Microsoft Is Rising Again

By Panos Mourdoukoutas 

After remaining in the shadows of Apple AAPL +0.69%,Google GOOGL +1.03%, and other rising technology companies for several years, Microsoft MSFT +1.52% is rising again, as evidenced by the release of new products and improving financials.  

Today, the company announced its own system for consolidating health and fitness data from various fitness gadgets and mobile apps; and a $199 fitness band to work with this system. Last week, Microsoft reported a strong performance in the most recent quarter ended September 30, 2014.

Gross margin, operating income and diluted earnings per share (“EPS”) for the quarter were $14.93 billion, $5.84 billion and $0.54 per share, respectively.

At the core of Microsoft’s turnaround is a host of strategies that focus on customer-driven innovations and partnerships that have yielded value propositions which address emerging trends in the technology industry.

“We are innovating faster, engaging more deeply across the industry, and putting our customers at the center of everything we do, all of which positions Microsoft for future growth,”  said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Our teams are delivering on our core focus of reinventing productivity and creating platforms that empower every individual and organization.”

“Customers are embracing our latest technologies from Surface Pro 3 and Office 365 to Azure and SQL Server,” said Kevin Turner, chief operating officer of Microsoft. “Through great execution by our sales teams and our partners, we have been able to deliver our truly differentiated value to the marketplace.”

In fact, the launch of the different versions of Surface Pro is a good example how the company develops new products to address emerging consumer trends.

First, the company got the hardware-software bundle right, at a competitive price. With its Windows operating systems, Office Suite and keyboard, the Surface tablet has bridged the gap between laptop and tablet, catering to users who seek the full functionality of a laptop rather than a smartphone in a tablet.

Second, Microsoft forged a partnership with Best Buy BBY +0.85% to place Windows Stores at Best Buy BBY +2.44% stores.The company’s Windows Stores occupy between 1,500 square feet to 2,200 square feet of Best Buy floor space, allowing consumers to compare and purchase a broad range of the company’s products and accessories, including Windows-based tablets and PCs, Windows Phones, Microsoft Office, Xbox, and so on.

Obviously, getting the bundle right, and bringing it to consumers in the right locations, has helped Surface Pro 3 gain momentum, and add $908 million to the company’s top line in the last quarter.

Microsoft’s strategic moves is a good sign that the company has been effective in addressing the “innovator’s dilemma” — as explained by M. C. Christensen — and rise again.

Credit: http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2014/10/30/microsoft-is-rising-again/

Dabbling in the future of payment: A week of Apple Pay and Google Wallet

By Nicole Lee

On Monday last week, Apple finally launched Apple Pay, the company's mobile-payment system that only works with the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and the latest iPads. (Though you can't use iPads for in-store payments.) Even though mobile payments have been around for several years now, Apple Pay is seen by many as a key step toward making paying-by-phone more mainstream due to all the increased attention. Seeing that I have an iPhone 6, I decided to use Apple Pay every day this past week to pay for everything from my groceries to a hot dog at AT&T Park during the World Series. Just to see how they would compare, I also tried using Google Wallet installed on a Samsung Galaxy S5 and a regular ol' credit card in the same locations.

The verdict? Well, the future of mobile payments is looking brighter than ever, but that doesn't mean I'm getting rid of my wallet. Let me tell you why.

Both Apple Pay and Google Wallet are very similar in a lot of ways. For starters, they both work in any store that accepts mobile payments. Apple made a big deal about partnering with certain stores like Whole Foods and McDonald's when it launched Apple Pay, but in reality any location that has an NFC-enabled point-of-sale system will work with Apple Pay. Google Wallet, of course, has worked with such systems for a little over three years.

Yet, Google Wallet doesn't seem to have caught on, most likely due to slow carrier adoption (many of them preferred to push Isis/Softcard, their own mobile wallet solution, instead) and the fact that many phones require that you download the Wallet app. Apple Pay, on the other hand, works with Passbook, an app that's preinstalled with every new iPhone. Google also recently mandated that only Android phones running 4.4 KitKat or higher can take advantage of Wallet's tap-and-pay functionality, which leaves certain phones out in the cold. Still, the same goes for Apple Pay -- older phones are not supported due to their lack of NFC. Wallet is definitely compatible with a lot more devices.

The process of adding a debit or credit card is very similar for both. On the iPhone, simply launch Passbook and you'll see an option to add a debit or credit card. For Wallet, you'll need to get the app first if you haven't already, and then follow the instructions to add a card once you have it. You can either enter in your card's information manually or use your phone's camera to automatically capture your card's number and expiration date. You'll still need to key in your name, address and CVV number, but otherwise it's all pretty easy. If you added multiple cards, you'll need to select one as a default for tap-to-pay, but you can always change to a different card at the point of purchase.

Here, however, is where the first stumbling blocks for Apple Pay show up: It only works with certain cards from certain banks. First, it'll need to be a Visa, MasterCard or American Express (sorry, Discover Card users) and it'll need to be a card from a participating bank. Launch partners include Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi and Wells Fargo.

And even if your card is from that bank, it's not a guarantee that it's compatible with Apple Pay. Corporate cards, for example, are still a no-go, and a few co-branded cards like Amazon's Chase Visa won't work (Update: Though it didn't at launch, Amazon's Chase card now works with Apple Pay). Google Wallet, however, works with all debit and credit cards. I only managed to add two of my cards to Apple Pay -- a debit card from a local credit union isn't supported -- while Google Wallet accepted all of them.

You can use both Apple Pay and Google Wallet with online purchases and through different shopping apps, but the key for me was to see if I could use it in the real world. So I tried both systems out at different Whole Foods and Walgreens locations here in San Francisco multiple times throughout the week. For Apple Pay, I simply tapped the iPhone on the reader, placed my thumb on the Touch ID sensor, and voila, I was done. There was no need for me to unlock the phone prior to payment.

Google Wallet, on the other hand, requires that you unlock the wallet with a PIN before you can have access to it. That sounds like a pain, but it doesn't have to be. You can select the PIN timeout for 15 minutes, a day or never. So, theoretically, you could just leave your Wallet unlocked all the time, which admittedly compromises its security. Even if you decide to lock it up, entering a PIN really isn't all that difficult. For me, I decided to simply leave the Wallet unlocked.

When I tapped my Galaxy S5 onto a payment terminal, it beeped to let me know it was working -- I didn't have to unlock the phone for this to occur. The terminal then showed a prompt asking me to either enter in a PIN (if I was using a debit card) or simply press the Enter key for credit. After I pressed Enter, it took a second or two for the transaction to go through, and then I was done. Payments made with Wallet definitely require a bit more attention and processing time than Apple Pay, but it honestly wasn't significant enough to matter to me, at least most of the time (we'll get to an issue I encountered with Wallet later on).

I also went to try out Apple Pay at AT&T Park during the World Series. Major League Baseball worked with Apple and MasterCard to trick out both AT&T Park (home to the San Francisco Giants) and Kauffman Stadium (home to the Kansas City Royals) with NFC-enabled terminals mere weeks before the start of the Fall Classic -- AT&T Park was equipped with 114 terminals, while Kauffman Stadium has 226.

The league did this not only to introduce the nascent mobile payment system, but also to show off the tech so that other baseball parks would be open to installing it during the offseason and beyond. Adam Ritter, senior vice president of wireless for MLB Advanced Media, says that it eventually wants you to be able to use Apple Pay to pay for everything from food and merchandise to tickets via Apple Pay and the At the Ballpark app.

As I looked for a stand where I could buy some food, it was immediately apparent that not all vendors were equipped with NFC-enabled terminals. MLB tells us that it's still up to the individual vendor or business to agree to it and that they could still adopt them in the future, but that didn't quite help me last Friday, as I had to go from vendor to vendor to find one with Apple Pay. Once I did, I ordered a $6.75 Polish dog (ouch), and the payment went through as seamlessly as it did with all the other Apple Pay transactions I made before.

An hour later, I returned to the same vendor and tried to pay for an order of nachos with Google Wallet -- after all, MasterCard has said that the terminals should work with most NFC-based payment systems -- but it failed. After the phone beeped, I got an error message that suggested I check with the cashier. The cashier was a little befuddled, so I ended up fishing out my credit card to pay for it instead. Both Google and MasterCard tell me this should've theoretically worked, so my guess is that it was probably a glitch. Still, as far as the ballpark experience goes, Apple Pay (and normal credit cards) won out, at least for this one instance.

Which brings me to my primary sticking point with the mobile-payments concept as it stands today -- it's still only available in a few places. Over 220,000 locations in the US reportedly accept mobile payments, which sounds pretty impressive, but that's still only around 2.4 percent of retailers in the US.

Of course, this will probably change eventually. Since MasterCard and Visa are requiring a transition to EMV credit cards by October 2015, many shops will have to upgrade their systems to support so-called chip and pin technology (which already exists in much of the world), and will likely throw in NFC support as well. But for now, don't expect to pay for stuff at your local mom-and-pop store with your phone. Shopping at just Whole Foods and Walgreens was fine, but not being able to buy a burrito from the Mission (a San Francisco neighborhood famous for their taquerias)? That's just criminal.

Additionally, for the majority of people, the extra step of taking a card out from a wallet isn't seen as terribly tedious. At a number of retailers like Bloomingdale's and Macy's, even if you pay with Apple Pay or Google Wallet, you still need to sign for your purchase if it's over a certain amount (usually $25). Plus, I still need my wallet to carry my driver's license and there are still instances when only cash will do.

And it seems that NFC isn't even the only way to pay with your phone. CVS and Rite Aidmade headlines last week when they disabled NFC on their terminals to push their own in-house payment technology, called CurrentC. A method devised by the Merchant Customer Exchange, of which CVS, Rite Aid and Walmart are a part, CurrentC uses a rather convoluted QR-code scanning system to authenticate purchases.

This supposedly allows retailers to curb the transaction fees typically incurred by credit card companies (Of note, both Apple Pay and Google Wallet get some sort of fee per transaction; Wallet charges the merchants the regular credit card processing fee while Apple Pay charges the issuing bank). The barrier to entry to CurrentC appears to be much higher than either Apple Pay or Google Wallet, so I doubt it'll survive in the long run. But add that to the occasional machine glitch and you can see why most people will still want to clutch on to their wallets.

Still, despite my reservations about mobile payments, I deeply want it to succeed. Using my phone as a way to pay for things was just so freeing. I usually have my phone in my hand anyway, often to fill time while waiting in line in exactly the places where I would use it to pay for something. Having to take out a card from my wallet isn't that much of a hassle, but once I got a taste of paying for stuff with my phone, I couldn't get enough.

Also, mobile payments are arguably a lot more secure. Your actual credit card number is never handed over to merchants. Apple Pay uses a Secure Element chip that encrypts user data and assigns a unique device number to each phone, while Google Wallet transactions are made with a virtual prepaid MasterCard that's different each time. Mobile payments could therefore be the answer to the ever-present threat of data breaches and identity theft.

But until we can get it accepted at every merchant and figure out a way we can use the phone to securely carry our ID as well, it simply isn't going to replace your wallet.

Yet.

Credit:http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/29/week-apple-pay-google-wallet/

How Tight Is Smartphone Market? Xiaomi Joins Samsung, Apple in Top 3 for Only a Few Hours

Only three years after launching its first mobile device, China's Xiaomi leapt to third place in global smartphone shipments, trailing market leaders Samsung and Apple.

Those bragging rights lasted about 8 hours.

The press release from International Data Corp. at about 10 a.m. Beijing time heralding Xiaomi's rise to the top three in the third quarter, after more than tripling shipments in the period, was followed by one at 6 p.m. from Lenovo announcing the completion of its purchase of Motorola Mobility from Google.

Guess what? Closing the Motorola deal makes Lenovo No. 3,according to Lenovo and analysts at IDC and Strategy Analytics.

The back and forth in rankings highlights how competitive the global smartphone market has become. While Samsung and Apple sit at the top, with market share of 23.8 percent and 12 percent, respectively, the next three players were separated by just 0.2 percentage points before Lenovo absorbed Motorola, according to IDC.

Xiaomi had 5.3 percent of the global market in the third quarter, compared with Lenovo's 5.2 percent before taking over Motorola, while South Korea's LG Electronics had a 5.1 percent share. As this chart shows, the three of them -- before the Motorola news -- were practically in a dead heat in this period.

The race is already so tight that researchers can't agree on the rankings beyond the top three. Like IDC, data from Strategy Analytics has Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi in the lead in the third quarter, but rounds out the top five with LG in fourth with a 5.2 percent share and Huawei Technologies in fifth place with 5.1 percent.

Completing the Motorola acquisition should give Lenovo a bit of breathing room. A combined Lenovo and Motorola would have given it an 8 percent share in the period, putting it well ahead of Xiaomi and Huawei, according to researcher Strategy Analytics.

"With the addition of Motorola, the company is now the third-largest vendor globally in terms of smartphone unit shipments, trailing only Samsung and Apple," said Technology Business Research analyst Jack Narcotta. "Motorola’s stable of devices and intellectual property will help Lenovo corral the chaos in emerging markets such as China and India, allowing Lenovo to vault over Xiaomi, Huawei and LG and establish itself as the default choice for consumers seeking an entry-level or mid-tier Android smartphone."

Xiaomi wouldn't comment about its competitors, but Tony Wei, a spokesman, said the company was "proud of our remarkable growth."

One thing is clear. The fight is far from over.

One reason is that China, the world's largest smartphone market, has become saturated, forcing local vendors to look abroad, Lenovo Chief Executive Officer Yang Yuanqing said in an interview.

"If you only play in China, that's not enough," Yang said. "You must win in the global market."

Look for even more volatility in those quarterly global smartphone rankings.

Credit:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/how-tight-is-smartphone-market-xiaomi-joins-samsung-apple-in-top-3-for-only-a-few-hours.html

The Social Network That Pays You For Your Content

We live in an era where social networks are essential part of our lives. We generate quite extensive amount of content on our social networks which we do it for free on traditional social networks. But... Here is a revolutionary concept of social networking, getting paid while doing what you do on other social networks. Tsu is the answer to those who are not satisfied with the treatment they are receiving from the traditional social networks who generate valuable content and they can be paid for their efforts.

Asked about the inspiration for Tsu, the social network he’s just launched, Sebastian Sobczak doesn’t immediately mention Facebook or Twitter. Instead, he talks about Ed O’Bannon.

Mr. O’Bannon, a former U.C.L.A. basketball player, sued to challenge N.C.A.A. rules banning athletes from making money from their own images — in August, the Supreme Court decided in his favor. And for Mr. Sobczak, he’s a sort of personification of Tsu’s ethos: People should get paid for the content they produce.

While Facebook and Twitter have been criticized for failing to share their profits with those who post on their platforms, Tsu pledges to do just that: It will give 90 percent of its ad revenue back to users.

Tsu’s philosophy is that “all content creators, which is basically every social user, should receive royalties for the commercial use of their image, likeness and work,” Mr. Sobczak told Op-Talk. “They essentially do all the work, they should get rewarded with the lion’s share.”

“What people don’t realize is how much value is created by these platforms on the backs of basically everybody’s networking,” he said.

“It’s the exact analogy to the N.C.A.A. If the N.C.A.A.’s going to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars by gaming companies using Tim Tebow or Ed O’Bannon,” he added, then “you gotta pay the guys!”

Tsu plans to pay users not only for its content, but also for its ability to bring in more people. Each user gets a unique code that allows him or her to invite others to the site. And after Tsu takes its 10 percent cut, it gives half of each post’s revenue to the user who posted it — the remainder gets divided up among the users that person invited, the users those users invited, and so on, the share diminishing with each remove from the original poster. So even if your posts aren’t generating much revenue, or if you’re not posting much, you can still make some money from the posts of the people you know. “If you brought value to the system” by inviting someone whose posts get a lot of attention, said Mr. Sobczak, “you’re actually rewarded for that.”

He believes paying users will benefit Tsu as well: “We’re everybody’s kind of de facto payment platform that is giving them purchasing power for their data, their content and their network. That’s very powerful.” Becoming a payment platform would allow the company to go beyond merely selling ads, he added. “I would rather play in the peer-to-peer credit and merchant services markets, because that’s 10 times a larger market than just digital advertising and mobile advertising markets.” He imagines Tsu potentially becoming “the people’s global banker.”

It’s not the first time a social network has paid users. At ReCode, Kurt Wagner notes that “Bubblews, a social network founded in 2012 with a similar mindset, pays users when the content they share generates engagement like comments or Likes.”

But such revenue-sharing is by no means mainstream, and some have taken the major social networks to task for what they say is exploitation of users’ time and energy.

The artist Laurel Ptak writes in her much-discussed piece, “Wages for Facebook”: “They say it’s friendship. We say it’s unwaged work. With every like, chat, tag or poke our subjectivity turns them a profit.” And on her website, she asks:

“In 2012 Facebook reached more than 1 billion users and generated a revenue of 5.1 billion dollars. It is the first social-media website to be traded on the stock exchange wherein all content on its site is created by its users. Is what we do on Facebook work? How would we calculate our value? What could an alternate form of social media, based on an idea of the commons or a feminist praxis, look like?”

Astra Taylor describes a similar concern in her book “The People’s Platform.” “A frustrated minority,” she writes, “have complained that we are living in a world of ‘digital feudalism,’ where sites like Facebook and Tumblr offer up land for content providers to work while platform owners expropriate value with impunity and, if you read the fine print, stake unprecedented claim over users’ creations.” She quotes Marina Gorbis of the Institute for the Future:

“We, the armies of digital peasants, scramble for subsistence in digital manor economies, lucky to receive scraps of ad dollars here and there, but mostly getting by, sometimes happily, on social rewards — fun, social connections, online reputations. But when the commons are sold or traded on Wall Street, the vast disparities between us, the peasants, and them, the lords, become more obvious and more objectionable.”

Can Tsu be the more communal social network critics are looking for? Brooke Duffy, a professor of media and communication who has studied women’s digital-media behavior, has doubts. “I understand the appeal and I certainly understand the buzz of it,” she told Op-Talk. “I think the problem is, if it gets a critical mass — and I think that’s a big if — who’s actually going to be benefitting?”

Her prediction: “I think what we’ll end up seeing is the same kind of social media influencers that are already getting compensated for their work are the ones that are ultimately going to benefit from this.” Those who have already amassed large followings on other social-media platforms, she argued, may have the easiest time earning money on Tsu.

Some may be able to use Tsu to gain lots of followers from scratch: “There’s always the handful who rise to the top,” she said. “But is this going to radically redefine the compensation model of social network content creation? I’m pretty skeptical of it.”

“There’s a great deal of enthusiasm for whatever the next big social network is,” she added, “and there’s always these hopes that we can identify the next big thing. But I think in all of these cases it tends to be a very small number of people that actually benefit from the contributions of the many.” Those who benefit are those who get in early, but “also people who have the time and income to actually work to grow this audience base.”

“Something that gets swept aside,” she said, “is the level of economic and social capital people need to even get started.”

Mr. Sobczak is more optimistic about users’ chances of making significant money on Tsu. “The monetization is for everybody,” he said, “that’s the beauty of it.”

“Talk to some of these kids out there, they have 5,000 Facebook friends,” he said. He estimated that bringing in 100 friends could make a user thousands of dollars annually. And, he said, “It’s not a zero-sum game: the more people that join, the more ad revenue, and the higher the rate.”

He said the user base was growing rapidly — “we’ve been in the several thousands of requests per second.” One recent adopter: Ed O’Bannon.

So guys let us try this new social network and become an early adopter to this revolutionary concept. I am already using Tsu and so far I think I am quite satisfied with it. You can join Tsu, same like me by signing up via my link below.  https://www.tsu.co/taherbaltee

So come guys lets grow together and make the content we generate count and tell other social networks that we want our share of revenues which at this time goes into your pockets.

Join  here..... https://www.tsu.co/taherbaltee

12 of the best new features in Android Lollipop

By Dieter Bohn
• 
  

Google’s approach for rolling out the latest version of Android, Lollipop, is a little different. There are the usual things we see every year — a new Nexus phone and a new Nexus tablet — but instead of a big event, the company is posting details in blog posts and on the main Android site. So if you’re tracking the rollout closely, you probably have a sense of what’s new and what’s cool in the OS. If you’re not, though, getting a sense of what Lollipop is actually like and what it actually does isn’t easy.

Luckily, we got a chance to sit down with some Google execs last week to get a walkthrough of the coolest features. We won’t know everything until we actually have a chance to use the final version, but there are some clever additions we saw last week. Here are some of our favorites.

Tap and Go: Android has never been particularly good at transferring your settings and apps from an old phone to a new one. It’s always been a crap shoot as to whether all your apps would actually be downloaded from the Play store, to say nothing of your home screen and wallpaper. That’s partially Google’s fault, but it’s also a difficult problem to solve because of the diversity of hardware and software in the Android ecosystem. "Tap and Go" is a small step towards resolving that. If you have two Lollipop phones, you can pair them with NFC and the old phone will then use Bluetooth to send over all the details of what your phone should have installed over to the new phone.

Ok Google: Several of the enhancements on Lollipop were inspired by Motorola. The first is the ability to say "Ok Google" even if your phone is in standby mode. Your phone will wake and then you can use voice to search, send texts, and more. It requires compatible hardware, though, and so far we only know for sure that the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 support it.

Double tap to wake: Speaking of waking up your Android device, you can just double tap the screen of the Nexus 9 tablet to wake it up. Like the advanced "Ok Google" command, it requires compatible hardware. We also hear it works on the Nexus 6.

NEXUS GETS SOME OF THE BEST FEATURES FROM THE MOTO X

Ambient Display: Another feature that’s made it over from the Moto X is the idea of displaying bits of information on your screen as it comes in without turning the whole thing on. On the Nexus 6, it’s much more advanced — basically you get black and white versions of what would normally be on the lock screen anyway. It requires an OLED screen to work, so for now it seems like this is going to be a Nexus 6-specific feature.

Face unlock: Android’s face unlock feature has never really worked all that well. It’s kind of magical that it can recognize your face, but it’s often slow and usually needs really good lighting conditions to work. In Lollipop, Google has tweaked it so that it starts running silently as soon as you turn on your screen. Since you can interact with notifications on the lock screen now (see below), the idea is that you’d power it on, mess with a few notifications, and by the time you’re done Face Unlock has already kicked in and unlocked the phone.

Lock screen notifications: As with the iPhone, Android Lollipop will put notifications right on your lock screen. But on Android, the notifications on your screen are basically the same as those that appear in the drop-down notification shade. Why does that matter? Because on Android, you get a lot of control built-in to those notifications. You can archive email, tap reply, expand notifications to see more information, and so on. Now, you can do it directly on your lock screen. As a small bonus, if you have apps with sensitive information that you want to see notifications from but don’t want to display their contents, you can set them to be "redacted" when they show up on the lock screen.

Priority Mode: But the best notification enhancement in Lollipop is something Google calls "Priority Mode." It’s a little bit like "Do Not Disturb" on iOS but it seems much smarter here. You can easily choose which apps can still disturb you when in Priority Mode (the rest won’t bug you). Even better, when you set it, Android gives you the option to set a duration before it goes back into normal notifications. That way, you won’t forget to switch it off. There’s also a total silence mode that will turn everything off — including alarms.

Guest Mode: Android has allowed multiple user accounts on tablets for awhile, but in Lollipop there’s a new option called Guest Mode that works on both phones and tablets. The idea is that it creates a clean, safe, and disposable workspace that anybody can use. Your guest can even quickly log in to their account to check email. You or your guest can get rid of the data inside the guest account at any time.

THE NEXUS 9 IS EASY TO HAND TO YOUR KIDS

Pin Apps: Sometimes Guest Mode is too much work, and all you really want to do is launch a game and hand your phone to your kid — but not let them leave that game to mess with your email. Lollipop has a new feature (enabled in settings) that adds a pin to each card in the mulititasking view. When you tap it, that app won’t let you leave without entering a passcode. It’s similar to the "Guided Access" feature in iOS, but a little easier to use.

Improved Quick Settings: Quick Settings have been reorganized again, and they’re a bit easier to figure out now. Plus, the brightness slider you’ll find there is a little bit smarter: by default it responds correctly to ambient light at any brightness level. Speaking of sliders, the volume slider that pops up when you hit the volume key is also smarter: it has the buttons for the various Priority Notification modes right there.

Overview: The multitasking view now has a new name, Overview, and a new Material Design look. Each app is a big card, stacked up, and you can scroll through many more recent apps than you used to be able to. But the best feature is that any app can create multiple "cards." So, for example, when you compose a new email your inbox is still in the overview, so you can switch back and forth between tasks in a single app.

Material Design: The best and most obvious feature in Lollipop comes last. It’s a complete redesign that we already got a good look at this past summer, but there are new designs pretty much everywhere. One example: the contact card. Android adds a dynamically-created color overlay to each photo based on an accent color from the photo itself. Red lipstick, red overlay. Orange sweater, orange overlay. It’s a nice touch.

This article was updated to reflect that double tap to wake reportedly works just fine on the Nexus 6. We regret the original error.

Credit:http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/28/7082875/12-best-new-features-android-lollipop-nexus

LG Brings the Fight to Samsung’s Door

South Korean Tech Stalwart Notches Gains on Bigger Rival

By MIN-JEONG LEE

Samsung Electronics Co. has been battling Apple Inc. in the cutthroat global smartphone market, but in its own backyard, the South Korean technology giant has been fighting off a half-century-old rival, LG Electronics Inc.

While it isn’t yet a big material threat like low-cost Chinese makers, LG has been nibbling at Samsung’s smartphone market share and is becoming a bigger player in a number of product categories, including TVs and home appliances, and gaining technological edge in key components like displays. The two keep very close tabs each other’s product launch plans, according to people familiar with the matter.

To be sure, LG’s gains are coming in Samsung’s massive shadow. Samsung’s revenue of 229 trillion won ($218 billion) for 2013 is nearly four times bigger than LG’s 58 trillion won revenue for the same period, and Samsung’s 30.5 trillion won net profit dwarfs LG’s 223 billion won. In the second quarter, Samsung had a 25.2% share of the global smartphone market, while LG had 4.9%, according to researcher Strategy Analytics. Samsung remains a dominant force in terms of shipments for TVs and memory chips.

But when Samsung released its third-quarter earnings estimates earlier this month, its struggles in the smartphone market became ever more apparent. Samsung said its operating profit in the third quarter more than halved from a year earlier, largely due to weakness in its smartphone business. Its TV and display unit isn’t expected to have done any better.

LG, which reports earnings on Wednesday, is expected to see its operating profit as much as double, according to analysts, thanks to a better-than-expected reception of the G3 smartphone it launched in May. In South Korea, LG grabbed a 27% handset market share in the third quarter, its highest in years, and up from just 18% a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research. During the same period, Samsung’s share slipped to 60% from 66%.

LG’s display-making affiliate, LG Display Co. , is poised to top its bigger rival Samsung Display Co. in both revenue and profit in the third quarter on solid sales of high-end screens used in Apple’s iPhones as well as LG’s flagship G series phones. Meanwhile, LG Display’s growing expertise in large-size, next-generation displays has allowed LG Electronics to beat Samsung in the launch of a series of curved-screen and super-thin TV sets.

Still, in a sign that Samsung is becoming increasingly conscious of its much-smaller hometown rival, the company took a page from LG’s playbook by introducing a rear-button function with its latest Galaxy Note 4 smartphone, which LG first introduced in its G2 smartphone last year.

LG didn’t miss out on the rare opportunity to mock its bigger rival bytweeting through one of its official accounts: “Thank you 4 taking Note.” Samsung declined to comment on the tweet.

For decades, the crosstown rivals have taken pride in pioneering technologies used in everything from TVs and refrigerators to washing machines and mobile devices. They compete in nearly identical global markets and product categories.

Their rivalry culminated in a bitter fight in September when LG executives entered an electronics shop in Berlin and allegedly broke the doors of multiple high-end Samsung washing machines. Samsung swiftly filed a formal complaint with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, requesting an investigation. LG denied allegations of ill intent, saying the executives were casually “checking out” the doors when they unexpectedly broke. LG also took the occasion to highlight that it outsells Samsung in washing machines, one of the few categories where LG tops Samsung.

The incident is under investigation by the South Korean authorities. The prosecutors’ office declined to comment on ongoing probes.

LG—which began in 1958 as a company called Gold Star, a maker of radios—has a history of falling behind Samsung in technological prowess. Its revenue was almost on par with that of Samsung, which was established in 1969, as a maker of black-and-white TVs, until the mid-1980s, when Samsung made a lucrative push into computers and semiconductors.

The gap widened after the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, when the government forced LG to divest its chip business as a part of a broad restructuring of the conglomerates known as chaebols. That chip business became SK HynixInc., the world’s second-largest memory chip maker after Samsung.

When word was circulating last year that LG Electronics would introduce an “industry first” curved-screen smartphone in the fourth quarter, Samsung surprised the market at a media event in September 2013 with news of its own curved-screen phone. Samsung launched its Galaxy Round smartphone the following month exclusively in South Korea.

LG launched its LG G Flex in November, and rolled it out in global markets. Sales figures haven’t been disclosed for either of the curved-screen phones.

Following LG’s successful G3 phone launch this year, Samsung responded in September with a new phablet, dubbed the Galaxy Note Edge, with a screen that wraps over one edge to display messages.

“It comes down to what kind of benefits our product can provide to customers, because we can’t earn money without customer satisfaction,” said Chris Yie, vice president for marketing at LG’s mobile unit. Mr. Yie said LG is preparing to counter Samsung’s Galaxy Note Edge, without going into specific details.

The two companies appear to have selected their next battleground: A team of LG Display engineers is working to bring flexible screens that can fold in half for smartphones, while Samsung Display aims to start production at its flexible-display production line early next year.

Credit:http://online.wsj.com/articles/lg-electronics-brings-the-fight-to-samsungs-door-1414516339