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Once again, Samsung and Apple are the big winners in the quarterly Worldwide Connected Smart Device report. Combined shipments of PCs, tablets and smartphones grew a healthy 27.1% year over year in the third quarter of 2012 according to IDC -- a total of 303.6 million devices worth $140.4 billion. But the growth was heavily weighted to the markets where Samsung and Apple dominate: smartphones and tablets. IDC expects more of the same this holiday season: tablet shipments in Q4 are expected to grow 55.8% and smartphones 39.5%, while PC shipments are expected to decline slightly from this quarter a year ago. In a set of stats that neatly sums up the competition between the two companies, IDC reports that Samsung maintained the top position in market share (21.8%) based on shipments, while Apple, which ranked second in shipments, led all vendors in the value of products shipped ($34.1 billion).
IDC: Samsung and Apple are driving holiday sales
One of the next hot areas of digital investment is connected health management. The number of apps that help empowered patients take charge of their own conditions is growing, and investors are piling in. But that growth is uneven. Whilst the sector is taking off in the United States, Europe acknowledges “barriers” remain. So the European Commission has drawn up an “action plan” to improve prospects.
That plan aims, by 2020, to:
- specify the structure of patient record data that can be exchanged across borders
- improved patients’ digital health literacy
- develop a mobile health green paper by 2014
- improved the market conditions for e-health entrepreneurs.
Europe wants to smash ‘barriers’ to digital health
Austrian rights holders group IG Autoren made waves this past weekend with a statement that suggests it wants to broadly expand levies on storage media. Consumers in Austria already pay levies on blank CDs and DVDs. Rights holders have been advocating to expand these kinds of fees to hard drives and other forms of storage media as well, and apparently aren’t just thinking about local storage.
European rights holders want levies on Dropbox, Google Drive
Add “potentially life-threatening” to the list of shortcomings accumulating around Apple’s new iOS mapping application. Police in Victoria, Australia, issued a warning discouraging travelers from relying on Apple’s new iOS 6 Maps app to navigate the region. The reason: In the past few weeks, six motorists have ended up stranded deep in a national park, after following the apps directions to the city of Mildura.
Apple Maps “Life Threatening,” Say Australian Police Apple Maps error called ‘potentially life threatening’ by Australian police (Washington Post)
Open Internet Advisory Committee
Federal Communications Commission
January 17, 2013
10:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M. PST
Stanford University
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db1207/DA-1...
Federal Register notice: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-12-17/pdf/2012-30232.pdf
At its January 17, 2013 meeting, the Committee will consider issues relating to the subject areas of its four working groups—Mobile Broadband, Economic Impacts of Open Internet Frameworks, Specialized Services, and Transparency—as well as other open Internet related issues. A limited amount of time will be available on the agenda for comments from the public.
Broadband & Social Justice Policy Summit 2013
Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
January 16 – 17, 2013
Westin Georgetown Hotel
http://mmtconline.org/bbsj-summit/register/
Brookings Institution
December 13, 2012
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM EST
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2012/12/13-mobile-technology?cid=em_aler...
Mobile technology has revolutionized how we communicate with one another, but is also transforming the world in the areas of culture, education, banking and personal finances, and politics. How is mobile technology being used to engage voters, raise money, deliver candidate messages, and help reporters cover campaigns domestically and globally? What is mobile technology’s impact on different populations, ethnic groups and communities? Which countries are best leveraging mobile innovations to enable democracy and empower citizens? In which countries is the impact of mobile greatest, and which policies have proven the most effective and should be replicated in other countries?
On December 13, Governance Studies at Brookings will host an event focused on the powerful influence of mobile technology in the United States and around the world. This forum is part the Mobile Economy Project, which examines how the rapid expansion of mobile technology around the world is transforming economic opportunity for millions of people. A panel of experts will examine the sociological, governmental and economic effects of mobile technology’s sudden growth in the United States as well as in developing countries.
After the program, panelists will take audience questions. This event will be live webcast. Participants can follow the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #TechCTI.
[Commentary] According to longtime political observers Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, campaign coverage in 2012 was a particularly calamitous failure, almost entirely missing the single biggest story of the race: Namely, the radical right-wing, off-the-rails lurch of the Republican Party, both in terms of its agenda and its relationship to the truth.
Mann and Ornstein are two longtime centrist Washington fixtures who earlier this year dramatically rejected the strictures of false equivalency that bind so much of the capital's media elite and publicly concluded that GOP leaders have become "ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." The 2012 campaign further proved their point, they both said in recent interviews. It also exposed how fabulists and liars can exploit the elite media's fear of being seen as taking sides. "The mainstream press really has such a difficult time trying to cope with asymmetry between the two parties' agendas and connections to facts and truth," said Mann, who has spent nearly three decades as a congressional scholar at the centrist Brookings Institution. "I saw some journalists struggling to avoid the trap of balance and I knew they were struggling with it -- and with their editors," said Mann. "But in general, I think overall it was a pretty disappointing performance." Lies from Republicans generally and standardbearer Mitt Romney in particular weren't limited to the occasional TV ads; the party's most central campaign principles -- that federal spending doesn't create jobs, that reducing taxes on the rich could create jobs and lower the deficit -- willfully disregarded the truth.
How the Mainstream Press Bungled the Single Biggest Story of the 2012 Campaign
Apple’s decision to make some of its computers in the United States may be a positive for American jobs. It is certainly a marker of where much of the global computer industry has gone.
Today, rising energy prices and a global market for computers are changing the way companies make their machines. If Cook is bringing his computer assembly back to the United States, it will probably be for larger, lower-value goods that Apple wants to sell locally, said Rob Enderle, an analyst in San Jose (CA), who has been following the industry for a quarter-century. “A big-value product, like an iPhone or an iPad, would be a bigger deal,” he said. “Cook is looking to give Apple some good news. He doesn’t want people thinking about Apple as a declining company that Steve Jobs used to run.”
Why Apple Got a ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Bug
[Commentary] We disagree with David Cay Johnston’s Op-Ed article on the state of competition in the broadband industry (“Bad Connections,” Nov. 28).
First, surveys show that the American people — 93 percent, according to one Federal Communications Commission survey — are happy with their broadband Internet service. Second, nearly 90 percent of all Americans can choose from two or more wireline competitors and at least three wireless broadband providers, most of whom now provide some of the fastest 4G LTE broadband networks in the world. Meanwhile, new fiber optic, satellite and wireless choices keep emerging. Third, during the past four years, broadband providers invested $250 billion in the nation’s broadband infrastructure, while other industries sat on their cash. Fourth, unlike many other consumer products, the monthly prices for broadband Internet have remained relatively constant, while average speeds have increased by 900 percent or more. Free-standing broadband service is now routinely available for $20 to $30 a month. And regarding Johnston’s comparison of French to American bundled services: American bundles tend to cost more because Americans have access to the best video content in the world — far superior and more varied than video content available in France — and great content costs money.
Happy With Broadband Bad Connections (see David Cay Johnston's piece)