Host Walt Mossberg, has technology plateaued . Guest oh, no, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Technology is always changing and always coming up with Technology Companies are always coming up with something new, and there are new Technology Companies all the time incubating, a lot of them are in what we call stealth mode. We dont even know who they are. Certain technologies plateau and things move on, but in general, no. Not at all. Host i guess i ask that because the last couple years weve had the explosion of smartphones, weve had tablets come online. Whats out there . Guest well, first of all, there are vast numbers of people especially in the less developed cups, but even in the developed countries who dont own a smartphone and, certainly, there are vast thurms that dont own 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. Thats a remarkable achievement and for people that own apple stock and, you know, i dont own any stock in any of these companies, that makes them very happy. But even 160 million ipads and then even if you add in the android tablets, its a, its a small fraction of the people that could own a tablet, especially as the prices come down. So, you know, there has been a lot of talk about the difficulty of innovating in the smartphone space, but and we have seen a couple of iterations by apple and samsung that havent been big, giant jumps in innovation. This often happens. But i think theres 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 your pocket and the less you have to hit icons and buttons no matter how ingeniously designed they are, the more convenient and kind of natural the process will seem. And so theres a lot of work going on in voice recognition, in what are called wearables. You know, google glass is a good example, smart things you wear on your wrist. Im not talking about the fitness meters now that are out there, but significantly beyond that that would tie back into the cell phone sitting, the smartphone sitting in your pocket or purse and allow you to do a bunch of things. Also giving, just staying on the smartphone for a minute and thats hardly the only area of technology, but giving it more capabilities and more intelligence in a way thats easier to use. So making a smartphone that is aware, to some extent not in a human sense, but aware of its surroundings, aware of whats going on. So just today, for instance, motorola which is now owned by google is announcing a new smartphone that it says can automatically adjust its functions when it senses that its this a moving car its in a moving car, when it senses that its in your pants pocket, you know . Itll shut down the screen and other functions to save battery because it senses its turned down in your pocket. You can pull it out of your pocket and just by twisting your wrist itll immediately turn the camera on even before youve unlocked the phone or pressed any button of any kind or an icon, done any swipe on the screen or anything. So those are, you know, examples of something that i think can get much bigger which is phones, tablets, wearable devices using their sensors, so gyroscopes and then new kinds of sensors that maybe can detect body heat or body function to do different things. So we have a lot of stuff going on in technology now. Host whos developing those sensors . Guest i dont know the names of the companies. Obviously, the customers for the sensors are, many of them are well known. Apple buys a lot of sensors. If you have an iphone, there are a whole bunch of sensors in there. If you have a samsung glaxly phone galaxy phone, there are a whole bunch of sensors in there. And then there are people making these medical devices or fitness devices that are using various new types of sensors. So theres just a ton going on. At the same time, you are right, some things are plateauing or even decan lining. The pc. Ive been writing for years now the pc has peaked. And the proof has finally arrived in the last year or so where youve seen pc sales actually falling dramatically, in the double digits, five quarters in a row. And before that it had been quite flat. Some of this had to do with the economic meltdown around the developed world and really the whole world over the last four or five years, but even as economies have recovered, the pc has peaked. When i say its peaked, i dont mean its done. I dont mean people are going to throw their pcs away. I dont mean that tablets and smartphones, for instance, can replace everything a laptop can do. But whats happening is that there are enough daily scenarios for which people used to grab their laptop that are more conveniently done now on a tablet, especially a tablet but also a smartphone. That, people find their actual with daily use of their laptop has declined significantly. They still haul it out for things that a tablet and a smartphone dont do very well like, for instance, creating a complicated spread sheet or writing a long, you know, youre not going to write a novel probably on even an ipad with a keyboard. But people are finding they use them less. And as they use them less, it means they feel like directing their money toward one of these other devices and not replacing a laptop as often. So thats what i mean by peaking, and i think thats what most of the experts mean by peaking. And yeah. So some technologies plateau. Right now theres somewhat of a plateau in smartphones, although i dont think itll last very long. Its not a plateau so much in sales so much as it is in feature innovation. But as i just explained, with the kind of selfawareness thing, i think were going to see a bunch of that. So i think thats going to keep going. And then other things get replaced or declined or become less important in the life of somebody who depends on technology, and the pc is an example of that. Host hows the blackberry q10 doing . Guest i dont know what the sales are of the blackberry q10. For those who dont know, we should explain that, you know, blackberry which i think most people know has been in a lot of trouble, missed a lot of the kind of revolution set off by the iphone very tied to corporate i. T. Departments which themselves have lost a lot of power and influence. Blackberry changed its leadership, changed its entire operating System Platform and brought out two new phones. Ones called the z10, and that is a alltouch phone directly competitive with the iphone and the Android Phones like the samsungs and the htcs. And that has not done very well. The other one was called the q10. Same software, same function functionality on the software, but it looks more like a regular, traditional blackberry with a physical keyboard x. Thats been out i want to say two months or less, and i dont know the Sales Numbers on that. My guess is that will do pretty well, at least in the first sales order or two that its 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 their physical keyboard and not feel so behind the android and iphone friends they may have. But i think the companys belief was that there was a finite number of those people, and thats why they had to bring out the other type of phone which is more directly similar to the iphone and to the Android Phones. So i dont know how the q10 will do. Im guessing itll do pretty well in the First Quarter of two. Host have you reviewed the z10, and how did it compare . Guest ive reviewed the z10. A colleague, my reviewing partner, katie barrett, works with me here in the d. C. Office. I thought the z10 was okay, and it had a couple of interesting features. But blackberry, like Windows Phone which is another platform where most of the phones are made by nokia, theyre in a difficult can situation because difficult situation because they got started at least in this new generation, the postiphone generation of smartphones, they got started late. And its been difficult for them to attract the apps, the varian te and the variety and certainly the important apps that i think people are looking for. So theyre really engaged in a a battle for number three. And its just, its a tough situation. Its not that the phones are terrible or anything like that. They, you know, Windows Phone has really got a quite nice user interface, and its been carefully thought through. The nokia phones, hardware built around it has, for the most part, been pretty good. But they havent been able to attract, you know, all of the, an app like, say, instagram. And, of course, this changes day by day, so what im telling you right now might have changed by the time people see the show. But last time i checked they didnt have instagram on there. Im not sure, i dont think its on the blackberry. It might be, but thats just one example. And be then new apps come out all the time. And app developers, whether theyre a small shop of five people or a big company with an App Development team, you know, these folks have limited resources. They have to prioritize what they do, and theyre looking for the platform where they can also monetize their app as quickly as they can, and they continually go to apple and android. Its a chore for blackberry and for microsoft to convince them to go with their platforms. Host are apps for apple and android d. C. S on par now devices on par now . Guest theyre more on par. Til maybe the last nine months to a year i think there were a large number of apps where the very same app would just be much richer and nicer on an ios which is the iphone, an ipad operating system, the apple one, than there were on android. I think that theres a lot more parity. I think still think i still think of the almost a million apps on both of those app stores youre going to find a greater number that are Higher Quality on the apple side and a lesser number that are the same quality on the android side. Youre also going to find a lot more malware, viruses or other kinds of malicious software, on the android side. Theres a reason for that that i can explain. But on the quality issue, i think the gap is closing. And, certainly, the numbers of app as. Android may even have more apps now than apple. Host why the malware on the android side . Guest well, theres probably some technical, underthehood issues that i dont understand because im not an engineer, but i know that the one big issue is that the Android App Store which is called google play is not curated. You can submit an app, and google never doesnt review it. So its easier to slip things in. Apple famously curates all the apps in their store and, you know, they get criticized by some people who believe you shouldnt make any choices in what you offer, everything should be allowed. Apple just says, you know, we i think the number is 2 or 3 of the apps that are submitted to us, and i think thats true. But one of their criteria is that they test these things, and they reject the ones they think carry malware. Theyre not perfect, but theyve been pretty good. I dont think there is any significant malware on the iphone. There is, there have been estimates i have seen that as many as 60 of the apps on, in the Android Store carry some amount of malware. Now, im not endorsing that number, but ive seen estimates like that. It doesnt mean those apps get downloaded a lot compared to the ones that are safe and popular. I mean, you know, theres i presume theres no malware in the facebook app. I presume theres no malware in the, you know, twitter app and the Instagram App or whatever or the various games that are frequently downloaded on both platforms. So the, that even if that 60 number were true, it wouldnt mean 60 of the actual downloaded and used apps have malware. But, you know, googles aware of this, they understood the risk, and they just preferred and they will yank apps after the fact if they learn they are in some way a problem, but they dont curate beforehand, and apple does. Some people are drawn to apple for what it does, some people are drawn to android there are many reasons but some people are drawn to android for that reason, that they dont like the idea of cure rating. Host well, Walt Mossberg of the wall street journal, what do you use . Guest well, im not a good example because due to my job, i use everything. Right now im sitting here with a brand new Android Phone that was Just Announced today, this one by motorola called the moto swz s which is this. Host looks like a normal phone. Hold it up guest yeah. It has interesting features. As i was saying, it has the ability to sense certain things about its location and movements, and then i also have this iphone 5. So, you know, im always using multiple devices. I own, i personally own iphone, a couple of ipads, couple of Google Android tablets and a couple of Android Phones. So, you know, i try to use what i like the best and what works best for me, but as a racket practical matter i own three or four Windows Computers and three or four macs. I have a roku and an apple the and a crime cast which is the newest tv device. I have them all on my tv at home. Host well, speaking of which, we asked some reporters who Cover Technology here in washington if they had any questions for you, and guest yeah, you do that. Thats annoying, but [laughter] host one of the questions was about the chrome cast, and this reporter says you recently reviewed and recommended googles new chrome cast product. How will chrome cast change Television Viewing habits . Guest well, we have to back up and explain what were talking about because i dont think we can assume everyone knows what chrome cast is. So the Tech Industry in general and especially apple and google and a few, microsoft and a few other companies have been trying to change television. Theyve changed phones, theyve changed, you know, the music industry, theyve changed lots of things, but television has been a hard nut to crack which frustrates these guys because they regard it as really pretty backward. I mean, if you think about it, if you carry around one of these devices and ten you look at and then you look at how these work and how your tv works, try to go to the menu on your tv and change something, you know, its really quite primitive even if the tv is new, even if it has a socalled smart tv functionality. And so the technology guys have been trying to reinvent tv. The problem is that there are two problems, the biggest problem is that you can build a tv, but what you really what they really want to do is change the content thats coming into the tv and equalize it. They want to equalize the internet content like netflix or hulu or itunes content, amazon content. They want to make that just another choice along with cspan and nbc and, you know, hbo and whatever else youre getting from your Cable Company. The Media Companies are not crazy about that, and so theres been a lot of friction there. The second problem is if you build a tv, and lets say you built a revolutionary tv that was much easier to use and took some of lessons from these devices or even, you know, integrated with all of your other device cans which is all perfectly possible, youve built a device in the tv that people really dont replace more than every i forgot the number, but its, what, seven or eight years that people keep tvs and then replace them. Its not like these things, these phones which a lot of people replace every couple of years. So its not as good a business in some respects for these companies. So thats the backdrop. Theyre trying to change tv. The only way or the way they have so far been doing it has been by building a box that you plug into the tv, and theres apple tv. Theyve sold about 13 million of those which is, makes it one of their very smallest products in their financial reports, but i theyve sold about 13 million. And be the interesting thing about that number is about half of those have been sold in the last year or so, i think. If im not mistaken. So its accelerated. Roku, which is a competitor, sold about five million of a similar box. And these boxes, what they do is bring content that is not coming from the Cable Company because these are not cable boxes, internet content to your tv. So netflix is a great example be, youtube is a great example, itunes, amazon, whatever. Google tried that. They tried something called google tv which they did the software and a couple of other companies did the hardware, and it was a failure. I gave it quite a bad review. It was kind of a mishmash and didnt work very easily. Chromecast is googles second attempt, and what it is is, it says, you know what . Were not going to build a complicated box that goes on the tv. Were not going to put content streams into that box. Were just going to make a little thing that looks like a usb flash drive. You plug it into a port called an hdmi port which is a common, the common port on the back of hdtvs, and then theres a wire that you just plug it into power. And whether you have an Android Phone or whether you have an iphone or tablets of those two types, youll be able youll see a little icon pop be up that will let you just beam whatever you would be watching on the phone or tablet onto the tv screen. And thats the new product they came out with. It costs 35. Now apple, for several years, has had a similar thing. If you happen to own an apple tv, in addition to the programming thats on the apple tv thats built into it like, i dont know, major league baseball, itunes, photos, things like that, youve been able to use a technology of theirs called airplay which does the same thing. Theres a little icon on the screen. Im watching a video or audio, you know, music, i hit that, wirelessly beams it to the tv. So apple had that, airplay. Google has it with chromecast. The pros and cons are kind of inverse to each other. The positive on apples airplay system is that it works with thousands of apps, and the app developer doesnt have to do anything. The little airplay icon just appears. It works on just too many apps to go into. You can sit down and just rev