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The App Stores Are Getting Full

“Illustrating how very, very hard it is to have a breakout hit in today’s mobile app stores, a report from app store analytics firm Distimo released today finds that only 2 percent of the top 250 publishers in the iPhone App Store are “newcomers,” versus just 3 percent in the Android store, Google Play.

In smaller countries, the share of new publishers tends to be slightly higher – 6 percent for both Google Play and the App Store for iPhone, Distimo found.

Also indicating how tight the current market is, only 0.25 percent of the total revenue from the top 250 applications goes to new iPhone app publishers, while 1.2 percent reaches new Android app publishers on Google Play.

And if you’re a newcomer, it seems you have a better chance at making money – at least initially – on Google Play. Again, that speaks to the possibility that we’re starting to run at full capacity here. The iOS Store is a bit older, and is home to more apps than Google’s Android-focused counterpart.

New publishers represent a small part of the revenue

To reach these conclusions, the company examined the trends in the iOS App Stores and Google Play from October 2012 through January 2013. Unfortunately, having a time frame that occurred over the holidays slightly skews the data, as it means that some Christmas-related apps were doing well, too, and that’s certainly a temporary situation. For example, Find the Elves from The Elf on the Shelf and ElfYourself from OfficeMax did well – something which also indicates the effect of the holidays on app sales.

Top 10 new publishers in he U.S. (Oct 2012- Jan 2013)

Above are the top 10 new publishers by app store (iPad, iPhone and Google Play). As expected, adoption reflects the prevalence and popularity of games. The handful of non-game apps tend to be photo or video-related, with the exception of Snapchat, which took the top spot in Google Play….”

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How to Profit From Disorder (Tech)

UBS, VMW, CRM, AAPL, FB, LNKD, HPQ, NTAP, FIO, IBM, EMC,

“Nassim Taleb is well known for his work as a trader and professor, as well as the author of the book “ Black Swan.” He often concentrates his work on market volatility and the likelihood of extreme situations or occurrences that can radically move stock prices. The 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center were a black swan event, devastating and totally unpredicted. His new book “Antifragile” focuses on things that gain from disorder. Are there tech stocks that can gain from disorder as well?

The tech analysts at UBS A.G. (NYSE: UBS) decided it would be interesting to apply some of the principles of Taleb’s book to tech stocks they cover. They point out in their report released today that Taleb advises using optionality to your advantage in finding situations with limited downside but undetermined upside. What matters is not the frequency of being right but the magnitude when you are correct. Also, to favor a barbell approach, both in specific companies that avoid the mushy middle of markets and in your portfolio by mixing low and high-risk assets.

Fragile things hate volatility and uncertainty, while the antifragile thrives on it. The UBS team believes that technology stocks, especially large caps, are inherently fragile, given that the industry structure changes every 15 years or so. They looked for companies riding emerging trends, and point to VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) and Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) as examples.”

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Q4 Sees a 16% Pop in E-Commerce Retail Sales

“In its quarterly report on estimated e-commerce retail sales released today, the U.S. Census Bureau said that adjusted online sales jumped 15.6% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2012. On an unadjusted basis, sales rose 15.8%.

Adjusted e-commerce sales of $59.5 billion comprised 5.4% of total retail sales of $1.1 trillion. That is the highest percentage since the Census Bureau started keeping track of online sales in the fourth quarter of 1999, when e-commerce retail sales were just 0.6% of total retail sales. The fourth-quarter total is also the highest since 1999.

For the full year, e-commerce sales totaled $225.5 billion, up 15.8% from 2011. Total retail sales rose 5% year-over-year….”

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How to Protect Yourself From Botnets

“(MoneyWatch) Even as the volume of spam in our inboxes appears to be receding, other threats are looming. According to cyber-security company Kaspersky, for example, about 200,000 new malware samples are appearing in the wild every day. And last year, a staggering 91 percent of businesses experienced some sort of IT security event.

Perhaps the most frightening statistics are related to the rise of botnets. Stuxnet — the first known state-engineered cyber-weapon — was uncovered in 2010, and since then about a half-dozen more have been found. Gartner’s Research Director, Lawrence Orans, contends that as many as 5 percent of corporate PCs and 30 percent of home computers are already infected 

Most of us — at home nor at work — have the resources of an enterprise class IT department to protect our computers and data. So is there any hope for protection? Indeed, there is. As I recently explained in a blog post for eHow Tech, you can mitigate a vast amount of your risk by following five simple and inexpensive security rules….”

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A Look at the Next 10 Startups Out of StartX

“Stanford’s student startup accelerator, StartX, had its eighth demo day tonight in Palo Alto, showing off the latest class of 11 companies* to go through the program. The accelerator, whichjust raised another $400,000, has already had about 100 startups go through, raising $100 million along the way between them. This next batch is hoping to follow that lead.

Here’s the next class of Stanford StartX companies, in the order they were presented:

Pixlee. This startup wants to use user-generated photos to help brands market themselves. The idea is not just to collect and curate photos that will resonate with consumers, but also to present them in a personalized fashion. The idea is that everyone will get a different experience, not just see all the same photos. The company had been chosen by the 49ers for a fan-engagement campaign around the Super Bowl, which had more than 50,000 photos submitted. It’s also being used by brands like Yamaha, Major League Soccer, and the NBA.

Distinc.tt. If you’re gay and new to an area, how do you find out where gay people hang out? And how do you find out whether or not someone hanging out in one of those places is also gay. That’s an overly simplistic description of a very complex problem that Distinc.tt hopes to solve. The mobile app shows nearby places based on the measured popularity among the gay community, and allows its users to check in and help identify other gay patrons in those locations. In just a few weeks, the app has garnered about 40,000 users, who log in twice a day on average. The company has also attracted Peter Thiel as an investor in its seed round.

VipeCloud. This startup provides a “video business in a box,” allowing independent content creators, B2B companies, and other niche video producers to quickly get up and running with video distribution. VipeCloud not only provides a platform for sales, but also customer relationship management, enabling clients to build relationships with their audiences and determine what’s working and what’s not, what’s selling and why.

Insynctive. This startup seeks to give companies a better way to do HR, providing the connective tissue between various payment and benefits systems. It’s all brought together by a single, usable, user interface that employees, as well as in-house and outsourced HR, can all use while simplifying the usual crazy HR application stack.

Spot On. Spot On provides time-based search which will give its users more actionable information. The idea is to match the right activity to the right person at the right time, therefore becoming a user’s personal concierge. The app works by pulling temporal data starting with the start and end time, matching items based on location, and then filtering by a user’s personalized preferences. The first market the team hopes to go after is families with kids to help provide activities that parents and kids will both love when they’re free…..”

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Chances Are You Have Been Hacked by $GOOG

 

“A few months ago, the Federal Communications Commission fined Google $25,000 for taking its sweet time to give information to the FCC about an interesting project Google had been working on.

Most of you are probably familiar with Google Maps, where you can search for directions to wherever you need to go and even get a street view of the area. Google literally paid for trucks to go around with cameras on them in order to record this information. Not a big deal, right?

Well it wouldn’t be a big deal if those trucks didn’t include technology on them that could swipe all of your personal information off unsecured Wi-Fi connections.

Just in case you don’t know what that means, if you have Wi-Fi in your house and it didn’t have a password on it to protect it, odds are that Google has all of your personal information.

What do I mean by personal information? Everything. Passwords, websites you’ve visited, financial records, absolutely anything that you have ever done on your home computer, Google now has.

Think about it this way: If you can’t live without the Internet, odds are that Google has your life.

The FCC Did Nothing

Apparently, according to the FCC, Google did nothing wrong. That’s right. According to the government (which, by the way, has millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with Google), the company had a right to spy on you.

Actually, that’s not quite right. Google did do something wrong, according to the FCC, it delayed the information it gave to the FCC.

The world’s leading search engine said that searching its own employees’ emails and getting statements from them “would be a time-consuing and burdensome task.”

The company can gather all of your personal information in a nanosecond from the air outside of your house, yet it said it would take too long to get the information about why it did it.

For delaying a Federal investigation, Google, of course, was fined heavily and people were sent to jail, right? Wrong. For all of that, the company was fined $25,000.

What does that “hefty” fine mean to Google?

Take all the money you have out of your pocket. Now take the lint out of the bottom of that pocket. That lint has the same value to you as a $25,000 fine does to Google. It’s not even a slap on the wrist; it’s more like an endorsement.

When contacted, Google’s employees refused to make statements as to why they were recording this information. That sounds like they have something to hide, doesn’t it?

Oh, and don’t think Google has pulled this trick off just in America. It did the exact same thing in 29 other major countries. Google doesn’t just spy on U.S. citizens; it spies on the world.

No one has rights in a Google-run world. And our government (which, let me remind you again, contracts Google to supply it data) is doing nothing to stop it.

It Isn’t Just Google…”

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DroidCleaner, A New Malware, Discovered for Android Users

 

“A recently discovered new form of Android malware called DroidCleaner can not only infect your smartphone, but also targets your PC to spy on you.

Researchers at the security firm Kaspersky Labs have uncovered new malware which poses as a “cleaner” app — or an app used to free memory on Google’s OS — in the Google Play app store. Once an Android user downloads the app, the malware infects the users smartphone and can also be uploaded to the users PC if they plug the device into their Windows computer in the USB drive mode.

(Read MoreBroad Powers Seen for Obama in Cyberstrikes )

While the malware that attacks the smartphone is more sophisticated than the malware that infects the PC, according to Kaspersky, the primary function of the malware that installs on the computer is pretty invasive….”

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IDC: Worldwide Tablet Shipments Hit A Record Total Of 52.5M Units In Q4 , Including 22.9M iPads

“Apple’s iPad led the charge as total worldwide tablet shipments hit a record 52.5 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC’s preliminary data from its Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker, but its market share continued to slide due to competition from Samsung. Meanwhile, PC shipments declined during the quarter for the first time in more than five years. The tablet market grew 75.3 percent year-over-year, and increased 74.3 percent from the previous quarter’s total of 30.1 million units, helped along by holiday purchases, lower average selling prices and a wider range of products.

“We expected a very strong fourth quarter, and the market didn’t disappoint. New product launches from the category’s top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season,” said Tom Mainelli, tablet research director at IDC….”

Full article with company breakdown of sales

 

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BII REPORT: Why Mobile Video Is Set To Explode

 

“Mobile video has historically been held back by a single factor: bandwidth. But 4G LTE is changing that, and mobile video is already more popular on the faster wireless networks.

Mobile video is quickly becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle.

In a recent reportBI Intelligence analyzes the impact of 4G LTE and device design improvements on mobile video growth, examines who watches mobile video and how they watch it, and details the mobile video monetization opportunity.

Access the Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>>

Here’s why mobile video usage is set to explode…”

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Need for Speed: Combine Multiple Connections for a Faster Pipe

“(MoneyWatch) If you’ve ever wished you could merge several Internet connections — like Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and even 3G — into a single, faster and more reliable pipe, then you’ll want to check out Connectify Dispatch, which does exactly that.

Connectify Dispatch is an app (no hardware required) that mimics an enterprise-grade load balancing solution. It combines whatever Internet connection you have available on your PC and lets Windows treat them as a single, fast connection….”

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Could You Imagine a World Economy Where 50% of the People Do Not Work?

“WASHINGTON (AP) — They seem right out of a Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have appeared in movies like “I, Robot” and the television show “Knight Rider.”

Now, three years after Google invented one, automated cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S., California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and trucks — jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught of technology?

“All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years,” predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. “Driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy.”

If automation can unseat bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even cabbies, is any job safe?

Vardi poses an equally scary question: “Are we prepared for an economy in which 50 percent of people aren’t working?”

___

EDITOR’S NOTE: Last in a three-part series on the loss of middle-class jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, and the role of technology.

___

An Associated Press analysis of employment data from 20 countries found that millions of midskill, midpay jobs already have disappeared over the past five years, and they are the jobs that form the backbone of the middle class in developed countries.

That experience has left a growing number of technologists and economists wondering what lies ahead. Will middle-class jobs return when the global economy recovers, or are they lost forever because of the advance of technology? The answer may not be known for years, perhaps decades. Experts argue among themselves whether the job market will recover, muddle along or get much worse.

To understand their arguments, it helps to understand the past.

Every time a transformative invention took hold over the past two centuries — whether the steamboat in the 1820s or the locomotive in the 1850s or the telegraph or the telephone — businesses would disappear and workers would lose jobs. But new businesses would emerge that employed even more.

The combustion engine decimated makers of horse-drawn carriages, saddles, buggy whips and other occupations that depended on the horse trade. But it also resulted in huge auto plants that employed hundreds of thousands of workers, who were paid enough to help create a prosperous middle class.

“What has always been true is that technology has destroyed jobs but also always created jobs,” says Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University. “You know the old story we tell about (how) the car destroyed blacksmiths and created the auto industry.”

The astounding capabilities of computer technology are forcing some mainstream economists to rethink the conventional wisdom about the economic benefits of technology, however. For the first time, we are seeing machines that can think — or something close to it…”

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3D Printing Helps Gunsmiths to Side Skirt Proposed Gun Laws

“Five months ago, the group of homemade gun enthusiasts known as Defense Distributed set out to create a lethal firearm that could be downloaded and 3D-printed entirely from scratch, circumventing all gun control laws. But as new gun bills have been proposed in the wake of recent shootings, creating a bootleg weapon with digital pieces may soon be far easier: As simple as printing a spring-loaded plastic box.

Over the past weekend, Defense Distributed successfully 3D-printed and tested an ammunition magazine for an AR semi-automatic rifle, loading and firing 86 rounds from the 30-round clip.

That homemade chunk of curved plastic holds special significance: Between 1994 and 2004, so-called “high capacity magazines” capable of holding more than 10 bullets were banned from sale. And a new gun control bill proposed by California Senator Diane Feinstein would ban those larger ammo clips again. President Obama has also voiced support for the magazine restrictions.

But Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson says he hopes the group’s recent work demonstrates the futility of that proposed ban in the age of cheap 3D printing….”

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Technology Takes the Unlikely Position of Being a Drag on Earnings

“This earnings season, the U.S. technology industry is in an unusual position – dragging corporate America down, rather than lifting it up.

Wall Street expects the tech sector’s fourth-quarter earnings to be down 1.1 percent from a year ago, the first drop since the third quarter of 2009, even though overallS&P 500 profits are still forecast to show growth, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Chip companies are expected to be among the worst performers because of softer-than-expected personal computer sales. Weak overseas demand and worries about the U.S. fiscal crisis have also likely caused corporations to put off IT spending.

“The lack of economic growth we’ve seen in Europe, the deceleration of emerging markets – that has put a significant amount of pressure, particularly on technology,” said Omar Aguilar, chief investment officer for equities at Charles Schwab Corp, in San Francisco.

Tech stocks have struggled recently and further weakness could dent the bullish 2013 forecasts many strategists have for the U.S. stock market. But some investors and analysts say weak fourth-quarter numbers have already been baked into many tech stock prices and valuations are attractive.

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote in a note this week that tech stocks are undervalued by about 32 percent, more than any other sector, based on current forward price-to-earnings ratios. Every tech industry except IT services is trading well below historical levels, the note said…..”

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Wrap Up: The Best and Worst from the Consumer Electronics Show 2013 (Video)

 

“CES has come and gone, but the memory of this year’s show will live on forever. Not necessarily because the 15-20 TechCrunch staffers who attended will remember it — chances are the night-time debauchery has wiped away all recollection of the past week — but because this post exists.

We met a bunch of celebrities. We discovered a phone with an e-ink display on the back, a giant spider walking vehicle, and a fork that tells you when you’re eating too fast.

We conducted a ton of interviews. (Even one with a robot.)

We met the Nyan Cat founder, and we even had time left over to film a CrunchWeek episode. And, of course, we went on a rampage of destruction in the iLounge accessories area.

But most importantly, we realized just how much CES matters (for now, at least.)

We had a blast, and we hoped you enjoyed our coverage as much as we enjoyed delivering it…”

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FT: Europe’s Telco Giants In Talks To Create Pan-European Network

“Europe’s largest mobile network operators are considering pooling their resources to create pan-European network infrastructure, the FT is reporting. Quoting several people familiar with the situation, the paper says discussions to potentially “unite Europe’s fragmented national markets” were prompted by the European Commission — reportedly keen for more radical options to simplify Europe’s mosaic of telecoms markets to fit its economic philosophy of pushing towards a single market.

The idea of a pan-European network emerged at a private meeting between EU competition chief Joaquín Almunia and the bosses of Europe’s biggest telecoms groups, including Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Telefonica, according to the FT. The paper says industry attendees left the meeting “intent on exploring the idea” of a pan-European network, adding that mobile network operators are frustrated by a “disjointed European market” that’s making it harder for them to compete.

For European telcos, the issue is the complexity of the regional telecoms landscape — with more than 27 telecoms regulators, and more than 100 carriers operating in the region. Doubtless envious eyes look over the pond to the U.S., with one regulator and four main operators, or China with three.

“The operators expressed a deep sense of frustration and agreed to bring constructive ideas of how a European market could work,” the FT quotes one person familiar with the meeting as saying. “Objections won’t come from Europe, they will be from the [EU’s 27 national] regulators.”

We’ve reached out to the office of Joaquín Almunia, and to Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Telecom Italia for comment — and will update this story with any response. A spokesman for Telefonica told TechCrunch the company does not comment on rumour and speculation. Update: TechCrunch understands that discussions between Europe’s telcos on network infrastructure pooling have taken place but are at a very preliminary stage….”

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Study: 75% Of The World’s Heads Of State Are Now On Twitter

“You know how some naysayers still like to dismiss Twitter as nothing more than a time wasting website where people talk about the sandwich they’re eating? Here’s another rebuttal for them.

A new survey from the Digital Policy Council (DPC) shows that 75 percent of the world’s heads of state have a presence on Twitter. The DPC’s annual study evaluates a total of 164 countries, and found this year that 123 of them have a head of state that is on Twitter, either with a personal handle or an official government one. That’s up significantly from 2011, when 69 out of the 164 countries had a Twitter presence. (It bears mention that there are a total of 193 states recognized by the United Nations, so we’ve reached out to the DPC for more details on which 164 countries they choose to monitor and why — we’ll update this when we hear back.) …”

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LTE Phone Shipments Will Triple To 275M Units In 2013, $AMZN Said to be Getting in on the Action

“We are far from global ubiquity for LTE and other 4G networks, but carriers in markets that have implemented the faster mobile data standard are seeing a boom in growth. Figures out today fromStrategy Analytics predict that shipments of LTE devices will hit 275 million units in 2013, a three-fold rise from the 90.9 million that have been shipped this year. And while a lot of this is being driven by strong competition among handset makers and carriers, Strategy Analytics predicts that the rise of 4G will bring something else to light: new entrants like Amazon and Mozilla also trying their hands at LTE devices.

“We expect Amazon to launch an LTE smartphone for the U.S. market around the middle of 2013. We think Amazon will want to get a ‘mobile shopping card’ into the hands of more consumers because the retailer wars are increasingly moving from the store, PC and laptop to the smartphone,”  Neil Mawston, executive director at Strategy Analytics, told TechCrunch.

However, the analysts also emphasize that it will be a challenge for anyone to break the stronghold that Apple and Samsung have on smartphones at the moment. “Apple and Samsung will dominate the global LTE smartphone market in 2013,” Mawston added. “Like the 3G market this year, 4G will be a two-horse race next year. Most LTE smartphone rivals, such as HTC or Blackberry, have a lot of catching-up to do.”

The analysts stop short of predicting whether one single hardware maker will reap the biggest rewards, giving equal weight to the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 as two “popular models.” At the moment, Samsung is the world’s biggest smartphone maker, and largest mobile handset maker overall in terms of shipments.

Other handset makers that have invested in 4G models include LG, Nokia, HTC, Motorola, Blackberry, Huawei, ZTE and Pantech.

With LTE services slowly being rolled out both in developed and emerging markets (comprehensive list here), Strategy Analytics says it will be a mix of both developed and emerging will be driving the rise in  shipment. U.S., UK, Japan, China and South Korea — where operators are “aggressively expanding” their LTE networks in fierce competition with other national carriers….”

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Confidence in Technology Rises to All-time High

“The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said this morning that its index of consumer technology expectations rose 9.3 point in December, lifting the index to an all-time high of 97.3 since the survey was started in January 2007. The index has gained 3.7 points year-over-year.

According to the CEA’s chief economist: ”

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