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.

PC slump may actually benefit AMD in long run

Posted on August 29, 2013 by - Opinions

AMD, SunnyvaleIt is often said that a crisis is merely an opportunity in disguise. It is often said but it’s rarely true. However, the steep drop in PC shipments could in fact be good news for AMD.

Ten years ago AMD taught Intel a costly lesson in the high end, forcing Intel to regain its footing and invest heavily in R&D and manufacturing. As a result Intel squeezed AMD out of the high-end consumer CPU market, relegating it to the mid range and low end.

AMD wasted its opportunity, but eventually it picked up ATI a couple of years after its CPU design peaked. Things looked bright for a moment, just before they went terribly wrong. AMD suffered from poor execution and its high end chips just weren’t good enough to keep up with Intel. The K8 glory days are long gone and AMD is now a different company, it is fabless, but it also has plenty of IP, competitive graphics and very interesting APU and x86 SoC designs.

So how could the weak PC market benefit AMD, especially now that mobile chips are the new black, and AMD hasn’t got any?

Long upgrade cycles are one indicator that the era of “good enough” computing is already here. The average PC is more than four years old, few people need costly high end processors and attention is shifting to low end and mid range silicon. This is what AMD is becoming good at. Its new Jaguar based APUs are brilliant and they are superior to Intel’s current generation of Atoms. Richland based APUs aren’t as competitive, but they offer relatively good value for money and they are making inroads in the ULV market as well. The bad news is that AMD is still suffering from execution problems. Kaveri was supposed to replace Richland later this year, but it has been pushed back to early 2014, along with desktop Jaguar-based Kabini parts. AMD’s propensity for delays makes any forecast extremely difficult.

With very little need for Intel’s high-end x86 chips in the consumer market, gamers and professionals aren’t enough. This is an obvious opportunity for AMD and CEO Rory Read seems to get it. That might explain why AMD is focusing its efforts elsewhere. APUs are just part of the story, they were the logical next step in CPU evolution. AMD’s next big thing is custom chip design. The Xbox One and PS4 are based on Jaguar, with AMD graphics in tow. Now for some geeky figures.

Most people associate Jaguar with cheap and small APUs, but custom console SoCs are neither. Built using TSMC’s 28nm process, the SoC used in the Xbox One actually features eight Jaguar CPU cores, coupled with powerful graphics and plenty of SRAM embedded on the die. They pack around 5 billion transistors, while Intel’s mid-range Haswells are said to feature between 1.4 billion and 1.2 billion, depending on the SKU.

AMD hasn’t forgotten how to do huge, immensely complex chips – it’s just not doing big x86 cores anymore. Its high-end GPUs also have upwards of 4 billion transistors. What’s more, AMD can apply the same custom approach to server parts and it’s also working on ARM based server chips as well. This flexible, modular approach sounds very interesting indeed, but it’s still too early to say whether AMD will put it to good use in server chips, so to speak,  whether it will manage to find enough customers for custom parts, as the orders have to be relatively big to justify the expense of developing and producing such chips.

As far as AMD’s graphics business goes, it is doing rather well at the moment. Time and again AMD has proven that it can go toe to toe with Nvidia and win a few rounds. We’ve been looking at a virtual stalemate for the past five years. This year AMD managed to increase its GPU market share, despite the fact that Nvidia won nearly all Haswell notebook design wins. The trouble for Nvidia is that notebook graphics are a dying market. In the consumer space AMD is doing well, while Nvidia still maintains a big lead in high-margin professional graphics. The recent console wins should also help AMD’s consumer GPU business, as developers should find it easier to optimise their games for AMD’s architecture on three different platforms.

The big question is mobile. A couple of months ago Nvidia announced that it would license its Kepler GPU and future GPU IP to third-party ARM SoC builders. AMD has not made the same commitment, but some AMD graphics tech is already used in mobile chips, in the form of Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics. The ARM SoC business will continue to grow and we are bound to see more consolidation. Nvidia has a small presence in the ARM SoC market and if it is willing to license its technology to its own competitors, AMD could and should enter the market as well. It is worth noting that Adreno is running out of steam, as it is based on old AMD/ATI tech. We’re not sure it would make financial sense for Qualcomm to continue development in-house, it might reach out to AMD instead. There is very little overlap between Qualcomm and AMD at the moment, and such a marriage of convenience would make perfect sense. If that happens, AMD could end up with a huge market share in ARM SoC graphics, trumping Nvidia, ARM and Imagination.

AMD is still in a world of trouble, but looking ahead it might actually be in a better position to weather the storm than Intel, at least in the consumer space. High end chips and server parts are still Intel’s turf, although AMD could score some custom server wins in the future. Intel is pushing mobile now and it has a good chance of penetrating the market a couple of years from now, but in reality if AMD starts licensing GPU IP to the likes of Qualcomm, it could make heaps of cash in mobile, with a lot less investment and risk than Intel.

Bank of England urged to support start-ups, SMEs

Posted on August 29, 2013 by - News

poundsA tech entrepreneur has called on the Bank of England to ramp up support for SMEs and start-ups, in what can only be a case of stating the obvious. However, every now and then the powers that be need a kick in posterior, as they tend to lose touch with reality quite often.

Powa Technologies CEO Dan Wagner said he would like to hear from the new Governor of the Bank of England and that he would like to see more support for entrepreneurial talent in the UK from Mark Carney.

“We have some fantastic, inspirational entrepreneurs who start great businesses, but unfortunately many of them have to go abroad to get the funding they need to grow and succeed and that is a shame,” he said. “Britain has great innovation across all areas and it needs to be nurtured and supported because it will be the lifeblood for the return of economic strength.”

Of course, Britain is no East Germany and it’s not experiencing a brain drain, but there is always room for improvement. Wagner believes the biggest problem for small businesses and start-ups is the lack of tax incentives for investment. In other words, even if a start-up comes up with a new idea and starts growing, it might choose to expand elsewhere, which means Britain could lose winners – and they are few and far between in the start-up world.

“I would like to see capital gains tax completely removed from the funding of start-up businesses. Any funds that are invested to create opportunities and jobs should see a full capital and profit return because of the great risks involved. This would be a political saviour. Small businesses represent 50% of the economy and its new small businesses that will drive future economic growth,” said Wagner.

Wagner told business leaders at an event in Nottingham that Britain knows a thing or two about coming up with brilliant ideas, such as the World Wide Web, and it needs to tap the potential by providing the right environment for start-ups and tech entrepreneurs. The long term benefits of losing a few quid on lower taxes for small outfits far outweigh the short-term tax revenue generated by such companies.

The seven cardinal sins of Steve Ballmer

Posted on August 28, 2013 by - News, Opinions

steve_ballmerNow that Steve Ballmer is on his way out, partners are breathing a collective sigh of relief for a number of reasons, some petty some huge. Over the last 13 years Microsoft has had a fair share of ups and downs. Although Ballmer can and should be blamed for many of them, it is worth taking a step back for a bit of perspective.

He took the helm in the good old days, when work was already underway on XP, one of Redmond’s most successful operating systems, backed by an impressive array of other products and initiatives, such as the Xbox push.

It’s been downhill ever since.

Ballmer described Vista as his biggest regret and who are we to argue. Vista was terrible, but in an ironic twist it did help fuel the need for new, faster hardware. It was just too bloated to run properly on old XP boxes, so people had to upgrade. To fix the mess Windows 7 was a lot more streamlined and it was followed up by the even leaner Windows 8. As a result, most Vista machines are still perfectly capable of running the latest version of Windows and the biggest reason to upgrade a laptop is an unfortunately placed cup of tea coupled with long sleeves.

However, the biggest problem with Windows was and still remains relatively slow development and the reliance on an ancient business model that no longer works. Apple and Google try to keep things interesting with tons of updates and new features, free of charge. Microsoft’s updates are basically fixes and new versions of Windows still cost an arm and a leg, offering very little in return. Windows 8 is proof that Microsoft still doesn’t get it. It was supposed to work on tablets, but there aren’t any, it was supposed to deliver x86 hybrids which are still nowhere to be found and it was supposed to do all that with very little in the way of touch enabled apps. As an added bonus, corporate users hate the new interface, which has failed on both fronts. Windows 8 is not good for tablets, but the tablet tweaks also made it unappealing for desktop users and businesses.

There was no shortage of hardware flops during Ballmer’s tenure, either. Remember the Zune, or better yet the Kin? Neither do we and Microsoft is trying to forget them. In addition to wasting millions on Zune, Microsoft also wasted half a billion on the developer of Sidekick and Kin, which was appropriately named Danger. Microsoft’s hardware curse is still going strong, thanks to the Surface RT.

Investing in Danger wasn’t the only bad call. Six years ago Microsoft also took a $6.2 billion write down for digital marketing outfit aQuantive. Wasteful spending continued with Microsoft’s efforts to take on Google in online services and search. All the efforts failed spectacularly, but cumulatively they cost the company a few more billion. Earlier this year Microsoft took another $900 million hit thanks to the Surface RT.

While Ballmer’s Microsoft was trying to compete with Google online, it was outmanoeuvred by Google on its own turf. Google acquired Android eight years ago for just $50 million, one tenth of what Microsoft paid for Danger. Google is now the biggest mobile OS on the planet, the Kin is just another embarrassing footnote in Microsoft’s history. Google also scooped up YouTube, DoubleClick, AdMob and topped it all off with Motorola Mobility. Google was just a lot better at picking winners than Ballmer and his gang. Microsoft did get Skype, but it paid $8.5 billion for the privilege and it did it only after Skype virtually destroyed its own Messenger.

The Skype deal is indicative of another problem. Mighty Microsoft paid $8.5 billion to buy a competitor, as it apparently couldn’t bring its own services up to speed for what is a huge amount of cash. Google probably could and would, Apple too, but for some reason Microsoft’s culture revolves around throwing cash at problems rather than solving them in-house. It is just a weird and oppressive culture that could work in the nineties, when Microsoft was king of the world and didn’t have much competition to worry about.

But Microsoft’s biggest failure under Ballmer was undoubtedly mobile. Ballmer arrogantly laughed at the iPhone and he clearly failed to recognize the threat posed by iOS and Android. As a result Microsoft’s market share in the smartphone market is virtually non-existent. It also teamed up with Nokia, another outfit that didn’t get it, which was only fitting. If phones weren’t to be, then Microsoft had another big chance in tablets, but it botched that, too. It even decided to cripple its own Windows RT by refusing to integrate Outlook, while at the same time it refused to release Office for iOS and Android, which didn’t help its own products and just allowed competing products to emerge.

The big question now is who will take the helm? We’re not sure anyone was groomed for the job and to be honest we’re not sure many people would want it. We suggest a maid from a Las Vegas hotel. They are used to cleaning up a mess and cleaning up Ballmer’s mess will probably be akin to cleaning Hunter S. Thompson’s hotel room.

Nexus 7 out, Nexus 4’s price cut

Posted on August 28, 2013 by - News, Products

nexus4-ceGoogle’s Nexus 7 has gone on sale in Britain. Prices start at £199 for the 16GB version, while the 32GB one costs £239. In addition to Google’s Play Store, it is also available at Currys, Tesco, Argos, Amazon and John Lewis.

It is competitively priced. Although it’s based on a  Qualcomm chip which is also used in the Nexus 4, the Nexus 7 features a 1920×1200 screen and as it is a Nexus device, software support is second to none. In many respects, it renders other cheap 7-inch tablets rather pointless, which is hardly great news for Google hardware partners. The Nexus 7 is now available in France, Germany and Spain, too. However, smaller markets will have to wait.

The Nexus 4 has been around for a while, but it is still a very competitive product. It might not have a 1080p screen or the latest greatest processor, but it’s a great workhorse and its build quality is still superior to any Samsung phone out there. Now it’s an even better deal, as Google slashed the price for the 8GB model to just £159, while the 16GB version now costs £239. If LTE isn’t a must have, the Nexus 4 is truly a steal for anyone who does not want to get bogged down in a two-year carrier deal.

Google is also expected to roll out a new Nexus 10 later this year and rumours of a Nexus 5 superphone are rampant. Let’s not forget the Moto X, either, although it is limited to the US market.

It’s all good news for Android fans and Google, but Google hardware partners are probably not amused. With such low prices, Nexus products are disruptive and they are hard to keep up with. They always get the latest updates and on the hardware front they offer great value, although they don’t tend feature the latest tech out there.

The only good bit news for other Android peddlers is that Google doesn’t appear to be trying too hard. Geeks love Nexus gear, but average people have no idea that it exists at all. Google is simply not marketing Nexus products properly, but this might be about to change. Googlerola recently announced that it would spend a few hundred million dollars on Moto X marketing and if Google starts marketing Nexus products just as aggressively, well then,  anything could happen.

Apple and Samsung lose ground on tablets

Posted on August 28, 2013 by - News

cheap-tabletsApple is losing ground on the tablet market, due to a drought of new products and more competition from the Android camp. However, Samsung is not capitalising on Apple’s woes and its sales are dropping as well.

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple sold just 14.6 million iPads last quarter, down 4.9 million from Q1. Its market share tumbled from 40.4 percent to 29.2 percent. Meanwhile its arch nemesis Samsung also suffered a hit. Its sales dropped by 700,000 units to 8.4 million units and its market share now stands at 8.4 percent.

Another report from Analysys claims that tablet sales in China aren’t growing nearly as rapidly as they did just a few months ago. Last quarter China gobbled up 3.58 million tablets, growing just 5.2 percent over the first quarter of 2013. Sales of Apple’s iPads were particularly hard hit, the research outfit reported.

Relative newcomers to the market like Acer, Lenovo, Sony and Dell are gaining ground. LG is gearing up to give tablets another go, following a dismal effort a couple of years ago. Then there are Chinese white-box tablets, heaps and heaps of them.

However, Cupertino’s troubles might be a thing of the past come Q4. The Church of Apple is widely expected to introduce new iPads as soon as next month and the hot iPad mini should get a Retina makeover. Apple’s current tablet offerings are showing signs of age and an update is overdue.

On the other hand, there’s really not that much hype this time around, iPads aren’t as fresh and cool as they used to be and getting people to upgrade from an iPad 3 or 4 won’t be as easy. They both have relatively speedy chips and a crisp high-resolution screen, so Apple will have to get creative, and it’s been faltering on that front for the last two or so years.

The iPad mini though desperately needs a sharper screen and a faster processor and a new high-res model should do very well indeed.

Dell includes channel in desktop-as-a-service move

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

Dell logoDell is looking to include the channel in its desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) strategy and it is about to offer two options for channel partners. The first one will be straightforward, much like the usual resale relationship, but a deeper approach will let the partners themselves “own” the customers, reports MSPmentor.

The cunning plan is that organisations will find it a lot easier to get into the DaaS business without the hassle of building their own infrastructure. Such an approach should appeal to potential providers, including telecoms, reckons Dell. So far the push will apparently be limited to the American market, where the service launched a month ago, in cooperation with system integrators MCPC from Ohio.

However, the model itself sounds relatively flexible and it should be relatively easy to expand. Dell Director of Sales Enablement Terry Vaughn said the company has already come up with a playbook for the service, which resembles a franchise model. Affiliate/referral margins are percent of revenue in a monthly recurring model, while the co-delivery model requires the partner to achieve Dell certification, but it also provides better margins of 15 to 20 percent.

“We know what we are selling this for direct in the market place, and we are holding the pricing consistent,” said Vaughn. He added that the approach is designed to avoid any channel conflict.

In addition, Dell is offering a free proof-of-concept trial for anyone willing to give the new DaaS strategy a go.

Dell to sell new Latitude ultrabooks, laptops

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

dell-latitude-7000-330pxDell has revamped its range of business friendly Latitude products, with a nice ultrabook on top. The Latitude 7000 is the new anorexic flagship, while Latitude 5000 and 3000 series products are designed with SMBs, education and small customers in mind.

The 7000 is quite a looker, a far cry from dull business designs of the past. The 12-incher is 20mm thick and it weighs just 2.99 pounds, which is not bad but it’s still a bit bulkier than the MacBook Air. However, unlike the Air, it is also available with a 14-inch screen, tucked underneath a carbon lid. All the usual business features are on board, like Intel vPro processors, TPM, optional fingerprint and smartcard readers, as well as NFC.

Battery life should be good, too. Dell promises up to 8.5 hours on a small three-cell power pack, which is pretty good. It can use existing E Docks as well as wireless WiGig docks. USB 3.0 and HDMI are on board as well. Although it’s thin and light, it is rather rugged and it complies with MIL-STD 810G.

dell-latitude-7000-600px

Base models ship with 1366×768 matte screens, but they are available with 1080p touchscreens, with a pane of Gorilla Glass on top. The 14-inch is available with a matte, non-touch 1080p panel. Both models ship with SSDs as standard, but the 14-inch version can also be ordered with a hybrid drive for more storage on a budget.

The entry level 3000 series and the mid-range 5000 series come in two sizes, 14 and 15 inches. They can also be ordered with touchscreens and due to their size they offer a lot more options under the bonnet, including discrete graphics, a bigger choice of processors, three different battery sizes and hard drives ranging up to 1TB, or SSDs up to 256GB.

Pricing starts at $599 for the 3000 series, but the sleek 7000 series is a lot pricier, starting at $1,049 in the US. There is still no word on 5000 series pricing.

HP and VMware team up for federated networks

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News

HPHewlett Packard and VMware have teamed up to deliver the industry’s first federated network solution, which is designed to provide customers with more automation and visibility in physical and virtual data virtual centres. Or so they say.

Companies are embracing mobile, cloud, BYOD, so manual network configuration is proving tricky and demanding. Virtualisation helps, as it offers a centralised control pane, but it still does not automate configuration and provisioning of physical devices. That’s where the new HP – VMware “solution” comes into play.

It will combine the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller with VMware’s NSX network virtualisation platform to let customers automate their physical and virtual network infrastructure, all in one place. The companies say the new networking solution will provide a centralised view, unified automation, visibility and control of the complete data center network, improving agility, monitoring and troubleshooting. Or so they say.

It all revolves around man or possibly woman hours. A typical cloud data centre network may need 10,000 provisions per day, each requiring at least 20 network command line changes. These 200,000 command line changes would require 3,333 man or woman hours to complete, assuming one minute per command. The HP-VMware networking “solution” threatens to eliminate manual configuration of both the physical and virtual data centre networks through interoperable automated orchestration of policies. It also will create a single view of the network, both physical and virtual. Or so they say.

“Customers are adopting network virtualisation to gain the necessary agility needed to realise the promise of virtualised and cloud data centres. To be successful, IT organisations need solutions to deliver common management of services and operations across the physical and virtual domains,” said Stephen Mullaney, senior vice president and general manager, networking and security business unit, VMware. “By collaborating with HP on a federated networking solution, we will help our joint customers create a unified network operations model that will radically simplify IT in the software-defined data centre.” Or so they say.

The new HP-VMware networking thing will be available in the second half of 2014, along with HP’s new ConvergedControl software.

AMD updates roadmap, reveals new delays

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News, Products

AMD, SunnyvaleAMD has a new roadmap which sheds more light on upcoming Volcanic Islands GPUs, as well as Kaveri and Kabini based product releases, and delays.

New GPUs are coming soon. AMD will hold a launch event in roughly a month and it is widely expected to launch the new Hawaii card at the event, which will be held – in Hawaii. AMD has already announced that Kaveri products will hit the channel in mid-February 2014. They will be joined by new Kabini SKUs later on, reports Digitimes.

The new Kabini chips will enter mass production in February and they will be announced in March. It appears that this batch will be focused on desktops and big notebooks, as most of them will be quad cores with a 25W TDP. The first desktop Kabini parts were supposed to launch in the second half of 2013, but now it appears they have been pushed back to March. Last week we reported that Kabini is struggling with limited availability and the delay explains it, at least on the desktop front.

Kabini’s successor, Beema, has also been delayed. It was supposed to launch in March 2014, but now it seems it will launch in the second half of 2014 or maybe even in early 2015, which is very bad news indeed.

According to the roadmap, AMD’s FM1 and AM3 sockets will be phased out by the end of the year. In 2014 AM3+ will account for 30 percent of AMD’s desktop processor shipments, while FM2/FM2+ will account for the remaining 70 percent. Kabini will use ST3 and FS1B sockets.

Looking ahead to 2015, AMD should release Carrizo APUs based on the new Excavator architecture and Nolan should replace Beema in the low end. However, delays are possible and when it comes to AMD they are the norm, not an exception.

AMD Jaguar products still thin on ground

Posted on August 23, 2013 by - News, Products

jaguar-peltIn late May AMD officially launched its first Jaguar-based APUs. Kabini was supposed to end up in all sorts of products, from cheap and cheerful notebooks, to AIOs and traditional desktops.

Temash is an even more frugal version of the chip, so it was intended for ultraportables, hybrids and similar form factors. Both chips arrived with much fanfare and got a lot of praise from the tech press. They are the most interesting consumer products to come out of AMD in 2013.

However, it’s been exactly three months since the launch and there really aren’t that many actual products to buy. There are some Jaguar-based notebooks and desktops in EMEA and US, but even they are available in a handful of shops, in rather limited numbers. The Acer Aspire V5, HP Pavilion Sleekbook TouchSmart 11, Samsung ATIV Book 9 Lite are Temash powered ultraportables and they are readily available in most European markets, albeit in a limited number of shops. So far they appear to be the only Temash notebooks in stock in Europe.

It is even worse with Kabini. There’s the Lenovo Thinkpad E145 in two SKUs, Toshiba Satellite C70/C75 and a huge Packard Bell 17-incher, which is practically the only Kabini notebook available on the continent, at least the only one to be found in price search engines. It’s only available in two Austrian shops, which is still better than the Lenovo and Toshiba, as nobody appears to have them in stock at the moment.

Then there’s a couple of Acer SFF desktops and a Packard Bell all-in-one, and that’s about it. There’s also not a single mini-ITX board yet, which is bad news for HTPC enthusiasts and tinkerers. It also may indicate that the first batches of Kabini chips are destined solely for OEMs, but we can only speculate.

In any case three months into the launch AMD’s most promising chip of the year is very hard to come by. This is very bad news for AMD. Kabini had the potential to wipe the floor with Intel’s obsolete 32nm Atoms and it should have enjoyed a few months on the market before Intel rolls out new 22nm Bay Trail parts. Now it seems this won’t be the case. The Bay Trail launch is just a few weeks away and it is becoming apparent that AMD failed to capitalize on its lead.

AMD informed us that is has product in stock in the US and EMEA. However, volumes and the number of actual design wins remain a concern. Jaguar is an excellent product with lots of potential, but with the PC market in shambles, it might struggle to gain traction and get plenty of design wins, as vendors and disties are still sitting on heaps of unsold Cedarview and Brazos products.

Intel’s post PC strategy is faltering

Posted on August 23, 2013 by - Opinions

Intel-logoEver since Intel got a shiny new CEO, we’ve been hearing talk of an aggressive mobile push, of a more dynamic Intel that will eventually steer clear of trouble and trample the ARM gang with Brian Krzanich at the helm.

This of course will take time, if it is possible to begin with, so Intel’s first order of the day was to talk about mobile rather than do anything about it, and talk it did.

Intel spent much of the last quarter talking about 2-in-1 hybrids, touch enabled Ultrabooks and now it’s outlining its smartphone strategy, complete with LTE. So far it’s been all talk and almost no action.

Earlier this week Intel shed more light on its first LTE chipset, the XMM 7160, which is supposed to launch by the end of the month. It is a multimode chip and currently Intel offers only a single-mode LTE solution, which is obsolete.

Worse, even the XMM 7160 is a discrete solution, it’s not an integrated option like Qualcomm’s LTE. Intel wants the world to think that it’s serious about LTE, but in reality discrete LTE chips are a thing of the past. It’s all about integration now. Intel’s next generation XMM 7260 LTE chipset is set to appear next year, with LTE Advanced support. Intel’s first integrated LTE solution might appear in the first half of 2014. This is very slow indeed and as a result Intel is highly unlikely to score any big phone design wins next year. It can go after second-tier devices, but they’ll probably be scooped up by MediaTek, Qualcomm and other ARM players.

To be blunt, Intel simply won’t do much better on the smartphone front next year. It will gain market share, but we are still talking about low, single digits.

It won’t do much better in other segments, either. It appears to be pinning its hopes on hybrids, which seems very risky at this point. Hybrids, or 2-in-1s, are supposed to combine the portability and practicality of tablets with the productive prowess of proper notebooks. The trouble is that they’re just not there yet. Windows RT is on life support, Windows 8.1 will still be big and bloated. As a result Windows 8.x hybrids will cost a lot more to produce than Android and iOS tablets, margins will be tight and vendors won’t be very happy. The OS itself is another problem. An x86 tablet with legacy support for tons of Windows applications sounds very good, if you’re Dr Who and you can travel back in time to 2009. The market has moved on and legacy support just isn’t what it used to be a few years ago – and it’s losing relevance fast.

The failure of Intel’s Ultrabook push and touch-enabled notebooks is another concern. Ultrabooks were too pricey and they didn’t offer much in the way of new features. Simply slapping a touchscreen on top of them did not address the original shortcomings of the concept, so touchbooks are failing as we speak.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Intel ditched Atom based netbooks in favour of pricier designs. At about the same time it culled CULV to make way for Ultrabooks. Intel wanted more high-margin silicon in the market, but now it’s focusing on Atom once again. The first Atom based hybrids are starting to show up and they are practically what the netbook would have evolved into had Intel not killed it. In the meantime, cheap tablets and Chromebooks ate its lunch, along with cheap ultraportables based on AMD’s low-end APUs.

As for tablets, Intel dropped the ball years ago and now it’s facing a much tougher market, a market it desperately wants to get back into. Intel recently launched a couple of unimpressive education tablets, running Android. Samsung also tapped Intel for the Galaxy Tab 3, which is equally disappointing spec-wise. Intel now says it wants to do more on the Android front, but it is simply too late. Intel’s x86 support is irrelevant in the Android world and most Android tablets are powered by dirt cheap ARM SoCs. High-end Android tablets, which seem like the obvious choice for Intel chips, aren’t selling well – so even if Intel gets back into the game, it doesn’t stand to make much on Android tablets.

It’s only ticket into the Android universe are high-volume devices, like flagship phones. It will not get them anytime soon. Next year’s Android flagships will still be based on ARM chips and unless Intel pulls off a miracle, it won’t get any in 2015, either. Samsung makes its own Exynos chips and doesn’t really need Intel’s Silvermont. Motorola has also cooked up a custom chip based on Qualcomm’s Krait core, which means Google is also pursuing a custom in-house approach. Apple already designs custom ARM cores and this won’t change. And then there’s Qualcomm. And MediaTek, and Nvidia, and LG, and just about everyone else with an ARM licence under their belt.

EMEA companies put IT budgets to good use

Posted on August 23, 2013 by - News

poundsResearch from CA Technologies has revealed that companies in EMEA are increasingly switching their IT budgets from dull, routine maintenance towards designing projects that enable revenue-generating services. The CA Technologies Channel Index 2013 found that EMEA partners spend 34 percent of their time helping consumers with such projects rather than maintenance. However, only 18 percent of the IT spend in Britain was devoted to new revenue-generating services.

“IT projects are being driven by the need for businesses to innovate for growth, while creating new ways to serve customers. And today’s IT director is expected to be the driver of these efforts,” said Sean McCarry, Senior Director, CA Technologies. “Our solutions and partner programmes equip partners with the tools they need to help their customers fuel innovation and drive growth. The Channel Index 2013 shows just how far IT departments and channel partners have come on this journey.”

Chris Gabriel, VP of Solutions Management at Logicalis Group, pointed out that the shift results in less operational waste, allowing IT departments to increase their participation in productive, revenue-generating fields.

“CIOs now see their role as Chief Innovation Officer, and they have recognised that their business value isn’t in managing IT infrastructure, but delivering new IT enabled business experiences,” he said.

The index revealed that 83 percent of surveyed partners in EMEA expect to see increased spending on enterprise mobility over the next year and almost all recognise that the rapid adoption of mobility creates opportunities to help grow their business. Among UK partners, this figure rose to 95 percent.

Cloud computing was identified by CA Technologies partners as the second priority for their customers’ IT investments. Nearly two thirds of the partners surveyed predicted an increase in cloud computing spending over the next year. In the UK, a significant 81 percent of partners expected increases.

Lenovo cooks up BYOD for channel

Posted on August 22, 2013 by - News, Products

lenovo-logoLenovo wants to tap the BYOD trend with a new demo kit, offered to its channel partners and customers. The new “Combat Kit” aims to make BYOD simpler and less challenging. It could also reduce the suicide rate among IT specialists in charge of sorting out the mess that is BYOD.

The kit features several Lenovo devices, mostly tablets and hybrids. Partners can pick the ones that best suits their needs and hand them out to end users, reports CRN. The kit includes the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad Helix, ThinkPad Twist and the ThinkPad Tablet 2.

Lenovo brand ambassador Stephen Miller said the sales cycle is changing. In the past, companies would buy ten computers and every end user got the exact same one. With the consumerization of IT, the old one-size-fits-all approach simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

“Now it’s difficult. Everybody wants a different device,” said Miller. “You have confusion around what to sell, and end users don’t know what to buy because of the paradox of choice.”

The kit would effectively allow users choose the device that works best for them. Miller said end users can get a hands on experience, and then partners can sell the device that the end users actually want. There seems to be a lot of interest in the kit and there’s already a waiting list, but Miller said partners should still sign up.

Tough times ahead for notebook ODMs

Posted on August 22, 2013 by - News

ancient-laptopSoft demand for notebook PCs and the relentless tablet juggernaut will continue to drag down shipments of Taiwanese ODMs in the current quarter and beyond, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The bank said the outlook for the second half of 2013 remains challenging.

Shipments are expected to grow at a rate of two to three percent, which is very bad news for Acer and Asus. According to analysts, both companies suffered a 40+ percent plunge in unit sales last quarter in the European market. BoA Merrill Lynch said Acer and Asus are suffering from the rise of cheap tablets. Ironically, Asus was one of the pioneers in the Android tablet space and it produces Google’s 7-inch Nexus tablets, but it appears that more and more people are simply turning to even cheaper, white-box tablets.

Analyst Robert Cheng wrote in a note that Acer is likely to see losses over the next four quarter. He did not have many kind words for Asus, either.

“Asustek looks relatively fine, but notebook guidance is quite weak,” he said. Cheng added that Asustek’s “product mix” will become worse in the second half of the year.

As for contract manufacturers, Compal and Wistron should stay flat in the third quarter, while Quanta and Inventec still expect growth. Pegatron will get the worst of it. It is expected to lose some share and client orders, hence its notebook shipments will drop by 5 to 10 percent this quarter.

HP squeezes profit despite poor PC sales

Posted on August 22, 2013 by - News

HPHewlett Packard reported net income of $1.39 billion for its third fiscal quarter. HP’s revenue fell eight percent to $27.2 billion, down from $29.7 a year ago. It wasn’t all bad news though. The company managed to post a profit of $1.39 billion, or 86 cents per share, barely beating Wall Street expectations which hovered around 85 cents.

Revenue fell across the board, but the PC business took the biggest hit. HP mitigated the effects of the downturn by cutting costs and focusing on more profitable niches. As a result, its expenses were down 34 percent last quarter, to $25.3 billion, down from $38.5 billion last year. The PC slump is here to stay and HP’s cost cutting seems to be paying dividends, quite literally.

PC revenue was down 11 percent, printer revenue was down 4 percent, while servers, storage and networking were down nine percent. Business services were also down nine percent, financial services took a six percent hit and only HP’s software business ended in the red, up one percent.

HP shares fell three percent following the news, but the company managed to end the day on a positive note. It raised its outlook and now it expects full year earnings in the $3.53 a share to $3.57 share range, up from $3.50 to $3.60.

CEO Meg Whitman told investors that year-on-year revenue growth remains unlikely.

“This is a five-year turnaround with milestones along the way. … We need to accelerate into the next turn,” Whitman said.

Although HP’s PC unit took a big hit, in the big scheme of things it did not underperform, as all PC vendors except Lenovo are going through a rough patch. Some are in much worse shape than HP. However, HP still looks relatively weak on the mobile front. The company ditched the smartphone business a few years ago and its first crack at the tablet market was a flop. However, in recent months it announced several interesting tablets and hybrids, so there’s still hope it could gain a foothold in the tablet market.