Author: Eva Glass

Eva Glass first rose to prominence in The INQUIRER. She continues to work behind the scenes to dig out the best stories.

Chips with built in security go postal

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericABI Research believes that by the end of this year processors including embedded security technology will reach the billion mark.

Vendors are building in the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) will reach 366 million as part of that figure.

The shipments are driven by governments, financial service companies and other enterprises largely to ensure secure ID and payments.

The market for TEE devices is still in its early stages, said ABI.  But shipments are bound to increase for them and for Host Card Emulation (HCE).

ARM is integrating TruZeone architecture into every Cortex-A family processor it licenses to vendors.

Unlike TEE devices, HCE depends on the cloud and lets banks introduce mobile NFC products without relying on smartphone SIMs.  ABI said that HCE support in smartphones is growing exponentially, and will account for shipments of 252 million by the end of the year.

Players in the game include ARM, Nok Nok Labs, NXP Semi, Infineon, Trustonic and Obertur Technologies.

MEMS market galvanised by the internet of things

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

Internet of ThingsGrowth in the internet of things (IoT) means demand for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) has risen steeply this year.

The MEMS category of semiconductors includes accelerometers, pressure sensors, timing components and microphones.

MEMS are used in areas like asset tracking, smart grids, building and other sectors.  Market research company IHS said that revenues last year were $16 million but will be worth $120 million yearly by 2019.

But MEMS will also be widely used in datacentres and this means that this sector of the market will be worth $214 million in 2018.

By 2025, shipments of MEMS for industrial IoT equipment will amount to 7.3 billion units. Last year 1.8 billion units shipped.

Datacentres will want optical MEMS, used for wavelength selective switches and optical cross connects.

Europe shows rise in high speed broadband

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

euroflagzA report commissioned by the European Commission has found that the number of European households able to access at least 30Mbps download speeds is 62 percent.

The survey covered 2013 and showed that 4G LTE support increased by 32 percent during the year.

Coverage growth was influenced by deployments of Very High Speed DSL (VDSL) – it was the fastest growing fixed broadband tech for the second year in  a row.

But the position is still bad for people living in the country.  Rural households showed 89.8 percent coverage, compared to 97.2 percent for urban households.

UK got the thumbs up in the survey. The vast majority of people in the UK have 100 percent coverage, the EC said.

LTE takeup was patchy. Sweden had the highest penetration, while three countries – Bulgaria, Cyprus and Malta – had no coverage whatsoever at the end of 2013.

Integrated systems market spurts ahead

Posted on December 19, 2014 by - News

HP-MicroServerCompared with the rest of the IT market, the worldwide integrated infrastructure market grew by a healthy 28.1 percent during the third quarter of this year.

That’s according to IDC, which said reveues increased to $2.3 billion, generating over 898 petabytes of storage capacity shipments, up by 46.6 percent compared to Q3 2013.

IDC research director Jed Scaramella said that over the past year IT vendors invested heavily in product portfolio and that’s resulted in more adopting in customers’ IT.

IDC defines integrated platforms as those sold with pre-integrated packaged software and customised system engineering for software development, databases, testing and integration tools.  Integrated infrastructure are for general purpose workloads.

In the first category, Oracle was the leader in the pack, followed by IBM, and HP.  Oracle showed revenue growth of 7.1 percent, IBM’s revenue growth fell by 18 percent, while HP showed a massive revenue growth of 285 percent.

In the second category, VCE saw a 45.7 percent growth in the quarter, Cico/Netapp showed a 32.2 percent growth while HP surprised with a 273.3 percent revenue growth in the third quarter of 2014.

Google faces antitrust hearing

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

330ogleA judge will hear a plea from Google today that she on dismiss an antitrust lawsuit in San Jose based on a class action against the internet giant.

Google will ask US District Judge Beth Freeman to dismiss a class action alleging that its Android operating system forces companies that use the OS in their devices to not use competing software from other companies like Microsoft.

Google will argue that people are free to use any apps on Android that they want to even though the plaintiffs insist it’s difficult or fiddly to do so.

If the class action is allowed to proceed, it’s likely that it will take some time and we’ll be treated to internal Google emails while executives from the company might be required to argue their position under oath.

Google is under increased scrutiny for its business activities.  A four year long investigation in Europe was given extra impetus last month when the European Parliament passed a resolution to break up the company because of its dominance. That caused the US administration to express worries about the case being politicised.

The European Commission has not yet given any indication of when its investigations will be completed, but has the power to levy large fines on the firm.

Fashion designers get fingered by big data

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

Wikimedia CommonsThe use of analytics and big data has demonstrated how style trends surge through the industry, according to researchers at Penn State University.

Heng Xu, a professor of info science and tech at Penn, said a team of researchers analysed a large number of words and phrases from fashion reviews.

Xu said: “Data analytics are becoming more available for finding patterns, establishing correlations and identifying trends”.  He said: “It is being applied to many industries and fields, from health care to politics, but what we wanted to see is if data analytics could be used in the fashion industry.”

Her team extracted keywords and phrases describing silhouettes, colours, fabrics and other data from designers’ collection and then created algorithms to rank the designers and find out their influence.

Fashion designers can be sceptical about big data and analytics because they consider themselves to be artists.  But the team said it had found fingerprints that could be related to individual designers.

“Buying from leading designers is expensive, but if you had information on what design elements were beginning to trend, it might help you buy the latest fashion more inexpensively,” Said Xu.

The team believes the analytics will help them to discover who the next big fashion designer could be.

US acts to prevent Asian solar dumping

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

solarsThe USA regulary publishes anti-dumping and countervailing duties and it looks like it’s taking tough action against China to prevent its home solar panel market being threatened.

Trendforce, a Taiwanese market intelligence company, said the US has raised Chinese solar anti-dumping tariffs to as much as 165 percent, while rates for Taiwanese manufacturing have decreased.

Even given the stiff tariffs imposed by the US, demand in the country for Asian modules continues to grow.  And in a bid to prevent the tariffs spoiling their businesses, Chinese manufacturers have set up module manufacturing in Europe, Canada, South Africa, Malaysia, India, Japan and Turkey, according to Trendforce.

Jason Huang, a research manager at Trendforce, said that the rulings mean that Taiwanese prices will rise in the short term.  “In addition to the stimulus from the anti-dumping, countervailing duties final ruling, prices are also encouraged by the UK, by Japan and China’s markets.  It is expected to increase both in shipment volume and price in the first quarter of 2015,” he said.

The USA has its own solar panel business and the govenmment introduces the anti-dumping and countervailing duties to stimulate its own home grown marketplace.

Thin clients survive PC battle

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

A not so mobile X86 PCThere’s been a battle in the enterprise between thin clients and commercial PC for market share and it looks like the thin clients have won.

According to IDC, thin clients competed directly with commercial PCs for market share and in 2014 the former did better than the latter.

Thin clients in the EMEA market are still a small market but growth exceeded market average and they will continue to grow  in 2015.

Oleg Sidorkin, a senior research analyst at IDC said: “Rapid deployment of thin client technology generates a leveraging effect, accelerating further adoption.”  The top four countries for shipments are Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and France – together they will represent 65.1 percent of the entire EMEA market by the end of the year.

These large markets will continue to grow.  “Once vendors gain a foothold in these markets, they can grow quickly as these markets continue to increase their EMEA share,” he said.

Brit launches first Bitcoin marketplace

Posted on December 18, 2014 by - News

Nick Boardman - Mike Magee picEntrepreneur Nick Boardman said he has introduced a Bitcoin online company which uses Bitcoins as its sole currency.

BTXDeals will differ from other etailers by offering a cost per sale that’s lower than 50 percent of charges from Amazon and eBay.

Boardman said that there are no additional or hidden fees.

Vendors can list an unlimited number of items at no charge, and be paid in either Bitcoins or UK pounds.  Boardman said BTXDeals won’t compete with the vendors but on building a secure and price conscious place where vendors can sell their gear.

Boardman said: “As the first of its kind, BTXDeals embraces the potential of Bitcoin and provides a safe, secure and transparent form of online shopping.  We believe this virtual currency will become the future for all e-commerce transactions.”

Customers already include Grange Hotels, Shy Aviation, Sun Mountain Golf, K Bassam Jewellers, Time Square Birmingham and others.  Boardman said the company is in negotiations with a number of other major suppliers. It expects to expand its product and service range over the coming months.

Boardman is well known in the tech business, previous enterprise included Rock Group plc and other ventures.

Intel signs up with Chinese giant

Posted on December 17, 2014 by - News

Intel-logoIntel and Chinese e-commerce giant jd.com have signed a deal with each other to create a new type of laboratory.

According to the Xinhua news agency, both companies will work on creating 3D product displays and “visual fitting rooms”, smart hardware, and servers for enterprises for promoting online shopping.

Xinhua said jd.com is one of the world’s top 10 internet companies and Intel will help it improve its existing e-commerce services as well as working on new applications related to ID authentication, security, and database monitoring.

Jd.com has something like 25 million registered users.

No financial details of the deal between the two corporations was released.

Intel has been trying to reposition itself in the last 18 months as more of a general purpose corporation, rather than just a manufacturer of X86 chips.  It also wants a chunk of the lucrative pie known as the internet of things, and is still desperate to make its mark in the mobile and tablet markets.

This deal, then, is something of an oddity.

Google reveals top 2014 searches

Posted on December 17, 2014 by - News

330ogleSearch giant Google processes trillions of searches a year and now it’s released a list of the top searches in a number of different categories for 2014.

The top searches across all categories were Robin Williams, World Cup, Ebola, Malaysia Airlines, ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, Flappy Bird, Conchita Wurst, ISIS, Frozen and Sochi Olympics.

And top five people searched for in 2014 were Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, Julie Gayet, Tracy Morgan and Renee Zwellweger.

On the techie side, the most searched for terms were the iPhone 6, the Samsung Galaxy S5, the Nexus 6, the Moto G, the Samsung Note 4, the LG G3, the Xbox One, the Apple watch, the Nokia X, and the iPad Air.

Apple scored number five in the top YouTube videos with the iPhone 6 Plus Bend test.

The top five deaths were Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Peaches Geldof, Shirley Temple and Maya Angelous.

Rackspace joins anti-Intel server group

Posted on December 17, 2014 by - News

IBM logoServer company Rackspace has joined an IBM inspired server group, snubbing its primary chip supplier, Intel.

The Openpower foundation was formed a year ago and has something like 80 worldwide members, working on producing server technology built using IBM rather than Intel microprocessor architecture.

The group already has members including Nvidia, Tyan and Google.

Rackspace has been working behind the scenes with the group for over 18 months, but openly declared its hand yesterday.  Senior director Aaron Sullivan said that Openpower has an open firmware stack, and better access to chips, memory and storage than, for example, Intel.

Other additions to the powerful consortium include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Mumbai Indian Institute of Technology, and worldwide distributor Avnet.

Openpower said its first summit will be held mid March at the San Jose Convention Center in California.

Apple shuts Russia online shore

Posted on December 17, 2014 by - News

blue-appleDrastic fluctuations in the value of the Russian rouble has led Apple to shut down its online store in the country.

The reason is pricing for its products.  The rouble has fell in value by over 20 percent this week, and it continues to be in freefall, losing value today.

Apple moved to increase its prices by 20 percent but now feels that the currency is fluctuating so much it has to suspend trading.

Russia is suffering from a combination of sanctions imposed on it because of Ukraine, and because the price of oil is in freefall too.

Russia’s primary export is oil and gas.

Apple did not say when or if it would open its online store in Russia.  Earlier this week the Russian state bank put up interest rates to 17 percent, prompting fears of a recession in the country during 2015.

SSDs make the notebook grade

Posted on December 17, 2014 by - News

seagate-hddBusiness users of notebooks can expect a plethora of notebooks in 2015 that use solid state drives (SSDs) rather than the traditional electromechanical storage.

SSDs are far faster at accessing operating systems and data than HDDs and Digitimes has talked to a number of suppliers that think their use will increase next year.

The main reason is that as SSDs proliferate, their prices will continue to drop and the report suggests that as many as a fifth of business notebooks will use them next year

SSDs are still expensive compared to HDDs however. Digitimes said that a 128GB flash drive will cost $60 in the next few months, but you can buy a one terabyte drive for that amount.

So the notebook vendors will probably use a combination of SSDs and HDDs in hybrid devices.

But it will be a while before notebooks intended for home use and using SSDs will be cheap enough for home use, although most analysts believe that time is not far away.

Shoppers face full on technology blast

Posted on December 16, 2014 by - News

highstreetCompanies using technology to track and attract shoppers mean the number of retail deployments by the end of this year has risen 100 percent compared to 2013.

This year, most deployments were in clothing, grocery and shopping malls using information like customer analytics, offers, product search and navigation.

But next year burger joints and coffee shops are expected to take up smartphone applications.

ABI Research senior analyst Patrick Connolly said: “We are seeing growth across all major technologies, including BLE, Wi-Fi and audio, with 2015 being an important year for handset based location, sensor fusion, magnetic fields and LED.”

Most deployments so far have been in the USA but that’s set to change next year and in coming years, without any single company having a dominant market share, he said.

“In 2015, we also expect to see camera analytics companies like ShopperTrak, Irisys and Brickstream playing an increasing role as they expand their offerings into BLE, Wi-Fi and in-store analytics,” he said.