Author: Brad Reed

In its commercials, Samsung (005930) likes to portray itself as the scrappy newcomer that’s risen from humble beginnings to challenge Apple (AAPL) for the title of the world’s most popular smartphone company. While this sort of narrative certainly suits Samsung’s purposes in depicting itself as the “anti-Apple,” it’s not particularly accurate. In reality, Samsung has always had all the tools at its disposal for becoming a major player in the smartphone arena — the question was whether it had the vision to take advantage of them.

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We’ve heard a lot about graphene being a “wonder material” that could be used for smartphone casings and antennas, but now it seems that some engineers have found a way to incorporate it into audio speakers and headphones as well. Technology Review reports that University of California Berkeley researchers Qin Zhou and Alex Zettl have found that graphene is the perfect material for constructing speaker diaphragms, which typically work best when made from a thin material that reduces the need to conduct expensive and energy-consuming “damping engineering.”

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Continuing our run of good news for BlackBerry (BBRY), the company on Wednesday announced that an unnamed “established partner” has agreed to buy 1 million new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, an order that it says is the “the largest ever single purchase order in BlackBerry’s history.” BlackBerry scored another big customer win with the German government earlier this month and has also been successful in picking off some Android and iOS users with its new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. We’ll hopefully know a lot more about the company’s BlackBerry 10 sales when it reports its quarterly earnings on March 28th. BlackBerry’s full press release is posted below.

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Google’s (GOOG) Project Glass is one of the more intriguing gadget concepts that we’ve seen in recent years, but it does come with a fairly big catch — that is, wearing Google Glass makes you look pretty dorky. Researcher Nickolay Lamm, best known for his pre-release renders of the iPad mini and his futuristic iPhone design concepts, has tried his hand at making Glass look more fashionable by designing it more like a pair of neckband headphones that wrap around the back of your head. In this way, Lamm’s design puts most of Glass’s computing power out of sight and only leaves the tiny display lens and camera at the front of your head. 

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The dire threat of public broadband lives on in Georgia. Consumerist reports that Georgia’s state legislature has shot down a bill that would have barred rural municipalities from building their own public broadband networks in areas where at least one residential building had an Internet connection speed of 1.5Mbps or higher. The Macon Telegraph reported last month that legislators from some rural towns in Georgia were “up in arms” over the proposed legislation and claimed that they needed to build their own broadband networks because “companies simply will not bring the highest-speed Internet to their residents because it doesn’t turn a profit.”

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We have no idea whether Google (GOOG) Glass will actually become a popular accessory, but at least we now know that it will have access to some of the same mobile services that have made Android smartphones so popular. Per 9to5Google, it seems that Google made a presentation at South by Southwest this week showing how Google Glass users can interact with their Gmail accounts and with other third-party apps such as the New York Times, Evernote, Skitch and Path. The Gmail app is particularly nifty since it utilizes voice recognition technology that supports email dictation as well as audio messaging. This way, Glass users on the other end can choose to hear your messages if they’re having difficulty reading text on their displays. A video of Google’s Glass Gmail demonstration is posted below.

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Amazing but true — commonsense ideas are still capable of getting bipartisan support. A bipartisan coalition of senators this week introduced legislation that would lift the current ban on consumers unlocking their cellphones without permission from their carriers. The bill, which was proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and cosponsored by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), would let users unlock their cellphones after completing all service agreements with their wireless carrier. The proposed legislation comes less than two weeks after the White House signaled its support for an online petition urging the government to reverse a decision made by the Librarian of Congress last fall to deny consumers the right to unlock their phones and bring them to different carriers.

Google’s (GOOG) Street View data collection practices have gotten it into legal hot water throughout the world and on Tuesday the company agreed to pay $7 million to settle charges leveled  by 38 state attorneys general that it improperly collected personal data from unsecured wireless networks from around the United States. Google maintains that it was unaware that some of its Street View employees were collecting the data, which it admits included “URLs of requested Web pages, partial or complete email communications, and any confidential or private information being transmitted to or from the network user while the Street View cars were driving down streets.” As part of the settlement, Google will also have to run a training program for at least the next decade instructing employees on how to respect users’ privacy while collecting data from Street View and other services. A press release on the settlement issued by the Massachusetts State Attorney General’s office is posted below.

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It’s taken a while but it seems that Android tablets are finally giving the iPad some real competition. The latest tablet shipment forecast from IDC projects that Android will take a 48.8% share of the tablet market in 2013, a significant jump from the 41.5% share of the market the platform held in IDC’s previous projection. The rise of Android in the tablet realm comes at the expense of Apple (AAPL), which IDC projects will hold a 46% share of the tablet market in 2013, a decline of five percentage points from the 51% market share it held in 2012.

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It used to be that Apple (AAPL) would intentionally low-ball its quarterly guidance so it could crush expectations with better-than-expected earnings. But now that Apple has started issuing more realistic guidance, it’s running the risk of missing expectations by a considerable margin. And according to a new estimate from Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek, there’s a significant chance that Apple’s earnings might be even worse than its own projections this quarter. Per StreetInsider, Misek released a new research note on Tuesday that not only slashed the company’s price target from $500 to $420, but also projected a 25% chance that Apple would miss its own guidance for the fiscal second quarter.

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