Friday, June 29, 2012

iPhone 5? Well, not exactly. Apple's iPhone turns 5.

iPhone 5? Well, not exactly. Apple's iPhone turns 5.

By Hayley Tsukayama
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Wish a happy birthday to your iPhone! June 29 marks the fifth anniversary of the day the first iPhone hit store shelves and Apple began its climb in the mobile market.
The first iPhone may have sported a metal and plastic back, but the general look of the smartphone hasn't changed all that much in the past five years -- new materials here, a nip or tuck there -- and has kept to its same general size.
What has changed, dramatically, is what the phone can do. At launch, it sported a 2 MP camera, ran on the EDGE network and touted its visual voicemail. It came in a $499 4GB version or a $699 8GB version. Users couldn't download programs from other developers, but the introduction of a more complete Web browser on a smartphone was enough to impress reviewers.
While it's hard to separate the iPhone and the App Store in our minds now, the iPhone didn't have its app ecosystem until a year after launch, in July 2008. Four years later, there are over 650,000 apps in the App Store, and the marketplace has 400 million accounts.
Looking back at Apple's press release for the original phone's debut, we're reminded that the tech giant mostly promoted the smartphone's connection to the iPod -- Apple even called it a "widescreen iPod" in its January 2007 product announcement.
At the time, there was skepticism about whether the iPhone could really take on market leaders Research in Motion and Nokia -- companies that are now struggling to hold on to their shrinking slices of the market. Both have announced job cuts: Nokia is set to cut 10,000 of its staff by the end of 2013, and Research in Motion said Thursday that it will drop 5,000 jobs.
The iPhone, however, hasn't stopped climbing -- though it has occasionally slowed -- even as Android-based competitors have crowded the field and taken the majority of the smartphone market. Demand for Apple's ubiquitous smartphone is still red-hot: It took the first iPhone 74 days to hit 1 million sales; the latest version of the iPhone hit 1 million pre-orders in its first 24 hours.
To date, Apple has sold over 217 million iPhones and has expanded to more networks and countries. According to the company's last earnings call, the iPhone is now on 230 carriers in 105 countries.
It will be interesting to see how the device evolves over the next five years, particularly with the advent of prepaid iPhones from Virgin and Cricket and the company's push for overseas expansion.
And, of course, it's almost a given that Apple fans will keep watching excitedly for any hint of what Apple plans for the iPhone's next incarnation. Top wishlist items include a bigger screen and support for 4G networks.
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iPhone anniversary marks triumph over crisis
By Robert Cyran
NEW YORK, June 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Apple (AAPL.O) rolled out its iconic iPhone five years ago, just as Bear Stearns subprime hedge funds sounded the alarm on a systemic trauma. Financial woe often impedes development. But the iPhone is proof that innovation can defy the odds and overcome hard times.
The advance of technology is hard to stop. R&D budgets do get slashed in downturns. The growth rate of patent filings has slowed during the recent crisis. But companies that don't invest, or that do so poorly, can suffer. Research In Motion (RIM.TO) and Nokia (NOK1V.HE) learned the lesson all too well. Their market values have plummeted over 90 percent since mid-2007.
More importantly, desired products, whether new plastics in the 1930s or smartphones now, tend to thrive regardless of the economic climate. About 40 percent of Dupont's revenue in 1937 came from products introduced during the Great Depression. Almost 60 percent of Apple's sales are now generated by the iPhone.
Apple's focus on high-end customers hasn't hurt. Even reduced disposable income at a certain level still leaves plenty left over for a new bauble. But the iPhone offers value for the considerably less affluent, too. It replaces digital cameras, personal organizers, guidebooks, dictionaries, satellite navigation systems and music players. That list isn't inclusive and is bound to grow.
The contrast with the financial crisis is a stark one. Apple's market value has increased by about $430 billion since the iPhone was introduced. The device represents a majority of the company's sales and an even greater proportion of profit, and has contributed greatly to the popularity of the iPad. That makes it safe to ascribe a healthy amount of the gain to the iPhone.
By comparison, Apple's increased capitalization isn't far off the $470 billion that was required from the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program to bail out Citigroup (C.N), AIG (AIG.N), General Motors (GM.N) and others. Real estate crashes reverse themselves and debt hangovers get worked off. In the meantime, technology relentlessly marches on and provides fresh stepping stones for the eventual recovery. That makes the iPhone a hopeful reminder for a world stewing in another five-year anniversary that isn't much worth celebrating.
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Birthday 5 for iPhone: The Device That Changed Everything
By Adam Dickter
Commenting on the iPhone's 5th birthday and the impact the iPhone has had, analyst Ken Dulaney said, "Marketing consumer electronics has changed, industrial design has reached a new level of importance, and traditional suppliers have been challenged as never before." Regarding the iPhone 5 years ago: "Easy to use reached a whole new level."
It exploded onto the scene with a burst of fanfare, a revolutionary device that, it can objectively be said, changed everything.
Five years ago today the first iPhone went on sale, six months after Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the touchscreen device, essentially a computer in the palm of your hand that displaced voice calls as the primary reason for carrying a mobile device.
"Apple's version of the iPhone is a mobile phone that combines the wizardry of smartphones with the music- and movie-playing features of the iPod," is how NewsFactor reported the story on January 9, 2007. "It features a large, 3.5" touchscreen, a 2-megapixel camera, and integrates fully with Apple's iTunes music store . It's less than half an inch wide, works on a pared-down version of Apple's OS X (which in full form powers Apple notebooks and desktops), sports WiFi, Bluetooth, and EDGE (a type of mobile broadband ), and runs on Cingular's network ."
What, No 3G ?
It took six months, however, for the much-hyped device to get into consumers' hands. Just before the consumer launch, we reported analysts' views that the phone set a new standard, but not without a few shortcomings.
Analysts at the time pointed out that the iPhone "lacked 3G capabilities and could only use the much slower EDGE technology. The compensation for this shortcoming [was] that the iPhone could automatically switch to Wi-Fi networks, when available, for Internet browsing." On Wi-Fi, it was reported, the iPhone "flies."
The original iPhone was followed in turn by the 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S models. Today's 5-year anniversary comes as Apple is soon expected to release the sixth version of the device. While the original device was strictly tied to AT&T , the current incarnation is available via AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and a few regional carriers, with worldwide sales estimated at more than 35 million.
That number makes the iPhone by far the single most popular device. However, over the past year, devices powered by Google's Android operating system -- and offered by different manufacturers -- have seized a larger share of the market as measured by operating system.
The iPhone "has made the consumer king," Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney told us on Friday. "No longer is the [mobile] phone considered [just] a business tool. Data usage has exploded and it has revolutionized the distribution of software ."
Dulaney also noted that the iPhone's app-centric touchscreen experience dramatically increased user interface expectations.
"Easy to use has reached a new level," he said.
Among other impact attributed to the iPhone: "Marketing consumer electronics has changed, industrial design has reached a new level of importance, and traditional suppliers such as Intel and Microsoft, RIM and Nokia have been challenged as never before."
Challenges Overcome
In addition to the above-mentioned shortcomings, Apple also had to deal with reception issues early on, as AT&T, its sole initial carrier, struggled to keep up with the demand on its network. Later, the iPhone 4 faced a backlash over signal problems resulting from contact with its external antenna. Although these issues may have caused some to be wary about being early-adopters, they never seriously hurt sales.
"One reason the iPhone was able to push beyond these issues was because, up to that point, nobody had really launched a smartphone with a true immersive Internet experience," said Weston Henderek, principal wireless analyst for research firm Current Analysis.
Although Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices and some Nokia smartphones were out, they were taking users to abridged mobile versions of Web sites that were difficult to navigate. "The biggest reason [the iPhone] was a revolutionary device is that it put the power of a PC -like Internet experience in your hand and it was really the first device to pull that off."
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Google Gives iPhone Users Browser Choice For Phone's Fifth Birthday
Apple‘s iPhone, the iconic device from that revolutionized smart phones, turned five on Friday, June 29.
There has been no other device like iPhone in history. Thousands of developers have written thousands of apps to organize the lives of iPhone users in a manner previously scarcely imaginable.
iPhone left its competitors like Research in Motion (RIMM) and Nokia (NOK) in the dust. The mobile platform for Microsoft (MSFT) was not at all competitive. Google (GOOG) came up from nowhere to mount a serious challenge with its Android operating system.
There continues to be a bitter rivalry between Apple and Google. The late Steve Jobs accused Google of copying iPhone; he called Android a stolen system and pledged to spend his last dollar to rectify the situation.
On the fifth birthday of iPhone Google has given a surprise present. Google has announced that it is launching a new version of its Chrome browser to run on iPhone and iPad. The new Chrome app will allow users to sync all of their credentials, bookmarks, and tabs on all of their devices.
The app may gain traction as Apple users will be able to sync easily with non-Apple devices. Moreover those tired of Safari, the browser from Apple, now have a great alternative.
From an investment perspective, there should be no material impact in the short-term on the stock prices of Google or Apple.
The introduction of Chrome for Apple opens a new battle front in the war between the two companies. Google is sending a clear signal that it will do whatever it takes to keep a major presence on the Apple platform. Recently Apple ditched Google Maps. Clearly Apple does not want to share the success of its platform with Google. Let another battle begin.
About Me: I am an engineer and nuclear physicist by background. I founded two Inc. 500 companies, and have been involved in over 50 entrepreneurial ventures. I am the chief investment officer at The Arora Report, which publishes four newsletters to help investors profit from change. Follow me here and get email notification when I publish a new article.
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Why the iPhone Was Truly a Disruptive Product
Chances are, the smartphone in your pocket bears little resemblance to the cell phone you were carrying 5 years ago. That's largely because of what happened on June 29, 2007, the day the iPhone was released in North America.
As I wrote on the anniversary last year, "every major smartphone that has gone into production since the iPhone's release has, in some way, been a response to the iPhone itself."
Since 2007, I've written hundreds of thousands of words about the iPhone, iOS and the modern smartphone ecosystem. I have chronicled the impact the iPhone has had not just on Apple, but on the telecom industry, the smartphone market and computing as we know it.
Now, on the fifth anniversary, I want to home in on a few specific examples of companies and individuals that the iPhone has profoundly changed.
Rarus Technologies Inc. Receives Approval from Apple for Zngle's Version 1.1 iPhone App and will release version 1.2 with Video and VoIP Calling in July
HENDERSON, Nev., June 29, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Rarus Technologies Inc. (otcqb:RARS) ("Rarus") announced today its newly enhanced version 1.1 of the Zngle iPhone App is now available at the Apple iTunes Store.
Rarus Technologies' Zngle social media network released its first Zngle iPhone App on June 1st 2012 in the iTunes Store and then moved quickly to produce and submit version 1.1 with added features and improvements. Zngle's development team has continued gathering member feedback and this data has now been incorporated into version 1.2 which includes new and improved features like Video and VoIP calling. These two features will be free for Zngle members and users will also be able to buy the additional required storage for Video and VoIP messages through the iTunes Store.
"We're very pleased to have received great suggestions through feedback from our members and have used their suggestions in the development of Zngle version 1.2 which now includes features such as Video and VoIP calling. These features will be free for Zngle members, however due to bandwidth and addition server requirements, there will be an in-App purchase requirement in order for members to acquire additional message storage. If members redeem proximity coupons they will also receive Zngle credits which they can use to acquire additional features. Due to the complexity of these features, which will set us apart from other social media companies, we have also delayed development of the Android App. We are planning to resume development of this parallel product once we receive feedback from beta testers of the Apple version 1.2," stated Mr. Manfred Ruf, CEO of Rarus.
About Rarus Technologies Inc. and Zngle, Inc.
Rarus Technologies Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is an emerging technology company focused on establishing an innovative business model intended to bridge cutting-edge social media and e-commerce into a marketplace that connects friends, family, consumers, and vendors in new and exciting ways. In May, 2012, Rarus Technologies Inc. incorporated Zngle, Inc. as the primary subsidiary and operations base for licensed internet platform. We are designed to be a centralized Internet portal and next-generation social media website that incorporates voice/text messaging, video email, and mobile technologies to allow consumers to access real-time information about various products and services through augmented proximity reality search features.
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
Certain information contained in this press release, including any information as to our strategy, plans or future financial or operating performance and other statements that express management's expectations or estimates of future performance, constitute "forward-looking statements." All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "will," "anticipate," "contemplate," "target," "plan," "continue," "budget," "may," "intend," "estimate," "project" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, certain delays beyond the company's control with respect to its plans or operations. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.
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Apple Loop: A Hardware Update, Friending Google (Sort of) And Other News
Keeping you in the loop on some of the things happening around Apple this past week.
Bob Mansfield, Apple's head of hardware engineering, says so long.
+ Hardware update. Apple announced that the head of hardware engineering, Bob Mansfield, is going to retire and that he'll be replaced by Dan Riccio, vice president of iPad hardware engineering, in several months. The hardware engineering team is going to keep reporting to Mansfield until he leaves. Mansfield joined Apple in 1999, when it acquired Raycer Graphics, where he was VP of engineering, Apple said. He's led Mac hardware engineering since 2005, iPhone and iPod hardware engineering since 2010, and iPad hardware engineering since the tablet was introduced -- which makes him kind of an important person at the company. However, Apple CEO Tim Cook made a point of noting that his replacement, Riccio, who joined Apple in 1998 as VP of product design, has contributed to most of Apple's hardware during his tenure. "Dan has been one of Bob's key lieutenants for a very long time and is very well respected within Apple and by the industry," added Cook. "Our hardware engineering team is the best engineering team on earth and will not miss a beat during the transition."

Google Brings Chrome Web Browser To Apple iPhones, iPads

Tomio Geron
+ Thermonuclear war on hiatus? Remember how Steve Jobs' told biographer Walter Isaacson that he thought Google was guilty of "grand theft" when it released the Android mobile operating system to challenge Apple's iOS for the iPhone and iPad? And how Apple was ready to launch a "thermonuclear war" to defend its patents against smartphone makers like HTC, Samsung and Google? While Apple CEO Tim Cook has said repeatedly the company will continue to fight to protect its intellectual property, it seems like it can play nice too. That's why iPhone and iPad users will now find Google's Chrome browser -- a rival to Apple's Safari browser -- at Apple's App Store. (And as of this writing, Chrome is the top free app on the App Store.) Google is also offering a version of Google Drive -- its cloud-based service for storing documents, photos, music, videos etc. and a rival to Apple's iCloud -- for iOS users. Frenemies?
+ Podcasts go out on their own. Delivering on some recent rumors, Apple released a standalone Podcasts app that makes it easier to subscribe and listen to podcasts (instead of having to access them out of iTunes). Podcasts are prerecorded audio and video shows you can subscribe to and stream episodes or download and listen to them offline. Here's how Apple describes the new app in iTunes: Podcasts app is the easiest way to discover, subscribe to, and play your favorite podcasts on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Explore hundreds of thousands of free audio and video podcasts from the Podcasts Catalog, and play the most popular podcasts, organized for you by topic, with the all-new Top Stations feature. Another new feature: a Sleep Timer to "automatically stop playing a podcast while listening in bed."
+ iTunes Plays in Asia. You couldn't tell it from the press release, but Apple's news that it was opening a dozen new iTunes stores in Asia was notable because it's the first major push in the region since it opened its iTunes stores in Japan in 2005. The new iTunes stores -- selling music and movies for the most part -- are in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Of course, Apple fans in those countries already have access to the App Store, which offers more than 650,000 apps in 155 countries. How many countries does iTunes operate in? Apple couldn't tell me (why, I don't know). By my count, it's about 50. Still no word on iTunes in China, Apple's largest market. And in case you're wondering, sales of music-related products and services accounted for about 6 percent of Apple's sales in 2011 -- or about $6 billion.
+ Apple to take another gamble on Reno. Apple is looking to build a data center for its iCloud service and set up a purchasing center in Reno, Nevada, as part of a $1 billion investment it is making there over the next decade, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. (Reno, the paper noted, is also home to Apple's Braeburn Capital subsidiary, which does investments and is part of its tax planning strategy, as the New York Times reported in April.) While Apple has plans to build data centers in other states, including Oregon, Steve Hill, the director of the Nevada Office on Economic Development, said Apple "wanted to come to the Silver State to diversify its locations as well as to capitalize on Reno's vicinity to Cupertino, Calif., the home of Apple's headquarters -- about a four-hour drive away." Nevada also lured the company with $89 million in tax breaks, including an 85 percent drop in the personal property tax for 10 to 30 years, which if approved, will make Apple's effective sales tax rate will be less than 1 percent, according to the Reno Gazette Journal.
+ Apple retail employees, by the numbers. As part of its iEconomy series, the New York Times took a deep dive into Apple's retail stores. All sorts of interesting numbers to be found -- including that the average tenure of a retail employee is 2.5 years, that they make about $25,00 a year and that store employees each brought in $473,000 in sales for the company last year. Should Apple pay its employees more since Apple is making so much thanks to their efforts? Should retail employees expect that working in retail will give them a career path to corporate jobs at Apple? Should they get an annual bonus (since they don't get commissions) for selling so much stuff? Apple said it's recently given retail employees a raise, though it declined to provide specifics. As for overall working conditions in its retail ops, here's what Apple had to say: "Thousands of incredibly talented professionals work behind the Genius Bar and deliver the best customer service in the world. The annual retention rate for Geniuses is almost 90%, which is unheard-of in the retail industry, and shows how passionate they are about their customers and their careers at Apple." Here's a question for Tim Cook: would you recommend your family or friends work at the retail store? And if yes, for how long?
+ It's not the iPad 3, but still. Apple didn't name the third iteration of the iPad the iPad 3 -- instead calling it simply ‘iPad.' But that hasn't stopped the company from claiming that it should be the owner of the domain, according to Domain Name Wire. Apple has filed a case with the World Intellectual Property Organization asking that the domain name be transferred to it from its current owner, a company called Global Access in Isle of Man which was registered in Jan. 2010.
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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review


Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 review

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The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under £200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - Design and Connectivity
Watch the video review
The 7-inch tablet is seen as the most obvious alternative to a 10-incher like the new iPad or Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. But if you look around, there aren't that many hot contenders. The Amazon Kindle Fire isn't available here yet, the BlackBerry PlayBook was virtually stillborn and the Acer Iconia A100 had a disappointing screen. Samsung is out to change all that. Its Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has a PLS screen, expandable memory, a dual-core processor and a sub-£200 price. What's not to like?
Design
With its gaze set on the budget buyer who doesn't want to make do with a cheapo no-name tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 doesn't have a particularly dynamic or interesting design. Its inch-thick screen bezel looks chunky, it has a plastic rear and while hardly rotund at 10mm thick, its form feels designed to be comfortable rather than razor-thin.
It feels much better-made than the vast majority of budget tablets we've tested, though. In making the plastic rear plate non-removable, Samsung has been able to fashion a solid and strong-feeling slab. And while it doesn't have that cool touch of metal, it has been textured to afford it a similar feel on the finger to anodised aluminium.
The front of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is glass. It's not Gorilla Glass as far as we can tell, but feels just the same under the finger and avoids the "oil slick" effect that plagued many Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets last year.
One of the best things about a 7in tablet is that you can hold it in one hand without developing muscles in weird places within your forearm. At just 344g, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 feels right at home in one mitt - and in this situation the generous bezel comes in handy, giving you space to rest your thumb without obstructing the screen. It's almost as if professional designers produced this thing...
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Connectivity
As with the other tablets in the Galaxy range, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 keeps its on-body connections simple. It features what's arguably the most important, though - a plastic flap on its right edge covers a microSD card slot. Its 16GB of internal memory (8GB version also available) is already reasonably generous, but this slot makes upgrading quick, cheap and painless.
The 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge, right next to a teeny pinhole microphone. Its speakers are - sensibly - placed poles apart on the bottom edge - and there are two of them. Getting stereo sound in a tablet is a neat extra, but it's not particularly well-executed here. When held in landscape, while watching a movie for example, all sound comes from the right side, providing zero sense of stereo image.
The level of volume these teeny speakers can produce is reasonable, but sound quality is not a match for the iPad. It has decent body and scale, but little fidelity or richness.
Between the speaker duo sits the proprietary adaptor socket, used to both charge the tablet and transfer data to its brainbox. The positive side of using this dock is that it makes producing the supportive desktop and car docks (available, but not included) easy, but also ensures losing the cable is more of a problem - it proprietary sockets are a bit of an irritation generally. The tablet battery doesn't charge when you plug the cable into a computer, either.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers both MTP and PTP transfer modes, which tells your computer that it's either a media player or camera when plugged-in. As long as you're not running an ancient version of Windows (or any version of Mac OS) you can drag and drop files directly onto the memory using Windows Explorer. Testing with a Mac, it seems Samsung sync software Kies is needed to transfer files.
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich. This is the upgraded version of Honeycomb, which was the first tablet-focused version of Google's operating system.
Samsung has dropped-in some of its own TouchWiz touches too - this is Samsung's proprietary user interface - and in all honesty it doesn't look all that different to last year's Honeycomb-based tablets.
Whatever way you hold the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 - landscape or portrait - on the home screen there's shortcut and notifications bar at the bottom of the screen, and links to Google search and the apps menu up top.
Although reasonably intuitive, this is a layout that feels more at home on a 10in tablet than a smaller one like this. When held portrait, it feels as though you should be able to access most features with your two thumbs - but you can't thanks to Google's obsession with spreading links across the screen. And having the toolbar constantly sitting at the bottom of the screen can make the display feel a little cramped - a feeling you don't get with 10.1in Android tablets.
It's almost enough to make you miss the days of Android 2.3 Gingerbread tablets running what's essentially a phone OS, like the original 7in Samsung Galaxy Tab. We say almost because the benefits of a proper tablet OS still far outweigh the niggles - key among them having tablet-optimised apps to play with.
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TouchWiz Extras
Samsung UI TouchWiz doesn't dramatically alter the DNA of the Android OS, but it does tack some neat extras on. Among the most front-facing is the screenshot-taking button on the home screen toolbar. Previous versions of Android have made it bafflingly difficult to take a screenshot, and we find it a most welcome addition.
Samsung AllShare also comes pre-installed. This is the manufacturer's own DLNA interface, and it's consistent across many home gadgets including TVs, phones and Blu-ray players. It lets you stream media over Wi-Fi and - as long as each end is AllShare compatible - takes most of the fiddliness out of the pairing process.
TouchWiz offers its own keyboard, too. It's not particularly pretty, but it makes typing quick and accurate on the 7in screen, and if you really don't like it, putting a replacement in its stead isn't difficult.
Apps and Games
Activities that benefit most from the large screen of a tablet, over a smaller smartphone display, are things like web browsing, video-viewing and email-sifting.
Enriching browsing, Adobe Flash support is in, and the 7in form is a good size for reading web pages. With a good web connection pages render fairly quickly, and the responsive capacitive touchscreen makes whizzing around them a joy. A higher-resolution display would make reading more comfortable, but it's like to be a while before we see super high pixel density tablets do the limbo under the £200 barrier.
Games and apps suffer from the lower resolution a little too, but not primarily because of a lack of pure pixel density. It's more an issue of compatibility and optimisation.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has full access to the Google Play app store and plenty of its hundreds of thousands of apps and games. However, with an unusual 1,024 x 600 pixel resolution, many apps and games are not fully optimised for the tablet, and some are not compatible at all.
For example, in the popular Unreal Engine 3-powered Dungeon Defenders Second Wave, the graphics appear to be upsized from those of a lower resolution device (most likely 800 x 480 pixels or similar). When using most 1,280 x 800 Android tablets, such as a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, they're nice 'n' crisp.
With high pixel density devices flavour of the month, it is unlikely that many more devices of this resolution will be made. And therefore developer support is unlikely to increase much. In fairness, most games look and play just fine.
It's a pity, though, because the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 packs a decent punch for an affordable tablet. In the AnTuTu benchmark it scored 5220 points. As a point of reference, last year's similarly-priced, dual-core Time2touch HC701A scored just 2870 - and that seemed pretty zippy at the time. The Tab's CPU is a TI OMAP 4430 dual-core 1GHz model with 1GB of RAM, roughly comparable with last year's top-end Android tablets.
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Screen
Using Samsung's PLS display technology, the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 offers decent viewing angles and image quality. PLS is Samsung's own take on IPS, the core screen tech used in Apple's iPad tablets.
It's not quite on-par with the best of IPS though, with significant contrast shift creeping in when the display is tilted in one particular angle. As it's not an angle you'd normally view the tablet from, though, it's not a big problem.
A deficiency that's much more noticeable is screen resolution. With a 1,024 x 600 pixel screen, the Tab 2 7.0 offers the same pixel count as the original Samsung Galaxy Tab and the comparable Acer Iconia A100. Although it offers slightly higher pixel density than the first and second iPads, with 169dpi, you can easily discern individual pixels if you get reasonably up-close - when reading, for example.
Video Compatibility
It's somewhat-less noticeable with less high-contrast images, such as those of movies. And, in the Samsung tradition, video codec support is pretty good. MKV support is included - handy for video downloads - although unusually it failed to play some of our less challenging test files. It supports Xvid and DivX, but stumbled over one of our SD DivX tests, suggesting some more software optimisation is needed. A patch perhaps, Samsung?
There's not need to wait around, though, as third-party apps can use software rendering to play anything not supported natively by the tablet.
Battery Life
Tasked with playing a looping SD-quality video at 50 per cent screen brightness, with wireless turned off, the 4000mAh battery lasted for six and a half hours - pretty close to the claimed figure of seven hours. While it outlasts most tablets of its size, and most tablets under £200, this is lower performance than premium 10.1in tabs and well below the iPad's 10-plus hours.
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Cameras
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 has two cameras. There's a VGA user-facing camera for video chat and a 3.2-megapixel main sensor that captures photos at up to 2,048 x 1,536 pixel resolution.
It's a basic affair. It doesn't have autofocus, lacking any control over the subject of your shots, and there's no flash. The only extras beyond the stripped-back basics of sepia/black and white filters you're treated to are Smile Shot and a panorama mode. Image quality is fairly poor and video capture maxes out at 720p.
Value
Starting at £199.99 for the 8GB version, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 is much cheaper than most of Samsung's tablets. It's also much better than the vast majority of tablets we've tested selling at under £200. Lacking a flashy design and top-end specs, its higher-end models, such as the more-expensive 3G editions, don't make a great deal of sense. However, as an alternative to smaller £150-250 tablets like the BlackBerry PlayBook, HTC Flyer and Acer Iconia A100, it's the pick of the bunch.
Verdict
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 isn't out to prove a grand point. This isn't the Galaxy Note, or the dazzling Tab 7.7. However, it is one of the very best tablets you can buy for under £200. With a dual-core 1GHz processor and relatively low-density 1,024 x 600 resolution screen, it's hardly cutting edge but performance is solid and build is good. The one lingering concern is that the screen resolution ensures games optimisation and support isn't up there with the best.
'Mad Men' recap, 'Signal 30': Red-faced and white-knuckled
By Mark Maurer/The Star-Ledger
For Pete Campbell, the question isn't "When are things going to get back to normal?"
It's "When is copycatting early '60s Don going to earn me respect?" Or, "When does success become satisfying?" Don in his heyday didn't have nearly this many enemies.
The latest "Mad Men" - which is a bit heavy on the match cuts (that's a film editing term) - looks at business relations, masculine yearning and the scary slo-mo car collision that's come to parallel Pete's middle years.
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Don tries to dodge a dinner party at the Campbell's suburban abode that sounds about as dull as his old plans with Betty. But he appears impervious to Trudy's stamina. The party is no more than a painfully transparent paean to Don, who is practically declared the man of the house on top of receiving the finest cut of steak. Pete flaunts his new stereo by playing classical music too loud. The kitchen sink Pete thought he fixed spits water like a geyser. And he gets one-upped by handyman/everyman Don, whom it only seems fair to compare with Jon Hamm in the category of surprise talents. On the way home, Don drunkenly suggests he and Megan make a baby.
Pete takes a driver's education class, during which he develops a crush on Jenny (Amanda Bauer), a high-school girl bound for Ohio State. They're both nostalgic for simpler times, and talk about taking turns driving to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. If they got into an accident, he'd have a lot of explaining to do. Jenny, if she even saw Pete in a romantic light, falls for an athletic classmate nicknamed "Handsome" instead. The track star (Parker Young) is more her speed.
Ken is still writing depressing short stories, now under the alias of Ben Hargrove. He prefers to keep his literary passions a secret, for fear of paying the price in the cutthroat world of office politics. First, Peggy catches him with a prospective publisher, then Cynthia touts his tales at the party. (Worlds are colliding. And that's not the only construable "Seinfeld" reference. Peggy's line "I thought we had a pact!" brings to mind Jerry and George's botched agreement to mature and settle down.) After Pete spreads the word about his stories, Roger makes Ken feel like his job could be on the line if he doesn't commit to one craft only. Ken chooses to switch alias - this time, Dave Algonquin, named after New York's Algonquin Hotel, or the cocktail.
Rebecca drags Lane to a pub to cheer on the ultimately victorious British team at the televised World Cup. Dining with them is Edwin Baker (David Hunt), a Jaguar Cars public relations executive who's in the market for an advertising campaign and wants to hear from an account man. Later, Lane, the financial chief, tells the partners and wants to handle his first account. Pete bullies him about it, speculating it's a costly endeavor with measly returns. Roger steps in to mentor Lane on the art of schmoozing clients. We never thought we'd hear Roger speak of feigning drinking. He instructs Lane to obtain answers by being smooth and artificially empathetic. When Lane fails, the big boys take Edwin to dinner.
"Lane couldn't close a car door," Pete sneers. Sure, Lane lacks an account man's bravado, but at least he knows how to drive a car.
Pete, Roger and Don take Edwin to a high-end brothel, where each man gets his jollies except Don. On the cab ride home, Don makes him feel shame for cheating on Trudy. Don says he feels Pete has everything right now; only a fool would test it.
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The next day, Lane reveals to the partners they've lost the Jaguar account. Off-camera, Edwin's wife caught her husband with chewing gum on his pubic hair, Lane says. Because Pete spearheaded the tag team initiative, he's the first to be dealt Lane's wrath. He fires back a nasty, and untrue, riposte: "Our need for you disappeared the day after you fired us."
Lane engages Pete in a boxing match in the conference room. Don eagerly closes the curtains. As Joan and Peggy eavesdrop from the adjacent room, Lane gets in two clean blows that drop Pete to the table, then the floor. In Lane's office, Joan says it's good to be different. He misreads the signal and kisses her. The move is an almost startling indication that Lane, too, is one of the boys. Being the good work friend she is, Joan accepts it as one elongated faux pas.
In the elevator, Pete admits to Don "I have nothing" (no Whitney Houston tie-in) and begins to weep. That's a lesson to Don: Don't ever leave the office without Megan at your side.
NOTES
- Whose marriage is faring the best this week? Betty and Henry are out of the running, so that leaves the Drapers, the Cosgroves, the Campbells, the Sterlings and the Pryces. Pete and Roger were both unfaithful; Ken feels most alive when he's writing while his wife's asleep; and Rebecca's likely upset about the bubblegum incident, though Lane is in the clear despite minor bruising. Although Don didn't want to wear the sport jacket, it's fair to say he and Megan are going strong. Neither can seem to resist the other's seductive power. It's tough to gauge the enduring strength of Don's feelings for Megan, because, as viewers, we entered his marriage with Betty on the long way down. His words to Pete are promising, if a bit too rosy to guarantee longevity: "If I'd met (Megan) first, I'd have known not to throw it away."
- I was especially excited for tonight's episode when I saw who co-wrote it with creator Matthew Weiner. Lending the show some added period authenticity, Frank Pierson - an old hand in Hollywood who co-wrote 1967's "Cool Hand Luke" and directed 1976's "A Star is Born" - was consulting producer on the third season and now this season. "Signal 30" is the 86-year-old's first writing credit on the show. Featuring only a handful of the key players, the John Slattery-directed episode was more slow-paced than usual and another thematically strong entry this season. It's also not every day that fisticuffs enter the ad world.
- Are we getting a follow-up soon on Michael's home life?
- What did everyone take away from the beginning of Ken's story "The Man with the Miniature Orchestra"? More like the guy with the tiniest violin.

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Sunday, June 3, 2012

Will Apple's game plan beat the trustbusters?


Will Apple's game plan beat the trustbusters?
By Josh Lowensohn


The challenge for Apple's attorneys is presenting a different picture of the e-book market than the one offered by the Department of Justice, experts say.
A flag outside a European Apple retail store.
Most companies finding themselves staring at the business end of a government cannon might consider it time to talk compromise. Apple is not most companies.
One day after the Department of Justice sued Apple and several book publishers for allegedly colluding to fix e-book prices, Apple publicly dismissed the government's claims as empty and false. Instead, Apple stayed with the script and described the 2010 launch of the iBookstore as a force for "innovation and competition," one that also helped break what it called "Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry."
"Since then customers have benefited from e-books that are more interactive and engaging. Just as we've allowed developers to set prices on the App Store, publishers set prices on the iBookstore," Apple declared.
Those were fighting words, and the message to the DOJ was plain: Bring it on.
Apple might regret the utterance. IBM in the 1980s and Microsoft in the 1990s got bogged down in long, hard, and inconclusive antitrust struggles with the government that distracted both companies as changes took place in the technology industry. But Apple has clearly reached the conclusion that this battle won't cost it dearly, either in time or resources. So without settling, how does Apple plan to defend itself even if this does wind up turning into a multiyear court battle?
The answer, several experts say, will be to try and present a different picture of the e-book market and play up Amazon's unassailable dominance. Obviously, it's hard to imagine Apple seriously painting itself as the underdog in the world of digital goods given its stellar success in digital music and mobile applications. But legal experts say Apple should remind a judge and jury that when it first tried its hand at e-books in 2010, Amazon had a 90 percent share in the e-books market. That offers Apple's attorneys a chance to make the case that no competitor could undercut that type of dominance.
"Apple trying to compete against Amazon is a good thing," said Gus Hurwitz, a fellow at the Center for Technology Innovation and Competition at The University of Pennsylvania Law School. "It's the sort of thing we want to encourage so long as it's in ways that are complying with the law."
The relationship of competition
Fair competition is at the very heart of the Justice Department's case against Apple and the publishers. The government accused the publishers of illegally holding private meetings to fix e-book prices, and later teaming up with Apple to crack Amazon's dominance of the market. Bundling all the companies together in one complaint has its own problems, though. Indeed, Hurwitz noted that Apple is not a competitor with e-book providers.
Apple's iBooks app, which serves as both a store and a reader.
Apple's iBooks app, which serves as both a store and a reader.
"If e-book publishers decided to collude and break the law, that's not Apple's problem. They were free to break the law and come to Apple as a cartel," he said. "That's not illegal on Apple's part."
The relationship between Apple and the publishers is crucial as far as antitrust laws are concerned, says Joseph Bauer, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame. Bauer noted that under the very first section of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act -- which Apple and others are alleged to be violating -- there is a marked distinction between business relationships, which are broken into two categories: vertical and horizontal. Where horizontal covers the behavior between or among competitors, vertical is that behavior between suppliers and customers.
"Historically, the antitrust law has been much harsher in dealing with horizontal behavior," Bauer said in a phone interview Friday. "At its core, the allegations by the DOJ are against the five publishers who allegedly conspired to adopt uniform pricing policies. That might be different, and only slightly less problematic from actually having agreed on price."
Adding complexity to the situation is how antitrust law deals with e-books as a business. As the DOJ notes in its complaint, the named publishers compete with one another in a business made up of six major providers of trade books. "They publish the vast majority of their newly released titles as both print books and e-books," the filing reads. According to Hurwitz, that very factor makes e-books a so-called "multisided market," wherein two or more distinct groups of participants are brought together by an intermediate platform.
"E-books are multisided markets, and antitrust law doesn't yet have a good handle on how to deal with pricing situations in multisided markets," Hurwitz said. "It is very possible that increasing prices on one side of a multisided market can benefit the market as a whole. By increasing prices you get a wider range that will ultimately benefit everyone in the marketplace."
What happened instead was the "agency" model, where publishers set e-book prices to retailers, who get 30 percent while the publisher keeps 70 percent. While the DOJ has focused part of its complaint on the deals Apple made with publishers to assure that it would always get the lowest wholesale price given to others, the grander idea of the agency model was for the companies to compete on experience -- be it shopping for e-books, or reading them on devices.
Historical similarities
Sometimes experience isn't enough. Bauer points back to an antitrust case against retailer Toys "R" Us by the Federal Trade Commission from the late 1990s that found the toy retailer to be breaking the law after having made vertical agreements with toy manufacturers to keep them from selling to warehouse club stores, where those same goods it might be selling were being sold at a smaller markup.
"The bottom line was that Toys 'R' Us' competitive position was enhanced. And action was brought against all of them," Bauer said. "But the important part against Toys 'R' Us was for orchestrating that agreement between the toy companies."
"If the evidence shows that analogously what Apple did was help to orchestrate, organize, or implement the agreement among the publishers, then we are transforming what would be the initial, problematic horizontal agreement among the publisher competitors into something where you have another firm which is intimately involved with making that conspiracy a reality," Bauer added.
Not to be dismissed, the evidence against Apple and the named publishers could change, and potentially strengthen if the claim goes to trial.
"There's often a difference between what gets put into a complaint and what you can prove in trial," Bauer said, "The DOJ will be able to compel all of the defendants to produce documents; they will be able to take depositions of folks who were involved in this -- both the representatives of the five defendant publishers and representatives of Apple -- and presumably even third parties who might have information."
That information could then be added, or used to take away claims from the original complaint, Bauer said.
In the meantime, some of the additional publishers named in the DOJ complaint -- and even Apple -- could end up settling, according to Ronald Cass, the president at Cass & Associates, and former vice chairman and commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission.
"Obviously when the Department of Justice is collaborating with that many attorneys general, there is some effort on its part to try to hold a pretty big hammer over the head of the people who are accused to get them to settle quickly," Cass said. "When that doesn't happen, sometimes things don't go quite the way the Justice Department would like."

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Top ten apps that help make classes managable

Top ten apps that help make classes managable


By Ashley G. Terrell.


For the life of a college student there's always a continuous juggle of work, school and social lives that keeps one busy. Anything to lessen the load would be a miracle. But what if that miracle came from just an app?


Through the thousands of choices at your fingertips, many go above and beyond to enhance the educational experience. Here are the 10 best Smartphone/tablet apps to help you become a better student:


1. Evernote: A digital note taking app that can record in text, video, notes and photos, plus sorting the information in order of date. It can also sync from a phone to computer. (For: iPhone, iPad, Windows, Android and Blackberry)


2. myHomework: Tracks homework, classes, projects and tests with ease while syncing information to myHomeworkapp.com for review. Once your class schedule and assignments have been entered, you'll receive notifications of due dates regarding to

your work. (For: iPhone and iPad)


3. Amazon Student: Need affordable textbooks? Don't we all? Amazon Student includes a barcode scanning feature used to compare prices to validate if a campus bookstore overcharges you (most likely yes). This app has helped students tremendously with saving money while being aware of competitive pricing in order to get better deals. (For: iPhone and Android)


4. Mint: The life of a student revolves around money for many reasons: cars, food, clothing, supplies and many more. This personal finance app is a perfect guide to help students create a budget and stretch their money too. With a budget set, inputting a point-of-transactions will track your overall expenses. (For: iPhone and Android)


5. EZ Read: Contains the literature sources of SparkNotes.com providing plot overviews, quizzes, characters analysis, chapter summaries and key facts for popular books. (For: iPhone and Android)


6. iTunes U: Available to various colleges, including Eastern Michigan University, students have access to audio lectures, videos, books and documents for class assignments. (For: iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch)


7. Recordoid: Specifically for Android, this is a great app for recording audio notes or lectures that can be sent via email and is supported with an auto-backup.


8. Wi-Fi Finder: When you're off campus but want to stay on top of emails, assignments or contact fellow group members, free internet is helpful. The GPS- monitor can locate Wi-Fi networks nearby along with the location type, directions and contact information. (For: iPhone and Android)


9. Dictionary.com: A popular app among college students, this dictionary and thesaurus has nearly two million words to search at ease. (For: iPhone, Android and Blackberry)


10. Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock: We're all guilty of hitting the snooze button or sleeping in lectures. But would you believe that your smartphone can analyze your sleep cycle? Receiving five stars from 148Apps.com, this accelerometer monitors sleep movement and stages from drowsiness to REM (dream) sleep. It wakes you during the lightest sleep phase, stage 2, resulting in less grogginess throughout the day. (For: iPhone, $0.99)


Gowalla officially closes its doors three months after acquisition by Facebook


Ailing location-based application Gowalla has finally shuttered its doors, three months after Facebook's talent acquisition of Gowalla. This leaves Foursquare to prove that its pivot will keep its location-based services relevant for users.


It's official. Gowalla shuttered its doors only three months after Facebook's acquisition and five years after its founding. Today, Foursquare stands as the lone giant lumbering in location-based check-ins, despite the fact that the majority of its users aren't in fact using Foursquare for checking-in.


Knowing that Gowalla was in its final stretch, Facebook purchased Gowalla in exchange for $3 million of Facebook's shares, prior to what will be an undoubtedly fruitful IPO. While Gowalla had pivoted to become a travel guide destination, which was leading to its slow death, its purchase was entirely a talent acquisition. With plans to expand Facebook's location-based API for statuses and updates detailing user's visits on their Timelines, the majority of Gowalla's team settled in Facebook's Palo Alto, while the remainder stayed in Austin to work in Facebook's Austin office.


Gowalla's landing page simply states:


"Thank you for going out with Gowalla. It was a pleasure to journey with you around the world. Download your check-ins, photos and lists here soon."


While Gowalla has been acquired, all the data that has been logged since 2007 will remain behind, available for downloading.


Its competitor, Foursquare, had begun a series of changes to its services beginning in October 2011 with the Radar recommendation engine, which notifies its mobile users when they're near a venue or restaurant that they may like.


Its latest venue discovery and recommendation feature, Explorer, allows users to search for recommended places based on the, "time of day, places your friends have been or left tips, places on lists you follow, and places we think you'll like based on the 1,500,000,000 check-ins on Foursquare," as its blog post states.


Following its Explorer update, Foursquare, using SinglePlatform's API, added 250,000 restaurant menus. The latest update has included hours of operation for local businesses, including hours for discounts and happy hours.


Its strategy is a dramatic pivot that will see Foursquare taking the form of a mobile recommendation engine coupled with Yelp. "There are a lot of people using Foursquare who aren't checking in. People use the app to consume data. That's a really important and interesting trend," Dennis Crowley, Foursquare's CEO, informed the Wall Street Journal.


With Foursquare's pivot and the old Gowalla team now building out Facebook's location-based API, the friendly competition between Foursquare and Gowalla continues to exist. But while Facebook intends to use its location API to leave memories of experiences shared, Foursquare will try to recommend future experiences.



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GM's Buyers Snub 'Obamamobile' Volt as Campaign Gets Hot

GM's Buyers Snub 'Obamamobile' Volt as Campaign Gets Hot


By Tim Higgins.


Pity the Chevy Volt. Ever since it became known that the plug-in hybrid car's batteries had burst into flames after government crash tests, the Volt has become the whipping boy of Republican politicians.


Conservatives have equated General Motors Co. (GM)'s Volt with everything from government bailouts to radical left-wing environmentalism.


"Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, we did not engineer the Volt to be a political punching bag," GM Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson said during a Congressional hearing on the Volt in January. "And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become."


Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich faulted the Volt for its lack of space for a gun rack. Front-runner Mitt Romney called it "an idea whose time has not come." American Tradition Partnership Inc., a conservative group, referred to Volts as "exploding Obamamobiles."


Akerson said all the trash talk about the Volt has been pinching sales. Obama's challengers, though, see it as an effective way to resonate with their voters. Republicans buy Silverado pickups and other Chevrolets in greater numbers than Democrats do, said Art Spinella, who studies new-vehicle buyers as president of CNW Marketing Research in Bandon, Oregon.


While Chevy customers tend to lean conservative, less than 14 percent of Volt buyers so far this year identify themselves as Republicans while about 53 percent call themselves Democrats, according to CNW survey of 1,416 people. Buyers of the Chevrolet brand as a whole were 37 percent Republican, 22 percent Democrat and 41 percent independent.


Disappointing Sales


Politics aside, Volt sales have been a source of disappointment for GM. The Environmental Protection Agency gave it a 95 mpg rating for city driving, less than half the 230 mpg rating GM had anticipated in 2009. After the battery fires became public in November, 2011 sales fell short of Akerson's goal and following slow sales in January and February, GM decided to stop making the cars for five weeks.


While the government's investigation found the Volt to be as safe as other vehicles, they are complicated and expensive for a small car at nearly $40,000 before a federal tax credit. Nissan Motor Co. (7201)'s Leaf electric car missed its sales targets last year, too, raising questions about the size of the market for technology-laden fuel-efficient vehicle.


Republican Bashing


It's impossible to know to what degree political rhetoric is hurting Volt sales, but Akerson isn't alone in believing the numbers would look better without the Republican bashing. Chevrolet dealers in the U.S. sold 7,671 Volts last year, missing GM's target of 10,000. About 1,600 Volts were sold in the first two months of the year, a pace that doesn't match Akerson's plans to deliver 45,000 in the U.S. this year. At least part of that gap is a result of attacks on the campaign trail, Spinella said.


Buyers from the political center to the right, "will not buy a car that has anything at all that they perceive being associated with the administration," Spinella said.


While the Volt accounted for less than 0.1 percent of the world's largest automaker's sales last year, it is getting heightened attention because "it's a hallmark car," Akerson told reporters in San Francisco this week.


After the announcement last week that work would stop for five weeks at the Detroit-Hamtramck where the Volt is made, Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, posted on Twitter about it with the hashtag "#ObamaonEmpty."


The Volt, introduced a month before Obama said he would run for president, can go more than 30 miles on electricity before its gasoline engine kicks in and powers a generator to recharge the battery. The car has a range of 379 miles with both electric and gasoline power combined.


Lutz Outraged


Bob Lutz, the former vice chairman at General Motors who helped develop the Volt, said he's angered that the car has become politicized.


"I don't mind criticizing Obama, I don't mind criticizing the Democrats and, you know me, I think global warming is a huge hoax perpetrated by the global political left," Lutz said. "But when it comes to starting to tell outright lies to advance your political purposes and damage an American company that is greatly on its way back, hurt American employment in Hamtramck, Michigan, I just think it's totally outrageous."


Lutz, a Republican, said he voted for former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum in the Michigan Republican primary in part because former Massachusetts Governor Romney wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in 2008 headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" about his opposition to a GM bailout.


Obama's Role


After President George W. Bush extended emergency loans to GM's predecessor, Obama's administration managed its $50 billion bailout. The U.S. still holds 32 percent of the GM shares, which have gained 26 percent this year after falling 45 percent in 2011.


Obama has embraced the Volt's fuel-saving technology and said it's his choice for a new car once he's no longer president.


"It was nice," he told a United Auto Workers audience on Feb. 28 about sitting in one. "I'll bet it drives real good. And five years from now when I'm not president anymore, I'll buy one and drive it myself."


Representative Mike Kelly, a Republican from Pennsylvania, who owns a Chevrolet dealership in Butler, said he doesn't sell the Volt at his store because it's too expensive for his customers, who would be better served with a cheaper Cruze. While it may be an engineering marvel, it's too far out for his customers, he said.


"It's still just not a viable alternative to the market that I serve in western Pennsylvania," he said. "I just don't have people coming in to buy that car."


Social Issues


The Volt not only personifies the bailout for Republican candidates, it also plays to other controversial issues such as class and environment. On the campaign trail, for example, Gingrich, the former U.S. House speaker, has peppered his stump speech with comments about the Volt, including during a stop Feb. 17 caught by C-Span.


"The average family that buys it earns $170,000 a year and this is Obama's idea of populism and in his new budget he wants to increase the amount given to every Volt buyer to $10,000, which is an amount which would allow a lot of people to buy a decent secondhand car but it wouldn't be an Obama car," Gingrich said to cheers in Peachtree City, Georgia. "But here's my point to folks: You can't put a gun rack in a Volt."


"So let's be clear what this election is all about," Gingrich continued. "We believe in the right to bear arms and we like to bear the arms in our trucks."


The Volt "can do a lot of things," including tote a gun rack, responded Selim Bingol, vice president of GM's global communications, on a company blog. "But if you are looking for a vehicle for your next hunting trip, it may not be your first choice."



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Soldier's Rampage May Fuel Calls for Obama to Accelerate Afghan Withdrawal

Soldier's Rampage May Fuel Calls for Obama to Accelerate Afghan Withdrawal


By Viola Gienger and Mark Drajem.


The fatal shootings of 16 Afghan civilians, allegedly by an American soldier, add to a series of incendiary incidents that threaten to drain remaining U.S. and European support for the decade-long mission.


In Afghanistan, the deadly attack also may reinforce Afghan suspicions that foreigners are seeking to conquer their Islamic country. They may conclude the U.S.-led coalition will end up leaving in defeat just as have outsiders from Alexander the Great to the British to the Soviet Union.


"This is a major setback," said Seth Jones, a senior political scientist at the Rand Corp. in Arlington, Virginia, who worked for the U.S. Special Operations Command in Afghanistan last year. Beyond influencing Afghan attitudes, he said yesterday in an interview, "it undermines certainly U.S. trust of the Afghans because I'm sure there are going to be concerns about the local reaction."


Any violent backlash by Afghans to the shootings in the southern province of Kandahar may add to domestic pressure on President Barack Obama to speed troop withdrawals, ahead of the the security handover now set for 2014. Asked yesterday on CBS's "Face the Nation" if it's time to withdraw U.S. forces, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich said, "I think it is."


In offering condolences to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta expressed resolve to continue to "work hand in hand with our Afghan partners," according to a statement from his office.


2014 Timetable


Two U.S. officials said the killings may prove to be the fatal hit to the administration's hopes for maintaining a large international military and civilian presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014. That plan is intended to improve the performance of the Afghan government, degrade the Taliban and strengthen Afghan security forces.


Whether that's the case will depend on how Afghan civilians, government officials and security forces respond to the killings, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly. This incident follows the burning of Korans in a trash dump at a U.S. base last month and a video in January showing at least four U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses.


If Afghan anger, frustration, and resentment of foreigners turns violent as it did after the Koran burning, whatever political and public support remains in America and Europe for the NATO mission in Afghanistan will almost certainly dissipate, both officials said.


Administration Divisions


Already, Vice President Joe Biden and some White House officials have been pressing for a faster exit from Afghanistan, according to the officials. CIA Director David Petraeus, a former NATO commander there, and some U.S. military officials have been arguing that there's been progress and that a hasty exit would open the door to the Taliban's return and perhaps to a new civil war, the officials said.


The U.S. soldier allegedly shot to death 16 Afghan civilians in their homes before returning to his base and being taken into custody, Afghan and NATO officials said. The soldier, whose name was withheld by U.S. authorities, is from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Washington, said one official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to comment publicly.


Statements of condolences yesterday from Obama and a reassuring message from the acting U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan posted on YouTube clashed with photos linked on Twitter of the victims, who included women and children.


Whatever trust and credibility remained between the U.S. and the Afghans after last month's burning of Korans at the main American base in Afghanistan probably is gone after this latest attack, said David Cortright, director of policy studies at the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.


'Fatal Hammer Blow'


"This is a fatal hammer blow on the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan," Cortright, author of "Ending Obama's War: Responsible Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan," said in an e-mailed statement. "This may have been the act of a lone deranged soldier, but the people of Afghanistan will see it for what it was -- a wanton massacre of innocent civilians."


The shooting spree yesterday compounds the difficulty of sticking to the U.S. military's strategy of gradually reducing its troop levels while strengthening the Afghan army, police and government ministries to take over fully at the end of 2014.


White House and Pentagon officials are confronting decisions on how many forces and what types to leave in place after the last of 33,000 personnel that were added in 2010 leave in September. The American public has made clear it has little stomach left for the battle, according to results of a Washington Post/ABC News poll that shows a majority consistently opposing the war for almost two years.


U.S. Public Opinion


The latest survey found 54 percent of Americans want to pull out U.S. forces even if the Afghan army isn't ready to pick up the fight. The poll was conducted March 7 to March 10, among a random national sample of 1,003 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points for the full results.


Obama convened a meeting of his senior White House national security staff yesterday to discuss the incident before calling Karzai with condolences and a pledge to investigate thoroughly.


Right now "you have a policy that is lurching from headline to headline," Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview. "We forgot the lessons learned from Vietnam about how long this takes."


"Our being in the middle in a country like Afghanistan is probably counterproductive," Gingrich said on CBS. "We are risking the lives of men and women for a mission frankly that is not worth doing," he said earlier on "Fox News Sunday."

Koran-Burning Aftermath


Dozens of U.S. military advisers had returned to Afghan ministries with extra security since being withdrawn after two were killed in one of the offices in the violence set off by the Koran-burning incident. Hundreds remain under orders to stay in secure NATO coalition compounds.


"One incident like this can change the equation," Virginia's Republican Governor Bob McDonnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday when asked about the killing of Afghan civilians. "It's tragic because we have so many brave" soldiers serving in Afghanistan, he said.


Such incidents exacerbate a sense of instability even as U.S. defense officials and military officers say violence is declining.


Intelligence Estimate


A National Intelligence Estimate given to Obama in January concluded that the Taliban remain resilient and determined to re-impose their brand of strict Islamic rule on the country, and that Afghan forces and the civilian government are still plagued by corruption and ineffectiveness. The estimate, the consensus view of the intelligence community, was described by two U.S. officials on condition of anonymity because it isn't public.


Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said such continuing instability is all the more reason for the U.S. to continue fighting.


"I understand the frustration and I understand the anger and the sorrow," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday. "I also understand, and we should not forget, the attacks on the United States of America in 9/11 originated in Afghanistan. And if Afghanistan dissolved into a situation where the Taliban were able to take over or a chaotic situation, it could easily return to an al-Qaeda base for attacks on the United States."

Military Justice


The U.S. military justice system's handling of the case, in what is likely to be a lengthy process, also may affect the perception among Afghans.


The country's Defense Ministry issued a statement yesterday saying it "strongly condemns this inhuman and devastating incident." The statement said officials asked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led coalition to "capture the perpetrators of the merciless action as soon as possible and punish them for their despicable crime."


In the phone call to Karzai, Obama expressed "his administration's commitment to establish the facts as quickly as possible and to hold fully accountable anyone responsible," according to a White House statement.


The shooting "would only be an incident without this larger chronology we've seen in recent weeks," said Cordesman, the military analyst. "It's a much broader problem than people understand," he said.



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IPhone Failing to Gain Market Share in China as Samsung Lead Triples

IPhone Failing to Gain Market Share in China as Samsung Lead Triples


By Bloomberg News.


Apple Inc. (AAPL) got a second partner in China to sell the iPhone in the world's biggest mobile-phone market. The deal may be too late to catch Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), with a market share that's three times larger and growing.


China Telecom Corp. (728) began selling the iPhone last week as Apple tries to build on its 7.5 percent share of the country's smartphone sales. Samsung controlled 24.3 percent of the market for phones that can play videos and games, according to Gartner Inc., using a strategy of allying with all three of the nation's third-generation networks since such services started in 2009.


Succeeding in China is important for Apple as shipments of smartphones in the country are projected to jump 52 percent this year to 137 million units, overtaking the U.S. for the first time as the world's biggest market. Unlike Samsung's strategy of partnering with all carriers, Apple has limited its own success by not making a device compatible with the nation's biggest operator, China Mobile Ltd. (941)


"I don't expect Apple to replace Samsung any time soon," Gartner analyst Sandy Shen said in an interview. "China Telecom is the nation's smallest carrier, so the extent to which they can help Apple is quite limited."


The 16.8 percentage-point gap in China between Cupertino, California-based Apple and Samsung almost doubled from the third quarter. While Samsung is No. 1 and Apple No. 5 in China, the global story is different: Worldwide, Apple passed its Suwon, South Korea-based competitor to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner.


China Mobile


Apple's partnerships with China's second- and third-largest carriers give it access to about 34 percent of the nation's 988 million mobile users, while Samsung targeted the whole market. iPhones aren't sold to China Mobile's 655 million subscribers, a number almost equal to the combined population of the U.S., Brazil and Mexico.


"Having access to more subscribers gives vendors like Samsung an advantage," said Teck Zhung Wong, a Beijing-based analyst with IDC China, who forecast the 52 percent jump in smartphone sales this year. "If Apple is going to continue to grow in the Chinese market, it has to consider very seriously a handset with China Mobile."


China Telecom had a total of 129.3 million wireless users at the end of January, including 38.7 million 3G subscribers.


Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 in the U.S. exclusively with AT&T Inc. (T) and added a second carrier partner last year in Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ)


Pelting Eggs


Apple chose not to make a phone with China Mobile because the operator had a unique 3G standard called TD-SCDMA, even after the Chinese company's Chairman Wang Jianzhou met with the then Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs in early 2010. Wang told the company's annual meeting in May that he didn't expect Apple to introduce an iPhone until the carrier rolled out the fourth- generation TD-LTE network by end of this year.


China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. (762) was the nation's first carrier to offer the iPhone with a service contract in October 2009.


Even though Apple trailed Samsung, Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp (000063) in China's smartphone market, people still crave an iPhone.


Apple's oldest store in China was pelted with eggs from a crowd of customers on Jan. 13 when the shop, in Beijing's Sanlitun district, failed to open on the first day of sales for the iPhone 4S. After police sealed off the area to remove more than 500 people, Apple said it would suspend sales of iPhones at all its stores.


'Didn't Bet High Enough'


The maker of iMac computers and iPad tablets underestimated the "staggering" demand for the iPhone 4S when it started sales in China in January, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said. "We thought we were betting bold," Cook said Jan. 24. "We didn't bet high enough."


The iPhone 4S has been "an incredible hit" with customers around the world, Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said in an e-mail. Apple "can't wait to get it into the hands of even more customers in China," Wu said, declining to comment further on the company's handset strategy in China.


Samsung's approach to China is "the same" as other markets, Juha Park, senior vice president of product strategy, said in an interview in Barcelona.


"We make product innovation and make our brand very desired in the market," Park said. "That's what we do to become a major player. We have been doing quite strong growth in the China market."


Unlocked IPhone


Even without an agreement with Apple or a device that's compatible with its high-speed 3G network, China Mobile still has 15 million iPhone users, spokeswoman Rainie Lei said. Those China Mobile users buy unlocked devices and surf the web at slower 2G speeds, or else connect to Wi-Fi hotspots for a faster connection.


China Telecom projects that the iPhone will "significantly enhance its long term sustainable growth and value creation despite the short term pressure on its profitability," spokeswoman Lisa Lai said in an e-mail.


"For China Telecom, its 4S launch comes late and the low- hanging fruit may already be exhausted," said Lisa Soh, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd.


The egg pelting also resulted in Apple losing one advantage it had over Samsung -- its own retail stores stopped selling iPhones. Apple said at the time the move was "for the time being." Apple's Wu said the phones remain available through Apple's online store in China, and declined to provide an update on when the shops would resume sales of the devices.


That leaves Samsung free to further widen its gap.


"It's just one country, but it's such a big market and its portion in the global market is huge, so Samsung is trying to act fast to capture the market," said Kim Young Chan, a Seoul- based analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp. "Dealing with different network standards will give them a pretty valuable competitive edge."



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