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Who ever thought that the future of virtual reality could lie in a simple cardboard box?

Google Inc. is known for giving I/O Developers’ Conference attendees gifts like a tablet or laptop, but last year the company handed out something more lightweight: a small, cardboard flat-pack kit. When opened, it reveals a cardboard cutout that folds into a virtual reality headset, powered by apps on your smartphone.

A device essentially made from paper is not how we’ve typically envisioned virtual reality. Techies and gamers have looked excitedly to costly and bulky devices like Facebook Inc.’s Oculus Rift, the upcoming Morpheus from Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens. But Google Cardboard is the opposite of all of this: it’s cheap (about $20, versus hundreds of dollars for the aforementioned devices), easy to use with just a smartphone and feels incredibly humble.

So easy, yet so clever

The kit is so easy to build, a child can put it together. You fold Cardboard by matching numbers to certain slots, slide in your smartphone and secure it with Velcro and a rubber band. It works with Android phones running Android 4.1 (Jellybean) or later, and while there are some Apple iOS apps for Cardboard too, it’s not officially supported.

Handout/GoogleGoogle Cardboard is easy to put together.

When you hold Cardboard, it feels a lot like using an old-school Mattel View-Master toy. You hold up the brown, corrugated cardboard box to your face and view smartphone apps through two Bioconvex plastic lenses. Suddenly, you’re in a virtual world.

In the Google Cardboard demo app, I went on a mini-tour inside France’s Palace of Versailles. In a way, I felt like I was there: The app would tell me to look at a statue on the left, and I turned my head to look and see it up close. To enter another room, I flicked the magnet and washer on the side of Cardboard like a button. There’s something delightful in using a basic magnet as a trigger or selection button for virtual reality.

An app by Jaunt gave me a 360-view of a Paul McCartney concert. The music played through the smartphone speakers, and I could look at the crowd of screaming fans and then turn around to see Sir Paul belting “Live and Let Die” from his piano.

Another app, Zombie Shooter VR, really shows the fun possibilities of Google Cardboard. You walk through a post-apocalyptic subway, trying to dodge and shoot at zombies and mutants. At times, I turned my head and would find a zombie right in my face — it actually made me jump. With the app, I moved through sharp and rich images of labyrinths in this virtual world. My vision felt slightly disjointed when I took Cardboard off.

Google announced on Thursday several developments for Cardboard that will likely improve its VR experience. They include a new tool that optimizes any app for any viewer and a “Works With Google Cardboard” certification sticker so users know if a viewer meets Google’s standard. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also released new design guidelines to make it easier for developers to make VR apps, and said it will expand its Google Play apps collection for Cardboard.

So far, Google says hundreds of apps have been released for Cardboard, though the company did not provide an exact number. In December, Google announced that more than 500,000 Cardboard devices had been sold through retail partners.

Handout/GoogleGoogle announced it is expanding its collection of Cardboard apps.

Drawbacks


Google Cardboard’s simplicity has some drawbacks, of course. With most of the apps I tried, you can move your view in different directions, but I wasn’t in control of my speed and the navigation felt limited at times.

This also isn’t a VR experience for hours-long play: It’s designed for quick-use (you don’t need to wear a strap on your head with it, for example) and the graphic-heavy VR apps are a drain on smartphone battery power.

VR for the masses

What I like most about Cardboard is its accessibility. It’s not a high-end Oculus Rift by any means, but it provides anyone and everyone a door into the world of virtual reality with just a smartphone.

The fact that Google Cardboard is really just pizza box material also says something else about virtual reality: Its future of this technology isn’t just about hardware —  it’s the ideas, images and software behind it that will be a game changer for VR.

If you want to experience it, you aren’t able to buy the official Google Cardboard unfortunately. In true open source fashion, Google directs you to a few kit manufacturers including DODOcase (US$24.95) and I Am Cardboard (starting at US$19.99). You can also build this “hardware” yourself: Google provides you with instructions and all you need is a trip to the hardware store (or your own garage) for the materials.

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TORONTO — Corus Entertainment says it has secured the Canadian licensing rights to the Disney Channel’s content.

Starting in September, the Toronto-based company will offer the Disney Channel for children aged six to 14.

Corus will also have Canadian rights to streaming content and ad-supported video on demand for certain programs.

Disney Channel joins other Corus specialty TV channels geared to young audiences, including YTV, Teletoon, and ABC Spark.

The company didn’t disclose financial details of the multi-year agreement.

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Disney has had a content agreement with Halifax-based DHX Media Ltd., which entered the specialty TV business last year when it acquired the Family channel and two other channels.

“While Disney programming has aired before in Canada, this is the first time Canadian audiences will be treated to the full Disney Channel experience,” Corus said Wednesday in an email.

“Current and new series will be featured on Disney Channel when the service launches on Sept. 1.”

In the United States, Disney Channel is available in about 96 million homes.

In Canada, Disney programs had been available through Family, formerly part of the Astral Media lineup of specialty channels.

BCE bought Astral and sold Family to DHX Media, which creates and distributes content for children and youth.

DHX announced Wednesday that it will rebrand the three Family channels in its television division starting in November.

The channel targeting kids aged six to 12 will be called Family XTRM and the channels for younger kids aged two to six will be rebranded Family Junior and Famille Junior.

DHX said it will begin a new lineup in January but until then it will continue to broadcast Disney content including the series “Liv and Maddie” — which Corus identified as one of the programs that will be on its Disney Channel.

As I began wading into Xenoblade Chronicles – perhaps the finest RPG ever to be released for Nintendo Wii, and now available for New Nintendo 3DS – for a second time in three years, I immediately began to remember what I liked so much about the original.

When it was first released, Monolith Soft’s epic RPG represented a long overdue – and smashingly successful – merging of Japanese RPG style with Western RPG sensibilities. It had colourful characters and clothes, an incredibly complex combat system, massive open environments, and seemingly limitless quests. Basically, it’s what you’d get if the folks at Square Enix teamed up with designers at Bethesda Softworks.

And – so long as RPG fans understand the inherent limitations of Nintendo’s handheld and temper their expectations accordingly – the 3DS port delivers pretty much the same experience.

Nintendo

Let’s first remember Xenoblade Chronicles‘ remarkable feat of imagination.

Its narrative concerns people – homs – who live on the immobile, ancient body of a titanic, godlike known as Bionis, as well as a mechanical race called the mechon who exist on the long-motionless body of a second titan called Mechonis.

If you think a world set on the remains of fallen gods would be small or limited in some way, think again. The environments that players explore are enormous. Example: Bionis’ single thigh, bent to horizontal at the knee, is a vast, open plain begging to be explored. Even the game’s more linear environments – such as a maze of bridges and tunnels within a small portion of the body of Bionis – tend to be so massive in scale you can easily become disoriented.

The two species that inhabit this bizarre but frequently beautiful world are locked in an eternal struggle against each other. The story picks up with the mechon launching an offensive against hom colonies. The homs’ only hope of victory lies in the Monado, a mystical but poorly understood sword with the power to cut through the mechons’ seemingly invulnerable armour. Chief among the characters you control is Shulk, one of only a couple of homs capable of effectively wielding this sword.

It’s a melodramatic but engaging tale – brought to life by a fine British voice cast – in which few characters feel truly safe, thanks to the writers’ early demonstration that they’re not opposed to killing off likeable protagonists in order to stir other characters’ – not to mention players’ – emotions.

Nintendo

At the heart of the heroes’ connections with one another is the notion of fate, future, and whether either can be changed, and this theme extends beyond the story to affect the action in meaningful ways.

As your characters’ affinity with one another grows they become stronger in battle, gaining the ability to encourage their companions as well as the power to effectively link and chain attacks with each other – a strategy key to defeating many of the more powerful mechon encountered throughout the game. What’s more, among the many powers conferred by the Monado is the ability to see into the future, which allows Shulk to warn his comrades when attacks are incoming so they can take action to avoid major hits.

This is all part of an incredibly complex real-time combat system that takes upwards of 15 or 20 hours to fully understand and appreciate, and even more time to master.

Characters automatically attack enemies when given no commands, but only the wimpiest of enemies will fall using this strategy. Success in harder battles depends upon issuing commands to your allies without actually taking control of them, maneuvering characters to advantageous positions on the field, and selecting appropriate arts (types of attacks) to weaken enemies, break their barrage, and eventually topple them to inflict massive damage while they’re down.

It’s intimidating at first, but ends up a wonderfully empowering – and, perhaps just as importantly, wholly unique – combat system once you’ve gotten a feel for it.

Add in a huge array of upgradable weapons and armour – each piece of which alters the look of your character – and you have plenty of reason to take up the hundreds of side quests offered by non-player characters so you can earn the cash and crafting supplies necessary to ensure your crew of fighters is always as powerful as it can be.

Nintendo

The only thing keeping Xenoblade Chronicles 3D from being as recommendation-worthy as the Wii edition is the limited capabilities of Nintendo’s handheld.

You should know, first, that your old Nintendo 3DS won’t cut it for this game. The New Nintendo 3DS, released a couple of months ago, is mandatory. And it’s pretty clear why. Xenoblade Chronicles 3D would be pretty much unplayable without the New 3DS’s second analog nub to control the free camera. Plus, its more powerful processor is put to the test rendering in almost uncompromising fashion some truly massive console-style open world environments. And the extra shoulder buttons are all but necessary to help manage the game’s complicated control scheme.

However, even with its improvements, the New Nintendo 3DS can’t quite recreate the console experience.

Its small, low resolution screen renders a pixilated picture that makes it hard to distinguish details, meaning it can be hard to differentiate monsters from the grassy hills they’re wandering across. Tiny text also displays poorly on the 3DS screen, making it a visual struggle to read through the scores of tutorials that pop up to explain everything.

And it seems strange to me to add “3D” to a game’s moniker when the 3D is as abysmal as it is here. The enhanced 3D capability of the New Nintendo 3DS has proven impressive in other games, but it turns out to be a poor fit for a game that already struggles with clarity in complex images due to low pixel count. I had a headache in minutes whenever I switched it on.

Consider, too, Monolith Soft’s strange decision not to take better advantage of the 3DS’s second screen. The developer merely moved character stats and the tiny circular mini-map from the main screen down to the lower display rather than, say, blowing up the map to fill the screen (which would have been a great help when tracking down wandering non-player characters needed to complete many side quests.

Impressive as the 3DS edition is, there’s little question that the Wii version remains the superior way to play this great game.

Nintendo

In the end, the biggest problem you might face is simply figuring out how best to play a game clearly meant for consoles on a mobile platform.

You can save anywhere you like (thank goodness) or just snap your 3DS shut and pick up where you left off, but with its massive environments, complicated quests, and boss fights that can last longer than a substantial bus ride, this is clearly a game meant to be played in focused, hours-long sessions.

Consequently, I’ve done most of my playing while curled up on the couch late at night, free from distraction.

That’s not typically how I choose to play games on mobile devices, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is good enough to warrant a change of habit – especially since time to acquaint yourself with the Xenoblade universe prior to the launch of the much-anticipated sequel, Xenoblade Chronicles X, on Wii U this fall (hopefully!) is beginning to grow short.

The annual RSA Conference in San Francisco is next week, starting on Monday 20 April 2015. Get a free expo pass on us...

Ryerson University’s technology startup incubator, home to more than 70 companies from across Canada, unveiled a fresh logo and rebranding effort on Thursday as it celebrates its fifth anniversary.

CNW Group/Digital Media Zone at Ryerson UniversityThe DMZ is home to more than 70 tech startups today.

The Digital Media Zone is being renamed DMZ to be “more reflective and inclusive of the startup community we serve,” said Brendan Dellandrea, DMZ’s director of marketing and communications.

“Digital media or digital content facilitation really only applies to 20% of the companies in the DMZ now… We’ve outgrown that narrow niche. We’re now home to all types of startups who are involved with solving some sort of problem with technology, whether it’s with hardware, software, apps or algorithms,” Dellandrea said, noting current DMZ startups such as DreamQii, which is developing a consumer-ready aerial drone.

“We are changing the name of the Digital Media Zone to the nickname that all of our friends have known us as since the beginning, which is just the DMZ.”

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The incubator launched in April 2010 as a small working space for Ryerson students building digital media companies, and was originally home to just eight startups. That number has grown so much that the DMZ now takes up three floors at 10 Dundas St. East in downtown Toronto.

Brennan McEachcran, co-founder of SoapBox, a management platform for crowdsourcing ideas, was the first student to enter the DMZ and even partly inspired its creation. At 19 years old, McEachran pitched his idea to Ryerson President Sheldon Levy to create a platform for collecting student ideas on how to improve the school.

“Sheldon told me he planned to open a lab, and I could work on it there. It was just the fifth floor at 10 Dundas. It was an empty space, no bean bag chairs, not even painted,” McEachran said.

“The DMZ was a common meeting place that allowed me to connect with SoapBox’s co-founders, and to collaborate with others to build something with a grander vision than my own.”

The “Z” in the DMZ’s new logo features converging arrows to represent how it’s become a connecter for founders, clients and partners, Dellandrea said. “What we wanted to convey is sophistication, coolness and a little bit of fun, too,” he said.

Since its launch, the DMZ and Ryerson Futures Inc. — its affiliated accelerator program — have housed 180 startups that have collectively raised more than $70 million in funding.

"Some sick, evil person thought it would be funny to send the police to my house on one of these false reports," he said.

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The Ottawa-based e-commerce startup acknowledges that keeping its reputation unblemished is critical to success

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Etsy Inc., the website founded a decade ago by a carpenter looking to sell wooden computers, is making its public debut as a $1.78 billion company.

A marketplace for handmade and vintage goods, Etsy raised $267 million in its initial public offering, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Brooklyn-based Etsy and some of its backers sold 16.7 million shares for $16 apiece, said the person, who asked not to be identified, after offering them for $14 to $16 each.

The site’s offerings include a knit coffee warmer for $6.50 and a 1960 metal typewriter for $85. Etsy makes revenue by charging sellers listing fees and commissions. As a public company Etsy’s challenge will be to keep the artisans and craftmakers who sell their products on the site happy, as the it also seeks to build scale for investors.

The IPO is a first for a B Corporation, a distinction given to businesses that meet exacting standards with regard to social and environmental performance. Proceeds will be used to invest in the business, except for $300,000 which will fund Etsy.org, a non-profit for educating women and minorities on how to create their own businesses.

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Etsy plans to invest in marketing and logistics to expand globally, as well as enhance seller services. The company also wants to develop its manufacturing program — started in October 2013 to allow sellers to outsource production and fulfillment. The policy helped some sellers become six-figure successes, while others, purely focused on handmade items, saw their sales decline amid competition from less expensive products.

Sales amounted to $195.6 million last year, a 56 percent jump from 2013. As the end of 2014, Etsy had 1.4 million active sellers and almost 20 million buyers. Women account for 86 percent of the sellers.

The company was founded in 2005 by Rob Kalin, a carpenter making handmade wooden computers with nowhere to sell them. He left the company in 2011 and was replaced as chief executive officer by Chad Dickerson, 42, a former Yahoo! Inc. executive.

Accel Partners, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures planned to sell shares in the IPO, filings show. Accel will own 22.4 percent of Etsy after the offering, while Index Ventures will hold 10.6 percent. Union Square will have a 12.6 percent stake, while CEO Dickerson will own 1.9 percent of the company.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co. managed Etsy’s IPO.

The company’s shares will start trading Thursday, listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol ETSY.

The HTC One M7 released in 2013 was one of the first Android smartphones to actually feel like a high-end device, an issue Google’s platform has battled with for years. The following year HTC – the company barely managed a profit last year – released the HTC One M8, a slight upgrade over the M7 with an improved camera, faster processor and a sleeker form factor.

HTC’s flagship phone for 2015 is unsurprisingly an upgraded version of the M8, dubbed the HTC One M9. The company’s latest smartphone is impressive, but HTC’s strategy of yearly upgrades that don’t add much to its One line of devices, is beginning to become uninteresting, especially in the face of Apple’s almost complete overhaul with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus as well as Samsung’s recently released and revamped Samsung Galaxy S6.

With that said though, other than the smartphone’s disappointing camera, which arguably performs poorer in low-light conditions than last year’s HTC One M8, the One M9 is the most refined smartphone HTC has ever released, and is one of the few high-end Android smartphones able to rival the build-quality of Apple devices.

The only Android smartphone to match Apple’s design supremacy

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostEven sitting beside the iPhone 6, the HTC One M9 holds is ground aesthetically.

Visually the M9 is essentially a combination of the M7 and M8. HTC has once again opted for an aluminum unibody featuring the angles of the M7, but also the more curvaceous design of the M8. The resulting look is sleek and refined, and a visually pleasing look that combines the company’s previous two flagship smartphones. Compared to competing high-end Android smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S6, the One M9 is significantly better looking, but of course this all comes down to personal taste.

The smartphone’s body also feels so solid that it’s likely one of the few devices I probably could handle not putting a case on – in short, the One M9 feels like it can handle a significant amount of abuse and still show minimal signs of wear and tear. The only drawbacks to the M9’s design are its volume buttons, which sit so closely to the side of the smartphone that they’re often difficult to locate and can easily be pressed accidentally.

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The device’s power button has also been relocated to the side – just below the volume buttons – adding further confusion to the One M9’s button placement setup. I often mistakenly pressed the M9’s power button when hunting for the volume button, despite its different texture. However, I made this mistake less frequently the more time I spent with the M9.

HTC’s latest flagship device also features a microSD card slot, unlike the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6, allowing those looking for more storage space to expand the smartphone’s memory up to a massive 2 terabytes. While not something everyone will use, the ability to expand a smartphone’s memory is quickly becoming a disappearing feature, with fewer devices each year supporting the option. However, it’s great HTC still sees value in providing their customers with the option of expandable memory.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostThe HTC"s buttons are confusing at first, especially how similar the power and volume buttons feel.

Furthermore, the M9 also manages to have enough heft to it to prevent the smartphone from feeling like a lower-end device, an issue I encountered with the Galaxy S6 despite its redesign.

A step backwards in camera technology

HTC claims One M9’s camera difficulties stem from software issues and that the company plans to release an update at some point in the next few months designed to solve many of the complaints surrounding the smartphone’s photography abilities.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostIn many ways the HTC One M9's camera is a step backwards from the M8's.

 

Unfortunately, currently the M9’s camera is by far its most disappointing feature, both when capturing video (at a resolution of up to 720p/1080p all the way up to 4K) and when snapping pictures, the M9’s performance in low-light conditions is borderline horrible. Unless a picture is shot under perfect circumstances, the M9’s camera has difficulty selecting the appropriate white balance and images also frequently end up looking noisy when shot in less than ideal light.

The front-facing 4 mega-pixel with a F2.2 aperture fixed-focus lens, suffers from similar issues.

The M9 has also ditched last year’s Duo Camera UltraPixel set-up which instead has been replaced by a single, square-shaped 20-megapixel lens, which much like the Galaxy S6, sticks out slightly from the M9’s otherwise sleek body, potentially leaving it open to scratches and other wear and tear. On the plus side, the additional pixels in the M9 allows the smartphone to capture high-quality 4K video, a feature few smartphones include right now.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostThe HTC M9's camera currently leaves a lot to be desired.

Impressive hardware matches (and sometimes surpasses) HTC’s key competitors

HTC has packed significant hardware under the M9’s hood: A Qualcomm octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor, 3 GB of DDR4 RAM and 32 GB of built-in storage, all features that put the device firmly inline with the iPhone 6, Samsung Galaxy S6 and even Google’s Nexus 6. Make no mistake, the M9 is a multitasking beast and during my roughly week-and-a-half of using the device as my go-to smartphone, I only ran into one instance where an app suffered from lag or delay (this was likely the fault of the app and not the M9).

Where the M9 pulls ahead of the competition in terms of features is its “BoomSound” dual-speaker system, which creates one of the more impressive and clearest audio experiences available on any smartphone ever released. Music, YouTube and movies/television, all sound crisp, clear and volume is impressively projected a significant distance from the tiny device. However, despite how great the speakers featured in the M9 sound, they aren’t a significant upgrade over last year’s M8, although the ability to toggle between different sound pre-set modes such as “music” and “theatre” is a welcome addition.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostThe HTC One M9 is still one of the best Android smartphones out there, despite not being very different from the M8.

Next there’s the M9’s screen, arguably a smartphone’s most important feature. While the device’s display isn’t up to par with the Galaxy S6 – the current king of both quality and screen resolution – the M9’s reasonably sized 5-inch “super LCD 3″ display is crisp and clear, coming in at an industry high-end smartphone standard, 1080p. However it’s important to point out that the M9 lags behind the competition when it comes to screen resolution, although this won’t be an issue for the average user and can in some ways be beneficial when it comes to battery life, another aspect where the M9 continues to impress.

Additionally, the smartphone’s 2,840mAh battery lasts long, even with heavy use – between 11 and 14 hours – and I usually only needed to charge the M9 overnight (although some reviewers have experience inconsistent battery life).

Price and how it stacks up to the competition

Similar to every flagship non-Nexus smartphone, the One M9 features a re-skinned version of Google’s popular operating system. HTC’s launcher makes icons appear slightly farther apart than they do in the standard version of Android, which is a surprisingly impressive visual touch, giving the phone’s standard home screen a more refined look. HTC’s “Sense” branded bloatware, features I largely chose to ignore, often over complicate Android’s elegance. However, Sense 7 feels like a natural progression of what the company has done with its past One smartphones. For example, a new Theme Engine system allows the users to snap a photo of any object and turn the image into the M9’s theme.

Patrick O'Rourke/National PostThe HTC One M9 is the best looking Android smartphone currently on the market.

There’s also an updated version of Blinkfeed, an HTC-branded app that gives users the information they want before they know they need it (it’s essentially HTC’s version of Google Now), which works reasonably well, although I still prefer Google Now. Thankfully for someone like me who prefers a more standard Android experience, turning off most of the M9’s Sense-related features is as simple as removing the app from the smartphone’s home screen and spending a few minutes in the device’s settings.

Whether or not the HTC One M9 is a worthwhile upgrade comes down to a variety of factors. Do you already own an HTC One M7 or M8? Then the One M9 probably isn’t worth the $750 asking price (it costs $199.99 on a two-year plan with most carriers), given how little has actually been changed between the various iterations of HTC’s top smartphone.

But what continues to impress about the One line is that HTC’s flagship smartphones are still the only Android devices able to go head-to-head with the iPhone in terms of its build quality – I just wish HTC took a page out of Apple and Samsung’s playbook and opted for a full revamp with the M9. Instead what consumers are left with is an admirable but still very incremental upgrade, rather than a groundbreaking new smartphone.

There’s always next year.

The HTC M9 is set to be released on April 17 in Canada and comes in “gunmetal” grey, silver and gold.

Manufacturer: HTC

Price: Starts at $750

Release Date: April 17

Score: 7.5/10

Netflix Inc. said its video-streaming service topped 62 million subscribers worldwide in the first quarter, as original shows such as “House of Cards” drew new viewers globally. The shares soared.

U.S. subscribers jumped by 2.28 million, while international customers rose 2.6 million, the Los Gatos, California-based company said Wednesday on its website. Both figures beat the company’s Jan. 20 forecast. Sales grew 24 per cent to $1.57 billion, matching analysts’ projections.

Netflix is investing heavily in original programming and international expansion to increase subscribers. The success of new shows drove viewing while the rise of the U.S. dollar trimmed sales overseas.

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“We think strong U.S. growth benefited from our ever-improving content, including the launch of the third season of ‘House of Cards’ and new shows ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ and ‘Bloodline,’” Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells wrote in a letter to shareholders.

First-quarter net income fell to $24 million, or 38 cents a share, from $53.1 million, or 86 cents, as the strong dollar trimmed revenue and contributed to losses outside the U.S. Excluding that, profit was 77 cents, the company said. Analysts forecast profit of 63 cents, the average of 35 estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Netflix has released a flurry of new series over the past few weeks, including the comic-book drama “Daredevil” from Marvel. While the company doesn’t release viewer figures for shows, they have been hits with subscribers.

Netflix rose 12 per cent to $531.62 in extended trading after results were announced. The stock fell 0.7 per cent to $475.46 at the close in New York and has advanced 39 per cent this year.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the U.S. currency against 10 major peers, rose 6.2 per cent in the first quarter. The index, which is weighted against other currencies including the euro and yen, had reached on March 13 the highest since its 2004 start date.
Bloomberg.com

SAN FRANCISCO — About 6 per cent of U.S. adults plan to buy Apple Inc’s smartwatch according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, with men twice as likely as women to purchase Apple boss Tim Cook’s first new major product.

The poll showed the watch, marketed by Apple as a high-fashion item as well as a new frontier in technology, appealed to fewer than 4 per cent of women compared with 9 per cent of men.

Ipsos polled 1,829 U.S. adults online between April 8 and 14 about the watch, which opened for preorders last week. The poll had a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

If calculated based on 2014 U.S. Census projections, and excluding younger teens, this could mean potential sales of about 15 million watches, if those who said they intended to buy follow through with an actual purchase.

Wall Street estimates had varied widely between 10 million and 32 million worldwide sales in 2015. Van Baker, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner, said the Reuters poll results indicated a “pretty high percentage” was interested in buying.

“It should serve Apple well if they can even get close to that,” he said.

As far as overall interest in the watch as opposed to intending to buy it, the poll showed that 18 per cent of respondents were “very” or “somewhat” interested versus 76 per cent who showed no interest.

Highest interest at 34 per cent was among men aged 18 to 28, the same age and gender bracket that gave the watch the highest “cool factor” at 53 per cent, compared with an overall 42 per cent.

People around the world flocked to Apple stores on April 10 to try on the watches, which go on sale officially on April 24, and online orders quickly outstripped supply, with most customers facing at least a month’s wait.

“I already have the iPhone, the iPad, pretty much everything that Apple offers,” said poll respondent Sefu Grady, a 37-year- old counselor living in Clinton, Mississippi.

He said he was buying a basic Sport model for himself and a mid-range one for his wife for Mother’s Day.
Apple has not yet said how many watches have been ordered, but CEO Cook described sales as “great.”

Shopping data firm Slice Intelligence and brokerage Cowen and Co estimated preorders on the first day at about 1 million in the United States.

Samsung Electronics, Sony Corp and LG Electronics have all released their own smartwatches, many of them powered by software developed by Internet company Google Inc.

None have given sales figures but independent researcher Smartwatch Group estimates that 6.8 million smartwatches were sold worldwide last year, led by Samsung with about 1.2 million units.

The Apple Watch, priced from US$349 for a basic Sport model to a US$17,000 gold timepiece, lets users check email, listen to music and make phone calls when paired with an iPhone. Reviews have generally praised its style but criticized battery life and slow-loading apps.

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According to the poll, adults aged between 30 and 39 were the most likely buyers, with 13 per cent saying they planed to buy an Apple Watch, followed by 10 per cent of 18-to-29-year-olds.

Just under a third of respondents said they already own an iPhone.

Not surprisingly, iPhone owners are more likely to spend money on the new Apple gadget, with about 15 per cent saying they planed to buy.

Among those polled who do not own an iPhone, 8 per cent said they would consider switching to an iPhone in order to purchase an Apple Watch.

Baker at Gartner said many potential buyers will end up holding off until the second version of the watch, likely to appear next year.

“We may see a high level of interest. Apple will sell a few million fairly quickly, but then things might flatten out a little,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2015

Microsoft Corp. announced Tuesday that it has acquired Toronto-based Datazen, a mobile business intelligence service, as more enterprise customers seek data insights on how to improve their business.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Datazen Software, launched three years ago, provides enterprise organizations with BI software and data visualization services on Windows, iOS and Android devices. Datazen will complement Microsoft’s cloud-based business analytics service, Power BI, the companies said in a blog.

BI software aims to sort and analyze large amounts of raw data and reproduce them into meaningful packages of information for companies. In today’s era of massive data streams, BI is only increasing in importance and effect.

“The mobile business intelligence space is wide open right now,” said Miljan Braticevic, CEO of Datazen. “We’re only getting started … I’m looking forward to see how much damage we can do in the marketplace in the coming years because the opportunity is huge and the timing is great.”

Braticevic said Datazen’s operations will remain in Canada. “We’re not moving,” he said.

More information on the company’s integration with Microsoft will be announced at a later date, Braticevic wrote in a company blog.

Mihkel M. Tombak, professor of technology, management and strategy at the University of Toronto, says that while companies are collecting increasing amounts of data, BI companies will be in demand as businesses seek help in dissecting those insights. “People with the skills to analyze that … data are going to be in demand,” Tombak said.

Avi Goldfarb, a professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, agrees. “The amount of data companies have to contend with is increasingly enormous,” Goldfarb said. “A lot of big opportunities are in BI helping companies make sense of [that] data.”

Datazen’s acquisition by Microsoft also highlights how Canadian software companies are getting noticed in the tech industry.

“There’s lots of great Canadian software stories,” Goldfarb said. “Some of them are business intelligence and some of them are in other industries. We have lots of interesting companies starting up and it’s no surprise that bigger companies are interested.”

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Samsung Electronics Co. created a standalone team of about 200 employees working exclusively on screens for Apple Inc. products as the world’s biggest technology companies strengthen business ties, people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The team at Samsung Display Co., which provides screens for iPads and MacBooks, helps develop products and is only allowed to share information about Apple business within the group, the people said, asking not to be identified because the details aren’t public. The team formed April 1 and also helps with sales, the people said.

Samsung is relying more on its display and semiconductor units after falling into a tie with Apple for leadership of the global smartphone market. Relations between the companies thawed after they dropped all lawsuits against each other outside the U.S., and Apple is now the biggest external customer for Samsung components, one of the people familiar said.

“The new exclusive team for Apple implies that the relationship between Samsung and Apple has improved,” said Jerry Kang, an analyst at Englewood, Colorado-based researcher IHS Inc. “This also suggests that Samsung Display will win screen orders from Apple, such as for the Apple Watch.”

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Next IPhone

The companies each spent hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees across four continents after Apple accused Samsung of copying its iPhone designs. Samsung countered that Apple was using pieces of its wireless-transmission technology without permission.

In order to strengthen management, Samsung Display split its liquid-crystal display and organic light-emitting diodes units as of April 1, said Kim Ho Jung, a spokesman for Samsung Display. He declined to elaborate.

The display business is 85 per cent owned by Samsung Electronics, while the rest is held by Samsung SDI Co. Samsung Display supplies Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones as well as those by other vendors.

LG Display Co., a rival supplier of panels to Apple, also has a separate unit focused primarily on business with its biggest U.S. customer, another person familiar with the matter said.

Jean Lee, a spokeswoman for LG Display, declined to comment.

In addition to displays, Samsung is developing a closer relationship with Apple in semiconductors.

Samsung will make Apple’s A9 processor chips at its Giheung plant in South Korea for the next iPhone model, regaining a customer previously lost to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., people familiar with the matter said earlier this month. TSMC last year ended Samsung’s monopoly over contracts to make iPhone and iPad chips.

The Galaxy maker said April 7 its first-quarter operating profit declined 31 per cent to 5.9 trillion won (US$5.4 billion) in the three months ended March. With earnings falling for six straight quarters, the company is banking on Friday’s debut of its new Galaxy S6 models to lure back buyers and drive sales of chips and displays.

Bloomberg.com

Yahoo may be in talks to acquire Foursquare for “around US$900 million,” according to a report by Tech Crunch’s Ingrid Lunden and Jordan Crook.

According to Lunden’s sources, the deal between Yahoo and Foursquare “is done,” but the final details are still being worked out.

We have no idea if the rumour is true. Having said that, Foursquare and Yahoo could make sense for a few reasons.

First, Marissa Mayer and Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley are friendly, and Mayer is interested in making Yahoo a strong mobile company. Foursquare has tons of valuable location data, even if its user growth metrics haven’t been strong in some time. The reported price tag, US$900 million, might sound like a lot but big tech companies like Yahoo have been known to pony up for data plays. Google, for example, acquired mobile traffic navigation app Waze for US$1 billion and it had roughly the same number of users as Foursquare (tens of millions). Foursquare was last valued at about US$600 million a few years ago before it secured a pile of debt to avoid raising a down round. Foursquare has raised US$162 million to date.

Additionally, Crowley would almost certainly rather sell to Mayer than a company like Google. Crowley sold his first startup, Dodgeball, to Google and it was promptly shut down. The experience was devastating for Crowley and he’s not likely to make the same mistake twice.

Mayer has also reportedly had her eye on Foursquare for some time now. When Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013, AllThingsD reported that “As an executive at Google, she had closely watched [Tumblr’s] fast growth, along with that of Foursquare.”

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Foursquare, which was founded in 2009 by Naveen Selvadurai and Dennis Crowley, once turned down a US$100-150 million acquisition offer from Facebook when it had raised just a few million dollars. In 2011, Mayer and Crowley were seen getting dinner together in San Francisco.

But Foursquare has been showing signs of indecisiveness lately. Last year, Foursquare decided to unbundle its Foursquare apps into two standalone apps — a Yelp-like search app for discovering new locations and restaurants that will retain the Foursquare name, and Swarm — a location-based check-in app.

The new Foursquare app has seen moderate success, ranking among the top 25 travel apps, but it hasn’t managed to break into the top 500 overall apps yet this year, according to App Annie.

AppAnnie

 

Swarm, Foursquare’s location-based check-in app, has been doing even worse, failing to break into the top 100 U.S. social networking apps or even the the top 1500 overall.

App Annie

We have been reaching out to sources but haven’t yet been unable to confirm or deny the acquisition rumour. We’ll update this story as soon as we know more.

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Nokia Oyj is again seeking global domination in its chosen industry.

The erstwhile world leader in handsets looks set to regain some of its lost glory in a deal that consigns Alcatel-Lucent SA to the history books as the French company’s name is erased from the combined brand. The group’s headquarters will be in Finland and the US$16.6 billion takeover will make Nokia the biggest supplier of equipment that powers mobile-phone networks.

“Having their brand take over the Alcatel-Lucent brand is a good idea, on their part,” said David J. Cord, author of a book The Decline and Fall of Nokia. “That would be a good way to keep them in the industry and be better perceived in the industry.”

The deal caps a history of twists for Nokia, which began as a wood-pulp mill in 1865, and produced everything from rubber boots to toilet paper and televisions before transforming itself into the world’s biggest handset maker with a market value that, at its peak, reached US$320 billion. Finns looked to Nokia as a symbol of their country’s transformation into a technology- driven economy.

Nokia was such a part of Finnish culture and identity, and it was hard for Finns to see them fall

The nation then watched on in disbelief as Nokia was brought to its knees by rivals Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., culminating in the 2013 disposal of the flagship mobile-phone unit to Microsoft Corp. under then Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop.

“Nokia was such a part of Finnish culture and identity, and it was hard for Finns to see them fall,” Cord said by phone. “Now they’re making these big international moves and they’re really growing with acquisitions, I think this will help a lot with the Finnish psyche in that a small country can have a globally successful company.”

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Nokia’s dark years weighed heavily on the northernmost euro member’s economic output, which remains below its 2008 level. In 2000, Nokia accounted for about 4 per cent of Finland’s gross domestic product. It was equivalent to just 0.2 per cent by 2013, according to Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, an economist at Helsinki-based researcher ETLA.

CEO Rajeev Suri now looks set to drive the 150-year-old company into its next reincarnation. Nokia’s acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent is the biggest corporate transaction in Finnish history, dwarfing Telia AB’s 2002 takeover of Sonera Oyj for 9.9 billion euros (US$10.5 billion) and Nokia’s 5.4 billion-euro sale of the handsets.

“Nokia has been able to, without disappearing, reinvent themselves, and they’ve done this over and over again throughout their long history,” Cord said.

For the French, who back the merger, the deal marks the end of a company that had represented the nation’s engineering prowess and its long history of innovation. A takeover by Nokia, which is still subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, would be the final chapter in the history of the onetime French industrial giant, with former operations ranging from spaceflight to cutting-edge theoretical physics.

Created with the 2006 merger of Alcatel SA with U.S.-based Lucent Technologies, which both had roots in the telecommunications industry of the late 19th century, the company accumulated billions of euros in losses, weakened by Asian competition and slower spending on network equipment by mobile carriers during the financial crisis.

“The turnaround is a lot faster” for companies these days, Cord said. “Just a couple of years ago, many people thought that Nokia could go bankrupt and now look at them — they’re making one of the largest acquisitions in the networks industry.”

–With assistance from Matthew Campbell in London.

Intel Corp. was upgraded to outperform from sector perform at RBC Capital Markets on Wednesday, as analyst Doug Freedman expects the double-digit growth in its data centre business will drive a 25% increase in cash flow over the next two years.

“It is not about quarter-over-quarter changes in inventory and reported gross margins,” Freedman told clients, boosting his price target on Intel shares to US$40 from US$38.

The analyst believes bearish PC sentiment is fully priced into Intel shares, and anticipates data centre growth will drive more operating profit than the recently-created client computing group (CCG) by the end of 2016.

Intel reported an 8.4-per-cent year-over-year CCG revenue decline in the first quarter, and a 16.3-per-cent pullback on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

Freedman thinks the company’s guidance points to an annual decline of 12.3 per cent for CCG in the second quarter, but expects the weakness will moderate to -11.9 per cent in Q3 and -5.9 per cent in Q4.

Intel’s PC and data centre businesses currently account for more than 100 per cent of operating profits due to the loss created by mobile, but the analyst still sees growth options elsewhere. He highlighted the Internet of Things, memory and mobile as potential contributors to earnings growth as losses are reduced.

Freedman also pointed to the possibility of a closer relationship with Apple Inc., which could improve revenues in both its mobile and integrated circuit manufacturing businesses as soon as late 2016.

“At this point, we consider Intel to be a company that has successfully navigated a transition out of negative revenue growth prospects as data center and PC contributed more than the Street expected to financial results in 2014,” the analyst said.

“We think that Intel’s mix-shift in both revenues and profits to DCG increase the moat around the stock, as competition appears to be lower than PCs, where new technology (tablets and smartphones) and increasing life-span of the products appear to be weighing on revenue growth prospects despite increasing market share versus Advanced Micro Devices Inc.”