two iPhones in September?

Apple might surprise consumers this year by releasing not one but two iPhones, an analyst for Deutsche Bank Equity Research says.

Chris Whitmore predicted that at the same time Apple releases a fifth-generation iPhone, probably in September, the company will also show off a speedier version of the existing iPhone 4 that consumers will be able to buy for $350 without a contract. The lower-cost phone, he said, would feature a prepaid calling plan in which consumers could pay monthly for a limited number of talk minutes.

Apple's iPhones are generally among the more expensive smartphones available. But a souped-up iPhone 4, Whitmore believes, could help Apple compete with less-expensive phones from other companies.

Whitmore said that sales of lower-cost, "mid-range" smartphones are expected to grow three times as fast as sales of premium models, such as the current iPhone. By 2014, shipments of mid-range smartphones could surpass those of premium ones, Whitmore said.

"We believe the time is right for Apple to focus on driving penetration into the mid-range smartphone market and drastically expand its addressable market," he said, noting that Nokia Corp. and Research in Motion Ltd., which sell lower-cost handsets, are both struggling.

n the U.S., most cellphones are subsidized by carriers with contracts that allow them to recoup the cost of the phone in monthly payments. But as the above chart shows, there are large swaths of the world -- especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where iPhone penetration is low -- where customers prefer to pay the full cost of the phone upfront.

Note that analysts for some time have been calling for Apple to release a lower cost, pre-paid iPhone, and that Whitmore does not cite any sources or claim any inside knowledge for his two-iPhone theory.

In a separate note issued Sunday, Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty, back from a week of meetings in Taiwan, reports that she expects iPhone and iPad production to "begin ramping up aggressively" from August through the end of the year.

If production for what Huberty sees as one new iPhone doesn't start until in mid to late August, the launch might not come until late September. In her unit sales spreadsheet, copied below, she's shifted 2 million iPhones from calendar Q3 to calendar Q4 (Apple's fiscal Q4 and Q1 2012). If the launch comes in early September, she says, she'll shift them back.

Office 2010 Sales on Track

Microsoft touted the adoption of Office 2010, calling it "the fastest selling version of Office ever" in a blog marking the one year anniversary of the latest version of the productivity suite, which shipped June 15 of last year. The first service pack for Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 is expected later this month.

According to Microsoft, businesses are deploying Office 2010 at rates five times faster than Office 2007 during its first year.

The company has also declared Office 2010 the fastest-selling version of Office ever, though it didn't offer specific numbers to back that claim up. The software giant did, however, reveal that nearly 50 million people worldwide use Office Web Apps to view, edit, and share their documents from anywhere with a browser and an Internet connection. In a recent survey of Office 2010 users, 9 out of 10 said it's the best version of Office they've used. 96 percent would recommend it to others.

Deployments of Office 2010 are also beating those of Office 2003 “by a pretty significant margin,” Numoto said. Nine of 10 customers in a Microsoft satisfaction survey said 2010 was the best Office release ever, he said.

Sales in the business division, the company’s biggest, rose to $5.27 billion last quarter, exceeding the $4.9 billion average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

The Office business is being challenged by the growing popularity of so-called cloud software delivered over the Internet, which is allowing companies to choose from more options, Barnicle said. Delivering software as a service over the Internet may squeeze Microsoft’s profit margins, he said.

Introducing #Lytro

Lytro is the brainchild of Ren Ng, a Stanford Ph.D. whose dissertation on light-field technology five years ago was showered with awards. Now, with the help of $50 million in funding, most of it from Andreessen Horowitz, Ng has built a company that's preparing to launch a focus-free digital camera later this year.

The basic premise of Lytro's technology is pretty simple: The camera captures all the information it possibly can about the field of light in front of it. You then get a digital photo that is adjustable in an almost infinite number of ways. You can focus anywhere in the picture, change the light levels -- and presuming you're using a device with a 3-D ready screen -- even create a picture you can tilt and shift in three dimensions. (I got a demonstration of the camera's 3-D photos on a laptop and was blown away.)

The best part about the technology is that it doesn't create insanely large files as one would expect. The creator of the tech, Dr. Ren Ng, claims that the files produced are about the size of an average digital photo today, with all the hard work being done by the camera's processor.

It's a technology that has the potential to completely revolutionize photography. Imagine having this sort of camera built into your cellphone? It might not be all that far off. We could see a dedicated Lytro camera by the end of this year, even.

Applications for light fields exist anywhere computational imaging is used. That would include the fields of art, science, engineering and medicine.

Some of the core ideas in light field photography have existed since 1908, Ramamoorthi stated.

However, Lytro CEO Ren Ng developed the original light field camera in his Ph.D. dissertation at Stanford in 2005, UC Berkeley's Ramamoorthi said.

Mozilla Firefox 5

Windows, Mac, Linux and Android: Mozilla has released Firefox 5, the first product of its rapid-release three-month development cycle. Firefox 5's new features include support for CSS animations, do-not-track on Android, and faster canvas graphics. Perhaps the biggest reason to upgrade to Firefox 5, however, is that you can now close multiple tabs more quickly because the tabs stay the same size.

Mozilla has launched Firefox 5 and you can download it now. But don't expect too much: this is the first of the new rapid release cycle builds, so there's not a lot to show for the new major version increment.

The Mozilla Foundation, following in the footsteps of Google’s Chrome Web browser, seems to believe that if they keep popping out new “major” releases every six weeks, they’ll convince people they’re better than the competition. That seemed like a dumb idea to me when Microsoft went from Word for Windows 2.0 to Word for Windows 6.0 back in 1993. The idea hasn’t improved any with age.

Mozilla is starting a more frequent release cycle for the popular web browser, Firefox. The company put this plan into action a few weeks ago when they began working on alpha versions of upcoming software and released it to the new “Aurora” development channel. Five weeks later, Firefox 5.0 beta was born. The release does not bring any new features that the average consumer would recognize or benefit from. Instead, developers get support for the CSS animations standard and access to the new “channel switcher” which allows anyone to switch between using Firefox stable, beta, or Aurora — Mozilla’s fancy term for alpha. And of course, what would a beta release be without bug fixes and performance improvements? Those are also included.

64-bit Final Cut Pro X

A major improvement to Final Cut Pro X, along with its companion Motion 5 and Compressor 4 apps, is a complete rewrite to take advantage of all the power of modern Macs and Mac OS X. This includes across-the-board 64-bit support, OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch support, and full ColorSync managed, 4K resolution-independent workflow. It brings major performance improvements, including background processing of rendering, effects, and imports, as well as the ability to fully utilize all CPU and GPU resources in any given machine.

While experienced video editors might find the changes jarring at first, the new timeline promises improved editing speed. "I use the analogy of a bike versus a motorcycle," Larry Jordan, an editor who specializes in Final Cut Pro training, told Ars. "Both have handlebars and two wheels, but there is a whole lot of different in function and performance. The magnetic timeline is amazing, and the precision editor provides a trimming view we've never seen before," he said.

Some of the new features you'll find on Final Cut Pro X:

- The Magnetic Timeline lets users arrange clips simply, so that clips slide out of the way, instead of the tracks that characterized the old Final Cut editions.

- Clip Connections can link clips to things like sound effects or titles, so that they stay synced when moved together. Other clips can be put together into a Compound Clip so that they can be edited as a single clip. Auditions lets users go between clip collections so you can compare alternative shots.

- Content Auto-Analysis scans imported content and tags it with information so that the program can create Smart Collections which could include distinction by the kind of shot it is, the sort of media it contains, or even the number of people in the shot. Clips can be manually tagged as well for easy organization.

- Rendering now takes place in background, which USA Today says contributes to faster editing speeds, and reduces interruptions. Different kinds of video footage in different formats can be put into the same file.

Final Cut Pro X has earned praise already. Macworld is impressed with the new release, writing of the software, "Apple breaks new ground—not just with its flagship video editor's interface and underlying infrastructure—but with the whole mindset of what it means to be a working professional video editor."

10 reasons why Google’s Android powered smartphones can displace iPhone 5

Google Android-powered smartphones have gained prominence in the last two years and grown rapidly to an extent where, as of May 2011 Google said, 400,000 new Android devices were being activated every day compared to 100,000 per day in May 2010. Also more than 100 million devices have been activated so far.


According to Gartner research, Google’s Android operating system accounted for 36.2 million smartphones sold worldwide in Q1 2011 giving Android a market share of 36 percent compared to with 27.4 percent from Nokia Symbian. And Symbian was replaced by Android as the world’s leading smartphone platform during the last quarter of 2010.


Meanwhile, Apple’s iOS came in third with 16.8 percent of the market share and iOS sold 16.8 million iPhones, according to Q1 2011 report from Gartner.


So here is a look at 10 reasons why Android-powered smartphones may displace iPhone 5 in days to come.


Read more on ibtimes.com

Apple iPhone 5 vs Android

Apple's silence over the release of iPhone 5 has resulted in a barrage of rumors related to the specifications which the next rendition of iPhone 5 will entail.

When Apple arrives in September at the iPod refresh event, or as some tech websites surmise that September 7 could be the day, Apple will meet a band of five stellar Android smartphones - Samsung Galaxy S 2, HTC Sensation, EVO 3D, Motorola Photon and Atrix.

In the midst of Apple's legendary silence over the hardware details, the best way to infer the specifications which will make their way into the iPhone 5 is to look at the competition. The Android breed of superphones reveals the critical minimum that iPhone 5 needs in order to stay in the smartphone race.

Until the beast arrives, Apple has got a lot to contend with. There is Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Sensation, Android Gingerbread-based phones which pack 1.2GHz dual-core chips. When Motorola Atrix arrived in January at the CES 2011 event, it flaunted a 1GHz NVIDIA dual-core chip, which was then considered a milestone. However, Galaxy S 2 and HTC Sensation have changed the benchmark and now Apple has to contend with 1.2GHz dual-core chips. It is rumored that iPhone 5 will be powered by the A5 dual-core chip which currently powers the iPad 2.

While the industry muses over the hardware specifications, Apple has confirmed details about the software which will grace iPhone 5 by launching the iOS 5 at WWDC.

However, another rumor from BGR which states that Google's pure Android 4.0 version-based Nexus 4G is due to arrive during Thanksgiving does not bode well for Apple iPhone 5 release. The phone is touted to be "an absolute beast" of a phone.

Another feature which Apple has to counter is the docking facility that Motorola Atrix and Photon offer. With the docking accessory, the phone's content can be accessed through a PC or a TV. The Atrix comes with an 11.6-inch laptop dock which runs on Linux OS. Both the Atrix and Photon use the Webtop software which allows them to be docked with other devices.

The Android superphones sport an average screen-size of 4-inch. Samsung Galaxy S 2. HTC Sensation, HTC EVO 3D and Motorola Photon sport a 4.3-inch screen while the Motorola Atrix sports a 4-inch screen. Courtesy Nuance Technologies screenshots coupled with its SpeechTrans app available on iTunes, it is reported that Apple is planting an edge-to-edge screen on the iPhone 5. It is also rumored that iPhone 5 could sport a 3.7-inch curved glass screen.

Apple is also packing its iPhone 5 with an 8MP camera with an improved flash as revealed by the reduction in order for Philips LED flash which is currently found in iPhone 4. Galaxy S 2, HTC Sensation and Motorola Photon sport 8MP cameras. However, it not just the camera pixel that Apple has to deal with but also HTC EVO 3D that comes with 3D camera which captures pictures and videos in 3D. It also allows users to watch 3D content sans 3D glasses. EVO 3D uses a camera which can capture stereoscopic photos (2-megapixel only) and videos. And it can also capture videos at 1080p (2D) and 720p (3D).

Another facet that Apple has to deal with is the "worldphone" concept. Recently Apple released its unlocked version of iPhone 4 which allows users to run the phone on GSM networks. The phone comes without a micro-SIM thus allowing it to be used on GSM networks internationally. It is rumored that the iPhone 5 will feature a SIM-less design with 2-3 internal antennas which will be GSM and CDMA compatible. However, Motorola has already launched a "worldphone" in Photon. The phone which has been launched on Sprint Network offers both 4G and 3G support. It can be used on CDMA and WiiMAX in US and on GSM network internationally. Also MobileFun reported that Motorola is launching an unlocked version of Motorola Atrix in Europe from Aug. 2.

Apple is gearing to meet this competition though in November it will have to deal with Nexus 4G which is touted to have a "monster screen" and will be powered by a 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz chip. The phone will feature Google's next version of Android, the Ice Cream Sandwich, which is unified version of Gingerbread and Honeycomb.

Apple is also due to add NFC-capable mobile payment feature to counter Google Wallet, voice recognition feature and a digital locker service through its iCloud. The iCloud is better than Google's music locker Music Beta as it eliminates the need to upload music to the cloud. It uses a feature called "scan and match." It matches the music stored on a user's device with its own catalogue of music and then allows users to download the music on to any iOS 5 device.

Nokia unveils N9

Finnish mobile maker Nokia has unveiled its N9 button-free smartphone, the company's first and only bet on the Linux-based MeeGo platform.

Nokia dumped plans to use MeeGo in its future smartphones when in February it picked Microsoft's Windows Phone as its future software choice, but it decided to unveil one of the models it was working on before closing the business line.

The N9 model, Nokia's first and last to use MeeGo, comes with a large touch screen and is available in black, cyan and magenta packing a 1GHz processor, backed up by 1GB of RAM. It's not going to give dual-core monsters like the Samsung Galaxy S 2 or HTC Sensation a run for their money, but it should make general tasks a speedy and pleasant affair.

As a Nokia device, the N9 will have access to Nokia's Ovi app store. But as apps will have to be built specially for MeeGo -- specially for this one phone, really -- we expect the shelves to be barer than a Soviet supermarket. That said, if you couldn't give a monkey's about apps and just want to surf the Web and take photos, this could well be right up your street.

There's an 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics stuck on the back, coming with decent low-light sensitivity and auto-focus, and is capable of recording in 720p HD at 30 frames per second.

Full Specifications

On the web in 60 seconds

We all know the Internet is big and billions of pages are added to it every day.

But have you ever wondered what happens in just 60 seconds? Check out this research infographic by Go-Globe for some interesting facts.

ICANN says .whatever

It's the biggest change to the system of Internet addresses since it was created in 1984.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the governing association and allocation of Internet domain names, approved on Monday the creation of new domain names, their number is now unlimited.

ICANN decision will allow top level domains that will end in, virtually, every word. Thus, web addresses will be able to move from general names: ".com", ".net" or ".org" to dedicated, such as: ".apple", ".audi" or ".samsung".

"ICANN opened the internet domain system to unleash the human imagination worldwide," said Rod Beckstrom, chairman and CEO of ICANN.


Applications for the new domain names will be accepted from January 2012 to April 2012 and the estimated cost for one domain will be 185,000 dollars. Expect hundreds of applications for domains such as: ".car", ".love", ".movie", ".web" and ".gay"

The measure is seen as a great opportunity for brands to get more control over their online presence.

Intel Corporation

Intel Corporation is an American global technology company and the world's largest semiconductor chip maker, based on revenue. It is the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most personal computers. Intel was founded on July 18, 1968, as Integrated Electronics Corporation (though a common misconception is that "Intel" is from the word intelligence) and is based in Santa Clara, California, USA. Intel also makes motherboard chipsets, network interface controllers and integrated circuits, flash memory, graphic chips, embedded processors and other devices related to communications and computing. Founded by semiconductor pioneers Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore and widely associated with the executive leadership and vision of Andrew Grove, Intel combines advanced chip design capability with a leading-edge manufacturing capability. Though Intel was originally known primarily to engineers and technologists, its "Intel Inside" advertising campaign of the 1990s made it and its Pentium processor household names.

Intel was an early developer of SRAM and DRAM memory chips, and this represented the majority of its business until 1981. While Intel created the first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, it was not until the success of the personal computer (PC) that this became its primary business. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the computer industry. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics in defense of its market position, particularly against AMD, as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry. The 2010 rankings of the world's 100 most powerful brands published by Millward Brown Optimor showed the company's brand value at number 48.

Intel has also begun research in electrical transmission and generation. Intel has recently introduced a 3-D transistor that may improve performance and energy efficiency.