Dell Goes Plastic

Dell is manufacturing a line of PCs using plastics obtained by expanding its recycling program.

The company has expanded the hardware take-back program to more places worldwide, aiming to collect and reuse more extracted plastic and metals in PCs, monitors, hardware panels and other products.

Dell’s OptiPlex 3030 all-in-one, which will ship next month, will be the first product of that effort. Starting next year, more laptops, desktops and monitor back-panels will be made using recycled plastic, said Scott O’Connell, director of environmental affairs at Dell. The products will be certified as sustainable by UL (Underwriters Laboratories).

Dell will save money by reusing plastic, but O’Connell did not say whether the savings will be passed on to customers through lower prices. But it will be easier for more people to recycle electronics and Dell will also provide a PC mail-back option, O’Connell said.

Dell’s plan to establish a recycling chain internally could reduce the need for “virgin” plastics, which can be environmentally damaging to make, said Gary Cook, senior IT analyst at Greenpeace International.

Incineration of plastic from disposed computers can be toxic and reusing plastics in new computers or other parts reduces “dirty energy,” Cook said.

“We need to see plastics last longer,” Cook said.

Companies like Apple have helped raise expectations of sustainability in computers and others are following suit, Cook said. PC makers are using more metals in computer chassis and handset makers are using more nonpetroleum plastics.

Dell was criticized last year by Greenpeace for veering away from its carbon-neutral goals and sustainability advocacy. The company ranked 14th among most green IT companies, behind Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Wipro, Fujitsu and Google, among others.

Dell curbed its sustainability strategy when it was trying to go private last year, but has now reinvigorated that effort.

“They are trying to show some initiative,” Cook said.

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Panasonic Drops Plasma

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.

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Did Apple Trick Sharp?

Sharp is really regretting its dependence on Apple as its main customer.

While it made sense at the time to be extremely pleased when Apple sucked up most of its capacity with screens for its iPhone and iPad, now the tide has turned the outfit is reporting a bigger than forecast loss. Sharp is now suffering from low output at its factories and forced to write off excess capacity.

The company had a $5.1 billion net loss for the year which is much worse than it predicted. At the start of the year, Sharp was forced to curtail production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple’s iPad. That has stepped up the urgency for Sharp to find new customers and uses for its leading-technology displays and may make it harder for the company to convince investors and lenders it remains a viable company.

Sharp will officially announce its results for latest business year on May 14. To make matters worse the company is also taking a charge to put aside cash for possible fines from a display price-fixing investigation in Europe, the sources said. Sharp in October received a $4.4 billion bailout from banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group in return for mortgaging nearly all its factories and offices in Japan and pledging to cut 10,000 jobs.

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Is Apple Really Security Conscious?

Is Apple proving how clueless it is about security by backing a method of replacing passwords with fingerprint readers?

Just days after a scandal where a South American hospital was staffed by phantom doctors who used silicon fingers of their colleagues to convince administrators’ finger print readers that they were working, Apple has decided that they are the perfect form of security.

Word on the street is that Apple is said to be planning to introduce an iPhone that can be unlocked by the owner’s fingerprint. Speculation about Apple’s plans for fingerprint recognition began last summer when the iPhone maker bought bio-metric security firm AuthenTec for $335 million.

It is believed that the iPhone 5S will have a fingerprint chip under the Home button, to “improve security and usability.” Meanwhile in an engineering journal, two Google security experts outlined plans for an ID ring or smartphone chip that could replace online passwords, which is a lot sexier than fingerprint scanning.

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Sharp Says No To Intel

While Sharp is desperately looking for more cash, it appears that it will try busking outside CES with a dog on a string before it takes money from Intel.

A senior senior executive from the Japanese company told the Mercury News denied that the company was looking for money from Intel. Industry analysts had speculated that Intel and Sharp, which supplies screens to Apple (AAPL) for its latest iPhonem, were in investment discussions.

Sharp is fighting for survival after years of losses. In November, it said it may not be able to survive on its own after full-year net losses to doubled to $5.6 billion. Sharp Vice President Kozo Takahashi told reporters at a roundtable briefing on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that the company’s finances have been weakened considerably and we are considering ways to deal with that.

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Will Sharp Collapse?

Japanese troubled telly maker, Sharp, has warned that if it can’t do something radical soon, its business could go the way of the dodo and T-Rex.

Despite being a major supplier of LCD displays to Apple and other manufacturers, the company has admitted that it can’t survive in its current form. According to Computerworld the company said that there is “material doubt” about its ability to continue operating. The company thinks that it can cut costs and secure enough credit to survive and much of its plan for recovery is based on its IGZO technology for mobile displays.  This technology uses less battery power than existing screens.

Sharp is also carrying out a restructuring plan in which it has reduced headcount, slashed employee salaries and mortgaged its buildings and factories. The company is booking a net loss of $5.6 billion for the year mostly to cover its restructuring costs. Its stock has been downgraded to junk status by ratings agencies and apparently its executives have been seen around Apple and Intel HQ’s with their cloth caps in their hands looking for bail outs, or investments, depending on who you talk to.

Sharp President Takashi Okuda said the company is continuing its  negotiations with Hon Hai, even though so far these have not been going that well. Sharp made a mistake in that it thought that the world wanted LCD panels for large-screen TVs. It is now trying to switch over to the booming market for tablets and smartphones.

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Sharp Electronics Gets Downgraded

Sharp has had its credit rating cut to junk status by the Standard and Poor’s rating agency.

Sharp, which invested heavily during the LCD television boom in the mid 2000s, is now paying the price as demand for televisions slumps across the board. Now Standard and Poor’s has bestowed the ignominy of lowering Sharp’s credit rating to BB+, putting it into what’s called junk status.

Standard and Poor’s also warned that Sharp has weak cash flow and is facing worsening market conditions, two things that will not endear it to investors. It said, “Sharp’s liquidity position has weakened, and the company is highly dependent on short-term borrowings in light of weak internal cash flow and a less favourable funding environment.”

Sharp has had a troubled year and earlier this week announced that it will lay off 2,000 employees in Japan, as its LCD business simply cannot support itself. Standard and Poor’s said that unless Sharp’s fortunes improve, the firm could be hit with another credit rating downgrade.

Standard and Poor’s said, “We may consider lowering the ratings if Sharp’s earnings in (the year to March 2013) and prospects for its recovery deteriorate even further or the company’s financing environment and relationships with credit banks and strategic partners worsen.”

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Sharp To Pay Fine In Price Fixing Settlement

Sharp said on Monday it has agreed to pay Dell and two other firms $198.5 million to settle a lawsuit for fixing LCD panel prices in Europe and North America.

The company agreed to settle the civil lawsuit, which was first filed in November of 2009 against a group of companies including Sharp, Epson, Hitachi and Toshiba for collusion on prices of LCD panels sold to Dell. A Sharp spokeswoman said the company made the decision independent of the other firms involved in the lawsuit, and the payment would settle the suit with Dell. Sharp did not name the two other companies besides Dell.

“After broadly considering factors such as the U.S. civil lawsuit system and the facts of this case, Sharp has determined that agreeing to a settlement is the best policy,” the company said in a statement.

Dell sought damages to recover funds it paid for LCD panels purchased at inflated prices. The lawsuit involved TFT (thin film transistor) panels, widely used in TVs, laptops and handheld gadgets.

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Will Samsung Overtake Apple

Yesterday, DigiTimes released its comprehensive Global Smartphone Industry 2012 forecast report, which entails the total number of global smartphone shipments in 2011 along with estimates of smartphone manufacturer ranking by volume in 2012.

According to the report, global smartphone shipments are projected to top 464 million units in the entirety of 2011, with Apple being the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume, followed by Samsung Electronics and Nokia. On the Google Android side of matters, it is expected that Samsung will overtake Apple in 2012 as the “world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume.” In addition, HTC will overtake Nokia for the third-place spot.

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