Parmy Olson's Blog, page 61

Samsung Woos Developers In The Battle For Your Living Room

Apple has Apple TV and has Chromecast, both clever attempts to converge mobile devices with TV sets. Samsung is getting further into that game too, except instead of releasing a gadget as hardware companies are wont to do, it is using software and protocols, and asking for a little help from the developer community.

Samsung Kicks Off Its First Developers Conference As It Seeks An Edge In Software

Samsung may be the world's biggest device maker, but it knows that future growth depends on keeping customers loyal through unique software services. On Monday the company behind the booming Galaxy range of smartphones, phablets, and a critically-panned smart watch, launched its first developers conference in downtown San Francisco. More than 1,300 attendees, many of them software engineers, crammed into the St. Francis Westin Hotel to thumping electronic music and heavy blue lighting, eager to gauge how much of their time and money should go into optimizing their apps for Samsung devices. The company's pitch is that with more of its future gadgets becoming connected to one another, future apps will need to optimize for the Samsung platform.

Samsung Posts Record Profit In Q3 As Handset Growth Slows

Samsung posted another quarter of record profits on Friday, as stronger growth in its semiconductor division helped balance out weaknesses in TV sales and flat shipments of high-end handsets like the Galaxy S4.

AT&T's Narrowly Beats On Profit, Touts $1 Billion Monthly Sales At U-Verse

beat earnings forecasts by a slim margin in its third quarter, earning 66 cents per share, excluding one-off items, and just beating analysts' forecasts by one cent. GAAP Net income rose by 5.5% to $3.8 billion, or 72 cents a share, on sales of $32.2 billion. Revenue was up 2.2%.

LinkedIn Puts A Face To E-Mail With 'Intro,' Sees Mobile Usage Soar

executives did their best to tune out to reports of connection problems for about an hour on Wednesday morning, making a slew of announcements about how the professional networking site was repositioning itself for a more mobile future. There were several new features being added to LinkedIn's five mobile applications, and a remarkable new stat: 38% of LinkedIn's monthly unique visitors now access LinkedIn through a mobile device, up from 8% in the first quarter of 2011.

How China's Xiaomi Does In A Week What Apple Does In A Year: Update Devices

Xiaomi, the hot smartphone maker from China which recently overtook Apple in marketshare there, wants to do for hardware what developers do to software: change it. All the time.

Moto X Has Yet To Stem The Losses At Motorola

Moto X, the first flagship released by Motorola since Google swallowed it last year for $12 billion, still has a ways to go to prove its financial worth to the company.

Verizon Adds 1.1 Million Wireless Customers In Q3, Strengthens Margins

Verizon's recent $130 billion deal to take full ownership of Verizon Wireless may look increasingly justified as the company's wireless business continues to drive growth in subscribers and profit. America's biggest carrier beat Wall Street's estimates for its third-quarter, earning $2.2 billion, or 78 cents per share, up from $1.59 billion, or 56 cents per share, last year. It also added 1.1 million new retail connections, with 927,000 of them post-paid, the latter figure falling slightly below expectations.

Tracking Watch For Kids Also Makes Calls Through AT&T

Is The Moto X More Innovative Than The New iPhone? Researchers Think So

The dictionary defines "innovative" as something that features new methods, is advanced, and original. That being said, how much more original is the new Moto X smartphone than the iPhone 5C and 5S? Much more, according to analysts at ABI Research, who published the results of their teardown of the Moto X today.