Webtop

Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha pulled off one of the most difficult things to do in the technology industry: He surprised people at a press conference.

When Jha took the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show 2011 and revealed the Motorola Atrix smartphone and the "Lapdock" that made it act like a laptop computer, it sent reporters scrambling. They expected the unveiling of the Motorola Xoom, the highly anticipated and already-leaked first official Android tablet to take on the Apple iPad. But, it was the Atrix and the Lapdock that stole the show.

Was this a hybrid smartphone/… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha believes less may be more when it comes to the company's smartphone business.

Jha, speaking at a roundtable discussion with reporters today, said he plans to release fewer models of phones this year than in the past. The company will focus a more concentrated amount of resources on a smaller number of products with the goal of creating better products.

"There's a recognition of a lot of good ideas, but none have broken through," he said. "We're going to present fewer ideas, but we're going to push them … Read more

When we left the Verizon offices a couple days ago with our Droid Bionic in tow, Motorola handed us a veritable mountain of accessories to go along with the phone. That's because the Droid Bionic has a Webtop application similar to the one on the Atrix 4G and the Photon 4G, and like those two, it requires a special Webtop accessory to load it. The Droid Bionic is a fantastic handset even without Webtop, but the technology is compelling enough for us to take a closer look at these accessories.

Unique-to-phone accessoriesThe Atrix made headlines at CES earlier this … Read more

Motorola grabbed the spotlight a few weeks ago when it introduced its Atrix Android-powered smartphone. The handset isn't just a fairly impressive smartphone, it also has the capability to combine Voltron style with a type of dock that turns it into a laptop replacement.

Motorola is calling the gadget a "webtop" computer. It's not meant to be a user's main computing device--it uses the handset as a primary brain, so it's underpowered when compared with even a Netbook--but it's an interesting competitor to other not-as-laptop portables, like tablets.

And despite having its own tablet on the market, the Xoom, … Read more

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Motorola announces the Xoom tablet and 3 new Android phones

LG shows off the Optimus 2X

AT&T announces its 4G plans for 2011 and 20 new smartphones

Research In Motion gives us some details about the BlackBerry PlayBook on Sprint

Toshiba shows off glasses-free 3D TVs

Mitsubishi shines the light on a 3D projector

The 2012 Ford Mustang will have voice-controlled apps called App:Sync

Microsoft is adding more functionality to Kinect with video streaming control

GM partners with PowerMat to put wireless chargers in car consoles

When the Israeli-Palestinian Webtop Ghost made its official beta launch Tuesday, it got us wondering what happened to all those other such Web desktops that have launched in recent years.

Several of them are still around. At least half a dozen are trying to prove what many doubt--that there's a market for a virtual desktop with built-in applications and widgets, plus communications and collaboration tools, all served via the browser.

Among those CNET News reached, Glide OS is now the biggest, with about 1 million users, followed by Desktoptwo with 200,000 users, Ghost with 180,000 users, Icloud with 170,000 users, Startforce with 70,000 users, and Cloudo with 30,000 users.

Though the numbers aren't overwhelming, they indicate at least some interest.

On the other hand, a couple of Webtops we've reported on, Jooce and AjaxWindows, appear to be out of commission, or at least their Web sites are. And one of the best known, You OS, called it quits last summer.

Yet those still standing believe their time is now slowly coming.

"What we've noticed in the last four months is that with virtually no media coverage, we've had a steady upsurge and it's purely viral," said Donald Leka, founder and CEO of TransMedia, which runs the Glide OS.

But Ray Valdes, research director at Gartner Research, is skeptical.

"I have not seen growth or traction among the Webtop companies over the past year," Valdes said. "From a long-term perspective, I don't see any change to current market trends, which are that Webtop ventures are not gaining market traction."

Still, investors are watching the Webtop market closely.

"We have a tremendous interest from venture capital," Leka said, underlining that TransMedia so far is wholly angel-funded. "Repeatedly we get calls on a weekly basis."

And Daniel Arthursson, CEO and founder of Icloud developer Xcerion, said his company just raised new capital from new and existing investors, including Northzone Ventures, which invested $10 million in 2007.

Though the Webtops are similar, each has its own approach.… Read more

I was surprised to see that a collection of seven companies - including Mozilla Corp., ARM, and MontaVista - are collaborating on a web-enabled mini-PC. Why surprised?

Because companies have been throwing money at similar ideas for the past decade, and always without success.

When I was at Mitsui Comtek in 1997, we built a similar device. A few years later at Lineo, we worked on something similar (though this time purely from the software angle).

Now MontaVista, a company with which I competed back in my Lineo days, is at it again, but this time hopes that greater openness can be the differentiator:… Read more

Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher put Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer up on stage first thing at the D6 conference, and by doing so, let them set the agenda for the operating system discussion here at the show.

Microsoft's duo didn't do a great job of capitalizing on that position. Rather, they left a lot of room for other companies to excite the audience with newer ideas. Two companies here are taking on that charge.

Ghost The first, Ghost, demo'd Wednesday. Its product is a "virtual computer," as the company calls it. Hosted at Amazon Web Services, … Read more