A Popular E-Book Subscription Service, Now With Audiobooks

By Brad Stone

Technology startups are trying to unclench Amazon’s (AMZN) iron grip on the book business, one finger at a time. The latest effort comes courtesy of Scribd, a seven-year-old San Francisco company that, for $8.99 a month, offers unlimited access to a catalog of some 500,000 e-books, including titles from major publishers likeHarperCollins (NWS) and Simon & Schuster (CBS).

Today, Scribd is announcing that it’s adding more than 30,000 audiobooks to the service, at no additional charge. Standouts in the collection include the Hunger Games trilogy, The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, and Daring Greatly by Brené Brown.

The move to introduce audiobooks to an e-book subscription service improves Scribd’s offering in an increasingly competitive market and expands the notion of what a digital book subscription service can entail. Amazon offers its own subscription service, called KindleUnlimited, for $9.99 a month. It offers access to hundreds of thousands of e-books and, for now, a limited selection of only a few thousand audiobooks. New York startup Oyster also offers a $9.95 monthly subscription service comprised of only e-books.

STORY: Blendle Looks to Expand Its Extremely Metered Paywall

Scribd entered the book subscription market last fall, after dabbling with more conventional e-book downloads. Trip Adler, Scribd’s founder, says subscribers read about three times as much as readers who pay for individual titles. He asserts that Scribd is the largest book subscription service in the market with “hundreds of thousands” of paying subscribers. “We think we can have tens of millions of subscribers. That is the goal,” he says. “Netflix (NFLX) has 50 million members. Spotify has 10 million. We think we can do the same thing for things that are written.”

Or spoken, apparently. Publishers that are contributing audiobooks to the Scribd service include HarperCollins, Scholastic (SCHL), and Blackstone Audio, one of the largest audiobook publishers in the U.S. and a major rival to Audible, an Amazon subsidiary. Adler also promises that more deals with big publishers for e-books and audiobooks are on the way. “Audiobooks are over a billion-dollar market and growing faster than e-books,” he says. “We think this is a meaningful new offering. Audiobooks are on the rise.”

The book subscription startups pose a major challenge for Amazon, and vice versa. Every subscriber that Scribd or Oyster signs up is a customer who will likely buy fewer books on Amazon, as well as other things like Kindle devices and AmazonFresh groceries. But Amazon also has the resources to eventually drive down subscription prices and outprice the startups, and it has a vast catalog of self-published titles (some of dubious quality) that authors make available for the Kindle and to Kindle Unlimited. All of these companies sap attention from the oldest book delivery channel around—public libraries.

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Scribd’s biggest asset may be Amazon-related anxiety, which is rampant in book circles. “Publishers want to see new, strong players, and I think that they see subscription as an opportunity to create a new large consumer platform and new revenue sources,” Adler says. “Amazon has done a really terrific job with the Kindle and deserves a lot of credit, but I think there is room outside the Amazon world. There is an opportunity for one or several really big companies to be built in the book space.”

Lenovo Second-Quarter Profit Climbs, but Shares Dip

By REUTERS

BEIJING — Lenovo Group Ltd reported quarterly revenue that missed analyst estimates, with a decline in smartphone sales curbing investor optimism about the world's biggest maker of personal computers (PCs) turning into a force in mobile devices.

Lenovo's earnings came at a time of unprecedented competition in China's smartphone market, with rivals including fast-growing Xiaomi Inc, now the world's No. 3 handset maker. At the same time, the company is pulling ahead in the global PC industry.

The Beijing-based company now has a PC market share of 20 percent and has extended its lead over Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc [DI.UL], according to IDC research.

Sales of laptop and desktop computers rose 0.9 percent and 6.4 percent respectively in July-September, helping revenue rise 7 percent to $10.5 billion (6.58 billion British pounds). That compared with an $11.35 billion estimate of 13 analysts according to Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate, which gives greater emphasis to more accurate analysts.

But mobile device sales fell 6 percent to $1.4 billion in a rare stumble for Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing, who has been determined to muscle his way to the top of the global smartphone market.

"Smartphone revenue was not that exciting, it was a little bit of a problem," Yang told Reuters in an interview after the results. He attributed the fall primarily to an accounting procedure pushing revenue from a significant shipment of phones in late September to the following quarter.

Shares of Lenovo shed 5.1 percent after the results, compared with a 0.2 percent fall in the benchmark Hang Seng index.

Nomura analyst Leping Huang said a reduction in handset subsidies from Chinese mobile phone networks have adversely affected Lenovo's home market.

"All the smartphone vendors suffer from it," Huang said. "But Lenovo fundamentally looks quite good."

Lenovo said net profit rose 19 percent to $262 million in the second quarter, exceeding the $260 million analyst estimate. It also announced a dividend payment of HK$0.06 ($0.0077) per share.

SMARTPHONES AND SERVERS

The PC market has been shrinking since the advent of tablet computers and smartphones. Lenovo has responded by diversifying, making two multi-billion-dollar acquisitions in quick succession for Google Inc's Motorola handset unit and IBM's low-end server business.

Last week Lenovo closed its $2.91 billion deal for Motorola, gaining an iconic albeit faded brand that still has a presence in North America and Europe, two markets Lenovo covets.

Speaking on an earnings conference call on Thursday, Yang pledged to prioritize sales growth at Motorola without looking to cut expenses. He said he expected Motorola to turn a profit in four to six quarters, and that margins in Lenovo's smartphone business will be higher after integrating the U.S. unit.

The company also on Thursday named Yahoo! Inc co-founder Jerry Yang to its board of directors. Yang, who is also a director at Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, formerly served as a Lenovo board observer.

($1 = 7.7525 Hong Kong dollar)

(Editing by Christopher Cushing)

Microsoft Changes Tack, Making Office Suite Free on Mobile

By NICK WINGFIELD

SEATTLE — Few golden geese in technology have survived as long as Office has for Microsoft.

The suite of applications that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, first released in 1990, generated nearly a third of Microsoft’s revenue during its last fiscal year — about $26 billion of $87 billion in total. By some estimates, the software accounted for an even higher portion of the company’s gross profits.

But in a sign of the seismic changes underway in the tech industry, Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, said on Thursday that it would give away a comprehensive mobile edition of Office. The free software for iPads, iPhones and Android tablets will do most of the most essential things people normally do with the computer versions of the product.

Just a few years ago, giving away a full free version of Office would have earned a Microsoft chief executive a visit from a witch doctor. Now, the move is following through on the rallying cry coming from Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief executive, who has pushed cloud and mobile computing as lodestars for the company’s future.

A version of Microsoft Excel for the iPad.

The old Microsoft hemmed and hawed about creating Office apps for mobile platforms from Google and Apple, pushing its Windows platform instead. But the center of gravity in the tech industry has quickly shifted to mobile and cloud computing. Power players like Apple and Google and many of the most successful new start-ups now offer free software, often with premium perks for sale.

That shift has started to weigh on Office. While sales of the software to businesses grew about 8 percent last year, consumer revenue rose only 2 percent. Sales declined by double-digit percentage points during the first two quarters of the year.

“We’d like to dramatically increase the number of people trying Office,” John Case, corporate vice president of Office marketing at Microsoft, said about the new offering. “This is about widening the funnel.”

The Office business suffered in recent years from a global slump in sales of PCs, which were hurt as people began to do more and more basic computing chores on tablets and smartphones. For years, Office was not available on mobile devices, and many consumers began to wonder whether they needed the software at all. Those who needed productivity apps turned to free or cheap alternatives from Apple, Google and start-ups like Evernote.

“Lots of consumers don’t need a PC,” said Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Securities. “They just need an Internet connection. They don’t need Office as much.”

The outlook for Microsoft’s apps has improved in recent quarters with the growth of Office 365, a cloud version of the product that includes constantly updated apps, unlimited online file storage and free Skype calling to traditional phones. Consumers pay $7 to $10 a month for the service, rather than buying a copy of Office for about $150.

Microsoft started to suggest a more open posture earlier this year, when it released an iPad version of Office that could be used to read documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

If users wanted to edit or print those documents, though, they needed to pay a subscription fee to Microsoft. Now Microsoft is doing away with those hindrances. It is starting to test similarly full-featured and free Office apps for tablets running Android, Google’s mobile operating system. And it is updating Office apps for iPhone to allow editing, at a time when Apple’s new big-screen smartphones are making it easier to get work done on the devices.

Microsoft says it has more than 7 million consumers subscribing to Office 365. It says there have been more than 40 million downloads of its Office apps for the iPad. In its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 30, Microsoft said its consumer Office revenue grew 7 percent.

By making an unabridged version of Office available for free on mobile, Microsoft is betting it can get even more people to start using the software, without stealing sales from the PC and Mac versions of the product, where it still makes truckloads of money.

The calculation is similar to the one made by software makers in the mobile industry. Instead of the one-time fees long associated with software sales, most app makers give away basic versions of their products — from games to productivity software to online storage services — while charging for premium features.

“We’re seeing the consumer valuation for those things start to approach zero,” said Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that tracks the company.

Offering a mobile edition of Office for free comes as Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief executive, pushes cloud and mobile computing as lodestars for the company’s future.

Credit

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

Apple, for example, made its iWork suite of productivity applications free a year ago for new buyers of Macs and Apple mobile devices. Google has won converts to a free suite of Web apps that competes with Office.

Microsoft announced this spring that it would give away some versions of Windows, its other big cash cow, to hardware companies that want to put it on devices with screens smaller than nine inches.

It was an attempt by Microsoft to claw its way out of a severe deficit in mobile by encouraging more companies to make Windows smartphones and tablets. Notably, the change in its terms did not include versions of Windows for personal computers, which have larger screens.

One view is that Microsoft has little to lose in giving away mobile versions of its Windows and Office products. Its market share in smartphones is in the low single digits. Only about 13 percent of Microsoft’s Office revenue comes from consumers, estimates Mr. Sherlund, the Nomura Securities analyst.

The biggest risk to Microsoft is that, in the long run, the line it is drawing between free mobile versions of Windows and Office and premium versions for computers will not hold, as boundaries between devices get blurry. If Apple and others create tablets that are more serious laptop replacements, perhaps with detachable keyboards and mice, the case for paying for a premium version of Office could get weaker.

Mr. Case, Microsoft’s vice president of Office marketing, said the company was walking a fine line by making Office free on mobile, but he expected the impact would be positive for the company.

“This is not a small change,” he said.

WhatsApp gets flak for ‘sneaky’ blue ticks

BY COLLEEN GOKO

OPULAR messaging platform WhatsApp has added a new feature to its offerings that allows users to tell if their messages have been read by the intended recipient.

WhatsApp used to confirm the delivery of the message with a grey coloured tick.

ut now, one grey tick indicates that a message has been sent, two grey ticks mean the message has been delivered to the recipient’s phone and two blue ticks mean the recipient has read your message.

In WhatsApp’s updated frequently asked questions section it states: "If you see two blue check marks next to your sent message, then the recipient has read your message. In a group chat or broadcast message, the check marks will turn blue when every participant has read your message."

Previously, users could only guess if and when their messages had been read using the "last seen" feature. WhatsApp allowed users to opt out of that particular functionality if they were unwilling to share their last seen status.

It proved popular with users who did not want the pressure of replying immediately or having other users know when last they were online.

Not everyone is pleased with the new update. Some commentators have called it "sneaky".

"Part of the appeal was being able to hide from select individuals when I wanted to," said WhatsApp user Larissa Pringiers.

"I hope a future update will allow me to opt out when I want to, otherwise I’m afraid it might be curtains for some of my relationships," she said.

A study done by CyberPsychology — a web-based, peer-reviewed scholarly journal — concluded that 28-million couples break up because of WhatsApp and Facebook.

The result was attributed to the "double check syndrome", where people believed that the double checks meant the recipient had read the message, inciting feelings of jealousy, anxiety and suspicion.

Techies have long suspected that this update was in the works from the Facebook-owned app. Facebook uses this feature in Facebook messenger.

Other messaging platforms, such as BBM, also have the read-receipt functionality.

Research conducted by World Wide Worx and Fuseware in February into the use of social media and instant messaging on cellphones in SA, showed that the instant messaging app was used by at least 10.6-million South African adults.

The survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of adult cellphone users living in cities and towns. The sample frame represented about 20-million adults.

Forbes names Apple as most valuable brand

by Luke Jones

Forbes has released its annual list of the world's most valuable companies and (un)surprisingly the table is topped by Apple. The magazine/website values the iPhone maker at a whopping $124.2 billion, a number that is more than double any other company on the list and much more than Cupertino?s rivals.

Forbes said Apple increased by 19% thanks to increased product sales and continued demand for the iPhone. Microsoft was the nearest of Apple's rivals in second place, but trailed far behind Cupertino at $63 billion, itself a 13% increase. Other tech companies include Google in third place ($56.6 billion), IBM in fifth ($47.9 billion), and Samsung in 8th ($35 billion).

Microsoft band review: The fitness watchband built for running needs to walk first

By WILSON ROTHMAN

The Microsof Band consolidates health and fitness data from various fitness gadgets and mobile apps.Source: AP

THE giants of technology have made one thing abundantly clear this year: You’re out of shape and need their help to get fit!

Microsoft, the newest would-be coach, just rolled out a wristband-and-app pairing that was built to work with iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

Microsoft execs say the company is getting into the wearable business as a first foray into a big problem: how to identify useful intelligence in heaps of personal data.

Microsoft says it can take sensor information from wearables and interpret it in the cloud with an accuracy that less experienced firms couldn’t possibly pull off.

The evidence presented — the Microsoft Health app and the Band smartwatch, with 10 sensors — sounded promising, at least compared with the current offerings of Samsung, Google and Apple.

Shortly after I paired the $US199 wearable to my iPhone, though, things went downhill.

Like every other fitness band, this one has an accelerometer-based step counter. During a controlled test, it reported roughly the same number of steps as my phone and a cheaper wearable.

But there are a lot more sensors packed into the bracelet and it’s clear that they aren’t all equally reliable.

There’s an optical heart-rate sensor that, in the middle of a rigorous session with an elliptical machine, reported my heart pounding at 105 beats per minute (super chill) and at 208 bpm (close to collapse).

Meanwhile, my trusty elliptical confirmed I was likely somewhere between 150 and 160 bpm the whole time.

There’s GPS, which currently only draws routes of the jogs you take. It would be nice for the Band to use GPS when I’m on a bike ride.

Among the many sensors, there’s a UV sensor (tap it to find out if you’re in need of sunscreen) and a galvanic skin response sensor (whose purpose is still to be determined).

There are two problems with all this data collection. First, it creates a lot of noise that needs to be sorted out with software.

Microsoft’s goal may be to improve that kind of data interpretation, but I’m not seeing the results yet. And all those sensors also drain the battery pretty fast.

Microsoft said the Band’s battery would last up to two days, but it should have simply said “at least one day.” It died the first time in the middle of a workout, about 24 hours after I first powered it up.

With 100 per cent charge, it died after about 36 hours. Trouble is, it never warned me as it approached battery death.

Only when I tapped into the watch to do something did I get the warning that I’d better find the Band’s unique charger in a hurry. Microsoft said that the unit it lent me wasn’t performing up to expectations.

Ergonomically, the wearable is pretty terrible. It’s awkward, wide at the top while a competing product, Samsung’s Gear Fit, is smartly curved.

The Band has a clever metal clasp that slides to make a better fit, but it rubbed my wrist the wrong way. And it’s so easily scratched, it looked battle damaged by Day Two. I scraped the bezel against a wall by just shoving a box into a closet. (Microsoft says it is offering screen protectors at its stores.)

The app, however, demonstrates how far Microsoft has come on the user-interface front. Full of active tiles and slide-out menus, Microsoft Health is lively, especially when compared with Apple’s incredibly boring Health app and its clinically sterile line graphs and menus.

The Homepage gives a quick look at how I’m pacing today: Have I reached my step counting and calorie burning goals? How long ago was my last workout? How did I sleep last night?

The next page starts to get a little less helpful, recapping my specific sleep and workout activities. I can see how, if I were to be in a serious training regimen, it could be of value, but only if the sensor data was any good.

The third page is “Find a Workout,” where I can choose workout modules that sync right to the Band. Having videos explain how each exercise is done, then having the Band tell you what exercises to do and for how long, can be a nice benefit. But people who want a virtual personal trainer have a wealth of options, including the more sophisticated FitStar.

On a page labelled Connected Apps, we see the direction Microsoft would like to go. Here, you can sync your Microsoft Health data to RunKeeper and MyFitnessPal, and pull their information into your Microsoft profile. Microsoft says there is more high-quality data coming from such respected outside sources as Jawbone, which is a Microsoft Health launch partner.

In the next six months, the Microsoft Health website will launch, offering an easily searchable view of your fitness data that can answer such questions as, “Do I run better after having breakfast?”

Microsoft certainly has plans to analyse and correlate the information in ways that the individual contributors don’t have the power to do. But for now, the Microsoft Health club is feeling empty and the Band is weak.

From WhatsApp to Snapchat: Find out how safe your favourite messaging app is

By tech2 News Staff 

Messaging is arguably the most popular category of smartphone apps. Even the simplestmessaging apps are capable of sending text messages and keeping your social life alive. In the smartphone age, messaging no longer restricted to just sharing text messages. You now have apps in all shapes and sizes including ones for sending photo messages, disappearing messages, voice and video messages, and the list goes on.

With the growing popularity of messaging apps comes the pressing need to keep them safe. Recent reports of the Snapchat photo leak showed just how vulnerable your messages are on the web.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has tested several messaging apps across different platforms to find out which ones protect your messages at different stages after being sent from your device. Based on the test, it has produced a Secure Messaging  Scorecard that shows the level of security provided by each messaging app. The website explains “The Snowden revelations have confirmed our worst fears: governments are spying on our digital lives, grabbing up communications transmitted in the clear.”

The Secure Messaging Scorecard (Credit: The Electronic Frontier Foundation)

The scorecard indicates whether your messages are encrypted in transit, if the service provider can read it, whether you can verify the receiver’s identity and other important security aspects. It shows that some of the most popular apps, such as WhatsApp, Skype, Google Hangouts and Viber have feeble security practices in place. For example, even though WhatsApp messages are encrypted in transit, WhatsApp themselves can read your messages. Same is the case with Skype, Snapchat, Secret and Facebook Chat.

Some of the most secure messaging apps include Silent Text, Text Secure, Subrosa and Retroshare that check nearly all the boxes on the Secure Messaging Scorecard. While these provide solid protection, EFF points out that most of them are not the easiest to use and consequently not very popular among mainstream smartphone users.