TCTV: In the Studio, Gr...

Editor’s note:  TechCrunch  contributor  Semil Shah  is an entrepreneur interested in digital media, consumer Internet, and social networks. Shah currently works at  Votizen  and is based in Palo Alto; you can follow him on twitter  @semil “In the Studio” at TechCrunch TV continues today with a guest who was once a Senior Scientist at Apple and CEO of Mozilla Corporation before eventually making the trek up Sand Hill Road, where today he’s a partner at a leading venture capital firm. John Lilly , an investor with Greylock Partners , has kept himself busy. Having invested already in properties like Tumblr, Dropbox, and a series of others through his firm’s early-stage “Discovery Fund,” one of the new areas Lilly is investigating today is world of personal health data and systems. The sheer number of new companies and devices on the market offering consumer-level health solutions is simply staggering. We have an explosion in “computing devices” (phones and sensors), new hardware (like Fitbit ), new software services (like Cake Health ), and social systems and platforms that attempt to weave these all together to form some type of personalized representation of our current state of health and where we’d aspire to be. (Note: There are simply way to many companies in the health space to mention them all here. You can find more comprehensive lists on Quora and by poking around the website of Rock Health , an incubator designed to help launch health-focused startups. ) In this short discussion, Lilly brings some of latest blog entries on personal health data and social health systems to life. Because he has a background in hardware, sensors, software, and now consumer products, Lilly has a unique perspective on where the real opportunities may lie relative to all the approaches currently on the market. In this talk, he’s able to paint a picture of how hardware, software, and social systems could marry to form a truly personalized health experience for the consumer, especially set against the backdrop of aggregate population data. For those entrepreneurs working away on the health devices, the health software approaches, and the ways in which we’ll share our data in social systems, this talk with Lilly is a great chance to learn from someone who has been thinking deeply about the opportunity a few years down the road, with an eye focused on the convergence of the hardware, software, and social.

Tablet Shipments To Rea...

Post-PC era? Here we come: According to new data from NPD , tablet PC shipments are expected to grow from 72.7 million units in 2011 to 383.3 million units by 2017. For comparison purposes, worldwide PC shipments for 2011 were 352.8 million, after seeing a 6% decline in Q4. While those numbers are remarkable enough on their own, what’s really interesting is where much of the growth will come from: the emerging market. Emerging markets are expected to account for up to 46% of worldwide shipments by 2017, up from the 36% share in 2011. “The emerging market opportunity for tablets has been flying under the radar mainly because the device brands aren’t household names and there are concerns regarding the sustainability of the market,” says NPD Senior Analyst Richard Shim. But the firm believes that won’t always be the case. “We are beginning to see investments by some of the better known brands in developing regions, and we expect this to not only continue, but to flourish as competition improves,” he notes. The tablet surge won’t be courtesy of the iPad alone, especially in these emerging markets. Specifically, the report cited the introduction of new brands like Aakash in India, for example, as well as older brands like Dell, as contributing the overall tablet growth. China and the Asia Pacific regions are leading in terms of tablet penetration rates in emerging markets at present, but Brazil, India, Russia and other countries are also becoming bigger forces, says NPD. And the key to unlocking this growth comes low-power processors and tablets with price points under $100. In addition to the growth in emerging markets, NPD also believes that other growth will come as the tablet platform itself evolves through technological advances. That evolution comes first from higher pixel densities, then later from higher performance. The changes will segment the market into “premium” and “value” category tablets. (Any guess where iPad will be?) Believe it or not, it even sounds like Microsoft might still be in the running as a tablet competitor, if NPD’s related survey data is to be believed. According to a survey of U.S. commercial tablet owners, 39% indicated that having a Windows OS option as a part of their next tablet purchase was “very important” to them. But let’s wait to see which tablet they end up buying – saying and doing are often very different things.

Glooko Raises $3.5M To ...

Glooko , the developer of a unique hardware device and mobile app solution for people with diabetes, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by The Social+Capital Partnership, with participation from existing investors, including Bill Campbell, Vint Cerf, Judy Estrin and Andy Hertzfeld, Venky Harinarayan, Russell Hirsch and Xtreme Labs. Chamath Palihapitiya , Founder and Managing Partner of The Social+Capital Partnership will be joining Glooko’s board. Launched last year, Glooko is a digital logbook for people with diabetes who have to check their blood sugar every day. There are dozens of glucose logbooks in iTunes, but almost all of them require manual entry. What makes Glooko different is that the company designed a $40 cable ( sold separately ) that works with seven of the top glucose meters. You just plug it into both devices and it downloads your daily readings. The app itself is free. The digital log book allows users to review daily blood sugar levels, annotate them and share the results with their physician. It lets you mark whether the reading was done before or after a meal, add notes, and email or fax a 14-day summary to your doctor. The company charges for the cable. Glooko today released a new version of the Glooko Logbook app that supports the Bayer’s Breeze 2 meter, including a real-time food database, a 30-day logbook, and provides availability in Canada. There are currently 25 million people living with diabetes in the U.S. today, and Yogen Dalal, Glooko co-founder and chairman, said that people with blood sugar meters couldn’t do anything but read results on the meter itself, making logging results a visualizing this data cumbersome. While there have been a number of digital readers that have emerged on the market over the past year which plug into smartphones, the beauty of Glooko is that it works with the top seven devices on the market. So users don’t need to purchase and learn how to use a whole new measurement device. “Proactive and ongoing self-management of one’s health can now be a reality using mobile devices and well-designed software,” said Palihapitiya. “Glooko has made important progress in helping individuals better manage one of the most pervasive diseases of our generation.” There is also future potential in actually analyzing the data collected from users. Parsing and plotting these data points on a graph requires FDA clearance, explains Dalal. Dalal says Glooko currently has 1,000 plus users, and the response has been overwhlemingly positive. He adds that Android integration is on the horizon. The new funding will be used to expand to other platforms and for user acquisition.

RIM’s New CEO Backtrack...

On Monday of this week, RIM’s new CEO made a statement that set off a bomb on the blogosphere, and I’m not sure he understood its repercussions at the time. “I don’t think any drastic change is needed.” If you’ve been paying attention to RIM and its numbers, you know that what the company desperately needs is change. Sales are declining, platform market share is dwindling, and the BlackBerry brand, to a large extent, has lost the power it once had behind it. So in a recent interview with CrackBerry , Heins made sure to clarify exactly what he meant by “no drastic change is needed.” I think this got into a little bit of the black and white zone. I was talking about drastic or seismic changes. What I was trying to address was that there was some suggestion that RIM should be split up or should even be sold. My true belief is that RIM has the strength and the assets that we can really succeed in this market . There is a LOT of change. There is a lot of structure change, there has been already a lot of change in terms of our software, our software platform, bringing QNX in. There is no standstill at any moment here at RIM. What I wanted to make clear to the market is that we believe in our own strength, we are BlackBerry, we are an integrated solution, hardware, software, services, and network. Perhaps, Mr. Heins makes a point. RIM is clearly trying to change. We just haven’t seen it yet. A QNX-based BlackBerry 10 operating system is a huge step in the right direction, but it was announced in April 2010 and won’t be ready until the second half of this year. Quite the wait, if I may be so bold. Then there’s the PlayBook 2.0 OS that’s supposed to make its way to us next month, and refreshed hardware to go along with it which hasn’t been given a clear release date. Again, these are solid changes. PlayBook 2.0 brings everything that the first tablet OS was lacking and does it in a seamless, elegant manner. But … the original PlayBook should’ve launched with this version of the OS, even if it meant the launch would be a bit later. Another case of attempted change, but poor execution. Another change we’ll soon see from RIM has to do with their launch strategy. RIM usually puts out two or three new phones all on the same day. It’s like a BlackBerry explosion. But according to a leaked roadmap , the company seems to finally realize that a staggered approach is the only way to give each device a moment in the sun. It’s a smart move, we just need to experience it. Finally, the BlackBerry London . Despite the fact that RIM’s bread and butter lies with its full QWERTY keyboard, the company is expected to debut BlackBerry 10 on an all-touch device, codenamed London. I have to say I applaud RIM for this choice, for now. RIM’s core audience enjoys the full QWERTY, no doubt, and the company will likely continue to be the de facto when it comes to communication and QWERTY handsets. But (yep, another but)… the world is moving to all-touch whether RIM likes it or not. This is the company’s chance to tap into a different, younger segment of the market. Of course, the London will need to be just about perfect in terms of hardware to get the ball rolling again, especially since RIM’s found itself in an uphill battle. Long story short, RIM certainly is in the midst of a change. Whether it’s big enough or coming soon enough is an entirely different story.

It Only Makes Sense Tha...

Every once in a while something comes along that’s worth a wait, and I think the Samsung Galaxy S III will be one of those things. We’ve all been expecting Samsung’s next flagship to show its face at MWC in February, but according to the Verge , Samsung may have other plans. Anonymous sources who spoke with the Verge claim that the SGSIII will still be available “before summer,” but that Mobile World Congress in Barcelona may not be the most beneficial launch venue. Last year, the Samsung Galaxy S II was debuted at MWC and though it was available in Europe almost immediately, the U.S. had to wait quite a while before AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile were all comfortable with their model. That said, the Galaxy S II still has a little life in it yet, and it would be just plain silly for Samsung to interrupt its success too early. A look at the numbers, if you don’t mind: In less than a month, Samsung sold 1 million Galaxy S IIs in its home country of South Korea Samsung sold 3 million units of the Samsung Galaxy S II in its first 55 days on the market After 85 days on the market, units sold jumped to the 5 million mark By September, the company shipped over 10 million units At this point, 1 in every 10 South Koreans is carrying a Galaxy S II Meanwhile, the original Galaxy S is still selling well, topping 20 million units sold. No doubt the Galaxy S III will be a beast, and Samsung is well aware of its mobile prowess by this point. A bevy of new phones — most of which are meant for the European market — will launch at MWC. Still, after the success of earlier generation Galaxy S models, Samsung knows its consumers will wait a tad longer to hear about the SIII as long as it shows up on shelves shortly thereafter. From the report this morning, we believe that will be the case.