Facebook subverts Apple and Google’s best assets
Facebook is an incredible innovator, but one of its greatest strengths is its ability to absorb – the less charitable might say copy – its competitors’ best features. We saw it with Twitter and status updates; with Foursquare and Places; with Pinterest and last autumn’s Collections tool; and most recently Snapchat and the Poke app.
That’s fine when startups are nipping at your heels, but does that work when you’re competing against the tech industry’s biggest platforms?
This week, Path, the social networking app, faced criticism for storing users’ information after Arun Thampi, a developer, discovered his iPhone’s address book was uploaded to Path’s servers without his permission.
While Dave Morin, CEO of Path, apologised in a post and vowed to delete the contacts from Path’s servers, tech commentators debated how iOS developers and Apple should deal with access to user data. Read more
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Research In Motion, the company behind the BlackBerry smartphone, is rolling out a new system that aims to help its corporate customers maintain and manage the security of their employees’ BlackBerrys as well as rival devices such as the iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal. The new system, the first from RIM to incorporate competitors’ products, is seen as a tacit acknowledgment that an increasing number of employees are calling on their employers to allow work e-mails to be pushed to smartphones other than the Blackberry. Read more
Apple’s iPhone battery fix needs fixing
The software update that Apple pushed to iPhone users this week in part to resolve rapid battery draining has backfired for some users and made the problem worse. Read more
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Downloads of Android’s apps overtook those of Apple’s iOS apps in the second quarter of 2001, Business Insider reports. According to figures from ABI Research, the market shares of Android and iOS were 44% and 31% respectively. However, Apple still gets more downloads per user than Android. Read more
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As the deadline for applications for the latest Y Combinator start-up showcase nears, GeekWire reports that survey of 52 venture capital firms raised $1.72bn during the third quarter, a 52 per cent decrease in dollar commitments on the same time last year. The survey, by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, says the latest total is the lowest for eight years.
Mobile devices now amount to almost 7% of all US web traffic, Apple Insider says. According to a report by comScore, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system takes up a 58.5% slice of all mobile traffic, with the iPad now accounting for more traffic than iPhones. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
Android is expected to surpass Apple in application downloads for the first time, according to research seen by CNET. A study by Ovum has found that Google’s mobile system is set to notch up 8.1bn app downloads this year, compared with 6bn for Apple’s iOS devices. Read more
Apple: iCloud and more
Steve Jobs appeared at the opening of Apple’s Worldwide Developer conference on Monday with what he said was a new approach to personal computing that had been ten years in gestation: the iCloud.
The service is based on an idea that Mr Jobs said he had a decade ago, and which involved computers becoming personal hubs. The iCloud will store all of a users’ content, and push it to all of that person’s Apple devices: “iCloud is integrated with your apps, so everything happens automatically.”
Details from the presentation follow after the break. Read more
Safer than Android, iPhone not risk-free
Apple’s iPhone is more vulnerable to phishing attacks than users might realise because it can obscure the true addresses of the websites that phone owners are visiting. Read more
Tech news from around the web:
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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