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Disney, Q-pot Choco, Honey Bee: Japan Gets 3 Extra-Cute Android Phones

Posted: 27 Jan 2012 04:16 AM PST

qpot sharp 2

Android adoption is growing rapidly in Japan, with local handset manufacturers doing everything they can in order to meet the demands of customers in all segments of the population. One particularly attractive target group seems to be women, given how many Japanese companies say they design Android phones specifically for female users.

Here are three recent examples.

First, Sharp has designed a weird “chocolate bar”-type handset that Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo plans to roll out on Valentine’s Day.

The so-called “Q-pot.Phone SH-04D” [JP] comes with Android 2.3, a 3.7-inch LCD with 540×960 resolution, NFC e-wallet function, Wi-Fi, and an 8MP CMOS camera.

Here are some accessories owners can get:

Second, Japanese carrier SoftBank rolled out Kyocera’s HONEY BEE 101K [JP] today, another handset designed with female customers in mind.

This model features Android 2.3, a 3.5-inch LCD with 800×480 resolution, a 5.1MP CMOS camera, a MP5225 dual-core CPU with 1.2GHz, 2GB ROM, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

Third, Disney Mobile has come up with the DM012SH, a Android 2.3 handset (made by Sharp). It comes with a 4-inch LCD with 960×540 resolution, an 8MP CMOS camera, NFC e-wallet function, infrared, digital TV tuner, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi, and a microSDHC slot.

Disney Mobile, a Japanese MVNO, is planning to offer the DM012SH (pre-installed with a special Disney UI, Disney apps, wallpapers, etc.) next month. Every buyer will get one the cases below for free:

Android Dominates Moolah Media’s Mobile Ads

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 03:03 PM PST

Moolah

It looks like publishers and advertisers are warming to mobile ad startup Moolah Media. The company says that in 2011, it generated 7 million leads for its advertisers — and 1.9 million of those leads (27 percent of the year’s total) came in December.

Also in December, Moolah says its ads reached 45 million Americans. And interest in the company is growing — Moolah projects that traffic to its website will triple this month, as pictured in the chart above.

The company first launched in November 2010. At the time, CEO Shawn Scheuer said that no one had effectively brought the “performance-based” ad model into the mobile world. Even now, Scheuer says most ad companies are interested in paying publishers based on impressions or clicks, rather than the form submissions, inbound phone calls, and mobile app installs that Moolah tracks and pays for. So Moolah’s approach is bringing more direct-response marketers into the mobile world — 50 advertisers so far.

Last fall, Moolah tried to improve its ads with the launch of SmartMoolah, which gathers more data about user behavior after the click. Since then, publishers have seen significantly higher payments, and are now willing to hand more of their inventory over to Moolah, Scheuer says.

He also revealed that 65 percent of Moolah’s ads get served on Android devices, compared to 19 percent on feature phones and a lowly 14 percent for iOS devices. That’s because certain products or services do better on certain carriers or devices, and it’s possible to target ads at that level on Android by not iPhone.

“We’re a small team, so we have to focus on where see the highest response rates, and right now that’s Android,” Scheuer says. “Apple has been clamping down on the user ID tracking, and they’re kind of spooking a lot of people about that. That’s really hurt advertising on the iPhone.”

Motorola Mobility Closes Out Q4 2011 With An $80 Million Net Loss

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 02:48 PM PST

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Motorola Mobility released their fourth quarter and year-end financials today, and now we can see why they made it a point earlier this month to downplay analyst expectations. The company’s new figures reveal that while Motorola raked in $3.4 billion in Q4 2011, they also incurred a net loss of $80 million.

Things don’t look much more promising when we shift our attention to their mobile offerings. Motorola’s myriad mobile devices accounted for the lion’s share of their revenue — $2.5 billion to be precise, a year-over-year increase of 5%.

Still, despite pushing out devices like the Droid RAZR and their XYBOARD tablet in time for the holidays, Motorola didn’t see a notable jump over their performance last quarter when during which their mobile devices netted $2.4 billion in revenue.

Also interesting to see is how Motorola stacks up to their mobile competitors when it comes to device shipments. Motorola announced earlier this month that they shipped 10.5 million mobile devices in Q4 2011, down from 11.3 million back in Q4 2010. Of those 10.5 million units shipped 5.3 million were smartphones, which doesn’t sound too shabby until you realize that Android-loving rival Samsung sold 35 million smartphones.

Taiwan-based HTC would probably be the closest in terms of performance — while they didn’t release specific device numbers along with their unaudited quarterly results, Bloomberg’s estimates pegged them at roughly 10 million devices shipped. Coincidentally, both Motorola and HTC have made known their intentions to streamline their smartphone portfolios going forward, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their earnings change as a result.

Stepping back to look at their yearly performance, we find that Motorola Mobility shipped a grand total of 42.4 million mobile devices, which includes 18.7 million smartphones and 1 million tablets. Those in tandem with their (less interesting) home segment offerings led Motorola to pick up net revenues of $13.1 billion, albeit with a net loss of $249 million. Of course, Motorola Mobility’s on the precipice of some drastic change, what with their pending acquisition by Google still churning along. With the transaction expected to finish early this year, we could be looking at a completely different Motorola before too long.

Steam Takes First Steps Into Mobile With iOS And Android Apps

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 12:43 PM PST

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As a gamer with admittedly poor impulse control, the newly-released Steam app for iOS and Android has me very worried. On the one hand, it seems like an ideal way to to keep tabs on the popular gaming service on the go.

On the other though, I could easily see myself going overboard on buying games I don’t need when I should be pretending to be a productive member of society.

The Steam app sports a set of features that should be familiar to many a PC gamer, including gaming news feeds and the ability to browse the extensive catalog. It’s also very geared toward communication, as it allows you to keep in touch with your fellow Steam buddies by poking through their profiles or kicking off a mobile chat session.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have no Steam friends, so the biggest threat that the new Steam app poses to people like me is that it provides up-to-date information about games on sale, which means that my loved ones will soon notice that I’m spending more time checking to see if Cave Story+ is on sale than, y’know, interacting with them.

Yes, I know I have a problem.

My only consolation is that the app is usable by people who have been invited to the beta, so I’ll be safe from the allure of buying cheap games from the park for at least a little while longer. If you’re lucky enough to be among the select few with beta access, the app is already live in the Android and iOS app stores. Download away, but please don’t tell me what I’m missing out on.

It’s About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around “Hero” Devices

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 09:48 AM PST

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HTC has gotten to be remarkably good at churning out phone after phone these days, but it’s gotten to feel like each new release is too little too soon. Thankfully, the godfather of Android hardware has come to its senses, as revealed by Mobile Today.

According to HTC UK head Phil Roberson, 2012 is going to be all about giving their customers “something special.” To that end, HTC plans to focus on a smaller number of “hero” smartphones and dial back their presence in the tablet market.

“We have to get back to focusing on what made us great – amazing hardware and a great customer experience,” Roberson said. “We ended 2011 with far more products than we started out with. We tried to do too much.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself. HTC’s philosophy as of late seems to have been about continually chasing the bleeding edge by pushing out new hardware before its predecessors have gotten the chance to breathe. It’s refreshing to hear (err, read) that someone at HTC feels the same way, because the glut of options ultimately becomes a big problem for consumers.

Chris Ziegler at The Verge noted that the here in the States, T-Mobile’s high-end HTC Amaze 4G debuted only 120 days after the carrier’s previous flagship Android phone hit sales channels. It’s no secret that technological advances come at a blistering pace, but to push out a new flagship device in four months could easily come as a kick in the gut for customers who splurged on the previous model in an attempt to future-proof themselves a bit.

Being on the bleeding edge is great, except for when your customers are the ones who get hurt. HTC isn’t exactly alone when it comes to this sort of behavior — Samsung’s LTE-packing Skyrocket overshadowed their original Galaxy S II model, and Motorola’s Droid RAZR Maxx trades a few millimeters for some outstanding battery life while leaving original Droid RAZR owners lamenting their luck. Still, while Samsung’s market saturating plans are doing them well, Motorola has already announced their intention to trim down their smartphone offerings for 2012.

Meanwhile, the revelation of their tablet plans (or lack thereof) doesn’t come as a huge shock. The Taiwanese company released two actual tablets in 2011, with a handful of carrier-specific variants thrown in for good measure. Alas, the tablet market has become an ever tougher nut to crack, and while HTC won’t be abandoning it completely, they’ll be spending more time and resources on their main moneymaker: smartphones.

HTC has been on shakier financial ground than it’s used to recently, and at the time they cited “increased competition” in the mobile space as one of the reasons their most recent quarterly earnings ended their six-quarter growth streak. This new move is a drastic one, but it’s worth a shot considering that their once-solid approach doesn’t seem so solid anymore. With Mobile World Congress right around the corner it shouldn’t be long before we get a better glimpse at HTC’s new strategy, though whether it actually works is another story entirely.

Distimo: Being Featured In The Android Market Can Boost Apps’ Rank By 172%

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 08:46 AM PST

android

Earlier this morning, we looked at the findings from analytics provider Distimo‘s latest report, which examined what happens when mobile apps go on sale. (Spoiler: when priced correctly, revenue goes way up). The second part of the report looked at the ranking gains that occur when an app achieves “featured” status in a mobile app store like iTunes or the Android Market.

Developers often don’t know their app is being featured until they see the large, unexplained jumps in download numbers in their preferred app analytics service. The effect can be remarkable. In the iPhone App Store, for example, a featured app sees an average jump in its ranking of some 15 spots or so, during the first three days. Some apps gain significantly more, while others see much less action. (Distimo looked at Q4 data for the top 100 most popular apps to determine these findings).

In the iPad App Store and Android Market, featured apps see even higher gains than on iPhone. iPad apps’ average gain was +27 during the first three days, while featured Android apps (i.e., “Staff Picks”) were boosted up +42 spots.

Below, the chart shows the proportion of apps that gained more than 50 ranks, more than 25 ranks and those that lost ranks after being featured (oddly, that can happen), again, during the first three days.

But not all apps immediately feel the effects of their featured status. In fact, one-third of the featured iPhone apps Distimo examined did not gain in the first three days of being featured. Given that apps are, in general, only featured for seven days in all three major app stores, these first few days are critical.

During the full seven days that apps are featured, the average gains are +65 spots for Android, +15 for iPhone and +28 for iPad apps.

Distimo cautions that even though the differences between platforms seem spectacular, the app’s overall position matters, too. For example, a jump from 10 to 5 would means a substantial uptake in downloads, but going from 50 to 45 wouldn’t matter as much.

To depict this visually, the graph below shows the relative rank gains. (A rank change from 3 to 2 is an increase of 50%, while the change from 50 to 25 is 100%. All figures are 7-day averages).

The chart shows that approximately half the apps that have been featured in the Android Market have an increase over 100% while one-third of featured iPad apps gained more than 200%. (Ranks were as follows: iPad up 252%, iPhone up 137%, and Android up 172%).

Also interesting is what happens when the featured period ends. Using an average from the following five days after being featured, Distimo found that the boost was still having an overall positive effect. On average, iPad apps were up +145%, iPhone apps were up +75% and Android apps were up +828% during this “post-featured” time period.

Note that this report only looked at the top 100 most popular apps in any category – the gains in less popular apps could be quite different.

What Happens When Apps Go On Sale?: Revenue Up 22% On iPhone, 29% On Android

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 07:56 AM PST

DistimoCorporate300px

In a new research report from Distimo, the app store analytics provider examined two different ways that allow mobile developers to get a bump in both their download numbers and revenue. One way, which is within the developers’ control, is putting the app on sale. Within the first day, iPhone developers see an average increase of 41% in revenue using this method, and see revenue increases of 22% by the sale’s end. Android apps, however, rose just 7% on day one, but closed out the sale with higher percentage gains than either iPhone or iPad.

The second method Distimo looked into is getting the app featured in the app store. This is up to the app store’s operator, like Google or Apple, of course. (We’ll examine Distimo’s findings on featured apps in a subsequent post). 

When a developer decides to put an application on sale, there’s a delicate balance that has to be achieved. The sale price has to be low enough to encourage more downloads, obviously, but it also needs to be low enough that it encourages enough download volume to make up for the lost revenue.

To examine what happens during when apps go on sale, Distimo examined the 100 top grossing apps in the iPhone App Atore, iPad App Store and Android Market. On the first day of the sale, the average revenue increase by +41% in the iPhone App Store,  and by 15 days in, was up by +22%. On the iPad App Store, the day one effect was even greater: up +52% on day one and up +19% by day 15.

But the boost in the Android Market was the largest of all, although this couldn’t immediately be seen. By day one, revenue was just +7% on average, but by day 15, it was up +29%. These are percentage increases, though – not dollar amounts.

Keep in mind, too, that these gains are averages. Not all developers were so lucky. In looking closer at the numbers, Distimo found that 44% of iPhone apps lost revenue during the sale, with 23% seeing a decline in revenue by more than 20%. This is why the sale price setting is key to maximizing the gains. For example, a discount of a dollar on a $7.99 app lowers the revenue, but a discount of $3 increased revenue by 131%. In general, the tipping point occurred when the app’s price was cut in half or the app was offered in Tier 1 ($0.99) or Tier 2 ($1.99).

The graph below shows what happens when prices were cut by 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 80%. The conclusion here is that it can pay to put an app on sale, but to actually earn more revenue, you have to make a significant price cut.

This all begs the question, then: what price should a developer ask? There isn’t a simple ratio to use. The right price depends a lot on what kind of application it is, where it’s sold, what category it falls into and its overall complexity. Simple apps that are easy to make (and copy) are priced lower. You can see the variations by revenue, category and app store here:

Since this is a lot of info to take in, we’ll look at Distimo’s findings related to apps being featured in the app store in a separate post. You can find the full report here.

ShoeBox App Now Integrates With Facebook Timeline, Lets You Add Photos To Years Past

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST

iPhone_0_3Phone_display

ShoeBox, the mobile app that lets you scan old photos and post them online, is today announcing Facebook Timeline integration. Using the newly released version of the ShoeBox iOS application, users will be able to scan photographs of family and friends using their smartphone, tag users by name, and then share those photos to Facebook.

But here’s the really cool part: ShoeBox is one of the first Timeline-integrated apps that’s letting you post photos into the past. By that, I mean you can edit the date on your photo, and it will post to the correct place on your Facebook Timeline. Nifty!

I’ll admit to being a huge fan of what 1000memories is doing with its ShoeBox app, something which probably shows my age. I, like many of you (old people), didn’t “grow up” on Facebook. My childhood and young adulthood were captured by flash bulbs, printouts, and trips to the drug store to pick up prints – not smartphones and social networks. ShoeBox provides an easy way to get those old photos online so they can actually be shared and enjoyed.

In its first release back in October, the ShoeBox app allowed you to quickly snap a smartphone photo of a printed photo, crop, flatten and rotate the image, then fill in missing information, like that which might be scrawled on the back of the printout (where the photo was taken, who’s in it, what you were doing, date, etc.)

However, until today, none of that information actually appeared in the correct format to be useful on Facebook. It only worked to supplement on 1000memories’ own website, its social network of days past at 1000memories.com.

With today’s launch of the new iPhone application, things have changed. Now you can find and follow Facebook friends in the app and tag your Facebook friends by name so they’re alerted when the photos go online, a much-needed addition. You’re also now able to edit the date on the Facebook post to send it “back in time” to the date you specify.

Interestingly, this process of posting to the past could have been automated, but 1000memories says the team decided to use Facebook’s Photos API and not the OpenGraph API. Since the Photos API allows posts to appear on the Timeline in a different way – big and beautiful like Instagram now does – they decided to use it instead.

But the company is pushing Facebook to revive support for EXIF data for the ShoeBox app itself, which would allow users to automatically post pictures to the right spot while also still appearing in the attractive, larger format. EXIF (exchangeable image file format) is a standard format that contains a digital photo’s metadata information, – e.g., details about the camera’s make and model or the photo’s timestamp.

Facebook briefly supported EXIF data during Timeline’s tests, but stopped doing so because users were “freaked out” that Facebook knew when a photo was taken. Now Facebook is now more cautious about when and where it supports EXIF.

However, in a case like ShoeBox’s, using EXIF data would simplify the process of time-stamping these photos appropriately. Although the photo in question wouldn’t have been a digital photo to start, ShoeBox could still send Facebook EXIF data that relates to the scanned-in photo’s actual data of capture as indicated by a user’s caption (e.g., “Halloween 1985,” “beach trip 1997,” etc.).

The updated ShoeBox app is likely to be the first of many Timeline-integrated apps to come, now that the Facebook Timeline is mandatory. Although not everyone is thrilled about Facebook’s new look, when you can get past the knee-jerk “change is bad” mentality, there’s a pretty compelling use case here with the idea of filling out the missing Timeline dates with old photos. With Timeline, Facebook is no longer just a utility for social networking, it’s a digital representation of our lives. For it to be a truer reflection those lives, however, properly supporting the 4 trillion printed out photos in the world would be a good start.

The new version of the ShoeBox app is available here. (And yes, Android is coming).

Sprint’s Epic 4G Touch Gets Stripped Of Carrier IQ

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 06:43 AM PST

Sprint Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch

Sprint has been spending the past few weeks quietly pumping out software updates that remove Carrier IQ from affected devices, and now it looks like Sprint’s flagship Android device (for now) will be able to run wild and free.

Thanks to an update that started making the rounds yesterday, Samsung’s Galaxy S II variant the Epic 4G Touch joins a handful of Sprint devices to get the Carrier IQ cleanup treatment.

Aside from giving Carrier IQ the boot (which Sprint refers to as a “security update”), the new build also includes updated modems and a fix for an issue involving multiple calendar alerts. The only other notable addition in the new update is support for the Commercial Mobile Alert System, which allows Sprint to push out critical public safety updates to customers in the event of an emergency.

While this release is the first official one that removes Carrier IQ from Sprint’s Galaxy S II, Samsung has been working on a clean build for some time now. To wit, a Carrier IQ-free software build for the Epic 4G Touch was leaked one day prior to Sprint’s announcement that they would discontinue use of the oft-maligned diagnostics tool.

If your Epic 4G Touch hasn’t yet been graced with the update, it’s only a matter of time — according to Sprint, the OTA rollout will should be complete within 10 days. Of course, if you’re really impatient, you could always load up a flashy new custom ROM and be done with Carrier IQ for good.

It Only Makes Sense That Samsung Would Delay The Galaxy S III Launch

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 06:27 AM PST

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Every once in a while something comes along that’s worth a wait, and I think the Samsung Galaxy S III will be one of those things. We’ve all been expecting Samsung’s next flagship to show its face at MWC in February, but according to the Verge, Samsung may have other plans.

Anonymous sources who spoke with the Verge claim that the SGSIII will still be available “before summer,” but that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may not be the most beneficial launch venue. Last year, the Samsung Galaxy S II was debuted at MWC and though it was available in Europe almost immediately, the U.S. had to wait quite a while before AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were all comfortable with their model.

That said, the Galaxy S II still has a little life in it yet, and it would be just plain silly for Samsung to interrupt its success too early. A look at the numbers, if you don’t mind:

  • In less than a month, Samsung sold 1 million Galaxy S IIs in its home country of South Korea
  • Samsung sold 3 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S II in its first 55 days on the market
  • After 85 days on the market, units sold jumped to the 5 million mark
  • By September, the company shipped over 10 million units
  • At this point, 1 in every 10 South Koreans is carrying a Galaxy S II

Meanwhile, the original Galaxy S is still selling well, topping 20 million units sold.

No doubt the Galaxy S III will be a beast, and Samsung is well aware of its mobile prowess by this point. A bevy of new phones — most of which are meant for the European market — will launch at MWC. Still, after the success of earlier generation Galaxy S models, Samsung knows its consumers will wait a tad longer to hear about the SIII as long as it shows up on shelves shortly thereafter.

From the report this morning, we believe that will be the case.



Google, Look Out Behind You!

Posted: 26 Jan 2012 06:01 AM PST

Rhino charging

Editor's note: Guest author Keith Teare is General Partner at his incubator Archimedes Labs and CEO of newly funded just.me. He was a co-founder of TechCrunch.

Google has been fighting the threat of Facebook for some time. It is now fighting for its life on two fronts! Facebook and now Apple loom large as it attempts to chart the future.

The past two weeks have seen some astounding changes in the software landscape. The current earnings season gives some clues and confirms some of the mega-trends that are leading to the need for change for Google in particular. As I wrote some months ago in Smart Mobile and the Thin Cloud.

The next 10 years are going to be wonderfully interesting. And the thanks goes to . . . Apple and Steve Jobs. Think different is no longer a choice.

Earnings hit and miss!

Google missed the streets numbers for its Q1 earnings last week and has seen its stock decline from $670.25 to yesterday’s close of $569.49. Apple, by comparison, has just beaten, no annihilated, the Street’s predictions and its stock has gone from a low of $363 to yesterday’s close of $446.66 in the same period.

It’s all about mobile!

The cause of Google's relative failure (and it is only relative) is that it failed to hit the "Cost Per Click (CPC)" target expected by analysts. The reason for this seems to be connected to the rapid growth of mobile traffic and the subsequent decline in paid clicks on Google searches.

The same trend – the growth of mobile – that is driving Google to despair is responsible for Apples staggering growth. Rising iPhone, iPad and associated revenues such as the App Store, drove Apple’s profits for the quarter above $13 billion, a number larger than Google's revenues for the quarter.

The growth of mobile is the key driver of almost everything happening in the software ecosystem today. Consumers and enterprises are turning their backs on the desktop and the laptop at an accelerating rate as they embrace tablets and smart phones. This trend is exponential and global.

Google's reliance on search revenues derived from web searches in a browser, its former strength, is now not sufficient to guarantee growth.

Google's focus on Android is a necessary but not sufficient part of confronting these trends. It gives the company a platform into mobile, but it does not do enough to offset the impact of the relative shift in traffic. This is compounded by Android's essential nature. Originally conceived as a client distribution strategy, making Google apps and services available on a best in class mobile operating system, it lacks the app-store like ecosystem that Apple has created and the consumer-friendly experience that Apple's approach embodies. A mobile web client to a cloud service just isn't as fast, or as friendly, as a native app. And whilst third parties are producing native apps, Google is heavily invested in making its cloud based apps and services available on the Android and iOS devices and is paying the price for that.

Social – a threat for sure, but not the only threat, and not the main threat.

Google is also threatened by the inexorable rise of the social internet. Its admirable roll-out of Google Plus over the recent past is almost entirely related to that threat. And at now 90 million users and growing, Google Plus is definitely off to a good start. The decision to change Google Search into a "Search plus Your World" experience this week is probably a necessary part of the response to Facebook also. The controversy that led Larry Page to reportedly suggest that employees who are hanging onto the old Google to go and work elsewhere is a misplaced loyalty to a model that can no longer be sufficient to ensure Google remains relevant. However, by focusing on the strategic threat posed by Facebook almost exclusively, Google may have waited too long, and have the wrong strategy, to beat a more serious challenger – Apple.

Indeed Facebook itself may be a victim of the growth of Mobile, and thereby a victim of Apple's success. Yesterday, it was reported that Facebook would file its IPO before April 1st in order to comply with US Securities laws requiring companies with more than 500 shareholders to report their financials. Its shares traded for $34 on the secondary markets, implying a market capitalization of $80 billion, down from $55 per share at the peak about 12 months ago (see Sharespost.com for details).

Apple has a platform that will soon be numbered in the hundreds of millions. Every device has communications built-in, personalization built-in, media capture built-in. And with iCloud, there is now a place to store the output of each device. How relevant is the Facebook hosted social graph in that world? How relevant is the web ecosystem that Facebook connect has helped penetrate? It seems likely that Facebook will have many of the same challenges as Google as it contemplates the rise of Apple, and the rise of mobile.

Only one winner this week.

So, as the earnings calls recede into memory, the fact of Apple;s growth and the moment for Google and Facebook to think through their response is now! The results of the past few days paint a clear picture of the future. Pivot may no longer be a word reserved for young startups. The big guys, who are more than capable of understanding the trends, need to step up right away. Failure will mean that Apple – the worlds most valuable company – will be many times bigger 5 years from now. Product thinking needs to be at the center of this reflection. What does mobile mean for us? That needs to be the only question on the table.