Apple will beat up Android

Posted on January 16, 2014 by - News

smartphones-genericA report claims that despite the surge in sales of devices using the Google Android operating system, it will be hard for it to triumph over Apple and it’s IOS in the long term.

Foolproof claims that smartphone penetration will hit 75 percent of the UK population this year and demographics don’t count any more. But surely cost must be a factor.

Philip Morton, a principal consultant at the company said: “Ultimately what Apple does, it does better than Android.”

He claims that people are beginning to realise that they have a computer in their pocket rather than a phone. Morton claims the iPhone is the best smartphone.

It surveyed 450 people in September last year. It came up with this highly coloured graphic that underlines its notions.Foolproof

Fruit and veg saves UK’s bacon

Posted on January 14, 2014 by - News

David CameronInflation in the UK fell to two percent in December 2013 – hitting the Bank of England’s target for the rate.

The Office for National Statistics released the data today and said that the prices of food, including fruit and veg and bacon had slowed down their inflationary trend.

But while food has saved the Bank of England’s bacon, fuel prices rose in December.

Prime minister David Cameron expressed his delight at the news and claimed that as the economy grew and more jobs came into existence, that meant more security for people lucky enough to have jobs.

The news is bad news for savers though – because it means the Bank of England is unlikely to raise interest rates any time real soon now.

Acer turns to cloud for inspiration

Posted on January 14, 2014 by - News

acer-logo-ceTroubled Taiwanese PC manufacturer Acer believes its future lies in the cloud.

Acer has been hit by the general decline of PC sales and recently Stan Shih, its founder, was hauled out of retirement while a number of senior executives clocked out of the operation.

According to Taiwanese wires, Acer’s spanking new CEO, Jason Chen, told journos at a press conference that it would concentrate on a concept called “Build your own Cloud”.

That, according to Acer, is different from private clouds which use public clouds, really.

Acer will weld the build your own cloud concept to tablets, to PCs and and to notebooks.

And, this is not an April Fool’s joke, it will raise salaries on the 1st of April and give year end bonuses but not performance bonuses, said Digitimes.

Distie goes into administration

Posted on January 10, 2014 by - News

pc-sales-slumpKMS Components  has entered administration, with Deloitte acting for the company.

The distie, which specialised in products from Asustek, Microsoft, and other big names has stopped trading, with a notification on its website saying that Deloitte names Richard Hawes and Matthew Smith are the joint administrators.

The Welsh company was operating more or less normally until yesterday.

A statement on the web site says: “Richard Michael Hawes and Matthew David Smith were appointed Joint Administrators of KMS Components Limited on 8 January 2014. The affairs, business and property of the Company are being managed by the Joint Administrators.

The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Company only and contract without personal liability.

The Joint Administrators are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). All licensed Insolvency Practitioners of Deloitte LLP are licensed in the UK.”

There’s no word about the fate of the staff.

Bitcoin comes in handy at London massage parlour

Posted on January 9, 2014 by - Fun Stuff, News

massageA high-class massage parlour in London is now accepting Bitcoins as payment for services rendered.

Ellie Young, marketing manager at Sensuous London, said she can see enormous potential for the use of crypto-currencies in their sector, although admitted there hadn’t been a huge demand for it as yet.

“As far as I can tell we are the first to make this available and we see a great deal of potential in the technology. We hope to create the demand and lead the way,” she said.

The ‘highly trained, professional masseuses’ of Sensuous London, provide what has been described to us as “a unique, five star luxury service, for the tourist, business and London communities”, and clients wishing to pay discreetly for the “high-end, sensual, tantric massage experience” on offer can now do so with Bitcoitus thanks to Payment Service Provider, BitPay.

In the adult services industry, taking payment via credit card is rare. Chiefly because of the risk to the service provider of the customer subsequently claiming the transaction was nothing to do with them, but was fraudulent. Crypto-currencies also mean there are no potentially embarrassing payments appearing on anyone’s bank statement.

“I’ve worked on dating websites in the past,” Ellie Young explained. “There are a lot of problems with credit card thieves testing stolen credit card numbers on dating sites. This results in a large number of charge-backs and refunds. This can lead to fines by the credit card companies and eventually to (the business) being blacklisted altogether.

“Bitcoin has the advantage that all payments are final and far more secure, so this couldn’t happen. There’s no credit card companies involved to refuse an account, blacklist us or refuse to work with an adult company in the first place. No merchant bank account is required.  Transaction fees are much, much lower and there’s no currency conversion fees – handy when many clients are tourists or businessmen.”

Young went on to say that while it will be difficult to predict the demand for Bitcoin payments, although with growing public awareness, and acceptance, of alternative currencies, it looks like to grow.

Which sounds like a happy ending for everyone.

Tesco: Very Lidl helps

Posted on January 9, 2014 by - News

tescoMegagrocer Tesco said its sales fell by 2.4 percent over Christmas 2013 compared to Christmas 2012.

And another big grocer, Morrisons said its sales fell by 5.6 percent in six weeks up to 5th of January, blaming competition by the likes of Lidl and Aldi.

Morrisons has been slow to sell stuff on the internet.

Philip Clarke, MD of Tesco said it was going to open lots more smaller Tesco Express shops. These shops sell stuff that’s slightly more expensive than the big megastores.

And there’s more woe on the High Street – Marks and Spencer sales for clothes and home kit fell 2.1 percent in the last calendar quarter of 2013.

X86 server market gets boost

Posted on January 8, 2014 by - News

server-racksIt’s not all bad news for Intel, which is beginning to be affected by peoples’ disinterest worldwide in buying expensive X86 notebooks.

According to IDC, the X86 server market in the middle east and Africa had significant year on year growth in the third quarter of 2013, expanding by 9.9 in volume and 10.6 percent in revenue.

The Saudi market showed year on year volume growth of 16.4 percent, but other sturdy markets included the UAE.

The Egyptian market slumped 36.6 percent because of political instability, while perhaps more surprisingly the Turkish market also showed a drop on server unit shipments of 8.8 percent compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

Morocco and Tunisia saw growth of 35.7 percent and 21.8 percent respectively and the North Africam region in toto rose by 20.4 percent in volume.

Kenya and Nigeria showed rises of 67.1 percent and 62.8 percent respectively, while South Africa saw a 6.6 percent rise year on year.

Blades were the flavour of the month in the regions surveyed, showing a market share of 30.4 percent in the overall server mix.  Dual socket servers, however, dominate the sector with 75.1 percent unit share.

Android to hit one billion users

Posted on January 8, 2014 by - News

pc-sales-slumpA report from market research company Gartner said gadgets including PCs, tablets, ultramobile and phones will grow by 7.6 percent this year.

And the Android OS is set to exceed a billion users during the course of the year. By 2017, Gartner said, 75 percent of Android volumes will come from emerging market.

It’s not good for companies tied to the traditional PC market however. Ranjit Atwal, a research director of Gartner, said users were moving away from traditional PCs such as desktops and  notebooks and the better flexibility of hybrids, tablets and light notebooks are seen as better by many.

Gartner says 1.9 billion mobile phones will ship this yer, and smaller tablets will edge larger tablets out and compete with hybrids, said Atwal.

The report shows an inexorable move away from PCs – both notebooks and desktops from 341,273 thousands of units in 2012 to 268,491 thousand in 2015.

The tablet market will grow by 47 percent this year with lower average selling prices.  The PC market will be flat this year, but will get a boost from Windows ultramobiles.

Microsoft buys big cloud firm

Posted on January 7, 2014 by - News

Steve BallmerSoftware giant Microsoft said it has bought Parature, which specialises in cloud based customer management systems.

It did not say how much it paid for the company, nor did it reveal how it intended to integrate its software. It said it would reveal those details at an upcoming conference in Las Vegas in February.

However, it is clear from Parature’s business model which way the wind is blowing.  Parature has 70 million users worldwide and works with 500 well known brands including IBM, Ask.com, and the US Environmental Protection Agency, Microsoft said.

It provides a knowledge base with self service portals, and supports ticketing mobile.  Microsoft said the services it offers complements its existing Microsoft Dynamics CRM customer care offerings.

DRAM shortage continues to bite

Posted on January 7, 2014 by - News, Products

nand-chipsIt looks as though the shortage of DRAM will continue well into 2014.

A fire at an SK Hynix factory last year was primarily responsible for the run on DRAM and even though the company says that production has resumed, there is still an element of catch up.

According to Taiwanese wire Digitimes, speciality DRAM chips are particularly badly affected due to increased demand from various sectors for SDRAMs.

Spot prices for DDR3 memory have risen and are expected to rise even further as the year goes on.

Samsung readies a tablet blitz

Posted on January 6, 2014 by - News, Products

Samsung rules the roostGiant chaebol Samsung is readying an assault on the low end tablet market with a range of cheapo machines intended to consolidate its place in the sector.

It will introduce a Galaxy Tab 3 Lite – a seven inch unit – which is set to be priced at $129, Taiwanese wire Digitimes reports. The machine will have a 1024×600 display, use a 1.2GHz Cortex A9 microprocessor, come with 1GB of storage, have a three megapixel camera and Android 4.2, the wire reports.

But it’s not leaving it there, it seems.  It will also introduce more seven inch as well as eight inch, 10 inch and 12 inch models this year.

Samsung remains second in the tablet market, behind Apple, but wants to be number one.

Unlike Apple, and many other players in the tablet market, Samsung has its own fabs and can source memory, microprocessor, display and other components as well as use its own machine assembly lines.

Avnet teams with Veeam

Posted on January 6, 2014 by - News

avnettsAvnet Services said that it had become an accredited Veeam authorised education centre.

That will allow it to introduce a training programme in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Spain.

The idea is to let its reseller partners become trained in Veeam software products. Veeam specialises in providing backup virtualisation management.

Rene Albert, director of education at Avnet Services EMEA said that the partnership will extend his company’s education portfolio just as the virtualisation market is showing increased growth.

And Daniel Fried, MD at Veeam said that the new training and certification programmes with let channel and end users take advantage of demand for data protection built for virtualisation.

Ryman gets net boost

Posted on January 3, 2014 by - News

Theo Paphitis, RymanStationery outfit Ryman saw its business grow by only 1.7 percent over Christmas, compared to the same period a year ago.

But subsidiary Robery Dyas, which Ryman bought in 2012, did somewhat better, clocking an increase of 5.2 percent, season on season.

The third string to the Theo Paphitis bow, Boux Avenue, saw its business grew by 20.2 percent. It has 21 stores here in the UK, and four abroad. Robert Dyas has 96 shops in the UK, while Ryman has 237 across the nation.

The periods cover from the 1st of November to Christmas Eve, 2013.

Paphitis said he was delighted with the performance of these three businesses – which came via footfall and mouse click or swipe.

He said that the businesses saw “significant increases” online and it managed to make more sales and better margins without having to discount stuff.

Intel thinks wearables will save its bacon

Posted on January 3, 2014 by - News

Brian KrzanichThe CEO of ailing chip company Intel has expressed the view that now the PC is at the end of the road, if it brings wearable technology out of its capacious hat it will be saved.

Brian Krzanich, the newly fledged CEO of Intel, told Recode.net that it would show off some technology at next week’s CES show in Lost Wages that would have people spinning in the aisles.

As well as showing off some wearable stuff, Intel will also tell the world about more Quark chips which are likely to wheedle their way into wearable gadgets, and, who knows, even end up in intelligent toothbrushes or condoms.

Krzanich acknowledged in the interview that Intel was identified as the PC company over the last 20 years and said the battle was worth fighting and winning. “But the market moved.”

What he means, of course, is that the market moved but Intel forgot to move so got overtaken by a heap of tablets and smartphones far divorced from X86 technology.

Krzanich doesn’t recognise that it has lost the smartphone and tablet market and claims Intel chips will be in 40 million tablets sold in 2014.

The chips won’t even be made in Intel fabs, he told Remote.net.

Notebook sales down

Posted on January 2, 2014 by - News

framedwindowsIt is hardly a surprise given that one in two UK households now have a swipy style tablet, but independent research shows top X86 models aren’t exactly the flavour of the month.

According to Digitimes Research, both branded notebook vendors and top original design manufacturers (ODMs), recorded month on month drops of 12 percent and 11 percent in December.

Dell and Toshiba did better than the other bunch of brand names, with the former, in particular, showing a bit of a surge because Microsoft will deck long in the tooth but reliable Windows XP this spring.

The ODMs were hit because HP was hit – Quanta and Inventec supply Hewlett Packard with most of its notebook boxes.

While the X86 mob hope that enterprises are still likely to plump for Windows based boxes, there is evidence that large corporations are seriously contemplating the bring your own device route, which will further erode Intel market share.