RIAA Blasts Jupiter Findings
The recent Jupiter Research report, which found that users of file-sharing services tended to spend more money on music than they did before using the services, has been drawing a lot of attention for obvious reasons. Not surprisingly, the RIAA has publicly attacked the report as "faulty," complaining that a key demographic group -- people under 18 -- was not polled. The RIAA went on to present its own findings, citing a commissioned poll by Peter D. Hart Research Associates that polled 2,225 people in the fall of last year -- a few months after Jupiter's June 2001 survey.
The analyst who wrote the Jupiter report, Aram Sinnreich, acknowledged the criticism from the RIAA but pointed out that teenagers are "not really the majority of where music sales happen, anyway." He also expressed skepticism with the RIAA-commissioned Hart poll, saying, "Whose research is going to be less biased? Research conducted by a lobbyist organization or research conducted by a disinterested third party?"
Source: http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176497.html
Korea's Burgeoning Market For MP3 Players
The Korean Herald reported in a recent article that the MP3 player market in South Korea is expanding at an unexpectedly fast rate. The article goes on to report that about 130,000 MP3 players were sold during the first quarter of this year, up from around 60,000 units in the same period last year. Korean MP3 player makers also exported about 300,000 units in Q1, up from 200,000 units last year.
Source: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2002/04/19/200204190003.asp |
Gnucleus Review
MP3 Newswire recently posted a favorable review of Gnucleus, a spyware and adware free open-source Gnutella project. Increasing attention is being given to P2P programs which have been stripped of 'parasite programs' that access and transmit information found on the user's PC via other networks. In addition to the Gnucleus review, MP3 Newswire also reported that a new version of KaZaA Lite was released recently -- it is also free of spyware/adware.
Sources: http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/gnucleus.html
and http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/kazaalite.html
Korea's Burgeoning Market For MP3 Players
The Korean Herald reported in a recent article that the MP3 player market in South Korea is expanding at an unexpectedly fast rate. The article goes on to report that about 130,000 MP3 players were sold during the first quarter of this year, up from around 60,000 units in the same period last year. Korean MP3 player makers also exported about 300,000 units in Q1, up from 200,000 units last year.
Source: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2002/04/19/200204190003.asp
GPS Handsets to Revitalize Sluggish Mobile Phone Market
The phone market, which has recently been rapidly losing its momentum, just might be given new life by the advent of more GPS-equipped handsets. The au C3003P handset -- manufactured by Panasonic -- was released in March and looks as if it is going to turn out to be a very big hit. It now seems likely that NTT DoCoMo, having seen how popular au's phone is becoming with users, will follow suit and start marketing its own new GPS handsets sometime soon. When earlier models of these types of position-locating GPS phones first hit the market back in December 2001 the reaction from users was rather cool, but the C3003P phone has changed that and is turning out to be a huge hit thanks mostly to the fact that it has a special built-in magnetic sensor which improves the GPS navigation functions.
* COMMENTARY: The magnetic sensor referred to above is a built-in sensor that senses the Earth's magnetic field, which has a (mostly) fixed direction. As a result, the handset can decipher its orientation in space, and the display can rotate the map automatically so that north on the map points to the real north at the user's location. This makes reading the maps a lot easier, since they are already oriented.
Also, these babies use both the CDMA network and the GPS satellite data to figure out where they are. As a result, the user gets useful location data even when indoors, where GPS satellite signals have poor or no reception. Wow! If these aren't category killers, we don't know what is. Once again, just like with Sha-Mail and with the original cell-based location services rolled out last year, Big D has been caught napping.
Source: http://www.nikkeibp.asiabiztech.com/wcs/leaf?CID=onair/asabt/fw/184769
I-mode Services a Hit with Europeans
I-mode's foray into Europe appears to be meeting with early success, with the mobile information and entertainment service raking in 80 percent of its revenues from data income, according to a source close to the company. A typical mobile phone network operator currently sees about 5 percent of its revenues from data services such as text messaging, with the remainder coming from voice calls. But with standard mobile phones reaching high penetration levels in Europe and elsewhere, network operators and handset manufacturers have been searching for ways to continue increasing their revenues -- and paying for expensive next-generation wireless spectrum licenses.
* COMMENTARY: This largely supports what we feel, which is that the Euro baby i-modes will successfully emulate Big D's i-mode back here. All things being equal, there is no reason why the baby i-modes won't take off like i-mode did here in 1999; perhaps a little slower, but just as inevitably.
Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t284-s2110082,00.html
Cellphone Scam Preys on Call ID
Last winter, military officials warned of a scam whereby swindlers randomly call cellphones and, after just one ring, leave a return telephone number in the phone's memory bank. Upon returning the call, individuals reach a recorded message in Japanese, often with sexually explicit material. Armed with a record of the call, a representative of a bogus company calls back and asks the cellphone user for an exorbitant amount of money for having called the phone service. If the cellphone owner refuses to pay, the representative threatens to tell
others of the calls to the adult service lines.
Source: http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=7809&archive=true
Olympus MIC-D Digital Microscope
It's not often something like this comes up -- the MIC-D is not a hip new burger from the fast food giant but, in fact, a digital microscope from Olympus. You can zoom in on a dissected frog or that putrefying Petri dish and -- with the aid of your laptop computer and the MIC-D's USB socket -- have the image displayed instantly onscreen all ready for digital manipulation. Finished in a laboratory-friendly plain white with a 1/3in CMOS color digital camera and blue-colored adjuster stem, the MIC-D (price TBA) comes as part of the wave of IT-related products that are infiltrating education and the classroom and, we hope, making it all easier and more fun in the process. Students gain a 13x optical zoom and a high quality digital viewfinder eyepiece that Olympus claims will bring new joy to peering at really, really tiny things. If nothing else, the MIC-D makes the microscope business more accessible and easier to use than ever before and the specialized software will allow the students to save, edit and print out their findings in all their 310,000-pixel VGA (640x480) glory.
More info: http://www.olympus.co.jp/LineUp/Microscope/Micd/index.html
Toshiba e550G/MD PDA
The latest Genio model arrives with a swanky new 'G' suffix to its name -- e550G -- and is powered by a 400MHz MPU from Intel, called the PXA250. Claiming that it is twice as fast as the previous one, Toshiba has also made sure that users get a lot more screen real estate, with the e550G (JPY60,000) capable of displaying images 30 percent bigger than before -- that's how much bigger the screen is this time around (a 4in TFT screen for those keeping count). The machine also comes loaded with the Pocket PC2002 OS, 64MB of RAM as standard and in two different flavors: the e550G/MD (JPY100,000) version also houses an internal 1GB Microdrive.
More info: http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2002_04/pr_j1801.htm
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