Plus life at a tech blog, a 'curtain' for iOS?, Almunia stands firm, Skype sips, and more
A burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
China clocks a record 100m smartphone shipments in Q4 2013 >> Counterpoint Technology Market Research
As well as being a bigger market than North America and Europe combined:
• China accounts for one in three smartphones shipped globally
• China smartphone penetration of total mobile phone shipped in 2013 stands at a surprising 88%. Feature Phones are dead in China
• Chinese OEMs enjoy a combined 70% of the total smartphone market share. A tough market for international brands as smartphone channel now tightly controlled by operators
Stronger international brands such as Samsung & Apple together control a combined 26% of the rest of the 30% market
Also: AOSP (and a few percent of Google Android) make up 91% of total shipments there in 2013.
Skype 4.7 for Android: your battery is breathing a sigh of relief >> Skype Blogs
With Skype 4.7 for Android, we are introducing aggressive battery savings that will allow most of our users to leave Skype running without noticeably affecting battery life. It has been a challenging process, because to do this we've had to transform to the way Skype technology works. Actually we're still undergoing that transformation – the process is not yet complete. But we are now at a stage where you can enjoy the fruits of our labour.
Battery demand cut by 75%, apparently.
EU unlikely to revisit Google deal, antitrust chief says >> WSJ.com
European Union antitrust authorities are unlikely to revisit a controversial deal with Google aimed at addressing concerns that the company was abusing its dominance of online searches, the bloc's antitrust chief said Tuesday.
The European Commission, which acts as the bloc's competition watchdog, announced a settlement with the search engine last month aimed at drawing a line under the long-running case. But the settlement has come under fire on multiple fronts, from Google's competitors as well as politicians.
"I can't rule out that some of their arguments will make us change our position," EU antitrust chief Joaquín Almunia said in testimony to a European Parliament committee.
Confessions of an ex-tech journalist >> Medium
Bekah Grant worked at Venturebeat, where she wrote nearly 1,740 articles in 20 months (an average of five per day):
Busy days were a blur of furious typing, rushed calls, and ignoring everything that wasn't news (like food and water). There would be days with 20 funding announcements, on top of everything else we covered. VB writers could have a post up in 15 minutes if the situation demanded. Online publishing is a horse race and speed is critical.
When a story breaks, you could take a couple hours to do research, call to sources, and write a contextualized, edited piece — but by that time, 5 of your competitors will have posted on the story. You will look slow and readers will have moved onto the next thing. The reality is that original reporting and careful editing fall by the wayside in the desire to be fast.
Worth reading in full at your leisure.
Bristol man gets revenge by texting works of Shakespeare to rogue internet seller >> Bristol Post
Edd Joseph, 24, who lives in the city with his girlfriend, was furious when he bought a PS3 games console for £80 and the seller failed to deliver the goods.
So Edd decided to take his revenge by sending him the entire works of the Bard - by text.
Edd discovered he could copy the words from the internet and paste them into a text message - without costing him a penny on his unlimited mobile phone package.
He sends it as one text but his victim can only receive them in 160 character chunks - meaning the 37 works of Shakespeare will buzz through in 29,305 individual texts.
Give me all your bitcoins >> The Nib
Mugging gets a lot more complicated in the world of digital money.
Startups with an Apple flavour >> FT.com
Tim Bradshaw looks at what ex-Apple staff are doing in Silicon Valley:
[Mike] Matas says working at Facebook can be very different from Apple. Now it is a question of working with users who generate their own content, he says: "You have to design for other people's stuff." While Apple's teams were siloed and rarely met their counterparts in other departments, Facebook is much more collaborative. "A lot of stuff that Paper has developed has gone out into other parts of the company," he says.
Nonetheless, Paper was developed in secrecy for more than a year before its surprise unveiling in January. That seems more like Apple's approach than the internet companies'. Facebook and Google often post new services to the web to see how users respond, before improving them based on large-scale, real-world behaviour.
Mr Grignon says Facebook's sometime motto of "move fast and break things" sits uncomfortably with many longstanding Apple employees. "It's a recklessness, in a way, of engineering. It works well for folks like Facebook but Apple engineers going into companies like that can experience a certain level of frustration."
Best wishes to Marc Whitten as he departs Xbox >> Microsoft
Following the launch of Xbox One, the most successful launch in Xbox history, and the recent launch of "Titanfall," the most anticipated game of this generation, the Xbox team is sad to share today that Marc Whitten, Chief Product Officer of Xbox, will be leaving the team to become Chief Product Officer of Sonos.
Sonos is attracting notable executives - Patrick Spence (formerly UK MD for BlackBerry) and now Whitten.
Curtain mesh effect on iOS >> Vine
Yes, it's a Vine by Marcus Eckert, showing off his new framework Meek. Hard to decide whether it's "cool!" or "ewww!"
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