Palm Pre Reaches 1 Million Apps Mark

The Palm Pre App Catalog has reached 1 million downloads, nearly three weeks after launch of the device, according to data from mobile analytics and advertising firm Medialets.

Palm sold about 50,000 Pres and logged 100,000 downloads on launch day for an average of 2 app downloads per device and 5,500 downloads per app. Eighteen days later, Palm has sold 150,000 units and has an average of 6 apps per Pre and about 33,000 downloads per app, Medialets wrote in a blog post.

By comparison, Apple's App Store hit 1 million downloads 17 days earlier than the Pre, had 16 times the number of apps, and 26 times the number of users. Still, comparing the 1 million mark, Palm secured 26 times the number of apps that iPhone users had, and the average app in the App Catalog was downloaded 16 times more than apps in the Apple App Store.

As a result, Medialets said that congratulations are in order for Palm. "The Pre is an amazing device with lots of potential and we're looking forward to what a public SDK will offer both consumers and developers alike," the blog concluded.
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DVD wars: Netflix warily eyes Redbox

With more subscribers than ever flocking to its DVD-by-mail service, Netflix Inc. is one of the few companies to prosper during the worst U.S. recession in 70 years. Yet Netflix CEO Reed Hastings still has something to worry about: an even cheaper DVD rental service run by one of his former lieutenants.

Once just an incongruous experiment amid the burgers and fries at McDonald's restaurants, Redbox has emerged as the largest operator of DVD-rental kiosks, with more than 15,400 vending machines set up to dispense $1-per-day discs in supermarkets and discount stores.

With Redbox opening an average of one kiosk per hour to lure budget-conscious consumers, Hastings is concerned that this upstart might upstage Netflix, whose cheapest mail-order plan costs $5 for two movie rentals in a month.

"By the end of the year, kiosks will likely be our No. 1 competitor," Hastings said in a recent conference call. "There are already more kiosks in America than video stores."

The fight for DVD-rental loyalties figures to intensify as Netflix, Redbox, Blockbuster Inc. and others vie for the attention of frugal consumers looking for inexpensive home entertainment. According to research from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Americans last year spent less money buying DVDs and more on rentals from stores, kiosks and online services like Netflix. The trend is expected to continue this year.

Redbox began in 2002 as a way for McDonald's Corp. to expand beyond the burger business. A strategy group inside the company tested a few "automated retail" ideas, as it called them.

"Vending sounded so last-century," said Gregg Kaplan, who led Redbox from inception until April, when he became chief operating officer of its parent company, Coinstar Inc.

McDonald's also tried a machine that made fresh French fries and an 18-foot-wide automated convenience store that sold everything from toilet paper to fancy sandwiches. Only the DVD kiosk stuck.

The group running Redbox grew from operating 12 of the DVD machines to about 900 in three years. By the middle of 2005, Redbox was itching to expand beyond burger joints, and McDonald's agreed to let it seek out another partner.

Coinstar already had a national sales team placing machines that converted loose change into bills in supermarkets, drug stores and other retailers — relationships it could use to pave the way for Redbox kiosks, too. In 2005 and 2006, Bellevue, Washington-based Coinstar invested $37 million in Redbox and took majority ownership, and this year Coinstar bought out McDonald's and other investors for up to $25 million.

Redbox, still based near McDonald's in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois, said last May it planned to go public, but the economy deteriorated and an IPO never materialized. Now DVD kiosks account for more than half of Coinstar's sales and profit. That profit more than doubled in the last quarter on sales that rose even more swiftly to $154 million. (An undisclosed portion of that came from DVDXpress, a much smaller kiosk chain Coinstar also owns.)

Meanwhile, Netflix grew at a slower pace, with first-quarter revenue rising 21 percent to $394 million.

Mitch Lowe, Redbox's president, came to the company after six years with Netflix, where he was vice president of business development. While at Netflix, he managed one of the company's competitive advantages: a popular system that recommends lesser-known movies to subscribers based on ratings for films they've already watched. That helps Netflix's 10.3 million customers sift through 100,000 movie titles.

In contrast, Redbox machines carry about 700 discs with 200 titles, mainly recent releases, and rely instead on the $1 nightly rate to encourage people to experiment. Four million people have swiped a card at one of the kiosks in the past month

Another difference: Because Netflix pays postage twice for every DVD it rents out, it does best when customers choose ambitious subscription plans but are slow to watch and return movies. By comparison, Redbox's profits depend on it renting out each disc as many times as possible before demand for the movie peters out.

To that end, Redbox tracks rentals to predict the right mix of titles and the right number of copies for each location. It also lets customers go online and reserve a DVD in a specific kiosk, then pick it up in person. The $1 price may be the initial draw, but most people end up paying to keep DVDs for two or three days.

If Redbox grows into a serious challenge to Netflix, it will have done what two much larger companies, Blockbuster and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., could not.

Both tried to match Netflix's DVD-by-mail success. Wal-Mart quit the business and gave all its customers to Netflix. Blockbuster still trails Netflix in DVDs by mail, and is also closing a growing number of unprofitable stores.

Now Redbox's success has prompted Blockbuster to promise 10,000 DVD kiosks of its own in a deal with NCR Corp. The maker of ATMs and cash registers acquired the second-largest movie kiosk company, TNR Holdings Corp., in April.

Redbox kiosks also sell used DVDs for $7, sometimes less than two weeks after they're available to rent, rather than the two or three months video stores usually wait. The practice irked some Hollywood studios — which may jeopardize the $1-a-day rental model that helps make Redbox so attractive.

Last year, NBC Universal's DVD distribution arm, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, pressed Redbox to limit the number of Universal DVDs its kiosks could carry and to destroy used discs instead of selling them at cut-rate prices. When Redbox refused, Universal ordered its partners to stop selling DVDs to Redbox at wholesale prices. Redbox sued Universal for violating antitrust laws, among other claims.

The case is still underway and Redbox would not say what effect it might have on its DVD rental or resale prices. But Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst Michael Pachter bets that if Redbox loses the lawsuit, other studios could follow Universal's lead, pushing Redbox to either agree to restrictions or buy movies at retail prices, then raise rental rates.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment did not return a call for comment.

In the era of YouTube and Hulu, video iPods, Netflix's own streaming video service and devices that connect TVs to the Internet, storming an industry by way of supermarket vending machines seems very yesterday.

But while DVDs will someday disappear, for now the market dynamics still work for Redbox: almost 90 percent of U.S. homes have a DVD or Blu-Ray player, while only a sliver download movies to their computer or stream them from the Internet, said Russ Crupnick, an entertainment analyst for market researcher NPD Group.

Crupnick doesn't expect streaming services to fully catch on until the technology is built into more television sets. And since many people just invested in new flat-screen TVs, it will be years before they replace them.

"Digital options and physical options can coexist," said Crupnick. "People think there's this balkanization — `Once I get Netflix, I never go to Blockbuster. Once I go to Redbox, I don't need Netflix.' That's really not the way that it works in the world."
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Apple stores to sell iPhone 3G S at 7 a.m.; Safari 4.0.1, Bluetooth 2.0

Having already promised to open its retail stores early, Apple now says that all its available stores will start selling the iPhone 3G S even earlier than expected. Also, the Mac maker has released Safari 4.0.1 and Bluetooth Firmware Update 2.0.

Not to be outdone by AT&T's 7 a.m. pre-order pickup on the iPhone 3G S launch day, Apple on Wednesday moved its doors-open time to 7 a.m., an hour ahead of the previous schedule.

Unlike AT&T, Apple isn't saving the early line for those already committed to an iPhone and will let on-the-spot purchasers buy an iPhone at that time in addition to those who already signed up for service at home. Apple also expects this timeframe to hold across all countries rather than just the US, which should lead to some of the countries in the first wave of the iPhone launch receiving their units before those in North America have fallen asleep.

In the US, six Apple retail stores will be closed for remodeling at the time of the launch.

Apple releases Safari 4.0.1

Just a week after the introduction of Safari 4 itself, Apple has patched it with Safari 4.0.1 (web link not yet available).

The update mends compatibility problems between the new Safari and certain iPhoto '09 features, particularly integration with Places and publishing photos directly to Facebook. Other bug fixes havent' been mentioned.

As of this writing, 4.0.1 is only available through Software Update.

Apple posts Bluetooth Firmware Update 2.0

A lower-key update has come Wednesday evening in the form of Bluetooth Firmware Update 2.0 (1.8MB).

Upgrading provides various bug fixes but is targeted at compatibility between certain Macs and both the Wireless Mighty Mouse as well as the Wireless Keyboard.

Only Macs with a Broadcom-made Bluetooth chipset will see the update. Installing requires Mac OS X 10.5.7 or later.
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Twitter power - or people power?

You'll have seen the suggestions, I suspect, that the remarkable scenes in Tehran and other major Iranian cities are a manifestation of a new phenomenon known as "Twitter power".

You'll have seen the suggestions, I suspect, that the remarkable scenes in Tehran and other major Iranian cities are a manifestation of a new phenomenon known as "Twitter power".

(Twitter, m'lud, is a method of communicating short messages via mobile phone or online, popular, apparently, among the urban young in Iran.)

I try to remain open-minded about new forms of communication (why else, after all, would I be blogging or on Facebook?), but I hope I am allowed by BBC impartiality rules to be mildly sceptical.

Where was Twitter when millions of people took to the streets of Manila in 1986, to put pressure on Ferdinand Marcos to quit?

Where was Twitter in central and eastern Europe 20 years ago to nudge Communist rule into the history books? Or in Tiananmen Square? Or more recently, in Kiev, or Tbilisi?

Of course, it's true that it is much easier now to spread a message than it was before the days of mobile phones or the internet. And I think the video footage taken on ordinary Iranians' mobile phones has genuinely added to our understanding of what is happening there.

But I am yet to be convinced that Twitter has done the same. Richard Sambrook, the BBC's director of global news, has written a useful piece about the pros and cons here Read More......

Clinton says Twitter is important for Iranian free speech

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday defended a US request to Twitter to postpone a planned maintenance shutdown as a way to allow Iranians to speak out and organize.

"The United States believes passionately and strongly in the basic principle of free expression," Clinton told reporters when asked about the State Department's request to the social networking firm Twitter.

"We promote the right of free expression," the chief US diplomat added.

"And it is the case that one of the means of expression, the use of Twitter is a very important one, not only to the Iranian people but now increasingly to people around the world, and most particularly to young people," she said.

"I wouldn't know a twitter from a tweeter, but apparently it is very important," she said, sparking laughter.

"And I think keeping that line of communications open and enabling people to share information, particularly at a time when there was not many other sources of information, is an important expression of the right to speak out and to be able to organize," she said.

The US government took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of its use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, a senior official said Tuesday.

The request highlighted the Obama administration's Web-savvy and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media.

But it also seemed to run counter to President Barack Obama's public efforts not to appear to be meddling in Iran's internal affairs.

Twitter delayed Monday's scheduled tune up, which would have taken place during daylight hours in Iran, and rescheduled it for Tuesday but said the decision was made with its network provider, not the State Department.
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A Billion-Euro Question

In the end all that seemed to matter was the size of the fine. When it was announced on May 13th it turned out to be the largest ever of its type: euro1.06 billion ($1.44 billion). This is what Intel, the world’s biggest chipmaker, will have to pay if the European Commission prevails in its view that the firm, which sells about 80 per cent of the microprocessors for PCs, has abused its dominance.

Yet the case against Intel is not chiefly about money that might one day “sponsor the European taxpayer”, in the words of Neelie Kroes, Europe’s competition commissioner (the fine will sit in a blocked bank account until the case is decided). The main question is: under what conditions can a quasi-monopoly such as Intel give discounts and rebates to computer-makers and retailers?

The commission does not think that such practices are illegal per se. But it claims that Intel’s discounts and rebates were often conditional on the exclusion of its rival, AMD. The commission says that in one case Intel paid Media-Saturn Holding, Germany’s largest electronics retailer, to sell only computers with Intel chips inside, and in another case a computer-maker had to agree to buy at least 95 per cent of the chips in its business PCs from Intel to qualify for rebates.

Computer-makers have to play along, the commission argues, because they depend on Intel for a majority of their chips-a result of the fact that AMD’s production capacity is limited. If a firm decided to buy as many AMD chips as possible, it could end up worse off since it might then have to pay more for the chips purchased from Intel. To overcome this handicap, AMD would have to price its processors below cost, and perhaps even pay its customers. In one case, according to the commission, AMD offered a computer-maker 1m free chips, but it ended up taking only 160,000 of them.
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Recovery of digital tech sector calls for new strategies

Now is the time to guide the future of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as it recovers from the effects of the economic crisis, the head of a United Nations technology unit said today.

“I am optimistic that not only will the ICT sector recover quickly, but it will also act as a catalyst in stimulating investment and growth in other sectors,” Hamadoun Touré, Secretary-General of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), said as the World Telecommunications Policy Forum (WTPF) opened in Lisbon, Portugal.

“WTPF presents a timely opportunity to forge global strategies that underpin the development and growth of future ICT networks and services,” he added.

ITU’s concerns have grown rapidly in recent years to go beyond fixed and mobile telephones to issues concerning internet bandwidth and the increased convergence of devices, applications and services that “facilitate seamless communications in a multi-protocol, multi-vendor environment,” according to the Union, which is sponsoring the three-day Forum.

This phenomenal growth of the sector, highlighted by mobile subscriptions reaching the 4 billion mark at the beginning of this year, prompted ITU’s Plenipotentiary Conference in 2006 to convene the WTPF to review emerging directions.

WTPF-09 focuses on key policy issues that will guide future regulatory and standardization efforts worldwide in the areas of new technologies and networks, communications security and regulations to bolster interconnection between different networks and types of communications, the Union said.

A Strategic Dialogue on ‘Confronting the Crisis’ opening yesterday ahead of the WTPF, moderated by TV anchors Stephen Cole and Vasco Trigo, and focused on how investment and financing in ICT can make a critical difference in the current recession.

At the session, repeated calls were made for a digital Marshall Plan, which had been proposed earlier by ITU at the Connect Africa Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda in October 2007.

Dr. Touré pointed out that Australia, the United States and several European countries are investing in stimulus packages based on the development of ICT infrastructure such as high-speed broadband.

Over 880 participants, representing 126 Member States and including 40 ministers, are expected to attend WTPF-09 along with representatives of the private sector, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
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