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BetaNews.Com (3 non lus)

Windows Phone will gain serious market share this year

Publié: avril 21, 2012, 8:28pm CEST par Mike Feibus
Let me repeat that a little more verbosely. Watch for Windows Phone to grab a serious hunk of market share at the end of 2012. No doubt about it. "Huh?" you ask. Believe it.

The Feibus-is-crazy club most assuredly is enjoying a surge in membership right about now. And why not? There is certainly plenty of evidence to suggest that Windows Phone thus far has underwhelmed.

Just this past week, in fact, Nokia’s financial results confirmed what the company, Microsoft’s primary Windows Phone partner, earlier had warned: that shipments of phones built around its fading Symbian platform are now in free-fall, and its WP7-based Lumia family isn’t picking up the slack as the company had planned.

Microsoft’s earnings report, released the same day as Nokia’s, echoed much the same. Indeed, Windows Phone stood out arguably as the weakest link in what proved to be an impressively strong quarter for the software giant.

So why, then, would I predict such a rosy change in fortunes for Microsoft’s struggling smartphone platform? It’s because of what was revealed in an earnings call from another wireless player, also that same day: Verizon.

Fran Shammo, Verizon’s CFO, responding in part to a question about the high cost of subsidizing iPhones for new contracts, says that the carriers need a viable third horse in the smartphone platform derby to keep the balance of power -- and thus the prices that Apple believes it can charge the carriers for its phones -- in check. For its part, Shammo said, Verizon will throw its weight behind Windows Phone.

The last time Verizon tinkered with the balance of power between carriers and platforms, it bet on Android, introducing the Droid in late 2009 backed by $100 million marketing campaign. That fall, iOS was the second largest shipping smartphone platform in the United States with 30 percent share, and closing in on market leader Blackberry. Android’s US share, meanwhile, stood at just 5.4 percent for that quarter. (These figures courtesy of Gartner.)

Android’s share quadrupled the following quarter -- that’s Q4 09, the first full quarter of Droid shipments -- to 20.4 percent. A year later, Android enjoyed a majority of all domestic smartphone shipments (51.6 percent), while iOS share dipped to 20.1 percent.

Last April, BetaNews published a white paper I wrote predicting that the carriers soon would elevate an underdog platform like Windows Phone to hold the market leaders in check. And this past week, that’s exactly what Verizon has signaled it intends to do.

Now, don’t expect Windows Phone share to quadruple in the fourth quarter, as Android’s share did three years earlier when Verizon took up the cause:
- For one thing, the smartphone market is several times larger.
- Second, there aren’t any fading platforms today. Three years earlier, Android had RIM and Symbian to snatch sales from to pad share.
- Third, the viable competitors -- Android and iOS -- own a much larger share of the market than the competitive alternatives did when Android was trying to claw its way into relevancy.
Still, there’s little doubt that Windows Phone will snag share in the fourth quarter -- in spite of itself. Bet on it.

Photo Credit: Joe Wilcox

Mike Feibus is principal analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, a Scottsdale, Ariz., market research firm focusing on client technologies. You can reach him at mike at techknowledge-group dot com.
Apple's Flashback Trojan tool fixes nothing

Publié: avril 21, 2012, 7:21pm CEST par Joe Wilcox

As if there isn't problem enough, with Apple giving Mac users a false sense of security. Now security software vendors do it, too. Earlier in the week, Symantec reported that the number of Flashback-infected Macs had fallen to 140,000 -- that's from as many as 700,000 by Kaspersky Lab's reckoning. But yesterday, Dr. Web put the number at 500,000, leading Symantec to acknowledge low reporting of actual infections.

The revelation -- and it most certainly is -- comes more than a week after Apple released a security update designed to remove the Flashback Trojan, which also is called Flashfake. Half-a-million compromised Macs, tied together as a botnet, is the tipping point for Apple computers. Apple and its security software partners must rally quick, to kill this beast before it bursts the fragile dike protecting the Mac user community from the tsunamis that occasionally wash across the Windows world. This the turning point, where OS X joins Windows as a platform aggressively targeted by cybercriminals.

Mr. Gates' Neighborhood

People have talked about this tipping point for years, but it never came -- creating yet another false sense of security (damn there are so many). This is the time, should the Flashback botnet flourish -- or even just persist. As I expressed last week, before Apple released the security fix: "Botnets this size are self-propogating. Cyberciminals can use a large botnet to attack and infect other computers. Can this one be taken down?" No is the worst possible answer to the question.

For years, I've heard pundits of every kind claim that cybercriminals largely attack Windows over Macs because of the large number of users. One day, should Apple PC market share increase, they argued, Macs would become targets. That thinking is a load of horse poop.

The problem started first by design. Microsoft developed Windows before the popular, public Internet and designed early networking and other features for the corporate network. The simple concept: Make sharing as easy as possible. Years ago, I referred to Windows and supporting productivity apps like Office as Mr. Gates' Neighborhood, playing off the public television kids program Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. It was a safe place, where people had no locks on their doors or windows and even connected their homes (think of that as Microsoft cross-integrating features). But then the big city -- the Internet -- grew up around the safe neighborhood. Suddenly, those lockless doors and windows and interconnected homes were a liability. Anywhere criminals could get in, they freely moved everywhere.

A decade ago, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates made security the company's number one priority. Microsoft changed the way it develops software, took an aggressive and proactive approach to security fixes and put in locks, so to speak. But securing the Windows ecosystem was a slow process -- and still is. End users didn't change their behavior right away.

Meanwhile, cybercriminals assailed Windows with great success, creating vast botnets of infected PCs to advance their activities. This is hugely important to understand. Windows isn't the larger target because there are more PCs running the operating system. Cybercriminals succeeded creating botnets early on that are persistent, and they will continue to be unless one thing changes rapidly in the Wintel market: XP.

Botnet Backbones

Windows is quite a secure operating system today. But the majority of the install base uses Windows XP, which shipped long before Gates made security Microsoft's top priority. Granted, Service Pack 2's release in 2004, did much to improve Windows XP's security architecture. But escalated user privileges, among other features, make XP considerably more vulnerable to malware attacks than Windows Vista or 7. It's explosive when mixed with careless, or simply stupid, user behavior.

Windows botnets are the backbones of cybercriminal activity. They spread spam and phishing email, mask cybercriminal's IP identities and steal personal information on massive scales. Botnets are the ground forces in a global attack against Internet users. Their persistence is devastating.

In March 2011, Microsoft and law enforcement took down the Rustock botnet, which had operated since 2006. Global spam volumes fell by 40 percent following the takedown. Even then, with the head and tail cut off the beast, Rustock's body persisted, with the botnet still about half its size, based on infected IPs, three months later.

As the market slowly moves off XP, Windows botnets are threatened. How much depends on many factors, such as user behavior and development of new attack vectors. Cybercriminals need to look somewhere else, and OS X is easy pickings (same can be said of Android and iOS) since most users don't install anti-malware and a false sense of security leads many to take unnecessary risks.

The Flashback botnet is a huge concern. If not reduced or eliminated quickly, it will spread more Mac malware and lead other cybercriminals to increase their attacks against the OS X platform. If you look at the rise of cyber attacks against Windows there is more correlation to botnets' reach than number of Wintel PC users (that's hard data I'll put together some other time -- it is Saturday!).

This is the turning point, if Flashback is unchecked. Not because Mac market share has increased or OS X is any more vulnerable to exploitation than Windows 7. It's the successful creation of a viable Mac botnet and promise of others.

Photo Credits: maraga/Shutterstock
Take away developers' PCs and send them to Walmart

Publié: avril 21, 2012, 1:01am CEST par Chris Boss

Why is it so hard to get developers to realize the software they design is slow, bloated and does not have the "fast and fluid" experience we all would like? End users may not appreciate this about many programmers and their mindset, but many developers don't like to use old computers? They love their technology and demand leading-edge PCs.

Maybe it's time to take away their computers, and send them to Walmart to buy new ones.

Developers and Their Computers

When a programmer starts working on his software, he or she has to deal with two problems.

The first is speed of development. If it takes 20 minutes to compile an application, before he or she can even run it, then it takes forever to write software. Programming is often a write some code, compile, test, then write some more code, compile and test process, which just goes on and on. I can understand the need to be productive, so the speed of the development cycle is critical to getting software finished in a reasonable amount of time.

The second problem is that today's software often tends to be a bit sluggish, because it is so CPU intensive. The 32-bit color displays we use, high-resolution monitors, heavy emphasis on graphics and large databases we access, put heavy loads on applications. Software has to do a lot of work, just to do the basic stuff, so everything else we add as programmers, slows it down even more.

The solution for most programmers to these problems is to buy bigger and better computers.

Simply put (please correct me if I am wrong): developers rarely are satisfied with a cheap PC. Most likely they have the leading-edge in computers. Just give them that multicore CPU, with enough RAM for three computers and a mean, gamer's graphic card and a programmer is happy and productive. But this is the solution from a programmer's point of view and there is one big problem with it.

Everybody Else buys PCs from Walmart

The people who use their software often don't buy the bleeding-edge computers (unless they do CAD and 3D games or create videos). The average end user, even in businesses today, buys from Walmart or from manufacturers like Dell -- the more mass-market lower-cost models available.

These computers have lower-end CPUs and even if the microprocessors are dual-core they are lower-end dual core. Integrated graphic GPUs is the name of the game today for mass-market computers and simply put, they just don't perform like a decent discreet graphics card does.

The Programming Paradox

Programmers develop their software on the leading-edge computers, while end users consume their software on computers with likely one-quarter the performance of the developer's computer. This is the programming paradox. Hopefully most programmers have the sense to at least test their software on a low-end computer to make sure it runs well, but this still creates a problem. When the software does not run well, it is easy for a developer to say to himself: "That's what you get for having a cheap computer", rather than take a serious look at ways to improve performance in the software.

The Solution, but You won't like It

While I say this partly in jest, part of me wants to say this in all seriousness: Why not put away your computers, go to Walmart, buy the cheapest PCs you can find and make use them for the next few months. Let's see how well they do now.

OK, be Realistic

Most programmers will likely have a good laugh at the suggestion, chuckle and then move on. But guess what? I am partly serious. Not only can I suggest this, but I live by it. I have been developing a long time now (started in the 1980s), and I design and develop all my software on mass-market PCs. I do all my work on a low-end computer, with previous versions of Windows and then do my testing of the software on newer, faster, PCs with the more current operating system.

When I tell other programmers this, they usually laugh, since most would not work this way. But I have done this for years, and it changes how you look at the software you develop. Performance becomes a key issue. Currently, I work on a Windows XP computer, with a 2.5 GHz Celeron CPU and 768MB RAM.

I then test my software on my Windows 7 (and Windows 8 beta) computers. But even the more current computers I have are not leading edge. They are in the mass-market catagory. Now I did add some 3D graphic cards to two computers recently (Windows 7, Vista Home Basic/Windows 8) so I can test some OpenGL 3D stuff I have been working on, but even there I only purchased as inexpensive a 3D card I could find. Both were in the $50 range (normal retail price), so they are very low-end graphic cards.

Why? Really! Why?

Developing software, especially if you lean towards a more agile style of development, is something where you do a lot of coding, compiling, running and testing -- and continue this over and over again. I need to know how my software will run on the average computer immediately, not after some development time and later testing on a low end computer.

I feel that if my software runs well on a low-end computer , then guess what happens when it is run on better computers by end users. Simply put, "it flies" -- "fast and fluid" or what ever you want to call it. If a programmer spends a day working on their software, with a high end computer and then only tests it at the end of the day on the low end, mass market computer, it is much more difficult to go back and find what slows things down.

The Lesson

While I honestly don't expect most programmers to work the way I do (I am realistic), there is a lesson in this, which may benefit them.

Performance in software has a great deal to do with the mindset of the programmer developing it. Can developers put themselves into the shoes of those who will use their software? Even the choices we make in how (and on what computers) we develop the software can make a big difference. Performance should not be an afterthought, but instead needs to be a mindset.

Photo Credit: trekandshoot/Shutterstock

Chris Boss is an advanced Windows API programmer and developer of 10 year-old EZGUI, which is now version 5. He owns The Computer Workshop, which opened for businesses in the late 1980s. He originally developed custom software for local businesses. Now he develops programming tools for use with the PowerBasic compiler.