The Verizon Droid has not been out for that long, but retailers want to capitalize on the hype around the new Google Android phone, designed by Motorola. Verizon is selling the phone for $200. Then Amazon.com decided to chop the price to $150. And now Dell.com decided to beat Amazon’s prices by offering it for $120.
Dell had a rough third quarter caused by a 54% net income drop so the company probably wants to attract more buyers to their website. Most likely Dell will be subsidizing the price drop out of their own pockets, but the commission from selling Verizon contracts might be worth the drop.
Nick Scott Studio designed an animation video of The Story of Google starting from the time that Sergey and Larry met each other to the point of the Google Chrome OS. The Studio put together the animation video using After Effects, Cinema 4d, and a little bit of film. The video was a mixture of stills photography as well. The Nick Scott Studio has done some work for Ford and MTV as well.
Google Image Swirl recently launched and it makes searching for images more fun. When you search for a monument or any other image and click on it, a tree form of other images show up. Google Image Swirl graduated from Google Labs. When searching for an image, twelve other thumbnails show up. You’ll see several different images at various angles. Image Swirl uses technology from Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to determine what other thumbnails come up. There are currently about 200,000 queries that are supported. The announcement was made by Google Product Manager Aparna Chennapragada and Google Researcher Yushi Jing.
AdMob is becoming a property of Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), but the company has not been slowing down since the acquisition announcement. The company announced earlier this week that they will support video advertisements for the iPhone and iPod Touch. iPhone and iPod Touch users will still be able to surf the web or watch other videos while the video ad is playing. Videos are saved as different file sizes and will play different qualities based on the user’s connection. For example, higher quality videos will play when a user is on a WiFi or 3G connection.
“AdMob’s new Interactive Video Ad Unit brings together consumers’ love of watching videos on their mobile device with advertisers’ goal of providing an interactive, social experience for consumers,” stated AdMob Founder and CEO Omar Hamoui. “We are excited to create new ways for advertisers to engage with consumers on their mobile devices and for the developers behind the most popular and engaging iPhone applications to effectively monetize.”
In the opening weekend an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech Inc. estimated that about 100,000 Verizon Droid mobile phones were sold. This is an impressive number considering that there was not much time between the announcement and the launch date.
Now that a week of data has been collected, a mobile analytics firm called Flurry estimates that about 250,000 Droid mobile phones have been sold in the last week.
Flurry has access to every 2 out of 3 iPhone and Android handsets for collecting data. Based on the 250,000 unit sales estimation, the Droid can now be called “the fastest-selling Android phone to date.”
The iPhone 3G S sold about 1.6 million copies across 8 countries in the opening week. The Verizon Droid launched in one country.
Location awareness mobile application Foursquare is best known for broadcasting your whereabouts to friends. In mid-September the company raised about $1.5 million in funding, giving it a valuation of about $7-$14 million. With that round of funding the company was able to ramp up their developer services by designing various APIs.
As part of the API announcement, Foursquare launched an app gallery. Some of the applications available in the Foursquare App Gallery include Foursquare Android, Mob Zombies (location based Zombie game), and YipIt (New York City deal finder).
Foursquare was started by Dennis Crowley. Crowley previously sold a company to Google called Dodgeball. Dodgeball was also a location-based mobile application. Google ended up shutting down Dodgeball and used the technology to design the concept behind Google Latitude.
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was considering buying out AdMob before Google swooped in and picked them up for $750 million in stock. Apple contacted AdMob several weeks before the Google acquisition according to Bloomberg.
AdMob is a major mobile advertising company that integrates advertisements into iPhone and Android applications. Generally applications that are free tend to have built in AdMob advertisements. After buying out AdMob, Google has become the largest mobile ad company.
About two weeks ago, Microsoft Corporation laid off their “ambassador to startups” Don Dodge because of a broad workforce reduction. Dodge decided to come to Silicon Valley to do some interviewing shortly after.
Google extended an offer to Dodge and he accepted. Now Dodge will become the evangelist to Google Apps. He will be reporting to former Microsoft executive Vic Gundotra. Gundotra worked at Microsoft for 15 years with the most reaching position being the General Manager of Microsoft developer outreach efforts.
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) has implemented the Google Android operating system in a new mobile phone that they are launching in China and Brazil. China Mobile and Claro will be selling the Dell Mini 3 very soon. The Dell Mini 3 is the company’s first smartphone and the specs are mum for now.
With the buzz around the Android operating system and Windows 7 afloat, an early launch of Google’s operating system would not surprise me. Supposedly Google has developers working around the clock to build drivers for the operating system. Google is working with a large number of companies to add their operating systems to PCs sometime in the near future such as Acer, HP, ASUS, Lenovo and Toshiba.
If you had the option to choose between a computer powered by Snow Leopard, Windows 7, or Google Chrome OS what would you choose? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
Bump Technologies has taken their popular iPhone application in which users exchange contact information simply by bumping phones and ported it over to the Android operating system. As the application launches on the Android today, a new version was just approved on the Apple App Store too.
The updated version has a feature called “Friend Compare” which looks at the address book of both phones and both of your Facebook profiles to see if you have mutual friends. When bumping each other’s phones, you can also automatically update your Facebook profile too. The Android version won’t have the Facebook integration yet, but it can be expected in future versions.
Bump has about $3 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. If you have used the Bump app, let us know what you think of it in the comments. Do you think it would do as well on the Android as it did on the iPhone?
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) software engineer Elvin Lee announced today that the company has dropped the price of 20GB storage between GMail and Picasa to $5 per year. Google currently gives 7.27GB of free storage for GMail and 1GB of free storage for Picasa. Before Google was offering 10GB of storage for $20 per year. For $20 per year now you can buy 80GB worth of storage. I’m highly considering the 80GB option because I have 27GB worth of photos and do not like the way that Facebook decreases the resolution quality when hosting my photos. To add more storage to your account, visit https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage.
Broadpoint AmTech Inc. analyst Mark McKechnie estimated that 100,000 Verizon Droid mobile phones were sold over the weekend. In terms of specifications the Verizon Droid was intended to challenge the iPhone. The iPhone remains as king when it comes to selling the most number of units on an opening weekend, but clearly the Droid has made an impact on mobile phone competition. At least more so than the Palm Pre when comparing opening weekend unit sales.
When the original iPhone first launched, it sold about 270,000 units on the opening weekend. However the original iPhone had a much higher cost. And then iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S had about 1 million units sold on their respective opening weekends, thus creating the benchmark that many other mobile companies are striving for. The Palm Pre sold about 50,000 units on their opening weekend which was a record sales day for Sprint. If the Verizon Droid did end up selling 100,000 units in the opening weekend, then that means that about 50% of the company’s inventory has been bought.
What does this mean for the telecommunications market in general? What this means is that the iPhone has a small rival which may just help Verizon retain some of their customers from switching to AT&T. The Android Market will see an increase in sales too. It will be a fraction of the sales that Apple makes on the iTunes App Store, but we will definitely start hearing some developer success stories about how much they made from the Android Market in the near future.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Boingo Wireless, Airport Marketing Income, Advanced Wireless Group and several other wireless companies are partnering to set up free Wi-Fi in airports as a holiday gift. If and when this project does come into fruition, it will further enhance Google’s motto “Don’t Be Evil.” I know a lot of people that will appreciate this gift especially those who get stuck in long lay overs.
“We’re very happy to extend our Holiday Wi-Fi gift to the millions of people who will spend time in airports over the next few months,” stated Google VP of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer. “We know that this is a very hectic travel season for people, and we hope that free Wi-Fi will make both traveling and connecting with friends and family a little bit easier.”
Below is a list of airports that are participating in the Google airport WiFi initiative:
* Austin (AUS)
* Baltimore (BWI)
* Billings (BIL)
* Boston (BOS)
* Bozeman (BZN)
* Buffalo (BUF)
* Burbank (BUR)
* Central Wisconsin (CWA)
* Charlotte (CLT)
* Des Moines (DSM)
* El Paso (ELP)
* Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
* Fort Myers/SW (RSW)
* Greensboro (GSO)
* Houston (HOU)
* Houston Bush (IAH)
* Indianapolis (IND)
* Jacksonville (JAX)
* Kalamazoo (AZO)
* Las Vegas (LAS)
* Louisville (SDF)
* Madison (MSN)
* Memphis (MEM)
* Miami (MIA)
* Milwaukee (MKE)
* Monterey (MRY)
* Nashville (BNA)
* Newport News (PHF)
* Norfolk (ORF)
* Oklahoma City (OKC)
* Omaha (OMA)
* Orlando (MCO)
* Panama City (PFN)
* Pittsburgh (PIT)
* Portland (PWM)
* Sacramento (SMF)
* San Antonio (SAT)
* San Diego (SAN)
* San Jose (SJC)
* Seattle (SEA) — rolling out this month
* South Bend (SBN)
* Spokane (GEG)
* St. Louis (STL)
* State College (SCE)
* Toledo (TOL)
* Traverse City (TVC)
* West Palm Beach (PBI)
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As of this week Google Street View now indexes all 50 states in the United States. Hawaii was the last state that got added to Google Street View. Using Street View you can now take a virtual vacation of the beaches in Oahu and Maui. The announcement was made by Google Product Marketing Manager Laura Melahn on the Google Blog.
