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Microsoft is transitioning to a world with more usage and more software driven value add (rather than the old device driven world) in mobility and the cloud, the latter also helping to grow the server business well above its peers
Quartely Highlights (from Earnings Call Slides):
Cloud momentum helps drive Q3 results
- Outstanding momentum and results in our cloud services; total Commercial Cloud revenue more than doubled again this quarter
- Office 365 Home currently has 4.4 million subscribers, adding nearly one million new users this quarter
- Windows remained the platform of choice for business users, with double-digit increases in both Windows OEM Pro and Windows Volume Licensing revenue
- With focus on spend prioritization, we grew our operating expenses only 2%, contributing to solid earnings growth
Microsoft CEO offer bright future [‘Saxo TV – TradingFloor.com’ YouTube channel, April 25, 2014]
Willing to change, that was the message new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was pushing as the firm released third quarter earnings.
Microsoft beat Wall Street analysts’ expectations, driving the company’s stock price up 3 percent on Thursday after earnings were released. Growth came from the company’s surface tablet sales and commercial business sector, according to Norman Young, Senior Equity Analyst at Morningstar. Results were also aided by a less severe decline in the PC industry.
Young believes the company has already demonstrated continued growth for the fourth quarter and remains optimistic about the company’s new direction.
Nadella is shifting the traditionally PC focused company towards more mobile and cloud based technology. On the quarterly call with Wall Street he said, “What you can expect of Microsoft is courage in the face of reality; we will approach our future with a challenger mindset; we will be bold in our innovation.” Analysts are excited about the company’s future trajectory as he continues to push Microsoft’s business into the mobile and cloud computing world.
The company’s stock has increased 8 percent since Nadella assumed the role of CEO in February.
From Earnings Release FY14 Q3 [April 24, 2014]
“This quarter’s results demonstrate the strength of our business, as well as the opportunities we see in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We are making good progress in our consumer services like Bing and Office 365 Home, and our commercial customers continue to embrace our cloud solutions. Both position us well for long-term growth,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “We are focused on executing rapidly and delivering bold, innovative products that people love to use.”
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Devices and Consumer revenue grew 12% to $8.30 billion.
- Windows OEM revenue grew 4%, driven by strong 19% growth in Windows OEM Pro revenue.
- Office 365 Home now has 4.4 million subscribers, adding nearly 1 million subscribers in just three months.
- Microsoft sold in 2.0 million Xbox console units, including 1.2 million Xbox One consoles.
- Surface revenue grew over 50% to approximately $500 million.
- Bing U.S. search share grew to 18.6% and search advertising revenue grew 38%.
Commercial revenue grew 7% to $12.23 billion.
- Office 365 revenue grew over 100%, and commercial seats nearly doubled, demonstrating strong enterprise momentum for Microsoft’s cloud productivity solutions.
- Azure revenue grew over 150%, and the company has announced more than 40 new features that make the Azure platform more attractive to cloud application developers.
- Windows volume licensing revenue grew 11%, as business customers continue to make Windows their platform of choice.
- Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange, our productivity server offerings, collectively grew double-digits.
From Microsoft’s CEO Discusses F3Q 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Seeking Alpha, April 25, 2014]
From the prepared comments: “This quarter we continued our rapid cadence of innovation and announced a range of new services and features in three key areas – data, cloud, and mobility. SQL Server 2014 helps improve overall performance, and with Power BI, provides an end-to-end solution from data to analytics. Microsoft Azure preview portal provides a fully integrated cloud experience. The Enterprise Mobility Suite provides IT with a comprehensive cloud solution to support bring-your-own-device scenarios. These offerings help businesses convert big data into ambient intelligence, developers more efficiently build and run cloud solutions, and IT manage enterprise mobility with ease.”
Satya Nadella – Chief Executive Officer:
As I have told our employees, our industry does not respect tradition, it only respects innovation. This applies to us and everyone else. When I think about our industry over the next 5, 10 years, I see a world where computing is more ubiquitous and all experiences are powered by ambient intelligence. Silicon, hardware systems and software will co-evolve together and give birth to a variety of new form factors. Nearly everything we do will become more digitized, our interactions with other people, with machines and between machines. The ability to reason over and draw insights from everything that’s been digitized will improve the fidelity of our daily experiences and interactions. This is the mobile-first and cloud-first world. It’s a rich canvas for innovation and a great growth opportunity for Microsoft across all our customer segments.
To thrive we will continue to zero in on the things customers really value and Microsoft can uniquely deliver. We want to build products that people love to use. And as a result, you will see us increasingly focus on usage as the leading indicator of long-term success.
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- advancing Office, Windows and our data platform
- continue to invest in our cloud capabilities including Office 365 and Azure in the fast growing SaaS and cloud platform markets
- ensuring that our cloud services are available across all device platforms that people use
- delivering a cloud for everyone on every device
- have bold plans to move Windows forward:
– investing and innovating in every dimension from form-factor to software experiences to price
– Windows platform is unique in how it brings together consistent end user experiences across small to large screens, broadest platform opportunity for developers and control and assurance for IT
– enhance our device capabilities with the addition of Nokia’s talented people and their depth in mobile technologies- our vision is about being going boldly into this mobile-first, cloud-first world
…
So this mobile-first cloud-first thing is a pretty deep thing for us. When we say mobile-first, in fact what we mean by that is mobility first. We think about users and their experiences spanning a variety of devices. So it’s not about any one form factor that may have some share position today, but as we look to the future, what are the set of experiences across devices, some ours and some not ours that we can power through experiences that we can create uniquely. …
… When you think about mobility first, that means you need to have really deep understanding of all the mobile scenarios for everything from how communications happen, how meetings occur. And those require us to build new capability. We will do some of this organically, some of it inorganically.
A good example of this is what we have done with Nokia. So we will – obviously we are looking forward to that team joining us building on the capability and then execution, even in the last three weeks or so we have announced a bunch of things where we talked about this one cloud for everyone and every device. We talked about how our data platform is going to enable this data culture, which is in fact fundamentally changing how Microsoft itself works.
We always talked about what it means to think about Windows, especially with the launch of this universal Windows application model. How different it is now to think about Windows as one family, which was not true before, but now we have a very different way to think about it.
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[Re: Microsoft transition to more of a subscription business]
The way I look at it … we are well on our way to making that transition, in terms of moving from pure licenses to long-term contracts and as well as subscription business model. So when you talked about Platform-as-a-Service if you look at our commercial cloud it’s made up of the platform itself which is Azure. We also have a SaaS business in Office 365.
Now, one of the things that we want to make sure we look at is each of the constituent parts because the margin profile on each one of these things is going to different. The infrastructure elements right now in particular is going to have different economics versus some of the per-user applications in a SaaS mode have. It’s the blending of all of that that matters and the growth of that matters to us the most in this time where I think there is just a couple of us really playing in this market. I mean this is gold rush time in some sense of being able to capitalize on the opportunity.
And when it comes to that we have some of the best, the broadest SaaS solution and the broadest platform solution and that combination of those assets doesn’t come often. So what we are very focused on is how do we make sure we get our customer aggressively into this, having them use our service, be successful with it. And then there will be a blended set of margins across even just our cloud. And what matters to me in the long run is the magnitude of profit we generate given a lot of categories are going to be merged as this transition happens. And we have to be able to actively participate in it and drive profit growth.
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From the prepared comments: “Office Commercial revenue was up 6%, driven by Office 365 as customers transitioned to our cloud productivity services. Office 365 revenue grew over 100%, and seats nearly doubled as well. Our productivity server offerings continue to perform well, with Lync, SharePoint, and Exchange, collectively growing double-digits.”
… to me the Office 365 growth is in fact driving our enterprise infrastructure growth which is driving Azure growth and that cycle to me is most exciting. So that’s one of the reasons why I want to have to keep indexing on the usage of all of this and the growth numbers you see is a reflection of that.
[Background from him in the call:]
Office 365 I am really, really excited about what’s happening there, which is to me this is the core engine that’s driving a lot of our cloud adoption and you see it in the numbers and Amy will talk more about the numbers. But one of the fundamental things its also doing is it’s actually a SaaS application and it’s also an architecture for enterprises. And one of the most salient things we announced when we talked about the cloud for everyone and every device and we talked about Office 365 having now iPad apps, we also launched something called the enterprise mobility suite which is perhaps one of the most strategic things during that day that we announced which was that we now have a consistent and deep platform for identity management which by the way gets bootstrapped every time Office 365 users sign up, device management and data protection, which is really what every enterprise customer needs in a mobile-first world, in a world where you have SaaS application adoption and you have BYOD or bring your own devices happening.…
[Re #1: about the new world in terms of more usage and more software driven rather than device driven, and the reengagement with the developer community in that world]
Developers are very, very important to us. If you’re in the platform business which we’re on both on the device side as well as on the cloud side, developers and their ability to create new value props and new applications on them is sort of likes itself. I would say couple of things.
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… on the cloud side, in fact one of the most strategic APIs is the Office API. If you think about building an application for iOS, if you want single sign-on for any enterprise application, it’s the Azure AD single sign-on. That’s one of the things that we showed at Build, which is how to take advantage of list data in Sharepoint, contact information in Exchange, Azure active directory information for log-on. And those are the APIs that are very, very powerful APIs and unique to us. And they expand the opportunity for developers to reach into the enterprises. And then of course Azure is a full platform, which is very attractive to developers. So that gives you a flavor for how important developers are and what your opportunities are.…
From the prepared comments: “Devices and Consumer Other revenue grew 18% to $1.95 billion, driven by search advertising and our Office 365 Home service. Search revenue grew 38%, offset by display [advertising] revenue which declined 24% this quarter. Gross margin grew 26% to $541 million. The combined revenue from Office 365 Home and Office Consumer, reported in the Devices & Consumer Licensing segment, grew 28%. … Office Consumer revenue increased 15% due to higher attach and strong sales in Japan, where we saw customers accelerate some purchases ahead of a national sales tax increase. Excluding that estimated impact, Office still outpaced the underlying consumer PC market.”
[Re: how you could potentially make what has been traditionally a unit model with Windows OEM revenue into something potentially more recurring in nature?]
… the thing I would add is this transition from one time let’s say licenses or device purchases to what is a recurring stream. You see that in a variety of different ways. You have back end subscriptions, in our case, there will be Office 365, there is advertising, there is the app store itself. So these are all things that attach to a device. And so we are definitely going to look to make sure that the value prop that we put together is going to be holistic in its nature and the monetization itself will be holistic and it will increase with the usage of the device across these services. And so that’s the approach we will take.
From the prepared comments: “Zero dollar licensing for sub 9-inch devices helps grow share and creates new opportunities to deliver our services, with minimal short term revenue impact”
[Re: the recent decision to offer Windows for free for sub 9-inch devices and its impact of Microsoft share in that arena, about Windows pricing in general, the kind of play in different market segmentations, and how Windows pricing is evolving]
Overall, the way I want us to look at Windows going forward is what does it mean to have the broadest device family and ecosystem? Because at the end of the day it’s about the users and developer opportunity we create for the entirety of the family. That’s going to define the health of the ecosystem. So, to me, it matters that we approach the various segments that we now participate with Windows, because that’s what has happened. Fundamentally, we participated in the PC market. Now we are in a market that’s much bigger than the PC market. We continue to have healthy share, healthy pricing and in fact growth as we mentioned in the enterprise adoption of Windows.
And that’s we plan to in fact add more value, more management, more security, especially as things are changing in those segments. Given BYOD and software security issues, we want to be able to reinforce that core value, but then when it comes to new opportunities from wearables to internet of things, we want to be able to participate on all of this with our Windows offering, with our tools around it. And we want to be able to price by category. And that’s effectively what we did. We looked at what it makes – made sense for us to do on tablets and phones below 9 inches and we felt that the price there needed to be changed. We have monetization vehicles on the back end for those. And that’s how we are going to approach each one of these opportunities, because in a world of ubiquitous computing, we want Windows to be ubiquitous. That doesn’t mean its one price, one business model for all of that. And it’s actually a market expansion opportunity and that’s the way we are going to go execute on it.
From the prepared comments: “Our universal app development platform is a big step towards enabling developers to engage users across PCs, tablets, and phones with a common set of APIs”
[Re #2: about the new world in terms of more usage and more software driven rather than device driven, and the reengagement with the developer community in that world]
Developers are very, very important to us. If you’re in the platform business which we’re on both on the device side as well as on the cloud side, developers and their ability to create new value props and new applications on them is sort of likes itself. I would say couple of things.
One is the announcements we made at Build on the device side is really our breakthrough worked for us which is we’re the only device platform today that has this notion of building universal apps with fantastic tooling around them. So that means you can target multiple of our devices and have common code across all of them. And this notion of having a Windows universal application help developers leverage them core asset, which is their core asset across this expanded opportunity is huge. There was this one user experience change that Terry Myerson talked about at Build, which expands the ability for anyone who puts up application in Windows Store to be now discovered across even the billion plus PC installed base. And so that’s I think a fantastic opportunity to developers and we are doing everything to make that opportunity clear and recruit developers to do more with Windows. And in that context, we will also support cross platforms. So this has been one of the things that we have done is the relationship with Unity. We have tooling that allows you to have this core library that’s portable. You can bring your code asset. In fact, we are the only client platform that has the abstractions available for the different languages and so on.
From the prepared comments: “Server product revenue grew 10%, driven by demand for our data platform, infrastructure and management offerings, and Azure.”
- “SQL Server revenue grew more than 15%, and continued to outpace the data platform market; we continue to gain share in mission critical workloads”
- “Windows Server Premium and System Center revenue showed continued strength from increased virtualization share and demand for hybrid infrastructure”
[Re: about the factors that have enabled Microsoft to continue growing server business well above its peers, and whether that kind of 10% ish growth is sustainable over fiscal 2015]
It’s a pretty exciting change that’s happening, obviously it’s that part of the business is performing very well for a while now, but quite frankly it’s fundamentally changing. One of the questions I often get asked is hey how did Windows server and the hypervisor underneath it becomes so good so soon. You’ve been at it for a long time but there seems to have something fundamentally changed I mean we’ve grown a lot of share recently, the product is more capable than it ever was, the rate of change is different and for one reason alone which is we use it to run Azure. So the fact that we use our servers to run our cloud makes our servers more competitive for other people to build their own cloud.
So it’s the same trend that’s accelerating us on both sides. The other thing that’s happening is when we sell our server products they for most part are just not isolated anymore. They come with automatic cloud tiering. SQL server is a great example. We just launched a new version of SQL which is by far the best release of SQL in terms of its features like it’s exploitation of in-memory. It’s the first product in the database world that has in-memory for all the three workloads of databases, OLTP, data warehousing and BI. But more importantly it automatically gives you high availability which means a lot to every CIO and every enterprise deployment by actually tiering to the cloud.
From the prepared comments: “Commercial Other revenue grew 31%, to $1.90 billion, driven by Commercial Cloud revenue which exceeded our guidance as customers transitioned to our cloud solutions faster than expected; Gross margin increased 80% as we realized margin expansion through engineering efficiencies and continued scale benefits; Enterprise services revenue grew 8%”
So those kinds of feature innovation which is pretty boundary less for us is breakthrough work. It’s not something that somebody who has been a traditional competitor of ours can do if you’re not even a first class producer of a public cloud service. So I think that we’re in a very unique place. Our ability to deliver this hybrid value proposition and be in a position, where we not only run a cloud service at scale, but we also provide the infrastructure underneath it as the server products to others. That’s what’s driving the growth. The shape of that growth and so on will change over time, but I feel very, very bullish about our ability to continue this innovation.
Intel’s desperate attempt to establish a sizeable foothold on the tablet market until its 14nm manufacturing leadership could provide a profitable position for the company in 2016
The stock market is over-optimistic about that: Intel tablets could cure [stock] market conditions [Saxo TV – TradingFloor.com YouTube channel, April 16, 2014]
I am—nevertheless—highly sceptical about that as Allwinner to continue the No. 1 position on Android tablet application processor market with the new UltraOcta A80 SoC optimized for premium devices, without the premium cost, also made universal accross other devices (TV box, notebook, smart TV, All-in-one and digital signage), and operating systems (ChromeOS, Smart TV, Windows, Ubuntu and Firefox OS) [‘USD 99 Allwinner’ blog, April 16, 2014]. My skepticism is also based on The lost U.S. grip on the mobile computing market, including not only the device business, but software development and patterns of use in general [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 14, 2014].
You can judge all that for yourself as the background and my analysis behind Intel’s tablet strategy could be found in the following sections of this post below:
- Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group (MCG), which the Tablet Group is just a part of, is the largest loss maker segment with losses even growing to $3.15B in 2013 from $1.78B in 2012, and continuing at least into 20145
- Intel is desperate to cheat when comparing its current tablet performance based on Clover Trail+ against much lower priced and lesser frequency ARM Cortex-A9 tablets from brand vendors.
- Intel’s Krzanich is betting on sacrificing “contra revenue” dollars for Q2-Q4 2014 tablet market with Bay Trail-based tablets, while hoping to level the playing field with its TSMC produced SoFIA SoCs for the 2015 tablet market.
To understand the technical and business development aspects behind that strategy read my previous posts as well:
– Intel CTE initiative: Bay Trail-Entry V0 (Z3735E and Z3735D) SoCs are shipping next week in $129 Onda (昂达) V819i Android tablets—Bay Trail-Entry V2.1 (Z3735G and Z3735F) SoCs might ship in $60+ Windows 8.1 tablets from Emdoor Digital (亿道) in the 3d quarter [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 11, 2014]
– IDF14 Shenzhen: Intel is levelling the Wintel playing field with Android-ARM by introducing new competitive Windows tablet price points from $99 – $129 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 4, 2014]
– The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14, 2013]
1. Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group (MCG), which the Tablet Group is just a part of, is the largest loss maker segment with losses even growing to $3.15B in 2013 from $1.78B in 2012, and continuing at least into 2014
Source: Download Quarters Q1 2014 [Intel Corporation – Investor Relations, April 16, 2014]
MCG is one of the new operating segments representing the following organisational responsibility, which is aligned with Intel’s new critical objectives (this particular segment was previously buried in the Other Intel Architecture Group):
- Mobile and Communications Group (MCG): MCG includes the Phone Group, the Tablet Group and Multi-Comm, all previously part of the Other IA operating segments.
- Mobile and Communications Group: Delivering platforms designed for the tablet and smartphone market segments; as well as mobile communications components such as baseband processors, radio frequency transceivers, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth*, global navigation satellite systems and power management chips.
Note that the previous structure of operating segments (since the end of 2012) was as seen on the right. As far as the organizational size is concerned, according to Infineon Completes Sale of Mobile Phone Business to Intel – New Company Intel Mobile Communications starts operations [Infineon press release, Jan 31, 2011]:
Following the sale, approximately 3,500 employees in total will move globally from Infineon to the new company Intel Mobile Communications GmbH (IMC). IMC will be headquartered in Neubiberg near Munich, Germany.
Then according to Intel® Mobile Communications Profile [Intel, Jan 6, 2012]:
Intel Mobile Communications GmbH is a subsidiary of Intel Corporation headquartered in Santa Clara, USA. The company develops and markets innovative semiconductor products and solutions for mobile communications – most notably in the rapid-growth market segments of smart phones, tablets and ultra-low-cost mobile phones.
The company has approximately 4,000 employees all over the world, about 1,700 of whom work in Germany where the headcount at the company headquarters in Neubiberg near Munich is approximately 1,200. Other German sites are Ulm, Regensburg, Duisburg, Dresden, Braunschweig and Nuremberg. Intel Mobile Communications is represented in altogether 17 countries around the world and has a strong presence in the Asian growth markets.
Considering that the Mobile and Communications Group (MCG) of today was put together from Intel Mobile Communications, the Tablet Group and the Phone Group, the overall number of employees in MCG is quite probably more than 6000 people.
Note that as of May 2013 MediaTek had 6,880 employees and ARM Holdings’ workforce at the same time was 2,261. As of March 2014 Allwinner Technology had 550+ employees (450 of which were engineers). In July 2013 Rockchip had more than 500 employees, 80% were engineers. In September 2013 Spreadtrum had 1,506 employees.
The 4000 strong Multi-Comm business is mostly engaged in standalone baseband processor market which had the following sales structure in 2013 according to Forward Concepts [March 24, 2014]:
Intel, the 2nd leading supplier of 3G thin modems in 2013 – will likely become the 2nd leading supplier of 3G/4G thin modems in 2014. Their focus will be on winning 3G/4G modem orders for notebooks and tablets. They will be challenged by Marvell’s 3G/4G PXA802 TD- LTE modem, which also supports TD-HSPA+ and is already shipping to ZTE.
Intel was—however—warning in its Nov 21, 2013 Investor Meeting presentation that:
In fact Strategy Analytics was painting a rather dark picture in Qualcomm’s Dominance Continues with 64 percent revenue share says Strategy Analytics [Feb 21, 2014]:
Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Spreadtrum, and Broadcom captured the top-five revenue share spots in the cellular baseband processor market [which the standalone is just a part of] in 2013. Qualcomm dominated with 64 percent revenue share, followed by MediaTek with 12 percent revenue share and Intel with 8 percent revenue share.
Sravan Kundojjala, Senior Analyst, explains “Qualcomm domination in the cellular baseband market continued in 2013, thanks to its early investments in multi-mode LTE technology. The LTE baseband landscape is expected to be a crowded one in 2014 with several vendors including Broadcom, Ericsson, Intel, Marvell, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Spreadtrum and others are all set to bring commercial multi-mode LTE chip products to the market and this could help drive LTE down into mid-to-low tier devices.”
According to Stuart Robinson, Director of the Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies service, “Strategy Analytics calculates that revenue from baseband-integrated applications processors represented over 60 percent of total baseband revenue in 2013, up from 48 percent in 2012. Most baseband vendors have now transitioned their portfolios to include integrated products in order to boost their revenue share.”
According to Christopher Taylor, Director of the Strategy Analytics RF and Wireless Componentservice, “MediaTek overtook Intel to capture the number two spot in the 3G UMTS baseband market in 2013, by Strategy Analytics estimates. MediaTek capitalized on its smartphone chip momentum and improved its baseband-mix. MediaTek’s recent LTE chip announcements could potentially improve its baseband revenue share in future.”
Such a doomsday scenario was even more present in Qualcomm, MediaTek in Two-Horse Race, Says CLSA; Game Over for BRCM, Etc. [Tech Trader Daily at Barrons.com, Apr 11, 2014]
… and predicting many of the challengers will fold up without making a dent in Qualcomm’s position.
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We believe that the baseband battle is largely over and expect more consolidation in the next 1 – 2 years. Nvidia is already shifting its investments, and we see a strong possibility that Broadcom exits in the next 6 – 9 months. Intel’s new management may have a bit more time, but we do not see enough opportunity to justify its $2bn+ investments. Marvell is least likely to exit in our view, but we expect it to remain a niche player. Overall, we expect the Qualcomm / MediaTek duopoly to get even stronger in the coming years and see positive implications for the overall industry profitability.
The baseband market has seen meaningful consolidation over the years. In 2006, there were 15 vendors in the market including larger analog IC vendors such as Texas Instruments, Freescale, and Analog Devices. The market has contracted to about 9 vendors by 2008 and currently has 7 vendors, after the recent consolidation at ST-Ericsson and Renesas.
Even if second tier vendors make significant progress in LTE, we simply do not see enough opportunity for all these vendors to achieve profitability any time soon.
MediaTek has a higher share in shipments of Chinese smartphones:
Chinese telcos, in particular China Mobile, are aggressively expanding their 4G networks, and China Mobile is targeting 100m LTE devices for 2014. While China Mobile’s target does appear aggressive, Qualcomm appears to be dominating the early shipments. We expect MediaTek-based LTE phones to start shipping in the next few months and expect a majority of MediaTek’s 3G customers to stick with the company as the China market transitions to 4G. Chinese smartphone OEMs lack the R&D capability of their international peers, and as a result, rely on turnkey solutions from MediaTek and Qualcomm. While MediaTek appears a bit late with LTE, we expect the company to maintain a strong share of the China LTE market longer term given its relationships with domestic handset manufacturers.
2. Intel is desperate to cheat when comparing its current tablet performance based on Clover Trail+ against much lower priced and lesser frequency ARM Cortex-A9 tablets from brand vendors.
For an Intel Clover Trail+ (pre-Bay Trail-T) tablet: A Four-Tablet Comparison: Intel vs. Competition [IREPRockLegend YouTube channel, April 16, 2014]
But Intel is cheating here, especially by being at least 2 times more expensive than the others (all the below prices are “best retail ones”), even discounting the 3G call capability:
- $300 (but has 3G call capability as well): Asus Fonepad 7 (Intel Atom Processor Z2560 (2 Clover Trail+ cores/4 threads, 1MB Cache, 1.60 GHz) since Q2’13)
(++Review Asus Fonepad 7 ME372CG Tablet [Notebookcheck.net, Nov 13, 2013) - $119: Amazon Kindle Fire [7”] HD* (TI OMAP 4460 Processor (2 Cortex-A9 cores, 1.20 GHz))
[* Intel is cheating even more here as the 2nd generation figured in the above test has been replaced half a year ago by a 3d generation 7” Kindle Fire HD tablet which contains the TI OMAP 4470 with 2 Cortex-A9 cores, 1.5 GHz.] - $160: Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7” (ARM Cortex A9 Processor (2 Cortex-A9 cores, 1.2 GHz) )
- $139: Lenovo IdeaTab A1000 (ARM v7 Cortex A9 Processor (MediaTek 8317, Dual Core 1.2 GHz) )
The same cheating is in another new Intel video: A Three-Tablet Comparison: Intel vs. Competition [IREPRockLegend YouTube channel, April 16, 2014] where the $140 Dell Venue 7 16GB, having the same Z2560 CloverTrail+ processors goes against the same 2nd generation Amazon Kindle Fire [7”] HD and the also same Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7”:
And finally the cheating in the 3d new video is even more inexcusable: Tablets with Intel Inside® vs. the Competition: Samsung as here the $305 Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1” tablet with the same 1.6 Ghz Z2560 (and list price of is compared with the $200 Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1” having just a 1 GHz Cortex-A9 dual core processor:
3. Intel’s Krzanich is betting on sacrificing “contra revenue” dollars for Q2-Q4 2014 tablet market with Bay-Trail-based tablets, while hoping to level the playing field with TSMC produced SoFIA SoCs for the 2015 tablet market
What is contra revenue? [Accounting Tools, March 5, 2013]
Contra revenue is a deduction from the gross revenue reported by a business, which results in net revenue.
Contra revenue transactions are recorded in one or more contra revenue accounts, which usually have a debit balance (as opposed to the credit balance in the typical revenue account). There are three commonly used contra revenue accounts, which are:
- Sales returns. Contains either an allowance for returned goods, or the actual amount of revenue deduction attributable to returned goods.
- Sales allowances. Contains either an allowance for reductions in the price of a product that has minor defects, or the actual amount of the allowance attributable to specific sales.
- Sales discounts. Contains the amount of sales discounts given to customers, which is usually a discount given in exchange for early payments by customers.
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In fact what Intel calls in accounting terms “contra revenue” it actually represents the subsidies paid to tablet manufacturers in order bring the Bill of Materials cost of Intel tablets into line with ARM based tablets. Intel was forced into these subsidies otherwise tablet manufacturers weren’t going to offer Intel based tablets.
Intel aggressively promoting tablet CPUs in China [DIGITIMES, April 14, 2014]
Intel has resorted to an aggressive pricing strategy to promote sales of its tablet-use processors, particularly in China, a move which apparently will take on Qualcomm and MediaTek, while ramping up its market share, according to industry sources.
Prices of Intel’s mainstream quad-core tablet CPUs have dropped to below US$5, which are almost on par with those offered by China-based chipset suppliers such as Rockchip Electronics and Allwinner Technology and even below those available from Nvidia, Qualcomm and MediaTek, said the sources.
Consequently, the number of Intel-based tablets is likely to expand in a great proportion as more and more China-based brand and white-box tablet vendors are expected to use Intel’s tablet CPUs to develop new products, the sources revealed.
Intel’s new policy also focuses on deepening its relationship with the supply chain in China, highlighting by its recent announcement of establishing an Intel Smart Device Innovation Center in Shenzhen and a US$100 million Intel Capital China Smart Device Innovation Fund, commented the sources.
To encourage China-based tablet makers to use Intel’s CPUs, the chipset vendor is offering assistance in terms of design, technology and marketing, the sources indicated.
Intel’s offerings will be particularly attractive to white-box tablet makers as they can optimize low-priced chipsets and advanced technologies to roll out competitive models for the entry-level segment, added the sources.
Intel aims to ship 40 million tablet CPUs in 2014, including entry-level Bay Trail family and SoFIA 3G platform products, the sources noted.
Intel Beats on Bottom Line, Misses Revenue Expectations for Q1 Results [TheStreet YouTube channel, April 15, 2014]
From Intel Reports First-Quarter Revenue of $12.8 Billion Operating Income of $2.5 Billion, up 1 Percent Year-over-Year [news release, April 15, 2014]
Mobile and Communications Group revenue of $156 million, down 52 percent sequentially and down 61 percent year-over-year.
From Intel’s CEO Discusses Q1 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript [Seeking Alpha, April 15, 2014] ragarding the tablet strategy which is carried out by the Mobile and Communications Group:
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: … We set an aggressive goal of shipping 40 million tablet SOCs this year. And I’m happy to say we’ve tallied more than 90 designs on Android and Windows and shipped 5 million units in the first quarter, placing us squarely on track to that goal.
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We demonstrated SoFIA, our first integrated apps processor and baseband, after adding it to the roadmap late last year. We’re on track to ship the 3G solution to OEMs in Q4 2014, with the LTE version following in the first half of 2015.
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We also shipped our first Quark SoCs for the Internet of Things and announced an upgrade of Edison to the Silvermont Atom architecture. Edison is on track to ship this summer.And in the Technology and Manufacturing Group, who’ve worked to advance Moore’s Law as foundational to our long-term success, we began production on our 14-nanometer process technology and remain on track to launch Broadwell in the second half of the year.
And the foundry team extended our collaboration with Altera to the development of multi-dye devices that take advantage of our world-class package and assembly capabilities and Altera’s leading-edge programmable logic.
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Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: … The Mobile and Communications Group is down 61% from a year ago. The underlying dynamics are consistent with what we shared at the investor meeting last November.
We’re seeing a decline in our feature phone and 2G/3G multi-[com] [ph] business, as we’re in the midst of a transition to integrated LTE solutions. In addition, the ramp in tablet volume is being offset by an increase in contra revenue dollars.
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We’re winning designs and ramping our tablet volume rapidly and we have design wins in LTE that will result in a second half revenue ramp.
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Let me even back up and give you — again restate the strategy of what we’re doing here. … what we’re doing is we’re taking Bay Trail, which is a product really designed for the PC market, and we made the decision to take it broadly across different segments of the tablet market this year.It brings along with it, at least over the course of 2014, a higher bill of materials. And that’s independent from the SOC cost. It’s the power management subsystem, it’s the motherboard that it goes on, it’s the memory solution, those kinds of things. And so, we’re providing some contra revenue to offset that bill of material delta over the course of 2014.
Now, as we said, we’re doing value engineering with our customers and our partners. And so we’re bringing down that bill of material over the course of 2014 independent of any changes to our SOC. …
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: … We have a series of improvements. They have already started to kick-in in some cases around our power management systems, the number of layers in our motherboards, the memory system integration. All of those things we’ve worked on and actually have started to see the advantages already in our costs.
Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: So, I think on a like dollars per unit, it comes down pretty dramatically over the course of 2014. And it should be relatively small, if at all, as we get into 2015. And it’s, again, the enablement we’re doing around the bill of materials.
And then we also have new products coming into the marketplace, like SoFIA, that’s targeted at the low end, and then in 2015 you’ll see Broxton, which is an SOC more for the mid-range to high-range of the market coming into our product portfolio.
So, the combination of all of that gives us a better cost structure with our own products and a better cost structure overall with the bill of materials as we enter 2015 and then work through 2015.
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We’ll have significant unit growth in tablets. But remember that contra revenue isn’t just a gross margin impact; it’s actually a subtraction from revenue. And so that will mute the revenue growth for the segment because you have that negative as we get into the back half and ship more tablets. …
C.J. Muse – ISI Group: In terms of integrated LTE, you’ve talked about when we’ll first see that. But curious when you expect to bring that in house at Intel.
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: We’ll bring that in on our 14-nanometer process either late 2015 or early 2016. We’re still battling back and forth on how fast we can bring it in and at what impacts that has. 14-nanometer is the technology there.
Blaine Curtis – Barclays Capital: … Maybe actually follows up on CJ’s prior question. The MPG business that you’re now breaking out, it’s pretty clear it’s losing $3 billion, $3.5 billion. How do you think about this business?
Obviously you’re trying to ramp the product set you are a bit behind. You’re entering from the low end and that pricing seems quite tough. You’re facing some subsidies that you have to do on the tablet side.
Are there some milestones that you look at to get this business back profitable? Or maybe would you consider this strategic enough that you would consider continuing to run this as a loss?
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: So, you asked several questions in there, so let me start to pars it apart. Absolutely this is a strategic business, so let’s just start with that. We think this is critical and we said this in our prepared statements. It’s critical from 2 in 1 devices down through the Internet of Things.
You look across the connectivity requirements there; more and more of the devices are requiring integrated connectivity, whether it be LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and all of these connectivities are becoming more and more required.
We don’t go into these businesses thinking that we’re going to lose money. We believe we have a roadmap to get to profitability in that business. The milestones that I look at — and so I’ll give you those for yourself to look at, we have the 7160, the current LTE version out there. We’re the second in LTE. We have the 7260 launch this quarter. I think that’s a critical there.
Again, we’re closing the gap with our competition. We’re bringing out leading edge Cat 6 capability with carrier aggregation. That’s a critical milestone. That puts — that closes the gap and puts us firmly in the LTE capability.
The next one is SoFIA. If you look at the SoFIAs at the end of this year with 3G integration and then a big first half of next year with LTE integration. Remember those products weren’t even on our roadmap six or seven months ago. So, that shows that we’re acting quickly integrating and bringing those products to production.
Then after that is, as Stacy said earlier, Broxton, which is our internal 14-nanometer product. That’s targeted towards the mid to high level. And as we bring that into the second half of 2015 and into 2016, there will be various levels of integration on that.
So, when I look across this, those are the milestones I look at, because those are what drive that along with just the basic cost reduction capabilities we talked about for this year as we get out of this contra revenue into 2015. Those products then place us firmly in leadership capability from the low end to the high end with integration. And those are the milestones to me that will lead to profitability long-term.
Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: And I’ll just add to that, I think you left it off because it was so obvious, but the 40 million tablets is one of the things I see Brian just laser focused on. And as we’ve talked about before, it gets us into the 15% to 20% range of the total tablet market.
It gives us a big enough footprint that we start to see people developing on our architectures. It becomes a self-sustaining ecosystem as we’re bringing these other products to the marketplace. So, don’t lose sight of that one, Blaine.
Stacy Rasgon – Sanford C. Bernstein & Co: I wanted to dig a little bit into the mobile and wireless group. So, you’ve talked a bit about having I guess developing leadership products, leadership position in order to drive profitability. We’re looking at this right now, though. So, we had the business fall more than 50% sequentially.
You have your 7160 which is shipping but apparently it’s not really driving much volume. We have the 7260 which is forthcoming, but we really haven’t heard much about design wins. And you launched at Mobile World Congress without really saying very much there.
We have SoFIA coming, which absolutely is integrated, but it’s being made at TSMC for the next few years which means you lose any potential benefits from your own process technology. And you would seem to be well behind what the market leaders are shipping in terms of 4G.
Just what should we be looking for and over what timeframe should we be looking for, for the ramp? I guess what I’m asking is, how can we get confidence that we’re going to actually see the revenue ramp that is built into the short-term expectations for this year and then going forward, to make sure that you can actually get a profitable business, which obviously would be driving quite a bit of upside to where the models are today?
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: Remember, the 7160, we gave you a series of products that it’s shipping in. And on the 7260, which will qualify this quarter, we gave you a list of OEM partners that have committed to that platform. So, we’re fairly confident that the ramp in the second half of this year will continue on that product. And it is a leadership product.
SoFIA, you’re right, is built at TSMC. We went for speed and integration. And it was simply quicker to get to market with a competitive product from both a price and performance. We actually believe that the IA core will give us better performance than the competition. And the competition is at that same node at TSMC. And it’s 3G at the end of this year and LTE in the first half of next year.
We then told you that in the second half of next year — and again, we’re debating whether it’s the second half or the first quarter of 2016, but we’ll move all of that internal on to 14-nanometers. And it’s really based on other products that we have moving in at that time and just overall resources all right.
We had a lot going on — the ramp of Broadwell, the ramp of Skylake in the second half of next year, plus bringing these products inside. But I’m very confident that when you do that, plus you add in Broxton, which is targeted towards the mid to high range and again is integrated with leading-edge LTE.
And don’t forget we have a roadmap of LTE products beyond the 7260 that continue the level of carrier aggregation and product leadership. We’re fairly confident that we can continue to grow this business and turn it profitable over that time.
Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: And let me just comment on the question about the long-term profitability. It sounds basic, but it really stems from our manufacturing leadership. If we’re two years ahead of the rest of the industry, and extending it gives us the ability that, as we target our products into the right space from a power standpoint, we will have power advantage or performance advantage and a cost advantage.
That really is our strategy playing out. You’re seeing the first products hitting that theme over the course of this year and into early next year. Bay Trail is a really good product. For the high end of the market, you’ll see products coming into the market that are more targeted at the mid-range and lower end of the market next year. But that’s how the strategy plays out.
I’d say for 2015, I would expect to see reduction in the loss. Not profitability, but a reduction in the loss will feel pretty good when we get there and then we’ll keep driving towards the long-term profitability goal.
Stacy Rasgon – Sanford C. Bernstein & Co: I’d like to drill in a bit more. I’m actually into the tablet efforts now. So, we’re obviously subsidizing. And I get the idea of reducing BOM cost in order to make up for the deficiencies with the idea being that you can drive improved product set down the road.
But at the same time, if you look at the tablet market, where it is today, you’re obviously not going to be going after Apple any time soon. Maybe there’s a little bit of volume at Samsung. But I mean if you take those guys out, 75% of what’s left is systems that are $250 and below, where your competitors are shipping quad-core chips for much less than $10.
I’m curious to know what kind of economics and pricing you see from that market long-term. And are the — I guess the total revenue pool and profit pool that’s available, even if you were to succeed at your goals, why does that make it a worthwhile effort to actually go after? Or is this simply, as you said, strategic? Is this an attempt to limit further penetration of tablets into the core market?
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: You’ve asked a question that has multiple questions built into it. But let’s start with what we told you was we’ve got multiple OEM partners building tablets and phones on our products. And we gave you Asus and Dell and Lenovo and Samsung on those products.
If you look at the tablet business overall, it’s broken up into a series of segments. And you’re right; there is a large percentage of them that are $250 and below. Products like SoFIA are specifically designed for that segment.
And our dual-core SoFIA already performs quite well against quad-core systems. As we move into next year, we’ll bring quad-core SoFIA-based products out, as well. And so we believe that we can stay very cost competitive and have a performance leadership.
Remember, Intel has two assets. We have our silicon technology, but we also have our architecture. And one of the things an OEM gets when they build with Intel technology is that they can go into any OS and they can build a single platform and move that on to Chrome, on to Android, on to Windows. And that’s a very unique capability that we provide to OEMs for flexibility.
So, we believe with a product like SoFIA, as we bring that into the market next year, we can absolutely compete in those spaces and make money. You’re probably not going to make as much revenue dollars and as much margin dollars as the PC business, but we think this is still critical. And it’s critical for a variety of reasons. Part of it is simply the scale. You want to have those units. You want to have a presence in all areas of computing.
And the second one is developer attention. You want developers creating new products, doing innovation on your architecture. This is a space that’s got innovation. We are going to bring some of that innovation to this market. You’re going to see some tablets as you go into the end of this year.
We showed them at CES, some of the highlights where you have 3D cameras, you have perceptual computing capabilities for gaming. All of those kinds of things can change the tablet market, along with the PC market.
So, we believe that we can bring a lot of the innovation that we do in the PC down into the tablet space. And again, that keeps the developers developing and interested in our platform. I think for all of those reasons, we want to be in this space and we will be in this space from now on.
Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: That was very complete, but we don’t fear the low end of the market. You look at how we played out in PCs. You can drive a lot of unit growth by participating in PCs now that are $199 to $250. We can have the cost structure because of our manufacturing lead to participate nicely there. And you see that as markets mature, they also segment.
And so we have look, you look at our PC business, we have great demand and profitability in core I7s and it spans down to Bay Trail at the Atom segment of the market. So, it’s a misconception to think that we only want to play at the high end. Our manufacturing leadership can give us the cost structure to play profitably at the low end, as well.
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Mark Lipacis – Jefferies: Brian, when you talk about the 40 million unit bogey on tablets this year, could you go through the taxonomy of that a little bit? To what extent do you think this is Windows versus Android? And what’s the class of product you think will represent the mode or the mean? Like where do you think your sweet spot is going to be this year on tablets?
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: Our mix of OSs reflects pretty much what you see in the marketplace. So, I think, depending on how you look at it, it’s probably something on the order of 90% Android, 80% Android, 10% to 20% Windows.
Our percentages look very much like the marketplace. So, if Windows continues to grow and gain traction I think our percentage would just align directly to that. So, you can — don’t separate what we ship from what’s basically in the marketplace. We’re leadership capability on all of the OSs now.
As far as what is the price point, again, it reflects fairly close to what the marketplace is. You see us in systems below $100 now. The majority of the systems are say $125 to $250, somewhere in there. And then you see us in some of the upper end systems, $250 to $400. And so — but the majority is in that — I’d call it, $125 to probably $250 range.
Mark Lipacis – Jefferies: And then as a follow-up, did you discuss, do you expect to have the Android tablets ramping in volume this quarter? Are we going to be — should we expect to see the Bay Trail Android products at Computex this year? When do we really see the material ramp in the Android products?
Brian M. Krzanich – CEO: Sure, absolutely. You can go out to the store today and buy an Android — in fact, I’d love you to go buy one of the 40 million we’ll sell. But, yes, you can buy Android. It continues to ramp through this quarter. At Computex, we’ll show a series of Android and Windows-based tablets. And they just continue to ramp through this year. But they’re on shelves today. I saw them in the store this weekend.
Stacy J. Smith – EVP and CFO: The majority of the 5 million units, for example, are Android. Just as Brian said, it more or less follows the distribution between Windows and Android.
The lost U.S. grip on the mobile computing market, including not only the device business, but software development and patterns of use in general
This is my conclusion after the two sections of analysis presented below:
I. China-based white-box tablet and smartphone vendors were shaping the 2013 global device market which will even more so in 2014
II. Asia is following different patterns of mobile use than the United States – the case of China and South Korea
The single, most forceful evidence for all of the above is the extraordinary presentation of Hugo Barra, Vice President, Xiaomi Global & Loic Le Meur, LeWeb Founders- LeWeb’13 Paris – [LeWebYouTube channel, Dec 11, 2013]
I. China-based white-box tablet vendors and smartphone vendors were shaping the 2013 global device market which will even more so in 2014
My analysis of the smartphone market in general was first presented in the Device businesses should have a China-based independent headquarter at least for Asia/Pacific if they want to succeed [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Jan 28, 2014] and then it was already updated by the recent Chinese smartphone brands to conquer the global market? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 18, 2014] post of mine.
As a Q4’13 update to The tablet market in Q1-Q3’13: It was mainly shaped by white-box vendors while Samsung was quite successfully attacking both Apple and the white-box vendors with triple digit growth both worldwide and in Mainland China [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 14, 2013] post of mine I should first add here the following analysis:
Note that the white-box tablet shipments from China were estimated by company data and Credit Suisse estimates as 7% and 10% higher: 2012: 58M (vs. 54.4M here), 2013: 98M (vs. 89.1M here) (as per the “Figure 30” chart in this blog below). As you see here and later on the conclusion of the Q1-Q3’13 analysis for the tablet market, represented by the title of the previous post will hold for the whole CY2013 as well. The only remarkable change is the sudden jump in Apple iPad sales in Q4, both worldwide and in China. This is, however, only attributed to Q4 introduction of the new iPad Air which was much anticipated for months, thus postponement of new purchases and the peak when it was available. So, for the whole year, my conclusion still holds true,
Note that the 2013 tablet market in China was 17.2M as per the above data, while the 2013 worldwide tablet market was 219.5M per IDC, and 255M according to company data and Credit Suisse estimates (as per the “Figure 30” chart in this blog below). So China was just 7.8% or 6.4% of the worldwide tablet market, while China shipped significantly more, 38.4% of the worldwide tablet market by the Chinese white-box vendors only (the last one according to company data and Credit Suisse estimates). This is 5.5% higher than the share of China-based smartphone vendors in the global 2013 smartphone shipments (32.9%, according to DIGITIMES Research—see well below), although in tablet space only Lenovo was a significant player, while in smartphones Huawei, ZTE, Coolpad and TCL were also signicant ones (being actually in the global Top 10). In addition a much higher portion of that was shipped internally: about 50% according to company data and Credit Suisse estimates (as per the “Figure 25” chart in this blog below), while for tablets 3M local brand tablets were shipped (as per Analysys International, see the above chart) against 98M of white-box tablets only (as per company data and Credit Suisse estimates), i.e. around 3%. Even taking the DIGITIMES Research’ 54.4M white-box tablet shipment data as the basis, this number will only climb to around 5.5%.
Then I need to add here some external analysis as well, for both the smartphone and tablet markets:
From Taiwan Display IC Sector [Credit Suisse Equity research, March 12, 2014]
[p. 10] … We are … seeing entry level tablet shifting from 7″ to 8″ with higher resolutions given the competition from large size smartphone (Phablet). Tablet brands also plan to introduce over 10″ models for more commercial applications. …
China smartphone will continue to proliferate
Credit Suisse Global Research team estimates global smartphone shipment growth of 18% CAGR in 2013-2016E, while China build smartphone shipment (domestic and export) will see 29% CAGR in 2013-16E. For 2014, we forecast total China smartphone DDI [Display Driver IC] demand of 650-700mn units, up 33-36% YoY, and panel resolution to see faster migration on aggressive pricing and less capacity constraint …
[p. 10] Tablet unit demand still solid in 2014 post strong 2013
Tablet set shipment growth is expected to slow down in 2014 (34% YoY) after a strong 57% YoY growth in 2013 and 107% YoY growth in 2012. However, we believe Chinese tablet makers (brand and whitebox) … will outgrow the industry thanks to further cost reduction …
[p. 11] We estimate there will be limited growth for high-end or branded tablets in 2014, with the exception of Samsung (60% YoY growth). We believe the overall tablet demand will be driven by the Chinese, such as Lenovo and whitebox makers.
[2011: 73M*, 2012: 163M, 2013: 255M, 2014E: 342M]
* Samsung’s own data: 2010: 1.5M, 2011: 5.8M, 2012: 16.6M
** Note that the white-box tablet shipments were estimated by DIGITIMES Research as lower: 2012: 54.4M (vs. 58M here), 2013: 89.1M (vs. 98M here)
(as per the 1st chart in this blog above)
2014 China smartphone market and industry – Forecast and analysis [DIGITIMES Research, March 24, 2014]
Digitimes Research expects demand in the domestic China market to reach 422 million smartphones in 2014, with 278 million units contributed by China-based smartphone vendors. The continued expansion by international vendors Samsung and Apple will push up their sales to almost 144 million units, accounting for nearly 4% growth from 2013. As competition in the local market heats up, China-based vendors are turning to overseas markets in order to maintain their shipment volumes, especially taking an aggressive approach to penetrating emerging markets, which hold higher barriers for overseas vendors to enter.
The outlook for the 2014 China domestic smartphone market is that fewer local brands will remain to compete in the market. With the general enhancement of software-hardware specifications in 2013, brand-building and channel management have become the key to sustainability. Vendors without the advantage of substantial product differentiation will face the challenge of being eliminated in the short term. On the other hand, local vendors need to deal with inventories with discretion to counter the vigorous attacks initiated by international vendors in the domestic market.
In terms of the China smartphone industry, Digitimes Research expects global shipments of China-based smartphone vendors to reach 412 million units in 2014, a 30.7% increase from 2013. Overseas shipments will account for about 126 million units. While shipments to mature markets are expected to grow on a small scale, shipments to emerging markets are expected to expand at strong rates, mainly due to the low base they are starting from.
In the forecast for shipments from different vendors in 2014, Lenovo and Huawei are expected to reach 50 million units. Huawei has been engaged in overseas markets for a long time so its export portion outweighs Lenovo’s. ZTE’s and CoolPad‘s shipments are expected to reach 35.5 million units. TCL [Alcatel] has shown a significant growth in exports with shipments expected to exceed 26 million units in 2014, ranking No. 5 on the list. Second-tier vendors Gionee and Xiaomi are expected to ship 20 million units.
Digitimes Research: China smartphone shipments to decline slightly in 1Q14 [DIGITIMES Research, Feb 7, 2014]
China-based handset companies are expected to see their shipments of smartphones decline lightly in the first quarter of 2014, after combined shipments posted a 13% sequential growth in the previous quarter, according to Digitimes Research.
Efforts by brand vendors to clear out entry-level models in previous quarters and increased overseas shipments by Huawei, ZTE and TCL contributed to shipment gains the fourth quarter of 2013.
Additionally, first- and second-tier vendors also launched a number of new models in the fourth quarter to meet demand during the year-end buying season, ramping up total shipments in the quarter.
For all of 2013, China-based handset makers shipped a total of 314 million smartphones, increasing 62.4% from a year earlier, Digitimes Research said.
Second-tier vendors, including Xiaomi Technology, TCL, Oppo Mobile and Gionee managed to ship over 15 million smartphones in 2013.
Digitimes Research: Global smartphone shipments to top 1.24 billion units in 2014 [DIGITIMES Research, Jan 14, 2014]
Global smartphone shipments are expected to top 1.24 billion units in 2014, with Samsung Electronics, Apple, LG Electronics, Sony Mobile Communications, Lenovo, Huawei, Microsoft, ZTE, Coolpad and TCL serving as top-10 vendors, according to Digitimes Research.
Apple may see its shipments double in 2014 largely due to increased shipments to China and Japan as it will benefit from its cooperation with the largest telecom operators in the two countries, said Digitimes Research.
The growth rate for Samsung will be limited in 2014 as its sales in the US, China and Japan will be depressed by growing popularity of iPhones.
China-based Lenovo, Huawei and Coolpad are expected to step up their efforts to boost sales in overseas markets after being enlisted among the top-10 vendors due to higher shipment volumes in the home market in China.
However, TCL and ZTE will continue to ship smartphones to overseas markets mainly, but will also strengthen sales in China, with domestic sales to account for less than 50% of their total shipments in 2014, commented Digitimes Research.
2014 global smartphone market forecast [DIGITIMES Research, Jan 7, 2014]
In 2014, smartphones are expected to continue penetrating rapidly into emerging markets such as Russia, India, Indonesia and Latin America, while China’s smartphone shipments will see weakened on-year growth in the year, but still enormous volume. This report will provide in-depth analyses to forecast whether global smartphone shipments in 2014 will maintain a growth similar to that of 2013 and what the global shipment scale will reach in 2014.
Within the top-10 smartphone vendors in 2013, four of them are from China and in 2014 more China-based vendors are expected to enter the top 10. This report will also analyze which China-based vendors will have the best chance to become parts of the top-tier players.
How Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia’s handset business will affect Windows Phone products’ shipment growth in 2014 and shake Android and iOS’ domination in the smartphone market, as well as the possibility of Amazon and Facebook joining the smartphone competition in 2014 and their potential influence to the market will also be analyzed within the report.
Digitimes Research: Global smartphone shipments to reach 1.24 billion in 2014 [DIGITIMES Research, Nov 25, 2013]
Global smartphone shipments are expected to reach about 1.24 billion in 2014, up 30% on year [i.e. 954M in 2013], according to Digitimes Research.
The increase in growth is expected to be driven by demand in Russia, India, Indonesia and Latin America countries.
Digitimes Research believes that Samsung Electronics will lead the way in shipments followed by Apple, LG Electronics, Sony, Lenovo, Huawei Device, Microsoft, ZTE, Coolpad and TCL [Alcatel].
Android and IOS operating systems are expected to be used in about 93% of the devices shipped in 2014, added Digitimes Research.
Global tablet market – 4Q 2013 [DIGITIMES Research, March 24, 2014]
Global tablet shipments grew 25% sequentially and 29.8% on year to reach 78.45 million units in the fourth quarter of 2013 benefiting mainly by economic recoveries of Europe and North America, which relatively boosted demand during the year-end holidays.
Digitimes Research: Global tablet shipments in 1Q14 to drop over 20% sequentially [DIGITIMES Research, Jan 27, 2014]
An estimated 62.14 million tablets will ship globally in the first quarter of 2014, decreasing 20.8% on quarter but increasing 10.9% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
iPads will account for 29% of shipments, brand models launched by vendors other than Apple for 36.7%, and models launched by white-box vendors for 34.3%, Digitimes Research indicated.
Of brand tablet shipments in particular, Android-based models will take up 50.5%, iOS-based 44.1% and Windows-based 5.4%. 7.9-inch models will account for 24.8% of the shipments, followed by 7-inch models with 20.2%, 9-inch models with 19.6%, 10-inch models with 18.3% and 8-inch models with 15.3%. In terms of touch solutions, GFF will account for 47.8% of shipments, GF2 for 42.9%, OGS for 5.3%, GG for 2.7% and G1F for 1.3%.
Among vendors, Apple will have the largest global market share at 29%, followed by Samsung Electronics with 23.1%, Lenovo 4.7%, Asustek Computer 2.7%, Amazon 1%, Acer 1%, Microsoft 0.9%, Dell 0.8%, Google 0.5% and Hewlett-Packard 0.5%.
Taiwan-based ODMs/OEMs will ship 22.5 million tablets in the quarter, taking up 55.1% of total brand model shipments. Foxconn Electronics will account for 51.7% of shipments, Pegatron 34.8%, Compal Electronics 5.1%, Wistron 4.3% and Quanta Computer 4.1%.
Digitimes Research: Global tablet shipments in 4Q13 estimated at 78.45 million units [DIGITIMES Research, Jan 24, 2014]
There were an estimated 78.45 million tablets shipped globally in the fourth quarter of 2013, increasing 25% on quarter and by 29.8% on year, according to Digitimes Research.
iPads accounted for 29.7% of shipments, brand models launched by vendors other than Apple for 36.6%, and models launched by white-box vendors for 33.8%, Digitimes Research indicated. Android-based models took up 51.2% of the shipments, iOS-based 44.9% and Windows-based 3.9%. 7-inch models accounted for 31% of the shipments, followed by 9-inch models with 25.4%, 7.9-inch models with 19.7%, 10-inch models with 15.8% and 8-inch models with 7.6%. In terms of touch solutions, GF2 accounted for 41.5% of shipments, GFF for 38.6%, OGS for 9.8% and GG for 9.5%.
Among vendors, Apple had the largest global market share at 29.7%, followed by Samsung Electronics with 17.4%, Amazon 5.4%, Lenovo 4.2%, Asustek Computer 2.8%, Google 1.4%, Acer 1%, Dell 0.8% and Hewlett-Packard 0.5%.
Taiwan-based ODMs/OEMs shipped 32.8 million tablets in the fourth quarter, with Foxconn Electronics accounting for 52.7%, Pegatron 24.4%, Compal Electronics 12%, Quanta Computer 6.6% and Wistron 4.2%.
II. Asia is following different patterns of mobile use than the United States – the case of China and South Korea
The Post-PC Era: Is the U.S. losing its grip on the software industry? [Flurry Blog, Aug 29, 2013]
Just five years ago, PCs reigned supreme and so did the US software industry. In 2008, U.S. companies produced an estimated 65% of all PC software units sold on a worldwide basis.
In only half a decade, smartphones, tablets, and perhaps most importantly, apps, have changed the nature of the software industry. In this post we look at where apps are being developed and used and discuss the implications of that for the Post-PC Era software industry.
More Apps Are Now Being Created Outside The U.S. Than Inside The U.S.
… By June of this year only 36% of the apps we measure were made in the U.S.A. …
…
U.S. Made Apps Still Dominate App Engagement, But Their Share Is Slipping
Of course, some apps enjoy much greater use than others, so we next considered how the picture changes if apps are weighted by total time, which takes into account both user numbers and engagement. Once time is taken into account, things look considerably better for the U.S., suggesting that, on average, user numbers or engagement are greater for apps made in the U.S. than for apps created elsewhere. That makes sense given the size of the U.S. population, the fact that it was an app pioneer country, and the number of English speakers in other countries who might be able to use U.S.-made apps without any localization. Nonetheless, even the weighted percentage of apps made in the U.S.A. has dropped in the past year.
Use of Local Apps Is Strong In China
This should not lull U.S. app developers into a false sense of security however. That becomes evident from examining where the apps used by people in particular countries are made. That’s what the chart below does, starting with the United States. Nearly sixty percent (59%) of the time U.S. users spend in apps is spent in apps developed domestically, meaning that more than 40% of the app time of U.S. consumers is already spent in apps developed in other countries.
And while U.S. made apps are used elsewhere, unsurprisingly, people in many other countries spend a significant amount of their app time in apps developed in their home countries. For example, 13% of the time spent in apps in the UK is spent in apps made in the UK and 8% of the time spent in apps in Brazil is spent in apps made in Brazil. But as is so often the case, it’s China where things get really interesting. Nearly two-thirds of the time spent in apps in China is spent in apps made in China. U.S. made apps only account for 16% of total time spent in apps in China. The size and growth rate of the Chinese app market imply that the worldwide share of time spent in apps that are produced in the U.S. can be expected to contract further.
China Report: Device and App Trends in the #1 Mobile Market [Flurry Blog, July 23, 2013]
In June of this year Flurry Analytics measured 261,333,271 active smartphones and tablets in China. That represented a whopping 24% of the entire worldwide connected device installed base measured by Flurry.
…
Smartphones and tablets are not just about fun and games in China. Compared to iOS device owners elsewhere, the average time Chinese owners spend using Books, Newsstand, Utility, and Productivity apps is greater than the rest of the world (1.8x, 1.7x, 2.3x, and 2.1x respectively). On average Chinese owners of Android devices spend more than seven times as much time in Finance apps (7.4x) than Android owners elsewhere spend in Finance apps, but they also spend more time in Entertainment apps (1.7x).
The South Korea Report: Device and App Trends in The First Saturated Device Market [Flurry Blog, Oct 14, 2013]
In August of this year Flurry Analytics measured 33,527,534 active smartphones and tablets in South Korea. While that was only 2.8% of the entire worldwide connected device installed base Flurry measures, South Korea is an important market for connected devices for several reasons. First, it is the first connected device market in the world to approach saturation. Second, it is Samsung’s home market, and largely as a consequence of that, more of the devices in use there are manufactured by domestic firms than is the case for any other country. Finally, it is home to more phablet fans than anywhere else.
…Social networking accounts for a significant share of app activity in South Korea, as it does in many other countries. Tool apps are used heavily by South Korean Android users, and entertainment apps capture a lot of time spent in iOS apps.
Compared to app users elsewhere, South Koreans over-index on Entertainment apps on iOS and several Android app categories (Media / Video, Photography, Lifestyle, Shopping, and Tools).
…
Given that South Korea’s rapid period of connected device growth was ushered in by the phablet, it is perhaps not surprising that it continues to surpass the rest of the world in its preference for that form factor. As shown below, in a worldwide sample of 97,963 iOS and Android devices, only 7% were phablets, but for South Korea that percentage was 41%. The appeal of phablets in South Korea appears to suppress the tablet market there. Worldwide, 19% of the devices in our sample were tablets compared to only 5% in South Korea.
Worldwide:
Size Matters for Connected Devices. Phablets Don’t. [Flurry Blog, April 1, 2013]
… For this study, we focused on the top 200 device models, as measured by active users in Flurry’s system, which represent more than 80% of all usage. Doing so, five groups emerged based on screen size:
1. Small phones (e.g., most Blackberries), 3.5” or under screens
2. Medium phones (e.g., iPhone), between 3.5” – 4.9” screens
3. Phablets (e.g., Galaxy Note), 5.0” – 6.9” screens
4. Small Tablets (e.g., Kindle Fire), 7.0” – 8.4” screens
5. Full-size tablets (e.g., the iPad), 8.5” or greater screens
…
The ‘Is it a phone or is it a tablet’ devices otherwise known as phablets have attracted interest, but currently command a relatively small share (2%) of the device installed base, and their share of active users and sessions is also relatively small.
…
Android owns the phablet market and also has the greatest proportion of devices using small tablets. iOS has the greatest share of active devices using large tablets.
…
… notice that nearly a third of time spent playing games take places on larger devices, namely full-sized tablet, small tablets and phablets. And while they command consumer time spent, they represented only 15% of device models in use in February and 21% of individual connected devices. These differences are statistically significant.Studying books and videos, it’s somewhat surprising that tablets, which possess larger screens, do not see a larger proportion of time spent. An explanation for the high concentration in time spent in smartphones could be that consumers watch videos from their smartphones on-the-go (e.g., commuting to work on public transit), whereas they opt for a bigger screen to watch video (e.g., computer or TV) when at work or home. We expect that tablets may represent a greater share of time spent in book and video apps in the future as tablet ownership expands and tablet owners branch out into more types of apps.
…
From our study, consumers most prefer and use apps on medium-sized smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy smartphones and full-sized tablets like the iPad. In particular, smaller smartphones under-index in terms of app usage compared to the proportion of the installed base they represent, and would suggest they are not worth developers’ support.
…
Mobile Use Grows 115% in 2013, Propelled by Messaging Apps [Flurry Blog, Jan 13, 2014]
… the segment that showed the most dramatic growth [worldwide] in 2013 was Messaging (Social and Photo sharing included). The growth in that segment should not come as a surprise to many, given the attention that messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, KakaoTalk, LINE, Facebook Messenger and SnapChat have received in the press. What is surprising, however, is that the rate of growth (tripling usage year-over-year) dramatically outpaced other popular categories. This type of growth could explain the high valuation Facebook has allegedly put on SnapChat, or Facebook’s rush to add direct messaging in Instagram, an app frequented by teens.
…
Another explosive growth year in mobile has passed. On December 31st, 2013 at 11:59 pm, Flurry Analytics tracked a record 4.7 Billion app sessions in a single day, for a total of 1.126 Trillion sessions for the whole year. Those are some very, very big numbers. …
The Truth About Cats and Dogs: Smartphone vs Tablet Usage Differences [Flurry Blog, Oct 29, 2012]
… Taking a snapshot in September 2012 from Flurry Analytics, that totaled more than 6 billion application sessions across approximately 500 million smart devices, Flurry provides a comprehensive comparison between smartphones and tablets, spanning age, gender, time of day usage, category usage and engagement metrics. For age and gender comparisons, Flurry leverages a panel of more than 30 million consumers who have opted-in to share demographic data. …
…
The chart below compares the time spent across app categories between smartphones and tablets. At a high level, consumers spend more time using tablets for media and entertainment, including Games (67%), Entertainment (9%) and News (2%) categories which account for nearly four-fifths of consumption on tablets. Smartphones claim a higher proportion of communication and task-oriented activities with Social Networking (24%), Utilities (17%), Health & Fitness (3%) and Lifestyle (3%) commanding nearly half of all usage on smartphones. Games are the most popular category on both form factors with 67% of time spent using games on tablets and 39% of time spent using games on smartphones. Further reinforcing that tablets are “media machines” is the fact that consumers spend 71% more of their time using games on tablets than they spend doing so on smartphones.
Indie Game Makers Dominate iOS and Android [Flurry Blog, March 6, 2012]
For the first two months of 2012, Flurry Analytics measured that more than half of all end user sessions were spent in games. Across January and February, Flurry observed sessions across a sample of more than 64 billion applications sessions across more than 500 million iOS and Android devices.
United States
:
Apps Solidify Leadership Six Years into the Mobile Revolution [Flurry Blog, April 1, 2014]
Last year, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the mobile revolution, Flurry issued its five-year report on the mobile industry. In that report we analyzed time-spent on mobile devices by the average US consumer. We have run the same analysis, using data collected between January and March of 2014, and found some interesting shifts that we are sharing in this report
…The chart
belowon the left takes a closer look at app categories. Comparing them to last year, gaming apps maintained their leadership position at 32% of time spent. Social and messaging applications, including Facebook, increased share from 24% to 28%. Entertainement (including YouTube) and Utility applications maintained their positions at 8% each, while productivity apps saw their share double from 2% to 4% of the overall time spent.
Flurry Five-Year Report: It’s an App World. The Web Just Lives in It
[Flurry Blog, April 3, 2013]
… On the five-year anniversary of launching Flurry Analytics, we took some time to reflect on the industry and share some insights. First, we studied the time U.S. consumers spend between mobile apps and mobile browsers, as well as within mobile app categories. Let’s take a look. …
Mobile App Usage [in U.S.] Further Dominates Web, Spurred by Facebook [Flurry Blog, Jan 9, 2012]
The chart compares how daily interactive consumption has changed over the last 18 months between the web (both desktop and mobile web) and mobile native apps. For the web, shown in green, we built a model using publicly available data from comScore and Alexa. For mobile application usage, shown in blue, we used Flurry Analytics data, which tracks anonymous sessions across more than 140,000 applications. We estimate this accounts for approximately one third of all mobile application activity, which we scaled-up accordingly for this analysis.
…
With mobile app usage soaring, Flurry additionally studied which categories most occupy consumers’ time. The results are shown in the pie chart below.
Further considering that Flurry does not track Facebook usage, the Social Networking category is actually larger. Combined, from just what Flurry can see, these two categories control a whopping 79% of consumers’ total app time. This breakdown in usage reveals Facebook’s inherent popularity as the leading social network, as well as how important controlling the game category is for all platform providers. As we drill down into the category data, consumers use these two categories more frequently, and for longer average session lengths, compared to other categories.
Intel CTE initiative: Bay Trail-Entry V0 (Z3735E and Z3735D) SoCs are shipping next week in $129 Onda (昂达) V819i Android tablets—Bay Trail-Entry V2.1 (Z3735G and Z3735F) SoCs might ship in $60+ Windows 8.1 tablets from Emdoor Digital (亿道) in the 3d quarter
Update: At 19:40 on April 14 from the 昂达微博 Onda microblogging
[Detailed background information on Onda you can can can find on the ONDA page of my other, ‘USD 99 Allwinner’ blog. Note as well the neostra ODM/OEM brand which is owned by Onda as it’s manufacturing base.]
# Onda Tablet PC & Intel 64 # [notice] April 21, Onda first Intel 64 Bay Trail-T quad-core tablet quad-core # # Onda V975i , 1099 yuan [$177] / 32GB! 50 can be stored in advance and are now starting to use arrived 100 yuan purchase! 9.7 inches iPad Air retina screen, 64 1.83GHz quad-core CPU, the strongest 64-bit tablet bunker! Starting snapped → Onda V975i “special” double 50 yuan deposit payment in exchange for 100 yuan photographed determine coupon @ Intel China @ Intel Core Collection of
Details about the Onda V975i shipping from April 21st see after the Onda V819i (shipping from April 14th) details given much below! End of update
Existing local tablet brands working with Intel were BYD, Ramos and Teclast so far. With CTE (China Technical Ecosystem) initiative now they have 14 partners, not only local brands but local IDHs (Independent Design Houses) and OEMs/ODMs as well, as will be presented very soon below (other subjects following that correspond to the other terms that you find in title of the post):
From 英特尔的中国白牌平板之路 (Chinese white-box tablet roadmap by Intel) [中国经济网深圳频道 (China Economic Net Shenzhen Channel), April 3, 2014]
…
Intel and low-cost Android [and Windows] tablet reference design roadmap (Source Intel)
- Clover Trail+, Dual Core, Android: Z2580 2GHz, Z2520 1.2GHz, LPDDR2, 8L1 HDI2
(Note that Intel was pressed to use the Clover Trail+ for tablets instead of smartphones as it was originally envisaged. See in Saving Intel: next-gen Intel ultrabooks for enterprise and professional markets from $500; next-gen Intel notebooks, other value devices and tablets for entry level computing and consumer markets from $300 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 17, 2013].) - BayTrail-T, Quad Core, Windows: Z3745D 1.83 GHz, 19×12 LCD, DDR3L, 8L1 HDI2
(3d party AM? Dual Boot solution available) - BayTrail-Entry V0, Quad Core, Android:
Z3735D (1.83GHz, <=2GB, <=19×12 LCD),
Z3735E (1.83GHz, 1GB, <=12×8)
DDR3L, 8L1 HDI2 - BayTrail-Entry V2.1, Quad Core, Android:
Z3735F (1.83GHz, <=2GB, <=19×12 LCD),
Z3735G (1.83GHz, 1GB, <=12×8)
DDR3L, 6L1 type 3 PCB - BayTrail-Entry V2.1, Quad Core, Windows
[note that the Windows-based SoC version started sampling in beginning of April vs. the Android based one in mid February]:
Z3735F (1.83GHz, <=2GB, <=19×12 LCD),
Z3735G (1.83GHz, 1GB, <=12×8)
DDR3L, 6L1 type 3 PCB
1 8L PCB = 8-layer PCB; 6L PCB = 6-layer PCB
2 HDI—High Density Interconnects (aka Type 4) PCBs are defined as PCBs utilizing blind, buried or microvia technologies. A blind via is drilled from the surface layer with an end target on an internal layer while a buried via is only drilled on internal layers and does not exist on the surface layers. A microvia is commonly referred to as a via with a hole diameter of 0.005’ or less. (Source: PCB Stack-up Overview for Intel® Architecture Platforms Layout and Signal Integrity Considerations, Intel Thainland, December 2008)
In 2013 Intel launched the CTE program, where “the CTE acronym stands for China
TechniqueTechnical Ecosystem, which can be understood as Chinese technology ecosystem environment and Chinese white-box industry chain”, an alliance of fourteen local tablet manufacturers in Shenzhen including 比亚迪-BYD (Build Your Dreams), 实义德-THD (Thread Technology Co. Ltd.), 创智成-CZC, 汉普-Hampoo, 亿道-Emdoor [Digital] (Emdoor Digital Technology Co. Ltd.), 德天-Techvision (德天信息技术有限公司-Techvision Information Technology Co., Ltd.), 蓝魔–Ramos, 台电–Teclast (Teclast Electronics Co, Ltd), 广和通–Fibocom (Fibocom Wireless Inc.), 微步–Wibtek3 (Weibu) (Weibu Electronics Co., Ltd), 天智伟业–Wisky (Shenzhen Wisky Technology Co Ltd), 炜疆–Range (炜疆信息技术有限公司-Range Information Technology Co., Ltd.), and so on.
3 Wibtek (Weibu) is a Top 1 design house, dedicated in DIY solution products over 13 years with 10 million units MB shipment per year.
– Founded: 2001
– Group Employees: over 1000
– HQ: Shenzhen China
– R&D Force: 500+ engineers
Because of a global brand need, Wibtek is established by TAIWANESE people who were working for A BRAND in the past. Wibtek is currently producing All In One, Mini PC and Motherboards at this moment. As because our profession is motherboard design we easily can claim that Wibtek: “AIO by ITX professionals”.
The below table (taken from Z3600 and Z3700 Series Datasheet as of April 2014 when Type 3 SoC related information was added) is giving the rest of the specific information:
In Brian M. Krzanich IDF14 Shenzhen keynote
[April 2, 2014]
- Demonstrates Intel SoFIA for the first time just months after adding the new family of integrated Intel® Atom™-based mobile SoCs for entry and value smartphones and tablets to its roadmap.
From Intel CEO Outlines New Computing Opportunities, Investments and Collaborations with Burgeoning China Technology Ecosystem [press release, April 2, 2014]
As 4G LTE service expands in China, Intel is well-positioned to provide a growing share of LTE chipsets. Intel’s 2014 LTE platform, the Intel® XMM™ 7260, meets the five-mode requirement of China Mobile* today, including support for TD-LTE, and TD-SCDMA protocols required in China.
Intel is actively engaged in China for certification of the Intel XMM 7260, paving the way for commercial availability in the second half of 2014 for performance and mainstream device market segments. Krzanich demonstrated the Intel XMM 7260 by conducting the first public, live call using China Mobile’s TD-LTE network, and spoke to strong ecosystem demand for a competitive LTE alternative.
Intel is also developing its SoFIA family of integrated mobile SoCs for entry and value smartphones and tablets. Krzanich demonstrated the family’s first silicon, booting up the new integrated Intel® Atom™ platform just months after adding the product to its ultra-mobile roadmap. He also noted the strategic opportunity these market segments present for Intel and the China technology ecosystems. Intel’s SoFIA 3G platform is on track to ship to OEMs in the fourth-quarter of 2014.
Krzanich also said that Intel is on track to ship 40 million tablets this year, and showcased a variety of innovative designs developed in China by OEMs and ODMs.
From Mobile Innovation With Intel Inside by Hermann Eul [IDF14 Shenzhen, April 3, 2014]
The general tablet roadmap was presemted as follows:
Intel reportedly places 28nm chip orders with TSMC, Globalfoundries and UMC [DIGITIMES, Jan 9, 2014]
Intel has contracted Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to manufacture its forthcoming Atom mobile processor series codenamed SoFIA, and also placed orders for entry-level baseband chips with Globalfoundries and United Microelectronics (UMC), according to industry sources.
The contract chipmakers declined to comment on customer orders.
Intel’s SoFIA SoCs designed for entry-level smartphones and tablets will be built using TSMC’s 28nm HKMG process technology, said the sources. As for the other series of Atom SoCs codenamed Broxton, Intel will use its 14nm FinFET process to make the chips targeting high-end mobile devices.
Intel has also placed orders for entry-level baseband chips with Globalfoundries and UMC, using their respective 28nm PolySiON process nodes, the sources indicated. Initial shipments required by Intel are estimated at 7,000-8,000 wafers monthly.
Globalfoundries will first be the primary contract chipmaker for Intel’s 28nm baseband chips, the sources noted. Nevertheless, Intel is likely to release more orders to UMC later in 2014 when the Taiwan foundry improves its 28nm production yield rates, the sources said.
More information:
– IDF14 Shenzhen: Intel is levelling the Wintel playing field with Android-ARM by introducing new competitive Windows tablet price points from $99 – $129 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 4, 2014]
– The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14, 2013]
– Form Factor and Average Power Innovations for Ultrabooks™
[April 10, 2013 presentation by Intel at the IDF Beijing] with the following abstract:
Intended Audience: OEMs and ODMs – Motherboard Layout Designers, Power Delivery, and Power Management Architects
In this session we propose methods to improve, form factor, battery capacity, and power consumption for Ultrabook™ devices. We show how High Density Interconnects (HDI) Printed Circuit Boards could free up considerable space for more battery and other features, especially in thinner Ultrabooks. We show current practices with HDI and propose better ways to achieve higher mother board area reduction to close the cost gap between type 3 and type 4 (HDI) designs. For power consumption, we also show design methods to reduce average power, especially by reducing platform idle power.
and agenda:
- What is HDI?
- Benefits of HDI in Form Factor Constrained Systems
- Reducing the Cost of HDI
- Reducing Platform Power
- Thermal management an Power Configurability
From Designing Entry and Value Tablets Based on the Intel Platform, Bay Trail – Entry [IDF14 TABS002 session, April 3, 2014] downloadable presentation (PDF)
- Stella Huang – Product Marketing Manager, Intel Corporation
- James Sheng – Planning Manager for Component Catalog, Intel Corporation
- Danny Zhang – Senior Engineering Manager, Intel Corporation
This session includes an in-depth review of the status and plans for the Intel® platform, Bay Trail – Entry, Intel’s first platform focused entirely on Entry and Value Tablets.
Topics include:
- Master Reference Design, component catalog and hardware and software differentiation
- Development and manufacturing tools
- Schedule and Original Device Manufacturers (ODMs) support model
1 MRD7 and MRD8/10 are Android* only. Windows is for selected ODMs with committed volume.
Imperatives for Master Reference Design (MRD) Development and Scaling
- Master reference design for simultaneous scaling @ multiple ODMs with fast time to market
- Tailor-made to enable flexible and fast changes with CTE friendly component catalogue
- Enable differentiation to drive value beyond low cost
- Manufacturing tools to ensure easy mass production process
Intel Platform, Bay Trail–Entry Component Catalogue Goal
- Strengthen Intel Architecture partnership with CTE hardware ecosystem
- Improve platform competitiveness, demonstrate performance and flexibility
- Shorten time to market and enable product variety
- Reduce project and supply chain risk
- Enable partners to support customer design directly
Intel software ecosystem enabling efforts
< from slide #22 to slide #36>
Intel tools for development and manufacturing
< from slide #38 to slide #41>
今天 17:59 Today [2014-04–11] 17:59
昂达微博 Onda microblogging
[Detailed background information on Onda you can can can find on the ONDA page of my other, ‘USD 99 Allwinner’ blog. Note as well the neostra ODM/OEM brand which is owned by Onda as it’s manufacturing base.]
# 64 Onda first Android tablet # [first] New Intel Bay Trail-T’s first quad-core tablet # # Onda V819i quad-core will soon at @ Jingdong
@ Jingdong computer digital sale! 16GB is only 799 yuan [$129]! 8.0-inch 1280 × 800 IPS screen ultra-clear, 64 of Bay Trail-T 22nm quad-core CPU, PC-class 7th generation GPU, 64-Bit Flat Panel “core” era! Starting snapped → http://t.cn/8sCvvnD @ Intel China
@ Intel Core Collection of
Onda V819i Intel Bay Trail-T 8 Inch IPS Screen Quad Core Android Tablet PC
[Onda Tablet – Buy Products, April 4, 2014]
SKU:820026
Regular Price:$189.90
Special Price: $159.90Quick Overview
Onda V819i Intel Tablet pre-installed with Quad Core 64-bit 22nm Bay Trail-T 1.83GHz Processor [3735E Bay Trail-Entry V0], with 1280*800 IPS Screen, Dual Camera.
…
Qty: … Pre-order
Shipping within 1-2 Weeks
…
From Boris at 4/2/14 11:44 AM
- Can I be notified when Onda V819i will be in stock?
Thanks.- Onda Tablet:
Thank you for your mail.
Onda V819i Intel Tablet will be in stock at the end of April.…
Details
Onda V819i Intel Tablet pre-installed with Quad Core 64-bit 22nm Bay Trail-T 1.83GHz Processor [3735E Bay Trail-Entry V0], with
1024*7681280*800 IPS Screen, Dual Camera.
Onda V819i Quad Core features Intel Bay Trail-T Z3735 processor, 1.83GHz.
DDR3 L RAM, eMMC up to 150MB/s
8.0 Inch HD IPS Gorilla Glass Touch Screen
189PPI IPS Screen with 1280*800 resolution
Onda ROM
Onda V819i Intel Tablet Features:
OS: Android 4.2
CPU: Intel 3735E [Bay Trail-Entry V0] Quad Core 64-bit Bay Trail-T, 22nm, 1.86GHz, support Burst Technology 2.0
GPU: Intel HD Graphics for BayTrail
RAM 1GB 64bit DDR3L
Storage 16GB eMMC
Bluetooth: Support
Shell Material Metal
Screen: Capacitive Touchscreen, 1280*800 High-resolution Screen
Size: 8 inch
Resolution: 1280*800 Pixels (16:10)
Display: IPS Screen
Dual Camera: 2.0MP Front + 5.0MP Back with AutoFocus (OV Camera)Onda V819i Intel Tablet Details:
Speakers: Dual AAC Speaker
TF Card: Support up to 128GB
Video: 4K HD Videp Play with formats of MP4/3GP/3G2/RM/RMVB/ASF/FLAC/APE/MOV etc.
Gravity Sensor Yes
Skype Yes
Multi-Touch Yes, 10 points touch
OTG: Yes
HDMI: Yes, Mini HDMI
Play Store: Yes, built in
Extend Card Support TF card up to 128GB extended
Email and Browser: Yes, built in
WIFI: Yes, 802.11 b/g/n
Earphone Interface 3.5mm
Video 1080P, AVI/MOV/MP4/RMVB/FLV/MKV…
Music MP3/WMA/WAV/APE/AAC/FLAC/OGG
Ebook UMD, TXT, PDF, HTML, RTF, FB2…
Battery : Li-ion 4200mAHOnda V819i Intel Tablet contain:
1 x Onda V819i Intel Tablet
1 x USB cable
1 x ChargerOnda V819i Intel Tablet Weight: 354g
Onda V819i Intel Tablet Size: 207*122.5*8.5mm
Update: At 19:40 on April 14 from the 昂达微博 Onda microblogging
# Onda Tablet PC & Intel 64 # [notice] April 21, Onda first Intel 64 Bay Trail-T quad-core tablet quad-core # # Onda V975i , 1099 yuan [$177] / 32GB! 50 can be stored in advance and are now starting to use arrived 100 yuan purchase! 9.7 inches iPad Air retina screen, 64 1.83GHz quad-core CPU, the strongest 64-bit tablet bunker! Starting snapped → Onda V975i “special” double 50 yuan deposit payment in exchange for 100 yuan photographed determine coupon @ Intel China @ Intel Core Collection of
Onda V975i Quad Core Intel Bay Trail-T 9.7 Inch Retina Screen RAM 2GB Tablet PC [Onda Tablet – Buy Products, April 14, 2014]
SKU:820027
Regular Price:$219.90
Special Price: $209.90Quick Overview
Onda V975i Quad Core pre-installed with Intel Bay Trail-T 61-bit Processor [3735D Bay Trail-Entry V0], with 22nm and 1.83GHz, 2GB RAM DDR3L and 32GB eMMC ROM,9.7 Inch Retina Screen 2048*1536 resolution 264 Screen PPI. Onda V975i come with Front 2.0M and Back 5.0M Dual Camera.
…
Qty: … Pre-orderShipping within 1-2 Weeks
…Details
Onda V975i Quad Core pre-installed with Intel Bay Trail-T 61-bit Processor [3735D Bay Trail-Entry V0], with 22nm and 1.83GHz, 2GB RAM DDR3L and 32GB eMMC ROM, 9.7 Inch Retina Screen 2048*1536 resolution 264 Screen PPI.Onda V975i come with Front 2.0M and Back 5.0M Dual Camera.
Intel Z3735 Quad Core 64 bit 1.83GHz
8.5mm Ultra-thin
9.7 Inch Retina Screen Android Tablet with 495g
HD OV Camera with Auto Focus
Front 2.0M and Back 5.0M HD Camera
Top 9.7 Inch Retina Screen
9.7 Inch iPad Air Retina Screen with 267 Screen PPi, Gorilla Glass Touch Screen
Onda V975i Quad Core Tablet Features:
OS: Android 4.2
CPU: 64-bit Bay Trail-T Z3735D [Bay Trail-Entry V0], 22nm,1.83GHz, support Burst Technology 2.0
GPU: Gen7,support DirectX 11
RAM 2GB DDR3L
Storage 32GB eMMC
Bluetooth: Support
Shell Material Metal
Screen: Capacitive Touchscreen, 2048*1536 High-resolution Screen
Size: 9.7 inch
Resolution: 2048*1536 Pixels
Visible Angle: 178°
Screen PPI: 264
Display: Retina IPS Screen
Daul Camera: Front 2.0 Megapixels, Back 5.0 Megapixels Auto FoucusOnda V975i Quad Core Tablet Details:
Speakers: Dual AAC Speaker
Video: hd Video Play with formats of MP4/3GP/3G2/RM/RMVB/ASF/FLAC/APE/MOV etc.
Gravity Sensor Yes
Skype Yes
Multi-Touch Yes, 10 points touch
OTG: Yes
Play Store: Yes, built in
Extend Card Support TF card up to 32GB extended
Email and Browser: Yes, built in
WIFI: Yes, 802.11 b/g/n
Earphone Interface 3.5mm
Video 1080P, AVI/MOV/MP4/RMVB/FLV/MKV…
Music MP3/WMA/WAV/APE/AAC/FLAC/OGG
Ebook UMD, TXT, PDF, HTML, RTF, FB2…
Battery : 7800 mAhOnda V975i Quad Core Tablet contain:
1 x Onda V975i Quad Core Intel Tablet
1 x USB cable
1 x ChargerOnda V975i Quad Core Weight: 495g
Onda V975i Quad Core Size: 241*169*8.5mm
End of update
From 亿道将推低于399元的Windows平板 (Emdoor will be pushing Windows tablet down to 399 yuan [$60]) [平板新闻 (PadNews), April 8, 2014] one can see the following roadmap from the company for 2014:
Currently its three 8-inch Windows 8.1 based tablets: EM-I8080-A, EM-I8080-C, EM-I8180 are already in mass production. And now Microsoft Windows system with tablets of 9-inch and less size has started free, which makes its three 8-inch Windows tablets more competitive.
In addition Emdoor will launch in the second quarter of this year a 10.1-inch Windows Tablet program supporting 3G/4G network, and a 10.1 inch 3G/4G tablet based on BayTrail-T CR [Cost Reduced] V0 version. In the second quarter it will also launch an 8-inch BayTrail-T CR V0 quad-core 3G tablet, the whole[sale] price will be around $ 139. In the end of the second quarter it will launch an 8-inch BayTrail-T CR V2 3G quad-core tablet, when prices will be further reduced to between $ 99-119. More awesome is that in the third quarter Emdoor will launch a 7 -inch BayTrail-T CR V2 quad-core 3G tablet, and the price will be lower than $99. Obviously in the WiFi-only version of the above scenario the price will be lower.
The current 50K shipment of Emdoor isn’t much, but for the company it is simply a starting point. At the launch party Emdoor also announced this year’s goal: 1KK, namely the 2014 Intel tablet shipments program to reach 1 million units, becoming the market leading Intel tablet IDH. Obviously, this is not small, in order to achieve it is really difficult. How Emdoor will be achieving this?
Emdoor’s approach can be summarized in three points: 1, constantly updated product technology and creating more product forms; 2, the establishment of a sound quality system, providing customers with better product quality; 3, for the continuous optimization of product cost it will introduce a $60 tablet this year. Here the US $60 tablet PC should be referring to that of Emdoor launching in the third quarter a 7-inch BayTrail-T CR V2 quad-core tablet, as the 3G version priced at only $99, then the price of the WiFi only version should be at around $ 60. Here we must add that BayTrail-T CR supports Windows System.
The $60 Tablet PC means that for less than 399 yuan you can buy a Windows tablet, the price really is a little scary. If it really can do at this price, then it will be able completely compete with an ARM-based Android tablet head-on. And an Android tablet does not have the advantage of full compatibility with PC programs. Plus the Intel and Microsoft brands, I believe, will attract a large number of consumers. And with this it will probably be possible to change the current ARM tablet market, a dominant pattern. But before the product is actually listed it’s hard to say, because the outcome will also depend on the specific market feedback.
Intel pre-CTE background in China:
As of 2013
From China tablet/smartphone chain: Leaders emerge but plenty to play for [Supply Chain Research by Credit Suisse, Oct 15, 2013]
… The China tablet market is also seeing Intel engage more on building reference designs with local players, with several solution houses and local brands rolling out Windows+Android 7-10” tablets for $150-250 factory price for tablets and $300-$350 for tablet + keyboard Win8 + Android models. …
…
Intel engaging local tablet suppliers more closely. Intel is putting more energy on penetrating the low-cost tablet market and now has reference models from design houses such as Emdoor and smaller branded companies including Ramos and Vido. The company is offering a thin and light reference design based on Clover Trail now with Bay Trail rolling out in the next 3 months. Factory price for 10” with keyboard ranges from $250-300 for Android and $300-$350 for Android + Wintel. 7.85” tablets are from Intel are now appearing at US$150 factory price, the high-end of the US$50-135 range for tablets based on Mediatek or the Chinese chipset suppliers. We are seeing more effort from Intel to penetrate several of these design houses on tablets, though presence is still very limited at the local smartphone suppliers.
Emdoor Digital background:
As of 2013
Emdoor Digital participates China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong with multi-platform solutions [press release, Oct 12, 2013]
Emdoor Digital participated China Sourcing Fair in Hong Kong on October 12-15, 2013 with multi-platform solutions. Emdoor Digital unveiled the latest Intel X86 architecture -based tablet solution, ARM Rockchips 3026 and 3168 -based architecture solution. There is also more mature amlogic tablet solution which is already in high-volume production, Marvell 3G call tablet solution, more tablet solutions targeted at different industries, Miracast, TV boxes, TV stick and other products.
《Scene photos I》
《Scene photos II》
Intel Dual System Tablet solution is undoubtedly the major popular model during this exhibition, X86-based Intel Baytrail-T quad-core tablet solution, 1.8GHz, support windows8.1 & android4.2.2 dual system, 10.1 inch, 8 inch two models, this is the world’s first prototype based on Intel Baytrail-T, the mature sampling will be available in the end of October and Mass production in November.
《Intel tablet solution》[based on Z3740D]
Intel leaders from different regions and countries visit and guide at Emdoor Digital Booth.
《 Intel Leaders’visit》ARM architecture-based RK3026 is the latest models target at lower-end market, RK3168 for higher-end market, both are undoubtedly the models lead the dual-core market.
《EM-R3170&EM-R6270》For the higher end market, Emdoor Digital has RK3188, M802, large size, thinner and lighter is the characteristics of these models.
《8”、9.7”、 10.1”》For Mass production and most stable performance, Emdoor Digital has full-size models of amlogic AML8726-MXS/MXL chip solution; all 7 inch, 8 inch, 9 inch, 10.1-inch types pass the GMS certification.
《 Amlogic series models》For 3G and calling market, Emdoor Digital has Marvell PXA986 dual-core, PXA1088 quad-core tablet solutions, Phablet, narrow flat border is a major highlight which is also the future market trends.
《3G Phablet》We can see some special tablets customized for different industries on Emdoor Digital booth, POS machines has intelligent cash system, supports NFC, mobile phone , bank card and magnetic card payments manner. And other industrial applications tablets of RFID, Zigbee / Z-wave, etc.
《Industry Solution》There are also TV box, TV dongle , Miracast, etc.
《 Other products》During this Hong Kong exhibition, Emdoor Digital presents multi-platform solutions with numerous product forms, which is undoubtedly one of the booths with rich content, different products for different markets, which is attraction for all buyers on site.
About Emdoor Digital:
Emdoor Digital is in charge of R&D of Emdoor. Officially founded in 2010, Emdoor Digital symbolizes the important start for Emdoor to increase research investment and focus on consumer product development and standard operation. Emdoor Digital is one of the earliest teams engaging in tablet PC research, which targets at consumer digital product and solution research and production. At present, it is one of the largest tablet PC main board and ODM/OEM suppliers in Shenzhen.
MID solution of Emdoor Digital uses international famous chip processor and intel X86 architecture, the latest ARM architecture with strong CPU function.
– The latest Android system is adopted, support powerful third-party software.
– It employs full-touch screen design with resolution covering 800*480 to 1280*800 capacitive multi-touch screen.
– Built-in WIFI and 3G module (WCDMA/EVDO/TDSCDMA) and GPS module are available.
– Browsing websites, checking email, QQ/MSN/SKYPK online chatting, online games, online TV, stocks, funds and futures, real-time stock market monitoring, real-time transaction and so on.
– It is supportive to more office software such as WORD, EXCEL, PPT, PDF, TXT etc.
– It is supportive to various mainstream audio, video, picture, Flash plug-ins and multiple game clusters.
– It supports 48 languages and 3G parameters from 28 countries.
– All solutions adopt ultra-low power consumption but strong power management design, which have stable performance, high yield, fast delivery and good service.
About Emdoor Group:
One of the top 10 embedded system enterprises of the top 100 IOT enterprises in China in 2010;
One of the top 10 embedded system enterprises in China in 2010;
One of the earliest companies in the world that are engaged in research, development and design of MID tablet PCs;
Member of IOT Expert Committee of Chinese Institute of Electronics;
Golden partner of Microsoft
Partner of ARM chip design tool, development tool, ATC training and education
Domestic agent of ARM for development tools and chip-level development board.
Designated supplier of ARM hardware platform for 2006 National Undergraduate Electronic Design Contest; won “Special Contribution Award” of Ministry of Education and Ministry of Information
Its software/hardware co-design system of R&D management system EmTeam won “EDN China” innovation award for 2010;
Emdoor possesses three subsidiaries: Emdoor Electronics, Emdoor Digital and Emdoor Information, which engage in R&D tool, tablet PC and industrial terminal R&D and sales respectively. Emdoor has attached great importance to R&D management, embedment, mobile Internet and Internet of Things for a long time and been devoted to embedment industrial chain in China, providing professional and individualized service and support to customers in chip development tool, EDA development tool, embedment development tool, embedded platform and solution, embedded software test tool, ODM/OEM, embedment training and so on, thus helping customers and global partners to achieve success.
Emdoor has increased investment in independent R&D though making great achievement in independent tablet PC R&D. With the great support of Fudan Technology Venture Park, Emdoor has established Internet of Things R&D Center, Android System R&D Center (Relocated to Shenzhen with a new name Shenzhen Emdoor Information Technology Co., Ltd.) in Shanghai by the end of 2010.
Emdoor Shanghai Internet of Things R&D Center is the new development of Emdoor’s 5-year research in Internet of Things, making wireless sensor networking technology and practical new sensor technology commercialized.
Relying on mature tablet PC R&D platform of Emdoor Digital, Shenzhen Emdoor Information Technology Co., Ltd. has furthered developed a series of industrial tablet solution, such as Zigbee tablet, NFC tablet, RFID tablet, Z-Wave tablet, one dimensional barcode, two dimensional barcode, Infrared Spectroscopy, custom-made industrial tablet, and multiple Internet of Things solutions. It realizes standardized module production based on mature product architecture, enabling itself to create custom-made functions with simple module configuration according to the demand of the project.
As of 2012
http://www.emdoor.com/ Emdoor Electronics 亿道电子
Emdoor Zigbee Z Wave Tablet Introduction [qing shi YouTube channel, Sept 5, 2012]
Emdoor NFC Tablet Peer To Peer Introduction [qing shi YouTube channel, Sept 5, 2012]
Emdoor shows $140 9.7″ and $85 7″ Telechips 8803 ARM Cortex-A8 ICS Tablets [Charbax YouTube channel, Jan 13, 2012]
Emdoor Digital Company Brief: [as of August 2012]
Emdoor Digital subordinate to Emdoor Group is responsible for R&D of Emdoor Group. Emdoor Digital was established in 2010, which symbolized the start that Emdoor Group increased the investment in R&D and its long-term devotion to R&D and standardized operation of the consumer goods. It is positioned for the R&D and production of the digital consumer goods and solutions, with the aim to becoming one of the largest tablet personal computer mainboard and ODM/OEM suppliers in Shenzhen.
Emdoor Digital takes up the R&D team and quintessence of tablet personal computer since 2004, particularly since 2008, having had a specialized R&D team with perfect technology and rich experience since its very start. During the past six years, this team has designed the high-speed ARM embedded processors of Intel/Marvell Xscale PXA255/PXA270/PXA272/PXA310/PXA320 series based on high-speed ARM processors, and it is the largest third-party design team in China for the previous Intel embedded processor with Xscale ARM architecture, good at the substrate design of the software such as Linux, Android, WinCE5.0/6.0 and Windows Mobile operating systems, and having completed the design of multiple customized product solutions.
It is noteworthy that since 2004, Emdoor all the time supported Intel University Program covering the laboratories in Category-A schools of higher education, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Xidian University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Tongji University, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, Nankai University, Nanjing University and South China University of Technology, till Intel sold this business to Marvell in 2006. During nearly 8 years from 2003 till 2011, Emdoor education platform and teaching scheme has been purchased by National-level Electrotechnic and Electronic Experiment Demonstration Center of Xidian University, and the embedded laboratories or electrotechnic and electronic experiment centers in almost all schools of higher education (including higher vocational and training colleges).
Emdoor Digital MID Solution Brief:
- The Emdoor Digital MID Solution mainly uses Amlogic AML8726-MX, AML8726-M3 processor, with the core of Cortex-A9, clocked at 1.5G and featuring strong capacity.
- The latest Android 4.1 system is adopted, able to support Flash11 and powerful third-party software.
- All-touch design is adopted, with all levels of resolution covering 800*480-1280*800.
- Built-in WIFI wireless network can support 3G modules (Optional), WCDMA / EVDO / TDSCDMA, as well as optional built-in GPS modules.
- It can support web surfing, e-mail sending and receiving, QQ / MSN / SKYPK online chat, online games, Internet TV, stock + funds + futures, real-time pricing, real-time transactions and more other office software, as well as browsing and editing of WORD, EXCEL, PPT, PDF, TXT and other document formats.
- Able to support all major audio, video, photos, FLASH plug-ins and a number of game sets, as well as 38 countries’ languages and 28 countries’ 3G parameters, all programs use ultra-low power consumption and robust power management design, boasting stable performance, high productivity, fast delivery and excellent service.
Products Development:
- Feb. 2008 Tablet R &D team was under preparation.
- Dec. 2008 1st tablet solution which was based on Marvell PXA303 was developed successfully.
- Mar. 2009 Selected as the key cooperative Design House of Marvell in Great China.
- Apr. 2009 Tablet with 4.3” touch screen and based on Android 1.1 was 1st published in China.
- Jun. 2009 Series of Android Netbook were released.
- Sep. 2009 Tablet with 7” touch screen and based on Android1.5 was 1st published in the industry.
- Jan. 2010 Tablets with 7” touch screen and built-in WCDMA based on Android forayed into Japanese market.
- Mar. 2010 7” Tablets with built-in WCDMA based on Android forayed into Germany Vodafone Telecom.
- Apr. 2010 Changed the chips solution supplier from Marvell to Telechips.
- Oct. 2010 Mass production started, the PCBA sales volume in Q4 was over 250,000 pieces.
- Jan. 2011 Tablet solutions based on Android2.3, Telechips 8803, Cortex, 1.2GHz was 1st published in the industry.
- Apr. 2011 Tablet solutions from 5” to 10” based on Android 2.3.3, Telechips8803 were keeping steady mass production.
- Jul. 2011 Be the supplier of well known educational enterprises in China for teaching platforms.
- Sep. 2011 Successively released diversified new tablet solutions such as EM76, EM78, EM89, EM101 and EM102.
- Oct. 2011 Emdoor Digital was participated in the China Sourcing Fair (Electronics & Components), which was hosted by Global Sources in Asia World-Expo, Hong Kong.
- Dec. 2011 Tablet solutions from 7” to10” based on Android 4.0, Telechips 8923, Cortex new generation (Cortex-A5) were developed successfully.
- Jan. 2012 Emdoor Digital was participated in the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in L.V.
- Feb. 2012 Tablet solutions from 7” to10” based on Android 4.0.3, Amlogic 8726, Cortex-A9 were developed successfully.
- Mar. 2012 Emdoor Digital was participated in the International CeBIT in Hannover Germany.
- Apr. 2012 Emdoor tablet solutions based on Amlogic AML8726-MX Dual Cortex-A9 were first appeared in China Sourcing Fair (Electronics & Components) in Hong Kong.
- May. 2012 Emdoor published mass production solution of Dual-core Tablet PC which based on Amlogic AML8726-MX Dual Cortex-A9 in new products release conference.
- Aug. 2012 Tablet solutions based on Android 4.0.4, Amlogic 8726-MX, Dual core Cortex-A9 appeared successfully at the first China Sourcing Fair-Sao Paulo in Brazil.
Enhanced cloud-based content delivery services to anyone, on any device – from Microsoft (Microsoft Azure Media Services) and its solution partners
Microsoft Azure Media Services – MAMS
(pre April 2, 2014: Windows Azure Media Services – WAMS)
A general introduction (when it was still called WAMS, corrected below):
TV Connect 2014: Martin Wahl, Principal Program Manager, Windows Microsoft Azure Media Services [IPTVWorldSeries YouTube channel, March 26, 2014]
Microsoft Azure Media Services Announces Enhanced Capabilities & New Partnerships at 2014 NAB [by Vibhor_Kapoor on Windows Azure MSDN Blog, April 7, 2014]
Our customers and partners have been building solutions with Microsoft Azure Media Services since its general availability in January 2013, leveraging cloud capabilities in media processing and delivery. Today, we are pleased to announce exciting new partnerships, customers, and capabilities at the 2014 NAB Show in Las Vegas that further support our vision to deliver any media on virtually any device, anywhere.
New Capabilities: We are excited to announce the following capabilities in a limited public preview that will further enrich the end-to-end, ready-to-use video workflow for encoding, packaging and distribution of live and on-demand content.
- Live Streaming: Building on the success of live streaming the 2014 Winter Olympics to millions of customers in 22 countries, we will soon be opening up the underlying technology that made this possible in preview to our customers. Media Services customers will have access to the tools and services needed to handle everything from ingest to processing, and distribution of on-demand video content or streaming live events at Olympic scale, to nearly any device.
- Secure Delivery Service: Media Services is also pleased to announce the preview of a secure delivery service that enables customers to protect their content during upload, while at rest in storage, and during playback, using either Microsoft PlayReady Digital Rights Management (DRM) or AES encryption.
- Office 365 Video Portal: We’re also very excited about a new Office 365 video experience for enterprise customers that we announced at the SharePoint Conference 2014. The Office 365 Video experience offers secure, cloud-based video upload, storage and optimized playback for businesses, all powered by Azure Media Services. To learn more about it, clickhere.
New Customer & Partner Wins: The integration of third party technologies, breadth of Microsoft’s partner ecosystem and customer momentum makes Media Services a strong choice for organizations looking to move to the cloud for processing anddistribution of media content. We are pleased to announce the following partnerships and customers:
- Ooyala Partnership: We’re very excited about our recently announced strategic relationship with Ooyala, a leading online video platform. Combining Microsoft’s strengths in video infrastructure, encoding, packaging and streaming with Ooyala’s SaaS-based content management, analytics and monetization gives customers the ability to solve for the challenges of multi-screen services efficiently and reliably. Learn more about the partnership in Ooyala’s press release.
- iStreamPlanet Partnership: We’re proud to offer the same live streaming platform that delivered the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi by introducing live video services from iStreamPlanet, powered by Aventus, in the Azure Store. Customers will be able to choose from packages tailored for recurring live events, ad hoc live events, and live linear streaming channels with fast, high quality, and reliable live ingest and transcoding. The offering will be available in Q2 2014.
- blinkbox Customer Win: blinkbox, a leading UK movie and TV Streaming Service, is taking advantage of Microsoft Azure to expand its business and deliver more content to more customers, with outstanding reliability and quality. Learn more about it here.
- FansChoice.tv Customer Win: Fans Choice.tv, a video content site from the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) Pro, International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) Pro and NASCAR gives race fans anywhere access to premium race video content via the web, tablets, smartphones and PCs. Using Microsoft Azure Media Services, the website live streams various events across several different racing series not covered by broadcast television. Learn more about it here.
To learn more about these announcements and for additional details on several other exciting updates, please visit John Deutscher’s blog.
To learn how you can leverage Media Services for your video-on-demand, live streaming, and enterprise video projects, please contact us at mediaservicespreview@microsoft.com and visit www.azure.com/media
I would briefly characterize here the new Ooyala relationship as it is quite exemplary:
Ooyala today announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft Corp. to help develop, promote and accelerate the deployment of next-generation IP video services utilizing Microsoft Azure Media Services (Media Services) in conjunction with Ooyala’s SaaS-based video distribution, analytics and monetization technology. Ooyala also formed a global sales and marketing alliance with Microsoft, which is designed to drive standardization of new personalized TV services for broadcasters and operators around the world.
Through this partnership, Ooyala becomes a preferred online video provider for Microsoft and Microsoft becomes Ooyala’s preferred public cloud provider.
From Ooyala and Microsoft Announce Partnership for IP Video Services [Streaming Media Magazine, March 31, 2014]
especially because its long-time Ooyala on AWS – Customer Success Story [Amazon Web Services YouTube channel, Aug 15, 2013]
as well as its value proposition as presented in Ooyala Brand Essence Video [Magnet Media, Inc. YouTube channel, Dec 17, 2013]
also as a year ago Ooyala already explained why live video is killing online (also need to know: 25% of the world’s online video traffic is analyzed by Ooyala) Sean Knapp Interview, NAB 2013, StreamingMedia.com [Streaming Media YouTube channel, May 6, 2013]
plus they were one of leading companies discussing on a UK panel what distribution models exist for professional content creators, and how best to leverage them:
Reinventing Distribution: Ooyala, Viki & Base79 – MIPCube 2013 [mipmarkets YouTube channel, April 10, 2013]
there is an introduction of their companies by each of the panelists in the following order:
1. Ooyala, USA (… was started by some “refugees” from Google:
watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF7XibwA1Z4)
2. Base79, UK (distribute content primarily on YouTube platform:
read http://www.base79.com/about-us/ or watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8Tra5nBbms)
3. Viki, USA (distributing video shows worldwide by bringing down language barriers, for 156 different languages: read http://www.viki.com/about or watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVH–bLiVZ8)
till [13:30], and then comes the discussion part.
Details of the Microsoft NAB 2014 announcement
NAB 2014 Announcements from Media Services [‘The (unofficial) Guide to Azure Media’, April 7, 2014]
By John Deutscher, Principal Program Manager Lead, @johndeu
We are unveiling several exciting updates to Microsoft Azure Media Services at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention today, all consistent with Media Service’s broader vision of helping media developers build end-to-end media workflows and reduce the costs associated with integrating multiple products and providers. This includes key new services like Live, Content Protection and Key Delivery, and enhancements to our encoder’s capabilities and support for popular streaming formats. We are also working on improving the integration of CMS’s with Media Services by offering low-cost open source solutions along with more complex integrations with industry leading OTT providers.
Here are some of the highlights of what our team has been working on for NAB this year:
Live Streaming Preview
Building on the success of live streaming the 2014 Winter Olympics to millions of customers in 22 countries, we will soon be opening up the underlying technology that made this possible in preview to our customers.
All Media Services customers will have access to the tools and services needed to handle everything from ingest to processing, and distribution of on-demand video content or streaming live events at Olympic scale, to nearly any device.
If you’re interested in previewing our live services contact us at: mediaservicespreview@microsoft.com.
On-Demand Encoding and Streaming
Secure Delivery Service Preview
We are introducing a new secure delivery service that enables customers to protect their content during upload, while at rest in storage, and during playback, using either Microsoft PlayReady Digital Rights Management (DRM) or AES 128 encryption. This feature allows you to serve both encrypted HLS and Smooth Streaming to your client devices. In addition, we are announcing the preview release of our PlayReady License delivery service. Using this new service you can configure and deliver PlayReady licenses to your client applications directly from a Microsoft Azure platform service.
For more details on the new PlayReady service and AES dynamic encryption with Azure Media Services, please read Mingfei Yan’s latest blog post here.
If you’re interested in previewing our secure delivery services contact us at: mediaservicespreview@microsoft.com.
Office 365 Video Portal
Just a few weeks back at the SharePoint conference we introduced a new Office 365 video experience for enterprise customers – offering secure, cloud-based video upload, storage and optimized playback all powered by Media Services. This new service leverages the power of Azure Media Services encoding, streaming, and security services to provide an enterprise grade solution with the power of Office 365 in the cloud and on client devices. Learn more about how this awesome new solution can work for your organization here.
From that:
Office 365 Video Portal. Today, Microsoft previewed the new Office 365 Video Portal to support upload, storage and discovery of videos in a secure manner. Businesses will be able to categorize videos into channels for specific business needs and stream them on mobile devices, with all of the video compression, optimization and rendering work done by Office 365.
Two New Data Centers in Japan
Our platform team opened two new data centers for Media Services last month for our Japanese customers: Japan-West and Japan-East. We are all very excited about this new region and are looking forward to working with our new customers in Japan.
MPEG-DASH for On-Demand Streaming is now GA
Our streaming server team continues to invest in MPEG-DASH across both On-Demand and Live scenarios. Last year we launched our On-Demand DASH preview and contributed reference streams to the DASH-IF site — these enable player development across the ecosystem. We are actively working with contributors (including Microsoft Open Technologies) to the DASH-IF JavaScript player to ensure interoperability of Live streams produced in Media Services with the DASH.js player framework.
We are happy to announce that our MPEG-DASH support for on-demand streaming through our streaming origin services is now GA. It is included in the cost of an Origin reserved unit. Live streaming with MPEG-DASH is still in private preview and available only to Live preview customers at this time.
Contact us if you are interested in testing MPEG-DASH live streaming at: mediaservicespreview@microsoft.com.
Grass Valley® HQ/HQX Digital Intermediate File Support
The encoder team added built-in support for sourcing from Grass Valley’s HQ Codec/HQX Codec. This opens up a new door for high-quality digital intermediate ingest into Media Services. The higher quality source files from Grass Valley’s HQ and HQX codecs provides the ability to encode without significant quality loss at high-speed and with low CPU usage.
The HQX format supports compression ranges from 25:1 to 2:1 and bitrates from 45 Mb/s down to 7.8Mb/s. In addition, the codec supports 10 bit color depth and 4:2:2 YCbCr chroma. Grass Valley Edius users can now upload and encode AVI files with the codec for encoding and stream them for multi-device distribution via HLS, MPEG-DASH, and Smooth Streaming.
To read more details about the benefits of the Grass Valley HQ/HQX digital intermediate format download the application note here.
Apple HLS version 3 Support for Improved Backwards Compatibility
Responding to customer demand, our streaming server team added support for the older HLS version 3 draft specification to our Dynamic Packaging feature. Previously we only supported the newer un-muxed HLS version 4 specification. Multi-language support was the primary motivation behind choosing HLS v4 two years ago for our service. At that time, Android was seeing a lot of active development and with its largely international customer base, it was assumed that Android would adopt HLS v4 for these multi-lingual markets. Unfortunately that is not what happened.
We listened to customer feedback that a lot of older devices had not moved to the newer Apple drafts including some Smart TV’s, JWPlayer, and Android. This feature of the streaming origin server now provides backward compatibility to older Android devices, version 4.2.2 to present, as well as the ability to reach older connected TVs and set-top boxes. In addition, we have added the ability to select audio languages when streaming HLS v3 using Azure Media Services — despite limitations in the original specification. To use HLS v3 in production today, simply modify and add a “–v3″ to the end of your streaming manifest URL for HLS:
*.ism/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl-v3)
This will mux the default audio language into the video. For more details on how to handle multi-language muxing with HLSv3, read the MSDN forum post with details from Nick Drouin here.
New Content Management Integration with Orchard CMS
Microsoft Open Technologies is announcing a new module for the open source Orchard content management system (CMS) which provides a convenient user interface for managing Azure Media Services content. Now users can store, encode, manage and view videos using Media Services natively in Orchard. Multiple input and output formats are supported including adaptive bitrate streams. The included custom video player framework, can automatically select the ideal playback option including Flash, DASH.js and Silverlight, allowing users to preview their content. The integration of Azure Media Services and Orchard makes it easy to build powerful and scalable video content management solution on Microsoft Azure. Features of the new module include:
- Uploading a single video and automatically encoding in multiple formats
- Support for dynamic bitrate output formats (Apple HLS and MPEG-DASH)
- Comprehensive access policies
- Scheduled publication of video assets
- Built-in player that automatically selects the optimal playback client
Getting Started with Orchard and Media Services
There are several ways to set up a site based off of Orchard CMS ranging from the very simple (Azure Web Sites Gallery) to the more complex, but very flexible, building from source code. The modules user guide describes five different ways of enabling these features. The user guide also clearly documents how to configure the module to use your Media Services subscription (if you don’t have a subscription yet you can try things out with a free $200 credit trial subscription) This module is part of the official Orchard project, if you have feature requests, bug reports or better yet documentation and/or code contributions please head on over to the Orchard project.
To get more details on the new module for Media Services, check out the Open Tech project here.
Dolby® Digital Plus Encoding Now Available
Our encoder team is also excited to announce that the Azure Media Encoder is now certified for Dolby® Digital Plus encoding. With the proliferation of devices that consume media, there is an increasing need for customers to offer superior audio quality to their users and deliver premium content with 5.1 surround sound. Using Media Services, HD programming with high quality multi-channel surround sound is now possible across different platforms, including Windows 8, Xbox, mobile devices and more.
Dolby® Digital Plus, or Enhanced AC-3 (E-AC-3), is an advanced surround sound audio codec designed for high quality audio. Dolby Digital Plus is based on core Dolby Digital technologies, an established standard for cinema, broadcast, and home theater surround sound. Start delivering a first-class media experience to your users today.
For more details on using Dolby Digital Plus encoding with Microsoft Azure Media Services, check out this article.
Dolby® Professional Loudness Metering Support
The Azure Media Encoder team is also announcing support for Dolby® Professional Loudness Metering. Viewers adjust the volume control based on the loudness of dialogue, and do not adjust again for typical variations in programs, such as quiet sections without dialogue or brief high-loudness scenes like explosions. Their biggest complaint is when the dialogue level changes drastically from one video to another. Broadcasters and content producers use Dolby® Professional Loudness solutions to help ensure consistent audio loudness levels.
The Dolby® Professional Loudness Metering solution combines the use of standards-based loudness estimation algorithms with Dolby® Dialogue Intelligence™ technology. Supported algorithms are those most prominently in use worldwide: Leq(A), ITU-R BS.1770-1, ITU-R BS.1770-2, and EBU R 128.
With the integration of this technology in Azure Media Encoder, you can now ensure that your Dolby® Digital Plus encodes have the correct setting for Dialog Normalization, and ensure a consistent playback experience for your customers. Start delivering a first-class media experience to your users today. For more details on using Dolby® Professional Loudness Metering with Azure Media Services, check out this article.
Clients
OSMF Player Beta with MPEG-DASH Support
The Media Services client team is announcing a beta version of a Flash based OSMF plugin with MPEG-DASH support. Using the OSMF plugin, you can add both Smooth Streaming and on-demand MPEG-DASH (beta) content playback capabilities to existing OSMF and Strobe Media Playback players and furthermore build rich media experiences for Adobe Flash Player endpoints using Media Services. The player does not yet support live streaming of DASH content, but we are working on that too. Download the new player plugin here.
Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1
Our client team also updated the Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows Phone 8.1 to align with the announcement of Windows Phone 8.1 at the //Build/ conference. This release includes the same feature set as the Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8/8.1 and also uses the same API which will help unifying development efforts across Windows, Windows Phone and XBOX ONE applications For more details check out Cenk Dingiloglu’s blog post here.
Microsoft Smooth Streaming Client SDK 2.5 with MPEG-DASH Support
The PlayReady team, working in conjunction with the Media Services team announced the availability of the Microsoft Smooth Streaming Client 2.5 with MPEG DASH support. This release adds the ability to parse and play MPEG DASH manifests in the Smooth Streaming Media Engine (SSME) to provide a Windows7/Windows8 and MacOS solution using MPEG DASH for on-demand streaming scenarios. Developers that wish to move content libraries to MPEG-DASH now have the option of using DASH in places where Silverlight is supported.
The existing SSME object model forms the basis of DASH support in the SSME. For example, DASH concepts like Adaptation Sets and Representations have been mapped to their logical counterpart in the SSME. Also, Adaptation Sets are exposed as Smooth Streams and Representations are exposed as Smooth Tracks. Existing Track selection and restriction APIs can be expected to function identically for Smooth and DASH content. In most other respects, DASH support is transparent to the user and a programmer who has worked with the SSME APIs can expect the same developer experience when working with DASH content. Download the new player SDK here. For more details check out Cenk Dingiloglu’s blog posthere.
That’s all of the updates from the engineering team for NAB. The business team also has a lot of exciting partnership announcements and customer case studies to talk about as well. I’ll be updating the blog after NAB with announcements and links to more details.
Announcing PlayReady as a service and AES dynamic encryption with Azure Media Services [Mingfei Yan site, April 6, 2014]
Azure Media Services is getting a big update this week in NABShow 2014. Now you have more options to secure your media delivery – by using AES clear key dynamic encryption or Microsoft PlayReady Digital Rights Management (DRM). This feature allows you to serve both encrypted HLS and Smooth Streaming to your client devices.
AES Clear Key Dynamic Encryption Feature explained
Now Azure Media Services allow you to deliver Http-Live-Streaming (HLS) and Smooth Streams encrypted with Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (using 128-bit encryption keys). Media Services also provides the key delivery service that delivers encryption keys to authorized users. The diagram below demonstrate how this feature works.
Firstly of all, similar to dynamic packaging, you bring in multi-bitrate Mp4 or Smooth Streaming video file. If you want for Media Services to encrypt an asset, you need to associate an encryption key with an asset and also configure authorization policies for the key, After that, Media Services origin server will dynamically encrypt HLS or Smooth Streaming stream with AES encryption algorithm. When a stream is requested by a “player”, Media Services uses the specified key to dynamically encrypt your content using AES encryption. To decrypt the stream, the “player” will request the key from the key delivery service. To decide whether or not the user is authorized to get the key, the service evaluates the authorization policies that you specified for the key. We provides three options: Token-based authentication, IP-based authentication and open. If you choose Token-based authentication, usually you will integrate the token issue progress into your own authentication system. Therefore, only authorized player could obtain a valid token from your Authentication system, and our key service will validate the token and issue AES key for the player to decrypt the stream.
Which client platform and devices support AES decryption?
AES decryption is a open algorithm that everyone could implement after downloading the stream. We have implement AES decryptor as plugin into the following Platform:
- Flash OSMF plugin to decrypt AES encrypted smooth streaming
- Windows 8 cache plugin to decrypt AES encrypted smooth streaming
For iOS, it natively supports AES encrypted HLS stream decryption. We will provide sample code for handling the Key request.
Who should use AES dynamic encryption?
AES dynamic encrypts on-the-wire communication using the widely-known symmetric AES encryption algorithm. Therefore, this would prevent man-in-the-middle attack, if someone eavesdrops the communication, he won’t get any useful information. However, the AES key considers in the “clear” on client devices. Therefore, it requires you to trust your client. For instance, enterprise videos could be a good use case. Usually employees are bounded by employee agreement of not to distribute their training videos. Hence, enterprise just needs to prevent outsider grabbing the video through traffic. Last month, Office 365 launched a video portal based on SharePoint for enterprise to share knowledge. All videos are using AES dynamic encryption and streamed out through Azure Media Services.
PlayReady as a Service feature explained
Azure Media Services provides a Microsoft PlayReady license delivery service. PlayReady is a full-featured content access protection technology developed my Microsoft that uses Digital Rights Management (DRM). It protects a content media stream during playback by using a license server that provides the decryption key needed to decrypt the media stream. For more information, see Microsoft PlayReady. This diagram below shows how this works in details:
Firstly, you need to pre-encrypt Smooth Streaming file with PlayReady License, by providing us License Acquisition URL, Key ID and Content Key. You could follow this MSDN article to use Azure Media Encryptor to encrypt the Smooth Streaming file. As a output, you could further package the encrypted Smooth Streaming into HLS and DASH (See how here). You could also define how the license could be authorized to your user. Similar to AES dynamic encryption, we enable Token/IP/Open authentication service.
When a user tries to watch PlayReady protected content, the client player application requests the content from Azure Media Services. Azure Media Services then redirects the client to an Azure Media Services PlayReady licensing server that authenticates and authorizes the user’s access to the content. The client can then download and decrypt the content. Azure Media Services enables content providers to configure license delivery policy for each client.
Which platform/devices that PlayReady SDK covers?
Azure Media Services can be used to encode, download, or stream Smooth Streaming or MPEG DASH content encrypted with PlayReady. For consuming PlayReady encrypted content, client SDKs and the PlayReady Porting Kit are available under commercial licensing terms. (PlayReady clients for Windows 8.1 Store Apps can be built using the free SDK located HERE). These client-side SDKs are not part of this preview.
Who should use PlayReady content protection?
Both PlayReady and AES encrypts the stream over the wire, so it prevents man-in-the-middle attack. However, on the device side, when you use PlayReady, the decryption of the stream happens in a secure DRM environment, which is in a lower stack of the operating system. Therefore, neither the key nor the content would be exposed in clear. If you have primium content and you need to prevent piracy, Digital Right Management(DRM) such as PlayReady is definitely the way to go. Plus, PlayReady allows you to define a comprehensive licensing agreement, such as how many times user get to watch the content, how long the content is available to the user and etc.
How do I get access to these services?
Currently, we are running both AES dynamic encryption and PlayReady service as private preview. We are working on get the services out of the door for preview soon. If you are interested in trying the service out, please email mediaservicespreview@microsoft.com and copy me yanmf@microsoft.com.
FansChoice.tv and Ooyala choose Microsoft to help them deliver content to anyone, on any device [The Official Microsoft Blog, April 7, 2014]
The following post is from Susan Hauser, Corporate Vice President, Enterprise and Partner Group, Microsoft.
On Monday at the 2014 NAB Show exhibition, Microsoft is showing the latest technology innovations for the broadcast media industry. We are also sharing how customers and partners like FansChoice.tvand Ooyala are reaching thousands of viewers with Microsoft technology. Monday’s announcements are part of our ongoing commitment to enable a wide variety of broadcasters to reach more customers using technologies that are secure, easy to use and cost-effective. You will also see us announce the new Microsoft Azure Media Services capabilities and Skype’s new integrated solution for broadcasters “Skype TX”.
Microsoft Azure Media Services
With Microsoft Azure Media Services, broadcasters can focus on content and leave the delivery to us.
FansChoice.tv, a collaboration between American Motorcyclist Association Pro, International Motor Sports Association and NASCAR, turned to Microsoft Azure to quickly build and launch a new live stream-capable website featuring the ability to stream live races and offer access to a library of exciting on-demand racing content. This provided fans at home access to an array of content not covered by broadcast television, via the Web, tablets, smartphones and PCs.
Ooyala also announced a new strategic relationship with Microsoft to develop, promote and accelerate the deployment of next-generation IP video services utilizing Media Services in conjunction with Ooyala’s Web-based video distribution, analytics and monetization technology. Combining Microsoft’s investments in video infrastructure, encoding, packaging and streaming with Ooyala’s strengths in content management, analytics and monetization provides customers with all the elements they need for online video development.
As broadcasters look to the cloud to accelerate the delivery of premium content, security is a key consideration. Microsoft is deeply committed to security and, in support of those efforts, is offering a new license delivery service that allows customers to apply Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) or PlayReady encryption to help protect and secure their video content.
Media Services was built to meet the demands of every broadcaster, so organizations of any size, from NBC Sports to United Kingdom-based blinkbox, have access to a powerful and scalable cloud platform that grows with their business. A recent example is the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, which were delivered to audiences in 22 countries across four continents by broadcasters using Media Services to provide high definition live coverage of every event.
On Monday, we are announcing a new solution available in the coming year for broadcasters, Skype TX, which can make any location in the world a professional studio. Skype TX is studio-grade software that delivers high-quality audio and video output to improve broadcast and media programming to people around the world. Skype TX includes call handling management for multiple, simultaneous Skype calls on one management interface, is free of audio and visual distractions such as call notifications and ads, and maintains HD-SDI Video output and input essential for broadcasters. This improved offering is a result of the recent Skype acquisition of long-time broadcast partner Cat and Mouse. We encourage you to visit www.skypeinmedia.com for more information on how Skype TX can enrich your broadcast and media programming.
My insert here: StudioTech NAB 2014 – 9: Skype TX (the first interview given at NAB!) [StudioTech TV YouTube channel, April 7, 2014]
End of the insert
Providing the Platform for the New Media Model
Over the past decade, cloud computing changed the media landscape immeasurably, offering nearly any media company new delivery options to extend their content to more people.
Consumers’ options have multiplied as well; the convergence of online, digital content and the myriad of new form factors have created new expectations. Customers can watch what they want, when they want, where they want on screen sizes from 3 inches to 80 inches and everywhere in between. Broadcasters need a solution that delivers on all fronts.
With Microsoft’s cloud-based offerings, media companies can grow advertising and paid subscription revenues by extending the reach of their digital distribution capabilities and their brand, as well as launching new channels and services more quickly. They also have control over broadcast quality and the customer experience to create an offering that is consistent with their brand.
With products like Skype TX, Microsoft also empowers content development collaboration between journalists and creative staff. In short, Microsoft is providing the tools that help broadcasters achieve their multi-screen broadcasting goals in a profitable, efficient and timely way. We’re grateful for the opportunity to partner with these organizations to help them reimagine their business and to be a part of this year’s event.
Microsoft and media companies bring content to the masses at the National Association of Broadcasters Show [press alert, April 7, 2014]
Microsoft will showcase its latest broadcast technology solutions that help deliver a connected experience that is secured, seamless and differentiated at industry-leading event.
Where: National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show
Las Vegas Convention Center
3150 Paradise Road
Las Vegas, NV 89109
When: April 7–10, 2014
What: Microsoft Corp. will showcase the latest devices and services that help media companies bring their content and business into the cloud with robust security and deliver quality content to their customers from virtually anywhere. Microsoft Azure will announce new customer wins and Media Services’ capabilities, while Skype will introduce a new studio-grade hardware and software solution for broadcasters, expected to be available early next year. At the Microsoft booth, #SL 5110, attendants will demonstrate how the Microsoft platform, along with its partner ecosystem, is serving media customers through the cloud, tools and devices. Some of the many partners that will be in the booth include:
Axinom – Cross-platform media solutions. Axinom is a leading digital solutions provider serving the world’s major brands in the media and entertainment industry. Axinom’s OTT portfolio features content management (CMS), digital rights management (DRM) and pre-built reference applications for on-demand, live event and live linear content. The company provides customers with an out-of-the-box solution for the entire workflow, from video acquisition right down to delivery to various devices. Axinom OTT is tightly interoperable with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Media Services, offering the flexibility, scalability and reliability of a cloud-based solution. It utilizes Microsoft PlayReady DRM, HTML5 and native technologies, and supports HLS, Smooth Streaming and MPEG-DASH streaming. At the NAB Show, the Axinom team will be presenting a new video streaming showcase running on HTML5, iOS, Android, Windows 8, Windows Phone, Xbox One, set-top box (STB) and smart TV. While demonstrating the whole end-to-end video workflow in real time, Axinom will give an insight into the next generation of OTT video, ensuring impressive results and short time to market.
Decentrix Inc. – BIAnalytix™ Media Business Intelligence (MBI™), maximizing ad sales revenue. Decentrix helps media, entertainment, telecommunications and ad agencies aggregate key audience, inventory and revenue information to support, secure and enhance new evolving advertising sales models. Decentrix provides powerful analytics to allow business users to become data-driven decision-makers. Attendees are encouraged to visit the Decentrix kiosk at the Microsoft booth to see demos of Decentrix’s core BIAnalytix and MobileMBI solutions that allow clients the ability to fast track their enterprise data strategies.
deltatre – Diva, the world’s greatest player. Diva is the ultimate live and on-demand sports video player that creates a unique and immersive viewing experience for fans — while it also helps content owners monetize their properties across platforms. Diva combines live video with sports data, social and editorial content in a single graphic interface, giving end users the best of engagement and transforming them into active viewers. Content owners can maximize the value of their digital rights with a concrete return on investment. At the Microsoft booth, deltatre will re-create the drama that captivated the audiences during Sochi 2014 with Diva and live demos from the Winter Games.
KORE Software – KORE MediaPitch™, extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM for media and entertainment. KORE is the market leader in business management software for the media, entertainment and sports industries. KORE MediaPitch is an additive to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and transforms it into a CRM-based media and sponsorship sales, analysis and proposal tool, which consolidates all existing inventory into one view (traditional media, digital, sponsorship, hospitality, etc.) across multiple sales divisions to drive sales, streamline operations and increase profits. Benefits for media companies include margin optimization, inventory visibility and management, proposal generation, forecasting, dynamic rate cards, and increased productivity. Leading global media, entertainment and sports organizations utilize KORE. A presentation and demo of KORE MediaPitch will be available in the Microsoft booth.
Other News:
Microsoft engineer Jonathan Tanner will lead an education session April 10 at 11:30 a.m., Room S227: “Encoding and Protecting Content in the Windows Environment, From Clients to the Cloud.”
FansChoice.tv, a video content site from the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) Pro, International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) Pro and NASCAR, is supported by Microsoft Azure: Three Developers, Two Weeks, One Ground-breaking Motorsports Online Experience
Ooyala Inc. is announcing that Microsoft is now its preferred public cloud provider:Microsoft and Ooyala Team to Deliver Best-of-Breed Multi-Screen Digital TV Services forBroadcasters and Operators.
For more details on other Microsoft activities at NAB, please visit The Official Microsoft Blog: FansChoice.tv and Ooyala choose Microsoft to help them deliver content to anyone, on any device
Who:
(Available for interviews)
Bob De Haven, General Manager, Worldwide Communications & Media at Microsoft
Tony Emerson, Managing Director, Worldwide Media & Cable at Microsoft
More Details: More information is available athttp://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/industry/communications-and-media/media-and-cable/events/nabshow/default.aspx#fbid=95r9qrqPb9F.
For the latest NAB news, links and photos, follow @MSFTenterprise, @MSFT4Work, @Azure and@Skype on Twitter.
Wintel rebirth amid the stock market turning negative about the Wintel future
Despite of the Intel video of a year ago getting totally new meaning this week:
with:
- Microsoft BUILD 2014 Day 1: consistency and superiority accross the whole Windows family extended now to TVs and IoT devices as well—$0 royalty licensing program for OEM and ODM partners in sub 9” phone and tablet space [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 2, 2014]
- IDF14 Shenzhen: Intel is levelling the Wintel playing field with Android-ARM by introducing new competitive Windows tablet price points from $99 – $129 [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 4, 2014]
the stock market has just turned negative about the future of both companies:
source: http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/INTC
source: http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/MSFT?s=msft
An explanation for that:
Why I Sold All Of My Intel Shares This Week [a “casual investor” by nickname Quoth the Raven on ‘Seeking Alpha’, April 3, 2014]
Summary
- Intel was upgraded by a Piper Jaffray analyst, who cited a slowing PC market decline.
- The PC market, sans Mac, has been on a decline that hasn’t ended, despite people like myself predicting it would have bottomed by now.
- I sold my Intel shares for the time being and am grazing greener pastures.
By now, we all know some of the questionable points about Intel’s (INTC) business. In the past, I’ve written about the company being a little slow on the uptake when it came to mobile and tablet sales. Most recently I’ve questioned the company’s vision for jumping into cloud computing with a major investment and abandoning their in-house Hadoop project, ultimately leading to a major waste of money and resources.
First things first; I sold out of my Intel long position the other day, not necessarily discounting the company to be a long-term hold again at some point in the future. I needed the capital for other purposes, evaluated the many positions in my portfolio, and found the most unease about Intel – so, I sold – for now.
And, sure enough, right after I sold, Seeking Alpha came out and reported that Piper Jaffray came out and upgraded the stock:
- As part of a change of coverage for chip stocks, Piper is upgrading Intel to Overweight, and downgrading Broadcom (BRCM) to Neutral.
- The firm thinks Intel will benefit from stabilizing PC sales, and is worried about Broadcom’s mobile customer concentration (presumably with Apple and Samsung).
- IDC still expects PC shipments to fall another 6% in 2014. But Y/Y decline rates have been narrowing in recent quarters.
- OTR Global recently reported Broadcom’s 3G baseband chip sales to Samsung have fallen sharply. Samsung has also taken steps to increase its use of in-house Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, though that hasn’t stopped Broadcom from continuing to secure combo chip design wins.
- Apple bought Bluetooth chipmaker Passif Semi last year (possibly for iWatch R&D), but hasn’t yet done anything to suggest it’s working on Wi-Fi chips.
When I dug a little deeper into the reasoning behind the upgrade, one thing perked my ears up. Piper is coming out and assuming that the PC market is going to continue to slow and then eventually bottom. I thought this very same thing six months ago. Since then, I’ve continued to watch the PC market decline – albeit slower now – but it has yet to hit a bottom.
Again, Intel’s biggest friend here has been Mac, which has been able to buck the overall trend of the PC market and continue to sell well. Intel leveraging its relationship with Apple (AAPL) at this point remains a key factor in their success.
As the main constituency of Intel products travel through the sales of PCs, this continues to remain a point of unease for Intel. Additionally, Piper is seemingly betting on a flawless execution and growth of Intel’s Quark chipset which certainly is possible, but remains to be seen at this point.
Gartner’s numbers, shown below, continue to show a decrease in PCs for 2015, and an increase in both tablets and mobile – where Intel still does not have a steady foothold.
(click to enlarge – source)
Further, the headlines surrounding the market that even I predicted would have stabilized by now, continue to look ugly. cnet reported:
PC sales will continue to nosedive this year as more consumers scoop up mobile devices, says a new report from Gartner.
Global shipments of personal computers will total 276.7 million in 2014, Gartner forecast on Thursday, a 6.6 percent drop from last year. On the flip side, tablet shipments will jump by 38.6 percent thanks in part to greater demand in regions outside North America.
But the number of people replacing their aging PCs with tablets is actually expected to decline.
But what about globally, you ask? I asked the very same thing – same uneasy headlines, different countries. We continue to see reports, like this one out of Taiwan, claiming that PC sales are poised to decline:
Total PC sales in Taiwan are poised to decline for the fourth consecutive year, as consumers continue to favor mobile devices that are less expensive than, but as productive as, their pricier counterparts, International Data Corp [IDC] forecast yesterday.
National PC sales are expected to fall by 5.1 percent to 2.55 million units this year, following a 15.6 percent fall last year, the market research firm said in a report.
Desktop computers are projected to account for 60 percent of total PC sales this year, with notebook computers making up the remaining 40 percent, the report said.
Last year, desktop and notebook sales in Taiwan reached 1.68 million and 1.01 million units respectively, it added.
But when are we going to hit the coveted bottom that we continue to talk about? It is coming, possibly, but it sure isn’t here yet. And, as long as these sales continue to decline, Intel remains at a vulnerable point as a company. Especially with the questionable vision they have shown of late.
Again, this data [dated March 5] from IDC is once again suggesting that PC sales are going to decline more than we expected this year:
Shipments of new personal computers, most of them equipped with Microsoft Windows (MSFT), will decline more in 2014 than thought a few months ago, researcher IDC said Tuesday.
IDC said that PC shipments will drop by 6% from the year before to approximately 296 million, a smaller number than it forecast three months ago, when it said global shipments would decline 4% in 2014.
Last year, shipments contracted by 10% compared to 2012, dropping to about 315 million new PCs.
IDC revises its numbers quarterly, said Rajani Singh, an analyst with IDC, who pointed out that as the market changes, the company modifies its forecasts, sometimes up, sometimes down.
Even though I thought their new incentive-based pay program was a good idea, there were many that disagreed with me and thought it was bad for business. You could say the same, again, about the company’s recent foray into cloud computing. People ask, “Is it too little, too late?” Why does it seem like Intel is just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks?
(click to enlarge)
Do I think Intel is an absolutely horrible stock to be in for the long-term? Of course I don’t. It pays a dividend, has a good balance sheet, and is going to be around for many years to come. Do I think Intel is ripe for a short to mid-term trade? Absolutely not. I think there’s still work that needs to be done at this point before we see Intel push up towards $30/share and, thusly, I made my decision to sell my Intel shares for the time being and enter an Intel holding pattern.
Best of luck to all investors.
IDF14 Shenzhen: Intel is levelling the Wintel playing field with Android-ARM by introducing new competitive Windows tablet price points from $99 – $129
As Microsoft is going against Android and Apple with a vastly updated Windows/Windows Phone 8.1 for $0 royalty fee on smartphones and tablets with screens under 9”, integrated Windows desktop experience (upcoming in the next update), capability of creating Universal Windows apps accross the whole Windows family, see Microsoft BUILD 2014 Day 1: consistency and superiority accross the whole Windows family e.t.c … [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, April 2, 2014]
Update: Intel aggressively promoting tablet CPUs in China [DIGITIMES, April 14, 2014]
Intel has resorted to an aggressive pricing strategy to promote sales of its tablet-use processors, particularly in China, a move which apparently will take on Qualcomm and MediaTek, while ramping up its market share, according to industry sources.
Prices of Intel’s mainstream quad-core tablet CPUs have dropped to below US$5, which are almost on par with those offered by China-based chipset suppliers such as Rockchip Electronics and Allwinner Technology and even below those available from Nvidia, Qualcomm and MediaTek, said the sources.
Consequently, the number of Intel-based tablets is likely to expand in a great proportion as more and more China-based brand and white-box tablet vendors are expected to use Intel’s tablet CPUs to develop new products, the sources revealed.
Intel’s new policy also focuses on deepening its relationship with the supply chain in China, highlighting by its recent announcement of establishing an Intel Smart Device Innovation Center in Shenzhen and a US$100 million Intel Capital China Smart Device Innovation Fund, commented the sources.
To encourage China-based tablet makers to use Intel’s CPUs, the chipset vendor is offering assistance in terms of design, technology and marketing, the sources indicated.
Intel’s offerings will be particularly attractive to white-box tablet makers as they can optimize low-priced chipsets and advanced technologies to roll out competitive models for the entry-level segment, added the sources.
Intel aims to ship 40 million tablet CPUs in 2014, including entry-level Bay Trail family and SoFIA 3G platform products, the sources noted.
Intel is announcing the Bay Trail-Entry SoCs for that: Atom Z3735G and Z3735F
(As far as the original announcement is concerned read the The long awaited Windows 8.1 breakthrough opportunity with the new Intel “Bay Trail-T”, “Bay Trail-M” and “Bay Trail-D” SoCs? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 14, 2013] post of mine. Note also that by Microsoft the new Bay Trail-Entry SoCs were called “Bay Trail Cost Reduced options”.)
Z3735G/F Bay Trail-Entry Designed Specifically for CTE (China Technical Ecosystem) ODMs an Supply Chain:
– Type 3 packaging of AP and PMIC
>>> Enabling cost effective and broadly
available 6-layer PCBs
– Reduced Component Count
>>> New PMIC with higher level of Integration
>>> Intel Platforms, Bay Trail-Entry 478
vs. Clover Trail+ 496 vs. Bay Trail-v0 700
– CTE-friendly Components
>>> Components selected based on cost and availability in China, after direct ODM & Sales feeback
– Component Catalog
>>> Pre-validated key components to allow reference design variations with fast time to market
Source: TABS002 – Designing Entry and Value Tablets Based on the Intel® Platform, Bay Trail – Entry
(Warning: The slides of that presentation still reflect the case before the $0 Windows royalty fee announcement for tablets with screens under 9” by Microsoft, which occured a few hours before Intel’s Bay Trail-Entry announcement!)
From Bay Trail-v0 to Bay Trail-Entry in terms of tablet circuit boards:
And the effect would be even more dramatic than you would first think: Low cost Windows tablets and Docking Demo [Steve Paine YouTube channel, April 4, 2014]
From Delivering Innovation across Mobile Devices, PCs, Software and Services [Intel Fact Sheet, April 3, 2014] + “Mobile Innovation With Intel Inside” – Hermann Eul Webcast [IDF14 Shenzhen, April 3, 2014] + Intel Developer Forum 2014 Keynote – Hermann Eul (English Slides) (PDF 3.7MB)
(Additional information: Intel Developer Forum – Shenzhen 2014 or IDF14 Shenzhen)
Accelerated Mobile Roadmap
Eul, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Mobile and Communications Group, demonstrated how Intel is accelerating innovation across its mobile platforms, from Intel® Atom™ to LTE, to scale at all prices and designs. The company continues to partner with emerging ODMs and OEMs in China and Taiwan to innovate and drive costs down to deliver compelling mobile devices to consumers around the globe. The China technology ecosystem is key to Intel’s goal of increasing sales of Intel-based tablets this year, and the company has an established program to help these ODMs and OEMs develop, market and sell Intel-based mobile devices at scale.
To further fuel the availability of low-cost, Intel-based tablets, Eul outlined how the company is expanding its Intel® Atom™ Z3700 series (“Bay Trail”) processor lineup to include several new products. New entry SKUs deliver 64-bit-ready, quad-core performance at a much lower cost based on engineering changes to the board design and other third-party components. Eul said these entry “Bay Trail” SKUs are currently in production and Intel anticipates OEMs to launch both Windows* and Android* devices this summer, with some starting at prices as low as US$99.
[Bay Trail 2GHz quad-core SoC has a roughly 2x performance gain vs. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz quad-core SoC in video encoding as it was demonstrated at IDF14 Shenzhen during Hermann Eul’s keynote.]
[ CPU Size reduction: Intel Baytrail for low-cost tablets (IDF14) [Steve Paine YouTube channel, April 3, 2014] ]
[ Intel’s $99 Windows Tablet Prospect. IDF14 [Steve Paine YouTube channel, April 3, 2014] ]
Intel is also introducing two tablet master reference designs that will be available this summer. The reference designs help ODMs deliver low-cost, high-quality Intel-based tablets faster.
Global Marketing Campaigns Begin
Reaching Consumer Globally
Help Consumer Choose
Intel Based Tablets
Reaching IT Decision Makers Globally
With tools to pick the best
tablets for the Enterprise
Marketing Local Innovation
Sell Through Campaigns
Eul also disclosed more details about Intel’s future SoFIA 3G product, a dual-chip, fully integrated SoC that will begin shipping in the fourth quarter this year. SoFIA builds on Intel’s proven communications platforms by adding powerful Intel Atom cores, and it will be targeted at entry and value smartphones and tablets.
Eul said LTE is a priority and opportunity for Intel. The company’s 2014 LTE platform (Intel® XMM™ 7260) features five-mode support, including support for TD-LTE, and TD-SCDMA, which expands its addressable market to include China. Eul said the company is already actively engaged with China operators for certification and field trials are underway.
For overall background about IDF14 Shenzhen watch this report: IDF Shenzhen 2014 Highlights & Analysis [Mobilegeeks.de YouTube channel, April 4, 2014]
Amazon joined the OTT TV, gaming console and entertainment race with its Fire TV
Gary Busey Meets Amazon Fire TV [amazon YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
Amazon unveils the FireTV [CNETTV YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
with no big stock market enthusiasm (I would say “business as usual” reaction):
Analyst commentary: Amazon Unveils Video-Streaming Device ‘Fire TV’ [WSJDigitalNetwork YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
Introducing Amazon Fire TV: The Easiest Way to Watch Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, and More on Your Big-Screen TV [Amazon press release, April 2, 2014]
Powerful performance with 3x the processing power, 4x the memory, dedicated GPU, and dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi
Say it, watch it—use voice search to instantly find movies, TV shows, and more
New ASAP feature predicts which movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and prepares them for playback before you even hit play
Huge, open ecosystem of entertainment—choose from over 200,000 movies and TV episodes
Plus, Fire TV comes with access to games from EA, Disney, Gameloft, Mojang, 2K, Amazon Game Studios, and more
My insert here: Amazon announces Fire TV, its own set top box: 90 Seconds on The Verge [The Verge YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 2, 2014– (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Kindle revolutionized reading by making it possible to think of a book and be reading it in less than 60 seconds. Kindle Fire put the world’s largest selection of movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks, and magazines in the palm of your hand. In each case, Amazonintegrates the hardware, software, and the content into an easy-to-use, seamless, end-to-end service for customers. Today, Amazon is excited to unveil its newest innovation—Fire TV, a tiny box that plugs into your HDTV for easy and instant access to Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME, low-cost video rentals, and much more. Fire TV also brings photos, music, and games to the living room. Meet Amazon Fire TV at www.amazon.com/FireTV.
“Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible price—people are going to love Fire TV,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Voice search that actually works means no more typing on an alphabet grid. Our exclusive new ASAP feature predicts the shows you’ll want to watch and gets them ready to stream instantly. And our open approach gives you not just Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video, but also Netflix, Hulu Plus, and more. On Fire TV you can watch Alpha House and House of Cards.”
Related information:
Prime (+Netflix comparison): Amazon may hike Prime cost as earnings disappoint and further challenges lay ahead of the company for which it needs to adjust its business model and expand its operations [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Jan 31, 2014]
1. Cable and satellite video market (U.S. only)
2. Pay-TV market (cable and satellite, IPTV, terrestrial)
3. The overall TV market (home video, on demand video, linear TV)
4. IPTV—AT&T U-verse TV and Verizon FiOS video in particular
5. OTT (Over-the-top content)
within the Microsoft’s integrated solution for streaming video and Live TV providers on all devices, plus the upcoming live-action and “shared experience” TV of its own on Xbox [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Feb 3, 2014] which also contains:
6. Microsoft’s live TV solution on Xbox
7. Preliminary information on the upcoming products from Xbox Entertainment Studios
8. Xbox Music and Xbox Video services for other devices
Amazon’s move into overall leadership: Kindle Fire HDX with Snapdragon 800, “revolutionary on-device tech support” (Mayday), enterprise and productivity capable Fire OS 3.0 forked from Android 4.2.2 etc. PLUS a significantly enhanced, new Kindle Fire HD for a much lower, $139 price [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 27, 2013]
My insert here: Hands On with Amazon Fire TV [TechCrunch YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
Amazon Fire TV features:
- Voice search that actually works—simply speak the name of a movie, TV show, actor, director, or genre into the remote, and you’re done. No more hunting and pecking in an alphabet grid.
- All the content—instant access to Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, YouTube, and more, plus the largest selection of videos for rent and purchase—over 200,000 movies and TV episodes from Amazon Instant Video. Plus, listen to music with Amazon MP3, Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, and more.
- Powerful performance in a tiny form factor—quad-core processor with over 3x the processing power of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3, a dedicated GPU, plus 4x the memory of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3 for exceptional speed and fluidity. Delivers stunning 1080p HD video and immersive Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. All of this comes in an incredibly small package—Fire TV is 0.7” thin and comes with a simple and sleek remote control with a built-in microphone.
- Simple and easy to use—arrives pre-registered so you can start watching immediately out of the box.
- An exclusive new feature called ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) predicts which movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and buffers them for playback before you even hit play—instant start.
- High-quality, low-cost gaming—games like Minecraft, Monsters University, The Game of Life, The Walking Dead, NBA2K14, Asphalt 8, Riptide GP2, Despicable Me: Minion Rush, and more. The average price of paid games on Fire TV is $1.85. Play using your Fire TV remote, the Fire TV app for smartphones and tablets, or the optional Fire game controller.
- Amazon FreeTime revolutionizes parental controls—parents can choose what their kids see and set time limits for types of content and times of day—no more negotiating for one more show before bedtime. Customers who subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited—Amazon’s all-you-can-eat content subscription designed for kids ages 3 to 8—will get unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV shows.
- X-Ray for movies, TV shows, and music—see information about cast and crew, trivia, goofs, and synchronized lyrics.
- See all of your photos and personal videos come alive on your big-screen TV—seamless integration with Amazon’s Cloud Drive.
Simple and Easy to Use, with Powerful Performance
Powerful Quad-Core Processor and Graphics Engine
Fire TV features a world-class quad-core processor with 3x the processing power of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3, and a dedicated Adreno 320 graphics engine that processes 57 billion floating point instructions per second, for lightning-fast graphics and excellent fluidity. Fire TV comes with 2GB of memory, 4x the memory of Apple TV, Chromecast, or Roku 3, so content loads faster and games run smoother.
New Amazon Fire TV powered by Snapdragon 600 processor [Qualcomm Snapdragon Blog, April 2, 2014]
Amongst popcorn aromas and home-theatre decor, today, Amazon announced Fire TV: a streaming set top box that aims to deliver just about every video streaming service in a compact, powerful package.
Addressing the media at today’s announcement in New York, Amazon.com’s Peter Larsen, Vice President of Kindle, identified three problems with today’s internet-enabled set-top boxes—search, performance, and a closed ecosystem—and detailed how Fire TV solves them.
Granted, search and content ecosystems are well within the purview of Amazon. But performance? That’s where Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processors come in.
Sporting a Snapdragon 600 processor with quad-core CPU, the Fire TV has all the base capabilities you expect from a device that lives in your living room: Full HD 1080p streaming video, 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound, and a lighting-fast, ultra-stable dual-antenna Wi-Fi connection.
With three times the processing power of other set-top boxes, the Fire TV features silky-smooth menu navigation and content browsing. And utilizing the additional performance on tap, Amazon have introduced ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction), which automatically predicts, buffers, and stores the shows you want to watch—all you need to do is hit play, and they instantly start.
But this is Amazon, the everything store. And the Fire TV is the everything box.
Foremost of which is the new voice search. Just press a button on your remote, and the Fire TV can find John Malkovich’s entire body of work at the utterance of his name, or get Team Umizoomi up and streaming almost as fast as you children can yell “Umizoomi.”
In addition to the massive library of movies and TV shows available through just about every video streaming service on the planet; the dedicated Qualcomm Adreno GPU opens up the Fire TV to the gaming world. Available today are staples such Minecraft, The Walking Dead, NBA2K14 and more than 100 other games. In addition, the GPU will power Amazon’s first foray into video games: Sev Zero.
Additionally there’s Second Screen—allowing users to mirror music, movies, and photos from their Kindle Fire HDX (also powered by Snapdragon processors) to their TV. And unlike the set-top boxes that came before, Fire TV will feature X-Ray: A second screen experience, powered by IMDb, that provides viewers with relevant information—such as cast and crew bios, soundtrack credits, trivia, character backstories, and more—as their movie or show plays. Currently, X-Ray is available for Kindle Fire HDX users, with support for iPhone and iPad later this year.
Amazon’s Fire TV is available now for $99.
Streams in High Definition 1080p with Dolby Digital Plus Surround Sound
With dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi, Fire TV streams in up to full-HD 1080p and supports HDMI and optical audio-out, enabling up to 7.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound.
Simple and Easy to Use
Fire TV comes automatically pre-registered so you can immediately get started. No complicated set-up, no hassle—just plug it in and start watching. All of your previously purchased movies and TV shows from Amazon, as well as personalized recommendations and your Watchlist, will be there waiting for you when you turn on Fire TV.
Designed to Disappear
Fire TV is designed to disappear. It is 0.7” thin, so it is easy to hide, and is silent even when running the most demanding applications.
Fire TV Remote
Fire TV’s remote is small, simple, and intuitive, with familiar controls. Search, browse, play, pause, and add titles to your Watchlist with ease. The Fire TV remote uses Bluetooth so there is no “line of sight” required, which means no reaching or struggling to aim your signal at a tiny target—store your Fire TV in a cabinet or behind the TV.
Voice Search that Actually Works
Gone are the days of searching for a movie or TV show by left-left-down-right-ing through an on-screen alphabet grid using your remote. Simply speak the name of a movie, TV show, actor, director, genre, app, or game into the remote, and the results will appear instantly. Voice search leverages the search data and expertise of Amazon.com and IMDb, and is optimized to understand Amazon’s video, app, and game catalog.
The Best Video Experience
Movies and TV Shows from Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and More
Fire TV comes with instant access to all of the most popular subscription video services, including Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, VEVO, SHOWTIME, Crackle, YouTube, and more, with additional services like WWE Network, MLB.TV, WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH ABC, and Twitch coming soon.
Prime Instant Video, with Exclusives and Original Shows
Fire TV is seamlessly integrated with Prime Instant Video, Amazon’s subscription streaming service. With tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes, Prime Instant Video is the exclusive premium subscription streaming home for thousands of hours of video, including shows like Downton Abbey, The Americans, Workaholics, Justified, 24, Hannibal, Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob, and more. Prime Instant Video also includes shows from Amazon Studios, the original TV production arm of Amazon, such as Alpha House from Pulitzer-Prize winner Garry Trudeau and starring John Goodman, which debuted last year and quickly became the most watched show on Amazon since its release. Alpha House is now in production for its second season, and Amazon recently greenlighted six new shows, including The After, Bosch, Mozart in the Jungle, and Transparent, which will be available starting later this year.
The Largest Selection of Videos for Rent or Purchase
Rent or purchase over 200,000 movies and TV episodes from Amazon Instant Video, which has the world’s largest selection of videos to rent or buy, including new releases and blockbusters. Amazon is the only nationwide video service that offers rental and purchase, as well as a subscription streaming service, so you can find everything you want in one place—catch up on past seasons of popular TV shows with Prime Instant Video before purchasing the most recent episode of the show as it’s released.
Find the Lowest Price—Even if it’s Not from Amazon
Just like on Amazon.com, Fire TV integrates viewing options on a single page so you can always choose the lowest price. This is available starting with Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and Prime Instant Video, and will expand to other content providers so you’ll see all of your options in one place.
ASAP
You shouldn’t have to wait 10 seconds for a video to buffer after you press “Play”—it should start immediately. Based on your Watchlist and recommendations, the new ASAP (Advanced Streaming and Prediction) feature predicts which movies and TV episodes you’ll want to watch and prepares them for playback before you even hit play. This feature is smart—it is personalized based on your viewing habits and adapts as those habits change. The caching predictions get better over time, so ASAP will continuously improve as you use Fire TV.
Fling TV Shows and Movies with Second Screen
Fling Amazon TV shows and movies from your phone or tablet to your Fire TV using Second Screen. This turns your TV into the primary screen and frees up your phone or tablet to provide playback controls, a customized display for X-Ray, or simply a place to email, browse the web, and more, while you watch a movie. Second Screen is available on Kindle Fire HDX and will be available later this year from your iPhone or iPad. You can also wirelessly mirror your tablet display to your Fire TV with Kindle Fire, as well as other Miracast-enabled phones or tablets starting later this year. Fire TV supports standards like DIAL, so app developers can enable multi-screen experiences based on open technologies.
X-Ray for Movies and TV Shows, Powered by IMDb
Using Second Screen on your Fire HDX and later this year on your iPhone or iPad, you can see X-Ray information as your movie or TV show plays on Fire TV. With X-Ray you can see information about cast and crew, the names of songs as they play, as well as a list of all music in the movie or TV show, trivia items in context with the action on the screen, and character backstories so you can easily remind yourself of the character’s history. X-Ray is exclusive to Amazon and is powered by IMDb.
Amazon FreeTime—Revolutionary Parental Controls
Now you don’t have to worry about what your kids are watching on the TV—with FreeTime, a parent creates profiles for each child and selects the content they can see. Parents can create time limits based on type of content or time of day. When in FreeTime, the background color and fonts change to a kid-friendly design. Kids only see titles that have been selected by their parents for them, and those who can’t yet read can navigate visually to content based on favorite characters or topics—for example “Dora the Explorer,” “Princesses,” or “Thomas and Friends.” Parents who have already set up profiles and approved content on Kindle Fire tablets will find the settings are automatically synchronized on Fire TV, making it simple and seamless to get started.
Customers who subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited—Amazon’s all-you-can-eat content subscription designed just for kids ages 3 to 8—will get unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV shows. FreeTime Unlimited is available for Prime members to enjoy for a monthly price of $2.99 per child or $6.99 per family. Customers who are not yet Prime members can subscribe to FreeTime Unlimited for a monthly price of $4.99 per child or$9.99 per family. Amazon FreeTime and FreeTime Unlimited will be available on Fire TV starting next month.
Your Photos on the Big Screen
Fire TV makes it easy to view your photos and personal videos on your TV. You can set up and play slide shows, find specific photos, and choose your favorite album for the screen-saver on Fire TV. Photos or videos you take on your phone or tablet can be automatically uploaded to Amazon Cloud Drive, so they appear on your Fire TV within seconds.
Music in Your Living Room
Music from Pandora, Amazon MP3, iHeartRadio, and More
With Fire TV, you can listen to music from popular streaming services like Pandora, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn, and watch music videos from VEVO. Starting next month, you can also listen to your full collection of music through Amazon Cloud Player. Simply upload your music or purchase from Amazon and it will be stored automatically in your Cloud Player and available on Fire TV as well as on your phone or tablet.
X-Ray for Music
Lyrics display and scroll line-by-line automatically as the song plays, so you can follow along with songs. X-Ray for Music will be available starting next month.
Bonus—Great Games at Low Prices
Games from Top Developers
Amazon worked with game developers like EA, Disney, Gameloft, Ubisoft, Telltale, Mojang, 2K, and Sega to bring their games to Fire TV. Games available starting today include customer favorites like Minecraft, Monsters University, The Game of Life, The Walking Dead, NBA2K14, Asphalt 8, Riptide GP2, Despicable Me: Minion Rush, and more. Over 100 games are available starting today and optimized for Fire TV, with thousands of additional games coming next month with the Fire TV app, which brings controls for touch-enabled games. These are great games for such a small box and at such surprisingly low prices—the average price of paid games is $1.85.
Fire TV also comes with access to Sev Zero, a new game built exclusively for Fire TV by Amazon Game Studios. Sev Zero is $6.99 and is available for free when you purchase the Fire game controller. Learn more: www.amazon.com/pr/SevZero.
Fire TV runs the latest version of Fire OS “Mojito,” which is based on Android, so it’s simple for developers to port their services and games over to Fire TV.
Choose How to Play—Remote, Game Controller, or App
In addition to using the Fire TV remote and the Fire TV app available starting next month, you can also choose the Amazon Fire game controller, which enables more high-intensity and complex gaming with dual analog sticks and a complete assortment of controls. Simple and comfortable to use for hours, the Fire game controller pairs with Fire TV via Bluetooth. The Fire game controller also intelligently manages power by automatically going to sleep when not in use, and waking at a touch of a button, so you get up to 55 hours of gaming on a pair of AA batteries. You can pair multiple game controllers with a Fire TV so the whole family can play together in the same room. The integrated GameCircle button gives you instant access to leaderboards, achievements and friends with a simple touch of a button from any GameCircle enabled game. The Fire game controller can also be used as a remote, with fast forward, rewind, play and pause, so you can control all your movies and music on Fire TV. The Fire game controller is available today for $39.99, and comes with a free copy of Sev Zero and 1,000 Amazon Coins (a $10 value) for purchasing games.
The Features You Expect from Amazon
Fire TV is not a gadget—it’s a seamlessly integrated service that brings together the features customers expect from Amazon, including:
- Whispersync—Amazon’s Whispersync technology saves and synchronizes your video and music library across all of your devices. Start watching a movie on your Kindle Fire or iPhone, and when you get home, pick up where you left off on your Fire TV. For games that support Whispersync, your place in the game will also sync across devices so you can always pick up where you left off.
- Watch on over 300 devices—When you buy a movie or TV show on Amazon, you can watch it on over 300 devices.
- Worry-Free Archive—Automatically backs up your Amazon digital content in the cloud so you never need to worry about losing your collection.
- Top-Rated, World-Class Customer Service—When a customer shops on Amazon, buys a Fire TV, or buys digital content from Amazon, they know that they are also getting Amazon’s world class customer service. Customers with a Kindle Fire HDX can also use the Mayday button to receive free, live, on-device tech support.
- Free Month of Amazon Prime—Amazon continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Prime members new movies, TV shows, and books to enjoy at no additional cost. Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video. Eligible customers get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime when they purchase Fire TV.
Pricing & Availability
Fire TV is available starting today for just $99—order at www.amazon.com/FireTV.
Eligible customers get a free 30-day trial of Netflix and Amazon Prime when they purchase Fire TV.
Images of Fire TV are available at www.amazon.com/pr/devicesandcontent.
Snapdragon 600 processor specs [Qualcomm product page, March 25, 2014]
CPU
28nm LP quad core Krait 300 CPU at up to 1.9GHz per core
LP-DDR3 memory for high performance and low latency
GPU
Speed enhanced Adreno 320 GPU delivers over 300% increase in graphics processing performance1
Support for advanced graphic and compute APIs, including OpenGL ES 3.0, DirectX, OpenCL, Renderscript Compute and FlexRender™2
Power Management
Energy efficient LP process and dynamic GPU clock and voltage scaling
Asynchronous Multi-Processing (aSMP) dynamic CPU power control for power-optimized performance
Qualcomm Quick Charge 1.0 integrated for up to 40% faster battery charging
DSP
Hexagon, QDSP6
Hexagon DSP enables ultra-low power operation for a variety of applications like music playback, enhanced audio effects, computer vision processing and still and video image enhancements
USB
USB 2.0
Bluetooth
BT4.0 + Integrated digital core
Display
Enjoy your photos, videos and games on large, high-resolution display devices (up to 2048×1536) and even on 1080p external displays
WiFi
802.11ac3 Wi-Fi for peak Wi-Fi performance + Integrated digital core3
Publicly demonstrated to 280 Mbps UDP
GPS
IZAT™ location technology features GNSS for accurate auto and pedestrian navigation and Indoor Location capabilities for advanced location-based services
Video/Audio
Capture and playback video at 1080p HD
HD multichannel sound with DTS-HD and Dolby Digital Plus
Camera
Up to 21 Megapixel, stereoscopic 3D
Take high-resolution, 3D photos with 21 Megapixel stereoscopic camera support
Process Technology
28nm LP
1 Compared to its predecessor, Adreno 305
2 FlexRender is designed to help the Adreno GPU boost speed and save power by dynamically switching between drawing pixels in direct or deferred rendering mode
3 Available only in select processors
Snapdragon 600 processors include the following part numbers: 8064T, 8064M
Microsoft BUILD 2014 Day 1: consistency and superiority accross the whole Windows family extended now to TVs and IoT devices as well—$0 royalty licensing program for OEM and ODM partners in sub 9” phone and tablet space
OR Microsoft is going against Android and Apple with a vastly updated Windows/Windows Phone 8.1 for $0 royalty fee on smartphones and tablets with screens under 9”, integrated Windows desktop experience (upcoming in the next update), capability of creating Universal Windows apps accross the whole Windows family (demonstrated with the Modern version of the Office upcoming later), an open-source cross-platform WinJS framework, the first true digital assistant for phones (Cortana), showing that for TVs, as well as planning for IoT devices.
Update: the expectation was somewhat higher: 
although was met when looking back to Nadella’s March 27 Office for iPad announcement:
|
Microsoft showcases latest updates to Windows, opportunities for developers April 02, 2014 SAN FRANCISCO — April 2, 2014 — Wednesday at Build 2014, Microsoft Corp.’s developer conference, the company announced several advances to Windows including Windows Phone 8.1, the availability of Windows 8.1 Update, a converged developer platform, and a $0 royalty licensing program for OEM and ODM partners developing smartphones and tablets with screens under nine inches.Microsoft detailed new developer opportunities on the Windows platform with a common platform across devices, a single toolset, a common infrastructure across the Windows and Windows Phone stores, and a clear commitment to interoperability. The announcements highlight Microsoft’s continued commitment to its partners and the developer community by maximizing opportunities across the broadest range of devices and services.Also as a part of the conference, Nokia announced three new Lumia smartphones for Windows Phone 8.1, including the flagship Lumia 930, the affordable Lumia 635 and the first dual-SIM Lumia 630.“The news today shines a light on continued Windows innovation in ways that benefit our customers, partners and developers alike. Our commitment is to make Windows more personal and accessible to individuals, and to ensure a vibrant ecosystem through closer collaboration with our industry partners,” said Terry Myerson, executive vice president, OS Group at Microsoft.… <more is inserted in the below keynote report> |
The essence of the Day 1 keynote:
Microsoft Build 2014 keynote in seven minutes [The Verge YouTube channel, April 2, 2014]
The Full Day 1 Keynote record on Channel 9: 2 hours, 59 minutes, 13 seconds or a YouTube copy of that from MicrosoftEurope:
Terry Myerson: Executive Vice President, Operating Sy stems group
- Making your creativity come to life
- Using public translation APIs to translate everything said here
Joe Belfiore (~ 1 hour): Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems group
==> Full transcript
- Running PC, tablet and phone within the Operating Systems group
Windows Phone is the world’s most personal phone
- 2 additional partners: Micromax and Prestigio (working with Qualcomm and Longcheer)
- Windows Phone 8.1: ==> Made more personal
– new Action Center
– new lock screen APIs
– option to choose a high density tile layout with custom background as well … even on a small screen
Microsoft Build 2014 8.1 Update Personalized Digital Assistant named CORTANA
Cortana Microsoft Build 2014 8.1 Update Personalized Digital Assistant named Cortana Microsoft VP Joe Belfiore unveils 2 new phones with hardware partners Micromax and Prestigio using Windows Phone 8.1
Windows Phone gets even more personal
Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8.1 and introduced Cortana, the world’s first truly personal digital assistant with a persona inspired by a much-loved “Halo” character. Powered by Bing, Cortana gets to know you and gets better over time by asking questions based on your behavior and checking in with you before she assumes you’re interested in something. She detects and monitors the stuff you care about, looks out for you throughout the day, and helps filter out the noise so you can focus on what matters to you.
Other new features that make Windows Phone 8.1 smartphones even more personal include Action Center, which complements Live Tiles by showing new activities and notifications at a glance; and Senses, a suite of features that takes the work out of managing data use, storage space and battery life. Windows Phone 8.1 also makes it easier for IT professionals to manage devices and for professionals to connect to essential business apps and services with features such as simplified device enrollment, a built-in mobile device management client, S/MIME for encrypted mail and VPN support.
Windows Phone 8.1 will start rolling out to current Windows Phone 8 users over the coming months. It will also come pre-installed on new phones starting this month. Cortana will launch shortly in the U.S. as a beta, in the U.K. and China in the second half of 2014, and in other countries in 2015. Registered developers can update their phones to Windows Phone 8.1 as part of the developer program later this month.
– working long for one a half year on (video): Cortana (launching as a Beta, in order to learn with linguistic & search things) – a digital assistance for Windows Phone; powered by Bing (knows the whole Internet); learns about you …; also replaces the search function for you …; can be extended via 3d party apps; giving Cortana a notebook in order to put the user in contact with Cortana; about the people matter most to you; about the places you use to frequent; has permission to read all e-mail on the phone in order to prompt pro-actively the owner on …; good with the calendar too; … example queries via voice …; works with typing as well; reminders; only Cortana can do: people reminders …; new version of Skype; starting apps for you via Cortana (like Hulu, even yommunicating with like for Facebook);
==> The first true digital assistant for phones
==> The Ultimate Assistant: Halo’s Cortana Coming to Windows Phone==> Searching for something more personal
==> Bing at Build 2014: More Helpful, Personal and Intelligent/
==> Introducing the New Skype for Windows Phone 8.1 and Improved Skype for Windows 8.1
- Consumers can choose for their device:
– VPN, S/MIME support, MDM capabilities, … many, many more hosted capabilities
==> The right choice for business
==> Building the Mobile Workplace with Windows and Windows Phone- Apps from the Store: … store experience more engaged for you …, new version of Calendar … with other views
- Improved basic performance: … WiFi Sense to connect to automatically when sensed … even securely share with friends automatically (no need to tell the WiFi password); … from ordinary phone call to a video call, even for RCS apps as well; Word Flow [Keyboard] typing … world’s fastest typing on the smartphone (the previous record was Samsung Galaxy …); focus on settings; IE11 with a bunch of new features
- to consumers rolling out in next few months
- on very new phones late April
Windows 8.1 Update
- boot straight to the desktop
- going automatically to enterprise mode
- mouse and keyboard experience of Windows, e.g. enhanced taskbar to work with Windows Store apps: no different swithching mode for Modern apps and desktop apps; PC settings tile on Start Screen; right click context menu …; power user … on Start Screen; pre-pinning the Windows Store to the taskbar to make it mouse and kleyboard friendly; new apps pin to the Start Screen or the taskbar …
- starting April 8
- [The update also enables Microsoft’s hardware partners to deliver low-cost machines that require only 1 GB of RAM and 16GB HDD. On Intel’s Bay Trail Cost Reduced options.]
Windows 8.1 Update: easier to use, runs great on more devices
Continuing its commitment to deliver improvements through regular updates, Microsoft also announced Windows 8.1 Update, which includes improvements that provide more of what people love about Windows across more devices: quicker access to what’s important, a more familiar and consistent experience across touch and non-touch devices, and more ways to discover great apps.
Key features of the update include user interface improvements for mouse and keyboard users, the ability to access the taskbar from any screen and pin Windows Store apps to the taskbar alongside desktop apps and favorite websites, and performance and compatibility enhancements to Internet Explorer 11. These improvements provide faster, more direct access to the things customers care most about, so activities such as powering down, searching the Web and switching between apps are easier than ever. Navigating with the mouse and keyboard will feel more familiar and intuitive because there’s more consistency with where controls are and how they work. Specific to the enterprise, Windows 8.1 Update offers improved Internet Explorer 8 compatibility on Internet Explorer 11, extends mobile device management functionality, and eases deployment with increased predictability for new operating systems and line-of-business apps by leveraging familiar management tools.
Current Windows 8.1 customers will receive the Windows 8.1 Update for free through Windows Update, while Windows 8 customers will receive the update free through the Windows Store, beginning April 8, 2014.*
David Treadwell: Corporate Vice President, Operating Systems group
==> Full transcript
- about things for developers
Microsoft’s Universal Windows App Allows Devs To Create For Any Platform [Pureinfotech, published on April 3, 2014]
Microsoft announces universal Windows apps, which simply means that apps created for the Windows platform will now run on all platforms including PCs, tablets, phones, and Xbox One.
Universal Windows apps:
==> Windows Runtime comes to phones
…
…
- Update for Visual Studio 2013 for universal Windows apps: demo
==> Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC: Windows Phone 8.1 Tools, Shared Projects and Universal Windows Apps- Streamline the Windows Store experience across …
- Modern (touch-first) version of Office: demo … also showing the same binary working on the phone
- hundreds of new features added for Windows Phone 8.1 based on developers’ and customers’ requests
Windows developer platform: easily build innovative apps, reach more people
Microsoft also announced enhancements in the way developers can build applications that target the full range of Windows devices using Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 Release Candidate. Among other new capabilities, with the introduction of universal projects, developers are able to create apps that can be easily optimized to take full advantage of Windows devices. Developers of all types can draw upon their existing skills to deliver shared experiences for Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update. Universal projects allow developers to use approximately 90 percent of the same code, a single packaging system, and a common user interface to target apps for phones, tablets and PCs.
To improve the developer experience on Windows, Microsoft announced updates to Windows Store to improve app discoverability and monetization, as well as easier shopping for end users with improved search, more personal recommendations and better merchandising. In addition, later this week, Microsoft will release the next version of Windows App Studio, a Web-based tool for non-developers that enables the creation of universal Windows apps in a single project.
To help developers build innovative apps for Windows using a natural user interface, Microsoft detailed plans for Kinect for Windows v2, coming this summer, with a new sensor and SDK that will enable developers to create Windows Store apps, with the Kinect sensor, for the first time. The Kinect for Windows v2 sensor offers more precision, responsiveness and intuitive capabilities. Developers and partner companies, such as Reflexion Health and Freak’n Genius, are already doing great things through the Kinect for Windows v2 developer preview program.
- DEMO of the above
Windows enabling cross-platform apps:
frameworks, libraries, tools and services for Universal Windows apps
– Web GL
– Cutting Edge video playback etc.
– announcing: making WinJS cross-platform
– open-source via GitHub
==> MS Open Tech Open Sources WinJS, Part of the Windows App Platform
- DEMO My
==> Announcing New Microsoft Advertising SDKs, Tools to Help Devs Do More and Earn More with Apps
Terry Myerson:
==> Full transcript
- Now about the TV … no better television than Xbox
- going to enable Universal Windows apps running on Xbox
- DEMO
My insert here: Satya Nadella email to employees on tuning our organization [Microsoft, March 31, 2014]
Today marks the start of another big week for Microsoft as we gear up for the Build conference in San Francisco. We continue to push on the momentum from last week’s news about how we will thrive and grow in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, as shown by the great Office apps for iOS, rich new APIs for developers and our new Enterprise Mobility Suite.In advance of Build, I want to highlight three announcements about how we’re continuing to evolve and tune our organization for maximum focus and impact.…Next, I have asked Phil Spencer to take on a new role leading Xbox, combining the Xbox and Xbox Live development teams with the Microsoft Studios team. Phil will report to Terry Myerson, allowing us to keep gaming close to the group developing operating systems across devices. In this new job, Phil will lead the Xbox, Xbox Live, Xbox Music and Xbox Video teams, and Microsoft Studios. Combining all our software, gaming and content assets across the Xbox team under a single leader and aligning with the OSG team will help ensure we continue to do great work across the Xbox business, and bring more of the magic of Xbox to all form factors, including tablets, PCs and phones. Phil will continue his close partnership with Yusuf Mehdi, who leads business strategy and marketing for Xbox, George Peckham, who heads up third-party partnerships and Mike Angiulo, who will continue leading Xbox hardware. Over the years, Phil’s team at Microsoft Studios has helped build a community of more than 80 million Xbox owners and 48 million Xbox Live members through blockbuster game franchises such as “Halo,” “Gears of War,” “Kinect Sports,” “Fable,” “Forza Motorsport” and many others. He’s helped drive the development of brand-new entertainment offerings like the partnership with the NFL and the formation of Xbox Entertainment Studios [Nancy Tellem]. I love the way the Xbox team is focused on great games and gaming experiences (go, “Titanfall”!), connects with its fans, pushes the boundary of entertainment and has embraced the power of the cloud in such interesting and impactful ways. Phil is the right person to lead Xbox forward.… |
- bringing Kinect to PC ==> Kinect 2.0 for Windows with greatly improved SDK, not just for games
- non-gaming Kinect apps: video
- Kinect: this is the future
==> Windows Store app development is coming to Kinect for Windows - Graphics: on Xbox One phenomenal ==> Xbox graphics platform to make available for everyone ==> bringing into DirectX 12
- DEMO
Internet of Things (IoT):
- Windows ported to ARM
- Now Intel Quark (i.e. x86 for IoT)
- Windows for IoT will be available for $0
Windows desktop:
- Universal Windows apps to run in a window
- New Start Menu: live tiles combined
- what is shown here is just for start to improve the Windows desktop
- (upcoming in the next update of Windows)
Pricing:
Making Windows devices more affordable
Microsoft is evolving its Windows business model to enable partners to offer lower-cost devices in the highly competitive smartphone, tablet and PC categories. Microsoft will offer to hardware partners $0 Windows with services including a one-year subscription to Office 365.
With Windows 8.1 Update hardware partners can also more easily build lower-cost machines — such as devices with 1 GB of RAM and a 16GB hard disk drive — without sacrificing the experience customers expect. The combination of new efficiencies and innovations from Microsoft hardware partners means customers will be able to choose from a wider range of Windows devices, particularly budget-friendly notebooks and tablets.
Additional information from Terry Myerson’s Thoughts on Day 1 of Build 2014 [Blogging Windows, April 2, 2014] post:
I wanted to use this post to share some thoughts from what I said in the keynote:
1. We believe in our ecosystem of device manufacturers and devs (developers, developers, developers!), and that their creativity has incredible potential to change the world – and we want to help them do that.
2. We believe in the Internet of Things, and that as the devices get smaller, the cloud gets bigger.
3. We believe in natural user interfaces, and the power of things like voice and gesture to transform how users will interact with their devices and apps in the coming years.
…
Today we announced that the Windows 8.1 Update will support Intel’s Bay Trail Cost Reduced options, along with 1GB RAM and 16 GB storage configurations which are popular on entry level tablets and notebooks. We’re also working with Intel on enablement programs that make it easy for their partners to onboard new Windows devices quickly, much as we are with Qualcomm.
…
We showed Windows running on an Intel Quark chip. It’s a processor the size of a pencil eraser that is running a full version of Windows, enabling developers to use all their Windows knowledge and skills to create new and exciting devices and experiences. When we are ready to ship Windows for the Internet of Things, we will make that available for zero dollars to encourage creation of these new devices and experiences in this new and exciting category.
…
Finally, I previewed some work we are doing for the next iteration of Windows, which builds on the journey we began with Windows 8 just over a year ago as well as the releases we’ve done since then. In particular, I showed some early thinking on how the user experience in Windows will evolve in a way that will help developers’ apps make their way to users across devices and form factors.
We set out to do this is a thoughtful way – one where we could enable more productivity for customers working in desktop mode, while building smart bridges to the new modern user experience and ensuring customers can get access to all your great apps in the Windows Store no matter where they are in the experience, or which device type they’re on.
As I said today, these are glimpses of our roadmap, with a particular focus on the parts of our roadmap that are most relevant to our developer partners. We’ll continue to invest in these and many other areas to build a great platform and experiences for developers, customers and partners and you’ll hear more from us when this work is closer to being ready to ship out to the world.
Stephen Elop (still Nokia, but soon Microsoft):
==> Full transcript
- Lumia 520 the best selling smartphone in the world: will have WP 8.1
- WP 8.1 for all other existing Lumias
- The next-generation of Lumia devices:
– Lumia 930: flagship for WP 8.1, with unprecendented images and video, Creative Studio app grealy updated, new/updated Living Images app, fantastic cinema video experiences (4 microphones included), all MS services well integrated, 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 SoC, from June starting in Europe, with more more than 100 operators
– Lumia 630: 4.5” ClearBlack display, 3G dual-SIM as well (different tiles for each SIM), designed for hyper-social people, Cortana is also available, SensoreCore introduced for health and fitness apps … Lumia services (HERE maps, etc.), 1.5GHz Snapdragon 400 quadcore, from May starting in Asia, $159 single SIM
– Lumia 635: 4.5” ClearBlack display, 4G LTE, …, 1.5GHz Snapdragon 400 quadcore, from May starting in Asia
- Two new SDKs:
– Imaging SDK 1.2
– new SensoreCore SDK to create motion based apps
Satya Nadella: CEO
==> Full transcript
- developer roots of Microsoft
- Q&A via the DPE collection made before the conference
- Why build for Windows if one develops for Android? –> innovating in every dimension … you will see a progress in a rapid pace … pretty unique pieces, e.g. bring end-users, IT profs and devs together … create a developer opportunity accross the Windows family expanding … we are betting on this platform ourselves
- Plans for easy development accross platforms? –> David Treadwell part … the only platform with APIs on every platform amd native, managed and the web … working w/ PhoneGap, Unity e.t.c. …
- What MS is doing to compete against Apple and Google in the tablet space? –> tablets accross all prices ranges … innovate with Surface to make the most productive table … what is the role of a tablet in the device family … consistency of user experience
- Approach to UX design now and in 5 years with Microsoft? –> we have fantastic people for UX … see inspiration for other platforms … Cortana … modern apps to mouse and … Bill Buxton about natural UI … the broadest range of input modes today
- How to design for the cloud, and how MS is supporting that? –> Scott Guthrie tomorrow … data-tier built for scale-out and other consideration long taken into account, Service Bus etc. … lot of focus on tools, samples that truely take advantage of the cloud
- Different APIs released for different products? –> Windows Universal apps is the first step in the direction of bring great consistency for developers … consistency of semantics for these APIs
- What’s the plan with latency as we are moving and more apps to the cloud? –> build robustness … data center build-up throughout the world … great effort to enable apps to run in a true distributed way
- How MS can better support start-ups? –> BizSpark program with 70K start-ups … seed fundings and accellerators throughout the world
- The vision for Microsoft going forward? –> Drive in this world of mobile first, cloud first … interactions of differnt kinds getting digitized … create platforms .. build the best experiences
- Plans to becoma a Master CEO? –> … 2514 … watch Scott Guthrie keynote tomorrow
Cortana (yes!) and Many, Many Other Great Features coming in Windows Phone 8.1 [by Joe Belfiore on Windows Phone Blog, April 2, 2014]
Whew, what a day! What a week! I’ve just gotten off the stage at Build in front of 5,000 of our beloved developers talking about the future of the Windows platform. And now I’m here to tell YOU about the stuff we’ve been working on to delight all our Windows Phone users and fans!
During my time on stage, I went over what’s next for Windows PCs, tablets, and phones with two major updates: Windows Phone 8.1 and the Windows 8.1 Update. Both releases bring a lot of new features for consumers and businesses alike, built from the feedback we’ve heard from customers along the way. We’ve also continued to invest in our partners, enabling lots of great new phones, tablets, laptops and PCs for you to choose from in the months ahead.
Windows 8.1 Update: Focused on Mouse/Keyboard
For PCs and tablets, we’ve made improvements in Windows 8.1 that will noticeably improve the experience when you’re using a PC without a touch-screen. We’ve made commands easier to find with mouse/keyboard, we’ve made switching between apps—especially Windows Store apps—much easier with mouse/keyboard… and we’ve made it easier to find new apps to install.
To learn more about the update to Windows 8.1 for your PC and tablets, head on over to the Windows Experience Blog and read Brandon’s post. What I really want to cover in detail here is…
Windows Phone 8.1: More Personal, Smarter, and even a “World Record Holder”!
If you’re a Windows Phone user, you already know that we set out to create an experience that puts you and the things you care about most front and center. As a result, we believe Windows Phone is the world’s most personal smartphone… and with Windows Phone 8.1, we’ve added a BUNCH of new features that make your smartphone even more a reflection of your personality and desires.
Want to experience it all in one giant demo? Then watch this marathon 15-minute video. Else… read on!
The world’s most personal smartphone just got more personal. Watch the innovations of Windows Phone 8.1 come alive.Start screen: Make the Live Tiles Yours
We want your Windows Phone Start screen to genuinely reflect your personality and the people and things you care about—so we are making it even more customizable!
In 2013, we added a third column on devices for 5-inch screen or larger devices, like the Lumia 1520, to enable more stuff to show up on the screen. People really liked this so we are enabling this on all screen sizes in Windows Phone 8.1. Pin away! We’ve also added the ability to customize your Start background with a favorite picture or one of the options we’ve provided, which will make many of the tiles on your Start screen become clear so you can see the background you selected as you scroll up and down.
Lock screen: Lots of new “themes” to choose from!
The Lock screen is the very first thing you – or your friends—see when you grab your phone, and in Windows Phone 8.1 we’re providing a new app that lets you set a wide range of interesting “Lock Screen Themes” which show all kinds of different visuals and animations. Make it yours…
Cortana: Your PERSONAL Digital Assistant
Of everything we’re announcing today, I’m most excited to introduce you to the world’s first truly personal digital assistant, now on Windows Phone. We were inspired by the popular character from Halo who served as a brilliant AI and a deeply personal digital assistant to Master Chief… so we called her Cortana.
Powered by Bing, Cortana is the only digital assistant that gets to know you, builds a relationship that you can trust, and gets better over time by asking questions based on your behavior and checking in with you before she assumes you’re interested in something. She detects and monitors the stuff you care about, looks out for you throughout the day, and helps filter out the noise so you can focus on what matters to you. Cortana will launch shortly here in the U.S. first as a “beta,” and then will launch in the US, the U.K. and China in the second half of 2014 with other countries to follow afterwards into 2015.
In Windows Phone 8.1, you get to Cortana by either a Live Tile on your Start screen or by pressing the search button on your device. This will take you to Cortana Home. To interact with Cortana, you can either speak or type—if you’re in a meeting, just type and Cortana won’t talk out loud. But if you ask her a spoken question, she’ll answer verbally and even carry on a natural conversation.
When you interact with Cortana for the VERY first time, she will start learning things about you… like your name, how to pronounce it, and ask for some personal interests.
Once she’s learned a bit about you, Cortana’s home populates with information that is curated just for you. You’ll see things like flight information she’s found from your email confirmations, weather, the latest news, and even traffic information once she learns your commute routine, such as from work and home.
To develop Cortana, we talked to a number of real personal assistants. One technique these assistants spoke about was keeping track of the interests and preferences of their bosses in a notebook. We thought… what a great idea! So all the stuff Cortana curates for you is stored in Cortana’s Notebook. This information enables Cortana to be proactive and helpful throughout the day. For example, she’ll let me know if my upcoming flight back to Seattle is on time and, if I choose, will even pop-up to recommend what time I should leave for the airport based on traffic. Cortana can also manage your phone when you don’t want to be disturbed by setting quiet hours where she will silence any notifications, in-coming calls, and texts. Cortana understands the “inner circle” of people-closest-to-you, and she can let them break through at any time during quiet hours. And Cortana is the only digital assistant that lets you setup people reminders. You can have Cortana remind you that your buddy owes you $20 the next time you talk to him. And ALL of these interests and preferences are under YOUR CONTROL via Cortana’s notebook.
What’s more, because Cortana is powered by Bing, some of the interests in Cortana’s Notebook will light up on Bing.comwhen you sign in on the web. Bing.com will give you access to the things Cortana tracks for you, like your weather, stocks, news, and flights.
We’ve also designed Cortana to be able to interact with 3rd Party Appsinstalled on your phone. You can ask Cortana to help you make a video call in Skype, watch a TV show in Hulu Plus, look up a news feed on Facebook or send a tweet using the Twitter app – all of which we demoed during this morning’s keynote.
And finally, Cortana isn’t just a dry computer returning search results. Just as she has in the game Halo, Windows Phone’s Cortana has a bit of personality. But you’ll have to talk to her yourself to see what I mean by that. Or… I bet you’ll be able to find some videos on the web pretty soon to see what I mean.
We think you’re going to really love having Cortana as your personal assistant!
A Whole Slew of New Delighters
Action Center: Live Tiles are a great way to “glance and go,” and now we’ve added Action Center to enable you to see notifications from ANY app – pinned or not—and to give you a customizable way to quickly access the settings you care about most, like Wi-Fi, Flight Mode, Bluetooth and Rotation Lock.
Word Flow Keyboard: The keyboard in Windows Phone is smart enough to learn your writing style and even knows the names of people in your contacts for faster typing. Best of all, our new Word Flow Keyboard lets you glide your fingers over the keys to type INCREDIBLY quickly… a kid was able to BREAK THE OFFICIAL WORLD RECORD previously held by the Swype keyboard on a Samsung Galaxy S4 using Word Flow by 8 seconds!
Skype:The new Skype app for Windows Phone 8.1 brings the best of Skype on a smartphone. It’s integrated with the Phone dialer, so if you’re on a call you can quickly and easily “upgrade” your ordinary phone call to a Skype video call at the tap of a button! And… the new Skype app is designed to work seamlessly with Cortana so you can use Cortana to setup your calls within Skype.
Calendar:The new Calendar has been redesigned to add a new week view which lots of people have been asking for and it has many nice touches—like panning right to get to the next day or week or month! What’s more, it looks a lot like Outlook on your Windows PC… e.g., the weather is integrated at the top – just like in Outlook.
Music, Video, Podcasts: We’ve made a ton of improvements to these experiences, which are now split out as separate apps and all of which can be updated via the Store. In Music, you can edit your playlists and manage your cloud collection really easily and effectively. Video makes it possible to buy or rent videos from Xbox Music, and Podcasts now lets you subscribe to any RSS feed AND provides a Bing-powered podcast search for every country where Windows Phone is available. Oh… and we’ve improved the phone volume control by including separate sliders for your ringer/notifications and for your apps and media. Just the way you asked for it!
People Hub, Email and Accounts: The People Hub has higher-fidelity feeds for your social network content (large photos!) and it connects directly to 3rd-party social networking apps so that you can have easy access to all the full functionality of the 3rd party apps once they are installed. Email now supports S/MIME secure email, and we’ve broadened our support for different account types, now including iCloud.
Photos & Camera: The Photos experience now jumps directly to your most recent photos and shows as collections automatically organized, in a view grouped by date and location. Online photo albums are now supported via app-extensibility, so 3rd parties can plug in their services. In the Camera, we’ve updated the UI and added “burst mode” photography that lets you capture exactly the perfect moment—just like on Windows 8.1.
Data Sense, Wi-Fi Sense, Storage Sense, and Battery Saver:We’ve added a number of features in Windows Phone 8.1 that are designed to help you get the most out of your data allowance, battery life and storage.
Data Sense lets you track how much data usage you use in a given month and will give you a breakdown of usage by app so you can see which app is using the most of your data. As you near your data limit, Data Sense will more aggressively offload data to Wi-Fi and limit cellular usage… and in 8.1 there’s a new “high savings” mode that cranks up the compression of images as you browse the web so you can browse even farther using less data than WP8.
Wi-Fi Sense will automatically connect you to free public hotspots it finds to help you save cellular data. And, if you’d like, you can opt-in to automatically and securely enable your friends and contacts to auto-connect to your home Wi-Fi, so they can use the internet connection at your house without hassling you for the password and typing it in manually. If you turn off Wi-Fi in Wi-Fi Sense, you can have Cortana automatically turn it back on when you reach one of your favorite places as identified in Cortana.
We’re introducing Storage Sense to help you get the most out of the memory and storage on your phone. It will help you manage content you have on an SD memory card if your device supports those. You can also move content – like apps, music, photos – between the storage built in to your device and an SD memory card.
And Battery Saver gives you a clear breakdown of how apps are using your battery so you can make more informed usage decisions. With “automatic mode” enabled, it can dramatically extend your battery life.
Windows and Windows Phone Together
Your Microsoft Accountallows Windows and Windows Phone to work together in amazing ways. Windows Phone 8.1 furthers the integration between phone and PC. If you change your theme color, that change will sync across all your Windows devices. If you buy an in-app purchase in some of the newer apps written for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1, the purchase works on your phone AND your PC. And other settings like your home Wi-Fi password will also sync.
Ever wanted to project your phone screen onto a PC, TV set or projector? We’ve added support for that as well—connect your Windows Phone to a compatible PC using a USB cable and you can run an application on the PC to show the phone screen. Some of the forthcoming new phones will also support wireless Miracast display to compatible TVs and other devices.
And finally with Internet Explorer 11 for Windows Phone, you will be able to see all the open tabs you have on all your Windows devices and all your Favorites too. Plus the new Internet Explorer gives you InPrivate browsing, password caching, and a super-handy reading mode.
Great for Business Users and IT Managers
Windows has long been the choice for the enterprise and professionals. Windows Phone fits easily and seamlessly into a corporate ecosystem making it easier to work when you are on the go. Last year, PC Magazine’s readers selected Nokia Lumia/Windows Phones as the Business Choice Award for smartphonesby scoring them the highest in end-user satisfaction.
With Windows Phone 8.1, we’re making it even easier for IT professionals to manage devices and for professionals to connect to essential business apps and services with features such as customizable MDM enrollment, support for loads more MDM policies, LOB application & certificate management, S/MIME and VPN support. Stay tuned for a detailed blog post later today on the Windows for your Business Blog that covers all the key features for businesses.
Sounds Great! When Can I Get It? And on which phones?
Windows Phone 8.1 will start rolling out to existing Windows Phone 8 users and will come pre-installed on new phones, including the Lumia 630 and 635 and Lumia 930announced by Nokia today, in the coming months. If you want to try out Windows Phone 8.1 and you are a registered developer, you can update your phone as part of the Developer Preview Program in the first part of April.
We are very proud of the progress we are making with Windows Phone. Industry analyst IDC proclaimed Windows Phone the fastest growing smartphone platform in 2013, and we think the future is even brighter. At Mobile World Congress, we announced our commitment to growing the number of device partners making Windows Phones, and were proud to welcome nine new partners to the Windows Phone ecosystem. Today we announced two more partners – Prestigio in Europe and Micromax in India – to further ensure that individuals around the world will have access to the amazing experience that only Windows Phone delivers consistently across all price points.
We know we have lots more to do – for developers, for business customers, and for consumers. Today’s announcements at Build were all about taking the next steps – making it easier than ever to build great devices and write great apps for Windows, and enabling a new generation of cool experiences for customers that show the power of designing around people, delivering truly personal computing, and helping us all to get more out of the technology in our lives.
Tags: Windows phone, Build 2014, Word Flow Keyboard, Battery Saver, Start screen, Email, camera roll, Windows Phone 8.1, Xbox Video,Enterprise, Announcement, inprivate, Action Center, Photos, Windows 8.1, Business, Devices, VPN, Cortana, Platform, skype, Xbox Music,Lock Screen, Windows 8.1 Update, podcasts, People Hub, calendar, Microsoft Accounbt, Windows, Live Tiles, Internet Explorer 11, Nokia, Wi-Fi Sense, Data Sense, Storage Sense
Windows 8.1 Update – important refinements to the Windows experience [ by Brandon LeBlanc on Windows Experience Blog, April 2, 2014]
As Joe mentioned here, today we’re announcing two important updates to the Windows platform: Windows Phone 8.1 andWindows 8.1 Update. With these updates, we continue to refine and improve Windows based on feedback from customers to deliver ongoing value to all their Windows devices. Joe’s post goes into detail on all the awesomeness that’s in Windows Phone 8.1(Cortana is rad – trust me!) but also gives some great context around our new engineering culture in the Operating Systems Group now that we’re in this mobile-first, cloud-first world. It also underscores how we are moving more quickly to improve the Windows experience for customers. In this post, I wanted to share a little bit more about the update for Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1.
With the current generation of Windows, we made a pretty big bet on touch and mobility. Along with building on top of the strong foundation in Windows 7, we also introduced a brand new approach to the Windows user experience that brought touch to the forefront. Since the original introduction of Window 8 in 2012, we have been continuously refining the experience, and we are making steady progress. More than 40 percent of Windows PCs at big box retailers, like Windows Stores Only at Best Buy, this past holiday season were touch-enabled – up from only 4 percent a year ago. As Joe recently said at Mobile World Congress, customer satisfaction for a device running Windows 8 with touch is actually higher than it was for a PC running Windows 7 without touch. We believe deeply in the notion that delivering a compelling personal and modern experience across all the devices that matter in your life should not mean sacrificing familiarity. Windows 8 and 8.1 were first steps, and we continue to make refinements based on customer and partner feedback.
Last fall, less than a year after we shipped Windows 8, we released Windows 8.1– bringing a large set of customer-driven improvements including the return of the Start button, tutorials, more personalization options, the ability to boot to desktop, improvements to multi-tasking, and more. Today marks the next step as we release a new update for your Windows experience.
The Windows 8.1 Update delivers a collection of refinements designed to give people a more familiar and convenient experience across touch, keyboard and mouse inputs. It also brings improvements for business customers, really accelerates opportunity for developers, and enables device makers to offer lower cost devices.
See what’s new with Windows 8.1 in the latest update, including easier mouse and keyboard functions, a new taskbar, and Bing’s improved Smart Search!
Easier access to your favorite apps and key controls:
On the Start screen, on select devices you will now find Power and Search buttons at the upper-right corner next to your account picture. You can now more quickly shut down your PC if you need to and do a search right from the Start screen.
If you like using the desktop, you will be happy to know that select devices will now boot to desktop as the default setting. And on your taskbar, you can now pin both desktop apps and apps from the Windows Store as well as your favorite websites. You can now pin any app you want to the taskbar so you can open or switch between apps right from the desktop. I’ve got some of my favorite apps like Xbox Music, Skype, Facebook, Flipboard, and Mint pinned to my taskbar. You can also access the taskbar from anywhere when you’re using a mouse; you can see the taskbar on any screen by moving your mouse to the bottom edge of your screen. Just click on any of the apps pinned to your taskbar to open or switch to them.
More familiar mouse and keyboard options:
We’ve made it so your mouse works more consistently anywhere in Windows. If you move your mouse to the top of the screen when using a Windows Store app, you will see the familiar Close and Minimize buttons. And as I mentioned above, when you move your mouse to the bottom of the screen in a Windows Store app, the taskbar comes up.
On the Start screen, if you right-click on an app tile, you will get a context menu next to the app tile that shows you what you can do with the tile, like unpin from Start, pin to the taskbar, change the tile size or even uninstall the app. Right-clicking on an app tile on the Start screen works just like right-clicking on something on the desktop.
Simpler way to find new apps:
After installing the update, you’ll find the Windows Store is now pinned to the taskbar by default so you can easily discover new apps (yes, you can unpin it if you don’t want it there).
And after installing new apps, you’ll notice a message at the lower-left corner of the Start screen that points you to the Apps view so you can see what you recently just installed.
Seamless browsing on all devices:
With today’s update, Internet Explorer 11 adapts your browsing experience by detecting your Windows device and input type – whether an 8-inch touch tablet in portrait mode or a 24-inch desktop with mouse and keyboard. The web is still front-and-center but new design enhancements make your browsing experience feel like it was made just for your device – like the number of tabs on-screen, the size of the fonts and menus. You can also now control when the browser remains on-screen or hides away for full-screen browsing. Check out 22tracksto see these updates in action.
Improvements for business customers: We are introducing several key improvements for businesses such as Enterprise Mode Internet Explorer (EMIE) and extended Mobile Device Management (MDM). EMIE enables Internet Explorer 8 compatibility on Internet Explorer 11 so companies can run existing web-based apps seamlessly on Windows 8.1 devices. And with extended MDM, we are introducing additional policy settings that can be managed with whatever MDM solution an enterprise chooses including whitelisting or blacklisting Windows Store apps and websites. Look for a blog post later today on the Windows for your Business Blog that discusses these in greater detail and a post on the Springboard Series Blogon deployment guidance for the Windows 8.1 Update.
New low cost devices:With the Windows 8.1 Update, we have enabled our hardware partners to build lower cost devices for Windows such as devices with only 1GB RAM and 16GB of storage that provide customers with the experience they expect from a Windows device without sacrificing performance.
We have made the Windows 8.1 Update available today for MSDN subscribers, and will begin to roll it out for free to Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 customers via Windows Update next Tuesday April 8th. For the majority of folks, they will receive the update automatically. If you are still on Windows 8, you can get the Windows 8.1 Update via the Windows Store on April 8th as well.
NOTE: The Windows 8.1 Update will be KB2919355 for those of you interested.
We’re really excited to get this update out to everyone! Moving forward, we’ll continue to deliver improvements through regular updates like this one to Windows, allowing us to respond more quickly to customer feedback as your needs change.
Tags: Windows 8, Keyboard, Start screen, Windows Store, Windows 8.1, search, Apps, Windows 8.1 Update, Windows, Update, Pinning,Taskbar, Mouse
Extending platform commonality through universal Windows apps [by Kevin Gallo on Building Apps for Windows, April 2, 2014]
Today during our BUILD conference in San Francisco we unveiled the latest Windows software for phones, tablets, and PCs. Windows Phone 8.1 further establishes Windows Phone as the world’s most personal smartphone, with an even more engaging Start screen, the fastest keyboard on the market, thanks to Word Flow, and of course Cortana – the only personal digital assistant built around you. We also shared Windows 8.1 Update features such as UI improvements for mouse and keyboard users, the ability to pin Windows Store apps to the taskbar, and Internet Explorer compatibility enhancements. These OS features, and a new wave of devices that consumers will love, open up new opportunities for developers.
With this release of the Windows developer platform we set out to accomplish three major goals: 1) Reach customers across phones, tablets, and PCs; 2) Deliver innovation that supports developer investments; 3) Make cross-platform technology easier and more capable.
Reaching customers across phones, tablets, and PCs
Windows Phone 8 brought the same core set of operating system components used by Windows 8 to the modern UI of Windows Phone. Today we’re taking an even bigger step with Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Update by empowering developers to create universal Windows apps for a common Windows runtime.
Since universal Windows apps run on the same Windows runtime, developers have a common way of building and architecting apps for phones, tablets and PCs; from how they handle suspend and resume and do background processing, to the way they manage in-app security.
To help developers create universal Windows apps for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, we’ve announced the release of Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC. In addition to enhanced productivity and collaboration features, Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 RC includes Shared Projects that allow developers to create an app that is easily tailored to render a contextually appropriate experience across Windows phones, tablets and PCs. Get the tools now!
Innovation that supports developer investments
We’ve designed Windows for the long term, to address developers’ needs today, while respecting prior investments. We do this with one familiar toolset based on Visual Studio 2013, with support for C#, C++, JavaScript, XAML, DirectX, and HTML. The tools and technology stacks already used by hundreds of thousands of developers extend app development across Windows devices. Developers who have built apps for Windows 8.1 will find it fairly easy to reuse their work and bring tailored experiences to Windows Phone 8.1. Windows Phone 8 developers can use the same code, and also access new features, when they develop for Windows Phone 8.1.
Windows now also offers an expansive set of common APIs for everything from displaying notification toasts to accessing the file system and device capabilities. With Windows Phone 8.1, we are adding a wide array of new features including support for Bluetooth LE to connect to devices, Action Center extensibility to more effectively connect with users, triggers to ensure battery-friendly multitasking, VPN so end users can connect to their workplace, and many more.
Even Cortana delivers developer extensibility. Cortana brings a significant evolution of the speech technology developed by Windows and Bing, which first appeared in Windows Phone 8. In Windows Phone 8.1 we expose new enhancements to the Speech API that developers can use to integrate their apps with the Cortana family of services. Developers can now leverage speech recognition and voice commands to denote a series of actions triggered by heuristically derived scenarios that are surfaced through the Cortana speech recognition service. Fewer steps and more types of natural verbal exchanges open more apps. All of this is delivered through a simple API so developers who use Windows Phone 8 speech features today can plug into Cortana with little additional effort.
Developers are interacting with tablets and Windows computers in new ways as well. Kinect for Windows v2 will be released this summer. Soon developers can start building Kinect apps for Windows Store and publish or commercially deploy Kinect apps and solutions.
We’re also improving the way people find and use apps, as well as increasing monetization options and providing a more consistent Store experience across devices and markets. Developers can choose to link apps among phones, tablets and PCs so when a user downloads an app on one device they can install it on all of their Windows devices, increasing usage and engagement. Windows 8.1 Update brings the Store icon and pinned apps to the taskbar on the desktop. Developers are also getting more ways to market and monetize apps, such as common price tiers that bring the popular $0.99 and $1.29 price point to PCs, and updated advertising SDKs that support more rich media standards for better fill rates.
Also, by popular demand, we’ll soon be piloting a program through which developers can directly respond to app reviews to address potential confusion or other issues that may be hurting their ratings. These are just a few of the new Windows Store features being detailed this week during BUILD. Todd Brix will share much more detail about what’s new in Windows Store later today.
Make cross-platform technology easier and more capable
We’ve also been working for developers who may not already be on the Windows platform by supporting a mix of languages, runtimes, frameworks, and protocols that run across devices. Middleware partners like Unity have helped developers bring thousands of titles to the Windows Store. In a newly released beta version, Unity is delivering support for Windows Phone 8.1, including universal Windows apps.
Microsoft Open Technologies also works with various open source communities to contribute code to popular C++ frameworks and optimize them for Windows devices. For example, Windows Store supports Cocos2D-X, openFrameworks, OpenCV, Cinder, and Ogre3D apps. Box2D and Bullet also have joined the Windows Store. jQuery now fully supports Windows Runtime, so web developers can build Windows 8 apps reusing their existing code and skills. Developers who use HTML5 to build cross-platform apps for iOS and Android with tools like Apache Cordova will find it easy to port their apps to Windows.
In fact, we’re taking a much more pragmatic approach to the web in general. We know that HTML is a critical cross-platform technology. Windows Phone 8.1 brings the same powerful hardware-accelerated IE11 HTML engine in Windows 8.1 to the phone. We’ve made great strides in extending IE to developers by focusing on open standards. Now we want to focus even more on interoperability. We already support WebGL and other technologies, such as media streaming extensions for adaptive streaming scenarios.
Today we’re also announcing that Microsoft Open Technologies has brought the Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) cross-platform apps and is open sourcing it under the Apache 2.0 license. Find the source code on GitHub. Use this powerful Windows development framework to build high-quality web apps across a variety of browsers and devices beyond Windows, including Chrome, Firefox, Android, and iOS.
Where we go from here
We’re enabling universal Windows apps for a common Windows runtime today, and we know we have more work to do, including expanding the range of devices running universal Windows apps so developers can reach more customers in more places, from Xbox One and the Internet of Things scenarios, to millions more desktop Windows users. We also continue to strive to make the app development, submission, and management process faster and easier. In the coming weeks and months, you’ll see additional updates to the Windows platform – including tools and Store – all designed to deliver even better experiences and enable greater opportunity for our developer community.
Tags: phone, PC, Tablet
Mobile Cloud Computing: proven questions and statements about the current and future state-of-the-market
- Is Android Becoming the New Windows?
- Tablets to Outsell PCs Worldwide by 2015
- Android Blows Past iOS in Global Tablet Market
- Android To Retain Big Lead In Maturing Smartphone Market
- The Price Gap Between iOS and Android Is Widening
- In Just 2 Years, Google And Facebook Have Come To Control 75% Of All Mobile Advertising
Note: In addition keep in mind at least the fact that Bloomberg (Businessweek) legitimizes Allwinner and Rockchip as challengers to Intel and Qualcomm via the tablet space, as well as Spreadtrum in the smartphone space [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 18, 2014]. More facts of such kind:
– Alibaba gets Tango for its push into the U.S. and the whole Western world [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 20, 2014]
– Chinese smartphone brands to conquer the global market? [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 18, 2014]
– MediaTek is repositioning itself with the new MT6732 and MT6752 SoCs for the “super-mid market” just being born, plus new wearable technologies for wPANs and IoT are added for the new premium MT6595 SoC [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 4, 2014]
– To watch Alisher Usmanov (Алишер Усманов) [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, March 22, 2014]
– Device businesses should have a China-based independent headquarter at least for Asia/Pacific if they want to succeed [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Jan 28, 2014]
– 2014 will be the last year of making sufficient changes for Microsoft’s smartphone and tablet strategies, and those changes should be radical if the company wants to succeed with its devices and services strategy [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Jan 17, 2014]
– The tablet market in Q1-Q3’13: It was mainly shaped by white-box vendors while Samsung was quite successfully attacking both Apple and the white-box vendors with triple digit growth both worldwide and in Mainland China [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 14, 2013]
– Leading PC vendors of the past: Go enterprise or die! [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Nov 7, 2013]
– The question mark over Wintel’s future will hang in the air for two more years [‘Experiencing the Cloud’, Sept 15, 2013]
- Is Android Becoming the New Windows?
- Tablets to Outsell PCs Worldwide by 2015
- Android Blows Past iOS in Global Tablet Market
- Android To Retain Big Lead In Maturing Smartphone Market
- The Price Gap Between iOS and Android Is Widening
- In Just 2 Years, Google And Facebook Have Come To Control 75% Of All Mobile Advertising
All supported by facts and well researched forecasts by IDC, Gartner and eMarketer.
Source: Is Android Becoming the New Windows? [Statista, Jan 9, 2014]
Source: Tablets to Outsell PCs Worldwide by 2015 [Statista, Mach 1, 2014]
Source: Android Blows Past iOS in Global Tablet Market [Statista, Mach 3, 2014]
Source: Android To Retain Big Lead In Maturing Smartphone Market [Statista, Mach 4, 2014]
Source: The Price Gap Between iOS and Android Is Widening [Statista, Feb 14, 2014]
Source: In Just 2 Years, Google And Facebook Have Come To Control 75% Of All Mobile Advertising [Business Insider India, March 21, 2014]
In the last two years, Facebook and Google have gone from a position of merely being two big, fast-growing players in mobile advertising to dominating it completely. Combined, they have cornered 75.2% of the entire mobile market in 2013, according to new data by eMarketer.
In 2014, Google alone is expected to be roughly as big as all other companies combined, as this chart of mobile ad revenues from Statista shows.
“new data by eMarketer”:
Driven by Facebook and Google, Mobile Ad Market Soars 105% in 2013 [eMarketer, March 19, 2014]
Mobile ad spending on pace to reach $31.45 billion this year
Last year, global mobile ad spending increased 105.0% to total $17.96 billion, according to new figures from eMarketer. In 2014, mobile is on pace to rise another 75.1% to $31.45 billion, accounting for nearly one-quarter of total digital ad spending worldwide.
Facebook and Google accounted for a majority of mobile ad market growth worldwide last year. Combined, the two companies saw net mobile ad revenues increase by $6.92 billion, claiming 75.2% of the additional $9.2 billion that went toward mobile in 2013. The two companies are consolidating their places at the top of the market, accounting for more than two-thirds of mobile ad spending last year—a figure that will increase slightly this year, according to eMarketer.
Facebook in particular is gaining significant market share. In 2012, the social network accounted for just 5.4% of the global advertising market. In 2013, that share increased to 17.5%, and eMarketer predicts it will rise again this year to 21.7%. Google still owns a plurality of the mobile advertising market worldwide, taking a portion of nearly 50% in 2013, but the rapid growth of Facebook will cause the search giant’s share to drop to 46.8% in 2014, eMarketer estimates.
The rapid pace at which mobile has taken over the company’s ad revenue share indicates Facebook’s mobile future. In 2012, only 11% of Facebook’s net ad revenues worldwide came from mobile, and last year, that figure jumped to 45.1%. In 2014, eMarketer estimates that mobile will account for 63.4% of Facebook’s net digital ad revenues. Mobile accounted for 23.1% of Google’s net ad revenues worldwide in 2013, and eMarketer estimates this share will increase to 33.8% this year.
