¿Consola Apple en 2013?

Autor: Juan Martín Fecha: 17/07/2009

Diversos analistas especulan con la entrada de Apple en el sector de máquinas de videojuegostransformando el receptor digital multimedia Apple TV en un centro de entretenimiento e Internet. La compañía con sede en Cupertino aprovecharía el tirón actual del videojuego y su base de usuarios del iPod e iPhone que ya descargan y ejecutan juegos en estos dispositivos. La consola de videojuegos llegaría en tres años y competiría con las grandes del sector como PS3, Wii y la remozada 360 con Natal. Según el analista de la consultora Wedbush Morgan, Michael Pachter, Apple comprueba la viabilidad de la futura consola analizando el comportamiento del iPod touch y del iPhone como máquinas portátiles de videojuegos. "Si pueden obtener un suficiente número de usuarios del iPod que descarguen juegos, es natural que, en última instancia, puedan convencer a un gran número de ellos para comprar videojuegos habilitados para Apple TV", indica. Hablamos de un receptor digital multimedia que reproduce contenido desde la iTunes Store, YouTube, Flickr o de la biblioteca de iTunes del ordenador mediante la transmisión de estos datos por WiFi y su almacenamiento en un disco duro interno. Este Apple TV sería la base para la consola, suponemos potenciando su hardware especialmente en el apartado gráfico y completándolo con videojuegos para obtener una máquina completa de entretenimiento doméstico. De momento, todo son especulaciones, aunque Yves Guillemot, el CEO de la compañía francesa Ubisoft, convertida en una de las desarrolladoras más potentes del mundo, también piensa en la entrada de Apple en el sector de máquinas de videojuegos de sobremesa. “Ya hay un nuevo competidor con el iPhone e iPod touch, y no creemos que Apple se pare ahí”, indicó Guillemot en una entrevista reciente, explicando que el Apple TV junto a otros dispositivos set-top-box similares podría convertirse en una nueva plataforma para consolas de videojuegos.

¿La televisión tiene los días contados?

SE IMPONE LA ERA DIGITAL Carrier y Asociados sostuvo que el creciente consumo online de contenidos de TV y la tendencia en alza a las descargas de videos son claras alternativas a la caja La Red se está convirtiendo en una alternativa más que potencial a las ofertas televisivas, tanto en su modalidad gratuita como paga, si se tiene en cuenta el crecimiento del consumo online de contenidos de TV y el alza de las descargas de videos por Internet, sostuvo Carrier y Asociados. Según cifras brindadas por la consultora, un 30% de los abonados al sistema clásico, ya sea por cable o satélite, se muestran proclives a abandonarlo si pudieran conectar su aparato transmisor a la Web para ver películas o series. A la hora de señalar qué motivos los llevarían a hacer la migración, los usuarios señalaron en primer lugar la cuestión de precios, argumentando que “el cable es muy caro”. En un escalón más abajo, se refirieron a los contenidos, señalando que la oferta televisiva tradicional es escasa, frente a la enorme cantidad de ofertas que pueden encontrar en Internet. La consultora hizo hincapié en que más de la mitad de los menores de 18 años afirmaron no estar interesados en la programación actual de los servicios de TV paga. “Esto es una seria amenaza a futuro, ya que cuando estos adolescentes ingresen en la vida adulta, tendrán muy arraigado el hábito de consumir contenidos vía Internet, viendo a la televisión como algo anticuado y rígido”, señaló Carrier. Además de ser considerada como una plataforma de comunicación, Internet ya es vista como un medio de entretenimiento, si se tiene en cuenta que el 39% de los usuarios de la Red afirmó que la PC conectada es su principal dispositivo de ocio, dejando a la caja boba en segundo lugar. Canal-Ar

Enviado el Jueves, 16 julio a las 11:10:05

¿Qué es eso de la Televisión Digital Terrestre?

La retransmisión en una calidad óptima se consigue mediante la digitalización de imagen y sonido

10.07.09 -

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Si la televisión digital es singular por algo es por los altos estándares de calidad, tanto de imagen como de sonido, que permite.

No en vano, ha sido concebida como la televisión del futuro y, en este sentido, supone un salto cuantitativo y cualitativo con respecto a la convencional televisión analógica terrestre.

Avances digitales

Esta característica singular, así como otras que hacen afirmar de la TDT que es el futuro de la televisión, le vienen dadas por el mero hecho de que en esta forma de concebir la televisión se aplican los modernos desarrollos de la tecnología digital a la transmisión de la imagen y el sonido, o lo que es lo mismo, a la señal televisiva convencional.

Una vez digitalizados, es decir, convertirdos en bits de información, en la Televisión Digital Terrestre la imagen y el sonido se transmiten a través de las ondas hertzianas y viajan por el aire hasta llegar a los distintos puntos de recepción: hogares, oficinas, bares, etc.

Una vez allí, a través de los sintonizadores, también conocidos como decodificadores, esos bits de información vuelven a ser convertidos en imagen y sonido para que puedan ser vistos y oidos.

Al igual que otros más de 110 países de todas partes del Planeta, entre ellos los estados miembros de la Unión Europea, España transmite la Televisión Digital Terrestre a través del estándar denominado DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial).

Múltiples ventajas

Gracias a esta tecnología, la Televisión Digital Terrestre no sólo asegura una óptima calidad de la imagen y el sonido, sino un mejor aprovechamiento del espectro radioeléctrico disponible. Esto supone, en última instancia, poder elegir entre una mayor oferta de canales de televisión y radio, cuatro por cada canal convencional.

Así, de la mano de todas estas virtudes, a falta de unos meses para el apagón definitivo, podemos afirmar que el cambio del analógico a la TDT supone una apuesta de futuro en la que se opta por más y mejor televisión.

Internet recorta la audiencia televisiva del «show» en memoria de Michael Jackson

Los «ratings» del funeral en Estados Unidos se quedan por detrás de las exequias de Reagan y Diana de Gales

El funeral de Michael Jackson, seguido por televisión en Londres / AP

Entierros y funerales más vistos de la historia televisiva de EE.UU.

.-Ronald Reagan. El entierro del ex ocupante de la Casa Blanca encabeza la lista al haber sido seguido por 35,1 millones de espectadores en el año 2004.

.- Diana de Gales. El funeral por la Princesa Diana fue visto por 33,3 millones en 1997.

.-Michael Jackson. El homenaje póstumo al rey del pop fue seguido por 31 millones de espectadores.

.- Ronald Reagan. También el funeral del ex presidente de Estados Unidos fue visto por 20,8 millones de espectadores en 2004.

.-Juan Pablo II. El sepelio de Su Santidad Juan Pablo II fue seguido por 8,8 millones de telespectadores en 2005.

PEDRO RODRÍGUEZ | LOS ÁNGELES

Actualizado Jueves, 09-07-09 a las 23:50

El estelar y multitudinario funeral de Michael Jackson -a pesar de la chapucera actuación de Mariah Carey por la que ha tenido que pedir públicas disculpas- puede haber servido para certificar la migración de audiencias desde la televisión a Internet, en detrimento de los canales y cadenas que tradicionalmente han dominado ese segmento de la comunicación de masas. En Estados Unidos, aunque toda la programación estuvo monopolizada por las exequías del rey del pop, la audiencia final habría sido de 31 millones de espectadores.

Los "ratings" facilitados por la compañía Nielsen sitúan el concierto de "corpore insepulto" celebrado en Los Ángeles por debajo de las audiencias generadas en su momento por los funerales del ex presidente Ronald Reagan y Diana de Gales. Sin importar que el memorial de Michael Jackson fuese retransmitido en un especial de tres horas en directo por un total de 18 cadenas y canales de cable, desde el hispano Univision al deportivo ESPN pasando por la CBS.

Por el contrario, las cifras de audiencia "on line" resultan mucho más rotundas, con un volumen de seguimiento por Internet no registrado desde el pasado enero, durante la histórica toma de posesión de Barack Obama. MSNBC ha contabilizado 19 millones de descargas de su cobertura funeraria de "Jacko". La CNN ha sumado de un total de 10,5 millones. Más 6 millones de la cadena ABC en formato digital, 3,4 millones de Foxnews.com y 5 millones de Yahoo.

La compañía promotora AEG, responsable de la producción del funeral de Michael Jackson, ha estimado una audiencia global de 1000 millones de personas. En comparación con los 2.500 millones atribuidos en 1997 al funeral de Diana de Gales, que en la costa este de Estados Unidos se emitió en directo a las seis de la mañana de un sábado.

En opinión de Rich Hanley, académico especialista en comunicación de masas, "la diferencia de audiencia con la Princesa Diana es el papel de Internet, que permite el acceso de más gente pero no necesariamente a través de televisión". Según el "Washington Post", que el funeral de Jackson haya sido seguido por uno de cada diez televidentes en Estados Unidos "es bastante significativo" porque fue emitido cuando la mayoría de la gente estaba trabajando.

Dentro de este fenómeno para Internet, el día de la muerte de Michael Jackson, el pasado 25 de junio, la sección de noticias de Google se desbordó por el aluvión de búsquedas sobre el rey del pop. Twitter, que llegó a registrar 5.000 comentarios por minuto, también estuvo colapsado. Bloqueo también experimentado por la biografía de Jackson en Wikipedia.

Tweet As the Real Twitterers Do

By Chris Crum - Thu, 07/09/2009 - 14:53

Too Many Tweets Can Be Bad For All Parties

Some people tweet a lot. I follow a good deal of them. Sometimes excessive tweeting can include plenty of wisdom. Often times, however, it is just annoying. Chances are that if you follow somebody, you do care what they have to say, at least to some extent. If they tweet too much though, you may find yourself caring less, and you may even decide to unfollow them. Do you unfollow people who tweet too much? Tell us.

Excessive tweeting is at the root of more than one of Twitter's problems.

The Retention Problem

Twitter has been known to have trouble with user retention. People sign up and abandon their accounts. A common complaint about Twitter is that it contains too much "noise." In other words, there are too many random tweets that nobody cares about.

I've always found it a bit naive to assume that just because you find a tweet useless, it is useless to everybody. I've long considered that you control who you follow, so if you don't like somebody's tweeting, you have the power to stop following them.

This is still true, but perhaps it is more complex than that. I may want to follow @soandso (I'm only using this as an example) because I know that they will say things that I need to know sometimes, but @soandso may also flood my Twitter stream with useless conversation that I have no interest in - noise.

If that noise gets to become to much of an issue, I will likely end up deciding to unfolllow @soandso anyway, and try to obtain the info from somewhere else - somewhere that is less annoying.

The lesson here (from the business perspective) is that if you want to keep followers, you should probably limit your tweeting. That's not to say that every Tweet has to be incredibly important. Just think before you Tweet, and keep your audience in mind.

The Capacity Problem

By tweeting too frequently, you may actually be hurting Twitter's accessibility. Interestingly enough, while I was researching this article, I encountered the "Twitter is over capacity" error message a couple times (one with and one without the Fail Whale), which if you'll notice in the illustrations below, is accompanied by "Too many Tweets! Please wait a moment and try again."

If Twitter's not operating properly, it's not going to do anybody any good until it comes back. If you're tweeting too much, you're contributing to the problem. Twitter does limit the number of tweets you post in a day.

"We do cap the number of updates a user can make in a 24 hour period, whether via the API or any other input method (web, mobile, etc.)," said Alex Payne, Twitter's API Lead in a Google Groups conversation back in January. "Right now, that number is 1000, but it's subject to change at any time. "

I am awaiting confirmation on whether or not this is still the number, but whether it has changed or not, Twitter may reduce it more still, considering the capacity issue. If Twitter wants to keep growing, this has to be a turn off (despite all of the charm of the Fail Whale).

Tweet How the Real Twitterers Tweet

I thought it would be interesting to see how frequently the people who actually run Twitter tweet themselves. As far as I can tell, the frequency isn't too high. They tweet often, but not excessively. I browsed the last month or so worth of tweets from the following list of Twitter staffers (hat tip to Twittercism who has a huge list of Twitterers), and they all pretty much kept it to 20 tweets a day or less (5 or less or 3 or less in some cases, most were under 10).

10 of the People Behind Twitter

1. Evan Williams (@ev) - Twitter CEO

2. Biz Stone (@biz) Twitter Co-founder

3. Abdur Chowdhury (@abdur) - Twitter's "Chief Scientist"

4. Alex Payne (@al3x) - Twitter's API Lead

5. Crystal (@crystal) - leads twitter support team

6. Eric Jensen (@ej) - Co-founded Summize (Twitter Search) - search and text mining technologist

7. Greg Pass (@gregpass) - Director of Engineering and Ops

8. Jason Goldman (@goldman) - Director of product strategy

9. John Adams (@netik) - operations engineer

10. Rudy Winnacker (@ronpepsi) - operations engineer

I have to wonder if Twitter employees have a limit in place for themselves. Of course they know what happens when there are too many tweets. No point in creating more work for yourself.

Can You Tweet Too Little?

Depending on what your goals are for using Twitter, I would say that it is possible to tweet too little. If you are using it for business purposes, then a lack of updates could reflect poorly on your effort to stay in touch with your followers.

As long as you're not completely dead on Twitter for months at a time, you'll probably be ok though. In fact, I don't consider myself a very frequent tweeter. There is just as much (if not more) to gain from Twitter by absorbing the content that is coming in, than there is by pushing content out.

The Moral of the Story

Your Twitter frequency should be dictated by you goals. That said, you do not want to overdo it. You may lose followers from a lack of updating, but I would think you would be more likely to lose them when you update too much. Use moderation. Use other channels of communication when applicable. Use direct messages for one on one conversation.

What are your thoughts on overtweeting? Undertweeting? Discuss with WebProNews readers.

Commentary: Google and Microsoft free-for-all

• STORY HIGHLIGHTS
• Chris Anderson: Obama's antitrust chief concerned about Google's power
• He says she will have to decide whether it's OK for Google to give things away
• He says Google's dominance in ads gives it power to win new markets
• Anderson: Battle pits Google against Microsoft, itself a target of antitrust cases

July 8, 2009 -- Updated 1408 GMT (2208 HKT)

• Next Article in Technology »

By Chris Anderson
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and the author of "FREE: The Future of a Radical Price", published by Hyperion on July 7. The book's first printing generated controversy over failing to attribute some passages to Wikipedia, which Anderson said in his blog was a mistake and will be corrected.

Chris Anderson says technology allows giants like Google to give away services.

(CNN) -- When Christine Varney was confirmed in May as the Obama administration's top antitrust cop, some of her words from last year sent a chill through the Googleplex, the search engine's headquarters in Silicon Valley.

During the waning days of the Bush administration, Varney worried that the government would not do enough about Google: "I think we're going to continually see a problem, potentially, with Google, who I think so far has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising lawfully."

Now she's in a position to do something about it.

Having a legally obtained monopoly is not a crime, but abusing it to gain unfair advantages in other markets can be.

The most recent landmark cases on this in technology have been the decade-long investigations and prosecutions on Microsoft's dominance of PC software.

In those cases, competitors complained that the software giant's near-monopoly on operating systems allowed it to get the upper hand in other markets, for example, by gaining an advantage on the Web through bundling Microsoft's Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows.

Now Google has Microsoft-like dominance in search and search advertising. What should it not be allowed to do?

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That question may come to define this era of antitrust law. When Varney was confirmed, she withdrew the Bush administration's report setting relatively conservative standards of antitrust enforcement and declared, "The Antitrust Division will be aggressively pursuing cases where monopolists try to use their dominance in the marketplace to stifle competition and harm consumers."

How might Google's dominance be harming consumers? Ask makers of such items as books and newspapers and advertisers and all will say they are concerned about Google's clout and ability to act unilaterally because of its dominance. Google, meanwhile, has been on a charm offensive for the past few weeks, emphasizing how easy it is for consumers to switch to other search engines and how small it is compared to other companies that have been in a similar position in the past, such as Microsoft, AT&T and IBM.

The Web is still a new territory, with the boundary lines of markets in flux. At least in the Microsoft case, we knew what an "operating system" and "Web browser" were. But on the Web, where software is a Web site, not something you buy in a box, and everything is just one click away from everything else, core antitrust concepts such as "lock-in" and "barriers to entry" will have to be redefined.

One of the most interesting issues that Varney will have to face is Google's use of free. This is not 20th Century "free," as in "buy one, get one free" or "free gift inside." Instead, it's really Free (let's dignify it with a capital F), something that's only possible in the digital age, where costs are close to zero.

Like many Web companies, Google gives away most of what it does. Its searches are free, as are its e-mail, maps, online word processor and spreadsheet, and nearly 300 other products, from directory assistance (GOOG411) to Google Earth.

This use of Free is part of its "max strategy" -- it uses Free to get its products in the hands of the greatest number of users, and then figures out some way to get money from them (mostly with ads, but sometimes with "pro" versions of the services, in which users can pay for more storage or features, using the "freemium" business model).

Google can give away so much because the incremental cost of serving one more Web page to one more user is almost nothing -- and falling as technology gets cheaper. This is the difference between the "bits economy" and the "atoms economy." The marginal cost of production for digital things is so low that Free becomes not just a marketing gimmick but the default price in most markets, driven by economic forces as real online as gravity is in the real world.

But companies still have to make money, so there are limits to how much they can provide free. Not a problem for Google. Its core advertising business is so powerful, dominant and profitable that it can subsidize almost everything else the company does, using Free to get customers in new markets.

Is that fair, when so many of its competitors don't have a similar golden goose at the core of their operations?

The analogy is something like the semiconductor battles of the 1980s, when Japanese companies were accused of "dumping" (selling for under cost) memory chips in the U.S. market to drive out U.S. competitors. Any time you are giving away a product, you are by definition selling it for less than cost (even if the cost is just a fraction of a cent).

Note that no court or regulator has yet suggested that there's anything remotely like this going on in the use of Free online. But when Varney starts looking at ways that Google is using its search dominance to win new markets, its use of Free is going to have to be one of the things she considers.

Could Free be OK for little companies, but not really big ones? How much market share would you have to have in one market to disallow you from using Free in another?

As she digs into this, she may find that it takes her back to Microsoft itself. As entrepreneur Alex Iskold haspointed out, Google is using the profits from its search advertising dominance to fund its competition with Microsoft in word processors and spreadsheets (Google Docs).

Microsoft, meanwhile, is doing just the opposite: using the profits from its dominance of word processors and spreadsheets (Microsoft Office) to subsidize its competition with Google in search (Microsoft Bing). In each case, the companies are using a highly profitable paid product to make another product free, on the hopes of gaining market share by taking price off the table.

The difference this time is that Google is the dominant player, and at least as far as search goes, Microsoftis a struggling upstart. Confused yet? Then spare a thought for Varney. She not only has to figure out what markets need protection, but also how to do that (to say nothing of the poignant irony of Microsoft complaining about unfair monopolies). Tough job. Who would have thought that there was anything not to like about Free?

¿Está cambiando la medida de la popularidad en la web? Backtype tweetcount

By dreig | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

No sé qué va a ser del Page Rank, del Alexarank o del ya muy mermado Technorati, como del resto de los ránkings que se basan, como criterio fundamental en el número de enlaces entrantes a un espacio para determinar su popularidad, pero leer a Louis Gray me confirmaba algo que muchos defendemos desde hace tiempo:

Twitter amenaza a muchas de las cosas que dábamos por sentadas en la red. Así , se confirma la disminución de la tendencia a enlazar en favor del incremento del fenómeno Retweet (RT).

Quizás el tema vaya en la línea del aumento de la “continuous augmented awareness” (conciencia contínua aumentada, escribiremos en breve sobre ello), que incluye una idea que también quiero reflejar aquí:

Que cada vez somos menos dados a creer (y sellar con enlaces) en meritocracias (poder derivado del mérito que atribuimos a unos pocos) y más a premiar de forma leve, puntual pero efectiva, el trabajo que valoramos y nos gusta de todos (democracia).

Dicho de otro modo, la disponibilidad del conocimiento, el aumento de nuestro sentido crítico nos convierte en menos mitómanos, menos necesidades de autoridades que nos digan lo que es correcto o no leer u opinar.

Veremos cómo se adaptan los índices, las analíticas de popularidad, las corrientes de pensamiento sobre internet a este tipo de fenómenos de reinvención por parte del usuario, pero quería presentaros, de momento, una nueva característica en este blog: el botón de retweet de Backtype.

Lo he cambiado por el de Tweetmeme (lo revisamos aquí), después de haber constatado y leído sobre múltiples fallos. No ocurre con el botón que véis a la izquierda de esta entrada: Backtype tweetcount, que añade al anterior algunas funcionalidades más, como la personalización en colores.

Aunque Tweetmeme recoge posibilidades interesantes como las que se muestran en el gráfico (contabilización global de retweets, analíticas globales) repito que su defecto al no contabilizar de forma fidedigna los RT limita su utilidad.

No creo, que Backtype tarde, de todos modos, en ofrecer posibilidades similares.

Si queréis instalar el botón, podéis hacerlo descargando el plugin para Wordpress desde aquí, o el script que encontraréis en este otro enlace.

AT&T's Designs for the Wireless Market

The iPhone was just the start. To offset slowing growth, AT&T is seeking devices that will expand the way people use its wireless network

By Roger O. Crockett

BW MAGAZINE

• Retirement: The Big Rethink
• Will Tax Breaks Boost Jobs?
• AT&T's Designs for the Wireless Market
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• Managing Forward

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July 13, 2009

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In one wing of AT&T (T)'s sprawling corporate campus just outside Atlanta's upscale Buckhead neighborhood, a cadre of wireless employees is doing business in a way that's anything but usual for the telecom behemoth. The newly assembled team, led by about a dozen executives, operates more like a startup than a part of the 132-year-old AT&T. And with good reason: Their mission is to come up with innovative ways for people to use AT&T's wireless network. The idea is to go beyond cell phones and hook up all manner of electronics to the Internet—from digital cameras and navigation devices to parking meters—to change the way people live and work.

Despite the unusual operating arrangement, AT&T CEO Randall L. Stephenson says this is no sideline for his company. He believes that figuring out how to take advantage of mobile access to the Internet will be critical to AT&T's growth. "It is the strategic initiative. It is the business model," says Stephenson in an interview. "It supports everything we're going to be doing over the next five to 10 years."

WORKING WITH PARTNERS

The Atlanta team, officially called the Emerging Devices group, is led by Glenn Lurie, a 43-year-old industry veteran who earned his stripes managing AT&T's iPhone partnership with Apple (AAPL). Stephenson has backed up his high expectations by giving Lurie wide latitude in testing ideas and arranging additional partnerships. What he wants in return is for the team to help AT&T gain share in what by 2013 is forecast to be a $93 billion market for linking gadgets to wireless networks.

AT&T executives won't disclose exactly what kinds of devices they will offer next. But people familiar with the company's plans say one product on the way later this year is an electronic book reader, similar to Amazon.com (AMZN)'s Kindle. AT&T could partner with companies that make rival e-books, such as Sony (SNE) or startup Plastic Logic. Also in the works is a portable navigation device that lets motorists use AT&T's network to collect real-time traffic data. And there's a gadget that lets drivers alert others to speed traps with the press of a button. AT&T is working with manufacturers to develop the products. As it does with the iPhone, the company plans to sell the devices through its own stores and may share wireless service revenues with manufacturers. "We have to break the rules," says Lurie.

In the future, AT&T plans to offer more advanced gadgets: digital cameras that link to the Net for sharing and printing photos; tools that help city agencies monitor parking meters from afar; and devices that alert businesses when they need to replace candy or soda in vending machines. "In three to four years it's not inconceivable a user may have four to five devices hooked onto a wireless plan," says mobile consultant Chetan Sharma.

Stephenson, 49, can't afford to stick with the status quo. A native Oklahoman who began in the IT department of Southwestern Bell 27 years ago, Stephenson succeeded Edward E. Whitacre Jr. as CEO in 2007. Whitacre, who was just tapped as outside chairman of General Motors, transformed Southwestern Bell into the new AT&T with a series of blockbuster acquisitions totaling more than $200 billion. But with no major targets left, the days of cutting megadeals to grow are over.

What's more, AT&T's own growth is slowing. The traditional wired phone service is shrinking by about 10% a year, and wireless growth has slipped enough that it may no longer make up the difference. Analysts expect sales to drop by $1 billion this year from $124 billion in 2008. Next year, AT&T may lose the exclusive right to sell the iPhone for Apple in the U.S., which has helped lure millions of new subscribers.

RIVAL STRATEGIES

Stephenson is betting he can turn the tide with new wireless gadgets. Already, AT&T is selling inexpensive portable computers called netbooks, and the CEO thinks that could soon be a $1 billion business. Lurie believes his team can pull in another $1 billion from other wireless-connected devices over the next few years. "If you get a few billion-dollar businesses I'd say you're doing pretty good," says Stephenson.

But how much difference will this make for AT&T? It will take time to persuade customers to consider buying computers and cameras from the telecom giant, instead of, say, Best Buy (BBY). Even if AT&T adds $2 billion in new revenues over the next three years, that's less than 2% of the total. It may not be enough to get AT&T back to positive revenue growth, given the declines in its other businesses. "It's hard to find things to move the needle for a company as large as AT&T," says John Hodulik, an analyst at UBS (UBS).

At the same time, AT&T's rivals are pursuing similar avenues of growth. Verizon Wireless (VZ) is already selling inexpensive netbooks in more regions than AT&T. In addition, Verizon's network often ranks higher than AT&T's in surveys measuring reliability. "This is a game of catch-up on [AT&T's] part," says a Verizon spokesman.

For his part, Stephenson took an unprecedented step when he signed off on the iPhone partnership that gave Apple a slice of the monthly service revenues from each device. Now he plans to break more new ground with the next generation of wireless devices. "Mobile broadband is where the growth is going to come from," he says. "And we don't think we are even scratching the surface yet."

Crockett is deputy manager of BusinessWeek's Chicago bureau.