EXTERNAL EFFECTS
Legislating Internet Tax? NASA Returns, Facebook and Amazon Kindle Stay On Course
By Rob Hephner
TAXING THE INTERNET What’s Going On: Senators Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have introduced a bill
referred to as the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would serve to close the loophole on Internet sales that do not charge tax. How It Could Affect You: The free ride on taxes will end, most likely sooner than later. While some will not like this as it will create
a downturn in sales, (sorry to you manufacturers that make up your end of month by trans-shipping) the real winners will be the locally based independent retailers. This measure is really meant to level the playing field. As much as I personally like to save money, it really will help to bring back local buying and allow customer service to overcome price when shopping.
IT’S A KINDLE REALITY What’s Going On: Amazon has increased its order for Kindle Fire by half a million, this via Taiwan-based sup-
pliers as reported by CNET. How It Could Affect You:
While Apple is the clear leader in the tablet realm, the real story is portability is here to stay. That means integration will be a motivating topic for consumers. Stores must have not only a clear understanding of products available in the market but a way to make them useable in vehicles.
FACEBOOK PHONE?
What’s Going On: When the announcement came down that Google had reached a deal to acquire Motorola Mobil-
ity, it was only a matter of time before Facebook would follow suit. Or did it? Well, in late November,
AllThingsD.com reported that Facebook selected HTC over Samsung as the manufacturer of its smartphone, code-named “Buffy” after the TV vampire slayer. The phone would run on a version of Android and have deep Facebook integration, as well as support HTML5 as a platform for ap- plications. How It Could Affect You:
Buffy won’t hit the market until 2013 at the earliest. However, with Facebook expected to go public next year, and its broad- based strategy to integrate with anything and everything mobile, it would be a good idea to keep an eye on Buffy’s progress.
FLASH NO MORE What’s Going On:
Adobe Software has abandoned its Flash Player for mobile devices and announced it will instead focus its mobile efforts on standards like HTML5. How It Could Affect You: Steve Jobs was right — flash sucks. What this development means to us is mobile devices will eventu- ally not have to suffer from the processing slowdown caused by Flash. They will get faster and be able to play things like streaming video with ease.
64 Mobile Electronics December | January 2012
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