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Nokia officially launched the N9 today, the Finnish mobile phone maker's first (and potentially only) smartphone to be powered by mobile Linux distribution MeeGo.

The slick N9 impressed us quite a bit when it was announced back in July: 3.9" (854 x 480) AMOLED display with convex Gorilla Glass, a 1 GHz TI OMAP3630 processor, 1GB of RAM, 16 or 64GB of storage, an 8 Megapixel flash camera, and front-facing chat cam, and global wireless support. It will be available in 20 countries for €480 (16GB) or €560 (64GB).

The critical issue with the N9 is the fact that it's partially a developmental dead end since Nokia made a commitment to Windows Phone, and officially gave up hope on MeeGo being a competitive OS for the company.

It is therefore only fitting that the N9 should launch on the same day as Microsoft launches the Mango update to Windows Phone.

But this appears to be no scheduling accident.

Tomorrow in Seattle, Intel's Elements 2011 developer conference will open, and MeeGo is going to be one of the major topics of discussion. In fact, the Financial Times of Germany today said that MeeGo is going to be merged with much more penetrative mobile Linux distro LiMo, which has been used on more than 20 mobile devices by Panasonic and NEC, mostly in Japan.

If that happens, MeeGo will receive support from LiMO Foundation members Samsung, NEC, Panasonic, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Orange, SK Telecom, and Telefonica, who could conceivably pick up any slack in development as a result of Nokia's gradual egress from MeeGo support, and it could feel like much less of a dead end.

Of course, this is just rumor, and we have received no confirmation from Intel, Panasonic, or NEC about it. Fortunately, though, we'll be on the floor at Elements 2011 tomorrow with the first word on this if it happens.

Apple has made big brouhaha about its multi-touch user interface on iOS products like iPhone, and has for almost four years been attempting to trademark the term here in the United States. That effort is now for naught as a filing made public on Friday shows that the company's application was denied.

Apple originally applied for the trademark back on January 9, 2007, the same day the first iPhone was introduced at that year's Macworld Expo. Its application was initially denied by a US Patent and Trademark Office attorney on the basis that it was "merely descriptive of the applicants goods," but Apple pressed on.

In a resubmitted application, Apple attempted to prove "acquired distinctiveness," but the USPTO was not persuaded and denied it a second time. Running out of options, the decision was then appealed to the full board, which held a hearing in April and handed its decision down last week, again affirming its attorney's opinion on the matter.

The decision seems to reflect the opinion of the USPTO that multi-touch now has become a generic term to describe the interface between the user and most touchscreen devices. Since that is the case, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible, to trademark the term.

"Simply because the applied-for term has been used in association with a highly successful product does not mean the term has acquired distinctiveness," the USPTO said in conclusion.

The full text of the decision can be viewed here.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

Stated differently: what does Verizon know that you don't?

I've been asking both questions after reviewing Verizon's legal filing supporting Samsung in its patent dispute with Apple. America's largest wireless carrier has asked a California judge to reject Apple's request to grant preliminary injunction against four Samsung 4G devices: Droid Charge, Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1. Verizon's major argument, but not the only one, is that the injunction will hurt adoption of its next-generation 4G LTE network. Samsung's Droid Charge, which would be barred from US sales if the injunction is granted, is one of four LTE handsets that Verizon carries. Surely this close to launch Verizon knows whether or not iPhone 5 will support LTE. If iPhone is so important to Verizon, if iPhone 5 sales are expected to be huge (so say financial analysts) and if iPhone 5 could more than fill the void left by Droid Charge, why take a stance against Apple?

There are other questions to ask: If iPhone 5 doesn't support LTE, will it matter? Will potential buyers even care?

Verizon waited a long time to get iPhone 4. The carrier only started selling Apple's smartphone in February of this year -- three-and-a-half years after AT&T, which had exclusive US distribution. The legal filing supporting Samsung really is a stance taken against Apple. Why should Verizon risk that relationship, particularly if iPhone 5 will support LTE? It's about mitigated risk. By any reasonable analysts' sales estimates, and based on still strong iPhone 4 sales, iPhone 5 should be more important to Verizon than Droid Charge.

Verizon offers four LTE smartphones, all running Android: Droid Bionic by Mototola, LG Revolution, Pantech Breakout and the aforementioned Samsung Droid Charge. That's another wrinkle asking the "why stand against Apple" question. Regardless of intentions, Verizon has taken a stand for Android by filing on Samsung's behalf. For good reasons, that's where the sales are. According to data Nielsen released yesterday, 56 percent of new smartphone acquirers bought a device running Android in August. An injunction would reduce the number by one quarter, leaving a huge hole in the lineup unless there was something to replace it -- like iPhone 5.

From Verizon's legal filing:

The motion to enjoin Samsung’s devices comes at a critical moment: when Verizon Wireless is expanding its LTE network to paying customers and right before the holiday shopping season. The proposed preliminary injunction would affect only Samsung devices that make use of wireless carriers’ next-generation networks...the proposed injunction would disproportionally affect the very devices that are most critical to adoption and expansion of Verizon Wireless’s next-generation network.

Verizon says it has spent $65 billion on the LTE network, which includes $9.6 billion for spectrum purchased in 2008. According to the legal filing, the LTE network launched on Dec. 5, 2010 in 39 markets and will reach 175 markets -- and 185 million people -- by end of this year. Interesting, advertisements on Verizon's website say 26 markets. So how many really is it?

Verizon sold 1.2 million LTE handsets during second quarter, but activated twice as many iPhones -- 2.4 million. If LTE is so important as Verizon contends and if iPhone 5 supports the 4G technology, surely Apple's handset would more than make up for the loss of Droid Charge?

Which again raises question: Why would Verizon stand against Apple? There's another way to interpret Verizon's actions -- that it knows iPhone 5 LTE is locked and loaded. So Verizon risks little by backing one of its other major manufacturers and one that has been a partner a helluva lot longer than Apple.

Ultimately only one thing matters. Do you care? Apple launched the original iPhone without 3G support at a time when it was becoming standard -- and still the smartphone sold well. The question: Just how much does LTE matter to you? Would it keep you from buying iPhone 5? No-LTE support certainly hasn't stopped millions of people from buying iPhone 4. Please respond in comments.

You'd think that Verizon would show more gratitude. Everyone knows how important iPhone is to America's largest cellular carrier. We know because the rabble of pro-Apple bloggers and journalists (and, whoa, there are so many) told us so. Over and over and over again. But, no, Verizon isn't showing gratitude or loyalty to Apple at all. Last week, the carrier filed a legal brief with the United District Court for the Northern District of California asking a federal judge to reject Apple's request for preliminary injunction against four Samsung devices. A hearing is scheduled for the afternoon of October 13.

The filing is really unsurprising when looked at rationally. Verizon has much more invested in Android than iPhone. The devices in question use Verizon's 4G LTE network. Holiday sales are another consideration. The latter two points are among the cornerstones of Verizon's arguments for why the judge should reject Apple's request for preliminary injunction. Then there is that pesky loyalty thing. iPhone 5's launch is imminent, and Verizon will be one of the major beneficiaries. So why risk the Apple relationship? If the judge doesn't wonder, perhaps you should.

Apple is asking the court to issue an immediate preliminary injunction against four Samsung devices: Droid Charge, Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G and Galaxy Tab 10.1. I've repeatedly observed that Apple's patent and other intellectual property claims are selective: Against devices that compete against iPhone. The three smartphones and LTE version of the Tab 10.1 all offer faster data bandwidth than does iPhone 4.

Verizon offers two of the four products: Droid Charge and Tab 10.1, which both run on its LTE network. Only four of Verizon's smartphones are LTE; Galaxy Tab its legal filing as much about Android vs iPhone as anything else. Verizon has made tremendous investments in Android, particularly the Droid brand, which it controls. For example, Verizon launched the original Droid with a $100 million advertising campaign in autumn 2009.

Whether or not its main goal, Verizon has taken a stand for Android by filing on Samsung's behalf. For good reasons, that's where the sales are. According to data Nielsen released today, 56 percent of new smartphone acquirers bought a device running Android in August. Just 28 percent bought iPhones.

From Verizon's filing, about its LTE network:

An injunction would prohibit some of the newest, most advanced wireless devices sold today and impede the growth of Verizon Wireless’s high-speed 4G network. The accused Samsung devices are among the few products that can access Verizon Wireless’s next-generation high speed network and, therefore, are among the most sought-after devices by early-adopting consumers -- a critical market segment in the industry. Verizon Wireless has invested and is investing billions in developing and deploying its next-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network; that investment depends on consumers having access to devices that can make use of that network.

How big an investment? Verizon says it has spent $65 billion on the LTE network, which includes $9.6 billion for spectrum purchased in 2008. The LTE network launched on Dec. 5, 2010 in 39 markets and will reach 175 markets -- and 185 million people -- by end of this year. By the way, that 39 markets is from the legal filing, but advertisements on Verizon's website says 26 markets.

From Verizon's filing about its LTE devices:

Samsung is one of only six manufacturers (including HP, HTC, LG, Motorola, and
Pantech) that has developed and is offering a limited number of such devices today. Moreover, the motion to enjoin Samsung’s devices comes at a critical moment: when Verizon Wireless is expanding its LTE network to paying customers and right before the holiday shopping season. The proposed preliminary injunction would affect only Samsung devices that make use of wireless carriers’ next-generation networks.

During second quarter, Verizon sold 1.2 million LTE devices. "The Samsung Droid Charge, one of the smartphones at issue in the motion, is one of the marquee products offered by Verizon Wireless to showcase its LTE network. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1, which is also the subject of the motion, is the first LTE tablet sold by Verizon Wireless". Verizon started selling the Tab 10.1 LTE on July 28.

Verizon makes two major arguments about why an injunction would either be unfair or harmful. Why it's unfair:

The utility patent at issue in the motion has nothing to do with the 4G network technology that makes the accused smartphones and tablet uniquely attractive to consumers. Instead, the patent covers the way documents can be viewed on the devices. There are nearly two dozen other devices accused in the current lawsuit that are not part of Apple’s preliminary injunction motion. But those devices are mainly older devices that are not designed to make use of Verizon Wireless’s and other carriers’ next-generation networks. Thus, the proposed injunction would disproportionally affect the very devices that are most critical to adoption and expansion of Verizon Wireless’s next-generation network.

Why the injunction would be harmful, according to Verizon:

The harm from a preliminary injunction would be substantial to both consumers and Verizon Wireless. Consumers cannot benefit from the billions of dollars that Verizon Wireless has invested in its next-generation network unless they can purchase and use 4G devices compatible with that network.

Protecting against consumer harm is one of US competition law's primary objectives. I'm not a lawyer and don't feel competent to evaluate the likelihood the judge would accept this argument, particularly from a third-party with no real legal standing in the case.

Additionally, Verizon asserts that an injunction against Samsung LTE devices would be devastating, because:

• The carrier has so few other LTE devices available to use
• Should Samsung re-engineer its LTE devices, they would return to market too slowly
• LTE adoption is at the crucial early-adopter stage, where loss of the LTE devices would discourage adopters

"An injunction that limited the availability of 4G devices in the market could substantially reduce the number of customers who could or would purchase those devices", Verizon's filing asserts. "Such a loss in sales of 4G devices, in turn, undermines the business justification for continuing to expand Verizon Wireless’s LTE network".

More: "The rate of technological changes in the wireless industry further exacerbates the harm from impeding early adopters’ access to 4G devices. For example, analysts predict that consumers will replace 50 percent of their smartphones and 30 percent of their tablets within two years".

I probably shouldn't start rumors, but...Surely Verizon must know by now if iPhone 5 will support LTE. Could it be inferred from this that iPhone 5 won't be LTE?

Verizon also presents the holiday sales as another area of harm the preliminary injunction would inject:

The harm from the proposed preliminary injunction would be increased if it issued during the holiday and year-end sales season. Holiday sales form a significant percentage of Verizon Wireless’s yearly revenue. Verizon Wireless has been preparing for the holiday period for months. Its build-up to this season has involved ordering smartphone and tablets, developing and launching new marketing campaigns, and training additional sales personnel. The holiday season will begin in November, with holiday commercials starting the first week of that month. If an injunction issued in the midst of the holiday season, after Verizon Wireless has begun its holiday sales campaigns, the time and money spent on those campaigns would be lost.

Verizon then also claims that the injunction would have larger economic impact, which includes employment. That reads to me more like a political than legal argument. But it's timely nevertheless.

That's the gist of the Verizon filing. I intentionally left out the legal nuances and case law. The purpose of this news report is presenting Verizon's rationale and its context. Something else: I'm more than a day late on this story because I chose to get the legal filing rather than cite FOSS Patents, as most of my peers did yesterday. I wanted to read and report on the original source material -- the legal filing -- rather than have it selectively filtered by FOSS Patents' Florian Mueller. Yesterday, on Google+ I wrote about the single-sourcing problem plaguing online news reporting today. Having actually read Verizon's filing, I must say that Mueller's analysis is unreasonably conspiratorial.

Musical accompaniment while writing this story -- album "Torches" by Foster the People.

Photo Credits: Verizon

On September 25, Nik Cubrilovic posted a terrific analysis looking at how Facebook uses cookies to track users even when they have signed out of the service. His findings about Facebook cookie tracking raises yet more red flags about subscriber privacy. We asked and he granted permission to repost the analysis, which differs in two subtle ways from the original: Slight editing for house style and incorporation of two updates into the main text. We also changed the headline.

Dave Winer wrote a timely piece yesterday morning about how Facebook is scaring him since the new API allows applications to post status items to your Facebook timeline without a user's intervention. It is an extension of Facebook Instant and they call it frictionless sharing. The privacy concern here is that because you no longer have to explicitly opt-in to share an item, you may accidentally share a page or an event that you did not intend others to see.

The advice is to log out of Facebook. But logging out of Facebook only de-authorizes your browser from the web application, a number of cookies (including your account number) are still sent along to all requests to facebook.com. 

Even if you are logged out, Facebook still knows and can track every page you visit.

The only solution is to delete every Facebook cookie in your browser, or to use a separate browser for Facebook interactions.

Here is what is happening, as viewed by the HTTP headers on requests to facebook.com. First, a normal request to the web interface as a logged-in user sends the following cookies:

Note: I have both fudged the values of each cookie and added line wraps for legibility.

The request to the logout function will then see this response from the server, which is attempting to unset the following cookies:

To make it easier to see the cookies being unset, the names are in italics. If you compare the cookies that have been set in a logged-in request, and compare them to the cookies that are being unset in the log-out request, you will quickly see that there are a number of cookies that are not being deleted, and there are two cookies (locale and lu) that are only being given new expiry dates, and three new cookies (W, fl, L) being set.

Now I make a subsequent request to facebook.com as a 'logged out' user:

The primary cookies that identify me as a user are still there (act is my account number), even though I am looking at a logged-out page. Logged-out requests still send nine different cookies, including the most important cookies that identify you as a user

This is not what 'logout' is supposed to mean. Facebook are only altering the state of the cookies instead of removing all of them when a user logs out.

With my browser logged out of Facebook, whenever I visit any page with a Facebook Like button, or Share button, or any other widget, the information, including my account ID, is still being sent to Facebook. The only solution to Facebook not knowing who you are is to delete all Facebook cookies.

You can test this for yourself using any browser with developer tools installed. It is all hidden in plain sight.

If you wish to view the raw logs, I have saved them here. Specifically the datr and lu cookies are retained after logout and on subsequent requests, and the a_user cookie, which contains your userid, is only cleared once the session is restarted. Most importantly, connection state is retained through these HTTP connections. There is never a clean break between a logged in session and a logged out session.

An Experiment

This brings me back to a story that I have yet to tell. A year ago I was screwing around with multiple Facebook accounts as part of some development work. I created a number of fake Facebook accounts after logging out of my browser. After using the fake accounts for some time, I found that they were suggesting my real account to me as a friend. Somehow Facebook knew that we were all coming from the same browser, even though I had logged out.

There are serious implications if you are using Facebook from a public terminal. If you login on a public terminal and then hit 'logout', you are still leaving behind fingerprints of having been logged in. As far as I can tell, these fingerprints remain (in the form of cookies) until somebody explicitly deletes all the Facebook cookies for that browser. Associating an account ID with a real name is easy -- as the same ID is used to identify your profile.

Facebook knows every account that has accessed Facebook from every browser and is using that information to suggest friends to you. The strength of the 'same machine' value in the algorithm that works out friends to suggest may be low, but it still happens. This is also easy to test and verify.

I reported this issue to Facebook in a detailed email and got the bounce around. I emailed somebody I knew at the company and forwarded the request to them. I never got a response. The entire process was so flaky and frustrating that I haven't bothered sending them two XSS holes that I have also found in the past year. They really need to get their shit together on reporting privacy issues; I am sure they take security issues a lot more seriously.

To clarify, I first emailed this issue to Facebook on the 14th of November 2010. I also copied the email to their press address to get an official response on it. I never got any response. I sent another email to Facebook, press and copied it to somebody I know at Facebook on the 12th of January 2011. Again, I got no response. I have copies of all the emails, the subject lines were very clear in terms of the importance of this issue.

I have been sitting on this for almost a year now. The renewed discussion about Facebook and privacy this weekend prompted me to write this post.

The Rise of Privacy Awareness

Ten to 15 years ago when I first got into the security industry the awareness of security issues amongst users, developers and systems administrators was low. Microsoft Windows and Internet Information Server were swiss cheese in terms of security vulnerabilities. You could manually send malformed payloads to IIS 4.0 and have it crash with a stack or heap overflow, which would usually lead to a remote vulnerability.

A decade ago, the entire software industry went through a reformation on awareness of security principles in administration and development. Microsoft re-trained all of their developers on buffer overflows, string formatting bugs, off-by-one bugs etc. and audited their entire code base. A number of high-profile security incidents raised awareness, and today vendors have proper security procedures, from reporting new bugs to hotfixes and secure programming principles (this wasn't just a Microsoft issue, but I had the most experience with them).

Privacy today feels like what security did 10-15 years ago. There is an awareness of the issues steadily building, and blog posts from prominent technologists is helping to steamroll public consciousness. The risks around privacy today are just as serious as security leaks were then -- except that there is an order of magnitude more users online and a lot more private data being shared on the web.

Facebook are front-and-center in the new privacy debate just as Microsoft were with security issues a decade ago. The question is what it will take for Facebook to address privacy issues and to give their users the tools required to manage their privacy and to implement clear policies - not pages and pages of confusing legal documentation, and 'logout' not really meaning 'logout'.

Erratum: I refer to the wrong cookie name in the post above. I also say 'all sites' can be tracked, when I meant to say 'all sites that integrate facebook'.

Nik Cubrilovic is an Australian-born serial entrepreneur, writer and hacker. He currently is working on pre-launch startups, previously at Techcrunch, Omnidrive and a number of other startups since 2000. He has lived in Australia, Bosnia, the UK, South Africa and the USA; Cubrilovic is currently based in Wollongong, Australia.

Well, so much for Apple Fanclub antics a few months ago, when a wave of blog and news posts asserted that Verizon iPhone's launch had stalled Android sales and iPhone 5 would beat them back. It's more wishful thinking published as fact, that has spread yet another iPhone urban legend across the web. The truth is far different. Androids continue to gain massively against iPhone, according to data Nielsen released today. This isn't abnormality but a trend Nielsen has tracked for more than a year.

Among new smartphone buyers -- "acquirers" in Nielsen perlance -- 56 percent chose an Android handset in August. Among all phone buyers: 43 percent. iPhone was 28 percent for both categories. "The preferences of these so-called recent acquirers are important as they are often a leading indicator of where the market is going", Don Kellogg, director of Telecom Research & Insights, explains in a blog post.

By that reckoning, most of the market is going Android, which market share also grows unabated, while iPhone is consistently flat. In May, three months after the Verizon iPhone launched, iPhone share was 27 percent, compared to 38 percent for Android. Nielsen measures the data based on smartphone operating systems among US handset subscribers.

"But those figures could change quickly in the months to come", Kellogg asserts. "Every time Apple launches a new iPhone or makes it available on a new wireless carrier, there is an increase in their sales". That's certainly true, but an increase in sales doesn't necessarily correspond to a bump in market share or massive change in overall new buyer purchases.

During second quarter 2010, iPhone subscriber share among new acquirers was 23 percent -- down from 34 percent two quarters earlier, according to Nielsen. During the same time frame, Android share rose from 6 percent to 27 percent. iPhone 4 launched late in Q2 2010. At the end of August 2010, after more than two full months of iPhone 4 sales, iPhone share among new buyers had risen by only 2 points -- to 25 percent. By comparison, Android was 32 percent, so up 9 points.

Market share among all US phone subscribers tells a similar story. At the end of Q2 2010, iPhone share among all phone subscribers was 28 percent, same as the end of August 2011, up just 1 percent from two quarters earlier. During the same time frame, Android share rose from 6 percent to 13 percent. A year later, it's the aforementioned 43 percent. At the end of August 2010, iPhone share was still 28 percent, while Android's had risen 6 points to 19 percent.

The point: While iPhone is a hot-selling smartphone, it's not keeping pace with the rapidly growing US smartphone market. It's overall market share is flat and that among new buyers is nowhere near the hype. Among the reasons iPhone is running in place: The smartphone market is growing faster than Americans are buying iPhones. At the end of second quarter 2010, 25 percent of US cell phone subscribers had smartphones. It was 43 percent at the end of August and 58 percent among new buyers.

I call all of thus out for two reasons: 1) Kelloggs statement is misleading about iPhone after the next-gen model ships, particularly in context of Nielsen's own data. 2) Numerous reports from the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists are claiming that iPhone's current market position is merely a calm before the storm, as buyers wait for the new model. Neither Nielsen's data nor that from Apple quarterly statements or other analyst firms support such supposition. In the United States, Apple share has been largely flat since second quarter 2010 -- and that despite the hugely successful iPhone 4 launch in June 2010 and its coming to Verizon in February 2011.

You'll read lots of rhetoric and justification today about iPhone's position to Android and how the tide will soon turn. That urban legend is at least a year old now, and it still hasn't proved to be true. Fourteen months of Nielsen's data is consistent on two points: iPhone isn't gaining share among US cell phone subscribers, while Android grows leaps and bounds, particularly among new buyers.

Samsung unveiled a new smartphone based on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango," the Omnia W on Monday. The Omnia W is the latest in a line of higher-end Microsoft-powered smartphones from the company, all which carry the "Omnia" brand.

The Omnia W features a 1.4GHz processor and HSPA capable of 14.4Mbps connectivity. The screen is a 3.7" Super AMOLED and features both front and rear facing cameras. It also features built-in Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, and LinkedIn connectivity through Microsoft's "People Hub."

"Mobile consumers increasingly expect to be socially networked through their phones anytime, anywhere, and instantly," Samsung's mobile communications chief JK Shin said in a statement. "They are looking for high-performance devices that are easy and intuitive to use, look great, and enable them to create and share rich multimedia content with ease."

Omnia W users would also gain access to Windows Live SkyDrive, giving them 25GB of online cloud-based storage. Mobile versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are included, which would likely help Samsung attract business users.

The handset is slated to debut in Italy next month. According to Samsung, the Omnia would gradually be rolled out globally to Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America next.

Samsung did not specifically mention a release in the United States. That could be due to the impending release of the Focus Flash this fall on AT&T, a device that appears to have nearly identical specifications to the Omnia W.

Specifications

Network: HSPA14.4/5.76Mbps 900/2100, EDGE/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900
Processor: 1.4 GHz
Display: 3.7” WVGA(800X480), Super AMOLED
OS: Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango"
Cameras
Main(Rear): 5 MP AF with LED Flash
Sub (Front) : VGA for Video Call
Video
Codec: MPEG4/H.263/H.264/WMV
Playback: 720p @30fps
Recording: 720p@30fps
Audio
Codec: MP3/AAC/AAC＋/eAAC＋/WMA/AMR-NB
Zune Player
3.5mm Ear Jack, FM Radio with RDS
Value-added Features
Marketplace Hub – free and paid Apps
People Hub – Windows Live, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin built-in
Picture Hub
Music & Video Hub – Zune Experience
Game Hub – Xbox Live
Office Hub – Microsoft Office
Samsung’s Enriched Apps
- Now, RSS Times, Video Call(3G), Photo Studio, Mini Diary, All Share(DNLA),
Fun Shot, Wireless Manager
- Dictionary (downloadable, except US, Canada, Mexico), Photogram (downloadable),
Rubik’s Cube(downloadable)
Windows Live Skydrive® (Free 25GB Storage)
Tile-based Metro UX / IE9 mobile
A-GPS / Bing Map
Connectivity
Bluetooth® technology v 2.1
USB 2.0
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
Sensors: Accelerometer, Ambient Light, Proximity, Magnetometer, Gyroscope
Memory: 512MB(RAM) ＋ 8GB Internal Memory
Size: 115.97 x 58.8 x 10.9mm, 115.3g
Battery: Standard battery, Li-on 1,500 mAh

Monday, Amazon and Netflix, two major competitors in the video streaming space announced new content partnerships that broaden their catalogs and represent the next generation of carriage agreements that occur every three years in the cable and pay TV business.

Amazon announced it had signed a licensing deal with 20th Century Fox that would bring streaming movies and TV shows to its Amazon Prime Instant streaming service. It will join CBS, NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Amazon's other current partners, who now bring a total of 11,000 movies and TV shows to the premium service.

This is more than double the total content Amazon Prime had when the streaming service launched seven months ago.

Netflix, who is still the most imposing presence in the streaming space, announced it had signed a multi-year licensing deal with Dreamworks Animation SKG, which will bring Dreamworks' content instantly to Netflix at the exact same time as it's launched on Pay TV.

This is significant because Hollywood studios have long staggered the release of movies on different formats so consumers will have more incentive to buy high-margin DVDs rather than rent them. Streaming has thus far been one of the last places content is released.

But as DVD sales have crashed and burned for the last couple of years, Hollywood is taking a revised approach to its release window strategy.

Last March, for example, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, and 20th Century Fox signed up to release their films on pay TV just two months after theatrical release, shortening the time between exclusivity in theaters and availability at home.

No longer are box office revenues or home video sales the main money-makers for Hollywood studios: Digital distribution, off-network syndication, and content licensing are the future.

Photo: Jim Barber/Shutterstock