Amazon offers a range of hardware, including its Kindle e-readers and tablets, but now it’s looking to expand the line with two new smartphones and an audio-only device that streams music, according to the Wall Street Journal. The phones include a high-end one with a glasses-free 3D screen, as well as another about which details were not included in the report, which presumably would be a more traditional design.

Amazon has been rumored to have been working on a phone for a while now, and the recent hiring of top Windows Phone evangelist Charlie Kindel also raised alarms that Amazon might be in the smartphone business soon. Natasha wrote about how Kindel had previously discussed Android’s fragmentation problem, and how it provided opportunity for other players to step up and innovate. This could be what he’s attempting at Amazon, and these devices might be part of that project, although nothing about its plans have been officially revealed as of yet.

The rumored 3D device is said to use some kind of retina-tracking technology to present a holographic image that’s viewable without glasses, and that hovers above the screen. It sounds a little like a gimmick to be honest, especially considering how CE devices with 3D have fared so far, like the 3DS, which recently has downplayed its 3D capabilities in recent marketing. Other phone makers, including HTC and Sony, have also dabbled with 3D displays on phones, all of which have essentially failed to make an impact.

Lately, however, a lot of companies have been creating hardware which doesn’t necessarily have an immediately apparent niche. There’s the Chromebook Pixel, for instance, as well as Google Glass and rumors of the Apple smart watch. There’s the Acer Aspire R7 more recently, too, all of which essentially point to a need to have a big, splashy marquee product that isn’t necessarily the hottest consumer device.

Amazon’s other phone could be the more mass-market play, and the dedicated audio player sounds like it might want to become the iPhone of the streaming music generation. WSJ says that some of these devices might launch as soon as in the next few months, though there’s no guarantee that they won’t be shelved, so 3D screens could also just be something Amazon is testing internally.

We’ve reached out to Amazon for comment and have yet to hear back, but will update this post if they provide any official comment.

amazon · apple · chromebook · expand-the-line · phone · smartphone · street · windows phone · windows-

Today, gaming console and software company OUYA announced that they have closed a $15 million round led by Kleiner Perkins, and with participation from the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Ocean Partners. This marks one of the largest institutional investments to go to a project that had its humble beginnings on Kickstarter.

OUYA is a company that launched back in 2012 on Kickstarter under the guiding hands of Julie Uhrman, a video game industry veteran who believes that gaming should be affordable and enjoyable for everyone. She and the team developed a $99 Android gaming console, which hooks into the TV and comes with automatic access to free-to-try games. It launched on the crowdfunding site to much fanfare, scoring $8.6 million in funding, which ends up being around 9x more than OUYA asked.

Along with the $15 million round, which brings OUYA’s total amount of funding to $23.5 million, the company will also be bringing KPCB General Partner Bing Gordon on to the board of directors. Gordon brings with him years of experience from Electronic Arts.

Here’s what he had to say about the funding:

OUYA’s open source platform creates a new world of opportunity for established and emerging independent game creators and gamers alike. There are some types of games that can only be experienced on a TV, and OUYA is squarely focused on bringing back the living room gaming experience. OUYA will allow game developers to unleash their most creative ideas and satisfy gamers craving a new kind of experience.

The OUYA hardware has proven its spot in the market with the successful Kickstarter project, followed by an institutional investment led by a firm such as KPCB. “The message is clear: people want OUYA,” said Uhrman.

But the same story rings true for software, as the company has seen over 12,000 developers sign up for the platform to build games and monetize them in any way they’d like. This is up from 8,000 developer signups in March.

And if that weren’t enough, OUYA has been picked up by major retailers like GameStop, Best Buy and Amazon, with availability originally intended to begin June 4. OUYA is pushing that back to June 25, however, announcing the delay today as a result of a desire to be able to meet initial demand.

Clearly, the affordable gaming console speaks to people. But is it enough to make OUYA profitable? In an interview with TechCrunch, Uhrman explained that OUYA essentially breaks even on the hardware from the $99 gaming console, and that all games will be free-to-try. Curious if that was sustainable, we asked Uhrman if free-to-try would always be the case with OUYA games.

“Free to try is a core tenant of OUYA,” said Uhrman. “We wanted a gaming experience for the television that’s inexpensive to get into. Developers monetize however they’d like to, which is why we have games with unlockable demoes inside a fully paid version, or micro-transactions, and even a donation based game. I’m looking forward to the first episodic, subscription-based game,” she said.

According to Uhrman, the latest round from KPCB and friends will go toward further supporting game developers and development, bringing in exclusive and unique OUYA content, and meeting the demand seen from all parts of the world, including Japan, Brazil, Germany, Spain, and Italy.

amazon · bing gordon · gaming · gaming-console · general-partner · julie-uhrman · kleiner perkins · kpcb · ocean · ouya · shasta-ventures · spain · venture-capital

As tablet ownership and usage continues its upward trajectory, little surprise that more people are expected to be paying for more stuff on tablets in the coming years. But analyst Juniper Research has put out a new mobile content revenue forecast predicting that purchases on tablets will be the primary engine for growth — ergo: beating out smartphones — in the mobile content market over the next three years.

The analyst expects annual revenue generated from content delivered to mobile handsets and tablets to rise by nearly $25 billion over the period — climbing from more than $40 billion this year to $65 billion by 2016. Music and video now account for nearly half of all mobile content revenues, according to Juniper.

The analyst says growth in the mobile content market will “primarily” be fuelled by an upsurge in tablet users buying games, videos and ebooks on their slates. But it also flags up “increased opportunity” for content monetisation via direct carrier billing on smartphones as another factor helping to drive the market. “While the availability of direct carrier billing is patchy, the various benefits which the mechanism offers — higher conversion rates, opportunities to monetise unbanked customers — suggest that deployments will rise significantly in the medium term,” notes report author Dr Windsor Holden in a statement.

Returning to tablets, the report found that ebooks are currently the largest revenue stream on slates, thanks to e-reader applications from the likes of Amazon, Kobo and Nook, but goes on to add that tablets are experiencing a sharp increase in both paid and free video applications. The analyst also expects consumer gaming spend to migrate to tablets from dedicated portable gaming devices such as the Nintendo 3DS and the Sony PS Vita — something Juniper has delved into before in a separate report.

The mobile content report also notes that the convergence of gaming and social networking has been “one of the major drivers” behind the post-download monetisation opportunity — i.e. via in-app purchases.

amazon · analyst-expects · convergence · conversion · ebooks-on-their · from-the-likes · gaming · juniper · little-surprise · mobile · over-the-period · sony · tablets · windsor-holden

As a man who spends most of his time in his attic, it’s nice to hit the open roads, feel a little wind in your hair, and run over crack vials as you motor through downtown Manhattan. That’s exactly what I did yesterday as when I tried to ride an Ultra Motors A2B Metro electric bike from Bay Ridge to our offices on Broadway, thereby cementing my love for electric bikes and this electric bike in particular.

The Metro, made by German manufacturer Ultra Motors, is a brutalist electric bike with a built-in battery and maximum speed of 20 MPH. It has pedals and a 7-gear shifter so it is technically considered a moped and does not require a motorcycle license and a built-in limiter ensures you don’t go roaring down the streets on this 80 pound machine.

The company has had these bikes in the US for a few years now but they are working on a complete rebranding – although the bikes will remain the same. You can see the brand new bikes on this absolutely awful webpage they’ve made. This particular model costs about $3,000 online but the build quality is excellent and the equipment – from the fat Kenda tires to the Shimano shifter – is acceptable enough. I noticed some bad reviews on Amazon complaining of damaged motors or tires and, although I didn’t experience these issues over the past week, I cannot speak for extensive use. In my 15 mile ride I saw solid performance and no skidding or fishtailing while accelerating. I did, however, experience a low battery and riding this thing home, even for a mile, on pedal power wasn’t great.

The bike is big bit it’s still thin enough to ensure you don’t get entangled with other riders in tight paths. I found it worked great in tight quarters and, because it is in actuality just a bicycle with a hub motor, the other cyclists didn’t give me that much of a stink eye.

I’ve avoided looking at electric bikes of late because most of them look like motors strapped to 10-speeds. This is far different and, if I were to describe it in any way, it is the exact opposite of those foldable city bikes folks are riding. The kids, in fact, have taken to calling it Super Bike.

Ultra Motors is finding its footing right now and also has sub-$2,000 models available, including their own version of the folding electric called the Kuo which retails for $1,599.

What are you paying for? Well, you’re paying for a solid, welded frame, solid components, and excellent acceleration. The range isn’t too shabby and for a bit more you can add on a second battery for 20 miles of range. I could also imagine a user removing the governor – though I’m sure Ultra Motors doesn’t condone this. This isn’t a sport bike. I could really see it more as a bike for folks with a 10-15 mile commute who want to hit the open air a little and don’t want (that much) of a carbon footprint.

amazon · gadgets · governor · love · open · remain-the-same · time · ultra-motors · video

According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, e-commerce behemoth Amazon is preparing to launch a set-top box this fall, in hopes that you’ll consume all of your content through its spin on the now-common device. The company is already working hard to push its Kindle line to consumers, and this box would be for people who don’t want to deal with the fanciness of Apple products, the gaming nature of Microsoft’s XBox, the half-baked Google TV or the little engine that could, Roku.

Yes, this is a crowded market, but Amazon has something that these other companies don’t have, which is warehouses full of things to sell to people while they watch TV. I imagine that you’ll be able to shop as you would online or on your mobile device, right on your TV set. That means that the temptation to pick up that new TV, while you’re watching your old crappy one, could overcome you during a show. One button click and a new TV could be on the way.

Think of it as Home Shopping 2.0. With some interesting programming to watch, of course.

Instead of acquiring a smaller company that already has its own product in the wild, Amazon has decided to build this in-house, under its Lab126 umbrella in Cupertino.

Amazon has been building up its content viewers by bundling it with Amazon Prime shipping for free, trying to entice anyone who is already spending regular money with them to try other things out. What shipping has to do with free movies and TV, I don’t know, but customers seem to be happy with it thus far.

Reasons for doing a set-top box are obvious, with its original content being the most popular on the platform since it launched. As Amazon finds its way to more niche shows that it can present exclusively, the reasons to grab an Amazon-branded device for your TV makes more sense. In the same way that Apple leverages each of its devices to sell new ones, Amazon is learning how it’s done. It also doesn’t help that it has millions of shoppers visiting its site daily looking for new things.

Some could say that Amazon is late to the game, but I see Jeff Bezos and company taking smart, calculated steps to capitalize on mistakes made by others, much like it did with the Kindle, staying close to a purer paperback-esque reading experience.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

already-working · amazon · apple · being-the-most · gaming · media · microsoft · mobile · other-companies · set top box · shopping · temptation

The HTC One, the Taiwanese company’s flagship smartphone device, goes on sale today across the U.S. at retail stores including AT&T, Sprint, Best Buy, Walmart Target and more, as well as online via those retailers, HTC itself, Amazon and beyond. The phone has already been highly praised by early reviews and anyone who seems to have gotten their lucky mitts on one, but will that be enough to sway consumers?

HTC has arguably not made a truly bad phone in at least the past two years, and last year the HTC One X truly excelled. But that hasn’t stopped HTC’s earnings from sliding for five consecutive quarters now. The One, which is as significant a break from tradition in terms of how Android smartphones are designed as any we’ve yet seen, is the company’s big bet to turn things around, and they appear to have spared no effort.

The One has a unibody full metal body design, a first for a smartphone, as well as speakers that don’t suck, itself an achievement for any kind of phone. Reviews of the UltraPixel camera have been good, too, with Mobile Syrup calling it “the best low-light camera you can buy.” And the HTC software features, including BlinkFeed and HTC Zoe, are also drawing praise from press and reviewers.

HTC has a big mountain to climb in terms of coming anywhere close to competing with Android juggernaut Samsung, or Apple and its iPhone in terms of market share. But the HTC One is the best chances anyone has had of doing so in a long time. If only they’d left Van Der Beek out of this.

For those looking to pick one up today, here’s a full list of its current U.S. availability direct from HTC:

The new HTC One in silver is available nationwide at:

• AT&T: Online and in retail with 32GB of memory for $199.99, or online with 64GB of memory for $299.99 with a two-year commitment.
• Sprint: Online and in retail with 32GB of memory for $199.99 with a two-year commitment.
• Best Buy, Radio Shack, Walmart, Target, Amazon.com, Costco, Car Toys, Sam’s Club, HSN.com andHTC.com.
• Coming soon to T-Mobile in silver with 32GB of memory, and available in the coming weeks in black at AT&T and Sprint with 32GB of memory.

amazon · gadgets · genesis-angels · least-the-past · robotics · smartphone · tablets · walmart

With PC laptop shipments projected to decline by 7.3% this year, Windows 8 machines desperately need a shot multiple shots of adrenaline. The Toshiba Kirabook may be just that.

The Kirabook is Toshiba’s first entrant in their newly fashioned “Kira” line of luxury ultrabooks. At first glance, you can see that the Kirabook is meticulously designed, and it radiates a Cupertino-esque level of fit and finish. We haven’t seen this kind of quality from Toshiba for a very long time (if ever).

That doesn’t mean the Kirabook offers anything new in terms of design. There are still shades of the Macbook Air to be found here and there, as is the case with all top of the line Windows ultrabooks.

The Kirabook has a smaller profile than the Macbook Air, but somehow manages to include a retina-quality 2560

adobe-photoshop · amazon · apple · carbon · intel · kirabook · lenovo-thinkpad · macbook · market · retina-macbook · toshiba · ultrabook · water · windows-

According to a report in the WSJ, Microsoft is working on a new line-up of its Windows 8-powered Surface tablets that includes a seven inch version of the slate. This small form factor size would enable Microsoft to compete with the likes of the Android-powered Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle Fire and Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, as well as Apple’s iOS-based iPad Mini.

The paper quotes a person familiar with the situation saying that while 7-inch tablets were not part of Microsoft’s product plans last year  company executives have realised they need to respond to the growth and popularity of small slates. Which boils down to Redmond is having to play catch up yet again.

Microsoft has previously been tipped to release three new and distinct generations of Surface this year — albeit, none of those prior rumours had pointed to a seven inch device. And perhaps with good reason, as Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg noted via Twitter today the small tablet form factor poses some usability challenges for Microsoft’s full-fat Windows OS. Rival small slates are powered by lighter weight mobile OSes, and while Microsoft has now unified its smartphone (Windows Phone) and desktop OSes on a shared kernel it’s still using ‘desktop’ Windows for tablets.

But it’s not just that  devices are getting smaller. Shrinkage appears inextricably linked with the computing market in another way. Gartner has just put out figures for worldwide PC shipments for Q1 late yesterday, which show shipments declining to their lowest level since Q2 2009. The analyst says alternative smart connected devices — aka those small smartphones and tablets running lighter weight smartphone OSes — are eroding the traditional PC market.

Global PC shipments totalled 79.2 million units in Q1 2013, which Gartner said was an 11.2% year-on-year decline. All global regions showed a decrease in shipments, with the EMEA region experiencing the steepest decline.

“Consumers are migrating content consumption from PCs to other connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones. Even emerging markets, where PC penetration is low, are not expected to be a strong growth area for PC vendors,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner in a statement.

Microsoft’s Surface tablet straddles the gap between a tablet and a laptop, having a touchscreen and a keyboard cover add-on. But Gartner said touchscreen-based Windows 8 PCs took only a small percentage share of consumer PC shipments in Q1 — owing to their relatively high price.

“Touchscreen-based Ultramobiles [such as Surface Pro] offer PC manufacturers an opportunity to recover market share from media tablets, but Windows 8 PCs with touchscreens accounted for only a small percentage of consumer PC shipments in the first quarter of 2013,” noted Isabelle Durand, principal research analyst at Gartner in a statement. “The majority of consumers remain unwilling to pay the price premium for touchscreen capabilities on PCs at this stage.”

Android tablet sellers including Google and Amazon have been driving down the cost of seven inch slates — with the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire currently costing from as little $199 and $159 respectively — and that price erosion is likely helping to accelerate the consumer migration away from the traditional PC category. Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet was priced from $499 at launch, while Surface Pro was from $899.

How Microsoft chooses to price any ‘Surface Mini’ will be key to driving sales — and with the iPad mini starting at $329, there is not much scope for Redmond to be able to undercut the small slate competition. Yet it can’t afford for Surface to fail.

As Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi told TechCrunch last week, discussing its smart devices forecast: “You need to own consumers in terms of mobile and tablet in order to remain relevant in this market… Consumers have options and consumers are choosing and Microsoft can not take that for granted that they’ll be the one to be chosen.”

amazon · Divers · galaxy-note · gartner · mega · microsoft surface tablet · pc sales · price · time · traditional · windows-

When Samsung revealed its new Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone, it literally did a lot of song and dance about its own unique software features, with nary a peep on the built-in Google Android improvements and features brought by the use Jelly Bean 4.2 on board. I argued that it could be a signal that Samsung is looking to move towards an Amazon-style approach to building its own version of Android, but a new investor note from Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu suggests Samsung’s platform bluster might be more useful to the South Korean company as a bargaining chip.

Wu praises Samsung’s move into a more “vertically integrated platform play” in his note, which puts it in a better place to compete with similar efforts by companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon who are all trying similar combined approaches to software and hardware. But he also notes that Tizen, the smartphone OS that Samsung is co-developing, has massive challenges ahead in terms of taking away platform share from Android and iOS, especially with BlackBerry and Windows Phone slugging it out for a third spot in the mobile market.

Samsung’s biggest strength, according to the investor note, is that it has a lot of leverage in terms of negotiating a better split of mobile advertising revenues from partners including Google thanks to its dominant market position. Treating their platform ambitions as a sort of backpocket option in case the lucrative deal they have worked out with Google starts to become not so lucrative does seem to be more of a hedge than a realistic option at this stage of the game, given how entrenched the top two platforms are, and the challenges we’ve seen even manufacturers with a wide reach like Nokia and BlackBerry have with populating the software ecosystem for a brand new mobile operating system.

Google has been reported to be somewhat ill at ease with Samsung’s growing dominance over the Android hardware market, but for now the two companies are much stronger together than they are apart, which means we’re unlikely to see either side do anything to initiate a rift. Meanwhile, we’ll likely see both also work on their own hedges, which means Google building out its Motorola division with new, Google-directed initiatives after major restructuring, and Samsung continuing to feint with Tizen and build its own pseudo-platform on top of Android.

amazon · apple · gadgets · google-android · mobile · motorola · samsung · windows-

When Samsung revealed its new Galaxy S4 flagship smartphone, it literally did a lot of song and dance about its own unique software features, with nary a peep on the built-in Google Android improvements and features brought by the use Jelly Bean 4.2 on board. I argued that it could be a signal that Samsung is looking to move towards an Amazon-style approach to building its own version of Android, but a new investor note from Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu suggests Samsung’s platform bluster might be more useful to the South Korean company as a bargaining chip.

Wu praises Samsung’s move into a more “vertically integrated platform play” in his note, which puts it in a better place to compete with similar efforts by companies including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon who are all trying similar combined approaches to software and hardware. But he also notes that Tizen, the smartphone OS that Samsung is co-developing, has massive challenges ahead in terms of taking away platform share from Android and iOS, especially with BlackBerry and Windows Phone slugging it out for a third spot in the mobile market.

Samsung’s biggest strength, according to the investor note, is that it has a lot of leverage in terms of negotiating a better split of mobile advertising revenues from partners including Google thanks to its dominant market position. Treating their platform ambitions as a sort of backpocket option in case the lucrative deal they have worked out with Google starts to become not so lucrative does seem to be more of a hedge than a realistic option at this stage of the game, given how entrenched the top two platforms are, and the challenges we’ve seen even manufacturers with a wide reach like Nokia and BlackBerry have with populating the software ecosystem for a brand new mobile operating system.

Google has been reported to be somewhat ill at ease with Samsung’s growing dominance over the Android hardware market, but for now the two companies are much stronger together than they are apart, which means we’re unlikely to see either side do anything to initiate a rift. Meanwhile, we’ll likely see both also work on their own hedges, which means Google building out its Motorola division with new, Google-directed initiatives after major restructuring, and Samsung continuing to feint with Tizen and build its own pseudo-platform on top of Android.

amazon · apple · gadgets · google-android · mobile · motorola · samsung · windows-