Qualcomm defends Windows RT tablets despite lackluster sales, biting criticism
A Qualcomm executive Friday defended Windows RT tablets despite poor initial sales, saying the mobile device chip maker is "very optimistic with the future of Win RT."
Qualcomm currently supplies ARM-based Snapdragon processors for Windows RT tablets launched in October by Dell and Samsung. The company also has plans to provide faster Qualcomm processors for next-generation Win RT devices from other tablet makers, said Luis Pineda, senior vice president of product management at Qualcomm. Pineda oversees Windows RT chips at Qualcomm.
"We're very excited about Microsoft's strategy around Windows RT," Pineda said in an interview with Computerworld.
Despite criticism from analysts about the Windows RT OS and Win RT-based tablets, Pineda said that "We're very optimistic with the future of Win RT and we see continued success." Read more...
BlackBerry stems bleeding, sells 1 million Z10s
BlackBerry today reported a return to operating profit for its fourth quarter amid sales of 1 million Z10 smartphones. But there was also a decline of 3 million global subscribers, down to 76 million.
"BlackBerry has gone through a major and exciting transition this year," CEO Thorsten Heins told analysts on a conference call, without making much reference to the subscriber declines. The profit of $94 million came on revenues of $2.7 billion for the quarter that ended March 2.
The 1 million new Z10 smartphones were sold mainly in Canada and the U.K. before the quarter ended, well before sales even started in the U.S. last Friday at AT&T.
Heins told analysts that sales of the Z10 and Q10 qwerty device would be helped by an infusion of 50% more marketing dollars globally in the current quarter, although he didn't provide a dollar amount. Read more...
Alcatel-Lucent announces loss, plans to cut 5,000 jobs
French telecom equipment company Alcatel-Lucent plans to cut 5,000 jobs after reporting a net loss of $308 million in the second quarter, it said on Thursday. A performance program announced by the company will also involve exiting or restructuring markets, and managing its patent portfolio as an independent profit center.
Alcatel-Lucent said sales in its wireless and optic divisions had a double-digit decline in revenue because of moderate spending from service providers. Sales in its software, services and solution segment also declined, and the services business was almost flat, it added.
Revenue in North-America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region witnessed a double-digit decline, the company said, adding that the decline in Asia was mainly driven by China, where sales fell by 21%.
Competitive pricing was one of the main reasons that eroded profitability, the company said. Overall revenue was down 7.1% year-over-year. Read more...
Ballmer plays down sales impact of Surface
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has downplayed the impact of Redmond's "iPad-killer" – aka the Surface tablet – as he wrapped a comforting arm around PC OEMS that may feel a little unnerved by the move.
The covers were lifted off the shiny slate weeks ago, but it was dismissed by several hardware vendors, including long-time partner Acer, which said Microsoft should concentrate its efforts on software development.
Ballmer told a 16,000-strong audience at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto that Microsoft needs "leading edge hardware that really shows off Windows 8".
Clearly Microsoft didn't trust the OEM giants to get the most out of the next gen OS and wants to get more hands-on to loosen Apple's stranglehold on the fondleslab sector.
But Ballmer, Microsoft's very own bald eagle, branded Surface as "just a design point". Read more...
Samsung fights Apple move to block Galaxy sales
Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday it will fight Apple's move to stop U.S. sales of its new Galaxy phone in the latest flare-up of an intellectual property battle between the world's top smartphone makers.
Samsung said it will vigorously oppose Apple's request for a court to ban sales of the Galaxy S III smartphone and still plans to go ahead with the device's scheduled release in the U.S. on June 21.
The South Korean company said in a statement that it will "demonstrate to the court that the Galaxy S III is innovative and distinctive." Read more...
Does the iPad cannibalize Apple’s laptops?
Is Apple cutting the MacBook's throat with the iPad?
The question -- whether the company's tablet cannibalizes sales of its own portable computing line -- is ultimately impossible to answer, or at least quantify: One can't look into a counter-factual crystal ball to view an alternate universe without the iPad.
But Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, believes that the iPad does block sales of at least some Apple personal computers.
"I think there was some cannibalization from iPad," Cook acknowledged earlier this week during his company's quarterly earnings call with Wall Street. Read more...
Chinese PC Market Will Grow 12% In 2012
If you were wondering where all the PC growth was, look East, young person. IHS, formerly iSuppli, expects that desktop sales will rise 8% and Ultrabook sales will take up 15 to 20 percent of notebook shipments. Windows 8 and Intel’s Ivy Bridge are to be driving factors in PC growth this year.
In comparison, IDC found that 2011 PC shipments shrank in Europe and the United States by 9%. Read more...
Nokia launches low-end Windows phone and a 38-megapixel camera phone
Nokia focused on its low-end phone offerings at Mobile World Congress on Monday, a year after announcing it would try to boost its smartphone sales by giving up its home-grown operating system in favor of Windows Phone.
It introduced a new, low-end Lumia phone, three new phones designed for emerging markets, a new Symbian phone that can take 38-megapixel photos, and a handful of new services to run primarily on Lumia phones.
The Lumia 610 will be Nokia's lowest-priced Windows Phone yet. The company did not say where it expected to launch the phones, but said they'd likely retail at a!189 (US$254) and be available in the second quarter.
"Now we're able to cover a range of needs and price points," said Jo Harlow, executive vice president of smart devices for Nokia. The Lumia 610 is the fourth phone in the series. Read more...
Chinese court rejects injunction to stop iPad sales at Apple stores
A request for a legal injunction that would have forced Apple to halt iPad sales in its Shanghai stores has been rejected, giving the U.S. tech giant a small victory as it faces an ongoing trademark dispute in China over the iPad name.
A Shanghai court said in a statement on Thursday that it would not grant the injunction requested by Chinese company Proview, which acquired the iPad trademark in 2001 and is fighting with Apple over its ownership. The court said it would postpone further hearings until a ruling was made in another Chinese court, where ownership of the trademark is expected to be decided. Read more...
Android security: Don’t let 2012 become the year of the bad app
The massive adoption of smartphones and tablets in 2011 was accentuated by the Christmas period sales figures. According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, close to seven million new smartphones were activated globally on Christmas Day.
In the final week of 2011, the number of downloaded apps passed the billion mark for the first time. In 2012 that level is expected to be commonplace.
Such a large market is immensely attractive to those looking to profit illegally from the boom. Using apps to deliver malicious payloads is not new but there has been a marked increase in the number of bad apps detected over the past two years. Read more...
Amazon Kindle Fire’s Apple-like blitz scorches Samsung
Amazon’s Kindle Fire fourth quarter sales threw Samsung Galaxy into a pyre, as Android-based tabs made their moves against the dominant Apple iPad.
Strategy Analytics reported that that 27 million units of tabs shipped in the fourth quarter. Apple and its iPad owned 58 percent of the market.
But Google Android-based tabs increased their share to 39 percent of the global tablet market, up 10 percentage points from the same quarter a year earlier. Shipments of Android tabs tripled to 10.5 million, as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others busted a move, said Neil Mawston, SA’s executive director. Read more...
E-book library borrowing hits record pace
Holiday sales of new tablets and e-readers have catapulted e-book borrowing at many of the nation's libraries, raising the question of how libraries can keep up with demand -- especially when some publishers still balk at e-book lending.
The demand for e-books at some major public libraries more than doubled so far in December and January compared to a year ago, causing frustrations for e-book users and librarians alike.
"Demand for e-book borrowing has definitely gone up...dramatically recently," said Laura Irmscher, collection development manager for the Boston Public Library, the nation's oldest with a central library and 26 branches. She said e-book borrowing demand at the Boston libraries more than tripled in December, compared to December 2010. For the first half of January, more than 700 people a day tried to borrow an e-book, or added their name to a long waiting list for some of the more popular titles. Read more...
Scammers replacing iPads with bags of clay in Canada
Christmas was a boom time for sales of tablet devices, and none more so than the iPad 2. But a group of thieves in Canada managed to upset a number of legitimate consumers come Christmas morning when they opened their iPad 2 packaging to find nothing but a bag of clay, in some cases even the charger had been replaced with clay.
What the scammers had managed to do was purchase iPad 2s, remove the tablet, and then make up the weight and shape with clay. They also had the necessary tools and materials to professionally reseal the iPad 2 box so it looks as if it had never been opened. The stores accepted the tablets back as returns without further checks because they were sealed, and then proceeded to resell them to other customers. Read more...
IDC: PC shipments slumped as 2011 ended
Sales of personal computers slowed in the last three months of 2011, thanks to a sluggish economy, scarce hard drives, and the proliferation of other device types such as tablets, according to a report released today by IDC.
Overall, worldwide PC shipments totaled 92.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, down 0.1 percent compared with the same quarter in 2010, when 92.8 million computers were shipped. For all of 2011, about 352.4 million PCs were shipped, a 1.6 percent increase over 2010, when almost 346.8 million PCs were shipped. The U.S. was particularly hard hit: Sales dropped nearly 5 percent from 2010, from 75 million units to 71 million units. Sales in Europe and Japan also slowed, though sales improved in China. Read more...
What’s up for Apple in 2012?
2011 was a big year for Apple. The company continued to dominate the tablet market, with no rival coming close the iPad in sales. It also released Lion, an update to OS X that delivered hundreds of new features; pushed out a major update to iOS that finally cut the cord for backups and syncing; launched its new cloud service, iCloud (albeit not without some issues); and continued to rack up record sales of Macs.
And, of course, 2011 was the year that Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO because of declining health just weeks before his death on Oct. 5.
On several fronts, Apple seems likely to capitalize on its successes in the coming year. Fueling continued growth in 2012 will be several trends that began this year within the company, the consumer market and enterprise IT. Read more...