The latest figures for global sales of advanced handhelds show Nokia out in the lead, though market shares vary greatly when broken down by region, according to a recent report by Canalys. The overall market, which includes devices such as smart phones and PDAs, grew 41% compared with the same period last year. But while Nokia leads in Europe, at 48%, it accounts for only a quarter of devices shipped in North America and Asia-Pacific. PalmOne has only around 1% sales share in Europe but 37% share in North America.
At the Samsung Tower Palace, a luxury apartment complex and the showplace for Samsung Electronics’ digital home business, even the refrigerators are logged onto the Net. The apartments are also outfitted with Internet-enabled ovens, security cameras and wall-mounted flat-panel displays. Samsung has sold more than 6,000 networked homes in South Korea, and now it's eager to export its success with testing in Canada, Australia and Europe, and it recently struck deals with two U.S.-based home builders to conduct digital home trials in the United States. According to Samsung, wiring homes in the United States with the necessary networking gear will cost from $2,000 to $10,000--making adoption relatively affordable. Last year, a group of companies driven by Intel and Sony formed the Digital Home Working Group - a consortium dedicated to drafting guidelines that will make it easier for consumer electronics and computing devices to work together. An estimated 28 million Americans now have broadband Internet access and experts expect the use of broadband access to propel the adoption of the digital home because it will allow consumers to access digital media and commerce from more devices.
Broadband Internet access in the United States surged 42% last year as demand for speedier connections remained strong, according to a report from the Federal Communications Commission. At the end of 2003, the FCC reported a total of 28.3 million broadband lines in the United States and that growth for the second half of 2003 reached 20%, up from an 18% increase during the first half of the year. As the market grows, the battle between cable modems and digital subscriber line services is getting more cut-throat.
Laptops containing sensitive financial details and all manner of corporate secrets can be snapped up at auctions for a pittance, a security company said recently. Stockholm-based Pointsec Mobile Technologies, which sells encryption software and other products designed to protect sensitive information on mobile devices, said it bought 100 laptop computers from a host of Internet and public auctions over the past two months to show how vulnerable data can be. Scores of lost or stolen laptops wind up at auction every day with hard drives with little or no security, giving identity thieves and fraudsters easy access to lucrative information. What the company did not expect to find was a cache of corporate laptops too that were as easy to crack as a typical home user's PC. In all, the company's technicians were able to pull sensitive details from 70 of the 100 machines it bought. In one case, the company obtained a particularly vulnerable hard drive from online auction site eBay that apparently once belonged to one of Europe's largest insurance companies. "Even when companies or individuals believe they have wiped the hard drive clean, it is blatantly clear how easy it is to retrieve sensitive information from them," said Pointsec CEO Peter Larsson. A bigger problem is laptops lost on the train or at the airport, which are often auctioned to the public if the owners don't claim them.
An association of world airlines agreed to cost-cutting measures such as full electronic ticketing by 2007, as part of a bid to save up to $3 billion a year. The move comes as the industry is faced with soaring fuel prices and mounting competition. The move was agreed to by 700 executives of airlines gathered in Singapore at the World Air Transport Summit. In addition to eliminating paper tickets, the airlines agreed to work on an industry standard for check-in terminals worldwide. The airlines also plan to replace magnetic stripes with bar codes on boarding passes so they can be printed by passengers at home to cut costs and check-in times.
The biography of Sony founder Akio Morita credits him with the concept of the portable music player, a device better known to Sony customers around the world as the Walkman. But the Japanese consumer electronics giant has just paid several million euros to a German inventor who patented the idea in 1977. After more than 20 years of court battles, 59-year-old Andreas Pavel agreed to a settlement that, in return for the payment, suspends all legal procedures he had set in motion against the company. In 1977, Pavel, then living in Italy, registered for several patents relating to a portable stereo device named the Stereobelt; in n 1979, Sony launched its famous Walkman, which went on to sell more than 200 million units in its first two years. Pavel sought to take advantage of his patent rights in 1980, starting friendly negotiations with Sony for acceptable royalty payments through a licensing contract. In 1986, the manufacturer paid out royalties, but Sony always rejected Pavel's claim that he had invented the gadget. In 1989, Pavel turned to the British justice system to establish his ownership of the rights. After more than seven years, Pavel's suit was dismissed, and he found himself near bankruptcy because the court costs--nearly 3 million euros --were charged to him. Pavel threatened to continue his battle in other countries where he held a patent. In 2001, Sony changed its stance and agreed to start new negotiations with Pavel, which led to the settlement.
Pavel now plans to approach other manufacturers of Walkman-like products, including Apple Computer whose iPod is to some extent the digital successor of the Walkman.
