Chinese vendors to offer tablet PCs

In today's podcast: Chinese vendors to offer tablet PCs; Sony set to sell 3D TVs; and US loosens rules for Net software exports.

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The U.S. Department of the Treasury has loosened controls on the export of Internet-based communication services to Iran, Sudan and Cuba, in an effort to spread free-speech freedoms to those countries. U.S. companies can now export instant messaging, e-mail and social-networking tools, blogging software, Web browsers and photo and movie sharing software, as long as the software is publicly available at no cost to the user. However, U.S. lawmakers have expressed recent concerns about U.S. technology being used to block access to the Internet or conduct surveillance on residents of countries such as Iran. The U.S. government should consider stronger export controls on some kinds of Web filtering and surveillance tools, according to the The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a digital rights group,

Ongoing computer scams targeting small businesses cost U.S. companies US$25 million in the third quarter of 2009, according to the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Online banking fraud involving the electronic transfer of funds has been on the rise since 2007 and rose to more than US$120 million in the third quarter of 2009, according to estimates presented at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, by David Nelson, an examination specialist with the FDIC. "Commercial deposit accounts do not receive the reimbursement protection that consumer accounts have, so a lot of small businesses and nonprofits have suffered some relatively large losses," Nelson said. That's led to some nasty legal disputes, where customers say the banks should have stopped payments, and the banks argue that the customers should have protected their own computers from infection.

Sony will begin selling 3D TVs in Japan on June 10 and worldwide at about the same time, it said Tuesday. A firmware upgrade to its PlayStation 3 console that adds 3D support and other 3D-compatible home electronics products will also be available to coincide with the television launch.

Sony's first two sets, which are 40- and 46-inch models, will come bundled with two pairs of 3D glasses and start at (US$3,215). In July it will launch six further sets: 52- and 60-inch models that come with 3D glasses and four "3D-ready" models that have 3D circuitry inside the set but require the purchase of glasses and an infrared transmitter.

Sony has high hopes for 3D and expects sales of 3D-compatible sets to be about 2.5 million this year. That represents a 10 percent slice of its total TV sales target.

Meanwhile on Wednesday Panasonic plans to start selling 3D televisions through Best Buy stores in the U.S. and some retailers are already advertising availability of the first 3D TV from Samsung.

Several Chinese companies have jumped on the tablet PC bandwagon as buyers await the sale of Apple's iPad, possibly indicating wide imitation of the Apple device in China.

Apple hasn't said if it will sell the iPad in China, but some local companies there have already started selling or planning rival tablet computers with Windows 7, the first version of the Microsoft OS to offer a core multitouch control option suited for such devices. Other Chinese vendors are taking orders for the iPad, planning to buy the device outside of China and informally take it back into the country before reselling it. The iPhone was similarly sold on the gray market in China long before its official release there late last year, and at least 1 million iPhones being used in China were not bought from official distributor China Unicom, according to analyst estimates.

The likely problem for imitation tablet PCs in China will be a lack of wide-ranging applications like the pool available for Apple's iPad, Wang.

And those are the top headlines from the IDG Global IT New Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. This is Marc Ferranti in the New York bureau. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.