MuSiC

State capital will buy 1,400 iPads in 2012

School districts in Madison, Wisconsin will be getting a total of 1,400 iPads this year, all of them paid for by Microsoft, reports the Wisconsin State Journal. The state will use a portion of the nearly $80 million it will receive from the tech giant to buy 600 iPads this spring and 800 more in the fall. The money comes from a decade-old settlement of a lawsuit Wisconsin and 18 other states filed, alleging Microsoft routinely overcharged for software.

The class-action cases were related to the well-known 1998 Department of Justice lawsuit against Microsoft for abuse of monopoly power, successfully charging the company with using its market position to harm competition through its efforts to destroy or undermine Netscape and other technologies. A total of 19 states filed suit, and 17 of the states eventually reached a settlement (Wisconsin got a total of $224 million, but most of it went directly to residents rather than to the state). The first set of iPads will be in place in 20 elementary schools, 10 middle schools and three high schools by mid-march.

Only about $700,000 of the $3.4 million that is Madison’s share of the settlement money — which works out to about $85 per student — will be spent on iPads. Schools are allowed to purchase other kinds of technology, including laptops, projectors, smart boards and upgrades for existing equipment. After educational discounts, the iPads will cost the districts about $479 each. One school is planning to buy 105 iPads in a pilot program that will allocate one for each student in four classrooms, while other schools are buying just a few, primarily to help teachers with planning and record-keeping.

Tablets like the iPad are cheaper, more portable and easier to use, said district Director of Technical Services Bill Smojver. He also noted that Apple’s recent announcements about textbooks being made available at lower costs through the iBooks application “a significant development.” Deputy Superintendent Sue Abplanalp said Madison administrators were impressed with a recent pilot program in Chicago public schools that found that students are much more engaged in classrooms that use tablets. “We’re very open to what technology is going to bring us next,” she said.

The paper also noted that State Superintendent Tony Evers will be releasing a “statewide digital learning plan” that outlines how the state expects to deploy technology across all school districts in Wisconsin. An independent education consultant said her company had already worked with over 50 districts around the state to implement iPad-based teaching efforts. [via Wisconsin State Journal]

By Electronista Staff

We review Logitech’s very tiny travel mouse

The world of mice could often be described charitably as stagnant: it’s an endless sea of ergonomic shapes that assume you’re sitting at a desk and have lots of room in your bag. Logitech’s Cube is about as different as you can get, with a small, brick-like design that relies on touch and orientation to make it an ultraportable mouse and presenter. We’ll gauge in our Logitech Cube review whether it’s a welcome break or a novelty.

By Electronista Staff

Nanotube transistors hit new record

IBM researchers have published results for a new nine-nanometer nanotube transistor that could redefine processors in the future. The carbon-based element is the first below 10 nanometers and is much more efficient than the best current silicon-based transistors. Because of the size and material, it can use considerably less power and takes on more of a current to improve the reliability.

To get to the smaller size, researchers used an extra-thin insulator and a two-part process to bring in the electrical gates while preserving the fragile structure. Challenges still exist, such as improving the production process for the nanotubes to avoid shorts as well as creating a method to scale the placement up to processor-size levels.

As with most research, the 9nm technology is still likely years away from the market. IBM’s role as a semiconductor giant may see its technique reach the mainstream when ready. [via MIT Technology Review]

By Electronista Staff

USPTO rules last of 3 core Rambus patents invalid

Rambus’ litigation campaign suffered a possibly fatal setback Friday after the USPTO pushed word that it had invalidated the final patent out of three the company has been using to sue a large part of the technology industry. Having quietly made the decision on Tuesday, the patent office’s appeals board left Rambus without any of the patents it has been using to sue NVIDIA, Hynix, HP, and others. The first two had been scrapped in September.

Rambus was considering appealing the decision, but would only say that it was “evaluating” what it could do.

Although an actual product designer, unlike many who launch massive patent lawsuit campaigns, Rambus has increasingly depended more and more on its lawsuits rather than its creative output. It has often been accused by its targets of being duplicitous with patents, joining the JEDEC standards body for memory only to secretly patent some of what it learned and later profit from unsuspecting JEDEC members.

If the invalidation is upheld, numerous technology companies may directly and incidentally benefit from the move. Rambus has successfully extracted ongoing royalties from some of those it has targeted, leading component companies like Broadcom, NVIDIA, and others to factor in the cost for the prices they give mobile and PC designers that in turn get passed on to users. Companies may also have less anxiety about developing memory techniques independently while still facing a possible Rambus lawsuit.

By Electronista Staff

Free claims competitors hitting below the belt

ARCEP, the French telecom regulator, has said it is going to inspect low-cost wireless provider Iliad’s backbone network to make sure it is compliant with its bandwidth licensing requirements. The action takes place after Iliad’s competitors raised complaints about Iliad’s network performance and customer service. Iliad, which operates its wireless service under the Free name brand, denied the claims, discounting them as false rumors.

Iliad stirred up the French wireless market earlier this month when its Free launched a service with unlimited calls to France the US, and most of Europe for 20 euros ($26) per month. The plan also included unlimited texts and three gigabytes of mobile data. Free also announced that starting today, it would begin offering the iPhone 4S under the plan. This has touched off a price war, and Free’s main competitors, Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom, have dropped prices to compete. They also unleashed a barrage of claims against the discount carrier, including one that Free, inundated with customer traffic, had turned off its own overloaded mobile antennas and had instead offloaded the traffic to France Telecom’s network, with which Iliad had a roaming agreement.

ARCEP has issued a statement indicating that it hasn’t received any formal complaints. It also hasn’t received any concrete evidence backing the allegations. Despite this, the agency, “for the sake of transparency and peace of mind,” has asked Iliad to provide documentation regarding the status of the network. This would include a list of installed and active towers, as well as any that had been shut off and an explanation why that action was taken.

Maxime Lombardini, Free’s Chief Executive, has denied that it turned off any part of the network and welcomes an investigation. “Our competitors are trying to make it seem to consumers that there is a problem with our network,” said Lombardini. “There isn’t. When you are faced with false rumors, the best thing to do is get back to the real facts.” [via Reuters]

By Electronista Staff

Flurry says Kindle Fire squeezing Android tablets

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is squeezing out other Android tablets for actual use online. New Flurry data shows that the Kindle Fire virtually cut the Samsung Galaxy Tab line’s usage share in half, from 63 percent in November to 36 percent in January. Other devices saw a similar squeeze, which mostly came from the Kindle Fire’s rampant sales rather than a drop in Android use.

In step with the shift, Amazon was also leading to more actual app use. For every one top paid app a Galaxy Tab owner bought, just over 2.5 apps were bought by a Kindle Fire owner.

Researchers explained the gap as a virtue of Amazon taking a more Apple-like approach to tablets. Rather than adopt the typical Android- or PC-like mentality of focusing on the OS and specifications, Amazon focused on the experience and the content for users. Like Apple, Amazon was making sure that an ecosystem both for developers and for media was well in place. It could tap some of the “virtuous cycle” that Apple had created, where developers wanted to offer support, attracting users who in turn kept developers making more titles.

Amazon controls its own store, and it can not only sell the Kindle Fire at a loss with knowledge it would recoup the money but guarantee the apps it wanted and curate content to work well. Samsung has its own app section, but it usually depends heavily on Android Market, where Google has shown a disinterest in highlighting tablet-native apps and content.

The iPad was deliberately excluded from the immediate example. It still has a much larger share by itself and would have made it more difficult to represent Android-specific changes.

By Electronista Staff

ATT has record iPhones but takes loss on T-Mobile

AT&T on Thursday marked very mixed results from its fall quarter that were partly self-inflicted. The season marked its best ever for smartphones, owed primarily to the iPhone 4S launch. About 7.6 million iPhones were activated out of the 9.4 million smartphones sold, making Apple’s platform 80 percent of AT&T’s customer base.

A “majority” of those iPhones were the iPhone 4S, AT&T said. Android sales were also at a new high for a fall quarter and had doubled their year-ago performance, but the sheer volume of iPhone demand had cut Android’s ratio by half or more. The 7.6 million was nearly three times larger than the 2.7 million of the summer.

The figure kept it ahead of Verizon’s 4.2 million iPhones and showed that the iPhone on other carriers was primarily taking share that would have gone to Android, BlackBerry, or other platforms.

Roughly 56.8 percent of AT&T’s 69.3 million regular subscription cellphone owners were using smartphones, now making them the majority versus 42.7 percent from fall 2010. The network accordingly saw a 10 percent increase in pure wireless revenue, a 19.4 percent boost to its data revenues, and a 1.4 percent boost to the average revenue per person. It did see churn climb slightly to 1.21 percent from 1.15, although it noted that this was also the first holiday season since it had to compete against other US carriers with iPhones.

Many of the successes were negated overall, however, by one-time factors stemming from its own decisions. AT&T saw a net loss of $6.7 billion owed largely to the $4 billion it had to pay T-Mobile as part of the conditions for its dropped takeover bid. Also factoring in was a high payout relating to benefit plans. The company would likely have turned a profit otherwise.

By Electronista Staff

Android tablets rise to 29pc only via Amazon help

The Amazon Kindle Fire may have saved Android’s share of tablets, Strategy Analytics reckoned from its calculation of shipments. Although the research firm didn’t break down individual model numbers, the known strong Kindle Fire sales could be credited to Android more than tripling tablet shipments versus a year ago, to 10.5 million units. Apple’s 15.4 million iPads still kept it in the clear majority, at 57.6 percent, but Android now had 39.1 percent of the fledgling category.

The full extent of Microsoft’s trouble in tablets, meanwhile, became fully evident. At just 400,000 Windows tablets shipped in the fall, Microsoft had 1.5 percent of the market, leaving it in the “niche” it has had for nearly a decade. Apple’s iPad is well-known to have outsold Windows tablets’ eight years of cumulative sales in just nine months, and it was apparent in the study that Microsoft was still waiting on a solution.

“The upcoming release of Windows 8 this year cannot come quickly enough for Microsoft, so its hardware partners can start competing more effectively in the tablet space,” analysts said.

As much as low-cost tablets like the Kindle Fire impacted Apple, the company still “shrugged off” the threat, Strategy Analytics added. While unofficial, signs exist that Apple could regain much of the share it lost. Kindle Fire shipments may have been cut in half, and most Android device builders won’t have refreshes until the spring. Apple has established an early pattern of launching new iPads in early spring and, if it ships in March, may avoid the seasonal slump expected from Android.

By Electronista Staff

Nokia beats market consensus, but profit down

Nokia has posted its financial results (pdf) revealing better than expected results. The Finnish company reports that it has sold well over 1 million Windows Phone-based smartphones in combined sales of the Lumia 710 and the Lumia 800. However, while its core earnings beat market consensus, they were still down 73 percent as it sold less Symbian-based smartphones than it had forecast.

Even though Nokia made several international launches of its new WP7-powered smartphones in Q4, its initial sales did not offset the continued slump in its Symbian-powered devices. Its smartphone sales fell a further 31 percent, year-over-year, on the shipment of 19.6 million handsets. A small bright note was that its smartphones sales experienced a holiday uptick, up 17 percent from Q3. While it did not enter into specific forecasts for the next quarter, its expectations for Lumia sales are that they are not expected to offset the ongoing plunge in sales of its Symbian devices.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that the companys feature phone sales were strong and that this was on the back of a rash of new releases, including the Asha 200, 201, 300 and 303 as well as double-digit growth in its dual-SIM phone business. While it is pleased with early sales figures for its Lumia smartphones, it plans to boost these numbers significantly with launches in China and Latin America. Elop also highlighted the flagship Lumia 900 LTE, which he says has been specially tailored for the US market and is expected to get top-billing from AT&T on its release.

Elop also added that Nokia still remains in a transition period over 2012. This is the result of restructuring that followed its major announcement in 2011 that it was dropping development of its Symbian platform and had entered into an agreement with Microsoft to replace Symbian with Windows Phone 7. Both companies hope to be able to combine their marketing and brand power in an effort to rekindle their stagnating smartphone plans.

By Electronista Staff

Clearwire starts recovering with cost cuts

Clearwire on Tuesday showed a significant recovery from near death with early estimates of its results. It swung from a loss in the summer to net positive earnings in the fall, owed directly to adding more subscribers and cost-cutting. The 4G provider expected to have gained 900,000 total customers, or an 11 percent jump just in one season.

Raw revenue intake had doubled from a year ago to $362 million.

The company is still facing a long-term battle and has offered $300 million in stock to help fund a transition to LTE-based 4G. If successful, however, it promises to both compete with AT&T and Verizon as well as raise the possibility of Clearwire becoming a full phone carrier instead of the data-only service dictated by the natures of WiMAX and current LTE.

By Electronista Staff