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Posts Tagged ‘Reuters’

AT&T CEO: iPad will be mostly used on WiFi, won’t drive many new 3G subscriptions
We all know by now that AT&T has secured the rights to furnish US iPad owners with 3G connectivity, but apparently the market desire for that service won’t be quite as big as we might have expected. That comes straight from Randall Stephenson himself, AT&T CEO and eternal believer in the power of i-branded devices, so it may have some legitimacy to it. Surely Randall’s dearest wish would be to announce his network is about to be overwhelmed by new subscribers, and the rather cooler news has already caused a small dint in AT&T’s stock price. Then again, this is hardly shocking news given that 3G on the iPad can be had on a month-by-month basis without contract, and in truth any subscriptions related to it would have to be achieved by AT&T’s own ingenuity — which, judging by its CEO’s comments, won’t be suffering any undue exertions any time soon. Not only that, Randall’s also taken the opportunity to advise us that higher data rates are likely for intensive users of unlimited 3G data plans — whether on the iPad or on smartphones. Way to endear yourself to the masses, dude.

AT&T CEO: iPad will be mostly used on WiFi, won’t drive many new 3G subscriptions originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Facebook Drives 44 Percent Of Social Sharing On The Web

If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on social traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic. This traffic comes from shared links, photos, and videos. By its own numbers, 5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every month.

What isn’t easily appreciated is the extent to which such social sharing is tied to different identity and authentication platforms across the Web. If you can log into a site easily using your Facebook or Twitter account, it is easier to broadcast links from that site to your friends.

To get a sense of which services on the Web drive the most sharing, I asked Gigya for some stats. Gigya powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com. NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com, and Reuters. Consumers can click a share button on these sites and send an article link, photo, or video via a menu of different services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL. Over the past 30 days, people have shared almost a million items over the Gigya network. Facebook and Twitter dominate with about three quarters of all shared items between them. Here is how the services break down (note that these are relative numbers) :

Distribution of shared items
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo:18%
MySpace:9%

It makes sense, people prefer to broadcast links rather than share them one at a time via email. Although Yahoo makes a strong third-place showing. When it comes to authentication, simply using your existing username and password to log into another site, Facebook is still the most popular via Facebook Connect, but only just barely. Google via Gmail and Yahoo are almost equally popular, at least on certain types of sites where people are just reading for themselves like news sites. On entertainment sites where people are more likely to share content, Facebook Connect makes up the majority of logins.

Here are the stats:

Share of Authentication By Platform:

News sites:
Facebook: 31%
Google: 30%
Yahoo: 25%
Twitter: 11%
AOL: 3%

Entertainment sites:
Facebook: 52%
Google: 17%
Yahoo: 12%
Twitter: 11%
MySpace: 7%
AOL: 1%

Facebook Chat is also a strong option, making up more than half of all live event chats measured by Gigya.

Live Event Chat:
Facebook: 56%
Twitter: 28%
Yahoo: 9%
MySpace: 7%

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Twitter Hires Pixar Financial Chief, Preps for More Profitability

Two months after announcing that the startup managed to turn a profit in 2009, Twitter has announced that it will be hiring Pixar finance head Ali Rowghani as its chief financial officer.

Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams told Reuters today that the new hire represents the company’s direction toward “creating value for our users and capturing the financial opportunities that result from it.” Rowghani will join Twitter officially in March.

Sponsor

Last year, Twitter’s search deals with Google and Microsoft made the company around $25 million – about $15 million from Google and $10 million from Microsoft. These two deals were enough to make the company profitable last year. For a fairly young company that offers a simple, free web application for end users, this is quite a feat.

Other revenue channels include creating a revenue-sharing scheme that would let Twitter share the profits generated by third-party applications. The details of this plan are still under wraps, but Twitter’s platform director Ryan Sarver announced at LeWeb that the company would announce details about this plan early in 2010.

Other possible sources of revenue are multi-user accounts, which Twitter has been testing internally.

Twitter has also recently made another high-profile hire, calling on Current TV’s Robin Sloan to work on media partnerships, covering “everything at the intersection of Twitter and media, from live events on TV to citizen journalism on the web.”

We’re excited to see how the startup that’s managed to become a cultural zeitgeist within a few short years will continue to grow and profit. Particularly in its early days, many who lived through the dotcom crash were skeptical about the monetization potential of a free web service. Without incorporating advertising – something that no users wanted to see – Twitter has managed to create a sustainable business.

We can’t wait to see what ideas Rowghani will bring to the table.

Discuss

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Sony posts sharply higher earnings and offers upbeat outlook

For the first time in a while, Sony blew away earnings forecasts for the quarter ended Dec. 31 and predicted a much better outlook for its fiscal year that ends March 31.

After years of restructuring under chief executive Howard Stringer, the company reported net profit of 79.2 billion yen ($861 million), up about eight fold from a year ago and more than twice the amount that analysts expected (33.73 billion yen) according to Thomson Reuters. The profit was the first in five quarters.

The Japanese electronics giant said that revenue rose 3.9 percent to 2.24 trillion yen while operating profit was 146.1 billion yen, up eight-fold from a year ago. Sony expects to report a full fiscal year operating loss of 30 billion yen, down from its previous forecast of 60 billion yen.

Sales of the PlayStation 3 grew after the redesigned PS 3 Slim version hit the market in August at a price that was $100 less than the previous version. During the past year, Sony has closed 18 percent of its plants and eliminated 20,000 jobs in an effort to cut costs. At the same time, the company is overhauling its product lines to connect them to online services. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Sony executive Kaz Hirai said that the company’s PlayStation Network online service was the model for the whole company to follow.

Sony’s Network Products and Services business, which includes the video game business, Sony reported a profit of 19.4 billion yen, compared to a loss of 5.9 billion yen a year earlier. Sales rose 1.9 percent to 606.1 billion yen. Sony’s flat-panel TVs recovered, and the company saw a profit in its joint venture in TV screen manufacturing with Samsung. But its Sony Ericsson joint venture in cell phones reported a loss.

Sony sold 10.8 million PS 3 units in the first nine months of its fiscal year ended Dec. 31, and it expects to sell 13 million by the end of March 31, 2010. That compares to 10.1 million units sold in all of fiscal 2008. The PlayStation Portable is hurting, however. The PSP is expected to sell 10 million units in the year ended March 31, 2010, compared with 14 million units in the prior year.

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FCC expands ETF inquiry, fires off letters to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Google
Verizon might be getting picked on for introducing its whopper $350 “advanced device” ETF, but the FCC has decided that it wants answers from everyone on concerns that “there is no standard framework for structuring and applying ETFs throughout the wireless industry.” The commission has sent letters (via fancy certified mail, in case you’re wondering) to all of the other biggies — AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile — along with Google, asking a series of questions probing how each carrier’s ETFs are determined and applied. Google gets roped in for its nasty equipment recovery fee, but all of the recipients share a common dubious distinction: the frickin’ FCC — a bureaucracy filled to the brim with lawyers and… well, bureaucrats — can’t figure out terms that everyday customers are expected to understand. Of course, most customers don’t have the distinction of being able to send a certified letter to their carrier probing fees and require a prompt and complete response, so we’re happy to see the feds get to the bottom of this. Sure, ETFs may ultimately prove to be completely justified in their current form considering the expense that carriers put up to subsidize hot hardware, it’s true — but regardless, it’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure they’re spelled out in ways even FCC commissioners (and Engadget editors) can appreciate.

FCC expands ETF inquiry, fires off letters to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Google originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nokia offering free turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones globally
Man, you thought Garmin and TomTom were in trouble when Google announced its free Navigation service… wait until investors hear Nokia’s news. Reuters is reporting that Nokia will offer free navigation on its smartphones. However, instead of just the US (the current Google limitation sans hacking), Nokia will be demonstrating its reach by offering free turn-by-turn directions in 74 countries in 46 languages — a move that should cover 20 million smartphones globally with Ovi Maps available in over 180 countries. Damn.

Update: The original San Francisco Chronicle report has been pulled but Google cache caught a bit more saying that Nokia’s navigation service is “capable of operating completely offline” unlike Google Navigation which requires data connectivity.

[Thanks, Jussi]

Nokia offering free turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones globally originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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McDonald’s starts dishing out free WiFi at most of its U.S. restaurants

McDonald’s starts dishing out free WiFi at most of its U.S. restaurants originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T sued by Washington DC for unused balances on calling cards

Here’s a superficially curious, but fundamentally quite important, bit of legal wrangling for you. Reuters is reporting that the District of Columbia has filed suit against AT&T Corp for the recovery of unused balances on calling cards purchased from the telecom giant. Estimated at somewhere between 5 and 20 percent of the overall value of the cards, the so-called breakage — leftover credit that customers neglect to use — has typically remained with the carrier as a sort of predictable bonus. The DC Attorney General, however, is seeking to have breakages treated as unclaimed property, which under district law means that after three years they must be returned to the state. Whichever side of the fence you sit on, the decision on this case will set a significant precedent for the future of such prepaid services.

AT&T sued by Washington DC for unused balances on calling cards originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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