Not too long ago, HTC was synonymous with Android. In fact the early parts of Android’s growth happened in-step with HTC’s growth – they were one in the same. Things have changed, since, with analysts saying that the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer is under increasing pressure to prove its worth and innovation chops to investors.

Differentiation the key

The challenge for HTC is to differentiate itself from a veritable sea of top-notch Android handsets. Speaking to Reuters, IDC’s Melissa Chau said that HTC’s ‘problem remains the same: How are they going to differentiate?’ This is especially so with several mid tier Android OEMs like Sony Ericsson and Motorola releasing handsets that, in the very least, are comparable with HTC’s offering.

Samsung pressure mounting

At the top of the heap, however, is Samsung. After a late start in the smartphone market, the company ships the second most smartphones in the world each quarter, bested only by Apple. Most of this success comes from meteoric sales of its Galaxy line of phones.

Apple lead widening

Apple, who many thought HTC was best poised to challenge before Samsung came virtually out of nowhere, is stretching its legs, too. In a blowout earnings report, the company sold 37.04 million smartphones in Q3 2011, representing year-on-year growth of 128 percent, whereas HTC is expected to post a year-on-year decline in unit sales.

What next

For perspective on meteoric rise and rapid decline of HTC sales, consider this: the company saw sales grow four-fold in one year, and its share price increase three-fold in 14 months ending April 2011. Since then, though, it’s been one of the biggest losers in the smartphone industry in 2012, with its share price dropping some 40 percent through 2011.

Consensus points to handset innovation if HTC is to return to winning ways, but with pressure mounting from all directions from competitors vying for the same spoils, it’s certainly not going to be easy.

Mike Lazaridis, along with his longtime partner Jim Balsillie, recently stepped down as co-CEOs of RIM, the makers of the BlackBerry. The decision came after a time of sustained shareholder pressure, decreasing market share, and formidable competition from Apple and Google both. In one of his first lengthy interviews since making way for Thorsten Heins to run Research In Motion, Lazaridis has called the decision ‘very hard’, though necessary.

Painful, but necessary decision

Speaking to Rose Simone of The Record, he admitted that ‘Stepping aside, as a founder, after 27 years, I would be lying if I said that wasn’t emotional for me, and for my whole family’. Even with that said, he felt very confident that Thorsten Heins, promoted from COO to CEO of RIM, would ‘take this company to new heights.’

How much actually changes?

Lazaridis remains a part of the company, though, as a member of the board of directors, as well as chairing RIM’s new innovation committee, but he will not be involved in how the company runs on a day-to-day basis. Still, given Thorsten Heins is considered a part of the former RIM co-CEOs inner circle, some think too little will actually change.

Mike Lazaridis implies a lot will change, not least of which is how he will spend his time from hereon. ‘Working so hard, with a 24-by-7 workload for so long, my biggest regret was not having enough time for my family. I need to correct that over the next few years. My kids have not gone to university yet, and so hopefully, I will correct that before they leave.’

Too little too late?

The Record’s lengthy interview with former RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis is a worthwile read for those who want to get to know a little about the man beyond his profile as co-founder of one of the biggest and earliest innovators in the smartphone industry.

It is, however, in the last bit – smartphone industry – where most readers’ interest lies. The big question, of course, is whether it is too late for RIM to stage a comeback under new CEO Thorsten Heins. So it is not left unsaid, under his leadership, the BlackBerry makers have an almighty task ahead of them if they are to claw back the control Apple, Google, Samsung, HTC and a few others have wrestled away from the company in the last two to three years.

Following a week of high drama where the future of the internet as we know it was hanging in the balance due to the controversial SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy bills in the US, Y Combinator has sent out a request for startups with a focus on the media industry and with the intent to ‘Kill Hollywood’.

Why Kill Hollywood?

Y Combinator, an incubator for web startups including mega-hits like Airbnb, Dropbox, and Heroku, issued its ninth request for startups, wherein it states that ‘SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying’. The startup incubator says that Hollywood won’t fade quietly like other declining industries do, because ‘The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down.’

The challenge

When asking the how and what part of the killing of Hollywood, Y Combinator says ‘What’s going to kill movies and TV is what’s already killing them: better ways to entertain people,’ and not filesharing, as Hollywood, SOPA, and PIPA seem to suggest. The incubator continues, saying: ‘So the best way to approach this problem is to ask yourself: what are people going to do for fun in 20 years instead of what they do now?’

Parting thoughts

Y Combinator’s call to ouster Hollywood from its perch comes at a time when the film industry is facing ever-mounting challenges from other forms of entertainment competing for people’s time, as well as independent programming often times that of Hollywood quality being increasingly easier to access due largely to the internet. This request for startups to ‘Kill Hollywood’ would only serve to make the distribution and content creation platforms designed to compete with Hollywood only more numerous, and more effective, too.

Where SOPA/PIPA were seen as a way to protect Hollywood, they’ve only served as a rallying call to upend it, at least for a small sliver of highly influential entrepreneurs.

Google’s Android mobile OS continues to grow at a torrid pace, having established itself as the number one mobile OS on the planet. This torrid growth, however, especially with numerous developers flocking to the frequently updating operating system has meant that design uniformity across applications has been a problem, at times. Google is attempting to remedy this through the unveiling of a site that will serve as an Android design style guide.

A thing of beauty

The site will contain documentation, and will also be a ‘live demonstration’ of what the Android team would like to see.

Google’s Director of Android Matias Duarte revealed this to Josh Topolsky of the Verge during an interview just before Google made the wider announcement at CES. When asked if Google has never previously had a style guide, Duarte revealed that they did not have ‘an up-to-date style guide’, before explaining their mission for Ice-Cream sandwich was to ‘make it beautiful, to make it simple, to make it powerful.’ He says this was a three-parted task, which includes the operating system itself, updating the framework, which in itself results in easier ways of making remarkable apps, and finally, the style guide, which they have just revealed.

The value of uniformity

Duarte told Topolsky that this initiative was not a once-off, and that Google will continue to update and maintain it over the life of Android.

A uniform mobile OS experience is critical in this – and future – smartphone generations since it helps give a platform its identity. There’s fair argument that both iOS and Windows Phone 7 have done a better job of this than Google has to date. The fact that Duarte’s team realise that an Android design style guide is necessary as Google continually chisels out its identity is encouraging, and with Ice Scream Sandwich having several unique characteristics over what preceded it, it’s a timely release, too.

It’ll take time, though, to see if greater uniformity across apps will start happening as a result, but it’s a pretty safe bet that definite design trends will emerge as a result.

As CES finally arrives, many tech companies took the Sunday prior to the event kicking off to unveil their more ambitious projects. For Toshiba, that came in the form of the Toshiba Excite X10, the world’s thinnest 10-inch tablet PC.

Shaving it close

The Excite 10 measures in at just 7.7mm thick, a full 0.6mm thinner than the Asus Transformer Prime, which now has to settle for being the second thinnest tablet in the world. It is also the lightest tablet PC in the world, weighing just 1.2 pounds (545g), which is 0.4 pounds lighter than Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Features

While its light and thin profile is the talking point the Japanese company is taking with the Toshiba Excite X10, its feature set is impressive, too. The Android tablet has a 10.1-inch HD-capable 1280×800 pixel display, and is powered by a dual-core OMAP 4430- 1.2GHz CPU made by Texas Instruments as well as 1GB of RAM.

It has a pair of cameras, a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera, as well a front-facing 2-megapixel camera primarily for video conferencing purposes.

The tablet has numerous expansion and connectivity ports, including a micro-USB, micro-HDMI, and a microSD slot. Network connectivity comes in the form of Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, as well as Wi-Fi connectivity.

What OS?

Interestingly, Toshiba is as yet undecided if it will ship the device with Android Honeycomb or Google’s new operating system, Ice Cream Sandwich. That seems an odd thing to be uncertain about, considering Toshiba claims that the Excite X10 has been designed to support ICS.

Release schedule

The Toshiba Excite X10 is scheduled for release in the middle of Q1 (Feb?) and will retail at $530 and $600 for the 16GB and 32GB versions respectively. At first glance, that seems somewhat pricey, especially when the more popular iPad can be had for less at respective capacities, and the fast-selling Amazon Kindle Fire can be had for a fraction of that cost. We’ll see how it stacks up when released.

For technology writers, 2011 was a massive year, with the final quarter seeing major story after major story breaking.  However the year also had persistent, undeniable trends that we expect to see continuing well into 2012 and beyond. The biggest trend of all is undoubtedly the importance of the mobile devices market.

The real battleground

The most successful technology company at the end of 2011 was Apple. Unsurprisingly it’s also – from a revenue and profit perspective – the leading maker of mobile devices in the form of the hugely successful iPhone and iPad tablet PC.  An interesting inverse to Apple’s success is Research In Motion’s continued struggle and decline.

Samsung has risen to prominence off the back of its successful Samsung Galaxy line of smartphones, and has legitimate claim to being the number two manufacturer in the mobile devices industry. HP fell to the wayside with webOS, while Google’s Android mobile OS continued to grow. Amazon has made major inroads in the tablet PC market with its introduction of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet PC.

The big money – and perhaps control of the computing market in the future – is concentrated in the mobile devices industry, and that’s why most all the major players in consumer technology are making a heavy push for the space.

Patent suits spiraled out of control

As much as 2011 was the year of mobile devices, it was also the year that patent lawsuits played out more publicly than in any year prior. Reuters issued an infographic in August showing who was being sued by whom in the industry. While it’s become dramatically dated since various suits and licensing agreements were brought forth in the last quarter of the year, it still does a good job of showing how active the legal departments for mobile device manufacturers currently are. And, in showing how active these departments have become, it also reinforces the great importance of the industry as a whole.

Comedian Louis C.K. has reported that the self-distribution experiment for his latest comedy special has been a rousing success, grossing $1 million in just 12 days of availability. The special – Live at the Beacon Theatre – went on sale to customers for just $5 – allowing them two full streams and mp4 downloads without any copy restrictions circumvented distributing through traditional retail platforms like iTunes, or distributing through TV networks like HBO, and it has been a huge success.

Lots of money

Announcing the progress on his website, C.K. writes: ‘So it’s been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Really too much money. I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden.’ He continues, saying: ‘I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.’

What to do with all that cash

Comedian Louis C.K. plans to distribute the money amongst various sources, keeping just a fraction of it for himself. $250 000 (about  £160k) will cover production costs, $250 000 (£160k) will be paid to his staff in bonuses, $280 000 (about £180k) will be given to charities, while the remaining $220 000 (£140k) he will keep for himself. He has also committed to distributing more cash

Why this is important

More so than any change in modern day retail, the rise of the internet has fundamentally altered how people are able to distribute products to end users – both digital and physical. With this experiment, C.K. has managed to completely circumvent digital middlemen like iTunes and Amazon, as well as broadcasting middlemen like the television networks who would air the special and later package it on DVD. His fans have benefitted from DRM-free video, while Comedian Louis C.K. grosses more than he would have if a network financed this.

The symbolism of this experiment – much like that of Radiohead’s In Rainbows Experiment – is important, and it points to a future where performers can survive – and thrive – without media houses controlling them.

Facebook, Google and Apple (in that order) have made it to Glassdoor’s list of top 10 places to work. The findings were published in the review company’s fourth annual Employee’s Choice Awards.

The list contains the top 50 places to work based on information gathered from over 250,000 employees. Things like salary, benefits, work-life balance, opportunities to advance and opinions about the way the CEO runs the company were taken under consideration.

Facebook’s fun

Coming in at third place, Facebook ranked 4.3 out of a maximum score of 5. Facebook employees admitted to having a heavy workload but added that the work was very rewarding. Rather than being micro-managed, Facebook employees are given plenty of responsibility, ‘unreal’ perks and a fun atmosphere to work in. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, scored an approval rating of 98 per cent from his employees.

Google’s great perks

Google, in fifth place, scored 4.0 overall. One reviewer sent a ‘day in the life’ overview of working at Google to Glassdoor. Highlights included a free shuttle to work, free breakfast, a workout with a personal trainer, a massage, free dinner and a free shuttle ride home. Based on 74 reviews, CEO Larry Page earned an approval rating of 92 per cent. Considering all these perks, it’s no surprise Google employees were happy to give their employer and Larry Page such a high rating.

Apple

Apple placed at the bottom of the list, at number 10. Employees commented on being able to ‘work on the products that people have real emotional commitment to’, working in an environment that’s fun and the great pay and benefits the company offers. Negatives included little room for career advancement and repetitive tasks. Tim Cook, CEO, earned an approval rating of 96 per cent, the highest of the three tech companies that made the list.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt recently spoke at the LeWeb conference. During his talk he made various claims, including saying that Android is leading the iPhone (debatable), and that Google TV would be on the majority of televisions that ship in 2012 (say what)?

On the iPhone

Speaking on how developers at times prioritised iOS App development over Android, he insisted that volume would ultimately win application developers. Schmidt said: ‘Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking. There are so many manufacturers working to deliver Android phones globally,’ he claimed. He later added that ‘Whether you like Android or not, you will support that platform, and maybe you’ll even deliver it first.’

How much truth there is to that statement is questionable, and, perhaps absolute volume is not the only motivator for developers.

On Google TV

While Eric Schmidt’s claim about Android developers inevitably flocking to the platform is debatable, his statement about Google TV’s prospect in 2012 may be downright ludicrous. The Verge reports him as saying that ‘By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.’

Given how Logitech crashed, burned, and abandoned Google TV after losing one  hundred million dollars on the platform, as well as the rise of competing platforms, it’s very difficult to see what is spurring on this mass adoption.

What’s next for Google?

Nevertheless, there’s no denying Android is big business for Google, and the search giant is clearly determined to correct its false start with Google TV. The economics of the television business is very different from that of the smartphone business, though, so it will take some doing, even for a company as accomplished as Google.

While naysayers claim – seemingly legitimately – that smartphone sales are eating into those of handheld consoles, it’s certainly inconclusive that social gaming is upending the home console market if the Xbox’s recent achievement is anything to go by. Microsoft announced that their popular home console had its best sales week ever, moving nearly one million units in Black Friday week in the US.

Microsoft announced the news on its official blog, writing: ‘Entering the seventh year of its lifecycle, Xbox 360 just closed the biggest sales week in the history of the hit digital entertainment system, selling more than 960,000 consoles in the U.S. during the week of Black Friday.’ Colossal.

Black Friday mania

What’s even more incredible than selling just shy of one million consoles is the number of consoles Microsoft sold over the 24-hour period spanning Black Friday. Get this – the company moved an incredible 800,000 units in the US in just 24 hours. Black Friday is characterized by heavy discounts, with US shoppers flocking to stores in their millions, often leading to lengthy queues, jams and, occasionally, strange incidents. A woman in the US was recently arrested for pepper spraying other shoppers just to get her hands on an Xbox 360 ahead of other shoppers. Really.

Kinect joins in on the fun

Not only did the Xbox 360 home console sell well, Microsoft was also selling Kinect sensors and Kinect bundles hand over fist. The company announced that they had sold more than 750,000 Kinect devices – bundled or otherwise – in the same week.

In short, Microsoft’s Xbox business is soaring while Nintendo’s console business sputters and Sony’s business hums along. The threat games like FarmVille and the like pose may be overstated – though legitimate – but for now, Microsoft will just bask in its victory.