Sep. 13, 2011 Executive Technology Strategies ets 11-09-01

Weekly IT News Snapshots Cal Braunstein, Chief Research Officer

Lead Analyst: Caroline Gabriel, Rethink Associates

• 
  Qualcomm has been researching gesture controls for some time, as have rivals like Texas Instruments, eyeing the success of products like the Nintendo Wii. The San Diego firm stepped up its level of interest this summer when it acquired assets and engineers from GestureTek, a pioneer of camera-enabled gesture recognition technology. The smaller firm's VGC (video gesture control) IP is licensed by Microsoft for Xbox 360 and by Sony and NTT DoCoMo for mobile devices.
  

• 
  As well as potential patent rights, Qualcomm gained technology which it plans to incorporate into the Snapdragon processor platform, to support gesture UIs in smartphones, tablets and consumer electronics devices. CEO Paul Jacobs demonstrated the prototype UI, which include GestureTek techniques, and told TelecomsEurope it, should be commercially available in late 2012 or early 2013.
  

• 
  The unit used in the demonstration detected movement with an ultrasound system harnessing the handset's microphone and speaker, and other sensors plus the camera will be added as the development progresses.
  

• 
  Jacobs also talked about another key area of Qualcomm R&D into the next wave of UIs, augmented reality. He said the firm's software development kit was now available and partners were starting to create applications. He showed off an example, which allowed a user to play a movie trailer by pointing the phone at a DVD box cover in a store.
  

• 
  Many high-end mobile products now include some AR support, though mainstream usage has been slow to take off. However, Juniper Research predicts revenues will reach $11.5m this year, and $213.3m by the end of 2013, after which it will leap more significantly, to hit $732.2m in 2014.
  

Lead Analyst: Peter While, Rethink Associates

• 
  The story seems traceable to the Wall Street Journal, which says that an ebook subscription offering will be almost free, bundled into the Amazon‘s Prime service, which has already been used to combat Netflix, by making a number of videos free to Prime members.
  

• 
  Amazon Prime costs $79-a-year and brings users benefits such as free next-day delivery and access to movies and TV shows (in the US), while subscribers are estimated to spend a typical 7-8 times as much with the company than more casual shoppers.
  

• 
  Free membership is likely to be an incentive to buy the upcoming Kindle Tablet, and Amazon clearly wants to achieve Prime-level buying patterns across all its content, as well as continuing to differentiate Kindle from other ebookstores. Barnes & Noble has proved a powerful competitor in the US and other country-specific challengers are on the horizon, including major UK bookstore chain Waterstones, whose new CEO James Daunt recently promised an own-branded e-reader integrated with the firm's digital shopfront, which would be "significantly better than our online rival's".
  

• 
  The WSJ says that Amazon is in talks with book publishers, though these are likely to be wary of the concept and may exclude certain new or premium titles, as happens with Netflix. There will be fears of individual books' value or launch impact being diluted, and the service would almost certainly include tiering plans, with different release dates, as with movies.
  

Lead Analyst: Cal Braunstein

• 
  A Clearswift survey of 1,529 employees and 906 managers in companies across the world about social media use found that 60 per cent of employers worried that giving their employees free access to Web 2.0 would bring in viruses and worms. Another 49 percent feared the loss of confidential data through employee carelessness, or hacking (45 percent), while 40 percent worried it would have a negative impact on productivity. 37 percent felt it posed a threat of reputational damage if used inappropriately. The study also found employers used a range of tactics to keep track of employee Internet usage. 71 percent issued a best practice policy on Internet use while 68 percent said they monitored employee Internet activity. The study showed that 19 percent of firms are now blocking employee access to social media websites and technology, which is up from nine percent of respondents who expressed the same sentiment in 2010. 43 percent of polled companies actually experienced a security incident resulting from Internet use.
  
• 
  According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute more older Americans are remaining in the workforce than ever before. In 1975 only 36.4 percent of workers 55 or older were working. This shrank to 29.4 percent by 1993 but by last year, even with the recession, the percentage reached 40.2 percent, the highest level in 35 years.
  
• 
  The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released numbers early this year that show that older IT workers have higher rates of unemployment than both younger IT workers and older workers in other professions. Between 2009 and 2010 the overall unemployment rate for people 55 and over jumped from 6 percent to 8.4 percent while for those between the ages of 25 to 54 the rate fell from 5.1 percent to 4.5 percent. Moreover, according to the latest Computerworld salary survey, the number of IT people feeling somewhat or very insecure rises steadily as they age. While no evidence of age bias appears in actual salaries, the older employees feel as though they have lost ground financially over the past two years.
  

Lead Analyst: Adam Braunstein

• 
  Further proof materialized this week signaling the arrival of a color Amazon tablet for the holiday season this year. A TechCrunch reporter claims to have spent time with a 7-inch, Design Verification Testing unit of the new Amazon Kindle. Though it is based on Android, Amazon built the upcoming Kindle on a completely forked version of Android thought to be older than 2.2 and has removed Google's Android Market in favor of the Amazon Android AppStore. Most of Amazon's Internet-enabled services are integrated into the device, including facilities for obtaining and viewing Amazon's book, movie, and music content. Kindle buyers will receive free subscriptions to Amazon Prime to further entice purchases. Lacking somewhat in the storage department with a mere 6 gigabytes (GBs) onboard, Amazon's intention is for this Kindle to be rely heavily on its cloud service offerings for storage and playback. The Kindle will lack any carrier network connectivity at launch, though Amazon is reportedly hoping to change that next year.
  
• 
  As Amazon is on the cusp of offering another fragmented version of an Android tablet, Google is working to end issues related to application compatibility. More than 50 percent of Android users run the 2.2 version of the operating system and more than 30 percent are running the most recent 2.3 version, leaving almost 20 percent on versions 2.1 and older. Google says the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich update will consolidate hardware and application specifications making application compatibility – and future hardware variations – less of an issue. In addition to issues related to application compatibility, a new survey of 75 Android application developers finds that platform monetization is far less than with Apple Inc.'s iOS platform. Developers cite piracy as one the main culprits given the ease of copying and republishing an Android application, along with lax Android Market policies. To help hardware manufacturers keep Apple lawsuits at bay, Google has sold nine patents to HTC Corp. and provided them with ammunition to fight the claims and launch a countersuit against Apple.
  
• 
  For the first time ever, Google released information about how much energy is consumed by its data centers worldwide. According to the Internet search giant, the company continuously consumed 260 million watts of power in 2010 – enough to power between 100,000 and 200,000 homes in a typical city. The company says that the average user consumes about 180 watt-hours per month, the equivalent of running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours, to power Google searches, Gmail messaging, and YouTube videos. Advertisements displayed on those pages and others that use Google's advertisement services are also included in that figure. The company estimated carbon emissions at 1.5 metric tons for 2010 and has committed to increasing its usage of renewable energy from 25 percent to 30 percent in 2011. While Google is proud of its energy fortunes, the situation for Solandra LLC, a developer and manufacturer of solar cells, is getting worse after having filed for bankruptcy protection last week. The company had its Fremont, CA offices raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to execute a search warrant issued as part of a joint operation between the Department of Energy and that department's inspector general. The company still has some staff at its offices as it tries to sell off all or part of its intellectual property. It had received $527 million in government loans and $69 million in private investment.