Hasta La Gadget!

Tablets, and specifically the iPad from Apple, have been one of the big drivers for growth in mobile in the last couple of years, but figures out today from NPD indicate that their popularity is going to get even bigger: the market for tablets, its researchers predict, is set to boom from 121 million shipped tablets today to 416 million devices by 2017, when they will overtake notebooks to become the most popular mobile PC device, driven by a drop in costs and a rise in features. Overall mobile PC shipments will reach 809 million units by 2017, from 347 million today.

But over that time, the rise of tablets will remain largely a story about developed/mature markets. Regions like North America and Western Europe, along with single countries like Japan, currently account for 66 percent of all tablet shipments (and most likely sales), and that proportion, NPD predicts, will remain in the 60 percent range for the next five years. That works out to 254 million units by 2017, versus 80 million today.

NPD seems to say that this is partly due to a lack of infrastructure and available services in developing markets, but also that it is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: vendors continue to focus on the mature markets with their new products, so that’s where they get bought: ”New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets,” Richard Shim, senior analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, notes in a statement.

The rise of tablets is also a story about the decline of notebooks. The market for these will continue to expand, but at a rate lower than the 28 percent that tablets will see: NPD says that by 2017 there will be 393 million notebooks shipped compared to 208 million today.

One takeaway from this: although Apple with its iPad line of tablets has dominated the tablet world in market and mindshare up to now, the space is far from penetrated, and that means that companies like Microsoft, Google and others still have a lot to play for.

Another is that we may continue to see a pressure on price, but that won’t necessarily mean a shortcut on features. Amazon has, by some estimates, ushered in the “death of the spec” with its Kindle Fire tablet, which pares down expensive features like cameras in favor of delivering a sub-$200 device, but NPD notes that it will be the features on those tablets — instant-on capability, battery life, portability, as well as multi-core processors, hi-res displays — that will make them a “compelling alternative” to notebooks for the mobile consumer.

Part of the reason we will see a lot of features continue to be incorporated into tablets is because of the emphasis of content on the devices. App stores are increasingly catering to tablet users. And figures from NPD itself indicate how they are becoming a major platform for traditional TV consumption. This kind of usage screams for better screens, faster processors and just generally awesome hardware.

But by the way, this is not to say notebooks are dying. Far from it — they will still account for 49 percent of the mobile PC market, NPD says, shipping 393 million units in 2017 compared to 208 million in 2012. It adds that notebook makers are also taking heed and looking to put more tablet-like features into their products — for example, becoming thinner and incorporating touch functionality.

Android tablets come in all shapes, sizes, and price but Lenovo‘s latest tablet, the IdeaTab S2109 is here on the review block at SlashGear and seems to be sitting right in the middle regarding all 3. It runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and comes offering decent specs at a great price, but can it compete with the iPad 2? Check out our hands-on and initial thoughts below.

Lenovo’s previous tablets were decent but nothing extremely top of the line, and the same holds true for this latest variation. Coming with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box — completely vanilla — without any of their changes and rocking a dual-core processor. When we said the specs were similar to the iPad we meant it. The S2109 comes with a 9.7-inch 1024 x 768 resolution 4:3 ratio display, a Texas Instruments 1.0 GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. Some improvements are the SRS quad-stereo surround sound, and a micro-SD slot for extra storage. Here’s our hands-on:

Lenovo made this look extremely similar to the iPad, and priced it along with Apple’s lowered $399 iPad 2 as well. The IdeaTab S2109 will start at $349 and go up from there, so is slightly cheaper than the Apple slate. Without the Lenovo logo and rounded plastic unibody design you’d barely tell the different until you power it on.

Lenovo hasn’t had the best success with the tablet market, but this could be a shift into more sales for them. Coming with a mid-range price and specs could make this a go-to tablet for the budget conscious user. The design is improved over their recent tablets, the 4:3 aspect ratio is a plus, and the SRS sound is exceptional from our limited time with the device. You can get the IdeaTab S2109 Android 4.0 ICS tablet on sale for July 4th this week only for just $311 (8GB) or $351 for the 16GB model — making this a great alternative to the iPad 2. It even comes with a nice rubber case for free and additional storage options.

Stay tuned and check back shortly as we’ll be sure to give Lenovo’s new budget Ice Cream Sandwich tablet the full rundown to see what she’s worth.

Lenovo IdeaTab S2109 Unboxing is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HTC’s Droid Incredible 4G LTE hasn’t been a very well-kept secret (then again, what HTC phone is?), but Verizon has just confirmed what many of us suspected — their latest HTC handset will hit store shelves on July 5.

If you’ve been itching for an upgrade and just can’t wait for a Galaxy S III, expect to shell out $149 (after a mail-in rebate, sadly) for the new Sense-powered slab.

But is it worth the price? The device’s name isn’t very inspired, but at least the Ice Cream Sandwich-powered DI4GLTE has a solid spec sheet to back things up. In case you’ve forgotten already, it sports a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset, 1GB of RAM, a 4-inch qHD Super LCD display, and Beats Audio support. Flipping the thing over reveals the same 8-megapixel rear shooter as seen in its distant cousins the One S and One X, though Verizon’s release makes no mention of HTC’s wonderful ImageSense functionality.

Sadly, instead of embracing the wonderful design language of the One series, Verizon and HTC have the device in their usual black and red trim. The end result is a device that doesn’t look terribly different from the handsets that came before it, though it’s certainly not a bad thing unless you’re a petulant design snob like me. Thankfully, the strangely high price ($299) Verizon quoted when the device appeared on a DROID teaser page was just a mistake, but any would-be upgraders would be smart to wait for a bit and weigh their options more thoroughly.

Looks like the reports that have been in play for months now have finally been confirmed: Beats Electronics, known best for their hip Dr Dre headphones and partly backed by HTC (who had also been a rumored MOG buyer), is indeed buying the music streaming service MOG, with the acquisition now confirmed by both sides.

The move will give MOG — struggling to grow against the runaway success of Spotify — a new lease of life tied to a specific hardware maker; and Beats another step up on the consumer electronics experience, following in the mold of Apple in providing the whole package from one brand.

“The addition of MOG’s music service to the Beats portfolio will provide a truly end-to-end music experience,” David Hyman, the founder and CEO of MOG told USA Today. Although the deal has been in play since March of this year, this was in fact the first confirmation by either side that they are linking up. We’re still contacting both companies for a direct confirmation. Update: Beats has now issued a formal release:

“[Beats] was never about just headphones. We’ve…expanded the Beats mission to every other link in the music experience chain – speakers, mobile phones, personal computers and automobile sound systems. With MOG, we are adding the best music service to the Beats portfolio for the first truly end-to-end music experience. With their talent and technology, the possibilities around future innovation are endless,” said Luke Wood, president and COO of Beats. MOG will remain an independent company post-acquisition, and the MOG Music Network, an ad-network and online music service, is not part of the deal. The LA Times further reports that the price paid by Beats was less than $10 million. [original story continues below]

What we don’t know yet is how the two companies will actually integrate their services together: “time  will tell” is all Hyman would say in response to that question. And there is also the question of how and if this will play with HTC, which invested $309 million in Beats in August 2011. The handset maker has been struggling against Samsung in the Android smartphone space but has been trying to fight back with a strategy that, like this deal between Beats and MOG, plays into making service investments to sit on top of its hardware, and further differentiate it from the rest of the Android pack.

Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Beats is taking a leaf from Apple’s book by looking for a way to control the music streaming experience, as well as the hardware that gets used to consume it — that sits in contrast to a number of other new hardware entrants at the moment. Sonos, for example, has a robust API platform that it uses to bring in a number of music streaming services into the fold to consume through its music streaming hub and speakers.

This is a first acquisition for Beats. No indication yet on whether we should be expecting more.

Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre, the two founders of Beats, did not comment in the USA today piece, but we do get a quote from president and chief operating officer Luke Wood also underscoring how owning music services is part of the Beats’ bigger vision: ”Beats was created as a response to the complete erosion of the music experience… Our whole reason for starting Beats was to try to bring emotion back into that experience. We believe music services is a vital part of that ecosystem.”

Given that producer Iovine and musician Dr Dre are music industry heavyweights, it’s not really a surprise seeing them make a stab at music services as well as hardware — they are part of the army of music industry people who have been impacted by the rise of digital media and subsequent fall in traditional media sales (and the margins that came with them), and have been developing their super high-quality sound products in response to that.

This gives them another chance to have a crack at righting that their own way, by bolting on an actual music service, and an engineering/management team that knows how to execute that kind of product.

The whole logic behind the creation of Beats has been about sound quality, so it’s unsurprising that this seems to have also played a role in the MOG acquisition, too:  ”They were the first service to offer their entire catalog in the 320-kilobit format,” Woods notes.

MOG is one of the older of the music streaming services — founded in 2005, and now containing 16 million tracks for listening — and it was perhaps too far ahead of its time. The later arrival of Spotify seemed perfectly in tune with the rise of better broadband connections, flat-rate mobile data and a public that was finally moving away from being tied to their old CD collections so that they could consume their music on their fancy new smartphones. While Spotify and others like Rdio have extended their services outside of their home markets, MOG only recently (June 2012) made its first foray outside of the U.S., to Australia in a partnership with carrier Telstra.

MOG has of course kept up with the times, with deals with LG and Samsung for smart TVs and other services, and a Facebook streaming service as well, including an in-car deal with Ford — but it’s perhaps not quite picked up the same kind of mindshare as Spotify in the process.  Its service costs $4.99 per month for unlimited ad-free streaming; $9.99 to throw unlimited portable downloads into the mix.

The ubiquity of MOG’s service was another selling point for the Beats folks: ”They understand that the consumer wants ubiquity,” Woods noted.

This week Google has released the first public build of Google Earth‘s 3D flyover features, and at the Google I/O 2012 developer event, we got the chance to take a peek at a relatively massive set of four HDTV units combined to bring on one giant vision of the future. This 3D mapping feature is currently out for Google Earth on Android and will be coming soon to iOS as well, as our Google hosts note in the video below.

This hands-on – or eyes-on rather is just a glimpse of what you’ll be working with in the near future once you grab the update to the app you’ve already more than likely got running on your devices right this minute. This 3D mapping adventure comes at essentially the same time as Apple has announced their own 3D mapping project to be tied in with Apple Maps on the future versions of iOS for the iPhone and iPad. That said, this Google Earth action will also, once again, be available for iOS more than likely sooner than the Apple equivalent.

The folks you see above are both Googlers, speaking during the Lives Stream of the Google I/O events you may have caught from a different perspective earlier today!

Have a peek at the hands-on video above and peek at the couple photos above and below as well, and grab the update for your Google Earth app from the Google Play app store now! Also be sure to continue following us all week for all the most fabulous Google I/O 2012 action!

Google Earth 3D hands-on at Google I/O is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.