Big Tech » Cnn Money

I'm at Google (GOOG), ready for the Chrome OS press event to begin. Refresh this page for updates.

They're telling us they're getting started a little late because attendees got caught in traffic. That's nice of them, I guess.

Sundar Pichai is at the lectern. He says Google is a year away from launching Chrome OS, but they want to show off what they've done so far. (Big disappointment here; blogs had spread rumors that this was a launch.) They're open sourcing the project, and the code will be totally open.

He starts off talking about Chrome, the browser. He calls it the foundation of everything Google is doing with Chrome OS. One year after launch they have 40 million users. Google claims its Javascript performance is 39 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. It has had 19 stable releases or updates, and HTML5 is making the web more powerful.

Chrome for Mac will be ready before the end of the year, he says, plus Chrome for Linux. There are also Chrome extensions coming. He claims the extensions won't slow down the browser and that Google will automatically update them.

Google is trying to figure out a way that web applications can take advantage of the same computing resources that mainstream client apps have. He says Google is trying to make sure web apps have access to graphics processors so 3D games can run in the browser. Google is also working on multithreading, real-time communication and a database API for local storage.

Now he's talking about a "perfect storm" of converging trends that he argues are creating demand for something like Chrome OS. Consumers are flocking to netbooks because they're a cheap way to get online. More people are "living on the cloud," or running most of their programs through the Internet, not their local machines. Phones are getting smarter, laptops are becoming more like phones with all-day battery life and thin, lightweight designs.

Google is asking whether there's a better model of personal computing. Google is focused on three things:

Speed, simplicity and security.

Google wants Chrome OS-based machines to be instant-on, like a TV. Google's Chrome browser will be especially fast. "Chrome on Chrome OS is blazing fast," he says, immediately raising questions about whether they need to change the name of either the browser or the OS.

Every app in Chrome OS will be a web app, he says. The data will live in the cloud, so if you lose your machine you can get a new one and just pull down all of your data and preferences.

(A nit here: Google says every app will be a web app, but they also say they're working to make web apps act just like desktop apps – so it's a little unclear exactly what this means.)

Now he's showing it. The OS looks just like a browser. He says the final version won't look exactly like it does today, but some features will carry through:

APPLICATION TABS: Just like the Chrome browser, this OS has tabs for navigation. You can put favorites up there, and they always stay in place. (I hope there's a full-screen mode to make these go away, or games won't work well.) There's also a menu showing all of the apps.

PANELS: There are little windows that pop up, like Gmail chat or Facebook chat, that persist across applications. All data will live in the cloud, so everything you put on the screen will be instantly available anywhere.

Now he's pulling up a chess game that's written in Flash. Now he's pulling up a book, Alice in Wonderland. (There is a full-screen mode, which answers my question about those persistent tabs.)

He's pulling up a Youtube video to show that flash works, and he's showing how you can navigate between different windows. Looks pretty intuitive, but he's plowing through it so fast it's tough to tell.

Now he's showing that Chrome OS works on the web, and that if you have an Excel file but don't have Excel, it opens just fine with Microsoft's Live Office web-based software. "Microsoft just launched a killer app for Chrome OS," he jokes, and quickly clarifies that he's a Google Spreadsheets user.

He shows that PDFs open very quickly from the web, right there in the browser.

Now Matt Papakipos, who heads the Chrome OS engineering team, comes up. (The Google folks in the corner clap wildly, which is a little weird. All of the journalists are typing.)

Speed is a big focus, he says. He repeats that they want it to feel more like a TV than a computer. All of the hardware for Chrome OS will be based on flash, not hard drives. "That makes a huge difference" for speed, he says. He's contrasting today's operating systems with Chrome OS. When they boos, today's OSes start with firmware, then a standard kernel, services, start-up apps, then a browser. Chrome will only have three steps.

He's talking about security, and Security-Verified boot. They want to make sure every time you boot that you're running what you should be. (This sounds like an automatic virus scan, only different.) It checks the cryptographic signature keys to make sure they're legit. If something goes wrong – if something's corrupted – it pulls the right stuff off the web and repairs itself, then reboots. "We repair the system automatically. Basically what this is doing is re-imaging your computer. … You don't lose anything in the process."

How do they make sure apps don't harm your machine? Current OSes use a model where apps have the same privileges you do. Installing an app is a great risk because of that. In Chrome, all apps are web apps and the security model is different – the OS doesn't trust any app.

(There's an interesting philosophical approach showing itself here. These Chrome OS PCs will implicitly trust Google to do absolutely anything to your machine, even re-image it, almost without telling you. But it doesn't trust the apps – or trust the user – to do much of anything. I imagine some security pros will raise red flags about this.)

Now he's talking more specifically about security, how everything is encrypted. If someone snatches your flash drive, it will be tough for them to crack it and steal your data. (But since everything on the laptop is synced back to the cloud, that's the weakest link here; all a thief has to do is steal your online login and he'll probably have access to not only your Google accounts, but also everything on every Chrome OS PC you own.)

Sundar is back talking about how they will go to market with this. There aren't a lot of details yet, but there are a few. They're going to be very specific about what kinds of hardware Chrome OS will run on. "As a consumer, you can't download Chrome OS and install it on any machine. You have to buy a Chrome OS machine." Interesting. Makes one wonder whether hobbyists will be able to build their own.

It strikes me that what Google is talking about here isn't really a PC. It's a Google-controlled appliance that runs on a web browser. It's more like a Kindle than anything else.

Google's now showing a 3-minute video that the marketing team came up with to explain what Chrome OS is. It's classic Google video. Cartoony, very easy to follow. It argues that the web browser is the center of the computing experience, where we spend 90% of our time. So Google made Chrome, and Chrome is fast. Since we all just want to get online, and today's computers take too long to get online, Google made Chrome OS that boots straight into the browser.

At the end of the video, all the Google people in the corner clap again. Which, again, is weird.

Now, Q&A:

What will a Chrome OS netbook cost?
Google won't say. "We expect to have devices in the price ranges people are used to today. … You will see larger netbooks than you are seeing today."

Someone asks what Chrome OS was running on today: it was an off-the-shelf EeePC.

How will manufacturers sign up to build a Chrome OS machine? Google has info online. Developers? There's info online. Standards? Google is working with the W3C. No clear answer on APIs. In general we want to see all of this get standardized.

Will there be an app store? What about drivers? What about photo editing or video editing apps?
No answer on the app store. There are hundreds of millions of applications on the web already. Google is working on drivers. On the third question, Google is focused on making the Chrome machine a second machine. It might be the primary device in terms of the amount of time you spend, but there will be things that this won't do. If you're a lawyer editing contracts all day, this won't be the machine for you.

Will Google support Silverlight? Google doesn't answer, but seem to leave the door open to it.

How will other browsers run on the machine? They won't. By open-sourcing it, Google is making it possible for someone else to make an OS version based on another browser. Interesting. So, no – no other browsers will run on Chrome OS. The browser is the operating system. (Neither Microsoft nor Apple would get away with this.)

Will this run on more robust machines than netbooks? It could. But for the next year or so, Google is focused on things that look like netbooks.

Will it work when you're not online? You'll be able to cache stuff locally. With HTML5 offline capabilities, that will work too. Google is focused on WiFi as the primary connectivity option. They don't answer whether they're working on cellular too.

Will there be native apps? Our current plan is to only support web apps.

Will Chrome run on ARM? It will work on both x86 and ARM.

How long before this works on more powerful machines? And is there a business model besides sending more traffic to Google? No business model that he's speaking of. He didn't answer the question about when it will work on full-fledged PCs.

Is there anything you can do with a Chrome OS machine that you can't do with a laptop? (Good question.) The answer isn't too coherent. Aside from instant-on and security stuff, there's not much difference between running the Chrome browser on another PC, and running a Chrome OS PC.

Will the data cacheing be open? (I didn't catch the answer to this question. But I suspect the answer is no; these machines will be locked into Google.)

No drivers. Keyboards and mice will work. Chrome OS will print. (An easy way to do this would be to keep the drivers in the cloud and create a USB receiver that hooks into a printer or other devices.)

The Q&A is over.

Settlement or no settlement, Advanced Micro Devices CEO Dirk Meyer still doesn’t trust Intel. That much was clear when I sat across the table from him last week at AMD headquarters in Sunnyvale.

I had a chance to talk to Meyer during the AMD analyst meeting last Wednesday. In a series of presentations that morning, Meyer and his lieutenants had made a cogent case that 2010 would be their comeback year. They have cut costs, pared non-core businesses, and returned to designing good chips and delivering them on time. Next year the company plans to begin selling several new chips, including a first: one that has a microprocessor and a graphics processor on the same chip.

But what about Intel (INTC), I asked him. In the past when AMD (AMD) had good products, you accused the chip giant of using its market dominance to unfairly squash you. (Intel has maintained that it plays by the rules.) Why should this time be any different? Do you think the playing field is level now?

Meyer knew what I didn’t: that in a few hours, he and Intel CEO Paul Otellini would announce a massive $1.25 billion legal settlement with Intel that’s supposed to put the companies’ acrimonious past behind them. That didn’t seem to change Meyer’s outlook on the chip giant, however.

“I would not tell any regulator around the world who’s still looking at Intel’s business practices to stop,” Meyer said. “The work that we’ve done needs to continue.”

Sounds to me like these two rivals might have put down the legal hatchet for now, but they haven’t quite buried it.

It’s official. Silicon Valley has a new mega-rivalry: Hewlett-Packard vs. Cisco.

Until this week, the two juggernauts had competed at the edges of their product portfolios. Now the gloves are off. That’s the subtext to HP’s (HPQ) announcement Wednesday that it will buy networking equipment maker 3Com (COMS) for $2.7 billion in cash.

With 3Com in his arsenal, HP CEO Mark Hurd will be able to more effectively attack one of Cisco’s (CSCO) most profitable businesses: supplying companies with gear that manages and secures data traffic. Maybe this aggressive move from HP was inevitable after Cisco decided to get into the server business. Maybe HP actually started this a long time ago with its ProCurve product. Either way, it’s war now.

“This creates the largest competitor to Cisco in quite some time,” says Alan Weckel, director of Ethernet switch research at Dell’Oro Group. “This expands the products HP can present to the market. It also gets 3Com back into the United States, something it’s had a hard time doing.”

For 3Com, the transaction would be a sort of homecoming. The company was founded in Silicon Valley 30 years ago and was a networking powerhouse until Cisco overpowered it in the ‘90s. Since then 3Com has struggled to reemerge. It moved from California to Massachusetts, off-shored its entire engineering operation to China, and recently began to gather momentum from customer wins in Asia.

There’s more to this deal than hardware. Dave Donatelli, executive vice president of H-P's servers and networking business, tells Fortune software was a big part of the reason HP liked 3Com. “They manage all of their network products with one software product ,” he says. “That makes them incredibly efficient.”

How much does HP/3Com really change the networking landscape? In the near-term, not much. Even after the deal goes through (assuming it does), Cisco will tower over HP in enterprise switching. Last quarter Cisco had 69% of revenue in the $3.7 billion market according to Dell’Oro, compared to about 11% for HP and 3Com combined.

But current size isn’t the point. Last week, 3Com was a talented but undersized rival whose new products hadn’t gained much traction outside of China. This week it’s engaged to HP, home of one of the biggest sales forces in technology.

Cisco has been looking to expand its influence into other people’s turf: areas like servers, storage, communications and enterprise software. This deal is a reminder that Cisco’s turf is fair game, too.

When Ben Foss's father in law was dying of liver cancer months ago, friends suggested Foss read "How We Die" to help the family with the grieving process. Foss has dyslexia, and finding an audio version of the book or scanning it into a computer typically would be an ordeal. But in this case he was able to plow through it at 250 words per minute.

Foss did it with an early version of the Intel (INTC) Reader, a $1,500 device he dreamed up along with colleagues in Intel's Digital Health Group. The device launches today as the first consumer product from the five-year-old group. And though its name seems to place it in the same category as trendy ebook readers from Amazon (AMZN), Sony (SNE) and Barnes & Noble (BKS), this reader is profoundly different.

This is not another thin tablet that displays text; instead it's more like a chunky digital camera that instantly captures the words on a printed page and pronounces them aloud. That makes it little more than a curio for mainstream gadget lovers, but a potential godsend for those who struggle to read standard text because of learning disabilities or vision problems.

The reader also poses a real risk for the world's largest chipmaker. Most of its previous forays into the electronics world have ended badly. Intel generally has thrived when it has focused on its core business of providing computing brains, to others and foundered when it has tried to design and market its own finished products.

But as demand for traditional PCs has slowed, Intel has resolved again to target non-traditional areas for growth. In healthcare technology, executives believe they have found a niche where they can build innovative products that medical professionals and consumers will pay a premium to use. The Intel Reader is poised to provide a high-profile test of that strategy – and it delivers a strong first impression.

Perhaps that’s because for Foss, the reader is far more than just another project – it’s part of his life’s work. The 36-year-old's learning disability has driven him to work for decades on more convenient ways to get information off the page and into his head. “They say necessity is the mother of invention, but it’s not,” Foss says. “Frustration is.”

Foss lived as a frustrated reader for years. In high school, his mother read aloud to him to help him process the information in assignments. In law school, he scanned book pages onto his laptop and had text-to-speech software play them back to him as he rode a bike to class. Now technology has advanced enough that, along with a team of Intel designers, engineers and software architects, he was able to squeeze a scanner and a digital reader into a device about the size of a paperback novel.

On the outside, the Intel Reader doesn’t look like breakthrough technology. Next to an iPhone, it looks like a museum piece – maybe a mid-90's digital camera prototype. But unlike Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, Intel’s reader isn't designed for the mass market. The finished product is the result of untold hours of tweaking; Foss carved the first prototype from a Styrofoam beer cooler more than two years ago.

Inside there's some impressive technology, including an Intel Atom processor and a Linux-based operating system. Simple menus on a high-contrast screen cater to low-vision users. A thick battery guarantees 4 hours of unplugged use and 30 hours of standby time. A 5-megapixel camera on the bottom of the reader captures images of pages; optical recognition software converts the images into digital text. Text-to-speech software creates an audio file that users can transfer to another device or play aloud on the reader at an adjustable pace.

The slow setting goes below 120 words per minute. The fast setting blazes along at 250 words per minute – a less frustrating pace for speed listeners like Foss.

Deal for AdMob accelerates scramble for a whopping $416 million in revenue.

As was trumpeted across the Internet Monday, Google (GOOG) is buying mobile display advertising startup AdMob for $750 million in (increasingly) precious Google stock. Wall Street digested the news and sent Google stock up almost $11.

Citi analyst Mark Mahaney says the deal “makes sense, because Google is moving aggressively to take advantage of the strong growth opportunity in mobile, which is fueled by smartphones.” Sandeep Aggarwal at Collins Stewart likes the deal, arguing “mobile advertising will be a $4 billion revenue opportunity by 2012-2013.”

Over my dead BlackBerry.

OK, I am in agreement that the whole smartphone movement is big, really big. But the ads on them? They are small, really small. In its own FAQ on the deal, Google brass acknowledge that mobile advertising is pint-sized today. They cite a number from eMarketer that pegs spending on mobile advertising at $416 million in 2009. That compares to the nearly $24 billion spent overall on online advertising.

It is true that $416 million ain’t chump-change, but it’s not Google dollars either. Estimates for AdMob’s gross revenue are in the neighborhood of $50 to 75 million, with a net of around $20 million. That is tiny, but presumably it will grow fast once AdMob’s display ads and universe of publishers and advertisers can plug into Google’s AdSense. But let’s get back to that small thing.

If you think online display ads are at best an annoyance on a 30-inch monitor, what about a three-inch screen? Ignoring ads on a PC is easy enough; on something I pay $60 or $80 a month for (especially if serving up the mobile ads slow my wireless network even more) ignoring the ads will be the default mode. Yes, there will be location-based bells and whistles to go along with the mobile ads — 30% off a ham sandwich and shoe-repair 30 feet from where you are standing — but that is still a ways off, and do you really want mobile coupons? Mobile advertising has been one of those things that gets promised year after year, and never seems to quite materialize (sort of like true broadband in the United States).

The mobile Internet is happening, and fast, the iPhone has shown us that. Whether an advertising experience works well enough on smartphones to really move the needle (and not simply cannibalize the non-mobile online ad world) remains to be seen.

Google: Buy vs. build

And by the way, Google knows how big this mobile Internet thing is going to be. Why couldn’t they figure it out, and save the $750 million? They have buildings filled with very smart people, and a good culture of “rolling their own,” as it were. I guess if your stock is up 83% since the beginning of the year you don’t have to sweat that too much.

Respect to AdMob for getting this deal done (barring any regulatory issues). Big ups to Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson who will make a bundle on the acquisition (and LiveOps CEO Maynard Webb who invested his own eBay money in AdMob). AdMob is clearly running fastest in this new mobile advertising world, and Google has the money to pull them off the startup track and install their 140 employees at the Googleplex. It seems there are plenty of Odwalla smoothies to go around, but I wonder, when will the big mobile advertising dollars arrive?

—

By Jon Fortt, senior writer

AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui doesn’t take himself too seriously. When I had lunch with him recently and he eyed the gourmet burgers on the menu, he had no qualms about asking one of his employees what aioli is. (It’s garlic mayonnaise.)

He shrugged and explained that he usually grabs a cheap sandwich, so he’s not used to the cloth napkin fare.

Hamoui’s easygoing manner shows in other areas. He doesn’t have an office in AdMob’s modest San Mateo headquarters — in fact, he doesn’t even have a cubicle. He works at one end of a row of computers, shoulder-to-shoulder with other engineers.

As you’ve read above, my colleague Michael Copeland is a bit down on Google’s decision to purchase AdMob for $750 million. Let me quickly offer another view. I think the AdMob deal is both a great business move and a signal that Hamoui can still fit in at Google — because the search giant is levelheaded enough to swallow its pride when it matters.

Let me explain. AdMob’s approach to mobile advertising is starkly different from Google’s. While Google has tried to squeeze its wildly successful PC-centric advertising onto the phone, AdMob has built a custom system that treats the phone as a unique sort of device. The differences between Google and AdMob were more than academic; they sometimes led to flare-ups between two passionate competitors. (Kind of like Copeland and me.)

A couple of sparks actually flew at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference this past July. During my “Future of Mobile” breakfast roundtable, Google engineering VP Vic Gundotra argued that Google’s approach to mobile ads was superior. Hamoui listened quietly before offering a rebuttal. But in the audience, under his breath, AdMob executive Jason Spero used some colorful language to inform his neighbors that Google was full of it.

Right after breakfast, Gundotra confronted Spero. A Google employee nearby had picked up Spero's comments on her audio recorder, he said — and he casually suggested that if the recording ended up online, it could make AdMob look pretty bad. The clear implication: Watch what you say about us.

Less than four months later, bygones are bygones. Google executives realized AdMob is better positioned in the must-win mobile market, and decided to pay up before AdMob gets even more expensive — or worse, gets acquired by Microsoft (MSFT) or Yahoo (YHOO).

Sure, you could look at this as evidence of a problem. You could argue that Google has an expensive habit of failing to build the best products in new markets like online video and mobile ads, and getting outsmarted by spry startups.

But here’s another take: Google knows how to pick its battles. CEO Eric Schmidt has openly declared that mobile advertising is a key piece of his growth strategy, with the potential to be as big as Google’s core PC-based business. If Schmidt believes that, it doesn’t matter that AdMob’s revenues are small today — what matters is that AdMob has the right people and the right technology to win in mobile.

Cisco’s growing again, and CEO John Chambers has called the beginning of a tech recovery. But don't assume this is the proverbial rising tide that's going to lift all boats.

First the good news: Cisco (CSCO) turned in a bang-up quarter. For the three months that ended on October 29, the seller of networking gear managed $9 billion in sales and 35 cents per share in profit, both of which outpaced even the most optimistic analyst expectations. Even better, Chambers said the current quarter will also shape up nicely – a promise that sent Cisco stock up a healthy 3% after hours.

But even in Cisco’s celebration, there were hints of caution. Though he signaled good results for this quarter, Chambers wasn’t willing to set sales and earnings targets for the rest of fiscal 2010, saying it’s too soon to assume that this recovery has legs. He asked analysts to maintain their ho-hum expectations for Cisco's financial performance, despite his apparent optimism – basically requesting that they keep the bar low, even though he feels more confident that he can clear it.

That’s the most important takeaway for anyone who might be tempted to read a full-blown tech recovery into Cisco’s good numbers. Yes, Cisco is doing well. For the entire tech sector to have a strong 2010 – and for Cisco to sustain its winning streak – we’ll need to see a convincing turnaround in fundamentals like U.S. unemployment and consumer spending. The jury’s still out on those, and will be until well after the receipts are in from the holiday shopping season.

Even Cisco's blowout quarterly results revealed signs that things are still rough out there. Not every customer group is bouncing back; governments awash with stimulus cash and enterprises that had postponed purchases proved to be big spenders during the quarter, but plenty of other key groups still looked weak.

For example, the phone and cable companies who buy Cisco routers spent nearly 10% less than a year ago. Retailers and other businesses also spent less. In Asia, non-government accounts remained soft. And orders in developing economies were down nearly 30% from last year.

In an interview after the earnings call, Cisco Chief Financial Officer Frank Calderoni told Fortune he feels very confident in Cisco’s ability to meet its financial targets, and said he was particularly encouraged by the rebound in enterprise spending; since it was among the first categories to suffer in the downturn, he's hopeful that its return signals a full recovery. But he's not letting himself get too worked up about it just yet. “Many outside of Cisco are seeing some challenges, talking about a mixed environment,” he said. “Because everybody’s not seeing improvement, we just want to focus on the current quarter where we have visibility.”

Translation: it’s still foggy, so Cisco is treading cautiously. Investors would be wise to do the same.

New software transforms your phone into a GPS device – and a pretty good one, too

As my wife will tell you, I have a comically bad sense of direction. I once got lost driving home from the mall.

This makes me a prime candidate for a GPS device. I’ve used a few for brief stints, mostly on long road trips, but never got into the habit of using one for everyday errands. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one, it’s a hassle to dig the thing out of the glove compartment. For another, entering an address on most of these things is a crazy-making experience.

My perspective changed recently, though, when I bought a new GPS unit for $70. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. I actually downloaded a GPS-based iPhone (AAPL) app for $70.

Yes, 70. Seven-zero. I’ll be the first to admit that it sounds crazy to pay that much for software that runs on a phone. The overwhelming majority of phone apps out there cost between 99 cents and $10.

Why would I pay so much for an iTunes download? Well, this directionally challenged consumer needed another GPS device. We had one in the newer car that my wife usually drives, where it did me absolutely no good. I had been compensating by using Google Maps (GOOG) on my phone to find my way to meetings in a pinch, but wasn’t comfortable – or safe – to keep glancing over to prepare for the next turn.

So in late August I took the plunge and went shopping for navigation software on the iTunes app store. At the time, there were two main options: TomTom’s app was $100; Navigon’s was on sale for $70. Both had gotten decent reviews, but I was drawn to Navigon’s for its ability to speak street names; rather than say, “Ahead, turn right,” it can say, “Ahead, turn right on Embarcadero.” It also has the bells and whistles we've come to expect from GPS units: points of interest, gas stations, restaurants. I decided to go with Navigon.

I was prepared to have serious buyer’s remorse. For $69.99 (plus another $30 for a windshield mount) this had to be good.

And it is. I’ve loved Navigon’s MobileNavigator software since I bought it. It’s actually better than the few standalone GPS units I’ve used. I can pull addresses from my phone’s contact list to set a destination and avoid the hassle of tapping through annoying menus. It shows me highway signs, indicates the best lanes to move into, and warns when I’m pushing too far past the speed limit. Best of all, my phone is always in my pocket – so I have navigation help even when I’m not in my car. On a hectic day trip to Southern California recently, I used MobileNavigator in a rental car to find my way from LAX to an out-of-the-way spot in Santa Monica. (Next time, though, I'll have to remember to bring the iPhone charger; by the time I got home, the iPhone's battery was all but dead.)

From the look of things, it won’t be long before a lot more phones start doubling as GPS devices. Smartphone customers seem to see value in the software. A few examples: MobileNavigator (now $90) is the #3 top grossing app on iTunes. AT&T (T) has begun selling a navigation service that works on dozens of phones in its lineup. And Motorola’s (MOT) Droid, a smartphone that’s arriving next week on Verizon’s (VZ) network, comes with free turn-by-turn directions via the latest version of Google’s Android operating system.

That’s not so great for companies like TomTom and Garmin (GRMN), who make a lot of money selling standalone GPS devices – their stock prices took a hit this week on the announcement of Google’s free software. But for wayward travelers like me, GPS navigation in phones is a killer app.