Barclays new app transfers money by mobile phone

By MARK HENNESSY.

THE ERA of the cashless society has moved a step closer, following the launch yesterday in Britain of a new mobile telephone payment system by Barclays Bank - the first of its kind in Europe.

Using Barclay's PingIt, a customer will be able to send up to £300 daily to another person knowing only their mobile number, as long as the receiver's bank details are registered with ¡®PingIt'.

For now, only Barclays' 11.9 million current-account holders will be able to send money, using a five-digit PIN, though anyone with a UK current account can receive funds through the system.

From March, current-account holders with all UK banks will be able to send money using the service: "I'm sure we'll soon be wondering what we did before it," said Anthony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays retail and business banking.

No bank details are exchanged during the transfer, which takes 30 seconds and which is free, for now. Both senders and recipients will be notified by SMS about transactions.

Users can download an app for iPhone, Android or Blackberry phones. Those without smart-phones can use PingIt's website to make or receive payments.

For now, the service is limited to personal accounts, though Barclays said the daily sums allowable should make it useful for "sole traders such as window cleaners or plumbers".

Mr Jenkins said, in time, bill payments and international payments could be added to the software.

Besides the minimum payment of £1 and the maximum of £300, Barclays has also set a total daily limit that can be sent of £300 and a £5,000 limit on the maximum that can be received by any one account.

Saying it will revolutionise the way people use money, Mr Jenkins cited examples such as friends splitting the cost of dinner, repaying a borrowed £10, or sending money to a son or daughter at university.

Sean Gilchrist, Barclays' head of digital banking, said the app employs "industry-standard encryption" and can be automatically wiped if a mobile is lost. But it should be locked when not in use.

However, Rachel Springall of the Moneyfacts comparison website warned that customers would need to be careful to use the correct mobile number and to send the right amount.

Users must be registered to receive payments - pending payments will be held for 24 hours and the instruction will be cancelled if the recipient has not registered during that time.

The Barclays move puts it into competition against the eBay-owned PayPal, which already has a similar app, although the bank - with its high-street presence - believes it has a branding advantage over eBay.

Barclays pushes out Pingit phone-based payment app

By Ben Woods.

Barclays Bank has launched Pingit, a service that lets people send and receive money using a smartphone, without sharing banking details. Barclay's Pingit app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry lets people send and receive cash using just a phone number.

The Pingit app can be used to make payments to anyone who has a current account with any British bank or building society, Barclays said in its announcement on Thursday. Participants sign up online to link their banking details with their mobile phone number, so that the phone number is all that is needed for the transfer, the company added.

At launch on Thursday, only Barclays current account customers will be able to send money via the app. However, any UK current account holder can register to receive payments. An update to the Pingit app expected in early March will open the payment part of the service up to everyone.

"For friends splitting the cost of dinner, repaying a borrowed £10 or people sending money to a son or daughter at university, it's free, quick, convenient, secure and easy to use," Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays retail and business banking, said in a statement. "You can send and receive money in seconds, without having to enter account details."

Google Wallet hits the town: In pictures

The Pingit app is available on the Apple iOS, Android and BlackBerry platforms, and can be downloaded from the related app stores. It requires iOS 4.2 or above, Android 2.2 or above and BlackBerry OS 4.6 or newer.

Payment limits for the service are in place, with the minimum transfer set at £1 and the maximum in one transaction at £300. The daily limit for receiving payments is £5,000.

Pingit could pose a challenge to PayPal's mobile payment service, which, unlike Barclays, imposes transaction fees for consumers. Small businesses using Pingit will have to pay "normal transaction charges", Barclays said.

In May, Barclays teamed up with Orange to introduce the first mobile wallet scheme in the UK. The contactless payment scheme made it possible for people with certain handsets, such as the Samsung Tocco Quick Tap, to buy products under £15 via an app.

Laptop Battery Replacement:

Dell Laptop Batteries

• Dell KM973 T555C Battery
• Dell Inspiron 14(1464) Battery
• Dell Inspiron 15(1564) Battery
• Dell Inspiron N7110 Battery
• Dell Studio XPS M1640 Battery

Fujitsu Laptop Batteries

• Fujitsu FPCBP282AP Battery
• Fujitsu FPCBP250AP Battery
• Fujitsu Lifebook S760 Battery
• Fujitsu Lifebook T730 Battery
• Fujitsu Lifebook T4210 Battery

... etc.

With Updated App, Path Hints at a Mature Business Model

By Mike Isaac.

SAN FRANCISCO, California - It's practically a Silicon Valley proverb: Build your user base, and the money will follow. The problem is that if you grow too big, too fast without a monetization plan, you'll end up taking round after round of money from venture capitalists just to keep up, without the means to make any of your own.

Path, the self-proclaimed 'personal' social network, has often looked like it was falling into this trap. As users are limited to 150 connections, traditional advertising has a more difficult time going viral on Path's network than, say, Facebook's or Twitter's. With a new version rolling out to users, however, the fast-growing startup may soon have more revenue on the horizon.

On Thursday, the company introduced Path version 2.1 of its iOS and Android apps. More importantly, Path announced it was opening up its application programming interface to the first major partner to integrate with the network: Nike.

Path's new version offers integration with the Nike+ service, so users can track their daily running routes and make them available for their friends to see and comment on. Path's team stressed that it's an added feature, not an advertising deal per se - and Path CEO Dave Morin says that his company has "no plans for advertising in the short term."

"If we're focused on happiness, traditional advertising goes against that experience," Morin told reporters at Thursday's press event.

In the long term, if or when Path does open itself up to integrating ads into users' streams, Morin says it would be some sort of content-based advertising, rather than the traditional display ads familiar to users of Google or Facebook.

Nike is currently the sole partner, as Path's API is still private. But as the API opens to more potential content partners, this expands the network's ability to provide both new services and more revenue-generating content.

Today, both features and revenue opportunities on Path are relatively limited. Among other services, users can share photos with one another and point to which music tracks they're listening to. Path only takes in very small amounts in revenues from these services: selling photo filters that work with the camera, plus a deal with iTunes which pays Path an undisclosed sum for each track a user posts.

If Path partnered with retailers, credit card companies or location-based deals apps, monitoring your daily activity could yield more advertising opportunities. Say you go for your daily run using the Nike+ feature. The app maps out your route that you take. Integration with a deal-based app could map out relevant shopping possibilities and available discounts on the route for your next run. Imagine planning out your run so that you'll end up at a shop offering a deal on Gatorade with purchase of a PowerBar.

Morin also expressed interest in mobile gaming, a lucrative source of revenues for companies like Facebook and Zynga.

"Obviously games are a big thing on the iPhone right now," Morin said. "Something like half of the iPhone users out there are mobile gamers. If we were to jump into games, it would be in a high-quality way."

Suppose Path were to partner up with Zynga, an obvious choice for mobile gaming. A potential deal could mirror the type that Zynga currently has with Facebook: Users purchase virtual goods through Path to use in Zynga games, while Zynga splits revenue 70/30 with Path.

These are all hypotheticals, of course; in the near future, Path's API will remain private to maintain "quality control." Meanwhile, the company will slowly expand its exclusive partnerships.

Path does have to tread lightly when it comes to sharing data with advertisers. The company is still fresh off a massive privacy scandal, in which Path was caught uploading users' mobile address book data to the company's servers. It has since apologized and deleted all of the collected data, but a slow, careful public relations path (so to speak) is most likely the company's best option.

Meanwhile, Morin and company are working to build up Path's feature set. The 2.1 update includes a music-matching feature that recognizes what tracks are playing in the surrounding environment. (Shazam, anyone?) And Path co-founder Dustin Mierau added a number of enhancements and filter updates to the app's camera feature, further encroaching on Instagram's turf.

Revenue from these services may be minor, too, but it still shows a steady advance toward monetization as well as growth. It's a more secure foundation for a more mature company - one that Path's team hopes users and partners continue to embrace as warmly as investors have.

Nike Fuel Band does it Live Up to the Hype?

It feels like the fitness tracking market couldn't possibly fit any more devices, but Nike is hoping to prove that that is not the case. The new Nike Fuel Band hopes to prove itself the best of the bunch for fitness tracking, and boasts some nice features that mean that it just might be. And if the pre-sale numbers are anything to go by, then this device should sell millions. (The Fuelband sold out in just 8 minutes. So does the device live up to it's prerelease hype? Read on to find out what the reviewers think.

The Nike Fuel Band is a small rubbery band that you wear on your wrist. On the top is a matrix of 100 LED's, which act as the display for the device. Most of the LEDs are light blue, but there is a band of colored ones along the top of the device, used for indicating how close you are to matching your daily goal.

While the device might look like it is rubber all the way through, at its core is a metal frame designed to be durable. This gives the device a nice feel. As said The Verge's Bryan Bishop: "the band feels more like a good watch than a gadget."

The Nike Fuel Band forgoes traditional metrics for burning calories and replaces it with its own: Nike Fuel. It is designed to be a unified measure of all your physical activity throughout the day. Most people seem to see this as an interesting, bold, and possibly brilliant idea, but one that athletes may not appreciate. As said The Verge's Bryan Bishop you're left with "a product that's probably not that interesting for hard-core athletes or the exercise-obsessed, no matter how many times LeBron James appears in the commercial."

Others felt that the metric actually does provide a real advantage to athletes. said Casey Chan of Gizmodo:

"It's a clever idea! As balancing the differences of various activities (sprint, jog, etc) can provide the token to improve overall fitness since you're gunning for the same goal, in this case, a Nikefuel benchmark. Nike believes that life is a sport, every human is an athlete and everything you do should be measured. I'm definitely interested in seeing how much Nikefuel I gain for surfing the internet."

But the Nike Fuel Band does have problems with anything not based on large arm motions. As said Mark Hatchman of PCMag.com, "Nike claims that any aerobic movement-dancing, walking, skipping rope, boxing-is tracked using the three-dimensional accelerometer and converted into its own arbitrary "fuel" metric. (It's doubtful, however, that the band can measure resistance, or activity where the wrist is stationary, such as a pushup or bicycle riding. With the FitBit, such activities must be manually entered.) It's water-resistant, but not waterproof, so don't try swimming."

The Verge's Bryan Bishop said :

"...the fact that the device keys off arm motion does lead to some activities being rewarded more heavily than others. 10 jumping jacks will get you 10 Fuel points, but 10 tough minutes on an elliptical - with consistent, steady hand motion - produced just 150 Fuel points. Riding a stationary bike, with hands locked to the steering grips, resulted in no Fuel earned whatsoever. Nike admits that the FuelBand also doesn't play nice with resistance-based activities like yoga or weight lifting, but to be fair this type of variance is going to be an issue with any wrist-mounted device."

The Fuel Band isn't cheap, at $149.99. And because of the limited release, there are Ebay auctions for the device that are ~$300.00. And the Fuel Band doesn't do many of the things that its competitors can do. Said Bryan Bishop again:

"The FuelBand doesn't monitor your sleeping patterns or serve as an alarm, two of the cooler functions of the Up bracelet, and it doesn't provide GPS functionality like a full-featured sports watch. At $149, there are also quite a few cheaper options out there on the market."

Right now, there is a web app and an iOS app, which the Fuel Band can sync to via bluetooth. The device can stay charged for 4 days, which is fairly long for a device like this.

Other Electronics News:

Red Store , Laptop Battery , Lenovo Battery ,

Lenovo R60 Battery , Lenovo R60E Battery , Lenovo R61 Battery , Lenovo R61i Battery , Lenovo R61E Battery , Lenovo R400 Battery , Lenovo R500 Battery , Lenovo X21 Battery , Lenovo X22 Battery , Lenovo X23 Battery , Lenovo X24 Battery , Lenovo X30 Battery and Dell j590m Battery , Dell j1knd Battery , Dell Latitude d520 Battery , DELL XPS M140 Battery , DELL rd300 Battery , DELL XPS M1530 battery , DELL f287h battery , Dell Studio 1435 Battery , Dell Studio 1745 Battery , Dell 75uyf Battery , etc.

Path updated to include Nike+ integration, music matching, camera enhancements

by Joe Aimonetti.

Summary: Popular mobile journal sharing app Path has been updated, now with the ability to share your runs through Nike+, find and share the music you're listening to, and add cool filters to photos.

Are you a fan of Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Shazam? Nike+?

Would you be interested in a service that essentially combines the functionality of all these mobile apps into one sleek and simple-to-use program? Then perhaps you should give Path a try.

After its most recent update (see my colleague, Paul Sloan's take here), Path could become a major player in the social networking game, expanding its existing 2 million user base. All these enhancements take the brain-child of former Facebook platform manager, angel investor Dave Morin, to a whole new level.

The major integration win for Path comes in the form of its partnership with Nike+. Now, when you want to complete a workout and share with friends, an option to share on Path is at your disposal. Path's integration is more than just posting your times, though. When you start a run, a note is made on Path. If followers add an emoticon (the equivalent of a Facebook "Like"), you will hear a cheer while running.

Mobile social encouragement. Pretty cool.

Of course Facebook and Twitter are longtime staples in the social-sharing world, but Path's unique user interface could prove to be the difference as consumers continue to search for the best way to express and share themselves and their lives.

And what bigger thing is there in many people's lives than music? Path has tackled music sharing by adding the ability to track and tag music you're listening to and share it to your timeline. Path uses Gracenote to obtain information about the tracks you're listening to so you can accurately let your followers in on your musical tastes.

Also included in the Path 2.1 update is new camera functionality including exposure and focus controls and some new effects that you can apply to photos to give them the classic vintage look and feel that have become a staple of iPhoneography.

The features listed above combined with bug fixes should make Path 2.1 a worthy player for people looking to change up their social networking game. Are you a Path user? How does it compare with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram? Let me know your opinion in the comments!

About JOE AIMONETTI

Joe is a seasoned Mac veteran with years of experience on the platform. He reports on Macs, iPods, iPhones and anything else Apple sells. He even has worked in Apple retail stores. He's also a creative professional who knows how to use a Mac to get the job done. Joe is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive.

Path Adds API With Nike As First Partner

Startup Path released a new version of its smart journal app today along with a third-party API for other applications to integrate with Path.

The first partner on the platform is Nike with its Nike Plus running app and integration will also be coming with the new Nike Fuel Band.

The integration means that once users connect Nike to Path, Path will auto-post route maps from Nike so that friends can see their runs on Path. When they go for a run using Nike Plus, Path will automatically recognize the run and add it to Path in real-time. Friends can then virtually "cheer" the runner on. The best part about this feature is that when friends cheer the person, the runner hears a cheering sound in his or her headphones while running. The idea is to encourage the person while she's running. Those virtual kudos are also visible on the route map, as if the person was there on the street. Path also automatically adds a point on the map where someone had his or her best pace.

It has been 16 weeks since Path relaunched as a private journal for documenting activities among friends. The company now has 2 million users and half of its users return every month.

The new Path API is still private for now, because Path wants to make sure it integrates quality content on Path. But the company plans to add new partners soon. The 30-person company is starting with health apps but will move to other verticals, said CEO Dave Morin.

"The reason we're starting with a private (API) is to focus on quality," Morin said at a press briefing at the company's San Francisco offices. "We want to make sure every story on the Path feed is quality. We want to make sure that the stories that show up in Path are good stories and a big part of people's days."

The small things are important to Path. Even the act of integrating the two apps is different. The screen is two small circles, a Path circle and a Nike circle. The user drags the two together in a kind of animation.

Other new updates in Path 2.1 include adding "music match," the Shazam-like functionality that recognizes a song that's playing and can post it to Path. Path has also revamped its camera lens features. The camera app also includes a new way of taking photos with focus and exposure adjustments both on the same screen.

In an answer to a question, Morin said the company hasn't seen any real drop-off in users after the privacy issue with contact uploading.

Other Electronics News:

Red Store , Laptop Battery , Lenovo Battery ,

Dell Studio 1537 Battery , Dell Studio 1737 Battery , Dell Studio 1749 Battery , Dell 310-0083 Battery , Dell 310-6321 Battery , Dell 310-6322 Battery , Dell 312-001 Battery , Dell 312-0058 Battery , Dell 312-0068 Battery , Dell 312-0078 Battery and DELL Vostro a90 battery , DELL studio 1536 battery , Dell XPS M1330 battery , Dell P649N Battery , Dell Inspiron 1427 Battery , Dell f5136 Battery , DELL Inspiron 1720 Battery , DELL rn873 battery , DELL Latitude D810 battery , DELL Vostro 1014 battery , etc.

New iPad adopts simple product naming Steve Jobs brought to Apple in 1997 B

By Daniel Eran Dilger.

iPods and iOS devices

When Apple introduced the iPod in 1999, it continued to remain "the new iPod" through several generations before being named the iPod Classic to differentiate it from the architecturally different iPod mini (and its replacement, the iPod nano) as well as the simple iPod shuffle.

Each successive model generation retained the same descriptive product name, without serial numbers or new name suffixes to highlight differences in their chipset or other features. One exception to this rule was the short-lived, premium fourth generation iPod named "iPod Photo" in 2004. It was later renamed "iPod (with color display)," then replaced with the video capable fifth generation "iPod" in 2005, which Apple purposely avoided naming "iPod Video," even as consumers often referred to it as such.

When Apple released iPhone in 2007, it paired it with the new iPod touch. While subsequent generations of iPhone got new names alluding to their new features (iPhone 3G) or updated speed (iPhone 3GS) or new generation names (iPhone 4) and new enhancements (iPhone 4S), iPod touch didn't, instead carrying forward the Mac style product name with a parenthetical reference to its generation or model year introduction.

A primary difference between the iPhone and iPod touch was that Apple continued to sell different generations of the iPhone in different markets or at different price points. While Apple continues to sell the iPhone 3GS, 4 and 4S, it has only ever sold one new iPod touch model. With the iPad, Apple has historically liquidated the previous model year, rather than selling both an old and new model at different prices.

This year, Apple has continued to sell a single iPad 2 while offering a "new iPad," positioning the device somewhere between the naming convention of iPhone and its iPod touch and Macs, which don't get new names and typically don't overlap in sales.

This suggests that Apple may begin naming subsequent new iPhone models as simply the "new iPhone," rather than introducing a new "iPhone 5" or "iPhone 4S Plus."

KIS,S

Such a move would also help to reduce confusion related to the difference between generations of iPhone, generations of Apple's A4/A5/A5X/A6 system on a chip processor, and the branding of wireless technologies that identify themselves as 3G, 3.5G, or various things that claim to be 4G (despite the fact that no deployed wireless networks actually meet the 3GPP standard for being a true "4G" technology).

Another complication is the fact that even among carriers supporting LTE, there is no global consensus on what bands to use. In the US, AT&T and Verizon operate LTE service on different bands, and globally carriers are rolling out the technology on still different bands. Until a single chipset and design can be made to efficiently work across all of them (something that many not happen), Apple is likely to want to avoid confusion with a series of different model names, and instead focus on '"iPhone" as its global brand.

Apple's strong brands related to iPod, iPhone, iPad and Mac enable the company to release models consumers can readily identify. The company's entire hardware product lineup fits into a small box on the company's online store page, with each brand clearly differentiated.

That's a big difference between Apple and other smartphone vendors producing new brand names every few months (such as HTC's latest ThunderBolt, Incredible, Rhyme, Rezound among the 51 current models listed on its website; Motorola's Droid 4, Droid Bionic, Droid RAZR among 27 models on its website; and Samsung's Illusion, Stratosphere, Fascinate, Continuum, Galaxy S, Galaxy S II Skyrocket and Galaxy Nexus, just to name a few of the 137 it offers.)

Windows PC makers offer similarly confusing ranges of products reminiscent of Apple in the 90s. Samsung offers a good example of both, with a website that lists not just 137 different phone models and carrier combinations (not including 14 Android tablets and two Windows 7 Tablet PC offerings) but also 37 laptop models grouped into four "series" as well as a Google Chromebook notebook and an all in one PC model. Samsung isn't even a major PC vendor.

RIM also continues to use Performa-style model naming, with BlackBerry Bold models identified as, for example, the 9000, 9650, 9700, 9780, 9900 or 9930 among the 21 models grouped under its six brand names, similar to Nokia's use of numbers on its Lumia Windows Phone 7 model lineup, which includes the 610, 710, 800, 900 and 910.

Other Microsoft licenses are using Android-style naming, with new brands from each vendor (such as the HTC Trophy, Mozart, HD7, Titan and Radar). Microsoft effectively prevents its Windows Phone 7 licensees from offering much diversification on specifications, but the product is now offered under more than two dozen brand names and numbers, despite accounting for very few actual sales globally.

On different carriers or in different countries, each of these model names is subject to change, too (the AT&T Samsung Galaxy S II is essentially the same phone as the T-Mobile Epic 4G Touch, for example, a nod to the ego of carriers at the expense of consumer confusion). This is in stark contrast to Apple's single brand name for the iPhone 4 or iPad on every carrier, even in cases where there were different chipsets and technologies used (such as an AT&T version and Verizon version).

By centering on a single brand name for each major product category it sells, Apple spends much less on advertising and promoting new brands and customers find it easier to find what they're looking for and ask for it by name.

Other Electronics News:

Red Store , Laptop Battery , Lenovo Battery ,

Dell XPS M1730 Battery , Dell Latitude D430 Battery , Dell Latitude D520 Battery , Dell Latitude D531 Battery , Dell Latitude D630 Battery , Dell Latitude D631 Battery , Dell Latitude D830 Battery , Dell Latitude E6320 Battery , Dell Latitude E6520 Battery , Dell Latitude E6500 Battery and Dell Latitude d510 Battery , DELL E1405 Battery , DELL pc764 Battery , DELL y6142 battery , DELL f287h battery , Dell Studio 14z Battery , Dell Studio 17 Battery , Dell 5081p Battery , DELL kd476 Battery , DELL pu556 Battery , etc.

New iPad adopts simple product naming Steve Jobs brought to Apple in 1997 A

By Daniel Eran Dilger.

Apple's latest iPad, originally anticipated to be named iPad 3 or iPad HD, was simply called "the new iPad" during its introduction. This isn't a new change in naming products at the company however; Steve Jobs initiated it 15 years ago when he returned to lead Apple in 1997.

Apple product names in the 80s

Apple's initial mainstream product was the Apple II, introduced in the late 70s and updated in a series of revised models differentiated by a character suffix: first the Apple II+, then the enhanced Apple IIe, the compact Apple IIc, and eventually the 16-bit Apple IIGS, with letters emphasizing its new graphics and sound capabilities.

The ill-fated Apple III and Apple III+ were followed by the Lisa (later rebranded the Macintosh XL), both using the same type of suffix naming convention that was also in common use by many other early computer makers.

The company named its first Macintosh models with character suffix identifiers: an initial update was called the Mac 512Ke (commonly referred to as the Fat Mac for sporting four times the RAM of the original) and the first major redesign was branded Mac Plus, followed by the Mac SE (for system expansion, the first Mac with a slot) and the Macintosh II in 1987 (the year after Jobs left the company to start NeXT Computer).

Names get crazy in the 90s

After continuing this naming system through a series of Mac II models in the late 80s, the company began branching out by delivering new series of Macs, ranging from the Mac LC line (for "low cost color," aimed at education and home buyers) to the low end, nostalgic "Mac Classic" line to the higher end Mac IIx, IIcx, Iici, IIfx, IIsi, IIvi and IIvx.

It then introduced a series of Latin-sounding product lines ranging from the consumer-oriented Performa to the middle of the road Centris and '040 powered, higher end Quadra, with each model getting a Sony-style model number such as the "Quadra 650 AV."

Systems using a PowerPC processor were given four-digit numbers (as opposed to the original three-digit numbers of Macs based on the Motorola 680x0 chips), and often incorporated "Power" in their name (although mobile PowerBooks predated that convention, so they didn't necessarily use a PowerPC chip unless they sported a four-digit model number). A single new machine architecture might be offered under a dozen Performa model numbers, each with slightly different specifications.

Throughout the 1990s, Apple's product naming resulted in a complex, difficult to understand series of overlapping models and model numbers, each representing a different configuration of hard drives and system capacities.

The company's Newton Message Pad and eMate product lines of handheld devices similarly used product numbers to differentiate models, and the company also used the same numbering conventions for peripherals such as its QuickTake cameras and StyleWriter and LaserWriter printers.

Jobs' product naming simplification

When Jobs returned to lead Apple in 1997, he immediately killed the Mac's confusing model number-names and introduced a single desktop model: Power Macintosh G3, paired with a single notebook, the new PowerBook G3, both highlighting the new, third-generation PowerPC chip. Newton devices, printers and cameras were all axed from the company's catalog entirely.

Jobs then introduced the iMac in 1998, followed by the consumer iBook notebook in 1999. Successive models that incorporated a significantly different processor were appended with G4 or G5, but each generation of Apple's Macs were no longer given unique names with each release.

Instead, iMacs and PowerBooks were generally released with an internal naming system that described when they were released (such as "early 2006"), along with an unpublicized architecture name ("iMac4,1"). To the public, a new iMac was simply marketed as the latest iMac.

With the shift to Intel processors announced in 2005, Apple's product names got even simpler, with "the new iMac," "the new Mac mini," and new series of MacBook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, Xserve and MacBook Air models, none of which drew attention to the generation of their Intel processor, nor features such as a 64-bit architecture, DisplayPort or Thunderbolt.

Instead, users buying a Mac simply choose the form factor they want, the screen size, and pick between good, better and best packages, or custom order a specific configuration they want. There's no hierarchy of model numbers or sub-brands to navigate through to find the Mac a users wants to buy. Rather than naming products after their specifications, Jobs' Apple named products descriptively (such as "Mac mini") or after the category of people who would be buying them (Pro).

Other Electronics News:

Red Store , Laptop Battery , Lenovo Battery ,

Dell Inspiron N4010 Battery , Dell Inspiron N7110 Battery , Dell Vostro 1720 Battery , Dell Vostro 3500 Battery , Dell Vostro 3750 Battery , Dell Vostro a860 Battery , Dell XPS L501X Battery , Dell XPS L702X Battery , Dell XPS M1330 Battery , Dell XPS M1530 Battery and DELL Latitude D400 Battery , Dell Vostro 1220 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1425 Battery , Dell c6017 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1521 Battery , DELL gw240 battery , DELL Studio XPS 1340 battery , DELL Vostro 1015 battery , Dell inspiron mini10v Battery , Dell inspiron 9200 Battery.

Google as Benevolent Dictator Yanks Apps With Kill Switch: Tech

By Jordan Robertson, VIA:businessweek.com.

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Finnish developer Janne Kytomaki said he knew something was amiss last year when he noticed dozens of best-selling applications on Google Inc.'s Android Market listing the same incorrect author.

Kytomaki ran tests, identified the mislabeled software as a fast-moving attack and published the findings online.

Google responded swiftly. It yanked the apps from the marketplace and, using a little-known tactic to keep the malware from spreading, flipped a kill switch that reached into more than 250,000 infected Android smartphones and removed all vestiges of the software.

"I was positively surprised by how fast Google got the apps removed from the market and how fast they were able to roll out a tool for removing the malware," Kytomaki said.

Google, Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have with little fanfare embraced technology that lets technicians instantly and remotely purge unauthorized content from users' machines. So- called kill switches are standard on Android handsets and iPhones, the smartphone leaders. The capability will soon become more widespread with the release of Microsoft's Windows 8 software for tablets and computers.

While their stated use is for the removal of harmful content, there's no standard definition of what that means, and companies aren't required to disclose when and how the tools are employed. The technology could be harnessed by a hacker to unleash a virus, a company to pry into a user's private information or a government body to repress free speech, said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University's law school.

'Dictator-Philosopher-King'

"We have the benevolent dictator, philosopher-king type of model," Goldman said. "You have someone who has absolute control over my hard drive in ways I may have never anticipated or consented to. If they use that power wisely, they actually make my life better. We don't know if they use the power wisely. In fact, we may never know when they use their power at all."

Kill switches are technologically unsophisticated administrative programs that run silently in the background. They have long existed in controlled networks, like at work, where technical staff has power over every machine. They haven't been widely used on personal computers, whose users are online sporadically and inconsistently update security patches -- a failure that has fostered the spread of malware such as the Conficker worm, which has infected millions of Windows machines.

Smartphone users, on the other hand, are online all the time and must download applications from tightly controlled stores. By design, mobile software gives computer companies a second chance on security, said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco security firm for smartphones.

'Overcorrection'

"The remote-removal tools are very much a response to the mistakes of the PC era," Mahaffey said. "Whether or not it's an overcorrection, I think history will tell us. It can be done right, but we as an industry need to tread carefully. It's easy to imagine several dystopian futures that can arise from this."

One concern is that Google, Microsoft and others could face external pressure to engage kill switches.

Governments are getting increasingly aggressive in demanding help from technology companies in censoring e-mail and the Internet, as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. learned in 2010 when India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pressured it to open customer communications to inspection.

"If you build a control into a device that the manufacturer and carrier can control, it will be used by governments," said Chris Wysopal, co-founder of Veracode Inc., a security firm in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Benefits, Drawbacks

Hackers are also getting more sophisticated at infiltrating protected networks, and privacy breaches are more common as personal data becomes the coin of the Internet realm. A kill switch feature carries clear benefits, and potentially dangerous drawbacks, Wysopal said.

"It can really be used to add security, but it can also be used to deny people their rights to communicate," he said. "This is a place where there's no clear doctrine. We haven't heard anything clearly come out from an Apple or a Google saying, 'Here's when we'll use our kill switch and when we won't.'"

Representatives of Mountain View, California-based Google and Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, said they have used kill switches a handful of times, though they declined to provide specifics.

Tricking 'Twilight' Fans

The kill switch is reserved for "really egregious, really obvious cases" of harmful content, said Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's vice president of Android engineering.

"We've always viewed remote removal as the final option," he said. "It's not something we want to use."

One instance came after Jon Oberheide, a 28-year-old security researcher from Ann Arbor, Michigan, duped fans of the "Twilight" teen vampire movies. Oberheide uploaded a fake app on the Android Market and billed it as a preview of the latest film in the series. The software was empty, except for a single screen shot.

Still, the app, which had been downloaded 200 times, provided an entr¨¦e that might have let Oberheide introduce malware onto devices. It also helped Oberheide goad Google into using its kill-switch option.

"It finally happened," Oberheide said.

Google, taking a lesson from PC industry bouts with malware, has built in more aggressive protections since the first versions of Android, which began appearing in phones in 2008. Google's partners have sold more than 250 million Android devices, while Apple has sold more than 180 million iPhones.

Hacking Risk

Security experts said users would be at risk if hackers were able to hijack the mechanism Google uses to push software to the devices. Lockheimer said Google takes security of the mechanism seriously and has built-in protections.

Microsoft, which enabled the feature in Windows smartphones several years ago, said its takedowns have not involved malware. The violations concerned "technical issues and content issues," said Todd Biggs, a director of product management at Microsoft.

"Revocation is a last resort, and it's uncommon," Biggs said. "We take that as a signpost that we're on target toward our goal, which is safe, reliable apps for consumers."

Microsoft disclosed last year that it was adding a kill switch to desktop and laptop software. It did so by posting the terms of use for an application store, a new feature for Windows 8.

Amazon's '1984' Moment

RIM's licensing documents for vendors say that RIM reserves the right to remove applications from users' devices "for any reason whatsoever." Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman for Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, declined to comment.

Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, also declined to comment. Steve Jobs, Apple's deceased co-founder, confirmed the existence of a kill switch in a 2008 interview with the Wall Street Journal. Jobs said it would be "irresponsible" for Apple not to have a way to protect users from malicious applications. The comment appeared at the bottom of a story about iPhone app sales, in response to research that uncovered clues that such a feature existed on Apple devices.

The incident that encapsulates the danger of using a kill switch is Amazon.com Inc.'s use of the feature to delete some copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" novels from Kindle devices in 2009 after discovering a publisher had sold them without the necessary rights.

'Stupid, Thoughtless, Out of Line'

Customers were infuriated, and CEO Jeff Bezos called it "stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles." The company vowed it would never delete books from Kindles again.

Amazon representatives didn't respond to requests for comment.

While the emergence of kill switches shows the growing control that technology companies have assumed over users' devices, it also exposes the shortcomings of other methods of keeping users' computers clean.

Stephanie Stambaugh, a 47-year-old freelance writer from Denver, has been battling a so-called botnet infection on her home PCs since December. Her Internet provider, Comcast Corp., alerted her to the infection, a type of program where a machine is controlled without the user's consent that is becoming more common. She said that while she has run a dozen different antivirus and other cleanup programs, she is still getting alerts that her machine is infected.

Giving Up Privacy

Stambaugh said she can't afford the $130 virus cleanup service that Comcast offers, and is considering reinstalling her operating software, the nuclear option of virus cleanups.

Cable-network operators such as Comcast have insight into which computers are compromised, since they can see when machines are silently reaching out to malicious sites. Yet they don't have the same capabilities as companies such as Google, Microsoft and Apple. Aside from alerting customers, they are limited to quarantining poisoned computers, or restricting the amount of bandwidth they consume.

Cathy Avgiris, a senior vice president for Philadelphia- based Comcast, said fully cleaning an infection is tedious, imprecise work, since the most harmful programs are good at hiding themselves. She said Comcast would be leery of adopting a kill-switch function for that reason.

Even some security experts who see the value of a kill switch say its advantages don't outweigh the potential risks.

"For most users, the ability to remotely remove apps is a good thing," said Charlie Miller, a hacker of Apple products and a researcher at the security firm Accuvant Inc. However, "I don't really like Google or anybody else with the ability to tell me what apps I can run or can't run and to remotely manage my devices. For me, the added payoff of security doesn't make up for the control and privacy you give up."

--Editor: Tom Giles, John Brecher, Nick Turner

Other Electronics News:

Lenovo Batteries ,

Lenovo R40E Battery , Lenovo R50 Battery , Lenovo R50P Battery , Lenovo R51 Battery , Lenovo R51E Battery , Lenovo R52 Battery , etc.

First look: Norton's 2012 desktop, smartphone security push

By Ellen Messmer, Network World

Norton today released an updated version of its Norton 360 desktop and mobile security software, while also rolling out a new licensing arrangement for combined PC, Mac and Android use.

In addition, Norton announced a novel plan for a new kind of customer support called "Norton One" that involves individualized unlimited assistance for customers who are mystified by computers, security and software -- if they're willing to pay the annual membership fee.

ANALYSIS: Antivirus software sales expected to show strong growth in 2012

Symantec's Norton 360 Version 6, available for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, is desktop security combining network intrusion prevention, Norton's "Sonar" behavior-based protection, its "Insight" reputation analysis for malware, an antivirus engine and Web-based anti-phishing protection, among other features. The latest version of Norton 360 adds bells and whistles, such as the introduction of a Web portal so customers can access passwords they commonly use anywhere. Its "Download insight" capability, which had been in beta, will give users feedback on how safe it is to download a file.

There are now bandwidth controls to allow the user to monitor and control how mobile broadband, which is often metered by the provider, might be used, among other network services. And in another change, a so-called "self-healing" feature will now be apparent to the user as a green dialog box from Norton, which may appear, when needed, to say it has detected a unique error code in the user's machine and is applying an auto-fix correction to Norton 360 to adjust for it.

"These are probably errors unique to your environment," says Collin Davis, senior director of engineering at Norton. He says "there are a lot of idiosyncrasies that come up" that Norton will tackle with a minor custom build to Norton 360 Version 6 to correct the glitch. Norton has found this is needed because customers use such a wide range of computers and software these days that making use of the new auto-fix will quickly solve issues that distract users, plus minimize call volumes for tech support. This auto-fix is distinct from any general patch updates that might occur.

Microsoft Windows 8 is not yet out -- it's not exactly clear when it will be but a beta is expected soon with year-end general release -- but Norton is working closely with Microsoft to make sure that Norton 360 Version 6 will be able to run on Windows 8. "Microsoft has given us internal preview builds," says Davis, adding at this point Norton is highly confident that if someone bought Norton 360 Version 6 now, it would work on Windows 8 when it's available.

Norton 360 Version 6 costs $89 for up to three devices.

Norton 360 Everywhere

For the first time, Norton is coming out later this spring with what it calls Norton 360 Everywhere, which basically is a licensing plan for use of Norton 360 for up to five Windows or Apple Macintosh computers, plus any Android-based smartphones and tablets based on Android 2.1 and up. Subscribers will link to Android Marketplace to get the app for it. Norton 360 Everywhere includes 25GB of online storage. Pricing is yet not announced. Norton says this is the first time it has set up a single licensing of Norton 360 across platforms like this, and that Norton 360 Everywhere is a testimony to the impact of mobile computing today. (The licensing plan doesn't include Apple iOS devices, however, mainly because Apple's architecture is said not to lend itself to this use.)

The "Norton One" customer-service membership

Also in the works is a plan to offer what's being called the "Norton One" membership to customers who find coping with security and management issues to be a trying ordeal, and they're willing to pay $149 per year for unlimited online and phone support help from Norton for a range of its products, including Norton Internet Security for the Mac, Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security 2012.

"It's a set of support and advisory services," says Jody Gibney, group product manager at Norton, about the new membership concept that Norton is now piloting and expects to launch in earnest toward the end of March in English-speaking countries, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The idea is that a "team of experts" is going to be available on call around the clock and through online remote support to help you with any difficulties, whether it be backup of photos in Norton's cloud storage or setting up the Identity Safe feature for family members. Norton One is conceived to be wide-ranging in its scope, and foresees Norton going into a new type of intense hand-holding customer interaction that isn't done yet today in the industry.

Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security.

Other Electronics News:

Laptop Battery ,

Dell Laptop Battery , Dell Inspiron E1505 Battery , Dell Inspiron E1705 Battery , Dell Inspiron M5030 Battery , Dell Inspiron M5110 Battery , Dell Inspiron N3010 Battery , etc.

Google's Motorola Mobility Deal Gets Green Light from U.S. and Europe

By Trefis Team, forbes.com.

Google received approvals for its proposed Motorola Mobility acquisition from both the European Commission as well as the U.S. Justice Department on Monday.

However, regulatory approvals in China and Israel are still pending. The acquisition plans were made public in August last year when the two companies announced that they have come to an agreement under which Google would buy out Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. Google has maintained that the acquisition was made with Motorola¡¯s strong patent portfolio in mind as it would help it better defend its Android mobile platform from lawsuits filed by Apple and Microsoft.

However, we believe that Google has bigger plans in mind. While the addition of more than 17,000 Motorola patents will no doubt strengthen Google¡¯s patent portfolio, we believe that the 63% premium that Google has paid for Motorola¡¯s rather under-performing mobile business needs a bigger justification in the form of a grander mobile hardware play.

Google eyes growing mobile search market

Google already is a dominant player in the online search business for desktops and notebooks. However, as PC growth slows and more users adopt smartphones to stay connected on the move, an increasing number of Internet searches will be performed on mobile phones and online ad dollars will shift to mobile advertising.

Coming up with an open mobile platform, the Android OS, was Google¡¯s way of entering the smartphone market. Now, armed with Motorola¡¯s hardware business, Google may plan to come out with a good enough smartphone at cheaper price points to increase the demand for Android smartphones, thereby increasing its presence in the growing mobile search market.

Margins to decline

While such a move may lead Google to take a hit on its margins, it may be worthwhile as it can help drive mobile ad revenues in the long run. This strategy is not very different from Amazon¡¯s plan to sell the Kindle Fire at a very low price point in order to drive its core content distribution business and compete with Apple. Or Verizon, AT&T and other such telecom providers¡¯ approach to drive data consumption by subsidizing smartphones.

However, similar to the margin hit that the carriers have suffered as a result of the smartphone boom, this may deepen the margin loss that Google will be suffering by acquiring Motorola¡¯s business. We estimate that Motorola Mobility will generate $12.6 billion in revenues and only 69 million in operating profits in 2012. This will significantly dent Google¡¯s overall operating margins to about 21% from 27% pre-acquisition.

Moreover, Google is simultaneously running the risk of alienating its Android partners if it favors Motorola or alters the open Android platform to its benefit. This may cause partners to seek ways of lessening their dependence on the Android platform, which poses a direct threat to Google¡¯s mobile search ambitions. It remains to be seen how Google is planning to alleviate such concerns.

On Wednesday, Symantec rolled out three new additions to its soup-to-nuts security sofware offerings: the "Windows 8 beta-enabled" Norton 360 version 6; Norton 360 Everywhere, for Windows PCs, Macs, and Android mobile devices; and Norton One, a brand new suite with "premium" support and a guarantee that customers won't experience telephone hold times of more than two minutes.

Norton 360 version 6, a product available immediately, will later be upgradeable through a software download to support Windows 8 beta edition whenever Microsoft moves Windows 8 out of its current alpha pre-release testing into the beta stage, said Collin Davis, senior director of engineering, in a briefing for NotebookReview.

"We're making it a priority to [do] whatever updates are necessary to maintain compatibility with all Windows 8 beta product builds," according to Davis.

Like its precedessor, Norton 360 version 5, the new N360 v6 includes the same features as Norton Internet Security (NIS), while adding online storage. Version 6 also folds in a number of improvements made in the recently released NIS 2012, such as lower performance impact, automatic error recovery, a new metering capability for bandwidth usage, and cloud synchronization for Identity Safe, Symantec's "secure vault" for user passwords and other sensitive information.

Other Electronics News:

Laptop Battery ,

Dell Batteries , Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1570 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1750 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery , Dell Inspiron E1405 Battery , etc.

Google-Motorola Purchase May Help Defrag Android

By Jennifer LeClaire, VIA:newsfactor.com.

Why is Google buying Motorola? Could be for the 17,000 patents or a number of other reasons. Gartner VP Michael Disabato thinks the Google-Motorola buy is tied to setting direction for the Android operating system. "I think one of the reasons Google wants Motorola is because they have lost control of Android and they want to get it back."

U.S. and European regulators Monday approved Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility Holdings, giving the green light to move ahead, although government approvals are still pending in Israel, Taiwan, and most notably China.
Google describes the acquisition as a move to supercharge its Android ecosystem. The company estimates that more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide -- and more than 550,000 devices are activated every day -- through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries.

The announcement set off speculation about Google rocking the smartphone market. Analysts discussed everything from Google making Android exclusive to Moto phones, to Google subsidizing Motorola phones and making them free. There were also questions of whether Google did the deal solely to obtain Motorola's patents and whether or not Google can pull off the merger. Industry analysts are still discussing why Google really wants Motorola to begin with.

A Fragmented Mobile OS

"I think one of the reasons Google wants Motorola is because they have lost control of Android and they want to get it back," said Michael Disabato, vice president of network and telecom at Gartner . "Google wants all Android phones to look alike and operate alike and they know if they don't take back control, they are going to fragment [the Android] operating system into a million little pieces."

One of the promises of the Android operating system was its open-source model, which would allow for various flavors of the mobile OS. Disabato said that's a good model when consumers can create their own experience, but it's not so good when there are multiple vendors and more than a dozen experiences -- and consumers are left without the power to make it their own.

"You look at iOS. Apple comes out with a new version and everybody runs and crashes the servers and eventually upgrades," Disabato said. "Google comes out with a new version of Android and what happens? The vendors first have to decide if the phone can support it. Then, they put it in a phone. Then, they have to go beg the carriers to let it out. So they've eliminated the end user, which is not what Google ever wanted."

Google's Mobile Privacy Push

Disabato points to Apple, a single manufacturer with a single operating system, as well as Microsoft , which has multiple vendors with a single operating system that cannot be tweaked. Windows Phone 7 runs the same on all hardware platforms.

"Who's standing out in left field trying to figure out what to do next? It's Google," Disabato said. "They've allowed the handset manufacturers and the carriers to take control of the user experience and they want to get that back."

But there's another factor at play in the Motorola acquisition: Google's consolidated privacy policy. Google recently moved to offer a single privacy policy across all its products and services, Disabato said, so the company can share consumer information across the board. At this point, mobile is the only missing component. And now, with the Motorola acquisition, Google can wrangle that in, as well.

(Reuters) - U.S. and European regulators approved Google Inc's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and said they would keep a sharp eye on the web search giant to ensure patents critical to the telecommunications industry would be licensed at fair prices.

It was one of a series of approvals on Monday that underscored the scramble by technology companies to acquire big pools of patents.

The U.S. Justice Department also approved an Apple Inc-led consortium's purchase of a trove of patents from bankrupt Canadian company Nortel Networks Corp and signed off on Apple's purchase of patents formerly owned by Novell Inc.

Google, whose Android software is the top operating system for Internet-enabled smart phones, said in August it would buy phone-maker Motorola for its 17,000 patents and 7,500 patent applications, as it looks to compete with rivals such as Apple and defend itself and Android phone manufacturers in patent litigation.

The acquisition, the largest in Google's history, will also mark the Internet search company's most significant foray into the hardware business - a market in which it has little experience. Some investors have worried that Google's profit margins may suffer as it becomes a hardware maker, although Google has said it intends to run Motorola as a separate business unit.

Regulators in China, Taiwan and Israel have still not signed off on the Google purchase of Motorola.

Google shares finished Monday's regular trading session up 1 percent at $612.20.

Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic want to prevent companies from gouging rivals when they license patents essential to ensuring different communications devices work together.

"This merger decision should not and will not mean that we are not concerned by the possibility that, once Google is the owner of this portfolio, Google can abuse these patents, linking some patents with its Android devices. This is our worry," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters in Brussels.

The U.S. Justice Department said it was reassured by Apple's and Microsoft's public statements that they would not seek injunctions in filing infringement lawsuits based on the Nortel patents.

"Google's commitments have been less clear," the Justice Department added in a statement. "The division determined that the acquisition of the patents by Google did not substantially lessen competition, but how Google may exercise its patents in the future remains a significant concern."

Almunia said the EU might be obliged to open some cases in the future.

"This is not enough to block the merger, but we will be vigilant," he said.

Regulators in China have until March 20 to decide whether to approve the deal or start a third phase of review, according to a source close to the situation.

The purchase would give Google one of the mobile phone industry's largest patent libraries, as well as hardware manufacturing operations that will allow Google to develop its own line of smart phones.

Google, the newest major entrant to the mobile market, is already being sued for patent infringement by Oracle Corp, which is seeking up to $6 billion.

The legal battles over patents between technology and smartphone companies has prompted the European Commission to open an investigation into legal tactics used by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd against Apple and whether these breach EU antitrust rules.

Some regulatory experts said the DOJ's comments in approving Google's acquisition of Motorola appeared to be more than mere boilerplate.

"They have to proceed with caution and tread lightly," said Shubha Ghosh, a professor at University of Wisconsin Law School who specializes in antitrust law and intellectual property, with regards to Google.

Regulators will be on the lookout for practices that might limit the entry of new smartphones or new technologies.

"If Google makes it more difficult for new technologies to emerge, by locking-in existing licensees of the patents so that it becomes not profitable for them to adopt other technologies, that's the kind of thing that might give rise to antitrust scrutiny down the road," said Ghosh.

Google's move to buy Motorola Mobility came shortly after it tried and failed to buy Nortel's patents. The winner was an Apple-led consortium, which includes Research in Motion Ltd, Microsoft Corp, EMC Corp, Ericsson and Sony Corp, which agreed in July to pay $4.5 billion for 6,000 patents and patent applications.

Google, which runs world's No. 1 Internet search engine, has been under increasing regulatory scrutiny. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are both investigating Google following accusations it uses its clout in the search market to beat rivals as it moves into related businesses.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz and Foo Yun Chee with additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Tim Dobbyn and Andre Grenon)

Other Electronics News:

Laptop Battery ,

Dell Laptop Batteries , Dell Inspiron 1425 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1440 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1470 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1526 Battery , Dell Inspiron 1545 Battery , etc.

Canaccord: Apple Claims 80% of Q4 Mobile Handset Profits

BY BRYAN CHAFFIN, VIA:macobserver.com.

Apple claimed a staggering 80 percent of all mobile handset profits during the December quarter, according to Canaccord analyst Michael Walkley. The analyst said that Apple achieved this remarkable feat, even though it had only 8.1 percent of the market. Samsung claimed another 15 percent of those profits, leaving the next top six companies to scrap it out for the remaining 5 percent.

The chart above shows that Apple took a huge leap during the 4th quarter in its share of hardware profits. In the third quarter ending in September, Apple owned only, and we use that word with tongue superglued to cheek, 56 percent of all industry profits.

Apple sold some 20 million iPhones in the September quarter, but that number increased to 37 million for the December quarter. That quarter included the launch of the iPhone 4S, the busy Christmas shopping season, and an extra week in Apple's fiscal accounting calendar.

AAPL

Michael Walkley also raised his price target for shares in Apple Inc. in Thursday's research note, bumping it from $650 per share to $665. The move comes with an increase in the analyst's iPhone estimates for the March quarter from 30.1 million units to 32.6 million. For the full year, Mr. Walkley raised his iPhone estimates from 140 million units to 148 million.

Mr. Walkley told clients that he believes Apple is continuing to take market share in the U.S. smartphone market, particularly at the expense of Research In Motion's BlackBerry platform and Nokia's mostly defunct Symbian OS.

"Our January checks indicated the iPhone continues to extend its market share gains from [the December quarter]," Mr. Walkley wrote. "In fact, we believe iPhones are outselling all other smartphones combined at the Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon channels since the iPhone 4S launch."

T-Mobile, the 4th largest carrier in the U.S., is the only major U.S. carrier without a deal to carry the iPhone. If, as the analyst believes, the iPhone is outselling every other smartphone combined, Apple will once be the top vendor during the quarter and could conceivably claim the top spot in smartphone platforms. If so, it would be a first for the company, but such an event seems unlikely.

iPhone 5

Looking ahead, the analyst said, "We believe an iPhone 5 with LTE technologies and a new iPhone form factor could result in even stronger iPhone sales than our increased estimates for [the second half of calendar 2012]."

So scary is the iPhone, the analyst said that industry sources suggest that would-be competitors have delayed launching some of their own products in order to avoid directly competing with the iPhone 4S while it is still new. He didn't offer any specifics on that factoid, however.

Government agency ditches BlackBerry for iPhone, iPad

By: Zach Epstein, VIA:bgr.com.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency within the United States Department of Commerce, will stop using BlackBerry phones later this year and instead supply workers with Apple's mobile devices. In a memo relayed by Loop Insight, NOAA's Chief Information Officer and Director for High Performance Computing and Communications said that support for BlackBerry phones will cease in May of this year. Apple's iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S will replace the agency's BlackBerry handsets, and NOAA plans to adopt current and future generations of Apple's iPad tablet as well. Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones have been the U.S. government's go-to solution for wireless devices due to their enhanced security and robust messaging capabilities. Loop Insight's report did not indicate that the NOAA memo provided an explanation for the agency's decision.

iPhone commands better resale value than Android or Blackberry

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, VIA:zdnet.com.

If you're the sort of person who sells your old handset, then the iPhone might be the best choice for you. According to data by Priceonomics, the iPhone holds its value over time better than Android or Blackberry handsets.

Priceonomics examined all iPhone model, along with 70 most popular Androids and 30 most popular BlackBerry models. Each was split into five different categories (newly released, 1, 2, 3, and 4 year-old phones) and then this data used to find out which phone had the best resale value.

The results are exactly what you'd expect of the car market:

The highest quality phones should have the best resale values over time and crappier phones should depreciate the fastest.

This means that after using your iPhone for 18 months, it still retains a whopping 53% of its value, compared to 42% for Android handsets, and 41% for BlackBerry handsets. That means that your old iPhone has a possible cash value of $312 if you decided to sell it. Even a four-year-old first-generation iPhone could be worth $115.

It's interesting to note how the iPhone holds its value better over the first 6 months compared to the competition.

Anyone sold an old handset lately? How much did you get for it?

Other Electronics News:

Lenovo Batteries ,

Lenovo T400S 2815 Battery , Lenovo T400S 2823 Battery , Lenovo T400S 2824 Battery , Lenovo T400S 2825 Battery , Lenovo R32 Battery , Lenovo R40 Battery , etc.