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ZTE Pushes Past RIM
ZTE became the world’s fifth largest smartphone vendor in the second quarter, it announced today, overtaking Research in Motion (RIM).
That’s according to research firm IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, which shows that thanks to sales of eight million smartphones in the second quarter ZTE has slipped onto the top five list. RIM, which was fourth on the list in May, is now nowhere to be seen, as sales of the firm’s Blackberry handsets continue to falter.
With eight millions smartphones shifted in the second quarter, ZTE’s shipments increased 300 per cent compared to the second quarter last year, helping it snatch a 5.2 per cent share of the worldwide market and making it the fastest growing smartphone maker after Apple. This puts the firm just 0.5 per cent behind Android phone maker HTC and just 1.4 per cent behind Nokia.
Unsurprisingly, rivals Apple and Samsung fill the top two spots, holding on to 16.9 per cent and 32.6 per cent of the smartphone market, respectively.
“ZTE’s great smartphone performance in 2012 in international markets has been a major contributor to our consistent expansion, and is a demonstration of the depth and strength of our R & D,” said ZTE EVP and head of its Terminal Division He Shiyou.
“We have moved into the middle to high-end smartphone market with the recent launch of the ZTE Grand X in countries including China, Turkey and the UK, and we will continue to build our handset capabilities in the middle and high range sectors, while still delivering great lower-end smartphones like the ZTE Kis.”
Artificial Photosynthesis Developed
August 6, 2012 by admin
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Panasonic said on Monday it has created a new system for artificial photosynthesis that can remove carbon dioxide from the air almost as well as plants do, as part of the company’s entry into an industry-wide trend toward greener tech.
The company said its system uses nitride semiconductors, which are widely used in LEDs (light-emitting diodes) to convert light to energy, and a metal catalyst to convert carbon dioxide and water to formic acid, which is widely used in dyes, leather production and as a preservative.
Carbon dioxide is a major pollutant and considered to be a main cause of the “greenhouse effect,” which most climate scientists believe causes global warming.
Panasonic has struggled with its traditional electronics business and has made eco-friendly products and practices the key element in its turnaround plan. The company is hoping to leverage its large rechargeable battery and solar businesses, while joining the industry in embracing technologies that are friendlier to the environment. The issue is an important one with customers, as demonstrated by the the outcry earlier this month when Apple was forced to rejoin a green standards program when clients complained about its earlier withdrawal.
Panasonic said the system can convert carbon dioxide and water to formic acid with an efficiency of 0.2 percent in laboratory conditions, which is similar to the conversion rate for green plants. The efficiency refers to the portion of the incoming light energy stored in materials produced during the process.
ARM Profits On The Rise
ARM has reported good second quarter financial results, with profit rising by 23 per cent to $102.97 million.
ARM has been riding high in the public consciousness thanks to firms such as Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia pushing its chip architecture into smartphones and tablets. The firm announced it managed to take in $209.78 millio in revenue during the second quarter, a 15 per cent increase from the same period last year, while net income rose even faster by 23 per cent to $102.97 million.
ARM said two billion chips using the firm’s various design models were shipped during the quarter, which represented a nine per cent increase from last year. The firm revealed that its core money making operation, processor royalties, rose by 14 per cent.
Warren East, CEO of ARM said, “ARM’s royalty revenues continued to outperform the overall semiconductor industry as our customers gained market share within existing markets and launched products which are taking ARM technology into new markets.
“This quarter we have seen multiple market leaders announce exciting new products including computers and servers from Dell and Microsoft, and embedded applications from Freescale and Toshiba. In addition, ARM and TSMC announced a partnership to optimise next generation ARM processors and physical IP and TSMC’s FinFET process technology.”
Windows Malware Hides In iOS App
Windows malware slipped past Apple’s eye and has been found tucked into software available on the company’s iOS App Store.
Although the malware, labeled a worm by Microsoft and tagged as “Win32/VB.CB” by the company, is harmless against Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems, it may pose a threat to iTunes customers who download iPhone and iPad apps to their Windows PCs before syncing to their mobile devices.
A user reported Win32/VB.CB to Apple’s support forum around 10:30 a.m. ET Tuesday. The user, identified only as ”deesto,” said that his or her OS X antivirus warned that “Instaquotes-Quotes Cards for Instagram” was infected.
HP Wants The Court To Bully Oracle
HP has asked California Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers.
HP and Oracle have been locked in a bitter legal dispute over Oracle’s decision to stop supporting Intel’s IA-64 architecture used in Itanium processors. Now HP has asked Judge Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers until it stops selling them or the contract term expires.
Oracle claims its decision to stop developing for Intel’s IA-64 architecture was spurred on by Intel having made it clear that it intended to focus on its x86 Xeon processors. Intel has said that its Xeon processors are being edged into the market presently occupied by its Itanic chips.
HP disputed Oracle’s claims of Itanium reaching the end of its life and it emerged that HP had a contract with Intel to support the chip. However, and perhaps most damaging for HP, was a release of emails between Intel and HP that seemed to suggest that Intel had enough of Itanium and that HP was having to all but strong-arm Intel into continuing to produce Itanium processors.
Seagate Gobbles Up Lacie
Seagate has signed a deal to buy consumer storage vendor Lacie that values the firm at $186m.
Seagate, which recently completed the acquisition of Samsung’s hard disk unit and swiftly cut warranties on most of its drives to just one year, has now announced that it will buy hard drive packager Lacie. Seagate has signed an agreement with Philippe Spruch, Lacie’s chairman and CEO, to purchase his 63.5 percent stake in the company at $7.05 per share in cash, which values the firm at $186m.
According to Seagate the purchase should help the firm grow in Europe and Japan. The firm also announced that Spruch will be employed by Seagate and run its consumer products division.
Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, CEO and president said, “Lacie has built an exceptional consumer brand by delivering exciting and innovative high end products for many years. This transaction would bring a highly complementary set of capabilities to Seagate, significantly expand our consumer product offerings, add a premium branded direct attached storage line, strengthen our network-attached storage business line and enhance our capabilities in software development.”
Lacie’s fancy portable hard drives are popular among those who like fancy cases wrapped around bog-standard consumer hard disks. Seagate’s purchase of Lacie should see the firm not only become the sole supplier of hard drives in Lacie products but make a renewed push in the consumer portable hard drive market following last year’s floods in Thailand that affected the three big hard drive manufacturers.
Seagate said the deal should be completed by the third quarter of 2012 pending regulatory approval in the US, France and Germany.
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Asus Stakes Claim In Tablets Market
May 4, 2012 by admin
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Asus has won critical acclaim for its early tablets, including the quad-core Transformer Prime TF201 that was debuted last year and the new quad-core Transformer Pad TF300T that will be available in some U.S. retail stores next week.
And it continues to improve its place in the crowded market — jumping into the Top 5 list of suppliers for the first time in 2011, according to the latest research from IDC. Asus ranked fifth in tablet shipments in both the U.S. and world in 2011 with a 2.3% share of the U.S. tablet market and a 2.5% share of the worldwide market.
Apple’s iPad remained at the top of both lists.
Though Asus still lags somewhat behind the market leaders, its influence on the market is clearly on the rise and could move it further up the tablet list, analysts say.
For instance, along with launching an array of powerful higher-priced new tablets, Asus is reported to be Google’s choice to supply a low-priced $200 device said to be called Google Play. The Google tablet would run Ice Cream Sandwich and a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, reports say.
The reports suggest Google is looking to launch the new tablet at its Google I/O developer conference in late June.
Apple Faces Another Lawsuit
April 30, 2012 by admin
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Apple devices using touch technology infringe on a patent owned by the Pennsylvanian company FlatWorld Interactives, the company stated in court documents filed on last Friday. FlatWorld asked for a permanent injunction that Apple stop infringing, and for sufficient compensation for the infringements, the company’s attorneys said.
The Pennsylvanian designer of touchscreen systems for use in museum displays alleged that Apple knowingly infringed on its patent, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said. The infringing products are said to include the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad.
FlatWorld said Apple’s infringement has been on a massive scale and has caused it irreparable harm. The company demanded a permanent injunction enjoining Apple from continued infringement plus an unspecified amount of damages to compensate for Apple’s infringement. The company is seeking a jury trial.
FlatWorld was founded in January 2007 by Slavko Milekic, a professor in cognitive science and digital design at the University of the Arts in Pennsylvania, in order to commercialize his touch screen patent, the filing said.
Milekic filed a provisional patent application on August 28, 1997, claiming priority from that date in his definitive patent application, according to the court documents. He applied for his patent on June 12, 1998 and was granted it as U.S. patent 6,920,619 on July 19 2005, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Cisco Hits 50 Million Milestone For Its IP Phones
April 26, 2012 by admin
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Cisco Wednesday announced Wednesday that it has sold its 50 millionth IP phone, a significant increase in just two years when 30 million were sold.
The switching technology giant today also said it will make software for presence, instant messaging and Cisco Jabber IM clients available for free to its Unified Communications Manager customers.
The latter move means organizations with UCM can roll out presence and IM to employees simply and cheaply to smartphones and tablets running various operating systems, Barry O’Sullivan, senior vice president of Cisco’s voice technology group, said in a blog post.
The supported OSs include Windows, Mac, iPad, Cisco Cius, iPhone, BlackBerry and, later in 2012, Android, O’Sullivan said.
The move helps companies “deploy a unified communications client that is BYOD-ready,” he added. BYOD refers to Bring Your Own Device, a trend where companies allow workers to use devices of their choosing to connect to company data wirelessly.
Is Samsung Pursuing The Server Market?
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It is certain that Korean electronics giant Samsung will soon be entering the server chip market.
Reports are coming in that the company has been picking up key server personnel from Intel and AMD. Samsung has been focused on developing ARM chips and stayed clear of the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD.
But the companies latest hires seem to indicate that might change.
Samsung’s latest recruits include veterans of the chip business like Jim Mergard, Frank Helms, who is a Fusion APU architect, Brad Burgess who designed the Bobcat APU and Patrick Patla (VP of AMD’s server business). Patla was behind the success of the Opteron chip set and has done well using the x86-server system.