HTC financial fortunes may be about to take a turn for the better.
The Financial Times reported that an Amazon smartphone is on the way and is being manufactured by HTC. There is apparently 3 phones in development, one near completion. It also appears that the new phones will only be made available to Amazon Prime customers.
This could be a godsend for HTC and help fill its pockets with much needed revenue.
Google announced its Q3 earnings a few hours ago. Full details click here http://investor.google.com/earnings/2013/Q3_google_earnings.html
The highlights are –
Q3 Financial Highlights
Revenues and other information – On a consolidated basis, Google Inc. revenues for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 were $14.89 billion, an increase of 12% compared to the third quarter of 2012.
Google Segment Revenues – Google segment revenues were $13.77 billion, or 92% of consolidated revenues, in the third quarter of 2013, representing a 19% increase over third quarter 2012 Google segment revenues of $11.53 billion.
Google Sites Revenues – Google-owned sites generated segment revenues of $9.39 billion, or 68% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013. This represents a 22% increase over third quarter 2012 Google sites segment revenues of $7.73 billion.
Google Network Revenues – Google’s partner sites generated segment revenues of $3.15 billion, or 23% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013, compared to $3.13 billion of Google network segment revenues in the third quarter of 2012.
Other Google Revenues – Other revenues from the Google segment were $1.23 billion, or 9% of total Google segment revenues, in the third quarter of 2013. This represents an 85% increase over third quarter 2012 other Google segment revenues of $666 million.
Tweetbot for iOS is one of the best twitter clients, along with the official Twitter app and Twitterific. Except that Tweetbot has still not been updated for iOS 7. Well good news. It has been submitted to Apple for approval.
Below is transcript from Tweetbot’s blog as why it has taken so long and the latest position –
“When the iPhone 5 was released a little over a year ago, our apps began to look a little…short. Most of our apps are designed specifically for the original iPhone size. Apps like Weightbot, Convertbot, and Calcbot needed to be completely re-thought and redesigned for the new aspect ratio. Pastebot is full of custom UI so while it would be easier to convert to the 4″ screen size than our other apps, it still needed lots of work. We made the smart business decision to keep our focus on Tweetbot for Mac. We haven’t abandoned our older apps, but we have to make tough decisions that keep our business running. We already have many great ideas for the updates to our older apps and are just waiting for the right time to implement.
Seven months ago, we started working on a big update for Calcbot. We were hoping to release it sometime in the summer. Two months in, Apple announced iOS7 at WWDC. We knew this was a huge change. It would make every single one of our apps look dated so we had to make sure our flagship app was ready for it. All of the design work that went into the Calcbot update was rendered obsolete in one keynote and so we focused our energy on updating Tweetbot for iPhone. Playing with the beta of iOS7 over the next few weeks brought us to the realization that this would not just be a “re-skin”. We really had to just start over with the new foundation and concepts of iOS7.
We were aiming for the iOS7 launch date, but unfortunately we didn’t make it. We’ve been working night and day for the last 4 months to re-design and develop an app that took over a year to build. The good news is that we are extremely happy with the results and can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Now that you know what we have been up to over the past months, here’s where we are today. We’ve just submitted Tweetbot for iPhone to the app store and are waiting for approval. We do not have a launch date yet because there are many other things that need to be in place and ready before we launch, but it will be soon. That is all that we can say at this point. We truly appreciate your patience and support on this and know that it will be worth the wait!”
Above is a high quality press render of the Nexus 5 which is soon to be announced by Google. No surprises on the hardware front, but details of the full package on offer cannot come quick enough.
Update – Google by accident put the N5 up on the Play Store. $349 for the 16gb version. Looks like a bargain already.
Sony is pushing over the air updates to its Z1 and Z Ultra. These are quite important updates so you may want to request the software update from within the system settings l.
With the Z1 the upgrade brings several camera tweaks and new camera algorithms for better all round performance. There have also been some changes to the Sony smart camera platform, which now enables built-in apps to run more fluidly.
The Xperia Z Ultra update brings optimized touchscreen sensitivity for fingers and styluses, therefore, effectively broadening the range of input methods, empowering the device to compete with the likes of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy Note III.
In addition, both the Z1 and Z Ultra will receive battery life enhancements, display calibration tweaks and significantly faster e-mail synchronisation over Microsoft Exchange.
Sounds like very good updates.
That great TV app, TVCatchup that provided live TV on your iPhone or android phone has lost a legal case.
This means ITV1-4, Channel 4, Channel 5, E4, More 4, 4 Seven, Five Star, Film Four, Four Music, and CITV are no longer available via the app.
Reuters FRANKFURT (www.reuters.com) reported the following on Huawei.
China’s Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecoms network infrastructure providers, is not planning any large takeovers because it would be unable to integrate them, Deputy Chairman Guo Ping was reported as saying in German paper Welt am Sonntag.
Ping, one of three deputy chairmen who take turns acting as chief executive, was responding to the paper’s question on whether he could imagine buying one of Europe’s big players in the sector, such as Nokia or Alcatel-Lucent.
Huawei, which is also one of the world’s leading handset manufacturers, last month ruled out the possibility of buying another mobile phone maker. However, Ping said that it would be open to cooperation with another handest company, the paper reported.
Ping also rejected allegations from the U.S. Congress that technology from Huawei might be used to spy on its users and denied accusations by the European Commission that it would dump goods on the market at artificially low prices.
Whenever a company denies something like this, it means they probably are looking at options. But apart from looking at the options, they are also looking at the cost of such an acquisition, politics and implementation.
Huawei might also believe they don’t need anybody else as they are starting to release some fine craft.
A few days ago I wrote about my early days with the Netatmo Urban Weather Station. To recap on the earlier part click here.
The Netatmo Urban Weather Station has apps for iOS, Windows Phone and android. Below is a couple of screen shots from the iOS app.
But it also has a PC web app. I will write a more complete review soon but I thought I would show you the view you get when using the PC web app for the first time.
I have since discovered that there are some third party apps that works with the Weather Station. First is WeatherPro for iOS. Baratmo for Mac OS. And for those android fans, there is also a widget with the official app.
Screenshot of Baratmo – with this all you get is an icon in the status bar. Click on this and the following pops up as below.
With WeatherPro you can fully integrate the Urban Weather Station into the app. First it appears in the list of favourites.
And then you can tap on it to get more detailed info as shown below. You can scroll down for even more info, or hit the top right bar chart info to get specific graphs on an individual item of weather, similar to the Netatmo official app.
So what do you think of the data available?
As of Monday, Mixpanel reported that 71% of iOS devices were already using iOS 7.
If Apple can keep it hardware updated at this rate, its time Google, Microsoft and others stepped up their game too.
On Monday I wrote about networks altering the speed of 3G data to make 4G look more attractive and try and sign up more users to these new plans.
Blog reader Jah managed to find out the following –
“I managed to get T-Mobile to confirm that they now limit download speeds on their 3G network to around 4mbps (but in Bristol I found I can still get 10mbps for some reason). My 4G SIM in the same area as my 3G SIM on the same 3G network can download at 20mpbs! So EE/T-mobile actually set limits for 3G.”
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 