News for Tuesday, 18 October 2005

If Sony seems to have lost the battle of the audio devices for the moment, they have certainly not yet lost the war, and have launched a counter-attack with mobile phone / audio device cross-overs.
SonyEricsson is really pushing the boat out and investing a lot in this market sector.
After the success of the K750 and the W800 "Walkman", SonyEricsson have now launched the W900.

This model, due out at the end of the year, is 3G compatible, and can play the MP3, ATRAC and AAC formats. It's a far cry from the mundane style of the ROKR.
To help compete with the iPod, and to demonstrate that these mobile phones are as good as, if not better than, the iPod, SonyEricsson are also launching a series of devices to improve the audio experience.
To kick off, there's an iTrip-like device:

The MMR-60 is an FM transmitter compatible with the latest models of mobile phones. It allows a user to listen to music tracks held on the mobile phone on any FM radio.
Then there's the MDS-70:

It's a set of external speakers that allow the user to listen to music tracks stored on the mobile phone.
Clearly, these products may impact on, and capture part of, the audio device market - if the quality of the design and the technology match up, why would you carry two devices in your pocket?

This is groundbreaking! For the first time in history, AMD is ahead of Intel in terms of market share, with 52% to be compared with Intel's "mere" 46%. This seems to be largely due to the Media Center sales, a segment in which AMD is highly present. It has also to be pointed out that Intel is sort of stuck with its Pentium IV line that evolves slowly and is nearing EOL.
Let's hope that Apple hasn't bet on the wrong horse - again.
In any case, even if it was the case, moving from Intel to AMD would be far less painfull than the upcoming PPC->Intel transition.