Techmeme: Apple's Tim Cook Visits Foxconn IPhone Plant in China (Bloomberg)

March 29, 2012, 12:00 PM

Top News

Smartphones Account for Half of all Mobile Phones, Dominate New Phone Purchases in the US — Almost half (49.7%) of U.S. mobile subscribers now own smartphones, as of February 2012. According to Nielsen, this marks an increase of 38 percent over last year; in February 2011, only 36 percent of mobile subscribers owned smartphones.

More: 9to5Mac, The Verge, MediaPost, VentureBeat, Internet2Go, TechCrunch, Engadget, BGR, Fortune, msnbc.com, Tech Trader Daily, textually.org, PhoneArena, SeekingAlpha.com, MacNN and FierceMobileContent

Paul M. Barrett / Business Week:

Apple's War on Android — In her black robe and strand of white pearls, Lucy Koh projects the serious, deliberate demeanor befitting a U.S. District Court judge. The Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor has served on the California state bench and as a partner in a Silicon Valley law firm …

More: AppleInsider, Business Insider, Fortune, 9to5Mac, iDownloadBlog.com and MacDailyNews

Ellis Hamburger / The Verge:

Paper: the next great iPad app, from the brains behind Courier — Georg Petschnigg throws his hands into the air as he traces thousands of years of human evolution that led us to develop the fragile wrists we need to use tools. Petschnigg locks his wrist into place and pretends to scribble …

More: Betabeat, All about Microsoft Blog, Gizmodo, iDownloadBlog.com, I4U News, App Advice and Appolicious Advisor. Tweets: @jonfingas

Chris Gallagher / Reuters:

Star-struck Japan PM befriends Facebook's Zuckerberg — (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda frequently entertains dignitaries from all over the world, but he was a touch star-struck on Thursday when he hosted a young billionaire with a whiff of celebrity: Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

More: ZDNet, Asiajin, Tech in Asia and VentureBeat

Mark McDonald / IHT Rendezvous:

Zuckerberg in China: Let the Rumors Begin — HONG KONG — Mark Zuckerberg was spotted walking around Shanghai on Tuesday, which naturally led to a spike in online speculation about Facebook entering the Chinese market. — He said he was just on vacation with his girlfriend, Priscilla Chan.

More: VentureBeat, Agence France Presse and Reuters

Bloomberg:

Apple's Tim Cook Visits Foxconn IPhone Plant in China — Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook visited Foxconn Technology Group's newly built manufacturing facility for the iPhone in Zhengzhou, China, as the U.S. company seeks to improve working conditions.

Agam Shah / PC World:

Dell Ends Smartphone Sales in the US — Dell has stopped selling smartphones in the U.S. as it tweaks its mobile strategy to focus more on emerging markets and higher-margin products. — Dell has nixed its last standing Venue and Venue Pro smartphones and no replacements have been announced.

More: AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Electronista, FierceWireless, Between the Lines Blog, CNET, PhoneArena, IntoMobile, Ubergizmo, Engadget, Phones Review, The Verge and WMPoweruser

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Millennial Media Shares Pop 100 Percent In First Trade; Valued At Nearly $2B — Mobile ad network Millennial Media just debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “MM,” and saw shares pop 97 percent in the first trade of $25. The company initially priced its IPO at $13 per share last night …

More: VentureBeat, Mercury News, VatorNews, The Tech Trade, PE Hub Blog and SiliconANGLE

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

OH NO: Apple TV Isn't Coming Until 2013, Says Research Group — Most analysts say Apple will release an Apple TV this year. — Not Asian research group CLSA, which said in a note this morning that it thinks it comes out in 2013. — We don't have the full note, just a brief of what they said, which is included below.

More: Fast Company, The Apple Core Blog, Guardian, T3 News, CNET, MacRumors and iDownloadBlog.com

Jack Purcher / Patently Apple:

The Foxconn-Sharp Alliance is all about Apple's Coming HDTV

More: Reuters, Social Media, AppleInsider and Bloomberg

Luke Plunkett / Kotaku:

The Next PlayStation is Called Orbis, Sources Say. Here are the Details. — While the official reveal of Sony's next home console could still be months away, if not longer, Kotaku has today learned some important details concerning the PlayStation 3's successor.

More: PC World, VentureBeat, Forbes, GamesIndustry International, ITworld.com, Fudzilla, Ubergizmo, Gizmodo UK, Pocket-lint, Softpedia News, SlashGear, Neowin.net, RipTen Videogame Blog, The Verge, VG247, CNET and Ars Technica

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:

House Shoots Down Legislation That Would Have Stopped Employers From Demanding Your Facebook Password — Well, that didn't take long. A proposed Facebook user protection amendment introduced yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives has already been shot down.

More: The Verge, Daily Dot, Friending Facebook Blog, SocialTimes, PC Magazine, Gizmodo and CNET. Thanks:@alexia

Matthew Kauffman / Investigative Reporting:

Claim Check: Employers Asking for Facebook Passwords

More: Poynter and Hillicon Valley

Fred Wilson / A VC:

Some Thoughts On Online Privacy — There are signs that Washington is gearing up to do something big in the area of online privacy. The FTC put out a report earlier this week and the White House called for a “privacy bill of rights” last month. Both have asked Congress to act on this issue.

Roger Cheng / CNET:

AT&T promises biggest launch ever for Lumia 900 — Nokia and AT&T's Lumia 900. — (Credit: CNET) — AT&T and Nokia are bringing out the big guns when they launch the Lumia 900 next month. — “At all levels, this is a notch above anything we've ever done,” AT&T device head Jeff Bradley …

More: SiliconANGLE, Nokia Conversations, FierceWireless, AllThingsD, SlashGear, Phones Review, The Next Web, TG Daily, Examiner, WMPoweruser, Gotta Be Mobile, Macgasm, My Nokia Blog, iDownloadBlog.com and 9to5Mac

Richard Lawler / Engadget:

iPhone 4 owners can register for $15 antennagate settlements (updated) — The official website for the iPhone 4 “antennagate” class action settlement is live, as pointed out by co-lead counsel on the case Ira Rothken. Of course, speaking of cases, if you're an iPhone 4 owner who has taken advantage …

More: Ars Technica, Inquirer, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Gizmodo, CNET, The Verge, iLounge, TUAW, iPhone Hacks, everythingiCafe, iPhone, SlashGear and PhoneArena

Deborah Gage / Venture Capital Dispatch:

HootSuite Takes A Little Cash Off The Table To ‘De-Risk,’ Aims For Bigger Game — Social media management company HootSuite Media has ballooned since it started a little over three years ago, winning business from global brands and growing to nearly four million users, with $75 million in revenue expected this year.

More: BetaKit, PandoDaily, VentureBeat, AllTwitter, Reuters, AllThingsD and TechCrunch

Jacques Hebert / YouTube Blog:

Do You Have What it Takes to be the ‘Next’ great YouTube Vlogger? — Vlogging, or video blogging, videos are some of the most popular on YouTube. And rightfully so—they're one of the few types of videos that literally anyone can create: all you have to do is sit in front of camera …

More: PC Magazine, SocialTimes and The Atlantic Wire

Dan Graziano / BGR:

Google's $199 Nexus tablet may pressure vendors to cut prices — It is widely believed that Google will entere the tablet market in 2012 with an own-branded 7-inch Android tablet. The search giant has reportedly partnered with ASUS to build a $199 device that will compete against Amazon's Kindle Fire.

More: CNET, Fudzilla, DigiTimes and Tech Trader Daily

Austin Carr / Fast Company:

Bump Launches Payments App To Let You Share Money By Tapping Phones Together — More than a snazzy new feature, Bump Pay is the culmination of lessons learned by CEO David Lieb. — Bump, the app that lets users “bump” smartphones together to share contacts and photos, is launching another service to let users pay the same way.

More: PandoDaily, VentureBeat, VatorNews, Mashable!, TechCrunch, ABCNEWS, Bump Blog and CNET

IDC:

Nearly 1 Billion Smart Connected Devices Shipped in 2011 with Shipments Expected to Double by 2016, According to IDC — FRAMINGHAM, Mass., March 28, 2012 -The universe of smart connected devices, including PCs, media tablets, and smartphones, saw shipments of more than 916 million units …

More: PC Magazine, Marketing Land, Computerworld, asymco, Network World, SlashGear, CNET, AppleInsider, TechSpot, Techie Buzz, Engadget, Music Ally, The Register, Telecompetitor and TechCrunch

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Snapguide wants to be your handheld how-to guide for everything — There are plenty of websites that provide in-depth information about specific topics, but apart from a few tired old services like eHow from Demand Media, there aren't many places you can go to find how-to guides for a wide range …

More: PandoDaily, PandoDaily, Uncrunched, Snapguide, Lifehacker, TechCrunch and AllThingsD. Thanks:@mathewi

Steve Lohr / New York Times:

New U.S. Research Will Aim at Flood of Digital Data — The federal government is beginning a major research initiative in big data computing. The effort, which will be announced on Thursday, involves several government agencies and departments, and commitments for the programs total $200 million.

More: GeekWire, GigaOM, CNET, Gov 2.0, Gov 2.0 and insideHPC

Arne Hess / the::unwired:

AVAILABILITY: HTC announces One X, One S and One V availability for next week [UPDATE] — Tagged under: [HTC] [HTC_One] [HTC_One_X] [HTC_One_S] [HTC_One_V] [HTC_Sense_4.0] [Android_4.0] — HTC today announced that its recently announced HTC One-series of Android smartphones will be available …

More: CNET, Engadget, Android Phone Fans and PhoneArena

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Former Zong CEO And Founder And Mobile VP David Marcus Named President Of eBay's PayPal — After former president Scott Thompson departed for the CEO role at Yahoo, PayPal has named David Marcus, the former CEO and founder of mobile payments startup Zong and PayPal Mobile VP, as President …

More: AllThingsD, The PayPal Blog, Mercury News, Between the Lines Blog, The Tech Trade, Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires and WebProNews. Tweets: @davidmarcus

T.C. Sottek / The Verge:

Spectrum of revenge: how the FCC is under attack from Congress and AT&T — There's been a rising drumbeat for FCC reform on Capitol Hill ever since the agency helped block the AT&T / T-Mobile deal — and that beat's being led by the nation's biggest carriers, their lobbyists …

More: Hillicon Valley and GigaOM

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Inside NuGet for C++ — NuGet support for C++ projects in Visual Studio has arrived in NuGet 2.5! It's been around for about a month now so we figured we'd go talk to one of the developers who helped make it happen, Garrett Serack.

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Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

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An Army Is Forming To Battle Patent Trolls — For the past several months, we've exposed the flaws in the patent system and how they're being exploited by opportunistic patent trolls looking to extort a quick buck …

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