One is the remote control for my TV, another for my surround-sound receiver. One is for my blue-ray player, another is for the PVR, and yet another one is for no discernible purpose.

But if I wasn’t half the lazy idiot I sadly am, I could replace them all with a simple app on my iPhone or iPad, like Roomie.

We’re getting fairly used to our mobile devices being remote controls for the various aspects of our digital and not-so-digital lives. Your LG fridge has an IP address, can text you when food is going bad, and can be controlled by your phone. Home security systems that come complete with an app, and can tell you what’s happening in your home, are almost the norm.

OnStar gives your car a remote control too, and if it’s not exactly a James Bond-style actually-drive-your-car-by-remote app, it at least tells you the condition of your battery, how much gas you have, and lets you remotely unlock your vehicle. (Oh, and by the way, if you do want to drive your car by remote control, just buy the Chinese BYD Su Rui, an ordinary 5-seater sedan that yes, can be driven by remote control — at 1.2 miles per hour.)

Next week at VentureBeat’s Mobile Summit 2013, we’re going to be talking about mobile as a remote control for life. Security systems, cars, homes, appliances: everything modern, seemingly, has a remote control.

Even you.

One of the things we’re increasingly using our mobile phones/remote control is to control ourselves. Sometimes with little devices like a Fitbit or an Up, but often also simply with our phones and apps like Digifit, which monitors and tracks our fitness and workouts. Others help us get better sleep, stop smoking, and walk more, simply by letting us set goals, and then holding us to them.

One, the Gain Fitness app, helps us to manage our fitness with one simple feature: the workout streak tracker. Although the app does other things, it tracks every day you do a workout, and every day you do not. Miss one, skip one, or avoid one, and your workout streak is broken, and you start back down at zero. Essentially, it’s a simple motivational trick to make yourself do what you know you really want to do, but sometimes don’t feel like.

In essence, a remote control.

More on devices, gadgets, the internet of things, and the mobile computers we call phones that are enabling this remote control trend at Mobile Summit 2013, April 1-2 in Sausalito, California.

photo credit: Stéfan via photopin cc

But perhaps not for long.

As PatentBolt saw, Google has applied for a patent on touch control built into the back side of future Android-based phones and tablets, which means that you could turn the page of an ebook, flip to the next song, or pause a video just by tapping or swiping the back of your device.

That all sounds simple, but the challenge lies in distinguishing normal holding contact from intentional touches to control the device or app. Google’s technology will apparently ignore spurious contact and only react to intentional, sustained contact.

Ars Technica notes that Apple also filed a patent for touch controls on the back of a device back in 2006. In Apple’s case, the device in question is an iPad, but no shipping device using this technology has yet seen the light of day.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Seventy-seven percent of all new smartphones and tablets activated in the enterprise last quarter were Apple devices, according to a new report from Good Technology.

The most popular device was Apple’s new iPhone 5, with 32 percent of all activations. The top five devices activated also included the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4, iPad 3, and iPad2. Out of the top 10, eight were Apple devices, including the iPad 4, the aged iPad 1, and the equally venerable iPhone 3GS.

Essentially, it’s utter enterprise domination by Apple’s iOS:

Source: Good Technologies

Top 10 devices activated in the enterprise: Q4 2012

Android’s first foray into the enterprise comes at number six, with the Samsung Galaxy S III, and its only other contestant is the S III’s baby brother, the Galaxy S II, which clocks in at number 10. iOS activations were up 8.5 percent year-over-year.

Good Technologies offers solution for secure collaboration, communication, and data. With 4,000 enterprise customers and half of the Fortune 500 in its stable, it has fairly good insight into what the enterprise is doing in mobility.

One place Android is gaining somewhat? Tablets.

“Between Q1 and the end of Q4 2012, Android tablet activations jumped from 2.7 percent to nearly 7 percent of total activations,” Good says in its report, attributing the spike in part to the rise of fablets: hybrid phone-tablet devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note.

Source: Good Technologies

Tablet activations in the enterprise: Q4 2012

Windows reigns, of course, on the enterprise desktop, but it is a marginal, niche player so far in enterprise mobility. Only .5 percent of enterprise device activations in the fourth quarter were Windows phones or tablets. That may, of course, change as Windows 8 edges into the enterprise and CIOs look at the potential benefits of a more unified desktop-mobile operating system environment.

Source: Good Technologies

Q4 2012 activations by device type

One interesting note: The business sector that is driving down Apple’s stock valuation is the same industry that is purchasing the most of Apple’s products. According to Good Technologies, between 30 percent and 36 percent of all iPads activated in enterprise where purchased by the financial services industry. The next closest sector is business and professional services, at under 20 percent.

Curious, no?

Source: Good Technologies

iPad activations by industry

photo credit: papalars via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Global tablet sales are still well below PC shipments. But one analyst is predicting tablets will overtake PCs by the fourth quarter of this year, or the first quarter of 2013.

Tablet sales are currently about 55-60 million per quarter, while PC sales are in the low 80 million range. But according to analyst Sameer Singh, the tablet market is very similar to the modern smartphone market (Android and iOS phones, as opposed to Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and BlackBerry smartphones), which allows him to compare 16 quarters of phone sales to 11 quarters of tablet sales and make some inferences about when more tablets will be sold than PCs.

The result?

Singh says the crossover point is coming early in 2013, or possibly even earlier:

“The substitution rate patterns between the two markets are remarkably similar, showing a correlation of nearly 93% over the first 11 quarters,” Singh writes. “It is also interesting to note that tablet/PC substitution seems to be happening at a faster pace.”

That faster pace is what makes Singh predict that the switchover point of sales could occur as early as the end of this year, driven by accelerating adoption of cheap tablets in emerging markets. (Which, by the way, sounds a lot like Android, and not much like iPad.)

One thing to note: While phone penetration was fairly limited in the early days of smartphones, the PC market is saturated. Which means that overall growth in the combined PC/tablet market will be in the low single digits, says Singh.

That’s bad news for traditional PC vendors, who are getting eaten at the high end by tough competition in a declining market and at the low end by more nimble new competitors in the tablet market.

But let’s face it: That train is in the station. What’s next?

Also see: Forrester’s top 10 mobile trends for 2013

Analyst Bryan Hopkins gave us a peek into what Forrester thinks is next, and much of it builds on those four horseman of disruptive change. “We went a level deeper in our research by examining how today’s hot technolog[ies] create platforms for future disruption,” he wrote this morning in a blog post.

Here they are, in four groups:

End user computing technologies

1. Next-generation devices and UIs
   New sensors and new user interfaces. Think Leap Motion
2. Advanced collaboration and communication
   Think social inside, like Yammer or other social-inside-the-enterprise solutions
3. Systems of engagement
   Real-time data, in everyone’s hands. Think Roambi

Sensors and remote computing technologies

1. Smart products
   Thing that can sense, react, and communicate. Think operating system for places and buildings
2. In-location positioning
   GPS and in-building location sensors
3. Machine-to-machine networks
   Background intelligence on people and things. Think ReelyActive

Process data management technologies

1. Smart process applications and semantics
   Real business processes are a lot messier than your flow charts. Smart process apps know that.
2. Advanced analytics
   Smarter, more predictive data. Think Cloudera’s Impala tool for Hadoop
3. Pervasive BI
   People need business intelligence that comes every hour, not at the end of the month
4. Process and data cloud services
   Scalable, burstable, and cheap computing capability. PaaS, BaaS, etc. 

Infrastructure and application platforms

1. Big data platforms
   Infrastructure to handle big data and high speed … and use all that data you’ve been uselessly storing
2. Breakthrough storage and compute
   Yes, hardware may still be necessary, even if you’re never going to be like Google
3. Software-defined infrastructure
   Software that dynamically routes your networking and data center capabilities
4. Cloud application frameworks
   Technologies for deploying and running distributed apps in the cloud, like, perhaps, a multi-continent-spanning database
5. New identity and trust models
   New federated trust and identity models for a changing world of jobs and careers … and maybe even killing all usernames and passwords

An interesting thought for executives:

If you want a good look at the future of end user computing technologies and sensor and remote computing devices, check winning Kickstarter and IndieGoGo campaigns in the technology and gadget categories. And for a picture of the future for the last two groups above, process data management and infrastructure and application platforms, look at Google and Facebook.

photo credit: ginnerobot via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s mobile operating system Android may be winning the smartphone wars, with over 75 percent market share. But Apple and Microsoft could be making more from Android than Google — up to 600 percent more next year.

This past weekend, Apple and HTC signed a patent cross-licensing deal that, according to one analyst, could see Apple collect between $6 and $8 for each and every Android smartphone HTC sells. And Microsoft, which has been working on licensing its patents to Android manufacturers for a number of years and has licensing deals with LG, Acer, Samsung, and many other companies, collects as much as $5 per device.

Google, on the other hand, though it has not broken out Android revenue, makes as little as $1.70 per Android device, per year, Asymco calculates, based on data Google was forced to reveal in court filings. Even at $2 a device, that’s only a sixth as much as the combined $12 that Microsoft and Apple could make for each Android smartphone.

This assumes, of course, that Microsoft collects royalties from all Android manufacturers … and that Apple will duplicate its HTC licensing deal with Samsung and all the other smartphone companies. And those are big assumptions.

But Microsoft has already been shown to make more from Android than from its own Windows phones. And some kind of licensing deals will have to be done, surely, unless Apple and Samsung plan to dual-handedly ensure the future financial viability of the legal profession. Which, arguably, they’ve taken a good crack at already.

Three good things from Google’s perspective: Up to April of this year it’s made perhaps three times as much on iOS phones and tablets as it has on its own Android devices (perhaps less now with iOS 6 and no Google Maps), mobile ad revenues are rising across the board, and the amount it makes on each Android device recurs every single year.

All of which means the trends are good for Google, although there may be pressure to increase revenues in ways that could harm the Android user experience. But things are also good for Apple and Microsoft, which stand to make money on their own mobile ecosystems as well as Google’s.

Which is kind of like having your cake and eating it too.

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

ComScore just released its June 2012 U.S. mobile report, and the results were mostly predictable.

The unholy trinity of Google, Samsung, and Apple captured 50 percent of the mobile phone market, and 84 percent of all smartphones run either Android or iOS. But Apple is growing slightly faster in both categories.

Samsung manufactured 25.6 percent of all phones in use in the U.S. as of June 2012, ComScore says, while Apple had a 15.4 percent share of the entire mobile market, which includes both smartphones and feature phones. Motorola, which is owned by Google, came in at 11.7 percent, while LG has almost 19 percent market share.

Source: ComScore

Top mobile manufacturers

When it comes to smartphone platforms, Google is in the undisputed lead, with a 51.6 percent share. Apple has a 32.4 percent share but grew 1.7 percent over March 2012 numbers — faster than any other platform vendor. In fact, the only other mobile operating system to grow was Android, with an uncharacteristically anemic .6 percent growth rate.

Source: ComScore

Top smartphone operating systems

Predictably, RIM was down 1.6 percent, and Symbian (Nokia) also dropped.

Windows Phone, supposedly a platform of the future, also dropped a small amount. Most likely that drop was due to turmoil around Windows phones and upgradeability: If devices on the shelf right now can’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, what’s the point of purchasing a Windows Phone today?

ComScore also asked the 30,000 survey respondents a few usage questions. The highlights include:

• 75 percent of mobile subscribers send texts
• 50 percent use downloaded apps
• 36.9 percent access social networking sites via their mobile device
• 33 percent play games on their phones
• 27.6 percent listen to music on their phones

Image credit: David Hammonds/ShutterStock

The Food and Drug Administration is being accused of monitoring the personal e-mails of six employees who had previously reported inappropriate device approvals to Congress and the press.

“Whistleblowers” are protected by law in order to ensure that employees feel comfortable reporting misconduct within an organization. People who raise a red flag are supposed to be free from consequence, and are able to take legal action if they are harassed or treated different based on their report. In the case of the FDA, however, six employees are claiming their personal e-mails were subsequently monitored after they shed light on flawed cancer-screening devices, which were later approved by the FDA.

All six employees worked within the Office of Device Evaluation, and worked with various pieces of technology such cancer detection devices, ultrasounds for labor and delivery, as well as osteoporosis detectors. According to the Washington Post, all of these devices had an issue which could have brought harm to the person it ultimately met. For instance, the ultrasound was known to malfunction during use. Despite the teams’ warnings, however, the FDA stilled planned on green lighting the machines, which caused the six to take action.

In the aftermath, two of the employees were fired, two left without renewed contracts and the others “harassed.”

According to the Washington Post, the FDA began intercepting e-mails from the employees in January 2009. The agency posts a warning on its machines telling employees that they have no reasonable right to privacy on their work computers. It also collected screenshots and looked at the computers’ hard drives. The defendants still hold that their rights were violated with the FDA examined their personal e-mail accounts.

via The Washington Post, Photo via The U.S. Food and Drug Administration/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

PlacePop, which allows any company to create and maintain virtual loyalty cards, today announced its free application is now available for Android devices.

The company was founded by former Friendster CEO Kent Linstrom and offers businesses a replacement to the traditional loyalty cards found in many of our wallets and purses. Consumers can check-in through the application, earn points and earn free stuff or special privileges for being a virtual card holder. The more points a user earns the higher their level, starting at bronze, then on to silver, gold and platinum. Businesses can customize their card and loyalty program on the app.

A whole host of loyalty program applications exist, and each offers consumers the ability to earn points or rewards for checking into a location. Major players like Foursquare and Gowalla are starting to add loyalty rewards to their services as well, giving brands the means to offer specials or promotions to those who check-in to a particular venue.

Foursquare continues its quest to dominate the check-in space with today’s release of version 2.0 for Android (Mashable first covered the story), giving users the ability to create to-dos and get tips from friends. The company is also working on a possible recommendation engine for its users.

Silicon Valley-based PlacePop recently launched for the iPhone and also announced an angel round of funding for $1.4 million from Affinity Labs founder Chris Michel, Bebo Founder Michael Birch, James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky, according to TechCrunch.