Nintendo’s ailing Wii U console continues to struggle, with the company’s latest financial results showing the tablet-equipped games system failed to meet even slashed sales predictions in the last quarter. A total of 3.45m Wii U were sold in the twelve months up to March 2013, it has been revealed today, short of Nintendo’s pessimistically reduced 4m unit expectations.
That four million figure had itself been a compromise, with Nintendo downgrading expectations for Wii U sales by 27-percent. However, what the company believed was reasonable interest in the console in the run-up to the holiday period had made the 4m unit figure seem reasonable.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in 2013, with a poor games roadmap blamed. “Wii U was not able to maintain the initial sales momentum after the beginning of 2013″ Nintendo said today, “due to a delay in the development of subsequent software titles.”
Overall, though, Nintendo managed to squeeze out a profit from its full-year finances [pdf link], with net profits of 7.1bn yen ($71.3m), though still an operating loss of 36.41bn yen ($366m). While hardly impressive, perhaps, they’re still a vast improvement over 2012′s numbers, where Nintendo recorded a 43.2bn yen loss.
Elsewhere, the 3DS glasses-free 3D handheld also missed its predicted sales, with 14m sold. Nintendo now expects to sell 18m in the next full financial year, along with 9m Wii U units.
It remains to be seen whether Nintendo will re-consider its stance on a price-cut for the Wii U, something the firm said, back in January, would not take place. Meanwhile, Sony has already announced the PlayStation 4, its next-gen console, and Microsoft is expected to reveal the new Xbox, colloquially known as the “Xbox 720“, within the next few months.
This quarter has certainly been decent for Apple with iPhone and iPad sales that eclipsed the company’s numbered from one year ago. While you’ll want to see the major numbers surrounding Apple’s massive $43.6 billion in revenue in an article just published on SlashGear a moment ago, you’ll find that Apple’s iPhone units sold aside it’s massive amount of iPads pushed in the past three months to be astounding on its own. This quarter’s results boasted a cool 19.5 million iPads sold and 37.4 million iPhones sold in the three months ending on March 30th, 2013.
Compared to the quarter that immediately preceded the quarter just reported, Apple sold a total of 22.9 million iPads and 47.8 million iPhones – that’s to be expected at least a bit as the first quarter Apple reports includes the 2012 holiday season. Apple’s results for the quarter including the three months reported here exactly one year ago has Apple bringing in cash from sales of 35.1 million iPhones and 11.8 million iPad units shipped.
This ramp-up is also beginning to fall into the category that includes consumers anticipating a new iPhone as rumors for the still unofficial iPhone 5S have been in full swing. Apple has been rumored to be creating a low-cost plastic-backed iPhone in the near future as well – both of these devices are, again, not yet made official or confirmed by Apple in any way at all.
Have a peek at more Apple action in our SlashGear Apple hub right this minute, and stay tuned as we continue to report on the Apple earnings today as they come in! With a massive “war chest” of $145 billion USD, Apple is certainly feeling confident here in the first half of 2013.
As the book “The New Digital World” is published this week by Google’s Eric Schmidt and co-author Jared Cohen, a transcript of a “secret” meeting held between the two men and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has come to light. The transcript of this meeting – as well as the audio (uploaded this week) has been being mined by the public, revealing notes such as the one appearing today involving “internet educated youth” as spoken about by both Assange and Cohen.
While the original intent of those involved in this meeting was the exchange comments which would eventually be used in the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future, it would appear that it wasn’t Schmidt or Assange that approved of the transcript of the meeting being published by WikiLeaks. The WikiLeaks team is part of the subject being spoken about, this youth which is becoming radicalized in our modern internet age.
Jared Cohen: I am just wondering, on the human side of this, you have such experience of the world you described earlier. …some combination of technical and altruistic people and what amounts to a kind of subculture that you’ve been in for some 15 years now.. So you know about how the subculture works. And that subculture needs to either I guess stay the same or expand in order to do the work that you are describing, and so since our book is about ten years away…
Julian Assange: It’s dramatically expanded…
JC: What are the patterns there in terms of the people part, rather than the…?
JA: That’s the most optimistic thing that is happening. The radicalization of internet educated youth. People who are receiving their values from the internet… and then as they find them to be compatible echoing them back. The echo back is now so strong that it drowns the original statements.
Completely.
The people I’ve dealt with from the 1960s radicals who helped liberate Greece and.. Salazar. They are saying that this moment in time is the most similar to what happened in this period of liberation movements in the 1960s, that they have seen.
Assange continued by expanding on the idea that young people are changing the way our society acts and thinks with the tools they’ve created for themselves with the internet. This age we’re in now, he says, is one in which the technical generation that created the internet – and those that are coming in with the web as a given – are becoming politically educated.
JA: This is the political education of apolitical technical people. It is extraordinary, in the same way that the young…
Lisa Shields: A-political? Do you mean one word?
JA: One word. People are going from… young people are going from apolitical to political. It is a very very interesting transition to see.
Lisa Shields is another of the very few people in the room during this conversation, she having been mentioned in our first short glimpse into this environment last week. This isn’t the last time we’ll be jumping in to this set of ideas being explored by Schmidt and Cohen – now that the book is out, we’ll be leaping in all week long!
Neuromancer author and arguably the father of wearable tech in fiction William Gibson finally met up with Google Glass at the weekend, donning the headset and finding – to his frustration – himself left intrigued by it. Gibson – whose 1984 novel coined the term “cyberspace” as well as kickstarted the cyberpunk genre – got to try out Google’s developer-version of the wearable at an event at the New York Public Library, after one member of the audience brought along their new unit.
As fitting meetings go, the intersection of Gibson and Glass is a hugely appropriate one. In Neuromancer, Gibson described a wearable display embedded in eye-lenses fused to central character Molly Millions, and through which a cyberspace-immersed hacker could communicate through text messages.
Although former MIT researcher Steven Mann is best known for translating augmented and mediated reality concepts to real-world hardware, having spent several decades refining his wearable techn, Gibson’s role in describing “the dystopian future in which humans are augmented with computer implants,” as MIT described it, makes him equally important. However, Gibson is also known for being only tangentially interested in technology, a fact which apparently led to some consternation after he had a chance to wear Glass.
“I also got to try Google Glass, if only for a few seconds” Gibson tweeted after the event. “Was faintly annoyed at just how interesting I found the experience.” Asked how well it worked, Gibson commented that the “focal-point tech was impressive.”
The headset itself was brought to the NYPL by Dow Jones consumer technology head Erin Sparling, who was himself surprised that he was the first to help Gibson experience Glass. The Explorer Edition began shipping earlier this month to those who put down $1,500 at Google I/O last year, though Google chairman Eric Schmidt has said that it is likely to be 2014 before a consumer version hits shelves.
[via BoingBoing; Image used by permission of Joe Kendall]
This afternoon a device has leaked from the halls of Acer with an 8-inch display and a keyboard dock attached along its longest side. This device is an 8-inch display-toting tablet that’s being reported to be carrying Windows 8 Pro 32-bit and an Intel Atom Z2760 processor under its hood. This tablet appears by all means to be detachable from its keyboard base and may be revealed along with the Star Trek-promoted transformable notebook we saw this morning at the start of next month.
This device has appeared in several photos, some as a tablet, some as a one-piece machine with a tablet bit being detachable. What’s able to be seen here is the machine’s ability to take on more than one form. As we’ve seen from Acer in the recent past, the ability to work as a notebook or a tablet is not something the designers at this manufacturer are afraid of.
UPDATE: MiniMachines appears to have had a takedown notice issued – take a peek while you still can!
Perhaps the most intriguing image is the one you see below. Here you’ve got the 8-inch tablet set against the back – or is that the bottom – of a notebook. This notebook appears to take on a form that’s just a bit different from the docked version you see above. Is there more than a couple of forms of machine here?
If you compare this device with what we saw this morning in the Star Trek Into Darkness teaser, you see that it’s not necessarily impossible for this device and that device to be completely separate releases. Here in this tablet amalgamation you’ve got what very well could be in one case a keyboard dock attached to a large display (like a standard notebook) and in the other case a dock for this smaller tablet.
Could this be a device that takes the idea of a multi-display machine like the ASUS Padfone and makes it happen with a notebook/mini-tablet combo rather than with a detachable full-size tablet or phone? Stay tuned as we get the full story on May 3rd (if not before!) Stick with us here on SlashGear through our big Acer tag portal as we keep on digging!
Google Glass will spur an evolution in social etiquette, Google chair Eric Schmidt has predicted, though he argues users of the wearable have a responsibility to “behave appropriately” as well. The augmented reality headset has already been preemptively banned from bars, casinos, and other locations, over concerns that users might film their fellow patrons; however, Schmidt pointed out to BBC Radio 4, it’s also down to individuals to use Glass responsibly.
“The fact of the matter is that we’ll have to develop some new social etiquette” Schmidt suggested. “It’s obviously not appropriate to wear these glasses in situations where recording is not correct.”
However, while some commentary has suggested that the public should be wary of Google’s “wearable eye” recording them, as Glass becomes popular and more widespread, Schmidt refuses to take full responsibility for the potential privacy issues. “Companies like Google have a very important responsibility to keep your information safe” the executive chairman concedes, “but you have a responsibility as well which is to understand what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and behave appropriately and also keep everything up to date.”
Keeping Glass up to date won’t be an issue, assuming the production version – which Schmidt says will arrive in roughly a year’s time – follows the same terms of service as the Explorer Edition already shipping to developers. One of the conditions Glass users must agree to is to allow the wearable computer to automatically update itself whenever Google pushes out new firmware; in fact, there is apparently no way to manual control the update process.
Similarly, Google will be capable of remotely disabling functionality on Glass units that is deemed unsuitable, such as if an app or service is found to contain malware or be used inappropriately. The headset will periodically check in on a “blacklist” of banned apps, services, and features, and removing any that are mentioned.
Nonetheless Schmidt argues that the same issues as are around Glass and privacy have been encountered for some time; “you have this problem already with phones,” he pointed out. Whether people will treat Glass differently, however, because it’s body-worn rather than handheld – and, as some involved in the project have discovered, is quickly overlooked by those around them – remains to be seen.
It’s not secret that Google’s Fiber Internet program is growing by leaps and bounds – and here in Provo, Utah, it’s being initiated in a deal that’s costing Google only $1 USD at the outset. This deal is being made by Google to purchase the city’s municipal fiber-optic system that originally cost around $39 million to build. The Provo City Council will still have to make a final approval – this approval is expected to come to light by next Tuesday.
This will be just the newest in a line of Google Fiber systems being set up, Kansas City, Missouri and Austin, Texas already coming up quick. Google is making a big effort to become the premiere brand for fiber-optic internet in the United States here in 2013 as the rest of the industry remains relatively silent. Just this past month AT&T Fiber Internet was announced for Austin, Texas as well.
With the network being purchased today by Google being nearly ready to rock before they arrive, they’ll be able to set up a final system well before they’ve got marketable sales ready for Austin. Residents of Provo have been paying a charge of $5.35 per household per month on their utilities for an all-inclusive internet, television, and phone service for approximately 12 years – this update should have some effect on how that charge is assessed.
“Provo City’s vision has long been one where our residents have access to reliable high-speed broadband Internet. We know that communities are better – and communities are stronger – when people are connected. With this agreement, we have an opportunity to do things that few communities in this country get to do.” – Mayor John Curtis
Residents have been paying said fee regardless of their use of said services, and would have had to pay a rather sizable fee to activate the internet service they’d already been paying for: $700 USD. With Google onboard, they’ll be grabbing internet service at no additional fee just so long as they pay a much more reasonable $30 hook-up charge.
Google will have five years to build out Provo’s current system in place if the deal is finalized. They will also have just 180 days to take over the network successfully after the deal is signed. At the moment it does not appear that Google has any deals signed for TV service.
This week a chat between Google’s own Eric Schmidt and the head of the organization known as WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been revealed in full. This conversation has been typed out in transcript form and revealed to the public by none other than WikiLeaks itself, releasing this document just ahead of the publication of the book The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future. This is significant due to the book’s co-author, Jared Cohen, also apparently being present at the meeting with Assange.
The transcript at hand – which you can access [here] – is said to be a complete write-up of a five-hour chat between Schmidt, Assange, Cohen, and Lisa Shields. Cohen is otherwise known as a former Secretary of State advisor to Hillary Clinton. Lisa Shields hails from the Council on Foreign Relations.
At the time of the recording from which the transcript was transcribed, Assange was under house arrest in the UK. The meeting took place in a single day, the 23rd of June, 2011, and according to WikiLeaks, it was Schmidt and Cohen that requested the meeting “to discuss ideas for” their book.
“To be used in a book by Eric Schmidt, due to be published by Knopf in October 2012. I have been given a guarantee that I will see the transcript and will be able to adjust it for accuracy and clarity.” – Assange
One of the first subjects that has turned up as telling – and will almost certainly appear in the forthcoming book – is Schmidt and Assange’s words exchanged on a government’s ability to turn off the internet. Using mobile phones, they note, things have changed drastically.
ES: When we were sort of chatting initially we talked about my idea that powering, mobile phones being powered, is sort of changing society. A rough summary of your answer for everybody else is that people are very much the same and something big has to change their behaviour, and this might be one of them, and you said, you were very interested in someone building phone to phone encryption.
Can you talk a little bit about, roughly, the architecture where you would have a broad open network and you have person to person encryption. What does that mean technically, how would it work, why is it important. That kind of stuff. I mean, I think people don’t understand any of this area in my view.
JA: When we were dealing with Egypt we saw the Mubarak government cut off the internet and we saw only one – there was one ISP that quite few of us were involved in trying to keep its connections open, it had maybe 6% of the market. Eventually they cut.. eventually the Mubarak government also cut off the mobile phone system. And why is it that that can be done?
People with mobile phones have a device that can communicate in a radio spectrum. In a city there is a high density… there is always, if you like, a path between one person and another person. That is there is always a continuous path of mobile phones, each one can in theory hear the radio of the other.
This conversation continues for over 25000 words – you’ll want to take a deep dive as we continue investigating throughout the day (and through the future, too). If you’re feeling really intrepid, you may want to download the page just incase it’s taken down or redacted in any way in the near future as well.
For this particular situation we’d love for you, the reader, to engage with us in taking a look at this WikiLeaks document. In our Facebook Chat today we’ll be discussing this document in-depth. Please feel free to join in!
Is there room in the market still for e-paper ereaders? Kobo says yes, and has the consumer research to prove it and the new model, the Kobo Aura HD, it claims will fit the bill. A survey of 10,000 of the company’s existing users found that 90-percent plan to buy a new, dedicated ereader sometime in the next twelve months, Kobo says; 36-percent apparently have both a tablet and an ereader, and 53-percent use their ereader every day. We caught up with Kobo to take a look.
For that target audience of avid readers, Kobo insists that E Ink remains the way forward for usability. The Aura HD’s panel sees a step up in specifications, however, with a 1440 x 1080 resolution, 6.8-inch Pearl panel, running at 256ppi; it also has front-lighting, as we’ve seen on other recent ereaders from Amazon and B&N, though Kobo claims its system offers the most even illumination. It’s certainly bright and looked consistent across the panel. Inside, there’s WiFi b/g/n though no cellular connectivity, Kobo telling us it still doesn’t believe the hassle of getting 3G/4G hardware certified and the costs of data involved make it worthwhile for its audience.
Kobo is pretty keen to highlight its angular back-panel, though, modeled after a creased sheet of paper. The raised edges give your fingers somewhere to rest, so the theory goes; in practice, it’s certainly not the thinnest way to read an ebook – the iPad mini and Nexus 7 have replaced a standalone ereader for many – but the Aura HD is easy to grip and feels like it could survive a fall from your nightstand. Physical controls are limited to a power button (finished in a contrasting color) and a key for the “ComfortLight” illumination.
Everything else is operated with the touchscreen, which seems reasonably responsive. The Kobo homescreen pulls together your recently read titles – complete with both a percentage of how much is read, and a useful indication of roughly how long it might take you to read the rest, handy if you’re trying to plan ahead for a journey – with recommendations for new books and authors. A tally keeps track of how many books you’ve finished and how long you spent reading them, and you’re prompted to rate completed titles. The Aura HD also supports basic gaming, like chess, with widgets to access your most recent game.
In use, what impresses the most is the clarity of the ereader’s screen. Even at small font levels, there’s no graininess or jagged edges to the text, something Kobo said it achieved not only by virtue of the higher-density display resolution but by going back to first-principles with the fonts and redesigning them pixel-by-pixel to suit the E Ink panel. The screen is also 30-percent larger than other ereaders of a similar scale, and together with the improved readability at small sizes, that means more text on a single page and fewer turns. Fewer turns also adds up to longer battery life, as e-paper displays like the Aura HD’s only use power when they’re changing the content of the display, not maintaining it.
Otherwise, it’s pretty much par for the course for the Aura HD. The onboard 4GB of storage can be expanded by up to 32GB with a microSD card, and there’s a new Freescale i.MX527 processor that, at 1GHz, is apparently 25-percent faster than any rival model out there. We can’t say we noticed a significant uptick in speed, though we also didn’t encounter responsiveness issues.
Kobo has high hopes for the Aura HD, and says there’s still a strong market for ebook-centric devices rather than tablets. In fact, its own ereader sales tripled year-over-year, something the $169.99/€169.99 Aura HD is expected to contribute to. It’s already up for preorder in the US and Europe, and will arrive in US and UK stores come April 25.
If you weren’t excited about the next edition of LG’s hero device by now, the following news should spark your interest: apparently this smartphone is going to be so thin that it wont have room for a power button or volume buttons around its sides. With news of the LG Optimus G2 coming in from South Korean news sources that may or may not be entirely reliable, the concept certainly seems intriguing enough to be possible: could it be? The framework of this next-generation device is said to be such that the left, right, top, and bottom will have a completely non-traditional button layout.
While the LG Optimus G was so impressive that Google hired LG to make them their own in the Google Nexus 4, the G2 has to step things up a notch. With the 2013 wave of smartphones out-doing the G with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 processors (in the HTC One and Samsung GALAXY S 4), it wont just be the body that’s getting a cut. LG has also been tipped to be including Qualcomm’s best yet: the Snapdragon 800.
The LG Optimus G2 is being quoted as containing the following today, straight from the source speaking with MyDrivers. The physical design of this device may be the biggest change, but the final build will be one heck of a whopper!
LG Optimus G2
• 5-inch display, 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution • 13 megapixel camera back-facing, 2.1 megapixel front • Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor • Android 4.2 Jelly Bean • LG User Interface • Worldwide Launch
Have a peek at our LG Optimus G Pro hands-on experience as well as our original review of the LG Optimus G and get ready for the next coming of LG. This device should be revealed by the time Summer has begun, but no confirmation has yet been given by LG. Stay tuned!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
