Samsung hangs on to LCD TV lead

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

LCDscreenGiant South Korean chaebol Samsung had 22.8 percent of the LCD TV market last year, outstripping the second Korean player, LG Electronics.
A report from Trendforce said Sony came third in place with a market share of only 6.8 percent, compared to LG Electronics’ 14.9 percent.
In all, 215 million LCD TVs shipped in 2014, more than the market expected.  Factors that helped the 5.4 percent growth included the US economic recovery and strong promotion of larger size TVs.
But the top three vendors need to keep their eyes on the ball.  Trend force said that Chinese brands occupied positions from the fourth to the seventh.
They are making progress globally because the home Chinese market is saturated and they are pricing their brands aggressively.
Well known brands such as Philips and Toshiba have vanished out of the top ten vendor list.

Screen Shot 2015-02-05 at 15.08.21

 

US health firm comprehensively hacked

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Sheffield: CEO of AnthemAn American health insurer appears to have been hacked and lost millions of its customers’ records.
Anthem said that hackers stole the identities of customers across all of its business units.
It has about 37 million customers in the USA and has reported the attack to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).
It has said it has now closed the hole but that’s somewhat equivalent to closing the gate once the horse has bolted.
The hackers do not appear to have had access to Anthem customers’ credit card records.
It has set up a website to try to explain what happened, with its CEO and president claiming his company had state of the art information security systems.
He said that despite that, his company “was the target of a very sophisticated external cyber attack.  These attackers gained unauthorised access to Anthem’s IT systems”.
Anthem has hired a company called Mandiant to assess its IT systems.
Sheffield said: “Anthem will individually notify current and former members whose information has been accessed. We will provide credit monitoring and identity protection services free of charge.”

Swatch gets into the smart watch market

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Swiss Watches the BrandIf Apple thinks it will have its own way in the smart watch category this year, it had better think again.
Swatch is planning to introduce a smart watch in the next three months and it’s going to have some advantages over the Apple device.
According to Bloomberg, the watch can communicate with the internet without needing to be charged, will work with Windows and Android and will let you make mobile payments.
Swatch has something of an advantage over Apple too in that it’s been in the market for decades and has had touch screens since the end of the 20th century.
It also knows its market and has distribution deals that Apple cannot possibly match.
Further, attempts by companies like Intel and Google to launch TV services haven’t exactly been the dish of the day.
While some analysts are predicting huge sales of smart watches, others are more sceptical.  Young people, by and large, don’t tend to wear watches and use their smartphones for telling the time.
People need to be convinced that spending money on duplicate functions makes any sense at all.

 

Video drives the mobile data market

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

tvThe age of TV is not over, it’s just taken a different shape.
IDC estimates that mobile data traffic will show double digit growth in 2015 – by 59 percent.
The company said in a report that while faster networks and more affordable 4G handsets are playing their part, the real reason for data growth on this scale is mobile video apps and other streamed content.
In 2013, mobile data traffic was 19,049,158 terabytes but by this year that figure will grow to close to 52 million terabytes while in 2016 the figure will not be far off 80 million terabytes.
IDC thinks 4G service prices will continue to fall but 3G still has its place, particularly in the non-Western markets.
By 2018, the company believes that people using 4G handsets will generate 46 percent of data traffic.
By 2018, it estimates that 4G devices will churn 5.5GB of data a month, three times more than a 3G smartphone.
Right now, mobile video generates 50 percent of all mobile data and that number is set to increase.  And video calling services are also set to grow.

 

VMware expands channel programme

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

vmware-partner-link-bg-w-logoVMware has announced new programs and other initiatives for its partner network.

The announcement, made at this week’s VMware Partner Exchange 2015, is tied to the outfit’s cunning plan to push “business transformation in the mobile cloud era”.

The VMware Partner Professional Services Programme will let  consulting partners to sell and deliver their own services. Partners will have free access to experienced software-defined data centre architects and experts.   They will also get access to customer-focused labs along with training discounts, the company said.

The scheme is only available to a limited number of pilot partners in the first half of fiscal 2015, the program is expected to expand in the second half of the year.

VMware has been expanding its VMware vCloud Air Network Programme to include managed services opportunities for vCloud Air Network service providers.  This will enable partners to use VMware vCloud Air as their core infrastructure while providing differentiation through their managed services. This gives partners more flexibility in how to build and offer cloud solutions. The new managed services model will be available in the second quarter to qualified service providers.

Javascript grows in popularity

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

JavascriptAccording to numbers from RedMonk, a tech-industry analyst firm, while Apple’s development language Swift is growing it has a mountain to climb before it will rival the ever popular Javascript.

The tame Apple Press is doing its best to talk up the rise of Swift, but the real news from RedMonk’s list of the most-used languages survey is that Javascript is continuing to grow like topsy. Swift has risen from obscuring to one of the top 22 languages but given that is two spots below an OS called “groovy” we don’t think it is making that much of a splash.

The top ten are

  1. JavaScript
  2. Java
  3. PHP
  4. Python
  5. C#
  6. C++
  7. Ruby
  8. CSS
  9. C
  10. Objective-C

JavaScript edged Java for the top spot in the rankings, but as always, the difference between the two is so marginal as to be insignificant.

The Top 10 was effectively static. C++ and Ruby jumped each one spot to split fifth place with C#, but that minimal distinction reflects the lack of movement of the rest of the “Tier 1,” or top grouping of languages.

PHP has not shown the ability to unseat either Java or JavaScript, but it has remained unassailable for its part in the third position. After a brief drop in Q1 of 2014, Python has been stable in the fourth spot, and the rest of the Top 10 looks much as it has for several quarters.

In fact rather than Swift, Red Monk predicts that Go is doing the best.  Six months ago it was predicted that it would become a Top 20 language within six to twelve months. Six months following that, Go can consider that mission accomplished. Go jumped over Visual Basic, Clojure and Groovyand displaces Coffeescript entirely – to take number 17 on the list.

Red Monk said that Julia and Rust are the two notable languages to watch, Julia and Rust’s growth has typically been in lockstep, though not for any particular functional reason. This time Rust outpaced Julia, jumping eight spots to 50 against Julia’s more steady progression from 57 to 56.

 

Obama has support for “big data” bill

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Obama BarackIt is looking like President Barack Obama’s “Big Data” privacy plans might get through the Republican controlled Congress.

He has proposed action on a series of laws to address “Big Data” concerns, but most have not gone anywhere when many corporations want to collect data to sell products, and are telling their paid politicians to vote them down.

This was the reason that a proposal to update the outdated Electronic Privacy Communications Act to protect email and other data stored in the cloud died.

However that is starting to change after public concerns over privacy and cybersecurity that have been amplified by high-profile hacking of credit card data at companies such as Target and Home Depot.

First up is a law being put through by Indiana Congressman Luke Messer, the chairman of the House of Representatives Republican Policy Committee, and Democrat Jared Polis of Colorado, an Internet entrepreneur who founded a network of charter schools.

He is pushing a student privacy bill which will stop big corporates collecting data on kids. The lawmakers have worked on the issue with privacy advocates and more than 100 companies including Microsoft, Google and News Corp subsidiary Amplify to develop a privacy pledge to prevent misuse of data collected in classrooms.

The law will make sure that data collected from students is used only for educational and legitimate research purposes.

Obama wants to go further and has proposed a new national standard to require companies to tell consumers within 30 days from the discovery of a data breach that their personal information had been compromised.

However, there are a patchwork of differing state regulations, which might put a spanner in the works.

Obama is also worried about how Big Data could be used to discriminate against people based on race or where they live for housing or jobs.

On Thursday, the White House will release a report on how companies use Big Data to offer different prices to different consumers saying that Big Data techniques have “turbocharged” price discrimination.  Those sorts of laws will hack off the US corporate sponsors of the US political system, and might also die.  But US reports are optimistic that Obama might win that one.

 

Paypal boss cashes in his chips

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

paypal-logoPaypal executive Don Kingsborough, who helped get the outfit to move into physical retail stores, stepped down in January.

Kingsborough was instrumental in PayPal’s attempts to push innovations such as in-store ordering and pickup and physical-checkout payment at chains.

His exit comes as the company competes with the likes of fast-growing startup Square to get its payments system adopted in more retail chains across the United States.

The company increasingly has had to contend with rivals such as Square, which is popular with smaller businesses, and the Tame Apple Press thinks that it will have to surrender ground to Apple Pay, even if take up from that is proving sluggish.

The thought is that Paypal is slowing. eBay said it enjoys “a strong foothold in offline retail,” but analysts say it has been difficult for the tech companies vying for checkout space to contend with the simple convenience of debit or credit cards.

No one is saying why Kingsborough is leaving.  It seems that he might have been frustrated that he could not so as much as he wanted.

One quote attributed to him was “!I think we were able to move the needle, but I have to say I leave a little frustrated in that I wish we as an executive team would have done more.”

eBay is also preparing to lay off some seven percent of its workforce, or 2,400 jobs, including PayPal employees, before the two companies split in the second half of 2015.

BT finalises EE take over

Posted on February 5, 2015 by - News

Kitten-Kong BT has finalised its deal to buy EE from Orange and Deutsche Telekom for £12.5 billion.

According to the International Business Times , the deal, is to be officially completed by the end of the year, will be settled in cash and shares.

While the deal has been rumoured for a while, it is now official.  It looks like once the agreement has been settled, the German Deutsche Telekom will have a 12 percent stake in the company and will be given the right to appoint one board member.

Orange will also get a four percent stake.

BT will raise £1 billion of the deal through issuing new shares and debt financing, with the view of making £360 million of capital expenditure in four years savings as a result of the deal.

BT CEO Gavin Patterson said: “This is a major milestone for BT as it will allow us to accelerate our mobility plans and increase our investment in them. The UK’s leading 4G network will now dovetail with the UK’s biggest fibre network, helping to create the leading converged communications provider in the UK. Consumers and businesses will benefit from new products and services as well as from increased investment and innovation.”

The deal comes after broadband providers have started to offer quad-play packages, providing customers with TV, broadband, landline and mobile services in one bundle.

BT will now join Virgin Media and TalkTalk, who already offer these deals to UK consumers.

CEO of EE, Olaf Swantee added: “Joining BT represents an exciting next stage for our company, customer, and people. In the last few years alone, we have built the UK’s biggest, fastest and best 4G network, significantly advancing the digital communications infrastructure for people and businesses across Britain.”

Following in BT’s footsteps is Sky, who struck a deal with Three Mobile last week to offer similar quad-play deals in 2016.

Facebook faces European probe

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

european-commissionData protection authorities in the European Union are getting edgy about Facebook’s privacy policy, it’s been reported.
Facebook released a new privacy policy at the end of last week which, among other things, even tracks you when you’re not logged into the social network.
You are automatically “upgraded” to the new privacy policy but you can choose to opt out.
According to PC World, authorities in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have formed a group in the belief that Facebook may breach the European Union’s privacy rules.
Other elements of Facebook policy the authorities are investigating include it claiming rights to data from profiles for business, and sharing of data with third parties.
The same report says that German authorities are worried about Facebook sharing information with its subsidiaries, such as Instagram.
Facebook always maintains that anything it does is to help individual users.
But the company makes its revenues from advertising – and its users are a means to that end.
European data protection authorities are increasingly cooperating with each other to keep multinationals like Facebook and Google on their toes.
The British ICO recently extracted a promise from Google that it would work to improve its privacy policy in Europe.

 

British firm promises flexible displays

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

FlexEnable's prototype fabA company based in Cambridge claimed that by the end of this year it will produce properly flexible displays by the end of this year.
FlexEnable is aiming to position its OLED displays into mobile products, wearables, surface displays and imaging systems.
On its website it says that the display could be used on smartphones with wraparound displays that can open out into tablet size.  The material is flexible enough to be folded in half.
It also envisages including screens that are so flexible they can be built into clothes and follow the curves of the body.
It also sees its displays being built into both cars and aircraft designs, using complex curves and irregular shapes.
The technology also has medical uses, creating flexible x-ray sensors. The technology can be as thin as 25 nanometres. It provides reference kits to its clients so they can make their own products. The company also claims to have created graphene based displays.
FlexEnable is a spin off of Plastic Logic and believes its technology will become an element of the internet of things.

 

Silicon chips to be one atom thin

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

SiliconScientists have created transistors using a form of silicon which are only one atom thick.
The researchers, based at the University of Texas at Austin said the breakthrough promises “dramatically faster, smaller and more efficient computer chips”.
The silicon is called silicene and the team demonstrated that it could be made into transistors, the basic building block of a central processing unit (CPU) in a computer.
According to lead researcher Li Tao, until a few years back silicene was a purely theoretical material but by studying graphene, which is also one atom thick, scientists theorised that a similar material could be based on the element silicon.
However, silicene is unstable and to fix this problem, scientists created a new method for fabricating it.
They allowed a hot vapour of silicon atoms to condense on a crystalline block of silver in a vacuum chamber, then forming a silicene sheet and adding a nanometre thick layer of alumina on the top.  They could then scrape some silver to leave behind two islands of metals as electrodes with silicone between them.
Although the work is in its early stages, the team believes that the discovery will lead to low energy, high speed computer chips.

 

Apple PCs make a dent in the marketplace

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

windows-10-technical-preview-turquoiseWhile the conventional Windows PC market continues to decline, it appears to be losing market share to Apple’s range of PCs.
That’s the conclusion of Taiwanese vendors who have told local wire Digitimes that global PC shipments are expected to fall by over three percent during 2015.
Apple, on the other hand, is set to do much better, with growth of between 10 and 15 percent during 2015, amounting to shipments of between 20 and 23 million worldwide.
Apple is gaining additional traction from more competitive prices and Digitimes said it expects the company to drop prices on its 11 inch and 13 inch notebooks when it launches a 12-inch Macbook Air this year.
While traditional PC sales have been hit by smartphones and tablets to some extent, Microsoft’s delays in shipping Windows 10 will also not help sales.
Microsoft is responding to vendors’ complaints about the excessive price of licensing its operating system by introducing aggressive pricing in a bid to boost the market during 2015.

 

Organisations anticipate internet of things

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

Internet of ThingsAlthough there’s still a clear lack of standards with different vendors vying to take the lead, many organisations are getting ready for the internet of things (IoT).
Companies including Intel, Qualcomm, Google and others want to have a big stake in the future of IOT.
And there’s no doubt the hype is generating interest.
That’s the conclusion of market research company Gartner which said in a study that 40 percent of businesses think the IoT will have a “significant” impact in the next three years.
Nick Jones, a senior analyst at Gartner, said: “Only a small minority has deployed solutions in a production environment. However, the falling costs of networking and processing mean that there are few economic inhibitors to adding sensing and communications to products costing as little as a few tens of dollars”.
But even though many organisations are anticipating the IoT, few have put executives in leadership roles.
The main concerns of the  people surveyed are security and privacy.  And there is a shortage of people with the relevant skills to plot the future.

 

Sony stumbling away from doom

Posted on February 4, 2015 by - News

doom_sprite_wallpaper_by_bobspfhorever78-d6lij4oElectronics giant Sony appears to be pulling out of its  death spiral.

The consumer electronics firm said on Wednesday preliminary results showed that operating profit had doubled to $1.52 billion in the October-December quarter, while sales rose 6 percent.

This was well ahead of what the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street expected and they rushed from their expensive loos screaming “buy, buy, buy.”

To be fair, the company is not home and hosed yet.  In fact it could not even be said to be at the front gate contemplating a nice hot bath and a rigorous toweling down.

Sony also forecast a preliminary full-year net loss of $1,44,841,1900 but since this was better than the  than its forecast last October estimating a net loss of $ 1,959,616,100 for the year no one appears to be quibbling.

The company had said it would delay announcing the official results for the third quarter as its Hollywood studio struggled to recover from a massive hacking of its computer systems. The company, in the midst of a restructuring, said on Wednesday its Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai would announce a “new business strategy” on February 18.

The company will cut 2,100 jobs in the unit by the end of the next fiscal year through March 2016, including around 1,000 cuts already announced.

Sony’s image sensors have emerged as one of its best performing product lines in recent quarters.