In just a few days, Tim Cook will take the stage and give us the full scoop on all of the Apple Watch details that we've been yearning for. First and foremost, it stands to reason that we'll finally get a pricing matrix for the Apple Watch. Indeed, recent rumors about potential pricing for the device have been all over the map, with some claiming that the gold models of the Edition lineup may cost upwards of $10,000.As for other tidbits, a rumor from the French-language site iPhonote relayed an interesting Apple Watch rumor earlier today, namely that Apple will offer a personal engraving option for buyers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft announced two Office-related partnerships for small- to medium-size business (SMB), with AT&T and Deutsche Telekom, at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona this week.The AT&T Mobile Office Suite deal with the second-largest mobile carrier involves Microsoft's Office 365 apps, along with unified access to voice calls, email, calendars, messaging, HD video conferencing, and file sharing, on almost any mobile device.The Microsoft Office 365 suite includes the usual apps – Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – plus Lync, Exchange, Outlook, and OneDrive, all usable from a desktop, laptop, smartphone or tablet. Lync allows for domestic or international voice calls while in the United States.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Android 5.0 Lollipop has been heralded as the operating system’s biggest step forward to date. Improved battery life and performance through changes to Android’s core runtime and power management systems are among the most anticipated enhancements among users, given their promise of a faster, more efficient experience.At least that’s the theory. Unfortunately, for the 98 percent of Android devices eagerly awaiting their Lollipop update, there’s no way of knowing whether Lollipop will breathe new life into their devices. That’s where third-party developers can fill the performance gap, as they have been since Android’s earliest days.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google's push into the enterprise gained steam last week when the company finally launched Android for Work, a containerization platform and standalone app for older Android devices that lets IT administrators create separate corporate and personal workspaces on Android smartphones and tablets.Android for Work is Google's latest attempt to address two of Android's most significant challenges for IT: security and fragmentation. The latest version of Android, v5.0, known as "Lollipop," now supports separate spheres for personal and work. Devices running older versions of the OS can access some of the same features in a separate Android for Work app.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
China defends surveillance plan by pointing to U.S.The Chinese government is calling out U.S. opposition to its new anti-terror law, saying that it’s similar to what other countries are doing as they ask tech companies to hand over information that they need to fight terrorism. On Wednesday, China’s parliamentary spokeswoman tried to play down the impact the proposed legislation might have on foreign tech businesses, who have complained about having to turn over encryption keys and create “back doors” to enable government surveillance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Four smartphone OSes that hope to find room next to Android and iOS were on display at Mobile World Congress, but the most exciting were Ubuntu Phone and Sailfish OS.
Apple and Google have further tightened their grip on the smartphone OS market; they had a market share of 96.1 percent last year, up from 94 percent in 2013, according to Gartner. However, that hasn’t deterred Mozilla, Samsung Electronics, Canonical and Finnish start-up Jolla from developing their own OSes.+ See our full coverage of MWC 2015 +
At Mobile World Congress they all showed commercial devices for the first time. Mozilla’s Firefox OS and Samsung’s Tizen have user interfaces that are very reminiscent of Android, but Canonical with Ubuntu Phone and Jolla with Sailfish have been either brave or stupid enough to try something different.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Net neutrality and 5G may be on a collision course as the mobile industry tries to prepare for a wide range of mobile applications with differing needs.The net neutrality rules passed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission last week have raised some eyebrows at Mobile World Congress this week. The full text of the rules isn’t public yet, but mobile movers and shakers are having their say. The latest questions involve 5G, the next-generation standard that everyone here is trying to plan for.The most common thing they think 5G will have to do is to serve a lot of different purposes. Regulators’ attempts to ban “fast lanes” and other special treatment might make that impossible, people who’ve been thinking about 5G said Wednesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the application world, the cloud has been all the rage. It's hard to find any application today that's not offered as a cloud service. The cloud has also had a significant impact on infrastructure and more and more customers are buying compute services from the likes of Amazon and Google.However, most network products are still procured using traditional means. Pay for it up front and then pay an annual or monthly fee for maintenance. There are a handful of network solution providers that offer "cloud-managed" solutions, and while they do offer a cloud-based management interface, the vendor typically charges an upfront fee for the hardware and then the customers' "cloud" cost is for the management tools.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With 23 days to go in its latest Kickstarter funding campaign, Pebble has raised over $15 million. Last year, Pebble shipped more smartwatches than Android Wear. This year, the company might ship more than Apple.The smartwatch maker went back to Kickstarter, where it initially found enough funding to enter the smartwatch market, to fund its next watch, and again it set a record.Pebble set a Kickstarter record once before. Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky started the company in his college dorm room in the Netherlands, eventually becoming a fledgling startup selling BlackBerry smartwatches. Migicovsky and his team had a new idea for growth – the original Pebble smartwatch that worked with iPhones and Android smartphones – but they needed an investment to build it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the romantic city of Barcelona, cellular and Wi-Fi are getting set up on a lot of dates this week.It’s a classic story: They’ve been neighbors for years and don’t always get along, but a lot of friends think they’re the perfect couple. There’s more matchmaking than ever at this year’s Mobile World Congress.The two types of networks are complementary, because often Wi-Fi is strong where cellular is weak, and vice versa. Most people use their cellphones outdoors and try to get on Wi-Fi when they’re indoors. But due to growing demand for mobile services, the line between the two is starting to blur. Vendors and carriers at this year’s show are demonstrating new technologies that bring them together.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here's the quandary with smartphones: despite featuring copious radios within, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi over both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, 4G LTE, Near Field Communication (NFC), and so on, the radios with the most propensity for delivering media don't work together.The two Wi-Fi bands found in today's smartphones generally aren't used at the same time. The issue has been related to needing two antennas connected at the same time for the different bands. It's because the frequencies used have very different characteristics.New routersThis dual-band limitation is about to change, for a couple of reasons.Firstly, the newest routers, or wireless access points, that are being sold are already kitted with the two radios and antennas configured to work together at the same time. I wrote about a few of these monsters recently in a post titled "Is it time to move to beamforming 802.11ac?"To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
BARCELONA -- Internet.org, which is already offering free Internet service in six countries, has ambitious plans to connect to 100 countries in the next year."We like big, ambitious goals at Facebook," said Chris Daniels, head of Internet.org in a discussion with several reporters at Mobile World Congress (MWC).Facebook and several partners founded Internet.org two years ago; it is already serving 7 million customers in Columbia, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, India and Zambia. Many of those who were originally connected for free are now paying some fee for more advanced data services.Daniels, a vice president at Facebook in charge of Internet.org, said the conversion of free Internet users to paying customers is critical to the carriers who provide the Internet infrastructure that makes the service possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the last year I've reviewed six MBaaS (mobile back end as a service) platforms: FeedHenry, Kinvey, Parse, AnyPresence, Appcelerator, and Appery.io. I also briefly examined the MBaaS platforms associated with Pivotal CF and IBM Bluemix in my reviews of those PaaS (platform as a service) offerings. All of these MBaaS platforms run on some kind of public cloud, and some can be installed on-premise or in hybrid cloud configurations.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Criminal hackers have hacked/cloned most of the top 100 paid apps and top 20 free apps for Android and iOS, according to data from Arxan’s State of Mobile App Security report, 2014. These attackers use the infected apps to gain entry to the enterprise in order to compromise its most treasured information.And with the movement toward doing networking in software, the ability to enable micro-segmentation to add policy-based traffic analysis and filters between any pair of endpoints is becoming an additional security option, which enterprises should consider.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Sadistic software switchersSadistic software switchers have been known to swap in malicious versions of these seven popular mobile apps.RELATED: Attackers have cloned malware-laden copies of the most popular apps your employees useTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS hasn’t taken the world by storm, but its successor, Windows 10, is off to an encouraging start even before its release.Only a handful of Windows 10 handsets were on display on the show floor of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, but with some device and chip makers announcing their intentions to support Windows 10 on smartphones, that could translate to many more handsets becoming available by year end.
Microsoft has said that Windows 10 will provide a more consistent user experience across smartphones, tablets and PCs. A technical preview of the OS is already available, with the final version expected to reach handsets later this year. Some handsets, but not all, running Windows Phone 8.1 will be upgraded to Windows 10.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Budget smartphones from the likes of Sony, Microsoft and up-and-comer Alcatel OneTouch have improved to such an extent that the question whether or not to buy one of the latest high-end smartphones is tougher than ever before.
The launches of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge from Samsung Electronics and the One M9 from HTC didn’t disappoint. However, it wasn’t expensive flagship smartphones like those that dominated in Barcelona, but smartphones that cost US$300 or less unlocked.
Even with such cheaper phones, manufacturers are increasingly focusing on looks.
A company that has succeeded in this regard is Sony, with its Xperia M4 Aqua. The product has a plastic frame and back, instead of glass and metal, but Sony has chosen materials that still look good.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Uber is acquiring deCarta, a mapping and location company that could help Uber to develop new types of services and also ensure its drivers show up on time.DeCarta, headquartered in San Jose, California, holds a variety of data pertaining to mapping, local search and turn-by-turn navigation. Location services in cars from GM and Ford have been powered by deCarta’s technology, as well as devices from Samsung and Blackberry.Now, Uber is buying the company for an undisclosed sum. It will allow Uber to improve services like UberPool and also give its users more accurate estimated times of arrival.UberPool lets several people share the same ride, with multiple pick up and drop off points, so it involves more complex routing data than a regular Uber ride. But regular rides could benefit too, if deCarta’s technology can help Uber drivers know exactly where they’re supposed to pick you up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Over the past few days, a number of auto executives have chimed on reports that Apple is not-so-secretly working on developing an electric car.Seeing as how there is no shortage of detractors who think Apple has no business entering the auto industry, perhaps it's appropriate to begin with some of the more positive takes on Apple's rumored jump into an entirely different industry.First up, we have Volkswagon CEO Martin Winterkorn who reportedly is fully on board with both Google and Apple dipping their toes into automotive waters.
*VW CEO 'WELCOMES' APPLE, GOOGLE CAR PROJECTS— Jay Yarow (@jyarow) March 2, 2015
Winterkorn added that Volkswagon would be more than happy to work alongside either Apple or Google in the electric car space.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Here’s an idea for the next version of Twitter that might crystallize the service’s value: The Twitter Daily Favorite.Okay, perhaps that won’t be the exact title. But a newspaper-themed form of Twitter that curates an assortment of newsy tweets to provide a summary of the goings-on could come as a future feature or as a separate app.People already check Twitter to see what’s happening. But news junkies who follow lots of accounts may have dozens if not hundreds of tweets to comb through every morning. Twitter thinks it can address this, partly by better organizing the content posted to its site and presenting it in new ways.“We’ve only scratched the surface here,” Anthony Noto, Twitter’s chief financial officer, said regarding how Twitter might evolve its service. A “Twitter Daily Edition” might be one such service that packages select tweets in a new way, he said during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here