Raspberry Pi goes on general sale
29 February 2012
Last updated at 06:17
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Dr Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation shows Rory Cellan-Jones how the computer works
A credit-card sized computer designed to help teach children to code goes on general sale for the first time today.
The Raspberry Pi is a bare-bones, low-cost computer created by volunteers mostly drawn from academia and the UK tech industry.
Sold uncased without keyboard or monitor, the Pi has drawn interest from educators and enthusiasts.
Supporters hope the machines could help reverse a lack of programming skills in the UK.
“It has been six years in the making; the number of things that had to go right for this to happen is enormous. I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Eben Upton of the Raspberry Pi Foundation which is based in Cambridge.
Massive demand for the computer has caused the website of one supplier, Leeds-based Premier Farnell, to crash under the weight of heavy traffic.
School tools
The device’s launch comes as the Department for Education considers changes to the teaching of computing in schools, with the aim of placing greater emphasis on skills like programming.
In a speech outlining those changes, Michael Gove mentioned the Pi, suggesting devices like it could play an important role in the kind of computer class the government envisages.
“Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme will give children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming,” he said.
“This is a great example of the cutting edge of education technology happening right here in the UK.”
Initially the £22 ($35) model of the Pi will be offered for sale. A cheaper £16 ($25) version will go on sale later in the year.
The machine, which runs on open-source operating system Linux, can be hooked up to a typical computer monitor – with additional ports used to attach a keyboard, mouse and other peripherals.
It also features an ethernet port, meaning the device can make use of high-speed internet connectivity.
Supporters hope the thousands-strong community of people that has grown up around the Pi will help develop additional software and suggest uses for the device.
The Pi going on general sale is likely to add to the buzz around the machine, but there are already a number of similar stripped-down computers on the market.
These include devices such as the Beagleboard and the Omnima MiniEMBWiFi.
Bottle-necks banished
The Raspberry Pi Foundation says it has already produced thousands of the machines, using a Chinese manufacturer.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
The real task, however, is not about getting the Raspberry Pi out to that impatient crowd of enthusiasts. What matters is the kind of reception the device gets when it arrives in schools”
End Quote
- Read more from Rory
It had originally hoped to produce the devices in the UK – “we want to help bootstrap the UK electronics industry” the group wrote in a blog post – but that turned out not to be possible at the right price.
But while production remains overseas, deals with two distributors, Premier Farnell and RS Components, mean that production volumes will be able to grow much faster than previously thought.
Rather than the foundation having to fund production, distributors have agreed to handle orders and deal with manufacturers paying the foundation a royalty on sales.
Mr Upton says that will help the project grow much more quickly then previously thought.
“We didn’t realise how successful this was going to be,” he said.
“This means we can scale to volume. Now we can concentrate on teaching people to program.”
Do you have a Raspberry Pi or are you planning on getting one? What do you hope to create with it? Send us your comments using the form below.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-17190918
Thai floods float Seagate to top of hard drive biz
Last year’s severe flooding in Thailand may have been human and economic disaster, but if every cloud has a silver lining, that silver has slipped into the pockets of Seagate as it retook the top sales spot among hard drive businesses, unseating Western Digital.
“Seagate owes its return to market leadership to a fortuitous accident in geography,” said IHS storage analyst Fang Zhang in a statement. “Its HDD manufacturing plant in Thailand is located on high ground.”
Seagate’s main competition was not so lucky. “Western Digital’s HDD manufacturing facilities were engulfed by rampaging storm waters,” Fang said, “which effectively slashed its fourth-quarter output to half of the manufacturer’s preflood volume.”
When it released its financial results for the final three months of 2011, Western Digital revealed that it had shipped a mere 28.5 million HDDs in that quarter, just over half of the 52.2 million it had delivered in the same quarter in 2010, and just less than half of the 57.8 it had shipped in the previous quarter.
Seagate, IHS says, endured a much slimmer decline in units sales during that quarter, shipping 46.9 million HDDs, down from 50.8 million in the previous quarter.
As a result, Seagate has regained its spot as el numero uno in HDD unit sales, a ranking it hasn’t held in at least two years, according to IHS. Note, however, that as a manufacturer of higher-margin products than those produced by Western Digital, Seagate is and has been the HDD revenue leader for quite some time.
The HDD industry as a whole took a beating in the final quarter of 2011, IHS reports, with total shipments sinking to 123.3 million units, down from 175.2 million in the third quarter.
If there is any good news to be found in this flood of depressing statistics, it’s that gross margins soared during the supply-constrained months. Seagate’s margins hit 32 per cent, far above what IHS says was the company’s target of 22 to 26 per cent, and Western Digital’s margins hit a new company record of 32.5 per cent.
Average selling prices (ASPs) went stratospheric, as well, with Seagate’s ASP rising from $55 in the third quarter to $68 in the fourth, and Western Digital floating up from from $46 to a rather astonishing $69 in the fourth.
IHS expects that although pre-flood pricing is not expected to return “anytime soon,” the HDD business should begin its return to normalcy at the end of this quarter.
If only that return were as quick and painless for those millions of Thais affected by the murderous floods. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/29/seagate_bouyed_by_thai_floods/
Apple iPad 3 expected within days
28 February 2012
Last updated at 18:05
Apple’s press invite appeared to show a person using an iPad – possibly the new device
Apple has announced an event on 7 March at which the company is expected to launch its latest iPad tablet.
Invitations sent to journalists read: “We have something you really have to see. And touch.”
While not officially confirming the product’s launch, the message was accompanied by an image showing what looked to be an iPad touchscreen.
The iPad range, which first launched in 2010, has sold over 50 million units worldwide.
It is not yet known when the new device will be available for sale.
Last year, sales of the iPad 2 began in the US nine days after the launch announcement – which also took place in March.
Apple’s first two versions of the iPad transformed the market for tablet computers and made it one of the fastest-growing sectors of the computer industry.
Patent woes
However, recently Apple’s dominant position in the tablet market has been challenged by a string of tablets powered by Google’s Android operating system.
Later this year, industry experts expect a new category of tablet devices powered by Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 8 operating system.
Microsoft will announce details for the consumer versions of Windows 8 at an event in Barcelona on Wednesday evening.
The tablet market – just like the smartphone market – has been subject to intense patent wars chiefly between Apple and its key challenger Samsung.
Apple is also embroiled in a dispute over the naming rights for the iPad with Asian electronics firm Proview.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-17198049
Fat margins squeeze Apple against Android
Open … and Shut There are a million ways to over-analyse iOS versus Android market share, but one thing is often overlooked: Apple’s high-margin strategy depends upon buying customers through subsidies, and may not be able to keep pace with Android’s low-cost model over time.
Google’s Android growth – 250 per cent in 2011 – is particularly impressive because, unlike Apple, Google no longer has to subsidise smartphones and tablets to the same degree as Apple, as Android is free. This could be the key to winning in emerging markets which Apple can’t subsidise enough to bring costs in line with consumers’ ability to pay.
To be clear, people seem willing to stretch their budgets to afford a smartphone. After all, smartphones have taken off with youth as even more important than a car, some surveys show. And recent Nielsen data suggests that even on poverty-level incomes of less than $15,000, 56 per cent of 18 to 24-year-old Americans own a smartphone.
But what kind? Well, Nielsen didn’t track that, but an NPD study shows that 57 per cent of first-time smartphone buyers buy an Android. Why? Probably because that’s what they can afford, and possibly because Android devices come in a wide array of shapes and sizes, unlike the iPhone monoculture.
But cost is likely the biggest driver for Android, and it’s why Android is exploding in emerging markets while the iPhone struggles to keep pace, as I’ve argued before. Apple counters its high-price, high-margin strategy, as Twitter’s Chris Aniszczyk points out, by using older models to cover less affluent buyers.
But even the older models cost more than $500 unsubsidised, which is a losing price in developing markets or even in the US.
Regardless, if faced with an older-model iPhone or the latest and greatest Android device, it’s likely that many buyers are going to Android. While it’s too early to pick a winner in the iOS-versus-Android battle, the data seems to indicate that older, more affluent buyers gravitate toward iOS devices. Because they can. Both iOS and Android are soaring, but there are far more people on the planet who don’t qualify as “wealthy,” and Apple simply isn’t going to be able to convince these “99 per cent” to buy an older iPhone, and it certainly can’t afford to buy everyone a phone through subsidies.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, Apple has stumbled over the past year in financial crisis-ridden Southern Europe, as consumers went with $200 (or less), unsubsidised Android phones and shunned the iPhone. US carriers pay an estimated $400 for every iPhone contract, which is likely not a sustainable market worldwide.
Apple is going to have to figure out how to be cheap if it wants market share.
Historically, the Cupertino-based company has cared more about profits than market share, and arguably will forfeit market share to retain its business model. But ultimately the mobile ecosystem is going to revolve around one big player, and Google’s low-cost strategy positions Android to be that player unless Apple can figure out a way to be both cool and cheap. Apple has increasingly cut prices in laptops, so maybe it will do the same in mobile.
But those costs are going to have to be cut on Apple’s side. As Android devices sell well, carriers are going to become less willing to pay to inflate Apple’s margins with subsidies. ®
Matt Asay is senior vice president of business development at Nodeable, offering systems management for managing and analysing cloud-based data. He was formerly SVP of biz dev at HTML5 start-up Strobe and chief operating officer of Ubuntu commercial operation Canonical. With more than a decade spent in open source, Asay served as Alfresco’s general manager for the Americas and vice president of business development, and he helped put Novell on its open source track. Asay is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). His column, Open…and Shut, appears three times a week on The Register.
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/28/apple_needs_to_shake_up_subsidised_business_model/
Google+ dwindles, while Pinterest climbs
While the media was getting obsessed with Google+… the world actually got interested in Pinterest. What’s more, Google’s nascent social network, despite having seen a growing number of signups, only managed to attract visitors for an average of 3 minutes in the entire month of January – and that was a fall from the 4 minutes it achieved in December.
New data from the web measurement company ComScore say that the figures for Google+ in the UK are even worse: having hit an average per user of 3.5 minutes for the month of December, that fell to 2.5 minutes in January.
Meanwhile Facebook remains the monolith of the web – taking almost 18% of people’s entire internet time in the UK during January. None of the other social networks managed more than 1% of UK “user minutes” for the same period; the blogging site Tumblr.com managed 0.55%, followed by Twitter, with 0.27%, and the “business social network” LinkedIn with 0.22%. Google+ and Pinterest both had 0.01% of total internet time, by ComScore’s figures.
Time spent on various sites (excluding Facebook), worldwide, January 2011-2012. Source: ComScore
While the figures for worldwide visitor numbers to Google+ are impressive – hitting 88.3m in January, not far behind LinkedIn’s 100m, though some way short of Twitter 181.8m (and Facebook’s 805m) – the brevity of visits, and the apparent fall in interest compared to December suggests that the company has not found a simple way to retain user interest.
Visitors to Google+, Twitter, Pinterest and others January 2011-2012. Source: ComScore
By contrast, Pinterest, which attracted almost no media interest before 2012, and which has not announced signup figures, has seen steadily growing figures both for users and for time spent since May, says ComScore: in January 2012, 13.76m people worldwide visited, and spent an average of 89 minutes there. The pattern is repeated in the UK, where steady growth saw 250,000 Britons visit the site in January, and spend an average of 25 minutes for the month. That contrasts with Google+, whose UK figures showed 3.8m visitors spending far less time on the site.
The data will be uncomfortable reading for Google’s chief executive Larry Page, who has committed the search giant to focussing on “social search” to the extent that the company has been accused of skewing its search results to push Google+ content above the position that it would normally merit on previous Google algorithms.
Page made much of the number of Google+ signups during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings in January, saying that 90m had signed up and then added “Engagement on [Google]+ is also growing tremendously. I have some amazing data to share there for the first time. [Google]+ users are very engaged with our products. Over 60% of them engage daily and over 80% weekly.”
But that statistic, while appearing to make Google+ look attractive, in fact only means that those people use services like Google Search, Docs, Mail and other products with that frequency – not Google+ itself. The company has not released its internal data which would show how long people spend on the site, in contrast to Facebook.
Google is trying to get Google+ to rival Facebook and Twitter so that it can expand its advertising business; the two networks are increasingly protective of their content. Facebook prevents Google from indexing the majority of its content, while Twitter declined to renew a contract to provide its full “firehose” of tweets to Google when the two could not agree on how much Google should pay it for what would in effect be lost revenue from advertising to Twitter through the lack of visitors compared to the amount Google would earn from showing ads against searches which included Twitter content.
The ComScore data does come with caveats. Rather than coming directly from the sites themselves, it is estimated via a user sample who have a toolbar installed on their desktop or laptop PCs – and so does not record visits to sites made by people using tablets such as the iPad, or from mobile phones. Facebook and Twitter have significant use via mobile phones. It is unclear how much use Google+ gets from mobile phones; it is now built into Android phones, which have dominant market share worldwide, and is available on Apple’s iOS, the second best-selling smartphone OS.
The ComScore data also only offers a mean value – which may disguise large variations in the time people spend on sites. Some Google+ users report being very engaged with the network, spending hours on it – which implies that some of the visitors spend scant seconds on the site during the month.
Other sources suggest that Google+ is failing to engage users: speaking to the Wall Street Journal, John Schappert, the chief operating officer of games maker Zynga, known for its “social game” Farmville, said that the network had been “slow on the uptick with users right now”. Intel’s social media manager Ekaterina Walter said that response on Google+ was “not as great as were hoping it was going to be” and pointed to the fact that its Facebook page has millions of fans and gets thousands of comments – while the Google+ one gets dozens.
But inside Google, there is no alternative: Page has declared that staff bonuses will be dependent on the success of its social efforts – though it is not yet known what measures will be used to determine that success.
Facebook dominates web use both in terms of visitors
Visitors worldwide to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Pinterest, Google+ January 2011-2012. Source: ComScore
And in time spent:
Time spent on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Google+ and others, January 2011-2012. Source: ComScore
.
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/28/google-plus-time-dwindles-pinterest
UK firm’s role in iPad name row
27 February 2012
Last updated at 13:36
Proview said it sold the iPad name to a UK firm called IP Application Development Ltd
Asian electronics firm Proview has accused Apple of “deception” in the way it acquired rights to the iPad name.
In Californian court filings, Proview claims Apple created a UK-registered “special purpose company”, IP Application Development Ltd (IPADL).
The court papers allege that IPADL said the trademark was needed because “it is an abbreviation for the company name”.
Proview is seeking damages and to void a 2009 deal in which it sold its rights to the trademark for $55,000 (£35,000).
A month after that deal, the court documents note, Apple launched the iPad.
IPADL is also named as a defendant in the case, which represents a new front in a continuing legal battle between the two firms over ownership of the name.
Proview told the BBC the action followed an “extensive investigation”.
Apple has reiterated a statement accusing Proview of refusing to honour the trademark agreement.
IPAD or iPad?
In emails quoted in Proview’s court filings IPADL said its address was in this street in Roydon, Essex
The case filed by Proview Electronics in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara on 17 February is a “complaint for fraud”.
The company is seeking damages, costs, the voiding of the 2009 trademark sale, and a ruling preventing Apple from using the iPad trademark.
Proview said it registered a number of iPad-related trademarks as a result of developing an “internet appliance” of the same name.
In August 2000, technology news site Cnet described the device as, “an all-in-one internet terminal with a built-in 15-inch colour monitor”.
‘Misrepresented’
In court filings, Proview claims that in August 2009 Apple’s lawyers created a “special purpose entity” – a UK-registered firm called IP Application Development Ltd (IPADL) with the sole purpose “to obtain the iPad trademarks while obscuring the relationship between Apple and the acquisition”.
It also accuses IPADL’s agent of representing himself as Jonathan Hargreaves in emails when he was, the company alleges, later revealed to be an individual called Graham Robinson.
Mr Robinson works for a UK-based fim specialising in intellectual property issues. It declined to comment on the case.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Proview refuses to honour their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter”
End Quote
Apple spokesman
Proview claims IPADL’s agents “intentionally misrepresented” why they needed the trademark by claiming that the firm wanted the trademark because it “is an abbreviation for the company name”, and would not use the trademark to compete with Proview.
In an email quoted in the filings “Jonathan Hargreaves” wrote to Proview’s Timothy Lo: “I can assure you that the company will not compete with Proview.”
International dispute
This latest case follows a series of legal actions in China which have disputed Apple’s right to use the iPad trademark in that country.
The BBC asked Proview to explain why it had taken until now to bring this action in the US. Spokesperson Cal Kenney said: “The US legal action commenced well within the statute of limitations, after an extensive investigation and thorough due diligence.”
In response to inquiries from the BBC, Apple reiterated a statement it had previously given in connection with cases being fought in China: “We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago.
“Proview refuses to honour their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter. Our case is still pending in mainland China.”
The company declined to make any further comment.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-17152957
Three From Three for the Zonkey boys
Frome Town FC u11′s 2-1 Westbury Youth u11′s
A bright and sunny Saturday morning saw Frome welcome Westbury to Oakfield school for a league match.
Westbury got the game underway playing down the slope, and within seconds were awarded a penalty when their forward went down in the area. Josh stood tall in the Frome goal though, and the penalty struck the crossbar.
Frome then started to apply pressure, and camped in the Westbury half for the next 20 minutes. Fin and Kuba were causing Westbury problems on the wings, and Charlie and Ben were getting forward and trying their luck from distance.
Henry worked hard in the middle to break up any counter attacks by Westbury, and the back line of Oli, Morgan and Joe kept it tight, denying the visiting forwards.
The first goal arrived against the run of play, when a speculative effort from a Westbury midfielder looped over Josh. Frome were slightly knocked out of their stride by this, and the game turned into an even affair with neither side managing to gain control. As the game headed for half time, Ben latched onto a loose ball and let fly with a drive from a full 20 yards. The Westbury keeper was stranded as the ball dipped under the crossbar to make it one all at the interval.
Frome looked brighter again at the start of the second half, and Joel and Sol were working hard to create space in and around the Westbury area. A succession of corners to Frome had the visitors defending deep, but the ball wouldn’t drop for the home side.
The Westbury keeper produced a series of excellent stops, whilst Josh was a virtual spectator in the Frome net.
With 15 minutes to play, and following another Frome corner, Finlay was first to a loose ball in the Westbury area, and he made no mistakes with a low shot into the bottom left of the Westbury net. 2-1 to Frome.
With tails up Frome looked to push on and put the contest out of reach, and were unlucky not to increase their lead on numerous occasions. A heavy challenge on Charlie presented Frome with a free kick some 20 yards from goal, and Ben struck a fine effort that rattled the crossbar.
In the last moments Sol was sent clear, but a heavy touch at the vital moment when one on one with the keeper meant the chance to add to the score line went begging.
So 2-1 to Frome at the final whistle, and whilst the team didn’t play at their best, they showed great character and effort to come back from a goal down, regain control, and run out winners.
Congratulations to the Zonkey sponsored Frome Town FC u11′s, 3 wins out of 3 and top of the league!
Frome Town FC Man of the Match was Charlie for his great work rate and keeping his cool under lots of heavy challenges.
Handbags at dawn: Hermes loses Chinese trademark battle
Sacré bleu! Apple isn’t the only big name brand facing a trademark KO in China at the moment, after French fashion giant Hermes lost a key legal battle with China’s Trademark Appeal Board.
Shanghai Daily reported that although the purveyor of luxury goods has had its English language name registered since as far back as 1977 in China, it had failed to do the same for its Simplified Chinese trademark.
Unfortunately for Hermes, Guangdong-based fashion outlet Dafeng Garment Factory registered a trademark, 爱玛仕, which was dangerously similar to the Chinese name of Hermes, 爱马仕 (differing by just one stroke on the character “ma”).
Despite appealing to the trademark board in 1997, it was the Guangdong company which won the right to brand itself with the pinyin moniker and its registration was formally completed in 2001, the report said.
Hermes reportedly appealed again to the board in 2009 that given its fame across the planet it should be allowed to have the trademark, but was again denied.
Now it has lost its battle to have the board’s decision scrapped after the court ruled that Hermes wasn’t necessarily a well-known brand in mainland China and that it couldn’t be proved that the trademark was obtained by Dafeng by “deceptive means”.
The case comes as Apple desperately tries to convince the authorities in the People’s Republic that it is the rightful owner of the IPAD trademark in the country. It is due in court on Wednesday to appeal the decision of a Shenzhen court in December 2011 which ruled that failed monitor biz Proview is the owner of the trademark.
In the meantime, Proview has already persuaded the authorities in several cities in the country to ban the sale of iPad devices and even filed a suit in the US alleging it is Apple and not itself that is the deceiver in all this.
China is notorious for its grey market as well as the trade in more obvious rip-offs, which many Western companies have argued seriously undermines their brand value and their ability to make money in the country.
Last week it emerged that a company making gas stoves had even chosen to emboss its products with a ripped-off Apple logo and branded the shiny machines with the iPhone moniker. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/27/hermes_trademark_china/
UK firm’s role in iPad name row
27 February 2012
Last updated at 13:36
Proview said it sold the iPad name to a UK firm called IP Application Development Ltd
Asian electronics firm Proview has accused Apple of “deception” in the way it acquired rights to the iPad name.
In Californian court filings, Proview claims Apple created a UK-registered “special purpose company”, IP Application Development Ltd (IPADL).
The court papers allege that IPADL said the trademark was needed because “it is an abbreviation for the company name”.
Proview is seeking damages and to void a 2009 deal in which it sold its rights to the trademark for $55,000 (£35,000).
A month after that deal, the court documents note, Apple launched the iPad.
IPADL is also named as a defendant in the case, which represents a new front in a continuing legal battle between the two firms over ownership of the name.
Proview told the BBC the action followed an “extensive investigation”.
Apple has reiterated a statement accusing Proview of refusing to honour the trademark agreement.
IPAD or iPad?
In emails quoted in Proview’s court filings IPADL said its address was in this street in Roydon, Essex
The case filed by Proview Electronics in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara on 17 February is a “complaint for fraud”.
The company is seeking damages, costs, the voiding of the 2009 trademark sale, and a ruling preventing Apple from using the iPad trademark.
Proview said it registered a number of iPad-related trademarks as a result of developing an “internet appliance” of the same name.
In August 2000, technology news site Cnet described the device as, “an all-in-one internet terminal with a built-in 15-inch colour monitor”.
‘Misrepresented’
In court filings, Proview claims that in August 2009 Apple’s lawyers created a “special purpose entity” – a UK-registered firm called IP Application Development Ltd (IPADL) with the sole purpose “to obtain the iPad trademarks while obscuring the relationship between Apple and the acquisition”.
It also accuses IPADL’s agent of representing himself as Jonathan Hargreaves in emails when he was, the company alleges, later revealed to be an individual called Graham Robinson.
Mr Robinson works for a UK-based fim specialising in intellectual property issues. It declined to comment on the case.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Proview refuses to honour their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter”
End Quote
Apple spokesman
Proview claims IPADL’s agents “intentionally misrepresented” why they needed the trademark by claiming that the firm wanted the trademark because it “is an abbreviation for the company name”, and would not use the trademark to compete with Proview.
In an email quoted in the filings “Jonathan Hargreaves” wrote to Proview’s Timothy Lo: “I can assure you that the company will not compete with Proview.”
International dispute
This latest case follows a series of legal actions in China which have disputed Apple’s right to use the iPad trademark in that country.
The BBC asked Proview to explain why it had taken until now to bring this action in the US. Spokesperson Cal Kenney said: “The US legal action commenced well within the statute of limitations, after an extensive investigation and thorough due diligence.”
In response to inquiries from the BBC, Apple reiterated a statement it had previously given in connection with cases being fought in China: “We bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago.
“Proview refuses to honour their agreement with Apple in China and a Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in this matter. Our case is still pending in mainland China.”
The company declined to make any further comment.
Article source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/technology-17152957
MWC: from nappy alerts to waterproof phones
Duran Duran, Stephen Fry and Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer have all made guest appearances, and Carphone Warehouse founder Charles Dunstone likes to berth his yacht in the harbour for the week. The annual Mobile World Congress, which opens in Barcelona tomorrow, is the nearest the telephone industry comes to a Cannes film festival.
This year there will be 60,000 delegates and 1,400 exhibitors, but the real business is done on the sidelines. Chief executives meet to negotiate deals worth billions of pounds. Barcelona is where the mobile operators, from Vodafone to Deutsche Telekom, go shopping – for equipment to run their networks and phones to sell their customers.
Top of their agenda will be working out how to make money from the flood of internet traffic being generated by the explosion of smartphone sales in plugged-in countries such as the UK.
“Mobile phone networks were not designed to carry large amounts of data,” says Mark Newman of analysts Informa Telecoms Media. “Operators are trying to find solutions for a problem they didn’t know they would have five years ago, before the iPhone.”
Although its impact continues to reverberate, Apple has as usual declined to attend: it’s so successful it doesn’t need to. But Google, Samsung, Nokia and Microsoft will all be there. Among the many innovations on show, here are five that catch the eye.
Windows 8
On Wednesday, Microsoft will unveil a test version of Windows 8. This is the software firm’s make-or-break chance to catch up with Apple and Google in the battle to control the computers of the future, be they smartphones, tablets or humble PCs. A radical redesign of the three-year-old Windows 7, it has been described as Microsoft’s most important software release since the original Windows 1.0 in 1985, when the interface switched from a blinking cursor on a black background to graphics.
Windows 8 will work with touch screens and its look has been inspired by Microsoft’s mobile operating system Windows Phone, already installed on the latest Nokia and HTC handsets. It will work on the chips made by UK firm ARM Holdings, which are inside practically every tablet made today.
Connected cars
Mobile network operators are now thinking beyond phones to other products. In-car computers, previously reserved for expensive brands such as Audi and BMW, are finding their way into more affordable vehicles. Ford, Toyota, General Motors and Volvo are among the manufacturers now equipping cars with software that can report engine faults, alert a breakdown service, navigate around traffic jams and relay internet radio stations.
In Barcelona, Volvo and Ericsson will demonstrate an electric car fitted with a mobile internet connection. The driver can recharge using any power point, even at a friend’s house – but the technology will enable the car’s electricity meter to send the bill to the vehicle’s owner.
Internet mobile messaging
Fans of BlackBerry Messenger or Apple’s iMessage prefer these apps to sending traditional SMS text messages because they are cheaper. These are called “over the top” services, because they use the internet to largely bypass the mobile phone network. So far mobile operators have shied away from offering similar services, unwilling to cannibalise their voice and text profits.
This year, Europe’s big five operators will change tack, unveiling a shared over-the-top service that will be pre-loaded into phones. But the technology will not carry voice calls, just messages, suggesting operators are some way from embracing the web with open arms.
Waterproof phones
Japanese electronics firm Fujitsu will make its debut in the already crowded European smartphone market with a pragmatic concept – the waterproof handset. In Japan this feature is already commonplace, but in Europe water damage is one of the biggest causes of insurance claims for smartphones.
Motorola is already using Aridion, made by Oxfordshire company P2i, a nano-coating that bonds with the surface of external and internal components and does not peel or scratch off. Instead of a coating, Fujitsu’s handsets have a waterproof seal on the battery case, and resist leakage at a depth of up to 1.5m, which should make them at least loo-proof.
Smart baby pyjamas
The news that your baby’s nappy needs changing eventually reaches your nose, but that information could now arrive more quickly by text or email. Exmobaby will demonstrate a wearable baby monitor that can detect an infant’s vital signs and relay them to phones, PCs and tablets. The sensors are hidden under layers of fabric, which the manufacturer says makes them virtually undetectable to human touch.
The washable pyjamas pick up humidity, movement, skin temperature and heart rate. They connect to the internet using low-power digital radio… and are, of course, rechargeable.
Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/26/mobile-world-congress-nappy-change
