MobileCrunch |  |
- Social Learning Game Developer Airy Labs Raises $1.5M From Google Ventures, Others
- AT&T Announces Their Next Three BlackBerries: The Torch 9810, Bold 9900, And Torch 9680
- The iPhone Actually Has No Competition Where It Matters Most
- “Cut The Rope” Sequel Will Be Called “Cut The Rope: Experiments”, Launching August 4th
- T-Mobile To Make Carrier Billing An Option For Online Purchases
- Sprint Opens Up 4G Network to Wholesale Customers
- ESRB Game Ratings App Enters The Windows Marketplace
- Verizon Preps Compaq Mini, The First LTE-Enabled Netbook
- AOL Editions Delivers A Daily Briefing To Your iPad
- T-Mobile Rebounds With 7-Eleven After Radio Shack Split
- Android Malware Eavesdrops, Records Your Conversations
| Social Learning Game Developer Airy Labs Raises $1.5M From Google Ventures, Others Posted: 03 Aug 2011 05:14 AM PDT  Airy Labs, a startup building mobile, tablet and browser games with an educational twist for young children, has landed $1.5 million in seed funding from Google Ventures, Foundation Capital and Playdom founder Rick Thompson. Airy Labs says it wants its social games to come with genuine learning value that parents will approve of. The company is part of StartX (formerly known as SSE Labs), a Stanford student startup accelerator. The startup was founded in 2011 by a genius by the name of Andrew Hsu. Check out this guy’s resume:
He is also the author of several books, and once a competitive swimmer.
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| AT&T Announces Their Next Three BlackBerries: The Torch 9810, Bold 9900, And Torch 9680 Posted: 03 Aug 2011 01:55 AM PDT  Nothing says “We’re really excited about these new products!” like announcing them at two in the morning. With fanfare that only insomniacs and folks getting ready for bed in Australia will hear, AT&T has just announced the next three BlackBerry devices set to hit their shelves: the Torch 4G 9810 (a follow-up to last summer’s Torch), Bold 4G 9900, and Torch 4G 9680 (an AT&T-branded, touchscreen-only followup to the device-formerly-known-as-Storm). AT&T’s primary focus right now seems to be the 9810, as the only detail they mention of the Bold 9900 or Torch 9680 is that they’re coming “later this year.” As long as things haven’t changed too much since RIM announced the 9900 back in May, though, here’s what to expect there:
With the Torch 9810 (confused by all the numbers yet? Me too! Just think of the Torch 9810 as “Torch 2″), AT&T’s got a bit more to say. Here’s what we know about it:
Alas, things get a bit fuzzier with the Storm-y Torch 9680. For now, all we’ve got to go off of are some rumored specs (BB OS 7.0, 1.2 Ghz CPU, and a 3.7″ 800×480 display Update: these specs are now confirmed) and a few leaked pics, the best of which made its way out last week:
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| The iPhone Actually Has No Competition Where It Matters Most Posted: 03 Aug 2011 01:12 AM PDT  Profit. No point in burying the lede. For the past two years, it seems as if every other story in the mobile space has been about the war between the iPhone and Android. Hell, though it wasn’t technically the theme of our Mobile First CrunchUp last week, that’s all anyone wanted to talk about there as well. It’s a sexy story because it features two companies, Apple and Google, that could not be any more different. And now they’re the two companies dominating the mobile landscape. And the cherry on top is that they used to be close allies. They’re Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier. Four years ago, Apple came out of quite literally nowhere (in the mobile phone space) and completely up-ended the industry. But in the past couple of years, they’ve watched their former ally take command in terms of market share. This has been the story that everyone keeps talking about — including Apple, which routinely takes thinly-veiled swipes at Google for what they often imply are misleading numbers, like activations-per-day. But part of me wonders if that’s not just Apple applying some very clever reverse-psychology and manipulation. The media is naturally distracted by big numbers, and Apple might be just fine ceding that story (while pretending they care, mind you, to keep us interested) while they take the real prize. While you can find dozens of stories each week about how Android is now dominating mobile, and poised for further domination as the rest of the world continues the move to smartphones, most overlook what is perhaps the more important story. To find that, all you have to do is follow Horace Dediu’s excellent Asymco blog. There, you’ll find stories and data like this one from earlier today: Apple share of phone revenues increased to 28%. As Dediu’s data shows, Apple now makes more revenue in the mobile space than all of their competitors. This list includes HTC, RIM, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung Motorola, and Nokia. Apple’s share in this regard has doubled since the end of 2009, right about when Android began to take hold. And while plenty of the aforementioned competitors now make Android devices, only HTC has seen any sort of significant increase in revenue share over the same span — and their share is nothing like Apple’s. But again, that’s not even the real story either. The real story is the number briefly highlighted in Dediu’s chart above, but more fully explored a few days ago here: Apple captured two thirds of available mobile phone profits in Q2. Take a moment to let that sink in. Apple now controls over 66 percent of all the profits amongst the major players in the mobile space. HTC, RIM, LG, Sony-Ericsson, Samsung Motorola, and Nokia combined for the other 33 or so percent of profits in the space (with a few of them: Nokia, Motorola, LG, and Sony actually losing money). Apple, the company “losing” the great mobile race to Android, is destroying all the Android manufacturers combined when it comes to profits. You know, the money you get to keep at the end of the day. In business terms, really the only thing that matters. While everyone is distracted by the raw numbers battle, Apple is quietly winning the real war. Obviously, Google is nowhere to be seen in these numbers because they don’t actually make the Android phones, just the OS that powers them. If you were to include them on the profit chart, they’d be a tiny sliver. As big as Android has gotten, Google still doesn’t make much money off of the OS — at least nothing near what Apple is seeing quarter to quarter from the iPhone. And as Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley pointed out a few months ago, maybe the point of Android isn’t really the profits for Google. Sure, you could argue that if Android continues to eat up market share, eventually, they should win over developers which could lead to Android phones ultimately making more money than the iPhone. But two years after Android started “winning”, there are absolutely no signs of that actually happening. Instead, the opposite is happening. Apple’s profit dominance continues to grow with each quarter. Further, I’m not so sure that Android’s market share is going to continue to grow once the iPhone 5 launches on both Verizon and AT&T in the U.S. and dozens of other carriers around the world. There are already plenty of signs that Android’s march is slowing and/or stopped. And if the rumors of a lower-cost iPhone are accurate, Apple’s massive growth in places like China may be just the beginning. But I think Apple is just fine having everyone believe that Android is dominating the mobile space. They’re wiping their tears of defeat with cold hard cash.
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| “Cut The Rope” Sequel Will Be Called “Cut The Rope: Experiments”, Launching August 4th Posted: 02 Aug 2011 12:50 PM PDT  While Angry Birds tends to get all the credit for being the game that has endlessly owned the App Store, it’s not alone up at the top. ZeptoLab’s Cut The Rope was the first game to come along and (temporarily) knock the Birds from their #1 spot back in October of 2010 — and in the months since, it’s rarely spent any time not in the top ten. With the license still proving to be an effective cash-printing machine (I mean, come on: they’ve got Cut The Rope plush dolls and comic books now) the Cut The Rope team is moving on to the next logical step: the sequel.
We’d been hearing that a second Cut The Rope game was in the works, so we reached out to the folks behind the original. They confirmed that the followup is on the way — in fact, it’s scheduled to launch later this week. If all goes as planned, it should hit the App Store on August 4th. They also sent over an exclusive teaser trailer (see below) — and while it doesn’t show much in terms of gameplay, it does spill the beans on the name: Cut The Rope: Experiments. ZeptoLab is still being pretty light with the details, but sums up the follow-up as:
Any Cut The Rope addicts (what do they call you guys? Cutters? That can’t be right.) out there just dying for this one? (Update: Just an interesting note — from what we’re hearing, ZeptoLab is self-publishing this one. The original Cut The Rope was built by ZeptoLab and published by Chillingo, but it looks like Chillingo has been cut out of the equation this time around.) Here’s all the media they shared with us:
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| T-Mobile To Make Carrier Billing An Option For Online Purchases Posted: 02 Aug 2011 12:09 PM PDT  Every phone geek loves to debate how long it’ll be before we’ve trashed our wallets in favor of paying for stuff with our phones in the real world — but what about online? Tailing a similar announcement by Verizon a few months back, T-Mobile has just announced that they’re opening up their carrier billing system to online retailers, allowing T-Mobile customers to charge things purchased on the web (whether it’s purchased on a smartphone, a tablet, or a good ol’ fashion computer) right to their monthly bill.
There are a bunch of businesses competing in this space right now — so which one is T-Mobile partnering with? Er… pretty much all of them, actually. Right off the bat, T-Mobile is calling on BillToMobile, PayFone, Boku, OpenMarket, and Zong to power things, and they say that “additional strategic billing service partners” will be added as time goes on. Sounds messy. Worried about lil’ Timmy snatching up all the porn he can find and charging it to his Sidekick? T-Mobile says that age-appropriate content blocking will be made available to parents, while a two-step purchase verification system should make it a bit harder for would-be thieves to buy things in your name. Each purchase will be broken down on your bill at the end of the month, which, if nothing else, should serve as a painful reminder that buying a new tractor for your Farmville farm probably wasn’t the best way to burn a week’s pay. T-Mobile doesn’t name any specific vendors or retailers that’ll be offering up the Charge-To-T-Mobile button at launch, but it looks like they’re going for smaller game: amongst the purchase examples listed are “online purchases of digital games, gaming and social networking credits, music, videos and other digital content”. In other words, it’ll probably be a while before you’re charging that Bugatti Veyron to the wireless bill. T-Mobile Carrier Billing should go live on its first few sites later this month.
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| Sprint Opens Up 4G Network to Wholesale Customers Posted: 02 Aug 2011 11:42 AM PDT  The Verizon/Sprint 4G war has been shifting into high gear lately, and with Verizon's LTE network capable of faster performance, Sprint has had to play up some of their other accomplishments to try and pick up some momentum. They certainly won't be letting you forget that they 1) offer the first 4G wireless network from a national carrier, 2) have the most 4G devices, and 3) are apparently "America's favorite 4G network". Now they've got another claim to add to the list, albeit one you probably won't be hearing in a commercial anytime soon. As of today, Sprint is the first U.S. carrier to let wholesale customers access their 4G network. In short, this allows third party providers to resell Sprint’s 4G service to their own customers. This announcement falls right in line with some of Sprint's recent business-oriented releases. By opening up their network to third-party resellers, Sprint hopes to gain some much-needed market share by getting their hands into wireless solutions that could stand to benefit from some 4G oomph. Sprint cites partner Mitel as an early example of their collaboration with wholesalers. Mitel, a "leading provider of communications software and solutions for a range of organizations" leaned on Sprint's network when they offered 4G mobile broadband cards as part of mobility solutions to their clients. In addition to a Sierra Wireless mobile broadband device, Sprint has also announced the availability of the HTC Detail, a Shift 4G-clone as part of their wholesale offerings. Sprint’s definitely got some mojo in the wholesale space — their MVNO kick culminated in the success of Virgin Mobile, which they later acquired — but we’ll have to see if they can duplicate that performance with 4G.
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| ESRB Game Ratings App Enters The Windows Marketplace Posted: 02 Aug 2011 10:21 AM PDT  One look at Grand Theft Auto 4 and you're probably not thinking, "Little Timmy or Susie would just love that game." No one wants their kids desensitized to reasonless mass murder or the dreaded F-bomb, and understandably so. Let the kids be kids. Well it turns out if you own a Windows-powered phone, you now have access to the Entertainment Software Rating Board app, where you can check out a full summary of different game ratings and content. Currently, the ESRB app has ratings information for over 20,000 game titles, which can be accessed by searching for the game or snapping a picture of the box. The app also provides access to ratings summaries — a tidbit not included on the packaging — that can help parents understand the reasons behind a certain game's rating. The cool thing about this app is that it's an app. All of this information can be found online, but that doesn't really help a parent getting dragged through GameStop by their kid. With ESRB, parents can look up that information immediately and make the call then and there: "No Timmy, you can't get Sexy Beach 3, maybe when you're older." The app has been available on Android and iOS for quite some time now, but today marks its entrance into the Windows world. The ESRB Rating Search app is available now as a free download from the Windows Marketplace.
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| Verizon Preps Compaq Mini, The First LTE-Enabled Netbook Posted: 02 Aug 2011 09:29 AM PDT  Have you been itching some Verizon 4G love in a package that's just a hair more portable than their also-just-announced HP Pavilion dm1? I know I haven't, but Verizon has just announced their first 4G capable netbook, the Compaq Mini CQ10-688nr all the same. The Mini packs a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom processor, a 250GB hard drive, and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM into its svelte-ish frame. It's set to ship on Thursday, August 4th at $449.99 with a 2-year contract agreement and Verizon's standard complement of 4G mobile broadband plans. You probably know them all by heart, but here they are for the 4G-uninitiated: $30 nets you 2 GB of monthly data usage, while $50 grants 5 GB, and $80 scores you 10GB. All things considered, it's not too shabby for such a tiny package, but it seems a bit underwhelming compared to its HP counterpart. It's only less than half a pound lighter, and the Pavilion manages to squeeze a feistier processor, and a larger screen and hard drive into a package that isn't that much bigger. I'm sure that true road warriors will appreciate the Compaq Mini's extra portability, but my (admittedly poor) internal economist likes the idea of more power at a slightly higher price tag sans contract.
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| AOL Editions Delivers A Daily Briefing To Your iPad Posted: 02 Aug 2011 08:45 AM PDT  The dream of a personalized magazine tuned just for you keeps showing itself on the iPad. Today’s edition comes from AOL Editions, which is finally coming out after much fine-tuning and a silly video. (Disclosure: TechCrunch is also owned by AOL). Editions assembles a digital magazine for you once a day from a variety of online news sources and blogs—The Atlantic, Businessweek, CNNMoney, Forbes, TechCrunch, Cnet, Business Insider, Wired. It is trying to stake a position somewhere between The Daily’s all-original (and expensive) reporting and Flipboard‘s endless pages of prettified RSS feeds and social streams. AOL Editions is designed to be completed in one sitting. It pulls in 30 to 50 stories across different sections like Top News, Technology, Business, Entertainment, Sports, Local News, and Travel. You pick the sections you want, enter your zipcode, and it does the rest. You can further train the app each time you read an article by tapping on sources and topics you want to follow or hide. The app pulls out a few main topic tags associated with each story for which you can effectively give a thumbs up or down by tapping on a check mark or an X. The next editions will show more stories from those sources or on those topics. You also can add blogs or news sources via a search box on each section start page as well (but only from sources without paywalls, no New York Times articles appear, for instance). The design and navigation are pleasing enough once you wait for a minute or so for your edition to be pulled together on the fly each morning. Readers are greeted by a big cover picture with an old-style magazine mailing label that states their name, town, and the temperature. Sections start off with large photos and headline typeface. As you flip through the articles, the layouts vary with headlines and excerpts in different column configurations. When you tap on a story, an in-app browser will open up and take you to the original webpage. If the source is owned by AOL (such as TechCrunch or Patch for local news), you get this nice effect that allows you to swipe through all the text within the app, but only half the page is moving because the photo and headline stay still. In addition to flipping through the edition sequentially, you can also pull up sections to jump to them directly or a full list of articles. Articles can be bookmarked or shared via email, Twitter or Facebook. It’s a solid effort put out by the mobile team under David Temkin and Sol Lipman from AOL’s West Coast office (which is part of Brad Garlinghouse‘s group). But I have one main issue with it and that is the timeliness of the news in its pages. For my realtime tastes, they can be a little bit stale. In an attempt to deliver something that is complete and completable, AOL Editions pulls together your personalized stories at the same designated time every day. If that is 8:00 AM, any news that happens after that will have to wait until your next edition “arrives” the next morning (although there is a way to override that and assemble the next edition immediately). If I open AOL Editions and read what I perceive as yesterday’s or even this morning’s news compared to what I can get online, I’ll just stick to the Web. I, admittedly, am a news junkie whose livelihood depends on being up-to-the-minute on every tech headline, but I don’t think it’s just me. People spot check news apps and sites against one another. News apps need to be as current as the Web. Those are just table stakes. While there is a certain satisfaction to being able to complete an Edition (or at least skim every headline and excerpt), it wouldn’t be too hard to add a few updates throughout the day to each section. The Edition could be reassembled every time I open the app, not some predetermined time of day. The algorithm that selects what stories to present is based on clusters of similar articles across top news sources. There is no social stream component like you have in Flipboard pulling out the images and text behind Tweeted or shared links. The benefit of this is that Editions is less noisy than Flipboard, but it is also missing out on the timeliness of the social news feed. Again, there is a different way to do this. Instead of showing every shared story in my Twitter and Facebook streams, Editions could show only the ones which hit a certain threshold of likes and reteweets. As the news-finding algorithm improves, so will the overall experience.
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| T-Mobile Rebounds With 7-Eleven After Radio Shack Split Posted: 02 Aug 2011 08:28 AM PDT  Breaking up is hard to do, but T-Mobile and Radio Shack seem to be handling the split rather well, all things considered. After Radio Shack alleged that T-Mo materially breached the terms of their agreement, the two have gone their separate ways. Or at least, they will on September 15. This is more of the awkward, still-living-together phase. In the mean time, Radio Shack has moved on to the hot red head, signing a deal with Verizon. T-Mobile, on the other hand, is looking more like the desperate dumpee, hooking up with none other than the infamous and quite unexpected 7-Eleven. What a rebound, am I right? While both parties attempted an amicable break, their public responses to the matter gave off another impression. Here's what Radio Shack's president and CEO had to say about it: "The addition of Verizon Wireless, in combination with our existing carrier partners, positions us to now offer the best assortment of carriers, rate plans, devices and accessories for every consumer need." The best carriers, huh? So, T-Mobile wasn't one of the best carriers? And you're gonna rub your new relationship in T-Mo's face? Low blow, Radio Shack… Low blow. You can tell that things were getting pretty rough between T-Mo and Radio Shack in recent months, based on a statement made by then CFO Jim Gooch calling T-Mobile's products "not competitive with other carriers." Boom. And that was back in March when the two were keeping up the appearance of a healthy, committed partnership. Then again, T-Mo hasn't exactly taken the high road. It's clear from the releases and the chain of events that it was Radio Shack who initially broke off the agreement. Whether it was actually about a contract breach, or simply poor sales disguised as a contract breach, Radio Shack dumped T-Mo. But T-Mobile has had trouble accepting that, issuing the following statement: "After careful consideration, we decided that in order to increase the effectiveness of our retail network and in line with our sales strategy, T-Mobile will exit RadioShack retail locations, effective September 15, 2011. We are currently focused on higher return national retailer opportunities and we expect to announce new channel growth in the coming weeks, which will more than double the number of RadioShack doors currently offering T-Mobile products and services." Well, that statement is just loaded with coded resentment. According to this response, T-Mo was the one who decided to bounce out of there. After all, the pink carrier is interested in "higher return national retailers." Which is no problem at all, because T-Mo will "more than double the number of Radio Shack doors" selling T-Mo gear. With 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven does have some experience selling prepaid phones and calling cards, and will add 8,800 new locations to T-Mo's map. Still, that doesn't really compare with the reach it had with Radio Shack, and T-Mobile will certainly need to rope in a few more partners before it can ever get back in the game completely. Plus, 7-Eleven won't really aid in growing the T-Mo customer base, since no one will be signing any contracts in a gas station. Plus, the only phone being sold through 7-Eleven is the LG GS170, a basic flip phone that'll go for $29.99. But T-Mobile's knight in shining armor is on its way. AT&T is in the midst of appeasing the FCC and the DOJ to get approval to officially acquire T-Mobile for $39 billion. While Verizon and Radio Shack seem to be totally over it, that tune may change when AT&T and its betrothed take the number one spot among national carriers.
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| Android Malware Eavesdrops, Records Your Conversations Posted: 02 Aug 2011 07:24 AM PDT  Now there's no question that Android's flexibility has endeared it self to many a smartphowner out there, but I'd imagine that not everyone is as cognizant about security as they should be. Case in point: a nasty new bit of Android malware discovered by security researcher Dinesh Venkatesan at CA Technologies records all of your conversations to your SD card when activated. The process by which it does this is deceptively simple, at least at first glance. When the infected app is installed, it drops a configuration file onto the device (no word on where specifically in the filesystem it goes) that specifies the "remote server and the parameters." Once the payload is on the device, it is automatically activated as soon as the infected machine makes an outgoing phone call. Venkatesan tested the malware in two mobile emulators with identical results — a new folder appearing on the SD card at /shangzhou/callrecord with .amr recordings of each "conversation". Scary stuff, no? Well, to be fair, it would be scarier if it weren't for one thing: like every other Android app out there, you actually have to approve the thing before it installs. Honestly, though I try to be aware of these things, I'll often just hammer on the screen when the installation prompt pops up. I'm sure I can't be the only one (although the TechCrunch audience is clearly savvier than most), but with more malware moving into the mobile space, let's all try and exercise a bit more caution, shall we?
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