Apple: “The iPhone Still Sells Better Internationally”

Apple has never been a company that felt obligated to provide responses to each and every press inquiry concerning Apple-related news. So it’s interesting to see that it gave the Loop’s Jim Dalrymple a statement concerning yesterday’s study that showed Android phones outselling iPhones in terms of units in the U.S.:

This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide,” Apple spokesperson Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

EA Sports to Used Game Buyers: Pay Up

Electronic Arts is getting ever more desperate to cripple the used video game industry, requiring a one-time access code to play its sports games online.

Starting with Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11, players will need an “Online Pass” to enjoy the game over Xbox Live or the Playstation Network. These passes are included with new copies of the game, but used buyers will have to purchase another pass for $10. All EA Sports games for Xbox 360 and PS3 will require an online pass from now on.

Sony did something similar with SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3, including a voucher for online play in the retail packaging and charging $20 for replacement vouchers. Sony said it was only trying to stop piracy, but EA doesn’t hide its disdain for used game sales. “We want to reserve EA SPORTS online services for people who pay EA to access them,” the company said in an Online Pass FAQ page.

EA previously experimented with innocuous ways to encourage new games sales. New buyers of Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2, for example, received free bonus content that used buyers had to purchase separately. Online Pass promises bonus features for new game buyers as well, but it takes the idea one giant leap further by withholding a core part of the game.

The writing’s on the wall: Gradually, publishers will begin locking up more of what’s on the game disc until there’s no advantage to buying used. It started with bonus content, now it’s multiplayer, and pretty soon it’ll be the whole game. EA’s justification for Online Pass — that it deserves to be paid — really applies to all game development, so you’re kidding yourself if you think the trend stops at online sports games. Want to play the final chapter of your second-hand first-person shooter? There’s an access code for that.

AT&T-iPhone: Five Year Exclusive Confirmed

Sitting around waiting for a Verizon iPhone and checking the Web every five minutes to see if it’s here yet? You might want to chill. Engadget’s Nilay Patel is reporting about a 2008 legal document that confirms that Apple’s original 2007 agreement with AT&T involved five years of iPhone exclusivity. Contracts, of course, are fungible things. So it’s not inconceivable that we’ll see a Verizon iPhone of some sort before 2012.  But if it takes another couple of years–or more–before the iPhone lands on Verizon, now we know why…

Sprint Nixes the Nexus One. Shocked?

And one more bit of Android news: Sprint, which was going to let Google sell a Sprint-ready Nexus One phone, has changed its mind. Its rationale is perfectly reasonble: Its upcoming EVO 4G superphone is essentially a souped-up Nexus One, with more power in every department that matters. It’s not clear why the company is only coming to this conclusion now, almost two months after the Sprint Nexus One was announced. Or, really, why it announced the Nexus One at all, given that it unveiled the EVO a week later, largely rendering its version of the Nexus One obsolete before it ever shipped.

Sprint’s decision follows the lead of Verizon, which also announced a Nexus One and then killed it before release. That leaves the original T-Mobile Nexus One and an unlocked, AT&T-compatible version available in Google’s online store. If Google wants to have a future as a phone merchant, it’s going to need to replenish its lineup–Nexus Two, anybody?–and avoid the vaporous quality of two out of the four U.S. Nexus Ones that were announced.

Google may have been trying to reinvent the phone business with the Nexus One, but it fell victim to a pretty basic law of phone marketing: If you announce a phone in early January and don’t actually ship it on a given carrier for months, chances are high that said phone will start to look like an antique before it hits the market. Especially if it runs Android, an platform that’s still evolving in fast-forward mode.

Helpful Infographic: Android Pricing vs. iPhone Pricing

Here’s a further thought on the fact that Android phones are selling well in part because they’re often way cheaper than iPhones. When iPhone purveyor AT&T finally hopped on the Android bandwagon, its first handset was Motorola’s Backflip:

As of this moment, AT&T wants $99.99 for a Backflip on contract–which is ninety-nine cents more than the cost of a plain-jane iPhone 3G. But if the Backflip appeals to you, here’s a slightly better deal: Amazon has it for a penny. That’s 1/9900th the cost of the iPhone 3G. (Amazon, in case you didn’t know, doesn’t have penny iPhones–and neither does anyone else.)

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It Would Be Kind of Stunning if Android Phones Weren’t Outselling iPhones

Retail research kingpin the NPD Group is reporting that Android-based phones are now outselling iPhones. Or at least they did last quarter in terms of unit sales in the U.S. according to NPD’s study, which found that RIM’s BlackBerries held 36 percent of the market, phones running Google’s Android had 28 percent, and the iPhone was at 21 percent.

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Twitter Forced-Follow Glitch Discovered, Fixed

For a brief period this morning, the Twitterblogosphere was abuzz over the discovery of a bug (although it looked like it might be an intentional backdoor feature) that let Twitter users force other people to follow them. Bizarre–and swiftly fixed by Twitter once it was widely covered and abused.

I want to make one thing clear: @janefonda was following me before all this happened. (No, I don’t know why…)

Shopping for an iPhoney

Back in December of 2008, I went to a sketchy sale and snapped photos of a bevy of cheesy iPod knockoffs. The slideshow I published went on to be one of Technologizer’s most popular stories to date. This weekend, I was in Santa Cruz, California. A similar sale was being advertised on TV about once every three minutes, with an urgent-sounding announcer who specifically mentioned half-price iPods. So I went.

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President Obama, iPad Skeptic

As politicians go, President Obama has a reputation as a reasonably tech-savvy guy–or at least one with a deep-seated appreciation for his BlackBerry. But during the commencement speech he gave on Sunday at Hampton University in Virginia, he sounded more like a technophobic old fogy:

You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank that high on the truth meter.  And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations — none of which I know how to work — (laughter) — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.  So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it’s putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy.

Class of 2010, this is a period of breathtaking change, like few others in our history.  We can’t stop these changes, but we can channel them, we can shape them, we can adapt to them.

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Sorry Zynga, Farmville Needs Facebook

There’s apparently some drama happening between Facebook and Zynga, maker of the wildly popular social games Farmville, Cafe World and Mafia Wars.

The beef is primarily about Facebook forcing game developers to use Facebook Credits for in-game purchases, says TechCrunch’s anonymous sources. Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all Credits transactions, and Zynga makes a lot of money by selling items that speed people’s progress through the game. You can see why there’s tension.

In case things go from bad to worse, Zynga’s reportedly preparing its own social gaming site, and is prepared to leave Facebook completely.

I agree with CNet’s Daniel Terdiman that both sites need each other. Facebook relies on Zynga for daily traffic — as of December more than 26 million people played Farmville every day — and Zynga uses Facebook as the primary platform for all those users. Moving them would not be easy.

Still, Zynga depends more on Facebook than vice versa because of the very nature of its games. Farmville’s biggest critics note that the game is not fun, per se, but it’s addictive. In a fascinating essay on what’s wrong with this game, SUNY Buffalo professor A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz explains:

The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in [sic] entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies.

Without Facebook, Zynga loses this crucial layer of interaction between friends, the meta-game that makes Farmville worth playing. Zynga Live could try and replicate it, but it’ll never be as tightly woven as Facebook’s existing network.

If Zynga leaves Facebook completely, as the company has reportedly threatened, it would be suicide. Farmville is not a good enough game to stand on its own. It needs the social structure of Facebook more than Facebook needs Zynga in particular. After all, there’s no shortage of imitators who would love to take Farmville’s place atop the app charts.

How to Go Back to the Old Google

When I wrote about Google’s redesign a few days ago, a couple of commenters grumbled that they didn’t like it. Over at Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan says that there doesn’t seem to be a critical mass of unhappy campers out there, and that Google doesn’t plan to let users override the new version. But he does provide a trick–who knows how long it will last?–that lets you use the old, no-sidebar version.

Oh, and if you’re really nostalgic for earlier versions of Google, try this.

Win a 500GB External Hard Drive

Our Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Pro giveway continues–go here to enter.

Calibrating Your HDTV and PC Monitor

I bought a 50-inch Samsung HDTV monitor a few years ago. It’s in our living room and it didn’t take long to adjust to it: Watching movies is a truly magnificent experience.

It got even better once I calibrated the beast. If you have a HDTV, and haven’t taken the time to calibrate it, do it.

I have a few ways to do the deed; you choose the one that fits your attention span and checkbook.

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Toshiba’s Latest Lightweight?

A 2.2lb, 13″ Toshiba laptop with USB 3.0, a fast CPU, and a new technology that charges the battery in minutes? Sounds good to me.

BlackBerry Tablet Rumor Roundup

Is BlackBerry Maker RIM working on a tablet? Lots of rumors say so. But so far, it’s hard to construct them into a logical picture of what might be in the works, or even a coherent rationale for RIM getting into the tablet business.

Borders Starts Selling the Kobo E-Reader

Borders is taking orders for the Kobo e-reader, a new device from a startup partially owned by the bookstore megachain. It says it’ll start shipping Kobos in June.

The most intriguing thing about the Kobo has nothing to do with its hardware, software, or service. It’s the price–at $149.99, it’s the cheapest e-reader yet that’s backed by a big brand. (Sony has been selling its Reader Pocket Edition for the same price, but it’s a sale that’s scheduled to end on Sunday.)

Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook both go for $259. Both sport 3G wireless and other features that the Kobo skips in order to hit a low price point. (The Kobo doesn’t even have Wi-Fi–you buy books on a computer, then download them to the e-reader via USB.) But you gotta think that if Borders promotes the Kobo energetically enough, it’ll still put pressure on Amazon and B&N’s fancier rivals. There are already rumors of a cheaper, simpler “Nook Lite,” and I’d be startled if Amazon doesn’t do something to make the Kindle more affordable.

Then again, it’s not a given that Kobo will be a hit. Borders has sold Sony’s Readers in its stores for years, but hasn’t exactly pulled out all the stops–they’re displayed at  kiosks which usually look pretty lonely when I wander by them. Kobo gives the bookseller a second chance to get serious about the future of reading, and it’ll be interesting to see if it invests more energy in the idea this time around.