Thurrott Daily: December 2

Here’s some other news from around the web today.

15/12/02 11:49:43 AM

Microsoft spreads the spirit of the season on 5th Ave

Have you seen this ad?

It’s nice, right? Here’s what’s cool about it: Apple agreed to let Microsoft film the ad and use its employees. Awww.

IDC: Tablet shipments will fall 8 percent in 2015

The market researchers at IDC have more bad news for tablet makers: Shipments of tablets will decline over 8 percent, year-over-year, to about 211 million units.

The new forecast follows three consecutive quarters of declining worldwide tablet shipments in 2015

Detachables—or what we might call “Surface and those devices that copy Surface”—are the one bright spot, IDC says.

“The proliferation of detachable offerings from hardware vendors continues to help drive this switch,” said Jean Philippe Bouchard , Research Director, Tablets. “We’re starting to see the impact of competition within this space as the major platform vendors – Apple, Google and Microsoft – now have physical product offerings. With attractive price points, including the introduction of sub-$100 detachables, and platform innovation being driven by competition, IDC is confident that the detachables segment will nearly double in size in the next year, recording more than 75% growth compared to 2015.”

More good news: Thanks to Surface and other Windows detachables, things are looking up for Redmond.

“We expect Windows-based devices – slates and detachables combined – to more than double its market share by 2019, driven by a combination of traditional PC OEMs as well as more household smartphone vendors,” said Jitesh Ubrani , Senior Research Analyst, Worldwide Mobile Device Trackers.

Also interesting is the expected mix of tablet sizes this year: 57.7 percent are small tablets (7-to-9 inches), 42 percent are medium-sized (9 to 13 inches) and almost none (0.4 percent) are large (13-to-16 inches).

Land lines are disappearing in the USA

No surprise here, but The Wall Street Journal reports on an ongoing trend where more and more people are relying on a smart phone as their only phone.

More than 47% of homes use only cellphones; about 42% have both … Now, only about 8% of households have just landlines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday.

”The tipping point is approaching,” said CDC’s Stephen Blumberg, the report’s lead author.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation accuses Google of collecting personal information from children

Well. This one could get ugly.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Google for collecting and data mining school children’s personal information, including their Internet searches—a practice EFF uncovered while researching its “Spying on Students” campaign, which launched today.

EFF found that Google’s “Sync” feature for the Chrome browser is enabled by default on Chromebooks sold to schools. This allows Google to track, store on its servers, and data mine for non-advertising purposes, records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords. Google doesn’t first obtain permission from students or their parents and since some schools require students to use Chromebooks, many parents are unable to prevent Google’s data collection.

Google’s practices fly in the face of commitments made when it signed the Student Privacy Pledge, a legally enforceable document whereby companies promise to refrain from collecting, using, or sharing students’ personal information except when needed for legitimate educational purposes or if parents provide permission.

Don’t be evil, I believe was the term.