MobileCrunch |  |
- Amazon Considered Acquiring RIM Over The Summer
- Don’t Hold Your Breath For That Nexus S ICS Update — It’s Been Paused
- Interview: CrowdStar’s Peter Relan, On Building Social Games For Mobile (And Making Social Girl An iOS Hit)
- Apple Takes One Small Step Against HTC, One Giant Leap Against Android
- “Twitter For Audio” App Spreaker Now Live On Android
- Disney’s Bart Decrem On “Where’s My Water?” And Their Approach To Mobile
- In Which We Reveal The Top CES 2012 Trends Without Breaking Embargoes
- Brightkite Winds Down, Says It Will Come Back With ‘Something Better’ (Again)
- After Years Of Patent Litigation, Nuance Acquires Vlingo
| Amazon Considered Acquiring RIM Over The Summer Posted: 20 Dec 2011 03:33 PM PST  To say that RIM has had it rough these past few months is a understatement, but according to a new report from Reuters, it may not have had to go through these trials alone. In a surprising twist, Amazon was reportedly considering a RIM acquisition as recently as this past summer. According to Reuters, Amazon had tasked an investment bank with exploring the possibility of a RIM buyout, although their sources don’t mention how far both parties were from finalizing a deal. The talks seemed to be largely informal in nature so it may have been nothing more than an open-ended meeting of the minds, but man — what a deal that would’ve been. The real head-scratcher here is why Amazon would want with RIM in the first place. Analysts from Citigroup predicted last month that an Amazon-branded phone could see the light of day some time next year, and acquiring RIM would certainly give them a platform to work off of. Then again, Amazon made their interest in Android apparent in March when they officially launched their own Android app store, not to mention the fact that they were probably already working on the Android-powered Kindle Fire. Patents then? RIM holds their fair share of wireless patents many of which could come in handy if Amazon ever chose to pursue a stronger presence in the mobile space. It’s a definite possibility, but with both parties keeping quiet on the subject, we may never know for sure. Amazon apparently wasn’t the only one floating the notion of a RIM acquisition: Reuters mentions that bankers have tried to convince HTC and Samsung to make a move, although they made the obvious choice to ignore their ailing competitor. Now it appears that RIM is looking to brave the market alone once again, as the company’s board has told co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to forget the idea of selling parts of the business. The company also seems to have begun a campaign of bright-eyed optimism in an attempt to convince people that the best is yet to come. Their most recent quarterly financials were filled with such bright-eyed gems as “we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths,” and the company’s pair of CEOs announced shortly afterward that they would reduce their salaries to $1 per year. Whether or not these maneuvers are enough to ease shareholder concerns is still up in the air, though a quick look at their stock performance shows that it doesn’t seem to be working so far. With share prices plummeting and the release of their next-gen BlackBerry 10 devices being pushed later into 2012, I can’t help but wonder if RIM regrets rebuffing Amazon’s advances.
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| Don’t Hold Your Breath For That Nexus S ICS Update — It’s Been Paused Posted: 20 Dec 2011 12:35 PM PST  Still anxiously sitting by your Nexus S, awaiting that Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) update that started rolling out a few days ago? You might want to take a break. Go outside, go dancing, maybe go rewatch the Lord Of The Rings trilogy (it is the 10th anniversary of Fellowship, afterall); for the time being, it appears that the Nexus S’ big update has been delayed. According to a forum post by Google Community Manager Paul Wilcox, the company has paused the update in a number of regions while they “monitor feedback”. “Monitor feedback” in this case is likely a nice way of saying “a bunch of people are reporting issues, and we’re trying to figure out why.” Issues with the update seem to be a bit of a mixed bag. For many, it seems to work just fine; for others, the OS seems to be spinning its gears and inexplicably gobbling up a huge chunk of the battery at a faster rate. For others yet, wireless signal seems to have tanked. Curiously, a number of users are still seeing the update alert come through, even after it was purportedly “paused”… only to have it cancel itself out at the last second. In other words: If you see that lovely little alert box pop up in the next few hours, don’t get too excited until you’re sure everything is in working order. We’ve reached out to Google for clarification, insight on where exactly it’s been paused, and when we might expect to see the update resume. We’ll let you know if we hear back.
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| Posted: 20 Dec 2011 12:00 PM PST  CrowdStar, a social gaming company that got its start on Facebook, has been steadily pushing into mobile over the last year, with improving results. Today, it's trying to drive that point home by announcing that its latest game, Social Girl, has reached a million downloads and reached #6 overall on iOS since launching a week ago. That's good for the company, sure, but the better news is how its overall mobile efforts have gone to date. I spoke with chief executive Peter Relan earlier today to hear more about it all. He's one of the most publicly opinionated executives in the social gaming industry. Here's the latest from on social, mobile, and expansion into Asia. TechCrunch: So tell me about this year. You started out mostly on Facebook, but now you're focused elsewhere — even though you still have more than a million daily active users on Facebook [according to AppData]. Peter Relan: We've seen a pretty dramatic uptick in mobile social gaming this year, to the extent that 50% of revenues now come from mobile. That’s because we got two big hits: top girl and social girl. To be clear, we're exiting with 50% of our revenue runway coming from mobile, but not for the calendar year. Mobile social gaming — free games that monetize through virtual goods — is probably going to make almost $500 million this year. TechCrunch: That's basically what the latest Inside Virtual Goods report says [see our previous coverage]. Can you tell me how that breaks down for you? How is Android doing? Peter Relan: With Android, Top Girl is doing pretty well but we haven't scaled it up yet. Everything I hear suggests that there's something like $100 million coming in to free-to-play games on Android. The rest is iOS. The thing about Android is obviously monetization. For example, on the Kindle Fire we're already seeing much better numbers — average revenue per user, and the rest — even if it's small. The thing about Android is that it's sold by the telcos for free or cheap, almost like feature phones in terms of users. So compared to the iPhone, demographically, the wealthier audience is there versus the Android. TechCrunch: But it's not just audience, it's how Google does payments, right? What do you want to see change? Peter Relan: I would like android to accelerate direct carrier billing. Google checkout and wallet — that’s a very long term strategic initiative, but not likely to take off on a mobile device because they’re just behind. Amazon already has 150 million credit cards on file, Apple has hundreds of millions. Android needs to leverage carrier billing very, very aggressively. Especially for things like free-to-play virtual goods. They're in-app. As the user is playing along, they'll hit a point where they want to buy virtual goods. If you make the payment easy, they'll keep paying. But if you the user have to go off and do five things, if you don't have an account, you won't buy. That's not the same for free games that make money on advertising, of course. TechCrunch: What about Facebook's latest mobile launch? How is that going for you? Peter Relan: We haven't heard or seen that much traction in terms of gaming, which I attribute to the fact that HTML5 games, which they're supporting, are relatively immature as a technology. You can't suddenly take people who have learned to build native client games on Objective C and Java and have them go build with fewer options. It just lacks the supply of high-quality games. Changing to focus on HTML5 requires massive tech and workflow adjustments. Facebook is taking a long-term strategic directional initiative, which developers have to compare to the here-and-now money initiative. TechCrunch: How are you adapting? You still have a significant business on Facebook, but that's not where you launched this game. Peter Relan: The biggest transformation has been our Project Trident strategy. So you can play anywhere, anytime. That's our vision now. There are times where I'm simply not on Facebook or on mobile devices — China and Japan. Our games don't rely on Facebook in those places. At this point we're looking at Facebook as one of three platforms versus the main platform, the other two being mobile platforms, and non-Facebook social platforms in Asia. We'll look at every Facebook game we consider building, and compare to opportunities to build social games on mobile or launch social in other markets That's been a change over the past year from our default-Facebook position in 2010. Zynga is the main other company that has been making this type of move to focus on multiple platforms. TechCrunch: Game developers have talked over the years about creating a unified gaming experience, where you take your identity with you across platforms. Do people actually want that? Peter Relan: We have both options in many of our games, but we find that actually it isn’t necessarily that the social graphs are shared right now. We do allow players to play on mobile using iOS using their Facebook identities. What we've found is that the large majority actually prefer their mobile social graph. That's part of why we changed to Top Girl from It Girl. I think it was do with what mobile is — more about your virtual identity, like dragonslayer482 or whatever your online identity is. In Japan it's also a lot more about users' virtual identity. That's one of the reasons that Facebook has not done well in Japan.
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| Apple Takes One Small Step Against HTC, One Giant Leap Against Android Posted: 20 Dec 2011 11:08 AM PST  Apple has been duking it out with Android manufacturers for the past couple years, and very few are safe. Samsung has already suffered some big losses with the banning of its Galaxy Tab in Germany and Australia. HTC, however, has remained mostly safe from Apple’s wrath. In July the Taiwanese manufacturer had a close call, as Administrative Law Judge Carl Charneski ruled that HTC was infringing two of Apple’s proposed 10 patents. Of course, before any serious action could be taken the ITC needed to have a look, which is exactly what’s happened. Luckily for HTC, most of the infringement “charges” have been dropped, save for two claims in one patent, ruled the ITC. The patent HTC is apparently infringing is U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647, specifically claims 1 and 8. Unfortunately for HTC and all other Android manufacturers, those claims cover a few different features that are baked right into Android, including the ability to push-to-talk on a phone number within an email. As far as HTC is concerned, this is a rather small win for Apple. Reuters reports that the infringing products won’t be allowed into the country if HTC can’t alter them. According to the official paperwork, the limited exclusion order will begin on April 19, 2012. But there’s an exception:
HTC has seemingly already figured a solution to the problem, offering the following statement to BGR.
While HTC asserts that the claims only cover a UI experience, supposedly HTC’s Sense UI, the Galaxy Nexus which runs pure Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich also allows for push-to-call within an email. So, this likely presents a greater problem for Android makers in general. A feature as simple as push-to-talk within an email is something we’ve all grown accustomed to. Who knows how many more simple, but wonderful, features within Android are also infringing Apple patents? It’s been Apple’s mission to destroy Android, and HTC is but a mere stepping stone.
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| “Twitter For Audio” App Spreaker Now Live On Android Posted: 20 Dec 2011 10:45 AM PST  About a month after its iOS debut, the self-described “Twitter for audio” app Spreaker is now publicly launching Android. The app, which lets users broadcast live over the Internet, is a DIY broadcasting/podcasting solution with social sharing mechanisms built in. You connect the app to your Twitter and Facebook accounts to broadcast live as a status update. Afterwards, you can download the MP3 created to publish it as a proper podcast complete with music and sound effects. The Spreaker app is unique in that it streams audio in 128 kilobits and includes features like live chat and Skype call-in, in addition to social sharing. There’s also an online web platform that lets you edit the recording, insert sound effects and add background music from a library of pre-licensed content. The finished podcasts can then be downloaded as MP3 files or you can use the iTunes-compatible RSS feed to syndicate elsewhere. The freemium service offers two paid levels (Gold and Premium) starting at $19.90. These provide more storage, bandwidth and air time while also eliminating ads. The free version is monetized through Spreaker’s ad partners. Spreaker reminds me of an app I toyed with in the past, Cinchcast, which had the similar goals of democratizing access to podcasting. But Cinch has since gone B2B, with a heavy focus on business-level tools like analytics, while pitching its services as ideal for corporate communications, meetings and events, marketing, e-learning and the like. Spreaker, however, is meant to be a consumer-facing service. Podcasts, sadly, are often the forgotten child in the iTunes universe. They’re difficult to monetize for the average user in most cases, and that doesn’t get any easier when they have to compete with the production values of professional content creators. Maybe Spreaker can bring a renewed interest in podcasts. Or maybe no one really finds the average user’s thoughts all that compelling? The new Android app is available here.
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| Disney’s Bart Decrem On “Where’s My Water?” And Their Approach To Mobile Posted: 20 Dec 2011 10:43 AM PST  Disney’s alligator-centric Where’s My Water game made a bit of a splash when it launched in Apple’s App Store this past September, and not for the reasons you may be thinking of. Sure, it turned out to be a popular mobile pastime (it unseated Angry Birds from its perch atop the Top 25 list for three weeks), but there’s more to it than that. Swampy, the game’s reptilian hero, is the first original character that Disney has developed specifically for a mobile platform. The company still has high hopes for Where’s My Water, not only because it’s the company’s first original IP for the mobile space, but also because of what its success means for Disney’s vision for the mobile gaming experience. According to Disney Mobile GM Bart Decrem, more and more “guests” — Disney’s name for their consumers — are turning towards smartphones and tablets as their primary source of entertainment. Disney’s new job then is to create compelling stories and characters that fit not only onto smaller screens, but also into more hectic lifestyles. “We want to create engagements within the span of a minute,” he said. That isn’t to say that those engagements should lack depth: most Where’s My Water levels can be completed in around a minute, but Decrem’s team has added secrets and easter eggs to reward users for spending more time with the game. I’ve alluded before to the fact that Where’s My Water was never intended to stay solely on the small screen, and Decrem confirms that the multimedia push is coming. Swampy’s popularity both inside and outside Disney has paved the way for his migration into other media. According to Bart Decrem, Where’s The Water merchandise will soon see the light of day, and Disney.com and YouTube will be partnering up for a string of Swampy backstory videos. He offered no specifics on when that multimedia push will kick off, but he did mention in passing that he appreciates Rovio’s sense for “doing things at the right time.” That could be the rationale behind the company’s recent announcement: Disney wants to push Where’s My Water into a whole new set of eyes today with the release of a free version of the game. Far from just being a trimmed-down “lite” version of the original app, Disney Mobile instead designed ten new levels for the free version, and will be rolling out another ten as a promotional campaign over the next few days. As it turns out, the decision to design a free version from the ground up was an easy one for the team to make. Decrem feels that “lite” versions of games are tacky and too focused on the upsell. Developers should focus on creating quality products without business considerations — your mileage may vary on that one, but it’s a formula that he ultimately feels led to a better product. For a company that has looked to mobile as an incubator for new IPs, keeping those burgeoning franchises in people’s minds can be crucial. So what’s next for Disney Mobile? They’ve got at least one more original IP that will debut on Android and iOS next year, and Decrem says he wants to create a “how did they do that?” experience. If Decrem and Disney Mobile can prove that the mobile space can help nurture new brands, Rovio may have to keep their eyes peeled. Everyone wants to claim their crown, but Disney may have enough money and manpower to really do it.
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| In Which We Reveal The Top CES 2012 Trends Without Breaking Embargoes Posted: 20 Dec 2011 08:53 AM PST  CES 2012 is going to be a crapshoot of predictable products. How do we know? Meetings, lots and lots of pre-show meetings. Like previous shows, Apple will not be present in person but still has a major presence. Consumer electronic companies are seemingly trying to build product lines and feature sets that compete directly with current and future Apple products. It’s as if these companies are prematurely releasing items just to head off Apple. The iPad took them by surprise and they’re not going to let that happen again — even if that means announcing and releasing half-baked products. So, what can we expect to see at CES this year? What are we going to cover live at the show? Read on. MacBook Air Clones Larger screened ultrabooks are also on tap. Look for 14-inch and larger models. Just like it we predicted, many of these models feature prices lower than current models and in some cases, dramatically lower. 2012 will be the year of the ultrabook, for better or worse. So-called Smart HDTVs From what we’ve seen, several major manufacturers will debut Android powered HDTVs that feature little to no Google TV 2.0 design elements. We’re not sure how much Google TV underpins these smart TVs, but the majority of what we’ve seen has been labeled as Android TV, not Google TV. The companies debuting smart TVs at CES are seemingly determined to get the jump on Apple this time around. If Apple is in fact releasing a smart HDTV product in 2012, these companies will be ready with their own models built around Android. Ironically, since there are several such TVs coming from different manufacturers, the smart TV market might collapse prematurely under the weight of half-baked models all trying to outdo an Apple HDTV that doesn’t even exist yet. Android Tabs And More Predictably, these tablets and the others we’ve seen, mostly run on quad-core platforms with the Nvidia Tegra 3 as the clear favorite. Ice Cream Sandwich is of course present, and most of the tabs are set to ship within the early months of 2012 at $399 to $499 price points. Voice Control Is The Unwanted Future Several smart TV concepts have optional voice controls. Using a mic embedded in a remote, viewers are supposedly able to control certain functions with just their voice. We haven’t seen any demos but the company’s limited descriptions lends us to believe that the feature set is very limited and is probably more of a novelty than a useful feature. But don’t fret, friends. CES 2012 will be huge. We didn’t ruin all the fun. We’re still going to be there, reporting with a constant live video stream. It will be the biggest collection of exciting gadgets and tantalizing products assembled to date. Items like voice controls and smart TVs will likely fade to obscurity shortly afterwards, just as 3DTVs did last year. The real star of CES is the odd, unusual, and paradigm-busting item that defies the popular trends. That’s why we love CES. Tune in Sunday, January 8th (around 4:00 PST) as we kick off our live video coverage of the 2012 International CES. Like previous years, we’re going to livestream all of our tomfoolery as we roam the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. There will be giveaways, tweetups and, of course, a drinking game. It will be great fun for all.
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| Brightkite Winds Down, Says It Will Come Back With ‘Something Better’ (Again) Posted: 20 Dec 2011 08:14 AM PST  Remember Brightkite? Launched with the help of TechStars back in August 2007, the location-based ‘check-in’ service once rivaled the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla, but never really got the traction it needed to keep on competing and win the day: the startup killed the check-in functionality about a year ago to focus on group texting. It’s been quiet about Brightkite ever since, and the company’s two founders moved on long before the pivot to group texting was announced, starting a new venture dubbed Forkly (our review). Now, a reader tells us, it appears Brightkite (which remained the name even after their 2009 merger with Limbo) is changing course again. The company’s mobile apps are no longer available on the App Store or Android Market, and the website displays only a logo and this not super-reassuring text:
I hate to say it, but can’t resist the pun: looks like the future isn’t going to be Brightkite. I’d get in touch with Brightkite to see what’s up and if we can deadpool them yet, but I frankly don’t know who could answer that question, or how to contact anyone at the company for that matter.
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| After Years Of Patent Litigation, Nuance Acquires Vlingo Posted: 20 Dec 2011 06:19 AM PST  In what Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan calls a ‘good outcome’ on Twitter, the voice-to-text technology company has just been acquired by speech recognition king Nuance. Notably, Nuance has repeatedly sued Vlingo over patent infringement – and tried to acquire them – in the past, and Grannan once referred to competing with Nuance as “having a venereal disease that’s in remission”. Vlingo even bought patents and eventually countersued Nuance to fend them off. Anyway, the deal is done: Nuance is buying the company for an undisclosed sum, and says it allows them to combine their innovation and R&D expertise in the field of natural language interfaces. Vlingo has been likened by some as a ‘Siri for Android’, offering voice-enabled Virtual Assistant apps for a wide range of mobile devices (not just Android phones but also Nokia, iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone handsets) that turn spoken words into a variety of actions. For what it’s worth, Vlingo says it’s way better than Siri. And the elephant in the room is of course that Siri is almost certainly powered by Nuance technology. And that Nuance offers Dragon Go. Founded in 2006, Vlingo was backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo and AT&T.
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