Alright, alright, we'll be the first to admit that the title, like the proverbial cake, is a lie – there's actually infinitely less than even a billion of worth here, but at least we ain't beating around the bush. Regardless, if you absolutely must have revenge, we implore that you at least 'listen', whilst fixing the kindling for the pyre:
Mobile apps are selling for billions and that seems crazy.
Exactly how crazy, you may wonder, and that's a fair question given the largely quantifiable nature of the posts you're used to around here – you know, of the that-device-is-this-many-inches-thick and that-many-inches-tall type. Right? Quantifiable.
Unfortunately, the topic at hand is not as easily exhausted, and we do not know just how crazy, yet – if at all. What we do know is that it lands right there, in the ballpark between 'savvy' and 'completely nuts'. In hindsight, much can be said in the way of baffling acquisitions-turned-horror-story, and time, once again, will be the only judge of the latest seemingly-ludicrous buyouts. Fortunately, every now and then there's somebody, somewhere, who seems to defy his disbelieving audience and pull through where no one else believed possible. This distinction being made, let us examine the past year or so.
Crazy or Savvy?
Remember the recent Waze acquisition by Google? The user-generated mapping service set Mountain View back a cool $1.1bn, while, in comparison, the social-mapper makes nickels in the form of ad revenue. Joining up with the paragon of advertising, though, we see a bright future for Waze and its 44 million total users. We say savvy - Google+ integration is bound to follow, and although much less popular than Facebook, we expect the networking effect and its parent company's expertise in advertising to balloon Waze's popularity and therefore – its ad revenue. What's more, 1 in 4 Google searches is related to location reinforcing Waze CEO, Noam Bardin's punch line - “What search is for the Web, maps are for mobile”. Will Waze on itself break even on Google's investment? That's much less clear. All we're saying is that the acquisition will further cement the search giant's hold on providing the best maps experience, and that's worth significantly north of a billion.
Just a month after its initial IPO, Facebook announced it'll acquire Instagram for a sensational $1bn (they actually only got $735m by the time the deal was closed, compliments of Facebook's crashing stock). At the time, Instagram was a company with some 30 million users, zero revenue, no known strategy to monetize its services and already facing competition. As of today, Instagram is yet to find a legitimate one. So, crazy or savvy? We call savvy. The undeniable networking effect that's been in play since Instagram got integrated with Facebook and ballooned to over 130 million total users, and with rumors that we're about to see video ads become part of the app's latest service, Facebook's acquisition does seem to have a lot going for it. Sure, unlike most other apps in the list, it's its parent feeding value into it, not the other way around. Regardless, the space is definitely up for disruption and competition is there. That said, having the world's biggest social network behind you means any potential rival will have to either buckle up in a similar fashion or seriously out-innovate the duo to make a dent. Until then, its smooth sailing ahead.
Speaking of networking and videos, both Yahoo! and Twitterhave gone bonkers for viral video-sharing apps – Qwiki and Vine, respectively. CEO Marissa Mayer got the shorter end of the stick, for Yahoo!'s acquisition of Qwiki was a tad pricier at a reported $50 million, whereas the significantly more popular Vine cost Dick Costolo and Co. a more frugal $30 million. So why do we think the duo above made for a savvy investment? Both of these sit at the very busy, but promising, intersection of mobile, video and advertising. Furthermore, the price-to-(prospective) earnings ratio is through the roof, especially compared to Instagram's. It's also probably noteworthy that Facebook seems to be preparing to spearhead the video ads model on its own territory, succeeding in which will equal a beaten path for the above to traverse.
Video-sharing apps aside, did you know that Dropbox purchased the iOS exclusive Mailbox for $100 million, and that's not even the most disturbing part about it? No, the really disturbing part was the fact that the app had been out in the wild for just a month and is free. Yes, despite the hype and the extensive reservation list (Mailbox has been scaling its service by easing in a set amount of new users at their own pace), the start-up doesn't even appear to have monetization within its priorities at all. And even if it does, apart from a subscription method, we don't quite see how the company will make enough dough to deserve its price tag. We call crazy – the company will need a huge amount of subscribers to make up for Dropbox's obscene investment, and all that is at constant peril as much bigger players like Google and Microsoft can step up to the challenge at any point. That's particularly important, as we haven't heard of Mailbox intending to patent gestures, which really is what it will need in order to preserve its competitive advantage. What's more, now Google owned competitor, Sparrow, was acquired for a much more economical 'under $25 million', reportedly, and that's with the app having at least some form of a revenue model – the app goes for $2.99 (it used to cost $9.99 back in the days).
Ah, news aggregators. There's something about them that makes tech companies reach for their wallets and cough up some serious cash, and we think we know what. Know Pulse? A cheeky $90 million, reportedly, is what it cost LinkedIn to get its hands on the news agreggator, and our verdict is precluded by Pulse's rapid success – the app had over 20 million users at the end of 2012, and claimed it was making $300,000 a month via sponsored content while simply testing the surface. We call savvy.
Google and Yahoo!, lest they feel left behind, have also joined in on the fun. Yahoo! purchased Summly for a reported $20 million for the app and the talent behind it and Google quickly followed suite by acquiring Seattle-based Wavii, yet another news reader for a reported $30 million. But both Summly and Wavii got shut down almost immediately after being purchased, so what's the deal? Well, what Google and Yahoo! did is simply acquire the talent behind the startups, and in the case of Wavii – the patents it held, within which is a granted application on Open Information Extraction on the Web, a paradigm shift said to be the future of search. Sounds interesting? Check the video below, and you'll better understand why a mere $20-30 million (for Google and Yahoo!, that is) is a savvy investment that feeds disproportionately more value back to the parent.
So how crazy is the tech industry? Surprisingly, not as much as we initially thought. Are they fail-proof? Of course not! But the fact remains, if you think about it: being savvy at what they do more often than not is the reason you know the names of these companies by heart, in the first place.
Yes, sure - none of this is set in stone. But we felt some may be missing a key point with these acquisitions. A noteworthy consideration when viewing these buyouts is the fact that the talent behind these already successful start-ups is also retained by the buyer, and from this flows our next point. Namely, these apps do not necessarily need to break even on their own – they need simply feed back enough value to the mother-ship in order to qualify as a successful investment.
Over in the U.K., a mobile phone comparison site surveyed 2007 Brits aged 18 or older to see how they feel about the next iteration of the AppleiPhone whether it is the Apple iPhone 5S or Apple iPhone 6. Interestingly, 2 out of 3 surveyed said that they expect the next iPhone to have poor sales. This goes hand-in-hand with the 59% who said that they expect Samsung to become the most popular manufacturer of mobile phones in the country.
When asked why they believe that the next Apple iPhone will have such a hard time ringing up sales in the region, 31% blamed it on Samsung's increasing domination of the market. 26% said that the new iPhone will fail because it will be too expensive. The "Apple has lost its mojo and can't build products like it used to," line accounted for 23%. According to 22% of the respondents, the next Apple iPhone will not succeed in Britain because it will be too similar to theApple iPhone 5. 19% blame an expected lack of sales for the next iPhone on the theory that people are not as excited about the device as they used to be.
The hot model to own in Britain in the coming months? 49% replied with the Samsung Galaxy S4 mini while 33% picked the Apple iPhone 5S/6. By the way, when asked which phone they currently own, 34% of those those surveyed said they own an Apple iPhone. 22% said they currently sport a BlackBerry model while 14% are totin' a Samsung made phone.
Earlier today, citing the CommercialTimes, Bloomberg reported that Apple's upcoming iPhone 5S may be delayed because of a design change, and this one is pretty major – the screen on the upcoming flagship has, purportedly, been upped to a 4.3-incher.
According to undisclosed sources from the semiconductor industry, the release date was originally set for somewhere between September and October. Whether this, and several other delays will cause Apple to miss that mark is to be seen. No statement has, as of yet, been given by neither Apple nor its supplier partners.
As always, the nature of such rumors requires a salty approach. That being said, a bump in the screen department has definitely been among some of the more requested upgrades for the upcoming flagship. Who knows, perhaps Apple has finally budged under customer pressure?
Regardless, we're very much intrigued by this (possible) turn of events, and we know you are, too. So make sure you lay it out in the comment section below!
At the beginning of 2012, Acer announced its Iconia Tab A700 at a time in the market when tablet specs such as quad-core processors and Full-HD resolution were the very cutting edge of technology. More importantly the Taiwanese manufacturer managed to put this, an enormous 9800mAhbattery and 1GB of RAM in a 10-inch package at the very attractive price point of $450.
Iconia A700 – that's the actual device name. What our research shows, however, is that the A700 sometimes shows up as the A700-TA1. You may wonder why his is important, and here's the reason: a mysterious device popped up on GFXBench named simply 'Acer TA2'. The test shows that the unknown device runs Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, has a resolution of 2560x1344 and is powered by a NVIDIA Tegra 4 quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz.
In other words, as you probably guessed already, we may very well be looking at the successor of the Iconia A700. If it is, we sure as hell hope it continues the trend of high-end hardware that is priced aggressively for the masses.
People "familiar with the matter" have confirmed for the Wall Street Journal that LG will indeed be placing a 5.2" display on a device destined to be called Optimus G 2.
The publication continues that this might indeed be the same "world's slimmest" 1920x1080 pixels LCD panel that LG bragged about developing recently. LG calls its technology Advanced One-Glass-Solution (OGS), as dual flexible printed circuits are inserted between the panel and touch film, reducing by 30% the number of lines.
Each pixel contains regular RGB sub-pixels, and the display sports the pretty high 535 nits of peak brightness, as well as a high contrast ratio for easier readability. Watch the 5.2" panel in action outside in this leaked video below, and summon up your patience until August 7th, when it will all be revealed.
Microsoft hasn’t been having the best summer. On top of gamers uniformly rejecting the company’s DRM policies for the Xbox One, the company has come under fire regarding privacy concerns from an always-on Kinect.
The last thing they needed was to be involved with the PRISM scandal that the NSA has been conducting worldwide.
However, general counsel & executive vice president of legal & corporate affairs at Microsoft Brad Smith has sought to clarify several things. He first assured that, “Microsoft does not provide any government with direct and unfettered access to our customer’s data. Microsoft only pulls and then provides the specific data mandated by the relevant legal demand.
“If a government wants customer data – including for national security purposes – it needs to follow applicable legal process, meaning it must serve us with a court order for content or subpoena for account information.
“We only respond to requests for specific accounts and identifiers. There is no blanket or indiscriminate access to Microsoft’s customer data. The aggregate data we have been able to publish shows clearly that only a tiny fraction – fractions of a percent – of our customers have ever been subject to a government demand related to criminal law or national security.”
Smith also stated that, “We have asked the Attorney General of the United States to personally take action to permit Microsoft and other companies to share publicly more complete information about how we handle national security requests for customer information.
“We believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees our freedom to share more information with the public, yet the Government is stopping us. For example, Government lawyers have yet to respond to the petition we filed in court on June 19, seeking permission to publish the volume of national security requests we have received. We hope the Attorney General can step in to change this situation.”
How much significance does this hold, considering officials have had no problem perjuring themselves in Congress when asked about whether United States citizens are under surveillance? We’ll soon found out in the coming months, but until then, Microsoft is working to defuse this issue as soon as possible.
The closer we get to the release of Sony’s new console the more questions we seem to still have about it. Sony has been pretty forthcoming with information about the games, its network and all the new services it’s boasting; but we can’t help but still try to dig every bit of information out of them as we possibly can.
There are plenty of questions people would like Sony to clarify for them, or maybe share a few ideas they’ve explored. There seems to be no shortage of people wanting to know more about the upcoming console. The PS4 is still ways off, so the company could still come forward with new information about the console.
Video Sharing – Managing And Length:
We know for sure that we’re getting an option to share video and other game content that’s been created by players and it’s going to be at our fingertips. With the long-used select button going the way of the dinosaur we’re getting a share feature. What we don’t really know about this share feature is how it’s going to be managed and used. For instance, how long can the recorded videos be. Will they be only a few short minutes to show an encounter, or is it going to be two, five or ten minutes?
Limitations will be there and we shouldn’t expect to be able to go willy-nilly and upload whatever we feel like. Sony or the developers could go the route of limit sharing content within games. This could easily be something that’s different from developer to developer, and probably game to game. There is no doubt that the sharing feature is a powerful tool that’s never been available to console gamers before and it will be interesting to watch this play out and how Sony as well as the developers decide to manage sharing.
Revamped Trophy System:
Sony has teased about a new trophy system, but for the most part not all that much is known about it. There is definitely room for improvement with the current system in place. With issues like long load times and a very simple sorting system, they were an obvious afterthought on the PS3.
From the E3 reveal we do know that there can be multiple accounts all earning trophies simultaneously. The Xbox One will have dynamic achievements but at this point there is not much information on how trophies will play out on the PS4.
Cross Chat Integration:
The PS4 is getting cross chat for the platform. Not only that, but it’s a feature that will not require PSN Plus network either.
Sony is being kind of vague on this one though, and while we’ve seen some of it in action in promotions but how it’s going to work and be controlled is still missing. Some folks are even curious about group or party chats, how many people they will hold and if this will function the same as the standard cross chat system. Sony just hasn’t gone into specifics about it. Worst-case scenario is that we will just find out on release.
The DualShock 4′s Six Axis support and PS Move:
With those lights blazing on the backsides of the controllers and the addition of share button are the biggest changes Sony have made to their controller since the adoption of the DualShock design.
But do you know that the new controller also includes a sensitive, six-axis motion system? Sony have stated that DualShock 4′s Sixaxis will be “Significantly More Accurate” and that it is supposed to also couple with the camera for better detection. Sony has also said the PS MOVE is not going anywhere, so what are the improvement’s we’re supposed to see?
Friends List size:
With all the extra social options that are going to be available on the PS4 hopefully we’ll see a fairly substantial jump in the number so friends someone has. As it stands, the PS3 currently allows up to 100 friends. While it may seem like a lot right now, the new social focus may change all of that. With MMO’s moving to the consoles and plenty of cooperative games that are on their way, Sony should probably plan on giving the maximum available friends a bit of a bump.
The extend of interactivity with 3rd party devices like the iPAD:
So we know that we are going to be at least partially connect to the PS4 from other electronic devices like tablets. Games like The Division have shown that there are going to be features for the game that are playable from those devices.
What we don’t know is if the tablet will be connected to the console itself in a pairing fashion, the way the controllers do or if it will be connecting to a 3rd party website that is set up by the developers.
Sony is also releasing the PlayStation App that is compatible to iOS and Android which is great news but we don’t really know to what extent the devices interact with the console.
Online sharing:
As it currently stands the PS3 can share digitally downloaded games upto two different consoles. Sony has confirmed that users can play all their digital games on anyone’s PS4 but the questions is: What is the maximum number of consoles your account can be accessed from?
Gaikai:
Although Sony have confirmed that Gaikai will be available for the PS4 in 2014 and will support wide range of titles, there is no clear indication of how it is actually going to work. What can one expect these titles to be?
Gaikai is a powerful distribution system for older, smaller indie titles but Sony is keeping tight-lipped about what we are going to be seeing from this cloud-based gaming service. Recently Sony released a video stating that Gaikai will support the ‘best’ PS3 games but again that is a pretty vague statement.
Nokia has just announced a new contest for app developers and designers. You should submit up to 3 creative ideas for imaging-based apps or hacks for Nokia Lumia 1020 and Nokia will pick the top 10 ideas. The top finalists will get a Nokia Lumia 1020 and fly to Nokia’s exclusive Hackathon in Lund, Sweden.
The Prizes:
Hackathon participants: The 10 finalists will fly to the event in Lund and will be amongst the first to get their hands on the Nokia Lumia 1020.
1st & 2nd runners-up: The runners-up will get a Nokia Lumia 1020 and their creation will be showcased at a Nokia event.
Top prize: The winner of the Hackathon will get a Nokia Lumia 1020 and a trip with VIP treatment to an upcoming Nokia event, where the creation will also be showcased. The app will be promoted via several online Nokia channels, as well as on Windows Phone Store.
Plaffo.com reports some good news for those impatiently waiting for the Nokia Amber update.
We have previously heard Nokia Spain say it is coming in August, but now Swiss carrier Swisscom has said on their support forums they will expect the update to become available from the end of July.
In all likelihood that would just be the start of the roll-out which would take several weeks to complete, but given that the Amber update has turned out to contain even more than we expected, the sooner it starts appearing on devices, the better.
Nokia has released three sample applications in Windows Phone Store that makes use of the newly released Nokia Imaging SDK. These apps shows the capabilities of the new imaging SDK and will help developers create their own imaging apps with ease.
This Nokia example application has been created to provide tips and best practice guidance for software developers and app designers, and may not have all the features you would expect in a commercial product. This application is published in Store as a free software as it may also have value to regular Nokia phone users. The source code and documentation of this example can be downloaded from Nokia Developer website.
Filter Explorer:
Filter Explorer application demonstrates some of the image editing capabilities and performance of the Nokia Imaging SDK by allowing the user to apply a number of filter layers to existing or newly captured photos.
Download it here from Windows Phone Store for free.
Filter Effects:
A Nokia example demonstrating the use of the different filters of Nokia Imaging SDK with camera photos. This example app uses the camera and displays the viewfinder for taking a picture. The taken photo is then processed with the predefined filters. The filter properties can be manipulated and the changes can be seen in the preview image immediately. The processed image can be saved in JPEG format into the camera roll album. You can also select an existing photo and apply an effect to it.
Download it here from Windows Phone Store for free.
Real-time Filter:
A Nokia example application demonstrating the use of the Nokia Imaging SDK for real-time image effects. The effects are applied to the stream received from the camera and shown in the viewfinder. This app does not support capturing photos.
Download it here from Windows Phone Store for free.
Skinery Tiles Pro, the most popular custom theme app for Windows Phone 8, is looking for beta testers for its next major update, Skinery Themes. The app has been rebuilt from scratch to provide the most existing features for all users who prefer to personalize their phone beyond simple theme colours. If you are interested to join the beta, please email us with your Microsoft email address (associated with your Windows Phone) tosym.wp7.apps@gmail.com
Pic Words is a unique & fresh take on the popular pic-word puzzle genre that has been released just today and is free to play. Each level consists of 1 picture and 3 related scrambled words that need to be reordered to succeed. The game discovers and tests the player’s knowledge of the many words in the English language that exist to describe the same concept.
Pic Word’s main features include:
300 carefully crafted levels are fun, tricky and challenging but never frustrating
Unique gameplay
High quality images
Easy sharing and friend assistance capability
Fast loading and one tap start, no start-up annoyances
You can find out more about Pic Words at the following locations:
Indian music streaming service Dhingana released their Windows Phone app today. This app allows you to stream more than 350,000 Indian music tracks on your device.
App Description:
Dhingana is Indian & Bollywood Music, Unlimited & Free.
Only Dhingana offers you 350,000+ songs from 35+ Indian languages & genres like Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi, Pop, Remixes, Bhajans, Ghazals, Devotional, Sanskrit, Urdu, Nepali and many more.
• Easy access to top songs, featured albums & popular playlists across all languages & genres. • Search for your favorite music – songs, albums and playlists • Easily discover related albums and playlist right inside album or playlist. • Play songs in the background, while you discover more content and move between the apps. •Easily share your favorite music with your friends on Facebook, Twitter or via email
Download it here from Windows Phone Store for free.
The ever incontinent evleaks have dribbled out some new unreleased smartphone code names. Relevant to our interests is the Nokia Rivendale, which we assume is a Lumia handset, though it could of course also be an ASHA.
The Nokia Lumia 625 did of course make an appearance not long after this leak, and we already know there is a Nokia phablet in the works, but we will have to wait and see for more information, via official or unofficial channels, to arrive before we could speculate further.
