Bill to crack down on cyber-bullies introduced in New York (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York State Senator Jeffrey Klein, a new "cyber-bullying" bill on Monday, saying pre-dates digital harassment laws do not punish, tyrants and smartphones that use the Internet to harass others.

The New York bill is a response to several highly publicized cases of adolescent suicides as a result of any form of online bullying. Klein, a Democrat from the Bronx and Westchester, has argued that current state law has not been keeping up with technology, such as life increasingly moved online.

"If the people are hard to find a law on the books and will be punished, will act accordingly," Klein said in a press conference in front of Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, where he was joined by members of two organizations, anti-bullying.

At least 30 states already have laws dealing with online harassment.At least five have laws that explicitly with the cyber-bullying, a study last year, perhaps even more difficult for the victim as corporal punishment or verbal abuse.

In view of Klein's crime of stalking in the third degree would be updated to explicitly molested a child with electronic communications.

To better the nature of interactions online, the bill eliminates requirements that initiate the contact with the author, and that the victim is a direct recipient of the communication.

Although it was a crime "intentionally cause or aid" the suicide of another person to update the account of the status of second-degree manslaughter was specifically cyber-bullying as a possible cause of this suicide.

Senator Diane Savino, a Democrat from Staten Island and Brooklyn and a co-sponsor of the bill, said that while bullying exists, "because Cain and Abel", has been transformed by the Internet and smartphone technology.

A dismissive review in the schoolyard can be heard from a couple and, finally, forgotten, he said .. But the same comment posted online can potentially be seen by everyone, and linger on indefinitely.

Anne Isaacs, whose daughter Jamie, now 15, had to change schools because of bullies, said that bullying was also much harder to get than other forms.

"When Jamie goes online to do homework, she would go online and screaming, because the messages would come," says Isaacs, who joined Klein at the press conference.

An attempt to legislate against bullying at the federal level failed in 2008, and left to the Member States to decide how to deal with the problem.

Mary Sue Backus, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma who has studied cyberbullying, was quoted several times in the arguments supporting Klein's name. She said in an interview that she generally opposes such legislation, he worked for, which could fail to have a deterrent effect and instead lead to the criminalization of youth behavior.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Cynthia Johnston)

Blog platform Tumblr wins $85 million in financing (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – blogging platform Tumblr has raised $ 85 million in venture capital financing round led by Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners, and Chernin Group and Sir Richard Branson.

New York-based income Tumblr little talking, but investors say they are confident the company will find its way to profitability.

"They'll manage to work in the months and years ahead," said John Lilly, a partner at Greylock Partners. A high degree of user involvement led to his investment does Greylock, he said.

Statistics said that the house up to 30 million blogs, page views, inspiring $ 13 billion per month.

Previous investors Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures and Sequoia Capital also a member of the round. CEO David Karp of Tumblr launched the service in 2007. The latest round of funding was 30 million in November 2010.

(Reporting by Sarah McBride dealing with Gunna Dickson)

Veteran Apple executive Eddy Cue gets expanded role (Reuters)

Apple Vice President Eddy Cue, speaks during the introduction of the new iPad News Corporation news release, "The Journal" in New York

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc Executive veteran promoted to senior vice president of software and Internet services Eddy Cue, marking one of the turnover for the first time the new chief executive officer Tim Cook, who happened to Steve Jobs last week.

Cue, who rose to fame by managing the App Store in iTunes, now also oversee the advertising service called Apple and icloud IAD, stressing the importance of combining new range of products from Apple Computer to be launched this fall.

"He is a veteran of Apple 22 years and plays a large organization of wonderful people," Cook said in an e-mail to employees announcing the expansion of the role Cue."Apple is a company and culture is like no other in the world and get leaders like Eddy, dass Apple is in your blood."

Cue said Cook also played an important role in creating online store of Apple in 1998, the iTunes Music Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Andre Grenon)

Google bought Motorola to guard Android: Sony Ericsson (Reuters)

A snapshot shows a Motorola Droid phone displays Google search site in New York

BERLIN (Reuters) – Smartphone provider Sony Ericsson said it so Google's takeover of rival Motorola Mobility as a move to protect Google's Android software from legal attacks from competitors.

All the latest Sony Ericsson smartphones with Google's Android software, and it is one of the leading suppliers on the platform globally.

Google and handset makers with the help of the platform have been numerous legal challenges from Apple, Microsoft and others.

Apple has also seen the first court room success in their attempts to block Samsung Electronics to sell some of their Android devices.

"It's important for us to protect the ecosystem of Android," said Nikolaus Scheurer, director of product marketing at Sony Ericsson in an interview.

Last month, Google announced its biggest deal ever, the acquisition of Motorola's mobile business for $ 12.5 billion, yielding a low margin of productive activity and facing many of the 38 companies that now use portable software Google's Android.

The move has raised fears that some major vendors Android Sony Ericsson could try other platforms for their smartphones.

"Google has confirmed that Google is doing this is not a hardware manufacturer. I guess the global market share of Motorola is about 15 percent in Android. I think everyone would agree that it makes little sense to risk, 85 percent of their business, "said Scheurer.

Sony Ericsson has stuck to its ability to use the Microsoft Windows Phone, but has not implemented a new model for Microsoft for several quarters.

Sony family

Sony Ericsson smartphones have been presented at the fair IFA in Berlin, inside the room, Sony, mixed with Sony TVs and new shelves.

"We are present for us as consumers of the Sony family," said Scheurer.

When asked if Sony's entry into tablets for Sony Ericsson would not come into a new market, Scheurer said: "Right now we focus on smartphones."

The initiative – which hopes to benefit from close ties with Sony – will also launch services from Sony music and video to their customers over the coming weeks.It has gained popularity of Walkman and Cybershot brands over the years, and earlier this year issued Games PlayStation Xperia phone.

"We really want to differentiate on top of Android. Many of our differentiation will come from Sony," said Scheurer.

Many analysts say Sony needs to assert control over Sony Ericsson, if the risk is to regain market share in the cutthroat world of smartphones.

The company has struggled with the decline in sales – because of its late push smartphone – but Scheurer shrugged off concerns of some analysts' sales, which have reduced the risk so that the big players can choose to work with others.

"I can not see us back," he said.

(Additional reporting by Nadine Schimroszik; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)

Hearing Rumors of a Plot, Cities Make Security Presence Known

New York was already on alert for this weekend’s memorial of the Sept. 11 attacks, but amid reports of a bomb plot, security efforts were escalated around the city, including on Wall Street near the New York Stock Exchange, as well as in Washington.

Two senior American law enforcement officials said an informer in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region passed word of the plot, intended to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, to American intelligence officers on Wednesday. The informer said two American citizens of Arab ancestry had left Afghanistan, traveled through one or more other countries and reached the United States as recently as last week.

But the informer’s information on the plot was second- or third-hand, another official said. It included only a vague physical description of the two men — one described as 5 feet tall, the other 5-foot-8 — and a first name for one, Suliman, that is common in the Middle East. The tipster also described a third conspirator, but he appeared to have traveled to Europe. “All this information is very, very sketchy,” one of the law enforcement officials said.

While the informer was not specific about targets, officials in both New York and Washington increased scrutiny of bridges and tunnels, long considered potential targets for vehicle bombs.

The increased security came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. publicly discussed the threat, trying to strike a balance between urging vigilance and preventing panic. “There are specifics — in that sense it was credible,” Mr. Biden said on the ABC News program “Good Morning America,” “but there’s no certitude.”

The increased police presence forced drivers heading toward Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge to squeeze into a single lane and through a gantlet of police officers, who walked around and between the cars, singling out some for a closer look. In Lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from ground zero, police vehicles with flashing lights were positioned in front of the former American Stock Exchange building.

“It’s good,” said Wolfgang Klebe, who runs a shipping business in Lower Manhattan, as he watched the officers on Friday morning. “They have to do this.”

More bomb sweeps of parking garages were planned; ferries were to be given extra police coverage; and cars parked illegally were to be towed quickly, not just ticketed.

Officials briefed on the threat offered varying views of how serious it was, and some suggested that the strong reaction from federal and local agencies reflected heightened wariness around the anniversary. The two senior law enforcement officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, were in the skeptical camp.

“It’s 9/11, baby,” one official said.  “We have to have something to get spun up about.” The second official said the reported plot “could all be one big fabrication, but no one wants to take any chances.”

Another official acknowledged that the tip could turn out to be wrong. But the imminent anniversary did not allow much of a window to study its veracity.

“There was no time to sit around and think it over,” the official said. “The appropriate thing to do it is to share the information and provide proper warning.”

In a notebook found in the compound of Osama bin Laden after he was killed in May, the Qaeda leader mused about the possibility of mounting an attack on the 9/11 anniversary, and the police in New York and Washington were already on alert for trouble.

American intelligence analysts said they were examining the possibility that the suspected plot was ordered by Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Bin Laden as Al Qaeda’s leader, and that it was accelerated after an American drone strike last month killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who had taken over as Al Qaeda’s top operational planner.  In their haste to speed up the attack, which may also have been planned to commemorate Mr. Rahman’s death, the plotters may have inadvertently allowed word of the scheme to leak out.

For 9/11 Museum, More Challenges Lie Ahead

Workers continued on Friday to prepare the September 11 Memorial plaza for the anniversary ceremony this Sunday.

The dedication of the memorial plaza of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum should be a cathartic event for the families of the victims of Sept. 11 and the officials who persevered through the tortuous process of getting it built. But once the families and politicians file off the plaza, there will be much left to do to complete the museum and mend relations with neighbors of New York City’s newest tourist attraction.

Among the challenges that lie ahead are raising the money needed to operate the memorial and museum and resolving the questions of how to charge visitors to the museum, which is scheduled to open in a year. The memorial plaza, which contains all the names of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, will remain free.

The foundation that manages the memorial and museum has raised $412 million from private donors and hopes to collect an additional $17 million by the end of the year. Joseph C. Daniels, the president and chief executive of the memorial, said that sum should cover all costs through the end of 2012.

That calculation, however, does not account for $150 million that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey wants from the foundation as its share of underground construction work. The foundation has so far refused to pay that amount, Port Authority officials say.

But beyond next year, the costs of running the museum and maintaining and protecting the memorial plaza, with its pair of deep, granite-lined pools and grove of swamp white oak trees, will be at least $55 million annually, Mr. Daniels said. He has been lobbying in Washington for federal financing to cover part, if not most, of those expenses.

Mr. Daniels and members of the foundation’s board, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg leads, were making a “very serious effort to have Congress hopefully make a decision that preserving the memory of 9/11 is a national priority,” Mr. Daniels said.

“I fully believe that the feds need to make a contribution,” he continued.

The rest of the costs, though, will have to be covered through fund-raising and admission fees. The foundation’s board has not yet decided whether to set a flat price or to suggest that visitors donate a certain amount, as some art museums do.

As a model, Mr. Daniels cited the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum, where tickets cost $10.

“If it could be free for everybody, that would certainly be nice, but at the moment we need to operate this facility for a couple of years to see how popular it really is,” said Dan Tishman, co-chairman of the foundation’s building committee.

But, he added, “We will likely have to charge a nominal fee.”

Some museums, like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, do not charge admission. But that museum cost about one-fourth as much to build as the Sept. 11 memorial and it receives a stream of federal funding. The 9/11 museum is “definitely not at this moment a federal facility,” Mr. Tishman said.

The pools could be a revenue stream of their own, but Mr. Daniels said they did not want people throwing coins or anything into the voids because that could “gum up the works.”

“These are not wishing wells,” he said.

Patricia Harris, the deputy mayor who has overseen construction of the memorial and museum for Mr. Bloomberg, said the museum could follow the lead of other cultural institutions in seeking sponsors for free-admission periods and offering discounts for students.

“A lot of institutions have a lot of creative ways of extending their arms to the public,” Ms. Harris said.

An informal survey of New Yorkers and tourists on the streets around the memorial this week revealed a mix of feelings about attending the museum and what a fair price would be. Several said they would not hesitate to pay as much as $20 to enter. But some insisted they should be able to walk right in.

“It should be free,” said Tom McGovern, 50, who has worked in the financial district for 30 years. “Charging people to see something that fundamentally changed our country doesn’t seem right. We don’t charge people to see the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument.

“Donations for maintenance? Yes. Charging? No.”

For Mr. Daniels, a more pressing matter may be smoothing over the feelings of his fellow residents of Lower Manhattan, some of whom have complained about being excluded from the dedication on Sunday. Their request to be able to visit the memorial on Monday, before it was opened to the general public, was rejected because, Mr. Daniels said, “we’re not in the business of picking and choosing among stakeholders — other than the families.”

He added that “the Lower Manhattan community is an important constituency; it’s not the most important constituency.”

Instead, Mr. Daniels said, the foundation decided to reserve a few hours on the first Sunday of every month for downtown residents to visit. But the first of those will come in October, which was not soon enough to satisfy some of the neighbors.

“We spent 10 years rebuilding our community,” said Julie Menin, a longtime member of the foundation board and the chairwoman of Community Board 1. “We did not want to let the 10-year anniversary go by without a proper commemoration.”

So, Ms. Menin organized “Hand in Hand, Remembering 9/11,” a chain of people linking hands along the downtown waterfront on Saturday morning. Ms. Menin said she wanted to help downtown residents redirect their disappointment into a gathering that might satisfy some of their yearning to be included.

Mr. Daniels said he did not see Ms. Menin’s plan as a slap at the memorial’s managers and added that they had worked hard to satisfy the community’s biggest concern: the impending influx of tour buses to the neighborhood. He said the foundation had agreed not to distribute memorial passes to tour operators for the morning and evening rush hours.

“We’re trying to do something for everybody,” Mr. Daniels said.

Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s Chief Executive, Is Fired

Carol A. Bartz had been under pressure to turn around Yahoo’s fortunes since she became its chief executive in early 2009.

She went out with the same outspoken style she used while running the company. In an e-mail she sent to employees from her iPad, titled “Goodbye,” Ms. Bartz wrote: “I am very sad to tell you that I’ve just been fired over the phone by Yahoo’s chairman of the board.” Ms. Bartz was informed of the board’s decision while she was traveling to New York from Maine, according to a person familiar with the board’s action.

She also wrote, “It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.”

Ms. Bartz has been under pressure from her first day in the job to turn the company around, and in recent months the pressure from major investors intensified. The company remains adrift despite management shuffles, layoffs and the shedding of underperforming services. She engineered a deal that turned over its search operations to Microsoft, but that has also failed to live up to expectations.

Timothy Morse, the company’s chief financial officer, will serve as the interim chief executive. Yahoo also said it had started a strategic review of the company’s options, including possible divestment of its Asian holdings. It cautioned that no decisions had yet been made.

The company also said its directors named five other senior Yahoo executives to an executive leadership council that is intended to help Mr. Morse, a former chief financial officer at Altera, a semiconductor makers, and at General Electric Plastics, manage the company.

“Yahoo hasn’t asserted what it wants to be — whether it wants to be a media or technology company — and Carol, rightly or wrongly, is being blamed for a bad search deal and a less than stellar performance,” said Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

Investors have long tried to pressure Yahoo to sell itself or at least sell major pieces of the company. Yahoo rejected a $33 a share buyout offer from Microsoft in 2008.

Yahoo’s shares were essentially flat during Ms. Bartz’s two-year tenure, closing at $12.91 in regular trading on Tuesday. In after-hours, following the news of her departure, Yahoo’s shares gained 6.3 percent to $13.72.

Ms. Bartz joined Yahoo in January 2009 after investors became dissatisfied with the stagnant growth and indirection under its previous chief, Jerry Yang, a co-founder of the company. Her hiring was initially met with optimism by Wall Street, which saw her as a tough-talking savior who could whip the company into shape.

But online advertising revenue at the company remained flat even though the ad market was growing quickly.

Although Yahoo draws one of the largest audiences anywhere on the Web — more than 600 million unique visitors to all its services, including its search page and its media sites like news, finance and sports — it has been unable to significantly increase its advertising revenue.

Yahoo’s share of display advertising in the United States, supposedly the company’s strength, is expected to decline 13.1 percent this year after falling 14.4 percent in 2010, according to estimates from eMarketer, a digital marketing research firm. Meanwhile, Facebook is expected to gain market share.

As recently as June, Roy Bostock, Yahoo’s chairman, voiced support for Ms. Bartz. At Yahoo’s annual shareholder meeting, he lauded her for streamlining Yahoo’s operations, focusing the company on its strengths like content and overhauling its infrastructure. “The hard-won progress that we have made is why this board is very supportive of Carol and the management team,” Mr. Bostock said at the time.

But more recently, Yahoo’s board concluded that it had given Ms. Bartz enough time and that a change in leadership was needed, according to the person familiar with the board’s action. The final decision was made during two meetings of the company’s board in recent weeks, without Ms. Bartz or Mr. Yang present.

Some analysts questioned why the directors had acted so suddenly, without having a successor ready. Criticism for the management of the company has also been directed at Mr. Bostock and the directors. Colin W. Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners, said the board should share some of the responsibility for Yahoo’s stagnation and should itself be replaced. “The board needs to look in the mirror,” he said. “Where’s the board’s culpability in this?”

He asked, “Are they going to seek a replacement, or is Tim just going to be tasked with carving the company up?”

A sale is a “nonstarter,” said the person familiar with the board’s action. More likely is a sale of Yahoo’s Asian investments — it holds valuable stakes in Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan — or the sale of some of its communications services.

“I think there’s a 50-50 shot that Yahoo gets pushed into play, and that investors try to wrest control of the company from its existing board of directors,” said Mr. Rohan, the analyst. “It’s not clear what investors could do right now except hope and pray that the interim leadership gets Yahoo back on the right track.”

The news of Ms. Bartz’s firing was first reported by All Things D, a technology news Web site.

DealBook: Derivatives Regulator Appoints New Technology Chief

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which recently charged with monitoring the market for $ 600000000000000 derivatives, has appointed a tech guru in order to monitor the complex field.

John L. Rogers, currently head of the agency's services, is now its Chief Information Officer. He established the agency's office management and data technology, a new office to open its doors in October, the Commission prepares to merchandise the Dodd-Frank financial law enforcement regulations.

"I'm thrilled, John, an important position, which is a key component of the agency reorganization plan that was introduced in the implementation of the Dodd-Frank legislation to promote the monitoring," said Gary Gensler, the president of the agency, said in a statement."Longtime IT John's experience will prove valuable if the agency develops and implements new technologies to monitor the markets."

While the product of the Commission is having problems recruiting new staff in the middle of the budget of uncertainty, the crane started slowly. In August, the Agency hired Gary Barnett as the first head of the Intermediate Swap Dealers and supervision. So far led the men, Barnett derivatives practice at Linklaters in New York.

The Dodd-Frank Act, has made for hire – and the new office – a priority for the agency, which is undergoing a major restructuring as it undertakes sweeping new authority over derivatives.

The new technology office, said the CFTC, will focus on automating the Agency's day to day administrative tasks and develop their data analysis.

"I am pleased that the Commission established a separate office of Information and Technology, and John Rogers was selected to lead this effort," said Scott O'Malia, a Republican commissioner at the agency and a champion strengthen their efforts in technology, said in a statement.

Amazon Pushes Hard to Kill a California Sales Tax

State Senator Loni Hancock of California, center, and other lawmakers are using a rare tactic to stop Amazon’s efforts toward a voter referendum on sales taxes.

Amazon.com, the Seattle-based retailer that is the state’s chief target, is fighting back with all the resources of a company whose stock market valuation is nearly $100 billion. In an unusual move that opponents say is a violation of the state constitution, Amazon is taking directly to voters its argument that it should not be required to collect sales tax.

Infuriated state lawmakers are responding with what some observers are calling “the nuclear option”: writing new legislation that goes after Amazon and other online retailers under an “urgency” clause. If they can get the new measure passed by a two-thirds vote before the end of the legislative session on Friday, it will trump Amazon’s efforts toward a voter referendum.

To sway a few legislators, Amazon is making a counterproposal: if California drops the tax issue for a few years, the retailer says it will build two warehouses in the state and hire 7,000 workers. In a state with 12 percent unemployment, that might seem an attractive offer.

“This is a game of chess with ultimately billions of tax revenues at stake across the country and strong competing values on either side,” said Tracy Westen, chief executive of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles research group. “High drama for policy wonks.”

At its heart, the standoff between Amazon and California is simple: the state passed a law at the beginning of the summer requiring online retailers with a physical presence in the state to collect sales taxes. Amazon denies that its subsidiaries in the state, which include a unit that designed the Kindle, constitute such a presence.

The stakes go far beyond the $200 million the state is hoping to get from Amazon and other online retailers, money it has already put into its new budget. (Local communities stand to reap an additional $100 million.) Amazon fears that a defeat in California will sway legislators across the country, and that it will lose a critical pricing advantage. It is fighting a similar measure in New York in the courts.

Opposing Amazon are traditional retailers as big as Wal-Mart and as small as the neighborhood bookstore — the few that are left. “Amazon is killing our business in bricks-and-mortar stores,” said Bill Dombrowski, head of the California Retailers Association, which was the driving force behind the original law.

Amazon easily collected the half-million signatures necessary to put the issue on ballots next June. Since people will in essence be voting on whether to pay an additional 8 or 9 percent when they buy online, Amazon could easily triumph among voters who are watching their wallets. Democrats in the Legislature responded with an urgency bill, a rare tactic used only a few times a year.

“We’re not doing this lightly,” said State Senator Loni Hancock, a Berkeley Democrat. “But it seems like Amazon doesn’t really care about the State of California or the people whose lives are affected by whether or not we have enough money for schools and roads and to keep the libraries and parks open.”

Any Californian who buys a book or a DVD player from Amazon is supposed to pay a use tax when filing state taxes. In practice, however, few do. For years, the issue has been simmering. Then came the withering recession, and the economic calculus changed.

In the two months since the law took effect, Amazon has declined to start collecting sales tax in California. Once it submits the signatures for the referendum and they are verified, the law will be suspended until the vote.

Senator Hancock and other Democrats say they have stopped shopping at Amazon. “This is getting pretty acrimonious,” said the California treasurer, Bill Lockyer, who said he was also boycotting the retailer. “It’s snarly.”

Amazon may sell 3-5 million tablets in Q4: Forrester (Reuters)

One station is dedicated iPad front of a iPhone in the Apple store in New York

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc. may sell as much as 5 million of Tablet PC in the fourth quarter, which is the largest retailer in the Internet's main competitor Apple Inc. in the niche market of rapid growth public consumption PC, Forrester Research, said Monday.

Amazon.com has the price of your pills "significantly" below competitive products and have a sufficient supply to meet demand, but if the company can accomplish this can be "easily" sell from 3000000 to 5000000 units in the three months of 2011, Sarah Rotman Epps, Forrester predicted.

Apple has sold nearly 30 million Cases since the launch of the tablet in April 2010.Competitive products companies, including Samsung Electronics Co., Research In Motion and Motorola mobile phone to a serious challenge to assemble early lead. This month, Hewlett-Packard are destroyed TouchPad after sales languished.

"So far, Apple has many potential competitors face, but none has gained significant market share," wrote Abs. "Not only have the potential to Amazon quickly gain share, but the willingness to sell hardware at a loss, as he did with the Kindle, Amazon makes a bad competitor."

A problem with rivals iPhone was expected that the developers have so far before you make a lot of applications or uses for the devices to create, Forrester said.

Apple says some 100,000 custom-built iPhone, honeycomb, the Google platform, which is the compressed version of the Android operating system, has attracted fewer than 300 applications, says Forrester.

"If Amazon Android-based tablets are sold in millions of Android suddenly much more attractive to developers who have taken a wait-and-see attitude," said Epps.

Amazon Kindle e-reader is lighter and smaller than the iPad, but Apple's tablet has a browser and other services to improve reading and research, says Fred Wilson, a venture capital investor and principal of Union Square Ventures, recently a blog.

"What we all want is a hybrid of the two – a Kindle as a full-fledged tablet computer with a browser, programs and OS," Wilson added. "It looks like Amazon will bring to the market this fall … It looks like a killer product."

Amazon shares were down 3.4 percent to $ 206.03 in trading Monday afternoon, so it is now more than 10 percent this year.

Apple's shares rose by 16 percent to $ 389.87. The stock is nearly 19 percent so far in 2011.

(Reporting by Tim Dobbyn Alistair Barr cut and Matthew Lewis)