BlackBerry’s Latest Delay Could Lead to Lawsuits

OTTAWA — A friendly crowd is unlikely to greet Thorsten Heins on Tuesday, when he makes his first appearance as chief executive at the annual meeting here of Research in Motion.

Shares in the BlackBerry maker have fallen by about 95 percent from their peak in mid-2008. And last month, not only did RIM post a $518 million quarterly loss, but it also surprised investors by announcing that a new line of phones critical to its future would again be delayed.

But the annual meeting may not be the only forum for shareholders to vent their displeasure. Several securities law experts and some investors say the delay in the BlackBerry 10, and overly optimistic remarks as recently as last week by Mr. Heins since he took over the top job in January, may also make RIM the target of shareholder lawsuits.

“They’re going to get sued and they should get sued because I think a closer look at the record is likely to unearth knowing and willful misrepresentation,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, the former president of Apple’s products division and the founder of the software maker Be, who is now a venture capitalist and blogger in Palo Alto, Calif. “When the C.E.O. says there’s nothing wrong with the company as it is, it’s not cautious, it doesn’t make sense.”

Apple Is the Heavyweight in Many Fund Portfolios

DESPITE the storms that have swept through financial markets over the last year, the overall stock market in the United States actually managed to eke out some gains. In fact, the market value of all stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index increased by $282 billion in the 12 months through June.

There’s a catch, though: One stock alone accounts for the overwhelming bulk of that increase. In fact, of that $282 billion, some 83 percent of it comes from gains in shares of Apple Inc., now the highest-valued company in the world.

Many mutual fund managers can attribute most of their recent success to large positions in Apple. But is a large current stake a ticket to further outsized gains? Or is it an increasingly risky bet that could quickly sour?

Apple is the most widely held stock among the 465 growth funds followed by FactSet Research, said Michael Amenta, an analyst at the firm. And that poses pressing issues for many fund managers.

“We’re sensitive to letting a mutual fund get too outsized a position,” said Ryan Jacob, manager of the Jacob Internet fund. When his fund’s Apple holdings neared 9 percent of assets, Mr. Jacob decided to “trim a little bit.”

Until quite recently, selling Apple often led to remorse. “Every sale has been a bad sale,” Mr. Jacob lamented. “Up until a couple of months ago,” he added, referring to Apple’s decline from an April high. Today, fund managers must weigh Apple’s distinct performance and potential against some equally distinct risks.

ICT integration in schools: Where are we now and what comes next?

Schools and ICT integration: The Australian policy context

Australian national and state education initiatives over the last 25 years stress the integration of computing technologies into compulsory education (AEC 1989; State of Victoria, 2001; Tas 2002; MCEETYA 2003; 2005). Like Western governments worldwide, in Australia computing technologies are considered a motherhood solution to the needs of a highly skilled and technologically capable workforce. Implicated in this 'final solution' is compulsory school education and its connection to future workplaces. The 2005 MCEETYA Joint Statement on Education and Training in the Information Economy resonates with this kind of digital rhetoric as we move towards a "...leading edge education and training system" that "drives development of an innovative society" (MCEETYA, 2005). ICTs (information and communication technologies) in education are burdened with the promise "to raise education standards and minimum skill levels" marking the arrival of the "future economy". The 'quality training through new technologies' of this new legion of workers will address Australia's need for competent, lifelong learners in "a world of continuous technological change where knowledge is becoming a commodity" (MCEETYA, 2005).

The cry for more technology in schools is deeply connected here; the origins of a school based solution are traceable to the Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling (AEC, 1989), which included the goal that students develop skills in 'information processing and computing'. In 2005, MCEETYA released its Joint Statement on Education and Training in the Information Economy, proclaiming a new blueprint for ICTs to 'empower' teachers and raise the standards of students' learning outcomes. The 16 year period between AEC (1989) and MCEETYA (2005) is a telling one; espoused views on computing technologies and student learning shifted from an initial preoccupation with the teaching of computer skills, to focus more on issues of ICT access for all students (MCEETYA, 1999), the relevance of a 'whole school' approach to ICT teaching and learning (Curriculum Corporation, 2003), and more recently to issues of school based change management and teacher professional development (Henderson, 2004). If we listen closely to this shifting 'learnscape', we can discern a quiet mantra: in terms of ICTs in schooling, more is definitely better.

In Learning in an online world (MCEETYA, 2000) evidence of a governance approach to integrating 'more ICTs in schools' can be found. Iterations of what it means to integrate ICTs are rolled out as a suite of statements and frameworks including the Online Content Strategy (2004); Learning Architecture Framework (2003); Research Strategy (2003); and Bandwidth Action Plan (2003). Notably, a Pedagogy and a Leadership and Professional Learning Strategy (2005) earmark a new direction in ICT statements for schools. This is notable for two reasons; (1) until this release, pedagogy has been a silent space in the evolution of ICTs in schools, and; (2) leadership has for the first time been problematised in the ICTs in schools debate.

A Tablet to Rival the Leader

You can love Apple or you can hate Apple, but one thing’s for sure: its favorite game is Lead the Industry. And the industry’s favorite game is Follow the Leader.

Steve Jobs hated the mimicry. Google’sAndroid software “ripped off theiPhone, wholesale ripped us off,” he told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

But there’s a positive aspect to the imitation, too. You could argue that Apple’s copycats fill in markets where Apple dares not tread, or offer an alternative to Apple’s very pure, controlled, choice-constrained world.

In that worldview, Google’s 2012 new-product announcements must seem like a cornucopia of good news. First, Google opened a unified online store with separate tabs for apps, e-books, TV shows, movies and music, modeled on the iTunes store. 

Last week, it introduced the Nexus Q, a black sphere that connects to your TV and plays those songs and videos, pretty much the way the black square Apple TV does. (You can read my review of the Q online atnytimes.com/personaltech.) 

Above all, Google has just introduced the Nexus 7, a shiny black tablet that aims to challenge both the iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. (Nexus phone, Nexus tablet, Nexus sphere thing; what is Google thinking, anyway? If it truly wants to emulate Apple, it should minimize confusion, not foster it.)

Where Apps Become Child’s Play

AN iPad case that doubles as a teething toy? Yes, such a product exists. It’s known as the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case (also available for iPods and iPhones) and it sells for $35.

At Fisher-Price, such products result from a process known as spelunking, which in its literal sense means to explore caves. But in the realm of toy making, it refers to the simple act of watching children play.
A similar process is alive and well at other companies, likeLeapFrog, maker of the LeapPad, a touchscreen tablet for children as young as 3; and at Hasbro and Crayola, which have partnered with digital media companies to create apps for very young children.

At Fisher-Price, “we bring babies in with their moms and watch them at play with different types of apps, different types of products,” said Deborah Weber, senior manager of infant research. Her job, she said, is to “understand the ages and stages of babies — what they can and can’t do, what their interests are, and the growing needs of families today.”

Spelunking has been around since the Fisher-Price PlayLab was formed in 1961, the same year that bricks made by a Danish company called Lego made their American debut. In its earlier days, the lab was filled with toys like a googly-eyed rotary phone known as the Chatter Phone, and the Corn Popper, a kind of mini-lottery machine on wheels.