912shou.com

It’s well known that Apple has played an active role in the design of chips that go into its system for years, but the acquisition of Dan Dobberpuhl’s PA Semi team means it will apparently play an even more active role in the future. Jobs has previously said that Apple acquired PA Semi for its talent and patents–not its products–but had not shared many details about its plans for that talent.

Apple may have taken a look at the future of mobile chip development and decided to forge its own path.

The New York Times scored an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs following Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, and buried inside a rambling exchange about parallel processing and Mac OS X Snow Leopard was this little nugget about PA Semi, the chip company Apple acquired in April. “PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods,” Jobs told the Times.

(Credit:
Apple)

System-on-chips, or SOCs, are pretty much what they sound like: complete computer systems on a single chip, including the processor, memory, graphics, networking, and all the regulator chips needed to manage things like power consumption. ARM’s licensees, such as Texas Instruments, Samsung, and Nvidia build SOCs around ARM’s processor cores for smartphones such as the
iPhone, and Intel wants to head down this path with its Atom processor family.

The companies that license ARM’s instruction set are increasingly butting heads with Intel as the ARM community tries to move up from smartphones into more powerful mobile computers, and Intel tries to shoehorn its PC processing know-how into a mobile environment. There has been much speculation over the past year or so that Apple will one day add processors for mobile devices to the invoices orders it sends Intel every quarter for
Mac processors, but the PA Semi acquisition apparently means Apple is prepared to go it alone.

Future successors to the iPhone 3G might use a chip completely designed by Apple.

In an interview with Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang last week, we got to talking about mobile processors and the evolution of that market, and he insisted that Samsung, widely thought to be the processor supplier inside the iPhone, merely “fabbed” the chip. In his view, Apple was the chief designer of the ARM-based processor that’s used to run the iPhone–and presumably the iPhone 3G unveiled Monday–with Samsung just providing the factory. The PA Semi engineers would allow Apple to draw up a complete design in-house and take it to a chip foundry without having to let any other mobile processor companies in on its plans, Huang said.

The Federal Economic Stimulus program checks are in the mail. When you get yours try and be a good consumer and spend it right away. That’ll help our economy and remember the checks will do the most good if they’re spent on made in America products. One of my favorite high-value, high-end audio brands, Outlaw Audio, would be a good place to start. Its multi-channel home theater power amplifiers are in fact proudly made in the USA. Outlaw sells direct on its website and all of their amps are now on sale–with free FedEx Ground shipping! If you’re single and getting the $600 check you might want to pick up the $599 Model 7075. If you’re married and lucky enough to get a $1,200 check the $899 Model 7125 would be even better. Hey, it’s practically your patriotic duty to buy American audio.

Your rebate can buy all American audio like this

(Credit:
Outlaw Audio)

Lombardi said the service could be sold much like satellite radio, which allows people to subscribe to a monthly service for about $10 per month. If subscribers want satellite radio service on additional devices, they get a slight discount on the monthly subscription for the second and third device.

Jacobs blames the carriers for not advertising the service enough. He said that carriers might be waiting for MediaFlo to increase its coverage, which he said will happen in February 2009 when TV broadcasters will transition to digital TV, the article said.

AT&T first announced its partnership with MediaFlo in February 2007. Back then it said it expected the service to begin by the end of 2007. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel told Reuters the company waited until May to offer the service because it was “a brand new service on a brand new network, and two brand new devices.”

If consumers don’t fall in love with live mobile TV it could spell trouble for Qualcomm’s MediaFlo USA, which has spent millions of dollars acquiring spectrum and building the network. Right now the company wholesales the service to mobile operators. But Verizon and AT&T are currently its only customers.

MediaFlo USA is a subsidiary of wireless chipmaker Qualcomm. Using analog broadcast TV wireless spectrum it bought several years ago, MediaFlo has built a wireless network to deliver broadcast TV service to mobile devices.

The new service will operate on two new handsets, the LG Vu and the Samsung Access. Subscribers will get access to eight channels of live TV plus two exclusive channels. AT&T said it would make pricing information available in May when the service officially launches.

Lombardi said the company is in talks with other wireless operators in the U.S. But the company is also considering offering its service on any device with a small screen.

AT&T said Thursday that it will start offering live mobile TV service from MediaFlo in May, but will anyone be watching?

“We’ve had a lot of interest from
car manufacturers,” she said. “We’ve even had refrigerator manufacturers ask if we could provide TV service to the tiny screens they put on refrigerators.”

But some mobile experts question whether people really want to watch TV on their phones. Verizon is charging $15 a month extra for eight channels of live TV. Perhaps the price point is still too expensive for consumers who on average spend about $40 to $50 a month on cell phone service. And as the economy dips further into a recession, I question how willing people will be to spend extra money on what I’d consider an unnecessary service like mobile TV.

“We are looking into all of these options,” she said. “If there’s interest, we don’t want to turn away from any opportunity knocking at our door.”

Verizon Wireless, which was the first wireless provider to work with MediaFlo, has been offering the service for more than a year. Verizon hasn’t published specific subscriber numbers, but Qualcomm’s CEO Paul Jacobs said during a speech at the Tech Policy Summit in Hollywood on Wednesday that the uptake has been going slower than the company would like, according to RCR Wireless News.

Qualcomm, which owns spectrum for the analog TV Channel 55, has had to negotiate with broadcasters in each market to be able to use the spectrum that some of them have used to broadcast TV. The network is currently operating in about 55 markets and is available to about 130 million people, said Gina Lombardi, president of MediaFlo USA. Markets where MediaFlo has launched include Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Dallas, Orlando, and Philadelphia.

It will be interesting to see AT&T’s customers’ response to the live TV service. AT&T already offers an on-demand video service to customers who buy certain 3G data packages.

TechCrunch reported early on Friday that four companies are in the running to place bids on Digg–Microsoft, Google, and two unidentified “media companies”–and that a sale may happen soon. It’ll likely be less than the $300 million that Digg was once rumored to go for; TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington cited sources who said that Google is prepared to bid $200 million to $225 million and that Microsoft, which currently serves ads on Digg, is aiming slightly lower. That’s a good bit less than the $300 valuation that was floating around when Digg reportedly hired investment bank Allen & Co. to shop it around.

In an interview several weeks ago, Digg founder Kevin Rose told CNET News.com that he thought selling the company to a big buyer could get in the way of running it efficiently.

As for the media companies, no specifics are given, but keep in mind that Digg has deals with several traditional media companies’ online arms, like CBS and News Corp.

One TechCrunch commenter noted, “Good for them, but Diggers will complain either way,” referring to the site’s active and opinionated crowd of regular users. “There’s no pleasing them.”

If every blog rumor were to be believed, social news site Digg would have been bought a dozen times over by now, so take the latest one with the requisite grain of salt.

Update 6:30 p.m. PT: I added Yahoo’s comment that it chose not to continue the partnership and edited wording accordingly.

Google search will be presented on the Opera browsers’ start pages–except in Russia and other former Soviet republics, Opera said.

In January 2007, Yahoo and Opera announced that Yahoo would be the default search engine on Opera Mobile and Mini. Now, though, the mobile versions are getting what the desktop version of Opera has had for seven years–a built-in Google default.

Opera has switched out Yahoo and made Google the default search engine for its Opera Mobile and Opera Mini Web browsers designed for mobile devices.

(Credit:
Opera)

Yahoo said the change was on its own initiative, though it didn’t offer details on what exactly it didn’t find desirable about having its OneSearch mobile search service be selected by default.

Opera Mobile is getting Google as its default search option.

Opera Mini can be downloaded for free on mobile phones, and Opera Mini users collectively browse 1.7 billion Web pages per month, the Oslo, Norway-based company said.

“Yahoo has elected not to continue its mobile search partnership with Opera at this time,” the company said in a statement. Yahoo has 29 carrier partnerships, and its “ability to partner with leading mobile operators and handset manufacturers enables us to lead and further the global mobile ecosystem.”

Opera and Google “are extending this collaboration to give our users immediate access to the quality and convenience of Google’s search results,” Opera Chief Executive Jon von Tetzchner said in a statement Wednesday.