Author: Erica Ogg

Opening Day for Major League Baseball season is still over a month away, but the team behind the league’s mobile apps have come to Spring Training ready to go: later on Thursday the latest version of At Bat will be available for download from the iOS App Store and Android Google Play store. This season, pro baseball’s app is now offering a cross-platform subscription and a better deal for those who like listening to baseball games online.

To get the 2013 version of the app, iOS users simply have to download the update in the App Store — no need to download a whole new app. Returning Android users will have a choice depending on the app they have installed. If you had the app called At Bat, you just need to look for the update; if you had the At Bat ’12 app, you’ll have to look for a new app to download. (I’ll update this story with the direct link as soon as the app goes live.)

The app is free, but to unlock access to live games for the 2013 season and World Series, it requires a one-time in-app purchase $19.99 subscription fee — or iOS users can pay in month installments of $2.99. However, as with last year’s version, subscribers to the league’s MLB.TV subscription plan for watching games online can get At Bat 13 for free.

Last year’s online and mobile video bundling deal resulted in downloads of the 2012 season app hitting 7 million, which surpassed the downloads during the 2010 and 2011 seasons combined.

This year, At Bat is again offering some cost-saving deals for subscribers that should juice downloads. Previously, fans had to pay separately for access to the mobile app as well as live game audio through the MLB.TV desktop website, but At Bat 13 subscribers will now get GameDay Audio (MLB.TV’s most popular feature) for free. And for subscribers who may own both iOS and Android devices: one subscription works on any platform now; you no longer have to pay for access on each.

Major League Baseball’s Advanced Media — whose CEO, Bob Bowman, will be speaking at our paidContent Live event in April – runs all of the league’s digital properties. And MLBAM made big strides this year in incorporating more news video and its historical video content into its mobile apps. Game highlight video will now be embedded in news stories in the app. More than 70 classic archived games dating back to the 1952 World Series will also be accessible, and the whole of MLB’s video highlights are finally searchable — it previously went back to just 2008. Stats are also playing a bigger part of the user experience: tablet users will now have access to sortable batting, pitching and fielding statistics.

Though it’s not yet ready, a version of At Bat for Blackberry 10 will arrive by Opening Day, I’m told.

This story was updated at 9:04 a.m. PT with a link to the iOS app.

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The owner of a website that was a conduit used by hackers to breach employee computers at both Facebook and Apple has come forward to explain the events that took place last month. Ian Sefferman, co-founder of the iPhoneDevSDK website, said Wednesday in a blog post that he’d found evidence that the targeted attack came from an administrator account on his website that was compromised.

Though Sefferman says he believes the site is no longer infected, it’s safer not to visit the site for now — hence no link. Here’s how MacRumors reported Sefferman’s statement:

What we’ve learned is that it appears a single administrator account was compromised. The hackers used this account to modify our theme and inject JavaScript into our site. That JavaScript appears to have used a sophisticated, previously unknown exploit to hack into certain user’s computers.

We’re still trying to determine the exploit’s exact timeline and details, but it appears as though it was ended (by the hacker) on January 30, 2013.

He says he doesn’t believe any his site’s user data was actually compromised.

AllThingsD was the first to report iPhoneDevSDK’s involvement in the attack.

Both Apple and Facebook blamed Java: each reported recently that some of their employees’ computers were infected by malware from a vulnerability in a Java browser plug-in. Apple has since released a software patch for Java for OS X. Both companies say no user data was stolen.

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Apple’s most biggest and important manufacturing partner, Foxconn, is instituting a hiring freeze in its China factories until the end of March, but there are two different explanations for the move being offered. The Financial Times said it heard from unnamed Foxconn HR officials, recruiters and local government officials that it’s ceasing hiring “in response to reduced orders for the iPhone 5.” However, Foxconn told Bloomberg, in a separate interview, that the hiring freeze on new recruits has to do with the fact that more workers are returning.

The FT quotes an external recruiter for Foxconn’s factories who said hiring had stopped because of “fewer orders for the Apple products” and another who said “Foxconn’s demand for workers this year was as low as that in 2009.” A Foxconn spokesman only confirmed to the FT that the hiring freeze is on; he does not mention why.

Bloomberg got a different Foxconn spokesman to explain the reason for the freeze. He offered some more detail, saying: “Foxconn halted recruitment until the end of March after more employees returned from the Chinese New Year break than a year earlier.”

Apple’s investors either aren’t buying that explanation or are put off by the confusion surrounding the halt in hiring — Apple shares were down 1.61 percent to $452.60 on the news as of this posting.

This drop in need for more workers echoes reports published in January that demand for the iPhone 5 in the first three months of 2013 had dipped, causing Apple to cut its parts orders from suppliers in China.

It’s true that Apple has typically sold fewer iPhones in the quarter directly following the holiday season. Apple got the iPhone ready for sale in 100 markets between September and December, its fastest rollout ever, so the hiring halt could simply be a seasonal response.

Apple CEO Tim Cook last week at an investor conference said he sees plenty of growth left in the iPhone: “Frankly speaking, I see a wide open field. It may surprise you, but iPhone is only available to about 50 percent of the subscribers in the world.”

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We know Apple sold 37 million iPhones during the fourth quarter of 2012, but a new report gives more fine-grain detail to sales of its top two models. The iPhone 5, which debuted in September, rose to become the best-selling smartphone in the world on the strength of 27.4 million units sold, or 13 percent of all shipments, according to Strategy Analytics’ Handset Country Share Tracker published on Wednesday. The year-old iPhone 4S was the second-most popular smartphone, with 17.4 million units sold. And both models beat out Samsung’s Galaxy S III juggernaut, which after five months of availability, sold 15.4 million units during the fourth quarter.

Credit: Strategy Analytics

While Apple investors continue to worry that the iPhone’s relatively smaller screen and higher price prevent it from attracting more customers, the iPhone seems to be having one of its best moments. Wednesday’s report follows a previous one from the same firm, published earlier this month, that found the iPhone was for the first time ever the best-selling mobile phone in the U.S.

But what may be more interesting than the iPhone 5′s stats is the sustained popularity of the iPhone 4S, which was released in October 2011. These numbers serve as evidence that a significant chunk of Apple’s customers are more interested in a lower price — $99 with a two-year contract — than the absolute latest in tech and design Apple offers. You could also use it as an argument against Apple making a new model cheaper iPhone, since it essentially already has one in the 4S.

For its part, Samsung is reportedly set to release its follow-up to the Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S IV, in March, so this picture may very well change over the next several quarters.

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I love to cook, but half the battle of preparing meals is knowing what to make. That’s when I turn to an app called Gojee. It’s not your standard cookbook app or a recipe search: it’s an app that tells you what to make based on what’s in your refrigerator and pantry. And the best part is it’s got a great mix of basic food preparations, along with some unusual recipes.

All Gojee needs to know is what staples or ingredients you have on hand, what meal or category of food you’d like to cook, and anything you absolutely won’t or can’t eat. Once this information is plugged in, Gojee produces not just recipes, but beautiful photos of food for users to swipe through and get inspired for an upcoming meal.

After being recommended to me by one of my colleagues, Gojee has been my go-to cooking app for several months. These days, I end up preparing at least two meals per week with this app and have rarely made the same thing twice, thanks to the sheer variety of food blogs it pulls recipes from. I think it could be a good fit for anyone, no matter their skill in the kitchen.

Here’s a quick tour of Gojee’s food recommendation app.

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Apple admitted on Tuesday that it was the target of the same hacking attack that hit Facebook last week. A “small number” of Apple employees’ computers were compromised by hackers, the company told Reuters.

Apple says there is no evidence that “any data left Apple.” The company is said to be working with law enforcement to identify the culprits. Apple released an update later on Tuesday that patches the security vulnerability in Java for OS X that hackers were able to exploit.

Here’s Apple’s full statement on the matter:

Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers. We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware.Since OS X Lion, Macs have shipped without Java installed, and as an added security measure OS X automatically disables Java if it has been unused for 35 days. To protect Mac users that have installed Java, today we are releasing an updated Java malware removal tool that will check Mac systems and remove this malware if found.

Facebook said last week that last month it was also the victim of a malware attack that it says came from China. The exploit took advantage of a vulnerability in its Java software to gain access to its employees’ PCs.

Apple’s announcement comes less than a day after the New York Times published evidence that a huge number of hacks emanating from China against U.S. infrastructure and American corporations can be linked to a secret division of China’s army. The Times itself, along with the Wall Street Journal, are also among a high-profile group of U.S. companies to be hit by Chinese hackers that made their way into employees’ computers.

This post was updated at 10:34 a.m. PT with Apple’s statement and again at 2:02 p.m. PT with the link to Apple’s published update for Java.

Thumbnail image courtesy Shutterstock user mkabakov.

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On a stage in New York City Tuesday morning, HTC officially introduced the next version of its flagship Android smartphone, which it called the HTC One. But if you were paying attention to early rumors, the device the company unveiled was the same one leaked just last week.

As expected, the new One has a large 4.7-inch 1080p display with 468 ppi resolution. It’s LTE-capable and runs Android Jelly Bean, the latest version of Google’s operating system. The One also has an aluminum body, dual front-facing stereo speakers — which are part of a system its calling BoomSound — two microphones for recording, two touch-sensitive buttons, and in an attempt to stand out from the Android crowd, a new custom HTC home screen. There’s also a cloud-based music player on board that can show song information and lyrics.

HTC spent time highlighting the new ”Ultrapixel” camera: it has an f/2.0 aperture lens and a sensor that it says gather “300 percent more light” than other smartphone cameras. The camera can produce what it’s calling Zoes, which are still images strung together to make short, three-second animated clips — basically HTC’s version of Vine. The camera also supports 1080p video.

In another attempt to stand out, HTC went even bigger, introducing a new HTC-only feature called BlinkFeed, a stream of social updates, news and information. Stylistically it looks a lot like Flipboard; HTC says it has 1,400 content partners signed up. ESPN was one of the big ones to get name-checked, and a company executive was given a speaking slot to talk about the partnership. Others are AOL, MTV, Vice Media, Cool Hunting and Reuters.

Not only is it a smartphone, but HTC has added its own software to make it a TV remote. Sense TV will turn the One into a program guide and remote control for “most TVs, set-top boxes and receivers.” The company did not name specific devices it would work with.

The new One comes in silver or black and in 32GB or 64 GB capacities. There’s no price yet, but the device is set to arrive in late March, though the company did not get more specific than that. HTC also did not announce when preorders will begin, but it is instituting a new offer: if you pre-order the new device and give HTC your old phone, you’ll get a $100 discount on the One.

Launch partners will include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Cincinnati Bell and Best Buy here in the U.S., along with 180 other operators worldwide.

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In February 2012, China became the source of the most new activations of iOS and Android devices. Now, just a year later, the country is set to become the world’s largest market for devices running Apple’s and Google’s operating systems, period. As of the end of January, the U.S. and China were running neck-and-neck, 222 million to 221 million devices, respectively. But the way things are shaping up, Flurry Mobile feels comfortable saying China is set to emerge the leader at the end of this month, according to a new report published this week.

By the end of February, China should have 246 million smartphones and tablets running iOS or Android; that will put it ahead of the U.S., which should have 230 million. The race is now effectively over: the U.S. will very likely never lead again, Flurry notes, thanks to the vast discrepancy in each country’s population — 310 million to China’s 1.3 billion.

Flurry arrived at its findings by tracking 2.4 billion app usage sessions on more than 275,000 apps in use worldwide.

This shift to China being the most important mobile device market in the world has been coming for a while, and it’s the reason, for instance, Apple’s CEO can’t shut up about China. That’s where the company’s main growth is going to come from. It’s why Tim Cook has gone there on official business twice in his two years as CEO, why the company has been on a tear opening retail stores in China, why it started accepting Chinese yuan for App Store purchases and why it’s offering no-or low-interest payment plans for iPhone purchases in the country.

And yet, it still has to contend with the formidable Android: iOS device sales, while growing, remain far behind the sales of Android devices from Samsung, ZTE, Yulong, Lenovo and Huawei in China.

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When Sunrise debuted last year, it was somewhat of a throwback idea in our hyper-connected, location-aware, status-updating world: it was a static, daily snapshot of your day — meetings, appointments, birthdays — that arrived your inbox each morning. On Tuesday, the team behind Sunrise is debuting a new product that pushes that idea forward: a smart, connected calendar app for iOS, also called Sunrise.

It’s not that the email product wasn’t doing well, they had 20,000 people signed up for it, founder Pierre Valade told me in a phone call from their New York City headquarters last week. But, “people were saying, ‘This is cool in the morning. But it’s hard to go back and find it throughout the day’ because they get so much email.”

He and his cofounder, Jeremy Le Van, realized people were looking for more than what the Sunrise email was designed for. “We were like, it’s not really meant to be read twice, or three times. We had the idea that if we had an app, people would be able to go back to it, so we decided to replace the calendar.”

A culturally current analogy to understand the difference between the original and new Sunrise: On House of Cards, the congressmen get printouts from their assistants of their entire daily schedules first thing in the morning; that’s what Sunrise was meant to be originally. As an app, the better metaphor for Sunrise on iOS is having that assistant follow you through the day, adding and deleting things on the schedule as they come up and giving you all the important, personal details on who you’re meeting with and where. The app is not just a schedule, but a full-on calendar that knows a lot about you and the people you’re meeting with.

Its smarts come from how Sunrise is connected: not only can you link up your Google calendars, both personal and professional, you can sync Sunrise with LinkedIN and Facebook. This allows Sunrise to know all of your planned meetings and events, but also who your contacts are, how you know them, and when their birthdays are. The way Sunrise has implemented all this information is with some delightful design flourishes. As you might imagine from guys who cut their teeth on mobile apps at Foursquare, design and the user experience are high priorities here.

The top of the screen is where you take care of your settings, a simple “+” sign lets you quickly add events in the app — the mechanics are very similar to adding events to the stock iOS Calendar app. In the center bar is an icon that has a number badge showing if you have new event invitations. Below that is a calendar that you can scroll through an adjustable window to find the date you want.

But most of the screen is taken up by the day view of the calendar. There is where you see the close attention to detail Sunrise’s designers have dwelled on. For example, next to each meeting event is a small profile picture of the meeting attendants; a small gift icon lists birthdays that day along with their Facebook profile shot. You can click on the person’s picture, and you’re given the option to post a birthday message on their Facebook wall right from the app, or — if you have them in your iOS contacts — text them a private “happy birthday.” Similarly, when a location is listed in an appointment, a map pin appears that lets you, in two clicks, jump to directions in the maps app of your choice — Google’s or Apple’s. If the appointment is a Skype call, the Skype icon appears in the list view; if it’s a lunch meeting, a food icon will appear. Each weekend also helpfully includes temperature forecasts for your location, along with small icons representing the forecast for each day.

Now, replacing the iPhone calendar is quite a popular undertaking these days. I wrote last month about Fantastical, which is much simpler and focuses more on helping you quickly add events to your calendar through natural language processing. Last week, Tempo debuted from the same folks behind Siri – it’s a smart calendar that uses artificial intelligence technology to learn about you and infer information about events and meetings based on past behaviors and other context. There’s also a handful of others, like Cue, from Greplin, which is a combination calendar and personal assistant — it integrates not just appointments and meetings but tracks travel info, package deliveries and more.

Sunrise is betting that its focus on using design to make a beautiful app that appeals to users’ emotions, and on making the user experience easy by not having to jump between a lot of different apps, will help it rise above the rest.

The email product was a side project when Valade and Le Van were at Foursquare; to pursue building the mobile app, they’ve struck out on their own. They are currently self-funded, but will be looking for funding soon to continue building out both the app and the standalone email product.

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It’s hard to go anywhere but down when you’ve been a senior executive at the world’s largest and most valuable consumer company, but former Apple retail VP John Browett seems to have done pretty well, considering the circumstances: he’s just landed the CEO job at Monsoon Accessorize, a U.K.-based purveyor of inexpensive jewelry and handbags. He moved from overseeing Apple’s 401 stores in 14 countries to 1,000 stores in 74 countries. Meanwhile, his appointment reminds us, the world’s most lucrative retail stores still have no official leader. How can that be?

Well, to begin with, they’re not really hurting as a result. At least that’s what CEO Tim Cook explained during a Q&A session at Goldman Sachs’ analyst conference this week. Cook was effusive in his description of the stores, calling the in-store experience “Prozac” for him when he’s having a bad day.

And it’s not hard to see why they make him so happy. The average stores pulls in $50 million in yearly revenue, he said Tuesday. And the stores make about $6,000 per square foot of retail space — twice what next-closest retailer, Tiffany & Co. does.

And, as this chart from Horace Dediu at Asymco shows below, Apple Stores are more popular than ever:

Cook said there were 370 million people that walked through the doors of Apple stores during 2012 — the most ever. Besides just being a place where shoppers can pick up an iPhone or MacBook, the stores function as showrooms for the Apple experience, customer service centers, and places to educate new iPhone or Mac users.

It’s been almost four months since Browett’s exit, and there’s still no SVP of Retail. Cook has been overseeing the group, while Apple is said to be still actively looking for Browett’s replacement. It needs someone who knows retail, understands the value of Apple’s brand, and has international experience, since that’s where most of Apple’s sales growth is coming from. Apple’s at the top of its game in retail in these respects, but apparently the SVP slot remains an extraordinarily hard position to fill. Apple doesn’t appear to be looking inward: longtime VP of Retail Jerry McDougal recently left the company after presumably being passed over for the position. It appears instead to be looking outside the company again, despite the bad experience last time.

In all, the toughest thing about Apple retail is, as we learned from the Browett episode, that it’s extremely high profile with almost no leeway to make significant change. Whoever Cook brings in will likely have to accept simply managing the model that’s already in place; which for the ambitious type Apple usually hires, is probably a tough sell.

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Kickstarter has been a huge booster for the iOS device ecosystem, and now it’s joining it. On Thursday, the crowdfunding company announced its first iOS app, for the iPhone and iPod touch. It’s free and on the App Store now.

On the Kickstarter company blog, the site’s three co-founders said when translating the Kickstarter web site to a smaller screen they decided to highlight three specific aspects of the service: searching for new projects, keeping up to date with the ones you are backing, and tools for project creators.

The app includes some handy mobile features, like push notifications for backers to let you know if Facebook friends have backed any of the same projects as you. For creators, there’s an option to turn on notifications so they can see new pledges in real-time. They also get a project dashboard and the ability to take photos and videos with their device and upload them as updates for the backers to see the project’s progress.

There’s no word on an iPad app or an Android version yet. But it’s clear why Kickstarter is starting to make the move to mobile: it’s where and how a lot of people do their shopping these days.

Last year was Kickstarter’s most successful year yet. As of December 2012, project backers had pledged $378 million to more than 34,000 successful campaigns on the site.

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iOS 6.1 was released just a few weeks ago, and Apple has had to squash a couple high-profile bugs already. Now add to the list another potentially scary-sounding glitch: with a few well-timed button taps, it appears anyone can bypass the iPhone’s lock screen, assuming it’s been updated to the latest version of iOS 6.1, according to several reports.

A YouTube video showing how it can be done, posted by user videosdebarraquito, was spotted by The Verge on Thursday. Basically, he found that by attempting and canceling an emergency call on the iPhone, holding the lock buttong and then taking a screenshot took him past the stage where he should have had to enter a password to access the phone. In the video he shows he’s able to place a call to one of the phone’s listed contacts.

He also claims that he was able to see and edit the “contacts list, list of recent calls, favorite contacts, and even make a call to any phone number on the hacked device and erase the log.”

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bug or if a fix is already being prepared.

This is yet another thing for Apple to address as part of the iOS 6.1 release. Earlier this week it released iOS 6.1.1 that targeted a bug causing some users of the iPhone 4S to experience degraded 3G connectivity. And some corporate iPhone users are still waiting for Apple to release a fix for an acknowledged bug causing syncing with Microsoft Exchange to go haywire.

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In what’s likely the least surprising bit of news you’ll read today, Apple is appealing a recent ruling by Brazil’s intellectual property authority that it is not the exclusive owner of the iPhone trademark.

Reuters reported Thursday that Apple has asked for a review of the decision by the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI). That decision, announced Wednesday, was that since local Brazilian company Gradiente Electronica had filed the iPhone trademark in 2000 — seven years before Apple introduced the iPhone — and released a product with the name in December 2012, Apple did not have exclusive rights to use iPhone.

As part of the review, Gradiente will have to establish a few things, according to Reuters:

Now, in order to keep its trademark rights, Gradiente will need to prove to the regulator in the next 60 days that it made use of the trademark between January 2008 and January 2013, Inpi said late on Wednesday. Brands in Brazil must be developed within 5 years of gaining approval.

With the “iPhone” smartphone Gradiente began selling in December, it appears to have met those guidelines. But that’s most certainly not going to be the end of this story, since Apple can take the case to court.

This is beginning to look as though it could play out the same way an iPad trademark case did in China last year. Like Brazil, China has a “first-to-file” policy that tends to favor the first person to file a trademark, not necessarily the first user. A Chinese company, Proview, had registered the trademark for iPad before Apple made the device. Apple said it bought the rights to the iPad trademark from Proview in 2009, before the iPad was introduced, for $55,000. Facing bankruptcy in 2012, Proview’s parent company disputed the sale and tried to get the iPad excluded from sale in China. After months of legal battles, Apple ended up paying a sort of ransom of $60 million as a settlement.

Settlement with Apple might be the ultimate goal here for Gradiente too. Its CEO has said from the moment this became international news that he’s willing to talk and is “open to dialogue about anything” with Apple.

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There are a lot of predictions being floated about what Apple’s going to do in 2013: an iWatch? An iTV? How about a plastic iPhone and an Apple TV SDK? A note from an analyst from Jefferies published Wednesday contains many of these predictions, but one idea about a move the company might make this year sounds likely: that Apple will make big changes to iOS that will allow the software to work better on mobile devices with much more powerful processors.

In a note to investors today, Peter Misek of Jefferies Securities notes (via AppleInsider):

“We think Apple plans to re-architect iOS to utilize more cores and better compete with Samsung. Also, we believe the way iOS interoperates with iCloud, gestures controls, and advertising will be substantially upgraded.”

I’m not sure about those specific things, but I do think big changes are coming to iOS for a couple reasons.

While iOS has seen six new releases since its debut in 2007, there have been few major changes. The arrival of the App Store in 2008, and push notifications in 2009 were the last big adjustments in how the software works. Consistency is good for users, and it’s been working for Apple. But iOS was developed at a time when mobile processors were slower and smaller — and iOS was no doubt built with those parameters in mind. At some point, as the analyst notes, iOS is going to need to make back-end changes to keep up with mobile processors as they become faster and more capable.

Another sign that change is coming? Since between the first iOS release to the debut of iOS 6, the same person was guarding and guiding the development. But Scott Forstall is gone now. CEO Tim Cook dismissed the former head of iOS Software last fall for reasons assumed to be related to the Apple Maps debacle.

However, I think this move will have ramifications for iOS in general, not just Maps. Both the software element and the engineering part of iOS have a new overseers: Jony Ive is now in charge of the Human Interface group, and Craig Federighi was promoted to lead iOS Engineering along with OSX Engineering.

New managers by nature often want to come in and force change (even if sometimes for its own sake). But in this case, as the software ages, as early iOS design decisions incorporating lots of skeuomorphic elements fall out of favor, as competitors catch up, and hardware continues to improve, it’s probably more tempting than ever.

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A Brazilian regulatory agency on Wednesday ruled that Apple is not the only company that can exclusively sell smartphones bearing the iPhone name in the country. Gradiente Electronica, a local company that had registered the name in 2000, is the other, the BBC reported.

Gradiente was granted the iPhone trademark in 2008. Apple began selling its iPhone in 2007. Though the company has a different name now (IGB Electronica SA) it began selling a device in the country it calls the iPhone in December 2012. (To add a little insult to injury, the device runs Android.)

Both companies can use the trademark, the Institute of Industrial Property ruled, but Gradiente has the option of suing for exclusive use of it since it registered the name first, according to the report. Apple, meanwhile, is still the only company that can legally sell software, clothing and publications with the iPhone trademark. So, there’s that.

The agency told the BBC that Apple is already planning to appeal. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the story.

The Brazilian company is said to be willing to make a deal with Apple. IGB Chairman Eugenio Emilio Staub told Bloomberg last week his company was “open to a dialogue for anything, anytime … We’re not radicals.”

This is perhaps a temporary setback for Apple, which has high hopes for the country as a market for iPhones and other products. Last year, CEO Tim Cook specifically mentioned Brazil as the most interesting emerging market — after China – for Apple.

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Apple is reportedly exploring different types of designs of smart watches, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The descriptions of the potential product vary slightly: The WSJ says the company is experimenting with ”a watch-like device that would perform some functions of a smartphone.” The NYT says Apple is looking at “wristwatch-like devices made of curved glass.”

The watch would run the same iOS platform as the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, according to the Times‘ report. The Journal adds that Apple has talked with its chief manufacturing partner, Foxconn, about manufacturing the device.

Last week, one of the original human interface designers at Apple, Bruce Tognazzini, wrote a detailed post on his personal blog about what he imagined Apple could do with an “iWatch.” He no longer works at Apple, and said he had no knowledge of what Apple’s designers may actually be working on now. Among other things, he pointed out that Apple has been testing and has patented a method of producing curved glass displays.

These latest reports aren’t the first that such a watch or device is under consideration inside Apple’s Cupertino, Calif. headquarters. It’s important to note that Apple testing or experimenting with a device is a long ways from it being an actual product. But as wearable computing becomes more mainstream — it’s expected by a $1.5 billion business by next year — it makes sense that a wearable, iOS-based device is something Apple would want to at least explore, especially as the market for iPhones continues to mature.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook likes to talk about his company’s plans for Apple TV as “pulling the string to see where it leads them.” It seems it may have led them to hire an expert in flat panel televisions.

In a report this week, industry group the OLED Association noted that Apple had hired away James (Jueng-jil) Lee from LG Display. At LG he was a research fellow working on creating a printed organic light-emitting diode (OLED) based television. And perhaps more importantly, he’s an expert in LCD production: before he was at LG he started new LCD product lines at Samsung and was heavily involved in their LCD research efforts.

Lee is ”no doubt more knowledgeable about OLEDs that any of Apple’s current staff, which is known to be quite strong,” according to the OLED Association.

Apple has refused to give any information about whether it’s getting into the television market. Cook has said several times that TV is “a market that’s been left behind” and for Apple is “an area of intense interest,” but that’s as far as he’ll go. Hiring an expert in getting a new display line up and going definitely seems more like action than mere “interest.”

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According to one of the original interface designers at Apple the question of his former company creating an iWatch is “when” not “if.” In a long and detailed post on his personal blog this week, interface designer Bruce Tognazzini laid out his case for it. He’s no longer with Apple, but as an early employee he seems to have a good sense of how Apple designers think, and he sees numerous possibilities for such a device and how it might work with Apple’s current products.

“The iWatch will fill a gaping hole in the Apple ecosystem,” he wrote on his Ask Tog blog. “It will facilitate and coordinate not only the activities of all the other computers and devices we use, but a wide array of devices to come. Like other breakthrough Apple products, it’s value will be underestimated at launch, then grow to have a profound impact on our lives and Apple’s fortunes.”

There are already smart watches out there for early adopters. But Apple always goes for the mainstream. The case Tognazzini makes is that for all the apparent drawbacks to getting regular people to wear and use a smart watch, Apple already holds the answers. For example:

• No one wants to recharge a watch: Apple has a patent on a wireless recharging method.
• Clunkiness can be solved with another patented method Apple has for curved glass displays.
• And thanks to Siri, there’s not need for excess buttons to scroll through menus on a small screen.

He also has some very interesting ideas regarding how Apple could use its own iWatch: as a way to remove the need for passwords when using other Apple devices, like a Mac or an iPhone; to make mobile payments possible with an NFC chip-equipped iWatch; to improve its maps with altitude and pressure information sensed on the watch; and as a method of crowdsourcing more accurate weather information.

That’s just a taste; there’s much more and you should read his whole post. As Tognazzini points out, he doesn’t have any insider information and has no idea when Apple could be ready with such a device. But his perspective is smart and while many others are waiting with bated breath for a new television to show Apple’s still got some innovation up its sleeve, Tognazzini’s thought very far ahead of how Apple could make the smartwatch one of its most revolutionary devices yet.

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In the world of mobile advertising, Android phones reached a significant milestone during the fourth quarter of 2012: they drove more mobile advertising impressions than iPhones during a quarter, for the first time ever. That’s according to a report published Thursday morning by Opera Mediaworks, the mobile ad tracking arm of Opera Mobile. Still, the findings show that highest volume still isn’t translating to the highest value for advertisers.

Android phones represented 31 percent of the more than 500 million mobile ad impressions tracked by Opera between October and December across more than 12,000 mobile websites and apps. iPhones, meanwhile, had a 29 percent share of those impressions. Major reasons for Android taking the lead include: the popularity of Android devices in markets where users are more likely to access the internet on a mobile device – like Indonesia and Russian Federation countries, which saw double-digit gains in ad impressions during the quarter — and Samsung’s rapidly growing popularity among smartphone buyers in the U.S.

“In the U.S. we think that this is considerably helped by the emergence of Samsung and the Galaxy S III,” Mahi De Silva, EVP of Opera’s consumer mobile division, said in an interview. “They’re pouring a lot of dollars into the market, and they have favorable pricing with mobile operators, so that entire market has a lot of momentum [toward] adoption of Samsung Android devices.”

Earlier this week we reported that Apple just barely outsold Samsung in the U.S. mobile phone sales during the fourth quarter, but Samsung sold nearly 7 million more devices during all of 2012, according to Strategy Analytics.

Source: Opera Media Works

iPhones are just one piece of the pie, however. When counting iOS’s overall impact, including mobile ads seen on iPod touches and iPads, Opera found that Apple’s devices still represent the largest overall number of impressions, about 42 percent.

And where it really counts — producing revenue for mobile advertisers — iOS is still comfortably in the lead.

“Even though you saw that for the first time Android phones have a larger volume of impressions, the dollars associated is still considerably in favor of Apple and iOS and iPhones,” De Silva said.

iPhones are responsible for 37 percent of the revenue made by mobile advertisers, versus about 30 percent from Android; and just over half of all revenues in the quarter came from some type of iOS device. So in terms of the ability to monetize, De Silva says iOS is still the more attractive platform for advertisers.

Android has a ways to go to catch up in revenue. And even though the platform is only going to grow and add more users, it’s not clear the monetization will catch up nearly as fast, he said. “The trend, as we’ve seen in the past, is iPhone continues to be the most monetization-friendly platform out there.”

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