Dell Considering Cell Phone Market

Dell Considering Cell Phone Market

Author JoeDigital | 02.02.2009 | Category Computers, Technology Viewpoint, Telecommunications

Industry rumors are floating around that computer giant Dell is planning to enter the cellphone market. Just before the Mobile Congress in Barcelona, a company source “leaked” the news, but it has not been a secret that Dell and other companies have been eyeing the cellphone industry more closely as smartphone develop into highly portable personal computers. In fact, the Google Android OS itself is expected to encourage many companies, which will be able to pack a great deal of functionality into smaller cases.

Dell, which is reported to have had a team of researchers working on cellphones for over a year now, is also rumored to be working on more than cellphone prototype, perhaps one that uses Android, and another using the MS Windows Mobile environment.

This news, if it bears out, could also mean that there is both a touch-screen cellphone, and one with an expected sliding keyboard. Dell entering the cellphone market could have financial ramifications for the entire industry, as many cellphone makers are already reporting lower dividends than expected, and even losses in some cases. Competition with a computer giant like Dell, which has the resources to create product bundles for corporations, could create quite a shake-up in the status quo.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Nokia Reports 4th Quarter Losses

Author JoeDigital | 27.01.2009 | Category Consumer Electronics, Technology Viewpoint

Nokia Corp. reported fourth-quarter sales were off by around 19% from last year. The company sold fewer phones, and further complications came fom a loss in overall marketshare, as the company reported on Thursday.

Sales for the last three months of 2008 totaled $17.9 billion U.S. as of Dec. 31, the last day of the period reported, which was nearly one-fifth lower than analysts had expected.

First and foremost, the consumer electronics company blames a worsening economy, but acknowledges that blame doesnt’ solve the problem or keep employees working. With profits off by nearly 50% over the same period a year ago, Nokia is being forced to consider reducing staff and other strategic busines smoves to balance the scales.

The drop in volume reflects not only the current economic climate but also Nokia’s relative weakness in high-end phones for markets such as Western Europe, according to Milanesi. Nokia now estimates its market share at 37%, down from 38% in the third quarter and 40% in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Samusng Post First Quarterly Loss

Author JoeDigital | 24.01.2009 | Category Consumer Electronics, Technology Viewpoint, world news

Samsung Electronics, the South Korea-based electronics giant, posted the first quarterly loss in its history on Friday. In large part, the loss was due to decreased memory chip and display units sales, which have dropped dramatically during the global economic slump.

The posted loss, through December 31st, 2008, was 14.4 million dollars, a sharp contrast to the 2.2 trillion profit posted only a year earlier. Samsung is not alone in taking losses, either, with Sony Corp. reporting their first annual loss in 14 years on Thursday.

LG Electronics reported a record loss, and Panasonic Corporation has announced shutting unprofitable aspects of their business, and reducing planned 2009 investments by 1.5 billion dollars. This cut is primarily the cancellation of two nw flat-screen TV plants that had been intended.

Business all over the world are feeling the crunch of tougher economic times, but perhaps none more so than the electronics sector, which has long based growth on continuous competitive developments in technology. One consequence of smaller budgets will be less investment into research, which means a complete slow down of the entire technology development process.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Lycos to Drop Lycos Mail, Tripod

Author JoeDigital | 22.01.2009 | Category Technology Viewpoint, World Wide Web

Lycos (latin for spider), is one of the wordwide web’s oldest search engines, rivaling Yahoo as one of the original search monsters. From there, it grew into a free email site, and provided website urls to anyone interested in setting up their own web page, using theiur Tripod services. In February, LYcos email and Tripod will be discontinued.

Lycos, which is still a major search engine and internet directory, is feeling the crunch of tough economic times, and cutting corners by cutting back on free services, it seems. To many, this is almost like the end of an era, as we watch the commercial push to populate webspace give way to the larger and more commercialized world of web 2.0. Just as Netscape gave way to fresher Mozilla packages, so do the old school websites and email providers fall to wayside as it becomes easier for such services to be provided on an as-needed basis by site who capitalize on the earnings potential of keyword oriented click-thru campaigns, and on-page advertising.

Remember, if you have any old data at these Lycos services, you only have a few weeks to remove it, or you’ll risk losing it forever.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Century 21 Moving Moves Toward Online Advertising

Author JoeDigital | 21.01.2009 | Category Technology Viewpoint, World Wide Web

The affordability of online promotion is appealing to more and more businesses, as the economic crunch rolls on. Large advertising budgets are being cut into fractions, and companies, looking to make the most for their investment, are turning to Internet Marketing to make that happen.

The newest big player to make a major commitment to their online presence was one of the nation’s largest realty companies, Century 21, which has announced that a large part of their 2009 TV advertising budget would be redirected into online pursuits.

Beverly Thorne, Century 21 senior VP-marketing, remarked that, “the company’s research and testing revealed that its online investments in 2008 were substantively more productive and efficient than its offline efforts.”

One key attraction for moving online is that the advertising budget reaches much farther through online channels, and more effectively targets prospective customers. For a company such as Century 21, which spends as much as 10% on advertising, that equates to reaching a far higher number of intelligent and interested individuals, and meeting those people in ways that are more casual and provide more immediate information than was ever possible before.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Economic Uncertainty Fuels Social Networking Growth

Author JoeDigital | 18.01.2009 | Category Technology Viewpoint, World Wide Web

Social media sites seem to be coming to the rescue for many people, during these uncertain economic times. MySpace reports that the average minutes a user spends connected has gone from 1 minute a year ago, to 7 minutes in the most recent reporting period. The figures, which were released a few days ago, show the 21-34 age group visiting the site has almost completely doubled from last year, at more than 160,000 now, and only 83,500 then.

Angela Courin, of MySpace, says they’ve seen almost a threefold overall increase in traffic. She went on to say that the site has never experienced such dramatic increases in the past.

As the financial meltdown has progressed, MySpace’s job site has seen a marked increase, along with another popular social networking site, LinkedIn, whose membership is at 31 million, up from 18 million at the start of 2008. People are looking for job openings, and to start new relationships with people that may be able to further them along their quest, and social network sites are meeting their needs, and thriving in the usage.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Toshiba Begins Solar Photovoltaic Business

Author JoeDigital | 12.01.2009 | Category Science, Technology, Technology Viewpoint

Toshiba Corp has announced its full-scale entry into the solar photovoltaic systems business. On January 1, Toshiba’s Transmission Distribution & Industrial Systems Co established the Photovoltaic Systems Division, a business management and promotion organization that will take the initiative in responding to a surge in demand for solar photovoltaic systems, widely recognized as a key measure against global warming.

Solar photovoltaic systems are moving beyond residential applications to large, megawatt-scale projects for utility and industrial plants. According to Toshiba, it will secure orders for large solar power generation systems by drawing on its competitive advantages. In components, the company’s expertise includes high-efficiency power conditioning systems and the SCiB, the super charge ion battery, a breakthrough rechargeable battery claimed to offer excellent safety, long life and rapid charging.

In system integration, the company said it can point to world-class capabilities in system integration, particularly in connecting generation systems to distribution systems; in microgrids that connect and manage dispersed small-scale power generation sources, including renewable energy sources; and in large plant system engineering capabilities.

Toshiba will promote business expansion by utilizing existing global sales channels and expects to achieve an annual business scale of about ¥200 billion (approximately US$2.2 billion) by fiscal year 2015.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Refurbished cell phones get a little smarter

Author JoeDigital | 11.01.2009 | Category Consumer Electronics, Gadgets, Technology Viewpoint

When AT&T recently offered refurbished 8-gigabyte iPhone 3Gs for $99, news of the deal eclipsed another major iPhone announcement, that Wal-Mart is now stocking the hottest smartphone in America.

If you can get a refurbished iPhone for $99, are good deals in the offing for other popular smartphones, like the BlackBerry Storm and the Google G1? They may be if enough consumers decide to return their multi-functional gizmos within 30 days, making those phones eligible to be refurbished and re-sold by wireless carriers.

“As more and more phones become smartphones, more capable and more feature-rich, we’re likely to see the number of refurbished phones going up because of returns,” said Kevin Burden, ABI Research’s mobile devices research director. “Some phones may not meet the expectations of buyers, who see them as too complex.”

Smartphones, so-named because of their ability to handle e-mail, Web browsing and some computer-like functions, are one of the hottest segments in the cell phone market, propelled in part by devices such as the iPhone and Research In Motion’s line of BlackBerrys.

But the complicated bits of communications gadgetry are not for everyone, said Burden. “We’ve talked to plenty in the industry who say, ‘We sell (some) people a snappy smartphone, and they come back a couple weeks later and say they don’t get it, it’s too confusing. They want a phone where they can make a phone call, do text messaging and maybe have something to hold their calendars.’ ”

Touchscreen phones, in general, are still new to many users, who may think they want such phones, but find themselves longing for physical buttons to press, be it a phone keypad or QWERTY keyboard, once they get the phones home.

“What I have seen with touchscreens is that they tend to polarize people,” Burden said. “Some people absolutely love them; others absolutely hate them. But if a phone is returned, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not working right or working the way it’s supposed to; it’s just not meeting the expectations of those particular users.”

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

LG, Netflix Partner On Movie Rental Televisions

Author JoeDigital | 10.01.2009 | Category Consumer Electronics, Technology Viewpoint, World Wide Web

A joint announcement from Netflix and LG Electronics on Sunday stated that the two companies are set to introduce TV sets that can screen Netflix movies directly from the Web without an external box.

The U.S. DVD rental company and the Korean electronics giant launched set-top boxes and Blu-ray DVD players last year that were equipped with the same Netflix software. Netflix also announced other partnerships, including one with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to embed the movie software in its game consoles.

Subscribers of Netflix who buy one of these devices can hook it up to their TVs to watch movies that can be downloaded from the Internet instantly, as part of their monthly rental plan. The company eventually hopes to equip all home-entertainment screens with instant movie-viewing capability.

However, only around 12,000 of Netflix’s more than 100,000 movie titles and television episodes will be available for instant viewing — an option the company introduced in 2007.

LG’s new high-definition televisions, which will be on view at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, are targeted at those Netflix customers who want the convenience of Internet-to-TV movies without the clutter of a set-top box or an additional DVD player.

Swasey said, however, that the Los Gatos, California-based company, whose trademark red envelopes are shipped to nearly 9 million subscribers, has no immediate plans to tie up with mobile phone companies, despite the growing popularity of smart phones like Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. “There’s a limited market for people who want to watch a 2 1/2-hour movie on a 2-inch screen,” he said.

Tim Alessi, LG Electronics USA’s director of product development, said the Netflix-enabled LG TVs should be on the market by spring. The new televisions use broadband Internet technology and are available in four models — LCDs with 42-inch and 47-inch screens, and plasma TVs with 50-inch and 60-inch screens, he said.

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net

Internet Car Radio

Author JoeDigital | 10.01.2009 | Category Consumer Electronics, Technology Viewpoint, World Wide Web

Forget AM, FM, and XM. A new wave of radio broadcast is right around the corner, and it’s called Internet radio.Thousands of customized stations can be configured for each radio, and then accessed from anywhere in the world, allowing a level of personalization that not even XM has been able to come anywhere close to.

The device, which uses 3G GSM, is likely to find its way to your car, your smartphone, and even your bluetooth headset. The prototype, which is not even definitely the only one of its kind, was introduced thrugh a partnership of miRoamerand Blaupunkt, and made its debut last week at CES, Las Vegas.

While everyon is excited about the idea of twens of thousands of stations to choose from, the inventors are quick to point out that the Internet Radio is really just a consumer-accepted means of getting digital technology into the cockpit of the family car, where it has thus far been slow to gain momentum.

“The move to develop an Internet car radio solution is a new paradigm and a real starting point for in-car digital media,” said Robert Demian, Head of Global Sales, miRoamer. “miRoamer was the first and remains the only true digital media platform. By partnering with Blaupunkt, who has always been recognized as the first to introduce new and innovative products to the car audio markets, consumers now have access to all of the great benefits of Internet radio in their car, while experiencing unparalleled sound quality and reliability that is far superior to what they are accustomed.”

“Integrating Blaupunkt stereos with miRoamer technology was a logical step in creating a truly multimedia driving experience,” said Dr. Gerhard Pitz, Head of Product Center, Car Radio, Blaupunkt. “Drivers will be able to use all the features they’re familiar with, such as phone, address book, Bluetooth and navigation, but with the first Internet radio, driven by miRoamer, we are able to offer them the ability to tune into the world.”

Sign up to our RSS feed at TheTechnologyBlog.net