Quanta slashes tablet forecast by a quarter

Posted on November 15, 2013 by - News

cheap-tabletsQuanta Computer, the world’s biggest laptop maker for hire, has slashed its tablet shipment forecast for 2013 from 20 million units to just 15 million. The reason? Cheap white-box tablets.

“We were optimistic about the company’s tablet shipments this year and didn’t expect that our clients’ products would face pricing competition from Chinese white-brands,” Quanta vice chairman C.C. Leung said in a conference call, reports Taipei Times.

In other words, it wasn’t exactly Quanta’s fault, it was their clients’ fault. Amazon and Google account for the majority of Quanta’s tablet orders and they obviously underestimated the impact of cheap white-box tablets on Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire sales.

However, Quanta still believes it will be able to ship 20 million tablets – next year, of course.
Luckily Quanta did not see a dip in laptop shipments and its annual forecast of 44 million units still stands. In addition, Quanta is hoping to see plenty of growth in server shipments next year thanks to growing demand for could servers.

Intel doesn’t back Lady Geek dot com

Posted on November 15, 2013 by - News

Belinda ParmarA woman on the radio this morning hit out at womens’ magazines for not including enough information on gadgets and the like.

Belinda Parmar, the CEO of the agency with a website at ladygeek.com (pictured) said in a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that technology “empowered” women and said magazines such as Glamour didn’t include enough features about tech.

The agency numbers among its clients Nokia, Dell, Microsoft, Sony, Vodafone,Kaspersky, Ubisoft and, er, the BBC. But not Intel.

According to its web page, 80 percent of all tech decisions are influenced by women but only three percent of advertising creative directors are women.

Technology is commoditised now so no one really cares about it anymore apart from Microsoft, Sony and the rest.

ODM bullish about notebook sales

Posted on November 14, 2013 by - News, Products

Flying in the face of received wisdom, Compal’s president Ray Chen is talking up notebook sales in 2014.notebooks

Compal is an original design manufacturer (ODM) – that is to say a company which makes notebooks for big brand names.

According to a report in Digitimes, Chen expects shipments to hit 40 million units next year.

But he is conservative about touchscreen notebooks, despite Microsoft’s best efforts, and thinks they’ll only account for 15 percent of shipments next year. Compal will ship 15 million tablets next year.

He told the Taiwanese wire that its customers have been placing additional orders in this final quarter and expects notebook business to increase as enterprises are forced into upgrading as Windows XP reaches the end of the road.

You can read more, here.

Logica man gets Logicalis job

Posted on November 14, 2013 by - Moving People, News

Gary Bullard, LogicalisGary Bullard will be the next CEO of Logicalis.

Bullard will take over the role of current CEO Ian Cook from the 1st of March next year.  Cook will become a non-executive chairman of Logicalis.

Bullard has a long background in IT. He was UK CEO and EMEA CEO of Logica, and before that worked as MD of BT’s corporate business unit.

And he also held senior executives at Big Blue before then, as general manager of IBM’s golobal services EMEA and IBM Global Solutions in New York.

Bullard will join Logicalis in December as CEO in waiting. He said in a prepared statement: “I’m excited to be joining Logicalis and see a strong foundation on which to build momentum for growth in the areas of software defined networks, enterprise mobility and the cloud.”

Bank of England says economy is on the up

Posted on November 13, 2013 by - News

churchillLower unemployment figures and a drop in inflation have led the Governor of the Bank of England to saw the UK economy will growth this year and next year.

Interest rates won’t be increased until unemployment falls to seven percent or below, Mark Carney said.

Growth in the UK is now likely to be 1.6 percent, slightly up from the 1.4 percent forecast. And Carney said annual growth could reach 2.8 percent, rather than the 2.5 percent the Bank predicted earlier this year.

In the quarterly inflation report, the Bank said that “recovery has finally taken hold. The economy is growing robustly.. thawing credit conditions start to unlock pent-up demand.”

Carney said that although house prices are showing signs of inflation, there did not yet seem to be evidence for a British property bubble.

Intel thinks anthropologist will fix its business

Posted on November 13, 2013 by - News

bummerGenevieve Bell and another 100 or so social scientists are trying to save Intel’s “flailing business”.

Bell, an anthropologist and an Intel fellow, and her team, are racking their brains to figure out what gadgets people will use in the future, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

We told Intel years ago it should bung StrongARM chips into small, portable devices that consumed little power.  But Intel can be rather hard of hearing.

The Mercury News reckons that Intel’s fate is in the 200 pair of hands in Bell’s team seeing as PCs ain’t what they used to be.

The newspaper quotes Bell as saying she couldn’t imagine being in a better place, while another researcher is quoted as saying that Intel “is highly attuned to long term thinking”.

Really?

Office workers threaten businesses

Posted on November 13, 2013 by - News

old_officeA survey conducted by YouGov suggests the biggest security threat to business is the enemy within.

That’s the employees.

The survey, conducted on behalf of security as a service company Proofpoint shows that while pilfering stationery may be a thing of the past, office workers are endangering security.

A quarter of the 2,076 people surveyed sent work emails using their personal email account – especially if files are too large to send.  A fifth sent emails with confidential information including names, ages and home addresses.

And when working out of the office, 20 percent used a file transfer service like Dropbox to their personal email addresses.

And 45 percent of people received emails that weren’t meant to arrive in their inboxes.

Organisations can’t cope with the idiosyncratic nature of business, it appears. While 43 percent were trained on data and privacy, a third of them didn’t get any training.

Needless to say, Proofpoint has an axe to grind because it sells security as a service.

Apps ain’t heavy, they’re by Brother

Posted on November 12, 2013 by - News, Products

ipad3Brother said it has created a series of apps intended to help its reseller community and its salesforce.

And to that end, it has given its entire sales force iPads with 3G access intended to help them put the message across about their products to resellers when they’re on the road.

David Peters, who heads up strategic development at Brother UK, said: “Access to our bespoke iPad apps means that our salesforce can easily access our online corporate resources, including those on our partner programme Brother Network, and as a result, provide better answers and a higher level of service.

“Brother UK is living and breathing an agile working culture, which increasingly typifies the working style of many of our partners and product end-users. By investing in the latest technology, we are not only improving our service to our partners, but also showcasing the progress we are making as a forward thinking solutions provider.”

Smartphone subscriptions to hit 5.9bn by 2019

Posted on November 12, 2013 by - News

smartphones-generic

The findings of the latest Ericsson Mobility Report indicate that the smartphone craze has not peaked just yet. The report found that the number of mobile subscriptions will reach 9.3 billion by 2019 and more than 60 percent of all subscriptions will be for smartphones.

An estimated 90 percent of the world’s population will be covered by current generation WCDMA/HSPA networks, while 65 percent of the population will have LTE coverage. Smartphone data traffic is expected to increase tenfold over the next six years.

“The rapid pace of smartphone uptake has been phenomenal and is set to continue. It took more than five years to reach the first billion smartphone subscriptions, but it will take less than two to hit the 2 billion mark,” said Douglas Gilstrap, Senior Vice President and Head of Strategy at Ericsson.

“Between now and 2019, smartphone subscriptions will triple. Interestingly, this trend will be driven by uptake in China and other emerging markets as lower-priced smartphone models become available.”

At the moment, smartphones account for about 25 to 30 percent of all mobile phone subscriptions, but they are already outpacing feature phones in terms of new sales.

5i woos resellers with cloud proposition

Posted on November 12, 2013 by - News

cloud 1ICT resellers are ready to jump on the cloud bandwagon and firm claims it can help them do just that.

Richard Brown, channel sales director at 5i, said that cloud technology has plenty of benefits but is also a big threat to businesses.

“Resellers are quick to recognise the complexities of deployment,” he said. “Resellers know that full cloud deployments are rare and they are turning to us for our complete suite of services.”

So 5i has created a partner enablement programme which includes marketing, sales, pre-sales and technical support.  That. Brown claims, will help partners to get to market quickly and there’s less risk than “going it alone”.

5i is a channel services company.

Financial services sector is ready for cloud

Posted on November 11, 2013 by - News

aircloiudsA report said the consequences of the credit crunch in 2008 has concentrated the minds of the financial sector and helped them to understand the benefits cloud services can bring.

According to the report, UK Financial Services Sector SITS Market Trends and Forecasts, from Tech Market View, the crash prompted “draconian cost cutting measures and rapid withdrawal from marginal business areas”.  But returning confidence in investment markets and other factors including more conservative ambitions have lead companies to concentrate on transforming costs.

The authors of the report said it is now clear to both customers and vendors that the last 18 months has seen a change in attitudes towards cloud services.

Their opinion now is that the sector will use cloud services to make the changes to costs. “Earlier concerns about security have moderated somewhat and… many companies have developed working practices and systems to limit the threat.”

And large customers now seem to be convinced of the benefits of private clouds. The report points to Lloyds Banking Group creating a cloud system for Unix and Windows servers.

Nevertheless, use of the cloud in core banking and transaction processing “is a long way off”.

Sharp readies cloud push

Posted on November 11, 2013 by - News, Products

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeSMEs are not taking sufficient advantage of the opportunities and cost advantages of the cloud, according to a survey by Sharp.

It has launched its Cloud Portal Office today, a subscription based model aimed at SMEs with data held at Amazon Cloud Services in Dublin.

Chris Hale, product manager of software at Sharp UK told ChannelEye that people running small to medium enterprises often didn’t realise the savings that could be made by having their data in the cloud, rather than in their offices. There were advantages from the security aspect too, with backups held remotely in case of fires or other catastrophes.

Hale said companies often had little idea how much it cost to maintain their own IT equipment costs.  The Cloud Portal offering, while launched today, will go live on the 2nd of December next giving it time to train its own direct and its channels’ indirect sales force.

SMEs, Sharp said, are “not only failing to realise the business benefits the cloud can bring, but also can lose control of networks and introducing vulnerabilities”.  Of the 1,500 plus employees surveyed across Europe, 83 percent didn’t think that they had an official cloud network in the workplace.

Brits just want to keep taking the tablets

Posted on November 11, 2013 by - News, Products

Santa CalusIn the buildup to Christmas it seems that the hot item for Santa’s stocking are tablets.

That’s according to nevouchercodes.co.uk, which today reports there’s an 18 percent increase for people searching for tablets.

But the white box buys may not fare so well, because the company says most of the searches are for iPads, Samsung Galaxy tablets and Amazon Kindles.

MD of the company Steve Barnes said that whiole people are searching they’re not buying yet.  Tesco and Argos entering the fray makes tablets more affordable as a gift, he said.

People are also searching for deals on Xbox360s and PlayStation 3s because they’re expecting older models to be discounted in advance of the release of new consoles.

White box tablets make the grade

Posted on November 11, 2013 by - News, Products

ipad3A report said that shipments of unbranded tablets amounted to 25 million in the third quarter of this year.

Digitimes Research said that figure is up by 56.3 percent sequentially and up 40.4 percent year on year.

Most of the shipments went abroad and seven inch screens accounted for most of the growth.

Yet the research outfit believes it won’t be all plain sailing for the white box suppliers because big brands will, and are, offering Android units at prices that compete with the white box units.

Mediatek continues to make progress in the sector, with its chips accounting for 70 percent of application processors.

Sales in Europe and the US of white box units often accompany other bundling deals, but the Chinese manufacturers of the tablets can expect to make headway in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America, according to the research.

You’re hired! By social networking

Posted on November 11, 2013 by - News

crowdsA survey of over 7,000 HR managers, recruiters, and recruitment companies has revealed that social networking is playing an important role in hiring.

According to oilandgaspeople.com, which is a jobs board for the oil and gas industry, 82 percent of employers check out candidates on their social networking sites. And, be careful what you stick on Facebook or Linkedin, because 64 percent rejected applications after examining people’s profiles.

A staggering 88 percent of recruiters use Linkedin, while 25 percent used Twitter and 33 percent industry based boards.

The reason for using social media, according to 77 percent of those surveyed, is that it gives better access to more candidates.  But cost comes into the equation too – 33 percent said using social networking was cost effective, and 41 percent it gave them better insight into job candidates.

Over 63 percent said social media is more effective than print ads for advertising jobs.