Is there a more explosive economic concept than combining iProducts with China? Didn't think so. In that vein, MarketWatch reports that China Unicom starts to ship iPhone 4 in China next month.

Our mind is boggled by the concept of hundreds of millions of frenetic Chinese citizens roaming the fastest growing country on earth clutching iPhones and iPads.

On to the rest of the news:

Can AT&T stop messing up? In this morning news, Gawker appears to have broken the scoop that 114,000 iPads have been victim of a security breach exposing email and iPad IDs.

The security breach has "exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg," writes Gawker.

AT&T confirmed the story this morning (Wall Street Journal). Just another black eye for AT&T, which is still trying to work out connection issues with the iPhone.

In other news:

• Why just focus on bad news from AT&T? They're rolling out 3D coverage of the World Cup with ESPN (Businessweek).
• AllThingsD reports that a Wall Street analyst says T-Mobile will be the next carrier to get the iPhone. InformationWeek's Eric Zeman says that's completely wrong.
• BP tries to reassure investors (New York Times). No, really, we're not a disaster! We know what we're doing! Really!
• Meanwhile, BP's bonds are starting to look like junk (Zero Hedge)
• Global markets rally (Bloomberg). Well, you can't go in the same direction all the time. That wouldn't be very interesting.
• Six strange iPad accessories (Newsweek).
• The HTC EVO is seriously flawed, says TechCrunch.
• Far out news of the day: Is the Obama administration looking at a plan to scrap social security? (Washington Post)

 

 

Well, AT&T has eliminated the unlimited data plan, and Internet anarchists everywhere are having a cow. The funny thing is AT&T's headline on the announcement: "AT&T Announes New Lower-Priced Wireless Data Plans..."

First question: Are the plans really lower priced, as AT&T claims? Now that's funny. If you read the headline on this press release you would think it was some mundane, tiny pricing shift -- like AT&T thought it could slip one by millions of frothing-mouthed, blogging mobile data heads. Of course the digital-media addicted Internet anarchists note that by definition eliminating an all-you-can eat plan is raising prices. MobileCrunch calls this a "sad day in data land."

Hopefully one of these mornings we'll wake up to learn that they've stopped the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. Depressing stuff, it is.

Meanwhile, while the oil spills, Google and Microsoft are sparring, with Google launching an anti-Windows campaign. Here's what's in the news today:

• BP shares plunge after top-kill effort fails (Reuters). Now, you would think they would have had a plan to stop this. It appears they don't.
  
• BP tries again with the dome (New York Times).
• The White House Tries to control the PR damage (Washington Post). Good luck wid that.
• As if there's not enough going on, we now have another conflict off the coast of Israel (AOL News).
• Hewlett-Packard is taking a hefty axe to the workforce -- to the tune of 3,000 workers (Reuters). Let me get this straight -- company doing great, but taking a $1B charge and cutting 3,000 workers?
• Stocks were boosted by manfacturing data (Reuters). For about 30 minutes, after which point they started to fall again.
• ZipCar files for $75 million IPO (Reuters).
  
• The Financial Times says Google is ditching Windows because of security issues. Eric Schmidt got tired of all those uninvited pop-ups.
• Microsoft responds by mocking Google (Business Insider).
• Meanwhile, Google is talking about something called a sensor revolution. Check it out.
  

Apple announced today that it has already sold 1 million iPads, coming in less than a month after it was launched. Wow. As pointed out in the press release, that means it took less than half the time it took the iPhone to get to 1 million (74 days). And as an experienced trader and investor, I know to watch the reaction to the news rather than the news itself. Apple, a stock I'm accustomed to seeing up $10 or $20 in short swatches of time, is only up $6 (2%). That seems like a lot but in the Apple world, it's quite a pedestrian gain.  In addition, on the chart, it looks like it's struggling to take out a new high (around the $267 level). Watch this development carefully. If it fails to take out a new high today or tomorrow,  I think it's time to book profits. Disclosure: I was in Apple briefly earlier in the year, but I unloaded my Apple stock around the $230 level. Doh! But sometimes you can't get greedy.

Gold-plated Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KP) is upping its bet on iPad applications.  The partners, in a post on TechCrunch, say that the immense growth projected in the iPad market is leading them to  "double down" by boosting the venture capital firm's fund focused on the iPad -- the iFund -- by $100M to a total size of $200M. Why now? KP partners believe, apparently, that the iPad is ushering in a new phase of innovation comparable to the World Wide Web. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partners John Doerr, Bing Gordon, Chi-Hua Chien and Ellen Pao write that the iPad experience is a follow-on boom to the Web:

The rest of the 90’s were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Entrepreneurs created the Web, and great ventures – Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others. And they changed our lives. Silicon Valley became the Florence of the New, Networked Economy. The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it’s happening all over again. Not once, but TWICE-in-a-lifetime.

The VC partners have funded 14 companies, with 3 in stealth mode. The companies include Booyah, Cooliris, GOGII, iControl, InMobi, ngmoco, Pelago, Pinger, Shazam, shopkick, and Zynga mobile. KP partners say the companies in the iFund have generated more than 100 million downloads and that they expect the companies to generate more than $100 million in revenue this year. To read the full article, go here.

If there is a technology guru and review who can make a break a technology's future with a few keystrokes, it's Walt Mossberg. The veteran gear reviewer for the Wall Street Journal is now out with his take on the iPad, and he calls it nothing short of revolutionary. Oh boy. This should uncork any remaining iPad hype that hadn't already boosted the press  into oxygen-depleted zones of the atmosphere.  The iPad is now akin to the discovery of the wheel.

I have a Labrador  as a pet. They are famous for eating everything.  So are mobile consumers, which brings an interesting question: With a flood of mobile "tablet computing" devices such as Apple's iPad coming, are the wireless networks ready for mobile consumers, the Labradors of data? The short answer is, "No." The problem is that tablet computers and all of their bandwidth-heavy network-based applications are a little too innovative for the 3G networks they will be running on. Really, they need 4G, which isn't really widely available yet, unless you are in a Sprint/Clearwire WiMax zone.

Adobe's Flash platform is coming under increased scrutiny as the iPad gets ready to ship.  As a number of big players start thinking about their HTML5 strategy, it's clear that the "Flash issue" is on everybody's mind. Here's where we come to the Flash problem: Apple famously doesn't like Adobe's Flash and won't support it.  When the iPad comes out, the primary video clients will be Apple's Quicktime and HTML5. The iPad, with its larger screen than the smaller iPhone and iTouch products, will be even a more powerful video and media platform. With Apple representing one of the fastest growing segments of online video, this will put pressure on the Flash empire as it will give users and developers a chance to look at the emerging alternative, HTML5. HMTL5 is an open standard, which will give it a natural advantage over Flash. Oh, and did we mention that HTML5 will be pushed heavily in all of the coming Google Android-based devices? Proof that video service companies are nervous about this potential tectonic shift is evident, as video streaming provider Brightcove has announced it is aggressively rolling out an HTML5-based alternative to Flash may be proof enough that that the Flash assault has started. Brightcove has announced a push to add features to HTML5 to "bring it to parity" with Flash by adding advertising and management features. This is important because Brightcove has long been thought of as a "Flash shop" in the video platform industry. The Web video platforms host and stream videos for media clients, making it easier to manage the video, insert ads, and make sure they're reaching and functioning in a wide range of devices and browsers. Brightcove's CEO and founder, Jeremy Allaire, threw down the gauntlet a few months back when he wrote a lengthy post on TechCrunch describing the coming conflict between Flash and HTML5. The announcement that Brightcove is working hard to "bring HTML5 to parity" with Flash indicates two things 1) Allaire and Brightcove see HTML5 as a legitimate threat to Flash's dominance in video on the Web 2) They are wisely hedging their bets. I'm impressed with the Brightcove move because it is the type of the strategic move that is made at crucial inflection points in a company's history. It shows that Brightcove is not standing still. But let's not stop there, other influential video players are taking a closer look at HTML5. The big one? YouTube, of course, which streams billions of videos a day, primarily in Flash. YouTube is one of the largest Web sites in the world, so if they turn away from their Flash roots, something big is happening.  It turns out that YouTube has an "experimental" program to test HTML5. My prediction: You'll see YouTube streaming video in HTML5 by the end of the year.

For those of you who have had your eye on the ball, unable to track the "financial crisis du jour" around the world, we appear to be finally reaching some sort of closure of the Ouzo Crisis, otherwise known as:  "Who's gonna bail out the Greeks?" This is the Baklava Bailout we've been waiting for for months. The Germans finally appear to be softening their stance, willing to toss a few Deutsche marks -- er, I mean, Euros -- in the pot. It's important to watch this stuff, because winding our way through these debt crises is crucial to recovery in the world economy. It's like a version of economic dodge-ball: It's possible we'll have rolling debt crises over the next few years, and we need to work our way through them and hopefully avoid a debt crisis in the Big Kahuna -- the U.S. of A.  Because you know, after everybody else is bailed out, it's not likely there will be anybody left to bail America out. Anyway, on that positive note, let's move on to da news:

• When there's a Euro crisis, you need to brush up than Ambrose Evan- Pritchard (Telegraph).
• Google's China plan gets complicated (Wall Street Journal). You would think "not being evil" would be pretty simple: Censorship or no censorship. Not when billions of dollars and the Chinese market is involved.
• Unemployment claims dropped for the third time in four weeks (MarketWatch). They're at 442,000. Watch the number 400,000. I've heard that's where we need to get to actually create employment .
• Banks still need free money, says Bernanke (Wall Street Journal). Even though they're doing nothing but hoarding it and creating exotic carry trades. Meanwhile, rumor has it Ben has the helicopters idling on the tarmac with the crates of cash lined up.
• Best Buy profits rise 37% (Wall Street Journal). Recession be damned, we need our gadgets!!
• Qualcomm raises forecast, helps spark tech rally (MarketWatch).
• Engadget has an entertaining piece on the WSJ on the iPad, where they say the WSJ says it will charge $17.95 a month. (Engadget). Interesting. Did I tell you they offered me the print version for $10 per month (shhhhh.).
• Google's working on ads that learn how to follow you. Kind of creepy, I don't like the idea of being followed by an Ad.