A lot of them are in stealth mode. Certain technologies plateau and things move on. In general, no. Not at all. I ask that because the last couple years we have had the explosion of smartphones, the tablets coming online, what is out there . First of all, there are vast numbers of people especially in less developed countries, but even in developed countries who dont own a smartphone. Certainly there are vast numbers that dont own a tablet. To give you a rough example, apple which leads in the tablet market, has sold somewhere around 160 million ipads since 2010. That is a remarkable achievement. I dont own any stock in any of these companies. That makes them very happy. Ipads, even ifn you had in the android tablets, it is a small fraction of the people that could own a tablet, especially as the prices come down. Talkhere has been a lot of about the difficulty of innovating in the smartphone space. Ofhave seen a couple iterations by apple and samsung that havent been big giant jumps and innovation. This often happens. There is even much more to do with the smartphone. Just to give you one example, the less you have to pull the phone out of your purse or pocket and the less you have to hit icons and buttons, no matter how ingeniously designed they and the more convenient kind of natural the process will seem. So, there is a lot of orc going on in voice recognition, in what are called wearables. Google class is a good example google glass is a good example. Smart things you wear on your wrist. I am not talking about the fitness meters that are out there. Significantly beyond that. They would tie back into the cell phone, the smartphone sitting in your pocket or purse and allow you to do a bunch of things. Also, just sitting on the smartphone for a minute, giving it more capabilities and more intelligence in a way that is easier to use. Picking a smartphone that is aware to some extent, not in a human sense, but aware of its surroundings, aware of what is going on. Today, for instance, motorola which is now owned by google is announcing a new smartphone that it says can automatically adjust senses that when it it is in a moving car, when it senses that it is in your pants pocket. It will shut down the screen and other functions to save battery turned it senses it is screen down on a table or in your pocket. You can pull it out of your pocket and adjust by twisting your wrist it will immediately turn the camera on even before you have unlocked the phone or press any button of any kind or an icon, done any swipe on the screen or anything. Of those are examples something that i think can get much bigger, which is phones, tablets, wearable devices, using accelerometers, gyroscopes, and new kinds of sensors that maybe can detect body heat or body function to do different things. We have a lot of stuff going on in technology. Who is developing the sensors . I dont know the names of the companies. Obviously, the customers for the sensors many of them are wellknown. Apple buys a lot of sensors. If you have an iphone, there are whole bunch of sensors and there. If you have a Samsung Galaxy phone, there are a whole bunch of sensors in their. These peoplere all making medical devices or fitness devices that are using various new types of sensors. Is just a ton going on. At the same time, you are right. Things are plateauing or declining. The pc, i have been writing for years now, the pc has peaked. The proof has finally arrived in the last year or so where you sales actually falling dramatically in the double digits, five quarters in a row. Before that, it had been quite let. Flat. Some of this had to do with the economic meltdown around the developed world and really the whole world. Recoveredonomies have , the pc has peaked. When i say it has peaked, i dont mean it is done, i dont mean people are going to throw their pcs away, i dont mean that tablets and smartphones or instance can replace everything a laptop can do. But, what is happening is that scenariosenough daily for which people used to grab their laptop that are more conveniently done now on a tablet, especially a tablet but also a smartphone. People find their actual daily deuce of their laptop has declined daily use of their laptop has declined. They still haul it out for things that a tablet and smartphone dont do very well like creating a conflict at its spreadsheet or writing you were not going to write a novel on an ipad. Finally usinge the most. As they use them less use them less. At the use them less, it feels like they are not replacing the laptop is often. That is what i mean by peeking and that is what most of the experts mean by peeking. Some technologies that though. Plateau. There is somewhat of a plateau on smartphones, not a plateau on sales so much as future innovation. As i just explained, with the kind of selfawareness thing, we will see a bunch of that. That is going to keep going. Other things get replaced or decline or become less important in the life of somebody who depends on technology and the pc is an example of that. How is the blackberry doing . I dont know what the sales are of the blackberry q10. For those who dont know, we should explain that blackberry, which i think most people know has been in a lot of trouble, missed a lot of the revolutions set off by the iphone. Very tied to corporate i. T. Departments which themselves lost a lot of power. Blackberry changed its leadership, changed its entire operating System Platform and brought out two new phones. One is called the z10 and that isnt all touch phone directly competitive with the iphone and the Android Phones. That has not done very well. The other one was called the q 10, same software, same functionality. But it looks more like they traditional blackberry with a physical keyboard. , i want to sayut come a two months or less. I dont know the Sales Numbers on that. My guess is that that will do pretty well at least in the first sales quarter or two that it is out because there is a pentup demand among people, mostly blackberry users who like physical keyboards, and this is a much more modern software. It has a much more modern software base than the old blackberry, so they can keep using the keyboard and not feel so behind the android and iphone friends they may have. But, i think the companys believe was that there was a finite number of those people and that is why they had to bring out the other to the phone which is more directly similar to the iphone and to the Android Phones. So, i dont know how the q10 will do. I am guessing it will do pretty well in the first order or two. Compare . Es the z10 i reviewed the z10. My reviewing partner who works with me reviewed the q10. Ok and itthe z10 was had a couple of interesting features, but blackberry, like Windows Phone which is the platform where most phones are made by nokia, they are in a difficult situation because they in the post iphone generation of smartphones. The got started late. It has been difficult for them to attract the apps, the variety and the important apps that i think people are looking for. Numbere in a battle for three. It is a tough situation. It is not that the phones are terrible or anything like that, Windows Phone has a nice user interface and it has been carefully thought through. The nokia phones hardware built around it has the most part been pretty good. But, they havent been able to Instagram App like and this changes day by day. What i am telling you right now might have changed by the time people see the show. But, last time i checked, they didnt have instagram. I am not sure. I dont inc. It is on the blackberry. Might be. That is just one example. New apps come out all the time. When app developers, whether they are small shop of five people or a big company with a App Development team, these folks have limited resources. They have to prioritize what for do and they are looking the platform where they can monetize their app as quickly as they can. They continually go to apple and android and it is a chore for blackberry and microsoft to convince them to go with their platforms. Are apps for apple and Android Devices on par now . Par untile more on maybe the last nine months to a year. I think there were a large number of apps where the very same app would be just much richer and nicer on ios which is the iphone operating system, then they were on android. I think that there is a lot more rity of the almost one million apps on those app stores. Greateroing to find a number that are Higher Quality on the apple side and a lesser number that are the same quality on the android side. You are also going to find a lot viruses or other kinds of Malicious Software on the android side. There is a reason for that but i cant explain. On the quality issue, i think the gap is closing. Certainly, the numbers of apps android may have more apps now than apple. On thethe malware android side . There is probably some technical under the hood issues that i dont understand because i am not an engineer. I know that one big issue is that Android App Store called google play is not curated. You can submit an app and google doesnt review it. It is easier to slip things in. Apple famously curates all the apps in their store. They get criticized by some people who believe you shouldnt make any choices in what you offer. Everything should be allowed. Think the says, i number is two percent or three percent of the apps that are submitted, and i think that is true. One of their criteria is that they test these things and they reject the ones they think kerry malware. A they are not perfect but they are pretty good. There have been estimates i have seen that as many as 60 of the apps in the Android Store carries some amount of malware. I am not endorsing the number but i have seen estimates i got. It doesnt mean those apps get downloaded a lot compared to ones that are safe and popular. Are inume there is no malw , infacebook app or twitter the Instagram App or whatever. Or the various games that are frequently downloaded. Even if that 60 number were true, it wouldnt mean 60 of the actual downloaded and used apps have malware. Google is aware of this. They understand the risks, and they will yank apps after the fact that they learn they are someway a problem. But they dont cure it beforehand and apple does. Some people are drawn to apple for what it does. Some people are drawn to android for many reasons. Some people are drawn to android for that reason, that they dont like the idea of curating. Walter musburger, what do you use . Mossberg, what did you use . I am not a good example. Due to my job, i use everything. Right now, i am sitting here with a brandnew Android Phone that was Just Announced today. Callede by motorola motox. It looks like a normal phone. It has a number of features. It has the ability to sense things about location and movement. I also have this iphone 5. I am always using multiple devices. Iphone, aly own couple of ipads, a couple of , and aandroid tablets couple of Android Phones. Try to use what i like the best and what works best for me. As a practical matter, i own three or four Windows Computers and three or four macs. I have a roku and apple tv and chrome cast which is the newest tv device. I have them all on my tv. We asked some reporters who Cover Technology here in washington to fill out questions for you. That is annoying. All right. One of the questions was about the chrome cast. This reporter says, you recently reviewed and recommended googles new chrome cast product. How will chrome cast change Television Viewing . We have to back up and explain what we are talking about because i dont think we can assume everyone knows what chrome cast is. General,industry in ,nd especially apple and Google Microsoft and a few other companies have been trying to change television. They have changed phones, they have changed the music industry. They have changed lots of things, but television has been a hard nut to crack. That frustrates these guys because they regard it as pretty backward. If you think about it, if you carry around one of these look at how these work and how yorkie works, try to go to the menu on your tv and change something, it is really quite privative. If it hase tv is new, socalled smart tv for nationality. So the technology guys have been trying to reinvent tv. There arem is that two problems. The biggest problem is that you can build a tv, but what they really want to do is change the content that is coming into the tv and equalize it. They want to equalize the internet content like netflix or hulu or itunes content or amazon content. They want to make that another nbcce along with cspan and and hbo and whatever else you are getting your cable company. The Media Companies are not crazy about that. So there has been a lot of friction there. The second problem is, if you build a tv, and lets say you built a revolutionary tv that is much easier to use, took some of devicesons from these or integrated with your other devices. That is perfectly possible. You build a device in the tv that people really dont replace more than every i forgot the number, but it is what, seven or eight years that people keep tvs . It is not like these phones which many people replace every couple of years. It is not as good a business in some respect for these companies. So, that is the backdrop. The only way, or the way they has so far been doing it been by building a box that you plug into the tv, and there is apple tv. They have sold about 13 million of those. That makes it one of their smallest products. They have sold about 13 million, and the interesting thing is about that number, about half of those have been sold in the last year. So it has accelerated. There is roku, which is a competitor that served about 5 million of a similar box. These boxes, they bring content that is not coming from the cable company. They are not cable boxes. Internet content to your tv. Netflix is a great example. Youtube is a great example. Itunes, amazon, whatever. Google tried that. They tried something called google tv, which they did the software and other companies did the hardware, and it was a failure. I gave it a bad review. Andas kind of a mishmash didnt work very easily. Chrome cast is googles second attempt. What it is is, it says, we are not going to build a consultative box that goes on the tv. We are not going to put content that streams into that box. We are just going to make a little thing that looks like a usb flash drive, plug it into a port called an hdmi port which is the common port on the back of hd tvs. Use a wire to plug it in. Whether you have an Android Phone or an iphone or tablets of those two types, you will see a little icon popup that will let beameen whatever whatever you were watching on the phone or tablet onto the tv screen. That is the new product. It costs 35. Apple, for several years, has had a similar ring. If you havent to own if you happen to own an apple tv, in addition to the programming built into the apple tv Like Major League baseball, itunes, things like that. You have been able to use technology of theirs called airplay which does the same thing. I have that, it wirelessly beams it to the tv. Apple had airplay. Google has it with crunk last chrome cast. The pros and cons are inverse to each other. The positive on apples airplay system is that it works with thousands of apps. The app developer doesnt have to do anything. The little airplay icon just appears. Apps to go too many into. You can sit down and review all of your photos on the tv screen with no wires. The downside, on the apple product is it only works with apple product. If you have an iphone, ipad, or a mac, it will work. If you have a windows computer or an Android Phone, airplay doesnt work even if you own an apple tv. Works chrome cast, it across platforms. It doesnt only work with googles android operating system devices. It works with apples devices. On an windows computer or mac, with googles browser which is called chrome, it will work with that. If you have a windows laptop and the chrome rouser and you want orgo to the Youtube Website watch a Youtube Video on your tv screen. It will work. Google is cross platform. Apple is apple only. It is not an uncommon thing. Then, the downside is that chrome cast so far only works with a handful of apps. On Android Devices, it works with four apps. Four out of one million. They are important apps for video, so it works with net licks, youtube netflix, youtube, and google music apps. On the iphone, it works with netflix and youtube. In my test, the reason i gave it a good review was, it worked. Old hdtv and an newer one. I tried it on apple products and android products, windows laptops, it just worked. Google is to for get more companies to sign on and add that little chrome cast icon to their apps. The challenge for apple might be due up in the top two other companies devices. We are talking on the communicators with author mossberg, technologist for the wall street journal. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies in 1979, brought to you as a Public Service by your television provider. Next on cspan, and encore presentation from season one of first ladies, and is an image. Then, highlights from todays rally and march commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march on washington. See the lossnt to of print journalism. I am frustrated when i see the loss of so much state and local journalism covering what is happening on the ground. A lot of this National Journalism isnt as good if you dont have that local journalism. A lot of what i do is watching, reading local and state stories, seeing what is happening at that level. Figuring out how it is bubbling up to the national level. If there arent people on the ground doing that sort of work, i think National Journalism suffers quite a bit. I really hope that someone figures out a way to keep that stable and keep those people in place. We are going to see a lot more social media i