VentureBeat |
- Consumer electronics sales rebound in second quarter
- Judge dismisses parts of billion-dollar Viacom - YouTube lawsuit
- MobileBeat drumbeat: NYT’s Stone, Android’s Chu, Getjar’s Laurs and more…
- Internet radio reaches deal with record industry, Pandora saved
- Plato Networks rakes in $7.5M for energy-efficient chips
- Firefox imitates Chrome with crash-proofing feature
- Relievant Medsystems raises $20M to treat lower back pain
- Slide cuts staff, refocuses on premium ad deals
- Michael Jackson memorial drew 6,000 messages a second on CNN/Facebook site
- Fotoglif lets sites publish and profit from professional photos
- Apple’s iPhone apps: 62,965 and counting (or is it?)
- Google finally rips the beta label off Gmail and other Google Apps
- Want to improve your odds? Think hardware
- Palm lines up carriers to launch Pre in Europe, Canada
- StayHealthy launching calorie-tracking devices; iPhone app to follow
| Consumer electronics sales rebound in second quarter Posted: 07 Jul 2009 04:51 PM PDT
The data is consistent with sales reports in the chip industry, which also saw sales grow in the second quarter, compared with the first quarter. Both industries are key bellwethers for judging the health of the tech economy. The second quarter sales are a big improvement from the first quarter, when sales fell 25.8 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. The sharp decline was more pronounced than usual because of the recession. But conditions are starting to improve in the consumer electronics business, said Sheri Greenspan, senior analyst at iSuppli. In the third quarter, sales are forecast to rise 12.5 percent sequentially over the second quarter, and fourth quarter sales are expected to rise 10.2 percent over the third quarter to $88.2 billion. Overall, 2009 will see sales decline to $307.6 billion, down 8.2 percent from $335.2 billion in 2008. Prices are falling in many popular categories, from digital cameras to flat-panel TVs and game consoles. Unit sales are increasing somewhat. In the second quarter, unit sales were up 5 percent from the first quarter. The third and fourth quarter unit sales are expected to rise 16.1 percent and 14.1 percent respectively. For the year, unit sales will be down 4.8 percent in 2009. The market research firm tracks 19 different consumer electronics items. Most categories saw unit sales increases. The categories that saw drops in the second quarter were handheld video games, game consoles, camcorders and rear-projection TVs. iSuppli forecasts that consumer electronics revenues will rise 2 percent to $313.7 billion.
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| Judge dismisses parts of billion-dollar Viacom - YouTube lawsuit Posted: 07 Jul 2009 04:44 PM PDT
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Stanton wrote that the DMCA “”bars statutory damages for all foreign and domestic works not timely registered.” Stanton’s interpretation would disqualify Viacom’s claims for copyright infringement on Britain’s Rugby Football League and music copyrighted by the British National Music Publishers Association. Judge Stanton also decreed that the plaintiffs in the case could not seek punitive damages. [Photo
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| MobileBeat drumbeat: NYT’s Stone, Android’s Chu, Getjar’s Laurs and more… Posted: 07 Jul 2009 04:02 PM PDT I’m delighted to announce the latest speakers at MobileBeat2009, our mobile industry conference for executives next Thursday (July 16):
David Marcus, chief executive, Zong (middle above)– Zong is a significant player in mobile payments. He’ll be speaking on the mobile social panel, where payments can help grease the wheels of the emerging mobile games industry. Andrew Lacy, co-founder and chief operating officer (above right)– Tapulous is parent company of some leading mobile game companies on the iPhone, including Tap Tap Revenge.
Ilja Laurs, founder and chief executive of GetJar (above middle) — Getjar is the world's largest independent mobile application store, something that has been forgotten with the emergence of the gee-whiz iPhone App store. Getjar operates mostly outside of the U.S., however, which is why it isn’t as well known here. But it’s the service is partly why Mig33 has become one of the most downloaded apps. Every month, 35,000,000 downloads are served from GetJar site and its network of OEM and carrier partners that include Vodafone, Sony Ericsson, Blackberry.
We’ve got a great time in store for MobileBeat. Our start-up competition has proven competitive, and we’ll be seeing 10 companies launch with brand new products. Buy tickets here. We’re thrilled to have sponsorship support from so many mobile industry leaders: Qualcomm, Velti, AdMob, GetJar, Symbian, beamME, Sun Microsystems, Cc:Betty, Greystripe, Mozes, Nvidia and SGN.
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| Internet radio reaches deal with record industry, Pandora saved Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:39 PM PDT
“Pandora is finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates,” said Pandora Chief Technology Officer Tom Conrad in an email sent out earlier today. “The unresolved licencing issues have hung over us like a dark cloud for two years. It’s a great feeling to have the road cleared of that obstacle.” The Radio and Internet Newsletter (RAIN) has more details on the agreement, which lasts until 2015. But the crux is that SoundExchange will reduce royalty fees in exchange for a percentage of revenues. It’s an opt-in system (meaning a company could choose to pay the higher royalty rates and not share revenue), and the terms change depending on the size of the company. Since Pandora is a “large” webcaster (meaning it makes more than $1.25 million annually), it gets a 40 to 50 percent cut in royalties and in return gives SoundExchange 25 percent of US revenue. Conrad added that the deal still sets Pandora’s royalty rates at a level “much higher than any other form of radio.” To bring in more money, the Oakland, Calif., startup is limiting its free service to 40 hours of listening a month. People who want to listen more than that (they account for 10 percent of users right now) have to pay $0.99 or upgrade to the $36-a-year Pandora One service. The first companies to sign the agreement were AccuRadio, Digitally Imported, and RadioIO, RAIN says. [Are you an entrepreneur or executive active in mobile? Join us at MobileBeat 2009, our mobile conference for industry leaders, where Pandora's Conrad will be one of the speakers. Sign up soon.] [photo:flickr/flattop341]
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| Plato Networks rakes in $7.5M for energy-efficient chips Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:18 PM PDT Plato Networks, maker of chips used to make data centers more energy efficient, brought in $7.5 million of an anticipated $10 million round of preferred stock. Based in Santa Clara, Calif., the company previously raised $20 million in a second round of financing from Crosslink Capital, Granite Ventures and STIC International.
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| Firefox imitates Chrome with crash-proofing feature Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:15 PM PDT
Google’s motivation, according to the promotional comic strip created by popular cartoonist Scott McCloud, was to goad other browser makers — Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple — into making changes in their browsers to keep up. McCloud’s comic may have worked. Ars Technica explains that Firefox is “considering the possibility” of adding multi-process browsing, a feature Chrome has had from the start. In multi-process browsing, each tab in the browser window is assigned its own process inside the server. So if one application crashes, its process gets shut down, but other browser windows aren’t effected. “Adapting Firefox to make it support multiprocess browsing will not be an easy task,” Ars Technica writer Ryan Paul wrote on his blog. Many fundamental components of the browser’s underlying infrastructure will have to be modified.”
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| Relievant Medsystems raises $20M to treat lower back pain Posted: 07 Jul 2009 01:00 PM PDT Relievant Medsystems, maker of minimally invasive procedures used to treat chronic lower back pain, has brought in $20 million in private equity from Morgenthaler Ventures, Canaan Partners, Emergent Medical Partners and ONSET Ventures. Based in Redwood City, Calif., the company has conducted a small pilot study testing out the effectiveness of its lead procedure and has seen positive results. The device used allows spine surgeons to relieve nerve pain in just the lower back without damaging any other vertebrae.
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| Slide cuts staff, refocuses on premium ad deals Posted: 07 Jul 2009 11:06 AM PDT
GigaOm first reported the news last night, after obtaining a copy of the email chief executive Max Levchin sent to the team and confirming the news with Levchin. The PayPal co-founder said that, financially, it makes more sense for Slide to pursue the bigger ad campaigns and sponsorships (in the $500,000 range), rather than spend time and energy on smaller deals. Lily Lin, Slide’s director of communications, sent me a few more details:
We’ve reported that Slide is currently making around $20 million a year in advertising. The company has raised a total of $58 million in venture backing — back in January 2008, it raised most of that money at an eye-opening $550 million valuation. (Shortly afterward, competitor RockYou raised a round at what we heard was a $200 to $230 million valuation.) Of course, the economy and ad market have changed dramatically since then, but I would imagine Slide’s feeling pressure to at least partially justify those numbers.
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| Michael Jackson memorial drew 6,000 messages a second on CNN/Facebook site Posted: 07 Jul 2009 10:55 AM PDT
After a few seconds of video, the picture on CNN.com stalled. Clearly, the site was choking. But viewers seemed to be having fun with the Facebook widget, which let them post status updates and watch the short messages scroll by alongside the video on the CNN web site. They were sending messages expressing marvel at the real-time conversation happening among people from around the world. CNN said hundreds of thousands of people were logged into the Facebook widget and 6,000 status updates were coming in every minute. That was more than during the Obama inauguration. I cut over to Hulu.com, which showed me a 30-second video ad before starting. They were on commentary, so I switched to Justin.tv, which handled the live streaming for E! Online. The sites seemed to be handling the traffic well, but my sense is they flowed even smoother once it was clear the ceremonies were delayed. Smoky Robinson came on stage to talk (apparently reading condolence letters from singer Diana Ross and statesman Nelson Mandela). The crowd applauded when the family came in. Then the audio cut out from Staples Center. We couldn’t hear anything. The commentators said Jesse Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Brooke Shields, Robert Townsend and a host of other celebrities were spotted inside. The TV networks managed to get people to tune in early by running live video of MJ’s motorcade moving down a completely cleared Los Angeles freeway (filmed from helicopters). Inside the darkened Staples Center, the crowd of 17,500 was silent, according to commentators. Finally, the memorial service resumed at 10:35 am. A gospel choir came on and sang a song with the refrain, “We are going to see the king.” Jackson’s pastor Lucious Smith came on and said, “We come together in this space where only days ago Michael sang and dance and brought his joy as only Michael could.” Singer Mariah Carey came out on stage next and sang “I’ll Be There,” accompanied by Trey Lorenz. CNN briefly cut out of the song and then returned to it, for an unknown reason. On Facebook, snarky and sentimenal comments rolled by. Many said they were crying. Another said, “Thank God she had Trey. He saved her performance.” Queen Latifah reminisced about how she tried to repeat the moves of the Jackson Five. She said, “Michael was the greatest entertainer that ever lived.” On Facebook, people echoed the comment. Keynote Systems, which monitors the performance of major news web sites, said it did see some slowdowns among the sites that it monitors on a regular basis. But it said the Internet appeared to function OK. Ustream said that it served 4.6 million video streams from around the world in partnership with CBS. Ustream said that viewers participating in the chat rooms left 12,000 messages per minute. Ken Godskind, chief strategy officer for web performance firm AlertSite, said that E!Online saw its response time for its ome page reach as high as 20.75 seconds, while TMZ’s home page response time hit 10.41 seconds during the memorial. Both suffered some page errors during the memorial service. People logging into Twitter during the memorial service saw login failures about half the time.
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| Fotoglif lets sites publish and profit from professional photos Posted: 07 Jul 2009 09:00 AM PDT
The company licenses photos from a bunch of photo agencies and embeds those photos with ads (see example below). Web sites can use the photos for free, and Fotoglif shares 50 percent of the ad revenue with the pro photographers, 20 percent with the site publisher, and it keeps 30 percent for itself. It also records usage metrics. Mike Betts, chief executive of Fotoglif, expects that sharing revenue with bloggers and other web sites that use Fotoglif photos will incent those sites to forego using pirated photos. The Toronto, Canada-based company is announcing its site today. It currently has three million photos in its library with about 15,000 new ones coming in every day. Fotoglif has partnered with the world’s leading photo agencies, including Getty Images, Thomson Reuters, Splash News, the European Press Agency, Newscom, Zuma Press and others. It hosts and manages the content itself, organizing the photos so content publishers can find what they want quickly. It also makes photos available in real time, so that recently-taken photos can be used quickly — for example, it has a current photo of President Obama in Russia. Rivals aren’t doing exactly the same thing. PhoTrade embeds ads in photos, but it’s soliciting photos from general users not professional photographers who submit photos to photo agencies. GumGum is a more direct rival, but you need multiple logins and passwords to access multiple photo agencies. GumGum also does not share revenue with site publishers. By contrast, Fotoglif is more like a single destination site for multiple photo agencies. Content publishers sign in with one password and get access to all of the photos. The company has been testing the site for a few months, gathering more photos and partners in the meantime. Fotoglif was founded in early 2008 and has 6 employees. It was funded by angels, friends and family. But more recently it raised $1 million from SunWah high-tech, a company in Hong Kong. Betts, the founder, is a photo studio owner himself.
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| Apple’s iPhone apps: 62,965 and counting (or is it?) Posted: 07 Jul 2009 08:27 AM PDT
That number became fixated in everyone’s heads. But now it’s time to move on. Less than a month later, there are now 62,965 apps on the iPhone, according to Mobclix. The number of games is now 13,030. Back on June 24, we noted that there 59,073 apps, including 12,403 games. That means there are 299 apps — including 48 games — coming out every day. The acceleration is due in part to the release of iPhone 3.0 software, which as of June 16 allowed a lot of developers to release enhanced apps. In some ways, that shows how healthy the ecosystem is. More than a billion apps have been downloaded. (That number is obsolete, as Apple crossed it on April 23). But observers are asking questions. How many of those apps are free? (There are 14,242 free apps, including 3,561 free games). How many of the billion-plus downloads are free? How much revenue are they generating? What are the profits? Who is building a sustainable business on the iPhone? Some apps makers such as Mark Pincus of Zynga have said that profits have been elusive so far on the iPhone platform. [Update: Busted Loop says its count is much different. The company says that Mobclix is double-counting apps between categories. The real numbers should be 55,977, with 10,175 games. Go figure.] What do the numbers mean? Apple has created a relentlessly Darwinian marketplace. New developers are piling in. Companies are developing their own tricks on how to get noticed. Production values have to be higher if the apps are to stand out. Marketing and advertising may very well become a necessity, even for apps that are viral hits. Publishers may have to get used to the idea that their apps may sell for a couple of weeks and then fall off a cliff. The numbers are stunning in a lot of ways, but I don’t think anyone fully appreciates what they mean yet. [Are you an entrepreneur or executive active in mobile? Join us at MobileBeat 2009, our mobile conference for industry leaders. Sign up soon.]
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| Google finally rips the beta label off Gmail and other Google Apps Posted: 07 Jul 2009 08:00 AM PDT
Well, the future is here. Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Talk — bundled with the already-out-of-beta Google Sites and Google Video under the name Google Apps — are all leaving beta. So what’s the difference between Apps in beta and Apps out of beta? In terms of features, not much. Rajen Sheth, senior product manager with Google Apps, tells me the company set a variety of benchmarks for when Apps could be taken out of beta, involving “usage, utilization, and overall quality.” For one thing, he noted that over the past few months Apps has taken some serious steps towards addressing the requests of big corporate users, such as adding offline access for Gmail, improving BlackBerry support, synchronizing with Outlook, and improving contact management. In that vein, Google is also announcing a few more features today aimed at those enterprises — email delegation so assistants can screen and send emails on behalf of others, email retention so IT administrators can decide when emails get deleted from the system (an important regulatory requirement for some businesses and government agencies), and live replication of data at other locations. But this may be more a question of perception than of features. Sheth notes that some potential customers who were leery of the “beta” description, despite the fact that when Apps is sold to businesses, it isn’t considered a beta product, and it includes things like guaranteed uptime. But it can be a challenge to convince someone that a package of services (Apps) is not in beta when most of the component products (Gmail, Docs, etc.) are. And the reason it’s a challenge is because it doesn’t make any sense. So this move should help businesses see Apps as a mature set of services that they can count on. Part of the confusion comes from the fact that Google Apps serve both consumer and business users. I asked Sheth whether consumer needs or business needs are guiding the product roadmap, and he said it’s actually both. It’s true that some features are really meant mainly for one group or the other, but “the vast majority” are meant for all users. “The consumer world is actually advancing much more quickly in terms of innovation,” Sheth said. “Things like, for example, group calendars and public calendars have been appealing across the board. There aren’t very many examples of features that originally started in the consumer world that aren’t appealing to enterprises.” On the pricing side, nothing’s changing, Sheth added — the consumer applications will remain free and ad-supported, there will still be a free version of Apps, and Google will continue to offer a premium version for $50 per user per year. There may be opportunities to charge for specific add-ons later, but he said, “Our philosophy to date has really been to continually enhance the functionality as is around the existing price point.” Using that approach, Apps is already serving 1.75 million businesses and bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue, according to Google. As for where Gmail and the rest go from here, Sheth offered a few general thoughts. Google wants to add more features that make Apps feel familiar to enterprise administrators and users, but it also wants to continue “innovating in completely new directions,” he said. Meanwhile, the next time Gmail goes down, you can expect a chorus of bloggers and Twitter users to cry, “I thought it wasn’t in beta anymore!”
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| Want to improve your odds? Think hardware Posted: 07 Jul 2009 07:41 AM PDT When I founded NewDealDesign nine years ago, the axiom in Silicon Valley was that software was the only way to go for new entrepreneurs. Things haven’t changed much since then. That traditional thinking ignores some ugly realities, though. Software and Web markets are so filled with dominant players that they are actually relatively difficult to break into. Standard category leaders control 60 percent of the market. Runners-up to those leaders are left with 30 percent. And the crumbs are fought over by others in the category. You don’t need to look much further than social networking sites, browsers or operating systems to understand this breakdown. No matter how hefty the investment, the odds of success are high. Hardware products, though, (particularly in the consumer electronics field) have a little more wiggle room. Rather than a market that is run by two or three primary competitors, you can thrive with as many as 12-15 companies with a similar focus. The cell-phone and laptop businesses are perfect examples. While the consumer hardware market has always been diverse, making it easier for newcomers to get on the shelf and begin building sales, recent trends have made it even more appealing. One key factor is that the manufacturing industry has grown in China and become more readily accessible to entrepreneurs. If you have a completed design, the manufacturers and component suppliers there are ready to help you begin building. Also, electronic components are smarter, faster, more powerful and less costly than ever before, making it cheaper and easier to build a smart gadget. There’s also a lot of room for innovation. Broadband internet connections are pervasive and allow for new market categories and profit opportunities. The recent rise of netbooks is a good example. The small PCs took the market by storm, accounting for 12 percent of sales in December 2008, the month they became readily available. You don’t have to come up with a market defining idea to be successful, either. You can be the 20th netbook company in the category, and still be making a profit relatively quickly. The Economics of Consumer Hardware Many new consumer electronics ventures can flourish in a state of semi-success, selling product for profits and reaching a break-even point faster than software startups. This is because the economics of consumer hardware are not incredibly complicated. The return on investment is a much clearer process. Roughly one-third of the suggested retail price of an item is direct cost (buying components, shipping, and inventory). Another one-third goes to the retailer. The rest is profit. Let’s go back to our netbook example. Say your product sells at $300 (meaning a $100 profit on each sale). If you spend $4 million up front — including industrial design and your direct costs — you only need to sell 40,000 units to break even. Your core technology, something that makes the product unique to your company, will be your biggest expense. When it comes to product design (or concept development), the general rule of thumb is this should amount to 3 percent of your research and development costs. (This number shifts, though, from company to company.) The most important money you will spend, though, is on industrial design (establishing the aesthetics of the final product). Good design can dramatically boost your sales, while bad design will end up costing you money (as you’ll inevitably have to go through a redesign down the road). When approaching an industrial design firm, know your goals, especially if you are a small company. Because small companies do not have large ad budgets, your product will often convey the attitude and positioning of the firm. You also need to be careful to ensure your management and board of directors are unified on the vision for your product. (Unofficial arbiters between the two sometimes galvanize different views of a product.) Another place where the value of your product design investment can help “sell” the product is in the fundraising process. Objects have power - they capture attention. The right object can be a showstopper - and an investment winner when you’re talking with VCs. When selling an idea (whether to backers or manufacturers), tangible prototypes are infinitely more effective than flat sketches. While Silicon Valley’s mentality hasn’t changed much in the last nine years, the opportunity in consumer electronics may be even greater. The ‘long tail’ theory is true here more than any other industry. A “magic product,” such as the iPhone, may be at the front of the curve, but it’s followed by everything else that people want and need. Take a walk down the aisles of Target, Wal-Mart or any big box store, and you’ll see how many products that are out there that are not revolutionary, but evolutionary. Gadi Amit is the founder and principal designer of NewDealDesign. He has been in product design for over 20 years and is responsible for the design of such devices as the Sling Box, Fitbit, Glide TV and Dell Studio Hybrid.
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| Palm lines up carriers to launch Pre in Europe, Canada Posted: 07 Jul 2009 07:38 AM PDT
O2 will exclusively launch the Pre in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany, while Movistar will launch the phone in Spain. The Pre will also debut in Canada on the Bell Mobility network in the second half of the year. The European rollouts will be ready in time for the holidays. Palm hasn’t detailed how many Pres Sprint has sold since the device debuted on June 6 in the U.S. But the company says that the Pre broke Sprint’s previous first-weekend sales records. Palm has been setting the stage for European expansion for months. Chief executive Jon Rubinstein said interest in the Pre has been brewing since the company showed it off at the Mobile World Congress in February. Palm has been pushing the Pre in the U.S. as a smartphone for the rest of us. Its ads note that it costs $1,200 less to own over a two-year period than the iPhone. The Pre features a slide-out physical keyboard and a new operating system, webOS, that gives the phone a lot of computer-like functions, such as the ability to run rich applications and to handle multiple tasks at the same time. Pricing and specific launch dates in the new territories haven’t been announced yet. [Are you an entrepreneur or executive active in mobile? Join us at MobileBeat 2009, our mobile conference for industry leaders. Sign up soon.]
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| StayHealthy launching calorie-tracking devices; iPhone app to follow Posted: 06 Jul 2009 11:25 PM PDT
So obsessive iPhone e-mail checkers may soon be able to apply that tenacity to their calorie count. “We think that information is key for people taking control of their health and the question is how do you make it most conveniently accessible?” said StayHealthy president Brian Baum. “We recognize that people don’t want to walk around with a half-dozen devices and the most ubiquitous device from a market perspective is the iPhone.” StayHealthy focuses on body composition, which is measure of a person’s bone, muscle and fat levels, over weight because it is a more accurate gauge of health, Baum said. Because muscle is easier to lose than fat, a dieter may inadvertently lose more lean mass if they just cut back on calories without any exercise. When a person is measuring their body composition, they grip StayHealthy’s device with two hands. It sends an electric pulse through one hand and measures the time it takes to pass through the entire body and into the other hand. Because water conducts electricity well, a slow response time might mean the person has a higher level of fat. StayHealthy’s second device is a calorie tracker and uses an accelerometer you wear on your waist to gauge how active you’ve been during the day. The devices relay that information privately online so users can keep track of their goals and how far they’ve progressed. They can also let outsiders like doctors or fitness trainers monitor their data to bring on extra pressure to meet health goals. StayHealthy isn’t focused on marketing its devices directly to consumers and is instead partnering with fitness centers, health providers and weight-loss centers to sell its products. Baum said the company had sales of the devices in the “low thousands” so far and that this is the year it will focus on deployment. The company is privately held and has raised $12 million since its inception in 1995. A few other companies are in the health and wellness space on mobile phones, including Bones in Motion, which lets athletes track the distance and speed of their training regimens using GPS technology, iHeartRate, which tracks heart rate and has a calorie burn calculator, iFitness, which shows images of more than 230 exercises sorted by body region or target muscle group, and Tap & Track, which lets users follow the calories they ingest and burn.
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In a sign of economic life, global consumer electronics sales rose 4.2 percent to $71.1 billion, compared to $68.3 billion in the first quarter, according to market researcher 
Brad Stone, New York Times (at left)– Stone, a leading reporter in the 
Eric Chu, head of Android App store, Google (left)– 
Internet radio companies have been complaining for a while about the high royalty rates they pay for music — they said the rates set in 2007 didn’t make sense given the small amount of money they’re making. Pandora, which 
Slide
Like millions of others, I tuned in at 10 am Pacific time to watch the Michael Jackson memorial service, live over the web. While I wanted to share the experience and remember MJ, I also wanted to see how the Internet held up under the weight of so much video traffic.
Web sites that use photos for free have been the bane of professional photographers. But Fotoglif has a solution that can make it easier — and more lucrative — for web sites to use the highest-quality photos with proper licenses.
Apple 
Google’s charming refusal to take the “beta” label off web applications like Gmail and Google Docs has become something of a joke. Not only did that imply serious kinks were still being worked out, it also made the idea of a beta test seem almost meaningless. Recently, 
Expanding its attacks on Apple’s iPhone empire, Palm said today
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