Intel is looking for a new CEO and its looks at internal candidates. The big problem: they are all kids of the PC revolution. What Intel needs is fresh thinking, much like Microsoft to get out of the crumbling PC ecosystem. Read more »
Tablets featured prominently in the connected consumer space, both as a product category and as a component of broader platform strategies by major OS providers Microsoft, Google and Apple. Meanwhile Facebook began laying the groundwork to add payment processing to its platform. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple and Google still dominate the smartphone space, but look out for Microsoft, which finally has some muscle behind its mobile strategy. Meanwhile mobile-browser developers went head-to-head with native apps, and Facebook continued to buy mobile expertise via acquisition. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In cloud and big data, the second quarter of 2012 featured several high-profile deals and product launches that could reshape the marketplace for everyone. Google and Microsoft launched Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, software-defined networking took off, and all eyes stayed fixed on the continuing promise of data analytics. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Overall, between 2012 and 2017, more than 900,000 light-duty PEVs will be sold in the United States. But there remain hefty inhibitors to mainstream plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) use, including limited vehicle driving range and large battery packs, not to mention steep prices. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Discussions about the cloud now involve more than just the IT department. New developments in hardware architectures, more-energy-efficient data centers, regulatory concerns and simplifying analytics are all discussions currently circling through the industry. Here’s what to consider when thinking about your business in the cloud. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
In the first quarter of 2012 all eyes were on the screen, both big and small. Apple’s new Retina display pushed video streaming, and broadcast-TV streaming service Aereo’s launch was quickly followed with litigation. These events and more are discussed in a new quarterly report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing is at the top of virtually every CIO’s interest list and is expected to grow 126.5 percent over the next two years. A new report on GigaOM Pro details each sector of cloud computing and forecasts a shift toward hybrid models in the enterprise community. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT combine to create another force that overwhelms IT departments: complexity, including complexity of devices and applications, physical and virtual computing environments, and related challenges for IT staff. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing, mobile computing and the consumerization of IT are changing the game for IT departments. Section one of our three-part report describes and quantifies each of these trends, demonstrating that they are real now, growing rapidly and perilous to ignore. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The big hosting provider that, along with NASA, launched the open-source cloud infrastructure project two years ago, will start beta testing the software, running tens of thousands of computing instances as opposed to the hundreds under test now, said John Engates, Rackspace’s CTO. Read more »
Years have gone by since Microsoft launched a version of Windows that made the general public stand up and take notice. On Wednesday, the company will allow tech enthusiasts to start poking around Windows 8, a product that could help Microsoft get its groove back. Read more »
Microsoft, which looked as if it might be the odd man out on Hadoop, might actually play a big role in taking the platform into the mainstream. On Tuesday, it exposed its plans to make Hadoop data analyzable via both a JavaScript framework and Microsoft Excel. Read more »
We know consumerization is eating away at the dominance of PCs, but Forrester Research has released fresh numbers on the phenomenon. The results are bad news for Microsoft, with Forrester finding one-third of work devices are non-Microsoft and a quarter mobile. Read more »
Tablets represent the next evolution in the advancement of mobile computing, and by 2015 or 2016, the tablet will begin to replace the laptop and the desktop operating systems market will begin to level off or perhaps decline. Our latest forecast examines these trends in detail. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft’s ambitious Windows Azure cloud is many things — it’s a full-fledged PaaS for developers. But beneath that, it is also a huge pool of foundational storage infrastructure for rent. And in that arena, it could be the only real competitor to Amazon. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Alleged details of Windows Phone 8 emerged on Thursday in a leaked video intended for Microsoft’s partners. Information from the video was written up by PocketNow and upon first glance, all the details seem feasible. More importantly, they’re what Microsoft needs to improve sales. Read more »
Was Bill Gates, chairman and co-founder of Microsoft, the power behind the proprietary Windows-and-Office juggernaut, really an open source champion? A new Wired article lays Microsoft’s wider embrace of open source technologies — including Node.js and Hadoop — squarely at Gates’ feet. Read more »
Nokia may have sold 1.3 million Lumia handsets running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, which would be a morale boost for both companies. Both have been in decline, facing competition from iOS and Android devices. Is this finally a smartphone turnaround point for Nokia and Microsoft? Read more »
Toronto-based Polar Mobile, which provides a digital media distribution platform powering the apps of some of the biggest media companies in the world, including Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, announced a new $6 million funding round on Monday. Read more »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Personal security app Guardly, which launched back in April 2011 on the iPhone and iPod touch, announced Thursday morning that it will now offer a special program for students at 67 universities and colleges across Canada, designed as an extension of on-campus security measures. Read more »
This week had me running around the CES event, where Android 4.0 was everywhere. New tablets with multicore chips impressed me — and could even be notebook replacements — plus a few smartphones looked incredible. Apps may start looking better to due to a Google initiative. Read more »
There’s a trend building, and it’s not good for the PC industry. It’s not tablet and smartphone growth — although that’s part of the trend — but virtualization on mobile devices. This allows remote PC access from a tablet, for example, and could hurt already slowing PC sales. Read more »
Sometimes Windows is just what the doctor ordered, and with OnLive’s new Desktop app for iPad, I suspect it’ll be the prescription I’m looking for much more often. Here’s a look at what the fresh new Windows virtualization app for iPad offers. Read more »
I was playing the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim video game today at CES; a game I play often at home on my Xbox 360 and large-screened HDTV. But I wasn’t playing on my Xbox. I was playing on an Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Android 4.0 tablet. Read more »
Qualcomm CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs shared his mobile vision at CES Tuesday, with much of the focus on emerging markets. With half of all smartphones expected to be sold in emerging markets by 2015, it’s no wonder the chipmaker is looking to innovate beyond traditional borders. Read more »
Microsoft may have finally accomplished something it has failed to do at the last six Consumer Electronics Show events I’ve attended: It has people talking about its phones. Even with few product launches announced at CES, there’s good reason for the Windows Phone buzz. Read more »
The new OnLive Desktop app making its debut at CES this week will let users stream their full-featured — and resource-intensive — Microsoft Office applications to their Apple iPads. The company runs virtualized versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint on its data centers in the cloud. Read more »
With the industry in uproar and a good reputation in TVs, Vizio has picked a great (perhaps the greatest?) time in recent PC industry history to try to make its mark on the industry by taking an entertainment-focused, Windows-based approach to laptops and desktops. Read more »
On this week’s audio podcast, Matt and Kevin share their expectations for next week’s big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The Nokia Lumia 710 is in hand, so both hosts share their thoughts on this very capable $50 Windows Phone device for T-Mobile’s network. Read more »
Big data is often talked about as a phenomenon that lets organizations create narratives from their volumes of data. That is an apt characterization when we are talking about connecting the dots among disparate and possibly disconnected data sets. However, when we are talking about anything ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It looks like development superstar Ray Ozzie is about to come out of stealth mode: The force behind Microsoft’s Windows Azure Platform-as-a-Service project and Lotus Notes is starting to hire developers for his new “Cocomo” project. Read more »
I’m saying goodbye to Android, and it appears I’m not alone. Here is why the platform’s fragmentation and lack of interoperability have driven me away — and why Google should do everything it can to address those ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The last four years have shown remarkable growth in smartphone ownership, changing the mobile landscape as the phone becomes central to our lives. This year I’ll be looking for cross-platform apps, centralized notification services and solutions that intelligently handle more mundane tasks around my smart home. Read more »
Since I use multiple mobile devices on various platforms, it sometimes gets to be a chore trying to read saved web pages when offline. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between two great solutions: Instapaper and Read It Later. But both might be trumped by Evernote. Read more »
