BlackBerry announced during their conference today that their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), their mobile social network is coming to Android and iOS in the coming months. BlackBerry has more than 60 million monthly active customers, with more than 51 million people using BBM an average of 90 minutes per day. The service sends and receives more than 10 billion messages each day, which is nearly double what other mobile messaging apps produce. BlackBerry states that "iOS and Android users would be able to add their contacts through PIN, email, SMS or QR code scan, regardless of platform. Android users would also be able to connect using a compatible NFC-capable device."
Late yesterday, the Nikkei reported that some 20 global companies including Electronics, NTT, Qualcomm, Ericson, China Mobile and Samsung have agreed to jointly develop a new Wi-Fi technology that is ten times faster than the current standard.
Although Samsung is the world's biggest manufacturer of smartphones, televisions and supplier of chips and flat-screens, Samsung continues to pay outsiders billions of dollars in return for using patents in semiconductors, displays and other software. Samsung wants to have first access to cheaper home grown ideas and solutions in the future and in order to get their hands on this new technology Samsung has set up the new "Samsung Future Technology Foundation."
It's being reported today that ABC will be quietly revolutionizing its app for iPhones and iPads with a button called "live." Users around New York and Philadelphia will be able to live-stream all the programming from ABC's local stations there, the first time that any major broadcaster has turned on such a technology.
If you were hoping for a faster wireless technology to come along in the next few years to replace 4G so that you could quickly download games and movies, you're out of luck. Korea IT News is reporting today that 5G technology won't be coming to market until 2020, if not longer.
Mainland China's Central News Agency reports today that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's largest contract electronics maker of products such as Apple's iPhone and iPad, reported more than a 12 percent monthly increase in sales for April, citing strong demand for consumer electronics products. Hon Hai currently holds about a 70 percent stake in Foxconn which experienced a pickup in iPhone shipments in April from the first three months of the year
There's good and bad news to be found in the latest statistical breakdown of "smart mobile device" shipments by independent analyst firm Canalys who notes that in Q1 2013, 308.7 million mobile devices were shipped. The analysis considers smart mobile devices to consist of notebooks, tablets and smartphones. Apple, Samsung and Microsoft were the winners in specific areas.
A surprising Korean report this afternoon emphatically states that Sharp, the leading company in the small & medium-sized LCD panel market, is starkly changing its supply strategy. After inviting investments from Samsung, the Japan-based company is strengthening its cooperation with Samsung. According to the industry on May 8, Sharp stopped the production of LCD panels for iPad as of January this year and started supplying Samsung with small & medium-sized IGZO panels instead.
Samsung is at it again. Within a new patent application published by the US Patent Office today, Samsung is found presenting some new user interface ideas for their touch display devices covering page turning effects and a new screen-unlock feature. Yet one of their so-called new ideas is one "borrowed" from Apple. It's the iOS app-dock that's like a glass shelf reserved for your most used/favorite apps. Samsung's patent figure is illustrated in our cover graphic above. Samsung's oh-so creative engineers just couldn't resist borrowing yet another Apple user interface element.
A new milestone for Apple was reported on today. Apple has made its first foray into the top 10 of the Fortune 500 list, replacing Silicon Valley's previous top-10 tech entry, Hewlett-Packard, which fell steeply while recording the biggest loss of any company to make the list in 2013.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Adobe Systems has officially decided to pull the plug on most of their packaged-software business and double down on delivering its popular design tools through the online service they introduced a year ago called "Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe, known for their industry leading graphics software for illustrators, photographers and publishers believes that creative professionals prefer features of the online service including the fact that it is constantly updated with new features.
Earlier today, Intel announced a number of new systems coming to market later this year. They touched on Silvermont, Bay Trail, Haswell and Xeon processors shifting to 22nm technology. The latter will provide Apple's Mac Pro users with a nice power boost upgrade if Apple so chooses to stay with this processor this fall. Their all-new Silvermont is unlikely a processor that Apple will use but it could always slip into a lower priced Mac mini if Apple so chose to entertain expanding the OS X market. Last week Intel illustrated that next generation Ultrabooks, premium notebooks like the MacBook Pro and high-end desktops like the iMac with Haswell could experience a huge leap in graphics power, as in 100 to 200% depending on the configuration chosen.
