The internet is abuzz about Facebook’s S1 filing – the first step for the company on its way to going public later this year. The company has filed to raise $5 billion when it is finally available for public ownership. At first glance, the numbers are very impressive and point to Facebook’s potential to one day justify the lofty $75 billion plus valuation the company will have when it goes public.

Healthy margins

The first key metric for the Facebook IPO filing is the company’s profit and revenue numbers. In 2011, the platform had profit of $1 billion on $3.7 billion revenue, for a healthy profit margin of 27 percent. 85 percent of that revenue came in the form of advertising and the remaining 15 percent came from the sale of virtual goods.

Notably, the company’s 2012 sales is nearly double the $1.97 billion revenue it had in 2010, showing that growth, at least at a monetary level, is still happening at a rapid rate.

Nearly 850 million users

The next key metric in the Facebook IPO filing is the number of users the platform has and how engaged they are. The S1 filing revealed that the social network has 845 million active monthly users. 57 percent of them log in to the service daily! In addition, nearly half of Facebook’s users use mobile devices to access the platform. The company noted that this large influx of mobile users – many of whom access the service exclusively from their handsets – is a big contributor for the rapid growth they’ve experienced in emerging markets like Brazil and India.

Billionaires and millionaires aplenty

When the Facebook IPO officially happens, many people associated with the company will become ‘overnight’ millionaires, while some, most notably founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, will become billionaires.

What is worth pointing out, though, is that the numbers behind Facebook show a company with fantastic fundamentals, steady profits, and sustained growth. That alone is reason to believe that $75-100 billion may actually be an accurate valuation of what the social network is worth.

The highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S III will be unveiled later than expected, after reports emerged that the Korean consumer electronics maker would not use Mobile World Congress 2012 to show off their device.

Reveal after MWC, release before ‘summer’

The news comes courtesy of The Verge, who cited indications from ‘people familiar with the matter’ that the unveiling of the latest release of the best-selling Android device in the world by some margin would only happen after MWC 2012 in February. The source did, however, explain that the originally planned summer release window (between June and August) remains in tact.

Why the delay?

While a reason for the delay has not been given, it’s believed that Samsung was unhappy with the long gap between the Samsung Galaxy S II’s unveiling at MWC, and its eventual release in North America. Given how massive North America is as a smartphone market and the fact that the Galaxy S II is the best selling Android handset in the region, whatever Samsung can do to accelerate sales of the S III will be prudent.

What we can expect

A report in TechRadar on Tuesday suggested that the Samsung Galaxy S III would launch in the UK as soon as April, with an impressive tech spec sheet to boot. The handset will reportedly have a 12-megapixel camera, and will run on Ice Cream Sandwich from day one (unlike many as-yet unreleased handsets that will get an ICS sandwich as an update after release).

The gravity of anticipation

Just as Samsung has managed to become the second biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world behind only Apple, the Samsung Galaxy S III and its predecessors have shaped up to become the second most anticipated smartphone releases each year. I’d like to think the S III is a big enough deal that it should get its own press conference, and that MWC 2012 may be too crowded as is.

Thoughts? We’ll see how Samsung plays it.

In a fascinating email sent to PandoDaily, the new tech site started by former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacey, an unnamed but highly knowledgeable publishing executive admitted that the Amazon Kindle team was in the process of slowly killing all of the big publishers. The retail platform was achieving this by slowly pushing to become the content distributor and publisher all at the same time, by putting a financial squeeze on the already-struggling book publishers.

Business model

The email to Lacey is lengthy – and well worth a read in entirety – and is packed with perhaps the best insight I’ve seen on the relationship between publishers and disruptive retail platform with significant clout, with Amazon being the example here.

Bidding war for big books

The anonymous executive writers: ‘Publishers like to pretend that we make our money from discovering unknown talents for small advances and selling millions of their books. That’s a very small part of our business. The bestselling books are all written by celebs, by people with huge platforms, by fiction writers with a long history of bestselling books, or by people who do a proposal that’s on its surface brilliant. In short, there’s a bidding war among the publishers over the big books.’

Throwing around money in a money-less industry

The publisher explains, though, that as overall book sales have declined, so too have the advances the publishers are willing to pay for said books. Amazon, however, does not have this problem. ‘Amazon could probably afford to lose $20 million/year in their publishing arm just to put the other publishers out of business.’ There is reason to believe that that is what they’re doing, wrote the executive.

Platforms more valuable than content

Amazon today and Apple before it have shown that any media that can be digitized puts the gatekeepers – the content owners and publishers – at business risk. While it would be presumptuous to take this anonymous executive at their word, there’s little reason to believe that the Amazon Kindle team are not doing this, either.

The biggest names in the hotel and accommodation industry have joined forces to launch Roomkey, an online hotel search service for hotels and accommodation within their members’ networks.

The who’s who of hotelling

Tnooz’s Kevin May reports that Hilton Worldwide, InterContinental Hotels, Hyatt Hotels, Choice Hotels International, Wyndham Hotel Group, and Marriot International combined forces to launch this joint venture. John Davis, who is the founder of Pegasus, a hotel distribution and technology service, will be the founding CEO of Room Key.

Speaking on the initiative, Davis said: ‘Finding the right hotel is complex and, unlike booking a flight or reserving a car, it is a personal decision process – one which no one understands better than hoteliers.’ He continued, saying: ‘We believe Roomkey will provide consumers with an innovative resource that will give them unprecedented confidence in their booking decisions by fulfilling their hotel search needs, with comprehensive and trusted content, and over time, through additional features such as the ability to connect and share their plans with family and friends – all provided through a simple and flexible site experience.’

Why it matters

In essence, Roomkey will serve as a centralised platform for checking out hotels, and booking accommodation for any of the hotels that belong to the six founding members, as well as all the subsidiary entities that belong to them, too.

The founding companies find themselves fending off a new era of hotel room distribution, where the internet and powerful search platforms have made finding the cheapest and most convenient accommodation extremely easy for travelers. Several third party services already tap into the respective room databases of the aforementioned groups, and the commission for these sales has put a squeeze on the profit margins hotel chains have. The hotel search platform Roomkey looks to recapture those affiliate sales and leads. How it will succeed remains to be seen.

Reports have emerged that an official ‘Google Nexus’ tablet PC is in the works and that the search giant was targeting the Kindle Fire as opposed to the iPad with this device. In this respected, it is expected to have the same display size as the Fire, and priced less

Price and form factor

Digitimes is behind the rumour, saying that the in-the-works tablet PC would be targeted at the Kindle Fire both in terms of capability and in terms of price. The publication writes: ‘The sources believe that Google will launch the own-brand tablet PC in March-April, featuring a 7-inch panel and Android 4.0 with a price less than US$199 to compete against Amazon.’

Is this smart?

At surface level, this seems intelligent. The Amazon Kindle Fire has quickly become the number two tablet PC on the market behind only the iPad, and it has achieved this by employing a different strategy to Apple’s high end tablet PC. Android, through attempts like the Motorola Xoom, has had little success at competing with the iPad in its class, and will instead attempt to compete with Amazon in its class.

At a deeper level, this could be dangerous, too. Tech-writer-turned-venture-capitalist MG Siegler writes: ‘If Google is going to undercut the $199 price, the hardware is either going to be sh*t — or Google is going to have to take a significant loss on each one sold. Maybe they do that and say they’ll make it back in search advertising. But there is real money they’re going to have to pay to an OEM to get them to agree to that.’ For Google, who’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt recently said they had plans of making ‘a tablet of the highest quality’ within the next six months, sacrificing quality or deferring payments to advertising may be a tough pill to swallow.

For now, we recommend taking Digitimes’ report with a pinch of salt, although we’re quite confident a Google Nexus tablet of sorts is, in fact, in the works.

Acer has committed to continue producing tablet PCs through 2012, even though the company has seen poor returns with its initial venture into the tablet market.

Acer founder Stan Shih commented that the company would persist with its tablet PC ambitions, even though sales of Acer tablets in 2011 were slow. In persisting with tablet devices, Shih also said that the company he founded would keep plugging away at the smartphone market, too. Even though the company has struggled with its mobile devices division, the Acer founder said that there were no plans of firing people working on smartphones or tablets at Acer, which is contrary to what has been rumoured.

Silver lining?

Digitimes reports Stan Shih as admitting that sales of Acer tablets have been poor to date, but his company’s persistence is likely evidence that there is too much at stake with both tablets and smartphones to throw in the towel already. Moreover, he added that it took Acer years to gain much traction in the notebook space, a fate that has since changed with the company being one of the largest vendors in the world.

The iPad and Kindle market

Poor sales of the Acer tablet PC is indicative of the tablet market in general – or rather lack thereof. What the market has been is an ‘iPad’ market – with high profile challengers like Motorola, HP and Research In Motion failing to make an impact. This position of sole dominance has since changed, with the arrival of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet PC.

The Fire, which shares many of its hardware features with the BlackBerry Playbook, has managed to make massive inroads in the tablet market due in part to its cut throat price, Amazon’s large retail network, the media services that come with the tablet and Amazon’s reputation built off of the Kindle e-reader.

Apple has reportedly acquired Anobit, an Israeli startup that specialises in flash memory design. The acquisition – reportedly costing some $500 million – sees the world’s number one buyer of flash memory look to improve the storage medium used in the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Macbook Air by bringing some of its design in-house.

Flash memory a huge priority for Apple

Flash memory is a storage medium that offers several advantages over moving parts hard drives, especially in mobile devices. These include lower power consumption, meaning batteries last longer, higher speed performance and the fact that it has no moving parts, meaning the memory unit is less susceptible to breaking.

Given Apple has become a mobile devices company – with the iPhone and iPad contributing more than two thirds of total revenue – flash memory has become a growing concern for the company, reflected by its acquisition of Anobit now, and its acquisitions of PA Semi and Intrinsity prior.

Why this purchase matters

Writing about why this acquisition is important, ArsTechnica’s Chris Foresman says: ‘Anobit has developed unique technologies that can increase the reliability of multi-level cell designs. In fact, Apple already uses an Anobit-designed DSP chip in iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Airs to extend the life of the NAND flash chips in those devices.’

He continues, saying: ‘Its [Anobit’s] specialty is creating, testing, and verifying new designs that implement its technological innovations, and then licensing the designs to companies like Apple. By buying up Anobit, Apple can keep its flash storage improvement technologies all to itself as a competitive advantage.’

At the margins

In the mobile devices space, where every little advantage, from performance and reliability to battery life and software, acquisitions of this nature present incremental benefits. And with the mobile devices space fast shaping to become the most hotly contested in all of technology – if it is not so already – acquisitions of this nature are likely to become more frequent.

Apple is reportedly in talks with high profile iOS accessory makers about the implementation of Bluetooth 4.0. The connectivity format will reportedly be targeted at health and fitness devices in the early days, making the possibility of it being extended to other in-house Apple projects, like AppleTV and the Apple Television, that little bit more likely.

The Verge were the first to report the news. Nilay Patel writes: ‘We’re told that Apple wants to see a new wave of app-based accessories using the new Bluetooth Low Energy profile in Bluetooth 4.0, with a particular focus on next-generation health and fitness gadgets like the FitBit Ultra and Jawbone Up.’

Given that the original Nike fitness app that paired with Nike sneakers back in the day was the first high profile fitness/mobile device pairing, this seems a natural evolution.

Pilay continues, saying: ‘We’re also told Apple is making it easier too for MFI accessories to connect to Wi-Fi networks by automatically pulling the appropriate configuration information from your iOS device over Bluetooth or the docking cable – all you have to do is approve the request and your accessory will hop online without any extra effort.‘ This will mean Wi-Fi based accessories and AirPlay docks and devices will be simpler to use and pair in the future, as opposed to how they work right now, which requires some effort on the users part.

What’s next?

With Apple making a concerted move to push AirPlay, and with the rumours that a refreshed AppleTV could soon hit the market, as well as the long talked-about Apple television, pairing iOS devices with other pieces of hardware – both large and small – could become a key function of extending the use of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. I’m curious to see what comes of this Bluetooth 4.0 push.

Just a day after reporting the Xbox 360 had its best sales week ever, signaling consoles may still have life in them, Ultima and Tabula Rasa creator Richard Garriott told Industry Gamers that consoles are fundamentally doomed.

Living on borrowed time

The death may not be immediate, though, says Garriott. ‘I think we might get one more generation, might, but I think fundamentally they’re doomed.’ He continued, saying: ‘I think fundamentally the power that you can carry with you in a portable is really swamping what we’ve thought of as a console.’

Some disagree

Strong Xbox 360 sales, where Microsoft announced that they sold a remarkable 960,000 consoles over the Black Friday week, of which 800,000 were sold within the 24 hour period of Black Friday, suggests otherwise. BGR also reports on industry watchers who are not in complete agreement with Garriott. ‘Several industry leaders disagree with Garriott’s assessment. In a recent interview with BGR that will be published in the coming weeks, Saber Interactive co-Founder and CEO Matthew Karch suggested smartphones and tablets may never catch up to consoles in terms of capabilities and user experience,’ the publication writes.

Who is most exposed?

If indeed handhelds pose the threat to video game consoles that Garriott and some others suggest, the company that will be most exposed is Nintendo. Sony and Microsoft both have tablet PC and smartphone initiatives either in the works or currently on market, while Nintendo has remained steadfast in its commitment to being a gaming company.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft is currently winning with their handhelds, though, with Apple and Samsung being the early leaders in the mobile devices industry. The key takeaway here, though, is the space is fast-moving and nobody is entirely sure what mobile devices will mean for dedicated video game consoles just yet.

Apple has the most loyal mobile device users in the world, a report by Gfk Research found. The research company said that iPhone loyalty was one of the biggest competitive advantages Apple has, but that competitors still had a chance to change market share if they moved fast.

Loyalty is almost everything

GfK analyst Ryan Garner says that, on average, 63 per cent of mobile phone users stick to the brand of handset they currently have. Unpacking this sentiment, he explained that building customer loyalty was as crucial as building market position, because as users become more acclimatised to their platform over time, the less likely a dramatic change in market share is.

Apple lead

The research firm surveyed 4,500 people in Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the United States. Based on finding in that research, where 70 per cent of those surveyed said they would stick to their platforms due to how content and media is seamlessly integrated, GfK Research analyst Ryan Garner said [via Reuters]: ‘Apple is clearly ahead of the game, but developments next year will challenge that.’

Still room for competition

He said that the rapid growth of Google’s Android platform and the mere presence of Windows Phone 7 was enough reason to believe the door on competition is not closed just yet, though, even if iPhone loyalty levels are higher than those of other platforms.

GfK added that: ‘The scope for brands to lure customers from rivals has diminished and the richest rewards will go to those providers that can create the most harmonious user experience and develop this brand loyalty.’

What’s next?

GfK Research’s findings on iPhone loyalty echoes that of similar studies conducted throughout the year. Moreover, at an intuitive level, the general findings ring true for most smartphone users, especially on a platform basis. If you drop £100+ on applications for Android, WP7 or iOS, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to switch platforms at whim.