MacRumors

The Wall Street Journal reports that AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega noted at an investor conference today that the company is continuing to work to address network issues in Manhattan and San Francisco, areas with high densities of iPhone and other smartphone users who have been experiencing subpar performance.

Those two cities see especially high smart-phone penetration, which has put pressure on AT&T's data network. The company expects to see gradual improvements in New York and plans to replace some microcells in San Francisco, he said.

"This is going to get fixed," Mr. de la Vega said. "In both of those markets, I am very confident that you're going to see significant progress."

Despite recent improvements centered around deployment of the 850 MHz spectrum in many of AT&T's markets, complaints have continued to surface, with Apple support staff even apparently acknowledging that a dropped call rate of 30% was considered normal in New York City.

De la Vega also addressed the ongoing issue of high-bandwidth smartphone customers, noting frequently-cited data showing that 3% of smartphone users are responsible for 40% of data traffic. In response to this issue, de la Vega reiterated AT&T's general plan to "incentivize" customers to reduce their data usage.

With about 3% of smart-phone customers driving 40% of data traffic, AT&T is considering incentives to keep those subscribers from hampering the experience for everyone else, he said. "You can rest assured that we're very sure we can address it in a way that's consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations."

While specific plans have yet to be rolled out, de la Vega suggested that simply offering users greater insight into their bandwidth usage has been shown to reduce their demand. Over the longer term, however, AT&T is likely to shift to usage-based pricing, although any such changes would be based on industry standards and competition and on regulatory guidelines.

While one of the key features of the iPhone 3GS was video recording capabilities, that was limited to recordings that were captured on your device and could be uploaded to the web after they were done recording. With the Ustream Live Broadcaster, you can easily record videos right to the web, and allow others to watch them as they're being recorded. These videos can also be archived so that people can watch them later, if they choose.

The application also offers a number of other features, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube integration, viewer chatting and polling, and geolocation.

The debut of Ustream Live Broadcasting marks the second approval of a video streaming application for the iPhone in recent days, following Apple CEO Steve Jobs' apparent personal involvement in the approval of Knocking Live Video. Knocking, however, offers only iPhone-to-iPhone one-on-one streaming, while Ustream supports streaming to the Internet for multiple viewers.

Ustream is no stranger to the App Store, having debuted an application for viewing Ustream videos early this year.

MarketWatch reports on a new research note from Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Yair Reiner predicting, based on industry checks, that Apple will begin mass production of its much-rumored tablet computer in February ahead of a launch in late March or April.

The report claims that the device will include a 10.1" multi-touch LCD screen, specifically countering a recent rumor that the device's launch would be delayed to the second half of next year and would include a model sporting an OLED screen.

Another claim included in the report is that Apple has begun contacting book publishers about distributing their books through Apple for consumption on the new device. Apple is reportedly proposing a similar business model to its App Store, where Apple would retain 30% of each download's sale price with 70% going to the publishers. This model is seen to be a significantly more attractive deal to publishers than that offered by Amazon for its Kindle Store, where sales are split 50-50 between Amazon and the publishers.

Book publishers may not be the only ones looking to get on board with Apple's tablet launch, as a coalition of magazine publishers just yesterday launched a joint venture to develop standards and business models for digital distribution of their content. Magazine publishers have also been designing prototypes of how their content might be presented on tablet devices.

Reiner estimates that Apple may sell 1-1.5 million tablets per quarter at an estimated price of $1,000, contributing $0.22-$0.38 of profit to Apple's quarterly per-share earnings based on a margin of 22%.

AppleInsider reports that Apple is preparing to begin seeding builds of Mac OS X 10.6.3, the next maintenance release for Snow Leopard, to developers as soon as this week.

People familiar with the matter say the forthcoming builds are likely to be released to some developers in the next 48 hours, and carry the expected prefix of 10Dxx. It is not yet known what issues Apple hopes to address with the latest update.

While Mac OS X 10.6.2, the most recent update, saw an approximately one-month interval between its first developer seed and its public release, development times can vary significantly as Apple works to address both known issues and new ones that crop up throughout the process.

Through job listings and and interview comments, it's clear that Apple has finally taken an active interest in the gaming market. The company has been positioning the iPod touch as a gaming device in their advertisements both on the web and on television. Meanwhile, a recent job listing seeking a game developer raised the question of whether or not Apple might take matters into their own hands with game development.

Some weren't convinced that the game developer job listing necessarily meant that Apple would actually develop their own games, but another recently-discovered job listing further suggests that they may. In October, Apple posted a job listing specifically for a "Video Game Artist".

The interactive media group is looking for a skilled artist who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The position on the team is to help design, visualize, enable and implement interface, 3D characters/environments, animation, texturing as well as original concept artwork.

The candidate must be able to model and animate 3D scene graph environments and be a strong environment and character concept artist. While you could argue that a game developer may simply be used to help Apple support their 3rd party developers, Apple's hiring of a gaming artist/modeler seems more telling.

Meanwhile, another Apple job listing reveals that Apple has been recruiting for an internal team called the "iPhone Games Group".

With the Dragon Dictation App, spoken words are instantly transcribed using the world-renowned power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition, giving anyone the power to simply "say anything" up to five times faster than typing. Dragon Dictation allows users to speak anything from a one-line text message or status update for Facebook, to a multi-paragraph e-mail. For instance, simply say, "We should meet at the restaurant at 7 and then go to the movies. I'll pick up Scott in Cupertino after he gets off work. See you then." Users can start and stop as needed or just speak free form to capture a quick brainstorm idea or reminder. It's completely up to you.

The application works by transmitting spoken input to Nuance's central servers, where it is processed by the transcription algorithms and returned to the user's device. Consequently, the application does requires a data connection in order to function.

The application offers editing options including alternative suggestions for misinterpreted phrases and built-in keyboard functionality for manual editing of text. The application also offers voice corrections, allowing users to highlight a selected portion of text and replace it with newly-spoken phrases.

Several users have noted a potential privacy issue with Dragon Dictation, however, with a number of iTunes Store user reviews noting that the license agreement for the application reveals that data from users' lists of contacts will be sent to Nuance and stored on its servers.

Dragon Dictation is free for a limited time, and Nuance will in the near future be releasing Dragon Search, a second iPhone application allowing users to conduct voice searches of a number of sources including search engines, YouTube, Twitter, iTunes, and Wikipedia.

Update: Nuance has responded to the privacy concerns, noting that the use of users' contacts is limited to only names and is used to aid in transcribing those names when spoken.

As you may have experienced already, Dragon Dictation for the iPhone goes through your contact list on your iPhone and uploads the names to our server. We do this for a pretty simple reason: we found that people are often dictating names from their address book and expect the names to be recognized. We take this information and create an anonymous user profile for your device that understands what names are likely to dictate into a document. It's important to note that we only upload the names, not the e-mail addresses, phone numbers or any other personally identifying information from your contacts.

Five major magazine publishers today announced the creation of a joint venture to develop standards for a digital content storefront and viewing on portable devices.

Cond Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. today jointly announced that they have entered into an independent venture to develop open standards for a new digital storefront and related technology that will allow consumers to enjoy their favorite media content on portable digital devices.

Rumors of collaboration among major magazine publishers looking to prepare for Apple's much-rumored entrance into the tablet market have been circulating in recent months, with word of the specific joint venture appearing late last month.

While today's press release provides little specific information on plans for the new venture, it offers four goals for creating a flexible and robust framework to allow magazine publishers to offer their content and advertising on a variety of portable devices.

The goal of this digital initiative is fourfold, to create: a highly featured common reading application capable of rendering the distinctive look and feel of each publication; a robust publishing platform optimized for multiple devices, operating systems and screen sizes; a consumer storefront offering an extensive selection of reading options; and a rich array of innovative advertising opportunities.

With a growing number of devices capable of accessing media content, from the iPhone and other smartphones to dedicated e-readers to Apple's forthcoming tablet, publishers have recognized the potential for new revenue streams as well as the need to streamline the process for offering content for this wide variety of devices.

Of course, Apple also has a sizable App Store listing with a breakdown into traditional applications and games. Amongst the top selling apps were The Sims 3 and Mobile Navigator North America, while the best apps included Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor and Reel Director.

The full list of items can be see in iTunes [link]. Exact items on the lists seem to be country specific.

ArsTechnica reports that Intel's Larrabee graphics chip technology has been delayed indefinitely:

Specifically, Larrabee v1 is so delayed that, at the time it eventually launches, it just won't be competitive as a discrete graphics part, so Intel plans to wring some value out of it by putting it out as a test-bed for doing multicore graphics and supercomputing development. Intel will eventually put out a GPU, but may not be the one we've been calling "Larrabee" for the past few years.

Larrabee had been the codename for a new graphics card technology that would compete head to head with NVidia and ATI. Larrabee had a unique hybrid design that was said to scale incredibly well with multiple cores. Apple's Snow Leopard was well poised to take advantage of this multi-core design and Apple had been rumored to be planning on adopting the chip upon its release:

And I've heard from a source that I trust that Apple will use Larrabee; this makes sense, because Larrabee, as a many-core x86 multiprocessor, can be exploited directly by GrandCentral's cooperative multitasking capabilities.

Obviously, with this development, we're not going to be seeing this technology in Macs anytime soon. In fact, Intel is not even planning on announcing details about their followup graphics product until 2010.

iPhoneography reports that Apple's Phil Schiller has apparently taken action based on a complaint that one App Store developer was boosting their app's ratings artificially with fake reviews:

Please investigate for I have just looked at 44 of the reviewers who posted reviews for this Molinker Inc app "NightCam Pro" & EVERY Review except 2 of the 44+ are ALL FAKE 5 [star] reviews.

The customer suspected that the developer had used their 50 promo codes to leave these 5 star reviews on the iTunes App Store. This customer then emailed Apple's Phil Schiller notifying him of the findings which quickly resulted in removal of this developer's 1900+ apps.

The practice of leaving positive ratings for your own applications is not an uncommon practice in the App Store, though Molinker's efforts appear to be on a much greater scale. Schiller's quick response is just another sign that Apple is taking recent App Store criticisms very seriously. Schiller has been directly involved in many of the App Store decisions and has even given interviews defending their policies.

Apple also recently reversed a much publicized policy to heavily restrict the use of any Apple hardware images within App Store Apps.

Media Memo reports that multiple sources are saying that Apple paid approximately $80 million in its acquisition of streaming music service Lala Media late last week.

Apple ended up paying around $80 million for the company, according to multiple sources. That's less than half of what investors valued the company at in 2008, but it's more than the $35 million the company raised throughout its life. Which means that some investors could get their money back and more.

The report notes that Warner Music Group had invested $20 million into Lala, but wrote down $11 million of that investment back in March. It remains unclear whether it will recoup its full $20 million investment with the sale or the smaller, post-write-down amount.

Lala reportedly possessed about $10 million in cash, meaning that it could have continued operating on its own for a significant period of time, but it appears that it sought a larger partner due to doubts about the company's ability to operate profitably as a stand-alone entity over the long-term.

Apple's exact motivation for purchasing Lala remains unclear, as some reports have suggested that Apple was primarily interested in the engineers behind Lala, while others have claimed that Apple is in fact looking to enter the streaming music business directly. Regardless of Apple's intentions, the purchase barely even dents its cash reserves, as the company reported approximately $34 billion in cash and cash equivalents at the end of its most recent quarterly reporting period.

Update: TechCrunch is now reporting that Apple's purchase price for Lala was only $17 million. Including Lala's reported cash reserve of $14 million, the purchase price would have valued the company itself at only $3 million.

Mobile analytics firm Flurry yesterday released a report promoting an interesting take on Apple's iPod touch market, one that sees its strong performance among young consumers as building a base that will naturally migrate to the iPhone as they mature.

As all industry eyes look to the iPhone, the iPod Touch is quietly building a loyal base among the next generation of iPhone users, positioning Apple to corner the smartphone market not only today, but also tomorrow. In terms of Life Stage Marketing, the practice of appealing to different age-based segments, Apple is using the iPod Touch to build loyalty with pre-teens and teens, even before they have their own phones (think: McDonalds' Happy Meal marketing strategy). When today's young iPod Touch users age by five years, they will already have iTunes accounts, saved personal contacts to their iPod Touch devices, purchased hundreds of apps and songs, and mastered the iPhone OS user interface. This translates into loyalty and switching costs, allowing Apple to seamlessly "graduate" young users from the iPod Touch to the iPhone.

As part of its metrics report, Flurry reveals an iPod touch market that is growing faster than the iPhone market in terms of "user sessions", with the iPod touch increasing its session share by four percentage points over that past five months while the iPhone's share has slipped by seven percentage points.

The New York Times yesterday published a lengthy feature article on Apple's iPhone and the App Store, calling them a "game changer" in the field of telephony and mobile applications. While the article provides little in the way of new information, the prominent story is part of a recent push by Apple executives to share their vision for the App Store and to address concerns from customers and iPhone developers over the App Store approval process.

In discussing the "game changing" nature of the App Store, the report quotes a "giddy" Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller, who has been Apple's primary point person for the media, particularly when it comes to the App Store.

"I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and distribution," Mr. Schiller says. "The idea that anyone, all the way from an individual to a large company, can create software that is innovative and be carried around in a customer's pocket is just exploding. It's a breakthrough, and that is the future, and every software developer sees it."

Addressing the issue of the App Store approval process, the report sees it as a "necessary evil" in order to provide a safe and secure repository of applications for customers' use. Regardless, Schiller claims that the vast majority of applications have little problem receiving approval, although there are occasional issues that crop up and the company appreciates the feedback it receives.

"I think, by and large, we do a very good job there," Mr. Schiller said. "Sometimes we make a judgment call both ways, that people give us feedback on, either rejecting something that perhaps on second consideration shouldn't be, or accepting something that on second consideration shouldn't be."

The article also compares the App Store's revolutionary impact on mobile applications to the iTunes Store's impact on the digital music industry, noting that while the App Store is part of the iTunes Store experience, it is a vastly different operation.

"A rocket ship is even too small of an analogy," says Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president for iTunes, of the App Store's popularity. "We've been able to leverage a lot of our iTunes technology for the App Store. But it's completely different. We're reviewing all of those apps. We really don't have to review each and every song."

But Apple is not alone in the industry, and the report highlights efforts on other platforms and how they differ from Apple's approach. Some companies, such as Research in Motion and Microsoft, acknowledge Apple's huge lead in the application market with over 100,000 applications and instead claim to be focused on the quality of their smaller application libraries. Others, such as Palm and Google, are offering a simpler or non-existent review process, touting unfettered access and content as their selling points.

Regardless of how things turn out in the future, the report's conclusion is that Apple's iPhone and App Store will almost certainly be seen as a "turning point" in the mobile communications industry, marking the transition of mobile phones into mobile computers.

In case you missed it, Apple acquired a streaming music service called Lala Media late last week. The acquisition has generated the obvious speculation about what Apple might do with a streaming music service. Apple's official response was, of course, unrevealing:

"Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plan."

While a New York Times article suggested it was primarily a talent acquisition with Apple's interest lying with the engineers, a Reuters source over the weekend suggests Apple is indeed looking towards adding streaming to iTunes:

"Apple recognizes that the model is going to evolve into a streaming one and this could probably propel iTunes to the next level," said the person.

The source also stated that Apple was looking into new ways to expand iTunes beyond being a download service for songs.