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Read This Before You Run Out And Buy An HTC Phone

0 sek tagasi

HTC just announced its sales forecast for the first quarter this year. It doesn't look good.

The company even admitted it's getting spanked by Apple and Samsung. It also blamed poor sales of its LTE phones, those super fast "4G" devices you keep hearing about in Verizon and AT&T commercials.

First, let's tackle why HTC's LTE phones aren't taking off.

Typically, when an LTE phone launches, it starts at $300. Carriers are expecting you to pay a premium on the phone for those 4G speeds. Instead, that price backfires, scaring customers to a cheaper phone. Then the price drops within a few months. We've seen this pattern over and over again, ever since Verizon first launched its LTE network last year.

Case in point: HTC's Rezound, which was the company's premiere smartphone for the holidays, went on sale in November for $300 from Verizon. It's already down to $200.

So what's HTC's plan? And what should you do if you want to buy a new phone this year?

Luckily, HTC said a few weeks ago that it will offer fewer smartphones this year and focus on a handful of major releases instead.

That's a smart move. HTC launched a ton of phones last year, many of them just minor upgrades to the model before it. It's frustrating for customers who feel like their HTC phone is obsolete in just a few months. You don't have to suffer through that if you buy Apple or Samsung's flagship phones.

Later this month we'll get a look at HTC's early 2012 lineup when it shows off new phones at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Assuming HTC sticks to its promise, those will be the devices you'll want to buy if you're looking for a phone from the company early this year.

That will all start with the HTC Ville, a phone that's rumored to run the latest version of Android and boast some impressive hardware. If you're an HTC fan, the Ville is the phone to hold out for.

Now click here to see the best smartphones you can buy this month >

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Amazon Is Planning To Open A Boutique Retail Store In Seattle (AMZN, BKS)

13 min 47 sec tagasi

Amazon is planning to open its first retail location some time in the next few months, Good E-Reader reports.

The store, which will be more of a boutique, will sell Amazon-created products like Kindles and Amazon Exclusives, their in-house publishing line.

Amazon Exclusives have been a topic of debate lately, with Barnes and Noble and a few other large chains saying they won't sell the books in-store (though they would online).

With Barnes and Noble struggling to retool to compete with Amazon — and their retail locations being one of their greatest assets — this could hurt B&N even further if it's successful enough to roll out on a larger scale.

More so than that, Amazon is taking another page from Apple's playbook. Apple's retail stores introduced customers to its products at a time when they were being ignored. Amazon can use its stores to get people familiar with the Kindle Fire, and anything else Amazon is planning to release down the road.

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An Ex-Zynga Engineer Is Ripping The Company Apart In Plain Sight (ZNGA)

24 min 45 sec tagasi

Whales, abusing contractors, and pushing metrics.

That's pretty much all Zynga is about, according to a former engineer.

An ex-engineer who was there about six months ago is opening up on an "ask-me-anything" question and answer thread in Reddit.

The employee apparently left the company because he (or she) didn't like the direction it was moving in — focusing on metrics and expansion rather than actual gameplay.

As usual, this is an ex-engineer that left the company because he or she wasn't satisfied — so take the claims with a grain of salt. 

Here are some of the other highlights from the thread. Some of this is already suspected to be true:

  • Zynga's "whales," who spend more than $10,000 on its games, are labeled "Zynga Black." One Mafia Wars "whale" has spent around $100,000. They are the "hardcore" crowd Zynga caters to, and every other player is treated as a spammer.
  • The engineer said, "They are trying to make their own social network for games. Steam is their main competitor in that realm." We've known Zynga is working on its own site for its social games, but that comment suggests Zynga could run other companies' games instead of just their own on the network. 
  • Product Managers rely on metrics more for office politics, not science, not game design. Zynga is a marketing company, not a games company.
  • The amount of code for analyzing metrics "dwarfs" the size of the game's production code.
  • Zynga has special access to Facebook's API news — basically, when Facebook will make changes to the way it works — and fewer restricitons on "spamming."
  • Contract workers have almost no feedback or say on their work schedule, and aren't welcome to company events.

We've reached out to Zynga, who hasn't commented on the response just yet.

Heard any stories like this at Zynga or another social gaming company in Silicon Valley? Shoot us a message at mlynley@businessinsider.com.

See Also: What Happened To The Founding Team Behind Zynga

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Apple And Samsung Are Crushing HTC (AAPL, GOOG)

59 min 45 sec tagasi

Remember when HTC was the hot Android phone maker? Those days appear to be over.

Ryan Kim at GigaOm reports:

In the first quarter, HTC said it was expecting revenue of between 65 billion and 70 billion Taiwanese dollars or $2.20-2.37 billion, which could amount to as much as a 36 percent drop from the previous quarter. Analysts had expected HTC to generate $89.64 billion or $3.04 billion in revenue this quarter. HTC had previously released unaudited results for the fourth quarter but the forecast raised new concerns for HTC as it looks to regain its momentum.

...

“Our weakness in first-quarter guidance also comes from facing competition in the U.S. from iPhone and Samsung,” said Chief Financial Officer Winston Yung said on a conference call. “LTE handsets also didn’t meet our expectations.”

Read the whole thing at GigaOm →

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Business Insider Is Hiring A Sales Development Associate

1 hour 16 min tagasi

Business Insider is looking for a proactive, articulate and energetic Sales Development Associate to join our sales organization in New York.

The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of digital advertising and will be comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.  

Responsibilities Include:

  • Work with sales to respond to RFPs by creating proposals that meet client objectives
  • Brainstorm integrated ideas and sponsorships 
  • Develop cross-platform programs including, events, mobile, video and social media
  • Coordinate the on-time delivery of client proposals
  • Assist in the creation of effective sales and marketing tools, including sell sheets, presentations and/or mockups 

Qualifications/Experience:

  • 1-3 years experience as a digital media planner at an agency, digital media company or publisher
  • Exceptional attention to detail and organizational skills
  • Ability to meet deadlines in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
  • Excellent verbal and written presentation skills
  • Proficient with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint
  • Experience with Photoshop and web analytics tools such as @Plan and Comscore
  • Understanding of social media and extensive web knowledge required -- in other words, this is one of the rare jobs where tweeting and being a Facebook power user are advantages!

Interested? Please send resume to salesjobs@businessinsider.com with subject "Sales Development" Thanks in advance.

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One Way Apple Makes Sure It Gets Favorable Reviews From David Pogue (AAPL)

1 hour 22 min tagasi

For the most part, Apple has an adversarial relationship with the press.

It doesn't answer to inquiries, and it doesn't make its executives available for interviews or comments unless it's a major issue.

However, there are exceptions to Apple's treatment of the press. Namely, Walt Mossberg and David Pogue get first-class treatment, according to Adam Lashinsky's book, Inside Apple.

Apple "actively caters to" Pogue and Mossberg, says Lashinsky.

For instance, a former iTunes engineer said he got a phone call at home because Pogue's Apple TV was crashing:

"They wanted me to go through the development logs of David Pogue's Apple TV. I'm like, 'You're kidding, right?' Because what happens is that when there's a fire, if you want to get it out as fast as possible, you call every single expert. Apple TV was getting ready to release and Apple is very concerned about public perception."

For more good stuff like this, go buy Inside Apple →

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Here's How Best Buy Is Generating Buzz For The Apple Television (AAPL, BBY)

1 hour 22 min tagasi

Best Buy is asking web customers to take a survey about the Apple television, reports The Verge.

The survey refers to it as an "Apple HDTV" and includes the tagline "Apple finally reinvents what the television can do."

According to the survey, the television will run iOS, have support for iCloud, be controllable from your iPhone and iPad, and have access to third-party services like Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr.

The survey also says the television will include an iSight camera for FaceTime and Skype capabilities.

All this is allegedly built into a 42-inch form factor for $1,499.

This begs the question: is Best Buy speaking with knowledge, or is this speculation? Feel free to sound off in the comments.

In the meantime, check out all the Apple TV rumors we know about so far >

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LAST CHANCE: Like Superbowl Ads? Meet Brand Advertisers Tomorrow

1 hour 27 min tagasi

Clocking 10,000 tweets per second during its final three minutes, America's biggest advertising bonanza has come and gone. But there's life beyond Superbowl Sunday: you can get an entire day of intelligence on brand advertising tomorrow at Social Commerce Summit, Business Insider's major conference on the intersection of  digital commerce and social media. Tickets are still on sale. Brands speaking include:

And Social Commerce Summit isn't just about mega-brands. Incredible emerging companies, e-commerce market leaders, top investors, and publishers taking advantage of social commerce will also speak, including:

  • Katia Beauchamp, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Birchbox
  • Neil Blumenthal, Co-founder, Warby Parker
  • Beth Collins Ellard, EVP & GM, DailyCandy
  • Corby Fine, Sr. Director & GM, Audience Solutions and BD, Rogers Media
  • Paul Lee, Partner, Lightbank
  • Tim O'Shaughnessy, Co-founder & CEO, LivingSocial
  • Brian Sugar, Co-founder & CEO, Sugar Inc
  • See them all at the Speakers Page.

See you tomorrow!

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The Most Depressing Thing You'll Read About Yahoo…Today (YHOO)

2 hours 1 min tagasi

For the past year or so, Yahoo's turnaround has been FROZEN in place because its board feels like it has to figure out a way to "unlock" the value of the company's Asian assets for Yahoo shareholders. 

Yahoo owns big, multi-billion dollar stakes in two Asian Internet companies (Yahoo Japan in Japan and Alibaba in China). These are not considered "strategic" assets, so Yahoo is trying to sell its stakes back to the companies.

This is complicated to do because a normal sale would cost Yahoo 40% in taxes, knocking a couple billion off its market cap. So Yahoo is working on something called a cash-rich split. The Asian companies will actually buy some other operating business (WebMD? LivingSocial?) and then TRADE it to Yahoo for its Asian investments.

The truth is, until this happens, Yahoo is kind of stuck in neutral.

So when will it happen?

Here's where we get to the most deperessing thing you will read about Yahoo today.

Kara Swisher says the Asian assets deal won't close until…………2013.

Blah.

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Meetup Cofounder Raises $100,000 From Gary Vaynerchuk And Others For A 'Paw'-some New Startup

2 hours 32 min tagasi

Matt Meeker, cofounder of Meetup and Entrepreneur in Residence of Polaris Ventures, is on to his next startup.

Meeker, along with Carley Strife and Prehype's Henrik Werdelin, cofounded BarkBox eight weeks ago.  It's a subscription e-commerce company that delivers dog treats and toys to a few hundred users' homes every month.

"We started BarkBox because we're all obsessed with our dogs," says Meeker.  "I would stop at the local pet store a couple times a week, spend $25 per trip, and always asked the teenager working there what was good.  It was clear he didn't know, so we knew there had to be a better way."

Meeker, Strife and Wedelin have raised a modest $100,000 round from some well known angel investors including Gary Vaynerchuk, College Humor's Josh Abramson and Crowdtwist cofounder Mike Montero. Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp, co-founders of Birchbox, are official advisors to the company.

The BarkBox team says they intended to bootstrap the company but an opportunity to include good friends and smart people presented itself.  The startup is still mostly being financed by the three founders though.

BarkBox only been in business for two months but it has big future plans.  Meeker says the goal is to create a global pet brand. The subscription commerce aspect is just the first phase.  By the end of this year Meeker wants to have a BarkBox retail business in place followed by branded merchandise and content.

Without any marketing or much press, BarkBox has secured more than 200 paying subscribers and has maintained 100% renewal rate after two payment cycles. Monthly subscriptions costs about $25.  In addition, BarkBox pledges to donate 10% of every transaction to dog rescue centers so every dog can find a good home.

Meeker will continue to work at a venture capital firm in addition to running BarkBox.

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Yahoo Looked At Buying Netflix When The Stock Was In The Toilet (NFLX, YHOO)

2 hours 51 min tagasi

Yahoo thought about buying Netflix back when Netflix stock was in the toilet late last year, we've heard from sources and so has Kara Swisher.

The deal never happened because Netflix stock rallied and the company got too expensive.

Oh well. It would have been very exciting to see what Reed Hastings could have done with Yahoo. 

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Samsung's Next Galaxy Phone Is Going To Be Thinner Than The iPhone

3 hours 1 min tagasi

Samsung's next big Galaxy phone, the Galaxy S III, will be just 7 mm thick, according to a report from the South Korean publication Electronic Times News.

For reference, that's thinner than the iPhone 4S, which is 9.3 mm thick.

The report says the Galaxy S III will launch in May, but that could only be the date for South Korea.

The current Galaxy S II didn't launch in the U.S. until several months after it launched in South Korea and other countries.

Beyond that, ETN didn't say anything else too surprising. The Galaxy S III will have Google's latest Android operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich, and an 8 MP camera.

We've heard Samsung may have an announcement in New York City this spring, so we'll likely get all the details then.

[Via BGR]

Click here to see the best smartphones you can buy this month >

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Redbox And Verizon Are Teaming Up To Form The Biggest Threat To Netflix Yet (VZ, NFLX, CSTR)

3 hours 7 min tagasi

The world has another potential Netflix-killer.

Verizon and Coinstar, owner of DVD kiosk service Redbox, have announced that they'll be launching a joint venture combining Redbox's product with a video on-demand streaming and download service from Verizon.

Planned for the second half of 2012, the venture joins the biggest provider of physical DVDs with Verizon's massive network.

Verizon will hold a 65 percent ownership share, with Redbox having a 35 percent ownership share at the outset.

We'll have more details on the joint venture later. The companies have a conference call scheduled for 9:30.

In the meantime, click here for some great Netflix alternatives >

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Hey Samsung, Here's A Reminder From Steve Jobs On Why People Hate Styluses (AAPL)

3 hours 27 min tagasi

Here's the latest in Samsung's ads ripping Apple customers who line up for the iPhone.

Somehow we're supposed to believe that people who love the iPhone would jump out line for an oversized phone with a stylus. Or, maybe we're not. It's an ad after all, not a documentary. And, as far as ads go, it's pretty entertaining.

Anyway, there's one simple reason people who love Apple products wouldn't jump out of line. Steve Jobs summed up their thinking on styluses when he released the iPhone. In short, his attitude was, "yuck."

Here's Samsung's ad:

And here's Jobs:

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Is Google About To Let Everyone Inside Its Secret X Lab? (GOOG)

4 hours 42 min tagasi

A new site that recently popped up has people thinking it might be Google's way of letting people inside its X Lab, reports 9to5Google.

If you're unfamiliar, X Lab is a secretive arm of Google revealed by the New York Times in November. Engineers toil away on all kinds of Jetsons-style projects, like a refrigerator that automatically orders new groceries or a plate that posts what you're eating to Twitter.

This new site is called Solve For X, and it's currently nothing more than a splash page that prompts you for an email address to be notified when it launches. Some clever WHOIS work by Andoid Police reveals that the site definitely does belong to Google.

From the page:

Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction. And radical in the sense that there is some real technology breakthrough on the horizon to give us all hope that these ideas could really be brought to life.

Android Police speculates that it will be a conference series comparable to TED Talks, and after reading that description we're inclined to agree.

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10 Things You Need To Know This Morning (GOOG, AAPL, FB, MSFT, HPQ)

5 hours 3 min tagasi

Good morning! Here's the news:

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The Superbowl Saw More Tweets Per Second Than New Year's Eve In Japan

5 hours 31 min tagasi

Twitter indicates that there were 10,000 tweets per second during the final three minutes of last night's Superbowl.

This is a huge jump from last year's Superbowl, which saw a high of 4,064 tweets per second.

Here are some other notable events and their corresponding tweets per second, as reported by TechCrunch.

  • Premiere of Japanese movie "Castles in the Sky:" 25,088
  • New Year's Eve 2011 in Japan: 6,939
  • Steve Jobs’ death: 6,049
  • The Japanese earthquake and tsunami: 5,530
  • Bin Laden’s death: 5,106
  • The Royal wedding in England: 3,966 TPS.


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You Can Win A Vacation If You Abuse Your 3G Connection In Russia

5 hours 53 min tagasi

A Russian citizen downloaded more 3G data than anyone else in the country and won a nice vacation in the process, reports The Next Web.

Between November 1 and January 31, customers who bought a 3G modem from Russian telecom provider MegaFon were encouraged to go nuts and download to their hearts' content. Whoever downloaded the most data would win a $5,000 trip abroad.

The winner downloaded 419 GB of 3G data in a week.

The contest was a means for MegaFon to show off its 3G infrastructure, which proved expansive. Second and third place were won by people living in the rural towns of Novgorod and Yaroslavl, hitting download speeds up to 21 megabits.

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The Least Stealthy Startup In The Valley Has Officially Launched (CSCO)

11 hours 56 min tagasi

One of the most talked about startups in Silicon Valley has opened for business today: Nicira.

The company is formally launching its software, the Network Virtualization Platform (NVP), and announcing a set of impressive early customers: AT&T,  NTT, Rackspace, Fidelty Investments and eBay.

Although Nicira (pronounced nis-era) has been in stealth mode for months, it's been the object of massive speculation and several leaks.

Last year it racked up $50M in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and NEA, as well as VMware founder Diane Greene and Andy Rachleff, a former general partner at Benchmark Capital.

And it has actually been shipping its software since July of last year, CEO Steve Mullaney told Business Insider.

The company hopes to do for the network what VMware did for servers, saving big companies tens of millions of dollars in the process.

Virtualization software like VMware's allows many software operating systems to share the same physical server while each thinks they've got the server all to themselves. It puts a layer of software between the server and the operating system to trick it that way.

Nicira does something similar for network routers and switches. While it has become very easy to move applications around from one physical server to another -- because the software is contained in its virtual server -- it is harder to move many workloads between data centers. Each workload is tied to a set of network gear set up in specific ways, says chief technology officer Martin Casado.

Nicira's NVP addresses that. It places software at the edge of each end of the network and it makes servers think that they've got their favorite network settings.

Because Nicira lets companies pack more usage onto their existing networks, it can save a large enterprise millions, the company says. Nicira calculates it will save a large cloud-like data center, with 40,000 servers and 80,000 10 gigabyte network ports, more than $30 million because they will need fewer servers.

The technology behind Nicira is called OpenFlow. Casado developed it as part of his PhD at Stanford, and his two Stanford advisors, Nick McKeown and Scott Shenker, are his co-founders.

Nicira has also lined up long-time network industry veteran Steve Mullaney as CEO, and ex-Cisco top sales guy Alan Cohen. (It recently snatched Cisco Fellow Bruce Davie from Cisco, too.)

"All of the hard stuff, the things networking hasn't gotten right for 20 years, we pull that into software and we manage that with OpenFlow," explained Casado.

Nicira isn't the only OpenFlow startup on the block. Big Switch Networks also offers a network virtualization product that uses OpenFlow.

In the meantime, the giant network vendors like Cisco, Juniper, and HP may not be pleased. OpenFlow doesn't eliminate the need for their gear. But these companies -- particularly Cisco -- have been adding features, which they call "intelligence," into their network gear to justify premium prices. They won't want that stuff moved into someone's else software product, leaving their gear to compete on price alone.

OpenFlow doesn't need to be used in the network gear from these companies for the Nicira product to work, however all the big network vendors have promised to add it to at least some of their gear.

What that really means is that these vendors are becoming proactive and familiar with OpenFlow and the concept of network virtualization.

Because Nicira has opened its doors with big customers, it has a strong position in what is sure to become a giant market. But unlike VMware, it's not leaving the starting gate all alone.

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Here Are The Best iPhone And iPad Apps You Missed This Week (AAPL)

5 Veebruar 2012 - 11:04p.m.

We've put together a list of the best iPhone and iPad apps you might've missed this week.

We have an app to help you manage your garage band, a classic game Bill Gates designed in 1981, and an app to bring you all the best "long reads" from around the web.

We even have an app that helps you find the cheapest generic drugs near you.

Plus much more.

Longreads is the perfect app for reading on the couch.

Longreads brings the best "long form" articles from Esquire, GQ, Wired, the New Yorker, and more to your iPad.

The app strips ads from all the articles, so you're left with a clean and distraction-free reading experience.

Price: $4.99



Donkey is Bill Gates classic game from 1981.

Bill Gates co-wrote Donkey to demonstrate the incredible power of a new IBM PC, and now you can have it on your iPhone.

It's fun to play, and you only need one finger to play it. There's even Game Center support so you can compete with friends.

Price: $0.99



This app brings the Steam social network and video games store to iPhone.

Steam for iPhone brings the popular online PC game store/social network to your iPhone. You can chat with friends, check out games, and more.

While you might have to wait a couple days to receive your invite to actually use the app, it's worth it if you like to play games on Steam.

Price: free



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