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Academy Awards iPad commercial
Way back in 2007, the first TV advert for iPhone went out during the Oscars, and Apple again paid for the top spot yesterday during a break within the 82nd Annual Academy Awards.
There’s a lot packed into 30 seconds here, and iPad has begun to pique my interest. But I’m not sure I could sit as comfortably with it as the commercial implies. I’d want to rest it against something, or anchor it for stable typing. After all, how often is a laptop really on your lap?
The Wi-Fi versions of iPad are out in the US on 3 April and will reach the UK by the end of the month. The 3G versions will be along to hog data and to fuel the debate on traffic shaping later in the year.
Power out? Pop in a triple-A for an extra hour
 The FrvrOn V-G2300 is launching in India with Olive Telecom, a long way from the UK but it caught my attention because of its nifty hybrid power mode. If the standard lithium-ion battery runs out of juice, users can slot in an AAA battery to get an extra hour of service.
Budget handsets have been my radar while I’ve been using a VX1, and I think I’d prefer to have one of these. Additional features that add interest, gimmicks, or even practical usability can really up the value of a phone, but the price here has been kept right down. It has an FM radio as well.
Selling in India for around £25 ($37), the FrvrOn is a basic voice and text phone, with an obvious appeal to those based in rural areas, travelling, or just suffering from erratic power supply. Hybrid power is an idea that’s been around the block before and appeared in the UK, but I’ve never seen it need just a single AAA battery to work.
Engagingly retro or Soviet-era calculator?
 The VX1 from Bluetooth manufacturer Bluechip arrived on my desk this week. Retro built like a 1980’s calculator, it measures 80mm x 50mm x 10mm and is smaller in profile than a credit card. Solely for voice and texts, it’s been available exclusively from Tesco during the Christmas and the New Year period, priced at around £18. It’s marketed SIM free as a backup or emergency phone and works on any network except 3’s.
It gained a bit of interest in the office, and again on Friday night when I took it out with me. It attracts by being a little strange and different to the current range of huge glowing smartphones out there, but it didn’t hold anyone’s attention very long. The battery has lasted for 4 days so far, and voice quality has been fine, but I wouldn’t want to use the fiddly buttons to text anything beyond ‘ok’ or ‘cu l8r’. As an emergency replacement it did the job, but I missed being able to take a few pictures of friends during my night out.
A year ago I’d have been really keen on the VX1 as a cheap and cheerful stand-by phone. But now I think it’s missed the window of opportunity. It’s low build quality and utterly basic functions don’t compare well against the alternatives you can find on prepay for any network at under £20. For example, I picked up a Samsung E1120 as a temporary Orange phone for my Mum, for £14.95 at Asda.
If you’re looking for a bargain, I’d check out the clearance stock in supermarkets and office suppliers first. Being SIM free is an advantage for the VX1, but shopping around will bring you better results.
Conditions accepted
 The Orange T-Mobile 50/50 deal as discussed previously has been accepted by the European Commission, and the UK Office of Fair Trading has withdrawn its objections, Reuters report.
France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom can proceed with merging their UK operations, on condition of expanding the existing network sharing agreement T-Mobile has with 3. The combined company must also hand back a quarter of its assigned 1800 MHz radio spectrum. The paper should be signed in the Spring, followed by both brands running in parallel for up to 18 months.
FT and DT’s new business will be catapulted to a 37% market share, with the companies expecting to save around €4 billion through synergies and economies of scale, i.e. cuts.
Facepalm moment
 California based Palm faces dire straits. Financial trouble looms as the company cut its forecast revenues and the share price slumped. Generally smartphone sales are riding a wave but demand for Palm’s new Pre, Pixie and their ‘Plus’ siblings has been low. It’s unfortunate as Palm’s webOS has some great features, including the best implementation of multitasking I’ve seen. So why the problems? Well, partly webOS is being squeezed out by established operating systems, the rise of Android and new entrants with more clout like Samsung’s Bada. Without the support structures and developer community, there can be no clamour generated for all important app consumption. Second, the advertising and branding has been dreadfully dull and even worse.
CEO Jon Rubinstein has sent a letter to all Palm employees, reassuring them that Palm has £500 million in the bank to carry it through the choppy waters, but that figure only just covers the amount that backer Elevation Partners has already stumped up to keep the firm running.
War chest is not for looting
 At Apple’s annual shareholder meeting, boss Steve Jobs defended the decision to sit on cash reserves of $40 billion. Roughly amounting to a fifth of Apple’s value and a strategically critical resource as the recession ends, Jobs alluded to the war chest being kept for something big. Investors would love to get their hands on the cash, but questions and suggestions were rebutted, with the explanation that buy backs and dividends would have no lasting impact on company’s share value.
Apple also announced it would place 25 new retail stores across Chine by 2012 and pursue other opportunities abroad. Currently around 60% of Apples revenue is reaped from international markets, according to the most recent quarter’s balance sheet.
European triple hurdle
 After an uncomfortable time in China already this year, Google is now experiencing difficulties in Europe. Two employees, and one ex-staffer have been convicted of breaching Italian privacy regulations in a case involving cyber-bullying back in 2006. Footage was posted to Google Video of a child being mistreated by schoolmates. The video was taken down after a request from the authorities, but the prosecutor continued with the case and convictions have led to suspended sentences. It’s a pretty stark warning to all social networking and media sharing sites, that potentially they are legally responsible for every bit of content posted by anyone.
Google has also been notified by the European Commission about complaints from three companies regarding the fairness of its search engine results. UK price comparison site Foundem, French legal search engine eJustice.fr and Microsoft’s Ciao from Bing, all accuse Google’s search algorithm technology of being unfairly weighted. It remains to be seen if an antitrust case will be formally investigated.
Associated Press also report that the company has been asked to better notify residents before its Street View camera vehicles start to collect pictures. Not sirens or alarms on the vans, just notification posted on the web, and in local papers before the event. The data protection authorities in Finland, Germany, Greece and the UK have already asked the company to make changes such as lowering the camera angle so that the images don’t show private gardens.
Independent app vendor jumps to number three spot
Until now, independent app vendors have often lost out to the big names, a major and obvious criticism being lack of content. PocketGear are seeking to change that perception, and by acquiring Handango now have the ability to field a cross-platform marketplace with more than 140,000 titles, spread across Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm. The increase in scale for the two firms potentially makes them world number three, behind Apple and Google. PocketGear already provide the backbone for 40 storefronts, including those of Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, T-Mobile and AT&T.
Like to know more? press release here
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