Think what you want about 3D TV, but it’s here already, and we’ve just seen the beginning. But are people actually buying the devices, as a few dozen models are now available in the US, Japan and other places? The Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business daily, recently investigated the 3D TV market in Nippon. What they found out could be of interest for the US and European markets as well.

Here are their main findings:

Prices

In Japan, prices for 3D TVs offered by the two most aggressive manufacturers, Panasonic and Sony, have fallen 20% and more since they were introduced back in spring this year. Panasonic’s 50-inch VIERA model, for example, is now available for as “low” as $3,600 in some stores in Osaka and Tokyo, after the company launched it with a $5,000 price tag in April.

Sony now sells a 40-inch Bravia 3D TV for $2,800, 20% cheaper already than in June (when it made its debut in Japan). As we reported earlier, the company tries a different approach in the US.

According to The Nikkei, the nation’s retailers say prices for 3D TVs fall rapidly, but they are still 30-50% more expensive than comparable models without 3D-capabilities.

Market size

Research firm GfK Marketing Services Japan found out that this early in the game, the market share of 3D TVs is still (not too surprisingly) relatively small. In the week from August 2nd to August 8th, for example, just 2.6% of all TVs sized 40 inches or larger sold in Japan were 3D models.They accounted for 5.9% of all sales for TVs in that size range in that week.

But the Nikkei expects the market for 3D TVs in Japan to expand when Toshiba and Mitsubishi launch their models at the end of this month, with Hitachi following later this fiscal year.

Addendum

To put things into perspective, other sources are more bullish about 3D TV. Take US-based market research firm DisplaySearch, for example. According to a recent report released by the firm, as many as 3.4 million 3D TVs will be sold worldwide in fiscal 2010 (5% of the entire flat TV market). The firm expects 3D TVs to achieve a whopping 43 million shipments as early as 2014 (37%). We’ll know soon if they’re right.

by Serkan Toto

Published at: http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/13/how-is-3d-tv-doing-some-data-from-japan/

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren’t 100,000 applications available in the store – yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps beensubmitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.

The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps and games are available in the United States, necessarily. Not all markets are counted, even, so AndroLib claims it may potentially undercount the number of apps, although it’s safe to say there’s somewhat of an error margin either way as with every data aggregation.

According to AndroLib, an estimated 18,000 apps have been removed or otherwise unpublished from Android Market, so the current number of active apps currently available in Android Market is closer to 83,300 today. That’s more in line with the number Google itself shared in its latest earnings call, about two weeks ago (more than 70,000 in total).

How long before the number of active Android apps hits 100,000?

by Robin Wauters

Published at: http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/30/android-market-100000/

Here’s some bad news for the residents of countries still in line for an iPad launch: LG, one of the largest supplier of displays for Apple’s iPad, says it cannot meet the enormous demand for the device.

“Demand (from Apple) keeps growing and we can’t meet it all. Apple may have to delay launches of the iPad for some countries due to tight component supplies and strong demand,” LG Display CEO Kwon Young-soo told reporters.

Recently, the iPad became available in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

However, Apple was careful not to promise a launch date for the rest of the world, merely stating that the “iPad will roll out to many more countries later this year and Apple will announce availability and local pricing for these additional countries at a later date.” It seems now that this date could be further away than we thought.

by Stan Schroeder

Pubslihed at: http://mashable.com/2010/07/26/ipad-launch-delayed/

Today is earnings day and Windows continues to have a strong showing. We announced a new milestone in Windows 7 sales – 175 million copies. This continues our record breaking pace of more than 7 copies sold per second. And as of today – Windows 7 is now running on more than 16% of all PCs worldwide. It’s exciting to see this kind of response from customers who have helped make Windows 7 the fastest selling operating system in history. We are also seeing some strong momentum with businesses for Windows 7. The PC “refresh cycle” for businesses has accelerated and we recorded the second straight quarter of double digital business license growth. And with Internet Explorer, IE8 is now the fastest growing and most popular web browser in the market and we have IE9 coming!

This strong momentum isn’t limited to Microsoft  – in fact we’re seeing strong growth across the tech industry. Last week we highlighted a recent IDC press release that illustrated the growth of the global PC market – more than 22.4% year-over-year for the second quarter of 2010. Intel reported its best quarterever with second quarter revenue up 34% year-over-year. And AMD reported a whopping 40% growth year-over-year in its earnings release, due to record sales of their chips for notebook computers. It’s great to see this kind of growth across the PC ecosystem and we’re pleased to be part of this growth with Windows 7.

by Brandon LeBlanc
Published at: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/07/22/windows-7-momentum-continues-175-million-licenses-sold.aspx

Sony Pictures has become the latest big brand to buy a spot on Twitter’s trending topic list, using the microblogging site’s new ad platform to promote the trailer for The Social Network, which hit the Web on Thursday.

As a result, Twitter users this morning are seeing the trending topic “#SocialNetwork,” which when clicked, shows a promoted tweet on top for the upcoming movie aboutFacebook’s controversial beginnings.

The company is using the promoted tweet to drive people to 500MillionFriends.com, a site that houses the film’s trailer, music and the movie poster featuring the tagline, “You Don’t Get to 500 Million Friends Without Making a Few Enemies.”

You might think The Social Network would be better off spending its ad dollars on Facebook itself, and, you’d probably be right. However, ads that reference Facebook aren’t allowed on Facebook, and not surprisingly, the social network isn’t bending the rules to accommodate.

by Adam Ostrow

Published at: http://mashable.com/2010/07/16/social-network-twitter-ad/

Lady Gaga is the first living music artist to acquire 10 million fans or “Likes” on Facebook, beating U.S. President Barack Obama by around 700,000. She reached the milestone earlier this weekend.

Gaga previously made headlines for being the first currently producing music artist to reach one billion YouTube views, based on data provided by video analytics company Visible Measures. The late and great Michael Jackson still has Gaga beat in both categories. (He has almost 15 million fans on Facebook.)

The Facebook page for Lady Gaga is regularly updated by either her or a ghost writer (it’s hard to tell these days), as is her Twitter account, which has more than 4.5 million followers. The online success of the artist’s music videos was due in part to the excellent strategy executed by cross-label music video site Vevo, but there’s no denying that the extravagance and style of Gaga’s videos have been essential.

Previously, Gaga’s Facebook fans organized “National Lady Gaga Day.” The accompanying Event had more than 100,000 attendees. Is this getting out of hand? You’d be well within your rights to say so, but at least 10 million people are bound to disagree.

by Samuel Axon

Published at: http://mashable.com/2010/07/03/lady-gaga-facebook/

Apple® today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone® 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime®, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple’s new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

iPhone 4 also features a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, HD 720p video recording, Apple’s A4 processor, a 3-axis gyro and up to 40 percent longer talk time—in a beautiful all-new design of glass and stainless steel that is the thinnest smartphone in the world.

iPhone 4 comes with iOS 4, the newest version of the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, which features Multitasking, Folders, enhanced Mail, deeper Enterprise support and Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform.

Published at: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/06/28iphone.html

Apple has sold 3 million iPads in 80 days, according to a releaseissued by the company today. The statement also reported that there are 11,000 iPad apps available for the device.

On May 31, Apple reported that it had sold 2 million iPad, showing that the company has sold one million more tablet devices in less than a month. The company only started shipping units to customers in countries outside the United States in late May, which could account for the faster growth in sales.

At the 2 million mark, Apple said the iPad had over 5,000 new apps for the iPad. Clearly this number has more than doubled, to 11,000 total iPad apps. There’s no doubt that iPads are flying off the shelves, as Apple sold a million devices in less than a month.

As previously announced, the iPad will be available in nine more – but still unnamed – countries in July and additional countries later this year.

by Leena Rao

Published at: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/22/apple-sells-3-million-ipads-in-80-days-11000-ipad-apps-available/

Twitter has announced that it is postponing a complete switch to OAuth, dubbed the “OAuthcalypse”, by a month and a half due to the severe load and downtime being caused by the World Cup.

Currently, there are two ways to connect to Twitter apps: basic authentication (where you provide your username and password) and OAuth, which lets users hand out “tokens” for access to applications instead of sensitive account data. Twitter intended to cut off use of basic authentication on June 30th — 12 and a half days away — and even launched a countdown clock for the occasion so that application developers were prepared.

Since then, Twitter’s stability has been compromised due to critical mistakes setting up and maintaining the service’s internal network. It has resulted in constant downtime and fail whales.

With so much happening, Twitter has decided to push back Oauthcalypse to August 16th, a full month after the World Cup ends. Here’s exactly what’s going to happen, according to Twitter’s Raffi Krikorian:

“just to review what we’re going to be doing: starting on august 16 we’ll be ramping down the rate limits on basic auth roughly by 10 calls/hour/day ending on august 31st. on the 31st, you won’t be allowed to make any other basic auth calls. in other words, if you don’t do anything, you’ll get more and more frequent rate limit errors as you approach august 31st. starting on august 31st, any basic auth request will get a HTTP 403 response back.”

Summary: Starting on August 16th, Twitter will begin to limit the use of basic authentication until the 31st, when the switch to OAuth will be complete.

Given the circumstances, delaying the OAuthcalypse is the right move for the company, but one has to wonder what other features and projects are being pushed back due to the massive failure of Twitter’s internal network. This month is turning out to be Twitter Hell.

by Ben Parr

Published at: http://mashable.com/2010/06/17/oauthcalypse-delayed/

NPR always has among the most popular news apps in the iTunes Store. Its latest iPad app has been downloaded 350,000 times, according to CEO Vivian Schiller, who spoke this morning at Wired’s Business Conference in New York City. Considering that only about 2 million iPads have been sold, about one in six iPad owners have downloaded the iPad app.

Asked whether she minds getting links from Google News, as Rupert Murdoch and other news organizations like to complain apparently do, she responded: “I have no problems with that whatsoever. I am not in the camp of Google bashers, Google sends a lot of traffic to us. We want our content to be as easily discoverable as possible.”

Of course, NPR’s mission is to provide free journalism to the public, so she is not a big fan of paywalls either. As listeners shift to the Web, NPR is committed to following them and serving them there as well. Ignoring consumer preference, she notes, would be a “path to destruction.” She estimates NPR’s Website traffic to currently be around 12 million unique visitors per month.

To the extent that other traditional media outlets talk actually start erecting paywalls and blocking Google, NPR and other open media sites will benefit.

by Erick Schonfeld

Published at: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/14/npr-ipad-350000/