A Morgan Stanley analyst has made a startling prediction about Apple's smartphone. Katy Huberty has predicted that about 42 million iPhones will be sold by the end of 2010, and the number could even reach 48 million. Apple recently announced that it sold 600,000 iPhone 4 units (pre-orders) in the first 24 hours of availability.

Huberty believes that more than half of current iPhone owners will upgrade to the new iPhone 4. She points out that the original iPhone isn't eligible for an upgrade to iOS 4 and the iPhone 3G won't be able to use all of its features. Additionally, there are also tiered data plans from AT&T which can drop the overall cost of an iPhone by about $400.

Tripling its user base within 18 months would be a dramatic expansion for the iPhone, but it already has gotten rapid growth before.

Gartner Research reported in early 2009 that the iPhone had more than doubled market share in just one year from 5.4 percent to 10.8 percent. Apple now holds an estimated 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States.

Permalink | Comments

---

Google Inc. is integrating a PDF reader with its Chrome browser. The move comes not long after the company revealed it would do the same for the Adobe Flash player, showing growing support from the search giant for Adobe's products.

The company rolled out developer builds of its browser for Windows and Mac that include a PDF reader on Friday. "As we've previously mentioned, the traditional browser plug-in model, though powerful, presents challenges in compatibility, performance, and security. To overcome this, we've been working with the web community to help define a next generation browser plug-in API," Google engineering director Marc Pawlige said.

"We have begun using this API to improve the experience of viewing and interacting with PDF files in Google Chrome. This mirrors our efforts to optimize the Adobe Flash Player experience in Chrome."

The PDF viewer will not be on by default, and has to be activated by visiting "chrome://plugins", but Google will eventually change the default settings to have the PDF reader active.

While admitting the PDF rendering process needs some improving, Google claims that PDF files will render as seamlessly as HTML pages soon, and that basic interactions will be no different than the same interactions with web pages.

Permalink | Comments

---

Major providers of landline telephone services in the UK will be cutting fees charged to customers who break contracts early following pressure from the telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. The providers will cut "early termination" charges by up to 85 percent.

The one-off fees will reportedly fall from as much as £33 to just £2 in cases. The major providers have made the commitment to the cuts, while Ofcom has warned smaller providers to follow suit, or face the consequences. "We very much welcome the reductions made by BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media which mean that consumers will face much lower charges if they wish to end their contracts early," Ofcom said in a statement.

The regulator has been investigating the fees for 18 months. Customers that ended deals early had to pay charges supposedly based on the money they would have had to pay under the remaining term of the contact, but Ofcom argued that firms weren't taking into account that they would no longer need to bear the cost of supplying service to a household that leaves early.

BT doesn't see it that way. "If a customer leaves within the minimum contract period that they signed up to, they are charged the amount we expected to receive from them, less the costs we save as a result of them leaving early, as this is what we are legally entitled to," said a BT spokesman.

The company will still work with Ofcom to reduce charges for landline (or landline plus broadband) to help reach an "industry-wide agreement on charges."

Permalink | Comments

---

Google announced a new command line tool for some of its services on its Open Source Blog on Friday. GoogleCL is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.

GoogleCL is a pure Python application that uses the Python gdata libraries to make Google Data API calls from the command line. An example use of a Google service this way looks like this...

$ google blogger post --blog "My blog" --tags "python, googlecl, development" my_post.html
$ google calendar add "Lunch with Jason tomorrow at noon"
$ google docs edit --title "Shopping list" --editor vim

You can get more examples of GoogleCL in action right here, if that's your kind of thing.

You can download the Linux package or zipped tar archive here at:
http://code.google.com/p/googlecl/

Permalink | Comments

---

A trade group representing movie theater operators - amusingly called NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) - ran a full page trade ad on June 16th attacking changes in the theatrical release window of movies as well as pressing studios not to adopt VOD distribution to compete with theaters.

Some cable companies and movie studios have thrown around some ideas to provide video-on-demand (VOD) access to films not long after their theatrical release and well before they land on DVD or Blu-ray. NATO warned studios that such services would undercut the value of a typical movie ticket, saying that a lot of people could view a VOD feature at the same time, with just one payment.

"Collapsing windows muddies the value proposition for the consumer, blurs distinctions between theatrical and 'straight-to-video' and undercuts one of the important selling points for theatrical exhibition — the timeliness of the exclusive event," NATO warned.

NATO also tapped the fears among Hollywood execs about the future of services such as Redbox, whose kiosks offer very-low-priced rentals of movies. Most Hollywood studios have enforced 28-day delays for kiosks (after DVD release) due to fears that they could hurt sales of brand new titles.

NATO questions why they would want to risk the same "profit-cannibalizing self-competition" by changing release windows or offering early-viewing via VOD services.

Permalink | Comments

---

Swedish police have made three arrests in an Internet piracy case that targeted "scene" warez servers known as "Darkside". The action follows an investigation from anti-piracy outfit Antipiratbyrån. The servers carried huge amounts of data, making them the biggest case so far in Sweden, and possibly even in Europe.

According to Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån, the three arrested maintained servers that housed 130 terabytes of Swedish and international films and other content. Searches were carried out by police in Stockholm and at two locations in Västerås. The servers were found at the locations.

"Dark Side has a huge capacity," Pontén said. "This is the biggest case we know of to date, certainly the biggest in Sweden, but possibly also in Europe." The investigation was handed over to police in February after Antipiratbyrån spent months gathering IP addresses and other usable information.

"Wednesday's police operation was yet another important step to stop organized piracy. This type of action has a direct and dramatic effect on the number of infringements," said Pontén in a statement.

"By extension, it means that the cultural workers get an opportunity to get paid for their work and we consumers have access to a continuing culture production."

Permalink | Comments

---

Following their recent announcement of the Galaxy S Captivate, Samsung has leaked some specs of the Galaxy S Pro, the second phone in its "superphone" line.

The phone will have a full QWERTY keypad, along with a 4-inch touchscreen. It will use a 1GHz Samsung/Intrinsity ARM Cortex A8 processor.

As with all Galaxy S line phones, it will have a Super AMOLED screen, which are 20 percent brighter, with 80 percent less sunlight reflection and add 20 percent more battery life. Described by the source as "gorgeous."

The resolution, unconfirmed, is 400x800.

8.2GB of ROM and 512MB of RAM, but the ROM space may be moved to internal storage.

The Pro has a 5MP camera with 720p recording, and a front-facing camera for video conferencing, as is quickly becoming the standard.

Additionally, the phone will have Samsung's TouchWiz 3.0 user interface layer, can playback H.264 and Divx video, and will allow Sprint TV to work over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G.

No word on price or release date.

Permalink | Comments

---

While Apple's battles against iPhone hackers and modders have been well publicized, things have been much quieter on the Android side up until now. Even as hackers found ways to gain root access in devices and port otherwise-unavailable new builds of Android, Google and its hardware partners HTC, Motorola and Samsung, have kept quiet.

Now a website run by Android hacker Conflipper is in HTC's sights. The website, Shipped ROMs, provides ROM dumps of released and unreleased Android devices. HTC has fired off cease and desist letters to the site, alleging that its intellectual property was "illegally obtained by fraudulent means."

HTC even released a statement on the issue to clarify its problem with Shipped ROMs. "While HTC tries to take a hands off [approach] about the modder / ROM chef community, this site's sole purpose [is] to make HTC's content available for download from a source other than HTC," HTC's statement reads.

"That content is not just the open source parts and kernels of Android but all of the software that HTC itself has developed. This is a clear violation of our copyrights and HTC needs to defend itself in these cases."

Permalink | Comments

---

Google Inc.'s YouTube online video service, and Rumblefish are reportedly set to hold a joint press conference on June 29. The pair are likely to announce a new deal over the use of licensed music on YouTube videos uploaded by users.

An e-mail pitch seen by CNET indicates that Rumblefish chief executive Paul Anthony and a YouTube executive will hold the conference.

Rumblefish is a music-licensing firm that arranges deals with music companies and artists for the use of their music in marketing campaigns or products offered by third parties. YouTube enlisted Rumblefish' services back in 2008 to give video uploaders a legal option for using music in their content.

We hope the press conference means something good for the millions-strong YouTube community.

Permalink | Comments

---

Graham Cluley of the Sophos security firm has written about a hidden change in Mac OS X 10.6.4 that is not mentioned in its release notes. Specifically, Apple included an update to the malware protection built into Mac OS X to protect against a backdoor Trojan the Cupertino-based Mac-maker identifies as "HellRTS".

Sophos has been tracking the same trojan since April as OSX/Pinhead-B. It is distributed by malicious sources as the iPhoto application. The malware can provide a attacker with full access to an infected Mac, allowing for the taking of screenshots, sending spam, reading the clipboard, accessing files and so on.

"Unfortunately, many Mac users seem oblivious to security threats which can run on their computers. And that isn't helped when Apple issues an anti-malware security update like this by stealth, rather than informing the public what it has done," Cluley wrote.

"You have to wonder whether their keeping quiet about an anti-malware security update like this was for marketing reasons. 'Shh! Don't tell folks that we have to protect against malware on Mac OS X!'"

Building on that point, Cluley recalled a recent twitter entry from a colleague telling of how he had overheard an Apple Store employee tell potential customers that it was impossible for Macs to be infected with viruses.

"There's a lot less malicious software for Mac computers than Windows PCs, of course, but the fact that so many Mac owners don't take security seriously enough, and haven't bothered installing an anti-virus, might mean they are a soft target for hackers in the future," Cluley writes.

To counter the threat of HellRTS - or OSX/Pinhead-B - Apple added signatures to the XProtect.plist file. "Apple's update to detect "HellRTS" more than doubles the size of the XProtect.plist file from 2.4k to 5.1k. There are still a lot of Mac threats it doesn't protect against," Cluley concludes.

Permalink | Comments

---

When Apple unveiled the iPhone 4 earlier this month, one of the features most touted was the device's Retina Display screen. The screen, which uses in-plane switching (IPS) technology is also used with Apple's iPad tablet, and is also made by LG Display.

According to Ashok Kumar, managing director and senior technology analyst at Rodman & Renshaw, supply issues might become a problem for the new iPhone over the coming months. "Low yields on the IPS LCD panel from LG Display have dramatically impacted the production volumes for iPhone 4," Kumar wrote in his research note.

"Our supply chain checks indicate that our earlier monthly shipment estimate of 4 million units have been reset by about half." He said that demand is likely to be chasing supply through September. That is not good news when analysts also anticipate strong demand for the iPhone 4, as users of the older first generation iPhone to iPhone 3GS may opt to upgrade to get full feature support from iOS 4.

"The hope is that the LG transition to Gen 5 LCD capacity by late summer could help alleviate the production bottleneck. Meanwhile there is a non trivial risk in the September quarter whereby demand for the legacy 3GS iPhone drops off faster than production can ramp up for the iPhone 4," Kumar's note concluded.

Permalink | Comments

---

YouTube is reaching out to San Francisco local media to test a new iteration of the YouTube Direct platform. Launched last November, YouTube Direct is intended to be used by publishers to locate and distribute video captured by amateurs and uploaded to the YouTube site, and it has been used well by bigger named in news such as NPR, or ABC's Good Morning America.

However, local news outlets have not embraced the YouTube Direct platform as a tool for enhancing their news coverage. For this reason, YouTube will reportedly use San Francisco as a sort-of showcase. YouTube staff are currently looking for local contributors in San Francisco to test out the YouTube Direct platform.

"We launched YouTube Direct in November, and it's been a great way for news organizations to easily leverage citizen reporting on YouTube," YouTube's comment on the matter reads, according to CNET. "We're currently experimenting with new ways to make the platform more useful, and we'll have more to announce on that front soon."

Permalink | Comments

---

Logitech has added a product page to its website for its new Google TV box. The Logitech Revue is an external device that connects to a television via HDMI, and takes full advantage of everything that Google TV will have to offer. As well as supporting Google TV, the Revue has Logitech's Harmony technology built in to provide integration with a home-entertainment system.

Intel, Sony, and Logitech, together with Best Buy, DISH Network and Adobe, joined Google on stage at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco in May, to announce their support for Google TV. With Google TV, consumers will be able to search and watch an expanded universe of content available from a variety of sources including TV providers, the web, their personal content libraries, and mobile applications.

At the time, Sony and Logitech said they would be delivering products based on the Intel Atom CE4100 processor and running Google TV later this year.



To navigate the array of content that will now be available through a single device and on a single screen, Google TV introduces an integrated search experience to help viewers easily find relevant content across over-the-air and pay-TV channel listings, DVR, and the Internet, as well as a picture-in-picture layout to access multiple windows simultaneously.

LogiTech's product page for its first box for Google TV is very short on details for now.

Permalink | Comments

---

The Apple iPhone 4, which was so popular that it took down servers and websites when pre-orders began has begun shipping today, with early consumers guaranteed to get their devices on June 24th launch day.

Macrumors is reporting today that a number of their readers have already received shipment and tracking numbers for their devices, with some even seeing a "Delivers By" date of June 23rd.

The iPhone 4 has a 1GHz A4 processor, a 3.5-inch multi-touch screen, a 5MP camera, a smaller MP front-facing camera for video conferencing, a micro-SIM tray, large 960x640 resolution, and 720p video recording capabilities.

Additionally, the phone has 802.11n wireless networking and quad-band HSPDPA/HSUPA networking.

The device goes on sale, in-store at Apple stores, Radio Shack, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy on the 24th.

Permalink | Comments

---

In April, rumors began that Barnes & Noble was all set to start shipping a Wi-Fi only version of their popular Nook e-reader, with the device dubbed the "Nook Lite."

The Lite would remove 3G support, but give consumers a way to buy the e-reader on the cheap.

Today, Engadget has been sent a screenshot of the internal database showing off a Nook Wi-Fi shipping on Wednesday with a price of just $150, cheaper than most expected.

Rival e-readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, Kobo and iPad sell for significantly higher, with the Kindle at $250 and the cheapest iPad at $500.

While the "Lite" is still unconfirmed by B&N, we should know if the screenshot is accurate on Wednesday.

In addition to its E-ink screen, the Nook has a 3.5-inch color touchscreen and the device runs the Android mobile operating system.

Permalink | Comments

---