Hasta La Gadget!

Terry Myerson, who took over as corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Windows Phone division following Andy Lees’ departure in 2011, is helping to kick off the second day of D: Dive Into Mobile here in New York City. Right out of the gate, host Ina Fried asked where Windows Phone is seeing the most success. The response?

“When you think about the world, there are markets where operators are subsidizing phones, and then there are markets where they aren’t. We’re seeing the most success in markets where operators are not subsidizing the phone. What happens in the subsidized market — the market that Apple and Samsung have chosen to focus on — is that the best innovation happens in the $650 product that’s sold for $200. For us, the momentum we’re building is with building a phone we can offer for less than $650 [unsubsidized]. Getting to 20 percent share in Mexico or Poland, that’s the opportunity.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Microsoft

Comments

Noam Bardin, CEO of Waze, just took the stage here at D:Dive Into Mobile, taking part in a wide-ranging discussion hosted by Liz Gannes. Aside from dodging questions about potential acquisitions, Bardin made no bones about how he saw the future of mobile playing out. Of course, this is a man who spends essentially no time focused on the desktop web — given that Waze is mobile only, one shouldn’t be surprised. According to Bardin, “the next five years will be about fighting for time with users,” and he pointed to Facebook Home as the de facto example of that.

Rather than crafting their own OS and “doing what Microsoft has done — fighting a war that ended five years ago” — Facebook decided to make a time play on a massive OS. From there, Bardin confessed that in major markets, he sees Waze as Google’s “only real competition.”

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

From the latest harbinger of the robopocalypse from Boston Dynamics to more friendly looking machines like Romo, Engadget has a longstanding love affair with all forms of robots. Syfy channel’s newest show, Robot Combat League (RCL), has provided us with twelve new objects of robotic affection –and the best part is, we get to watch them destroy each other in gladiatorial fashion. RCL isn’t the first show to have ‘bots do battle on TV, of course, but it is the first to have the robots be humanoid avatars that mimic the movements of the people operating them. Mark Setrakian is the man who designed and built the dozen robots on the show, and we recently got the opportunity to chat with him about how he did it.

Filed under: Robots, HD

Comments

Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.

In the latest installment of our weekly bout of answers, the owner and CVO of V-Moda Val Kolton reminisces about rotary dials, programming on the TI-99 and tethering for free burritos. All of the responses await your perusal on the reverse side of the jump.

Filed under: Misc

Comments

“It doesn’t help to have a car that’s cheap, but that sucks.” This isn’t the sort of direct language that you typically hear from a CEO these days, but this is exactly the kind of material you can expect from Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. Over the course of our conversation, Musk (who earlier co-founded PayPal and who also heads up SpaceX) went on the record calling journalists who didn’t understand the benefits of leases “dumbasses” and pledged that use of the company’s Supercharger stations will always, forever and ever, be free. Candid responses such as these are not new for Mr. Musk, having certainly caused some turmoil in the past, and they do make for quite an interesting interview. Join us as we explore why the cheapest Model S was scrapped and we ask just when we can expect the fabled, and truly affordable, third-generation Tesla.

Filed under: Transportation

Comments