Feeling the heat from Verizon and that company's expanding 4G rollout, AT&T said Tuesday at CES that would accelerate its LTE plans, planning to have the network complete by 2013. In addition, the company plans to start preparing customers by releasing 20 4G-capable phones during 2011.

The carrier would also move up the launch of LTE overall -- expecting to enable the higher speeds by the middle of this year. Until now, AT&T had been rather vague in its plans for LTE's launch, but it is likely Verizon's high-profile 4G push has given AT&T impetus to catch up to its biggest rival.

Continue reading →

Vendors aren't waiting for the Consumer Electronics Show to officially open. The kick-off keynote, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, starts tonight at 9:30 pm ET. The show officially opens tomorrow. Early announcements, such as ASUS, Toshiba and Vizio tablets, tumbled out like little stones falling down the mountainside on Monday and Tuesday. Today, it's the avalanche. Which announcements matter?

Amazon is opening an Android apps store. That's right, it's Amazon versus Android for Android developers. The Amazon appstore Developer Portal beckons Android developers away from the Android Marketplace. Apple can laugh all the way to the bank.

Continue reading →

Web retailer Amazon.com is launching its own Android app store both for Android devices and for the Web. Wednesday, the company opened the beta of its developer portal, inviting Android appmakers to enroll in the program and submit their apps for approval.

There may be one "official" Android Market that is run by Google, but that doesn't mean Google necessarily owns the Android application trade. Thanks to the mobile OS's open source underpinnings, there are many third-party app stores designed by carriers, manufacturers, and software companies. Some companies that have released devices running on Android have also created app stores exclusive to their devices.

Continue reading →

Actually, I'm hoping to be wrong in this assertion, and with main Consumer Electronics Show events commencing tomorrow there's still a chance I might be. The most important tablet, or table concept, must come from Google. The plethora of Android 2.x tablets won't be competition enough against iPad. When it comes to products and marketing, there often isn't safety in numbers.

During CES 2010, Google released the Nexus One. The search and information giant designed the HTC-manufactured smartphone, which ran the then newest Android version -- 2.1. Many bloggers and journalists wrongly wrote that Google charted new retail waters by selling direct. I repeatedly corrected this claim. For example, Nokia has sold phones direct for years, Many blog or news posts about the N1 also missed the point: Google wasn't going into retail sales but establishing a reference design for manufacturers and developers. From that perspective, Google executed brilliantly with N1 and continued with last month's release of the Samsung-made Nexus S.

Continue reading →

Okay, so, I'm throwing things into a rollie and a backpack to head off to the Consumer Electronics Show tomorrow. It's the usual drill, which I could probably do in my sleep by now, but I still have to apply some consciousness. For example, tomorrow evening I get my rental bike delivered to the hotel, but Vegas is going to be cool this year. So, I have to pack light but warm items: wool cap, ski glove liners, windproof shell.

And I'm not taking my HP Jornada as a note-taking device for the first time since 1998. This time, I need to stay connected. So, an old Lenovo X301 with Windows 7, solid-state storage, 3G and WiFi will have to do it. Oh, and extra battery. At this point, I'm as ready as anyone can be for the chaos that is CES. What is going to be like there? The rest of this post highlights various aspects of the show, some perennial, some dynamic.

Continue reading →

Streaming entertainment service Netflix announced ahead of CES 2011 Tuesday that it had partnered with select manufacturers to include a Netflix "button" on remote controls. So far Blu-ray players from Dynex brand, Haier, Memorex, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba will include the button, as well as Internet connected TVs from Sharp, Sony and Toshiba.

Netflix buttons would provide one-click access to the built-in application, which the company hopes will increase usage of what has become an increasingly larger percentage of its business. The first enabled devices would appear in the spring, the company said.

Continue reading →

Smartphones and tablets may be the early buzz darlings of this year's Consumer Electronics Show, but no one should forget USB 3.0. This afternoon, Samsung reminded me in a press release about new USB 3.0 drives it's popping this week.

Three drive lines -- two of which are portable -- will be available. Portable drive colors: Onyx black, Sapphire blue and Coral pink, with capacities up to 1TB. The new desktop drive comes in 1, 1.5 and 2TB capacities.

Continue reading →

Forrester Research claims that one in three Americans will own a tablet PC -- that's 82 million of us -- by 2015. No wonder "Tablets look to steal the show at CES and beyond," as my colleague Ed Oswald asserted yesterday. It's no coincidence that Forrester released its tablet forecast less than two days before the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show starts.

Already, the tablet noise is growing, with Microsoft rumored to be showing off Windows-powered tablets during CEO Steve Ballmer's June 5th opening keynote. Then there are the Android rumors, such as the HTC Scribe running Honeycomb (Android 3.0).

Continue reading →

Reports indicate that Microsoft is prepared to show off a connected television solution of its own, and will demo a TV set top box this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The device will be similar to those already offered by competitors Apple and Google.

The Seattle Times reports that the device will come in at a price point below $200, and is expected to go on sale later in the year. In the simplest terms, it is an effort by Microsoft to bring its Windows Media Center concept to the masses.

Continue reading →

Let the march to Android 2.3 begin, with (gasp) more smartphones running version 2.2. You've got to love this one-step-behind (sometimes two) innovation that defines Android. My Google-branded Nexus S runs Gingerbread (aka Android 2.3), and it's the only phone that officially does. The carrier and OEM channels move much slower than does Google operating system development. I kind of understand the slow upgrading of existing handsets, but most everything new shouldn't run something old. Hehe, "these aren't the Droids you're looking for." Today's 2.2 star: the HTC EVO Shift 4G from Sprint, available on January 9 for a cool $149.99 (with two-year contract and after $100 mail-in rebate). Update: After I posted, Best Buy announced presale availability of January 6.

By the specs, Sprint's new smartphone impresses (except, perhaps the processor): 800MHz Qualcomm processor (MSM7630); 3.6-inch capacitive touchscreen (with 800 x 480 resolution), slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 720p video capture, FM radio and all the other expected stuff, like GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi. Too bad that the EVO Shift 4G is but another new Android phone running an old OS version.

Continue reading →

I sure don't. Otherwise I would have joined the cacophony writing about Apple's market capitalization milestone yesterday. I see the $300 billion valuation as another excuse for pageview-obsessed bloggers and journalists and hype-seeking Wall Street analysts and investors to write even more about Apple. It's great news for driving the share price higher.

From one perspective, Apple's valuation achievement is so impressive it shouldn't be ignored. Following the Sept. 29, 2008 stock market collapse, Apple's valuation plummeted. Apple's market cap was a mere $88.68 billion on Oct. 2, 2008, down by nearly half from a month earlier. Apple's stock price comeback is nothing short of miraculous over the past two years. In late May, Apple's market capitalization topped Microsoft.

Continue reading →

Google is aiming to keep on an even keel with Apple by looking for industry support for a planned newsstand for Android devices. The plans seem similar to what Apple already offers publishers to offer online subscriptions to their content through the App Store.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is currently in discussions with several content providers including Time Warner, Conde Nast, and Hearst Publications. Details are slim, but it appears the Mountain View, Calif. company is ready to do what's needed to bring content providers on board.

Continue reading →

Could 2011 be the year of the tablet? It sure seems that way -- as many as 100 companies may release tablet computers in 2011, say analysts. This week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas will be the debut of several of these devices, all hoping to at least compete with the juggernaut that Apple's iPad has become.

What was once a market that seemed to have little potential has proven to be one of technology's most lucrative -- and untapped. Apple was able to successfully take advantage of this opening, and has left its competitors scrambling in an attempt to catch up.

Continue reading →

On Monday, just a couple of days before the International Consumer Electronics Show for the year 2011 takes place, chipmaker Intel revealed the specs for its long-awaited second generation Core i3, i5, and i7 processors and the related chipset family code named "Sandy Bridge." Intel's 32nm process chips will be the replacement for the Nehalem architecture that has been in use since 2008.

The most noteworthy qualities of the Intel Core 2011 chips come from their new construction, which integrates the CPU, GPU, and a multi-purpose I/O controller on the same little piece of silicon. What makes this especially interesting is that early testers of the chips say the integrated graphics processor (called either HD 2000 or HD 3000) can actually outperform certain low-level discrete graphics cards. Intel today highlighted the chips' graphical capabilites with "Intel Clear Video HD" for high def, and "Intel InTru 3D" for stereoscopic Blu-Ray playback.

Continue reading →

Holy downloads, Batman, BitTorrent has 100 million monthly active users -- 20 million per day. Average daily downloads: 400,000. That's a whole lot of file sharing, and I wonder: How active are Betanews readers on BitTorrent?

BitTorrent revealed the subscriber data in one of many tech announcements leading into the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, which kicks off with Wednesday evening's keynote delivered by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Continue reading →