Lonnie Knows Everything

Hulu today introduced its Hulu Plus premium subscription plan for television content, set to offer customers willing to pay $9.99 per month the ability to access an extensive array of both current television shows and older library content. Hulu Plus, offering content in 720p HD, is also set to move beyond the company’s existing computer-centric platform to include Apple’s full line of iOS devices, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, with streaming available over Wi-Fi and 3G. Samsung Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray players will also be supported at launch, with additional support for Vizio and Sony devices, as well as the PS3 and Xbox 360 gaming platforms, rolling out in the future.

Hulu Plus is not a replacement for Hulu.com. Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service. For almost all of the current broadcast shows on our service, Hulu Plus offers the full season. Every single episode of the current season will be available, not just a handful of trailing episodes. Now there’s never a bad time to jump in on a hot new show like Modern Family (which I recommend highly). From Family Guy to Glee, from The Office to 30 Rock, from Grey’s Anatomy to Desperate Housewives, from Parks & Recreation to Parenthood, from House to Saturday Night Live, and dozens of other hits, the best time to jump in on any series is any time, and with any episode, that’s right for you.

Hulu is currently accepting requests for preview invitations to Hulu Plus. The program appears to be rolling out today, although the Hulu Plus application does not yet appear to have been posted to the App Store and it is unclear exactly when preview invitations will begin being distributed. A full, public release date for Hulu Plus is also not yet known.

Update: The free universal Hulu Plus application [App Store] is now available in the App Store. It can be used to request an invite to the preview, and access content once an invitation has been received.

Yesterday, we pointed to mention of “iWork for iPhone” in several of Apple’s international online stores, marking the second time that Apple’s own site has suggested that a scaled-down version of its iWork for iPad productivity suite might be making its way to the iPhone and iPod touch.

In a pair of posts today, 9 to 5 Mac shares a number of purported shots of Pages running on an iPod touch. While Pages has been unofficially ported from iPad to iPhone, the new screenshots, while blurry, exhibit none of the toolbar formatting issues seen on the tweaked iPad version and appear to offer a customized layout for the iPhone and iPod touch’s smaller screen size.

As the first report notes, the iPod touch on which Pages appears to be running currently carries only a 320 x 480 display, suggesting that an iWork for iPhone release may not be limited to the 640 x 960 “Retina” display of iPhone 4.

Meanwhile, WMPoweruser.com points to a new Microsoft job posting looking for a software engineer to work on bringing Office Mobile to Nokia smartphones, with “other leading Smartphone platforms” also being targeted, leading to speculation of Office for iOS devices. A Microsoft project manager noted in early February soon after the iPad’s introduction that the company was “looking at” the possibility of an iPad version of Office, but a company executive tempered expectations in mid-April by claiming that the company had “no current plans” to bring Office to the Apple’s tablet device. The company has not specifically addressed the possibility of Office for the even smaller iPhone and iPod touch screen size.

Update: 9 to 5 Mac is now posting actual screenshots of Pages for iPhone and iPod touch rather than photos of the screens. According to the new report, Pages and Numbers will be available as universal binaries to support iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. There is no word on whether Keynote will also be making the transition to the smaller screen.

Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer reports that after a spate of corporate acquisitions late last year and earlier this year bringing such firms as Quattro Wireless, Lala Media, Intrinsity, and Siri on board, Apple may not yet be done shopping around for companies to acquire. In fact, Apple may be looking at somewhat larger deals than those undertaken in recent months, expanding deal values out to as much as $1 billion.

Apple’s shopping spree isn’t over, and the company is looking at all kinds of deals, even up to $1 billion. This is being led by Apple’s newish deals guy, former Goldman banker Adrian Perica.

The report appears to be based primarily on gossip coming out of CEO dinner moderated by Frommer last night, and addresses a number of topics beyond Apple that are currently the scuttlebutt of industry insiders. And with Apple’s iPad and iPhone 4 out the door, the time seems ripe for the company to increase its focus on some other areas.

Another tidbit of information coming out of the dinner is discussion of Apple’s next major move being into television. While Apple has clearly been playing a minor role in television with the Apple TV and its iTunes Store video offerings and there have been rumblings that it is looking to get a television deal done, it seems that Apple may finally be ramping things up. In particular, Apple’s renaming of “iPhone OS” to “iOS” is seen as setting the stage for the platform to move away from mobile and into other devices, as has been rumored for Apple TV.

Apple’s next big move is going to be TV. Besides the leaks of a supposed new Apple TV device, the company also renamed its iPhone OS “iOS,” foreshadowing a future beyond mobile devices. The company’s move into advertising — mobile, so far, but no reason it can’t extend into TV somehow — is another hint.

Possibly lending credence to claims of a significant push into television, a Bloomberg report today also notes that Jobs is set to attend the annual Allen & Co. media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho for the first time since 2005. The conference draws many of media’s top executives and is a common venue for networking and dealmaking.

Update: Ken Li of the Financial Times tweets that although Jobs is on the invitation list, he is apparently not attending the Allen & Co. media conference.

As it has done on a monthly basis for the past several years, AdMob today released a new Mobile Metrics Report for May 2010. The report highlights worldwide trends in mobile requests to its ad network from over 23,000 mobile websites and applications.

This month’s report shows continued strength for the iPhone and other iOS devices during the lead-up to the iPhone 4 launch just last week. Google, AdMob’s parent company, is making strong inroads with its Android operating system, however, growing rapidly from a negligible share of the mobile ad request market only a year ago to approximately 25% today.

Android’s overall strength, however, results from its inclusion on a wide variety of smartphones from a variety of manufacturers. That is in contrast to Apple, which offers essentially only a single iPhone that currently leads the pack by a wide margin with nearly 40% of worldwide ad requests compared to only 6.8% for the second-place Motorola Droid.

AdMob’s data also offers an interesting glimpse into the geographic distribution of Apple’s “iOS” family of devices. Among the interesting pieces of data included in the report is a note that fewer than half of all iOS devices are located in North America, with 43% residing in the United States and 5% in Canada. When it comes to the iPad specifically, however, the U.S. sees a full 58% of the devices, an unsurprising result given that Apple is still working to roll the device out to its international markets.

In comparing iOS and Android devices, the report shows that Android is rapidly approaching the iPhone’s ad request share in the U.S., with 11.2 million unique iPhones registering there during May while 8.5 million Android devices appeared on the company’s network. As many have argued, however, Apple’s iPod touch and iPad also contribute significantly to the “iOS ecosystem” and, while not true smartphones, should be counted in some way as important players in the mobile web and application market. Adding in iPod touch and iPad data boosts iOS devices to 19.3 million in the U.S., giving iOS a 2-to-1 advantage over Android. Worldwide, the data leans even more strongly in Apple’s favor as Android has yet to catch on significantly in most international markets, with iOS devices out-numbering Android devices 3.5-to-1 on a global basis.

With today’s release AdMob also noted that its monthly metrics reports will be going on hiatus for at least the next several months as the company looks to rethink the best way of sharing information on the rapidly-growing mobile market with the public.

As noted by Engadget, Apple has been busy posting job listings for engineers to work on design and testing of antennas for the company’s iPhone and iPad. While Apple typically posts a number of new job listings each day, the fact that the company has posted a total of eight antenna-related positions over the past two weeks naturally leads to speculation that it is beefing up its staff to investigate and deal with signal issues being experienced by iPhone 4 users.

The eight job listings comprise three separate job titles, with the most relevant being three “Antenna Engineer – iPad/iPhone” positions. The three listings, all posted on June 23rd, are looking for individuals with a high level of qualification including 10+ years of experience in RF technology and a preference for PhD-level training.

Responsibilities: Define and implement antenna system architecture to optimize the radiation performance for wireless portable devices. The candidate should be able to design antennas suitable for wireless handheld devices with excellent radiation performance, including TRP, TIS, SAR, and EMC. Work closely with other RF and antenna design engineers, mechanical and industrial designers, and EMC engineers to integrate the antenna design in our products.

Also posted on June 23rd were two listings for “iPhone OTA Wireless Systems Engineer” to focus on validation of antenna radiation performance. And just one week earlier, the company posted three listings for ” RF Systems Validation Engineer iPhone” positions also focused on testing the iPhone’s RF systems, noting that “as we add more and more capabilities to the iPhone, testing the radios becomes more and more complex.”

It is unclear exactly what role these new hires might play in addressing the current issues, as it typically takes some time for a hiring process to run its course and new employees to arrive and get up to speed. The job listings could suggest, however, that the company is looking to bring on additional hands to work on designs and testing for future models as some of the unit’s staff is absorbed in addressing issues with the current model.