[WEEKLY WIRELESS REPORT] Week ending May 11, 2012 This Week’s Stories experience, and uses the most advanced mobile internet technology on the market to make their lives easier and keep their families and property safer,” AT&T Announces IP-Based Petersen said. Remote Home Monitoring May 7, 2012 In February, AT&T announced plans to launch an SDK for international providers to equip global service providers with capabilities to offer customizable, web- AT&T has announced plans for a new consumer- based home automation, energy and security services based remote home monitoring system that includes to their subscribers. a portfolio of all-digital, IP-based home security monitoring and automation services. www.wirelessweek.com Called AT&T Digital Life, the carrier says the services will give users control over various aspects of their AOL to Give Shareholders All homes – security cameras, thermostat, water systems – using any web-enabled device, including PCs, Proceeds from Patent Bonanza tablets and smartphones, regardless of wireless May 9, 2012 carrier. AOL will give 100% of the proceeds from its $1 billion AT&T said it plans to begin trials in Atlanta and Dallas patent sale "directly back to shareholders," CEO Tim this summer. Armstrong said Wednesday, but the details are still being worked out. Specifically, AT&T says the new system will allow users to monitor devices such as cameras, AOL announced last month that it had agreed to sell window/door sensors, smoke, carbon monoxide, about 925 patents to Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) motion and glass break sensors, door locks, for $1.1 billion in cash. AOL also granted a non- thermostats, moisture detection and appliance power exclusive license to Microsoft for its remaining controls. patents. A few weeks later, Facebook announced plans to will buy 625 of those patents from Microsoft The devices will be wirelessly enabled to connect to for $550 million. the IP-based AT&T Digital Life platform inside the home. “We have not made the final decision," AOL CFO Artie Minson said about AOL's plans for distributing "AT&T Digital Life will change the way people live, the cash. AOL has already bought back 15 million work and play – and meets a clear need in the shares and has to be careful not to "trigger a change market,” said Kevin Petersen, senior vice president, in control at the company" by buying more, he said. Digital Life, AT&T Mobility, in a statement. “The service is smart, simple and customer centric– freeing Armstrong said he is generally happy with where homeowners to do the things they want to do without AOL's balance sheet and cash hoard stand. AOL had compromising on the things they need to do to care nearly $370 million in cash and liquid assets as of for family and home.” March 31. AT&T promises professional installation of the "At this point, if we had a good reason to hang onto a platform, sensors and other devices, as well as 24/7 billion dollars in cash, we'd do it," Armstrong said. technical support and users will be able to add more services after the initial installation. Despite Armstrong's bullishness on the deal, he said the sale "isn't fully reflected in our valuation" in the New users will be able to check the system out in market right now. AOL shares are up almost 40% AT&T stores, and it will be made available for since it announced the patent deal. purchase on att.com when available commercially. He also talked up the 300 patents AOL is hanging The Digital Life platform includes built-in AT&T mobile onto, which relate to its core business, including Internet service and will also be capable of Wi-Fi, Z- software technologies related to advertising, search, Wave and wired broadband connections. social networking, mapping, streaming and security. Microsoft and Facebook will each have a non- “Our focus is on providing our customers with a exclusive license to those remaining patents. comprehensive home security and automation solution that offers the best possible customer money.cnn.com [WEEKLY WIRELESS REPORT] Week ending May 11, 2012 Products & Services On Thursday, Microsoft also launched "Snapshot," which provides instant answers to queries about topics like restaurant reservations, hotel reviews, Bing Fires at Google with New maps and movie trailers. It also leverages Bing's social partnerships to help users search for people. Social Search May 10, 2012 Most of those features were available in Bing previously and can be accomplished in Google, but Microsoft is launching a major overhaul of its also-ran Snapshot relocates that data to a middle column, search engine Bing on Thursday, aiming at a keeping it out of the standard search results. weakness it sees in market leader Google. Even if Bing's changes give the service a boost, it has The most prominent new element in Bing's redesign is a long, long way to go to catch up to Google -- "Sidebar," a social search feature that scours users' something Microsoft hasn't been able to do since it social networks to surface information relevant to their launched Bing in June 2009. search queries. Bing currently maintains a 15.3% share of the search Google unveiled a similar feature dubbed "Search market, up from 8.4% when Bing launched, according Plus Your World" in January to decidedly mixed to online data tracker comScore. Google commands reviews. Though some of the basic features are the 66.4% of the market, up four-tenths of a percentage same, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) thinks it has a point from the 65% it held when Bing debuted. better solution. More than half the share that Bing has gained has Like Google, Bing's Sidebar will display posts from actually come from third-place Yahoo. The rest has people in your social networks who have recently come from search cellar-dwellers Ask.com and AOL. discussed a topic related to what you just searched for. A search for "San Francisco restaurants" will return posts from your friends talking about good eats There's usually no such thing as "bad" market share in the city. growth, but Yahoo's search is powered by Bing. That means more than half of Microsoft's share growth has come from cannibalizing its search partner. That's where the similarities end. Meanwhile, Microsoft is losing upwards of $1 billion a Google's "social search" only displays Google+ posts quarter on its search business. -- something that Facebook and Twitter are cranky about. It's a walled garden that fences users inside Google's proprietary network. The search engine's sad state of affairs has even made it the butt of pop-culture jokes. On Sunday's episode of HBO show "Veep," the vice president's Bing's Sidebar works with multiple social networks, socially inept aide yelled out, "I'm Binging it!" to a including Facebook, Twitter and Google+. It stashes search request. its social search results off to the right side of the page, while Google plops them right into the middle of its main results. But if Bing does get social search right -- in stark contrast to Google's widely criticized approach -- it may be time to start taking it more seriously. Bing's strategy is pointedly different than that of Google, which is laser-focused on building its own social network. Though Google+ has grown to nearly money.cnn.com 100 million users, analysts are still trying to determine how active and engaged they actually are. Mozilla and Google Cry Foul "We think this is a far better approach than building Over Browsers in Windows 8 our own social network," Stefan Weitz, Bing's senior May 10, 2012 director, said in an interview with CNNMoney. "We're not being restricting with anyone." If you thought you’d be happily browsing the web in either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox on that Sidebar isn't the only new feature in Bing's makeover. Windows 8 tablet you’re planning on buying, think Some of the more superficial elements of the redesign again. According to Mozilla, Microsoft is planning to began to show up on the website earlier this month, restrict the capabilities of third-party browsers on the including a cleaned-up look with significantly less tablet version of Windows 8, called Windows RT. clutter on the margins. [WEEKLY WIRELESS REPORT] Week ending May 11, 2012 In a blog post, Mozilla expresses great concern over which says it has tracked 82.5 million phones the possibility that Microsoft might restrict browsers destroyed by water alone. other than Internet Explorer from working as a full- featured browser on a Windows tablet. While a third- The Hydro, which Chier calls a mid-tier Android phone, party browser such as Firefox would still run in the comes running Ice Cream Sandwich and features a touch-friendly Metro environment, it wouldn’t have 3.5-inch HVGA 480 x 320 display, 1GHz Snapdragon access to the Windows “classic” desktop. processor, 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and Consequently, the browser would be cut off from the Bluetooth. “speed, stability and security” of a modern web browser, Mozilla says. Kyocera isn't new to the business of keeping devices safe against water. "We began developing devices as Google echoed Mozilla’s worries in a statement. early as 2008, initially in Japan, with this water- resistance technology," Chier said, noting that to date “We share the concerns Mozilla has raised regarding the company has a total of 16 water-resistant phones the Windows 8 environment restricting user choice on the market.