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Is Apple In A Free Fall?
May 26, 2016 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
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Apple shares are continuing to fall as more investors realise that the share price is not going to go up any more.
For a while now people have been buying Apple shares with the expectation that they will always go up. This always was largely based on a fantasy created by the Tame Apple Press that assumed the company would keep coming up with new technology ideas which would always be successful.
However lately Apple has not come up with any new ideas and has taken to re-issuing its old phone designs. It has also been floundering in its key Chinese market. The company’s only new idea has been for content creation through its Apple Music streaming brand. The only problem with that is that the software has been killing off user’s iTune libraries. It has also been banned in China which means that hopes that Apple would make money there are still thwarted.
Shares of Apple dropped below $90 on Thursday for the first time since 2014 as Wall Street worried about slow demand ahead of the anticipated launch of a new iPhone later this year. Some more reasonable analysts even think that the iPhone 7 is going to be a disaster because it lacks any new tech and has the same design as the poor performing iPhone 6S
Component suppliers in Taiwan have confirmed that they have received fewer orders from Apple in the second half of 2016 than in the same period last year.
Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang saidt that investors were getting negative data points about component orders and production forecasts, and the features on the new iPhone do not seem to be a big change from the 6S.
Apple briefly relinquished its position as the world’s largest company by market capitalisation to Alphabet – oh the horror.
At the close, Apple and Google each had market values of about $495 billion, according to Thomson Reuters data. In the past year, Apple’s market capitalization has fallen by more than $200 billion. Which just goes to show this whole value thing was an illusion.
Suppliers of iPhone components also fell, with Skyworks Solutions off 4.54 percent, Broadcom down 1.95 percent and Qorvo declining 1.76 percent.
Revenue from China slumped 26 percent during the March quarter. Apple faces increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and Huawei selling phones priced below $200, Rosenblatt’s Zhang said.
Last week, Dialog Semiconductor, which sells chips used in iPhones and other smartphones, cut its revenue outlook due to ongoing softness in the smartphone market.
The Tame Apple press is trying to do its best to find analysts who recommend buying the stock claiming it is too cheap.However how much should you pay for an outfit which has milked its cash cow and has nothing new on the horizon.
Courtesy-Fud
Is nVidia Going Linux
The dark satanic rumor mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn claiming that Nvidia is working on its own Linux OS for gamers.
A slide has tipped up showing a screen capture of an installer screen for this operating system supposedly going by the “NLINUX” codename at NVIDIA.
Not much to go on, but it does appear that Nvidia is looking at creating a distribution for gamers similar to that operated by Valve.
It is hard to see what Nvidia would get out of it. Nvidia also has its SHIELD TV that’s powered by Tegra hardware and offers a variety of games over their cloud/streaming “GeForce NOW” service.
So why would Nvidia need a full-blown Linux distribution? The only place it could use one is on the desktop, but that would just mean bringing another Linux distribution into a crowded market with little return for its efforts.
Nvidia already has control of the Linux gaming systems and its cards do better on Linux than AMDs so an “optimized” Linux OS is not going to sell them more graphics cards for Linux gamers. It would have to add something which is better than Steam, or Ubuntu and what could that be?
Courtesy-Fud
Smartphone Buyer Fatigue Hampering Growth
January 12, 2016 by admin
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Apple and Samsung dominate global smartphone markets with several new flagship handsets unveiled each year.
But after years of fantastic growth in smartphone sales, the pace of growth is slowing overall, including for the two smartphone giants. Market research firm IDC recently said that 2016 will be the first year that overall smartphone growth will slow to below 10%.
There is even talk among analysts that the latest models don’t have enough compelling new features to lure customers to a competitor’s device. Others say smartphone buyer’s fatigue has set in.
Buyer’s fatigue is a concern in the U.S. and other developed countries where the smartphone market is viewed as a “replacement” market because the market is already saturated: Nearly everyone already owns a smartphone. A focus on emerging countries by Apple and Samsung still requires them to find low-cost alternatives to compete with the likes of Huawei and others.
“Consumers are fatigued about new phone features that they can’t easily relate to any improvement in their personal use cases,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moore Insights & Strategy. “Samsung has been one of the worst offenders of this in the last few years. If consumers can’t relate, then they need to be educated.”
Most recently, reports that Samsung would add a pressure-sensitive displayand high-speed charging port to its Galaxy S7 phone drew a few yawns. That’s because Apple added the pressure-sensitive display to the iPhone 6S last summer, and a new USB Type-C fast charging port is already available in LG and Huawei smartphones.
While it is to Samsung’s advantage to keep up with Apple and others rivals, analysts disagree over whether these latest improvements will provoke an iPhone user to switch to a Galaxy.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/smartphone-buyer-fatigue-seen-hampering-growth.html
Cisco Goes To The Cloud
April 4, 2014 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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Cisco Systems Inc will offer cloud computing services, pledging to spend $1 billion over the next two years to make a foray into a market currently dominated by the world’s biggest online retailer Amazon.com Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Cisco said it will spend the amount to build data centers to help run the new service called Cisco Cloud Services, the Journal reported.
Cisco, which mainly deals in networking hardware, wants to take advantage of companies’ desire to rent computing services rather than buying and maintaining their own machines.
Enterprise hardware spending is dwindling across the globe as companies cope with shrinking budgets, slowing or uncertain economies and a fundamental migration to cloud computing, which reduces demand for equipment by outsourcing data management and computing needs.
“Everybody is realizing the cloud can be a vehicle for achieving better economics (and) lower cost,” the Journal quoted Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s president of development and sales as saying.
“It does not mean that we’re embarking on a strategy to go head-to-head with Amazon.”
Microsoft Corp last year said it was cutting prices for hosting and processing customers’ online data in an aggressive challenge to Amazon’s lead in the growing business of cloud computing.
Cisco could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters outside regular U.S.business hours.
Panasonic Drops Plasma
November 12, 2013 by admin
Filed under Consumer Electronics
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Panasonic has announced it will discontinue production of plasma display panels (PDP) next month and close three factories that were building the HDTVs.
The company will stop selling plasma TVs for consumer use and PDP-related products for commercial use, such as Interactive Plasma Displays, with the current line of TVs. It expects to stop business operations at three of its display plants — the Amagasaki P3 Factory, the Amagasaki P5 Factory and the Amagasaki P4 Factory — by the end of March 2014.
Samsung and LG continue to produce plasma display televisions, but theirs are lower-end or entry-level models; they have generally put development dollars into LCD TVs, according to Paul Gray, a research analyst with NPD DisplaySearch.
“Samsung and [LG] were at best uncommitted to PDP,” Gray said in a blog post. And as for Panasonic, Gray said its “PDP research team had to counter every move in LCD and translate it to their technology…. Inevitably, they slowly lost ground.”
Since 2000, Panasonic has been the leading PDP maker. It led the global flat-panel display market by using PDP for large displays and LCD screens for small- and medium-sized displays. Only three years ago, Panasonic claimed 40% of the plasma display market.
In 2010, plasmaaccounted for 40% of flat panel TVs; this year, PDPs are expected to represent only 5% of the flat-panel market, according to according to market research firm NPD DisplaySearch.
Over the past two years, Panasonic has lost $15 billion through investments in flat-panel TV production, according to financial reports.
Plasma displays have increasingly lost market share to LCD TVs as they moved to LED backlights that narrowed the performance gap between the two technologies.
“With the rapid development of large-screen LCDs, and facing the severe price competition in the global market brought on by the Lehman Shock in September 2008, the company consolidated production in the Amagasaki P4 Factory, made a shift towards commercial applications and worked to improve the earnings of the business,” Panasonic said in a recent statement.
Panasonic will now focus its attention on “non-TV applications” and is moving to reduce its fixed costs for production of both plasma and LCD panels.
The move away from plasma HDTVs is reminiscent of the video tape wars of the 1970s and 1980s.
LG Only Wants To Support Android
May 7, 2012 by admin
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Smartphone-maker LG Electronics has backed off manufacturing Windows Phone devices for now and will instead focus on Android phones, according to a report.
The Korea Herald reported Monday that LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, will take a step back from the Windows Phone platform, though it intends to “continue research and development efforts” on the Microsoft operating system.
LG currently makes the Optimus 7 based on Windows Phone 7 and other WP7 handsets.
LG has noted that Windows Phone 7-based devices hold less than 2% of the global smartphone market, according to multiple market analysts.
“The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure,” an LG spokesman told the Korea Herald.
In 2009, LG had decided to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone OS, with plans for 26 new Windows phones in 2012.
Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said the LG decision to cut its Windows Phone plans, at least temporarily, is likely not an absolute reversal of strategy.
He theorized that LG may be waiting for Windows Phone 8 to materialize late this year before producing more devices on the platform.
Google+ Is A No Go In China
The United States biggest creditor (China) has taken steps to stop Google+ right after it was debuted to the world yesterday. While some people may claim it is all part of a communist plot to crack down on dissent; this time it may not be the case this go round.
For those of you, who are late to the game, be advised that Google+ is the firm that tried to introduce social networking to China. Again social networking is thought to be a threat for oppressive governments because it allows its populations to share information and gossip. Therefore, it would seem apparent that the Chinese might be a little cautious about allowing a social networking environment in the country.
That said, it was revealed by Microsoft that cloud based operations in other countries, which are run by American companies fall under the jurisdiction of the US Patriot Act. Therefore, we (US) could technically spy on anyone in China with the proper paperwork such as a court order and the company is required is to hand over information.