Motorola's Android sales are kaput...no big deal
According to market research company NPD Group, the sale of Android-based handsets grew 29% in the second quarter of this year, bringing the operating system to a 52% share of the US market. Contributing to this growth were South Korean manufacturers Samsung and LG, which both experienced "substantial gains."
But while Samsung and LG were improving their Android sales, Motorola Mobility fell dramatically.
Best Buy offers free iPhone 3GS ahead of iPhone 5 launch
Likely aiming to clear its inventory of the now two-year-old iPhone 3GS model, Best Buy said Monday that it would offer the device for free with a two-year contract with AT&T. The 3GS had previously sold for $49.
The offer is available from Best Buy's website and in store. It is unclear what type of stock the retailer is working with, but it's likely supplies are limited.
Got HP TouchPad but want Android? Touchdroid is coming
I failed to snag TouchPad, when HP was practically giving them away this weekend -- $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB one. Like many other attempted or successful buyers, I was thinking: "Wouldn't it be great if this tablet ran Android?" Perhaps it will.
There's already a project underway to port Android to the TouchPad, which is sure to delight lots of people who wanted the hardware but couldn't care less about WebOS or don't see much future in it. HP insists WebOS will continue, but, c`mon, who will develop apps if there are no devices?
BlackBerry users, would you pay $5 a month for 50 songs?
It's a strange question given the alternatives, but it must be asked. All Things Digital's Peter Kafka reports $5/month for 50 songs will be the going rate for Research in Motion's rumored BlackBerry Music Service.
You can stop laughing now. Please. Someone will hear.
Sony Ericsson keeps 'feature phones' alive with Android Walkman line
It's not uncommon for Sony Ericsson phones to prominently feature one of Sony's consumer electronics brands, and there are now handsets sporting Cybershot, Walkman, PlayStation, and Bravia branding. Today, the joint venture debuted the Sony Ericsson "Live with Walkman" Android smartphone, another device capitalizing on the music player brand Sony popularized nearly 30 years ago.
The smartphone features a 3.2" touchscreen, a single core 1GHz processor, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), and a 5 megapixel camera with 720p video capture.
Need More from Windows 7? Try Explorer Toolbar Editor
As you browse the contents of your hard drive in Windows Explorer, you will no doubt have noticed that depending on the type of folder you have selected, different buttons are displayed in the toolbar. While Windows generally does a pretty good job of determining what you might want to do with a particular type of file, it is not always right. Explorer Toolbar Editor enables you to choose which buttons you would like to have on display and when.
For example, when you are browsing through folders containing music, or performing searches of these folders, it is likely that you will either want to listen to these files or burn them to a disc so it makes sense to have the relevant buttons on display in the toolbar. However, if you would prefer different buttons to be displayed, or you would like these buttons to be displayed for other folder types, Explorer Toolbar Editor enables you to makes the necessary changes without having to edit the registry.
Did you miss these 26 software downloads last week? Get them now
It was such a busy week -- what with Google planning to buy Motorola Mobility and HP killing TouchPad -- you could easily have overlooked a momentous number of new software releases. As the new week begins, we look back on what you might have missed during the last one.
The major release last week was more about the migration of Mozilla Firefox 7 from Aurora to the Beta channel, rather than the recent announcement that Firefox 6 is now stable. Firefox 7 is a bigger update, with much improved memory management and a host of similar features. Read through the blog announcement for more information. In addition to Firefox 6 going stable and Firefox 7 entering beta, Firefox 8a2 hit the Aurora channel, whilst the first preview of Firefox 9a1 hit Nightly. None of the planned UI enhancements have been implemented in this first alpha of Firefox 9 and, for OS X Lion users, these recent Firefox updates may leave you disappointed. The full screen mode does not place Firefox on a separate space and the scrollbars do not mimic the new bars introduced in the new operating system.
'Google TVs? They're selling really well'
That's the word from an employee at my local Sony Style Store, at Fashion Valley Mall in San Diego. Google TV products should be selling, because Sony has priced them to move as part of a clever back-to-school promotion.
The store prominently displays three "Internet TV" products, which all incorporate Google TV -- Blu-ray player and 24-inch and 32-inch televisions. The marketing pitch is simple: They're perfect for the dorm room. The Blu-ray player, which sold for $399.99 a few months ago, is $199.99. The 24-inch TV is $299.99 and the larger one sells for $499.99. I was so-o-o-o tempted to buy the Google TV Blu-ray player.
'It was like a stampede, and they went quick'
That's how a Best Buy employee described the line waiting to buy discounted HP TouchPads today outside the Mission Valley store in San Diego.
More than 100 people waited for the store to open, on a Sunday morning, to get one of about 30 TouchPads still in stock. They were sold out five minutes after the Best Buy opened.
Best Buy nukes tablet partners, resumes HP TouchPad sales
So much for my heaping praise on Best Buy. The retailer has decided to unload its unsold stock of TouchPads after all. It's an atomic blast that will have grave consequences for Best Buy and, more importantly, its other tablet partners. Apple might just laugh all the way to the bank.
The problem is this: Best Buy is sitting on an inventory of as many as 245,000 TouchPads -- or was yesterday. Today, who knows how many there will be for how long. By midday yesterday, cheap TouchPads were sold out pretty much everywhere, except HP online. Today, Best Buy owns TouchPad sales and already has sold out its online stock. Now it's up to retail stores to clear inventory. Last week, my local Best Buy sold the 16GB TouchPad for $499.99. Today it's $99 -- $149 for the 32GB model -- for an attractive 9.7-inch tablet, running the well-reviewed WebOS.
Sit down, kick off your shoes and cozy up to the new BetaNews
Please pardon the dust, and watch out for falling debris. BetaNews relaunched overnight August 20. The site has moved from a custom content management system to (a very customized) WordPress.
BetaNews founder Nate Mook and his developer team have done a great job getting the new site up and running on WP, which will offer lots more flexibility curating and presenting content and allow for better reader engagement. Expect more changes as we tweak the look and feel. I'm looking forward to lots of (cough, cough) work this creates for me as managing editor. It will be fun.
What does the glut of cheap HP TouchPads mean for Apple and Android tablet sales?
If you're trying to get a $99 TouchPad but can't find it anywhere, blame Best Buy. Based on calls placed to a half-dozen of the stores today, Best Buy has refused to sell its huge stock of HP tablets, choosing to return them to HP instead. It's probably cheaper for HP to dump the TouchPads -- as in a landfill -- then to sell them. You can thank Best Buy, which is sitting on an estimated 245,000 units, for that and partly for the mess at HP's online store today.
But there's sense -- loads of it -- for Best Buy shipping back unsold TouchPads rather than putting the soon-to-be obsolete devices into the hands of greedy geeks. HP, which is spending more than $100 million liquidating tablet stock, will compensate Best Buy for inventory. Better to take that cash rather than collapse sales of other tablets and quite possibly create unrealistic expectations among regular shoppers about what tablets should sell for.
Can HP survive Leo Apotheker?
It has been a rough week for Hewlett Packard, which stock took a beating following Thursday’s announcement that the company was rapidly exiting the hardware business, all but killing off WebOS and its associated line of mobile devices, including TouchPad. Within a day, a fifth of the company’s value disappeared on Wall Street.
How much, you say? A staggering $16.2 billion -- some $4 billion more than Google paid for Motorola Mobility. Analysts seem dismayed, and have downgraded the company’s stock. At least one of the credit rating agencies has threatened a downgrade of HP’s debt, and investors seem to doubt the company’s ability to make the switch.
It's a TouchPad Gold Rush!!
To celebrate the launch of BetaNews' latest redesign, we all went on a Cannonball Run for the newly-discounted HP TouchPad, and we found that it truly was a gold rush, and nearly every TouchPad had been scooped up.
Diehards all over the place hit the shops at 8am EST this morning to try to snatch up the super cheap, high quality WebOS tablets from whichever retailers had them in stock, and as it turns out, they weren't exactly lining their birdcages with the things, as some journalists had initially suggested.
Where's the HP TouchPad fire sale?
The InterWebs buzzed last night with excitement about TouchPads selling for $99 and $149 -- that's for the 16GB and 32GB models, respectively. These prices make Border's bankruptcy liquidation look pathetic. Suddenly, TouchPad is the Lamborghini of tablets for 30 year-old VW bug prices. Yeah, but where do you get such a steal? Not where I expected.
Last night, Amazon and Best Buy still offered TouchPad at full retail prices here in the United States. Best Buy Canada, among a handful of other retailers, offered the discount prices yesterday -- that's $300 and $350 off. Today. The WebOS tablet is gone from both US retail Websites, and that's not because they're sold out. I called three East Coast Best Buys this morning and got the same response from all. If they carried TouchPad, it would still be for the higher prices. HP has recalled the tablet, and Best Buy has none to sell.
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