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Bits Blog: Microsoft to Open Mini-Stores Inside Best Buy

It isn’t hard to find a place to buy a Windows computer. What’s missing, apparently, is the right kind of place.

To correct that, Microsoft and Best Buy announced a plan on Thursday to create 600 Windows stores within existing Best Buy retail locations in the United States and Canada. The Windows stores, at 1,500 to 2,200 square feet, will be the biggest stores-within-a-store at Best Buy, which has similar dedicated areas for Samsung and Apple products.

The partnership is an effort to give a lift to Windows 8, Microsoft’s latest operating system, which has failed to reverse declines in shipments of personal computers since it came out last fall. Microsoft is investing much more heavily in the retail side of the business, where Apple has a distinct advantage with its stores.

Microsoft currently has almost 70 Microsoft-owned retail stores, about 30 of which are “pop-up stores” in shopping malls and other locations.

Since Windows already runs on the vast majority of personal computers sold in Best Buy stores today, the deal between the companies is really a renovation of the stores’ existing computer departments. Walls will be decorated with Windows logos and spacious new tables will display Windows computers. An additional 1,200 workers will be hired to work exclusively in the Windows departments.

“We’ve learned again and again that dedicated, trained people makes such a difference when helping customers,” said Tami Reller, chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Windows at Microsoft.

Inside Asia: Smartphones Gain Ground in India

More than four years after it started selling iPhones in India, Apple is aggressively pushing the devices with installment payment plans that make it more affordable, a new distribution model and a marketing blitz.

“Now your dream phone” at 5,056 rupees, or $94, read a recent full front-page ad for the iPhone 5 in the Times of India, referring to the initial payment on a phone priced at about 45,500 rupees, or almost two months’ wages for an entry-level software engineer.

The newfound interest in India suggests a subtle strategy shift for Apple, which has moved tentatively in emerging markets and has allowed rivals like BlackBerry and Samsung Electronics to dominate with more affordable smartphones. With the exception of China, all Apple stores are in advanced economies.

Apple expanded its Indian sales effort in the second half of 2012 by adding two distributors. Previously it had sold iPhones only through a few carriers and stores it calls premium resellers.

The result: Shipments of iPhones to India between October and December nearly tripled to 250,000 units, from 90,000 in the previous quarter, according to an estimate by Jessica Kwee, a Singapore-based analyst at the consulting firm Canalys.

At the MobileStore, an Indian chain owned by the Essar conglomerate, which says it sells 15 percent of the iPhones purchased in the country, iPhone sales tripled between December and January, thanks to a monthly payment program introduced last month.

“Most people in India can’t afford a dollar-priced phone when the salaries in India are rupee salaries,” said Himanshu Chakrawarti, the MobileStore’s chief executive. “But the desire is the same.”

Apple, its distributors, its retailers and banks share the advertising and interest costs of the marketing push, according to Mr. Chakrawarti. Carriers like Bharti Airtel, which also sell the iPhone 5, run separate ads.

India is the world’s second-largest cellphone market by number of users, but most Indians cannot afford fancy handsets. Smartphones account for just a tenth of total phone sales. In India, 95 percent of cellphone users have prepaid accounts without fixed contracts. Unlike those in the United States, Indian carriers do not subsidize handsets.

Within the smartphone segment, Apple’s Indian market share last quarter was just 5 percent, according to Canalys, meaning its overall penetration is tiny.

Still, the industry research company IDC expects the Indian smartphone market to grow more than five times, to 108 million units in 2016, from about 19 million last year, which presents a big opportunity.

Samsung Electronics dominates Indian smartphone sales with a 40 percent share, thanks to its wide portfolio of Android devices, priced as low as 5,900 rupees. The market has also been flooded with lower-cost Android phones from local brands like Lava and Micromax.

Most smartphones sold in India are much cheaper than the iPhone, said Anshul Gupta, a Gartner analyst: “Where the masses are — there, Apple still has a gap.”

Apple helped create the smartphone industry with the iPhone in 2007, but last year it lost its lead globally to Samsung, whose free Android software is especially attractive in Asia. Many in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street believe the surest way to penetrate lower-income Asian markets would be with a lower-cost iPhone, as has been widely reported but never confirmed. The risk is that a lower-cost iPhone would reduce demand for the premium version and eat into Apple’s margins.

The new monthly payment plan in India goes a long way toward expanding the potential market, Mr. Chakrawarti said.

“The Apple campaign is not meant for, really, the regular top-end customer; it is meant to upgrade the 10,000-12,000 handset guy to 45,000 rupees,” he said.

Apple’s main focus for expansion in Asia has been Greater China, including Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan, where revenue grew 60 percent last quarter to $7.3 billion.

Asked last year why Apple had not been as successful in India, Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, said that its business in India was growing but that the company remained more focused on other markets.

“I love India, but I believe that Apple has some higher potential in the intermediate term in some other countries,” Mr. Cook said. “The multilayer distribution there really adds to the cost of getting products to market.”

Apple, which has partly addressed that situation by adding distributors, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Ingram Micro, one of its new distributors, also declined to comment. Executives at Redington, the other distributor, could not immediately be reached.

BlackBerry, which has seen its global market share shrivel to 3.4 percent from 20 percent over the past three years, is making what is seen as a last-ditch effort to save itself with the BB10 series.

The high-end BlackBerry Z10, introduced in India on Monday, is expected to be priced not far from the 45,500-rupee price tag for an iPhone 5 with 16 gigabytes of memory. The Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2, the Nokia Lumia 920 and two HTC models are the main iPhone rivals.

Until last year, BlackBerry had a market share of more than 10 percent in India, thanks to a push into the consumer segment with lower-priced phones. Last quarter, its share fell to about 5 percent, according to Canalys, just ahead of Apple.

App Smart: Unveiling the Bag of Tricks Inside Your Smartphone

But that does mean I’ve not explored every trick in my phone’s repertoire. For help with that, I turn to a few of the many apps that reveal those tips. These apps are also handy if you’re looking at a brand-new device in bewilderment.

Among the best iPhone “tips” apps I’ve found is Tips for iPhone — Tricks & Secrets (currently free on iTunes). This has been freshly updated for iOS 6 and has hoards of handy hints and tricks.

The real joy of this app is its heavy reliance on graphics. In the center of the screen is a photo or a graphic demonstrating a gesture, all of which are extremely clear and simple. Beneath this is a bright red banner bearing a title that’s akin to a newspaper headline for the tip in question. A tap or drag on this banner brings up a short text summary of the tip itself.

If you’re simply curious to learn, then you can just swipe through each tip on a whim and pull up details on the ones that intrigue you (the banner headline “The Bluetooth Fairy” always catches my eye, for example).

This app can also take you directly to a tip to help you understand an iPhone feature or perhaps solve a problem. The easiest way to find a specific hint is to use the app’s built-in search powers. You can also try looking under the Categories tab. This lists tips under headings like “Email,” “Photos, Music and Video” and so on, and under the “Troubleshooting” section you’ll find useful data like how to keep the phone up to date.

The app also has user comments, and you can share interesting tips with friends via e-mail or Twitter. Tips for iPhone is intuitive and helpful, plus it’s a great way to while away a few spare minutes.

If your mind is more organized, you may prefer the free app Guide for iOS 6 — Tips & Tricks. This app has similar content but has a listlike format. One of these lists is for iOS 5 tips, useful if you haven’t upgraded. There’s a section for Time Saver hints (like searching the Web for a phrase via the iPhone’s spotlight search bar) and one for Keyboard Tricks, and it’ll also help you solve problems. The app keeps 50 more “professional” secrets for an upgrade costing you $1.

While this app is definitely useful and easy to operate, occasionally some of the tips it suggests may feel a little obvious.

For a simpler tips app, you may enjoy the iOS 6-centric Tips & Tricks (currently free on iTunes). This app’s subtitle is “new features for girls,” and its décor is pink. The advice is broken down into extremely simple categories, each adorned with cute graphics, and you can choose “novice” tips or “talent” tips depending on your experience.

Despite its whimsical design, it’s very useful and taught me a trick or two. It told me, step by step, how to add those cute Japanese emoji characters to text messages.

When it comes to Android phones, there is a problem with hints and tips apps because of the diverse versions of the Android operating system used on a vast array of smartphones. Manufacturers also tweak some Android editions, which complicates matters.

One useful Android hints app is Droid Secret Tips (free with ads, or $2 for an ad-free “pro” version). This one is worth a mention because it contains tips for most versions of Android, and its maker promises that advice for Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and tablet-centric tips are on the way.

The app categorizes useful information by level of user experience. But the app delivers its information as text-only and is not browsable by category. This means it’s probably more useful for consulting on a casual basis rather than when you need specific advice.

Android Secrets Lite is another free helper app that’s relatively up-to-date, and it contains information about devices like the Samsung Galaxy S3. It has a comprehensive list of tips, and where it gives you advice it does so clearly — for example, listing actions in order and guiding you through menu options. There are images to help with some of the tricks. To get to its “advanced” section, where it guides you through complex tasks like formatting an SD card, you have to pay for the full app, but it’s under a dollar.

If you pay attention to their advice, you may find you learn something. I definitely did!

Quick Calls

The popular Android photography app Camera ZOOM FX has just had a makeover. The look is modernized and there are many new features that will please photographers, including brightness, ISO and exposure control. It’s $2.99 on Google Play and is a good alternative to your phone’s stock camera app. ... Sega’s popular Sonic the Hedgehog has just appeared in a brand-new game called Sonic Jump ($2 on iOS). The game is the first original mobile-only game Sega has put together for the phone.

Inside Art: The Met’s Exhibition Catalogs Are Revived for a Digital Life

Determined to “bring the Met’s scholarly heritage into the digital age,” as he put it, the museum on Friday began MetPublications, an online resource that will allow users to search more than 600 catalogs, journals and museum bulletins by title, keyword, publication type, theme or collection. Of that number, 368 are out-of-print catalogs and publications that can be previewed and searched. Also available on the site are 272 titles still in print. It will be possible to obtain on-demand copies of 140 out-of-print books and to get paperbound editions with digitally printed color reproductions through Yale University Press. “What’s value-added is the extent the team has cross-linked to all the Met’s artworks,” Mr. Campbell said. MetPublications includes a description and table of contents for almost every book as well as information about the authors, reviews of the books and links to related publications and art in the museum’s collections. There will also be links to buy in-print books.

For readers seeking a copy of a book in a nearby library, MetPublications can direct them to WorldCat, a global library catalog. Those living closer to the museum can also use Watson online, the Met’s catalog of its libraries’ holdings.

MetPublications is in its infancy, so now available material dates to only the mid-1960s, but Mr. Campbell said publications going back to the museum’s founding in 1870 will be added over time.

The Met is not the first museum to offer online books and research materials. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others, also have scholarly resources online.

“We are all recognizing that our mission is not just the physical audience,” Mr. Campbell said. “We’re addressing a world audience too.”

A RARE BLACK SHEEP

Being the black sheep isn’t always a bad thing. The artist François-Xavier Lalanne made hundreds of sculptures of sheep, but only a handful of them are black. It’s been seven years since a black sheep has come to market. But now a flock of 24 Lalannes — that includes one black among the eight standing and 16 grazing animals — is being sold at Christie’s on Nov. 14, in its important New York evening sale of postwar and contemporary art. The flock, which once adorned the East Hampton home of the oil heiress Adelaide de Menil and her husband, Edmund S. Carpenter, is expected to sell for $4 million to $6 million. Proceeds from the auction are going to benefit the Rock Foundation, which supports anthropological and archaeological research, publishing and films.

Until recently Lalanne’s sheep sculptures were relegated to decorative-arts auctions. But when his work began bringing high prices, auction house experts started reconsidering where his creations would fare best. In Paris three years ago a bar commissioned by the fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent and his partner Pierre Bergé was sold at Christie’s for $3.9 million. In London at a Sotheby’s sale in May of property from the estate of Gunter Sachs, the German industrialist and playboy who died last year, a group of three white sheep brought $2.5 million. And in December at an auction of 20th-century decorative art and design at Christie’s in New York, a group of 10 sheep (none black) brought a record price of nearly $7.5 million for one of his flocks at auction.

“This is the first time we’ve seen sheep in a postwar and contemporary-art evening sale,” said Brett Gorvy, who heads that department at Christie’s worldwide. “Many key collectors have started taking a new look at Lalanne’s sculptures. Back in the ’70s they were considered very daring and very Pop.”

HOCKNEY’S WIDE VISTAS

A traveling exhibition of David Hockney landscapes called “A Bigger Picture,” at the Royal Academy in London, drew such big crowds this year that the Academy had to extend its hours. Included in the show was a group of his drawings, created on an iPad, blown up and printed on paper.

Always undaunted by technology, Mr. Hockney, 75, was one of the first artists to experiment with Polaroid cameras in the 1970s and has never stopped embracing the latest technologies. Some of Mr. Hockney’s newest films, paintings and drawings will be on view in San Francisco next year at the de Young Museum, his first exhibition in the United States since the popular show of portraits at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, six years ago.

The San Francisco show, as yet unnamed, will include monumental works inspired by the landscape of Mr. Hockney’s youth in Yorkshire, England, which he returned to in 1997. (He divides his time between Yorkshire and Los Angeles, where he has lived on and off for more than 30 years.)

The show, scheduled to run from Oct. 26, 2013, through January 2014, will include previously unseen movies, filmed simultaneously on 18 digital cameras and shown on 18 55-inch monitors installed in a grid on the wall. One film shows acrobats juggling.

“He is still experimenting with the multiple cameras filming the California landscape and will possibly complete one of them in time for the exhibition,” said Richard Benefield, deputy director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which include the de Young. The show will also feature some of the paintings from the Royal Academy show.

“But there will not be any swimming pools,” Mr. Benefield said, referring to the canvases that became Mr. Hockney’s signature in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mr. Benefield has been visiting Mr. Hockney’s two studios in Los Angeles, one in West Hollywood and one in Hollywood Hills, where he has seen prints of Mr. Hockney’s iPad drawings of Yosemite as well as some of the films that are works in progress. “He’s still making new work as fast as he can,” Mr. Benefield said.