Friday December 05, 2008

- The electronics industry affected by the crisis - Lionel - 10:59:34

Nearly all the indicators are red. After years of growth, the computing industry starts to be affected by the crisis. All the sectors are concerned, from servers to machines for the general public.
The Taiwanese and Chinese industries, who are in the front line, on the level of production seek by all means to decrease their now oversized production capacities, while companies much closer to the customers, such as AT&T, start to lay off staff. AT&T have announced plans to suppress employment that will affect 12'000 staff.
According to certain analysts, Apple can survive better than most. The sales of the iPod may be higher than forecast, especially thanks to the price drops of the basic iPods, and the sales of Mac seems to remain rather good.
It should be said that a crisis is never a good thing, especially this one of today, thus even that Apple records a growth is without precedent. They, of course, will be also affected, but should escape, at least at this moment, general stagnation.

[translation by crispin]

- Towards a 4 GB iPhone 3G? - Lionel - 09:31:01

When the iPhone was initially launched, Apple offered 2 models differing only by their storage capacity 4 GB or 8 GB. Most customers purchased the high-end model, and Apple rapidly stopped the production of the 4 GB model while dropping its price.

According to Boygeniusreport, Apple might offer a new iPhone 3G, featuring only 4 GB of storage space, in order to further decrease the price of this model and offer an entry-level model to boost sales on the US market. Such model would then be sold by Wal Mart for 99 USD including a subscription plan. Orange in France is currently offering the iPhone 8 GB for 99 Euro to all new customers.

The idea is not so much surprising, as the main goal might well be the make iPhone owners purchasing from the AppStore than loading their iPhone with music and video, not necessarily purchased from the iTunes Store. Indeed, one should remember than a survey conducted by Apple indicated that in average only 3 albums/iPod were acquired from the iTunes Store. With such a lower storage capacity, the entry-level iPhone might further expend the number of iPhone owners, and consequently the number of potential customers for the AppStore. However, what about the exclusive deal with AT&T?

[translation by Linathael]

- SanDisk: Mac Compatible Encrypted USB Key - Lionel - 09:21:22

Source : SanDisk

SanDisk announced to have developed a Mac OS X compatible application allowing Mac users to take advantage of its encrypted USB key, USB Cruzer Enterprise.



The system is already fully functional with previous windows versions, so one can now use the same key with both environment, and then exchange data. The application is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, and you can download it from SanDisk website for any purchase of any 1 to 8 GB USB Cruzer Enterprise.
For additional information: http://www.sandisk-enterprise.com/macupdater


[translation by Linathael]

- RAM chips of 256 MB for ultra mobiles - Lionel - 07:40:44

Source : CDR Info

Hynix announced to have developed the first chips of 256 MB of DRAM intended for the mobile phones and ultra compact devices.
These chips, contrary to Flash are not intended to be used as permanent memory, but are used as random access memory during operation and allow faster running of the operating system and other processes.
One could imagine that Apple can integrate one of these chips in a forthcoming version of the iPhone. Currently, this has 128 MB of RAM. To double this memory could bring more fluidity, especially with the arrival of increasingly complex applications.

[translation by crispin]

- Apple makes sparks with the iPhone - Lionel - 07:30:53

Gartner has published the sales figures of Smartphones in the United States for the third quarter 2008.


As you can see, Apple has a one year growth of 327,5%; this is more than impressing!
RIM also fares very well with 81,7% growth and to a lesser extent HTC which gains 25,9%.
It should also be noted; Apple is not very far from claiming the second place of this market from RIM, who are still very far behind Nokia.
These figures are bad for Microsoft, Windows Mobile being present on 11,1% of the smart phones sold, behind Mac OS X which has now reached 12,9%.

[translation by crispin]