NCEU launches $299 Android tablet

News Corp education unit launches $299 Android tablet

 

Summary: The media conglomerate's education arm is set to launch a low-cost Android tablet for the classroom in a bid to take a chunk away from the ever-growing iPad in education market.

News Corp. is pushing further into the education space as its Amplify digital education group unveils a new budget $299 Android "Jelly Bean"-based tablet for the classroom.

The media conglomerate, better known for its ties with Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, among others, created its Amplify unit in mid-July last year. Through a partnership with AT&T, the unit planned to launch a low-cost 4G-enabled tablet for the K-12 market. 

And today, it made good on that promise. 

The Asus-powered Amplify tablet. (Credit: Amplify)

Reported by the Financial Times of London (paywalled), the 10-inch device will be available for the upcoming 2013-2014 school year and will include a range of pre-loaded software from traditional publishers — such as the Encyclopedia Britannica — and from education startups.

The $299 tablet comes with a $99-per-year subscription to Amplify's education software, making the price point lower than most rival tablets out there on the market. A premium tablet is also available with a 4G plan for $349 with a $179-per-year, two-year subscription.

It also comes with Google Apps for Education for outsourced cloud-based communications and services. Crucially, also, the tablet will run for 8.5 hours of battery life on a single charge,according to the company, along with a swappable battery and support for external keyboards — making these devices as low-cost as low-end PCs.

It goes almost without saying: the education market is a strong, burgeoning portion of the wider enterprise market. (Yes, schools and colleges are de facto enterprises, too.) Spending in this area is tight but many are aggressively targeting the textbook and education market in a bid to gain an in-road into the already highly competitive and lucrative market. 

The hope is that cash-strapped education systems around the U.S. will garner the support of local districts all the way up to federal government in a bid to tap into the education space, which at the moment isn't quite dominated by Apple's iPad but is certainly making waves among the education enterprise sector.

Apple, for instance, provides iBooks and desktop e-book publishing software, launched more than a year ago at an education event in New York.

Microsoft fined $731m by EU in browser choice screw-up by Windows 8

Summary: EU authorities have hit Microsoft with yet another fine, after falling foul of previous antitrust commitments, showing that if you're operating in Europe, you must abide by its rules.

Microsoft is to learn the hard way that "a deal is a deal," at least in the eyes of the European Union, by being forced to swallow a massive fine for breaching earlier promises made with the 27 member state bloc.

An earlier EU settlement led to the "browser ballot" screen. 
(Image: Microsoft)

The software giant has been fined €561 million ($731m) by European authorities for falling foul of previous antitrust settlement conditions.The software giant breached a settlement that it signed with the European Commission in 2009, which mandated that it display a "browser choice" screen on all existing and new PCs in the region.

Europe's antitrust and competition chief Joaquin Almunia stressed the importance of maintaining the legally binding commitments."In 2009, we closed our investigation about a suspected abuse of dominant position by Microsoft due to the tying of Internet Explorer to Windows by accepting commitments offered by the company."

He added: "Legally binding commitments reached in antitrust decisions play a very important role in our enforcement policy because they allow for rapid solutions to competition problems. Of course, such decisions require strict compliance. A failure to comply is a very serious infringement that must be sanctioned accordingly."

Microsoft comes clean, apologizes; "will comply" with EU

In July, the European Commission said it had received complaints that Microsoft was not carrying out its obligation to provide users with a choice of browser. The EU swiftly opened an investigation into the software giant's alleged oversight. In "personal talks" with Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer, Almunia said that he had "given [him] assurances that [Microsoft] will comply immediately, regardless of the conclusion of the [antitrust] probe."

Mozilla: Lack of "browser choice" hit Firefox downloads

After the news broke that the EU would investigate the software giant, rival browser maker Mozilla said that Microsoft's failure to include a "browser choice" may have lost Mozilla as many as 9 million downloads in total.me in which the "browser choice" screen was not included in the latest version of Windows 7 (Service Pack 1), rival browser maker Mozilla saw a significant and prolonged dip in downloads.

Lost downloads by Mozilla as a result of the failure to include the "browser choice" screen in Windows 7's latest update. 
(Image: Mozilla)

 The EU said today that until November 2010, 84 million browsers were downloaded through the "browser choice" screen, stressing its importance.

Mozilla generates around $300 million per year from Google to keep its web search on the Firefox starting screen and as the browser's default search engine.