NFL Players Banned From Wearing Beats Headphones on Camera

Thanks to a new marketing deal with Bose, NFL players will no longer be allowed to wear Apple's line of Beats headphones around television cameras, according to Re/code . The restriction is in place for TV interviews during training camp, practice sessions and game day, running from before the game or event through 90 minutes after play has ended.



Many professional athletes have sponsorship deals with Beats, with the headphones frequently spotted around the necks of players both before and after games. Beats accounts for more than 60 percent of the premium headphone market.

"Over the last few years athletes have written Beats into their DNA as part of the pre-game ritual," a Beats spokesperson said. "Music can have a significant positive effect on an athlete’s focus and mental preparedness and has become as important to performance as any other piece of equipment."

Beats, which has seen significant success with its athlete endorsements, ran ads last year with NFL stars Colin Kaepernick and Richard Sherman tuning out opposing fans with Beats noise-canceling headphones.



Something similar happened during the World Cup when headphone sponsor Sony banned Beats from stadiums, but not from outside the arenas where players frequently used their preferred headphones. Many advertising industry experts said Beats still won the day with its star-studded "The Game Before The Game" video, portions of which ran repeatedly during World Cup commercial breaks.

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Posted in 2014 at 03:20PM, October 04

Apple and Samsung are still the only smartphone companies winning in the U.S.

It's hard to make a case that any company other than Apple or Samsung has any momentum in the American smartphone market. The latest numbers from comScore show that the smartphone industry's heavy hitters further consolidated their hold on the United States smartphone market by growing to a combined 65% share of all U.S. smartphones by the end of August 2013. In all, Apple's share of the U.S. market grew from 39.2% in May 2013 to 40.7% in August 2013 while Samsung's grew from 23% in May to 24.3% in May. No other major vendor increased its market share over this period, as HTC, LG, Motorola and BlackBerry all saw their market shares either fall or stay stagnant. ComScore's press release follows below.



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Posted in 2013 at 08:30PM, October 04

Did BlackBerry ever really stand a chance against iOS and Android?

There's no shortage of articles out there — some of which may have been posted on BGR from time to time — highlighting all the mistakes that BlackBerry has made ever since the launch of the iPhone in 2007. But let's say that BlackBerry had executed better by getting BlackBerry 10 released in 2011 and by making the BlackBerry Storm a top-notch touch screen device instead of a legendary debacle: Would things have really turned out that much differently for the company?



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Posted in 2013 at 05:15PM, October 04

HTC’s latest cunning comeback plan: Dual-boot Windows Phone onto its Android handsets

HTC may have found an even worse comeback plan than building a third Facebook phone. Unnamed sources tell Bloomberg that Microsoft has approached HTC with a plan to load Windows Phone 8 onto its Android handsets as a way to give consumers more than one platform option on their devices. In exchange for loading Windows Phone onto Android handsets, Microsoft would consider waiving licensing fees for using the mobile operating system, Bloomberg's sources say. Amazingly, HTC is apparently warm to the idea and is pondering the logistics of making a dual-boot Windows-Android handset. The fact that such a deal is even in consideration shows how desperate both HTC and Microsoft are to make bigger dents in a mobile market that has largely been dominated by Apple's iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy-branded devices.

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Posted in 2013 at 01:30PM, October 04

Android is huge in China but it’s also out of Google’s control

There's no question that Android is far and away the No. 1 mobile operating system in China but that might not be as good for Google as you might think. The reason is that so many ultra-cheap Chinese Android vendors are cranking out handsets that simply use Android as a base platform but that may not use any of the revenue-generating apps and services that Google relies on. Case in point: Enders Analysis analyst Benedict Evans has posted a chart on his Twitter account that uses data from the Umeng Analytics Platform to show that Chinese Android users only used Google Play for downloading 5.6% of all mobile apps on their devices. The vast majority of Android apps downloaded in China — a full 72.6%, Umeng found — are from third-party app stores.

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Posted in 2013 at 03:59AM, October 04

All good things must end: Instagram officially bringing ads to user feeds

Come on, Instagram users: You didn't think your feed would stay blissfully ad-free forever, did you? Instagram announced on Wednesday that it will start delivering ads to users' Instagram feeds over the next couple of months as a way to grow its revenues. The Facebook-owned company says it wants to make sure that "any advertisements you see feel as natural to Instagram as the photos and videos many of you already enjoy from your favorite brands" and will insist that the ads it displays will "be enjoyable and creative in much the same way you see engaging, high-quality ads when you flip through your favorite magazine." Users will also be able to block ads that they don't like and will be able to give Instagram feedback about what ads they'd prefer to see in their feeds.

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Posted in 2013 at 01:45AM, October 04

Nobody wins in a government shutdown… except Netflix

With around 800,000 federal employees on furlough due to the government shutdown, they'll have a lot more time to catch up on missed episodes of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. The Washington Post's Wonkblog notes that Netflix's stock price saw a big jump right after the government shutdown started on Tuesday morning, although it cautions that this could be due to a variety of factors such as the company's recent distribution deal with a Swedish cable company. At the very least, though, it's a striking coincidence and it will be interesting to see whether Netflix's overall traffic numbers have similarly surged since the start of the shutdown.

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Posted in 2013 at 12:30AM, October 04