Thursday, March 27, 2014

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Samsung puzzled by Galaxy S5 launch

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:19 AM PDT

Samsung is apparently puzzled about how it launched its new flagship Galaxy S5 in South Korea without knowing about it.

Last we heard, the S5 was delayed because of problems with the camera, but it turns out that Korea's three mobile carriers rolled out the device in an effort to soften an impending sales ban.

The global release of the smartphone is scheduled for 11 April, six days after a 45-day sales ban comes into effect in Samsung's home market of South Korea.

KT are LG UPlus are already under certain sales restrictions; however, they have proceeded to sell the Galaxy S5 to customers not covered by bans.

Samsung told Bloomberg that it was "very puzzled... SK Telecom strongly asked for an earlier release of the product but we delivered our stance that the global release date of 11 April remains unchanged".

Samsung makes up approximately two thirds of the mobile market in South Korea and the country represents the fifth biggest market for the world's largest mobile phone maker.

The sales ban was expected to hit South Korea's mobile carriers hard as they would have missed out on signing up new customers in the crucial first months of the Galaxy S5 launch when publicity and hype surrounding the device is at its strongest.

Irene Kim, a spokeswoman for SK Telecom, said: "We decided to release the product for a wider consumer choice of handsets before our operation suspension begins on April 5."

Already the pressure was on, HTC this week announced and started selling its One M8 flagship smartphone. 

Music companies saddle CEO with $41 million piracy bill

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:18 AM PDT

The former chief executive of defunct online music storage firm MP3tunes was personally ordered to pay an estimated $41 million after being found liable for infringing copyrights owned by record companies and music publishers once part of EMI.

A lawyer for EMI, Luke Platzer, estimated after the verdict was read that it added up to roughly $41 million. The verdict included $7.5 million in punitive damages.

Robertson and the bankrupt company was found guilty by a jury on various copyright infringement claims.

A lawyer for Robertson said he planned to appeal, saying that many of the claims were not sustainable.

MP3tunes was founded in 2005 and was one of the first cloud based music services that allowed users to store music in online lockers. EMI claimed that the MP3tunes website and a related one called Sideload.com enabled piracy.

This particular case was considered a barometer for how courts might look at cloud-based music storage services in the future. It looks like the future is bleak.

In the trial, Robertson's lawyers contended MP3tunes had shut out users who abused the locker system and that many of the songs had been made available online free by EMI as a promotion.

A federal judge's ruling against MP3.com in 2000 led to a shutdown of the service and more than $160 million in estimated payouts by the company to the five major record labels and music publishers.

MP3.com was sold a year later to Vivendi Universal for about $372 million, with $120 million going to Robertson's family trust, he testified at trial. The website is today owned by CBS. 

Turkey's Twitter ban is illegal

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:04 AM PDT

Less than a week after the Turkish government banned Twitter over failing to remove allegations of government corruption from the social network, a Turkish court ruled that the ban was "illegal".

This is bad news for the government which has been trying to silence Twitter from talking about a government corruption scandal so close to the elections.

Users in Turkey are expected to have their access to Twitter restored—as soon as the court's stay of execution reaches Turkey's telecommunication authority (TIB).

The ban happened after anonymous audio recordings on Twitter alleged corruption inside the Turkish government.

Even when the Twitter ban was in place, Turks used Twitter by using virtual private networks (VPNs) and programs like Tor that use cryptography to mask a computer's location.

Last week's ban was based on three court orders that instructed Twitter to remove content from the site, which the company says were not provided prior to the blackout. Twitter said it complied with two of the three requests from the Turkish government.

The third order stifled political speech, which is why Twitter petitioned the Turkish court on behalf of users to reverse it. Twitter also used a "Country Withheld Content" tool that blocked Twitter accounts in Turkey while leaving them visible to the rest of the world.

Word on the super information strasse is that the government plans to appeal the ruling to keep the ban active until after the election.

 

ZTE sees boom in 4G phones

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:02 AM PDT

ZTE has said that sales of 4G smartphones accounting for at least 40 percent of its global smartphone shipments in 2014.

According to Reuters, the Chinese based ZTE plans to ship 60 million smartphones in 2014, up 20 million units from last year.

ZTE global head of mobile devices Zeng Xuezhong told a press conference in Hong Kong that the company's smartphone business was strong in the USA, Japan and Europe. But this year we will add China to that list.

ZTE returned to net profit last year after making a loss in 2012. However operating revenue for the year dropped 10.6 percent, its biggest decline on record, to hit the lowest level in three years.

The company is lagging behind Huawei and Lenovo Group Ltd, which are respectively the number three and five in the world by smartphone shipments.

IDC claimed that Huawei shipped 48.8 million smartphones last year and Lenovo, which acquired the Motorola Mobility handset unit from Google in January, shipped 45.5 million units.

However, as telecoms equipment makers, ZTE and Huawei are set to reap the rewards of contracts to build high-speed 4G mobile networks around the world. ZTE predicts global spending on 4G will be $100 billion in 2014.

ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo need China for the vast majority of their smartphone sales. Huawei and ZTE are set to doubly benefit from China's 4G rollout as they make money from building the networks as well as handsets. 

Facebook freaks me out

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:01 AM PDT

Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson is furious that the 3D Oculus Rift outfit has fallen into the paws of Facebook.

Persson tweeted that in light of the Facebook acquisition, he's cancelled a deal he and his company Mojang were working on to bring Minecraft to Oculus VR.P

He said: “We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.”

There is an existing mod that lets you play Minecraft in Oculus Rift and it looks good, though it's not official.

Writing in his bog,  Persson said that Oculus wanted Minecraft, but he did not really think that it fitted the platform because it is very motion based, runs on java  and has a hard time delivering rock solid 90 fps.

He thought it would be cool to do a slimmed down version of Minecraft for the Oculus. Something free, similar to the Minecraft PI Edition. And then, not two weeks later, Facebook bought them.

Persson does not mince his words about Facebook. He said that it is not a company of grass-roots tech enthusiasts or even a game tech company.

“Facebook has a history of caring about building user numbers, and nothing but building user numbers. People have made games for Facebook platforms before, and while it worked great for a while, they were stuck in a very unfortunate position when Facebook eventually changed the platform to better fit the social experience they were trying to build,” he wrote.

While Persson thought VR was good for social networking, he wanted to work with games.

“I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they have not historically been a stable platform. There's nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me,” he said.

Persson also added that he did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition.
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