Summit Notebook

from MediaFile:

GlobalMedia-Baseball exec frustrated, but shies off lecturing Jobs

One of Major League Baseball's top executives may not think Apple's iTunes app store is particularly user friendly, but he's not about to offer advice to the hottest technology executive on the planet.      Robert Bowman, the head of MLB Advanced Media, the league's Internet and digital business, loves apps. He wants his sport's games and other content to be on every wireless device out there and think apps will begin to shape how websites are designed.       "We actually think it's going to invade the website. We think people like apps," he said at the Reuters Global Media Summit. "They're easy to understand. They're compartmentalized. It's a quick way to get information."      That said, the Apple and Google app stores leave a lot to be desired, Bowman said.      "The app stores are not well laid out. The app stores are very hard to figure out. Even Apple ... they do a great job, but they're hard to understand. The Android app store is very hard to understand, so it's hard for people to find the content."   But, when asked what he would do to improve Apple's app store, Bowman demurred.      "I don't think I'm going to get very far giving Steve Jobs advice," he said of Apple's renowned CEO. "He's done pretty damn well not listening to me for the first 57 years of his life and so I'm just going to continue to let him not listen to me."      Bowman acknowledged that the Android app store leaves him "a little bit more frustrated."      However, the baseball executive is not alone is finding the app stores frustrating.      Despite charging $14.99 a pop, baseball has sold nearly 600,000 apps this year between the Apple and Android platforms, he said.      Bowman also dismissed questions about the future of set-top boxes or big TVs, saying both are not going anywhere.      "I don't think there's any history of media dying," he said. "I still listen to radio in my car.   "The big TVs aren't going to go anywhere. It's like the automobile," Bowman added. "We're a country that likes big TVs. 

(Reuters photo)

from MediaFile:

GlobalMedia-iPad cautionary tale: What not to watch, up close

Media executives love to go on about their love of the Apple's iPad. But the tablet isn't suited for everything. Walt Disney's Anne Sweeney relayed her recent experience catching up on an ABC  TV show using the  popular tablet.

Sweeney missed the season finale Grey's Anatomy and, while traveling, decided to watch the show in her hotel room. The episode was particularly gory -- several characters were picked off by a aggrieved man who held the hospital at gunpoint.

"It was a massacre," Sweeney said at the Reuters Global Media Summit. "There's nothing like seeing that on your pillow. There are some things you might not want to watch that close on your iPad."

(Photo: Reuters)

from MediaFile:

GlobalMedia: EA nabs triple word Scrabble score from Oprah

Forget sports tournaments or new movie releases as boosters for game demand. Electronic Arts' latest hero is America's most famous chat show host.

Chief Executive John Riccitiello,  at the Reuters Media summit, went out of his way to praise Oprah Winfrey, whose recent shout-out of Scrabble  gave a new lease of life to the not-so-new word game.

"We're very thankful to Oprah for mentioning Scrabble on iPad as one of her ultimate favorite gifts. There was a 400 percent pop ... on her word." He said. "I think there's different grades of favorite so we were happy to be among her ultimate favorites."

So did Riccitiello contact Oprah directly to say thanks? "My sense is that the number of people sending her flowers is too many for her to notice my petunias," he said.

(Photo: Reuters)

Is Apple in Intel’s future?

Apple developed the processor for it’s recently launched iPad tablet PC in-house. Intel was left waiting on the sidelines but change may be in store. Future tablets from other device makers, and maybe even Apple, could prove to be a lucrative for the world’s largest chipmaker. And why not, Intel already makes the microprocessors that are used in more than three quarters of the world’s PCs. Tom Kilroy, Intel senior vice president and general manager of sales and marketing, says “wait til Computex” for a big announcement. So, what’s likely to come out of the industry trade show this June in Taipei? Any thoughts? Click below to hear what Kilroy had to say in San Francisco at the 2010 Reuters Global Technology Summit.

Intel on Tablet Opportunities from Reuters TV on Vimeo.

from MediaFile:

Want an in with Kleiner? Send a drawing

For Matt Murphy, partner with influential Silicon Valley Venture fund Kleiner Perkins and point person on the firm's iFund, old-school is still the way to go.

During an interview at the Reuters technology summit, the VC said picking the right startups to back was tough, given that he had received 8,000 business plans for iFund, which invests in iPhone and iPad applications.

The onslaught of business plans from app developers escalated to almost 500 per day when the fund expanded to $200 million in March.

When asked what gets his attention, Murphy said anything handwritten or hand-made leaves an impression.

"What stands out in this day and age of technology is when somebody sends me like handwritten things with hand sketched-out drawing, or a model or mock-up of something they are building," he said. "It is always entertaining to see something done in an old-school way that stands out."

"I can't say if any of those things I funded, but it did leave an impression on me."

(reporting by Poornima Gupta)

from MediaFile:

Speak, memory! The eternal search for notebooks with flash drives

Good news for us computer geeks! PCs are nearly ready to ditch hard drives for faster, less energy-intensive drives with flash memory, like in a camera or cell phone, according to memory maker Micron, which ought to know. That is exciting news for victims of crashed hard drives and people who always want something new.

"I think it'll be a story in 2011, and it'll be pretty good penetration in 2012. But, you know, maybe I'm wrong," said Mark Durcan, president and chief operating officer of Micron, during the Reuters Global Technology Summit.

Sadly, he may well be right about the last part. The last Micron exec to speak about so-called solid state drives to an appreciatively nerdy Reuters summit was CEO Steve Appleton, who in November 2005 predicted that flash drives would replace hard drives within five years. Actually, he's still got time, but folks better hurry!

There are some notebooks with flash drives (like Apple's super-thin MacBook Air) and  Durcan says consumers love 'em. Hiccups with the technology from a year and a half or so are gone -- power efficiency now beats hard drives, and annoying problems which slowed solid state drives have been solved, he said, comparing now with when Appleton spoke, on the cusp of 2006.

"In 2006 it was the promise. It wasn't the reality. But it's real now." Still, he added, computer makers are wary of the volatile prices.

Hopefully by next year's Tech Summit that will all be worked out.

iSkyscraper? If you were Apple, why not?

If you had paid $3.5 billion for a skyscraper named after bankrupt automaker General Motors, wouldn’t you want a tenant to come in and pay you another few million to rename the building, with the added bonus of giving it a name not associated with a failed recipient of government largesse?

Boston Properties, which bought the building last year, located at the southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan, is not known to be shopping around the naming rights to the building, but a top real estate broker in Manhattan, known as the “Queen of the Skyscraper” has one suggestion if ever it is : Apple.

The GM Building is home to Apple’s sleek flagship store, well known to the hordes of tourists and New Yorkers alike, and the maker of the iPhone enjoys top brand name recognition and public affection that Apple is a logical choice.

“If I were Steve Jobs I would be negotiating now,” said Darcy Stacom, the CB Richard Ellis broker who handled the transaction. (She hastened to add she has no knowledge of whether Apple is or might be interested.)

What’s more, she said, the building is home to CBS News’ national daily broadcast, so a massive audience hearing, “Live from the Apple building in New York…” every day would be a major coup for the retailer.

The naming rights to such a marquee building can be cost millions (they are not typically sold outright, but built into rents.) Then again, few companies, Apple among them, can afford that luxury in this market. And even if, as Stacom says, it takes a while for New York to get used to a new name, they may be eager to forget GM.

(Reuters photos)

Dell’s enterprise chief pooh-poohs netbooks

Netbooks: flavor of the month? Not according to Dell’s Steven Schuckenbrock.

The PC giant’s head of enterprise sales was quick to point out flaws in the stripped-down, no-frills mini-computers that have garnered rave reiews for their ultra-portability and anywhere-connectivity.

“Netbooks are a secondary device. The user experience of a netbook is just not as good. It’s slower than a conventional notebook computer,” Schuckenbrock said at the Reuters Global Technology Summit in New York.

Perhaps that’s why Dell was slow to get into a space dominated early on by aggressive Taiwanese upstarts like Asustek. Dell, the once-preminent U.S. personal computer manufacturer, which has steadily given away market share to rivals from Hewlett Packard to Lenovo, unveiled its first netbook only in September.

Schuckenbrock, however, acknowledged that the netbook was an ideal device for non-demanding consumers. “I carried one with me on the road this week to check it out. A great device. Light, easy to use. But a different performance. If I’m in my office, it’s probably not gonna work.”

Which is fine by some investors. Dell had endured criticism from the Wall Street community for appearing at times to see-saw between different and sometimes contradictory corporate strategies, from its initial tardiness in latching onto the netbook craze to its flirtation with the hand-held device market.

Verizon and iPhone: Deal or no deal?

Verizon Communications Chief Financial Officer John Killian had a lot to say about how well his company’s smartphone and data business is doing, but skirted the elephant in the room at the Reuters Global Technology Summit: Is his company going to strike an iPhone deal with Apple?

Killian refused to comment on whether Verizon is talking to Apple about selling the iPhone once rival AT&T’s exclusive contract with the iPhone maker ends next year.

“Our PDA, smartphone and data business is growing incredibly nicely,” Killian said. “Our strategy is to have multiple devices. I’m not going to comment on Apple or the iPhone, but… we don’t feel we’re going to be at a market disadvantage in the PDA space as we go through today or 2009.”

So, no iPhone deal, then? Again, Killian avoided answering directly.

“We have a range of different devices with different manufacturers, and we’re continuing to evolve that. We’re going to have a series of introductions this year, we’re not dependent on any one vendor.”

But surely, Verizon must miss the publicity that all things iPhone get? After all, the iPhone — and Apple products in general — seem to drive people into paroxysms of delight, especially at trade shows like CES and CTIA. Does Verizon not feel the pressure to do something big and showy?

Killian’s response: “I don’t want buzz, I want volumes, cash flow, profitability. I want things that allow us to do that and I think our lineup is allowing us to do that.”

Apple’s iPhone takes slow boat to China

In China, Apple’s iPhone commands a strange presence. Perenially “coming out”, already widely available on the black market, viewed with trepidation by local telecom players but with undisguised lust by affluent consumers.

Sanford C. Bernstein Toni Sacconaghi thinks the wildly popular device will arrive in the Middle Kingdom before the end of the year, after a long haul of negotiations with state-run telecom carriers keen to control the content to be sold over the gadget.

Some sticking points thus far: Sacconaghi says Chinese typically spend $10-$15 per month on data services — everything from stock quotes to weather forecasts — wheareas your typical iPhone user in the developed world now spends $70. That limits the Chinese carriers’ ability to subsidize the iPhone. But the analyst thinks that in one to two months Apple may unveil a cheaper version of the device that can lower the cost of the phone to lower-paying Chinese customers.

“You’re struggling with how to monetize the iPhone”, he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit. “It could be used to let carriers pay less.”

Though conceding that negotiations on that front between the consumer electronics giant and carriers in the world’s largest telecoms arena have been “opaque” at best, Sacconaghi thinks Apple is getting tougher.

“It’s a testament to the fact that they’ve been negotiating pretty tough” that the iPhone’s introduction had been delayed,” he said.

Problem is, Apple may be underestimating the Chinese government’s tendency to want to control content — especially mass consumer content — and its distribution. Apple, which also jealously guards ultimate control of the applications or programs sold through its Apps store, may have finally met its match.