Category Archives: mobile

NVIDIA Tegra 2: amazing mobile power that hints at the future of client computing

Smartphone power has made another jump forward with the announcement at CES in Las Vegas of new devices built on NVIDIA’s new Tegra 2 package – a System on a Chip (SoC) that includes dual-core CPU, GPU, and additional support for HD video encoding and decoding, audio, imaging, USB, PCIe and more:

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The CPU is the ARM Cortex-A9 which has a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architecture and a 32-bit instruction set. It also supports the Thumb-2 instruction set which is actually 16-bit. How is 16-bit an upgrade over 32-bit? Well, 16-bit instructions means smaller code, even though it gets translated to 32-bit instructions at runtime:

For performance optimised code Thumb-2 technology uses 31 percent less memory to reduce system cost, while providing up to 38 percent higher performance than existing high density code, which can be used to prolong battery-life or to enrich the product feature set.

The GPU is an “ultra low power” (ULP) 8-core GeForce. In essence, the package aims for high performance with low power consumption, exactly what is wanted for mobile computing.

Power is also saved by sophisticated power management features. The package uses a combination of suspending parts of the system, gating the clock speed, screen management, and dynamically adjusting voltage and frequency, in order to save power. The result is a system which NVIDIA claims is 25-50 times more efficient than a typical PC.

According to NVIDIA, Tegra 2 enables web browsing up to two times faster than competitors such as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 or Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 – though of course these companies also have new SoCs in preparation.

Tegra 2 is optimised for some specific software. One is the OpenGL graphics API. “The job of the GPU is to implement the logical pipeline defined by OpenGL”, I was told at an NVIDIA briefing.

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I asked whether this meant that Tegra 2 is sub-optimal for Microsoft’s Direct X API; but NVIDIA says it is sufficiently similar that it makes no difference.

Nevertheless, Tegra 2 has been designed with Android in mind, not Windows. There are a couple of reasons for this. The main one is that Android has all the momentum in the market; but apart from that, Microsoft partnered with Qualcomm for Windows Phone 7, which runs on Snapdragon, shutting out NVIDIA at the initial launch. NVIDIA is a long-term Microsoft partner and the shift from Windows Mobile to Android has apparently cost NVIDIA a lot of time. The shift took place around 18 months ago, when NVIDIA saw how the market was moving. That shift “cost us a year to a year and a half of products to market”, I was told – a delay which must include changes at every level from hardware optimisation, to designing the kind of package that suits the devices Android vendors want to build, to building up knowledge of Android in order to market effectively to hardware vendors.

Despite this focus, Microsoft demonstrated Windows 8 running on Tegra during Steve Ballmer’s keynote, so this should not be taken to mean that Windows or Windows CE will not run. I still found it interesting to hear this example of how deeply the industry has moved away from Microsoft’s mobile platform.

Microsoft should worry. NVIDIA foresees that “all of your computing needs are ultimately going to be surfaced through your mobile device”. Tegra 2 is a step along the way, since HDMI support is built-in, enabling high resolution displays. If you want to do desktop computing, you sit down at your desk, pop your mobile into a dock, and get on with your work or play using a large screen and a keyboard. It seems plausible to me.

During the press conference at CES we were shown an example of simultaneous rich graphic gaming on PC, PlayStation 3, and Tegra 2 Smartphone.

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Alongside Android, Tegra 2 is optimised for Adobe Flash. NVIDIA has been given full access to the source of the Flash player in order to deliver hardware acceleration.

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Actual devices

What about actual devices? Two that were shown at CES are the LG Optimus 2X:

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and the Motorola Atrix 4G:

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Both sport impressive specifications; though the Guardian’s Charles Arthur, who attended a briefing on the Atrix 4G, expresses some scepticism about whether HD video (which needs a large display) and the full desktop version of FireFox are really necessary on a phone. Apparently the claimed battery life is only 8 hours; some of us might be willing to sacrifice a degree of that capability for a longer battery life.

Still, while some manufacturers will get the balance between cost, features, size and battery life wrong, history tells that we will find good ways to use these all this new processing and graphics power, especially if we can get to the point where such a device, combined with cloud computing and a desktop dock, becomes the only client most of us need.

NVIDIA says that over 50 Android/Tegra 2 products are set to be released by mid-2011, in tablet as well as Smartphone form factors. I’m guessing that at least some of these will be winners.

Steve Ballmer at CES: Microsoft pins mobile hopes on Windows 8

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave the keynote at CES in Las Vegas last night. It was a polished performance and everything worked, but was short on vision or any immediate answer to the twin forces of Apple iPad and Google Android which are squeezing out Microsoft in the mobile world – smartphones and tablets – which currently forms the centre of attention in personal computing.

That said, CES stands for Consumer Electronics Show; and Ballmer did a good job showing off how well Kinect is performing, claiming sales of 8 million already. He showed more examples of controlling Xbox through speech and gesture, and said that Kinect is also boosting sales of the console; clearly it is now taking it beyond the hardcore market of first-person shooters.

We saw some fun new Windows devices, such as Acer’s dual-screen Iconia laptop.

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There was also a demonstration of the updated Microsoft Surface which now runs full Windows 7 and does not require hidden cameras, so that it can now be used in more scenarios, such as for interactive digital signage.

All well and good; but what about mobile? We got a Windows Phone 7 demo, but no sales figures, nor any mobile partners on stage; I’m guessing they are too busy promoting their new Android devices. Ballmer did say that the phone is coming on Verizon and Sprint in the first half of this year. Application availability is improving, but how will Microsoft win attention for its smartphone? My local high street is full of mobile phone shops, none of which even stock it as far as I can tell. There is a tie-in with Xbox Live which may help a little.

The problem though is that Microsoft does not seem to be wholeheartedly behind the Windows Phone 7 OS, which is based on Windows CE with a new GUI and Silverlight/XNA runtime for applications. Rather, Microsoft is signalling that full Windows is its future mobile operating system. At CES it announced Windows on ARM, the processor of choice in mobile, and during the keynote we saw the next version of Windows (though with the Windows 7 GUI) running on various ARM devices.

The power available in new System on a Chip packages like NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 leaves me in no doubt that full Windows could technically run on almost any size of device; but that does not make it the sensible choice for all form factors. Note also that while it was not mentioned at CES, NVIDIA has said that Tegra 2 is optimized for Android.

Microsoft could plausibly have released a tablet based on the Windows Phone 7 OS, which is built for touch control, this year. Instead, it will be at least 2012 before we see a Windows 8 tablet, and we are taking it on trust that this will really work nicely with touch and not need a stylus dangling at the side. By then Apple will, I presume, be releasing iPad generation 3.

Putting this in a developer context, what is Microsoft’s mobile development platform? Silverlight and XNA? The full Windows native API? Or HTML 5? Each of these is very different and it seems to me a muddled story.

Windows 8 will run on ARM processors – a natural home for Silverlight?

Microsoft announced today at CES in Las Vegas that the next version of Windows will run on ARM as well as Intel CPUs. But why? The reason is that ARM CPUs have huge momentum in mobile computing, thanks to their low power consumption. Microsoft wants Windows to support System on a Chip (SoC) architectures such as NVIDIA’s Tegra 2, which has two ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs combined with an HD-capable graphics processor in a single package. In its press release, the company is careful not to upset established x86/x64 partners Intel and AMD too much, emphasising that Windows will run on SoC packages based on those CPUs as well.

It is an interesting announcement, but one that raises as many questions as answers. The first concerns Microsoft’s mobile strategy, with Windows now seeming to encroach on territory that you have thought belonged to its embedded operating system, Windows CE, which underlies both Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7. With all its legacy APIs, full-blown Windows does not seem ideal for low-powered, resource-constrained mobile devices; yet the company seems set on bringing full Windows rather than something based on Windows Phone 7 to the emerging tablet market.

The second issue is that applications will need at least re-compiling, and in many cases some re-coding, in order to run on ARM CPUs. Microsoft says it will deliver Office for ARM:

Sinofsky: Microsoft Office is an important part of customers’ PC experience and ensuring it runs natively on ARM is a natural extension of our Windows commitment to SoC architectures.

Windows and Office alone is enough for a decent business device; but customers who buy Windows on ARM expecting their existing games or applications to run will be disappointed.

We have been here before. In the early days of Windows CE, devices ran a variety of processors such as MIPS or Hitachi SH3, and developers had to compile multiple binaries and create setups that installed the right one on each device. In an attempt to overcome the friction this created, Microsoft introduced the Common Executable Format (CEF) with Windows CE 3.0 in 2000. This was an intermediate language format which was translated to native code by a “translator” when it was installed onto a device.

It sounds  a bit like .NET or Java; and it was indeed a forerunner of the .NET Common Language Runtime, which appeared in 2002. However, CEF never really caught on. Although it solved deployment issues, it introduced performance problems and was troublesome to debug. Most developers preferred to stick with true native code.

Today though .NET is mature; and we also have Silverlight, a cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework combined with multimedia player and graphics framework. If Microsoft includes .NET and Silverlight in its ARM build of Windows, that would solve some of the deployment problems, especially for business devices. Many custom applications are built for .NET; and these would in principle run without any need to recompile, since a .NET executable is intermediate code which is compiled to native code at runtime, though any code which includes “platform invoke” calls to native APIs would not work.

It is surprising therefore that neither .NET nor Silverlight is mentioned in Windows president Steve Sinofsky’s Q&A about Windows on ARM. Still, we should not read too much into that. It would be madness if Microsoft did not support its .NET technologies on this new platform, would it not?

Hardware vendors chase Apple’s iPad at CES with Android, not Windows

There is a chorus of disapproval on the web today as Asus announced a full-fat Windows tablet  (Eee Slate EP121)  at CES in Las Vegas, along with three other devices running Google Android – the Eee Pad MeMo, the Eee Pad Transformer, and the Eee Pad Slider.

The most detailed “review” I’ve seen for the EP121 is on the Windows Experience Blog. Core i5, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD, capacitive screen with touch and stylus input.

Nice in its way; but no kind of game-changer since this is an echo of early Windows slates which never achieved more than niche success. Four big disadvantages:

  • Short battery life
  • High price
  • The stylus
  • and another thing: in the rush to embrace touch computing, vendors appear to have forgotten one of the best features of those early tablets: you could rest your hand on the screen while writing with the pen. If you have a combined touch/stylus device that will not work.

Microsoft fans will be hoping CEO Steve Ballmer does not make too much of the EP121 and devices like this in tonight’s keynote. If he does, it will seem the company has learned little from failures of the past.

Asus deserves respect for introducing the netbook to the world in 2007, with the original Eee PC. It ran Linux, had an SSD in place of a hard drive, battery life was good, and above all it was light and cheap. Back then the story was how Microsoft missed the mark with its 2006 Origami project – small portable PCs running Windows – only to be shown how to do it by OEMs with simple netbooks at the right price.

Asus itself is not betting on Windows for tablet success; after all, three of the four products unveiled yesterday run Android. Despite what was apparently a poor CES press conference these may work out OK, though the prices look on the high side.

There will be many more tablets announced at CES, most of them running Android. Android “Honeycomb”, which is also Android 3.0 if Asus CEO Johnny Shih had his terminology right, is the first version created with tablet support in mind.

But why the tablet rush? The answer is obvious: it is because Apple has re-invented the category with the iPad. Since the iPad has succeeded where the Tablet PC failed, as a mass-market device, intuitively you would expect vendors to study what is right about it and to copy that, rather than repeating past mistakes. I think that includes long battery life and a touch-centric user interface; keyboard or stylus is OK as an optional extra but no more than that.

Equalling Apple’s design excellence and closed-but-seamless ecosystem is not possible for most manufacturers, but thanks to Android they can come up with devices that are better in other aspects: cheaper, more powerful, or with added features such as USB ports and Adobe Flash support.

It is reasonable to expect that at least a few of the CES tablets will succeed as not-quite iPads that hit the mark, just as Smartphones like the HTC Desire and Motorola Droid series have done with respect to the iPhone.

Microsoft? Ballmer’s main advantage is that expectations are low. Even if he exceeds those expectations, the abundance of Android tablets at CES shows how badly the company misjudged and mishandled the mobile market.

The implication for developers is that if you want app ubiquity, you have to develop for Android and iOS.

Microsoft could help itself and its developers by delivering a cross-platform runtime for the .NET Framework that would run on Android. I doubt Silverlight for Android would be technically difficult for Microsoft; but sadly after PDC it looks unlikely.

Ten big tech trends from 2010

This was an amazing year for tech. Here are some of the things that struck me as significant.

Sun Java became Oracle Java

Oracle acquired Sun and set about imposing its authority on Java. Java is still Java, but Oracle lacks Sun’s commitment to open source and community – though even in Sun days there was tension in this area. That was nothing to the fireworks we saw in 2010, with Java Community Process members resigning, IBM switching from its commitment to the Apache Harmony project to the official OpenJDK, and the Apache foundation waging a war of words against Oracle that was impassioned but, it seems, futile.

Microsoft got cloud religion

Only up to a point, of course. This is the Windows and Office company, after all. However – and this is a little subjective – this was the year when Microsoft convinced me it is serious about Windows Azure for hosting our applications and data. In addition, it seems to me that the company is willing to upset its partners if necessary for the sake of its hosted Exchange and SharePoint – BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), soon to become Office 365.

This is a profound change for Microsoft, bearing in mind its business model. I spoke to a few partners when researching this article for the Register and was interested by the level of unease that was expressed.

Microsoft also announced some impressive customer wins for BPOS, especially in government, though the price the customers pay for these is never mentioned in the press releases.

Microsoft Silverlight shrank towards Windows-only

Silverlight is Microsoft’s browser plug-in which delivers multimedia and the .NET Framework to Windows and Mac; it is also the development platform for Windows Phone 7. It still works on a Mac, but in 2010 Microsoft made it clear that cross-platform Silverlight is no longer its strategy (if it ever was), and undermined the Mac version by adding Windows-specific features that interoperate with the local operating system. Silverlight is still an excellent runtime, powerful, relatively lightweight, easy to deploy, and supported by strong tools in Visual Studio 2010. If you have users who do not run Windows though, it now looks a brave choice.

The Apple iPad was a hit

I still have to pinch myself when thinking about how Microsoft now needs to catch up with Apple in tablet computing. I got my first tablet in 2003, yes seven years ago, and it ran Windows. Now despite seven years of product refinement it is obvious that Windows tablets miss the mark that Apple has hit with its first attempt – though drawing heavily on what it learnt with the equally successful iPhone. I see iPads all over the place, in business as well as elsewhere, and it seems to me that the success of a touch interface on this larger screen signifies a transition in personal computing that will have a big impact.

Google Android was a hit

Just when Apple seemed to have the future of mobile computing in its hands, Google’s Android alternative took off, benefiting from mass adoption by everyone-but-Apple among hardware manufacturers. Android is not as elegantly designed or as usable as Apple’s iOS, but it is close enough; and it is a relatively open platform that runs Adobe Flash and other apps that do not meet Apple’s approval. There are other contenders: Microsoft Windows Phone 7; RIM’s QNX-based OS in the PlayBook; HP’s Palm WebOS; Nokia Symbian and Intel/Nokia MeeGo – but how many mobile operating systems can succeed? Right now, all we can safely say is that Apple has real competition from Android.

HP fell out with Microsoft

Here is an interesting one. The year kicked off with a press release announcing that HP and Microsoft love each other to the extent of $250 million over three years – but if you looked closely, that turned out to be less than a similar deal in 2006. After that, the signs were even less friendly. HP acquired Palm in April, signalling its intent to compete with Windows Mobile rather than adopting it; and later this year HP announced that it was discontinuing its Windows Home Server range. Of course HP remains a strong partner for Windows servers, desktops and laptops; but these are obvious signs of strain.

The truth though is that these two companies need one another. I think they should kiss and make up.

eBook readers were a hit

I guess this is less developer-oriented; but 2010 was the year when electronic book publishing seemed to hit the mainstream. Like any book lover I have mixed feelings about this and its implications for bookshops. I doubt we will see books disappear to the same extent as records and CDs; but I do think that book downloads will grow rapidly over the next few years and that paper-and-ink sales will diminish. It is a fascinating tech battle too: Amazon Kindle vs Apple iPad vs the rest (Sony Reader, Barnes and Noble Nook, and others which share their EPUB format). I have a suspicion that converged devices like the iPad may win this one, but displays that are readable in sunlight have special requirements so I am not sure.

HTML 5 got real

2010 was a huge year for HTML 5 – partly because Microsoft announced its support in Internet Explorer 9, currently in beta; and partly because the continued growth of browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, and the WebKit-based Google Chrome, Apple Safari and numerous mobile browsers showed that HTML 5 would be an important platform with or without Microsoft. Yes, it is fragmented and unfinished; but more and more of HTML 5 is usable now or in the near future.

Adobe Flash survived Apple and HTML 5

2010 was the year of Steve Jobs’ notorious Thoughts on Flash as well as a big year for HTML 5, which encroaches on territory that used to require the services of a browser plug-in. Many people declared Adobe Flash dead, but the reality was different and the company had a great year. Apple’s focus on design and usability helps Adobe’s design-centric approach even while Apple’s refusal to allow Flash on its mobile computers opposes it.

Windows 7 was a hit

Huge relief in Redmond as Windows 7 sold and sold. The future belongs to mobile and cloud; but Windows is not going away soon, and version 7 is driving lots of upgrades as even XP diehards move over. I’m guessing that we will get first sight of Windows 8 in 2011. Another triumph, or another Vista?

Review: Audyssey iPhone Audio Dock South of Market Edition

How good can a dock for an Apple iPod or iPhone sound? Pretty good, as this high-end South of Market Audio Dock from Audyssey demonstrates. If you think all iPod docks have thin, tinny bass, think again. It also turns out to be a neat speakerphone.

The dock has a distinctive bulbous shape, measuring around 24cm (9.5”) square on its largest side, with the dock mounted on the front edge. The unit is designed to sit on a desk or table and is surprisingly heavy for its size – probably an encouraging sign. Viewed from the front it looks tall and compact.

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The side view though shows that the speakers do have some room to breathe.

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As you can see, the speakers are firing more or less sideways. This is not ideal for stereo imaging, but in practice the dock delivers a wider image than you might expect.

Here is what you get out of the box: the dock, a remote with a battery, a USB cable, and two 3.5mm audio cables.

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Getting started is just a matter of putting the battery in the remote (slightly fiddly), plugging in the power cable, docking your iPod or iPhone, and playing some music. There is also an app you can download that provides some additional settings.

Before going into more detail about what this dock is capable of, let me say immediately that the sound quality is excellent. Words that come to mind are crisp, deep, rich, smooth and powerful. Vocals have real presence. The dock successfully conveyed the drama of a Mahler symphony, the growl of Tom Waits, the complex rhythms and pace of Santana, and the tender emotion of English folk singer Sandy Denny. Once I started playing music, I did not want to stop.

The secret of this high quality is twofold. First, the electronics follows high-end principles. There are four speakers – two 4-inch woofers, two .75 inch tweeters – which are powered by four separate amplifiers controlled by an active crossover. By contrast, a typical home hi-fi would have two amplifiers driving speakers with passive crossovers. Active crossovers mean that the musical signal is divided into the optimum frequencies for each speaker driver at a low level, introducing less distortion and improving control.

Audyssey takes further advantage of this, by using software processing to mitigate the limitations of the speaker drivers. That’s no surprise, since Audyssey specialises in audio processing technology for other manufacturers, which gets incorporated into home theatre and in-car equipment.

According to the specification, there are several techniques implemented in this dock. BassXT extends the bass response by boosting the signal dynamically to flatten the frequency response at a point when it would normally be dropping off. Audyssey EQ corrects “time and frequency response” imperfections introduced by the loudspeakers and cabinets. Dynamic EQ performs frequency response correction to preserve a flat response as volume changes. Dynamic Volume evens out the volume level to compensate for differences in the volume of the source.

Some of these features can be controlled or disabled by a companion iOS app, free to install. Specifically, you can disable Dynamic Volume or set it to optimize for Background Listening; you can apply tone controls including a single tone control called Tilt or traditional bass and treble; or you can set your own custom EQ.

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I admit that seems a lot of processing; and it would not have surprised me if the results were worse than pure straight-through audio reproduction. That is not the case though; the unit sounds very good indeed. Given the challenge of getting high quality sound from a relatively small enclosure, taking advantage of digital processing makes sense to me, provided it is carefully implemented at it is here.

Controlling playback

Once you have docked an iPhone and set it playing, you can control it either from the iPhone itself, or from the supplied remote, or pause and play by tapping an illuminated icon on top of the unit (It is not obvious that this is a button, but once you discover it, it is a handy feature; it also has some other functions including answering phone calls and showing Bluetooth status).

The remote has buttons for volume up/down, pause/play, and skip forward or back.

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The Audyssey dock supports Bluetooth and for full features you should pair your iPhone with it and keep Bluetooth on. Now you can stream music from an iPhone even when it is not docked. This can be handy, since the iPhone is easier to use in your hand then when docked. Using Bluetooth, you can undock it with only brief interruption in playback, for example for selecting music. Range seems good, and I was able to detach the iPhone, walk through the door of my study and into the corridor, and the music kept playing – though note that the audio quality will not be as good. I found the quality acceptable though noticeably inferior.

When docked, the iPhone will charge provided the dock is not in standby mode.

There are also buttons on the remote intended for the dock’s speakerphone feature, which deserves its own paragraph.

Audyssey as conferencing speakerphone

The most intriguing feature of the Audyssey South of Market dock is its speakerphone feature. For this to work, you must have Bluetooth enabled.

Scenario: you are enjoying music, when a call comes in. At this point the music pauses, the iPhone invites you to decline or answer the call, and a ring sounds through the dock’s loudspeakers. Tap the phone icon on the remote and you can answer the call while using the dock as a speakerphone.

It turns out the Audyssey dock makes a rather good speakerphone. It performs microphone array processing and echo cancellation to improve voice quality, using front and rear microphones, and in my testing this worked well.

You can also wire up the dock to a computer, using its line in and mic out connections. This lets you use it as a speakerphone with Skype or other Voice over IP providers. Nice idea, though my guess it that this is too inconvenient for most users. Working with the iPhone is more compelling.

Connections

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This is the back panel, showing the microphone output, line in, and USB port. Above the panel is a button for pairing a Bluetooth device. If you connect the USB port to a computer, the docked iPhone will sync with iTunes, though auto-sync can be a nuisance if you frequently dock and undock the device.

Annoyances

Not that many. However, I would like some way to select music from my seat when the iPhone is docked, beyond the simple track skip on the remote. Of course you can do this using Bluetooth streaming, though sound quality may be compromised.

Even with Bluetooth set up, I find that removing the iPhone from the dock pauses the music. I have to tap play to resume it. Re-docking the iPhone interrupts the music briefly but it resumes automatically.

Considering the cost of the device though, it’s a shame that Audyssey does not supply a proper manual; there is an excellent one online [pdf], but the one in the box is just safety warnings and limited warranty, pleasing for the lawyers but not for users.

The stereo separation is good considering it is a single box, but poor compared to two speakers set apart in the normal way.

Summary

The Audyssey South of Market Dock costs more than most iPod/iPhone docks, but in return it delivers superb sound quality along with some well thought-out speakerphone features.

The B&W Zeppelin makes an interesting comparison. The Zeppelin is a little more expensive but has better stereo separation thanks to its 640mm (25.2 in) width, and has a sub-woofer for extended bass. On the other hand, the Audyssey is more compact and could be considered less intrusive depending on what you think of the Zeppelin’s distinctive styling, and the Zeppelin has no Bluetooth streaming.

In the USA it is an easy decision. The Audyssey dock at around $400 is better value than a Zeppelin at around $600. In the UK the fact that B&W is a UK company whereas Audyssey is based in Los Angeles seems to bring the prices closer together: £400 for a Zeppelin versus £350 for the Audyssey dock. Try to hear them both; but the Audyssey dock is not shamed and is still well worth considering.

Compatibility

The South of Market Audio Dock fits:

  • iPhone 4
  • iPhone 3 and 3GS
  • iPod Touch
  • iPod Nano (4th and 5th generation)
  • iPod classic

Price and availability

The Audyssey South of Market Dock costs around $399.00. You should find it at Apple stores among other retailers.

Amazon.co.uk is advertising this dock for availability from 15th January 2011, at £349.99

 

iPhone plus Amazon app = shopping revolution through magic of barcode scanning

Amazon has added barcode scanning to its Apple iPhone shopping app. It is an amazing feature. Here’s why.

Among the questions that shoppers ask themselves, two of the biggest ones are first, is it any good; and second, is it good value? Barcode scanning helps with both of these. The scenario is that you are in the shop looking at a book, CD or DVD – or almost anything really, from kettles to MP3 players – and you wave your iPhone over it. Up comes the entry for that item in Amazon’s store, where you can see the rating, read customer reviews, and check the price both new and used.

OK, there is a little bit more involved than waving the iPhone, but not much. Here is how it works. Tap the Amazon app on the iPhone, then Search.

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Tap Scan a barcode and hold the iPhone over the barcode.

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You adjust the size and position by moving the iPhone until the code is roughly central between the guide lines. At this point, the guide lines turn green.

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No need to tap; the app will now look up the item and show you the results. Tap the right-pointing arrow for more detail.

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Confession: I am sufficiently an Amazon addict that I have done this in shops even before the advent of the barcode feature. One reason is price-checking. We all know that you pay a premium for the instant gratification of bricks and mortar shopping; but how bad is it? This will tell you instantly.

That might not help if you need a gift at the last minute, but the reviews might. I use this for video games, or for CDs that I have not heard or DVDs/Blu-rays that I have not seen. It has saved me from some expensive mistakes.

Of course reviews are subjective and some are likely planted by publishers, authors or competitors; but there are usually enough to give you some idea of the range of opinions.

It is also handy for electronic devices. Is that MP3 player any good? How does that iPod dock sound?

When I was at school we learned about the concept of perfect competition. One of the requirements for perfect competition is perfect information – for example, knowing the price charged for an item in every outlet which sells it. We are a long way from that, but thanks to the Amazon marketplace, where third-party sellers compete, we are closer than we were. The barcode feature in the Amazon iPhone app makes it easy to access that information while shopping, which is a big feature.

Adobe declares glittering results as CEO says Apple’s Flash ban has no impact on its revenue

Adobe has proudly declared its first billion dollar quarter, $1,008 m in the quarter ending Dec 3 2010 versus $757.3 m in the same quarter of 2009.

I am not a financial analyst, but a few things leap out from the figures. One is that Omniture, the analytics company Adobe acquired at the end of 2009, is doing well and contributing significantly to Adobe’s revenue – $98.4 m in Q4 2010. The billion dollar quarter would not have happened without it. Second, Creative Suite 5 is selling well, better than Creative Suite 4.

Creative Suite 4 was released in October 2008, and Creative Suite 5 in April 2010. It is not perfect, but the following table compares the Creative Solutions segment (mainly Creative Suite) of the two products quarter by quarter from their respective release dates:

Quarters after release 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Creative Suite 4 508.7 460.7 411.7 400.4 429.30 432.0
Creative Suite 5 532.7 549.7 542.1      

CS4 drops off noticeably following an initial surge, whereas CS5 has kept on selling. It is a good product and a de-facto industry standard, but not every user is persuaded to upgrade every time a new release appears. My guess is that things like better 64-bit support – which make a huge difference in the production tools – and new tricks in PhotoShop have been successful in driving upgrades to CS5. Further, the explosion of premium mobile devices led by Apple’s iPhone and iPad has not been bad for Adobe despite Apple CEO Steve Jobs doing his best to put down Flash. Publishers creating media for the iPad, for example, will most likely use Adobe’s tools to do so. CEO Shantanu Narayen said in the earnings calls, “We have not seen any impact on our revenue from Apple’s choice [to not support Flash]”, though I am sure he would make a big deal of it if Apple were to change its mind.

Before getting too carried away though, I note that Creative Suite 3, published in March 2007, did just as well as CS5.  Here are the figures:

Quarters after release 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Creative Suite 3 436.6 545.5 570.5 543.5 527.2 493.6

In fact, Q4 2007 at $570.5 m is still a record for Adobe’s Creative Solutions segment. So maybe CS4 was an unfortunate blip. Then again, not quite all the revenue in Creative Solutions is the suite; it also includes Flash Platform services such as media streaming. Further, the economy looked rosier in 2007.

Here is the quarter vs quarter comparison over the whole company:

  Q4 2009 Q4 2010
Creative Solutions 429.3 542.1
Digital Enterprise 211.8 274.10
Omniture 26.3 98.4
Platform 47 46.1
Print and publishing 42.9 47.3

In this table, Creative Solutions has already been mentioned. Digital Enterprise, formerly called Business Productivity, includes Acrobat, LiveCycle and Connect web conferencing. Platform is confusing; according to the Q4 09 datasheet it includes the developer tools, Flash Platform Services and ColdFusion. However, the Q4 10 datasheet omits any list of products for Platform, though it includes them for the other segments, and lists ColdFusion under Print and Publishing along with Director, Contribute, PostScript, eLearning Suite and some other older products. According to this document [pdf] InDesign which is huge in print publishing is not included in Print and Publishing, so I guess it is in Creative Solutions.

In the earnings call, Adobe’s Mark Garrett did mention Platform, and attributed its growth (compared to Q3 2010) to “higher toolbar distribution revenue driven primarily by the release of the new Adobe Reader version 10 in the quarter.” This refers to the vile practice of foisting a third-party toolbar (unless they opt-out) on people forced to download Adobe Reader because they have been send a PDF. Perhaps in the light of these good results Adobe could be persuaded to stop doing so?

I am not sure how much this breakdown can be trusted as it makes little sense to me. Do not take the segment names too seriously then; but they are all we have when it comes to trying to compare like with like.

Still, clearly Adobe is doing well and has successfully steered around some nasty rocks that Apple threw in its way. I imagine that Microsoft’s decision to retreat from its efforts to establish Silverlight as a cross-platform rival to Flash has also helped build confidence in Adobe’s platform. The company’s point of vulnerability is its dependence on shrink-wrap software for the majority of its revenue; projects like the abandoned Rome show that Adobe knows how to move towards cloud-deployed, subscription-based software but with business booming under its current model, and little sign of success for cloud projects like Acrobat.com, you can understand why the company is in no hurry to change.  

As Microsoft releases new tools for Windows Phone, developers ask: how is it selling?

Microsoft has released Visual Basic for Windows Phone Developer Tools – not a lot to report, I guess, except that what you could already do in C# you can now also do in Visual Basic.

Still, when someone at Microsoft asked me what I thought of the Windows Phone 7 developer platform I replied that the tools look good for the most part – though I would like to see a native code option and it seems unfortunate that mobile operators can install native code apps but the rest of us officially cannot – but the bigger question is around the size of the market.

We all know that a strong and large community of developers is critical to the success of a platform – but as I’ve argued before, developers will go where their customers are, rather than selecting a platform based on the available tools and libraries. It is a bit of both of course: the platform has to be capable of running the application, and ease of development is also a factor, but in the end nothing attracts developers more than a healthy market.

Therefore the critical question for developers is how well Windows Phone 7 is selling.

Nobody quite knows, though Tom Warren makes the case for not much more than 126,000, that being the number of users of the Windows Phone Facebook application.

I’m not quite convinced when Warren says:

It’s likely that most users will connect their Facebook account so the statistics could indicate nearly accurate sales figures.

Not everyone loves Facebook; and when I was trying out Windows Phone 7 I found myself reluctant to have it permanently logged in. Even so, I’d agree that well over 50% of users will enable Facebook integration so it is a useful statistic.

Although that suggests a relatively small number in the context of overall Smartphone sales, my perception is that lack of availability is part of the reason, so it is too early to judge the platform’s success. I do not see many Windows Phone 7 in the mobile phone shops that I pass in the UK; in fact it is unusual to see it at all. I am not sure if this is mainly because of supply shortages, or because Microsoft and its partners found it difficult to build expectations in the trade that this would be a sought-after device, or both.

Some bits of anecdotal evidence are encouraging for Microsoft. Early adopters seem to like it well enough. Nevertheless, it is a minority player at the moment and that will not change soon.

Developers are therefore faced with a small niche market. Microsoft has done a fair job with the tools; now it needs to get more devices out there, to convince developers that once they have built their applications, there are enough customers to make it worth while.

The cloud permeates Microsoft’s business more than we may realise

I’m in the habit of summarising Microsoft’s financial results in a simple table. Here is how it looks for the recently announced figures.

Quarter ending September 30 2010 vs quarter ending September 30 2009, $millions

Segment Revenue Change Profit Change
Client (Windows + Live) 4785 1905 3323 1840
Server and Tools 3959 409 1630 393
Online 527 40 -560 -83
Business (Office) 5126 612 3388 561
Entertainment and devices 1795 383 382 122

The Windows figures are excellent, mostly reflecting Microsoft’s success in delivering a successor to Windows XP that is good enough to drive upgrades.

I’m more impressed though with the Server and tools performance – which I assume is mostly Server – though noting that it now includes Windows Azure. Microsoft does not break out the Azure figures but said that it grew 40% over the previous quarter; not especially impressive given that Azure has not been out long and will have grown from a small base.

The Office figures, also good, include Sharepoint, Exchange and BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which is to become Office 365. Microsoft reported “tripled number of business customers using cloud services.”

Online, essentially the search and advertising business, is poor as ever, though Microsoft says Bing gained market share in the USA. Entertainment and devices grew despite poor sales for Windows Mobile, caught between the decline of the old mobile OS and the launch of Windows Phone 7.

What can we conclude about the health of the company? The simple fact is that despite Apple, Google, and mis-steps in Windows, Mobile, and online, Microsoft is still a powerful money-making machine and performing well in many parts of its business. The company actually does a poor job of communicating its achievements in my experience. For example, the rather dull keynote from TechEd Berlin yesterday.

Of course Microsoft’s business is still largely dependent on an on-premise software model that many of us feel will inevitably decline. Still, my other reflection on these figures is that the cloud permeates Microsoft’s business more than a casual glance reveals.

The “Online” business is mainly Bing and advertising as far as I can tell; and despite CTO Ray Ozzie telling us back in 2005 of the importance of services financed by advertising, that business revolution has not come to pass as he imagined. I assume that Windows Live is no more successful than Online.

What is more important is that we are seeing Server and tools growing Azure and cloud-hosted virtualisation business, and Office growing hosted Exchange and SharePoint business. I’d expect both businesses to continue to grow, as Microsoft finally starts helping both itself and its customers with cloud migration.

That said, since the hosted business is not separated from the on-premise business, and since some is in the hands of partners, it is hard to judge its real significance.