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Apple might top Intel in mobile processor shipments by year-end

Watch out, Intel. That Apple-shaped company in your rear-view mirror is closer than you think, and according to In-Stat, could pass you in terms of mobile processor shipments by the end of 2012.

What’s really amazing is that Apple wasn’t even in the mobile processor business until 2007. In 2011, Apple shipped 176 million processors in its iPad and iPhone devices. Intel, which manufactures mobile processors for laptops and other devices, shipped 181 million. In-Stat believes that if the unprecedented demand for Apple’s mobile products continues, the company will soon be the number-one manufacturer of mobile processors.

That’s not far-fetched, considering that earlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook said that it’s fairly likely that the tablet market — which Apple owns — would surpass the total market for PCs in the near future.

Jim McGregor of InStat notes that things could get worse for Intel if Apple decides to use its own ARM-based processors in the popular MacBook Air and other devices. Analysts say that this currently isn’t too likely due to technical and performance issues, but if it could reduce total system component costs for Apple’s “traditional” computers, it might be worth the company’s time and effort to overcome those issues.

Intel’s not taking the market threat lightly, hence the recent push to use more of its mobile processor line in the so-called “Ultrabooks,” which are aimed directly at competing with the slender and light MacBook Air.

[via The Loop]

Apple might top Intel in mobile processor shipments by year-end originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel takes moviemaking social with The Inside Experience

Christina Perasso found herself locked in a dark room on Monday, unclear about where she was or how she got there. Her only link to the outside world has been a laptop, which she has been using to post requests for help on Twitter and upload photos and videos to Facebook and YouTube. Here’s one of her recent Facebook updates:

I can’t climb up to the windows I’ve tried a couple of times… a bunch of sites are blocked, like Skype, Google Earth etc. but I’m going to keep trying, a lot of other sites seem to work… whoever is doing this seems to be one step ahead of everything I try..

Relax, there’s no reason to call the cops. Perasso is a fictional character, part of a new interactive movie called The Inside Experience that was launched by Intel and Toshiba to promote the laptop used in the film. The 20-something is played by Emmy Rossum, who previously appeared in movies like Phantom of the Opera and The Day After Tomorrow, and the show is directed by D.J. Caruso of Disturbia fame.

Both companies started brainstorming about ways to combine a branded movie with social networks back in Janaury, I was told during a phone conversation with Intel’s OEM partner marketing director Ryan Baker today. The idea really started to take on a life of its own once Caruso got involved, who Baker credited for bringing a lot of Hollywood folks on board. Filming started in early June, and now it’s up to the online community to take the film to its final conclusion.

Perasso has already started to post a bunch of clues on her Facebook page, including various receipts from take-out restaurants and furniture stores. Users have eagerly begun to go over those clues to locate Perasso and help her to find a way out of her captivity. The pace and order in which these pieces of the puzzle are solved directly influence what kind of videos get posted next. “The clues have an impact on how the film plays out,” said Baker.

This also means that we won’t know for some time how long this movie actually is, and when it will end. Baker said that the team estimates viewers to solve the entire puzzle by mid August, but admitted: “We are not exactly sure.”

The Inside Experience is in many ways similar to alternate reality games, which have been used to promote shows like Lost by blurring the line between reality and fiction. However, the movie doesn’t even pretend to be the real deal. Part of this obviously has to do with liability: You don’t even want to pretend for a second that an abduction could be real. However, Baker also said that this was more about exploring new ways of storytelling: “We had always conceived of this as a fictional story line.”

There are a few things that I find interesting about The Inside Experience: First of all, it obviously seems to capture the imagination of its audience. The trailer to the movie was seen 1.75 million times before it even launched, and the publishing of Perasso’s first video even briefly took the movie’s website offline. Also intriguing is that Intel is willing to go rather dark with its old “Intel Inside” tagline. Sure, the laptop is Perasso’s most powerful tool, but she’s also held inside, against her will. Exploring this double meaning is pretty ingenious.

And finally, there’s the promise that we will eventually be able to see The Inside Experience as a complete movie, with edits and story line depending on all the social inputs that are gathered while the mystery unfolds. The movie’s audience also takes part in its completion, or in other words: We’re all inside, even if we don’t know it yet.

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Privacy Legislation’s Potential Impact on Online Media

Last week, the bipartisan Kerry-McCain bill proposed legislation on a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights that would put the Federal Trade Commission in charge of policing the online collection, sharing and use of personal information. Because the legislation is watered down relative to prior proposals, the Kerry-McCain bill will face the least industry resistance and is more likely to be passed this year. That has far-reaching implications for the online media business, as I detail over at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

The proposed bill is relatively business-friendly, so much so that it’s drawing criticism from privacy rights activists. Although advertising industry groups are predictably resistant to any kind of regulation, their initial reactions to Kerry-McCain seem more muted than concerns they had prior to the bill’s introduction. Big tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, eBay, Hewlett-Packard and Intel, for example, have already expressed support for the bill.

The real promise of online advertising is that it holds the potential combination of television-like reach with the ability to very precisely target audiences. But passage of the Kerry-McCain bill — or even something similar — could shift some power in online media and force changes in the way online ad networks and other targeters work with content sites. Here are two of the effects the bill could have on the online world:

  • Online content sites: Some traditional publishers might be perfectly happy without web-wide behavioral targeting. They could tout the value of their online/offline audience and promote contextual targeting and sponsorships. The bill lets publishers follow and target a user within their own site, which would benefit portals like Yahoo and AOL with their huge audiences and broad variety of content.
  • Online advertising ecosystem: The bill’s restrictive approach to behavioral targeting favors search advertising over display ad formats. The data sharing guidelines could force data miners (Experian, Audience Science, BlueKai) and ad networks (DoubleClick, ValueClick, 24/7 Real Media) to secure more formal contractual relationships with content sites that have registered users. And the legislation seems to leave room for third parties to take user info and create anonymized groups of targetable customer “types” based on demographics and behavior.

For other potential effects on the rest of the online ad ecosystem and social media targeting, as well as a more in-depth look at what does — and does not — focus on, read my weekly update at GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Image courtesy of: flicker user tristanf

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Palestinians get their first technology venture fund

In a first for an important region of the Middle East, the Middle East Venture Capital Fund announced today it has raised $28.7 million to invest in Palestinian technology companies.

The fund will be based in Ramallah and it has money from a bunch of international companies, foundations, and other investors. Those include Cisco, Google, the Soros Economic Development Fund, Skoll Foundation, Jean and Steve Case, and the European investment bank.

There is no question that the region badly needs tech startups to create jobs. The question is whether it can actually support tech startups. One disadvantage, beyond political turmoil, is the lack of infrastructure. Cell phone data networks might solve that, but there’s no guarantee that connectivity will be uninterrupted. Another hurdle is the lack of technologically-educated workers.

Intel realized this when it set up a technology education effort back in 2008 in the region. The world’s biggest chip makers has been investing billions of dollars into chip factories in Israel for many years, but not in the Palestinian areas. Still, the area’s talent has likely been overlooked.

The fund will be managed by Saed Nashef, a software entrepreneur and industry veteran who recently returned to the region after nearly two decades in the U.S. Another manager is Yadin Kaufmann, a longtime venture capitalist in the U.S. and Israel.

“We believe the Palestinian technology sector offers significant prospects for economic development and job creation,” said Nashef. “There is a vibrant community of software entrepreneurs who have ‘the right stuff’. We and our investors will aim to provide the access to risk capital and to international markets that these entrepreneurs need in order to compete on the world stage.”

The fund will invest in startups in the internet, mobile and software sectors in the West Bank. Several multinational tech companies already have outsourcing development work with Palestinian software companies. Those include Cisco, HP, and Intel. The fund says there are several thousand skilled Palestinian engineers available and 13 higher-learning institutions.

The fund’s timing is interesting as revolutions have spread through various Middle East countries, including Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. It would be very interesting to see if lasting change and technological advancement comes to the region at a time of dramatic change.

Jean Case, cief executive of the Case Foundation, said she sees tremendous potential in the value of technology firms in the West Bank as a contributor to both prosperity and stability in the region.

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Epic Games shows jaw-dropping graphics for next-generation consoles (video)

One of the best technology demos at the Game Developers Conference last week came from Epic Games, which created an incredible-looking futuristic fight scene that pushed the boundaries of 3D graphics.

Nvidia executives also showed off the technology today at their analyst meeting and we’ve captured video of it below. The 3D graphics represents a new peak in realistic graphics and it represents Epic’s proposal for what the next-generation of console games — whenever they come — should look like.

“This next-generation technology preview is what we would like to see from the next-generation of gaming hardware,” said Alan Willard of Epic Games, which is the well-known game developer that has created games such as Unreal Tournament, Bulletstorm and Gears of War.

The cinematic video shows graphics that are running in the Unreal Engine in real-time. It is real-time computer graphics, not a video of pre-fabricated computer graphics.

The scene depicted resembles the futuristic, gritty city in the film Blade Runner. You can see cool effects in the glowing blow torch, the smoke rising from the cigarette, the detailed facial hair and wrinkles, and the morphing of the man’s skin. The guy takes out a bunch of cops beating up an old woman. As he does so, the screen freezes to slow motion and you can see all of the details that would otherwise be a blur.

Willard said that one of the effects is called bouquet depth of field, where you see a bright spot that is out of focus and then it is replaced with another image. You can also see reflections on all surfaces, such as the water on the streets reflecting light from the street lamps. Those reflections do not show through objects that are blocking it from view.

When the light hits a human face, you can see an effect called sub-surface scattering, when light penetrates through the layers of skin and makes skin glow as the light bounces around inside the skin. You can see the water trickling down the man’s face. The man’s jacket tail sways and moves as he does, thanks to an Nvidia clothing rendering technology.

The demo ran on a PC with an Intel Core i9 microprocessor with three Nvidia GeForce 580 GTX graphics cards connected through SLI technology. The demo took about three months for 12 programmers and artists to build.

Epic Games’ vice president Mark Rein said that the demo is considered ideal for next-generation console technology. But no console maker has yet acknowledged that it is building anything to replace the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation 3, or the Microsoft Xbox 360. See the video below.

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