Corrections: The name of the report that set 100 Mbps download speeds as a goal for a third of the U.S. population by 2020 was the FCC National Broadband Plan (see 1501280056). ... CTC Technology & Energy incorrectly listed the Benton Foundation as a client, said Benton Executive Editor Kevin Taglang (see 1501280049).
Three advertising associations urged their members to contribute to the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative to “speed up the transformation and maturation of digital measurement,” a joint letter from the agencies said Thursday. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau said marketers, ad agencies and publishers need to provide the Media Rating Council with “specially structured data on viewability measurement results for their advertising campaigns.” The "most valuable data submissions would be those that illustrate significant vendor counting differences in systematic manners,” it said. “The next phase of 3MS, which has already begun, will focus on the creation of a common, audience-based GRP, followed by the development of common platforms for cross-media analytics.”
Development for Apple Watch “is right on schedule” and shipments are expected to begin in April, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Tuesday on an earnings call. Developers are hard at work on apps “all designed specifically” for the Apple Watch's user interface, he said. Cook has “very high” expectations for the Apple Watch, he said. “I'm using it every day and love it and I can’t live without it. So I see that we’re making great progress on the development of it. The number of developers that are writing apps for it" is "impressive and we’re seeing some incredible innovation coming out there.” The iPhone was the star of Apple’s Q1 ended Dec. 31, Cook said. That Apple sold on average 34,000 iPhones every hour that quarter is a volume that’s “hard to comprehend,” Cook said. Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones in the quarter, an increase of 23.4 million over last year, representing 46 percent unit growth, said Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri. Sales of iPhones grew strongly in both developed and emerging markets, Maestri said, including a 44 percent increase in the U.S. and a 97 percent increase in Brazil, Russia, India and China, he said. The company's stock closed up 5.6 percent at $115.31 Wednesday. The introduction of the large-screen iPhone 6 Plus helped push iPhone average selling prices $50 higher than a year earlier, to $687, Maestri said. The downside of iPhone’s popularity was that iPhone “channel inventory” fell by 200,000 units in the quarter, “and we were not able to reach supply-demand balance until this month,” Maestri said. “This left us below our target range of five to seven weeks of channel inventory on a look-forward basis.” Apple works with "about 375 carriers, representing 72 percent of the world’s mobile phone subscriber base, and we have over 210,000 points of sale for iPhone across the globe,” said the CFO. Apple thinks its iPhone strength will be sustainable throughout calendar 2015, Cook said. “We are incredibly bullish about iPhone going forward,” he said. “We believe that it’s the best smartphone in the world. Our customers are telling us that. The market is telling us that. We’re doing well in virtually every corner of the world." Only a “small fraction” of the iPhone installed base has upgraded to iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, he said, suggesting sales momentum will continue. “We had the highest number of customers new to iPhone last quarter than in any prior launch,” including the “highest Android switcher rate in any of the last three launches in the three previous years,” he said. Asked to quantify that “small fraction” of iPhone users who have upgraded to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus, it’s “a number that's in the mid-teens or barely in the teens,” Cook said. “There is an enormous amount left. And given there are fair amount of Android units out there, there is also an enormous amount of Android customers that could switch. And I’d also remind you that there is a lot of people that have not yet bought a smartphone. And I know it doesn’t feel like that when you’re sitting in the United States.”
The Thread Group said it launched an enabler program based on the recognition that much of the innovation in the connected home will come from small startups that can’t afford membership fees. The Thread Innovation Enabler Program is designed to give low-budget innovative companies a chance to play a role in “defining the connected home through access to Thread technology,” it said Wednesday. Once a quarter, the program will provide one company with up to 18 months of contributor-level membership to enable it to build new products using Thread, and companies will be picked based on the creative potential of the ideas they submit, Thread said. The group is soliciting submissions from companies that are pre-Series A funding; planning a connected product or service for the home based on Thread; or planning to ship products in the second half of this year or first half 2016. Projects on Kickstarter or Indiegogo will be considered, and in addition to the Thread membership, winners will receive Thread certification for one product, a listing on the Thread website, access to member meetings and potential inclusion in Thread marketing, the group said. The Thread Group, with 80 members, also said it added home control company Somfy and fire protection and security company Tyco to its board, which also includes ARM, Big Ass Fans, Freescale Semiconductor, Nest Labs, Samsung Electronics, Silicon Labs and Yale Security.
ZTE announced the global launch of the Blade S6, a $249 4G LTE smartphone powered by Qualcomm’s 615 octa-core chipset and running Android 5.0. The Blade S6 has a 5-inch display and ZTE’s Smart Sense gesture motion controls that let users shine the built-in flashlight, activate a mirror app or play music using a flick of the wrist motion. The phone has a Sony camera and an Adreno 405 image processor capable of Full-HD H.265 decoding, ZTE said Wednesday.
Facebook’s revenue in FY 2014 was $12.47 billion, up 58 percent from 2013, the company said in a news release Wednesday. The social media company’s net profit was $2.94 billion in the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, it said. It averaged 890 million daily active users in December, up 18 percent from the same period the previous year. Its monthly active users in 2014 averaged 1.39 billion, a 13 percent increase. Monthly mobile users averaged 1.19 billion in 2014, a 26 percent increase year-over-year.
FiberTower said it opened a millimeter wave spectrum technology laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. The lab will focus on "research and development in the wide-area licensed millimeter wave bands, and is especially focused on the revolutionary small cell backhaul and 5G mobile access technologies that are emerging in these bands,” the company said in a news release. “These bands are key to current 4G and LTE small infrastructure proliferation, and due to their low-latency and high spectrum re-use capabilities, such millimeter wave enabled sites will be the core infrastructure sites from which 5G operations will be deployed.” At its October meeting, the FCC approved a notice of inquiry on new technology developments that could increase the viability of operations above 24 GHz (see 1410170048) .
Verizon added 24 Viacom channels to its FiOS Mobile App, including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Spike, it said in a news release Wednesday. Customers can now watch 88 live channels on the app, it said.
PlayStation Network is partnering with Spotify to launch PlayStation Music, a streaming service, said a PSN blog post Wednesday. PSN will close its Music Unlimited service March 29, it said. The new service will launch in 41 global markets and be available on the PlayStation3 and PlayStation4 systems, plus Xperia smartphones and tablets, it said. Subscribers to PSN’s new service will have access to all existing Spotify users’ playlists and Spotify’s curated playlists, it said.
More than 400 million phablets will ship in 2019, up from 138 million forecast for this year, a Juniper Research report said. While the early success of the iPhone 6 has driven the category since its fall debut, budget phablets with 5.5- to 6.9-inch screens are expected to push the category into the mainstream market, the researcher said in a Wednesday news release. With smartphone screen sizes trending larger, many flagship smartphones are likely to be phablets by default within two to three years as consumers increasingly use smartphones for media consumption and gaming that benefit from the larger screens, Juniper said. The trend will have an impact on smaller-screen tablets that are closer to phablets in size and could affect sales of larger tablets, too, if consumers shun the larger, more expensive models, it said. The trend is likely to slow tablet adoption in markets where consumers already do most computing on smartphones, such as China, Juniper said. Stakeholders are likely to feel less of an impact from a shift away from tablets as the same chips are now powering the gamut of mobile devices ranging from smartphones to laptops, analyst James Moar said. "Hardware capabilities are blurring,” Moar said, adding that cellular-connected tablets, phablets and smartphones are all now including console-level graphics and sound systems. “This shifts device design parameters to budgets and use cases, rather than technological features." Among the report’s findings: Chinese vendors hoping to expand tablet and phablet offerings globally are likely to see slower growth due to “low-key marketing strategies” and online-only distribution. Juniper forecasts growing use of phablets at work, spurred by vendors offering productivity software standard with some devices.