Advanced Micro Devices and its partners on Monday began to roll-out new graphics card aimed at the mainstream market. The “novelty” is expectedly based on an existing graphics processing unit, but belongs to a new product family and carries an all-new model-number, the Radeon R7 250X. The new Radeon R7 …
Read More »Firepower acquires power supply unit business of OCZ Technology
Firepower Technology, a little known company, has acquired the power supply unit assets of the bankrupt OCZ Technology Group. It is not completely clear what exactly has been purchased, but it is likely that Firepower will be able to continue making power supplies using intellectual property (IP) from the insolvent …
Read More »Chief exec of Sony confirms interest in Windows Phone
Sony Corp. is going to cease using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system as a result of its planned exit from the personal computer business later this year. But as the company intends to continue with making smartphones and tablets, it will consider other OSes from Microsoft, according to the chief …
Read More »Apple’s partner expands manufacturing of sapphire glass
At present Apple uses artificial sapphire-crystal glass for its touch ID fingerprint scanners and iSight cameras on its iPhone smartphones. But it looks like Apple is preparing to expand usage of the advanced material as the company’s manufacturing partner has acquired equipment to substantially boost output of sapphire-crystal glass. In …
Read More »Sony to shut down its e-book business in the U.S., Canada
Sony Corp. has announced that it would cease to sell its e-book readers in the U.S. and Canada shortly and would shut down its online e-book store in the country by the end of March. All e-book related services will go offline by May and customers with existing accounts will …
Read More »Apple’s Tim Cook vows to reveal new product categories this year
Chief executive officer of Apple, Tim Cook, said in an interview that this year the company would finally introduce new product categories that could trigger further growth of the firm. As usually, the head of Apple remained tight-lipped about those devices and did not reveal when the company plans to …
Read More »DARPA teams up with IBM for self-destructing chips
Sophisticated electronics is used in nearly everything today, including military gear and weapons. The electronics has become necessary for operations, but it is almost impossible to track and recover every device used on the battlefield, which means that some of them might be captured by the enemy and repurposed or …
Read More »Steve Wozniak calls Apple to make Android-based smartphones
Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple, said in an interview that the company he helped to establish could make smartphones based on Google Android operating system in order to boost market share. At the same time, he said that the iPhone handsets have the right amount of features and capabilities …
Read More »IBM explores selling-off its semiconductor manufacturing unit
IBM has reportedly started to search for a buyer for its semiconductor manufacturing business. While the move itself seems like a milestone for the whole industry, the potential transaction will not have a huge impact on the market since IBM is not a leading maker of chips. Moreover, chips today …
Read More »Sony to spin-off TV business, focus on 4K, high-end models
Sony Corp. on Thursday said it would implement additional reform measures to return its TV business to profitability. The company said it would shift its focus on high-margin premium-class TV-sets, including those with 4K resolution and will continue to cut-down its costs. The latter will effect in optimizations, outsourcing and …
Read More »Smartphones with 4K screens incoming, 23 million to ship in 2015
The ultra-high-definition resolutions is incoming not only to televisions and PC monitors, but also to mobile devices. Next year the first smartphones with displays featuring 3840*2160 resolution will hit them market, according to analysts from NPD DisplaySearch. Obviously, such handsets will be rather rare, but even in this case their …
Read More »Steve Jobs inspired some Sony products, and Sony inspired him
Although Steve Jobs always wanted to build his own universe around Apple and its products, he carefully examined devices made by other companies and in many cases liked them. One of the companies he admired was Sony, so, he frequently visited its headquarters, looked at new products and shared his …
Read More »Apple will continue to use Imagination’s PowerVR graphics
Imagination Technologies and Apple on Thursday made a disclosure with the London Stock Exchange that the latter has extended its multi-year, multi-use license agreement that allows it to utilise PowerVR graphics cores. The announcement means that Apple plans to continue using ImgTec’s PowerVR graphics in its future system-on-chips that power …
Read More »Sony to sell PC unit to JIP, Vaio to become Japan-exclusive
Sony Corp. and Japan Industrial Partners on Thursday announced that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding under which Sony plans to sell its PC business currently operated under the Vaio brand to the JIP investment fund. The terms of the deal are expected to be concluded next month …
Read More »Specs and images of Samsung Galaxy S5 leak to the Internet
Samsung Galaxy S5 is expected to be announced in about three weeks from now, but its pictures and main specs have already been published by various leakers. As expected, the novelty will feature an extraordinary display, a new application processor and new cameras. It is unknown whether the device will …
Read More »Steve Jobs wanted Mac OS X to run on Sony Vaio PCs
One of the first things that Steve Jobs did when he returned to Apple in the late nineties was to cancel all plans regarding making Apple Mac OS available to third-party PC makers. However, several years later he was considering to allow Sony to use the innovative OS X operating …
Read More »Sony may sell PC business to a Japanese investment fund
Sony Corp. may sell its money-losing PC business to a Japanese investment fund, according to a local news-paper. The new owner of the unit will likely retain the Vaio brand, but will have to completely reorganize the business in order to become profitable. Nikkei daily news-paper reported this week that …
Read More »Shipments of 4K desktop monitors to reach two million in 2014
Thanks to dropping manufacturing costs leading to declines in average selling prices (ASPs), shipments of ultra-high-definition (UHD) desktop monitors with 4K resolution are expected to increase steadily this year. In the coming years, displays with UHD will continue to lose price and gain adoption, according to NPD DisplaySearch. Unfortunately, 4K …
Read More »Dell forms research division, set to invest more into R&D
Dell, a leading maker of personal computers, servers and other hardware that is trying to diversify its businesses these days, has quietly formed a research division for the first time in its history. Traditionally, Dell approached research and development (R&D) in a very minimalist way since for years it had …
Read More »Asustek introduces Haswell-based ‘Chromebox’ for $179
Asustek Computer on Tuesday introduced its first ever desktop with Google ChromeOS operating system. The PC utilizes an Intel microprocessor based on the latest “Haswell” micro-architecture and provides all the pros and cons of the ChromeOS platform. Since the system does not use a commercial OS, it costs starting from …
Read More »Chairman of Asus vows smart-watch device in 2014
Asustek Computer first demonstrated a prototype of a smart-watch device (code-named Waveface) around four years ago. This year, the product of this kind is expected to become a reality, according to the company’s chairman Jonney Shih. Asustek Computer, one of the leading maker of computers and PC components, told its …
Read More »Microsoft expectedly denies Xbox One price-cuts, new versions
Game platform holders never confirm plans to cut prices of their devices in order not to disrupt current sales. In addition, they never make announcements regarding new versions of hardware due to the same reasons. Just as expected, this week Microsoft Corp. denied last week’s rumours about incoming price-cuts/new models …
Read More »Bill Gates to help Satya Nadella to shape new Microsoft
In addition to appointing Satya Nadella on the position of the chief executive officer of Microsoft, the company announced that Bill Gates will resign from his position of the chairman of the board. At the same time, the co-founder of Microsoft will assume a new position at the company to …
Read More »Microsoft names Satya Nadella new chief executive officer
Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday appointed Satya Nadella on the position of the chief executive officer effective immediately. Satya Nadella is a server and cloud specialist who has been serving Microsoft for 22 years. The new chief executive officer strongly believes in Microsoft's innovations. The new head of Microsoft promises to …
Read More »Samsung to unveil Galaxy S5 this month at MWC 2013
Samsung Electronics has started to send out invitations for its “Samsung unPacked 5” event on the 24th of February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Apparently, the company wants to unwrap its new flagship smartphone – Samsung Galaxy S5 – at the trade-show, a rather unexpected move. The …
Read More »Sony and Lenovo negotiating over possible PC alliance
It is known that leading makers of personal computers are reducing their shipments goals for the year. Since lower targets mean higher prices of manufacturing (due to increased costs of components), it is logical to expect certain PC makers to consolidate in order to become more competitive. According to unofficial …
Read More »Sony hints at virtual reality helmet for PlayStation 4
The first rumours about a virtual reality helmet for the PlayStation 4 emerged well before the announcement of the console last February, however, they did not look really credible since nothing particular was known about the system. However, since then they have not only re-emerged, but have now even been …
Read More »ARM and partners reveal initial server platform standard
Data centers demand standards-based software and hardware offerings to ensure ease of deployment and manageability. ARM Holdings and its partners on Monday released the first standard for servers based on ARMv8-A 64-bit micro-architecture. The guidelines will help server makers to build similar machines. ARM ‘server base system architecture' (SBSA) platform …
Read More »Sony may leave Nintendo Wii U without GPU with eDRAM cache
Sony Corp. this week acquired a semiconductor manufacturing facility from Renesas Electronics which, among other things, makes Nintendo “Latte” graphics processing unit with 32MB eDRAM cache that is used inside Nintendo Wii U game console. While there are long-term supply agreements in place, over time Nintendo may lose the supply …
Read More »Top PC makers cut NB shipments targets for 2014 – analysts
Top notebook PC manufacturers have reduced their 2014 shipment estimates as the market faces some challenges on both the supply and demand fronts. It is not a secret that media and business tablets are cannibalizing sales of traditional notebooks. Meanwhile, Intel Corp. delayed shipments of its low-power Core i-series “Broadwell” …
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