Posts Tagged “12”
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple iPhone 4 sets record sale pace despite gaffe Read Full Story…
LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple iPhone 4 sets record sale pace despite gaffe Read Full Story…
Motorola has enhanced its WiMax portfolio with a new service designed to help Read Full Story…
Orange has announced its Read Full Story…
Tesco Mobile has become the latest operator to confirm that it will offer the Read Full Story…
Motorola has appointed John Bucher as corporate vice president of strategy for its mobile devices and home business. He will report to Sanjay Jha, the company’s co-CEO and CEO of mobile devices and home business. Read Full Story…
RIM has appointed Kondor as its accessories distribution partner in the UK, supplying a full range of BlackBerry products across all channels Read Full Story…
Major problems with both AT&T and Apples online commerce operations have Read Full Story…
Apple has confirmed in the Read Full Story…
BT plans to provide up to two million homes and small businesses across Read Full Story…
Verizon Business has added to its portfolio of enterprise IT services with Read Full Story…
Steve Jobs denied that Apple is developing a search engine when he was asked on stage at the D8 conference recently – not that that tells us anything about what’s really going on in Cupertino’s labs. But the speculation persists not about if Apple will move into search, but when, how and why. It was the acquisition of Siri in April that first raised the flags. The deal for somewhere in the region of £200m, according to TechCrunch, gained Apple a small but established app enabling voice command and search for mobile. While it might not seem to compete directly with Google’s primary web search tool, anything in search will compete with something Google is working on. And as both Apple and Google have moved further into the mobile space, the two have become increasingly conflicted. (There are subtle indications of the two moving apart; Jobs last week announced that Bing would be added to the iPhone’s search engine options, though Google remains the default.) So what exactly is Apple developing? Where did Siri come from? Thanks to xconomy‘s excellent background piece, we know that it was born out of a defence research project at SRI International, where it was funded by US taxpayers at a cost of $150m. The roots of the orgaisation go back to 1946, and included work by Douglas Engelbart in 1968 on pioneering human/computer interfaces, like the mouse. It began work on a military version of a ‘personalised assistant that learns’ in the earlies noughties. Eventually the Siri app was spun out in 2008 to make money for the project, which is when $24m in venture money was invested. When it sold to Apple for $200m, (give or take $50m) that netted an eight-fold return for the VCs, Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures. Jobs explained last week that this deal is about artificial intelligence. Search, but not as we know it. xconomy explains: “It’s about the artificial-intelligence insights behind it: the chain of machine-learning, natural-language processing, and Web search algorithms that swing into action with every Siri query. When you can access these algorithms from a mobile device like the iPhone, and prime them with a bit of contextual awareness such as a GPS location reading or an understanding of the user’s preferences, you have a powerful personal tool that Norman Winarsky, SRI’s vice president of ventures, licensing, and strategic programs, likes to describe as a “do engine” rather than a search engine.” The result – and this is fascinating stuff – will be consumers interacting with their phones in a conversational way, rather than being tied to the conventional keyword searches. Why is voice command important? Voice-command technology is an extremely important tool for mobile. It’s hands-free, but essentially just far more practical than typing and means your eyes don’t have to be glued to the screen. If you’ve ever tried using your phone while walking (and of course you have) you’ll know how important that it. Other solutions, like Type n Walk, are more a gimmick than a real solution. From calling up contacts in your address book to searching the web, voice commands give an entirely new and virtual interface with your phone, and it seems right that the challenge of streamlining and organising that interface would appeal to Apple. It may eventually lead to a entirely voice-controlled mobile, freed from the constraints of a keyboard size. And that means mobiles can get really small, saving those delicious touchscreens for desktops and notebooks. iPhone already has voice command. I know this because the voice command appears occasionally, like a genie from a lamp, when I sit on my phone. (Holding down the main call button, as it turns out.) But voice control has yet to really impress – especially in the UK, where it only seems to work properly if you use an American accent, and that’s not even stating to think about the task of developing international language versions. What does that leave? It leaves a field ripe for improvement, and for a mainstream consumer solution. Step in, Apple. And in five years, maybe that iPod Shuffle-sized iPhone Voice will be announced. You just know that’s where things are headed. More speculation Apple analyst Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray confirms Apple will focus on mobile-centric search, presenting very specific competition to Google. They put the likelihood of Apple developing a search engine at 70%. “An iPhone specific search engine could be a difficult undertaking, but we feel Apple could make a minor acquisition of a search company that has built a web index, like a Cuil, and utilize the index as the base for building its own engine… One hurdle for Apple in developing its own search engine would be generating enough advertiser interest to form a competitive marketplace; however, we believe the rationale for an Apple search product is to protect data rather than generate profit.” Venture capitalist and former tech journalist Steve Allsopp explains, at around 2:00, why search is relevant to Apple and why they are embedding Siri into “everything they do”:
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Cisco has announced that EastLink is deploying its ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers as the broadband aggregation platform to deliver ultra-high-speed internet access throughout its Atlantic Canada footprint. Read Full Story…
Verizon Business has added hosted storage to its line of enterprise IT Read Full Story…
But how do they compare with the other networks? And how do they compare with previous prices? Vodafone has – oops! – leaked details of its iPhone 4 pricing. Which, since you can pre-order them from Tuesday 15th, means that it’s not much of a leak, but on the other hand you’d think the networks might have got their pricing out earlier. The numbers were accidentally leaked by Vodafone and captured from its datasheets by Engadget (whence we’ve copied them) reader Liam Gladdy, and we’ve got them here now for you. Note that the white version seems to be the 16GB one, and the black one is your 32GB one. Pore over the details and tell us your thoughts.
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O2, Orange and Three have confirmed that they will accept pre-orders for the Read Full Story… |
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