A third of American adults now own tablets, study finds

A new report from Pew Research Center released earlier today revealed that a third of American adults now own a tablet, further validating the notion that the portable devices are eating away at market share once owned by traditional computers. For comparison, only 18 percent of adults reportedly owned a tablet a year ago while only three percent of respondents owned a tablet in 2010.
Unlike smartphones that have become the norm regardless of income, tablets still remain a toy for the upper-class according to Pew. Demographics released with the report show that those living in households that earn at least $75,000 per year are more likely to own a slate than those with lower income brackets.

What’s more, adults between the ages of 35 and 44 are more likely to own a tablet versus age brackets of younger and older Americans. Finally, Pew found that tablet ownership is higher among college graduates than those that don’t have a college degree.
The research group found no statistically significant differences in tablet ownership between men and women or between members of different racial or ethnic groups. What they did find, however, is that parents are also more likely than those without children to own a tablet. 50 percent of parents with minor children still living at home owned a tablet versus 27 percent without kids.

[Source: techspot]

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Sony ventures into tablet market

15 September 2011 Last updated at 15:21 GMT Melvin Pang from Sony gives a tour of the tablet

Sony's Tablet S is due to arrive in shops in the US, UK and Japan, as the Japanese electronics maker enters the tablet PC market.

The device runs Google's market leading operating system Android and has a wedge-shaped design.

Following the success of Apple's iPad, other manufacturers such as Samsung and HTC have released their own tablets.

Analysts say while Tablet S may prove to be a popular Android tablet, it is not a serious threat to the iPad.

"It looks like the best Android tablet so far," said Abhishek Chauhan, associate director at Frost and Sullivan.

"But I still think it lags behind iPad 2 in terms of overall ease of use, as well as availability of tablet-specific applications."

Innovative design

As it goes head-to-head with the iPad and others, analysts said the Sony Tablet S did have some unique features not available in other devices.

For one, the hardware design, a wedge shape, is different from most other flat, thin tablets.

"The unique form factor shifts the device's weight closer to your palm, making it feel lighter and more comfortable while reading a book or magazine," Sony said in a press release.

Other features include the ability to play PlayStation games on the device and stream music and video to your TV or home entertainment system from the tablet.

However, Mr Chauhan said in order for consumers to be tempted, those features needed to work seamlessly.

"The ease-of-use factor is related to the satisfaction you get when everything is extremely intuitive," he said.

"That is what really works in Apple's favour."

Apple appeal

Even though Sony has come up with some distinctive features, analysts say Apple's first mover advantage and its brand appeal has placed it squarely ahead of all others in the tablet market.

"Whether it's Sony or Samsung it doesn't matter, one of them has to find a compelling reason why I would choose Android over the iPad," said Melissa Chau, research manager for mobile devices at IDC Asia pacific.

"The iPad is far and away number one and that's not going to change any time soon."

But it might still prove a threat to other tablets. Even though Sony entered the market later than many other competitors, the timing could work out in its favour.

"Currently the leading Android tablet is the Galaxy Tab which is facing legal issues, so because of that, [the Sony Tablet S] has a real good chance of becoming the leading Android tablet.

The Tablet S is in stores in the UK on 15 September, the US on 16 September and in Japan on 17 September.

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Grid10: The anti-Android tablet

14 September 2011 Last updated at 08:15 GMT Who's going to challenge Apple's dominance of the tablet market?

Any number of flavours of Android have failed to make much of a dent, the Blackberry PlayBook has hardly rocked the world, and HP's Touchpad retired hurt within weeks of its launch.

But now a tiny Singapore-based business has big ambitions for a tablet which aims to beat the iPad by looking different and costing less.

Fusion Garage's Grid10 goes on sale in the UK next month, but if they are to succeed where others have failed its creators need to make plenty of noise to persuade consumers that this is not another "me-too" tablet.

And when I met the firm's CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan this week for a quick runaround of the device, that was the core of his message.

Despite the fact that the Grid10 is an Android device - although one based on Fusion Garage's own variant - he was pretty contemptuous about the achievements to date of Google's operating system.

The mobile computing industry, he told me, had not innovated since Apple brought out its first phone in 2007. "Everything that has followed the iPhone has been a rip off of the iPhone. Every function is similar and what's worse is the experience is poorer than with Apple."

His answer has been to build a completely new user interface which he says provides a very different experience. And as he took me on a tour around the tablet's grid desktop it certainly looked as though he had found a new way of making a touchscreen environment come alive.

This is as un-Android as you can get”

End Quote Chandra Rathakrishnan Alternative vision

Everything from adjusting the volume on a music track to navigating through a set of photographs had a fresh feel, whereas on most Android tablets the experience will be very familiar to anyone who has used an iPad.

They have also made sure to build a social element into everything. From taking a note to looking at a photo, you are just a click away from telling your friends about it via a social network.

But what has made many consumers wary about plenty of iPad rivals is a lack of apps and the challenge of getting content, from films to movies to books, onto their tablets. With the Grid10 locked out of the Android Market because it has gone its own way you would think that problem would be all the more stark.

GridOS is built on top of Google's Android

The answer to this, says Chandra Rathakrishnan, is Amazon. His tablet gives you access to Amazons Appstore for Android applications, and the online retailer will also deliver music downloads, plus books from its Kindle store.

What is slightly bizarre is how keen he is to distance himself from Google's operating system: "This is as un-Android as you can get, we've taken all these services and integrated things that Google would not have wanted to see on an Android device."

He claims that his tablet has cherry-picked the best from the giants of the online world - the stability at the heart of Android, Microsoft's Bing for search, Amazon's services - and clothed them all in an innovative wrapping.

For all that, the Grid10 would struggle to attract an audience if it did not compete on price. By offering its basic 16GB wi-fi model at £259 - that is £140 cheaper than Apple and many of its Android rivals - Fusion Garage has given itself a chance.

This is not the firm's first try at this market. Its JooJoo tablet looked pretty clever - and was in development before the iPad. It sank without trace, however, swamped by the tidal wave of excitement which carried Apples machine into millions of homes.

But Chandra Rathakrishnan's Fusion Garage has won tens of millions of dollars in backing from private investors.

Like him, they must believe there is room in this brand new market for a plucky outsider with a different vision of our touchscreen future.

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Fulham FC introduces tablet CCTV

14 September 2011 Last updated at 06:10 GMT Security staff can access the new HD CCTV system using mobile devices, including iPads Ground staff at Fulham FC can now keep an eye out for trouble using tablets and smartphones.

The Premier League club has installed an advanced security system that allows employees to wirelessly monitor its network of 63 HD cameras.

Images of troublemakers can be quickly circulated to police and Fulham's own crowd control team.

In future the technology may incorporate facial recognition, linked to a database of known hooligans.

Instant action The old CCTV system was ditched in favour of ethernet-connected high definition cameras

The entire system runs on an IP computer network, meaning that cameras are hooked-up using standard ethernet cables.

Video is stored on a central server and can be accessed by a range of devices, securely connected to Fulham's wi-fi mesh network.

This allows local and remote access via a range of devices, including the iPads and iPhone currently being tried out.

Users control the cameras by dragging their finger across the screen and can even use the standard pinch-to-zoom feature.

Before the upgrade, the ground was equipped with 27 standard definition cameras, each recording onto its own VHS tape deck.

"Incidents that happened were taking days to recover. We can now do that within seconds," said Nicolas Pendlebury, Fulham FC's head of IT projects.

Operators can zoom in on the stands at a high resolution

"Say there are five fans in the away end breaking seats, we would bookmark the image in the application, email those photos to one of our response team and say 'please eject these people'.

"They can't argue it is not them. It stands up in court if we need to take it there."

The higher quality provided by the HD cameras means that the club can now produce still images to help identify troublemakers, in contrast to the poor results lifted from its old system.

"The closest we could get to any fan was four or five people wide by four or five high. The image was like, 'do you know this man?', and you would say 'is it a man?'," said Mr Pendlebury

Smart CCTV

Artificial intelligence promises to add even more advanced features to the new CCTV setup in future.

In addition to facial recognition, linked to a national database of football hooligans, the club is hoping to introduce systems that can detect suspicious behaviour.

The club is in the process of blacking out sensitive locations nearby

"We are looking at a tool that can pick up threats. For example, if it sees me walking into a room with a bag, but leaving without the bag, it will pick up that I entered with something and left with nothing," said Mr Pendlebury.

Because the system is online, the club has put in place a range of safeguards to ensure that access to the feeds is secure.

Use of the remote access devices, including iPads is currently limited to four authorised individuals, and is only possible while connected to the club's own private network.

Fulham is also putting in place privacy measures to protect local residents whose homes may fall within the camera's field of view.

The location of windows on nearby houses has been digitally mapped and will be automatically blacked out.

Installation challenge

Much of the technology installed at Fulham's Craven Cottage stadium, as well as its Motspur Park player training facility, was developed for airport security systems.

Some elements have been used at sporting grounds already, but the club believes it is the first to bring together high definition IP cameras with an in-house cloud storage system.

HD or no HD, Fulham could only manage a 1-1 draw against Blackburn

Fitting around the day-to-day business of a football club was a novel challenge for IT firm EMC which managed the Fulham project.

"When you are implementing a solution at an airport, you've got the run of the airport," explained Trevor Adams, EMC's physical security solutions practice manager.

At a football stadium you have a number of days when you can work and match days when you can't really do anything at all.

EMC said it was particularly pleased to have got the iPad and smartphone aspect of the project working. It was something, said Mr Adams, that it would likely take to other, similar installations in future.

One thing the system can't do is improve results on the pitch. On the day that Fulham rolled out its new cloud HD CCTV, they were held to a 1-1 draw by Blackburn.

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HP TouchPad tablet liquidation begins

Filed Under:

The $99 tablet has arrived. Hewlett-Packard TouchPads are being liquidated--at least at some Canadian retailers, in the wake of HP's announcement yesterday that it is shuttering the WebOS device business.

Prices have dropped off a cliff to $99.99 for the 16GB model and $149.99 for the 32GB version, according to a post at PreCentral.net.

HP TouchPad fire sale at Best Buy in Canada.

(Credit: Best Buy Canada)

A quick check at Best Buy in Canada shows TouchPads at these prices.

The same can't be said for stateside Best Buy, however. As of today, Best Buy in the U.S. was showing standard pricing. And anecdotal reports in the U.S. seem to bear this out.

Of course, consumers may pause even at these prices: You're buying into a defunct HP hardware platform. That said, there was a very limited production run of the TouchPad and it may have value as a novelty item, right next to an IBM PCjr.

If you have a question or comment for Brooke Crothers, you can submit it here. However, because our editors and writers receive hundreds of requests, we cannot tell you when you may receive a response.

Brooke Crothers has been an editor at large at CNET News, an analyst at IDC Japan, and an editor at The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.

Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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HP to exit PC and tablet business

18 August 2011 Last updated at 21:48 GMT Leo Apotheker was rumoured for some time to be planning to exit HP's traditional hardware business Hewlett Packard has confirmed plans to stop making PCs, tablets and phones, in order to refocus on software.

It has also emerged that the US company has agreed to buy UK software firm Autonomy for £7.1bn ($11.7bn).

HP added that it was considering selling its personal systems group, which includes the world's biggest PC-making business, and that it will discontinue its webOS devices.

The webOS operating system is used in its tablet computers and smartphones.

Refocus

The announcements mark a significant U-turn for the company, which announced in a March strategic review that it would integrate webOS into all of its future hardware.

HP had launched its Pre smartphone as a competitor to the iPhone and devices based on Google's Android operating system.

Continue reading the main story

While there's a promise that Autonomy will be run as a separate business, with Mike Lynch still in charge, this still looks like a sad day for British technology - and for Cambridge in particular”

End Quote However, WebOS failed to gain traction with reviewers, operators and retailers.

The decision to ditch the Pre, as well as its TouchPad tablet computers, comes despite paying $1.2bn (£727m) last year to buy up the technology through its acquisition of Palm.

There have been long-running rumours that chief executive Leo Apotheker, who recently joined from German rival SAP, wanted to refocus the company away from its traditional hardware business towards its smaller, but much more profitable, software lines.

The transformation planned by Mr Apotheker mirrors that of IBM, which dropped out of its traditional hardware business over the past decade.

"HP is recognising what the world has recognised, which is hardware in terms of consumers is not a huge growth business anymore," said Michael Yoshikami, chief executive of YCMNET Advisors.

"It's not where the money is. It's in keeping with the new CEO's perspective that they want to be more in services and more business-oriented."

On the sale of its PC business, HP said it "will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation... from HP through a spin-off or other transaction".

Market rumours have previously named various private equity firms as being keen to buy parts of HP if a break-up of the company were to happen.

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Motorola product delays, tablet price to hurt third quarter

A Motorola Xoom tablet is displayed during the first day of the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada January 6, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Steve Marcus

By Sinead Carew

NEW YORK | Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:23pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Motorola Mobility warned that its third-quarter profit would miss expectations due to a long delay of a key smartphone launch and a tablet computer price cut, sending its shares down 4 percent.

Chief Executive Sanjay Jha said Motorola's Bionic, a high-speed device for Verizon Wireless, would be delayed until September, which was later than analysts had expected for the device whose launch had already been delayed to the summer from its original target for a second quarter launch.

The delay, which also involves a Motorola tablet computer, will put Motorola under ever more pressure to compete with Apple Inc, which is expected to launch a new iPhone this fall at Verizon Wireless.

"It would have been nice if Motorola had a clear window prior to the release of the new iPhone," said CL King analyst Lawrence Harris. Motorola had announced the product on January 5 at the consumer electronics show.

"It's highly unusual to have a product delayed this long. They really had to go back to the drawing board in this," said Harris, who noted that many people on Wall Street had hoped for an August launch of the phone.

A high-speed version of Motorola's Xoom tablet, also announced in January, will also be delayed until September, Motorola said. It had also originally slated that product launch for the second quarter.

Gross profit margins will also be worse than expected this quarter, because Motorola was forced to cut the price of its first version of Xoom to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc's iPad and Samsung Electronics's Galaxy Tab.

DELAYS AND PRICE CUT

Motorola cut the price of Xoom to $499 from $799 at Verizon Wireless on July 25 to compete with iPad and tablets like Galaxy as consumers weren't willing to pay a premium for the Motorola device, which like Galaxy is based on Android software from Google Inc. It launched Xoom at Verizon on February 24.

The company gave a third-quarter earnings target ranging from break-even to 10 cents per share, excluding unusual items, compared with analyst expectations for 24 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"It's all lining up to be a weak quarter that's going to ripple though to the end of the year," said Charter Equity Research analyst Ed Snyder.

Motorola's full year forecast for 2011 of 48 cents to 60 cents per share missed Wall Street expectations for 71 cents per share.

Jha said he had misjudged pricing in the highly competitive tablet market but vowed that Motorola's profit would be back on track in the fourth quarter, when he promised to introduce more competitive products.

"We now recognize where the price points are," Jha told Reuters. "For the fourth quarter we'll launch very good, new tablets and we'll have a good quarter."

By year end, Jha promised that Motorola would have five devices based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) -- the high-speed technology both Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc are using.

This will include at least one more LTE handset besides the Bionic and two more tablets besides the LTE version of Xoom, Jha said.

For the second quarter, it reported a loss of $56 million, or 19 cents per share, compared with a profit of $80 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding unusual items Motorola earned 9 cents per share in the quarter, ahead of analyst expectations for 6 cents a share

according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue rose to $3.3 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $3.12 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Motorola said on Thursday it shipped 4.4 million smartphones in the quarter, in line with expectations from six analysts contacted by Reuters. It has also sold 440,000 tablet computers, ahead of analyst expectations for about 366,000.

The company tweaked its full year sales estimate for Android tablets and smartphones to a range of 21 million to 23 million from 20 million to 23 million.

Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc.

Motorola shares fell to $22.01 in after-hours trading, down 3.9 percent for their $22.91 close on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Robert MacMillan, Andre Grenon, Tim Dobbyn, Phil Berlowitz)

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