U.S. carriers expected to ship BlackBerry Q10 in late May
The BlackBerry Q10 with its physical keyboard is expected to be available from major U.S. carriers in late May at a suggested price of $249 with a contract, a BlackBerry spokeswoman said late Tuesday.
Pricing for the BlackBerry Z10, already released, is $200 on AT&T and some other U.S. carriers with a two-year contract, or $550 without contract. Some carriers have discounted the contract price.
None of the major U.S. carriers have announced pricing or exact availability for the Q10, which features a 35-key qwerty keyboard and a 3.1-in. touchscreen. Read more...
Developers find multiple changes in BlackBerry 10.1
The next update to BlackBerry’s latest operating system is expected to deliver a number of new features and changes. BlackBerry 10.1 made its way to developers this week ahead of a public launch with no fewer than 14 new features in tow according to fan site Crackberry.
The publication came up with the following list of changes in the update based on user feedback from their forum: Read more...
Google’s Page drops the A-bomb: Google Glass runs Android
Google chief exec Larry Page has confirmed his company's techno-spectacles Google Glass will run some form of Android.
During an earnings call yesterday for Google's first-quarter 2013 financial numbers, Page revealed the choice of operating system when asked about the new product and how it would fit in the existing Google stable.
"Obviously, Glass runs on Android, so [Android] has been pretty transportable across devices, and I think that will continue," he said. Read more...
Intel profit dives 25 percent amid PC market slump
Intel reported a drop in profits and revenue for the first quarter, as the biggest PC market slump in recent memory weighed on its business. Intel reported a profit of $2.05 billion for the quarter ended March 30, down 25 percent from a year earlier. Revenue was $12.6 billion, Intel said, a drop of 2.5 percent.
About two-thirds of Intel's revenue comes from its PC client group, which makes chips for laptops and desktops. Revenue from that division was down 6 percent year on year, to $8.0 billion.
Intel's Data Center Group, which sells server chips and other enterprise hardware, fared better. Quarterly revenue from that division was up 7.5 percent year-over-year, to $2.6 billion. Read more...
As PCs decline, it’s Apple that’s making real money from PCs
Apple doesn't even make the list of top five sellers of PCs in the world (though it is No. 5 in the United States), but some number crunching by Asymco's Horace Dediu shows a surprising fact: Apple earns 45 percent of the operating profits in the PC industry. The top five sellers -- Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer -- together make only 33 percent of operating profit. (Operating profit is the cash the companies keep after all expenses, including day-to-day operational costs, are paid for.) Read more...
How Lenovo kept PC sales strong while everyone else tanked
By now you've read the IDC report saying that worldwide PC shipments dipped 13.9 percent, year-on-year, in the first quarter of 2013. You may have also read Gartner's report saying that worldwide PC shipments dropped 11.2 percent in the first quarter. Both companies wail about how PC shipments have fallen off a cliff, in spite of their earlier predictions -- IDC had previously foretold a decline of 7.7 percent in the first quarter, and Gartner had cited a 7.6 percent decline for the year. I figure it's just another "oops, forget what we said last time" moment. Neither company has officially updated its crystal (or brass) balls, but I'm sticking to my prediction that PC sales (net of returns) in 2013 will be around 20 percent lower than in 2012. Read more...
The PC is on life support, and PC makers are mostly to blame
Industry observers have heralded the death of the PC for years now -- and it appears those prophecies are indeed coming to pass. The worldwide PC market is coming off of its worst quarter in history with shipments 13.9 percent lower than they were a year ago, according to IDC. The damage was far worse than the 7.7 percent decline the research company had predicted; it also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year shipment declines.
Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer, Dell, and other prominent PC makers that have seen their pieces of the PC market pie steadily shrink can no longer blame the global recession. If they need to point fingers, they can lay some blame at Microsoft's feet for failing to inspire with Windows 8. They can blame (or credit) Apple for its lead role in accelerating the arrival of post-PC era, where tablets and smartphones have emerged as essential PC supplements if not outright alternatives. But most of all, PC makers have no one to blame but themselves for clinging far too long to the same old hardware designs while continually betting the farm on the success of Windows.
Objective-C’s dip in popularity tied to decline in iPad and iPhone
Objective-C, best known as the programming language used for building applications to run on Apple's popular iPad and iPhone devices, is beginning to level off in popularity, one monthly assessment of languages reports.
The Tiobe Programming Community Index for April has Objective-C slipping a spot, dropping to fourth place and displaced by C++. The index gauges language popularity based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses, and third-party vendors pertinent to each language, with popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, as well as other sites used to make the assessment. This month's index had Objective-C coming up in 9.60 percent of searches, which was down from 10.23 percent in April. The language is still up from one year ago, when it showed up in just 8.24 percent of searches. Read more...
Microsoft plans 7-inch tablet to compete with Apple, Google
Microsoft is said to be planning a 7-inch version of its Surface tablet to help it compete with similar size devices from Apple and Google.
The 7-inch version, which will go into mass production later this year, is part of a new lineup of Surface tablets planned by Microsoft, reported The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, citing people familiar with the company's plans.
The Redmond, Washington, software giant decided to get into 7-inch tablets to counter the iPad mini from Apple which has a 7.9-inch display and the Google Nexus 7 with a 7-inch display, according to the report. The company also plans cuts in the prices of its Windows and Office software to give a boost to sales of lower-cost touch-screen devices running Windows software. Read more...
HTC One: Hands-on impressions of an impressive handset
Each year, a few Android phones manage to break out from the pack and emerge as the cream of the crop -- the devices worthy of a "best of the best" designation. Make no mistake about it: The HTC One is one of those phones.
I've been using the U.S. version of the HTC One -- on sale next Friday from AT&T and Sprint and later this spring from T-Mobile -- in place of my own personal device for several days. I'm not going to write a full review of the phone just yet; from hardware to software, the One has a lot of significant elements to consider, and I want to spend more time living with it and getting a meaningful feel for how its features work in the real world before reaching any final conclusions. Read more...
HP to customize Moonshot offerings, offer ARM and Xeon chips
Hewlett-Packard in the future will offer customized Moonshot servers at different prices and also offer configurations with ARM and Intel Xeon processors.
HP on Monday started shipping the first offering in its new class of hyperscale servers called Moonshot, which runs on processors built for smartphones and tablets. The initial Moonshot system has a fixed configuration with 45 Proliant servers -- also called cartridges -- based on Intel's Atom S1200 x86 low-power processors, and will be priced at $61,875.
Over time, customers will be able to work with HP to configure Moonshot depending on how the server will be used and that also will determine the price, said Mark Potter, senior vice president and general manager of the Industry-Standard Servers and Software group, in an interview. Read more...
Apple reportedly pushing hard for iRadio launch as soon as June
Apple could launch its long-rumored iRadio service as soon as this summer, finally giving iTunes a streaming music app to take on Pandora and Spotify.
"iRadio is coming. There's no doubt about it anymore," an unnamed music industry source told The Verge.
The report says that Apple is pushing hard for a summertime launch of the streaming music app after making "significant progress" in talks with two top labels, Universal and Warner. Read more...
Google Translate for Android adds offline translation option
The latest update to the Google Translate app for Android aims to solve one of its trickier issues: how to use the app when you're traveling abroad without incurring expensive overseas data roaming charges or fiddling with foreign SIMs.
Previous versions of the app required you to be connected to the internet, and all of the actual translation took place on the Chocolate Factory's servers.
The new version now gives you the option of downloading "offline language packages" for some 50 different languages, enabling you to translate text even when your phone is in airplane mode. Read more...
U.S. patent office rebuffs Apple’s iPad Mini trademark request
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has provisionally denied Apple's trademark application for "iPad Mini" because the term is "merely descriptive" of the tablet's size.
Notice of the rejection was mailed to Apple on Jan. 25, but was only made public in the last week, according to Patently Apple, which first reported on the decision.
The iPad Mini was launched last October, and went on sale in early November at prices starting at $329. Apple filed for the trademark Nov. 15, 2012. Read more...