Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Oct 2012 10:11

Mickey is going thru a much needed transition. BTW that Store zero idea is what the Mahdi used for figuring out fruit co. store design. Allegedly the idea was given to him by the founder of Gap.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 17 Oct 2012 10:34

Motorola Wants To Give Their Users A Stock Android Experience – Verizon, Not So Much

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Oct 2012 11:42

In US carriers squeeze the balls and till date nobody has succeeded in making them toe the line except the Mahdi - everybody else failed or downhill skied whether GumBoot or Sammy or Yell-ji or Motor Oil or Yech Tea Sea or even Chacha. Wonder how Mickey will fare - probably join GUBO position with Chacha.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 17 Oct 2012 20:24

^^^This is something I agree with fully. IIRC, it is also the reason VZW didn't get the iPhone to start with in 2007. VZW has MOTO by crushing their gotas. Only choice for GOOG is to dump their partnership with VZW and stick to the Play Store, but I doubt that is possible. If MSFT, GOOG, and AAPL decided to end telecom carrier shenanigans by selling only unlocked phones, their sales may suffer initially, but would quickly pick back up.

I wish one of the US presidential candidates would come out and say they will push congress and the FCC to sell all phones unlocked and two year contracts as illegal.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Oct 2012 21:06

Chacha tried to defy the carriers back in 2009 and then quickly had to assume GUBO position - the result of which was Moto Droid on VZW which launched Android as a solid mobile platform. That with the failed N1 experiment pretty much sealed the deal for the mid-term at least. VZW didn't get iPhunwa initially for a number of other reasons. Till now Mickey has managed to keep the UI clean from carriers (though carrier apps are still included) but WP volumes are low right now so its going under the radar. But if Mickey cannot pull off WP by its muscle, it will have to assume GUBO position too, pronto.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 17 Oct 2012 21:44

soothing industrial scale datacenter psyops pics from google

http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 17 Oct 2012 22:54

^^^Them Data Centers are extremely expensive proposition to build in the first place. And I am not talking about all the wiz-bang stuff inside. The physical infrastructure required itself is quite staggering...for example, the floor loading required is north of 1200 Kgs/m2...for normal It/Vity buildings, this is 450-600 kgs/m2 with area designated for server rooms having 1000+ floor loading...and the power requirement is quite humungous.....now imagine, building an entire 150,000+ sq.ft building to these specification.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 17 Oct 2012 23:03

^^They all do it - no other choice. Chacha, Takla, even device/software companies like Fruit Co and Mickey. The most TFTA new data center coming up these dins is from a non-existent agency.

negi · Post by **negi** » 17 Oct 2012 23:07

^ It is going only naarth with stuff like Big Data and Hadoop being thrown to sell snake oil to large enterprises who have enough cash to spend.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 17 Oct 2012 23:31

Singha wrote:design hawks might want to read this - a guided tour of "studio B" the roped off facility where MSFT surface tablets are worked on
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/ ... e-company/

in marketing terms I think they are going to get hit by apple and samsung on using a compromise display resolution though. "eagle eye" or whatever creative name appl uses on its retina++ gen screens will surely up the pixel count . eagle eye because only a eagle or falcon might notice the diff between retina and retina++ mahdi would be yelled at customers for not taking enough carrots and vitamin-A injections to develop such magical eyes.

During this tour, they compared 3rd Gen "The new iPad" and Surface's screens.. Ars Technica's peter bright said this in comments :-

Peter Bright wrote:
anthrobug wrote:I also found the comment in the article about a lower resolution, less reflective, higher contrast display could be better than a higher resolution, higher reflective, lower contrast display completely absurd. Sounds like they're making excuses to me; There is no higher resolution, lower contrast display - There's only the iPad(3)'s retina display which wipes the floor with surfaces' LCD for the same price.

I've seen both LCDs side by side. You haven't. You're wrong.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 17 Oct 2012 23:48

Raja Bose wrote:^^They all do it - no other choice. Chacha, Takla, even device/software companies like Fruit Co and Mickey. The most TFTA new data center coming up these dins is from a non-existent agency.

Well, it is a growing business in India as well.

Companies run Data Centers and offer space to other companies as well.

Having said that, if you observe all the facilities listed in Google website, they are horizontal development. Chacha has used industrial plant style set-up to go for horizontal development. This saves the CAPEX in terms of building a multistory complex with higher specifications. In our case, I remember a huge ICICI Data Center coming up in the middle of Hiranandani Development in Powai. Some 250,000 sq.ft + building built as per the requirement of the bank. AFAIK, such industrial scale facilities are not common in India.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 18 Oct 2012 00:08

rohitvats wrote: Having said that, if you observe all the facilities listed in Google website, they are horizontal development. Chacha has used industrial plant style set-up to go for horizontal development.

That's the advantage in massa. There are huge open areas still available close to major population centers (or at least well connected by road) where large scale horizontal development can be done.
In India such spaces, if any can only be acquired far away from major cities with the consequent problems of poor road connectivity, 10 hour load shedding, no internet infra in place etc. etc.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 18 Oct 2012 02:26

Shh, Vadra might get ideas!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 18 Oct 2012 04:02

^^^That's OK if we get a dus-percenti cut!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 18 Oct 2012 07:13

american states with surplus land and power, and somewhat economically down vie with each other to provide nearly free land and power and tax breaks to attract these data centers. each employs only around a 100 people but the hope is more tech will come seeing the anchor tenant.

negi · Post by **negi** » 18 Oct 2012 11:05

Well in Gurgaon most of the ITVTY companies have a small power plant in their backyard , they virtually run on diesel for at least 2-4 hours every day.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 18 Oct 2012 21:11

GOOG may be trying to limit any anti-trust suits that the US government might bring against them.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 18 Oct 2012 22:25

Google's third-quarter results have missed estimates.. its down 10%.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 18 Oct 2012 22:38

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecch ... on-profit/

The company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin earned $9.03 per share in the third quarter, well below the consensus estimate that called for an EPS of $10.63; GAAP EPS came in at $6.53.

Search giant Google also missed its revenue number, which came in at $11.3 billion, excluding traffic acquisition costs, according to Trade the News. Wall Street expected Google to deliver $11.9 billion in sales. Consolidated revenues grew 45% to $14.1 billion.
Paid clicks increased 33% year-over-year, while cost per click fell 15%. Google’s international revenue hit $6.1 billion, representing 53% of total revenue, compared with 54% in the second quarter.
Google-owned web site advertising revenues grew 15% to $7.7 billion. The all-important traffic acquisition cost (TAC) number ticked up to $2.77 billion, from $2.2 billion.
The company reported that it’s cash stock pile had reached $45.7 billion.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 18 Oct 2012 23:04

^^Somebody will get halal'ed for this.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 18 Oct 2012 23:14

Google lost 19 billion in market value.. also Motorola Mobility' losses have nearly doubled to half a billion compared to last quarter.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 18 Oct 2012 23:15

You mean for early release or missed estimate, or both?

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 18 Oct 2012 23:23

Mort Walker wrote:You mean for early release or missed estimate, or both?

Missed estimate. Though even if the results were released few hours later.. markets would have reacted in same manner.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 18 Oct 2012 23:23

Raja Bose wrote:^^Somebody will get halal'ed for this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19995730

Google shares suspended after profit results error

Trading in Google shares has been suspended after the internet giant released its third-quarter results early by mistake.

Third-quarter profits fell 20% on a year earlier to $2.18bn (£1.35bn) and below analysts' expectations.

Google blamed financial printing firm RR Donnelly for filing an early draft of the results, which had been expected after the closing bell

Looks like RR Donnelly ki phati.

negi · Post by **negi** » 19 Oct 2012 00:56

Lot of companies missed their targets in Q2 and Q3 .

I giggle in those feel good type of meetings where they summon everyone and claim 'all ij well'.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 01:32

Mort Walker wrote:You mean for early release or missed estimate, or both?

Early release. Halal'ed as in getting investigated by SEC.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 01:47

$249 MacBook Air

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 19 Oct 2012 01:58

Raja Bose wrote:$249 MacBook Air

Not bad. ARM based though. It has an SD card slot and you could easily increase the storage space by 64 GB. It may be the type of cheapo laptop for the kids. I wonder if I could install Linux on it or if there is some sort of EFI/secure safe boot?

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 19 Oct 2012 06:28

Mort Walker wrote: I wonder if I could install Linux on it or if there is some sort of EFI/secure safe boot?

It comes with a google flavor of Linux called Chrome OS preinstalled. Chrome OS is officially supported by Google and is guaranteed to work with their hardware. Google had earlier released the sources for Chrome OS a while back, so some guys in the open source community maintain their own flavor based on Chrome OS which they called Chromium OS.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Oct 2012 09:02

To add to the open vs closed debated we were having (about "Open" meaning that development is open in full public glare)

Key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret, to escape the critics’ ire
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/13 ... ritics-ire

In a twist that is sure to raise eyebrows and cause no end of neckbeard scratching, Canonical founder and Ubuntu’s de facto spiritual leader, Mark Shuttleworth, has announced that key parts of Ubuntu 13.04 will be developed in secret.

The reasoning is simple: Ubuntu 13.04 (dubbed Raring Ringtail, after the ring-tail cat/raccoon) will contain some features with “high ‘tada!’ value” (Shuttleworth’s words), and he would rather they stay secret until the big reveal. Judging by his words, Shuttleworth is sick of Ubuntu features being torn apart by critics before they’re ready.

So Ubuntu is not really open?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Oct 2012 09:10

negi wrote:Lot of companies missed their targets in Q2 and Q3 .
I giggle in those feel good type of meetings where they summon everyone and claim 'all ij well'.

All companies in the computing business (especially those in Ads) face the twin problems of shift to mobile and weak economy (except ofcourse fruitco who actually disrupted it). Mobile has changed user habits, profits and business model. Take Mickey$ for example: Bulk of margins to be made in hardware is in mobile (fruitco probably makes 10 times more moolah per phunwa than dell makes in a PC*). Thats what propelled fuitco beyond M$. If M$ had a mobile OS out 5 years back, they could have charged big moolahs for it.

Bulk of entertainment is consumed on mobile (and not on desktop) so is bulk of app revenues. PC upgrade cycle is widening (7 years or so), mobile upgrades still take place 1-2 years. Companies like Sun, HP, Motorola, GB, RIM have their mush kicked due to this shift. Companies like facekitab dont know how to make money. It is inevitable that chacha will hit this downturn too and it is a long time coming.

In the end, all companies change and survive. Or stay static and die.

*Interesting news about that: Remember the lawsuit sammy lost? Turns out fruitco had filed documents regarding its profit margin to justify damages. And now the judge wants to release it to public. I bet my testimonial that a iPhunwa costs 150$ (which they sell for 600$) and if the release happens, headlines will scream 800% profits on iPhunwa!!!

Ofcourse fruitco will try to keep it under wraps and have appealed.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 09:13

^^^Actually it ceases to be in the true spirit of open source once they start doing that. One can argue endlessly what "open" means since it is just an adjective but open source as per its original definition does mean it is developed in full community view and allows community contributions during the development process. The excuse Shuttleworth is giving has to be taken with a pinch of salt since he has been going on fishing expeditions to pitch various forms of Ubuntu for commercial uses in embedded for quite a while now (one of them was for a rival version to B2G). So his move to put a burkha is quite understandable. As I have said many times, true open source and commercial don't mix - just like being goody-two-shoes and becoming a mantri in India don't mix. Never has till date.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 09:21

Mickey's problem was it was late to follow in Fruit Co's disruptive wake in mobile but even if they did that, it wouldn't mean that they would profit like Fruit Co since Mickey would be playing horizontal, not vertical. For PCs, mickey doesn't make money off HW margin but rather from SW licensing onlee. In fact I doubt mickey has ever made money directly off HW barring its mice and kb since XBox HW sells at a loss. But the fact they are going selectively vertical with plans for profit (XBox was the 1st time they did it but not for profit) means they are drooling at those fat margins. Surface is the 1st time they are looking to profit directly from device HW margins but whether they succeed is another question.

If I remember my teardown reports, iPhunwa BOM used to be like ~190 or so. Fruit Co makes such big margins off the carriers - you gotta hand it to the Mahdi coz no other manufacturer has managed to extract such huge margins from carriers or keep their UX free from carrier crap.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 19 Oct 2012 09:52

The reason I was talking about hardware margin is because it ultimately sets the limit on how much testimonial you can squeeze. If dell makes 50$ per pc profit, M$ cannot charge 200$ for licensing windows. OTOH if someone makes 400$ per device profit, M$ can charge 200$ for licensing windows.

I am not sure what the strat-e-jee minds in M$ dreamed up. Maybe they thought that the era of profiting from SW was gone or there is a ton of profit to be made from HW like fruitco and they took some time to execute on that. Maybe upgrade cycles played a part: Companies buy PCs every 5 years or so (i vaguely recall some study that said that a typical mac laptop is 4 years old or something. So even mac kashtmars are not upgrading fast and furious), but consumers buy phones every 2 years or so (and maybe likely to continue. Phones get worn out/lost/broken/dropped in Pakistan much more than a desktop PC) -- this has a direct bearing on how much M$ profits from desktop windows. Or maybe they didnt want to fork windows (Fruitco has 2 different OS'es now) and try to converge later (like how fruitco keeps saying it would do). Or maybe they felt that Android and Fruitco have set a precedent that hardware companies make profit, but software companies dont in mobile. Android is free, FruitCo really doesnt sell you the OS -- they talk about how smooth the phunwa's musharraf is and how thin it is and how retina the LCD is. So where is the incentive for hardware manufacturers to pay and install windows on mobile, especially when there is no installed base and no app/content lock in (so there are repeat buyers)? On PC it was simple, if HP installed ubuntu and sold a PC 50$ cheaper than dell, Kashtmars will buy from dell for 50$ more price because their programs run only on window and peripherals work on windows. OTOH Why would Kashtmars prefer windows on mobile (especially if it is atmost delta better than Android but costlier than android handsets?). Unless they want to hedge their bets, why would hardware manufacturers pay licensing to M$, install windows and sell it for a reduced margin or at a price point between Android and iPhunwa? It makes sense for M$ to sell phunwas and tablets as an "integrated experience" and make even more money than on software alone.

I think everyone was taken by surprise by Mahdi, the success of iPhunwa and iPod was probably something others didnt see. Music companies probably though "So what if we agree to 1$ per song in iTunes, who is going to buy them strange music player and install a software and listen through it". Now Fruitco is the biggest music retailer -- ahead of walmart and amazon! ATT probably thought "lets have an expensive phunwa which nobody would buy, charge those kashtmars 50000$ for data plan and give 25000$ to fruitco". Except everyone wants an iPhunwa, ATT's profit is flat, fruitco takes home all the money and ATT cannot drop iPhunwa without Kashtmars going in droves to competitors.

Although I do have my beef about Fruitco's tendency to lock down their OS from the users (I bought the phunwa, and wish to have the right to do whatever I feel with it, not only those things that Mahdi blessed) I am 400% happy that the cellphone Cos got screwed over. And the Music Cos before that.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 19 Oct 2012 10:14

Raja Bose wrote:^^^Actually it ceases to be in the true spirit of open source once they start doing that. One can argue endlessly what "open" means since it is just an adjective but open source as per its original definition does mean it is developed in full community view and allows community contributions during the development process. The excuse Shuttleworth is giving has to be taken with a pinch of salt since he has been going on fishing expeditions to pitch various forms of Ubuntu for commercial uses in embedded for quite a while now (one of them was for a rival version to B2G). So his move to put a burkha is quite understandable. As I have said many times, true open source and commercial don't mix - just like being goody-two-shoes and becoming a mantri in India don't mix. Never has till date.

Not necessarily sir. A lot of the early open source projects were developed by a group of few people without sharing their progress until they were ready to release (for example: netbsd in the early days). The first project to truly open its latest sources as they are being developed was the OpenBSD project via anonymous CVS [1]. And this was because they were getting a fair amount of duplicated code contributions because people would not always know what the core developers were working on.

Also, Linux has a history of accepting closed source drivers from certain vendors e.g. nvidia.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD#Op ... umentation

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 21:07

I am still not sure about Boxee's revolution - let's see. In general, the TV is one screwed up space where its more about politics, licensing and other crap rather than technology. The TV revolution has a much better chance in turd-world India rather than chi-chi massa - for all their boast about free economy and capitalism, massa sure does have a ton of monopolies ruling the roost, no better than our old sarkari PSUs.

Armen mullah, do remember the big scary disclaimer linux distros show on screen when you ask to install closed source Nvidia drivers.

BTW there has been an internal debate for quite long within Nvidia regarding open sourcing the drivers, how open to make 'em etc. It will probably really come to fruit once they stabilize their offerings across PC and mobile (iirc it was somewhere around 2015 or 2016?).

Fruit Co's ability to survive depends on whether it can disrupt again. For now I am not so sure - they have multiple talented takniki guys who can pull it off (I mean they pulled off iPhunwa, iPad...leaving aside iPod since Fadell and Rubenstein left) but they don't have a strong a-hole who can whip the others mush into line.

Anujan-ullah, I doubt Mickey thinks profiting from software is gone. They know that profiting from OS is gone, that is why the push to services and integration across platforms - Android OS is free but Chacha makes money from services on top of Android both directly and indirectly.

The 2 year upgrade cycle of mobile phones actually has very little to do with them getting worn out/lost/broken/dropped but rather in massa it is a cycle enforced by carriers. The upgrade cycle in other countries varies. Regardless of mobile or PC, HW manufacturers make the least amount of profit unless they go vertical like Fruit Co. - then they get the whole pie instead of the tiniest slice. That is why Sammy is moving in that direction, GB is still clinging on to NAVTEQ (and purchased it many years ago in the 1st place) and Mickey is making eyes in that direction.

Music companies actually fought tooth-and-nail against the $1/song (esp. Sony), they knew exactly the threat iPod posed to them and their evil ways. But some very deft manouvering by the Mahdi plus leveraging his personal connections with the big name artists (Dylan, Bono, even his ex GF) got him thru. The Mahdi's personal connections played a huge role in many of his achievements whether it be doing music deals or making gorilla glass relevant. Other tech CEOs are mostly content to stay cooped in their offices or mingle only amongst their peers (YumBeeAyes and/or geeks) - they could take a leaf out of the Mahdi's book.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 19 Oct 2012 21:15

For those who never met him, he was a truly humble man - one of those people who did great things but had no Mahdi-like ego. He is an example of a guy who earned his patents, unlike the Mahdi. RIP.

Stanford Ovshinsky, inventor of the NiMH battery, passes away at 89

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 19 Oct 2012 23:37

^^^Sad to hear that and as one of the comments in the article aptly stated. Without him we would be stuck with NiCD where cadmium is a toxic heavy metal and NiCD batteries suffer from hysteresis.

lakshmikanth · Post by **lakshmikanth** » 19 Oct 2012 23:46

Folks question:
Planning on buying a tablet, wondering which one is better:

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 vs Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 20 Oct 2012 00:15

For that kind of money you owe it to yourself to check out Microsoft Surface tabs on Oct 26th.