Hewlett Packard on Wednesday returned to the market of smartphones and introduced its highly-anticipated handsets. The new “Slate VoiceTab” family of devices offers large displays and promising performance. Unfortunately, those hybrid smartphones will be initially available only in India and, perhaps, some other developing countries. The line of HP’s smartphones …

When it comes to smartphones, Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S-series provides almost unbeatable performance and feature-set, in many cases these handsets are more impressive than Apple’s iPhones. But when it comes to media tablets, then Galaxy Tab family has a limited amount of advantages compared to the iPad. This year, the …

Many attributes of traditional consumer computing are set to extinct in the cloud computing era. One of the things supposed to disappear is “Intel Inside” logo and program since many do not care about technology that powers their businesses from the cloud. Nonetheless, Intel just does not want its brand …

Intel Corp. said it had decided to postpone equipment move-in at its fab 42 cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing facility. The move, which is aimed to improve utilisation of capital at the world’s largest maker of microprocessors, will leave the company without one fab capable of making next-generation chips using 14nm manufacturing …

At the Consumer Electronics Show this year tens of companies revealed their smart wearable gadgets designed for various use cases. However, market analysts believe that the actual revolution on the market of wearable computing devices will start after Apple says its word and releases its highly-anticipated iWatch gadget. Last year …

Mining of virtual currencies is getting more and more popular among PC hardware enthusiasts since this is not only fun, but can bring actual income. IBuyPower, a leading PC maker from the U.S., on Tuesday introduced two systems designed specifically for crunching numbers and mining virtual currency. IBuyPower’s Mine series …

Even though video streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix are growing rapidly these days, the majority of consumers still prefer movies on good-old optical media, such as Blu-ray disc (BD) and DVD. As a result, sales of Blu-ray movies hit another record last December in the USA. A recent …

Although the press mostly reports about high-end chip solutions designed for leading-edge electronics and made using state-of-the-art process technologies, the market continues to need very low-cost products that are far from being technological breakthroughs. On Tuesday ARM Holdings and United Microelectronics Corp. announced partnership to enable such devices. ARM has …

Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday officially began sales of its highly-anticipated A-series accelerated processing units (APUs) code-named “Kaveri”. The new chip features a pack of AMD’s latest technologies and are expected to show high performance in applications that can take maximum advantage of its heterogeneous system architecture (HSA). Starting today, …

Amazon, the world’s largest online store, is working on a new hardware project that is supposed be a bigger revolution than Kindle e-book reader or Kindle Fire media tablet. What will it be? The only thing known is that it will deliver media content to Amazon’s customers and is currently …

Microsoft Corp.’s latest Windows 8 operating system has failed to meet expectations of millions of customers as well as the software giant’s own sales projections. Needless to say that Microsoft is working hard on improved Windows and today the first details emerged about the code-named “Threshold” operating system that is …

Last week’s launch of PlayStation Now service that can stream PlayStation games to various devices will affect the future of video games in general and game consoles in particular. Some people might think that if it is possible to stream a game, why buy a dedicated console? Nonetheless, the head …

Jason Chen, a former executive from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. who recently became chief executive officer of Acer Group, has failed to impress investors who attended his press conference in Taiwan early on Monday. The new head of the company did not present a lot of ideas regarding the future …

Intel Corp. is not going to release its next-generation code-named “Broadwell” family of central processing units (CPUs) until later this year, but it is already working on two small form-factor PCs based on the chip. While the products are still in development, we already know that both are going to …

Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system has long been a darling of gamers thanks to its compatibility with a broad selection of hardware, software, application programming interfaces (APIs) and so on. Likewise, the Xbox consoles are admired by core gamers. However, powerful new platforms designed for video games are incoming and …

Intel Corp. may speed up introduction of its next-generation microprocessors based on the code-named “Broadwell” micro-architecture, according to sources with knowledge of the chip giant’s plans. Previously it was expected that the “Broadwell” line of chips will be released sometime in Q4 of 2014. It is now planned that some …

Despite all the buzz regarding 4K ultra-high-definition format in general and UHD televisions in particular, Kazuo Hirai, chief executive officer of Sony Corp., believes that the technology is years away from becoming a mainstream one. Nonetheless, he is already thinking about time when 4K TVs become commodity and his company …

Samsung Electronics has traditionally released its flagship smartphones in the first half of the year around March – April timeframe. In cases of Galaxy S III and Galaxy S4, their launches were surrounded by loads of teases, leaks and rumours months ahead of formal announcements. But while everything seems to …

Seagate Technology this week introduced Backup Plus Fast external storage solution that combines high performance, high capacity, portability and relatively low cost. The new drive is aimed at creative professionals and so-called pro-sumers who require performance and capacity, but do not want to pay for business-class solutions. Seagate Backup Plus …

Until now, Intel Corp.’s success on the market of Google Android-based smartphones and tablets has been pretty mediocre since x86 microprocessors could not bring a lot of advantages to mobile devices. However, Intel’s latest system-on-chips support 64-bit processing capability, something no one else can offer for Android. Moreover, Intel has …

Apple and Samsung this week agreed to hold mediation talks ahead of the third trial between the companies in two years that starts in March. The companies proposed to discuss possible settlement by chief executive officers of the two firms as well as their senior legal counsels. The talks do …

This year’s Consumer Electronics Show clearly demonstrated that the 4K ultra-high-definition video format is heading to the mass market. Consumer and computer electronics companies need to sell a new technology with a beautiful name, so they will continue promoting UHD. But there are problems with certain standards as well as …

In an attempt to make devices based on its chips more competitive, Intel Corp. plans to bring human-like senses to a broad range of personal computers, the company outlined at the Consumer Electronics Show this week. To make this possible, the chip giant has developed a combination of software and …

Sometimes in the third quarter of this year Intel Corp. plans to release its next-generation high-end desktop (HEDT) platform code-named “Lituya Bay” based on the code-named “Haswell-E” central processing units that will rely on DDR4 memory to maximize bandwidth. For those, who will want to get some extra performance out …

Plextor, one of the most respected brand-names in the consumer storage industry, this week unveiled its new M6 lineup of solid-state drives. The new SSDs come in various form-factors that target different types of personal computers and also sport different interfaces, including Serial ATA and PCI Express. The latter brings …

Just in case you think that the 4K resolution (3840*2160) is a thing to last for a long time, think again since 8K (7680*4320) technology may be approaching faster than expected. Samsung Electronics and some other consumer electronics companies this week showcased their first prototypes of 8K ultra-high-definition TVs at …

Ultra-high-definition (UHD) is incoming for both video games and movies thanks to designers of graphics processors, developers of video games and Hollywood. Looks like the UHD hardware eco-system is also beginning to build up. Dell announced this week that its first affordable display with support for 4K (3840*2160) resolution will …

Following PlayStation sales report by Sony earlier on Wednesday, Microsoft Corp. also announced cumulative global shipments results for its Xbox One game system in 2013. Quite expectedly, the software giant sold less of its new-generation consoles than its arch-rival due to a number of reasons. Over three million Xbox One …

Various market rumours pointed at Alan Mulally, current chief executive officer (CEO) of Ford Motor Co., as a potential candidate to be Microsoft Corp.’s next head, despite of the fact that he never disclosed plans to leave his current position. This week, the man who led reshaping of Ford several …

Sony Corp. said on Wednesday that global cumulative shipments of its latest PlayStation 4 video game consoles have reached 4.2 million as of December 28, 2013. With sales of the PS4, the company has already beaten sales of PlayStation 3 during the launch window and will likely exceed its initial …