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New Atom Architecture In The Making
Word on the street is that Intel is in the process of developing an entirely new Atom architecture based on its 3D transistor technology they announced last week. This new architecture should enable more power efficiency on the chip.
The new processor is being called Silvermont and the Atom will encompass a system-on-chip design, similar to Intel’s Z760 Atom or ARM’s processors. Silvermont is being designed on Intel’s 22nm process and harness the power of Intel’s 3D transistor technology that has yet to be tested.
EBS Coming To Your Smartphone
May 14, 2011 by admin
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In the event of local and/or nationwide disasters, wireless carriers will soon begin alerting the public by sending emergency SMS text messages to mobile phones.
AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless have all agreed to a participate in this new Emergency Broadcast System alert method. It will initially be rolled out in New York and Washington, D.C., later this year, and nationwide next year, in April at the earliest.
The emergency text messages will cover public safety threats, Amber Alerts for missing children, and messages from the president, the New York Times reports. Messages will be free for customers, who can opt out of them all except the presidential messages.
We don’t expect the alerts to be frequent,” Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told the Times. “They will be reserved for when they are truly needed, for tornadoes or for disasters like 9/11.”
Genachowski said the emergency texts will look different from ordinary messages, making them more difficult for hackers to infiltrate or fake. They’ll probably appear directly on the screen, along with a special vibration or other signal. No word on how closely they’ll resemble the tone and color bars of the current Emergency Broadcast System for televisions, or whether users can expect “this is a test” messages on a regular basis.
Google Facing DOJ Probe
May 13, 2011 by admin
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Google is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice concerning practices within its advertising program, and has set aside $500 million for a potential resolution fund, the company said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday.
In its quarterly report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Google said that in May it accrued $500 million for the three-month period ended March 31, 2011 in connection “with a potential resolution of an investigation by the United States Department of Justice into the use of Google advertising by certain advertisers”.
Although it cannot predict the ultimate outcome of the matter, Google said that it believes that it will not have a material adverse effect on its business, consolidated financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.
The company did not explain why the charge had been taken retrospectively on its first quarter earnings. It is also not clear to whom Google would have to make the payment in the event of settlement.
Google declined to comment, stating that it was a legal matter. The company has updated its first-quarter results press release on its web site, to reflect the new charge.
Tablet Users Are Dropping Laptops
According to Neilsen people who have owned laptops and now use tablets as a PC device are ditching them like hotcakes. Under the study conducted around 77 percent of tablet owners are now using their device in the same capacity as they used their laptop computers. This strange because there are many applications or functions that a tablet is not able to process or handle.
One third of the tablet owners also admitted that they find themselves using their desktops even less since they acquired a tablet PC. Furthermore, thirty percent of those surveyed who own both a laptop and desktop who owned a laptop find themselves using their tablet more. A small percentage (2) of those Neilsen interviewed said they had stopped using their laptop computer altogether.
Samsung Infuse Smartphone Outed
May 9, 2011 by admin
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AT&T Wireless and Samsung Mobile jointly announced the thin and lightweight Infuse 4G smartphone during a press conference Thursday in New York.
The phone is 8.99 millimeters (0.35 inches) thick, making it just a fraction thinner than Apple’s iPhone 4, and has a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display, one of Samsung’s most advanced, stated Jeff Bradley, senior vice president for devices at AT&T Wireless.
The device weighs 4.7 ounces and is powered by a single-core ARM processor running at 1.2GHz. It runs Google’s Android 2.2 OS and will become available in the U.S. on May 15, priced at $199 with a two-year wireless contract. It runs on AT&T’s HSPA+ (Evolved High-Speed Packet Access) network, which AT&T considers a 4G service.
The display shows more pixels than Samsung’s earlier AMOLED smartphone screens offered on the AT&T network, Bradley said. Infuse also includes an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and flash.
‘Do Not Track’ Internet Legislation, Advances
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California is a moving closer to making into law the first Do Not Track legislation in the U.S., aimed at protecting Internet users from invasive advertising.
The proposed Senate bill, SB-761, passed a Senate Judiciary Committee vote late Tuesday, but it still has a long road ahead before having a chance of being signed into law. It now moves on to the Appropriations Committee, and must also pass the Senate and State Assembly before being sent to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk.
Still, it’s the first time such a bill has made it out of committee, and that’s a big deal, according to John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog’s Privacy Project. “This is the first time that a ‘do not track’ bill has actually had a hearing and been debated and then voted forward in the legislative process,” he said.
The bill would give California consumers a simple way of opting out of data collection systems that keep track of their online activities. “It puts up a no trespassing sign on our device,” Simpson said.
Opponents of the bill, including Google, the Direct Marketing Association, and the wireless industry group CTIA, say it puts an unnecessary burden on online commerce.
Online marketers love this type of data because it helps them fashion highly effective targeted advertising. But many consumers don’t want to hand marketers every detail of what they do on the Web.
Under the proposed law, users would have a way — possibly a through a browser setting — of telling Web sites not to track them. If a company disregarded this and collected data without permission, it could face stiff fines.
Laptop Users Still Prefer USB Modems
Mobile data users still overwhelmingly prefer USB modems for keeping PCs and other devices connected while on the go, but they may turn more to built-in cellular radios and portable Wi-Fi hotspots over the few years, according to ABI Research.
Despite the growing market for connected tablets and the availability of laptops and netbooks with high-speed cellular modules built in, worldwide shipments of USB modems still surpass embedded 3G and 4G modules by three to one, ABI said in a report Monday. But by 2016, that ratio may change to near an even split, said ABI analyst Jeff Orr.
Mobile operators including AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Clearwire give consumers the option of buying a laptop or netbook with an integrated cellular module. Those computers let subscribers go online almost anywhere without using up a USB port or carrying around a separate piece of hardware that sticks out of the side of the system.
Built-in modems lock buyers into one carrier or network technology for the life of the device, which most consumers and enterprises don’t want, Orr said. They buy USB modems because they can be easily discarded when a better network comes along, he said. Prices are low and often there is no early termination fee for getting out of the carrier data contract. “That device becomes almost disposable,” he said.
One problem with built-in modems is that wireless technology changes faster than most users want to change computers. For example, the past three years — a typical PC lifetime — have seen the construction of both a WiMax and an LTE network in many cities around the U.S., offering 10 times or more the speed of 3G networks.
The market for embedded modems is still fairly small, according to ABI. In 2010, only about 5% of laptops worldwide shipped with built-in cellular modems, Orr said. Among netbooks, 17% came with modems, but overall shipments were much smaller for netbooks than for laptops. Meanwhile, 40% of tablets came with such modems, but the overall tablet market was smaller still.
Motorola Xoom Sales Better Than Expected
May 2, 2011 by admin
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Motorola Mobility shipped 250,000 Xoom tablets in the first month the device was released, the company said on Thursday as part of their first-quarter earnings report.
The tablet, the first to run Google’s Android Honeycomb OS, went on sale in February. Within weeks, several analysts said early sales numbers were disappointing. By early April, one analyst estimated that Motorola had sold a total of 100,000 of the tablets.
Shipping a quarter of a million in a month isn’t quite the same as Apple first iPad shipment, but the number appears to be better than most had expected.
For the full year, Motorola is expecting to sell 1.5 million to 2 million tablets, it said. It plans to introduce new tablets, including some with new form factors, this year, executives said during a conference call to discuss first-quarter results.
During the quarter, Motorola Mobility also began selling the Atrix, a phone that can be docked into a device with a full keyboard and monitor. Some analysts have also said sales of the Atrix are unimpressive.
The company did not release Atrix sales numbers separately. It said it shipped 9.3 million mobile devices, including 4.1 million smartphones, during the quarter.
Motorola expects to record an operating profit for the full year, but faces challenges ahead. It has delayed the launch of the Bionic, its first LTE device, and on Thursday said the delay is related to a software problem. That same problem is also pushing back the launch of LTE on the Xoom, which was initially expected for the first half. Both the LTE Xoom and the Bionic are now expected to come in “summer,” which in North America could be as late as September.
Intel Developing Thunderbolt Technology
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A new interconnect technology being developed by Intel could be ready for market by 2015 and will be able to move data between computers at up to five times the speed of its recently launched Thunderbolt technology, an Intel researcher said earlier this week.
The new technology uses silicon photonics, which combines silicon components with optical networking, to transfer data at up to 50 gigabits per second over distances of up to 100 meters, said Jeff Demain, strategy director of circuits and system research at Intel Labs, at a company event in New York.
Intel expects the technology to be ready for use in PCs, tablets, smartphones, televisions and other products by 2015, Demain said. As well as being faster than today’s interconnect technologies, it’s expected to lower costs because the components will be built using existing silicon manufacturing processes.
The technology could possibly be used in TVs and set-top boxes to carry video streams at much higher definition than those available today. Image resolution is likely to quadruple by the middle of the decade, when successors to 1080p have arrived, and that will mean more data has to be pushed to the TV.
It should also enable faster data transfers between smartphones, tablets, PCs and peripherals such as external storage drives.
The technology still has a way to go, but Intel showed its progress at the event in New York Wednesday. It showed what it said were working prototypes of the silicon chips used to transmit and receive the laser signals.
PC Sales Up This Year
The research firm Canalys is stating that overall worldwide PC sales grew by seven percent last quarter. The firm is report believes the Apple’s iPad was the main factor for the increase. Nevertheless, the jury is still out on whether a tablet can be considered a true PC.
According to Canalys, tablet shipments in the first quarter of 2011 were 6.4 million units and Apple had a 74 percent share. Be advised, Android tablet sales are expected to increase in the later part of 2011.
In the world of true PC’s like laptops, desktops and netbooks, HP is still the king, with 14.6 million units shipped and a 16.6 percent share. While Acer is second, with a 12.8 percent share and 11.3 million units sold last quarter. In reference to year-on-year sales, overall Acer sales saw a drop of 5.8 percent and 6.5 percent respectively. Dell was close on the heels of Acer at third with an 11.3 percent share, and sales of 10 million units and 2.8 percent growth.