Category: Mobile

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs surprised Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) today by publishing a 1,671-word essay on his thoughts on why Apple does not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads. This afternoon, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, made an appearance at the WSJ’s office to participate in a live blog, and to defend the company, against what he called was an “extraordinary attack.”

Without a referee, there could be no winner. Jobs accused Adobe and Flash of being a closed and proprietary system, and Narayan chuckled in response, calling Flash “an open specification.” Jobs said Flash drains batteries, and Narayan said that’s “patently false.”

While Jobs railed on about the downsides of Flash, Narayan stuck to the benefits: that Apple should let customers decide and that Adobe’s ultimate goal is to create a platform that lets content be written once for multiple platforms, and that a more cohesive world will “eventually prevail.”

Be your own judge and read the full text of the interview with Adobe’s Narayan here, and Jobs’ full essay here.

Paris-based Gameloft (EPA: GFT), a world leader in making games for mobile phones, said revenues totaled $43.7 million (Euro 33 million) in the first quarter of 2010, jumping 7 percent compared to the same period a year ago, and up 3.8 percent compared to fourth quarter.

The company, which considers itself an iPhone powerhouse with 63 games in the App store, said 21 percent of the company’s sales in the first quarter came from the iPhone—compared to 14 percent in all of 2009.

However, it said it was optimistic about other platforms, including recent device releases from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Palm (NSDQ: PALM), Samsung, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), and therefore continues to expect revenue growth in 2010. As usual, Gameloft did not provide any other financial results, or specific forecast in its release.

The one figure it does break out is revenues by region. Europe represented 37 percent; North America, 34 percent and the rest of the world 29 percent, which is fairly comparable to last year’s figures.

This is the new Hyundai Avante, which debuted yesterday in Seoul, South Korea. Outside of the brand’s homeland, the Avante wears Elantra badges, meaning this car serves as a preview of the next U.S.-market Hyundai Elantra.

The new sedan wears the stretched lights, flowing lines, and body creases that define Hyundai’s “fluidic sculpture” design language, as seen on the Genesis and Sonata. The Avante also shares many styling cues with the smaller Hyundai Verna/Accent we saw in Beijing last week.

Under the hood is a 1.6-liter gasoline engine hooked up to a six-speed automatic transmission. The engine makes 138 hp and 123 lb-ft of torque, and features variable valve timing, direct injection, and variable intake geometry. Despite being positioned as an entry-level small car, the Avante packs HID and LED lighting, heated seats, and a color LCD screen in the instrument cluster.

The Avante goes on sale later this year in Korea. We can probably expect a new Elantra sedan for our shores by 2011, although we don’t yet know what specific equipment will carry over. We’ll update you as soon as we know more.

Related posts:

1. 2009 Hyundai Elantra / Elantra Touring – Review
2. Hyundai, Kia Plan Fuel-sipping Variants of Accent, Elantra, and Forte – Car News
3. 2008 Hyundai Elantra – Review

With HP’s $1.2 billion planned acquisition of Palm, the computer giant hopes to turn Palm’s webOS operating system into a platform to rival Apple’s mobile computing franchise. “Ultimately the Palm webOS and Apple are the two that can scale best over multiple devices and we are going to compete with Apple going forward in the broader mobile category,” said Brian Humphries, SVP of corporate strategy and development at HP.

I spoke with Humphries last night after the deal was announced, but he declined repeatedly to give details as to when or what devices may get webOS. So we have no idea if the HP Slate that Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, was waving about at CES will continue to have Windows or webOS, but we do know that HP has a big vision for webOS — it hopes to put it across an array of mobile devices, creating a platform backed by the power of HP’s sales and distribution channels to which developers will flock.

A huge portion of HP’s message around this deal is aimed at reassuring developers that webOS isn’t a dying platform and that HP is willing to invest. Humphries was adamant that developers will find a supportive HP (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d). “We’re clearly giving them dev tools, a platform they can port to, an easy financial model that’s viable to them and confidence that the OS will be scaled globally and on many different form factors,” Humphries said.

It’s clear that HP is modeling its mobile computing vision on Apple’s platform, and when I asked how many mobile operating systems the world has room for, Humphries hedged for a bit saying the market is large and that it was difficult to see how things might develop, however when pressed he said that only webOS and Apple really have the ability to scale across many devices and many markets.

As for HP’s willingness to be more open than Apple, perhaps taking a page from its personal computing heritage, it doesn’t look good. “Apple is proprietary but it also has a tremendous relationship with the app developer,” Humphries said. “And it may have a closed OS on which the app community can sit, but the apps make it open.”

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of mobile advertising platform activity. The latest on the pile – Mojiva has landed a $7 million second venture funding round.

The money will go toward global expansion for its Mobile Ad Serving Technology ad serving platform and its display ad network, the company says.

The round is led by UV Partners but also comes from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, the German media company’s VC wing, which stumped up the bulk of Mojiva’s £3 million first round in 2008.

Mojiva actually spun off ad serving operations in to a separate subsidiary, mOcean, recently.

Mojiva claims to reach more than 41 million unique users a month. The company’s main product, its “Self Service Ad Delivery Tooklit” is targeted at advertisers who want to create and manage their own mobile campaigns, and publishers who want to monetize their mobile content through ads on their websites or apps. Mojiva also provides white label versions of its toolkit to ad agencies.

The National Corvette Museum is planning a $35 million motorsports park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The park will be built on 300 acres of land near the museum and GM’s Corvette assembly plant, and is expected to be ready in two to three years.

The main attraction will be a pair of road courses, the larger of which is designed to mimic the Circuit de la Sarthe, which hosts the 24 Hours of Le Mans race. The East course features a turn modeled on the Nürburgring’s Caracciola Karussell and a chicane that supposedly apes the Bus Stop at Watkins Glen. Sounds neat if they can pull them off.

Other plans include a quarter-mile drag strip, a ten-acre autocross area, a skid pad, and a 0.75-mile karting track. Organizers say all the facilities will meet FIA and SCCA rules, and will be open to driver training events as well as open track days. And yes, it’ll be open to cars other than ‘Vettes.

Related posts:

1. Track to Street: Chevy’s Corvette C6.R GT2 Helps Make a Better Production Vette

Watch the Video: 2011 Ford Mustangs vs. 2010 Chevrolet Camaros: Behind the Scenes – Video

Related posts:

1. 2011 Ford Mustangs vs. 2010 Chevrolet Camaros – Video
2. 2010 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport vs. 2010 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 – Video
3. 2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0 vs. 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS – Comparison Tests

Symbian today announced a new initiative intended to attract developers, and is providing web development tools to ease application programming for its open source mobile platform, Symbian 3. Using the web standards of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, developers can create software for devices such as Nokia’s new N8, which was introduced earlier this week as the first handset to run the Symbian 3 operating system. The web application development tools are available today for Windows, Mac and Linux computers and will supplement the Qt cross-platform framework that already supports application development for Symbian 3 devices.

Last night, I spoke with Larry Berkin, the Head of Global Alliances and General Manager USA of the Symbian Foundation, about the use of web standards for mobile phone development, mainly because we’ve seen this approach before — Palm touted the same strategy upon introduction of its webOS platform in January of 2009, but the approach didn’t seem to capture the attention of developers who flocked to other popular platforms, by comparison. I asked Berkin why offering a simple, web standards approach might work for Symbian, when it didn’t do so for Palm.

“While there will always be a need for native apps, this will lower the cost of development for developers,” Berkin said. That makes sense because coding with HTML, CSS and JavaScript doesn’t require a deep knowledge of object-oriented programming or as sophisticated a technical understanding of programming in general. And quite literally anyone who has created a web page can build an application using this method — Symbian’s own developer page runs this tagline now: “If you can create a web page, you’re a Symbian 3 app developer.” As far as the inevitable comparisons to Palm are concerned, Berkin spent seven years at PalmSource, the company that created the Palm OS and was later bought by ACCESS and says “We think it will work out better (for Symbian).”

Web standards might be easier to use than low-level programming languages, but that simplicity can also limit an application’s capabilities. Berkin, however, says this isn’t the case with the new Symbian 3 web development tools, due to accessible APIs. “The breadth of available platform services is good. Using APIs, developers can access the dialer, calendar, camera, contacts and more,” he said. That means without much additional effort or coding knowledge, a web standards application for Symbian 3 doesn’t have to be a simple client that can only access the web. By exposing APIs to core functionality, Symbian apps built on the new tool set could be used to capture a photo and share it on Flickr, for example.

I also asked Berkin about Qt, the Nokia-owned framework that was originally introduced as a programming method for Symbian 3. “Symbian offers a wide variety of development tools,” Berkin said, “but in terms of absolute numbers, Qt is still limited. This is just another tool in the arsenal.” So a two-pronged approach is the path towards Symbian software — one for experienced programmers looking for a write-once, run in several places with Qt, and one for us everyday folks that have the skills to build a web page. Between the two development tools, Symbian hopes to achieve what Palm hasn’t: a large and thriving development community to support one of the largest, open-sourced mobile device platforms in the world.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

How to Clean Up the Mobile OS Mess

If anyone was hoping that Palm’s financial problems would lead to a less cluttered mobile operating system market—you are out of luck.

HP (NYSE: HPQ) was resoundingly clear this afternoon during a conference call discussing its $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm. It intends on investing heavily in the webOS platform, and more broadly into the mobile devices market, which it calculates is worth more than $100 billion.

HP did not say how much it will be investing beyond the acquisition, but plans to bring the webOS platform to multiple form factors including phones, slates, tablets and netbooks. The pitch from Todd Bradley, HP’s EVP of Personal Systems: “Together HP and Palm (NSDQ: PALM) can make a powerful combination. With a long history in Silicon Valley, our values and vision are consistent and complimentary. Together, we can move forward and coupled with our scale global reach and investments in ecosystem, we expect to see solid growth, compelling, connected mobile experiences.”

HP, which has barely been participating in the mobile-phone space for the past few years, could be a viable contender when taking on such large and dominant brands, such as Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and others. It said that one out of five PCs shipped around the world comes from HP, or in other words, two per second. It clearly will be bringing that scale to Palm, which had been too small to move quickly.

When asked why HP decided to buy its own operating system, rather than rely on Microsoft’s Windows or Google’s Android, Bradley said the market was just too big to pass up. “Our breadth of products between smartphone slates and netbooks is an enormous opportunity for our customers,” Bradley explained. “It’s an early stage market, the developer community will develop a suite of applications that will make it [Palm] more compelling than it is today. We are a strategic partner of Microsoft’s, and we’ll continue to be so. We believe there’s a unique opportunity with Palm to create an HP experience across these connected products.”

Otherwise, HP was very coy on the call in providing any hints as to how it will integrate Palm into its operations, or the timeline for any products. On the decision to keep Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein on board, HP said they have a retention plan in place for all key employees, and that Rubinstein in particular, is “very excited about staying and executing his vision for webOS, and HP brings him the capabilities to do that, and his team is excited too.”

Related

• HP Buys Palm For $1.2 Billion
• Palm: A History In Links
• Palm’s Back-Up Plan If Its List Of Buy-Out Candidates Shrinks To Zero

Given recent economic challenges around the globe, one might conclude that demand for the web is down, but apparently that’s not the case. According to a report from research firm TeleGeography, international bandwidth usage continued to grow in spite of the global recession of the past few years. It notes that:

“International bandwidth usage increased 60 percent in 2009, in line with the past two years, and well ahead of the trend of 2002-2006. Growth has been particularly rapid in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. However, capacity requirements to seemingly mature markets, such as Europe and the U.S., have also grown at a compounded annual rate of more than 50 percent since 2002.”

Home and enterprise Internet access are surely driving demand, but the TeleGeography growth numbers from the Middle East, Africa and Latin American regions are undoubtedly being impacted by the mobile web. In emerging markets, it’s not uncommon for the primary information source to be a cellular phone connected to the web. That’s something I learned during Nokia’s CES keynote earlier this year — a moving experience that I’ve not forgotten.

Although the recession appears to be nearing an end in some areas of the world, the data has me wondering if readers would give up their Internet access — either home or mobile — before cutting back in other areas. There are too many scenarios to account for, so instead of running a poll here, leave us your thoughts in the comments. Would you give your web access during financially troubled times or is it one of the last items you’d drop in a cost-cutting measure?

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Why Carriers Can’t Afford to Wait for New Spectrum

Ooh la la! Google’s Image Search has gotten quite a nice makeover for iPhone and Android devices. There are now neater thumbnails, results optimized for speed, and pictures that can be flipped through with a swipe. [Google Mobile Blog] More »

Each week, our German correspondent slices and dices the latest rumblings, news, and quick-hit driving impressions from the other side of the pond. His byline may say Jens Meiners, but we simply call him . . . the Continental.

The main action took place in Beijing last week, and we paid close attention to the announcements from the auto show there. BMW, for example, unveiled further details on its “megacity vehicle,” aka “Project i.” It will be fully electric, and thanks to extensive use of carbon fiber, it will tip the scales at just around 1500 pounds. Now if we could just get one of BMW’s motorcycle engines with that package!

BMW’s Gran Coupé concept (above) is the answer to the Mercedes-Benz CLS, but the enthusiast community in Europe would rather have an answer to the Audi R8 and Benz’s SLS AMG instead. We continue to wait for a smashing re-interpretation of the legendary M1, preferably one superior to its forebear—which, incidentally, was underpowered, overpriced, and not one of Giugiaro’s greatest efforts at the time.

The Power Escalation Stops

Audi is working hard on further lightweight variations of the A5, the first one of which we sampled last December at the Boxberg test track in Germany. One will be an extremely efficient diesel, another will provide S5-beating performance with a four-cylinder gas engine.

Even before cutting weight significantly, it seems that Volkswagen and Audi are dropping out of the power race. The W-12 versions of the A8L and the just-face-lifted Phaeton (which is still not ready to re-enter the U.S. market) stay naturally aspirated and thus keep a significant distance from the turbocharged Mercedes-Benz S600 and BMW 760i/Li. It probably makes sense; these are prestige versions for China and the U.S. market. Sales in Europe, where you could actually use the power of a twelve-cylinder engine, are negligible. A few months ago, we tried to locate two similarly spec’d Mercedes S600s in Germany—it was virtually impossible.

Life Goes On

Saab lives on, at least in China. The old 9-5, in production since 1997, will continue to be built as the Beijing C71. Its manufacturer, BAIC, is also Daimler’s Chinese cooperator. Stuttgart will have fun with their ambitious partners. Meanwhile, Saab is inviting enthusiasts to a huge celebration in Trollhättan, Sweden, on July 15-18, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the quirky 96, and to show the new 9-5 to the hard-core brand aficionados. We welcome it as a sign of life.

Many of us who didn’t travel to China gathered at the Concorso d’Eleganza at Villa d’Este in Northern Italy last weekend. Besides a large number of solitary historic vehicles, the most fascinating concept was the Zagato TZ3 Corsa, a tribute to the 90-year relationship between the coachbuilder and Alfa Romeo. Zagato has seen better times, and an unannounced visit we paid to headquarters last year proved to be a surreal experience. Chased by dogs, we finally found our way to a sort of reception, and tried to find an English-speaking person for well over a half-hour—without success. It’s fitting that a German collector, Martin Kapp, paid for the TZ3.

Low on Style

The week was short of vehicle launches: Škoda showed a face-lifted Fabia and Roomster, two exponents of VW’s  Eastern European cheapo brand, and Toyota let us drive the plug-in Prius, which allows you to actually drive in fully electric mode for over ten miles before it switches to its typical gas-electric dance. We were more excited by news of technical upgrades for the iconic Lada Niva, a Soviet-designed off-roader which has carried on faithfully since the mid-seventies. We hope it will carry on for a long time.

On the other side of the spectrum, Daimler’s Maybach face lift brought the luxo-barge without brand equity visually even closer to a Kia Amanti, but we get the fact that something had to change aesthetically. After all, today you can pick up a used Maybach for a quarter of what they cost new, and up until now you couldn’t even tell the difference.

Mitsubishi’s future as a contract manufacturer was confirmed by an announcement that the Japanese carmaker would deliver 50,000 units of the Outlander Sport to PSA, re-badged as Peugeot and Citroën models. We hear that development of future models has been slowed, and the business case for the current lineup, including the i and the Lancer, is weak.

Autobahn Tested: Citroën C6, Volvo V70 Diesel, BMW 550i GT, The Old Maser

Our Citroën C6 tester with its 238-hp V-6 diesel looks great, but the driving experience is a far cry from those of the DS, CX, and XM models of yore. The suspension is soft but jittery, and the experience reminds us of some not-so-great, recent American front-drivers.

We were supremely put off by the driver-assistance systems in the Volvo V70 2.4 D, which seem to constantly sense an impending crash and make sure you notice their presence in the most annoying way.

And we thought it was amusing that the BMW 550i Gran Turismo features a trip computer that won’t provide readout for average fuel economy below 5.9 mpg. If you care to know how much gas you’re consuming, take your pocket calculator. That said, if you have one of those, you’ll probably figure out that the wiser choice is the diesel.

By far the most rewarding driving experience was awakening this writer’s 1990 Maserati 430 from a two-year hibernation. It fired up without hesitation, and we’ve put on 500 miles in two days without the slightest hiccup.

Related posts:

1. Saab Resumes Vehicle Production in Sweden
2. Saab Sells Powertrain and Tooling Assets to China’s BAIC
3. 2009 Maserati Quattroporte S – First Drive Review

Hewlett Packard was such a logical buyer for Palm (NSDQ: PALM) that it seemed unlikely to ever happen. After the market closed Wednesday, though, the companies announced that HP has a deal to pay $1.2 billion for the troubled smartphone-maker. It’s been a monster roller-coaster ride for Palm and its shareholders. A quick look here at our most recent coverage on paidContent and mocoNews; You can also dig through the Palm archives.

»  HP Buys Palm For $1.2 Billion
»  Palm’s Back-Up Plan If Its List Of Buy-Out Candidates Shrinks To Zero
»  RadioShack Gives Up On Palm
»  Palm’s Struggles Will Handicap Its Ability To Ward Off Upcoming Competition

»  Palm Adds A Retention Program For Key Employees, As SVP Abbott Quits
»  Hedge Fund Manager Falcone Buys Stake In Palm
»  Is Palm Putting Itself Up For Sale?
»  Palm’s Stock Dives As Analyst Downgrades Target Price To $0
»  Palm Issues Warning That Their Phones Aren’t Selling Like Hotcakes
»  Analyst Predicts Bright Future For Palm’s WebOS
»  Palm Raises $359.9 Million; Confirms Handset Launches
»  The Palm Pre May Or May Not Be Meeting Expectations
»  Earnings: Palm’s Financial Results Sink Without Revenues Flowing In From Pre Yet
»  Palm To Pay New CEO Jon Rubinstein Up To $1.7 Million A Year; Colligan’s Departure Is Costly
»  Palm To Pay New CEO Jon Rubinstein Up To $1.7 Million A Year; Colligan’s Departure Is Costly
»  The Reviews Are In: The Palm Pre May Be As Good As The iPhone
»  Palm Increases Public Offering, Sets Pricing
»  Palm Investor Predicts The Day The Pre Will Overtake The iPhone

After all the speculation, HP has agreed to buy Palm (NSDQ: PALM) for $1.2 billion, or roughly $5.70 a share.

Palm, which was running short of cash and struggling to compete against the Apple’s and Google’s of the world, will now have HP’s deep pockets and worldwide scope. While HP is no stranger to the mobile phone world—with its line of iPAQ phones—it has a lot of catching up to do and could benefit from branching out to phones and tablets from its a laptop and PC driven line-up.

Generally, Palm’s technology is viewed as solid, it was just poor timing that hurt the smartphone-makers’ chances. Of all the rumored potential acquirers from Dell to HTC and Huawei, HP was never considered a likely candidate. Palm’s current chairman and CEO, Jon Rubinstein, who received a bit of flak for Palm’s recent poor performance, is expected to remain at the company. Release.

In a brief statement on Palm’s web site, they point out that HP is one of the largest technology companies in the word, adding: “Can you say “webOS acceleration”? We’re pretty excited, and pleased we surprised the world again.”

Over the past year, Palm’s stock had been trading as high as $18 a share to more recent lows around $3-$4 for a total market capitalization of around $781 million. After a brief pause in trading, Plam’s stock surged 27 percent to $5.90 a share. The transaction has been approved by the HP and Palm boards of directors, but is still pending customary closing conditions and the approval of Palm’s shareholders. Under the agreement, Palm shareholders will get cash for each share. The transaction is expected to close during HP’s third quarter ending July 31.

HP will be hosting a live audio webcast for analysts and shareholders to discuss HP’s agreement to acquire Palm. It can be found here.

Apple’s not hesitating to put a dent in its gigantic cash horde.

A day after the New York Times reported that the Cupertino, Calif. company bought Intrinsity, a small chip company known for making a faster processor that uses less energy, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has purchased Siri, an iPhone application that acts as a personal assistant on the phone. Of course, both deals follow Apple’s purchase of Quattro Wireless, a mobile ad network.

The Siri deal was first discovered by Robert Scoble, who spotted an obscure document on the FTC web site. Apple did not return requests for comment. UPDATE: Two of Siri’s board members, Shawn Carolan of Menlo Ventures, and Gary Morgenthaler confirmed the sale in an interview with mocoNews.

Siri’s current application is built for the iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch in the U.S., and is pitched as a “virtual personal assistant,” which allows you to search for the closest Sushi restaurant, ask what’s playing at Carnegie Hall, or look for a nearby movie theater or gas station. So far, the company has integrated 40 service providers into the application.

The company is not a voice-recognition company. In fact, it licenses that technology from Nuance Communications. Rather, it bills itself as Artificial Intelligence. The company’s background is a bit unusual. It was started as a five-year project at SRI, a research institute that brought together 22 top-notch universities and DARPA to create artificial intelligence for the battlefield, so that commanders can assemble information in real-time to make decisions. The U.S. military still uses it today, but in 2008, SRI worked with VCs to spin-off a team that would have exclusive rights to commercialize the technology. Apple now owns those exclusive rights.

In its short history, Siri, which has 26 employees, raised $23.5 million in funding. When Apple called, it was not currently raising funds, or looking to be sold, Morgenthaler said. Rather it had just secured additional cash from the Li Ka-shing Foundation, known for having a $120 million stake in Facebook.

It’s unclear how Apple will integrate the technology into their offerings, and neither Morgenthaler or Carolan were allowed to comment on Apple’s future plans. However, they were able to say where Siri was headed next with the technology. For now, the mobile software along with server software takes natural language commands to anticipate the users’ intent. But with more intelligence, such as addresses, credit card numbers and logins, more actions can be executed on the behalf of the user—rather than limited to hailing a cab, or finding out the weather.

What the company isn’t, they say, is a search engine. Carolan: “Siri is not a search engine in any form, nor is it in direct competition with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) or anyone else. Siri is a vehicle to execute transactions.” The business model was to make money from referrals, not advertising. Morgenthaler: “What Siri gives you is the natural language and domain expertise. This is a fundamental new paradigm for mobile user interaction. Apple is the ideal company and vehicle to take the company to the marketplace, I couldn’t imagine a better acquirer.”

Generally speaking, there’s a ton of applications like do similar actions on the mobile phone today, ranging from the basic search engine from Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Bing or Google to more specific apps that specialize in restaurants, movie tickets, etc. Another similar applications is WHERE, which is available for most platforms lets people search for gas stations, restaurants or movie theaters from the home screen, but isn’t necessarily pitched as a personal assistant. Handmark’s MyAssist takes the idea a step further by providing an application that lets you contact live people for help for $9.99 a month.

Intel reportedly plans to pack more power into its next-generation Atom chips, the line that currently powers netbooks. While some thought the netbook market was a race to the bottom — or at the very least, the low end of the market — Intel is reversing that course by maturing the Atom. The move will further blur the lines between netbooks and notebooks, and could mean the netbook market will disappear as quickly as it arrived.

The Atom line accounts for less of Intel’s overall chip sales than it used to; an upcoming IDC report will reportedly show that in the first quarter of 2010, Atom contributed up to 20.3 percent of the Intel’s processor sales compared to 24.3 percent the prior quarter. Such a drop coincides with slowing netbook sales, the result, in turn, of consumers having a wider variety of device choices, including notebooks, which are entering price levels where once only the lowly netbook dared to tread.

The NPD Group reports the average selling price of a Microsoft Windows notebook was $528 for the 2009 holiday season. That number includes netbooks — which still typically fall into the $350-$450 range — but also premium or specialty notebooks that can cost north of $2,000. While low netbook prices drag down the average selling price of notebooks as a whole, there are plenty of full-featured notebooks available at near-netbook prices of $500 or less. Likewise, some Atom-powered netbooks can be configured with options that boost their price to above $700. There’s more of a pricing overlap now between netbooks and notebooks than ever before, even though the potential for cannibalization of both devices already existed.

This price parity is happening as Intel is beefing up the Atom — unofficially, Intel’s expected new N455 and N475 Atoms will have faster clock speeds and support DDR3 memory, much like today’s notebooks. Instead of a growing capability gab between netbooks and notebooks, the two device classes are becoming more similar. Does that mean there won’t be a netbook market in the future? It could and if so, that would be tragic — there’s still a place for netbooks in my opinion, although some — Steve Rubel comes to mind — can do 80 percent of their work with today’s Apple iPad and there will be more slates coming down the pike later this year.

Intel and computer makers shouldn’t overlook the fact that netbooks can be used in places where a traditional larger computer doesn’t make sense, or if that computer has run out of battery power. As Dave Winer said recently on his blog: “I think the tech industry should give up the belief that netbooks are a temporary thing and fully embrace them and make the work better and better. Ultimately the user is always right, and ultimately always gets what they want.” Maybe he needs to talk to Intel directly — if the trend continues, the split between netbook and notebook could disappear entirely.

Related research on GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

I Want a Netbook, Not A Little Notebook!

Apple has apparently bought Siri, as documented in an FTC file that’s been flagged by Robert Scoble. Siri makes a really cool, almost magical tool that could easily be core to the iPhone experience.

Siri is a free virtual personal assistant application for the iPhone that pulls together all sorts of web services and accounts. It uses voice recognition, location information and knowledge of a user’s relationships and history. This is not a lightweight startup, but a byproduct of SRI’S $150 million CALO Project on artificial intelligence that’s raised $24 million in funding from Morgenthaler Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Horizons Ventures. But it ties together the technology and services other companies have already created, for instance StubHub for ticket buying, OpenTable for restaurant reservations and Nuance for speech recognition. Think of it as the ultimate on-the-fly date planner: after Siri helps you get to a concert, it can find you a suitable place to eat nearby.

I personally haven’t been able to use Siri much because I have an older iPhone. (Sounds just like something Apple would do, right? Give you a reason to upgrade!) But the real charm of the service will be when it’s incredibly fast — something Apple can most certainly help it be. Today the app is a series of shortcuts. It caches what it can through data dumps, but makes real-time web service calls when it needs more information. The idea is to provide convenience in a mobile environment. Siri isn’t faster than web search, and it won’t connect to every long-tail service out there, but it beats the arduous sequences of queries, typed-in URLs and logins on our phone browsers that many of us have come to dread.

And while Apple isn’t in the habit of buying out its own app developers, binding that kind of integrated experience as a built-in application on the iPhone could only make it better. The only question would be how Apple chooses the partner services to include on the app; those who get the call will get incredible exposure to iPhone users.

A representative for Siri declined to confirm or deny the acquisition, but at this point all signs point to yes.

Opera today shared a preview of its next “State of the Mobile Web” report, which focuses on Opera Mini for iPhone, the app that — to the surprise of many — was approved by Apple for inclusion in its App Store earlier this month. According to Opera, iPhone users are indeed downloading the app — but are they using it?

For while Apple greenlighted the app, it won’t allow users to set Opera Mini as a default browser. And based on the limited preview numbers provided by Opera, it appears that while Opera Mini is finding its way to iPhones, iPhone users aren’t finding their to the way to the web through Opera Mini.

According to a preview of the report:

• The iPhone is currently the No. 3 device used by Opera Mini users worldwide; the other top 20 devices are all Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets.
• The iPhone is currently the No. 1 device used by Opera Mini users in the U.S., well ahead of BlackBerry (which previously occupied the top spot).
• By mid-April, due to the iPhone launch, the U.S. jumped to No. 5 from No. 8 in the top 10 countries list.
• Beyond the top 10 countries, Australia, Korea, Canada, Germany and Japan are other examples of places where the iPhone has become the device of choice for Opera Mini users.

That all sounds good — but is it the result of users finding Opera Mini to be better than Safari, or a reaction to an alternative browser landing on a highly popular phone? Obviously we’ll have to see the full report to answer that question, but Opera does share some additional global information in today’s preview statement by supplying the top 10 handsets of unique users, downloads and page views per user for Opera Mini.

Nowhere is the iPhone mentioned in the Opera Mini global numbers, although I fully expected it would be after reading the iPhone-specific data points. Instead, the global usage numbers are dominated by handsets from Nokia and Sony Ericsson. In fact, two specific Opera statements appear contradictory — how can the iPhone be the No. 3 device “used by Opera Mini users worldwide” and not appear in the top 10 handsets for Opera Mini unique users list? Perhaps it’s that “unique users” qualifier, that in fact only a relatively few iPhone users are accounting for total Opera Mini use on Apple’s handset.

Even stranger to me is that the iPhone is a singular platform as compared to all of the other global handsets mentioned — put another way: a popular device with essentially one model should compete well in a market fractured by so many different handsets. I realize that Nokia has the strongest presence worldwide — the data should and does reflect that. But the iPhone not showing up in the top 10 handsets lends credence to what I thought would happen: iPhone owners may be installing Opera Mini, but for most of them, Safari will still rule the roost.

Related content on GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Mobile Market Overview, Q1 2010
• What Does the Future Hold for Browsers?
• Why Feature Phones Are the New Black for Mobile App

While one company sues, another partners.

Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) said today that its long-standing handset partner, HTC, which makes both Windows and Android phones, has agreed to a broad patent agreement in conjunction with the Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Android platform. Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but HTC will have to pay Microsoft royalties.

Not all disagreements are so graceful. In March, Apple sued HTC for infringing on 20 Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) patents. That case is under review by the U.S. International Trade Commission. Microsoft played up the collaboration bit, by saying that it has entered into more than 600 licensing agreements over time. In a statement, Microsoft said: “As you may be aware, many technology companies active in the growing smartphone space have been taking increasing steps to protect their inventions…Microsoft views this agreement as an effective example of how industry leaders can reach commercially reasonable arrangements that address intellectual property concerns.”

Related

• Apple Slaps Android-Maker HTC With Patent Infringement Suit
• HTC Will Defend Itself Against Apple’s Patent Claims
• HTC Will Defend Itself Against Apple’s Patent Claims
• HTC Says It Is Mulling The Benefits Of Owning An Operating System