Business Tech

Qualcomm walks fine line between privacy, connected devices

NEW YORK--Qualcomm is walking a fine line between enabling the "Internet of Things" and protecting users' privacy, the chipmaker's chief executive said Tuesday.

Paul Jacobs, speaking at the Wired Business Conference in New York, said that nearly everything people interact with will be connected to the Internet in the future, but that also means companies have to figure out a way to make such technology less intrusive.

For example, department stores or restaurants can detect when someone is walking by and send them coupons, but not all people may want to receive those offers. So Qualcomm and … Read more

SoftBank: Our Sprint bid is better for this reason -- TD-LTE

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son says his company's $20.1 billion acquisition offer is best for Sprint, even though Dish Nework's bid is higher.

Speaking Tuesday at an event in Tokyo, Son told reporters the LTE network efficiencies that his company can bring to Sprint would dramatically improve the value of Sprint's network to customers. And that's all because of an LTE variant that Softbank already uses, called TD-LTE.

Softbank has been using TD-LTE for quite some time, and as Son points out, it's doing so in Japan "on a large scale."

TD (Time … Read more

Tablet shipments to surpass PCs before year's end, says analyst

PC shipments may finally play second fiddle to those of tablets before the year is over, at least according to one analyst.

In one scenario outlined today by Sameer Singh, head analyst at technology incubator BitChemy Ventures, PC shipments will fall to between 70 million and 75 million in the fourth quarter, while tablet shipments would rise to almost 80 million. If so, that would be the first quarter in which tablet shipments outshine those of PCs.

In a second scenario, the crossover could happen even sooner. PC shipments could decline to around 65 million in the third quarter, while … Read more

Retina iPad Mini display could go into production soon

Production of the display for Retina iPad Mini should start in the coming months, boasting one of the highest tablet resolutions to date, NPD DisplaySearch told CNET Monday.

"We should see the start of mass production of the panels in June or July," said Richard Shim, an analyst at NPD DisplaySearch.

LG Display will be one of the major manufacturers of the display, he said, adding that Samsung is not a supplier for the Mini.

"Samsung is currently not in the iPad Mini and they won't be in the next generation. LGD is becoming a much … Read more

Ex-Palm chief joins Qualcomm's board

Qualcomm has added a former mobile chief to its board, naming Jonathan Rubinstein as a new director.

Rubinstein brings more than 30 years of experience in the mobile, computing, and consumer electronics industries, the chipmaker said, most notably as CEO of Palm. Rubinstein joined the company as executive chairman in 2007 and took over the role of CEO from June 2009 until it was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2010.

Rubinstein then continued at HP, most recently leading product innovation for the personal systems group after the company largely wound down Palm's operations. Earlier in his career, Rubinstein ran Apple'… Read more

Google Glass: Who's bringing the apps?

When Jonathan Gottfried developed a Twitter app for Google Glass called GlassTweet, he did so because he wanted a way to tweet photos from his Glass headset. Now it's looking as though he's onto something, although no one would characterize his user base as big -- yet.

"There's at least 10 people using GlassTweet," said Gottfried, who is a developer evangelist for Twilio. "The group that's using it is extremely active and vocal," and includes uber-early adopters such as the all-Glass, all-the-time Robert Scoble and LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur.

"I certainly … Read more

Intel's new mobile chip to boast up to 8 processor cores

Intel needs to make waves in mobile computing. That's exactly what the first overhaul of the Atom chip design intends to do.

The new Silvermont Atom micro-architecture -- the first major architectural change since Atom debuted in 2008 -- delivers a "significant reduction in power [consumption] and a significant increase in performance," Dadi Perlmutter, an Intel executive vice president, said in a conference call Monday.

Perlmutter was quick to point out that the two -- performance and power efficiency -- are not incompatible. A slide (below) showed Silvermont Atom performing at twice the level of the previous … Read more

Adobe kills Creative Suite, goes subscription-only

In a major shift for its business and its customers, Adobe Systems on Monday announced it no longer will sell its Creative Suite software as it moves instead to the $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans.

"We have no current plans to release another perpetual release of the CS tools and suites. Creative Cloud is going to be our sole focus moving forward," said Scott Morris, senior director of product marketing for Creative Cloud.

When Adobe launched its Creative Cloud subscription last year, executives weren't sure how long it would offer it alongside the traditional perpetual-license … Read more

Taiwan university sues Apple over patent infringement -- again

Apple has been sued by a Taiwan-based university for the second time.

The company on Friday was hit with a lawsuit by the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan related to a patent the university owns on video compression technology. The complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, claims that Apple's use of video compression technology in its FaceTime video-chatting feature, as well as QuickTime, violates the university's patent.

The university last year hit Apple with a patent-infringement lawsuit over the company's use of Siri and voice-to-text functionality. … Read more