Marco Tempest to deliver Keynote Address at ISE 2013

Integrated Systems Europe has announced that globally renowned cyber-illusionist Marco Tempest will present the Keynote Address on the eve of ISE 2013. Titled ‘Inventing The Impossible’, Tempest’s presentation will address the use of illusion as a creative tool and how it can be used to bring seemingly impossible scenarios to life.

Using examples of the magical illusion work Tempest has designed in collaboration with engineers, animators and programmers, the Keynote will focus on the envisaging of future technologies, the value of open-source projects and how illusion can provide an inviting gateway to socialmedia interactivity.

“Marco Tempest has a worldwide reputation as an inspirational speaker whose use of computer-based imagery, augmented reality and other visual technologies is as original as it is breathtaking,” comments Mike Blackman, Managing Director, Integrated Systems Events. “Whether they are combining multiple projected images to create a single animated canvas, building interactive kiosks for retail spaces or visitor attractions, designing multi-channel sound systems or simply providing multimedia content for installed or live applications, ISE attendees are in the business of adding value by persuading people to suspend their disbelief.

“Marco Tempest’s unique take on the use of illusion as a creative tool fits perfectly with ISE’s business and technology landscape, while his commitment to collaboration, creativity and enterprise could hardly be more topical.”

Tempest, who is based in New York and has delivered presentations to a string of different

corporate and institutional bodies including Google, the TED Conference and the Royal Society, adds: “My interest in computer-generated imagery is what led me to incorporate video and digital technology into my work as a magician, and develop a new form of contemporary illusion. The expansion of the internet and social media has provided more opportunities for digital illusions and interacting with audiences, and in Amsterdam I hope to show that using these influences in smart, creative and compelling ways can indeed allow us to ‘Invent The Impossible.’”

Mike Blackman concludes: “We are delighted that Marco is coming to Amsterdam to present ‘Inventing The Impossible’ on the eve of ISE 2013, and look forward to a presentation that will amuse, entertain and inspire Europe’s professional AV community in ways they could not have imagined.”

Buzz as Samsung seeks to rock camera market with Galaxy Camera...and S3 mini

Two hot products, namely Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and Samsung Galaxy Camera, touted as the world's first truly connected camera, are expected to be available on the shelf by next week, Samsung execs said in at a breakfast meeting with newsmen in Lagos. Managing Director, Samsung Electronics West Africa (SEWA), Mr. Brovo Kim said: “Already, we have two brilliant products that will positively impact the market in 2013: namely, our Galaxy Camera which combines high performance photography functionality with the latest Android 4.1 platform, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S III Mini, which promises unending thrill for tech-savvy fashion leaders who desire a mobile device with maximum features in a compact, rounded package,” Kim said.

Samsung Business Head, Hand Held Products, Mr. Emmanouil Revmatas, Business Leader, Hand Held Products, Mr. Daesong Na and other Samsung officials took time to demo some of the features of the products to newsmen.

Galaxy Camera is touted as the world’s first connected camera. It connects directly to 3G and Wi-Fi networks, revolutionizing the way digital camera content is created and shared. It comes with Cloud support and group sharing apps, variable camera lenses and photo settings, editing tools and visual effects, full high definition video with slow-motion capability and a huge 4.8” high definition super clear touch display to view, edit and enjoy the images captured or recorded.

Also speaking at the breakfast meeting, Head, Corporate Marketing, Samsung Electronics, Donald Etim said, “In this new era of visual communication, the growth of social networks and the increasing dominance of smartphones and tablets, we are excited to introduce two innovative, cutting edge devices that will enable our consumers share their experiences through pictures and videos with much ease.”

Samsung’s new Galaxy Camera is a unique proposition – is it a phone, thanks to its 3G sim card, or a camera? The answer is clearly the latter, and in fact the 3G emphasis in the marketing is probably something of a red herring. Making phone calls is possible, but only after some serious fiddling. This is a fully connected camera, running Android, that makes uploading, sending and sharing photographs far easier than other models that demand you plug memory cards or cables into your computer.

Indeed, the 3G connectivity (a one-month 3 sim card is bundled) is probably nowhere near enough for sending the16MP images that the Galaxy Camera can take. With its 21x, 23mm zoom lens this is a serious camera, building on Samsung’s expertise in cameras and using Android. No doubt a 4G model will be along soon enough.

There are, of course, other Android cameras out there, including from Nikon, but it’s Samsung’s heritage with the OS that means it is able to offer a simple interface that has plenty of options easily available to more expert users. Sony, too, offers camera apps, but does not have the momentum of Google Android.

The Samsung camera AllShare, Share Shot application allows consumers to automatically save photos the instant they are taken and users can share at the same time as they shoot them. Users can also connect to a range of Galaxy devices including the Galaxy SIII and Galaxy Note II for effortless and automatic sharing of pictures across the Galaxy family.

The Galaxy S III mini on its part is Galaxy S III in a smaller package and more organic design. It is powered by Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean), the latest version of the world’s most popular smartphone operating system. Jelly Bean has fast, fluid and smooth graphics along with a new Google Search experience featuring Google Now.

As the cloud battle continues, HP Unveils Cloud Application Platform

The battle for the cloud continues to heat up with HP announcing earlier today the latest addition to its portfolio of cloud related products and services.  Called the HP Cloud Application PaaS, the offer fills a hole in its cloud portfolio in an area commonly referred to as Platform as a Service or PaaS.

In what has been a rather poorly kept secret, HP has spent much of the last 6 months looking for its PaaS partner for a new global OEM licensing agreement finally settling on Vancouver, British Columbia based ActiveState and its Stackato PaaS software. The HP Cloud Application PaaS will be a fundamental component of the HP Cloud, and will be generally available in the near future.

HP describes its enterprise focused PaaS as “an application platform for development, deployment, and management of cloud applications using any language on any stack. The HP Cloud Application PaaS enables the real-world enterprise to reap the benefits of cloud computing while preserving the order of managed IT.”

The PaaS market is quickly becoming a center point for the fast growing cloud sector. Global revenue for the platform as a service market are expected to grow consistently over the next five years from $1.2bn in 2012 to $2.9bn in 2016, up from $900m in 2011, according to research firm Gartner. But as the platform-as-a-service delivery model grows, it will intensify the competition between large cloud service providers and enterprise software suppliers, which look to capture the growing, market, Gartner predicted.

The company also said “by the end of 2013, all major software vendors will have competitive production offerings in the PaaS market. By 2016, competition among the PaaS vendors will produce new programming models, new standards and new software market leaders. However, until then, users will continue to experience architectural changes to technologies, business models and vendor alignments in the PaaS market.”

Who’s next? With this announcement HP’s Cloud grabs a potentially big technological advantage. Expect other cloud providers to do the same by quickly following HP’s lead of an integrated PaaS technology as key a differentiator. It’s also interesting to see that HP has selected ActiveState to form the core of its new PaaS offering. ActiveState’s Stackato is built atop VMware’s Cloudfoundry project, and is described as an application platform for creating your own private, secure, and flexible enterprise Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) using any language on any stack on any cloud.

ActiveState CEO, Bart Copeland said, “This partnership validates Stackato technology, as well as its enterprise-focused approach to PaaS. It also signifies the advent of the PaaS-integrated infrastructure service. It’s a competitive space. I expect other large infrastructure service providers to follow suit—They’ll move up the chain to offer PaaS solutions, all in an effort to differentiate their IaaS services for enterprise customers".

Toph Whitmore VP, Marketing at ActiveState agrees saying “In using ActiveState HP has a security advantage. One of Stackato’s enterprise benefits is its security model; with secure virtual containers “individually wrapping” cloud data and applications. The security model (which leverages Linux containerization) reduces risk in the enterprise, and—when used in a public cloud environment—eliminates a hack-once-compromise-all threat. Effectively, HP has established a private PaaS on a public cloud, and further differentiated its HP Cloud from competitors using a “single-playground-within-the-firewall” public PaaS. With those other guys, the multi-tenant architecture PaaS playground is only as secure as the weakest tenant, and vulnerable to metaphorical playground bullies.”

Copeland also believes that his company’s new relationship with HP will be a game changer for not only his firm, but also the entire PaaS space. “This OEM relationship puts Stackato at the forefront of PaaS technology. Market leadership is important, but so is driving the technology forward. It’s still early days for PaaS, but we’re going to continue to move fast. I look forward to seeing this technology evolve. And to seeing even more enterprise customers innovate with Stackato. Our customers push us to make the technology better. This is a big win for ActiveState, with more to come.”

Copeland’s final comment summarizes the opportunity for ActiveState perfectly. “They chose us.”

The multiple challenges facing Microsoft Surface Tablet

According to a recent IDC report about tablets, there's good news and bad news for Microsoft. The good news is that Windows tablet sales will surge in the next four years. The bad news is that even then, they'll be only 10% of the market. In the report, IDC increases the number of tablets it expects to be sold in 2012, 122.3 million of them, compared to a 117.1 million estimate previously. By 2016, it expects a whopping 282.7 million tablets to be sold.

Apple tablets will rule the roost for years to come, according to IDC. In 2012, it will have 53.8% of the market, and by 2016 it will have 49.7% of the market. Android, meanwhile, will have 42.7% market share this year, and 39.7% in 2016.

Windows tablets will grow from a 2.9% market share in 2016 to a 10.3% market share in 2016. In terms of actual shipments, Windows tablets will see a 69.2% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), while Apple will see a 20.9% CAGR and Android a 21% CAGR.

While that 69.2% CAGR looks good, keep in mind that Microsoft is starting out at the bottom of the market, so it's easy to rack up high numbers. Far more impressive is the Apple 20.9% and the Android 21%, because they're already shipping plenty of devices.

Microsoft can't be pleased with these numbers. A mere 10.3% market share by 2016 is very bad news. If true, would show that the Windows 8 experiment of designing a tablet operating system for PCs as a way to get people used to the tablet interface so they buy tablets, has failed. But that is only an IDC projection!

There's also some more evidence that Microsoft's Surface RT tablet sales have been sluggish. The Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton says that Microsoft is expected to sell only 500,000 to 600,000 of them in the December quarter, compared to Microsoft's expectations of one million to two million. So reports AllThingsD. AlThingsD says that one reason is poor distribution. Detwiler Fenton said, according to AllThingsD:

"Lack of distribution is killing the product. Mixed reviews and a high starting price tag certainly don't help, but lack of retail exposure at Best Buy and others is severely depressing sales." In Africa for instance, Microsoft Surface is yet to be officially launched.

None of this is good news for Microsoft in a world in which tablets and mobile are where the growth is, not personal computers. So far, at least, it looks like Windows 8 might not do anything to help Microsoft in mobile.

Again, of more than a dozen tablets Microsoft and Intel touted for the new version of Windows, only five can be purchased for immediate US delivery. Early demand for Microsoft's first computer, the Surface tablet, seems "disappointing", said Craig Berger, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. And computer-makers have been hampered in introducing tablets by limits Microsoft imposed on which manufacturers got a crack at prototypes, and by delays in Intel power-management software.

The hold-up is making it harder for personal computer makers, already beleaguered by plummeting demand, to challenge Apple and Google during the year-end holiday shopping season. While PC variants running Windows abound, tablets built on ARM technology-based chips or low-power processors from Intel are scarce.

To compound this, the list of Windows tablets is short. In addition to Microsoft's Surface, Asus's Vivo Tab RT and Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga run the RT version of Windows and boast ARM-based chips. Samsung's ATIV Smart PC and Acer's Iconia run Windows 8, and rely on Intel chips.

Two of them, the Surface and the Acer device, are only available at Microsoft's stores, which number just more than 60 for the holidays. FBR's Berger wrote in a note last week that Surface sales "have underwhelmed expectations". Microsoft has declined to comment on Surface sales, which isn't a positive sign, said Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft.

"When Microsoft is stealthy about numbers, that usually means something," he said.

At a September event, Intel said nine PC-makers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, would have devices with its newest low-power chip on sale when Windows was released in October. More than a month later, only four manufacturers do.

Days before Windows went on sale, Microsoft provided a list of five Windows RT devices it said would be available at the software's release. Only two made it out of the gate, and Microsoft later said the list contained errors. In a note to clients, Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura, termed Windows 8's release an "awkward launch, with PC vendors slow to bring out" new tablets and Ultrabook touch devices.

For the PC industry, Windows 8 and RT tablets and touch- screen laptops that convert to handhelds are an attempt to build a beachhead in the mobile business. The PC market is forecast to shrink this year for the first time in more than a decade. Tablet shipments will pass notebooks in the second half of 2013, estimates Eve Jung, an analyst at Nomura. NPD DisplaySearch projects the tablet market will reach $162 billion in 2017, more than double its size this year.

Intel and Microsoft shares have suffered as concern rises about the future of the PC industry, exacerbated by the lack of Windows tablets on the market. The PC market's lack of momentum contrasts with the 43 per cent jump in tablet shipments in the third quarter, according to Strategy Analytics. Apple, before it introduced a new line-up of iPads, including the lower-cost iPad Mini, had 57 per cent of the market in the period. Devices based on Google's Android mobile operating system had 41 per cent, and Microsoft Windows-based tablets had 1.6 per cent of the global market.

"Windows doesn't typically come screaming out of the gate, but it's fair to say that Intel and Microsoft would have hoped for more," said Alex Gauna, a San Francisco-based analyst at JMP Securities. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said at a shareholder meeting in Bellevue, Washington, last week that Microsoft is seeing "fantastic demand" for tablets and touch-screen PCs featuring Windows 8, and is working to get more into stores.

Microsoft declined to comment for this story except to refer to comments from Windows chief financial officer Tami Reller at a conference last week. "There are some touch devices in retail today and we're working to get more touch devices out there," Reller said. "But broadly speaking there's a lot of great devices that have come to market, some that have sold out, some that are now being replenished and coming to market, and more models to come."

Typical Windows releases are accompanied by hundreds of new machines. In this case, hardware manufacturers have done a better job delivering PC and notebook designs than tablets. While there are few tablets available, Microsoft has certified a total of 1500 machines to run Windows 8.

Microsoft’s Windows RT Surface tablet has proved a dud in the market so far. From being praised to be the first tablet to run on Microsoft’s latest Windows RT OS, the tablet is being written off as another unsuccessful venture by Microsoft. But there are analysts who have said that the tablet is failing not because of the dissatisfaction of people with hardware or its OS, but because of the fact that it is not available in much of the world. Only Microsoft is selling the tabs either online or through a handful showrooms it owns.

But to be true, Microsoft from the very beginning didn’t have great hopes from this tablet. They were expecting at least a few million tabs being sold in the market. Unfortunately given the low demand for Surface RT tablet, Microsoft was forced to cut the orders by as much as half to its OEM partners in Asia. Reports suggest that the company may not be able to cross 1 million surface tablet sales mark in the current quarter. That and the fact that the existing price tag is just unreasonable. Analysts have attributed weak sales of Microsoft’s Surface to its hefty price tag, and the Surface Pro does little to alleviate this burden on users’ pockets.

Microsoft revealed the pricing information for its fully stocked Windows 8 Surface Pro tablet at the end of November, and the device will cost $899 for the 64GB model and $999 for the 128GB edition. While Microsoft’s forthcoming gadget boasts a fuller operating system and more storage, users can purchase a loaded Windows 8 PC for less than this $899 price point. Many mid-range Windows 8 hybrid laptops, such as Sony’s VAIO 13.3-inch ultrabook, fall in the $600-$800 bracket.

The device will compete with the likes of Apple’s iPad, Google’s Nexus 10 and other various 10-inch tablets come 2013, although its price and features appear to be aimed at laptop buyers rather than slate shoppers. The Surface Pro’s primary issue lies in the fact that it’s too expensive to really make a splash in the market as a tablet, but it’s not impressive enough as a laptop to gain traction with PC buyers.

As some acknowledge, the Surface Pro seems like an appealing laptop/tablet hybrid for businesses, but Microsoft will have to gain a lot of market share to rival Apple in that area.

“Love it or hate it, the iPad started the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement in IT,” Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes. “Steve Jobs may not have had office workers in mind when he dreamed up the iPad, but the iPad has become the poster child for tablets in business.”

Microsoft is in the early stages of creating what could be a successful Surface brand, but it has yet to learn from its mistakes. There have been talks of a Surface smartphone in the works or a gaming-based tablet referred to as the Xbox Surface, and perhaps Microsoft will work out its kinks and find a strategy that works by then.