Smartfones with Smart Markets...

Smart Phones are on their way...

Palm’s Pre is on the runway. HTC is launching new Google Android phones (and ads to go with them). Nokia is paying attention to the U.S. again with a thin smartphone. And even Motorola has a phone that looks pretty good.


Simply put, there is no better time to be a wireless subscriber off a contract. In fact, the barrage of phones may make consumers pine for hassle free wireless contracts. If I didn’t have a two-year contract I’d be a smartphone two-timer hopping from phone to phone every few months.

These smartphones battles are often portrayed as phone vs. phone wars. Apple’s iPhone vs. Pre. Apple 3.0 vs. HTC Android. IPhone vs. the BlackBerry Storm. The larger question we all should be asking is, "Just how vulnerable are Apple and Research in Motion? There will be plenty of color on the latter as RIM reports earnings Thursday and worries about profit margin pressure abound. Meanwhile, there’s a reason that iPhone 3.0 is so important—beyond the long-awaited cut and paste capability—Apple is vulnerable too.


RIM and Apple had a collective 70 percent of the smartphone market in the fourth quarter and the two companies are running out of headroom in the U.S.

Android is on the move. Notice T-Mobile’s share and how it surged in the fourth quarter. That was mostly due to the G1 phone. Android is just as hip as the iPhone in geek circles and more phones are on the way.

Nokia may be getting serious about the U.S. again. Nokia this week rolled out the world’s thinnest smartphone with AT&T. Overseas, Nokia is extremely popular but for some idiotic reason it punted on the U.S. If Nokia is serious about the U.S. again it will surely poach some share.

The Pre is coming. Palm is getting iPhone-ish type buzz. And while it may not take a huge chunk of Apple’s share it can surely take some. Ditto for RIM.
And lesser vendors can poach share too. Even Motorola is dressing up its phones.
Bottom line: Everything is an iPhone. Apple invented a category and now every carrier will have a copycat. These copycats only have to take a smidge of share from both Apple and RIM to raise a ruckus.

Ultimately, this scrum can be defined with two words: Commodity market. And commodity markets are won and lost based on distribution and pricing. This smartphone game will be decided on pricing—so long profit margins—and distribution. The vendor that gets the most shelf space wins. Fortunately for Apple it has its own stores to sell the iPhone because the shelf space will get crowded at carriers.

Will price win the day when every phone has a touch screen, a good browser and decent apps? Probably. Look for the two top smartphone dogs to lose at least a little share as an army of competitors surround the gates. Apple and RIM would never admit to being vulnerable, but it’s clear these two are going to have to play a little defense.

Intel cuts processor prices by 48%

Intel, the world's largest chip maker, has cut the price of some processors by as much as 48 per cent as it confronts slumping demand and new lower-cost chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Bloomberg reported.

The price of Celeron 570 processors, designed for laptops, dropped 48 per cent to $70 whereas one of the company's quad-core desktop-computer models, which have four processors on one piece of silicon, dropped 40 per cent to $316, the news agency said.

For more Information please visit :- Tech News

Intel to shut plants, cuts 6,000 jobs

Intel Corp said that it would close manufacturing plants in Malaysia and the Philippines, as well as its only remaining factory in Silic
on Valley, cutting as many as 6,000 jobs.

The announcement comes a day after the world's largest maker of microprocessors used in personal computers slashed prices on a number of its chips and a week after it reported a decline in fourth-quarter revenue.

Intel said it would close two assembly test facilities in Penang, Malaysia, and one in Cavite, Philippines. It will also halt production at a wafer fabrication facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, as well as its Santa Clara, California plant -- a factory connected to its headquarters and the only one left in Silicon Valley.

The actions will result in a reduction of 5,000 to 6,000 jobs, Intel said. It ended 2008 with around 84,000 employees.

Not all cuts at the affected plants will lead to job losses and some workers will be offered positions at other facilities, it said, adding that the restructuring will take place between now and the end of 2009.

Bootable Solid State Drive - SSD

Check out this high-end solid state drive (SSD) named the Fusion ioDrive which is now bootable. Previous models of this drive were not bootable due to the lack of a driver.


This problem has now been addressed and some firmware allows your computer to think that the SSD is an actual hard drive. The SSD based drive uses a PCI-e slot which sits on your motherboard.


The Fusion ioDrive isn’t cheap though as we expected. It costs $2400 for an 80GB model. The upside is that there are no moving parts which helps makes things more reliable.

Expect to see this arrive Q4 this year.

But...

Hard drives will always be cheaper than SSDs, it is just very cheap to produce a large storage capability magnetic platter, but SSDs cost just scales up the bigger you go, extra storage chips, extra power and heat to deal with and lack of space to fit it all in, of course the technology is always improving and as manufacturing steps up the price will drop, but this will mostly occur at the bottom end of the market (sub 200GB), it will be a long, long time before a 1TB SSD is cheaper than a 1TB hard-disk.

Google has a remote kill switch in Android

It seems that Apple is not the only one with a remote kill switch, with the ability to remove applications from your device, Google has one in Android as well.

If Google discovers a product that violates the developer distribution agreement, in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion.

Unlike Apple, who didn’t reveal the kill switch until a developer found it, Google has been up front about it and included it in the Android Market terms of service.

Reliance BIG TV Software Update 1.7.2 to 1.8.13

After launching their Direct To Home Service, Reliance BIG TV now looks to make some changes as they have not updated their software and also not adding a single channel since launch, few weeks ago Reliance BIG TV have updated their firmware version from 1.7.2 to 1.8.13. This new version is much improved then previous version and better then it but need to correct few bugs which already have in BIG TV Set Top Box.

One of the biggest changes in this version is BIG TV logo. BIG TV logo changes in each channel according to the Channel logo, so it does not cover the logo, for sports channels it’s on lower right corner. But it’s not transparent so still need to improvements.


After making such a changes BIG TV is now ready to come with better firmware version and also better interactive service. It’s just because of competition from other Direct To Home Operators. Once all of above features working perfectly you will have better TV viewing experience and you will world on press of button. Our source suggests that new features and channels will be activated on BIG TV from end of the month.

Also they are coming with unique features My Top Ten which will carry 10 channels you watched most and it all depends on TV viewing so that means now your TV viewing is also observed by them. Its great feature for us and you can have list of most viewing channels by you.

Windows 7 Beta

If you are looking to download Windows 7 Beta right now its possible directly from the official Microsoft website because its available to the first 2.5 million users who want to download it.

Here are the 2 websites from which you can download the ISO Images which you can later burn and then install after getting them activated using the product keys.

The normal installation would work out for 90 days and to extend this time frame you need to activate, after which the windows 7 licence would work out till August 2009, pretty good to get your hands on the OS. Even if the download links dont work out in the initial keep refreshing the website and finally you can get it working, because the downloads are currently done heavily.

Download Links :
Windows 7 Beta (32-bit)
Windows 7 Beta (64-bit)

-----> Enjoy <-----

Satyam Scam

Satyam Computer Services Ltd is in a total mess with the Former Satyam Chairman B Ramalinga Raju surrendering before the andhra pradesh police under sections 120B, 409, 420, 468, 471. Along with him his brother and the companies CFO was also arrested on friday evening. The Securities and Exchange Board of India [SEBI] has ordered for an enquiry to look into this matter in detail.

Along with this news the most important point would be the stock prices dipping more and reached 6Rs/share which is seriously very low considering it was trading it 400-500Rs levels a year back. The stock prices clearly shows that the company has lost its value among the investors and everyone is looking to sell out.

I would recommend all the investors to still hold the stock because when they have already lost 90% of the value why not atleast risk with the 10%? If this 10% again grows back to atleast 30-40% after some days by chance in case of the take over/ acquitision then you have a better option rather than regretting in the future.

The stocks closed at 23.75Rs which is again 41% down from the last trading day and it was originally moving up from the 6Rs figure which means that there are still many people who believe in the company. The owners would be scammers but not the 53000 employees who worked hard in the company to fulfil their targets and there are numerious Saytam clients who are still willing to continue with the company and are ready to give contracts/orders.

The only problem would be that since the company is in a problem now, all their accounts would be siezed and even if the business operations are operated the payments would be struck. This is the reason the employees are in panic stage and have already started looking out for new job options in case the company is closed for a while.

One of the biggest Chartered Accountancy - PricewaterhouseCoopers which is highly reputed in India because there are thousands of students trying to get into PWC for completing their CA Course, is also in question because this firm was handling all the Satyam’s operations and if such a big scam was running around how did PWC not find out? Or were these guys also bribed by Mr Raju in tunes of crores of rupees and will this networked chain keep continuing?

Intel to bring Flash in its CE3100 media processor

Intel and Adobe have joint forces to bring Flash into Intel’s media processor named CE 3100. This teamwork seems to promise a rich and seamless web-based video viewing experience through Intel’s cable set-top boxes, digital TVs, Blu-ray Disc players and AV devices.

The last couple of years were of mixed sort for Adobe’s flash software, as Apple refused to bring Flash to the iPhone, while Microsoft came up with its Silverlight. Well, it was a double blow for it.

However, Intel has decided to back that format in its coming Media Processor and you would see it with Adobe first Flash Lite version that is expected by the end of 2nd quarter.

Dell Blasts Apple’s Green Claims, but Does Dell have a Leg to Stand On?

Apple’s television advertisement claims its family of notebooks are the world’s greenest.

Some people at Dell, the self-proclaimed greenest technology company, take exception to this. Bob Pearson, Dell VP of Communities and Conversations, took Apple to task in a blog post. Pearson says Apple is not being open and transparent on environmental issues and putting out advertisements that may not be truthful.

Dell may be casting stones from within a glass house, according to this article from The Wall Street Journal. Despite improving its energy efficiency, skeptics say its claims of carbon neutrality are premature since there is no set standard for carbon neutrality.

A major factor in Dell’s carbon neutrality claims is its purchase of carbon credits, which offset a portion of its carbon footprint by bankrolling the environmental improvements of others. However, there is reason to believe such improvements would have been made regardless of whether carbon credits were purchased. While some projects, such as a threatened forest in Madagascar, were dependent on Dell investment, others, such as a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota, were not.