Tag Archives: QWERTY

BlackBerry Is Still Underrated on Wall Street

By Adam Levine-Weinberg, The Motley Fool

BBRY Chart

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For a prominent company that’s frequently in the news, BlackBerry is one of the most misunderstood stocks in the market today. Too much attention focuses on the company’s past missteps — which allowed Apple and Google to rapidly overtake it — rather than BlackBerry’s future prospects. Similarly, now that the new BB10 OS has come to market, too many people are focusing on the success or failure of the Z10 (BlackBerry’s first BB10 device) rather than the ecosystem’s overall potential.

To be “successful,” the Z10 would need to sell perhaps 2 million units per quarter — just a tiny fraction of Apple’s iPhone sales or Samsung‘s Galaxy S series sales. However, even that level of sales is not necessary to justify a higher valuation for BlackBerry, because the Z10 is just a small part of BlackBerry’s future. The much more important Q10 smartphone — equipped with BlackBerry’s signature QWERTY keyboard — is just hitting the market now. Furthermore, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has already revealed that lower-cost BB10 smartphones will come to market later this year, probably in the fall. Extremely low market expectations and a strong product roadmap will most likely combine to generate strong returns for BlackBerry investors.

Cheap stock
The investment case for BlackBerry is straightforward. First — and most obviously — the stock trades for $15, which is below book value. In other words, the company is priced to never earn a profit in the future and eventually go bankrupt. This is a big change from 2011, when the stock peaked above $70, or 2008, when BlackBerry shares briefly traded for more than $140:

BlackBerry 10-Year Price Chart; data by YCharts

To put it another way, for the past year, investors have been able to buy BlackBerry stock at prices that had not been seen since the company was a small start-up.

Great product
Second, BlackBerry has a competitive product again. The BB10 operating system is great for multitasking and includes several unique features that may appeal to current iPhone or Android users. Many people already claim that iOS is getting stale and that Apple has lost its touch for innovation since Steve Jobs passed away. More recently, Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has underwhelmed many reviewers, who see it as a great phone, but not a big improvement over the SIII.

In all likelihood, most iPhone users will stay within the iOS ecosystem, and most Android users will stay within Android going forward. But consumer desires for something “fresh” could drive a significant number of people to BlackBerry over the next couple of years. This may get BlackBerry to only 10% market share, but the smartphone market has grown tremendously since the original BlackBerry went out of fashion. Today, having 10% market share would involve having BlackBerry sell more phones than it did at the peak of its popularity.

Loyal user base
Lastly, BlackBerry has an extremely loyal high-end user base of 20

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Lenovo IdeaCentre Q190 review: Call it a full-figured micro PC

Compared with Intel’s diminutive NUC and Sapphire’s slim and sexy Edge VS8, you might think of Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Q190 as a full-figured micro PC. It’s not the smallest such model, but it boasts a ton of ports, it has enough interior space to move air over its components, and it has a Blu-ray drive option. If you’re looking for a home-theater PC, those are important features.

Design and ports

The Q190 is a small monolith measuring 6.10 by 7.55 inches. It’s 0.86 inch thick (expanding to 1.5 inches thick with its piggyback slot-feed optical drive attached). A stand that stabilizes the unit when upright adds about another half-inch of height, but Lenovo also provides a VESA mounting bracket so you can mount the Q190 on the back of a display.

Robert Cardin
A drop-down panel (lowered here) hides the Q190’s front ports.

Mic and headphone jacks, two USB 3.0 ports, and a six-in-one media-card reader are hidden behind a door on the front of the unit. On the back you’ll find HDMI and VGA video outputs, three USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, an optical S/PDIF port, and the power jack for the AC adapter. The computer and the optical drive both have Kensington lock points. The Q190 also has a built-in 802.11b/g/n wireless network adapter. The bundled keyboard and mouse are middle-of-the-road units, but Lenovo’s palm-sized Enhanced Multimedia Remote, which combines a backlit QWERTY keyboard and fingertip mouse and costs $80, is worth a look if you plan to use the system from your sofa.

The Q190 is not quite as quiet as the nearly noiseless NUC, or the Edge with its super-quiet fan, but we didn’t find its noise signature to be bothersome.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Analysts Are Still Too Pessimistic About BlackBerry's Profitability

By Adam Levine-Weinberg, The Motley Fool

BBRY Chart

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BlackBerry shares jumped more than 6% on Wednesday after an analyst at Morgan Stanley upgraded the company from underweight to overweight. BlackBerry shares have more than doubled in the past six months, and have gained nearly 25% since dropping below $13 in early March.

Source: BlackBerry Price Chart, data by YCharts

Despite BlackBerry’s recent gains, I believe that the stock has significant additional upside. Analysts are still too pessimistic about the company, which continues to weigh on the stock price. However, the new BB10 devices should quickly return BlackBerry to profitability by boosting revenue and gross margin.

Margin concerns linger
While Morgan Stanley upgraded BlackBerry on Wednesday morning, analyst Ehud Gelblum still valued its smartphone business at zero. His $22 price target was based on the value of the services business and the “terminal value” of the company. He points out that BlackBerry probably experienced negative gross margins for its smartphone business in recent quarters, but expects gross margins to rebound to 20% long term, just enough to offset R&D and marketing costs. In other words, Gelblum’s upgrade simply hinges on BlackBerry’s smartphone business not losing money. This equivocal opinion is reflected in Gelblum’s estimate that BlackBerry will produce EPS of just $0.23 this year, on revenue of $13.92 billion.

While Gelblum’s analysis seems very conservative, many other analysts are far more bearish. Vocal BlackBerry critic James Faucette of Pacific Crest reiterated his negative view on Wednesday. He argues that BlackBerry will not even be able to sell 3 million high-end phones per quarter and will have to discount its high-end models, leading to lower gross margins. Thus, he expects the device business to continue to burn cash, overwhelming the profit generated by BlackBerry’s service business.

Sales will be fine
Apple’s iPhone has certainly eroded BlackBerry’s traditional enterprise customer base over the past few years, particularly in the U.S. Samsung is also trying to gain share among business customers by adding security features to its Galaxy phones in an attempt to overcome Android’s reputation for security flaws. However, as I have argued previously, BlackBerry has nearly 20 million users in the U.S., U.K., and Canada alone. Clearly, these individuals are very loyal to the brand. They likely would have otherwise switched to the iPhone or a Google Android phone already.

These loyal BlackBerry fans have already begun upgrading to the new Z10 phone, where it is available. However, many of them are probably waiting for the Q10 model, which features a physical QWERTY keyboard. After all, the latter is the primary factor differentiating BlackBerry from other smartphone vendors, and is arguably the biggest barrier preventing many users from switching to the iPhone.

With a captive market of 20 million to 30 million high-end BlackBerry users (across all countries), BlackBerry should have no trouble selling more than 3 million high-end smartphones per quarter after production fully ramps up. In fact, I expect …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Google Launches Hindi Input App

By Kevin Chen, The Motley Fool

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Google‘s Internationalization Team has launched an Android app that makes it easier to communicate in Devanagari script on mobile devices. 

Available through Google Play, the Hindi Input app enables users to communicate in two ways. In transliteration mode, users can type any Hindi word in English, and the app will automatically convert the word to Devanagari script. However, if users hit the globe button, the keyboard changes to a full Devanagari script keyboard; the keyboard organizes the Hindi consonants alphabetically across two pages. 

Google said it began working on this app after recognizing the difficulty mobile users typing in Hindi had with the traditional QWERTY keyboard. Google has also released other Hindi language and Indic input tools available on Chrome extensions, Windows applications, and Google Cloud products.

 

Transliteration. Source: Google India Blog. 

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The article Google Launches Hindi Input App originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Kevin Chen has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Google. The Motley Fool owns shares of Google. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

BlackBerry Z10 Launching on AT&amp;T on March 22

By Evan Niu, CFA, The Motley Fool

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BlackBerry‘s new flagship Z10 smartphone running the new BlackBerry 10 platform is set to launch on AT&T‘s network on March 22. The wireless carrier will begin pre-sales starting tomorrow and the device will be priced at $200 with a standard two-year contract.

The Z10 features a full touchscreen while the Q10 model carries a physical QWERTY keyboard and AT&T has already confirmed its intention to launch the Q10 at a later time once the device is available. The pricing of the Z10 is in line with Verizon , which has announced the same $200 subsidized price, but has yet to announce availability.

BlackBerry unveiled its new platform on Jan. 30, and said delays for launching in the U.S. were related to carrier testing.

 

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The article BlackBerry Z10 Launching on AT&T on March 22 originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Verizon Communications. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

RIM To Launch Six BB10 Smartphones In Make-Or-Break Year

By Trefis Team, Contributor While RIM will initially launch only two BB10 devices – one touchscreen smartphone and the other with a QWERTY keypad – the other four (and possibly more) devices will be launched over the course of the year as the company not only looks to win over customers in the developed markets but also target those regions in international markets where the BB brand is still pretty popular.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Roccat MK Ryos Pro keyboard offers fully programmable lighting (video)

Las Vegas—Roccat has been in the PC peripheral game for some time, but this year they’re showcasing something really neat: a mechanical gaming keyboard with programmable key lighting and customizable Cherry MX mechanical key switches. If that reads like gibberish, let me back up and explain that mechanical keyboards are awesome because they offer much more tactile feedback than your typical keyboard — check out our mechanical keyboard guide to learn more.

The Roccat MK Ryos Pro’s SDK offers fully programmable lighting
Roccat’s Power Grid app lets you control your PC remotely

That’s not all: Roccat is going even deeper down the hardcore hardware nerd rabbit hole by shipping the MK Ryos Pro with an SDK (software development kit) for the lighting. It’s a neat step forward, but you’ll need to have some basic coding skills to program the keyboard to light up the way you want it to. If you do, you can configure the MK Ryos Pro to light up specific keys at specific times; that makes it possible to hack your keyboard so it lights up the QWERTY keys while you’re at full health and gradually dims them from right to left as your health bar drops, or have the visual equalized for your music player translated into lighting patterns on your backlit keyboard. If your coding skills aren’t up to snuff you’ll need to wait for enterprising Roccat-enthusiasts to get to work. Unfortunately we don’t know exactly how much they’re going to be asking for the MK Ryos Pro, but we know it should go on sale in the first quarter of 2013.

But wait, there’s more : Roccat is showing off a free iOS app that lets you wirelessly monitor and control your PC. It’s called Power-Grid, and while it’s still in beta (and has been for some time) I spent some time testing it at CES and it works surprisingly well when connected to a PC via Wi-Fi (Bluetooth support is in the works). You use it by downloading the free Power-Grid app to your smartphone and installing the free Power-Grid software on your PC, then pairing them up and personalizing the phone app for your needs.

You can use the Power-Grid app to remotely mix and control your PC volume, monitor vital PC stats like available memory or GPU temperature, launch programs and communicate via social networks, Skype and Teamspeak. You can also download custom grids for specific games that let you control the game with your phone; this may seem a little silly (after all, who wants to try and play Starcraft II with an iPhone) but in practice it works well for managing skills in slower games (like spells in Skyrim) or broadcasting orders in fast-paced multiplayer games like League of Legends. There will be a few custom game grids available at launch, and more are expected throughout the year. The Power-Grid apps should be available soon and will be free to download and use, though it’s possible that premium features may be introduced in the future for a small fee.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Virtual laser keyboards look cool, but might not be ready for prime time (video)

LAS VEGAS— Flashy products and unique gadgets certainly seem nifty at a glance, but they don’t always deliver as promised. Take this CTX VK200 Keyfob Virtual Laser Keyboard, for example. This keyboard is supposed to provide the comforts of typing on a full-sized keyboard when packing one is difficult—it’s actually a small projector that can display a functional virtual keyboard onto any flat surface.

This full-sized QWERTY keyboard projected in bright red onto a demo table caught my eye at CES on Tuesday, but when I went to try it out, I couldn’t successfully type. The device syncs with your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, but the Bluetooth connection wasn’t the problem. The battery life on both projector and the demo smartphone were fine. And when others typed, the text displayed on the screen without an issue.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld