IBM tailors BPM Software for Small Business

IBM has customized its new BPM (business process management) software to help small and midsized organizations set up their own automated workflows just like big businesses do.

Most BPM tools "are built for thousands of users and to run across multiple servers, and so they can get complex and expensive. This software addresses the BPM need in the mid-market," said Ron Kline, an IBM director for marketing to small and midsized businesses. "It fits the need for a midsized company, without it being too lightweight."

The software is based on the recently revamped enterprise BPM software IBM launched earlier this month, called Business Process Manager.

The standard edition of Business Process Manager combined two of IBM's previous BPM offerings, the WebSphere Process Server and IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition. IBM obtained the latter when it purchased Lombardi last year.

This Express edition offers the same capabilities, though its usage is limited to four CPUs, 200 users and three "authors," or administrators who build the processes, Kline said.

BPM software is designed to automate routine business processes, such as hiring help or tracking shipments.

The new software is "departmentally oriented," Kline said. "You wouldn't use this software like a large enterprise would to track multiple processes across your entire business process."

Instead, this software could accommodate a handful of processes. Organizations can upgrade to the standard edition should they require larger deployments. The standard edition has no user limit and can be clustered across multiple servers.

Express is different from IBM's Blueworks Live, another lightweight IBM BPM offering, in that its processes can be coupled with back-office systems, such as CRM (customer relationship management) software.

This software could be used to automate simple processes such as filing and submitting expense reports, Kline said. Instead of having employees fill out spreadsheets and e-mail them to their supervisors to be approved, an organization could use this software to automatically shuttle the employee's expense data, once filled out, to the supervisor for approval, and then submit the approved data to the appropriate financial system.

BPM Express is available directly from IBM and through its partners. The price for the software itself starts at US$600 per author and $120 per user. An average deployment for about 200 users would cost around $25,000, Kline said.

Sony Delays Launch of 3D Camcorder

Sony is delaying the launch of its 3D Handycam video camera by roughly a month due to difficulty securing parts following the March 11 earthquake in Japan.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami halted factories and disrupted the distribution networks and supply chains on which Japanese electronics makers rely. For Sony, the knock-on effect of this disruption has been a shortage of at least one component for the new camcorders.

The camcorder was previously due to launch this month, but will now be available in Japan from May 13. Revised launch dates for other markets were not immediately available from the company's headquarters in Tokyo.

The HDR-T10 Handycam was first unveiled at January's International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and is distinctive for its dual lenses. Behind the lenses are dual image sensors and processors, which add to the complexity and bulk of the camcorder but, according to Sony, result in a superior picture compared to single-lens 3D camcorders.

Other features include a screen that shows 3D images without the need for special glasses. In the U.S., the camcorder will cost around US$1,500.

It's the second Sony group announcement this week of quake-related disruptions to product plans. On Tuesday, Sony Ericsson said it faces difficulty obtaining some parts for high-end cell phones due to the earthquake. As a result, supplies of its flagship Xperia Arc, Xperia Play and Xperia Neo phones will be affected in the current quarter.

Apple sues Samsung for copying product designs

According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, Apple has sued Samsung for copying the iPad, iPod and iPhone with its Galaxy Tab and Galaxy handsets. The lawsuit says, Samsung has copied the designs of the Apple products with some of it’s leading smartphones (Galaxy S 4G, Epic 4G, Nexus S), as well as the Galaxy Tab touchscreen tablet.

Samsung copied Apple technologies, designs and even packaging with its Google Android-based products, according to a complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Apple’s action against Samsung includes trademark infringement claims, as well as a plethora of patent claims. Apple is seeking a jury trial in the case.

"Instead of pursuing independent product development, Samsung has chosen to slavishly copy Apple's innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging design, in violation of Apple's valuable intellectual property rights," Apple said in the complaint.

Late last year, Samsung became the first major consumer electronics maker to roll out a tablet to compete with the iPad. It is also one of the world's largest makers of mobile phones, especially handsets that use Android.

The complaint includes 10 charges of patent infringement, two of trademark violation and two of trade dress violations, plus unjust enrichment and unfair business practices. Apple named Samsung Electronics, Samsung America and Samsung Telecommunications America as defendants. The case was filed at the district court in San Francisco but is being transferred to Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler at the court's Oakland, California, location.

The allegations span a broad range of Samsung's mobile devices, including the Epic 4G, Captivate, Indulge, Nexus S and Galaxy S 4G smartphones as well as the Galaxy Tab. Apple singled out the Galaxy product line for criticism.

"The copying is so pervasive, that the Samsung Galaxy products appear to be actual Apple products - with the same rectangular shape with rounded corners, silver edging, a flat surface face with substantial top and bottom black borders, gently curving edges on the back, and a display of colorful square icons with rounded corners," the complaint said.

Apple wants an injunction to stop Samsung's alleged intellectual property violations, along with actual and punitive damages, Samsung's "wrongfully obtained profits" and funds for corrective advertising about the allegedly confusing products.

A particularly interesting part of this legal action centers on the fact that Apple devices incorporate a number of components made by none other than Samsung. And even as recently as February it was being reported that Apple would be spending a whopping $7.8 billion on Samsung parts. It seems that Apple would prefer it if Samsung stuck to making components rather than complete devices.

RIM PlayBook hits market with an app deficit

Research In Motion’s PlayBook is starting off with a definite apps deficit as it hits the market Tuesday. It will only have 3,000 apps vs. the hundreds of thousands available for the iPad from Apple. Omar El Akkad reports in The Globe and Mail: “Apple’s iPad can make use of the hundreds of thousands of apps built for the smaller iPhone. But PlayBook owners won’t be able to use even the much smaller number of BlackBerry apps until RIM has a fix ready this summer.” He said RIM will enable PlayBook users to run apps designed for competing tablets from Google’s Android operating system this summer. “The move means an infusion of tens of thousands of apps for the PlayBook,” he said. Farhad Manjoo points out other issues in Slate: “Reviewers who have gotten early access to the PlayBook have been almost universally puzzled by how half-baked it is. In its current form, the PlayBook doesn't include any apps to access your email, calendar and address book. To get those things, you've got to have a BlackBerry phone, too.” He describes this approach as nothing less than insane and a sign of a company “circling the drain.” He said RIM’s co-CEOs have been “comically incoherent about their plans for the future” as its share of the smartphone market has been gobbled. RIM, based in Waterloo, Canada, seems to have taken on a bunker mentality. They’re not feeling the love. Mike Lazaridis, “the brain behind the BlackBerry,” is taking a leaf from the boys over at South Park who sang in the film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: “Blame Canada.” El Akkad said: “Lazaridis is proud of his role in turning this – RIM, the city of Waterloo, the university, the institutes – into a hotbed of innovation. But he is bothered, too, because he believes people don’t understand how much all of this is really worth. “Maybe we’re just not good at promoting ourselves. Maybe that’s the Canadian way.” He said that he and fellow CEO, Jim Balsillie, perhaps should have moved the company to Silicon Valley instead of remaining “loyal patriots” to the Great White North. PlayBook will show whether RIM has a second act in its playbook following its success with BlackBerry in the corporate and government markets, and whether it can penetrate a consumer market created by and dominated by Apple. El Akkad said, “It’s an audacious strategy. If it succeeds, RIM just might regain the ground it has lost in the smartphone market, while finding new sources of revenue. But if the strategy fails, then arguably so does RIM. At the very least, it would relegate it to No. 3 status for a long time to come, a poor cousin to Apple and Google – two companies that five years ago were not even in RIM’s business of wireless communications.”

Gigabyte to launch Dual-boot Windows-Android Tablet

Taiwanese motherboard maker Gigabyte Technology will come out with two Android tablets later this year, including one that can also run Windows, and a Windows 8 tablet next year, the company senior vice president has said. Those tablets follow the release of Gigabyte's S1080, a heavy tablet that runs Windows 7 Home Premium. The Gigabyte tablets will enter an increasingly crowded tablet market, as makers from Apple to obscure white-box brands launch new models this year. Gigabyte tablets due by July will come in two screen sizes, 7 inches and 10 inches, said Senior Vice President Richard Ma. The larger ones will run Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS, which was designed expressly for tablets, and the smaller ones will run the older Android 2.2 system. Android 3.0 better supports bigger screens, whereas Android 2.x was designed for mobile phones. Another line of Gigabyte tablets, due in October, will be able to run either Windows 7 or Android, letting users choose when they start up the machine. That would give something to both casual Internet users who prefer Android and to business users who find Windows more compatible with Microsoft Office software. Gigabyte has not decided which Android version to use. Although Android users can use tablets to read documents, compatible tablet software seldom allows editing those files and therefore the system does not appeal to business users. Both the tablets release in July and in October will use Intel Atom processors but not include USB ports. They will sell for less than US$400 per unit, he said. He would not release other specifications, saying they had not been finalized. Gigabyte will also begin developing a Windows 8 tablet by the end of the year. That tablet will be on the market in the final quarter of 2012, possibly using an ARM processor. Microsoft demonstrated an early build of Internet Explorer 10 running on an ARM chip at the Mix11 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, and has said that the next version of Windows will work on ARM processors as well as those based on the x86 architecture. "Everyone is hoping that Windows 8 will support ARM," Ma said. If ARM and Windows don't work together by late next year then, the tablet due on the market then will use an Intel x86 processor, Ma said. He did not give detailed specifications for the planned Windows 8 tablet. Gigabyte, not a household name in many developed markets, will sell tablets and notebook computers through B2C e-commerce channels to cut retail costs. But the tablets are more likely to gain a following in developing markets, said Michael Clendenin, managing director of RedTech Advisors in Shanghai.

T-Mobile unveils HTC Sensation 4G Smartphone

In the midst of potentially being acquired by AT&T, the HTC Sensation 4G, formally known as the HTC Pyramid, has finally been unveiled and will be released by T-Mobile this summer. The Android-powered phone is comparable to the Sprint Evo and includes a 4.3-inch super LCD screen, with a 540x960 resolution, dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor, Android Gingerbread (2.3) with Sense 3.0 and a qHD display. It also contains many new features, such as a personalized lock screen that allows the user to visit their most used apps. The Sensation will have Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, Wi-Fi, DLNA and the ability to stream to other DLNA-enabled devices. It will also come equipped with 1GB of internal memory and 768MB of RAM. “Consumers have quickly transformed smartphones into consumer lifestyle hubs that are pocket-sized entertainment centers that enable people to take their favorite multimedia content with them wherever they go. The new HTC Watch service makes it fun and easy for people to access premium movies and TV shows while on the go,” says Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “The HTC Sensation 4G combines this great multimedia experience within the latest HTC Sense experience in a premium device that delivers a powerful and unprecedented smartphone to our customers.” Before its release date in the summer, the Sensation will launch in the UK, Germany, and the rest of HTC’s key spots in the European market.

T-Mobile G2x available for 200 dollars

T-Mobile has a new device in its Android roster, the T-Mobile G2x. It is essentially the same phone as LG Optimus 2X, which makes it one of the most powerful Android devices on the market. The T-Mobile G2x features a dual-core 1 Ghz Tegra chip, a 4-inch WVGA screen, 8 GB of memory, which is expandable up to 32 GB via microSD memory cards, a 1,500 mAh battery, an 8-megapixel rear camera with 1080p recording capabilities and a 1.3-megapixel front camera for video calls. Also present are HDMI, accelerometer, a gyro sensor, and a micro-USB port. The device is currently running Android 2.2, upgradeable to 2.3 at a later date. The suggested retail price for the T-Mobile G2x is $499.99, but after an in-stand discount and a mail-in rebate it goes down to the price of $199.99, with a two-year contract attached. The device is currently available exclusively online; it will be hitting the store on April 20.

Google Activates 350K Android Devices Each Day

The growth of Google's Android platform is undeniable, and an analyst says Google is now activating 350,000 Android devices every day.
According to Brian Pitz, an executive director and senior research analyst at UBS Investment Bank, that's a 16 percent increase from just a few months ago, when Google's vice president of engineering, Andy Rubin, tweeted that the company was activating more than 300,000 Android phones daily.
That announcement came just two months after Google chairman Eric Schmidt divulged that Google was activating 200,000 Android devices per day.
If Pitz is correct, his analysis is in line with figures released by Gartner earlier this week, which said Android is in line to overtake Symbian as the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide by the end of the year. According to Gartner, Android will only continue to gain steam, capturing nearly half of the smartphone OS market in 2012.
On the other hand, Gartner also predicted that Apple will maintain its position as the second-place mobile platform with iOS through 2014. However, it said Apple will peak this year, securing about 20 percent of the space. There have been rumors that Apple won't release the iPhone 5 this summer as expected. Although these reports are unconfirmed, it's possible Apple would want to release a phone, even if it's just an intermediate update, in order to complete with the rapid growth of Android.
Part of Android's growth can be attributed to the openness of the platform and the fact that it's available across a wealth of devices. But this has led to some criticism about fragmentation, prompting Rubin to pen a blog post that defended Android and insisted that the company remains committed to developing an open platform.
Pitz also noted in his report that Google has been very successful through its mobile advertising platform, AdMob, delivering more than two billion ad impressions every day.

Zoom to make 3G phones with Qualcomm chips

Zoom Technologies Inc signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm Inc, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents, sending its shares soaring as much as 64 percent.
Zoom's Nollec Wireless unit will develop the products for the Chinese market and pay royalties to Qualcomm at standard rates.
Qualcomm's chips are used by mobile device makers including Apple and HTC.
"With this (chips) we will make smartphones, the smarter the phones higher the margins," said Zoom Chief Financial Officer Anthony Chan.
Zoom plans to launch the new phones in China under its Leimone brand by summer this year and expects sales of these devices to show up in its third-quarter results.
"Our own products enjoy margins of 10-15 percent where as the OEM products have margins of 6 percent," Chan said.
Original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, make products for larger companies to be branded and marketed by them.
Sales from Zoom's Leimone phones - its line of mobile phones sold through Chinese national carriers - contributed almost 19 percent to its top line last year.
Zoom will make some types of CDMA smartphones running on the Android operating system, targeting Asia and Europe.
Code Division Multiple Access, or CDMA, technology allows many signals to occupy a single transmission channel, optimizing the use of available bandwidth.
Zoom will expand to North America and European markets with these products by the end of 2011.
The company sells phones to major Chinese carriers such as China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.

Apple suppliers making white iPhones

Suppliers to Apple Inc have begun production of white iPhones after a delay of almost 10 months, pointing to a launch date of within a month.
Industry sources reveal that Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, flagship of Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, would assemble the iPhone.
Apple Senior Vice-President of Marketing Phil Schiller first said in a Twitter post in March that the white iPhone would be available for sale by Spring, which ends in May in the northern hemisphere.
The white iPhone would be available from AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc by the end of April, Bloomberg News reported on its website, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs first unveiled the white version of the smartphone when the iPhone 4 was launched in June last year, but it has been delayed because of a manufacturing issue that the company has not elaborated on.
Many telecommunications operators have been eager to sell the iPhone, hoping that the feature-jammed device will help boost data network use and increase revenue. For example, China Mobile Ltd, the world's biggest mobile operator, has been in talks with Apple for more than a year on distribution rights for the handset.
More than 16 million iPhones were sold in the last quarter of 2010, accounting for more than a third of Apple's sales in those three months.

Apple unveils Final Cut Pro X

Apple has unveiled Final Cut Pro X, the newest version of its popular video-editing software. According to Apple's Peter Steinauer and Randy Ubillos, Final Cut Pro X is a rebuild of the 12-year-old software. It's the first 64-bit version for the software, capable of utilizing all eight cores and more than 4 GB of RAM of the Mac for professional video editing. Apple revealed the new version of Final Cut Pro at an event at the National Association of Broadcasters trade show in Las Vegas. Final Cut Pro X comes with a slew of new features, including advanced people and shot detection, automatic audio cleanup and "range-based keywording," which give video editors the ability to apply keywords to specific portions of a video. The new Final Cut Pro also sports a feature that prevents audio and video tracks from being pushed out of sync by accident. Photography Bay also reports that Final Cut Pro X will come with feature that automatically matches color between two clips. Final Cut Pro X will be available for download via the Mac App Store in June for $299, far less than the Final Cut Studio's $999 price tag.

Foxconn to invest $12 billion in Brazil

Taiwan IT giant Foxconn, which makes iPads and iPhones, is considering investing $12 billion in Brazil to build computer and mobile phone components, said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff, who is in China on her first major foreign trip since taking office in January, said that Foxconn had expressed its interest in investing the money in Brazil over the next "five to six years". The Brazilian leader said a working group had been formed to study the proposal. Taipei-based Foxconn, which has been plagued by a spate of suicides and labour problems in China in recent years, is the world's largest maker of computer components and produces goods for Apple, Sony and Nokia. It currently employs around one million workers in China, about half of them based in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen, which neighbours Hong Kong. The company said last month it planned to transform its factories in Shenzhen into an engineering base while moving about 200,000 jobs inland - where wages are lower than in manufacturing hubs on the coast. Foxconn has been expanding its workforce in central China as it seeks to scale back the size of its biggest facility in Shenzhen. It has previously said it plans to hire up to 400,000 new workers this year, mostly in the central provinces, partly to keep up production while cutting maximum overtime hours. Foxconn's investment in Brazil, if realised, would create massive job opportunities in the world's eighth-largest economy, and would advance Rousseff's goal of attracting more high-tech manufacturing. Brazil and China signed nearly two dozen agreements after talks between Rousseff and Chinese President Hu Jintao, including a deal for the sale of 35 Embraer E190 commercial jets to two Chinese airlines worth up to $1.4 billion.