPhone was no exception. But the 3G speed, combined with its already popular interface, may have been what pushed it over the edge.
"While the original iPhone also helped win customers for AT&T, the faster network speeds of the iPhone 3G has proven more appealing to customers that already had access to a 3G network," says Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for the NPD Group.
G1 Predictions
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Microsoft Gains Traction in Search Wars with Desperate Ploy
Microsoft's Live Search attention-seeking ploys may be paying off. According to Hitwise statistics, Microsoft has gained traction in the search market with its Cashback program, in which users who comparatively shop for and eventually buy items through Live Search receive monetary incentives. Microsoft also unveiled another offensive in the face of Google's search empire to the tune of SearchPerks!, an overly cheery program that gives users coupons that can be traded for prizes, such as MP3 downloads, T-shirts, and airline miles. SearchPerks! requires Internet Explorer to function, boosting another Microsoft effort.
The data shows that while Microsoft may not have a chance against Google's 71.2 percent dominance of the market, the company does appear to be chipping away at Yahoo!'s foothold. Live Search went from 3.8 percent in mid-July to 6 percent in mid-September. Yahoo! slid from 18.7 percent to 11 percent during the same time span.
Hitwise Research Director Heather Dougherty attributes the rise of this service, which not only saves money but offers monetary reward for its use, to our miserable economic situation. Some blogs consider Microsoft's latest efforts pathetic. Salon.com calls it "really lame" and claims Microsoft "doesn't matter anymore." Ars Technica says the service "has potential" but that Microsoft messed up the execution process.
Whether Microsoft's reputation will be damaged by a service for penny-pinchers, a last-ditch attempt at recognition, or a valuable tool with good intentions, the numbers are clear: Microsoft is gaining traction and, in the process, putting its name out there. In order to stand a chance in the cutthroat search engine game, this is an effective and successful method to garner recognition.
Hands On with the Revamped Ask
Fast answer to a query of the new Ask.com
Ask.com was relaunched with new and improved features today as it sets its sights on regaining ground in the consumer market. Ask says its site is faster than before, has improved relevance, will return better natural language searches, and has simpler layout. Gone are the divided search results the company launched in June 2007 as Ask3D with encyclopedia entries, video, and images divided up on different parts of the page. Although this function was popular with tech reviewers, Ask was never able to get in front of MSN and AOL to compete with Google and Yahoo. The new Ask will still allow you to refine your search, preview certain Web pages, and provide statistics on that page, but it's all streamlined into one list like most other search engines.
Ask.com President Scott Garrell says that it generally takes users three to four clicks to get the answers they are looking for in a typical search engine. Garrell's aim with the new Ask is to "reduce the distance between your query and the answer you want."
So, does it work? Well, for my tests I threw the same query I used in my test of Powerset earlier this year. I typed in, "Who is the President of the United States?" and right there at the top of the page was Ask.com's new Answer feature telling me that, in fact, George W. Bush is the president. All right, it passed the easy test, so now on to something a little harder.
"Who was the President of the United States in 1986?" At the top of the results page was the Wikipedia entry for Ronald Reagan. Okay, one more for good measure: "What is the lineup for the Philadelphia Phillies?" The top two answers linked here and here.
So, yes, Ask.com has the natural language thing down for direct questions. The layout is also nice, as you can see from the illustrations here. Standard web returns run in a single list and there are tabs at the top for other types of search including images, news, "Q&A" (the natural language function), and common searches such as blogs, videos, and TV listings.
But will Ask be able to break through and compete with Google, Yahoo, and MSN? Possibly. But it's got a long road ahead. The major search engines have been spending a lot of time going beyond search to create comprehensive Web portals. E-mail, calendars, documents, fantasy sports, customizable maps, and instant messaging have created loyal networks for Ask's major competitors. Ask has improved its search engine and is well worth using, but the company is going to have to offer a lot more if it wants to stay relevant.
Answers to my second query
Ask answers my baseball question
Amazon Kindle 2: Details and Pictures Leaked
Leaked pictures of the forthcoming incarnation of Amazon's ebook reader, Kindle 2 have surfaced this weekend on the Web. The new device features various improvements and a design overhaul which reminds us of the early iPod days.
After Amazon dismissed the launch of a new Kindle this year, delaying the new device until "sometime next year at the earliest" we got our hands on pictures of the forthcoming Kindle, courtesy of The Boy Genius Report. As usual, Amazon hasn't made any comments on the leak or publicly announced a price or launch date.
The first improvement that you will notice is the unified keyboard, which is not split into two sections anymore. The new Kindle's corners are now rounded and the white case with the metallic backplate reminds us of the first iPod models launched a few years back.
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Samsung Innov8 Up Close
At the E for All Expo, Samsung showcased gaming on its new flagship smartphone--at least, it's a flagship phone in markets outside of the U.S. The hook for E for All, an entertainment show in Los Angeles over the weekend: the phone is the official one of the World Cyber Games, an event whose finals were being staged at the expo. But the other hook is, as a Symbian S60 3rd edition-based smartphone, the i8510 (as the Innov8 is also called) can play a host of Java-based mobile games--and many were on display at the show.
I enjoyed handling the device for reasons that go beyond gaming. In fact, the first thing I noticed was the phone's camera--a whopping 8 megapixels, with a flash. This blows way past the Nokia N96's 5-megapixel camera, and makes cell phone image capture more viable than ever before (I marvel at how many folks--myself included--will attempt to capture an event on a cell phone cam, knowing full well the image looks like crap if viewed as more than a postage stamp on a PC.) The camera includes autofocus, image stabilization, geotagging (through the handset's built-in GPS) and fancier features like blink, smile, and face detection. Is this a cell phone with a highly functional digicam, or a dedicated digicam with a cell phone built in? That's a question I'll personally ponder after taking the Innov8 for a spin in the real world--but with specs like this, the question certainly seems valid.
Unfortunately, the Innov8 carries an uber-premium price, as does the N96 (Innov8 sells for $700 to $800 at online shops specializing in unlocked imports). What frustrates me is that higher quality cell phone camera technology clearly exists--and has for quite some time--and yet in the U.S. market, anything above a paltry 3 megapixels is rare and added only to top-of-line models that are priced out of reach of the masses. I wonder sometimes, if mobile manufacturers do this in the U.S. for bigger-picture reasons, like concerns for cannibalizing the digicam point-and-shoot market or concerns about privacy and corporate espionage; but I tend to think it's just an outright misstep by mobile handset manufacturers and operators.
The Innov8 felt dreamy in-hand, with its easy-glide slider mechanism, thin and sleek black case, and sharp 2.8-inch QVGA LCD (capable of displaying 16 million colors). Menus were clearly organized and easy to navigate, though at times I found myself wishing the screen operated via touch. Other features include a built-in FM radio and a 3.5mm audio jack; 8GB or 16GB of memory plus a microSD Card slot; assisted GPS; accelerometer; dual-band UMTS/HSDPA and quad-band GSM connectivity; and Wi-Fi with DLNA support.
It may have felt dreamy, but keep dreaming: So far, no announced plans for this phone's release to the U.S. market.
Nintendo DS Gets First-Person Shooter Game
The Nintendo DS isn't a platform I normally associate with graphics-intensive gaming. But Graffiti Entertainment showed its C.O.R.E game at the E for All Expo in Los Angeles this weekend, and it looked impressive given the platform it was on.
C.O.R.E. is described as a "classic" style first-person shooter, on the order of Doom or Quake 2. But instead of playing it on a PC, you're playing it on a pocket-sized Nintentdo DS. The game, which carries a Mature rating for its blood and gore violence, will ship in November for $30, and uses a 3D engine to render the graphics. One nifty feature: It supports a four-person multiplayer mode off a single card--just interlink up to four Nintendo DS units to take advantage of this feature.
The company also has Air Conflicts: Aces of World War II coming in November as well. This flight-simulation app for the PlayStation Portable takes you chronologically through 13 campaigns of World War II, and gives you options to fly with any of 17 planes.
Adobe Makes You the Housekeeper
People often say that Adobe's Photoshop image editor is way too cluttered--that it has so many tools strewn about, buried in menus or hidden in palettes, that you can't find what you're looking for. Well, with its soon-to-be-introduced Configurator tool, Adobe's handing you a broom and a dustpan.
The Configurator lets you create custom palettes and toolbars, which you can use in addition to or in place of Adobe's stock ones. The tool, which runs on top of Adobe Air (Mac or Windows), shows you a collapsible, comprehensive list of all the tools, commands, actions and scripts, and widgets available in Photoshop; after you create a new, blank panel, you simply drag things into the panel. Several buttons across the top of the window help you arrange and distribute elements in your panel.
You can create multiple panels, export them, then open them up in Photoshop via its Extensions menu; once you get them where you want them, you can save a custom Workspace, and they'll open up in the same place every time you start up the application. You can also drag in text labels, images, and even video; Adobe showed me examples of pretty sophisticated tutorials that use customized panels.
Adobe says that using custom panels won't speed up Photoshop or reduce its system requirements, but John Nack, principal product manager for Photoshop, says that, by and large, Photoshop doesn't load things until you need them anyway.
Rate Hike for Digital Music Averted: iTunes Stays Open
Monday Apple all but threatened to close up iTunes pending a decision by the Copyright Royalty Board as to whether to raise digital music distribution royalty fees or not. And while it may have been an empty threat, we can all breath a sigh of relief that we won't need to find out. Yesterday the board made its decision and music royalty fees for online sales remain the same.
It seems like everybody wins with the current royalty plan. While the music labels wanted to increase royalty rates to as much as 8 percent of total revenue, the Digital Media Association, of which Apple and Amazon.com are a part of, was trying to get royalty rates reduced. It turns out that the status quo is just the compromise both sides were looking for. The decision will be revisited in 2012, so at least we know that the iTunes store will be safe until then. That is, assuming Apple doesn't face any DRM related issues.
Windows XP Death Date May Be Extended - Again!
For all the money Microsoft has spent pimping out Windows Vista, they certainly can't seem to let XP go. The Register reports that Microsoft has yet again extended the deadline for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to produce machines equipped with Windows XP to July 31, 2009. This claim has not been substantiated by Microsoft, but given its push-and-pull relationship with the XP cut-off date, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true.
Windows XP was supposed to retire on January 31, 2008, a year after Vista's release, but once Vista sales failed to meet expectations, its death date was extended to July 30, 2008.
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Hollywood Director Asks Fans to Fake Out File Swappers
The world of BitTorrent mixed with Hollywood this week, and it turns out that's never a good combo. Saw director Darren Bousman may have tried to encourage his fans to upload fake soundtracks of his new movie to BitTorrent sites recently, and Michael Moore, or at least his lawyers, may have got more than they bargained for when they allowed Moore's new film Slacker Uprising to be distributed for free.
Torrent Freak is reporting that Bousman, who directed Saw II, III and IV, encouraged his fans to upload phony copies of his new film's soundtrack. While we could not confirm Torrent Freak's version of events, we did discover, via a cached page on Google, that there was some talk of uploading fake albums.
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