 Welcome to News Desk on SiliconANGLE TV for Monday, October 29th, 2012. I'm Kristen Folletti. Google has canceled its big Android event that was scheduled for today in New York City, faring the impending Frankenstorm. But the Microsoft event is given the green light. Will they steal Google's spotlight? And how are consumers responding to Apple's iPad mini? Here with more is SiliconANGLE contributing editor, John Casaretto. Welcome, John. Good morning. The combination of three separate weather patterns over the Atlantic coast, including the largest of the three, Hurricane Sandy, could converge into a so-called Frankenstorm, which is expected to hit the shores of New York today. The state of New York, along with several other coastal states, has declared a state of emergency. Google will reschedule their event, but there is no word yet on when that will be. So how much is this anticipated event that's now going to be put on hold? What announcements are we still going to have to wait for now? Yeah, that's pretty interesting for the fact that's happened. Strategically, I think it's a bit of an impact for Google. The anticipated, the rumors would be that they were going to be announcing a 32 gig version of its Nexus 7, so an update to the Nexus 7 platform. And also there was some news that there would be a potential announcement for a new Nexus phone. Hyundai Office Depot stores across the country put the new 32 gigabyte Nexus 7 tablets on display and had them available for purchase in store with a price of $249, and the 16 gigabyte version dropped to a price of $199. Since the Google event isn't taking place today after all, does this put out some of their fire? I believe so, quite a bit actually. With the Android event cancelled, they don't really have a big venue for announcing. Google's not in the tradition of having a lot of television commercials and things like that, so they're pretty much limited to the amount of ways they can get that news out. Google Play is one way to do it. They've recently in the past have put their announcements on the front of their Google page, a lot of visibility there, but in terms of capturing the public and things like that, it's going to be a separate impact on their ability to talk about the availability of the product anytime soon. Along with leaks about a 32 gigabyte Nexus 7 tablet to be debuted, which have now been confirmed by Office Depot's availability of that tablet, we were also expecting a version with 3G connectivity. Was that version released in stores? Thus far, no. We haven't seen that, but that was a potentially one of the rumored announcements that they were going to have at this Google event, so we'll see what transpires in the days to come and how and when that does come to light, if it is indeed a product that they're coming out with. We've speculated about the reveal of a 10-inch tablet as well manufactured by Samsung, which is code named Manta and maybe going by the name Nexus 10. How do you think that tablet would compete with Apple's new iPad? Well, it definitely is gearing up to be a competitor to that. Now, of course, it faces a long road in trying to capture the imaginations and hearts of iPad users. What we've seen is resistance in terms of just last week we talked about the Surface and its big debut, and a lot of people are just really stuck in their systems of Apple. The product that they know was the first Apple, it's very dominant. How Samsung and how Google aligned to come out with this new tablet and the features, I mean, really we'll have to wait for the announcement to see how cool it is, but all these things require a bit of savvy killer app, if you will, killer features and things like that to get the tech crowd, to get the public crowd, to get the business crowd into it. There's a lot of challenges there, so anytime they come out with the product, it's something that's significant and of no, and the competitor's great, but against the iPad it's a formidable opponent. Microsoft also has an event scheduled today in San Francisco, which is not canceled. What can we expect to hear from Microsoft today? The big announcement today is the Windows Phone 8. A lot of people have been looking forward to this, so yeah, it brings home all of those features and all those things that a lot of people have been waiting to see what they're going to do. There's a lot of fans of the Windows Phone, the prior versions, there's a lot of technology partners and hardware that in the past has been well reviewed and things like that, so the integrated base, the integrated interface with Windows that it shares in common, a lot of people are excited to see that and see what the offerings are. With the Windows 8 phone debuting today, do we know when those devices will be available for pre-order or when they'll hit stores? Well, the first phones are supposed to be Nokia, Samsung, HTC, that's what those are the ones that are expected. They're supposed to hit the shelves next month. There's a number of details on prices, carriers, exact dates that haven't been made available yet, and they may be announcing some of this information today. As far as pre-orders, that'll also be part of the information that hopefully we'll hear about today. What kind of features can we expect to hear about that come along with the new Windows 8 operating system? Again, with a common base of interface code, we'll see what's come to light in terms of software that's been created for both systems, both the mobile platform, the Windows 8 platform, with the ease of transporting these things between the two platforms with minor modifications. That interface will be one thing. Windows 8, the tile interface is a major selling feature. It makes things very quick, very easy. It's a very unified presence. I think that in terms of what we'll see in terms of Windows, the Windows 8 mobile platform, that's the main thing people will be looking at. With Google being forced to reschedule their event today, what do you think that'll mean for Microsoft? Did they get lucky here? I think that very well could be. The competing messages from both giants in the business, Google was anticipating announcing a Nexus 4, a new generation phone, potentially to be available very soon and compete with the range of high quality phones that Microsoft is anticipating to be behind than announcing from Nokia, Samsung, HTC with all the features and all the latest greatest camera gear and different pixels on the screen and things like that. A whole range of hardware against Google's offering, which would be a line with the Nexus 4, there would be definitely an advantage for Microsoft seeing that this unfortunate event has caused the Google event to be canceled. We'll see how Microsoft pounces on that and if that makes a big difference in the long run, they are kind of a third wheel in the market. We'll see what that adoption really ends up looking like. If Google does still plan to unveil a LG Nexus 4 phone, do you think they're going to have trouble getting back in the spotlight following Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 announcements today? No, that phone has got a number of, it has a base of fans. The Nexus 4 is really like a high feature, high-end phone. I think that there's a lot of anticipation to see what Google's coming out with, what they've done with the Android operating system. There's a hardcore base of fans. There are a number of leaders out there in the smartphone market, including Samsung. Samsung's got a comfortable lead in the domestic market and international market as well. That all aligns with Google's offerings and I think that we'll see great success with the Nexus 4 when it does get announced. Four out of the six available iPad mini models are sold out on the Apple online store, having their shipping date pushed back several weeks. Is this an early sign of Apple's success with their new device? Very well could be. There's news that they've sold out of a certain model of the iPad minis. It's a bit of a strategy, if you will, of their retail strategy. We'll see these things play out and we'll see what that means in terms of long-term sales and things like that. We noticed that the new iPad mini still has the older Apple 5 chip compared with the fourth generation iPad, which has the upgraded chip. Why would Apple hold back on the iPad mini in this aspect? Why not give us everything at once rather than make us wait for the next best thing, especially when it's already here in the new fourth generation iPad? That's a very complex strategy when it comes in terms of managing inventory, managing product cycles and things like that. Apple has a history of releasing things in little bits and pieces. They probably have got a lot of investment in the A5 architecture chip and they probably haven't really seen the value of that chip really played out. There's a lot of pieces a lot of people don't think about. We've got all this great technology, but we haven't fully utilized the last technology. We have all this production capability, all the tooling and engineering it took to get to that phase, the development and things like that. That's part of it. The other part of it is pricing strategy, how it competes in the market, how it plays out compared to other products that are comparable or the next step up or whatever the case might be. It's a very complex thing to really put together. For those of us that might miss out on the pre-order, remind us when the iPad mini will be available for in-store purchase. Wi-Fi models are available on November 2nd, so later this week you'll be able to get there at the Apple retail store starting at 8 a.m., so there'll probably be a line over there. In mid-November we'll see the Wi-Fi and the cellular models available at that time. Well, John, thanks so much for your time today. We appreciate you joining us. Thank you. For in-depth coverage on news of the day and breaking analysis on tech innovation, keep up-to-date with Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE TV.