Mobile Device Survey: In a recent “Mobile Device
Management: Sanity and Success
with an iPad 1:1” Tech & Learning/
Lightspeed webinar, participants
were asked “Are you planning a
mobile device roll-out?” Here are
their replies:
Monday, October 1, 2012
Sharp’s new 5″ smartphone screens: full 1080P HD and 443 pixels per inch
Sharp’s new 5″ smartphone screens: full 1080P HD and 443 pixels per inch:
Sharp announced today that it has started manufacturing 5-inch high-definition LCD panels for smartphones with a full 1,080 x 1,920 pixels — and an astonishing pixel density of 443 pixels per inch.
Just two months ago the Osaka, Japan-based company announced that it was shipping smartphone screens to Apple, presumably for the iPhone 5. Those screens are 4 inches, with a 326 pixel-per-inch image.
These new screens, which Sharp is displaying at CREATEC conference in Japan tomorrow, have only one obvious intended purpose: Android-based phones. Android-based phones such as the Galaxy S3 have significantly larger screens than even the iPhone 5 at 4.8 inches.
Where Sharp will use the 5-inch screens is not clear, but Samsung would clearly be a valuable client as the largest manufacturer of Android-based phones. And the pixel density would set any clients up well for competition with Apple’s iPhone, beating iPhone’s pixel density by over 100 pixels per inch.
One valid question: Can Android even support such a high pixel density? Android’s developer resources reference screen densities up to “xhdpi,” which Android defines as in the 300 pixels per inch range. The developer resources say nothing about 400+ pixel density screens.
Sharp is desperate to find new revenue streams, as the company had a disastrous last quarter and is on track for a $3.18 billion loss this fiscal year. The company is cutting 11,000 jobs — a move of desperation for most Japan-based firms — and is selling production plants in Mexico, China, and Malaysia.
It has also been in talks to sell part of the company to Taiwan-based Foxconn.
The new screens employ CG-Silicon (continuous-grain silicon) technology that enables small screens with fewer layers and high resolutions, while increasing manufacturing yield. It was developed by Sharp and a Japanese partner.
photo credit: marcomagrini via photopin cc
Hat tip: The Verge
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat
Sharp announced today that it has started manufacturing 5-inch high-definition LCD panels for smartphones with a full 1,080 x 1,920 pixels — and an astonishing pixel density of 443 pixels per inch.Just two months ago the Osaka, Japan-based company announced that it was shipping smartphone screens to Apple, presumably for the iPhone 5. Those screens are 4 inches, with a 326 pixel-per-inch image.
These new screens, which Sharp is displaying at CREATEC conference in Japan tomorrow, have only one obvious intended purpose: Android-based phones. Android-based phones such as the Galaxy S3 have significantly larger screens than even the iPhone 5 at 4.8 inches.
Where Sharp will use the 5-inch screens is not clear, but Samsung would clearly be a valuable client as the largest manufacturer of Android-based phones. And the pixel density would set any clients up well for competition with Apple’s iPhone, beating iPhone’s pixel density by over 100 pixels per inch.
One valid question: Can Android even support such a high pixel density? Android’s developer resources reference screen densities up to “xhdpi,” which Android defines as in the 300 pixels per inch range. The developer resources say nothing about 400+ pixel density screens.
Sharp is desperate to find new revenue streams, as the company had a disastrous last quarter and is on track for a $3.18 billion loss this fiscal year. The company is cutting 11,000 jobs — a move of desperation for most Japan-based firms — and is selling production plants in Mexico, China, and Malaysia.
Source: Google Finance
Sharp stock in the past six monthsThe new screens employ CG-Silicon (continuous-grain silicon) technology that enables small screens with fewer layers and high resolutions, while increasing manufacturing yield. It was developed by Sharp and a Japanese partner.
photo credit: marcomagrini via photopin cc
Hat tip: The Verge
Filed under: mobile, VentureBeat
 |  |
iPad mini event invites rumored for October 10th
iPad mini event invites rumored for October 10th:
Read
Read
iPad Mini event rumored for Oct.17 (with a November retail release)
iPad Mini event rumored for Oct.17 (with a November retail release):
Apple should soon start sending out invitations for an October event announcing the iPad Mini, according to an unnamed major Apple investor who spoke to Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt.
Apple hasn’t made any official mention of a smaller version of its 10-inch iPad despite many rumors and potential iPad Mini mockups that have leaked online over the past month. Many speculate that the new device could sport a 7.85-inch screen and sell for a lower price, as VentureBeat previously reported.
The invites should go out Oct. 10 for a Oct. 17 event date, according to Fortune’s sources.
If true, this unveiling would come a month after Apple’s announcement of the hotly anticipated iPhone 5. It makes sense for the company to stage a separate event for the iPad Mini because it could have overshadowed the iPhone 5′s initial debut. Also, announcing the iPad Mini in October would mean that it still had plenty of time to build buzz going into the holiday shopping season. The report indicates that Apple could begin selling the iPad Mini device by Nov. 2.
VentureBeat has yet to receive any word from Apple about an event, but we’ll make sure to update you (either in this post or in a future article) if and when we do get an invite.
Photo via NowhereElse
Filed under: mobile
Apple hasn’t made any official mention of a smaller version of its 10-inch iPad despite many rumors and potential iPad Mini mockups that have leaked online over the past month. Many speculate that the new device could sport a 7.85-inch screen and sell for a lower price, as VentureBeat previously reported.
The invites should go out Oct. 10 for a Oct. 17 event date, according to Fortune’s sources.
If true, this unveiling would come a month after Apple’s announcement of the hotly anticipated iPhone 5. It makes sense for the company to stage a separate event for the iPad Mini because it could have overshadowed the iPhone 5′s initial debut. Also, announcing the iPad Mini in October would mean that it still had plenty of time to build buzz going into the holiday shopping season. The report indicates that Apple could begin selling the iPad Mini device by Nov. 2.
VentureBeat has yet to receive any word from Apple about an event, but we’ll make sure to update you (either in this post or in a future article) if and when we do get an invite.
Photo via NowhereElse
Filed under: mobile
| |
Why Big Companies Can't Innovate
Why Big Companies Can't Innovate:
Big companies are really bad at innovation because they're designed to be bad at innovation.
Take a story plucked from the pages of Gerber's history. In 1974, the company's growth potential was waning. In order to grow profitability and fight margin pressure, Gerber executives turned towards a market they hadn't successfully penetrated for decades: adult food.
Luckily for a company adept in sourcing and processing vegetables and fruits, tens of millions of busy Americans were spending more time at work and fewer hours in front of the stove. Gerber's team knew if they could develop a quick, healthy meal for adults, they had an avenue into meaningful growth.
When Gerber launched its product targeted towards this opportunity, it flopped disastrously. It's no surprise: Instead of developing a novel line of food suited to the needs of busy Americans with distinct branding and its own distribution strategy, Gerber slapped a new label — excitingly named "Gerber Singles" — on existing pureed products and shipped them out for placement in a different aisle.
Needless to say, working Americans weren't busting down the doors at Safeway to pick up the latest, greatest flavor of Gerber Singles carrots. In three months, the product was pulled from all grocers and returned to the company.
For those who would admonish Gerber for their approach to transformational innovation, it might be wise to consider that the company did exactly what it was designed to do: create operational efficiency. This deeply-rooted tendency goes all the way back to a corporation's typical life cycle. In it's infancy, it's designed to bring innovation to the market. A start-up's success is not gauged by earnings or quarterly reports; it's measured by how well it identifies a problem in the market and matches it to a solution. If venture capitalists think entrepreneurs have identified a big problem with an interesting solution, they'll fund the start-up. If those entrepreneurs match and improve this solution, they'll see growth in revenues and, ultimately, profitability.
But that's not what life is like within a mature organization. When corporations reach maturity, the measure of success is very different: it's profit.
Once a business figures out how to solve its customers' problems, organizational structures and processes emerge to guide the company towards efficient operation. Seasoned managers steer their employees from pursuing the art of discovery and towards engaging in the science of delivery. Employees are taught to seek efficiencies, leverage existing assets and distribution channels, and listen to (and appease) their best customers.
Such practices and policies ensure that executives can deliver meaningful earnings to the street and placate shareholders. But they also minimize the types and scale of innovation that can be pursued successfully within an organization. No company ever created a transformational growth product by asking: "How can we do what we're already doing, a tiny bit better and a tiny bit cheaper?"
It's only natural that Gerber executives created a product for adults that looked and felt just like its product for children. The product design allowed them to use their existing processes for sourcing and distributing food as well as empowered them to use excess manufacturing capacity. It was product development in an operationally-efficient fashion.
This was their biggest barrier, not a lack of vision. Companies like Gerber don't struggle to identify the next great idea. It may seem like a foolish endeavor at first, but Gerber for adults wasn't destined for failure. The idea had merit, and the trends the executive team noticed were real. Just look at any smoothie section in your local grocery store. Naked, Odwalla and Innocent sell hundreds of millions of dollars of product addressing the same problem that Gerber identified with a very similar solution.
But Gerber faced the internal pressure of its organization, the need to operate efficiently, to deliver billion-dollar growth businesses every year, to satisfy existing customers — and to do all this without threatening existing net income levels. The problem wasn't the idea; the problem emerged from the relentless pursuit of incremental profit within mature organizations. It's a pursuit that drives us towards incremental wins by leveraging underutilized assets. And you know what's wrong with this pursuit? Nothing. That's the paradox.
At the end of the day, corporations exist to make money. So pursuing profit isn't a problem at all. The issue arises when corporate leaders fail to acknowledge the limits of the organizations they've put in place. They hear about the advantage of disruptive innovation or step-out innovation and decide that their organization should do "some of that." But their organizations are designed to do something else very well. Namely, what they are already doing.
For executives who want to secure growth through innovation, the answer lies in recognizing the limits of their organization and empowering groups to function with very different goals and operational metrics. To allow teams the freedom to create Odwalla Smoothies as opposed to forcing them through a mold that outputs Gerber Singles.
For those executives who aren't willing to engage admit to their organizations are built to be bad at transformational growth, the other option might as well be to give up. It worked for GameStop: the company accepted their impermanence and simply returned profits to investors in the form of dividends, achieving remarkable success in the process.
This is the first post in a three-part series.
Big companies are really bad at innovation because they're designed to be bad at innovation.
Take a story plucked from the pages of Gerber's history. In 1974, the company's growth potential was waning. In order to grow profitability and fight margin pressure, Gerber executives turned towards a market they hadn't successfully penetrated for decades: adult food.
Luckily for a company adept in sourcing and processing vegetables and fruits, tens of millions of busy Americans were spending more time at work and fewer hours in front of the stove. Gerber's team knew if they could develop a quick, healthy meal for adults, they had an avenue into meaningful growth.
When Gerber launched its product targeted towards this opportunity, it flopped disastrously. It's no surprise: Instead of developing a novel line of food suited to the needs of busy Americans with distinct branding and its own distribution strategy, Gerber slapped a new label — excitingly named "Gerber Singles" — on existing pureed products and shipped them out for placement in a different aisle.
Needless to say, working Americans weren't busting down the doors at Safeway to pick up the latest, greatest flavor of Gerber Singles carrots. In three months, the product was pulled from all grocers and returned to the company.
For those who would admonish Gerber for their approach to transformational innovation, it might be wise to consider that the company did exactly what it was designed to do: create operational efficiency. This deeply-rooted tendency goes all the way back to a corporation's typical life cycle. In it's infancy, it's designed to bring innovation to the market. A start-up's success is not gauged by earnings or quarterly reports; it's measured by how well it identifies a problem in the market and matches it to a solution. If venture capitalists think entrepreneurs have identified a big problem with an interesting solution, they'll fund the start-up. If those entrepreneurs match and improve this solution, they'll see growth in revenues and, ultimately, profitability.
But that's not what life is like within a mature organization. When corporations reach maturity, the measure of success is very different: it's profit.
Once a business figures out how to solve its customers' problems, organizational structures and processes emerge to guide the company towards efficient operation. Seasoned managers steer their employees from pursuing the art of discovery and towards engaging in the science of delivery. Employees are taught to seek efficiencies, leverage existing assets and distribution channels, and listen to (and appease) their best customers.
Such practices and policies ensure that executives can deliver meaningful earnings to the street and placate shareholders. But they also minimize the types and scale of innovation that can be pursued successfully within an organization. No company ever created a transformational growth product by asking: "How can we do what we're already doing, a tiny bit better and a tiny bit cheaper?"
It's only natural that Gerber executives created a product for adults that looked and felt just like its product for children. The product design allowed them to use their existing processes for sourcing and distributing food as well as empowered them to use excess manufacturing capacity. It was product development in an operationally-efficient fashion.
This was their biggest barrier, not a lack of vision. Companies like Gerber don't struggle to identify the next great idea. It may seem like a foolish endeavor at first, but Gerber for adults wasn't destined for failure. The idea had merit, and the trends the executive team noticed were real. Just look at any smoothie section in your local grocery store. Naked, Odwalla and Innocent sell hundreds of millions of dollars of product addressing the same problem that Gerber identified with a very similar solution.
But Gerber faced the internal pressure of its organization, the need to operate efficiently, to deliver billion-dollar growth businesses every year, to satisfy existing customers — and to do all this without threatening existing net income levels. The problem wasn't the idea; the problem emerged from the relentless pursuit of incremental profit within mature organizations. It's a pursuit that drives us towards incremental wins by leveraging underutilized assets. And you know what's wrong with this pursuit? Nothing. That's the paradox.
At the end of the day, corporations exist to make money. So pursuing profit isn't a problem at all. The issue arises when corporate leaders fail to acknowledge the limits of the organizations they've put in place. They hear about the advantage of disruptive innovation or step-out innovation and decide that their organization should do "some of that." But their organizations are designed to do something else very well. Namely, what they are already doing.
For executives who want to secure growth through innovation, the answer lies in recognizing the limits of their organization and empowering groups to function with very different goals and operational metrics. To allow teams the freedom to create Odwalla Smoothies as opposed to forcing them through a mold that outputs Gerber Singles.
For those executives who aren't willing to engage admit to their organizations are built to be bad at transformational growth, the other option might as well be to give up. It worked for GameStop: the company accepted their impermanence and simply returned profits to investors in the form of dividends, achieving remarkable success in the process.
This is the first post in a three-part series.
VA to Award Mobile System Contract
VA to Award Mobile System Contract: 
System Will Manage 100,000 Devices
The Department of Veterans Affairs on Sept. 30 will award a contract for an enterprise mobile device management system that will support more than 100,000 devices. Find out how BYOD fits into the VA's plans.
System Will Manage 100,000 DevicesThe Department of Veterans Affairs on Sept. 30 will award a contract for an enterprise mobile device management system that will support more than 100,000 devices. Find out how BYOD fits into the VA's plans.
Google reportedly set to blow open the tablet market later this year with $99 Nexus tablet
Google reportedly set to blow open the tablet market later this year with $99 Nexus tablet:
UPDATE: ASUS has denied Digitimes’ claim that it is working on a $99 Nexus tablet.
Read
UPDATE: ASUS has denied Digitimes’ claim that it is working on a $99 Nexus tablet.
Read
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