News for Thursday, 19 October 2006

DLink has announced the release on the market of a WiMax compliant router some time during the first quarter of 2007.
While the date rate and the transmission range are yet to be learnt, this technology theoretically allows 10 to 70 Mb/s over 10 to 45 km.
It should be used by licensed ISPs to provide wireless Internet acces on a large scale and for a lesser cost as WiMax does not require to install cables.
Later, when the technology is mature enough and the coverage sufficient, WiFi phones should then come out, allowing VoIP with a real freedom of movement. This sure will be a hard time for traditionnal telephone companies...

According to Dailytech, Intel will add in its next generation of mobile chipset a specific NAND flash memory, known as "Robson" technology. If this is not new (see our previous report), it seems that the amount of NAND flash to be installed could be modified by simply swapping modules. EOM could reduce the cost of their computers by having 512MB of NAND flash instead of the 1GB originally planned for the Robson technology. One can easily imagine, when this technology becomes widely used, to have the opportunity to get 2 or 4GB of NAND flash modules to improve even more performance.
Robson technology is dedicated to speed up booting procedure, as well as improving files access by storing them in the NAND module instead of having to retrieve them from the HD. This will of course be useful for files that are often called by the system or by some applications. This is of course also a way to save power for mobile platform. It will work synergistically with increased cache memory in future HD.
Robson technology should be incorporated in "Santa-Clara" platform, the one that will replace the current Napa platform currently used with Core Duo (Yonah) and Core 2 Duo (Merom). Intel is also looking for a desktop-dedicated version of Robson.

Apple has posted record revenue for its last quarter 2006 financial results.

The Company posted revenue of $4.84 billion and net quarterly profit of $546 million, or $.62 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $3.68 billion and net profit of $430 million, or $.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 29.2 percent, up from 28.1 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple shipped 1,610,000 Macintosh® computers and 8,729,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 30 percent growth in Macs and 35 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

In addition, 61% of Macs sold were laptops confirming the excellent sales of MB and MB Pro. Mac Pro demands are good, but will probably increase when Universal binaries creative suite will be released from leader software companies (Adobe being among them).
Proving Apple development outside USA, international sales accounted for 40% of the quarter’s revenue.
So if we are still far away from the goal of 10% computer market share, at least apple is going towards right direction.