With 50 percent of the mobile browser market in its home market of China, UCWeb is now looking across the Pacific. UC’s next target is the U.S., where the company released localized Android and iOS versions this past week and plans to open up a Silicon Valley office later this year. (It has already made inroads into India, where it has 20 percent share and is close to knocking off market leader Opera, execs said.) UCWeb's Roy Rong and Yu Yongfu visit AllThingsD. UC Browser is more than a just dumb container for Web sites; in China, the browser includes its own virtual currency accounts, identity system, social network and navigation services. In a way, it’s more like a mobile-only Facebook platform than the pure Chrome or Safari browsers. Plus, UC browser is quite fast, because the company maintains local data centers from where it compresses Web sites and sends them to phones. Opera Mini and Amazon’s Kindle Fire Silk browser use similar techniques. Bridging to the U.S. market won’t necessarily be easy, but UC’s design and experience across the spectrum of low- to high-end phones could be instructive. CEO Yu Yongfu — who’s on a grand tour of Silicon Valley this week — emphasized that while his company started doing all this in 2004, the U.S.
Read MoreChina Mobile told its shareholders on Wednesday that the company is in talks with Apple on carrying the iPhone. “China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation,” Chairman Xi Guohua said, according to Bloomberg . “When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.” The company reportedly indicated it is unclear whether a deal will be reached this year. An Apple representative was not immediately available for comment. However, sources have said that a meeting with China Mobile was among the stops CEO Tim Cook made during a China trip earlier this year . With roughly two thirds of a billion users, China Mobile is the biggest carrier in the world, as measured by number of customers. The company’s current 3G network doesn’t work with today’s iPhone, but a next generation iPhone could well work with China Mobile’s 4G network, which is currently in a few spots. China Mobile has also applied to offer service in the United States, Reuters said , but it is unclear how well that bid will be received
Read MoreNetworking giant Cisco systems will report quarterly earnings today after the markets close in New York, and the pressure will be on CEO John Chambers to show that the changes made as a result of the company-wide restructuring he led last year — the one that made Cisco look like it was fitting back in its skinny jeans — are taking permanent hold. The question is whether or not it can start delivering some fatter profits. The consensus of Wall Street analysts has Cisco reporting sales of $11.6 billion in sales and reporting 47 cents per share of earnings. The big question, writes analyst Sanjiv Wadwani of Stifel Nicolaus in a note to clients on May 7, will be around margins. Last quarter, Cisco gave guidance for gross margins — a key measure of profitability — with a narrow range of 61.5 to 62 percent, while operating margins were guided to the range of 27-28 percent. Wadwani thinks that guidance may stand up as pressure on Cisco’s supply chain from the Thailand flooding, favorable pricing on switching products and a less-aggressive posture from Hewlett-Packard’s networking arm, are all providing a little breeze at Cisco’s back. Yet one product in Cisco’s stable may, in success me hurting margins overall: Cisco’s Unified Computing and Servers line (UCS) tends carry a lower gross margin, Wadwani writes, and so may eat into its overall gross margin. The product line — which combines computing, storage and networking into a single product offered to the corporate and service provide data centers — had 10,000 customers worldwide last quarter , and was showing “positive momentum” in Wadwani’s checks. “Overall, we believe that there is intense focus on margins internally, which should allow the company to report an in line margin quarter,” Wadwani wrote. Cisco has been operating “with more confidence and aggressiveness with its refreshed product line, making it tougher for competitors,” writes Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee in a note to clients issued May 7, and has been a lot of reason that Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent have missed expectations recently. He expects Cisco to give guidance for the quarter ending in July that’s more or less in line with consensus expectations. He also sees Cisco benefiting from Apple’s next iPhone: “We believe this could mark the fourth quarter in a row where Cisco does not guide down expectations further building investor confidence. We see Cisco benefiting in the second half of 2012 from the continued build-out of 4G LTE wireless infrastructure ahead of the iPhone 5 refresh likely in the September-October time frame.” I’ll be covering Cisco’s earnings announcement later today. Having dedicated songs to CEO John Chambers two quarters in a row now, I’m going to have to scramble to see what song fits today’s results, because I just know he’s going to ask.
Read MoreLet’s say you’re walking around your neighborhood, or a neighborhood you’d like to make yours, and you spy a house you find interesting. Even if it isn’t for sale, you can just whip out your iPhone, take a picture of the home and in less than a minute, you’ll have an estimate of its price, plus details on its square footage, number of rooms, similar homes for sale and other facts. [ See post to watch video ] This feat of digital magic, which works all over the country, is performed by a new, free app called HomeSnap, from a Washington, D.C., online real-estate firm, Sawbuck Realty. Despite its parentage, the company says that using the app doesn’t send any data to a Realtor, or invite any calls or emails from one — unless you explicitly ask for such a connection. It’s just a cool way to investigate houses and if you like, to share your “Snaps” — photo profiles of houses — with HomeSnap users and friends via email, text or social networks. Why would you want to use it? Maybe you’re interested in buying the house if it ever comes on the market, or helping a friend do so. Or, maybe you’re just curious, or nosy. Of course, you could be in real house-hunting mode, and HomeSnap gives you even more information if the house you took a picture of is for sale, including interior photos and bid history. There’s even the option of contacting a buyer’s agent, asking a question or requesting a tour—right from the phone. You can use the app to flip through Snaps taken by others, either in nearby areas or around the nation. (HomeSnap allows you to keep your own Snaps out of this “stream,” if you’d rather your neighbors didn’t know you’ve been investigating their homes or you’d rather not tip off potential competing buyers.) With a picture you take of a home, HomeSnap offers data like the number of bedrooms and baths. There are many real-estate apps and Web sites, such as Zillow, that allow you to get similar information.
Read MoreDespite having been founded four years ago, Twitpic only launched its first free iPhone application on Monday, complete with basic photo editing tools and comments section. The app debuts as competition increasingly heats up in the mobile photo-sharing space, intensified by Facebook’s recent $1 billion acquisition of similar photo-sharing service Instagram.
Read MoreEvery year, come tax season, I curse myself. I might write about all things digital, but when it comes to receipts and important documents, my record-keeping is analog amateur hour. So this year I’m getting serious about scanning. Fortunately, there are plenty of portable scanning options out there, ranging from mobile apps to wand-like scanners. This week, I set out to determine whether an app or a pocket-sized scanner with receipt-management software can really do the job of a larger scanner. I tested three options: The smartphone app JotNot Scanner Pro by MobiTech 3000 , PlanOn’s tiny SlimScan SS100 scanner, and Xerox’s new wand-shaped Mobile Scanner . The JotNot Pro app uses the iPhone’s camera to capture images of documents. And after five days of testing, it became apparent that the app was great on the go, but I wouldn’t use it to scan tons of files. The SlimScan scanner’s size was attention-grabbing, but the device and its software were problematic for me. Despite its larger size and $250 price point, the Xerox scanner was my top pick, because of its fast scanning and its wireless connectivity via an Eye-Fi card. [ See post to watch video ] I began the scanner tests with JotNot Pro for iPhone, which was updated late last year and costs $1.99.
Read MoreSprint Nextel Chief Executive Dan Hesse agreed to cut $3.25 million from his compensation after shareholders complained it didn’t reflect the hefty upfront expense of carrying the iPhone. Hesse, in a letter filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission Friday, said he was voluntarily cutting some short- and long-term bonuses as well as some stock awards. Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read MoreAccording to IDC Samsung surpassed Apple to become the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer in the first quarter, shipping 42.2 million smartphones to Apple’s 35.1 million. But Cupertino retains another, far more lucrative title: smartphone market revenue leader. New data from Juniper Research shows that Apple’s revenue from the iPhone in the first quarter topped out at about $22.7 billion — a fair bit more than the $17 billion Samsung made from its entire handset portfolio — smart and feature. So while Samsung may be winning on global smartphone shipments, Apple’s winning on a far more important metric: smartphone profitability. And for a very simple reason: the company has the highest margins around. Reporting second quarter earnings last week , Apple said that its gross margin was 47.4 percent. Meanwhile, Samsung’s was just under 13 percent. So while Samsung is dominating smartphone shipments, Apple is dominating the smartphone industry’s pool of profits.
Read MoreThe worst-kept recent secret in tech — aside from Google Drive — is out: Audio-gadget maker Jawbone has created a monster Jambox. The original Jambox, for those not familiar, is a nifty Bluetooth-equipped speaker that wirelessly connects with the iPhone, iPad and Android phones to play music. It’s easy to see why, even at a price point of $199, the little Jambox has become the best-selling speaker in the U.S. — it’s small, sleek, and it works; plus, it’s easy to travel with, as I noted in this review of a competing speaker . Starting today, a new, bigger version of the Jambox is available for preorder, and is expected to hit stores on May 15. The bigger Jambox is called — wait for it — Big Jambox. Big Jambox is 10 inches long by 3.1 inches wide and 3.6 inches high, closer to the size of the shoebox-style box the original Jambox comes in. It weighs 2.7 pounds, is made of stainless steel with a polymer base and sides, and has music-control buttons on the top of the speaker, in addition to volume control. Soundwise, Big Jambox definitely packs more power and better sound than the standard Jambox. It’s got Jawbone’s signature LiveAudio technology, which is supposed to digitally enhance the sound coming out of the speaker to create “3-D” sound. The company claims 15 hours of continuous play on Big Jambox without needing to recharge the built-in battery, although that’s with the volume output at 85 decibels, and not maxed out at 110 decibels. Like the little Jambox, Big Jambox also acts as a two-way speaker for phone conversations and conference calls. And there’s a bonus feature for Android users: If a calendar reminder pops up on your phone while it’s paired to the speaker, the Jambox will read the reminder out loud, then patch you directly through to any phone numbers you might have put in the reminder. Unlike the little Jambox, Big Jambox allows more than one person or one device to be paired with the speaker at the same time. It will be interesting to see whether consumers buy into Big Jambox as much as they did the original. With its “little” Jambox, Jawbone was focused on mobility — in terms of both mobile-phone connectivity and portability.
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