apr 18

Oracle decided not to buy BlackBerry or Palm, denies the world Ellison helmed webOracleBerry

iPhone No Comments »

Oracle decided not to buy BlackBerry or Palm, denies the world Ellison helmed webOracleBerry

Oracle, the 2 ton mutant gorilla of enterprise data software, once considered buying BlackBerry or Palm in order to take on Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android in the smartphone space. No. Seriously. Unfortunately, Oracle CEO — and former Apple board member and long-time Steve Jobs friend — Larry Ellison decided against it. I say unfortunately because, while I can’t imagine Oracle achieving anything inspired with either BlackBerry or Palm, it would have been incredibly interesting to watch them try. Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice interesting.

If the future really is mobile, right now only Apple and Google are positioned to own that future (though Android’s open source nature means there could end up being hundreds of Android forks from the likes of Amazon, carriers, even Oracle itself).

BlackBerry was even later to the modern mobile party than Microsoft, and Microsoft was plenty late. HP and their brutally incompetent board of directors squandered what could have been a brilliant future for webOS.

But oh, what could have been…

Source: Reuters via CrackBerry



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gen 23

CIRP: l’iPhone 4S da 64GB rappresenta il 21% delle vendite, il 36% degli acquirenti viene da un’altra piattaforma

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Una nuova ricerca effettuata dal CIRP,  Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, ha messo in evidenza come il 21% degli acquirenti di iPhone 4S abbia optato per il modello con una capacità di 64GB, sottolineando inoltre come il 36% degli utenti sia passato al terminale dell’azienda californiana venendo da un’altra piattaforma, tra cui Android, BlackBerry o Palm.

Come già accennato, lo studio condotto dal CIRP si è concentrato sugli acquirenti di iPhone 4S in seguito al lancio avvenuto ad ottobre; tra quelli intervistati, il 21% sembrerebbe aver optato per il modello da 64GB, quindi con la massima capienza disponibile tra i terminali messi a disposizione dall’azienda californiana, che fino all’iPhone 4 potevano essere acquistati con una capacità di archiviazione fino a 32GB. Dalla ricerca sarebbe emerso inoltre come il 36% degli acquirenti abbia deciso di comprare un iPhone venendo da una piattaforma diversa da iOS. Dai risultati pare inoltre che gli acquisti avvenuti online siano diminuiti progressivamente con il passare del tempo dopo il lancio del terminale: mentre in quest’ultimo periodo le vendite online rappresentavano il 43% del totale, con l’avvicinarsi della fine del 2011 questo numero sarebbe sceso al 33%.

Lo studio ha inizialmente ricevuto le risposte di 6,316 soggetti, nonostante il Consumer Intelligence Research Partners abbia poi deciso di intervistare 365 persone reputate qualificate per l’analisi sui dati di vendita di coloro che hanno acquistato un iPhone 4S nei mesi di ottobre, novembre e dicembre del 2011.

[via]

storie correlate



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dic 09

WebOS lives! HP decides to open source the platform

Generale, Hardware Upgrade, iPhone, Mobile, Open Source No Comments »

After on-again, off-again news about the webOS mobile platform, HP has come to a final decision: WebOS will be offered to the open source community. HP will still be involved in the platform to help developers and aid in governance for webOS. The choice effectively gives a third life to the platform, first developed by Palm and later purchased by HP.

In a press release sharing the news, HP CEO Meg Whitman touts the mobile platform as robust enough to power future devices:

[W]ebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable. By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices.

HP spent $1.2 billion to acquire Palm and its webOS resources in April, 2010, but the investment hasn’t paid off. It took more than a year for the company to design and build the HP TouchPad tablet running webOS, which was never considered successful. At least not until the price was drastically reduced to $99 when HP decided to leave the tablet market it only just entered.

With the operating system now to be open sourced, we could see device makers build new phones or tablets with it, as no licensing fee would be required. This is similar to Google Android, but the challenge for webOS is the ecosystem. Android has become the most-used smartphone platform to date and developers are writing apps for it, as well as Apple’s iOS devices. WebOS still has many fans — myself included — but doesn’t have as strong of an ecosystem.

It’s also possible that HP itself could jump back in the mobile hardware game, but of course there are no guarantees. My suspicion is that this scenario would only play out if the open source community gave HP a reason to do so by maturing the platform and third-party software offerings.

Other hardware makers could play a wait-and-see game too, although I’d rule Samsung out as using webOS: The company has quietly developed its own Bada OS, which is gaining an audience and gives Samsung a backup plan for Android. Not that it needs one yet.

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nov 29

WebOS app development chief flees to Xobni

Generale, Hardware Upgrade, iPhone, Mobile No Comments »

You might have heard that Hewlett-Packard is still trying to sort out what it wants to do long term with its webOS mobile operating system. There’s been rumors of a massive shutdown and talk of salvaging the old Palm-designed OS or selling it off. But it’s clear the uncertainty is not a way to retain talent.

The latest sign is the departure of Michael Rizkalla, the former senior director of webOS application development at HP, who just started at Xobni, where he will be its senior director of mobile applications, according to his LinkedIn profile. Xobni tries to make inboxes and addresses books smarter on Outlook and BlackBerry through its software and recently introduced apps for Gmail and Android. Rizkalla exit follows the retirement of Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Shane Robinson and the departure of Richard Kerris, vice president, Worldwide Developer Relations for webOS. Palm also saw a number of executives leave after it was bought by HP last year.

The departure of Rizkalla highlights the bigger problem for HP. Even as it debates the future of webOS, the fact that it’s potentially on the chopping block has to be sending plenty of signals to the entire team. HP has already confirmed it would be pursuing layoffs of the webOS team, reported to be more than 500 people. The question is what happens to the rest. Do you wait for HP to shut you down or hope for a reprieve? Why not just take matters into your own hands.

At Palm and HP, Rizkalla was responsible for shipping some of the core apps on webOS and previously led the development of webOS 2.0. Now, it looks like he’ll be heading up engineering for Xobni’s mobile products. How many other talented people leave the webOS team before any decision to keep it or discard it becomes moot?

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