Canonical to crowdfund first batch of Ubuntu Edge phones

Canonical is taking its innovative smartphone design directly to potential customers. The company has launched a crowdfunding campaign to build the original batch of its planned Ubuntu Edge devices.

Canonical hopes to raise US$32 million within 30 days, to build 40,000 units. It will use the Indiegogo service and the Paypal electronic payment service, to collect the contributions.

"We'll use crowdfunding to see if there is a real market," said Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder, in a press conference. "Today there are very few people who decide what will go into the next generation of handsets. And they can't possible get it right all the time. With crowdfunding, we can connect the passionate forward-thinking types directly to manufacturers."

Contributors who pledge $600 on Tuesday, or $830 for the remaining 29 days, will get one of the devices, which are due to be shipped in May 2014. Canonical will not build the phones should the full $32 million not be donated, though handset manufacturers have indicated a willingness to build the phones on their own, should they receive sufficient interest from the phone carriers.

Like Microsoft did with its Windows RT tablets, Canonical is hoping to kickstart interest among device manufacturers for an innovative hardware design by introducing its own device. Unlike Microsoft, Canonical has no plans to stay in the hardware market after this test run of devices. The company plans to break even in this project, though obviously it will benefit by raising awareness of the Ubuntu Edge.

Ubuntu sees two potential users of Ubuntu Edge: early adopting consumers and the organizations that wish to use the product as a combined smartphone and a sort of thin-client device to power worker desktops.

The Ubuntu Edge is a unique smartphone design in that it would be the first that could be used as a smartphone as well as a full-fledged personal computer, when docked to a monitor with an HDMI cable and linked to an optional keyboard and mouse.

Canonical's idea is that the user can use the phone when out and about, but switch to a PC when docked, thereby consolidating two devices into a single one.

"If you only have to buy one set of RAM, CPU and storage and CPU for your phone, your tablet and your PC, there are enormous savings there in doing that," Shuttleworth said. "If developers only have to target one platform, there are enormous benefits for them."

"This will be the first phone you can connect to a screen and get a full PC experience," Shuttleworth said. The Ubuntu Edge would dual boot both the Ubuntu desktop OS and Android.

As a result of this potential dual usage, the phone design calls for more muscular componentry than is typically found in a phone. It will feature a quad-core processor, though Canonical has not decided on which chip company will provide the CPU. It will also come with 4GB of working memory, or RAM, which is twice what high-end smartphones now offer.

"By putting more RAM in, we think we can get comfortable performance" on the desktop, Shuttleworth said.

The Ubuntu Edge will contain 128GB of storage. The 4.5 inch, 280 x 720 pixel display will be made from a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, and it will feature a novel silicon anode battery technology that promises longer charges.

The device will provide high-speed roaming with access to 4G-LTE broadband in both Europe and the U.S. It will also support dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, and NFC (near field communication). It will have two cameras, an eight megapixel rear camera and a two megapixel front facing camera.

Millions of phones 'at risk of hack'

 Mr Nohl said one in eight Sim cards might be vulnerable A flaw with mobile phones' Sim card technology is putting millions of people at risk of being spied on and robbed, according to a leading security expert.

 
Karsten Nohl has said he has found a way to discover some Sims' digital keys by sending them a special text message.

He warned criminals could potentially use the technique to listen in on calls or steal cash.
Industry organisation - the GSMA - said it was looking into the findings.

"Karsten's early disclosure to the GSMA has given us an opportunity for preliminary analysis," said a spokeswoman for the association, which represents global network operators,
"We have been able to consider the implications and provide guidance to those network operators and Sim vendors that may be impacted.

"It would appear that a minority of Sims produced against older standards could be vulnerable."
Mr Nohl has posted preliminary details of the vulnerability on the website of his company, Berlin-based Security Research Labs.

Intercepted calls Sim (subscriber identity module) cards effectively act as a security token, authenticating a user's identity with their network operator.

They also store a limited amount of data such as text messages, contacts' telephone numbers and details used for some applications - including a number of payment and banking services.

 Mr Nohl says that mobile banking customers in Africa rely on the security offered by their Sim cards Mr Nohl said he had found a way to discover the authentication code by sending a device a text message masquerading as a communication from the user's mobile operator.

The message contained a bogus digital signature for the network.

He said most phones cut contact after recognising the signature as being a fake - but in about a quarter of cases, the handsets sent back an error message including an encrypted version of the Sim's authentication code.

The encryption is supposed to prevent the authentication code being discovered, but Mr Nohl said that in about half of these cases it was based on a 1970s coding system called Digital Encryption Standard (DES), which was once thought secure but could now be cracked "within two minutes on a standard computer".
Once the attacker had this information, Mr Nohl said, they could download malware to the Sim written in the Java programming language.

He said these could be used by the hacker to send texts from the device to premium rate numbers they had set up, to discover and listen in to the target's voicemail messages and to track their location.

In addition, he warned that combined with other techniques, it could act as a surveillance tool.
"Sim cards generate all the keys you use to encrypt your calls, your SMS and your internet traffic,"

"If someone can capture the encrypted data plus have access to your Sim card, they can decrypt it.
"Operators often argue that it's not possible to listen in on 3G or 4G calls - now with access to the Sim card, it very much is."
Mr Nohl said that his research suggested about an eighth of all Sim cards were vulnerable to the hack attack - representing between 500 million to 750 million devices.

Although Mr Nohl would not reveal at this time in which countries DES encryption remained most common, he did say that Africa-based users had particular cause for concern.

"Here in Europe we use a Sim card to make phone calls and texts, but many people in Africa also use them for mobile banking," he said.

"Someone can steal their entire bank account by copying their Sim card.

"That adds a certain urgency because you imagine fraudsters would be most interested in breaking into their Sim cards - especially when it can be done remotely."

Black Hat

Mr Nohl said he expected network operators would not take long to act on his study, and should be able to provide an over-the-air download to protect subscribers against the vulnerability.

The GSMA said that it had not yet seen the full details of his research, but planned to study it to pinpoint any issues that could be fixed.

It added that "there is no evidence to suggest that today's more secure Sims, which are used to support a range of advanced services, will be affected".

The UN's telecoms agency - the International Telecommunications Union - said that it would now contact regulators and other government agencies worldwide to ensure they were aware of the threat.
Mr Nohl said he planned planned to reveal more information about the vulnerability at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas later this month.

However, he said he would not publish a survey showing which phone owners were most at risk until December to give operators an opportunity to address the problem.

BlackBerry Chief Admits Release of New Phones in U.S. Was Flawed

But Mr. Heins, speaking at the company’s annual meeting, told investors BlackBerry just needed more time for a turnaround — and he again sought their patience.

Not everyone was biting. One shareholder, referring to one of the new phones, the BlackBerry Z10, told Mr. Heins: “My sense is that the rollout of the Z10 was a disaster.”

“Were we perfect at the launch?” Mr. Heins responded. “Probably not. Was it a disaster? I don’t think so.”

After more than two years of development, the new phones and their new operating system were supposed to give BlackBerry smartphones capabilities similar to those of phones made by Apple and Samsung, the dominant forces in the market. But hopes have vanished that the new phones would swiftly increase market share in the United States — now just 0.9 percent, according to a survey from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

Late last month, BlackBerry said that it had shipped just 2.7 million of the new models, about a million fewer than analysts expected. That disappointing news set BlackBerry’s stock sharply downward and eliminated the possibility that the annual meeting would be a turnaround celebration.

When Mr. Heins introduced the company’s new phones in New York this year, he spoke to an excited crowd, a situation that was repeated at a meeting this spring with enthusiastic developers. But on Tuesday, when he faced a crowd of shareholders and questions about the weak sales of those phones, the reception was far more muted.

And maybe that is the best he could have hoped for. A few weeks ago, when the shipment numbers were released, the company also reported an $84 million loss in the latest quarter. BlackBerry shares still have not recovered — and a chorus of harsh questions about the direction of the business have not gone away.

Mr. Heins again warned investors to expect more losses during the current quarter, while the company increases its spending on marketing and other promotions for the new BlackBerry 10 line of phones. And although the company has spent the last two years saying the phones were the centerpiece to its future, Mr. Heins repeatedly said on Tuesday that “we are not a devices-only company,” and he outlined his hopes for growth in its data services business.

He attributed the disappointing reception for BlackBerry 10 to the United States market.

“It is really a challenge in the U.S.,” Mr. Heins said at the meeting, which was webcast from the University of Waterloo in Ontario. When another shareholder asked him why the company had been unable to win over American investors, particularly ones based in New York, he said: “I would absolutely admit that this is an uphill battle.”

Richard Piasentin, the managing director of sales and marketing for the United States, left BlackBerry last month, Adam Emery, a spokesman for the company, said on Tuesday.

Some of problems with the BlackBerry 10 release seemed more related to the products than to advertising or lack of prominence in carriers’ stores, which had been cited as problems.

Some buyers of the Q10, a model that includes BlackBerry’s signature keyboard, have said they were disappointed to discover that it initially could not synchronize calendar and contact information with corporate systems that use Microsoft Outlook. Others discovered mail syncing issues that they had not had with previous BlackBerrys. And although BlackBerry continues to expand the apps offered for the phone, many important ones are missing, and assessments of their overall quality are mixed.

Among the disappointed was Mark R. McQueen, the president and chief executive of Wellington Financial in Toronto. While Mr. McQueen is a BlackBerry loyalist, his frustration with the Q10 became so great that he wrote two detailed posts enumerating its problems on his blog, which is widely followed in Canada’s financial community. He wrote that the phone’s shortcomings had prompted him to sell his BlackBerry shares at a loss.

“The sad reality is that BlackBerry management has failed to deliver on the incredibly modest expectations of someone who has held shares in the company, on and off, since the late 1990s,” Mr. McQueen wrote.

Many technology reviewers praised several features of the new phones. Mike Gikas, the senior editor for electronics at Consumer Reports, said the new phones were “pretty good but they don’t have the pizazz of top-shelf performers. No one’s dying for these phones.”

He said that whenever he was asked for his thoughts about the new BlackBerrys, “the next question is: ‘Do you think they’re going to be around?’ And that’s a consideration for people on a two-year contract.”

Myanmar selects two telecom licensees, paving way for affordable mobile phones

Myanmar is a step closer to offering affordable mobile services after selecting two international carriers to launch telecommunications networks in one of Asia's last untapped markets.

 

Norway's Telenor and Qatar's Ooredoo were named the winners in a government tender that is opening Myanmar's once tightly regulated mobile services sector. The carriers will help provide badly needed telecommunications infrastructure in a nation of 60 million, where only about 5 percent of the people use mobile phones.

 

Both carriers plan to roll out new networks in Myanmar once the nation's government finalizes the licenses, the companies said in statements posted online. The licences are expected to be awarded to the two successful applicants pursuant to the new Telecommunications Law which the Parliament is expected to adopt in the current session, the Myanmar government said in a statement.

 

Telenor will bring 3G HSPA and 4G LTE technologies, and plans to launch commercial mobile services in both voice and data in 2014. Ooreddo said its investment will create new jobs.

 

The networks are expected to help Myanmar reach its goal of raising mobile penetration to 75 and 80 percent over the next three years. In the past, mobile services were not only tightly regulated by the country's then military rule, but also expensive. SIM cards, alone, once could cost US$250, or more.

 

But since 2011, Myanmar's new civilian government has ushered in new democratic reforms that promise to modernize the country. Starting this year, the nation began offering a limited supply of SIM cards for the low price of $1.50.

 

By awarding the licenses, the government hopes to make cheap SIM cards and affordable mobile service plans a norm in the country. Already, smartphones makers such as Samsung and HTC have entered the nation's market, and many local handset dealers have set up new shops in Yangon, the country's largest city.

 

More mobile handsets also means that Myanmar's Internet penetration could dramatically rise over the next few years. Only about 1 percent of the population currently go online, and many people do not own PCs or know how to use them. Cheap smartphones, however, could bring millions in Myanmar to the Web, according to local industry leaders.

 

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Most Android threats would be blocked if phones ran latest Android version, report says

Over three quarters of Android threats are malicious apps that send SMS messages to premium rate numbers and could be mitigated by a protection feature present in Android 4.2, according to researchers from networking vendor Juniper Networks.

 

However, because manufacturers and carriers fail to update Android end user devices in a timely fashion, only 4 percent of devices currently run Android 4.2, even though this version was released more than six months ago.

 

From March 2012 to March 2013 the number of mobile threats grew by 614 percent to reach a total of 276,259 malicious samples, researchers from Juniper Networks’ Mobile Threat Center (MTC) said in a report released Wednesday. Of those malicious applications, 92 percent target the Android operating system, they said.

 

The surge of Android malware in the past two years is consistent with the findings of other security vendors that track mobile threats. This growth is primarily driven by Android’s “commanding share” of the global smartphone market, the Juniper researchers said.

 

The majority of Android malware, 77 percent, are apps that earn money for their creators by either requiring users to send SMS messages to premium rate numbers or by surreptitiously sending such messages on their own. These threats usually masquerade as legitimate applications or come bundled in pirated apps.

 

The Juniper researchers estimate that every successful attack using such an app can bring an immediate profit of $10 for the attacker on average.

 

Android 4.2 introduced a feature that detects attempts to send SMS messages to special rate numbers, also known as short codes, and prompts users for confirmation. Unfortunately, due to the Android market fragmentation, only 4 percent of Android devices are currently running Android 4.2.x.



This estimation is based on data collected from Google Playover a 14-day period ending on May 1, 2013, the Juniper researchers said. Based on the same data, the most common versions of Android found on devices are Android 2.3.3 to 2.3.7, also known as “Gingerbread,” with a 36.4 percent coverage and Android 4.0.3 and 4.0.4, also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich,” with 25.5 percent.

 

The lack of regular updates for Android devices contributes to the growth of Android malware, because the latest protections added by Google to the operating systems reach users too late or never, the researchers said.

 

The second most common type of Android threats are spyware applications that capture and transfer sensitive user data to attackers. These account for 19 percent of all malicious samples collected by Juniper’s MTC.

 

Some information-stealing Android Trojan apps discovered during the past year and distributed through drive-by downloads or phishing emails could also pose a threat to enterprise environments, the Juniper researchers said.



Data collected from enterprise mobile devices running Juniper’s Junos Pulse endpoint collaboration and security software showed at least one infection on 3.1 percent of such devices.

 

While that figure is not large enough to raise a significant alarm, it is proof that the threat of mobile malware to corporate devices is not only theoretical, the Juniper researchers said. “We expect the presence of mobile malware in the enterprise to grow exponentially in the coming years.”