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Friday, February 5, 2016

This is the Star Wars: Battle Pod you were looking for — where to play it in the U.S.

Don’t worry, no Bothans died to bring us this information.
Game publisher Bandai Namco has a list that reveals every location in the country, by state, where you can play Star Wars: Battle Pod. It’s an arcade shooting game that encloses the player inside a cockpit with a giant screen in front of them, creating an ideal experience for living out all of those Star Wars fantasies. Of course, while a lot of Star Wars fans want to play the game, it’s rather hard to find. Although Star Wars is as popular as ever, with The Force Awakens bringing in $900 million domestically, arcades are about as rare as Jedi were during the Empire’s reign these days.
That’s largely because the U.S. is well past the age of arcade dominance, an era that really ended in the country once home consoles caught up with the graphics of arcade machines at the turn of the century. The emergence of mobile gaming further made arcades a niche market. This creates a weird problem where arcades themselves aren’t really in fashion, but a lot of people still want to play this specific game.

The next Flappy Bird? Color Switch is the top game in Apple’s app store now

For the past couple of weeks, a newcomer has been at the top of the iOS app store. Color Switch is one of those free downloadable games like Flappy Bird that came out of nowhere and hit the top.
It’s games like Color Switch, which tests your skill at moving a ball through color-coded obstacles, that gives indie developers hope that they can still stand out among 3 million apps and claim their own place in the $30 billion mobile game industry. The title has had more than 15 million installs, and it has hit No. 1 in 25 countries.
The game is available on both iOS, where it’s ranked at No. 1 in the U.S., and Google Play, where it is ranked at No. 5, according to market researcher App Annie. The developers of the game are David Reichelt and Aditya Oza, and the publisher is Fortafy Games in Sydney, Australia. Reichelt and Oza initially made the game using Buildbox, which allows for simple, drag-and-drop development procedures. It took them about a week to make the game. And Reichelt was able to make the game — which is filled with dazzling colors — despite being colorblind.
The game hit No. 1 on the iOS app store on January 22, and it has been thee ever since. It went viral on Twitter, and I heard about it long before I noticed that it hit the top ranks.
“People on social media are calling it the new Flappy Bird,” said Zeb Jaffer, cofounder of Fortafy Games, in an interview with GamesBeat. “My son came back and said everyone in the playground is playing your game. It’s a stroke of luck and good work. What started as a tappy game has grown into a bit of a beast.”
The title is addictive because it seems so simple, but it takes a lot of skill. It has funky music and colorful, if simple, 2D graphics. It’s also easy to play in a short time, over and over again. Jaffer said the small team feels fortunate to climb to the top, particularly since they all have little previous background in the game business.
Nearly 400 million games have been played to date. The title has more than 100 levels, and the team is now working to come up with more of them. Some players are writing to the company, and they’re demanding new content to play. The game has no in-app purchases, but it makes money through banner ads.

“We are grateful it has done so well, and now it’s a great challenge to keep people happy,” Jaffer said.

Google confirms Hangouts will now use peer-to-peer connections to improve call quality and speed

Google Hangouts has received a small but important backend upgrade: peer-to-peer (p2p) connections. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that the functionality started rolling out to all users this week.
Reddit user kxra first spotted the addition in their Hangouts for Android app yesterday. We reached out to Google to gauge what exactly the feature meant for users.
“To improve call quality and speed, Hangouts will route audio and video over a peer-to-peer connection when possible,” a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. The “when possible” part is key — Hangouts won’t be using p2p every single time. To be clear, Google confirmed that Hangouts is getting peer-to-peer functionality on all platforms (Android, iOS, and web), not just Android.


Hangouts Help support document explains that peer-to-peer connections allow Hangouts “to more efficiently route your call directly to the person you’re talking to, rather than connecting the call through one of Google’s servers.” Think of it like letting Hangouts know where you’re located so that it connect you more efficiently:
A direct peer-to-peer connection between you and the other person reveals both your IP addresses. With an IP address, it’s possible to approximate your location.
This is great news for anyone who has ever been frustrated with the call quality on Google Hangouts (oh god, don’t even get me started). Some, however, may be concerned that their IP address will be exposed. The good news is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to show someone’s IP addresses in the Hangouts user interface.
Skype, which originally used p2p connections, just last month finally started hiding IP addresses by default. For years, if someone wanted to attack or harass you online, all they had to do was figure out your Skype name and follow one of the countless guides to get your IP address. Once a malicious party had your IP address, they could perform a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common method for taking down a device by overloading it with requests. This was particularly frustrating for Skype users playing games online, and doubly so for those trying to stream their gaming session.
We doubt Hangouts will result in similar problems, but Google has likely taken the possibility into consideration.

Apple smart watch


   Current smartwatch offerings are expensive, they don’t yet live up to the expectations many people have for a gadget that costs hundreds of dollars, and most people can easily get by without one. But if you know you want one—or you want to see how you’d enjoy using one—and if you’re committed to the iPhone, let’s get the obvious out of the way: The best smartwatch for you is an Apple Watch.
While the Pebble Steel is one of our favorite smartwatches for Android smartphones(and works to a limited extent with iOS devices, too), the Apple Watch offers dramatically better integration with the iPhone and Apple’s services, as well as an already-huge and quickly growing selection of apps. Put simply, the Apple Watch does more, and does it better, than any other iOS-compatible smartwatch out there.
For most people (on most budgets) eager to give the Apple Watch a try, we believe the Apple Watch Sport—the least expensive version—is the model to get. It gives you the same features, and the same internal components, as its more-expensive siblings at a much lower price ($350 to $400, depending on the body size). Its aluminum body is also noticeably lighter than the steel and gold bodies of the Apple Watch and Apple Watch Edition models1, respectively—a bonus if you normally don’t wear a watch and you’re concerned about the bulk of a smartwatch on your wrist. And the Sport even has a couple of advantages over the more-expensive models: Its aluminum body makes haptic taps easier to feel, and its screen is a bit easier to read in sunlight.
That’s not to say that the Apple Watch is perfect. It’s a typical 1.0 Apple product: It combines an overall enjoyable experience with some frustrating limitations (which we’ll get into below). Some aspects are way better than what you get with other products, and bring innovation to the category, while other things feel not quite done. That means that for many iPhone users, especially those new to smartwatches, the question isn’t “Which Apple Watch should I get?” but instead “Should I get a smartwatch right now?” Our impressions of the Apple Watch should help you answer 

Why you should trust us

Dan Frakes is The Wirecutter’s gear and Apple editor and a former senior editor at Macworld; he’s been reviewing tech gadgets for almost two decades. Kevin Purdy is a Wirecutter staff writer and former Lifehacker editor; he’s also the author of our Android-smartwatch guide.
Other contributors to this guide include Jacqui Cheng, Wirecutter editor in chief and former senior editor at Ars Technica; Brian Lam, Wirecutter founder and former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo; Nick Guy, Wirecutter accessories writer and former accessories editor at iLounge; and Jim McDannald, Wirecutter fitness writer, residency-trained podiatrist, distance-running coach, and the author of our fitness-tracker guide.
Most of us have been wearing an Apple Watch since its debut; the others have each spent significant time with an Apple Watch for the purposes of testing it and comparing it head-to-head with other smartwatches and with dedicated fitness trackers.

Should you buy a smartwatch?

Smartwatches are still in their early days, and their usefulness will vary greatly depending on which of their features you take advantage of. This means that, unlike a mobile phone, most average buyers will not “need” one.
A smartwatch is a watch, of course, but beyond that it’s an extension of your smartphone. You pair a smartwatch (via Bluetooth) with your phone so that the watch can show some or all of your phone’s notifications. Many smartwatches also track your fitness, let you control music playback, and help you perform other basic connected tasks. Some models, including the Apple Watch, Android Wear watches, Pebble models, and Tizen-based models, even let you install apps on the watch to extend the device’s features.
42mm Apple Watch Sport with Modular face
When a smartwatch does its job well, it reduces how frequently you must pull your smartphone out of your pocket to check things or to respond to notifications. It can show you calendar reminders, text messages, phone-call alerts, important emails, and social-media updates when you glance at your wrist. You can dismiss these notifications, send quick replies, or decide that you need to grab your smartphone and deal with a particular task in a more focused way. A good smartwatch will allow you to know what’s going on while keeping you from getting drawn away from whatever you’re doing in the non-virtual world. (The Apple Watch does all of this and more, and is optimized for use with an iPhone. In fact, it requires an iPhone—specifically, an iPhone 5 or later.)
If all you want is fitness tracking, you can find (much) less expensive devices for tracking your running, biking, steps, and heart rate. Similarly, if you regularly need more than quick glances at emails, messages, and the like, you’ll likely still end up taking your phone out of your pocket whenever a notification appears. A smartwatch may not be for you.
If, however, you like the idea of wearing a watch that also helps you reduce the amount of time you spend looking at your phone, provides quick access to useful information, and lets you handle some discrete tasks you’d otherwise need to pull out your phone to do—paying for goods at some stores, showing your boarding pass at the airport, or getting directions while walking, for example—you might find a smartwatch appealing.
(There’s a case to be made that some people will simply end up looking at their wrist all the time instead of their phone, but you can avoid that with some careful configuration, as discussed below. And smartwatch-research company Wristly’songoing Apple Watch usage survey has found that 32 percent of respondents spend much less time on their iPhone, with 58 percent using their iPhone somewhat less.)
The most important thing to remember about a smartwatch, however, is that it’s a watch, not a miniature smartphone. It won’t do everything your phone can do—nor should you expect it to. But it is a watch for 2015. Whereas 30 years ago the only real “data” we had regular access to on our person was the time, in 2015 our smartphones provide access to myriad types of data on the go, and a good smartwatch will give you quicker access to the most important tidbits at a glance—just like a watch does, but more.
The good news is that smartwatches have improved dramatically over just the past two or three years, in both looks and functionality. And the Apple Watch is currently about as good as it gets when you consider the whole package: looks, features, and the overall user experience.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 review 2016

Pros

  • Excellent Full HD display
  • Outstanding value for money
  • Good battery life
  • Simple, attractive design
  • High-quality keyboard and trackpad

Cons

  • Fragile lid
Key Features: 13.3-inch screen; 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display; 1.35kg; Intel Celeron processor; 4GB RAM; 16GB built-in storage 
Manufacturer: Toshiba 

What is the Toshiba Chromebook 2?

The Chromebook 2 is the follow-up to the original Toshiba Chromebook, which we really liked when it launched early last year. It’s a 13-inch laptop that comes in two different versions – one with a Full HD screen (1,920 x 1,080) and one with an HD screen (1,366 x 768) – that are available for £249 and £199 respectively.
We think the Chromebook 2 is even better than the first, too. Chromebooks are generally cheap and cheerful but are hampered by dull design and poor quality screens. The Chromebook 2 is different. It’s attractive, has an excellent screen and is outstanding value for money. Read on to find out why we like it so much.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 – Design

The Toshiba Chromebook 2 is a well-proportioned laptop that'll easily slot into a standard messenger bag or backpack, and its 1.35kg weight means that carrying it around won’t be a struggle. At 320mm wide and 214mm deep, it’s about the same size as a 13-inch MacBook Air, and at 19.3mm thick it’s only slightly thicker, too. That’s damn impressive given it costs a fraction of the price.
It’s similar in shape to most modern-day laptops, and has clearly taken design tips from the MacBook Air. The Chromebook 2 has lots of curved corners and a chunky base that tapers to a point at the front side. Clad in silver-coloured plastic, it’s simple but good-looking and the dot pattern on top adds texture and ensures it stands out from the crowd.
It doesn’t feel particularly solid, though. We could easily bend the screen element by applying a little pressure to the lid with our fingers. This distorted the display, with blue, abstract-looking fingermarks appearing on-screen. We think we could seriously damage it with our hands alone if we tried. However, it survived a night out in London completely unscathed, despite being knocked about in its bag quite often.
Connections are basic, but ample. On the left side are the charging port, micro USB 2.0 and SD card slot. HDMI-out, the headphone jack, a Kensington security lock and the USB 3.0 slot sit on the right-hand side. The latter supports sleep-and-charge, meaning that devices plugged into the slot charge even when the Chromebook 2 is asleep – a handy feature when you need it.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 – Screen and Sound

The 13.3-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display is the Chromebook 2’s crowning glory. It’s stunning and feels like it should be attached to a much more expensive laptop. A 1,366 x 768 display is also available for less money, but the Full HD version is worth shelling out the extra £50 for.
Colours are rich and bright, and the quality of blacks is very impressive for such a cheap laptop. It’s great for watching films on. Viewing angles aren't as good – brightness drops and colours distort the wider you go – but three people can watch a films on it without huge difficulty.
It’s lovely and bright too, topping out at 300 nits. You won’t need to blast it up to its highest setting indoors, but you will if you plan to use it outside in the sunshine. This worked fine for us, and the display’s coating seems to reduce glare from the sun, which is handy too.
The speakers are tuned by Skullcandy, and are completely invisible because they’re hidden beneath the keyboard. Sound quality is impressive. The speakers are loud and deliver a really crisp sound, making the Chromebook 2 great for listening to music and watching TV on. It easily overpowered the loud whirring of the washing machine in the next room.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 – Keyboard and Trackpad

The Chromebook 2 has a black tile keyboard that is slightly different to the ones on Windows PCs and MacBooks. For example, there’s no Caps Lock, Delete or Print Screen here. This takes a little getting used to, particularly the loss of the Delete key, but you’ll get used to it.
On the whole, the keys are a good size and are spaced far enough apart to make quick typing nice and easy. They offer a good amount of travel, too. We found the narrower than normal Enter key slightly awkward – it’s easy to accidentally press down on the hash key (#) instead – but it’s not the worst we’ve used. We miss the backlighting of pricier laptops, but you can’t complain about this on a £250 machine.
Above the numbers row are 10 buttons that control settings and functions, flanked by Escape and the Power. These are all marked with different icons, most of which are instantly recognisable. There’s a left-pointing arrow to go back and a large symbol of the sun to increase brightness, for instance.
The three volume keys (up, down and mute) are a little annoying to use, though. Hitting the mute button twice doesn’t mute and unmute, as you’d expect it to. Instead, you have to press the volume up key to turn sound back on. It’s a minor issue, but an irritating one.
The trackpad is large and excellent to use. It feels solid, offering a good amount of resistance when you’re clicking. Moreover, like the MacBook Air, it doesn’t have separate buttons for right and left click. Instead, clicking with one finger activates the left click, while clicking with two fingers activates the right click. We like this system better than the clumsy systems employed on many Windows laptops.
The trackpad supports a wide range of gesture controls, too. Swiping right with two fingers takes you to the previous page, while doing the same in the opposite direction takes you forwards. Swiping with more than two fingers allows you to switch tabs, and swiping up with three fingers displays all of the windows you have open at any time. These all worked perfectly for us, and they’re surprisingly easy to remember once you start using them regularly.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 – Battery Life

Toshiba says the Full HD Chromebook 2 will last up to nine hours off a single charge, and the HD version will keep going for 11.5 hours. These are good numbers, and real-world use supports the claims.
We squeezed just over nine hours out of the Full HD model while working on Google Drive, browsing the web and watching TV shows.
It’s a reasonably quick charger too, with a 30-minute blast taking it up to 30% battery from flat. The only real issue we found was that the status tray only warned us when we got to 1% battery life. We’d have preferred a heads-up much sooner – a notification at 10% would be much more useful and would have helped us avoid the mad scramble for the charger.






The Wirecutter's best deals: A Vizio smart TV and more!

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer's guide to the best technology. Read their continuously updated list of deals at TheWirecutter.com.
You may have already seen Engadget posting reviews from our friends at The Wirecutter. Now, from time to time, we'll also be publishing their recommended deals on some of their top picks. Read on, and strike while the iron is hot -- some of these sales could expire mighty soon.

Vizio M43-C1 43-inch Smart LED TV

Street price: $550; MSRP: $600; deal price: $498
This matches the best price we've seen on this TV, which was set during Black Friday sales. We saw this price a couple times around then, from both Costco and Amazon, but haven't seen it drop since.
The Vizio M43-C1 TV is our pick for the best TV around $500. Chris Heinonen said, "The Vizio M43-C1 offers the darkest blacks, the best contrast ratios, five HDMI inputs, superior daytime performance, and Ultra HD resolution for the best overall package."

Jaybird X2 Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

Street price: $144; MSRP: $180; deal price: $128
This isn't quite the lowest price we've seen on these headphones, but it comes within $3 of that mark. We haven't seen them drop this low since the holidays. This deal is for the Alpha color headphones, but you can also get the Ice and Midnight models for just $1 more.
The Jaybird X2s are the runner-up pick in our guide on the best wireless exercise headphones. Lauren Dragan said, "They are light, they stay put, they sound fantastic, they have a lifetime warranty against sweat damage (which, if you sweat through one pair of headphones a year, can really add up!), they charge pretty quickly (around 2 hours), they have a nice case, and you can wear them several different ways, depending on what works for you."

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 Digital Camera

Street price: $750; MSRP: $900; deal price: $700
While this isn't as good as the eBay deal (down to $600) we posted back in December, this is the best price it's ever been at Amazon. Except for eBay, this camera has stayed firm at $750 pretty much everywhere. This $50 drop from street price makes for a good discount.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ1000 is the upgrade pick in our guide on the best superzoom camera. Amadou Diallo said, "The Panasonic FZ1000's sensor is four times larger (and several times better) than the one in our main pick. Spending the extra money on this model gets you shallower depth of field, less image noise at high ISO settings, and a lens that lets in a lot more light. You do have to settle for a rather limited 16x zoom range, though."

DeWalt DCBL790H140V MAX Lithium Ion XR Brushless Blower

Street price: $332; MSRP: $370; deal price: $295
This is the best price we've ever seen on this model, beating the previous low by $12. This is the first time it has dropped below $320 in almost a year.
The DeWalt is the portable pick in our guide on the best leaf blower. Doug Mahoney said, "It offers power comparable to that of our corded picks, and with a 22-minute run time, it has twice the stamina of the four other cordless models we tested. We also liked its pro-grade durability and beefy design; it feels tougher than the other cordless (and corded) models we tried."
Deals change all the time, and some of these may have expired. To see an updated list of current deals, please go to The Wirecutter.com.

Apple is now selling View-Master's iPhone VR headset

One week ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned to investors that he finds virtual reality "really cool" and believes it won't remain "a niche." And hey, now it's a week later and Apple is selling a virtual-reality headset on its website.."
The headset comes from View-Master, which has transformed its classic red image viewer into a big red VR viewer akin to Google Cardboard. It's essentially just a big plastic case that you slip an iPhone into; you then open up an app that shows 360-degree videos, and you can look around the world by holding the viewer to your eyes and turning your head. It's a super low-tech way of getting into virtual reality, but it's incredibly accessible. As long as you already own an iPhone, you can buy this cheap accessory and get started. Apple is selling it for $29.95 (but you should probably not buy it from Apple because it's much cheaper elsewhere).


    You can't make too much of the fact that Apple is selling a third-party VR viewer on its website — it sells a lot of third-party accessories, including some product types that it doesn't formally show support for. (The product also came out last fall, and it's possible that Apple began selling it months ago but that people are only taking notice now.) But VR is something that Apple likely wants to get involved in, and supporting cheap viewers like this one may encourage other accessory and content creators to get in on the action. Apple may be planning something much bigger for down the road — for now, at least, this is one of the cheapest ways an iPhone owner can get started.

    GoPro shares rise on Microsoft licensing deal

    This story still under developing. Please come back later late for  further GoPro and Microsoft updates.
    Shares in GoPro jumped more than 4 percent in after-hours trading after the announcement of a patent licensing deal between the company and Microsoft. 
    "This agreement with GoPro shows the incredible breadth of technology sharing enabled through patent transactions," Nick Psyhogeos, president of Microsoft Technology Licensing, said in a statement. "Microsoft's licensing of personal wearable technologies is seeing strong demand as we partner with companies from all industries to optimize solutions for their customers around the globe." 
    The deal is a new "collaborative patent licensing agreement" for "certain file storage and other system technologies," according to Microsoft, which said in its announcement that the terms of the agreement are confidential.
    GoPro's stock is down more than 40 percent year-to-date. It reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue earlier this week that came in below Wall Street's expectations, and it guided lower than analysts had forecast. 

    Microsoft, Nokia, and the burning platform: a final look at the failed Windows Phone alliance



    When Microsoft acquired Nokia’s Devices and Services division in late 2013 and began integrating the storied Lumia brand into its offerings, it was hailed by Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer as “a bold step into the future — a win-win for employees, shareholders, and consumers of both companies.” Since then, Microsoft has folded much of its $7.5 billion acquisition into other divisions of the company, laid off thousands of former Nokia employees, slashed its output of smartphones per year, and eventually wrote off the entire purchase in a $7.6 billion impairment charge. Fast forward to early 2016, when we will soon see a quiet launch of what’s widely believed to be the final Microsoft Lumia-branded handset, the Lumia 650.
    (According to Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott, what remains of the Lumia division has been shifted over to the Surface team, but the eventual branding of their final products is unknown.)
    It’s easy enough, with the benefit of hindsight, to lament that many of these billion-dollar acquisitions end up failing to deliver shareholder value or operational synergy. But unlike other failed mergers — and despite Ballmer’s rosy assessment of the situation — this was a corporate coupling that many observers correctly predicted would fail. Rather than being done to achieve some shared vision, at the time both Nokia and Microsoft were backed into a corner and saw the other as their only potential savior.
    Why did this happen? Both companies could have avoided such a point of desperation — but once Microsoft and Nokia tied their fates together in a wide-ranging 2011 partnership, failure was all but inevitable. How these two stalwarts developed an ultimately fatal codependency offers yet another cautionary tale about billion-dollar corporate mergers. As in life, there are no sure things.
    Stephen-Elop_Nokia-President-and-CEO-and-Steve-Ballmer-Microsoft-CEO

    A Trojan horse?

    Some critics have likened former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to the mythological Trojan horse, in the aftermath of Nokia’s failed efforts to employ Windows Phone (and only Windows Phone) to boost sales. After all, Elop was a Microsoft executive from 2008 through 2010 before taking over the helm at Nokia, and his relationships there very likely paved the way for Nokia’s big gamble on a platform with tepid market share.
    Make no mistake: Despite Nokia’s then-declining market share, it was Microsoft that was, strategically, in the relatively worse position. Windows Phone was not performing nearly as well as it had hoped, and the conventional wisdom stated that a tie-up with a popular handset maker could give it the necessary cachet, and jump-start, that it so desperately needed.
    As it turned out, a situation more akin to the opposite of that conventional wisdom is how things actually transpired.
    Even though Windows Phone is a well-regarded operating system, it faced a chicken-or-egg conundrum when it came to apps. Developers don’t want to devote resources to a platform without a significant user base, but consumers don’t want to invest in devices until they can offer a minimum threshold of popular applications.
    Nokia got stuck in the middle of this tug-of-war. The Finnish handset manufacturer, under Elop’s leadership, adopted Windows Phone but soon proved unable to sell enough devices to convince app developers to contribute to the Windows Phone platform. Eventually Nokia itself became a victim of the apps tug-of-war.
    As Nokia’s fortunes fell and Microsoft grew more anxious about Windows Phone, a tie-up took on urgency. Nokia had one foot out the door, tentatively exploring entry-level Android-powered phones in a bid to stay afloat after bleeding cash for several years in a row.
    Best-Smartphone-Nokia-X-Android-Wallpaper
    Microsoft needed its only major hardware partner to stay faithful if it hoped to remain in the mobile platform business, and was willing to pay $7.5 billion for fidelity. Almost overnight, Steve Ballmer became the white knight Nokia needed. But there was more to the deal. One unusual aspect to the arrangement: Instead of Nokia waving goodbye to its division, CEO Elop moved over as well, returning full circle to his former employer as the new chief of Microsoft Devices.

    The burning platform

    In 2011, market share of Android surpassed that of Nokia’s Symbian OS, despite being launched just two years earlier. During that same time frame, Apple enjoyed explosive growth of its iPhone OS, whose 2007 introduction roiled an industry caught off-guard by its arrival.
    Nokia was slow to react to the newfound competition. In his now infamous “Burning Platform” speech, delivered to employees just prior to announcing the Microsoft partnership in early February 2011, Elop acknowledged that the company’s traditional strategy of competing device-to-device at various price points had failed.
    The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications, and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyze, or join an ecosystem.
    Elop’s chosen ecosystem was, of course, Windows Phone. Nokia launched its first two handsets — the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 — in late October 2011, nearly a year after adopting the platform. Microsoft, too, had forced its fans to wait 8 months (February to October 2010) between announcing Windows Phone 7 and the release of the first wave of compatible devices.
    nokia1
    Both gaps would prove to be problematic, especially for Microsoft, due to the fact that Windows Phone apps would not be compatible with the Windows Mobile handsets that it had been promoting up to that point. Perhaps the shift from a handset way of thinking to a broader ecosystem model was a larger undertaking than both companies anticipated.

    The road not taken

    So, might things have turned out differently for Nokia if it had picked another route? Windows Phone was far from its only option, of course. Android should have been an obvious candidate. Nokia, at the time, was familiar with the operating system. Android would eventually power its short-lived line of Nokia X devices.
    However, there were other possible directions. MeeGo, a homegrown Nokia OS that made it to retail on a single phone — the N9 — would have been the fan favorite. However, despite generally positive reviews in the press and from owners, its release after the “Burning Platform” inflection point relegated it to being merely a curiosity. And Symbian Series 60, which had powered the vast majority of the company’s smartphones, had virtually no market share in the U.S. — by that point considered a critical mobile market for the company.
    So, let’s assume that instead of Windows Phone, Nokia had become an Android partner instead. It’s far from given that adopting the Android OS alone could have righted the ship; after all, many Android OEMs — and there are a lot of them — struggle to make a profit as commoditization overtakes the industry. Still, I have to believe that they could have sold more Android handsets than they did Windows Phones. How many more is unknown, but simply going by the market share that each platform has had over the past five years, I suspect it would have been a pretty healthy increase.
    statistic_id266136_global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-operating-systems-2009-2015-by-quarter
    In the end, Nokia hoped that Windows Phone would make it stand out in a sea of Android and iOS devices — and it did, but not in the fashion it had wanted. Instead, Nokia customers watched their once-mighty brand slowly fade into irrelevance, eventually getting consumed by its ill-chosen partner.
    The mobile landscape is littered with manufacturers who lost their way, from Palm to BlackBerry to HTC to Danger. No company is too big to fail, and those that react too slowly to shifts in tastes and preferences can quickly find themselves struggling to catch up. Often, the only path forward requires choosing from a set of unpalatable options. Thanks in part to Stephen Elop’s Rolodex, Nokia’s storied handset division wound up in the arms of Microsoft, a fatal embrace.

    Apple Watch Took Two-Thirds Of Smartwatch Market In 2015, Says Analyst

    Apple does not break out sales of its debut wearable, the Apple Watch, so it’s up to analysts to stump up the sales estimates — and the latest to do so, Canalys, reckons the Apple Watch accounted for two-thirds of the smartwatch market in 2015, with more than 12 million units shipped by its count in total — and more than five million of those in the holiday quarter.
    Canalys’ figures have early mover Samsung returning to second place, thanks to an improved design with its Gear 2 smartwatch that it says has proved more popular with consumers. Pebble took third place, according to the analysis, while Huawei was fourth — the latter establishing itself as the leading Android Wear OEM.
    Turning to more basic fitness wearables, by Canalys’ count, more than 37 million basic fitness bands also shipped in the year, with Fitbit comfortably leading this category and setting a quarterly shipments record. China’s Xiaomi held onto second place, shipping some 12 million of its budget priced Mi Bands during 2015.
    The analyst recorded growth of more than 60 per cent sequentially across all wearable bands — driven by what it dubbed “strong” holiday shipments for Fitbit, Apple and Garmin. Across the entire wearable bands segment, Fitbit led all vendors in the holiday quarter, followed by Apple and Xiaomi.
    Canalys takes a positive view of Fitbit’s Blaze smartwatch, announced last month at CES. Although investors punished the company for perceiving it had strayed too close to Apple’s wearable, the analyst argues the Blaze is competitively priced and still “squarely focused on fitness”. Whereas the Apple Watch is a more multifaceted device, with fitness features as part of a more fashion/lifestyle-focused proposition.
    Analyst Gartner is also taking a positive view on the smartwatch space. Earlier this month it identified smartwatches as having the greatest revenue potential among all wearables through 2019 — forecasting they will be generating $17.5 billion by then.
    It predicts sales of wearables overall will generate revenue of $28.7 billion in 2016 — out of which $11.5 billion will be from smartwatches, as Apple’s entry into the category popularizes wearables as a lifestyle trend.
    Gartner is less bullish about the near term prospects for head mounted wearables, such as the clutch of VR headsets due to launch this spring (e.g. Facebook’s Oculus Rift and the HTC-Valve Vive) — characterizing the space as “an emerging market”.
    And while it says it anticipates wearable headsets moving “towards mainstream adoption” in 2016, it’s only envisaging 1.43 million units shipping this year — vs 50.4 million smartwatches. So that’s some pretty baby steps towards anything approaching mainstream adoption.
    Gartner
    Even smartwatches are going to remain far behind the mainstream adoption of smartphones, as Gartner notes — which again is unsurprising as all wearables are supplementary devices. None as currently envisaged purports to be a smartphone replacement.
    “Though the sales of smartwatches are the one of the strongest types of wearables, their adoption will remain much below sales of smartphones,” said Gartner analyst Angela McIntyre in a statement. “For example, in 2016 more than 374 million smartphones will sell in mature market countries and in large urban areas of emerging market countries, for example, in Hong Kong and Singapore.”

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