RIM offers free apps to BlackBerry customers

Canada's Research In Motion Ltd will offer free premium apps worth more than $100 to appease BlackBerry customers frustrated by service disruption last week which ran for days and affected millions.

Research In Motion said the complete selection of premium apps would become available to download at BlackBerry App World for four weeks beginning October 19.

Enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free technical support as an apology for the outage.

The offering, to compensate for a system failure that left tens of millions of Blackberry users on five continents without email, instant messaging and browsing, could be expensive for RIM and it remains to be seen how many customers will see the offer as an acceptable response.

Analysts have said the company faces a wider problem from the damage to its reputation and loss of corporate customers who no longer think they can rely on the device.

"We've worked hard to earn their (customers') trust over the past 12 years and we're committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect," said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

"We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."

RIM co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie apologized last week to millions of Blackberry customers for the four-day outage which tarnished the company's reputation and set back its drive to catch up with the likes of Apple Inc and its iPhone.

Some mobile operators such as Spanish group Telefonica SA have already said they will compensate customers, although analysts believe they will also be looking at whether they can pass on some of those costs to RIM.

The apps include games such as Bejeweled, a translation service and the music discovery tool Shazam.

Francisco Jeronimo at IDC said the decision was a clever move by RIM because it would help customers to discover the app service. He said the company was likely to have struck a deal with app developers to keep the cost down.

"More important than the offer itself, is that RIM is showing goodwill and being humble. They recognized the problem, apologized and now they are compensating their users."

Nissan developing a 10 minute battery charger

Announced earlier this week, Nissan has designed new battery technology for electric vehicles that cuts charging time from eight hours down to just ten minutes to fully recharge the battery. Assuming electric vehicle charging stations become more widespread across the United States, a driver could potentially take a long-distance trip from New York City to Los Angeles only having to stop for ten minutes at a time to recharge the vehicle. Researchers at at Kansai University in Japan claim that the breakthrough in this charging method comes from swapping out the electrode utilizing carbon inside a capacitor to an electrode using tungsten oxide and vanadium oxide.

The downside to the announcement is that perfecting and commercializing the technology is likely going to take up to a decade to reach consumers. While Nissan waits for the 10-minute battery charger, the company is aggressively supporting quick-charging stations that can recharge a battery to 80 percent capacity in approximately 30 minutes. Nissan is working with DBT, Europe’s largest charging station manufacturer, to build smaller DC fast chargers that will cost user $15,000 and become available during early 2012. DBT is also scouting locations for a U.S. manufacturing plant that will likely roll out the new charging stations to U.S. locations.

The pharmacy chain Walgreens recently announced intentions to install 800 electric vehicle chargers at retail locations around the United States and DC fast charging stations will make up nearly 20 percent of those units. Some locations aren’t able to utilize DC charging stations due to limitations in the power infrastructure. Walgreens is hoping that consumers with electric vehicles will soon associate the store with charging and encourage more people to shop at its retail locations. The company is taking a “wait-and-see” approach on rolling out charging stations nationwide to get a better understanding of the popularity of the chargers.

Wealth managers prefer Apple over RIM

Wealth managers prefer using Apple products for business rather than Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed.

Of 402 financial advisers polled, 45 percent said they would choose an Apple iPhone or iPad, while 14 percent would pick a BlackBerry.

The research firm, which focuses on financial services, conducted the survey in March, well before the recent RIM outage which left large pockets of BlackBerry users around the world without access to email and other functions.

The study found that using mobile devices was increasingly important to advisers, many of whom service clients with hand-held devices who have access to online brokerage services.

Nearly half the advisers surveyed said having access to business applications was an "important" or "very important" part of their technology strategy for 2011.

Apple's iPhone looks set to ditch rival phones

Apple Inc's latest iPhone looks set to become its bestselling device ever, and one reason appears to be disenchantment with rival smartphones.

Nearly one in four people who thronged Apple stores from Tokyo to San Francisco said they were ditching BlackBerries, discarding Nokias or even giving up Google Android-based phones, hoping for something better.

The majority of the 127 iPhone 4S buyers polled informally by Reuters in the United States, Japan, Australia, France, Germany and Britain were Apple diehards upgrading their devices.

But 28 claimed they were making a switch, with some saying they were disillusioned by Research in Motion after this week's global BlackBerry outage that enraged millions.

Apple had already pre-sold over a million during the first day it went live on the Internet - a week before it hit stores selves in seven countries on Friday.

RIM's BlackBerry and smartphones by manufacturers such as Nokia - which abandoned Symbian and will this year unveil devices based on Microsoft software - have been losing ground to the iPhone, which is facing a serious threat only from Android phones.

The new phone looks similar to the previous iPhone 4 but has a faster processor, better camera and a voice-activated software dubbed "Siri", which lets users ask the phone questions and helps in logging calendar items.

Away from the notoriously fickle consumer-gadget marketplace, Apple also appears to be making strides.

Apple appears to be a winner when workers get to pick their own phones, in a trend known as the consumerization of IT. Companies can save money when they let employees buy their own phones and pay their own monthly bills.

An Aite Group poll of 402 wealth managers conducted before the outage found that 45 percent would choose an iPhone or iPad, compared with 14 percent for a BlackBerry.

Motorola to sell cheaper version of Xoom tablet

Motorola Mobility Inc. has said that it will sell a cheaper version of its Xoom tablet computer that's geared toward families. The device will be available starting Sunday and will only be sold at Best Buy Co. stores.

Like the existing Xoom, the Xoom Family Edition has a touch screen that measures 10.1 inches at the diagonal, a dual-core processor, front and rear cameras and runs Google Inc.'s tablet-geared Android software, Honeycomb. It has less memory though: 16 gigabytes, compared with 34 gigabytes on the existing Xoom. Motorola said Family Edition will cost $379 - $120 less than what the cheapest Xoom currently costs - and it will come with a number of family-friendly apps built in.

It's unclear how long the Xoom Family Edition will keep its lower price tag, though: In a press release, Motorola called it a "limited-time value price."

As more companies enter the burgeoning tablet market in hopes of competing with Apple Inc.'s extremely popular iPad, the pressure is on to drop prices in order to woo consumers.

Microsoft Completes Skype Purchase

Microsoft and Skype are now one company. The Redmond, Washington-based technology giant completed its acquisition Friday of the once-upstart, Internet-based communications company.

In a posting on The Official Microsoft Blog, Tony Bates, the former Skype CEO who is now head of the new Skype division, said the deal-closing "represents a huge leap forward in Skype's mission to be the communications choice for a billion people every day."

Bates said Skype's position would be at "the intersection of social, mobile and video communications." He added that the company's goal was "to transform communications," which meshes with Microsoft's goal of creating "communication across every device and every platform."

In a video message, Bates said both Skype and Microsoft are "disruptive, innovative, software-oriented companies." The envisioned world is one of "complete, pervasive video communications, something that's across all parts of your life."

In May, Microsoft said it intended to buy Skype for $8.5 billion. Last week, Microsoft cleared its last major regulatory hurdle when the European Commission approved the purchase.

One of the questions had been whether Microsoft would hinder Skype's interoperability with other companies, or if it would integrate Skype with its widespread Windows operating system, creating market advantages others could not match.

On the first matter, the commission found that Microsoft would have no incentive to diminish Skype's interoperability, since it's to the advantage of the Skype brand that it be available via as many partners and platforms as possible.

Concerning whether Microsoft could integrate Skype with Windows, as it had been accused of doing with its Internet Explorer browser, the commission reasoned that most users could readily download a version of Skype if they wanted, and that most users who buy a PC with Skype installed were already registered Skype users.

Video is a growing part of communications, and of Skype. According to statistics released recently by Microsoft, about 42 percent of all Skype-to-Skype minutes were video calls, and there were 1.8 billion hours of Skype video calls made in the year ending in August.

Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, and it has about 124 million registered users. It is the largest Internet communications company, but has had difficulty being profitable. eBay bought the company in 2005 for an estimated $2.6 billion, but then sold it to an investor group last fall for an estimated $2 billion.

Sprint gets its 1st iPhone

Apple stores got the longest lines as the new iPhone model launched Friday, but there were lines at Sprint stores too, as the carrier got a chance to sell the phone more than four years after the first model was launched.

Product chief Fared Adib said, the iPhone had broken Sprint's record for first-day sales of any phone. Sales were above the company's expectations.

Sprint Nextel Corp. joined bigger carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless as a seller of the phone. Spot checks in Philadelphia and San Francisco showed that the lines outside Sprint stores were longer than at its rivals.

Meanwhile, a representative for AT&T said, it had activated a record number of iPhones and was on track to double its previous single-day record for activations.

Sprint is struggling to compete with the bigger carriers and expects the iPhone to help it keep subscribers.

Kaufman Bros. analyst Ben Abramovitz said talks with about 50 people in line for the phone at a Sprint store revealed that most of them are current Sprint customers looking to upgrade, particularly BlackBerry users looking for a more Internet-friendly phone. He also found some AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile USA customers looking to switch.

Sprint will be paying a lot of money to put iPhones in customer hands: It's subsidizing each iPhone 4S by about $400 to get it down to the $200 price for the 16 gigabyte version. It's also selling the cheaper iPhone 4.

Credit ratings agency Moody's Investor Service downgraded Sprint's debt, sending it further into speculative-grade, or "junk" territory. Part of the reason is the cash drain that iPhone sales will cause before they start paying off through higher monthly service fees.

The chief reason behind the downgrade, however, is Sprint's decision to upgrade its wireless network for faster data speeds. Sprint revealed that decision a week ago, to the dismay of investors.

Lenovo becomes world's second largest PC maker, HP on top

Chinese computer maker Lenovo moved up a place to become the world’s second largest PC maker, according to figures released for the third quarter. Dell dropped from second to third place.

Separate figures released by research firms Gartner and IDC on Wednesday had Hewlett-Packard (HP) remaining in top spot in terms of PC market share. Gartner’s figures showed HP as having 17.7 percent share of the market in the third quarter, Lenovo 13.5 percent and Dell 11.6 percent.

Despite selling the most PCs, HP’s new CEO, Meg Whitman, said last week that a decision would be made by the end of this month on whether the company will stay in the PC business – a business which, despite healthy sales for the California-based company, isn’t proving to be a particularly big money-spinner.

A look at the overall figures for worldwide PC shipments in the third quarter shows growth of 3.6 percent on those of a year ago, said IDC, falling slightly short of the firm’s projections.

Gartner, which reported a similarly low growth rate, said that the growing popularity of devices such as tablets was a factor. The global recession also meant consumers were being more careful about how they spent their money.

However, IDC senior research analyst Jay Chou believes sales will pick up next year as updated laptop models with extra features are brought to market.

Among the top five PC vendors, both Gartner and IDC showed Beijing-based Lenovo as experiencing strong growth on the same quarter a year ago, at 25.2 percent and 36.1 percent respectively. Taiwan-based Asus, the fifth biggest PC maker, also showed strong growth. HP’s growth was less impressive, with both research firms putting it at just 5.3 percent.

Despite Acer’s poor showing, the figures demonstrate to some extent the growing strength of Chinese companies in the global electronics market. Both research firms pointed out that Lenovo’s strong figures were partly as a result of its purchase of German electronics maker Medion in June and the launch of a joint venture with Japan’s NEC in July, giving it better access to European and Japanese markets.

As for the US PC market, HP remained in top position with regards to market share for the third quarter, while Apple showed the strongest growth.

BlackBerry services improved after 3 days' outage

BlackBerry services improved in several regions including Europe, the Middle East and India on Thursday after three days of outages that have incensed users.

Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM) has blamed a backlog of emails from Europe for the glitches which have starved millions of users around the world of instant access to emails and messaging.

"From 6:00 am BST (British Summer Time, 0500 GMT) today, all services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as India, have been operating with significant improvement," a statement on BlackBerry's UK website said.

"We continue to monitor the situation 24/7 to ensure ongoing stability. Thank you for your patience."

RIM said on Wednesday that an initial technical failure had prompted a build-up of messages in its network, triggering a cascade of problems around the world that affected many of the firm's 70 million subscribers.

"It is a backlog issue," RIM software vice president David Yach said, ruling out any rumours of sabotage or hacking for the problems that started on Monday and continued despite initial claims that the issue had been resolved.

Apple inventory suggests new iPhone 4, iPod Touch

Rumor has it that a look into Apple’s internal inventory system might have revealed at least a couple of the company’s coming announcements before its Oct. 4 iPhone event.

According to a report from 9to5Mac, new model numbers have appeared in Apple’s internal inventory system that suggest some new variations on the iPhone 4 and the iPod Touch. Both new model numbers carry the letter “A,” suggesting they’re minor variations and are likely devices we’ve already seen before.

The first are three new models carrying the codename N81A; N81 is Apple’s identifier for its latest generation of iPod Touch devices, and the A suggests that these are the same devices with a smallish change. Over at 9to5Mac, the speculation here is that Apple is releasing three white models to go with the three black models of iPod Touch that are already available: the 8GB, 32GB and 64GB iPods. That makes pretty good sense, given that 9to5Mac previously published plans that seemed to confirm a batch of white iPod Touches as being in the works.

The second set of models is much more interesting. These are two SKU numbers carrying the codename N90A, which suggests two variations on the N90 – the code that refers to the iPhone 4 that’s currently available to the public. The “A” in this case suggests two new variations on the iPhone 4 we know, quite possibly an 8GB model that will come in both black and white.

Rumors have been flying around for a while now that Apple intends to release two new iPhone models during its Oct. 4 event: the full-on upgrade known as the iPhone 5, with new internal hardware and a redesigned case, and a cheaper variation on the iPhone 4.

This N90A iPhone could very likely be the cheaper iPhone 4 we heard about, with a scaled-back hard drive to keep its cost down. There’s been some talk that this could be a carrier-free phone that users could pay for in full up front, allowing them to avoid the cost of getting on a two-year contract with carriers such as AT&T or Verizon.

So it seems likely that if these codename numbers are to be believed, we really will see a couple of new iPhones next week. It’s unlikely that the N90A refers to the next iPhone model, although many rumors have been up and down that Apple won’t be releasing a full-on iPhone 5, but rather an incremental update known as the iPhone 4S. Still, if that were the case, the iPhone 4S would carry its own new model number, likely N94, which has popped up in the software development kit code for the next update to Apple’s operating system, iOS 5. The Verizon iPhone 4 got its own codename, N92, when it was released earlier this year, so it seems unlikely that the iPhone 4S wouldn’t get a new number as well.

Apple Releasing a Voice Interface for the iPhone

With the iPhone 5 being unveiled next week, the rumor mill is working overtime. In fact, even the invitation for the Oct. 4 event, which reads "Let's talk iPhone," has sprouted rumors that the new model will offer new voice-recognition features that could transform the way smartphone interaction works.

Previous Apple invitations have included hints about the coming product. If the "let's talk" invitation is a hint, the voice-recognition features could represent a fully integrated voice-control interface that accompanies, and in some cases replaces, the touch interaction.

This new voice control could include the ability for a voice-based virtual assistant to access data stored in calendar, contacts, music files and other locations, and use them in conversations between the device and the user. The possibility of new voice features is supported by the fact that Apple bought voice-recognition application provider Siri in 2010. The company has previously released some voice-to-text features.

Various Apple-watching sites are describing the voice-recognition features as a dramatic change, not only allowing the user to schedule an appointment or find a retailer, but offering a revolutionary voice-based interface that once again changes the expectation for smartphones. The aptly named Assistant, according to some reports, will also be able to ask the user questions if, for instance, it's not clear which phone number to use.

Hopes that the newest iPhone could support 4G transmission technology are not high, given reports that the company is waiting for smaller and less power-hungry 4G chips that won't be available until 2012. There have been reports in past months that the company was testing iPhones with 4G Long-Term Evolution support, but the consensus is that, for Apple, elegant style will triumph over speed, at least until the new LTE chips are available.

A research vice president from China Unicom said at the Macworld Asia conference that the iPhone 5 will support HSPA+, a not-quite-true-4G technology with speeds up to 21 Mbps, compared with 7.2 Mbps for 3G.

There are also reports that Apple's internal inventory system shows three new iPod Touch models, likely in the same 8 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB configurations, as well as updated iPhone 4 models and a next-generation iPhone, with a dual-core A5 processor and 1GB of working memory. Some observers have suggested that the next-generation device will be marketed as the iPhone 4S, not as the 5.

RIM committed to PlayBook

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) dismissed a report that it was pulling the plug on its PlayBook tablet computer.

Major US retailers, meanwhile, slashed the price of the PlayBook by up to $200. The move comes a day after Amazon unveiled a tablet rival with a $199 price tag.

RIM stressed its commitment to the PlayBook after Collins Stewart analyst John Vihn said the Canadian company has stopped production of the device.

"Any suggestion that the BlackBerry PlayBook is being discontinued is pure fiction," RIM said. "RIM remains highly committed to the tablet market."

Sales of the PlayBook have been sluggish since the device went on sale in mid-April with a $499 price tag for the 16-gigabyte model, $599 for the 32GB version and $699 for the 64GB model.

Best Buy, Staples and Office Max were offering the PlayBook for $299, $399 and $499 on Thursday. Office Depot was selling the device for $100 off.

The PlayBook was still being offered for its original price at RIM's online store and through US carrier Sprint.

Amazon unveiled a tablet computer, the Kindle Fire, on Wednesday which costs $199, less than half the price of the market-leading iPad from Apple.

The cheapest iPad costs $499.