quarterly round up Prescription Google Glass Looking for January Launch Exciting news about Google Glass has been making the rounds for a while. And those of us, who have an eye – no pun intended - for the finer technology trends have certainly had Google Glass on our minds. The good news is that a New York based company, Rochester Optical, will be ready with their version of the Google Glass prescription lens by January 2014. The company has come out with an announcement saying that they will be launching prescription lens add on for Google Glass. Though Rochester Optical have clarified that these prescription lens are
not part of Google itself, this new product will work as an add-on for those who are interested in using Google Glass. The product is currently available and those interested just have to do is go on to their website, from where they can chose a matching color for their existing device and provide their prescription information. That is all that will be required for the lens to be shipped to you in two business days! The other bit of good news is that these lenses will be priced in the same range as the regular prescription lens.
Chromebooks is Good News, Say Experts You may remember that Chromebooks have been on the receiving end of quite a bit of slack. There are some techies who have sworn that Chromebooks will not see the light of day, but the laptops sales data is throwing up an entirely new story. Chromebooks have seen a good run so far and, mostly because of its competitive pricing, have been selling at top rate. Experts are saying that the holiday season is going to bring some more good news for the makers of Chromebooks. “We expect Chromebooks to continue to have a substantial presence in the entry-level price bands during the holidays. They have consistently accounted for 20-25 percent of the entry-level market for consumer notebooks in 2013 and given the typical consumer (and
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channel) price sensitivity during the holiday they are very well-positioned to expand that share over the holiday period. The significant marketing and advertising support Google is providing its partners is likely to be a key a feature in helping continue to raise awareness of the product and show consumers that it is a reasonably priced alternative to a tablet”, said Stephen Baker, Vice President of Industry Analysis for Consumer Technology for NPD group, a retail analysis group. This is a particularly interesting point to note as the Chromebook seems to be competition not only to other laptops, but to the tablet market also. It has also been noticed that the Chromebook has been doing good with students and saw a lurch in sales during the Back to School season.
9.3 Billion Mobile Phones by 2019, Says Ericsson Mobility Report A recent report released by Ericsson says that by the year 2019, the number of mobile phone subscriptions would go up to 9.3 billion. Given this whopping number, it would not come as much of a surprise that 60% of these mobile phones – amounting to 5.6 million – would be smart phones. Though it does seem like everywhere you look everyone has a smart phone, what might, however, come as a surprise to you is that smart phones make up only 25-30% of current mobile phone subscriptions globally. The global landscape for mobile phones, especially smart phones, is changing at a very fast pace. “The rapid pace of smart phone uptake has been phenomenal and is set to continue. It took more than five years to reach the first billion smart phone subscriptions, but it will take less than two to hit the 2 billion mark. Between now and 2019, smart phone subscriptions will triple”, said Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson. Here are some other interesting findings featured in the report: • 90 percent of the world’s population will be covered by WCDMA/HSPA in 2019 and 65 percent will be covered by LTE • Smartphone subscriptions will triple and smart phone traffic will increase 10 times between 2013 and 2019 • Video is growing 55 percent annually, and will represent more than 50 percent of the mobile data traffic, while social networking and web services will account for around 10 percent each in 2019.
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