there was a time when NEC was the 500 lb. gorilla in Japan’s cellular telephone market with a 27% market share—then got here smartphones. faced with competition from the likes of Apple and Samsung, NEC’s share quick reduced in size to a measly 5%; after spending six months unsuccessfully seeking to negotiate a partnership with China’s Lenovo, the business enterprise has decided to exit the telephone business totally, according to a record through the Nikkei newspaper.
Japan’s cellphone marketplace is brutal, dominated by means of fickle cell carriers and fad-chasing clients. As within the relaxation of the sector, it’s also intensely aggressive: similarly to Apple and Samsung, there are 5 homegrown corporations—Sony, Fujitsu, Sharp, Panasonic, and Kyocera—who’re vying for a spot in customers’ pockets.
nevertheless, Japan once had ten handset makers before the relentless economics of smartphones winnowed the crowd. And NEC (so as to reportedly maintain making non-smartphones for Japan’s elderly) won’t be the closing company to bow out. Who’s subsequent? well, JP Morgan analyst Alvin Kwock said in a word this week that Taiwan’s suffering phone vendor HTC can be pressured to do not forget being acquired by means of the chinese language cellular telecommunications system maker Huawei to live to tell the tale.
Pentagon officials did no longer check product performance earlier than purchasing a probably $16 million provider meant to relaxed smartphones and tablets for three hundred,000 military personnel global.
In past due June, the protection records systems employer inked a deal for software program and training to help authorities-owned cell devices used by the complete protection branch, together with individuals of the Coast shield, national protect and navy reserve forces. The product selection method did no longer require era demonstrations, in keeping with agreement filings.
The “cellular device control” gadget is vital to ensuring unclassified purchaser logo gadgets that touch military networks do not infect protection systems or leak records if they fall into the wrong arms.
The triumphing team, made of safety providers DMI, Fixmo and MobileIron, also will open an app save that need to keep as a minimum 10,000 cellular packages, in line with the filings.
once the gadget is walking, the modern-day iPhones, iPads, BlackBerry 10s and different business devices licensed by using DISA can be allowed onto defense networks.
due to the fact that a past overall performance evaluation was no longer required, it is doubtful what assurances the Pentagon has that the winning technology without a doubt paintings the manner the providers defined on paper.
as an instance, the request for proposals did no longer stipulate that officers weigh remarks from kind of 50 latest smartphone, tablet and cell software program trials. unbiased of the contract opposition, defense components were experimenting with numerous gadgets and control structures, together with technologies made through agreement bidders inclusive of AirWatch, right generation and Fixmo, consistent with Pentagon presentations and enterprise sources.
The June award fulfills part of an execution plan for a defense mobile device strategy that Pentagon leader data Officer Teri Takai announced closing yr.
On behalf of DISA and Takai, a protection spokesman said in an email, “in the direction of this request for concept, DISA followed the same old contractual processes, guidelines and guidelines. even as an RFP won’t constantly especially cite ‘past performance’ as a finding out component, the branch considers and is ever aware of instructions discovered from previous and ongoing pilot programs at some stage in this or any choice system.”
Pentagon brass expect smartphones and pills to manual warfighters anywhere they is probably, whether or not in struggle abroad or on-the-cross stateside. The cellular device management device ought to remotely configure customers’ devices, push out bug fixes and behavior maximum of the work generally accomplished by pc aid team of workers. The app store is supposed to permit army employees browse and install vetted apps.
The price of mobile facts in India is plummeting.
a number of India’s leading telecom operators—Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, and idea cell—currently slashed their mobile information prices by as an awful lot as 90%. below the new schemes, customers can access the internet over 2G connections for as low as 1 paisa (less than 1 US cent) in line with 10 kilobytes. What’s riding the dramatic fee war?
- A massive marketplace FOR SMARTPHONES
India is already the sector’s third largest smartphone marketplace, after China and the us. The wide variety of Indians with smartphones grew 163% within the first zone of 2013 from the equal length a yr in the past, but there’s lots extra room for boom. simplest 9% of the u . s . a .’s 900 million mobile smartphone users have switched to smartphones. - cell data ISN’T yet heavily USED
Voice calls still generate the majority of carrier sales. Indian operators like Bharti get just five% or so in their total sales from statistics offerings, compared with 32% at China cell. the share of information in typical sales for India carriers is expected to bounce to 20% by means of 2017, according to Fitch rankings.
read extra at Quartz.
government spending on cloud computing stagnated at some point of the 2013 monetary 12 months, however need to select up again inside the middle of 2014. it’s consistent with a new record released Monday.
Federal spending on non-public cloud services is expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2014 and $7.7 billion through 2017, in keeping with the forecast from IDC government Insights.
moving authorities computing to public and private computer clouds has been close to the pinnacle of the Obama administration’s technology to-do list on the grounds that 2010. pc clouds normally provide less expensive garage and better far flung get right of entry to to information than conventional government facts facilities.
The move to cloud became hindered via protection issues, sequestration and the slow process of establishing commonplace standards, IDC said.
substantially greater government spending is going closer to infrastructure as a provider cloud products rather than to software program as a service, the record said. meaning government is by and large walking custom built programs inside externally-managed computer servers.
kind of ninety percentage of presidency cloud spending is for personal cloud alternatives, the report stated, in place of clouds that mix authorities and commercial information.
foreign hackers do not simply pose a chance to classified material, company secrets, and individual privacy. security experts say the best cyberthreat to the us is the truth that the chinese and Russian governments—and probable different gamers—have succeeded in hacking into the state’s electric grid, giving them the capacity, in the event that they want, to convey the U.S. financial system to a screeching halt with the clicking of a mouse.
Such an attack—accomplished now not via gun-wielding terrorists on planes however by means of hackers activating software applications from lots of miles away—may want to “deny large regions of the usa get admission to to bulk-machine power for weeks or even months,” concluded a country wide Academies of technology take a look at declassified late closing 12 months. “An occasion of this value and length may want to lead to turmoil, massive public worry, and an picture of helplessness that would play immediately into the fingers of the terrorists. If such huge extended outages were to occur at some stage in times of excessive weather, they might additionally bring about loads or even heaps of deaths due to warmness strain or prolonged exposure to intense cold.”
And the cyberthreat is growing as U.S. utilities are seeking for to modernize growing older electric infrastructure. when power corporations invest in updating the 20th-century energy grid with twenty first-century “smart-grid” generation—specially digital tools that growth the performance of energy distribution whilst cutting worldwide-warming pollutants—they’re additionally making the grid more at risk of devastating cyberattacks.
it’s created greater efficiencies for utilities and convenience for purchasers. but it’s come on the price of security,” said Michael Dubose, managing director at Kroll, a risk-management company, and a former chief of the Justice department’s pc Crime and intellectual belongings division.
authorities officials say there may be masses of evidence that hackers have made their way into the 200,000 miles of transmission lines that offer power to extra than 300 million humans. In may additionally, the native land safety department advised a residence panel that between 2011 and 2012, DHS processed sixty eight percent extra cyber incidents related to federal corporations essential infrastructure, consisting of the electrical grid, than it had the previous yr.
This tale is a part of Nextgov’s building better Apps venture.
The nation department’s clever traveller app has some beneficial information for foreign travelers, but suffers from such a lot of design flaws it’s not going to do them any good, Nextgov’s app reviewers said.
The app includes legitimate united states records, journey alerts, tour warnings, maps and U.S. embassy places. That statistics is difficult to access, though, and lots of it’s far on external websites that aren’t optimized to work with the app, causing common errors.
It made sense that a few records, such as tour warnings, had to be pulled in from external web sites, said Ted Chan, founding father of Practicequiz.com. but the app additionally linked out of doors for files which are not often up to date, consisting of nations’ visa necessities.
ordinary our reviewers gave the app 1.five stars out of a possible 5.
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A cellular-optimized website is probably a higher in shape for the statistics and could be afflicted by fewer insects, suggested Yaron Oren, leader operating officer at iSpeech. because the app calls for internet get entry to for tons of its content material, a cell website wouldn’t be more or much less handy for maximum worldwide tourists.
“With better design this app might be a need to have tool for overseas tourists,” said Andrew Borut, co-founding father of Eco Hatchery.
Few, if any, of the confrontations charming Washington this summer season will affect every day existence in the united states greater than a subdued regulatory technique in an effort to begin Friday in an office constructing some distance from the capital’s downtown strength centers.
On Friday, the Federal Communications fee will start restructuring the “E-charge” below which Washington gives price range to help faculties connect with the internet. This apparently obscure decision may want to cause an training revolution by using extraordinarily accelerating the deployment of drugs and different digital equipment into lecture rooms. Even legal professionals’ eyes may glaze over whilst faced with the gray columns inside the “be aware of Proposed Rulemaking” the commission will unveil on Friday, but the report will provoke a kaleidoscope of change for the families of the us’s seventy six million number one and secondary students—and earlier than many may think. “that is a once-in-a-generation possibility to allow our schooling device to basically leapfrog a number of our competitor international locations,” says James Shelton, the acting education department deputy secretary.
The generational possibility that Shelton and different advocates envision centers on the usage of virtual era to create a extra personalized learning surroundings. Reformers task a reimagined school room wherein all college students are ready with pills or laptops that permit them to paintings at their personal tempo on lessons that modify to their development; use video links to take guides, including superior technology instructions, simplest to be had at different schools; and receive real-time feedback from teachers who gain reviews on their overall performance through online connections with the students’ devices. constant virtual updates might update cumbersome out-of-date textbooks lugged in spine-crushing backpacks.
In June, the bipartisan leading education by means of Advancing virtual (LEAD) commission advised a country wide drive to provide virtual devices to all students by means of 2020. round that point, l. a. Superintendent John Deasy received popularity of a $30 million contract to provide every scholar inside the country’s 2nd-biggest school gadget with an Apple iPad. “college students are going to revel in a common middle [curriculum] with excessive standards in a totally customized setting,” Deasy declared at this month’s Aspen ideas competition (cosponsored with the aid of countrywide magazine’s sister book The Atlantic). big apple metropolis’s two main Democratic mayoral candidates are proposing a similar application.
those adjustments won’t be possible until faculties improve their connections. nearly all U.S. colleges are now on-line in a few style. that’s largely because of federal help supplied by way of the E-price, which turned into hooked up underneath the 1996 Telecommunications Act exceeded with the aid of a Republican Congress and signed by way of President Clinton. below the E-rate, purchasers pay a monthly price of about 30 cents in keeping with telephone line to subsidize internet connections for number one and secondary faculties, which must also contribute to the price.
even as that program has furnished most schools with fundamental connectivity, handiest about 20 percentage of yankee college students have get admission to to “true high-speed net in their school room,” as President Obama stated ultimate month. speakme at a North Carolina middle college that has upgraded, he entreated the FCC to expand a plan to offer ninety nine percentage of the usa’s college students with high-speed connectivity inside 5 years.
The LEAD fee initiatives that assembly Obama’s name for broadband in each school room—which triggered the FCC rule-making—will value between $6 billion and $9 billion. The White residence estimates that to satisfy that value customers could face a transient boom of about 35 cents of their monthly E-charge charge, less if the FCC can discover savings from the prevailing program, as it will endorse in Friday’s observe.
in spite of extra cash, this bold vision faces many hurdles. management officials renowned that the upgrade may not be cheap until schools negotiate extra efficaciously with telecommunications carriers (a number of that have faced chronic prices of failing to provide the E-fee’s mandated discounts) and device manufacturers (which have not yet furnished educators with mass low-value alternatives.) software agencies need to increase extra-state-of-the-art digital content, and teachers will want training to get the maximum from the new equipment. colleges will need to educate “virtual literacy and digital citizenship, and not just plunk a kid in front of a pc display screen for seven hours an afternoon,” says James Steyer, a member of the LEAD commission and founding father of commonplace feel Media, a set that video display units media’s impact on children.
but if the FCC brings mass broadband to the classroom by way of increasing the E-fee application, it’s going to create a significant new market for the entirety related to virtual training. with a purpose to possibly spur a virtuous cycle of invention and opposition that generates new answers to all of these challenges from educators, mother and father, and personal groups alike. To sell new virtual breakthroughs, the FCC for years has primarily wager on a method of deregulation. but to propel schools into the statistics Age, government intervention looks like the fundamental first step in the direction of unlocking private innovation.
This tale is part of Nextgov’s constructing higher Apps venture.
The kingdom branch’s DOS Careers app gives the entirety a potential foreign carrier officer could need, from an overview of the department’s roles and duties to sample questions from the service’s front examination, Nextgov’s app reviewers stated.
moreover, the app is well-organized, with a logical float from one section to the subsequent and it isn’t weighed down via links to outside websites, the reviewers stated.
The app’s best problem, they stated, is its length, which at 128 megabytes for the iPhone model rivals many excessive-quit video games and might dissuade ability users who don’t need to surrender precious space.
The Android version of the app is smaller at approximately 50 megabytes and can draw in extra users, said Andrew Borut, co-founding father of Eco Hatchery, which designs sustainability and electricity efficiency apps. Eco Hatchery’s light Bulb Finder app received the Environmental safety corporation’s 2011 Apps for the surroundings task.
DOS Careers offers text and video descriptions of the foreign service’s five career tracks at the side of interactive “day in the existence” case studies for every track. The case research observe a “choose your own adventure” style narrative because the person both manages a change summit or responds to a local earthquake.
The app also consists of hundreds of sample questions from the foreign carrier officials test damaged down into principal classes which include economics, era and global history and geography.
overall, Nextgov’s reviewers gave the app 4.3 stars out of a probable five.
Borut known as DOS Careers “fun and informative.” Practicequiz.com founder Ted Chan referred to as it the “satisfactory designed government app” out of nearly dozen he’s reviewed.
Borut faulted the app for offering an “choose in” alternative for utilization tracking with out fully explaining what might be tracked. Chan stated it’d be great to look an iPad model of the app.
Brutal Smartphone Market Is Clobbering Former Stalwarts