MobileCrunch |  |
- After Acquiring NAVTEQ Ad Group, Matchbin Becomes Radiate Media; Adds $22 Million In Financing
- Appcelerator Raises $15 Million Series C Round
- iPhone 4S Battery Life Bugs Got You Down? Try This
- Urban Airship’s Strategic Partnership With SimpleGeo Turns Into An Acquisition
- HTC Rezound Appears On Video And Signage Ahead Of Launch
- New Mobile Ad Unit Lets Developers Promote Apps That Are “Coming Soon”
- 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet
- DeNA, GREE: Japan’s Mobile Social Gaming Giants Report Impressive Financial Numbers
- AT&T Reveals First LTE Phones: HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket
- HTC Reports Record Q3 Numbers With 13.2 Million Handsets Shipped
| After Acquiring NAVTEQ Ad Group, Matchbin Becomes Radiate Media; Adds $22 Million In Financing Posted: 01 Nov 2011 04:43 AM PDT  Matchbin, a company that creates CMS solutions and hosts websites for community newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, announced today that it has acquired NAVTEQ Media Solution's Radio and Television Group. The acquisition closes a $12 million credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank, and resulted in the creation of Radiate Media, which will offer localized content, digital CMSes and an advertising platform to local and national advertisers — among other things. Chris Rothey, who founded Traffic.com and took it public before being acquired by NAVTEQ in 2007 (where he then became head of NAVTEQ Media Solutions), will become Radiate Media's new CEO, while Hal Widlansky, previously the CEO of Matchbin, is to be Radiate Media's new President and COO. Matchbin is also announcing today that it has closed its first institutional equity financing, which was led by New York-based growth equity investor, Level Equity. Greycroft Partners and vSpring Capital also participated as co-investors in the $10 million round. Radiate Media will use the resources of Matchbin and NAVTEQ’s broadcast media group to continue providing content solutions to the radio and television space through an exclusive agreement with NAVTEQ, as well offer solutions like Matchbin’s “Editionals”, an iPad-focused CMS plaftorm for media partners — along with directory publishing platform and local SEO-optimized websites for merchants. NAVTEQ’s Media Solutions division was established to take advantage of its parent company’s strength in digital maps, which have driven 60 million navigation devices in the last decade, to provide location-enabled ad networks and mobile marketing solutions to both large and small publishers. On the other side, since launching in January 2008, Matchbin has built a stable of over 700 local media partners, with aggregated website traffic seeing over 6 million unique visitors. Now, in conjunction with NAVTEQ Media Solutions’ Radio and TV Advertising Group, the newly formed Radiate Media can provide a bevy of web and mobile content apps and services to media partners, which will in turn offer merchants localized digital advertising and promotional tools to drive their businesses at a local level. Radiate Media will offer sponsorships of broadcast content to TV and radio advertisers, as well as giving them the opportunity to add a mobile element to broadcast campaigns with marketing services like SMS campaigns, original mobile websites and apps, etc. In addition, the company will be offering a top-down mobile marketing solution that includes creative strategy, campaign design, execution, and reporting. For more, check out Radiate Media at home here. Matchbin offers solutions in local content management system (CMS). The corporation offers six products, mostly tailored towards local community newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations. Matchbin's technology platform and business directory solution were created to help the consumer capture market share of local online advertising revenue. NAVTEQ Corporation develops and delivers digital map, traffic, and location data for navigation and location-based platforms in North America and Europe. It offers driver assistance systems; and NAVTEQ Discover Cities, which combines pedestrian thoroughfares, such as sidewalks, walkways, tunnels, and bridges with time-sensitive public transit system information to enable multi-modal routing. The company also provides NAVTEQ Voice, which enables systems to speak commands through speech synthesis and allows automatic speech recognition; NAVTEQ digital map database that provides a point...
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| Appcelerator Raises $15 Million Series C Round Posted: 01 Nov 2011 12:00 AM PDT  Appcelerator, makers of the popular mobile cloud development platform Titanium, has raised $15 million in Series C funding in a round led by Mayfield Fund, Translink Capital and Red Hat. Existing investors eBay, Inc., Sierra Ventures and Storm Ventures also participated in the round. The additional funding will be used to expand Appcelerator’s Titanium product line, with an emphasis on adding HTML5 mobile Web capabilities to its offerings. It will also help the company expand operations in Europe and Asia. Appcelerator will be opening a U.K. office in Q1 2012 and is working with Translink, a firm with a strong Asian presence, to enter Japan, Korea and Greater China. According to Appcelerator VP of Marketing Scott Schwarzhoff, 40% of its developer base is North America, 40% is from Europe and the rest is “other.” So for Appcelerator, establishing a European office is mandatory, he says. The company also took the opportunity to provide an update on its growth. It now has 30,000 mobile applications on over 30 million mobile devices in its portfolio and 1.6 million developers in its ecosystem. This makes it if not the largest, then certainly one of the largest, mobile development platforms in existence today. More remarkable, perhaps, is how quickly the growth was achieved. The number of apps represents a 6-fold increase over 2010, the number of devices is a 12-fold increase over 2010, and the number of customers is a 10-folder increase, with the addition of 1,000 new customers in the past year. Some notable recent additions include NBC, eBay, Medtronic, GameStop, Merck, Progressive, Reuters and Harrah’s. The company has also grown from 17 employees to 100 over the past 12 months. Schwarzhoff says that around 30% of its customers are enterprise clients, and that number is growing. Another 30% are midsize companies, he adds. These clients increasingly want an integrated solution – one codebase that works across platforms, but not a “write once, deploy everywhere” solution. With Appcelerator, they take the “80/20″ approach instead, meaning 80% is common code and 20% is unique to a given platform. This allows the publisher to take advantage of platform-specific features like Android’s intents, or iOS’s notifications. Going forward, that approach will continue on the backend, but on the UI side, Appcelerator is working on introducing more HTML5 capabilities through a new declarative UI which will allow it to compile the UI into a native UI. Appcelerator acquired Aptana in January to create a mobile IDE and just last week acquired competitor Particle Code, which focused on making games compatible across mobile platforms. Red Hat, an Appcelerator investor, also partnered with the company in May, making it the first mobile app development platform to be a part of Red Hat’s OpenShift Platform-as-a-Service. Including its Series A and B rounds, Appcelerator has now raised $31.5 million. Appcelerator provides open source platform for building and managing rich Web, Desktop and Mobile applications.
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| iPhone 4S Battery Life Bugs Got You Down? Try This Posted: 31 Oct 2011 03:40 PM PDT  It hits you when you least expect it. It slips away under a mask of dormant inactivity. And it can ruin your entire day. It’s your iPhone 4S battery life, and it sucks. It’s been 17 days since the iPhone 4S was released — 19 since iOS 5 — and just like the madness that was Antennagate, complaints are churning out left and right. As Erick so clearly pointed out, the iPhone 4S is meant to offer 8 hours of talk time, or "up to 6 hours" of Internet use on 3G. For so many of us — including iPod touch and iPhone-not-4Ses running iOS 5 — that simply isn’t the case. But there may be hope. To start, there are a few possible bugs in iOS 5 that may be sucking an inordinate amount of life out of your battery: a calendar bug and a time zone bug (one of which can be summarily blamed on location services, as can most of the other battery life killers in iOS 5/iPhone 4S). The calendar bug is still somewhat unclear, but has been reported in Apple forums. Basically, when your calendar app is turned on in the Notifications Center, events are “re-ordering themselves near-constantly,” which sucks the life straight out of the phone. The only fix as of now, unfortunately, seems to be disabling the calendar app within the Notifications center. The Time Zone bug, however, seems to be solved (although again, by disabling things). Oliver Haslam over at iDownloadBlog noticed, like many of us, that iOS 5 was sucking his iPhone 4 battery dry. He realized that by going into Settings > Location Services > System Services (all the way at the bottom) > Setting Time Zone, and toggling off the location services, his battery life nearly doubled. According to Haslam, iOS 5 probably has a bug that constantly pings the servers to update location, and thus update time zone settings. When it comes down to it, iOS 5′s location services are most usually the culprit in cases of random battery life drainage for no apparent reason. It allows your apps and other services to ping for your location way more often than before, but in many cases it’s totally unnecessary (like TapTap Revenge, for example). Just head into Settings > Location Services and browse through the various apps using the phone’s location. The option to turn it off for some apps but not others is there for a reason; use it. Don’t forget to dip back into System Services (yep, all the way at the bottom), and disable anything you deem unworthy. Diagnostics & Usage should fall into that category, as it merely sends back information to Apple about the way you use your phone and where. And, any one of the services you turn off can always be turned back on. No harm done. Email, especially with certain settings, can really wear on your battery since the Mail app can be set to ping mail servers almost constantly. An easy way to help spare some green bar is to really take a look at your account(s) and what you need out of them. If most of your emails tend to be about daily deals or new book releases, do you really need them pushed immediately to your phone? Axe push if you can, and if your accounts don’t support it anyway, play with your update timings and try to find the right balance between being in the loop and being able to use your phone. Siri uses up a lot of processing power, but I wouldn’t kill her for it. Siri is one of the iPhone 4S’s best features, and other sacrifices can be made to save her. Then, of course, the basics: turn off Wifi and Bluetooth, turn down screen brightness, and keep the phone out of the sun and/or heat. Oh, and if you have such crappy service that you’re not really able to use your phone much anyway, you might as well just switch it to Airplane mode. It’ll stop the phone from working so hard to connect and maintain that connection, and should last you much longer once you’re in a place you can actually use it. The truth is there isn’t some quick fix or magical solution to this problem. It’s a question of priorities. Which apps, which notifications, which location services are worth a speedier death for your iPhone? In the end, it’s your decision. At least until Apple rolls out an update to iOS 5 and squashes a few of these issues. Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple’s product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod (offered with...
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| Urban Airship’s Strategic Partnership With SimpleGeo Turns Into An Acquisition Posted: 31 Oct 2011 02:10 PM PDT  Back in November of 2009, former Digg Chief Architect Joe Stump and Social Thing founder Matt Galligan first publicly unveiled their new startup, SimpleGeo, which was slated to become the new infrastructure for location-based services. They called it the “Amazon Web Services” for location, offering products that make it easy for developers to build location-enabled web and mobile apps, including storage, context, API features, and polymaps. Less than a year later, in March 2010, SimpleGeo was closing in on a terabyte of geodata stored, had grown their staff to 13, and launched officially to the public. A year later, the startup initiated their “grand unveiling”, which revealed what they’d been focused on over the last year, which was SimpleGeo Storage: A hosted database that allows developers to store and retrieve location data. And since it was hosted, it allowed developers to outsource their infrastructural issues issues and was distributed using Cassandra, so there's no single point of failure. But, then in August, SimpleGeo Co-founder Matt Galligan decided to step down, deciding to take some time off to do his own thing as well as become a West coast advisor to the TechStars incubator and launch 1% of Nothing, which asks founders to give 1 percent of their earnings to charity in the case of a liquidity event. Well, SimpleGeo now has that opportunity, as Mike Arrington reports that SimpleGeo has been acquired by Urban Airship for approximately $3.5 million. In July, the two companies formed a strategic partnership which was intended to, put simply, provide better ways for developers to offer location-aware push notifications in their applications. Geo-targeted notifications were expected to be a big source of revenue for both startups, but it seems that it just made more sense for the companies to move forward as one rather than as two separate entities. SimpleGeo has raised $10 million in outside investment since 2009, with its first angel seed round including quite a few big names like Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Chris Sacca, Timothy Ferriss, Shawn Fanning, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Urban Airship, which was founded at about the same time as SimpleGeo, has itself raised $6 million to date from the Foundry Group and True Ventures to make it easier for mobile app developers to offer push notifications. As Mike points out, this is indeed a “soft landing” for SimpleGeo and most of the proposed cash will likely go towards paying off the last round of investors. It seems a low exit for a startup that was once very promising, especially as it is being led by current CEO and serial entrepreneur Jay Adelson. It also remains to be seen what Urban Airship will be doing with that terabyte-plus of data SimpleGeo has in stock. SimpleGeo has confirmed in a blog post here — as has Urban Airship. Scott Kveton, the CEO of Urban Airship, will remain the Big Kahuna, and Jay Adelson, Matt Galligan, and Joe Stump will join as advisors. Urban Airship, Kveton tells me, has seen revenue grow 600 percent in 2011, has a team of 38, which will now become 51. The teams will be meeting this week to discuss plans for the future and finalize the acquisition. But Kveton said that Urban Airship, as a Portland-based company, is excited to establish a presence in the Bay Area. And with the businesses bearing so much resemblance, it was a “natural extension” for Urban Airship. Kveton declined to comment on numbers, but all signs point towards $3.5 million being, at least, in the ballpark. SimpleGeo provides a ready-to-use location infrastructure that makes it easy to ad location-aware features to applications. The company was founded in 2009 by Matt Galligan and Joe Stump. Urban Airship provides an easy, affordable way for mobile publishers and developers to deliver real-time push notifications and in-app purchase content to their app users on multiple platforms. Urban Airship provides a scalable infrastructure and easy-to-integrate tools that solve two main problems for app publishers: keeping their apps in use and earning recurring revenue from their apps. Push notifications keep uses engaged, enhance the app brand and connect with mobile devices, even when the app is not open. In-app purchase...
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| HTC Rezound Appears On Video And Signage Ahead Of Launch Posted: 31 Oct 2011 01:02 PM PDT  By now it’s no secret that HTC’s Verizon-bound Rezound will debut shortly, but the stars seem to have aligned recently, because we’re absolutely swimming in Rezound-related news. Most notably, a video demoing the Rezound in action has begun to make the rounds, and it gives us our best glimpse yet at Verizon’s next holiday heavyweight. The video doesn’t probe very far, but it does confirm that the Rezound packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 4.3-inch display running at 720p. It comes with 16GB of internal storage out of the box, but since it’s a Sense 3.0 device, it can also take advantage of Dropbox’s 5GB of cloud storage. We’re also afforded a quick look under the battery cover, and I’m happy to report that HTC’s trend of making their device’s innards look as good as the outside continues. Verizon seems to be just as excited for the Rezound as HTC fans are, as the company has begun to push out signage that features the much-anticipated device front and center. It probably wasn’t supposed to go up yet, but that didn’t stop some over-eager employees by putting it up for all to see. The sign also trots out the Rezound’s Beats-friendly earbuds, not to mention some love for the middle Jonas brother. Sadly, there’s still no word on a release date — Droid-Life cites a tipster’s claim that the phone will launch on November 14, but there have been so many claims that it’s hard to keep track at this point. The Rezound is almost sure to take the stage this Thursday at HTC’s big New York event, but with any luck some juicy details will leak ahead of the show.
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| New Mobile Ad Unit Lets Developers Promote Apps That Are “Coming Soon” Posted: 31 Oct 2011 10:17 AM PDT  Mobile marketing platform Appsfire is launching a new ad unit for iPhone that lets app developers promote the applications they’re about to launch. The “Coming Soon” ad doesn’t just announce the forthcoming applications, however, but can also gather early sign-ups from potential users through its “notify me” button. According to Appsfire Co-founder Ouriel Ohayon (and former editor of TechCrunch France), most app developers wait until their app has launched before they start marketing it, when really they should start before. I have to agree with him there – after all, the formula is pretty successful for all the startups we cover here, which often promote their soon-to-launch services via landing pages from LaunchRock or KickOffLabs, for instance. Why shouldn’t mobile app developers do the same? The new ad unit, which functions sort of like a trailer for mobile apps, includes a full screen preview, a few visuals and the above-mentioned “notify me” button. Users can be notified both by push messages and via email, depending on their preference. On the backend, Appsfire tracks the application in real-time so it knows when the app goes live and then handles the automatic notification process. The ad unit was launched into private beta testing a few weeks ago, with Tinyco, Capcom Labotec, UsTwo, Metamoki and others as testers. Early results have been good, says Ohayon, with up to 30% CTR on the “notify me” button. The company is now working on bringing the same ad unit to Android and will be making it available for use in other apps (not just AppsFire). The unit may also be expanded to support the collection of beta testers. AppsFire raised $3.6 million in Series A funding earlier this year and is now listed as a top 15 free app on iTunes. AppsFire produces a discovery platform for both iOS and Android mobile applications that allows users to share and distribute their favorite apps.
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| 500 Startups Peels Back The Curtain On Its Third And Largest Batch Yet Posted: 31 Oct 2011 09:00 AM PDT  It’s Halloween, so it’s the perfect day to unveil the newest group of 500 Startups’ “little monsters”. Yes, this is the name that founder Dave McClure and his partner in crime Christine Tsai give to all the rock star entrepreneurs that grace the halls of their Mountain View offices. 500 Startups, as you may have heard by now, is the early-stage seed fund and incubator program founded in 2010 by the globe-trotting angel investor, which seeds between $25K to $250K in each of its startups that meet its "Three Ds" criteria: Design, data, and distribution. The fall batch kicked off on October 10 and includes 34 awesome startups, which makes this its largest roster to date (the initial batch consisted of 12 startups and the second came in at 21, bringing 500 Startups’ total to 174). The breakdown of this batch’s demographics shows this to be a diverse group of companies, as 8 of the startups have female founders: 72Lux, DressRush, Gizmo, LoveWithFood, MeMeTales, Talkdesk, Tiny Review, WeddingLovely, and fifteen of the startups have international founders (UK, Croatia, Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, Australia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Estonia, Russia, Japan). There’s also some good geographical distribution in the U.S., as the majority of this batch hails from outside of Silicon Valley, with teams from Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington DC, Boston, and more among its ranks. Two of the companies, TinyReview and WeddingLovely, have also received investments from Designers Fund, which, for those unfamiliar, is a community of designers that invests in design-experienced founders through mentorship, angel funding, and network access. Designers can also apply for investment, much in the same way founders apply to AngelList. The “Demo Days” for this batch of startups has not yet been confirmed, but we do know that they will take place sometime in January 2012. It should also be noted that, in the spirit of Halloween, the third batch of 500 Startups companies is not only made up primarily of zombies, but it also appears that part of the strict regimen of business plan-building and product-honing also includes instruction in the fine art of dance. Thrilling, thrilling dance. These 34 startups will give a more complete peek into their various products and plans to take over the world at 500 Startups’ Demo Days in January, but for those of you who are too antsy to wait until then, here's a sneak preview below in alphabetical order: 300milligrams is a priority inbox for team conversations. The team hails from Estonia, which just so happens to be a country with a disproportionate number of startups per capita. 72Lux offers consumers a universal checkout and personalized BrandBoards is bringing Google Adwords simplicity and reach to live event digital advertising. BrightNest is the Mint.com for home maintenance, helping homeowners manage their most valuable asset with customized tips and reminders. Cadee helps golfers understand and improve their game. Central.ly wants to connect all of the social media profiles for small business owners. Chorus is customer feedback without the hassle. It automatically extract meaning from thousands of customer messages as they arrive in real time. ContaAzul is a web-based, SaaS accounting system for Brazilian SMBs. Contactually is a personal assistant for your professional email contacts that connects directly with your CRM. DressRush (“Gilt for Weddings”) wants to make “bridezillas” everywhere clamor to get couture without the cost. Up to 100% off retail. eSpark Learning is “Pandora for education”, creating custom playlists of fun education apps on iPads for elementary school students. Farmeron is a Croatian startup that helps farmers across the world to manage their production data online and to do automatized farm performance analysis using exciting statistics. Fileboard is a service accessed from the iPad that helps manage files and attachments across email, Dropbox, Evernote, and other cloud repositories. Fitocracy turns fitness into an addictive gaming experience where you level up in real life. (Check out TC’s early coverage of Fitocracy here.) Forrst is where developers and designers improve their craft and companies come to hire them. Gizmo is a cloud-based multichannel marketing platform for mobile, tablet, social, and the Web. GoVoluntr is a social platform that brings together volunteers, nonprofits, and businesses to solve today's social problems. Hapyrus offers the easiest way of leveraging Hadoop to make your system highly scalable. HighScore House turns a child’s chores and boring routines into a game, making the lives of families a little less hectic and a little more fun. Intercom lets web businesses build powerful, personal relationships with their users, turning them into loyal customers. LookAcross is a sales productivity tool helps you to have more conversations and up your connect rates by improving your company’s odds of connecting with people. LoveWithFood, is the easiest way to find culinary deals & samples, curated by a community of foodies for foodies. Like Tom’s shoes for food, with every deal served, LoveWithFood donates a meal. Meloncard wants to keep your personal information private and out of the hands of the companies that sell it. MeMeTales is a mobile game and reading platform for kids. “Fun like Angry Birds without the guilt”. MoPix wants to define what the movie experience can be on tablet devices and make distribution accessible to anyone with film or video content. OneSchool is a free mobile app that connects students to the people, places, and things around them. PayByGroup wants to make it so that you never have to front money for your group purchases again. The startup coordinates your friends’ payments to the merchant so you can plan activities without the hassle. Redeemr helps businesses and celebrities get un-ignored by their social media fans. RotaDosConcursos is a Brazilian test prep service designed to get users into those coveted government positions. Spinnakr simplifies website targeting and increases your click-throughs and conversions by automatically displaying the right message to the right visitor. Switchcam recreates the concert experience by combining and syncing fan-recorded videos. Talkdesk lets your company have a contact center in the browser. It provides information about the caller by integrating with services like Salesforce and Zendesk. Tiny Review is “Instagram for Yelp reviews”, or a fast and fun way to say what you think about a place. WeddingLovely is building tools and directories to promote small and independent wedding vendors. One of the best parts of becoming a 500 Startups company is its strong list of advisors and mentors, which you can check out here. Not to mention the fact that more than 50 percent of its first batch raised at least $250K, two raised a million or more, and every startup finished with some money in their pockets. For more McClure on why 500 Startups is like the Oakland A’s of seed-stage investing, compared to Sequoia as the Yankees, check out Alexia’s interview here, or for seven of the most interesting startups from the accelerator’s last batch, check out our coverage here. 500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program located in Mountain View, CA. They invest primarily in consumer & SMB internet startups, and related web infrastructure services. Their initial investment size is typically $25K-$250K. Selected areas of interest include financial services & e-commerce, search/social/mobile platforms, personal & business productivity, education & language, family & healthcare and web infrastructure.
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| DeNA, GREE: Japan’s Mobile Social Gaming Giants Report Impressive Financial Numbers Posted: 31 Oct 2011 08:16 AM PDT  GREE and Mobage are brand names that don’t ring a bell with too many people (yet) as far as markets like the US or Europe are concerned, but these mobile social gaming platforms are hugely successful in Japan. The Tokyo-based companies behind these homegrown gaming networks, GREE and DeNA, reported some big financial numbers today. DeNA (current market cap: US$6.4 billion) today announced sales reached US$457 million for the second quarter of this fiscal (through the end of September 2011), while operating income hit a mind-boggling US$203 million. That translates into 28% and 13% year-on-year growth, respectively. While these numbers are impressive (especially because about 90% of sales come from game-related transactions), DeNA isn’t as strong on a quarter-by-quarter basis: from Q1 to Q2, sales have been flat (+/-0%), while operating income dropped 3%. Their financial report can be downloaded in English from here. Competitor GREE didn’t have quarterly results to report, but they didn’t want to let DeNA steal the show: the company (current market cap: US$7.3 billion) has radically revised their earnings estimates for the fiscal year (which ends in June 2012). GREE is now expecting sales to hit US$1.67 billion to US$1.8 billion for the current fiscal (up 40-44.4% from the previous forecast), while operating profit is expected to land somewhere between US$770 million and US$900 million (up 40-50%). All of GREE’s new numbers in English can be found here. What’s impressive is that DeNA and GREE still make almost all of their money in Japan, on cell phones, and with games (avatar-related sales, in-game virtual items) only. Both companies started offering mobile games embedded in a social networking platform for Japanese feature phones around 2006/2007, with DeNA now boasting 32 million registered users in Japan, while GREE has over 26 million. The social networks are in the process of internationalizing heavily and acquired or set up subsidiaries throughout the world. In the US, for example, DeNA acquired ngmoco last year for US$400 million (and set up Mobage in English on Android as a beta in summer), while GREE acquired Openfeint in April this year for over US$100 million.
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| AT&T Reveals First LTE Phones: HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket Posted: 31 Oct 2011 07:32 AM PDT  For a few months now AT&T has had an LTE network, but no phones that could take advantage of it. Well, that all changes today — AT&T has just announced that the Android-powered HTC Vivid and the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket will be the first to run on their LTE network, and will hit store shelves on November 6. The HTC Vivid packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor under the proverbial hood, and a 4.5-inch qHD display graces its face. A 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting 1080p video occupies the Vivid’s rear end, and 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 32GB with the right microSD cards) rounds out the package. HTC has kept mum on the specific version of Android the Vivid runs, but it does indeed sport HTC’s Sense UI. HTC fans can pick up the Vivid for $199 on a two-year contract. Meanwhile, the Skyrocket takes a familiar package and plays with the internals. Instead of the 1.2GHz Exynos processor as seen in AT&T’s original GSII, the Skyrocket features a 1.5GHz dual-core processor. It also swaps the original version’s 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display for a 4.5-inch variant. The Skyrocket does however stick with an 8-megapixel rear camera, 16GB of built-in flash storage, and Android 2.3.5. If the Skyrocket has piqued your interest, expect to shell out $249 for it later this week. Of course, you’ll need some LTE-friendly data plans to get the most out of these bad boys. Much like Verizon, AT&T has chosen to carry over their existing data plans, so $15 will net casual users 200MB of high-speed LTE access while $25 yields 2GB. Right now, LTE coverage is only available in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio, but AT&T is getting ready to fire up Boston, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Athens, Georgia on the 6th. Long story short, most Vivid and Skyrocket owners won’t even be able to use LTE for a while, but they’ll at least have some impressive hardware to tide them over until AT&T lights up their neck of the woods.
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| HTC Reports Record Q3 Numbers With 13.2 Million Handsets Shipped Posted: 31 Oct 2011 06:21 AM PDT  While Samsung’s somewhat disputed earnings report has left it on top for the third quarter this year, HTC has also announced record numbers in its Q3 earnings report. In its sixth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, the company reported 13.2 million handsets shipped — a 93 percent increase from last year — which resulted in profit growth of 68 percent. In total, HTC reported NT$18.68 billion in profits (US$624 million) and revenue of NT$135.82 billion (US$4.5 billion), a 79 percent year-over-year increase. Comparatively, Samsung shipped an estimated 28 million handsets in the third quarter, while Apple sold 17 million. Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S II shipments were included in their numbers, while the iPhone 4S just barely missed the mark. HTC has the Vigor smartphone on the way, which should be a boost for the Taiwanese phone maker, but there’s no telling what the Q4 reports will look like once the new iPhone is in the mix. HTC Corp, (TAIEX: 2498) produces smartphones running the Android and Windows Phone 7 operating systems for themselves and as an OEM to other manufacturers. Since launching its own brand in late 2006, the company has introduced dozens of HTC-branded products around the world. The company recently introduced the HTC diamond to compete with Apple’s iPhone. Founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, Chairwoman, and Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC made its name as the company behind many of the...
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