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Thursday, January 2, 2014
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Tune in Sunday for our live coverage of Hardware Battlefield where you can see 15 great hardware startups compete head to head for a top prize of $50,000 and recognition as one of the top hardware startups of 2014. This project has been months in the making and there will be plenty of fun and surprises – as well as all of our regular CES coverage from our live team on the show floor.


But best of all, TechCrunch is pleased to announce that the amazing Martha Stewart – lifestyle queen and Maker guru –will serve as a hardware startups judge at Hardware Battlefield at CES. We are thrilled that the inimitable creator, designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia will be sharing her expertise in product creation and brand building. We are delighted and honored to be teaming with Martha for this exciting event.


You can see the entire schedule right here and you’ll be able to watch the show and all our coverage live right here on TechCrunch. This is shaping up to be the most exciting CES ever and we want you to join us.


You can keep up to date on news coming out of the show by visiting our special Hardware Battlefield page and you can tweet at us using the #cescrunch hashtag. We’ll be doing some great giveaways, lots of live roaming, and the competition will be hot and heavy in our booth outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center.


Are you in Las Vegas and don’t have tickets to CES? Come by anyway! We’ll have space for an audience to watch the competition and who knows – maybe you can join us next year with your amazing product!


CES 2014







11:10 AM

Tune in Sunday for our live coverage of Hardware Battlefield where you can see 15 great hardware startups compete head to head for a top pr...

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Screen Shot 2014-01-02 at 9.43.15 AM

This morning, online advertising network Chikita released a short report detailing the changes it saw in the tablet space after Christmas compared to the period directly before. The report shows a small decline in Apple’s tablet dominance, strong momentum for Amazon, and perhaps surprisingly, second highest in-class growth for Microsoft’s Surface line of devices.


What Chikita found is that Microsoft’s Surface tablets picked up 0.5% usage share in the United States and Canadian tablet markets during the post-Christmas period. Assuming that more consumer-friendly tablets are gifted in the holiday period than business-facing devices, we can assume that Microsoft moved more Surface 2 devices than Surface Pro 2 devices at Christmas.


This data therefore affirms the other market indications that the Surface 2 tablet hybrid is selling well.


Why are we looking so closely for data of this sort? The simple answer is that the Surface project remains so nascent, and yet so important for Microsoft’s future as an OEM and platform (that thing called Windows) that we need to track its pulse as closely as possible.


Microsoft will provide us with a single Surface figure when it reports its calendar fourth quarter earnings: revenue. But that blunt statistic will only get us so far. That Microsoft picked up 0.5% usage share in the period to land at 2.3% indicates that as a percentage of its total share, this holiday was big for it, even if its total share gain pales compared to Apple’s dominance.


Amazon picked up 0.6% usage share in the period, on what Chikita calls the Kindle Fire’s “remarkable run to the top of the Android tablet marketplace.” Amazon ended the period with 9.4% usage share.


Usage share of course is not directly commensurate with market share.


With the help of Amazon, Android continues to outpace Windows handily, but there was a minor change of the guards that is worth nothing:



Microsoft’s Surface lineup also continued its impressive year end run. Surface users generated more tablet traffic than all Google Nexus tablet users following the holiday, making Microsoft the fourth-largest source of continental tablet Web traffic should it maintain the lion’s share of this latest share growth.



Of course, Nexus devices are only one part of the Android tablet ecosystem.


Looking at the above broadly, innovation by partners is helping keep Android growing, while Windows claws market share from tablet leaders. That Apple is shedding minor share in the face of the twin challenge is not surprising.







9:55 AM

This morning, online advertising network Chikita released a short report detailing the changes it saw in the tablet space after Christmas c...

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A teacher standing at the front of the room at a chalkboard is one of the iconic images of education. Smartboards and other digital technologies, however, are changing how classrooms are structured, how teachers teach, and how students learn. "We're all about increasing student engagement and achievement," said Neil Currie, director of education marketing with SMART Technologies. "It's about student achievement at the core. We have research that shows that interactive whiteboards increase student engagement."


7:23 AM

A teacher standing at the front of the room at a chalkboard is one of the iconic images of education. Smartboards and other digital techno...

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As New Year's Day approaches, I'm reminded of the Chinese curse, "May you be born in interesting times," because 2014 is likely to be a very interesting year. I expect the Democrats will be trying to distance themselves from their failed Affordable Care Act, while Republicans will be doing their best to avoid actually reading it before attacking. There are some impressive trends emerging that will make 2014 very, very different, and might even fix the problem we have with a U.S. Congress that thought Dumb and Dumber was a how-to film.


7:23 AM

As New Year's Day approaches, I'm reminded of the Chinese curse, "May you be born in interesting times," because 2014 is...

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Screenshot 2014-01-02 09.35.00

The console wars are in full swing, and no contender is more focused on the pure gaming experience as the PS4.


Sony’s next-gen PlayStation is not like the Xbox One, which is leaning more toward the media console space than ever before. Instead, the PS4 is built squarely for the gaming enthusiast.


The PS4 is essentially an x86-based personal computer, making it easy for developers to build new titles and port over PC games, and it comes with a DualShock 4 controller. It’s a beauty, with a Vita-style touchpad and Kinect-like capabilities thanks to a 3D “stereo” camera accessory.


However, is it worth rushing out and getting one right this second?


Probably not.


The PS4 is a beautiful machine that not only enhances graphics but elevates the entire experience. However, game variety is a bit of an issue early on. Plus, the console probably has a pretty long lifespan (at least five years), with price drops along the way.







7:10 AM

The console wars are in full swing, and no contender is more focused on the pure gaming experience as the PS4 . Sony’s next-gen PlayStation...

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Here in Silicon Valley we are currently worried about a major transportation strike, and I doubt many on either side yet realize that this is likely to accelerate the move to automate most of the related jobs. There is little doubt the problem we are currently seeing here will be virtually gone in a decade, but I doubt the workers will be very happy with the solution. Often we don't anticipate the impact of a coming major technology. In fact, even companies that introduce the technology may not benefit from it in the end.


5:24 AM

Here in Silicon Valley we are currently worried about a major transportation strike, and I doubt many on either side yet realize that this...

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Samsung isn’t off to a great start for 2014 – during its first full day of trading of the new year, it lost 4.6 percent of its stock price value, which amounts to a more than $8 billion drop in market value, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The drop is likely attributable to increasing lack of confidence from investors in Samsung’s ability to continue to grow its mobile business.


Outlook for the company’s upcoming quarterly results are good – analysts estimate that they will see an increase in profit derived from their mobile business, which is the big powerhouse at the company when it comes to driving earnings. But that increase will be off the pace from the previous quarter, and the fear is that in general Samsung’s ability to continue to see increasing gains in its mobile business has come to an end.


The problem for Samsung comes from a number of different developments in the mobile market over the past year. First, there’s the fact that smartphone penetration at the top-end of the market is now pretty wide-reaching, meaning there’s theoretically much less opportunity to sell high-end devices than there might have been previously.


There’s also ample price pressure making its way into the world of smartphone sales. Google’s Nexus devices continue to set examples for high quality hardware at lower, contract free prices, and now Motorola is also offering extreme value for money with the $179 Moto G, and the just-reduced Moto X at $399, a price drop made permanent earlier this week. To compete with Google and the Google-owned Motorola on price, Samsung would inevitably find margins on its products to be lower than usual since the budget devices become more important, driving down mobile profit overall.


Samsung held a conference designed specifically to address the concerns of analysts and investors back in November last year, where it tried to reassure its backers and market watchers that it had the right plans in place to continue growth. Despite that, investors seem unconvinced: stock price was mostly flat coming out of that event, and both for the last day of 2013 and now the first day of 2014, price has dipped considerably.







4:40 AM

Samsung isn’t off to a great start for 2014 – during its first full day of trading of the new year, it lost 4.6 percent of its stock price v...

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