HTC launches One E8, Desire 616 in India: Where are the budget smartphones?

 

Struggling Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, today launched two new devices in India: the One E8, a cheaper version of the flagship One M8 and the Desire 616 dual-SIM device. The HTC One E8 is priced at Rs 34,900, the Desire 616 is priced at Rs 16,900.

Despite the fact that HTC is facing heavy losses close to $100 million in Q4 2013 alone, the company’s executives were confident that the new range of devices would help them bounce back both in Indian market and the global market as well.

HTC is hoping that 2014 will be their year; it’s not going to be such an easy task given that the high-end smartphone market has largely stagnated across the world with most analysts predicting that it is now time for sub-$100 smartphones to rule.

We spoke to HTC’s CFO Chian-Lin Chang after the launch event on the expectations from the new devices and he said that HTC was not going to go in the sub-$100 category, at least for now and was concentrating on giving good consumer experience along and hoping to woo the mid-segment buyer.

On expectations from the Indian market, Chang said, “Our expectation is very clear. We want to be one of the top three recognised brands in India. In terms of market share, we want to be one of the top five market share brands in India. We hope that each product will be a strong driver in their price-tier. We have a flagship product selling at  Rs 49,999, then we create this fashion edition for a price of Rs 34,900. We then have the Desire series. Hopefully between Rs 10,000 to 30,000 we have a lot of models.”

It was clear both from the launch event that HTC is hoping to target the mid-range consumer more aggressively. Currently in the sub-$100 category HTC has only the Desire 210 in India. According to the CFO, the reasons for favouring the mid-level consumer is well-thought one for HTC. It is a smart move targetting this audience, as this is one that has probably used a cheaper smartphone before and are now looking for a better device, one that has a good brand name to offer without inflicting too much damage on the pocket. A brand like HTC does hold the potential of being a strong second smartphone buy for users.

But with the flood of budget smartphones, a brand isn’t enough to stand out from the crowd. So has HTC priced its phones too high? The CFO doesn’t think so.  ”We have to ask, for every price-tier are you able to deliver the grand promise to the consumer? If we can, we do it. Desire 210, we introduced in India, we think it will fulfil that quality service. Below that we’ve been thinking, we’re not so sure,” said Chang.

Quality service is of course an important point, given that a lot of smartphone brands in India face the ire of users due to poor customer care service. The mid-level segment is where HTC’s CFO felt that the company can grow the most.”Between 10 to 30 is a big broad spectrum. Our Desire family is in this spectrum and we feel we have a lot to grow there. We are exploring below Rs 10,000, and if we go below that, we’re not sure we can do that without compromising on the consumer experience. First thing is not competition, it’s whether this is good consumer experience. Maybe a couple of months from now, we’ll figure a way to do that, ” he said.

On supply chain issues that plague and ruined the launch of the original HTC One smartphone, Chang said that the company was trying to work on those too. ”We’re fixing some of the supply chain issues. We introduced the One E8, this model is shipping earliest in India. Desire 616 is shipping right away. We want to make sure that India is the first one getting some of the models, it’s very key for us to do that,” he said.

He added that where the Indian market is concerned, they are hoping to use their brand name to their advantage, one that they seem to have squandered in the last two years. ”What we like about here is that consumers still like the HTC design and they associate us with good experience and service and we want to capitalise on that. Hopefully we’ll catch up very quickly,” he said.

Where the latest smartphone market share numbers go, HTC is far behind. IDC data showed that Samsung is the clear leader, followed by Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, Nokia and then others. It should be noted that others have a 30 percent smartphone market share in India, just five percentage points short of Samsung. But the problem for HTC is that this list of others is going to get bigger in India.

From Gionee to Oppo to Xiaomi, the list of Chinese competitors that are ready to deliver top-end specs even in the mid-budget segment means that HTC’s attempt at recovery is not going to be so easy, despite the company exuding some new-found confidence. 

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Apple Opens Up With A New Blog About Swift, Its New Programming Language

Times, they are a-changin’: Apple just launched a blog about Swift, its new programming language that makes it easier to build applications for iOS and Mac OS X.
This marks a new period of openness for the famously walled-in tech giant. While it’s certainly not the same as Apple showing off a product before it’s ready to come to market — a fairly standard practice at rival Google — it shows that Apple recognizes that it can’t keep developers, whose apps are one of the key differentiators in the smartphone and tablet markets, in the dark about what it’s doing until the last second.
In this case, it seems Apple has specifically chosen Swift as a topic where it’s acceptable to be a bit less secretive because A) it plans to eventually migrate developers from primarily using Objective-C to using Swift to develop apps for its platforms and B) the language is technically still in development, so being open lets them get more feedback on its design.
Developers are openly showing their surprise at the change in behavior on Twitter:
As for the content of the blog itself, there’s only one post at the moment. It has to do with a concern some iOS and Mac OS X developers had with using Swift in actual production code: if the language is still under development, does that mean our apps might break in the future?

Apparently, that’s not an issue. From Apple’s post:

Simply put, if you write a Swift app today and submit it to the App Store this Fall when iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite are released, you can trust that your app will work well into the future. In fact, you can target back to OS X Mavericks or iOS 7 with that same app. This is possible because Xcode embeds a small Swift runtime library within your app’s bundle. Because the library is embedded, your app uses a consistent version of Swift that runs on past, present, and future OS releases.

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Apple’s iPhone is a danger to China national security, says state media

 

Chinese state media on Friday branded Apple’s iPhone a threat to national security because of the smartphone’s ability to track and time-stamp user locations.

A report by broadcaster CCTV criticised the iPhone’s “Frequent Locations” function for allowing users to be tracked and information about them revealed.

“This is extremely sensitive data,” said a researcher interviewed by the broadcaster. If the data were accessed, it could reveal an entire country’s economic situation and “even state secrets,” the researcher said.

Apple was not available for immediate comment.

Apple has frequently come under fire from Chinese state media, which accused the company of providing user data to U.S. intelligence agencies and have called for ‘severe punishment’. It has also been criticised for poor customer service.

The California-based company is not the only U.S. firm to suffer from Chinese media ire.

Google Inc services have been disrupted in China for over a month, while the central government procurement office has banned new government computers from using Microsoft Corp’s Windows 8 operating system.

Other U.S. hardware firms such as Cisco Systems Inc and IBM Corp have experienced a backlash in China from what analysts and companies have termed the ‘Snowden Effect’, after U.S. spying revelations released last year by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

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Use your Android Wear watch to shoot pictures through your smartphone

 

Google is slowly adding to the arsenal of features on Android Wear and the most recent update comes to the camera app on connected smartphones.

The stock Google Camera has now got an update that adds new functionality specifically for Android Wear devices.

Thanks to the update, the Android Wear smartwatch be it an LG G Watch or the Samsung Gear Live, can now act as a remote shutter button for your smartphone. The UI of the feature is limited to a single click button, while there’s a timer counting down to let you know when the photo will be ready. You can also preview the picture on the Android Wear watch before going back to your phone.

At the moment though one killer feature is missing. You cannot use the Wear device as a second viewfinder, which means you are shooting blindly, if you are not setting up every shot. What this also means is that you cannot use the Lens Blur, Panorama or Photosphere mode.

Do note that if you have an Android Wear device, the update will show up on your phone for the Google Camera app, following which the remote shutter functionality will become active. At the moment, the update is not rolling out for all devices.

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Apple Patents A Way To Make All-Glass iPhones, iPads, Monitors And TVs

Apple has patented a method for building devices with all-glass outer casings (via AppleInsider), by fusing pieces together for a completely seamless final look. The all-glass device casings could be used to hold the internals of an iOS device or to house a TV or monitor, too.
The all-glass structures are designed for maximum durability but also weight savings, with designs that fuse pieces together to avoid having to use a single heavy block of material, and internal structures like fused-on ribs and reinforcement points, also made of glass, placed at key points where structural integrity could be weaker.
Unlike the iPhone 4, which featured front and back glass panels, the patent would allow Apple to build completely glass-encased gadgets, which would allow for a completely different aesthetic versus other gadget-maker’s designs. An all-glass Retina Cinema Display would certainly stand out from the crowd in terms of monitors, and an all-glass iPhone would definitely draw even more headlines than usual.

Of course, glass is still subject to impact damage and other potential pitfalls. And as with many of its other patents, Apple may simply have experimented with the tech but then moved on to something else (like sapphire glass construction, for instance), but the patent does cite Apple SVP Jony Ive as one of its main inventors. Flat glass slabs are a staple of sci-fi TV and movies, after all, so maybe Apple wants to help usher that future into production.

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Facebook Launches “Out-App Purchase” Ads

What if in-app purchases didn’t have to happen in-app? Rather than indirectly helping developers monetize with ads that drive them installs and re-engagement, Facebook today began letting them sell Facebook desktop game virtual goods straight from ads in the News Feed or sidebar.
But an even more lucrative opportunity could be bringing these “out-app purchase” ads to mobile. They could let Facebook earn money even if the 30 percent cut on in-app purchases goes to Apple or Google. Facebook already has the infrastructure in place, between re-engagement ads, coupon code auto-fill, and plenty of mobile feed impressions where it could place these ads.
For now, though, these out-app purchase ads can ony be bought on desktop, and Facebook told me it had nothing to share about future plans to do more to inspire mobile purchases. But on desktop, the ads are already working and they let Facebook double-dip. Developers pay to show the ads, then pay Facebook a 30 percent cut of desktop in-game purchases.

Kixeye used the out-app purchase ads to sell discounted virtual currency in its Facebook game Battle Pirates. The ads to buy $10 worth of in-game credit for $5 got a 10 percent click-through rate (way higher than the average), a 50 percent conversion rate for people who had paid in the game before, and a 14 percent conversion rate for users who hadn’t previously paid. Kixeye went whale spearing as well, getting a 5,000 percent return on investment by targeting their biggest spenders with ads for $500 worth of currency for $250.
These ads surely benefited from the big discounts Kixeye was handing out, but since the goods are virtual, it doesn’t have much to lose. The new ad format may have caught some extra eyes, too.
Of course there’s an argument to be made that these types of ads prey on social gaming addicts who spend real money on pointless, fake virtual goods. Many Facebook desktop games are framed as “entertainment” when in fact they’re utter time wasters that peddle quick dopamine hits rather than any lasting satisfaction.
But like it or not, that’s business. And it could be an even bigger one on mobile.

Right now Facebook earns much of its $1 billion mobile ad revenue each quarter indirectly helping developers get more people into their apps through install and re-engagement ads. These allow developers to get seen despite overcrowded app stores and homescreens.
As the popularity of the freemium model grows and more games don’t make you pay up front, the ROI on these ads becomes less clear. Monetization through in-app purchases isn’t directly connected to the user clicking on a Facebook ad —  they have to be hooked on an app enough to see value in spending money on it when they’ve seen all of the free content.
If Facebook could bring its out-app purchase ads to mobile, it could prove obvious ROI like in the Kixeye example above. Of course, they probably couldn’t sell virtual goods from the mobile News Feed as they can on the desktop, since iOS and Android don’t allow in-app purchases to happen outside of their respective app stores.
Still, Facebook could show ads that deeplink directly to exclusive virtual good purchase pages in apps that can’t be navigated to normally. Alternatively, it could use the coupon code auto-fill feature it announced at f8 to show a discount code in the ad, which when clicked would pop you into the app and auto-fill the code so you didn’t have to enter it manually.
Imagine if you already played a mobile game but beat all the levels. A few months later, the developer releases new levels as a $2 in-app purchase. Facebook could show an out-app purchase ad in its mobile feed that deeplinked you into the app where you could pay a discounted $1 rate to unlock the levels. Or rather than the conversion-focused re-engagement ad to the right telling people to generally “Shop Now,” Facebook could show a discounted sweater deal only available through the ad click.
These would essentially be Facebook’s existing re-engagement ads re-framed for driving immediate purchases. What developer wants engagement when they can get cold hard cash?
Facebook is now competing with Twitter to sell ads to developers. The big blue social network is especially equipped to push these ads because they know so much about us. Not only does it have our identity, social graph, and interests, its SDKs, Facebook Connect options, and auto-fill billing info e-commerce feature mean its learning tons about our behavior in other apps. Plus, with Facebook starting to track our real-time location, and hear what we’re listening to or watching, it’s collecting context about what we’re doing at any given moment and therefore what ads we might want to see. It could also lean on deeplink ad targeting services like URX for assistance.
As former Facebook lead designer Soleio Cuervo wrote this morning, personalization is about identity, graphs, behavior and context. Personalized ads that lead straight to in-app purchases could be a boon to developers and become Facebook’s next cash cow after app install ads.

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Facebook Messenger Finally Gets An iPad Version

Three years after Facebook acquired Beluga and turned it into Messenger for smartphones, its dedicated chat app today got a version specially designed for iPad rather than just running as an enlarged iPhone app. Messenger for iPad features a multi-window interface showing a list of threads and your current conversation at the same time. Messenger had over 200 million users as of April across devices, but now Apple fans can mobile message on a larger screen.
Messenger for iPad comes with most of the Messenger features, including stickers, easy group chat navigation, and VoIP calling. It’s only missing the latest additions, including the split-screen selfie camera and tap-and-hold quick video recordings. Facebook hasn’t mentioned anything about an Android tablet version.
The app will surely be nice for Messenger users who are tired of having to juggle their iPhone while working or playing on their iPad. If you have both Facebook and Messenger installed on your iPad, tapping the Messages button in Facebook automatically fast-switches you to Messenger. You can then tap the bar at the top of Messenger to return to Facebook.

Getting more devices supported for Messenger is important to Facebook’s long-term goal of disrupting SMS and owning the mobile chat space. While Facebook is known for its News Feed and profiles, people only spend so much time a day sifting through broadcasted content. Direct, private messaging has become a constant part of many people’s days, though.
Messaging is also intimately connected to the concept of social networking and your social graph, which is why Facebook is so desperate to own it. Chat is a foundation that other social interactions can be built upon. That’s a big reason Facebook spent a stunning $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp. Beyond just being a free SMS replacement that now has 500 million users around the world, it also included a status update feature that Facebook surely feared could steal attention from its feed.

For now, Facebook doesn’t make any money directly from Messenger. Instead Facebook uses it to promote platform lock-in. More devices means more people locked in. But Facebook has plenty of opportunities to monetize its dedicated chat app, and it recently poached PayPal president David Marcus to become VP of its Messaging Products.
At the time, Facebook said Marcus has “a track record of building great products and finding creative ways to turn them into great businesses.” That implies Messenger could soon be a source of revenue. Facebook could follow other messaging businesses like Line by selling stickers or the ability to upload you own designs. It could also earn money from movie studios, toy makers, others by offering free branded sticker packs like its recent Lego Minifigures pack.
An even bigger opportunity could be right in Marcus’ wheelhouse: payments. Messenger could facilitate peer-to-peer payments and take a small cut to make money. Right now, people around the world pay exorbitant fees, ranging from 1.5 percent all the way up to 20 percent for remittance — transferring money to family or business partners in other countries. People often use remittance to send money home using services like Western Union, MoneyGram, Telegiros, or Remit2India. If Facebook could undercut these services, they could claim a healthy profit while reducing fees for disadvantaged laborers trying to support their families.
The iPad is likely too expensive for people who would benefit the most from a cheaper Facebook Messenger remittance service. But each additional Messenger user grows the app’s network effects and gives Facebook more reason to invest in innovation and monetization for chat.

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Apple’s “Secret” eBay Store Returns [Updated]

In fall 2012, a mysterious eBay store appeared that only sold Apple products at prices that undercut Apple’s own online refurbished store. The store was widely speculated to have been run by Apple, despite the company never confirming its involvement. That store disappeared last year, but now one just like it has returned, and this time around, it’s selling “Apple Certified” iPhone 5 devices. Does that mean new iPhones are just around the corner? Probably!
First spotted by AppleInsider, the new eBay store lists a number of iPhone 5 models, ranging from $449 to $499 in price. The devices are available in black and white, in 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB capacities, and are sold factory-unlocked for GSM networks. They also include a one-year Apple Warranty, and are said to be “returned to like-new condition,” “repackaged with manual and charger,” and have received a “final quality inspection by Apple,” according to the website’s text.
You’ll note that Apple’s official refurbished site doesn’t currently list iPhone 5 models for sale – or any iPhone for that matter.
The recently launched store, which goes by the name “FactoryCertified,” could hint at a forthcoming release of new iOS devices, which are typically announced at Apple’s September product launch events. If you recall, when the first Apple eBay store launched, it was selling refurbished iPads at $100 less than Apple’s store, AppleInsider notes. Today, the new store is selling off old iPhone models – and could certainly point to updated iPhone models on the near horizon.
We’ve reached out to both Apple and eBay about this news. eBay declined to comment. Apple has not yet commented, but we’ll update if it does.
At this time, it’s not 100 percent certain that this is a real Apple-run store, though eBay’s refusal to comment could be interpreted as a confirmation of sorts. After all, if this were some random third-party seller or “just a big misunderstanding,” eBay would likely help to correct the earlier reporting, which is now spreading through the Apple blogs like wildfire. That being said, the store could also be run by an authorized Apple reseller.

There was some confusion around how involved Apple really was with the first “official” eBay store, in fact. 9to5Mac claimed at the time that eBay had confirmed the original store was run by Apple. eBay reportedly told them the store was “a low-profile test site that could open to much bigger things.” But the store’s product pages referred to the seller as being “authorized by Apple Inc. to sell Apple Certified Refurbished products on eBay.” This led others to believe 9to5Mac’s reporting was just inaccurate.
However, AppleInsider says they later confirmed the original store was a pilot program run by Apple. That bodes well for this new store being the real deal, too.
This story is developing. 
Update, 7/9/2014: We had reached out to the seller directly before publication, and asked directly if the store was run by Apple, as per reports. This is the response: “No, this listing is not ran by Apple. We are a private re-seller.”
Apple has not commented.

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BlackBerry Explains The Passport, Its Square Tablet… Phone Thing

BlackBerry previously gave us a sneak peek at a device that’s as category-busting as the revolutionary Padfone, called the Passport. I expressed my …uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the design decisions made in creating this 4.5-inch square thing with a hardware keyboard then. But now it’s BlackBerry’s turn to articulate some of its reasoning behind the Passport, with a blog post in which it avoids calling it either a phone or a tablet directly.
The blog post asks “Why?” in italics on a line all its own, so BlackBerry at least is aware this is a weird device that has some people, like myself, scratching their heads. The 4.5-inch screen on the gadget is square, not rectangular, meaning it’s almost as wide as two iPhones placed side-by-side.
The answer to “Why?” begins with something about academic typology, which isn’t a great way to explain a design decision for a mobile device in my opinion. But wait! The academic stuff means that the Passport is supposedly the optimal size for reading e-books, paging through documents and reading the text-heavy portions of the web. WHICH IS WHAT BUSINESS PEOPLE DO!

BlackBerry blogger Matt Young goes on to articulate a few different scenarios where the Passport’s unique ID will make it an ideal digital companion, including for architects and real estate professionals switching between blueprints and contract docs; doctors checking X-rays and patient info forms; financiers watching the stock market bob up and down; and writers looking for the joys only a real physical keyboard can bring.
I remain skeptical, but BlackBerry is at least taking a different approach to the smartphone/tablet/whatever-mobile-computer, the design of all which has been largely normalized over the past few years. Basically, though, at this point the only question that remains is whether this is a better or worse idea than the noveltylicious curved screen smartphone.

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Microsoft To Abandon The Bastard Child Of Windows Phone In Two Months

Remember Windows Phone 7.8? Microsoft built it as a stop-gap measure to lessen the ire of Windows Phone 7.5 users, a group technologically precluded from making the leap to Windows Phone 8. If you had forgotten about it don’t worry, Microsoft is about to do the same.
Mary Jo Foley today detailed the coming death-dates of a number of Microsoft products, including Windows Phone 7.8. As it turns out, 7.8′s moment of expiration has been known for some time: September 9th.
Today Microsoft published — and then retracted, it seems — a note to computing users concerning the end of support for a number of its products. The list included a note that Windows Phone 7.8 would lose “mainstream support” in September.
It wasn’t clear what that meant. According to the company’s general life cyle page, consumer products generally receive a two year period of updates and support, after which they are no longer supported. There isn’t “extended support” for such products, as there is for versions of desktop Windows, for example.
Windows Phone 7.8 is being axed after a mere 18 months. The official verbiage: “Microsoft will make updates available for the Operating System on your phone, including security updates, for a period of 18 months after the lifecycle start date.” In short, if you are on Windows Phone 7.8 you have a few months left before your phone won’t update ever again.
How many Windows Phone 7.8 users are left? About 17% of the larger Windows Phone market, so it’s no small tally.

Windows Phone 7.8 was never more than a band-aid. Microsoft decided that Windows Phone needed to join the larger Windows family, and the original Windows Phone 7, 7.1 7.5, and 7.8 devices could never share in that future. Thus, to see Microsoft walk quickly away from the product is hardly surprising.
What does it gain from its support? Aside from honoring the implicit promise to not leave users behind when providing them with a platform to by into, little.
Strategically, that is, Windows Phone 7.8 is moot.

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BlackBerry Is One Of The Hottest Stocks Of 2014, Seriously

Don’t look now, but BlackBerry — you know, the butt of most cell phone jokes — is mounting an impressive comeback. BlackBerry’s stock is up 50 percent on the year and one of the best performers in its sector.
BlackBerry has been written off as dead countless times. The company is often viewed as a relic of a bygone era. Its CEO is a blowhard, not afraid to take spats with the company public. Yet the company is creating value for its shareholders.
In 2014 BlackBerry’s stock is outperforming all its peers. At the beginning of the year, the company’s stock was languishing at $7.44 a share. Yesterday it closed at $11.21. The stock is also up in trading today.
Apple is up just 20 percent on the year. Google? Just 5 percent, although it’s a touch easier for a struggling company to rebound than an established company to double its stock price.
The Motley Fool recently looked at the company’s financials and caution the company has yet to improve its revenue growth or its profit margin. The company is simply slashing costs and not making waves. So far, investors are liking that approach.

The company is also making some strategic moves. BlackBerry has leveraged its established Messenger app, positioning it as a WhatsApp for the lucrative enterprise market.
The company also released minor updates to its BB10 mobile operating system and turned to niche and developing markets for additional handset sales. Essentially, by not doing a lot this year, BlackBerry hasn’t done anything wrong. That could change.
The company’s long-term future is still in question. Its mobile market share is still shrinking and Apple and Android makers are increasingly adding features once exclusive to BlackBerry devices. If BlackBerry is to remain, it will need to do more than cut costs and add stickers to BBM.

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Facebook Tests Android L-Style Lock Screen Notifications

A new update for the test group of Facebook for Android users briefly enabled lockscreen notifications, at least for new message activity, before a later update today seems to have disabled the feature. The notifications looked very similar to the lock screen notifications Google showed off at I/O this year, one of the new upcoming features of Android L, the next major update for Google’s mobile OS. Facebook has confirmed to TechCrunch the update went out to a “small group of beta testers.”
The update doesn’t require Android L to be installed to work, however, as I encountered the new feature using an HTC One M8 running Android 4.4.2 with Sense 6. It features a Settings expander with viewing options, and tapping on the notification itself will take you to the Facebook app directly, after you unlock your device. As indicated on the notification itself, swiping will dismiss the notification and keep the device locked. Multiple notifications from multiple message senders stack visually one on top of the other.

I was only able to see message notifications because of the type of activity on my FB account during the test, but other FB activity was also included in the new test feature. Facebook often tests new features on Android, but they don’t always necessarily make it to a shipping release. Presumably once Android L becomes production software, it won’t be required, but Facebook could still gain a user attention advantage by delivering lock screen notifications regardless of what version of Android handset owners have installed on their devices.

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Google Now Is The Killer App For Android Wear

Google’s I/O keynote may have been a bit of a jumble of different product announcements — many of which won’t be available until later this year — but Android Wear was what most people in the audience wanted to hear about. While there is plenty of Android in Google’s smartwatch operating system and while developers will be able to develop apps specifically for it, Wear in its current form is fundamentally about bringing Google Now notifications to your wrist.
While I’ve had Google Now on my phone for a long time now, the more I use Wear, the more I feel like it was custom-made for Google Now. Indeed, this is the first time I really feel Now is living up to its promise. It’s also the first time I find myself paying full attention to Now, despite its prominence on Android before.
Android Wear, of course, also shows you all of your notifications from your phone (and when they are interactive, Wear will automatically mimic those, too). You could push all of your phone notifications to your watch, but that would be overkill. Thankfully, Google lets you choose which applications can push to Wear. But its most useful feature — and maybe its killer feature overall — is definitely easy access to Google Now.
At this point, everybody is pretty much familiar with Google Now, but there is something fundamentally different between using it on your phone and on your wrist. Sure, the mission is the same on both platforms: Google wants to give you the right information at the right time. When you’re at work, it shows you the drive time to home. Got an appointment somewhere else? It’ll show you when to leave. At the airport? It’ll show you the barcode for your boarding pass. It’s one thing for that information to be available on your phone, but on your wrist, it suddenly becomes so much more accessible.
That is, of course, only when Google Now gets it right — and most of the time, it does. The company has been working hard on bringing more information to Now and that has made it quite a bit more useful by regularly adding more information and new cards to it. Some cards that Google shows on the phone don’t make sense on Wear (links for topics you recently search for, for example) and those thankfully never make it to the watch.

Wear doesn’t always get it right, though. If you end up swiping the weather card away by mistake, for example, you can’t easily get it back. That’s a fundamental problem with Wear — and maybe the only one that really annoys me. For Google Now, at least, it’d be nice to have an easy way to flip through all of your cards at all times.
Just like Google Now brings together a number of Google’s services into one product, Wear has a similar feel to it. It’s a mix of what it has learned from Android and its ecosystem, its advances in voice recognition and its newly found design chops.
All of that comes together to bring Google Now to your wrist, and while that may sound like a minor thing, it’s actually a very useful experience. Whether that’s worth $200 to you is a different question, but after using Wear for a bit more than a week now, I can actually see myself wearing one of these watches going forward — and before this I hadn’t worn a watch for at least a decade.
In the next few months, Google will get some competition from Microsoft, Apple and a few startups in this space. For better or worse, none of them know as much about you as Google does, so it’ll be hard for them to replicate the Google Now experience. That should give Google a bit of an edge against the competition — unless the iWatch turns out to be so amazing that people will buy it even if it just shows the time and phone notifications.

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Facebook Starts Using App Links To Get You Back Into Apps 

 

App Links, Facebook’s initiative to make it easier for developers to link to specific content within an app, is about to become a lot more useful for developers who rely on Facebook to direct users to their apps.
In a blog post, Facebook announced today that developers will now be able to utilize App Links to send people straight from ads in the Facebook mobile app to specific points within their apps. There’s a catch though: for now, they’ll only be able to deploy these ads if they’re working with one of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developers.
As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine wrote in his summary of this year’s F8 developer conference, it’s pretty clear that Facebook launched App Links as a way to sell more re-engagement ads. Developers have already found that Facebook’s mobile app install ads can drive a massive number of installs — 350 million as of April — so the company is looking to take advantage of their newfound mindshare to become a major source of user engagement as well.
While many dislike targeted advertisements, the advantage for users in this case is that ads will now be able to point to something specific that you might be interested in rather than sending you to an app that you then have to search through to find something appealing.

A lot of users try out apps once and then never go back because they didn’t find something that hooked them. With re-engagement ads, you might install an app from an ad, check Facebook later that day, and instead of seeing “install now” as an option, see an option for a particular piece of content you might be into.
Of course, App Links works for more than just Facebook’s mobile app install ads. Developers who have enabled App Links will also send users who click links shared by other users, Pages on Facebook, or even other apps to specific points within their apps. Now that it sells in-app ads via the Facebook Audience Network announced at F8, Facebook will benefit from more app engagement in general, not just that generated from its ads.
Notably, Facebook isn’t the only one stepping up its mobile app install and re-engagement ad business. Yesterday, Twitter began its global rollout of out both kinds of ads across its mobile apps. In addition, it acquired mobile ad startup TapCommerce, who specializes in getting users to get back into the apps they’ve already downloaded.

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Google Now Has 1B Active Monthly Android Users

At its Google I/O developer event today, Google provided us with an update on current Android activations. Instead of announcing the usual cumulative numbers, however, Google’s senior VP for Android and Chrome, Sundar Pichai, announced that there are now over 1 billion 30-day active users on the Android platform.
Pichai also said that Android tablets now have hit 62 percent of the global Android market and that app installs increased by 236 percent year-over-year.

This is the first time Google has provided us with updated numbers since it announced Android 4.4 last year.

A year ago, Google said it had reached 900 million activations, and at that time, it was adding about 1.5 million new ones per month. By last September, the company surpassed the 1 billion mark for activated devices.


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Google I/O Attendees Gifted Brand-New Android Wear Smartwatches

Get ready to be jealous, Google fans. Google I/O attendees will walk away from this week’s annual developer conference with some brand-new Android Wear-powered smartwatches. They’ll be able to choose between one of the new Android Wear watches introduced earlier today, including the Samsung Gear Live or LG G3 Android Wear. In addition, they’ll also receive the forthcoming Moto 360, when it becomes available in a few months.
That’s right: not one, but two smartwatches. Because there was no Chromebook underneath their seats, and Google felt badly? Maybe that’s why they also handed out cardboard (yes, actual cardboard – a poor man’s virtual reality device) as the attendees left the venue. More on that in a bit.
It may be interesting to see which of the two smartwatches attendees initially select: the LG or the Samsung.

Android Wear, which was previously introduced, was shown off during the keynote this morning, where its various features, including a card-like design and integrations with Google’s smart assistant technology Google Now, were on display.
The company also introduced a new Android Wear SDK for developers, allowing them to build custom user interfaces, control sensors, tie into voice actions, and send data back and forth between watches, tablets and phones.
The new smartwatches, which go on sale today to the general public, will also have a few new functions, including swiping to dismiss messages and displaying contextual information to the wearer.

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This Mechanical Watch Has A Magic Button That Sets It By GPS

If there’s a single problem with mechanical watches its that they’re often considered inaccurate. A collection of gears and springs, no matter how carefully put together, will always lose a little time here or there. There’s a solution, quartz, but these tickers are accurate but boring. But why not put the chocolate in the peanut butter, as it were, and connect the two? VCXO has done just that.
Their new watch, called the Ox One, features a mechanical movement that automatically syncs with GPS satellites with the press of a “Magic Button” (yes, that’s what it’s really called) on the side of the watch. A built-in battery is charged by the weights inside the movement that also power the automatic movement. It does not have a winding crown and instead depends on the magic button to set the watch. If there is no GPS connectivity the watch simply sets itself to an internal clock.
The creator of the watch, Adrian Pedrozo, is keeping mum about how the whole system works but the mechanical part of the watch is a TT-738 from Swiss Technotime SA, a movement supplier.

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Microsoft May Prioritize The Desktop In Windows 9

The latest rumor from the Microsoft community is confusing: Microsoft may disable, by default, the Metro-defined Start Screen on desktop-based computers in Windows 9, what is currently referred to as “Threshold.”
According to Neowin’s Brad Sams, in some Threshold builds, users must “manually turn [the Start Screen] back on, but this is situation dependent, if you wish to access the live tile environment.”
ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has a slightly different take on the situation:

Users running Threshold on a desktop/laptop will get a SKU, or version, that puts the Windows Desktop (for running Win32/legacy apps) front and center. Two-in-one devices, like the Lenovo Yoga or Surface Pro, will support switching between the Metro-Style mode and the Windowed mode, based on whether or not keyboards are connected or disconnected.
The combined Phone/Tablet SKU of Threshold won’t have a Desktop environment at all, but still will support apps running side-by-side, my sources are reconfirming. This “Threshold Mobile” SKU will work on ARM-based Lumia phones, ARM-based Windows tablets and, I believe, Intel-Atom-based tablets.

All of the above makes sense, so let’s synthesize. We’ve known a few things for some time now: Microsoft wants to re-prioritize the desktop Windows environment, because for all the talk of a post-PC world, people are still wildly dependent on their trusted computing configuration; and Windows is going to become a more unified system across discrete screen environments, eventually becoming a functionally dual-version operating system that works from phones to desktops.
I doubt that Microsoft will ever disable the Start Screen on PCs that are desktop-focused. But that doesn’t mean that the company wouldn’t build a flavor of its core operating system that has the desktop experience greatly favored.
Here we reach a point of dissonance: If Microsoft is hellbent on building share for its Windows Store, which resides in the Metro side of Windows 8.x, how the hell could it afford to essentially push that section of the operating system aside? It’s actually made the proper concession: The Windows Store’s icon has been moved to the desktop-side of the operating system.

And if you can run Metro apps in the desktop environment, ahem, you can Windows Store for days without needing the Start Screen.
Anecdotally, and I know that means we’re speaking with a skewed sample set, I’m recently seeing folks in my life that have purchased Windows 8.x PCs that are enjoying the new form factors, and touch, but are not too enthused about using the Start Screen on a chronic basis. Make of that what you will, it’s merely something that I’ve noticed and heard.
Foley has an interesting thought:

Microsoft is basically “done” with Windows 8.x. Regardless of how usable or functional  it is or isn’t, it has become Microsoft’s Vista — something from which Microsoft needs to distance itself, perception-wise. At this point, Microsoft is going full steam-ahead toward Threshold and will do its best to differentiate that OS release from Windows 8.

I think that’s actually a savvy take. We’re in a potentially Office 2007 situation, when Microsoft shook up the paradigm, took a number of potshots, managed to keep the bulk of the work intact and push out Office 2010 to massive success. Provided that Microsoft can keep that which is good in Windows 8, and blend in a host of strong desktop-focused updates, prioritizing each in different weight based on device form factor, the company could have a pretty solid operating system on its hands.
However, it’s no simple task: If Microsoft instead manages only a muddle of updates that are disparate in nature and are even less cohesive than Windows 8.0, the company could tilt the entire PC market south, past the point of stability in the 300 million units per year mark.

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Virtual Says It Can Emulate iOS Or Android Devices In The Cloud

 

A new company called Virtual is claiming that it can imitate nearly any Android or iOS device almost perfectly in software, on any platform, with nearly ‘native quality’ performance. It does this with a combination of virtualization and emulation technology and it could change the way that developers test apps.
Chris Wade started out hacking the iPhone in its earliest days, and contributed to some of the first jailbreak exploits. Since then, he’s dabbled in a variety of hardware and software hacking projects. Back in 2011, he launched his newest endeavor: an attempt to create an open-source iOS device emulator called iEmu.
Though Wade got the funding he needed via Kickstarter, he cancelled the project, fearing that getting public funding would make him a target for litigation. Emulation, after all, requires impersonating proprietary hardware, and though there are some precedents in place for duplicating out-of-date devices, the iPhone is very much still around.
That’s where Virtual comes in. It’s the spiritual successor to iEmu, but instead of just iOS, it also handles emulating Android devices.

“The idea was to move away from emulation and go to full-blown virtualization,” Wade says. Virtual allows a user to purchase a license to run a certain amount of iOS or Android devices with as close to real hardware capabilities as possible. Wade claims that Virtual has managed to virtualize the ARM core and emulate peripherals that allow it to double as almost any Apple TV, iPad or iPhone.
Virtual is currently working with HP to evaluate their Moonshot ARM servers, which will be available later in 2014. The servers allow Virtual’s proprietary hypervisor to manage virtual machines for both iOS and Android, markets that are dominated by ARM.
Wade says they’ve been seeing “really phenomenal” performance from the new HP servers.
The advantage to virtualization and emulation over simulation is manyfold. There are the performance gains, of course. Wade says that virtualization and emulation offer a significantly more accurate representation of the physical device at a low level, which means they offer a more accurate development and testing experience.

Apple famously states over and over in its programming and testing guidelines that developers should test on a real physical device, in order to get a feel for how their code will act in the real world. But even Apple provides a simulator (not an emulator) that allows developers to get some real-time feedback on how their apps are running.

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