Filed under: Portables

While Sony appears concerned about its eroding share of the mobile gaming market since the phenomenal success of Apple's App Store, gaming giant Nintendo isn't worried about Apple at all. In an interview with VentureBeat, Nintendo of America's Cammie Dunaway said that with 11.2 million DS units sold last year, and 125 million DS sales in total thus far, Apple's mobile platform isn't really a threat to Nintendo's dominance of mobile gaming. "Consumers are still finding fun with our products, and there is a lot of room to grow," Dunaway said.

Nintendo certainly has room to feel comfortable, at least for now. In terms of units sold, the DS has been the most successful gaming system in history, and the iPhone and iPod touch aren't even primarily focused on gaming. If anything, Apple's success in gaming came almost accidentally; it's only relatively recently that Apple has been touting the iPod touch as a gaming device, and only after the success of the App Store did Apple even start to take portable gaming seriously. For many people, "Nintendo" remains synonymous with "video games" -- compared to Nintendo, Apple's only dipped its toe in the gaming waters. That said, the continued explosive growth of Apple's mobile device sales and the popularity of the App Store means Nintendo can't afford to rest on its laurels forever.

[Via slide to Play]

In terms of sales, Sony's PSP has been getting trounced by the various incarnations of Nintendo's DS since day one. Despite the PSP's better graphics and flexibility as a mobile media platform, the DS has grabbed hold of the handheld gaming market and shows no sign of letting go.

Since the introduction of the App Store in 2008, a new mobile gaming juggernaut has emerged, seemingly out of nowhere -- the iPhone/iPod touch. With the forthcoming launch of the iPad, whose larger screen and more powerful CPU could make it a gaming powerhouse, it means there are now three very big players in the mobile gaming market... and Sony is in an untenable position already.

Sony is hoping to change that. According to a leak to the Wall Street Journal, Sony is hard at work developing a range of handheld products designed to compete directly with Apple's mobile platform. One, a smartphone built in tandem with Sony Ericsson, would be a PSP phone designed to compete with the iPhone and iPod touch; the other, a hybridization of a PSP, e-reader, and netbook, would be Sony's answer to the iPad. Both devices would have a dedicated online store available to them, but the store itself isn't scheduled for deployment until later this year at the earliest.

I'm going to give Sony some free advice: if you want to have any hope of even competing with Apple's mobile platforms, to say nothing of surpassing them in sales, then gather up the marketing and engineering teams that developed the PSP Go, march them into an auditorium, and fire them all. The PSP Go has been savaged in reviews for its high price point, limited functionality compared to the older full-sized PSP, and download-only gaming catalogue. All these factors have combined to make the PSP Go a failure in the marketplace, and deservedly so.

Granted, the games catalogue for Apple's mobiles is also download-only, making traditional gaming conventions like buying and selling used games just as impossible as it is on the PSP Go. But there are three ways Apple's App Store buries Sony's online store under a pile of cat litter: the number of games available is staggeringly higher, the average price of games is far lower, and the App Store is much easier to navigate.

To its credit, Sony not only knows the PSP Go is a failure, but more importantly, the company also appears to know why. If Sony can learn from that failure and apply those lessons to the forthcoming handheld challengers, it might be in a position to regain some of the ground that's been lost in the mobile gaming marketplace.

[Via electronista]

Two things happen like clockwork every year: Apple raises the capacities on its NAND flash-based iPods and the iPhone, and analysts like iSuppli release a report saying that worldwide supplies of NAND flash are likely to be constrained as a result. The supply constraints aren't likely to affect Apple, which signed a supply deal with Toshiba last year, but other companies that depend on flash memory for their consumer electronics products may find themselves scrambling to find enough memory to keep production going ... just like last year, and the year before that, when analysts said almost exactly the same thing.

iSuppli predicts Apple will ship in excess of 33 million iPhones this year with an average capacity of 35.2 GB of NAND flash memory -- consistent with a doubling of capacities across the line. 2010 sales estimates for the iPad range from 4 million units and up, and the iPod touch may also see a capacity bump to 128 GB in September/October. That all adds up to a lot of flash memory. With the introduction of the iPad and a likely storage increase to 64 GB for the next-gen iPhone in mid-year, it's no surprise that chipmakers will have a hard time keeping up.

[Via All Things Digital]

Blue Microphones are on the show floor here at Macworld, and they invited us by their booth to take a look (and a listen) at the newest version of the Blue Mikey iPhone microphone. And with most of Blue's products (I have a Snowball that I use for podcasting, and it works and sounds great), it's quite impressive, producing excellent sound in a well-designed and easy-to-use form.

Earlier this year, Blue announced the second revision of the Mikey, with enhanced features for $20 more than the first $79 version. That's the one we used, and it looked and worked great. They've added a line input (for recording guitars), and a USB passthrough, as well as put the entire body on a swivel (so it can even swing all the way around and point forward while shooting video on the 3G.

Bill Gates thinks the iPad is OK, but lacking compared to his own vision of tablet computing. Speaking to business blog Bnet he said, "You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen, and a real keyboard-in other words a netbook-will be the mainstream on that."

He added "So it's not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with the iPhone where I say, 'Oh my God, Microsoft didn't aim high enough. It's a nice reader, but there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say, 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done that."

He was a lot nicer than when Steve Ballmer famously dissed the iPhone. Of course Microsoft has been flogging tablet computers for years, and hasn't had the buzz that the iPad has received.

Of course, the iPad does allow a hardware keyboard to be used with it. As far as a stylus goes, Apple has been there and done that with the Newton. Gates also wanted to see voice input on the iPad, but with a built in microphone and some iPhone apps that already do that it's not a stretch to assume voice input will be available.

How about you? Will a stylus make the iPad just what you want?

[Thanks to Tommy for the tip]

Sometimes I feel sorry for you poor iPhone users in the US. Sure, the telecommunications landscape in New Zealand isn't exactly perfect, but our small nation has the US beat on at least one very significant point: unlike AT&T, our wireless providers let us tether our iPhones as much as we want (within our monthly broadband limits, anyway). Sure, there are workarounds that let you do iPhone tethering in the States, but nothing beats the pure simplicity of officially supported tethering: flip a couple switches in your iPhone's settings, then either pair over Bluetooth or dock your iPhone, and boom, your Mac runs off your iPhone's data connection.

I've been using iPhone tethering since it became available in iPhone OS 3.0, and it's saved my geek bacon many times. On a recent monthlong vacation where my wife, my mother-in-law, and I hopped all over both the North and South Islands of New Zealand, using my iPhone's data connection on my MacBook Pro was often the only feasible way of connecting to the world beyond our campsite.

Many of the places we stayed had Wi-Fi available, but the prices were pretty astonishing; some places wanted $10 for 20 minutes of internet access. In towns where we had a decent 3G connection, we were able to watch videos in Safari (No Flash? No problem), look up tourist information, get access to Google Maps, download music and apps from the iTunes Store, and keep an eye on the notoriously fickle weather. All these things are possible to an extent using the iPhone by itself, but things went much faster and more smoothly on my MacBook Pro, where multitasking, multiple downloads, and a 17" screen are all big improvements over the browsing experience on the iPhone.

Read on to find out what else iPhone tethering can do for you, and why AT&T's excuses for not letting you have it are totally disingenuous.

ASUS chairman Jonney Shih has successfully guided his company through the spinoff of their manufacturing arm Pegatron (whom Apple is already ready to do business with), and in the process stated that he wants the computer maker to become "another Apple," but one based on open-source platforms like Google's Chrome OS and Android platform and chips sourced from ARM. However, ASUS is also carefully leaving the option of Windows/Intel products on the table to "suit consumer demand" -- or in other words, "keep ASUS solvent." He also hinted at a "killer product" launch in June, which Electronista sees as a thinly-veiled hint of ASUS's forthcoming Eee Tablet, the company's answer to Apple's iPad.

As for their ambitions to become an "open Apple," good luck to them. So far Chrome OS and Android have both seen adoption rates best described as "niche," and Linux has been a widely-espoused "open" alternative to Windows and OS X for over a decade (in which time, they've gained little traction in the marketplace). Chrome OS and the Android platform certainly have the potential to become successful, but it seems odd to pin ASUS's future success on the hopes of "open" platforms that have yet to catch on with the average consumer. I won't go so far as to say that ASUS's ambitions are doomed to fail before they've begun, but if they really want to become "another Apple," they have a hard road ahead of them.

[Via Electronista]

In addition to their Quattro Wireless buy last month, Apple has picked up two more new employees that seems like additions to an incoming mobile advertising business. Theo Theodorou was picked up from Microsoft's mobile advertising sales department and will head sales in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And Todd Tran, from mobile ad agency Joule, will serve as general manager in Europe.

Apple hasn't announced exact details of what they plan to do with all of this mobile advertising, but they did say in the conference call last week that they plan to use their Quattro Wireless acquisition to help app developers make money, especially on free apps. We don't yet know the exact specifics of that plan ("iAds," coming soon to an App Store near you?), but it looks like Apple is making a significant investment in putting mobile ads on their devices.

Fox News writer Clayton Morris was also wondering just why Apple went with AT&T yet again for the iPad data plan, but it turns out things between the two companies weren't quite so cut and dry as Jobs made us believe on stage. He says that inside sources at Verizon still insist that they've been talking with Apple about handling some of the data service, and he even says that they've mentioned not only an iPhone set up to work with Verizon later this year, but an iPad as well.

Rumor also has it that AT&T simply outbid the other cellphone providers for becoming the official iPad data service, and that makes sense: that $29.99 unlimited plan is a heck of a deal for consumers, but then again, it'll bring in a heck of a lot of business for AT&T (who should have already been in hot water for their service outages, and will probably end up in more, despite their promises that their network can handle the data).

Of course, Verizon is really the only source saying they're still in the game at the moment -- most analysts believe Verizon won't see Apple hardware until they bring out their next-generation LTE service, and even then having a bunch of different plans to choose from doesn't really sound like Apple's kind of thing. But it is interesting to hear that AT&T is willing to take a dive in price to keep Apple's business. Wonder what might happen if their network dives as well.

[via Apple Insider]

Over at TechRepublic's 10 Things blog, Debra Littlejohn Shinder has posted an article called "10 reasons why I'll be passing on the iPad." Some of her reasoning is sound, but quite a few of her points are easy to refute. It's worth looking at her post and the points it tries to make, because it's indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of not only the iPad's capabilities, but also its intended consumer base.

1. There's no physical keyboard

Debra's correct that the iPad has no physical keyboard. But what she fails to account for is that not only will Apple sell a keyboard dock for the iPad, the device can also be paired with any existing Bluetooth keyboard. Apple's reasoning for not including a physical keyboard on the iPad is even more compelling than for the iPhone, because unlike the iPhone, you at least have the option of pairing the iPad with a physical keyboard. In order to put a physical keyboard on the device itself, there'd be two options: keep the iPad the same size and sacrifice a third of the screen's real estate, or increase the iPad's size beyond what some (including Debra) already consider unwieldy in order to include a keyboard.

In landscape orientation, the iPad's virtual keyboard is nearly the size of a conventional keyboard, too, so while touch typing is going to be a challenge, it's a fair bet that typing on the iPad will be much faster and easier than the high end of 30 - 35 WPM thumb typing many people (myself included) achieve on the iPhone's far smaller keyboard. The lack of a physical keyboard on the iPhone hasn't measurably affected its sales; the iPad isn't likely to suffer many lost sales from this, either.

(Note: a few people have asked for a source on the Bluetooth keyboard issue, particularly my assertion that you can use any BT keyboard and not just Apple's wireless models. During her hands-on with the iPad following the device's announcement, Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica verified that "You can use any bluetooth keyboard you want, instead of Apple's keyboard dock. You could use the case/stand with your existing bluetooth keyboard. You cannot use a bluetooth mouse, however.")


Check out the other nine points by clicking the Read More link below.

Back when the iPad was a rumor, many contended that a successful Apple tablet would provide an easy and cheap way to distribute textbooks. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that several publishers have come on board.

Specifically, publishers are in talks with ScrollMotion, the company behind, among other things, the very well-done Iceburg Reader for iPhone, to develop text-prep and other study guides for the iPad. McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education and the Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan Inc. are named in the article.

John Lema, chief executive of ScrollMotion, called the iPad's introduction "...the beginning of handheld education."

Of course, the iPad's reception and performance in the education market is unknown, and the device faces competition from inexpensive netbooks, systems fully entrenched in an existing system, or networks and budgets that don't allow for new purchases.

Still, we imagine the average college student being able to purchase textbooks with an iPad, and carry only that device across campus. Plus, publishers would be able to dodge the resale of used books by campus bookstores -- which doesn't generate any money for them. Finally, we can imagine an app that allows professors to push notations or assignments to students' iPads or even individual books.

Keep your eye on the iPad in the education market. It could push the device over the edge.

[Via Macsimum News]

The folks at Mission:Repair have received iPad replacement parts from Apple. While checking them out, they noticed a slot that seems like it could accommodate an iSight. So they pulled an iSight camera from a MacBook pro and guess what happened. It fit perfectly inside the slot in the iPad's frame. In the picture at right, you see the iPad's frame (above and below) and the MacBook Pro's iSight (center).

And to add a little more fuel to the fire, some eagle-eyed event watchers claim that the iPad Jobs held on stage at last Wednesday's event actually did have what looks like a camera along the top bezel.

What does this mean? Will future iPads sport an iSight? Probably. But that doesn't explain why the 1st generation's case has the slot. It must have been pulled at the last minute for reasons of cost, function ... who knows.

If you're not going to buy one until it's got a camera, it looks like your prayers will eventually be answered.

[Via MacNN]

At the roll out of the iPad, our old friend Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal chatted up Steve, and when asking about the pricing of buying books from the iBookstore, Walt was told that the price would be the same as Amazon. Amazon currently charges $9.99 for most books, which, according to AppleInsider, means that Amazon is losing $4.50 per book to keep its leadership position in the eBook market and keep Kindles selling. This strategy is similar to the loss-leader marketing popularized by Gillette who sold razors at a loss in the hopes of more than making up for it in the sales of blades.

Apple proposes prices that would actually be profitable, wanting to position best sellers between $12.99 and $14.99. AppleInsider notes that Apple's plan is a similar one to the App Store where the publisher takes 70% and Apple takes a 30% cut. Under the Amazon plan, including the $4.50 Amazon subsidy, book publishers are currently being paid $14.50 while under Apple's model, the publisher of a bestseller would only make $10.49 per copy.

The idea of Amazon subsidizing books is unsustainable in any competitive market and with more than one big razor in town, or at least one showing up soon, the market will inevitably settle on one method or the other.

[via AppleInsider and WSJ]

Even though the device won't be released for another two months, Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray has been quick to revise his sales estimates for the iPad. His former estimate of 1.9 million units sold in the first 12 months was based on an estimated average price tag of $600; now that we know the iPad is priced much lower than that, Munster has revised his estimate accordingly. With the official pricing revealed, Munster now projects iPad sales of 3-4 million units in the first twelve months and double that amount in 2011, which would generate $4.6 billion in revenue for Apple next year.

Munster doesn't think the iPad will cannibalize Mac sales, however. "The gadget is a premium mobile device, not a computer," Munster believes, and goes on to say that "consumers looking for an affordable portable computer will likely stick with the MacBook lineup." Munster thinks it far more likely that the iPad will cannibalize sales of the iPod touch, and has revised his sales estimate of that device downward by 1.8 million units for 2010.
I can tell you at least one person who won't be part of that 3-4 million sales for the iPad: me. When we at TUAW posted about our dreams for the then-unnamed tablet last August, I said, "In order for me to get really excited about an iTablet, it would have to be more than a gap-filler between the iPhone and the MacBook. It would have to be revolutionary, a device that does something neither existing product is able to do." Based on what I've seen about the iPad so far, though, the device seems to be something targeted toward people who don't already have that particular setup and are missing either an iPhone/iPod touch or a MacBook. That might be exactly what 3-4 million people are looking for this year, and maybe 8 million more next year, but it's not something that suits my own computing needs in any way.

What do you think? Are you planning on getting an iPad and joining Munster's legions? Let us know in the comments.

Apple has updated their website with all kinds of fun iPad information, including an official specs page and the video that was shown at the end of today's event. The thing looks just plain beautiful, but then again this is basically their first ad for the "magical and revolutionary" device, so you'd expect that. You can find screenshots of all the different apps, and see folks like Johnny Ive and Scott Forstall chatting about how awesome it was to work on something so "unbelievable."

Interesting things to note on the official stats page: no camera at all, no Flash support, and while they did talk about a month-long standby battery life this morning, it's not actually listed on the stats page (probably because they can't be certain of which month you're talking about). Also interesting that there are a total of four buttons and controls on the entire device, and the only connector looks to be the dock. We've got to give it to Apple -- even though we haven't been able to touch it in person yet, this is a pretty amazing computer.