$700 Motorola Xoom Launching Feb 17th at Best Buy
An internal Best Buy document leaked to Engadget nails down February 17th as the launch date for Motorola’s highly anticipated Xoom tablet. The Xoom features the latest and greatest version of the Android operating system, Honeycomb, which was designed to run better on tablets. The document also indicates the Xoom will come with 32GB of onboard storage. The tablet was originally rumored to cost around $800, but the same tipster has indicated a price of $699.99. Droid-Life has a nifty chart comparing the Motorola Xoom to the iPad.
$10k iTunes Winner Hung Up On Apple
Thinking she was being pranked, Gail Davis of Orpington Kent hung up the phone when Apple called to say she’d won a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Apparently, Gail’s daughters downloaded the winning app, but Gail had no idea what was going on.
Speaking exclusively to CultofMac.com, Davis says it was actually one of her two daughters who downloaded the 10 billionth app, winning the family a $10,000 iTunes gift card. Her daughters, 14 and 17, had downloaded several apps in the morning. One of them, the free Paper Glider app, was the magic 10 billionth app.
After she realized the call was legit, she tried to call back with no luck. She knew her daughters would hold it against for for life if she didn’t make things right. Luckily, Apple decided to give Gail another call. “I was hugely relieved,” says Davis. “I was getting really worried.”
Twitter May Triple Ad Revenue to $150 Million This Year
Remember when people used to joke about Twitter’s monetization strategy? I wonder if they’re still laughing now. According to Internet researcher EMarketer Inc., Twitter could more than triple its advertising revenue to $150 million this year. Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at EMarketer, went on to say that Twitter could hit $250 billion in ad revenue in 2012.
“The company is definitely attracting brand advertisers,” Williamson said. “The difference is going to be whether Twitter can prove itself to advertisers as delivering results. I think this will be the year that we know a lot more.”
via Bloomberg
In-App Payment System Coming Soon to Android
Actually, in-app payments were set to launch last quarter, but “Developers were busy with their Christmas applications,” Chu said. “So we couldn’t get enough feedback,” he continued. Eric Chu, a group manager at Google for the Android platform, promised that in-app purchase ability will come this quarter. Chu says they have invested a lot of time in carrier billing, but that will be only one option among many, including the Android Market payment system. When they do add more, developers won’t have to do a thing, Chu said.
via TechCrunch
Android 3.0 Platform Preview and SDK Tools
A preview of the Android 3.0 SDK has been released for developers so that they can begin testing their applications for a tablet form factor.
Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is a new version of the Android platform that is designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. It introduces a new “holographic” UI theme and an interaction model that builds on the things people love about Android — multitasking, notifications, widgets, and others — and adds many new features as well.
While this is exciting news for developers, most of us might find the screenshots of Honeycomb slightly more interesting. Android 3.0 brings enhancements to the user interface as well as updates to the Android developer tools. Are you developing an Android tablet app?
Microsoft Sells 300 Million Licenses for Windows 7
As part of their Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2011 earnings release, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 has sold over 300 million licenses to-date.
To put that in perspective, 300 million is roughly the combined number of households in North American and in Europe! Or, to put it another way, if you lined up 300 million Windows 7 product boxes, they would stretch nearly 1.5 times around the Earth!
Over 20% of Internet-connected PCs worldwide are running Windows 7. Their earnings report announced record second-quarter revenue of $19.95 billion for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2010. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $8.17 billion, $6.63 billion and $0.77 per share, respectively.
via The Windows Blog,