Remember the Wikipad, the Android-powered gaming tablet/hefty controller rig combo that was supposed to launch in 2012 before suffering delay after delay? Well, the wait is just about over — the company announced earlier today that the $249 gaming tablet will be available on U.S. store shelves starting on June 11, and that a global launch is being prepped for the summer.
The road to an official release has been nothing if not eventful for the Wikipad team. The Android gaming device was originally touted as a 10-inch tablet that was shown off at CES last year and a media tour ahead of a launch slated for the end of October… a deadline that was ultimately pushed back a few times. For a while there it seemed as though the Wikipad might have met its demise, but the tablet re-emerged earlier this year with a 7-inch display running at 1,200 x 800 and the same quad-core Tegra 3 chipset under the hood.
Make no mistake: that 10-inch version is still in the works, but the company hasn’t yet said when it hopes to push the thing out the door save for a vague “Christmas 2013″ window. For better or worse, this more portable 7-inch model will be the vanguard of the Wikipad product line, and some early impressions haven’t exactly been bullish on the tablet’s prospects.
To make things worse, the Android gaming scene just isn’t what it was when Wikipad first decided to take a stab at a game-centric tablet. Sure, the quality of these games has only gotten better as time has passed, but the prospect of churning out dedicated Android gaming hardware has been embraced by some prominent hardware players. Take NVIDIA for instance: it recently joined the fray with the ambitious (if pricey) SHIELD handheld, which will feature (among other things) the ability to stream select PC games, as well as play the usual slew of Android titles. If anything, the Wikipad’s big advantage is the relatively small price tag attached to it, but we’ll soon see if it’s enough to enthrall the masses.
Troubled Taiwanese mobile maker HTC, which has seen its profits plummet as it struggles to compete in an Android mobile space dominated by its Galaxy-spewing rival Samsung, is losing (yet) another senior executive. Bloomberg reports that Chief Operating Officer Matthew Costello will step down after less than three years at the company. Costello joined HTC in December 2010, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Bloomberg reports that Fred Liu, currently HTC’s president of engineering and operations, will “take on Costello’s responsibilities in an expanded role covering operations, quality, sales operations and services”. The details were in an email to employees obtained by the news agency, which also notes that despite stepping down as COO Costello will stay on as an executive adviser after moving to Europe. We’ve reached out to HTC for comment and will update this story with any response.
Update: HTC has now sent the following statement, made by CEO Peter Chou: “To achieve success, we’ve had to change when it was right for the business. Recently was one of those times. We took control of our business, narrowed our focus, and launched our new HTC One. Actions to streamline our business resulted in some reorganization and executive departures, but initial sales of the One have validated our approach. Response for our flagship device has been strong and demand has exceeded our expectations. We are confident that the business steps we have taken and continue to take are the right ones to lead to a strong resurgence of the HTC brand.”
Costello’s departure is the latest in a string of senior exec loses at HTC, including its Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Greg Fisher, Chief Product Office Kouji Kodera, Global Communications VP Jason Gordon, Global Retail Marketing Manager Rebecca Rowland, digital marketing chief John Starkweather and Eric Lin, manager of product strategy — all within the past three months. Last November the company also announced the appointment of a new Chief Marketing Officer, Benjamin Ho, to replace John Wang from January, with the aim of turning the marketing noise up on HTC’s innovations.
The company’s prior ‘quietly brilliant’ marketing messaging has fizzled against the onslaught of Samsung’s well-oiled and funded marketing machinery — which is pretty much the opposite of quiet. So it barely seemed to matter that HTC made a cracking Android flagship in the HTC One, arguably the best Android flagship on the market, because selling smartphones has become a game of who can shout the loudest for the longest. A game of brash tones, if you will.
But there’s one bright spot amid all this gloom for HTC. The company has just posted monthly revenues for May showing a 48.03% surge in sales — its best uplift all year (it has, however, been a terrible year for HTC). It’s still 3.35% down year-on-year but considering April’s revenues were down 36.87% that’s a substantial improvement. May’s revenues were NT$29 billion ($970 million).
Still, another quietly positive note for HTC is that Google looks to be stepping in to try to help out a little, by offering a Google Edition of the HTC One for sale on its Play Store. After all, an Android ecosystem dominated by Samsung is not without problems for Mountain View — for Android ecosystem health/biodiversity reasons — but also because of the risk that Samsung starts to hold too many of its cards. Whatever Google’s motives, HTC could certainly do with a few friends in high places right now.
Bloomberg is reporting this morning that Microsoft is cutting the price of Windows RT for small tablets in a seemingly desperate bid to spur sales.
It’s a rather predictable move and a touch sad. Tablets based on Windows RT, an operating system that’s pure garbage, are not selling, because, referring to my first point, Windows RT is trash. And since they’re not selling, Microsoft is making concessions and that means cutting the price.
Windows RT was supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to iOS on tablets. Microsoft built the platform to be more robust than the Apple counterpart by including a lot of Windows 8′s desktop tools to run on lower-power devices. But in doing so, Microsoft forked its operating system, forcing developers to choose between Intel-based Windows 8 or ARM-based Windows RT (or Windows Phone 8 or Xbox).
Now, some eight months after Windows RT’s launch, very few mainstream apps have made their way into the Windows Store. There are only a smattering of Windows RT devices available. Meanwhile, Windows 8 devices are quickly becoming as inexpensive as Windows RT.
Microsoft has failed to provide buyers with legitimate reasons to buy a Window RT tablet over an iPad or Android device. Windows RT can run most of Microsoft Office, something traveling shower ring salesmen probably find enticing.
Cutting the price could help.
Android tablets went through the same sort of soul-searching early on, too. For several years, Android tablets were overpriced and without any real reason to exist (remember the HTC Jetstream?).
Then came the $250 B&N Nook Color followed a year later by the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. Suddenly, thanks to their $200 price tag, Android tablets were a viable option for buyers. As popularity exploded Samsung and others cut the price on larger versions, helping to entice more buyers, thus expanding the Android tablet’s market share.
I’m not sure even a $200 tablet could save Windows RT, though.
Computer makers are dropping Windows RT support en mass. HP killed its RT support early on. Samsung followed suit. HTC recently stopped developing its large RT tablet, instead focusing on a smaller, likely 7-inch model. As Bloomberg notes, Dell also has another RT model in the works.
Just the Dell XPS 10, Surface RT and the Asus VivoTab RT carry the Windows RT banner. Lenovo quickly killed its Windows RT-powered IdeaPad Yoga 11. Any other model is too far outside of the mainstream to matter.
Acer just announced the Iconia W3 at Computex. The 8-inch Windows tablet is supposed to hit at 379 Euros later this month. The small-ish tab packs modest specs: 720p display, dual-core Atom Z2760 CPU, 32 or 64GB internal storage with a microSD expansion slot. But it runs Windows 8, not Windows RT.
In fact, at Computex, Taipei’s massive computer tradeshow, there isn’t a hint of Windows RT. And this is the same tradeshow that featured dozens of Windows RT examples last year. The only talk of Windows 8′s lackluster sibling came from Acer’s chairman who told WSJ that Windows RT won’t be “so influential anymore,” also noting that it would be difficult for Windows RT to overcome the lack of compatibility that the full Windows 8 version has.
Windows RT was a mistake from the onset. It’s ridiculous to force consumers to choose between battery life and usability. They’d prefer both. Like on the iPad.
Microsoft can cut prices and perhaps later introduce device subsidies, but it won’t help. Consumers, and more telling, device manufacturers, have spoken. Neither find Windows RT devices to be worth their money. As widely stated at the Surface RT launch, the platform simply has too many compromises.
If you thought smartphones were ubiquitous now — and in certain places they pretty much are — prepare for a whole lot more people to be coming online on their phones in the next five years. Network kit maker Ericsson has published its latest mobility report, based on traffic measurements of live mobile networks, which projects that global smartphone subscriptions will rise from 1.2 billion in 2012 to 4.5 billion by the end of 2018 — a CAGR of 25 percent.
Ericsson is also expecting the monthly mobile data usage per smartphone to rise from 450MB in 2012 to 1,900MB by 2018. Even larger growth is on the cards for tablets, with monthly data usage forecast to rise from 600MB in 2012 to 3,100MB in 2018 — a CAGR of 30 percent. By 2018, Ericsson also reckons LTE (4G) will cover 60 percent of the world’s population. As for the mobile data driver, it’s video — with video growth underpinned by increasing availability of faster networks as LTE spreads. Larger devices with bigger screens with higher resolutions are also causing users to gobble up more MB, according to Ericsson:
The fastest growing segment in mobile data traffic is video. Increasing usage is driven by continual growth in the amount of available content as well as the better network speeds that come with HSPA and LTE development. Larger device screens and better resolutions will also drive video traffic as they will enable high definition and eventually even ultra high definition video.
Ericsson’s data shows video makes up the largest segment of mobile data traffic today — and is expected to grow by around 60 percent annually until the end of 2018 when it’s forecast to account for about half of total global traffic, dominating mobile content consumption. Good news if you’re Vine, then.
The data also shows music streaming gaining in popularity — with a projected annual growth rate of around 50 percent, although Ericsson notes there is a “high degree of uncertainty” in the audio forecast because it’s “very dependent on how music streaming services develop over the coming years.” So that likely refers to stuff like Apple being rumoured to get into the streaming space, and the knock on effect a Cupertino iRadio could have on other services, should it indeed come to pass as rumoured.
On the social and web front, Ericsson reckons web browsing and social networking will each constitute around 10 percent of the total data traffic volume in 2018 — so achieving some sort of parity, even if social networking still ends up taking up more of mobile users’ time and therefore more mindshare. According to Ericsson’s data, smartphone users are spending the largest portion of their time on social networks: an average of 85 minutes a day in some networks.
Ericsson has also broken out mobile traffic by device type, to give a breakdown of what different devices are being used for right now, which shows how quickly video has established itself on tablets — passing smartphones video volumes already. The latter device type remains the most popular device for social networking, which dovetails with how personal smartphones are vs tablets and laptops which can be shared within groups and families:
The touchscreen text input space could be heading for some serious disruption. If Apple drops its API guard a little more to allow developers to create system global keyboards that could open the floodgates to real keyboard innovation on iOS. (I for one hope so.) That’s not to say novel keyboards aren’t already out there — they are — but uptake is limited on Apple’s mobile platform by how siloed these apps currently have to remain. There are now signs Apple is preparing to be a little more open on that score, which could give alternative keyboards some serious uplift.
That limitation does not exist on Android, of course, where developers are free to replace the system keyboard with their own software. But the barrier to entry here — and generally – remains how accustomed people are to Qwerty layouts. Better the devil you know, especially if the newcomer is a new-fangled layout that looks confusing and initially makes texting much slower. (See, for instance, the Dvorak keyboard.) Little wonder that the likes of Swype have done well by disrupting the input method but leaving Qwerty order as it is. Cutting the link with the Qwerty past requires other, bigger stuff to happen with devices themselves.
Yet there are signs those changes could be coming. Wearable technology is waiting in the wings to put new demands on text input technology. Sure you can talk to Google Glass but what if you want to send a message without dictating it to the room? And what about an Apple iWatch? A wrist-mounted screen is going to be highly space constrained — and no one wants to go back to the days of alphanumeric repeat-tap keypads. So it’s pretty clear there’s going to be pressure for keyboards to evolve, for layouts to get a lot more flexible to keep pace and fit the new places we want to put devices.
The most striking change is already evident: gesture-based text input is helping to breakdown our old tappety-tap keyboard habits — with software like Swype and, more recently, a startup such as Minuum. But both still lean on the Qwerty layout, even if Minuum has squished the space it takes up. There are others that don’t though. Meet MessagEase: an alternative keyboard that uses a mixture of taps and gestures combined with a radically different keyboard layout designed to speed up text input by minimising the movements typists have to make to reach the keys.
MessagEase’s method compacts the keyboard space required into a small square — which could easily fit on a wrist watch, say, or even enable a Glass wearer to type in the air with minimal finger movements, once they have the muscle memory to do so.
The MessagEase keyboard software has been more than 10 years in the making — the earliest version was created for the now defunct Palm back in 2002 — but its creator, Saied Nesbat, reckons the technology landscape is finally starting to catch up with his idea. ”MessagEase’s invention was inspired by a vision of the time when QWERTY would have to be abandoned. But 2001 was not that time, nor was 2005. I believe we are nearing that time as touch and gesture input become more pervasive,” he tells TechCrunch.
Nesbat, who has a PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford where he specialised in Design For Test, says the keyboard’s design grew out of his frustration with texting on “old style cell phones” — so long before the rise of smartphones — but he also says he foresaw that small touchscreens were going to create a real pain-point for Qwerty. “So I set out to redesign the keyboard going to the basics,” he says.
“I used my expertise in exhaustive testing, exhaustive simulation, and letter frequency statistical analysis (used in coding and encryption) to create a new, efficient letter assignment such that the finger movement is minimized and the speed is maximized (this is the same principle used for Dvorak keyboard). The other principle that I used was to reduce the number of keys to 9, arranging them in a 3×3 matrix, use drags in addition to taps, and make each key bigger. The analysis of this design using Fitts’ Law (the fundamental UI “law” that quantifies UI speed based on key sizes and distances) shows that this design achieves superior speeds. Plus, it enables entering up to 162 characters using only 9 keys!” he explains.
The basic mechanism of the MessageEase keyboard involves taps for the most commonly used letters (ANIHORTES), which get pride of place on the grid to comply with Fitts’ Law, and then directional drags to reach the rest of the keys — either up, down, left, right, up left, up right, down left, down right and so on. “With these nine keys, you can enter ALL letters and about 80 special/punctuation characters,” notes Nesbat.
Capitalisation is done by circling a letter or swiping up on the R key once or twice to lock caps lock on and reversing the gesture to return to lower case. Additional keyboard layouts that add in punctuation and numerals can be accessed by swiping up over the space bar or via a toggle key. The flexibility of the MessagEase keyboard extends to customising its language, shape and layout, plus the ability to create macros for particular word combinations — for example you could preset “td” to expand out to write “Today’s date is Sunday 2 June”.
MessagEase’s keyboard software is available on Android, iOS, Windows, Pocket PC and Palm OS. The Android version of the app includes word prediction and the keyboard can be resized, reshaped, recoloured or made blank – Nesbat says the latter option is “for our advanced users who don’t need to see where the letters are; they find it distracting!”.
Despite this software being a decade+ out in the wild, MessagEase clearly hasn’t stolen Qwerty’s crown yet. Nesbat says it’s had more than 500,000 downloads and has “tens of thousands of dedicated users now” — which just goes to show how hard it is to get people to change ingrained habits. Albeit, says Nesbat, that’s with “almost no money spent on marketing” — he therefore argues that MessagEase’s adoption rate is much stronger than other non-Qwerty input technologies such as Snapkeys and 8Pen.
Of those MessageEasers that have put in the time to learn — getting fast (40-60 WPM) takes several days of practising 10-20mins per day, concedes Nesbat — a few are very fast indeed, with the current champion setting a world record typing speed equivalent to 84 WPM. Of course most users aren’t going to achieve anywhere near those speeds but with around 50 WPM being around the average speed of 10 finger typists using regular keyboards MessagEase’s method looks reasonably impressive — assuming you’re willing to put in the hours to reprogram your fingers. And there’s the rub really: reeducation of typing muscle memory remains the biggest barrier to any Qwerty killer.
Setting aside its radical new layout, MessagEase’ most salient feature is how compact it is — allowing one or two fingered typing on very small screens — which, more so even than potential fast speeds, may be the USP that allows it to gain a foothold as screens shrink and morph to fit new physical locations. On the training side, to help new users get to grips with its grid, the company behind MessagEase, Exides, has created tutorials and built practice games into its keyboard apps to help users make the switch. That’s a start — but it’s still a steep learning curve to expect people to climb on their own. The imperative created by new types of devices may prove a more compelling climbing aid.
Exideas is not currently profitable but it does have licensing deals in the works. “We have several licensing deals in the process, but none we can disclose now,” says Nesbat. “(One, more advanced one is re: Internet TV/ Set top box/ remote.)” He won’t disclose Exideas’ funding or backers but says it’s not currently looking for external capital. Since its apps are free to download to mobile platforms, licensing is clearly where it sees a profitable future for its patent-protected technology.
“We will make money by licensing our technology,” he tells TechCrunch. “MessagEase is applicable to a range of classes of applications/devices, from smart watches, to smartphones, tablets, Glass, gesture-in-the-air, Internet TV, to car nav systems. As these devices are commoditized — everyone having a shiny surface, running more or less the same apps, doing more or less the same things — we provide a distinct, unique, efficient, and WYTIWYG (i.e., no disambiguation or autocorrection needed!) full text input technology edge to differentiate one company’s device from all others.”
Understanding electronics is tricky. Electricity is invisible, the components are cryptic, and the concepts are hard to grasp. That’s where LightUp comes in. This is an AR-based system for teaching electronics by allowing kids to build little projects and “see” what the components are doing using augmented reality.
The projects snap together with magnets and you can send juice through the circuit to light up LEDs and turn on buzzers. However, when you take a picture of the circuit with your phone, LightUp adds animated lines to show you what the electricity is doing. While it’s not particularly useful for simple circuits – there’s not much going on – it’s particularly cool in that it tells you when your diodes are aligned wrong or your transistors aren’t working.
For $99 you can get a mini kit that includes an Arduino micro-controller as well as variable resistors, light sensors, and LEDs. A $39 kit offers considerably fewer parts but can be used to make a “morse code buzzer, night light, dimmer switch, [or] lunch box alarm.” I personally, could use the lunch box alarm to keep the kids out of my jellybean container.
LightUp is already fully funded. The project has a few competitors, including LittleBits but the AR capabilities really sell this kit. Rather than focusing on blind experimentation, LightUp offers just a bit more in terms of STEM education.
While the name “Elasto Plastic” sounds like an 80s punk band, it is, in fact, a new material from 3D printing company Shapeways. The plastic is elastic to a certain degree yet maintains its shape after stretching or squeezing. It will break when pulled too hard and is still in the experimental stage on the Shapeways website.
The material is off-white and has a “grainy finish.” It’s laser sintered and a bit jagged because of the layer-by-layer requirement to build the model. Shapeways writes that it is “not ready for broader use” but can be used for personal models and experimental projects.
We recently featured Shapeways in our TC Makers series and they’ve begin printing this material on their nylon sintering machines in their US factory. It takes about eight days to print and ship and could be an interesting hinge material for 3D-printed projects. Considering it already looks like cartilage, I’d be curious to see how makers take the material to the next level.
HTC is currently sailing through a patch of rough seas, and it seems as though the company is starting to rethink its tablet strategy. According to a recent report from Bloomberg, HTC was planning to put together a 12-inch Windows RT tablet for release later this year before scrapping it due to cost and anemic overall demand for Windows RT.
That’s not to say that the beleaguered Taiwanese OEM is ditching Windows RT completely — there’s reportedly still a 7-inch RT tablet in the works, as well as another Android tablet. Bloomberg’s unnamed source goes on to note that demand for RT-powered tablets in general has been lackluster, so it made sense for HTC to pick its battles more carefully. After all, recent (albeit unconfirmed) Surface RT sales figures from back in March purport that Microsoft had only sold about a million units at the time — for a device meant to be the RT flagship, such numbers probably weighed heavily into the machinations of OEMs considering entering the RT fray.
Long time HTC watchers will know that focusing on a smaller number of quality devices is a tablet tactic the company has leaned on before. HTC’s recent history with tablets has been, well, pretty spotty. It’s first notable Android tablet in 2011 relied heavily on a smart stylus (a formula that Samsung would later turn into a winner) and just didn’t sell all that well, and its larger-screened followup saw similarly poor sales in the U.S. thanks to its incredibly high price tag — $699 with a contract. Clearly, things had to change.
HTC UK chief Phil Roberson said early last year that the company would be dialing back its focus on tablets, and true to his word HTC company spent much of 2012 trying to perfect its smartphone formula while facing ever-stiffer competition from rivals Samsung and Apple. Arguably the OEM has finally managed to hit its stride with the widely acclaimed One smartphone, but a single well-received device almost certainly won’t be enough to turn things around alone. It’s tough to say just how much of an impact a small Windows RT tablet will have on HTC’s flagging fortunes (I’m guessing it won’t move the needle much), but the company could use any boost it can get at this point. A quick look at HTC’s recently released fiscal Q1 2013 financials reveals a business that has definitely seen better days — it reported a mere $2.8 million in unaudited net income, down drastically from the year-ago quarter.
The company has begun shipping units of the Double to customers who pre-ordered and coughed up the $2,000 to get one. In fact, the first hundred are already safely in the homes and lives of their new owners.
By September, the company will have shipped another 1,000 units, showing that even with a high price tag, hardware startups can still rake in the cash and run a sustainable business. But of course, this has to do with the fact that the Double has all kinds of valuable use-case scenarios that span across various industries.
The $2,000 price tag, which was a special pre-order price, will remain in place until June 6, for those who feel that they’d like to get in on the robotic goodness. After that, the price will go up to $2,499.
Google will make another mobile phone available with stock Android soon. Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome, and Apps, announced at the D11 Conference that the company will sell the HTC One Google Edition for $599 on the Google Play store, beginning June 26.
“We’re developing a user experience that scales across the world[…],” Pichai said, explaining why the Google Edition devices are now a priority for the company. “We’re making Android the operating system that is consistent across all of these devices.”
“The challenge is related to what is great about Android […] The scale and scope of Android is pretty breathtaking,” Pichai explained further. “From a Google perspective, we care about how users use Android and the user experience.”
HTC has already offered a similar device through its own online retail store, the HTC One Developer Edition. The Developer Edition is a $649.99 device that has 64GB of onboard storage, plus an unlocked bootloader. The new Google Play version of the One will differ in that it will also offer stock Android, and updates that arrive in time with those issued for Nexus devices and the Play version of the Galaxy S4. The Developer Edition also ships with Jelly Bean 4.1, but the HTC One Google Edition will ship with Jelly Bean 4.2.2. Also, the Google version will carry 32GB of internal storage instead of the 64 from the dev model. The Google HTC One works with GSM cellular networks.
HTC says it will continue to offer the Developer Edition direct from its own website, but the $599 Google Edition, with its GSM network support and initial U.S.-only availability, is probably the better buy for developers looking to not only try out the hardware but also stay up-to-date on the very latest from Google’s OS.
The HTC One has already been well-received by critics, and offering it with a stock Android experience is sure to be a hit with a specific audience. It’s also impressive that it will cost $50 less than the competition from Samsung. But now that Google is clearly interested in expanding the so-called “Nexus Experience” beyond its own line of co-branded devices like the Nexus 4 from manufacturer LG, it’ll be interesting to see what role those “blessed” handsets will have in the future, or whether “Nexus” becomes more of a designation than a specific device line.
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.
