Samsung's flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, recently surpassed Apple's older iPhone 4S to become the best-selling smartphone in the world, says a report. But its time at the top could be short.
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AT&T Backpedals on FaceTime Restrictions
AT&T has removed a limitation that prevented some iPad and iPhone owners from making FaceTime video calls over its cellular network, after some public interest organizations said they would complain to the government about the restriction.
The new version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 6, allows iPad and iPhone owners to make a FaceTime video call over a cellular network; before, those calls worked only on Wi-Fi.
AT&T had said it would allow only customers who subscribed to its new shared data plans to use FaceTime over its network, not those who had its older unlimited or tiered data plans. But the public interest organizations said that AT&T had violated Internet neutrality rules by blocking FaceTime, a calling service that could potentially compete with AT&T's traditional phone service.
In a statement issued on Thursday, AT&T said that over the next two months, it would allow customers of its older tiered data plans using its 4G LTE network to use FaceTime. It said it had limited use of  the service to customers with shared data plans because it wanted to measure the impact of FaceTime on its network. Customers with unlimited data plans will still not be able to use the service over the cell network.
The public groups said AT&T's move did not go far enough.
“The law is clear,†said Matt Wood, policy director of Free Press, in a statement. “AT&T cannot block FaceTime based on claims of potential congestion. There's nothing even remotely reasonable about that approach.†He said the carrier still faced potential violations of Net neutrality rules unless it made FaceTime available for all customers, including those with unlimited data plans.
James W. Cicconi, an AT&T executive, said in the statement that the company would continue to assess the impact of FaceTime on its network. He said he anticipated that customers on its other plans would be able to use the feature on its network in the near future.
RIM Drums Up Support for New BlackBerry Among the Loyal
Like most technology companies, Research In Motion used to surround BlackBerry smartphones in secrecy before announcing them at a showy event. For BlackBerry 10, however, RIM is going with a slow reveal.
About 250 politicians and bureaucrats squeezed into a gilded room at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa on Wednesday evening for an advance look at some of the features of BlackBerry 10, free drinks and a chance to win one of the smartphones as well two BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
Earlier in the day, Frank Boulben, RIM's chief marketing officer, said these sessions, which will be repeated throughout North America, are the first step in convincing consumers to give BlackBerry another chance.
Rather than “carpet bomb the U.S.†with advertising, Mr. Frank said during an interview at the RIM offices in Ottawa where the new phone's operating system is being developed, he plans to first win over existing BlackBerry users through in-person dem onstrations. Then, as the phone's as yet unannounced release date in 2013 nears, he will supplement that with online videos about its features.
“It's a BlackBerry brand, it stands for something,†said Mr. Frank, who is from France and who was a executive at several wireless carriers, mostly in Europe. “We have customers who have left us who want to come back. There's still an attraction for the brand.â€
Given RIM's outsized importance in its home country, Wednesday's crowd was perhaps the ultimate captive audience. Few, if any, federal politicians in Canada dare pull out an iPhone or Android device in public. Government information technology bureaucrats probably don't need to be told that dumping BlackBerrys for other smartphones would not enhance their careers.
Wednesday's demonstration used a stripped down prototype of the phone which was enclosed in a plastic cover to disguise its ultimate form and shape.
As the company has during demonstrat ions for software developers, it emphasized the phone's novel system for gathering all messagesâ€"including e-mails text messages, social media updates and Twitter posts-in a single spot and linking them with data about the senders.
It was less keen to show off other features. Following the formal presentation to the crowd, a RIM employee demonstrating the phone said that he could not display the new phone's navigation app because it was indoors. Like Apple and its ill-fated new Maps app for iPhone, RIM is replacing Google as the source of its map data with Tom Tom.
On Thursday, RIM made an announcement that will sit well with government buyers like those at the reception. The company said that the cryptography system of the new phone as well as special BlackBerry 10 servers which will used by governments and corporations has been certified as secure by the governments of the United States and Canada.
Mr. Frank acknowledged that questions about RIM's financ ial viability have come up at BlackBerry 10 demonstrations he's held for large corporate users. But he said he's been able to eliminate those fears by explaining the company's current financial state, particularly its lack of debt.
Mr. Frank said that he joined RIM about four months ago “to be part of one of the greatest technology comebacks in history.†He added: “I think it's a very doable challenge.â€
While limited, the demonstration on Wednesday was well received by at least three government information technology employees who were in the room along with senators, policy analysts and political staffers. When asked what they thought of the new phone by a RIM product demonstrator, they all broke out into broad smiles.
“I've been in for a long time,†one of them replied while all three said that they are waiting for a firm arrival date.
Analysts, however, are less optimistic.
On Wednesday, James Faucette, a analyst with Pacific Cres t in Portland, Ore., said in an investment note that “We believe BB10 is likely to be D.O.A.†He wrote, “We expect the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail due to the new and unfamiliar U.I., lack of complementary devices, relatively few applications and what we believe to be a general reticence by app developers to develop for the platform.â€
Tom Astle, an analyst with Byron Capital Markets in Toronto who recently resumed covering RIM, isn't that pessimistic. But during an interview he fell well short of the Mr. Frank's bold prediction.
Noting that RIM's shares are now trading below the value of the company's assets, he said that any positive consumer reaction to BlackBerry 10 may boost their price.
“I don't think there will be some big recovery in the U.S. when B.B. 10 ships,†Mr. Astle, an iPhone user, said. “But there is some loyalty to BlackBerry. Anyone still using a BlackBerry has to be prett y loyal.â€
RIM Drums Up Support for New BlackBerry Among the Loyal
Like most technology companies, Research In Motion used to surround BlackBerry smartphones in secrecy before announcing them at a showy event. For BlackBerry 10, however, RIM is going with a slow reveal.
About 250 politicians and bureaucrats squeezed into a gilded room at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa on Wednesday evening for an advance look at some of the features of BlackBerry 10, free drinks and a chance to win one of the smartphones as well two BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
Earlier in the day, Frank Boulben, RIM's chief marketing officer, said these sessions, which will be repeated throughout North America, are the first step in convincing consumers to give BlackBerry another chance.
Rather than “carpet bomb the U.S.†with advertising, Mr. Frank said during an interview at the RIM offices in Ottawa where the new phone's operating system is being developed, he plans to first win over existing BlackBerry users through in-person dem onstrations. Then, as the phone's as yet unannounced release date in 2013 nears, he will supplement that with online videos about its features.
“It's a BlackBerry brand, it stands for something,†said Mr. Frank, who is from France and who was a executive at several wireless carriers, mostly in Europe. “We have customers who have left us who want to come back. There's still an attraction for the brand.â€
Given RIM's outsized importance in its home country, Wednesday's crowd was perhaps the ultimate captive audience. Few, if any, federal politicians in Canada dare pull out an iPhone or Android device in public. Government information technology bureaucrats probably don't need to be told that dumping BlackBerrys for other smartphones would not enhance their careers.
Wednesday's demonstration used a stripped down prototype of the phone which was enclosed in a plastic cover to disguise its ultimate form and shape.
As the company has during demonstrat ions for software developers, it emphasized the phone's novel system for gathering all messagesâ€"including e-mails text messages, social media updates and Twitter posts-in a single spot and linking them with data about the senders.
It was less keen to show off other features. Following the formal presentation to the crowd, a RIM employee demonstrating the phone said that he could not display the new phone's navigation app because it was indoors. Like Apple and its ill-fated new Maps app for iPhone, RIM is replacing Google as the source of its map data with Tom Tom.
On Thursday, RIM made an announcement that will sit well with government buyers like those at the reception. The company said that the cryptography system of the new phone as well as special BlackBerry 10 servers which will used by governments and corporations has been certified as secure by the governments of the United States and Canada.
Mr. Frank acknowledged that questions about RIM's financ ial viability have come up at BlackBerry 10 demonstrations he's held for large corporate users. But he said he's been able to eliminate those fears by explaining the company's current financial state, particularly its lack of debt.
Mr. Frank said that he joined RIM about four months ago “to be part of one of the greatest technology comebacks in history.†He added: “I think it's a very doable challenge.â€
While limited, the demonstration on Wednesday was well received by at least three government information technology employees who were in the room along with senators, policy analysts and political staffers. When asked what they thought of the new phone by a RIM product demonstrator, they all broke out into broad smiles.
“I've been in for a long time,†one of them replied while all three said that they are waiting for a firm arrival date.
Analysts, however, are less optimistic.
On Wednesday, James Faucette, a analyst with Pacific Cres t in Portland, Ore., said in an investment note that “We believe BB10 is likely to be D.O.A.†He wrote, “We expect the new OS to be met with a lukewarm response at best and ultimately likely to fail due to the new and unfamiliar U.I., lack of complementary devices, relatively few applications and what we believe to be a general reticence by app developers to develop for the platform.â€
Tom Astle, an analyst with Byron Capital Markets in Toronto who recently resumed covering RIM, isn't that pessimistic. But during an interview he fell well short of the Mr. Frank's bold prediction.
Noting that RIM's shares are now trading below the value of the company's assets, he said that any positive consumer reaction to BlackBerry 10 may boost their price.
“I don't think there will be some big recovery in the U.S. when B.B. 10 ships,†Mr. Astle, an iPhone user, said. “But there is some loyalty to BlackBerry. Anyone still using a BlackBerry has to be prett y loyal.â€
Daily Report: Apple Shares Under Pressure
Autumn is traditionally the time of year when people start snapping up Apple products - and investors, in anticipation of another blockbuster holiday season, do the same with Apple shares. But this year, even though Apple's iPhones and iPads don't seem to have lost any of their allure, its stock seems headed straight for the discount rack, Nick Wingfield reports in Thursday's New York Times.
On Wednesday, Apple's shares slid 3.8 percent. They outpaced a broader decline in the stock market set off by investors' uncertainty about how the outcome of the presidential election will affect taxes and consumer demand for the types of products Apple sells. The stock was up 0.7 percent in premarket trading on Thursday.
During the campaign, President Obama proposed increasing capital gains tax rates for people earning over $250,000 to 20 percent from the existing rate of 15 percent, and his re-election Tuesday night may have prompted some investors to unload shares in an ticipation of a broader sell-off in stocks ahead of a tax increase, analysts said.
Owners of Apple shares would have good reason to fear higher taxes on capital gains. Apple shares have appreciated mightily since 2005 when they were about $35 apiece; they began this year at $411 and peaked at more than $700 in late September. The drop on Wednesday only added to what has been a grim few weeks for Apple shares, which have fallen over 20 percent from that peak, to $558 on Wednesday.
The decline has followed a sequence of seemingly unrelated events, including a broader-than-normal overhaul of its product line that is expected to hurt profit margins in the near term and a rare shake-up in Apple's senior ranks.
“It has just been wave after wave of bad news,†said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray.
The events also do little to diminish the questions reflecting longer-term concerns with which investors pepper analysts like Mr. Munster. How much bi gger can Apple - with a $525 billion market value, the biggest of any corporation - get? Won't Apple soon run out of people to sell iPhones, iPads and Macs to?
Mideast E-Commerce Gains Its Footing
After Many Slip-Ups, Mideast E-Commerce Gains Its Footing
DUBAI - Back in 2005, Souq.com was a new Web site modeled after eBay in the United States, catering to the nascent online retailing market in the Middle East. In the last week of October 2012, the fast-growing site received $45 million in funding from international investors, creating a new benchmark for the region's evolving e-commerce scene.
Ronaldo Mouchawar is C.E.O. of Souq.com, which was modeled after eBay.
“When we launched at the end of 2005, e-commerce was still in its infancy, and getting started that early gave us time to find a business model that works today,†said Ronaldo Meshawar, chief executive of Souq, which is based in Dubai. “It also helped us be an enabler in the region for businesses to sell their products online.â€
The $45 million deal bolsters an industry that is still relatively young and fragmented, extremely capital intensive, and facing logistical hurdles that have led many sites to shut down.
The large size of the funding shows that money, particularly from foreign investors, is available for the right kind of business. That means one that appeals to consumers and has the potential to grow.
There have been a lot of mixed messages for the regional e-commerce community over the last year. The sudden exit of LivingSocial, the global daily deals site, from the Middle East in August seemed put a nail in the coffin of the regional online retailing market.
The demise of other promising, local sites, including Joob, Nahel and Mizado, in the months preceding the abrupt closure of LivingSocial's regional operations suggested that e-commerce business models in the Gulf were not working.
But success stories are now starting to emerge from a handful of e-commerce sites that are figuring out how to run an online business in the area.
Namshi.com, a copycat of Zappos.com, which sells shoes online, has shown strong growth in its first year of operation. The site grew from three to 100 employees since it began in October 2011, and now manages 600 orders a day, according to Namshi's founders.
Backed by e-commerce veterans, including Rocket Internet in Germany, Namshi also received $20 million in funding from J.P. Morgan and Blakeney Management in September to further grow the business.
“There are challenges around delivery of product, setting up efficient distribution centers and making the right decisions about styles to keep in our inventory base,†said Muhammed Mekki, one of Namshi's three co-founders.
“The initial funding was there to test and see if fashion e-commerce can work in the Mideast,†he said. “Now that we've proven the model works, we'll focus on expanding.â€
MarkaVIP, a Jordanian site that provides discounts on luxury items, has also caught the eye of international investors, attracting $10 million in capital from European and American investment firms in April.
Souq is the latest and biggest in a string of new sites. The firm received funding from the South African group Naspers and Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund.
The firm's parent company, Jabbar Internet Group, still holds a majority stake. Jabbar Internet manages the spin-off brands that were not purchased by Yahoo when Maktoob, a news site, was sold to Yahoo in 2009 for $175 million.
When Souq started up in 2005, the team brought eBay's auction model to the region, in Arabic. They soon faced a slew of problems that smaller sites had been unable to resolve in the early years.
For one thing, transporting goods ordered on the Web across the Gulf countries was not easy because currencies and legal structures varied from place to place. Often, there was the added necessity of opening new bank accounts or finding a local partner to share the business. This also made it more difficult to manage inventory.
Online payment was also a hurdle. Many customers preferred to pay with cash on delivery rather than entering credit card details online. Cash on delivery put a strain on the company's resources as it had to ship goods first and collect, or not, the money later.
Online payments are now becoming more widely accepted and some of the shipping issues have been resolved. As part of those efforts, Namshi joined with Aramex, a global shipping firm based in Amman. The arrangement lets Namshi use Aramex's network of warehouses to store its inventory and ship orders in 24 hours.
To simplify things, Souq scrapped the eBay-style auction model in 2010 and instead adopted fixed prices. “You can't take a model and just apply it to the region,†Mr. Meshawar said. “The copycat model doesn't work, we had to execute on the ground and adapt.â€
Now, Souq has 8 million to 9.5 million unique visits each month and a client base of 3.5 million customers across the Gulf, according to Mr. Meshawar. The site ships thousands of items a day.
The new funding will go toward setting up new distribution centers, expanding geographically and streamlining operations. Plans are in place to open logistics centers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where the site already has a strong following.
The money will also help Souq expand into new categories, including fashion and lifestyle, following the site's recent acquisition of the fashion site Sukar.com and the sports site run2sport.com.
This is the third round of financing for Souq, which has 200 employees and 50,000 sellers in its online marketplace.
“The failure of some sites just shows that the get-rich-quick, poorly managed sites won't make it, and it's a learning curve for entrepreneurs trying to enter the region's market,†said Alexandra Toomey, an independent e-commerce analyst in Dubai. “Established e-commerce companies with a proven product can succeed if they adapt to the market correctly and have the right backing.â€
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 8, 2012
A previous version of this article wrongly included the online bookseller Jamalon in a list of Web sites that have closed this year. Jamalon is still operating.
Technology Intrudes on a School
A School Distanced From Technology Faces Its Intrusion
Cheryl Senter for The New York Times Like other students at the Mountain School in Vershire, Vt., Sonia Inam, left, and Keifer Thomas, learn through farm work and a connection with the outdoors.
VERSHIRE, Vt. - Past the chicken coop and up a hill, in a spot on campus where the wooden buildings of the Mountain School can seem farther away than the mountains of western New Hampshire, there sometimes can be found a single bar, sometimes two, of cellphone reception.
The spot, between the potato patch and a llama named Nigel, is something of an open secret at the school in this remote corner of Vermont where simplicity is valued over technology. “We're at the periphery of civilization here,†said Doug Austin, a teacher.
But that is about to change.
The school offers high school juniors, many from elite private institutions in the Northeast, a semester to immerse themselves in nature. The students make solo camping trips to a nearby mountain for a day or two of reflection, and practice orienteering skills without a GPS device. Between English and environmental science classes, they care for farm animals, chop wood and read the works of Robert Frost. And in the process, many say, they stop scouring the campus for its sparse bars of reception and lose the habit of checking their Facebook pages at every opportunity.
As the rest of the country has gotten high-speed Internet, Vershire (population 730) has lagged, relying on land lines shared among neighbors, with dial-up and (for homes that face the right way) satellite Internet service that cuts out when the weather is rough. But cellphone signals have been seeping in, and soon there will be more.
This fall, technicians will start laying fiber-optic cable to bring high-speed Internet to the town. Cellphone coverage is expected soon after. “Right now we're the third-world country of Vermont,†said Gene Craft, the town clerk. “We'd like to be in touch.â€
That presents a challenge for the Mountain School: how to regulate the use of smartphones and other devices that serve as a constant distraction for 21st-century teenagers, who are here to engage with the rural setting and with one another.
True to its mission of encouraging “collaborative learning and shared work,†the school asked its students and alumni to develop a technology policy that will determine whether to ban phones, allow them in a limited way or leave the decision whether to disconnect to students.
Many students, alumni and teachers have asked Alden Smith, the school's director, to declare a ban. But the school has always held that its students can be trusted to make good choices, he said. “We have to figure out the balance between how to preserve the values we have,†Mr. Smith said. “But I tend to think that adolescents, particularly the ones we get here, when mentored, will rise to the occasion when trusted with real responsibility.â€
To make phone calls from the 300-acre campus, students must take turns, using prepaid calling cards, at small phone closets in each dormitory. At the recommendation of alumni, there is no Internet service in the dorms, only in the academic building, and incoming students are strongly discouraged from bringing DVDs or loading videos on their laptops. (Even where there is Internet service, any online activity that requires significant bandwidth - watching a video on YouTube, for example - means a loss of signal to others because the town's fair access policy limits bandwidth to the school.)
At first, Andy Sharp, 17, from nearby Thetford Academy, missed participating in his friends' fantasy football league online. But after most of a semester at the school, he said, he uses his laptop only for doing homework and checking Facebook occasionally. “I didn't think that was going to happen to me, but it did,†he said. “Your focus shifts to things that are in front of you.â€
That is not to say that students cut themselves off from the outside world altogether. Many were keeping up with new music, including Julia Christensen, a 16-year-old from the Lakeside School in Seattle. She planned to wake up before 7 a.m. recently to download Taylor Swift's new album before the morning Internet rush hour. But that was an exception.
“Here, if you spent a lot of time on your computer, people would think that's lame,†said Calais Larson, 17, of Phillips Exeter Academy, who believes that cellphones should not be used on campus.
Students say they are ambivalent about returning to a world where they can be reached at any moment.
After a short break last month, several students said it was a relief when they returned and were not expected to respond immediately to text messages or did not have to worry about which party to attend. As they split firewood and dug potatoes, the discussion was instead about heading to Garden Hill to watch the stars, or reading Frost and hiking in the New England countryside.
The school says students have agreed on a draft policy: students will hand over their phones to the faculty when they arrive and will get them back on off-campus trips; they can also choose to get them back a month into the semester.
Mr. Smith and other longtime teachers say their goal is not to encourage their students to live without technology, but to make them think more carefully about their use of it.
“The idea is not to be going back to a time where things were better,†Mr. Smith said, “but where the richness of each day is defined by the food you eat, the company you keep, the work you do.â€
A version of this article appeared in print on November 8, 2012, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: A School Distanced From Technology Faces Its Intrusion.
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