News tagged ‘Sony’

Last week it was reported that Sony was actively working on changing the way users view and interact with content on its TV sets, with company’s CEO Howard Stringer acknowledging that they was seeking the way to compete with Apple’s ecosystem that is planned to include TV sets in the near future.

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Greenpeace ranked 15 companies across three areas: energy, greener products and sustainable operations and released its "Guide to Greener Electronics" on Wednesday. This time Apple took fourth place in the rating up five places from the previous report. Nokia (4.9/10), Dell (5.1/10), and HP (5.9/10) were on the third, second and first places respectively. Immediately below Apple were Philips (4.5/10), Sony Ericsson (4.2/10), Samsung (4.1/10) and Lenovo (3.8/10).

The organization criticized Apple for the fact that Apple has not specified any target to reduce emissions. Nevertheless, Greenpeace gave the company credit for use of renewable energy and improved energy efficiency. Apple is also very demanding for product criteria. So all of the company's devices are free of PVC vinyl plastic and brominated flame retardants.

But Apple’s relationships with Greenpeace are not limited by positive experience only. "For years now Apple has pushed the environmentally friendly aspects of its products, countering a dispute that began with Greenpeace in August of 2006, when the organization issued a report condemning Apple for the use of toxic chemicals in its devices. Greenpeace also pulled a number of publicity stunts, such as a "Green My Apple" campaign in London in October of 2006, and a "greening" of Apple's flagship Fifth Avenue glass cube in January of 2007."

Flurry, mobile analytics firm, reports that portable gaming has seen a continuous shift from dedicated gaming devices to smartphones and other multifunctional devices.

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The Bookseller reports that Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson easily became the most popular book in the States and United Kingdom during its first week of availability. For example, in the United States the book sold 379,000 copies.

Despite being on sale for just six days in the US, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is already the 18th bestselling book of the year. It sits one place ahead of John Grisham's The Confession (Dell) and one place behind Rick Riordan's The Son of Neptune (Hyperion) in the year-to-date BookScan US bestseller list.

As we reported, Amazon had previously announced that the book was poised to become the best-selling book of 2011 despite a release late in the year. And we will probably be able to watch a film adaptation of the autobiography soon, because Sony Pictures has already acquired the movie rights to the book.

Earlier this month we reported that Sony Pictures had acquired rights to the recently-released Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. As the company is planning to adapt the story  for the big screen, Sony suggest that the best person for writing screenplay would be Aaron Sorkin, who had successfully transitioned the story of Facebook to film The Social Network. He also gained fame for his work on A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and most recently Moneyball with Brad Pitt.

Sony is moving forward with a Steve Jobs movie based on Isaacson's book. And one of the writers being courted by producers to pen his story, according to a person who was briefed on the project but not authorized to speak about it publicly, is Aaron Sorkin, Hollywood's chronicler-in-chief of the complicated visionary. Sony and a Sorkin representative declined to comment on the writer's potential involvement.

Noteworthy, Jobs tried to hired Sorkin to write a film for Pixar, bur he declined his proposal, giving the following explanation:

The truth is I don’t know how to tell those stories. I have a young kid who loves Pixar movies and she’ll turn cartwheels if I tell her I’m writing one and I don’t want to disappoint her by writing the only bad movie in the history of Pixar.

Sony Pictures is reportedly working to acquire right for a film that will be based on Steve Jobs authorized biography by Walter Isaacson, according to Deadline.

I’ve just learned that Sony Pictures is making a hefty deal to acquire feature rights to Steve Jobs, the upcoming authorized biography by former CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson.

History of Apple and Steve Jobs were already the topic of the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. The movie tells us about founding of Apple and covers events up to the return of Steve Jobs at Apple in the late 90s. And now Sony Pictures is said want to shoot a movie about Steve Jobs. It is unclear whether the movie will indeed shoot and when such a film might be targeted for release.

We already reported that in the second quarter of 2011 Apple had passed Nokia as the world's largest smartphone vendor as measured by shipments. But Nokia still excelled Apple in sales to end user. Digitimes Research now projects that Apple will be a top smartphone vendor of 2011 with nearly 19% of the market at 86.4 million units.

Apple is expected to overtake Nokia as the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume in 2011, while Huawei Technologies will enjoy robust growth in shipments enabling the China-based company to close its gap with Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

Apple's smartphone shipments are projected to top 86.4 million units in 2011, up 82% from 47.5 million units in 2010. In contrast, Nokia's smartphone shipments in 2011 will decline to 74.4 million units from over 100 million in 2010, said Luke Lin, analyst for Digitimes Research.

Today co-founder and CEO of Google Larry Page officially said that their company has acquired one of the largest smartphone manufacturer – Motorola, specifically Motorola Mobility. The company was sold for $12.5 billion, which is 63% more than the closing price of the company on Friday, August 12. This deal has yet to be approved by several official authorities in USA and European Union, as well as Motorola Mobility’s shareholders. All transition processes is expected to finish in the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012.

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As Reuters writes, a consortium consisting of Apple Inc, Microsoft, EMC Corp, Ericsson, Sony, Research in Motion and BlackBerry placed a winning bid in the auction and bought Canadian telecommunications equipment maker Nortel with its collection of more than 6,000 patents.

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Geohot is famous iPhone and Sony Playstation hacker, the creator of blackra1n and limerain jailbreak methods, as well as blacksn0w unlock. Now he works at Facebook.

Joshua Hill (P0sixninja) recently mentioned this fact in an interview.

Geohot started working at Facebook in May and actually announced it on his Facebook account on June 17th:

"Facebook is really an amazing place to work...first hackathon over."

This means that we should not expect any new iPhone jailbreak and unlock utils from him.

The New York Post reports that Apple will pay between $100 and $150 million in advance payments to the four major record labels, Sony Music, EMI, Warner Music and Universal, for iCloud license agreements with them. Each of them was offered between $25 million and $50 million. Of course, the total amount will depend on number of songs consumers will store in iCloud.

The New York Post also mentioned that Apple would receive 30 % of fees, the music publishers - 12% and the rest would go towards record labels and artists. Apple is known to have finalized all deals concerning iCloud. The last one was recently sealed with Universal Music. The official iCloud announcement will be made on Monday, June 6, at the WWDC keynote.

On the recent investor event in London Intel CFO Stacy Smith hinted that Intel negotiates with Apple about production of the ARM-based chips for iPhones and iPads.

"If Apple or Sony came to us and said 'I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it,' I wouldn't blink. That would be fantastic business for us,"

said Smith during the Q&A session.

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Any user regardless of his profession will be able to choose a notebook to his taste from the Apple notebook family.  The entry-level MacBook will be a perfect choice for casual users; MacBook Air will fit someone who travels a lot; MacBook Pro will definitely satisfy everyone’s needs. This statement was supported by the ranking in Consumer Reports special computer issue.

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Bloomberg reported last night Apple has reached a deal with Sony Music Entertainment, following reports that the company managed to sign the Warner Music Group and EMI. This leaves Universal, the biggest label of all four in the United States, out of the equation, but according to the rumors Apple is actively focused on closing all the remaining paperwork with music labels by next week.

Apple has reached licensing accords with Sony Corp. (6758)’s music division, EMI Group and Warner Music Group, the people said. Universal Music Group, the largest recording company, is close to a deal, another person said. The company also would need to reach agreements with music publishers, which control different rights than the labels.