Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 214

Samsung's Galaxy S IV is being launched in 24 hours, so it is about time Apple's marketing chief, Paul Schiller, came out on damage control. Because, you know, they make the devices that everyone else copies.

Well, the Apple marketing chief has had some interesting things to say about the Android user experience, and how it is not a pleasant experience. Schiller yet again attacked Android's continued fragmentation problems, describing it as "plain and simple". He took a big jab at Android, saying: "Android is often given as a free replacement for a feature phone and the experience isn't as good as an iPhone."

That wasn't all, Schiller also attacked Android for a lack of integrated software solutions - something I personally laughed out loud over - where he said:

Western Digital has invested in Skyera, a start-up focusing on all-SSD products for the enterprise market. The investment comes as part of Skyera's Series B round of financing, in which Skyera raised $51 million.

Radoslav Danilak, CEO of Skyera:

The backing of Western Digital has enabled us to ramp our business across marketing, sales and engineering which has been instrumental in creating the industry's most innovative solid-state solution. With our skyHawk family of enterprise solid-state storage systems we are witnessing the next era of solid-state storage and I strongly believe that having a close working relationship with Western Digital, the world's top disk drive vendor, is invaluable as we set out to reshape the storage landscape.

Andy Rubin has resigned from head of Android development. In his place, Google has appointed Sundar Pichai. Pichai has previously been the senior vice president for Chrome and Apps and is a nine-year veteran of Google. This could indicate that Chrome OS and Android will start to get cozy with each other, something that has previously been predicted.

It would be interesting if Google were able to allow Android apps to run on Chrome OS. It shouldn't be that hard of a task, but Pichai has said that it is much too early to discuss whether this is in the cards.

Sergey and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry. Most people thought he was nuts. But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences.

Research firm IDC have their latest report out, which expects to see a tip toward Android being dominant this year in the tablet market, taking the throne from Apple's iPad. IDC have increased their 2013 forecast for worldwide tablet shipments to 190.9 million, up from 172.4 million units.

Interestingly, Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analysts for IDC's Tablet Tracker, has said: "One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below 8 inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets to continue growing in 2013 and beyond." Getting into the Android dominance, the IDC report that moving into 2013, Google will continue to expand their share of the tablet market.

Android's share of the tablet market is expected to reach 48.8%, a huge surge compared to the IDC's previous forecast of just 41.5%. Android's increased dominance comes at the expense of Apple's iOS, which is expected to drop from 51% market share to 46% in 2013. How about Microsoft's Windows 8 platform?

It was only a matter of time, but Seagate have reached the milestone first by shipping two billion hard disk drives. It took the storage giant 29 years to reach this goal, and more impressively they shipped one billion drives by 2009, and have shipped one billion since.

The one billion drives shipped in the last four years is thanks to the explosion of demand for storage in mobile applications, cloud infrastructures, social media, business applications and the ever increasing consumer market. Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate, has said: "This is truly an impressive accomplishment and I am proud to lead this company as we celebrate this success."

John Rydning, IDC's research vice president, for hard drives and semiconductors said:

Chris Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, is looking at getting back into the video website business after selling his video streaming site to Google for a nice $1.65 billion. Hurley has now begun teasing his new venture, where he said during a Q&A session with Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose: "I wish [South by Southwest] was a month later because I could unveil the new product."

He didn't go into much detail, but added that the new product is "primarily video-based...and gives flexibility for people to work together and create content." It looks like we should expect a next-generation YouTube, and that's not a bad thing at all. Digg founder Kevin Rose asked him if that was his intention, where he responded with: "We're not setting up to [kill YouTube]-now. There's always going to be a place for YouTube." His intention, instead, is to create a platform better suited for collaboration."

Facebook is used for a million and one things these days, but child trafficking - you'd think not. Misty VanHorn, a mother of two in Oklahoma has tried to sell her two children on Facebook. She was arrested on the weekend for alleged trafficking of minors on Facebook, trying to sell her 10-month-old and 2-year-old for $4000.

VanHorn reportedly offered the kids up for sale more than once, offering her innocent 10-month-old girl for $1000. Alternatively, you could buy a package deal which included both kids for $4000, where she actually had someone interested. VanHorn was dealing with a woman in Fort Smith, Ark., according to The Oklahoman. Because she was dealing across the state line from her home in Sallisaw, she might be charged with a federal crime.

Her Facebook message to the Fort Smith-based woman said: Just come to Sallisaw, it's only 30 minutes away and I'll give you all of her stuff and let y'all have her forever for $1,000. Why was VanHorn trying to sell her children? She wanted the $1000 to bail her boyfriend out of jail, where ironically she's being held on a $40,000 bail. Her kids are now in the custody of the state's department of human services, who alerted the police in the first place.

Cooler Master is waking up this morning to a fresh lawsuit involving its Seidon closed loop liquid CPU coolers. Asetek, the company who licenses similar coolers to companies like NZXT, Corsair and PNY is claiming that Cooler Master is infringing on two of its patents.

US Patents 8245764 and 8240362 are the two in dispute here, both of which provide a very vague overview of a sealed "cooling system for a computer system". Both reference a maintenance free liquid cooling system that is connected to a pump and radiator and "different embodiments of the heat exchanging system as well as means for establishing and controlling a flow of cooling liquid".

These patents (2010 filing) are updated versions of the ones Asetek used against CoolIT in a similar suit which were filed in 2005 which means that they are valid for any product created since 2005. Neither company has released a statement about the suit and both have refused to comment on the matter.

As a huge fan of SimCity, who pumped countless hours into as a kid, I haven't purchased it yet personally and I'm sure you know it's for good reason - the huge amounts of issues. We've posted many times about it, not just once, or twice, but even three, four, and now five times. There is now a petition against DRM, with a strong title of 'Institute an industry-wide return policy for video games that rely on remote servers and DRM to function properly.'

The petition states, in full:

Video and computer games are growing increasingly reliant on remote servers and the implementation of Digital Rights Management (DRM) to function properly.

The White House and FCC aren't the only groups that are advocating for the legal unlocking of smartphones. AT&T has authored a post on their blog explaining that they are perfectly happy to unlock your device as long as the customer is paying his or her bills and they have fulfilled their service agreement commitment.

While we think the Librarian's careful decision was reasonable, the fact is that it has very little impact on AT&T customers. As we make clear on our website, if we have the unlock code or can reasonably get it from the manufacturer, AT&T currently will unlock a device for any customer whose account has been active for at least sixty days; whose account is in good standing and has no unpaid balance; and who has fulfilled his or her service agreement commitment. If the conditions are met we will unlock up to five devices per account per year. We will not unlock devices that have been reported lost or stolen.

If you're an AT&T customer who meets the requirements above and have tried unlocking your device to no avail, let us know! We'd love to hear your story in the comments. If you'd like to read AT&T's full blog post detailing their unlocking policy, you can head over to AT&T's website.