WhatsApp, the world's most popular messaging service that was purchased last week by Facebook to the tune of $19 billion, will add voice calls to its service later this year. The company's CEO Jan Koum confirmed the news on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
WhatsApp boasts 450 million users worldwide, and according to market researcher Ovum, the service made roughly $120 billion last year from text messaging alone.
Apple on Friday confirmed its purchase of Burstly, the maker of the popular iOS beta testing platform TestFlight.
The news was first reported by TechCrunch but confirmed by Apple in a statement to Re/Code.
Amazon may launch a TV-streaming device in March that would compete with Apple TV, Roku and, to some extent, Google's Chromecast, the tech site Re/code reports. The gadget—which Amazon reportedly considered, then decided against, releasing for the just-passed holiday season—would presumably help the sprawling e-commerce giant build the audience for its online video offerings and its nascent slate of original programs.
See also: How Apple TV Can Win; Getting Started With Chromecast; How To Choose Between Apple TV, Roku and Chromecast
Everyone’s a tech company these days. From new-school video streaming services like Netflix to old-school grocery businesses and government agencies, technology increasingly drives business productivity. At the heart of this movement is Linux, resulting in exceptional, highly paid job opportunities for Linux professionals.
Software developers are the new kingmakers, according to Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady. Small wonder, then, that the most recent US News & World Report list of the top 100 jobs now ranks software developer at #1, with system administrator positions in the top 20.
Clearly, the economy is rebuilding around tech as every company seeks competitive advantage by making more intelligent use of their data and seeks to improve agility with cloud and open-source technologies, among other means.
What’s perhaps less clear is just how much this new tech economy depends on Linux.
This Linux dependence becomes evident in a survey of 5,000-plus Linux professionals and hiring managers the Linux Foundation recently released in partnership with Dice.com. Among other findings in the report:
All of which means demand for Linux professionals is heating up. Considerably.
In fact, 90% of hiring managers said it’s “somewhat” or “very difficult” to find experienced Linux pros—and those who have the right skills and expertise are being aggressively recruited. In fact, 75% of Linux professionals surveyed said they received at least one call from a recruiter in the last six months. Nearly 50% of those received six or more calls.
It’s a good time to be a Linux pro.
This translates into higher pay and better benefits. Because 55% of Linux pros believe it would be “very easy” or “fairly easy” to find a new, better job, 20% of them said they received incentives such as higher pay, a more flexible work schedule or additional training as part of a counteroffer from their employer after they tested the job market.
To keep them from testing the market, Linux pros enjoyed salary increases over the past year that exceeded the average for technology professionals by more than two percentage points. These professionals also received an average bonus of $10,336, up 12% from the previous year.
Ten years ago, the smart way to earn more money was to learn Linux. Today, that’s still true. Back in 2004 Linux was still new and was largely being deployed by early adopters seeking a competitive edge in their respective markets, and often financial services. Today Linux is the default operating system for cloud, Big Data and mobile, the big trends that are reshaping industries. Not confined to early adopters, Linux is simply the platform on which much of our innovation happens.
As such, I’ll give the same career advice I gave back in 2004, and which I’ll likely still be repeating in 2024: learn Linux. it’s the future.
Image by Flickr user mikecogh , CC 2.0
Google I/O is coming at the end of June. The biggest developer conference of the year for Google was announced today by the company’s head of Android and Chrome platforms Sundar Pichai in a posting to his Google+ profile.
This year Google I/O will take place at Moscone West in San Francisco from June 25-26. I/O comes about a month later this year than it did last year but at about the same time as it did in 2012.
The expectations for this year’s Google I/O are a bit up in the air. Google focused specifically on new developer features last year, eschewing the opportunity to release any new versions of Android or Chrome OS. Instead, Google’s announcements focused on Google Play Services and the Google Play developer console, design principles and updates to maps. Google did not announce any new hardware last year (though it did give all attendees a Chromebook Pixel). Google introduced the original Nexus 7 tablet at I/O 2012, the same time it announced Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
The headmaster for Google I/O this year will be Pichai as Google focuses on getting developers on its two biggest platforms, Android and Chrome. Pichai was the head of Chrome before taking over Android when founder Andy Rubin went to Google’s special projects group to work on robotics.
Information on how to register for tickets to I/O will be announced next month. Pichai said that the registration process will be different this year to allow people that have an interest in going to be able to get tickets. I/O has sold out as soon as registration has opened in the past couple of years so Google will be making it easier for people to get tickets without having to hustle the second tickets for the event go live. The new system is akin to a lottery.
"We'll be implementing a new system, where you can submit your interest to attend Google I/O 2014. Successful applicants will then be randomly selected and notified shortly thereafter," Pichai said.
For more information on Google I/O 2014, visit the event's website here.
Soon you may be able to mirror what's on your Android smartphone or tablet to your television through Chromecast.
Google's Chromecast television streaming dongle has become a bit of a cult hit. At $35, it is one of the cheapest over-the-top media streamers on the market, can connect to virtually any television and allows you to use your smartphone or a tablet as a remote. The problem the Chromecast has had in its seven months or so of existence is lack of depth for apps that can use it.
Cyanogen developer Koushik Dutta—the developer of the popular AllCast app—has figured out how to hack the Chromecast to be able to mirror what's on your Android device to your television. He posted a short demo video on his Google+ profile on Sunday showing him playing Flappy Bird and using Twitter on his phone while also casting it to his television. There appears to be a lag in the video and Google does not officially support device screen mirroring for Chromecast at this point, but the capabilities may soon come Google's popular dongle.
In a post to his Google+ profile today, Dutta notes that Google may be working on screen mirroring for the Chromecast from Android, but it is not yet ready. Dutta wonders if Google will soon come out if there is a protocol that will be added to the Chromecast firmware in the future to allow screen mirroring, but Google has not yet released any documentation. Dutta notes that it looks like Google is not using WebRTC, can't package and stream MP4 videos without buffering, can't stream H264 or VP8 and that mirroring frame by frame is slow.
Dutta says:
Did some poking around to see how far along Google is with their Chromecast mirroring solution. There's plenty of evidence that there's some (possibly half baked) solution in the Play Services APK and it is not totally disabled. This is why people are seeing their "Cast" quick setting tile sometimes light up.
Dennis Woodside, a ten-year Google veteran who most recently served as CEO of its Motorola Mobility unit, will be moving to cloud-storage service Dropbox as its first chief operating officer. Google recently announced plans to sell Motorola to Lenovo for almost $3 billion, roughly two years after it paid more than $12 billion for the unit.
Photo by Dan Rowinski for ReadWrite
Apple's next-generation Apple TV streaming box, which it could unveil by April, may include access to more live programming, Bloomberg reported.
Apple is reportedly in talks with Time Warner Cable, Comcast, DirecTV and others about expanding program offerings, although Bloomberg notes that some discussions have stalled because Apple wants to offer users access to programs via their Apple IDs instead of forcing them to log in with cable- or satellite-provider credentials.
Charging cables for phones and tablets just edged a little closer to oblivion. Two of the three major coalitions backing incompatible wireless charging standards announced plans to join forces, potentially a big step toward unifying wireless charging standards and pushing the technology toward mass adoption.
It's not clear, though, how quickly this agreement will simplify life for people who just want to power up their gadgets wirelessly without having to worry about charging-station compatibility issues. And the standards war isn't settled, either, as a third major wireless-charging standards group wasn't included in this announcement.
Formally, the Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) and the Power Matters Alliance (PMA) agreed to support each other's technical standards. That should eventually result in charging hardware that works with most new mobile electronic devices. (Will any of it be backward compatible? No word at this point, though you probably shouldn't count on it.)
Henry Samueli, co-founder and chief technology officer of Broadcom, a voting member of A4WP, told me in December that "the biggest impediment to [wireless charging] is that there are different standards in the market." At the time, Samueli hoped the groups would find a unified approach, which would minimize some of that complication. Now, PMA's inductive charging will include a specification supporting A4WP's Rezent standard, and vice versa.
The odd man out here is, notably, Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) and its Qi wireless charging standard. WPC is backed by Verizon, Motorola, Nokia, Energizer, Belkin and several other big companies in the wireless market. (Samsung and HTC are members—Samsung even released an optional Qi-based wireless charging kit for the Galaxy S4—but both manufacturers also belong to the PMA.)
I've reached out to both A4WP and WPC for comment, and will update this post as more details come to light.
As Apple’s market share slips to Google's surging little green robot, developers are increasingly turning to HTML5 as a way to embrace both iOS and Android.
According to Vision Mobile’s latest Developer Economics report, Apple’s developer mindshare has slipped to 52% (from 56% in January 2013) while HTML5 has jumped two percentage points from a year ago to 52%.
The lesson here: It’s a multi-device world, and developers can no longer afford to play favorites.
Apple hasn't completely faded. Far from it, iOS attracts the most loyal developers with 59% of developers that target iOS prioritizing it over any other platform. Despite the fact that more developers use Android, just 52% of developers who use Google's platform consider it their primary deployment target.
HTML5? It’s used by 52% of developers but hardly tops anyone’s list of priorities.
Though a recent Sencha survey finds that more than 60% of mobile developers have migrated to HTML5—75% of those people expect to do even more with HTML5 in 2014—those developers’ motivations may be somewhat pedestrian. With the median developer supporting five different device types, HTML5 is more necessity than priority in a multi-device world.
In fact, HTML5 even trails Blackberry as a preferred primary platform in Vision Mobile’s report:
As I’ve written before, Apple rules where people can afford it. But in South Asia, South America, the Middle East and Africa, iOS takes third position behind Android (#1) and HTML5 (#2).
In the all-important Asian market, with China’s billion-plus users dwarfing North America, Android reigns with 46% of the developer market, compared to iOS’ 28%. In Africa, iOS fares even worse: 9% versus Android’s 47%.
Apple still claims a disproportionate market share in tablet shipments, but tablets are a secondary device for application developers. Yes, tablets attract 83% of app developers, but just 12% of developers see tablets as their primary development screen. The majority of developers (57%) perceive tablets as a secondary device behind smartphones.
As for developer income, iOS continues to pay much better than Android or HTML5. iOS seriously outpaces Android with median revenues between $500 and $1,000 per app per month, much higher than the median revenues of Android developers ($100 - $200 per app per month). Even HTML5 outpaces Android in this category:
Interestingly, HTML5 developers actually do better than iOS developers in the top-most tier (developers making over $50K per month) and in the low-income tier (developers making $500 to $10K per app per month):
In other words, HTML5 may be the best way for developers to play both the high-end and low-end markets.
As more mobile devices migrate to emerging markets, we’ll continue to see a shift toward Android and HTML5. A native iOS or Android experience continues to be preferred by both users and developers, but it’s becoming increasingly cumbersome to support multiple device types.
In short, while HTML5 is only the first priority for 26% of developers, it’s likely to be continue to grow as a necessary second option. If developers divide their first loyalties roughly equally between iOS and Android, that leaves a lot of room for HTML5 to grow into the dominance second choice, a strong position, indeed.
Lead image via codepo8 on Flickr; other images via Vision Mobile