VentureBeat |
- Yonbongo’s chat app launches for everyone in select cities
- Demand Media buys CoveritLive: content farm meets liveblogging
- PayPal’s latest developer challenge is all about Android
- AdColony creates an ad network for high-definition mobile videos
- RIM bringing BlackBerry Messenger to Android and iOS?
- 3 ways to incorporate mobile into your business strategy
- Browser makers release standard to bring 3D graphics to web apps without plug-ins
- Loot Drop banks on talented game designers as it takes on social gaming’s giants (exclusive)
- Will 2011 be the year of the iPad 2? (video)
- Electric car startups to square off against Big Auto competition
- Nintendo CEO: Smartphone games are worthless
- Nintendo to partner with Netflix, AT&T to boost 3DS
- Forrester analyst agrees that iPad 2 will dominate
- Ge Wang on iPad 2: it’s better for multimedia app makers (video)
- The iPad 2 will be great for playing games (video)
| Yonbongo’s chat app launches for everyone in select cities Posted: 03 Mar 2011 09:12 AM PST
The app was created by Caleb Elston and David Kasper, two former employees of livestreaming video company Justin.tv. When they first announced Yobongo back in January, Elston described it as “a place for authentic conversations with people who are physically nearby, whom you might not know yet.” The interest in mobile chat continues to grow. Just this week, Facebook acquired chat app Beluga, while Ning launched its own mobile social service Mogwee. But these apps are really focused on connecting you with people you know. In Yobongo, you can chat with anyone, as long as they’re nearby. Behind the scenes, Elston and Kasper have worked to make the app as simple as possible. When you sign up, you don’t have to look for a group to join — Yobongo just places you in the correct room based on your location. For now, Elston said the app will probably just have one room for each city, but it dynamically adjusts the rooms based on activity, so as the user base grows, we’ll probably see rooms based around specific neighborhoods. But even without that narrowing of focus, Elston said that within the early users (who are mostly in San Francisco) he’s already seen one group connect for the first time in the app, then meet up in-person for brunch last weekend. Of course, like every mobile chat app, Elston is also hoping to see those interactions really take off at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin later this month. Companies: Yobongo People: Caleb Elston, David Kasper
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| Demand Media buys CoveritLive: content farm meets liveblogging Posted: 03 Mar 2011 09:05 AM PST
CoveritLive events reach over 60 million people monthly, the company said. The tool is used by companies like News Corp, BBC and ESPN to add live commentary and other interactive features to stories. Last week it powered Oscar ceremony content for over 2 million readers from People, TMZ, Entertainment Weekly and others. The acquisition comes shortly after Demand debuted as a public company last month. The company is widely considered a content farm because it specializes in creating content that’s tailored for search engine traffic. A recent update to Google’s search algorithm took aim at Demand and similar sites that take advantage of search engine loopholes to better rank their content. The company maintains that it can survive based on the value of its content from sites like eHow and Cracked. Demand Media is known for quickly creating articles based on search trends. But with a liveblogging tool like CoveritLive in its arsenal, it will be able to create timely content even faster. It also makes the company a driving force behind many other publications for their own live coverage. Demand Media previously made a strategic investment in CoveritLive in 2009, which gave it a minority stake in the liveblogging company. Demand says that CoveritLive will join its portfolio of social services, like its community platform Pluck. Companies: CoveritLive, Demand Media
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| PayPal’s latest developer challenge is all about Android Posted: 03 Mar 2011 08:57 AM PST
In the past few years, the eBay-owned company has been making a big push to recruit developers who will incorporate its latest payment technology into their websites and applications. PayPal has not only held two previous developer challenges, but it also started its own PayPal X developer conference in San Francisco. Mobile apps have always shared the spotlight at these events. Past winners include AppBacker, which offers to help developers sell their iPhone applications to wholesale buyers, and iConcessionStand, which created a marketplace for buying snacks and souvenirs at stadium events. (iConcessionStand has widened its target customer base beyond stadiums and is rebranding itself as Yorder.) But the new event’s exclusive focus on mobile, and specifically on Android, definitely represents a change. Here’s how PayPal explained it:
The grand prize is $25,000 in your PayPal account, as well as marketing and public relations support. The deadline to submit your Android app is May 3. More details are available here. Companies: paypal
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| AdColony creates an ad network for high-definition mobile videos Posted: 03 Mar 2011 08:00 AM PST
Basically, AdColony can be used to monetize apps and games using the free-to-play business model. In such content, users can play for free but pay real money for virtual goods. If they don’t have money, an advertiser can subsidize the transaction. They do so by getting the user to fulfill some kind of special offer. In this case, the user watches an HD video ad. The offer business is not unlike what Tapjoy announced recently as a way for advertisers to pay for engagement in mobile games. Tapjoy and its partner can measure how far a user gets into a game and then make a special offer to that person for reaching certain achievements. It’s important because while many developers are getting lots of users on mobile devices, they’re not necessarily making money from those users. With AdColony, users aren’t redirected to another web site or app to interact with the video or to claim their reward. They can do it inside the app. Some current mobile ad solutions are based on streaming and buffering (loading a bunch of the video into memory so that it can play smoothly). They also suffer from graininess and muffled sound. With AdColony, Jirbo uses a proprietary technology to produce sharp video playback with no load times, good sound and no graininess. Once the app is on the App Store, AdColony directs high-value video ads to the app as users engage with it. Publishers can see the usage through live analytics and can ensure that ads for adults won’t be seen by kids. The publishers get paid every month.
Jirbo was founded in 2008 and has 35 employees. Rivals include game publishers such as Zynga and ad networks such as Greystripe. Jirbo says its solution is simple, favors developers, and has superior video ad delivery. Jirbo says its software development kit can be integrated into a game in as little as 20 minutes. Once integrated, the developer has to submit their app to Apple and all the instant-load video campaigns are dynamically allocated to them. Jirbo has raised $2 million from Insight Venture Partners. The founder and president is Jonathan Zweig. The company is not currently seeking funding. Companies: Jirbo People: Jonathan Zweig
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| RIM bringing BlackBerry Messenger to Android and iOS? Posted: 03 Mar 2011 07:51 AM PST
Sources tell Boy Genius Report that BlackBerry Messenger will land on Android first, while support for the iPhone and iPad will come later. RIM is apparently still trying to figure out how to charge users for BBM on other platforms. It could offer the app completely free, charge a one-time fee, or charge a recurring subscription fee. (I don’t think the latter is very likely.) BlackBerry Messenger is a popular app among BlackBerry users because it’s incredibly fast. BlackBerry users generally rely on the app to chat amongst themselves, instead of texting. By bringing BBM to other platforms, RIM is clearly taking aim at popular new mobile messaging apps like Kik and Beluga. Those apps are heavily inspired by BlackBerry Messenger — so much so that RIM booted Kik off of its BlackBerry App World store. It also makes sense that RIM is hoping to bring BBM to Android first, as the company seems to be working on bringing Android app support to its PlayBook tablet and future phones. RIM may offer a stripped down BBM experience for Android and iOS users, meaning they may not be able to share things like photos and their locations. The hope is that using BBM on other platforms will convince users to jump to BlackBerry devices. Honestly, RIM should just offer the full-blown BBM experience for free, as that could easily make it the leading mobile chat company. That market dominance will be more important than the minor revenue it would earn charging for the app, or the vague hope that users will adopt BlackBerry phones after getting a taste of BBM. Companies: Apple, Beluga, Google, Kik, RIM
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| 3 ways to incorporate mobile into your business strategy Posted: 03 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST (Editor’s note: Rajesh Makhija is head of the Enterprise Market Unit at IT solutions provider MphasiS. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.) The popularity of smartphones has increased exponentially—not just for personal use but in the enterprise as well. For many in today's workforce, iPhones, Blackberries and other devices have become the de facto mode of checking and responding to email, accessing the Internet, reading industry news and even executing business processes. It’s a paradigm shift in business, but how can you make it work for you? Here are three ways to consider: Incorporate mobile into business process execution—Until recently, from a mobile perspective, decision making within enterprises was primarily around information received on the Blackberry. The popularity of tablets has taken the information distribution to a very different level, though, as the device's large visual display allows for data visualization beyond just websites. In the world of media and entertainment, for example, a film or TV executive who is away from the office can use a tablet to securely stream the latest version of a film or episode that her editing team has been working on and give feedback, saving valuable time in getting the content approved and ready for consumption. Similarly, a warehouse manager can monitor the flow of orders and determine the specific warehouse for faster order fulfillment ensuring better service and lower cost, all based on predetermined algorithms during his commute home on the train. Likewise a private investment advisor can manage her client’s account even when on the move. Strategic companies should ensure these functionalities are top of mind when designing products, solutions or services for the enterprise. Leveraging the evolving richness of mobile experience— Previously, websites mostly presented snapshot views of data – and visualization was limited to pre-built elements such as tables, charts, tabs and accordions. This began to change with the advent of mobile. Early adoption of these devices came with hastily built "miniature" websites. While these sites served their purpose, developers raised the bar when they delivered Apps with a much richer user interface, including comprehensive tools for graphics. Tablets and smartphones can now present data in a visually rich and interactive form. They can even use positional sensors such as accelerometers and gyro-meters and take users to a dimension that was simply not possible with desktops or laptops. Putting it into action— Taking advantage of these features has significant implications on a number of business functions, including the potency of mobile marketing. These elements can transform the user experience with the tools employed for brand recognition, namely free ringtones, wallpapers, sponsored games or other like applications. The platform offers similar benefits for lead generation, where users are asked to input information to receive discounts or coupons. One key element of note is the growing presence of regulatory bodies attempting to govern this platform. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued guidelines covering topics such as frequency of contact and the type of message delivered. And the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) announced late last year that it is in the early stages of developing comprehensive recommendations for how companies can engage with consumers via SMS, MMS, mobile Internet, applications and more. Organizations must ensure that they are in compliance with relevant regulations as they move forward with their mobile strategy. Prior to smartphones and tablets, users had to go to their laptops or desktops in order to participate in a business critical process. That’s different now, as the explosion of mobile has permanently altered the ways companies interact, both internally and externally.
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| Browser makers release standard to bring 3D graphics to web apps without plug-ins Posted: 03 Mar 2011 06:00 AM PST
WebGL, as the technology is known, could become a critical technology in giving ordinary web pages a 3D makeover. If it becomes widely adopted and wins support from browser makers such as Microsoft, then 3D could infiltrate a whole new series of web-based apps. Right now, many web sites don’t use 3D graphics because they fear that users don’t have good enough PC hardware to process the 3D. So WebGL is aimed at unleashing a huge sea of graphics innovation on the internet. (Cool demos are here, once you upgrade your browser.) Neil Trevett, vice president at Nvidia and president of the consortium Khronos Group, said the new technology could lead to a wave of innovation in web gaming, education, training and graphically rich user interfaces. Vlad Vukićević of Mozilla and chair of the WebGL Working Group said that WebGL-based browsers will take advantage of 3D graphics hardware in a user’s machine if it is present. WebGL is a browser version of OpenGL, the Open Graphics Library specification developed by Silicon Graphics in 1992. You can run OpenGL applications in a browser today using a plug-in from Unity Technologies. But even that plug-in has to be downloaded once, and in a country with uneven broadband penetration, plug-in downloads are an obstacle to widespread adoption. With WebGL, browser makers will include new code in their future browser versions. Users can download those updates and then can enjoy the benefits of WebGL, as long as web site creators take advantage of their newfound 3D capability. WebGL brings the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics functions to HTML5 web pages. That means the 3D graphics could be viewed on PCs, embedded devices, and mobile devices. As we’ve noted before, OpenGL is currently used for video games and for the slick Mac OS X interface. Your Windows PC already knows what to do with it. WebGL will extend OpenGL by allowing websites and Web-based services to access and control OpenGL through Javascript, the programming language that can be built into Web pages. The new standard will not require anyone to contribute royalties, which is sometimes a condition for new standards. Microsoft has not yet embraced WebGL. Compliant browsers include Mozilla Firefox 4.0, Google Chrome 9.0, an experimental Opera Build, and Apple Mac OS Safari nightly builds. Khronos is also forming a new WebCL working group to create a standard related to parallel computing, which involves the use of graphics chips to handle non-graphics computing tasks. Companies: Google, Mozilla, Opera People: Neil Trevett
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| Loot Drop banks on talented game designers as it takes on social gaming’s giants (exclusive) Posted: 03 Mar 2011 05:00 AM PST
The San Mateo, Calif.-based company is unveiling its game plan today for making a splash in social games, which have been fueled by the rapid growth of Facebook past 600 million users. Loot Drop is assembling a small but talented team of famous game industry veterans who already have a lot of experience crossing the divide into social games. Their plan is to build a strong game development company that can publish games for multiple social game publishers.
Loot Drop has funding from social game publisher RockYou, which will publish Romero’s first game in the coming months. The company has a total of 11 employees, including programmers who have decades of experience programming games. And while there are a lot of old timers in console video games who are thinking about making the leap into social games, each one of the design leaders at Loot Drop has already done that. Rattling off the bios of these founders is like taking a walk through video game history. Hall will be the studio head and game designer at Loot Drop's Austin, Texas studio. He has worked with Romero at places such as id Software and Ion Storm. Most recently he was an executive at KingsIsle Entertainment, maker of the popular Wizard 101 online virtual fantasy world that was inherently social from the start. Robert Sirotek, co-founder of Sir-Tech Software, will serve as chief executive of Loot Drop. Sirotek's previous company released 138 games over 26 years, including Brathwaite’s Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series. “I’ve had a chance to work with John several times and I jumped at the chance to do it again,” said Hall. “John’s genius is seeing the next thing. It’s an honor to work with Brenda too.” Most recently, Romero made a spectacularly successful social game, Ravenwood Fair, for LOLApps. That game launched in October and turned out to be a big hit, with more than 11 million monthly active users. Romero said that whet his appetite for more. And Brathwaite spent the past year as creative director at LOLapps and worked on Ravenwood Fair with Romero. One of her games is being published soon by LOLapps, and she will now begin work on a new game for Loot Drop. Romero said his goal is to launch four Loot Drop games this year. The games will be published and marketed by other companies.
Romero is used to making bold bets, and sometimes he’s just a little too bold. He is now on his eighth video game startup. From id Software to Ion Storm, he had a lot of ups and downs. At id, Romero and co-founder John Carmack, Hall and others created some of the most legendary first-person shooter games in history, from Doom to Quake. But the id team split asunder. Ion Storm (pictured, photo credit Salon) in particular, which Romero started with Hall, was an ambitious attempt (with admittedly too much machismo) to make game designers into the center of power in the industry. It was an outright attack on the system where publishers held most of the power. But after raising a lot of money, it crashed and burned, much to the delight of the gaming establishment. Ion Storm closed its doors in 2001. After Ion Storm collapsed, Romero tried his hand at mobile games with Monkeystone Games, and he thrived in that environment for several years. He worked briefly at Midway Games and then shifted to massively multiplayer online games, starting Slipgate Ironworks, which became the core studio of Gazillion. That didn’t work out as planned, reminding Romero that big unwieldy teams aren’t easy to manage. Then he moved over to LOLapps as a contract game designer to experiment with making a Facebook game. His title, Ravenwood Fair, was made in a few weeks by a team that had never made a game before and worked under his and Brathwaite’s direction. Once he got a feel for it, he decided to start his own company “because that’s what I’ve always done.” With this startup, he wanted to be sure to have creative control. Moving with speed was important, Romero said, because “the game industry is dropping down on top of social.” Veterans are flooding into the new social game studios. Brathwaite says there’s a talent war on and her feeling is that the best strategy is to gather a “ninja strike team” together. When you do that, it’s important to treat game designers with respect, regarding them as talented artists rather than worker bees. One way to express that is to give them all credit in each game, she said. Often, social game companies don’t do that for fear that someone will steal away their talent, a practice that was common in the early days of gaming and which was hated by individual developers, Brathwaite said. She says Loot Drop has a unique approach because it is a gathering of veterans who have already worked together many times and who have also succeeded in the new era of social games. Sirotek added that he has occasionally seen game developers get good at one kind of game and then fail to adapt to make the new kind of game when the industry changes. So developers have to spend time learning the new ways.
“We don’t have a view of strip mining the players for cash,” Romero said, referring to the fact that many players spend lots of money buying virtual goods in social games. “When a player gives you money, you want them to feel good about giving you that money.” That view is certain to be controversial. Social game leader Zynga has hired a lot of seasoned game designers — the big names include Brian Reynolds, Steve Chiang, Mark Skaggs and Bruce Shelley (a contractor). But it started out without a focus on traditional game design. Zynga was more like a web company that figured out how casual games could work on Facebook and how they could be improved by paying attention to metrics and then monetized through virtual goods. Romero didn’t single out Zynga as the enemy in an interview, but clearly Zynga’s approach to making games in its early stages is the antithesis of what Romero and his colleagues are saying is important now. For many in the industry, the early Zynga symbolized a lot that was wrong in the industry, for traditional game designers. For those who think that way, Zynga’s clash with the old game companies is a lot like the clash between the artists and the business people, or the developers and the marketers, in just about any game company. Indeed, while the early Facebook games drew praise for the sheer numbers of players they could attract, the focus these days — with titles such as Zynga’s FrontierVille (designed by Reynolds) — is on engagement, or keeping players entertained with a game for a longer period of time. Brathwaite said many veterans have been encouraged by the success of FrontierVille, which has more than 19 million monthly active users on Facebook, as proof that game designers have a place in the social game market. That’s because FrontierVille is really the first of Zynga’s hit games to be critically acclaimed for its game design.
But Sirotek said that isn’t the case. He says the market is in such an early stage that anything can still happen. Social games can still be created in a matter of months with a very small but competent team. Richard Garriott, founder of social game startup Portalarium and the veteran creator of the Ultima series of games, feels the same way and is preparing to launch original games in direct battle with Zynga. Brathwaite says, “There is a ginormous fish in social games, but it’s a giant sea.” Brathwaite says that the current market favors games that can be played in a lunch hour. She says she loves this time now because, for the first time in her decades-long career in games, she is part of the key demographic that consumes Facebook games, which is women in their 30s or older. “I’m in the target market,” she said. “I am making games for my gender peers. This is the moment I have been waiting for.” Adds Romero, “We have satisfied hardcore gamers for decades. Now it’s time for the rest of the world. Our opportunity is to teach the rest of the world how to play games.” And Hall said, “My wife Terri is playing Ravenwood Fair and she has embraced it all the way. But she won’t admit she is a gamer. She just likes chopping down trees,” which is one of the main activities in the game.
Romero says a lot of venture capitalists have come knocking on the company’s door already. He is taking meetings to get to know them. But Hall says that it makes more sense to build a real company with valuable assets first, rather than fund a new company that is nothing but fumes. At the Game Developers Conference this week, Brathwaite will give a rant on the social game industry and its tensions with traditional game developers. Her message? “We’ve seen this all before and we have had so many shades of evil,” she said. “We are going in to do something right. We believe in fun. We want to make games fun. Some people call social games evil and [say] that they are ruining games. But that’s just judging the entire platform on a few games and one business model. We are going into this to pioneer a new platform.” Companies: Electronic Arts, Id Software, Ion Storm, LolApps, Loot Drop, Monkeystone Games, Portalarium, Siro-Tech, Zynga People: Brenda Brathwaite, John Romero, Rob Sirotek, Tom Hall
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| Will 2011 be the year of the iPad 2? (video) Posted: 02 Mar 2011 04:56 PM PST
When it sells its products in stores, it also doesn’t have to give away 20 percent of the margin to a retailer. That is a huge financial advantage. Carriers are also willing to subsidize the costs of Apple products in a way that they won’t with other tablet vendors. All of these things may explain why the Motorola Xoom, a very cool product, is selling for $800 while Apple has priced its new devices at $499 to $829, (and dropped the price of the old iPad to $399). Apple has also left very little room for rivals here, since it has signed up both AT&T and Verizon. Perhaps there is room for rivals to sell $199 machines, but users probably aren’t going to like them. Those are reasons why any cool Apple mobile product could beat other rivals. But Apple has also done some smart things with the iPad 2. It has created another rev of its microprocessor, the A5, which has two cores, or computing brains. And it has nine times faster graphics than its old A4 chip. Since Apple designs this chip itself, it doesn’t have to give away much margin to a chip design firm. It only has to give a small margin to a chip manufacturer such as Samsung to make the chips. Apple has also custom-designed the A5 to run Apple applications on a device with a 10-hour battery life. Apple should have an edge there, as it won’t sell the A5 to rivals. But if this is an advantage, it isn’t likely to last long, as Nvidia is being very aggressive with a new quad-core chip that it could sell to any Android rivals. The design of the iPad 2 is where Apple has more advantages. The iPad 2 will have faster web-browsing with a new version of Safari. It has two cameras that will inspire a lot of video and photo-related apps. The availability of the Mac applications — iMovie, Garage Band, and Photo Booth — on the iPad 2 will make a lot of users happy. More interesting features will come with new releases of the iOS, or Apple’s operating system in the fairly near future. There are some users who won’t like the restrictions of Apple’s ecosystem. If they want universal serial bus (USB) and SD card ports, they are out of luck. Apple didn’t change the resolution of its screen either, leaving it at 1024 x 768. Competitors could add these options and put emphasis on them as selling points. (Critics are disappointed that Apple did not improve the display, but that’s a big cost issue others have too). Apple has also made great improvements in the feel of the product. It’s 33 percent thinner, 2 ounces lighter, and it has a wonderful new screen cover that doubles as a stand for the device. (It wakes up the device when you peel it back and it has micro-fibers that clean the screen when the cover is on). Now here is why Jobs is not entirely right. Apple has come up with a stunning machine at prices that the competitors will have a hard time beating. But it is almost inevitable that Android-based tablets will gain market share on Apple. So far, I don’t see the Android machine that will beat the iPad 2. But the potential is there, given ingredients such as Android 3.0, Nvidia Tegra 2 chips and other fast microprocessors, and 4G LTE. The latter is the main weakness in Apple’s armor. LTE is fast, with a minimum speed on Verizon at around 12 megabits a second and actual speeds running much higher than that now. Getting access to 4G LTE is as big a benefit as having access to lots of cool apps, from my point of view. Right now, the timing of the still-young LTE technology means that Apple cannot yet put it into its mass-produced, lowest-cost tablet computers. If LTE costs come down sometime soon, then Apple can launch a new version of the iPad to incorporate the technology. But it’s not a simple upgrade, as it means that the hardware of the machine — including the radio chip — has to change. And for now, LTE chips are larger than their 3G equivalents, so the heat dissipation and product size are affected. In other words, LTE can force Apple to redesign the iPad. Apple can do that. But Android tablet makers might be able to move faster than Apple directly into the 4G LTE tablet market. If they do that, then they will have found a scenario where they could steal a march on Apple. Apple is not likely to let that gap last for a long time, but it might be enough for Apple to lose some share this year. Apple’s leadership position in this market will be hard to beat, but the collective weight and reach of Android rivals could erode it. And here’s a sobering thought: If Apple eventually winds up with only 30 percent of the tablet market, it could still be No. 1, and its place as the largest technology company in the world will not be at risk. Check out Apple’s overview video on the iPad 2 and Jobs’ comments on technology and the liberal arts below. People: Steve Jobs
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| Electric car startups to square off against Big Auto competition Posted: 02 Mar 2011 04:04 PM PST
Some startups have lofty ambitions. Electric car startup Coda said today it aims to sell 50,000 cars by 2015, or 12,500 cars a year. It will launch its electric sedan (pictured, right) late this year, with about 100 miles of range and a $44,900 pre-tax incentive price tag. The company has said in the past it wants to sell 14,000 cars in the first year of release, targeting 40 percent of sales going to corporate fleets, an ambitious goal. Newcomers like luxury hybrid maker Fisker, and smaller players Wheego and Think are looking to make a mark on the market, too. But startups are jostling in an increasingly crowded space, and one of their top reasonings for their company’s success — low supply and high demand for electric cars — may not last for long as automakers like Nissan, Chevrolet, Toyota and Ford ramp up production and launch more green car offerings. Coda has made such an argument in the past, saying the sedan will sell because there’s more demand than supply for electric cars. Ditto for Wheego, a startup selling a two-seater electric car for $32,995. While there is potentially an opportunity for startups to make a mark, asking consumers to pay a premium price for an unestablished brand of car that doesn’t seem remarkably different from its better-known competitors seems like a stretch. Indeed, a consumer survey conducted last year by Pike Research found that a small number of consumers are willing to pay a premium of more than 20 percent for an electric car. “While there is greater demand than the small supply today, we don't expect that to continue very far into the future when more models are introduced, and the major brands are producing (electric vehicles) in greater numbers,” says Pike analyst John Gartner. “There may be a brief window in 2011 to 2012 when some customers tire of waiting for Leafs and Volts [and] may consider paying more for vehicle Fisker or Coda, but those will be few in number.”
Trying to break into the auto manufacturing and selling business is no easy task. One of the most successful car startups to date, electric carmaker Tesla, IPO’d last year and is now planning to fully produce from scratch the all-electric Model S sedan (pictured, left) at its first-ever factory. Some analysts like Carter Driscoll of Capstone Investments have expressed trepidation about Tesla stock. His argument is that it’s very difficult to build cars from scratch without ever having done it before — as is the case with Tesla’s new Fremont factory, the building grounds of the Model S and future cars. Tesla, however, has a leg up on other startups in that it has already successfully assembled and sold a car, the Roadster. Mass-consumer and luxury green car hopefuls alike are coming up against competition from major automakers. Nissan has released its all-electric Leaf, which is backordered with a waiting list of 20,000. GM recently sped up its rollout of the partially electric Volt, citing high demand. Ford will release the Focus Electric later this year, and Toyota, father of arguably the most successful and well-known hybrid available to date, will be releasing a plug-in version in 2012, the Prius Plug-In. The Fisker luxury plug-in hybrid, a sports car called the Karma (pictured, right), will go on sale this year at a price tag of $95,000. The company has pushed back the release dates and raised prices several times, amounting to about a 20 percent price increase. With the Roadster already available and better-known names like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, BMW and Nissan gearing up to offer sporty, sexy green cars, Fisker is arguably up against more competition than it would have been had it debuted earlier. Tesla’s Model S will also have to compete against those offerings. So far, the company says it has nailed down about 3,700 reservations for the car, which will retail for $57,000 and cost $5,000 to reserve. Would you pay a premium for an electric car from a startup? Or would you rather wait and pay less (maybe) for a car from a brand you know? Companies: Audi, Bmw, Coda, Fisker, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Tesla, Think, Toyota, Wheego People: Carter Driscoll
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| Nintendo CEO: Smartphone games are worthless Posted: 02 Mar 2011 01:41 PM PST
"They are not like gaming consoles, there's no motivation [for] high-value video games," Iwata said at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Iwata said he's worried about the future of the industry. Big game companies pour millions of dollars into game development, and only a few of the titles become megahits like Halo or Super Mario. It was hard to get attention before and now, with tens of thousands of new titles, it has become even harder. He listed Nintendo, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 as what he considers high-value gaming platforms: "We have some differences in the way we do business but games always come first. The console is just to enable gaming." On the other hand, social networks and mobile-software platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system focus on getting as many apps as possible. Smartphone manufacturers naturally want to sell devices, while social media sites seek to have as many active users as possible. Mobile games are less expensive to create, but sell for less — or nothing at all. "92 percent of mobile games are free, and the rest are sold with a low price", said Iwata. "We have always been able to make a living with games." And he would clearly like to keep it that way. Too bad so many consumers and investors disagree. Companies: Microsoft, nintendo, Sony People: Satoru Iwata
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| Nintendo to partner with Netflix, AT&T to boost 3DS Posted: 02 Mar 2011 01:30 PM PST Nintendo's new 3DS handheld video-game player will play Netflix movies and connect to AT&T’s network of Wi-Fi hotspots next summer. Reggie Fils-Aimé, the president and COO of Nintendo North America, said that the 3DS platform will be an excellent way of promoting new games and other 3d-material. The new features will be available after a major software update in May. After the update, the handheld console will also gain the ability to play 3D movie trailers in a format that doesn’t require special glasses to view. Fils-Aimé made the remarks in a keynote address at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. One limitation of the 3DS has been the use of a removable cartridge to load games into memory for play. More modern game-playing devices like Apple’s iPod Touch store games on memory chips. With the update, the 3DS will be able to download additional game content even without a cartridge loaded, and can do so without charge over AT&T’s Wi-Fi network.  Satoru Iawata at the stage. Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, who also spoke at the conference, said he wants the 3DS to be the next must-have. His list of examples of must-haves included games like Angry Birds, Grand Theft Auto and Tetris. Nintendo announced also a new 3D version of its popular game franchise Super Mario. There was no official title or logo available. Iwata promised he'll release more details at the E3 Expo in June. Companies: nintendo People: Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iawata
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| Forrester analyst agrees that iPad 2 will dominate Posted: 02 Mar 2011 01:07 PM PST
During the event, Jobs made several digs at the competition, arguing that a wave of "copycat" devices are flooding the market, but they're taking the wrong approach by treating tablets as "the next PC market" rather than "post-PC devices that need to be easier to use than a PC, more intuitive." Jobs' confidence seems well-earned, given the iPad's stellar sales — J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz had previously predicted that Apple will dominate the market until 2012 at least. So how does the iPad 2 affect that argument? Rotman predicts that the device will claim 80 percent of the total US marketshare for tablets in 2011. The iPad 2 seems to represent an incremental improvement over its predecessor rather than a huge leap forward, but Rotman argued that the key to Apple's victory lies not in a rational comparison of features. Instead, it’s mostly about adding enough cool stuff to stir consumers’ emotions:
Still, Rotman said it's possible that someone could take on the iPad, pointing to Amazon, Sony, and Microsoft as companies that might announce something formidable. So Apple has solidified its place at the top but, she said, "Things could get rowdy." People: Sarah Rotman, Steve Jobs
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| Ge Wang on iPad 2: it’s better for multimedia app makers (video) Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:54 PM PST
His company makes a lot of cool music apps from Ocarina to Magic Fiddle. Each of them takes advantage of the unique features of the Apple mobile devices. With Ocarina, you can blow into the microphone of the device to make sound and tap on its touchscreen to add various effects. The better graphics and dual-core processor will also be very useful as Smule designs its next big apps, Wang said.
People: Ge Wang
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| The iPad 2 will be great for playing games (video) Posted: 02 Mar 2011 12:44 PM PST
That’s a good thing for Apple, since playing games is the top activity on the iPad and the new version will help Apple further invade the turf of game hardware makers such as Nintendo. That, in turn, will generate a lot more revenues for Apple and game creators such as Epic, the maker of high-end graphics technology and games such as Gears of War 3 and Bulletstorm. On the iPad, Epic Games created the runaway hit Infinity Blade, which has beautiful 3D graphics. Apple has nearly 60,000 games on the iPhone, and many of the 65,000 apps on the iPad are games. With nine-times better graphics, Rein says game makers will be able to create scenes with faster action, more detail, and better shadows and lighting. Rein said the nine-times better graphics in the A5 chip — the dual core processor that serves as the brains of the iPad 2 — will be great for games. The screen resolution is the same as the original iPad, but the device now has an HDMI output port, which lets you play iPad 2 content on a bigger screen at 1080p resolution. With a dual core chip, game makers can also make improvements such as better sound. Check out Rein’s reaction to the iPad 2 in this video. Companies: Apple, epic games People: Mark Rein
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Location-based chat startup 
Notorious content farm Demand Media announced today that 
PayPal is announcing its latest developer challenge today, with a focus on Google’s Android mobile operating system — the PayPal X Developer Challenge for Android.
Advertisers want to find mobile consumers who will engage with compelling ads. AdColony says its high-quality, high impact HD video ads can hold the attention of mobile consumers; and it is betting that advertisers are willing to pay higher prices to reach those consumers. In turn, that can generate more money for developers. If it works, then mobile content will become more profitable and companies will be able to better support their businesses with ads.
The company already has a lot of traction. Jirbo has used the ad network on more than 200 of its own internally developed apps for the past year. It has drawn advertisers such as 20th Century Fox, ESPN, CBS Interactive, Microsoft and others. One of the apps, Type n Talk, has had more than 4.8 million downloads to date. Full told, Jirbo apps have been downloaded 30 million times. Jirbo is now offering the AdColony solution to third-party developers. Jirbo calls the system “video for virtual currency.”
Research in Motion is planning to bring its popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) app to Android and Apple’s iOS, according to 
An industry consortium including browser makers Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Google today announced it has created a final standard on how to deliver 
Getting the best talent together is a good strategy in any market. 
The company’s leadership is impressive and includes Doom co-creators 
Third-party development deals are common in the traditional video game industry. But they aren't so common in social games, or least they aren't publicized that much. The industry is in its early stages and it hasn’t broken down into its areas of specialization yet. It’s still like the early PC industry, before it broke down into makers of hard drives, microprocessors, and software. Social gaming has grown up with publishers doing everything. As the industry evolves, the likely specialties include publisher, distributor, analytics firm, and developer. But Romero feels like the industry is mature enough to support an independent game development studio.
Romero said he has done that. And he said that the lesson of many of his past startups was that you should always work with small teams of seasoned people, not with huge teams. Each of the three teams at Loot Drop will start with a handful of people and grow to perhaps 10 or 11 each. As with Ion Storm, Romero’s view is that “design is law,” meaning the game designer is in charge and responsible for focusing on making the game fun. That means that commercial concerns, such as figuring out how to monetize a game, are secondary. Metrics, while important in the feedback loop of design, are also secondary to the designer’s instincts for what is fun and what is not.
Of course, Loot Drop isn’t going to knock out Zynga, which has more than 267 million monthly active users on Facebook, with a few well-designed games. Zynga could even become a publisher of Loot Drop’s games, as Loot Drop’s relationship with RockYou is not exclusive. In fact, many independent game developers are moving into mobile games because they feel like Zynga — and a handful of other players such as CrowdStar, Electronic Arts, 6 Waves, and Playdom — have already won the lion’s share of the market. Those indie developers feel like the market is played out and it’s too hard to dislodge the leaders. Starting a social game company, they say, is as crazy as starting a console game company to take on Activision Blizzard and EA.
Romero said the flowering of new game studios — which follows upon the layoffs and studio shutdowns at many big companies during the recession — reminds him of the days in the 1990s when many developer-powered studios were built. Today, there are a few strong game studios that Romero admires, such as Bonfire and Newtoy — both of which have been acquired by Zynga.
The big picture question of the day is whether Apple has done it again. With the original iPad, Apple crushed its rivals, taking more than 90 percent of the tablet market in 2010 and selling more than 15 million units. Jobs predicted today that 2011 will be the year of the iPad 2. Based on what I have seen today, I think he’s mostly, but not entirely, right.
Competitors will discover that Apple has a lot of inherent financial advantages, including being a low-cost leader. That may not sound intuitive, but I believe it has to be true. It is selling so much volume of its products that it can get discounts on parts and manufacturing services that no one else can get.
Competition is heating up in the electric car sector, and the next few years will be a challenging testing ground for startups looking to gain a foothold among consumers as more and more major automakers launch electric and hybrid cars.
The Coda sedan’s specs don’t appear to be hugely different from the Leaf, but costs $12,000 more. One analyst told us last year “it’s really hard to see how this will be successful” given that it 
In a feisty attack on the fastest-growing sectors of the video-game industry, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said that smartphone games and social-media games focus on quantity instead of quality.
Apple just wrapped up 
Ge Wang, founder of social music app maker 
Check out Wang’s reaction in this video.
Mark Rein, vice president of | You are subscribed to email updates from VentureBeat To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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