In lieu of a formal review, Matt Burns and I sat down to take a look at the Samsung 700T AKA ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T , a convertible tablet that has a small button on the keyboard that pops out the Windows 8 tablet that forms the brains of the machine. The device is a bit chintzy – more pressed metal and injected plastic than I like to see on a laptop – but at about $1,000 retail it’s an acceptable compromise for Win8 users who are looking for a nicer tablet. I gave this device a Fly simply because I like the idea – a laptop that turns into a tablet with much fuss – but Matt was unimpressed. A little treat for you: this thing was so hard to describe that I had to read the name off of my phone and I still mispronounced it. The laptop hit about 6 hours of battery life and a Geekbench score of about 4,000, on par with the i5 tablets we tested. Read more »
Microsoft’s Q3 2013 Results Beat Expectations With EPS Of $0.72, Miss On $20.49B In Revenue, CFO Peter Klein Leaving
Microsoft just reported the results for its third financial quarter of 2013. The company’s revenue came in just under expectations at $20.49 billion but it beat expectation with an earnings per share of $0.72. Despite the muted response to Windows 8 and PC sales that continue to disappoint , the analyst consensus was that Microsoft’s revenue would increase 13 percent compared to last year. The expectation was that Microsoft would report $20.56 billion in revenue and EPS of $0.68 this quarter, compared to the $0.60 EPS and $17.41 billion in revenue Microsoft reported in Q3 2012. “The bold bets we made on cloud services are paying off as people increasingly choose Microsoft services including Office 365, Windows Azure, Xbox LIVE, and Skype,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft in the announcement. “While there is still work to do, we are optimistic that the bets we’ve made on Windows devices position us well for the long-term.” Last quarter, which is traditionally very strong, the company reported record GAAP revenue of $21.5 billion, a net income of $6.38 billion and diluted earnings per share of $0.76. Read more »
Q1 Venture Capital Spending And Number Of Deals Down, M&A Activity Drops 44 Percent And Pre-Money Valuations Plummet
Dow Jones Venture Source released its quarterly report on the state of venture capital, including data on number of VC deals, funds raised, M&As and IPOs in the technology sector. According to the report, U.S.-based companies raised $6 billion from 752 venture capital deals in Q1 2013, an 11% decrease in capital and a 6% decrease in number of deals from the previous quarter. Compared to the same period in 2012, there was an 11% decrease in deals and a 12% decrease in amount invested. Additionally, median pre-money valuation dropped 79% from 4Q 2012. Deals in Information Technology (IT), Healthcare, Energy and Utilities, and Industrial Goods all declined, and deals in Business and Financial Services, Consumer Goods, and Consumer Services investment increased from the previous quarter. Read more »
Report: 22-Year-Old Gets Job At San Francisco Website
The Onion has the scoop . What’s crazy is I think I saw this guy near our office recently, riding his skateboard. Small world. Read more »
Windows 8 Will Cost You $120 After Jan. 31
Microsoft launched Windows 8 in the fall with attractive pricing -- just $39.99 for Windows 7, Vista or XP users -- but come February the price goes up. Way up. After the promotional upgrade offer ends on Jan. 31, anyone running an older version of Windows will have to pay $119.99 for the privilege of running Windows 8, a Microsoft blog post reveals. And that's just the basic edition; if you want Windows 8 Pro, it'll cost you $199.99. While it's a steep increase, jacking the price up on Windows 8 upgrades makes some sense. Although Microsoft has provided few details about how many machines are actually now running Windows 8, reports suggest the platform isn't performing as well as expe… Continue reading... More About: microsoft , Windows , Windows 8 , Windows 8 Pro Read more »
BlueStacks’ App Player For Mac Launches Beta: Now You Can Run Over 750,000 Android Apps On Mac
BlueStacks , the startup known for bringing Android applications to desktop PCs, is today releasing its App Player for Mac into beta, following its previous Mac alpha release in June . At the time of the original Mac launch, the selection of apps was limited – there were only a handful of apps available like Fruit Ninja and Pulse, for example. But with today’s beta release, the company is now offering access to 750,000+ Android apps on the Mac. The company worked with app developer partners like HalfBrick, Pulse and Handygames in the past, and will continue to do so on the Mac beta, but it can now also run any other off-the-shelf Android application as well, thanks to its patent-pending “Layercake” technology. In the months prior, BlueStacks had been working to expand its install base, forming partnerships with chipmakers like AMD ( also an investor ) and Asus , the former which will see its software pre-installed on over 100 million units, the company announced earlier this month , and the latter which will offer 22 million pre-installs. The startup also noted earlier in December that it has passed 5 million organic installs of its software across the Windows and Mac platforms. Today, that number has grown to 5.3 million. And while BlueStacks is debating whether to confirm the number of active users, we’re told that the number is “very healthy.” Until now, BlueStacks was very much targeted towards the PC crowd, not just because of the potential for pre-installation partnerships like those above, but also because mobile app developers looking to reach the Mac install base are likely to just build both an OS X and iOS app for their users. But that’s not always the case – some mobile developers (whether mobile-first or mobile-only) are late to address the desktop market entirely Read more »
The Problem With Windows 8
Sales of Windows machines are way down from the same period a year ago. Why aren't consumers flocking to Microsoft's new OS, Windows 8? Well, it's complicated... More About: microsoft , Microsoft Surface , Windows , Windows 8 Read more »
TechCrunch Crunched: The Top Keywords We Published In 2012
Editor’s note: Yvo Schaap is a 27-year-old entrepreneur from Amsterdam who loves data and code. He’s founder of Directlyrics.com and Fanity.com and has been featured on TechCrunch regarding major security holes or new Google and Facebook products. Follow him on Twitter @yvoschaap . TechCrunch has always been the most authoritative news outlet on what’s hot in Silicon Valley regarding startup trends, early and late investments, product launches, celeb founders and, of course, geeky drama. Although some frequently praised startups were eventually exposed as fads (Badgeville, Groupon), others were expertly picked early on (Twitter, Airbnb). It’s again time for end-of-year recaps, and I’ve developed research focused on analyzing TechCrunch’s editorial posts, with an aim to expose this year’s trends in tech. And while I was at it, I even went all the way back into the archives from when TechCrunch was launched. I analyzed all 106,664 posts made from January 2006 onwards, looking for interesting data hidden in the individual posts. Quickly my focus moved toward mentions – to be more precise, mentions of firms and people throughout time that could imply certain trends. My argument to focus on mentions is that a startup being covered by TechCrunch has a certain value due to its exposure to tech-savvy users, investors and other entrepreneurs. Read more »
Windows Azure Gets More Competitive With AWS, Launches New Mobile Features, Website Scaling, Data Sync And More
Windows Azure has added eight new features , including new mobile services, website scaling, and data sync. Vice President Scott Guthrie detailed the new features on his blog. Here are some of the more noteworthy improvements: Mobile Services: Better capability to schedule background jobs so the user experience doesn’t get disrupted. Jobs can be scheduled on pre-set time intervals, allowing the developer to perform scenarios without creating or managing a separate virtual machine. In addition, Azure mobile services are now available in Northern Europe. Previously, Windows Azure Mobile Services was only supported in the US East and US West regions of Windows Azure. Website Scaling: Developers can now scale websites to six shared instances and up to 10 reserved instances. These can be small, medium or large in size. Previously, a developer could only scale to three shared instances and three reserved ones. Guthrie also writes that Azure now has a new custom create workflow that allows for the configuration of source control settings as part of the site creation Read more »
Rent.com Is Beta Testing A Mobile-Friendly Redesign
Rent.com is taking a big step into the mobile world with the beta launch of its redesigned website, one that uses responsive web design to deliver an experience that’s usable on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Head of Product Amanda McConnell and Chief Technology Officer Alain Avakian gave me a preview of the redesign last week. It’s very clean, with big images and text, and if you’re looking at it on a smartphone, the page elements that won’t fit on the narrower screen just slide down, forming a more column-style layout. The site previously released native iOS and Android apps, but the focus for the past few months has been on the redesign. With this approach, when Rent.com rolls out new features, it can immediately push those changes to its visitors on all devices. Plus, a lot of Rent.com’s traffic comes from search, and it’s better to give mobile visitors who arrive that way a mobile-optimized web experience, rather than forcing them to download an app. Mobile traffic now accounts for 25 to 30 percent of Rent.com’s traffic, Avakian said, and he expects it to go as high as 40 percent in the next few years. Read more »