An Ignoble Experiment

2. IDC: Android trumps iPad as tablet market growth slows

Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) has finalized plans to shut down OMGPOP.com, the gaming portal behind the hit Draw Something, which it acquired for $180 million in early 2012. But multiple sources told TechCrunch that Zynga has rejected offers from former OMGPOP staffers seeking to buy back the site, games and related intellectual properties.

Zynga laid off the OMGPOP team in June, and said Monday that on Sept. 30 it will shutter OMGPOP.com, which was reportedly generating a profit and attracting more than 30,000 monthly active users. While the social gaming company will continue to support Zynga-branded mobile versions of Draw Something and Draw Something 2, it will terminate at least four OMGPOP titles--including Cupcake Corner, Gem Rush, Pool World Champ and Snoops--on Aug. 29. Players of the affected games are being offered compensation packages headlined by Zynga titles like FarmVille 2, Hidden Shadows and Bubble Safari.

TechCrunch reports that multiple OMGPOP team members have contacted Zynga to buy back the site, agreeing to purchase whichever assets Zynga would agree to sell, even if the deal didn't include the lucrative Draw Something brand. Other employees offered to work on OMGPOP.com for free. But Zynga has rejected all overtures, maintaining that any OMGPOP sale poses more legal headaches than it's worth. Zynga declined requests for comment.

At the time Zynga went public in late 2011, it was the largest gaming publisher across the Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) platform thanks to hit titles like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. But the company has struggled to maintain its initial success while transitioning its efforts to the mobile platform, losing a string of high-profile executives including former OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter, who stepped down a year after the acquisition closed. Zynga CEO Mark Pincus stepped down last month, replaced by Don Mattrick, previously head of Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Xbox business; Pincus continues to serve as Zynga's chairman and chief product officer.

Zynga recently reported second-quarter earnings that showed decreases in virtually all of the company's key metrics. Zynga's revenue clocked in at $231 million, down 31 percent year-over-year, and its monthly active users decreased from 306 million in the second quarter of 2012 to 187 million in the second quarter of 2013, down 39 percent year-over-year. In mobile, Zynga recorded 16 million mobile daily active users and 57 million mobile monthly active users.

In tandem with the dismal earnings report, Zynga said it will not pursue a license for real-money gaming in the United States, and will instead refocus on its existing free-to-play social gaming business. Speaking on Zynga's quarterly earnings call, Mattrick said the firm anticipates two to four quarters of "volatility'' as he evaluates its business and product line and formulates a new strategy.

For more:
- read this TechCrunch article
- read this VentureBeat article

Read more about: Mobile Gaming, Zynga
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By Jason Ankeny

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3. Samsung's Shin: Tizen will power more than just mobile devices

Worldwide tablet shipment growth slowed significantly in the second quarter of 2013, with total volumes plummeting 9.7 percent quarter-over-quarter, research firm IDC reports. Vendors still shipped 45.1 million units during the period, however, increasing 59.6 percent over the same quarter in 2012.

IDC blamed the quarterly decline in part on lower-than-expected shipments of Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) market-leading iPad. Apple shipped just 14.6 million iPads during the second quarter, compared to 19.5 million during the first three months of 2013. "In years past, Apple has launched a new tablet heading into the second quarter, which resulted in strong quarter-over-quarter growth," IDC said. "Now, Apple is expected to launch new tablet products in the second half of the year, a move that better positions it to compete during the holiday season."

Second-place Samsung Electronics also suffered declines, shipping 8.1 million tablets, down from 8.6 million in the previous quarter. Third-place Asus additionally dropped from shipments of 2.6 million in the first quarter to 2 million in the second quarter.

"A new iPad launch always piques consumer interest in the tablet category and traditionally that has helped both Apple and its competitors," said Tom Mainelli, IDC's research director of tablets. "With no new iPads, the market slowed for many vendors, and that's likely to continue into the third quarter. However, by the fourth quarter we expect new products from Apple, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and others to drive impressive growth in the market."

While Apple continues to lead all rival manufacturers on quarterly tablet shipments, units running Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android mobile operating system now dominate the global tablet ecosystem. Android ended the second quarter with a worldwide tablet market share of 62.6 percent, up 162.9 percent year-over-year. Apple's iOS dropped 14.1 percent over the second quarter of 2012, landing at 32.5 percent tablet share. Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows is next at 4 percent, up 527 percent over the previous year, followed by the fledgling Windows RT, introduced late last year but accounting for 0.5 percent of second-quarter 2013 market share.

BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) plummeted 32.8 percent year-over-year from 0.7 percent to 0.2 percent, casting additional doubt on the manufacturer's future in the tablet market. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins recently confirmed the company will not adapt its new BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system for its aging PlayBook tablet--earlier this year, Heins told Bloomberg that he believes the tablet form factor will have a limited shelf life, and also said that BlackBerry will consider a PlayBook follow-up only if the product can offer a unique value proposition in a crowded market. David Smith, the head of BlackBerry's PlayBook tablet division, is set to leave the company in the near future.

For more:
- read this release

Read more about: iPad, iOS
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By Jason Ankeny

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4. Apple pledges to restore most remaining iOS developer services this week

Samsung Electronics co-CEO JK Shin said the open-source Tizen operating system will expand beyond mobile devices to power a host of connected devices across multiple industry verticals.

Samsung's JK Shin

"There are many convergences not only among IT gadgets, including smartphones, tablets, PCs and cameras, but also among different industries like cars, [biotech] or banks," Shin told CNet. "Cross-convergence is the one [area] Samsung can do best since we do have various parts and finished products."

Shin's comments reiterated Samsung's commitment to Tizen, which combines open-source technologies with a standards-based HTML5 development environment, enabling the creation of device-independent, cross-platform mobile applications. Samsung recently said it would delay the introduction of its first Tizen smartphone to the fourth quarter of 2013, fueling speculation the company's enthusiasm for the platform could be waning.

Samsung plans to offer Tizen devices alongside smartphones powered by Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone 8. Shin previously stated that Google's decision to acquire rival handset maker Motorola Mobility has not dampened Samsung's interest in Android: "We have a good relationship with Google," he said in March, explaining that Samsung wants to offer a number of different mobile operating system choices to consumers and enterprise clients.

Shin also teased imminent news on Samsung's tablet efforts. "There will be good news on the tablet soon," he said. "Please wait and see."

For more:
- read this CNet article

Read more about: Samsung Electronics, JK Shin
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By Jason Ankeny

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5. Microsoft retools Bing Search for Windows Phone 8

More than two weeks after Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) shut down its developer portal in the wake of a security breach, the company said it plans to reinstate most remaining services within the next several days.

"The majority of our developer services are currently online, including Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Dev Centers, software downloads, Videos, Apple Developer Forums, iTunes Connect, Bug Reporter, App Store Resource Center and access to pre-release documentation," Apple said Monday in an email to registered developers. "We plan to reinstate most of the remaining services this week: Xcode automatic configuration as well as access to license agreements, TSIs, program enrollments and renewals in Member Center. You can check the availability of these systems on our status page. As a reminder, if your membership was set to expire during this downtime, it has been extended and your apps will remain on the App Store and Mac App Store."

The Apple site--which offers development kits, forums and other resources related to the company's iOS and Mac OS platforms--went offline last month after an intruder attempted to secure personal developer information. "Sensitive personal information was encrypted and cannot be accessed, however, we have not been able to rule out the possibility that some developers' names, mailing addresses, and/or email addresses may have been accessed," Apple said. "In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we're completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database."

Turkish security researcher Ibrahim Balic has claimed responsibility for the attack, telling The Guardian that his goal was to demonstrate that the Apple site was leaking user information. Balic also posted a YouTube video that appears to depict the site's vulnerabilities. "My intention was not attacking," Balic explained. "In total I found 13 bugs and reported [them] directly one by one to Apple straight away. Just after my reporting [the] dev center got closed. I have not heard anything from them, and they announced that they got attacked. My aim was to report bugs and collect the datas [sic] for the purpose of seeing how deep I can go with it."

The Apple site is a critical resource for developers building and updating applications optimized for the new iOS 7, unveiled in June at Apple's annual Worldwide Developer Conference. Among the biggest changes in iOS 7 is the elimination of skeuomorphism, the longstanding iOS design aesthetic that leverages real-world images and metaphors like linen-textured gray backgrounds, wooden bookshelves and spiral-bound notebooks. The revamped OS also signals the launch of multitasking for all apps, AirDrop wireless file sharing, revamped Siri voice controls and the iTunes Radio streaming music service.

For more:
- read this AppleInsider article

Read more about: Hackers, Apple
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By Jason Ankeny

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