New Atom Architecture In The Making

Word on the street is that Intel is in the process of developing an entirely new Atom architecture based on its 3D transistor technology they announced last week.  This new architecture should enable more power efficiency on the chip.

The new processor is being called Silvermont and the Atom will encompass a system-on-chip design, similar to Intel’s Z760 Atom or ARM’s processors.  Silvermont is being designed on Intel’s 22nm process and harness the power of Intel’s 3D transistor technology that has yet to be tested.

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Visa Digital Wallet Coming

Visa Inc, the world’s largest credit and debit card processing network, is designing a digital wallet that people can use to pay for things on the Internet or with their phones instead of with traditional plastic cards.

The network said on Wednesday it is collaborating with several large U.S. and international banks to create the wallet. Its partners include US Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, Regions Financial, BB&T Corp, Toronto Dominion’s TD Bank and the U.S. arm of Barclays PLC.

The “digital wallet” will store the banks’ customers’ credit and debit card account information, both for Visa cards as well as other cards. People can use the wallet to pay for things online or in stores, Visa said.

The network will also have to convince merchants to put a new “one-click” button on their websites, so that potential customers can use their Visa digital wallets to buy things by clicking the button instead of by manually entering all of their account information every time they want to make an online purchase.

Banks, mobile phone operators and networks like Visa are all trying to gain territory in the small, but high-potential market for U.S. mobile payments. Last week Isis, a separate mobile payments venture run by three of the top four U.S. carriers, said it had modified its initial goals and was now open to working with Visa and MasterCard as it introduces its own mobile wallet.

Jim McCarthy, Visa’s head of global products, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that mobile payments in the United States “will more easily take off” from people using their smartphones’ browsers to buy things online.

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Google Facing DOJ Probe

Google is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice concerning practices within its advertising program, and has set aside $500 million for a potential resolution fund, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.

In its quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that in May it accrued $500 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2011 in connection “with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the use of Google advertising by certain advertisers”.

Although it cannot predict the ultimate outcome of the matter, Google said that it believes that it will not have a material adverse effect on its business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.

The company did not explain why the charge had been taken retrospectively on its first quarter earnings. It is also not clear to whom Google would have to make the payment in the event of settlement.

Google declined to comment, stating that it was a legal matter. The company has updated its first-quarter results press release on its web site, to reflect the new charge.

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iPhone Gaining on Nokia’s Dominance

Apple’s iPhone is moving closer and closer  to Nokia’s top spot in smartphones globally, according to first-quarter 2011 results reported by IDC on Thursday.

With the iPhone in the second spot, BlackBerry maker Research In Motion dropped to third after finishing second a year ago, IDC said. 99.6 million smartphones shipped in the first quarter, out of 372 million mobile phones overall.

Nokia sold 24.2 million smartphones in the first quarter, holding on to its global smartphone lead despite announcing that it will move from Symbian to Windows Phone as its main smartphone operating system in next few years, IDC said. Nokia “may find itself in danger of ceding market share as the competition ramps up,” IDC said.

Apple shipped 18.7 million iPhones in the first quarter, IDC said, a new record for a single quarter, “and inched closer to market leader Nokia, with fewer than 6 million units separating the two companies,” IDC noted.

Apple also had triple-digit growth in the U.S., with the Verizon Wireless CDMA iPhone 4, and in greater China.

RIM, while down from second place where it was a year ago, remained in third place from the fourth quarter of 2010. The majority of RIM’s shipments are older, lower-cost devices, IDC noted, a trend that will continue in the second quarter.

Samsung finished fourth in smartphones for the first quarter, with 10.8 million smartphones shipped, while HTC finished fifth, with 8.9 million shipped.

Samsung grew the most of any vendor for the first quarter — 350% year-over-year. Samsung has a multiple-OS strategy and sells mostly Android smartphones, including Galaxy S phones, as well as Windows Phone 7 and Wave devices.

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Tablet Users Are Dropping Laptops

According to Neilsen people who have owned laptops and now use tablets as a PC device are ditching them like hotcakes. Under the study conducted around 77 percent of tablet owners are now using their device in the same capacity as they used their laptop computers.  This strange because there are many applications or functions that a tablet is not able to process or handle.

One third of the tablet owners also admitted that they find themselves using their desktops even less since they acquired a tablet PC.  Furthermore, thirty percent of those surveyed who own both a laptop and desktop who owned a laptop find themselves using their tablet more. A small percentage (2) of those Neilsen interviewed said they had stopped using their laptop computer altogether.

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‘Do Not Track’ Internet Legislation, Advances

California is a moving closer to making  into law the first Do Not Track legislation in the U.S., aimed at protecting Internet users from invasive advertising.

The proposed Senate bill, SB-761, passed a Senate Judiciary Committee vote late Tuesday, but it still has a long road ahead before having a chance of being signed into law. It now moves on to the Appropriations Committee, and must also pass the Senate and State Assembly before being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.

Still, it’s the first time such a bill has made it out of committee, and that’s a big deal, according to John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “This is the first time that a ‘do not track’ bill has actually had a hearing and been debated and then voted forward in the legislative process,” he said.

The bill would give California consumers a simple way of opting out of data collection systems that keep track of their online activities. “It puts up a no trespassing sign on our device,” Simpson said.

Opponents of the bill, including Google, the Direct Marketing Association, and the wireless industry group CTIA, say it puts an unnecessary burden on online commerce.

Online marketers love this type of data because it helps them fashion highly effective targeted advertising. But many consumers don’t want to hand marketers every detail of what they do on the Web.

Under the proposed law, users would have a way — possibly a through a browser setting — of telling Web sites not to track them. If a company disregarded this and collected data without permission, it could face stiff fines.

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Laptop Users Still Prefer USB Modems

Mobile data users still overwhelmingly prefer USB modems for keeping PCs and other devices connected while on the go, but they may turn more to built-in cellular radios and portable Wi-Fi hotspots over the few years, according to ABI Research.

Despite the growing market for connected tablets and the availability of laptops and netbooks with high-speed cellular modules built in, worldwide shipments of USB modems still surpass embedded 3G and 4G modules by three to one, ABI said in a report Monday. But by 2016, that ratio may change to near an even split, said ABI analyst Jeff Orr.

Mobile operators including AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Clearwire give consumers the option of buying a laptop or netbook with an integrated cellular module. Those computers let subscribers go online almost anywhere without using up a USB port or carrying around a separate piece of hardware that sticks out of the side of the system.

Built-in modems lock buyers into one carrier or network technology for the life of the device, which most consumers and enterprises don’t want, Orr said. They buy USB modems because they can be easily discarded when a better network comes along, he said. Prices are low and often there is no early termination fee for getting out of the carrier data contract.  “That device becomes almost disposable,” he said.

One problem with built-in modems is that wireless technology changes faster than most users want to change computers. For example, the past three years — a typical PC lifetime — have seen the construction of both a WiMax and an LTE network in many cities around the U.S., offering 10 times or more the speed of 3G networks.

The market for embedded modems is still fairly small, according to ABI. In 2010, only about 5% of laptops worldwide shipped with built-in cellular modems, Orr said. Among netbooks, 17% came with modems, but overall shipments were much smaller for netbooks than for laptops. Meanwhile, 40% of tablets came with such modems, but the overall tablet market was smaller still.

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Tegra 3 Smartphones Being Developed By Motorola

Many sources around the Internet are a buzz with news that Motorola is apparently developing a couple of smartphones using Nvidia’s Tegra 3 SoC processor.

One of the smart is being called the Bullet which features a 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage with a 12MP camera. The other phone is code named the Jet and is basically rhe same as the Bullet with a 4-inch screen and keyboard.  The pair of phones are expected to debut in early 2012.

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FTC Singles Out Google’s Chrome

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Liebowitz this week singled out Google for not adopting “Do Not Track,” the privacy feature that allows consumers the ability to opt out of online tracking by Web sites and marketing entities.

In an interview Monday with Politico, Liebowitz called out Google for not supporting Do Not Track in its Chrome browser.

Noting that Do Not Track had gathered momentum, Liebowitz said, “Apple just announced they’re going to put it in their Safari browser. So that gives you Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla. Really the only holdout — the only company that hasn’t evolved as much as we would like on this — is Google.”

Do Not Track has been promoted by the FTC and by privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as the best way to help consumers protect their privacy.

The technology requires sites and advertisers to recognize incoming requests from browsers as an opt-out demand by the user. The information is transmitted as part of the HTTP header.

As Liebowitz said, Microsoft and Mozilla have added Do Not Track header support to their Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) and Firefox 4 browsers. While Apple hasn’t confirmed that the next version of Safari will include Do Not Track, developers have reported finding the feature in early editions bundled with Mac OS X 10.7, aka “Lion,” the upgrade slated to ship this summer.

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Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook

Verizon Wireless is still evaluating whether or not it will carry the PlayBook tablet computer from Research In Motion, the biggest U.S. mobile operator stated on Wednesday.

While BlackBerry maker RIM had said it expected Verizon Wireless to be one of its distribution partners for PlayBook, the company said it has yet to make such a determination.

“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it,” Verizon Wireless Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said.

The comment came the day after PlayBook debuted at North American electronics retailers.

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