Apple now represents about a fifth of all technology sales in the US, new NPD data showed Monday. By the end of 2011, 19 percent of revenue in the US was related to an Apple product. The company was now the top company selling technology in the US, topping HP, Samsung, Sony, and Dell even when the others could include their sales from all categories.
Apple on Monday took the step of asking the Fair Labor Association to orchestrate "special voluntary audits" of its last-stage suppliers. The investigations, which include Foxconn plants in Chengdu and Shenzhen, began the same day. They include both interviews with "thousands" of workers over conditions as well as inspections and document reviews.
The 13- to 14-inch notebook screen size is currently one of the hottest areas of competition right now: it's where Apple, HP, and others start off their higher-end models. Dell has certainly been one of the most active in this space and has brought its high-end XPS line to that space through the 14z. We'll check in our Dell XPS 14z review whether the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the Sony VAIO S, or comparable rivals will feel the strain.
New Gartner data breaking down European computer market share has shown poor results for almost every computer builder outside of Apple. Continent-wide, both market leader HP as well as Acer, Dell, and Toshiba were all dropping market share. Only ASUS (up 1.5 points) increased share based solely on its own merits among the top five; Lenovo's gain was inflated by its acquiring Medion last June.
Microsoft's roadmap for Windows Phone was given a possible outline in a rumor Saturday. Tango, the first minor update, was pegged by Digitimes contacts as going live in March or April if Microsoft clinged to its roadmap. The rumored second Tango update would arrive in mid-year.
Apple and AT&T are leading computer and phone support in conditions that are still on the decline, Vocalabs found in a pair of studies of phone help quality. Apple was still out in front by a significant margin in computers, with 54 percent very satisfied to 49 percent of HP owners and 44 at Dell. The figure for Mac help was still down a full 19 points from the first half of 2010, however, where Dell and HP had always been at their lower levels.
Friday signaled the second anniversary of the iPad's introduction and what has since been interpreted as the start of a shift in the entire computing space. Apple's tablet was unveiled this day in 2010 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco by its late co-creator, Steve Jobs. It would only go on sale April 2, but it proved to be polarizing from its unveiling, even for Apple loyalists.
Dell is trying an unusual strategy to try and steer ultrabook buyers towards the XPS 13 on Thursday. Nicknamed the Ultrabook Challenge, the demo campaign Thursday amounts to a blind taste test for the thin-and-light notebooks. Starting in San Francisco first, those at the corner of Chestnut and Scott, and later at Fisherman's Wharf, are being asked to pick an ultrabook based on "look and feel" with all the branding covered up, ostensibly to avoid bias.
Apple has faced both internal tension over as well as misleading statements from its Chinese suppliers, an in-depth investigation has uncovered. Focusing primarily on Foxconn, the New York Times spoke to numerous current and former Apple executives who said that, while there were improvements in the years since Apple began auditing factories, the company has so far stopped short of a hardline approach that would get a supplier like Foxconn to change.
Newly uncovered details behind Apple's original iPhone launch have underscored the reasons why manufacturing jobs aren't likely to return to the US in large numbers. Referring to Apple's well-known decision to switch from plastic to glass for the original iPhone's touchscreen, the New York Times understood that Jobs was furious the iPhone couldn't be put in a pocket with keys and avoid display scratches. The only way to get scratch-resistant glass in a timely way was to go to Foxconn's plants in Shenzhen, where Apple from a sudden midnight notice could have them producing 10,000 units a day with the updated model inside of 96 hours.
Sony is looking to export its lithium-ion battery production from Japan, the country's Asahi paper claimed Saturday. While the base parts would still be made in Japan, actual production of the cellphone- and car-oriented batteries would go to China and Singapore. One of its existing facilities, in Tochigi Prefecture, would reportedly switch over to pure research and would push 500 workers to either apply for jobs elsewhere in Sony or quit.
Dell's Alienware badge ventured into small form factor desktops for the first time late Tuesday. The X51 is billed as the smallest gaming PC desktop ever at no more than 13.5 inches at its largest dimension. Even with a 3.7-inch thick width, it can not only fit up to a GeForce GTX 555 desktop graphics card but replace this, the hard drive, and the RAM as new technology comes through.
We've at last had a first-hand look at the upcoming Dell XPS 13 on the CES show floor. The ultrabook on an initial glance bears more than a passing resemblance to the MacBook Air, down to the side port layouts and the single-piece, multi-touch trackpad; there's no question of who inspired the design. It remains something of its own beast, however, and the combination of aluminum (mostly on the lid) as well as a tightly constructed body give it a much more premium feel than we're used to from Dell.
Fall 2011 was the worst season for PC growth in the US in a decade, IDC found in preliminary results. The overall PC field shrank 6.7 percent compared to what it had in late 2010, based partly on hard drive shortages triggered by Thailand flooding. However, the iPad and other tablets like it, combined with a tough economy, meant many didn't want PCs, particularly in the "difficult competitive landscape" of the US as well as Western Europe.
In spite of two previous quarters of gains, computer industry shipments slipped 1.4 percent in Q4 2011 to 92.2 million units, according to preliminary Gartner estimates. The research firm had been forecasting a 1 percent drop. "Continuously low consumer PC demand resulted in weak holiday PC shipments," analyst Mikako Kitagawa is quoted as saying. "While economic uncertainty in Western Europe had an effect on consumer PC shipments, expectations of a healthier economic outlook in North America could not stimulate consumer PC demand in that region. The healthy professional PC market as well as growth in emerging markets could not compensate for the weaknesses in mature markets, with overall growth still negative."
Dell has rolled out its new XPS 13 ultrabook, a 13-inch notebook in a 12-inch form factor. The XPS 13 is highlighted by its edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass display and a thin bezel framing its HD WLED 1366x678 display. It also incorporates a full-size backlit keyboard and pairs second-gen Core i-series processors with fast SSDs.
Dell is planning a big push into home tablet PCs at the end of 2012, the company's Steve Felice said in an interview late Tuesday. In spite of having tried the mobile OS category with the discontinued Streak 5 and 7, Dell would come back in a "bigger way," ,he told Reuters. He suggested that too many tablet makers, implying itself, had just rushed in and been burned.
Dell finished the week by consolidating its customer-facing groups under one leader. Its former Consumer, Small, and Medium Business president Steve Felice will as of February 4 handle every segment, including both the groups he managed before as well as enterprise and public sector groups. The step, coming earlier than expected because of the retirement of enterprise and public group head Paul Bell, was "further simplifying" Dell's actions.
Dell's Venue Android smartphone has followed in the footsteps of the discontinued Streak 5 tablet from the company in earning US government approval for use by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). It has thus become the first Android phone to get the honor following RIM's BlackBerry devices, as revealed by a DISA document. Department of Defense employees will get limited access to the device's features however, with no access to the Android Market and web browsing done only through a DoD proxy server.
Intel ushered in what might be the swansong for netbooks on Wednesday by finally shipping Atom processors based on its Cedar Trail platform. Confirming rumors of another delay, it was shipping the 1.6GHz N2600 and 1.83GHz N2800 with the expectation that they would be available in early 2012. Familiar netbook supporters Acer, ASUS, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba had pledged new systems using the chips.
The official Android 2.3 update for the discontinued Dell Streak 5 tablet has now been released. The ROM can be downloaded through a link shared by a helpful member of the XDA-Developers forums, though it's meant for Korean Streak 5s. To install the 155MB update, users need to have version 350 of the stock recovery preloaded onto their tablets.
Best known for its computers and monitors, Dell has just announced it will soon offer its Streak Pro smartphone in China, a key market for the company. Already promised for the Japanese market, the device is the first with the Baidu Yi mobile platform from China's Internet search giant Baidu. It integrates the popular Ting music service and other cloud services also offered by the search engine.
Dell has formally but quietly backed out of the netbook category. A search for netbooks like the Mini 10 gives users a warning that the Mini line is "no longer available." In return, buyers are told to pick the much larger Inspiron 14R.
Dell has updated its Alienware Aurora gaming desktops introduced at the past CES show. The new PC is being touted as the most advanced Alienware desktop created thus far, sporting a choice of second-generation, six-core Core i7 chips ranging in a factory-overclocked clock speed between 3.9GHz and 4.2GHz, along with the X79 Express chipset and as much as 16GB of quad-channel DDR3 RAM. Active vents and a liquid-cooling system are present to keep the system running quietly.
Dell on Monday confirmed that it had stopped selling the Streak 7. The tablet is no longer available online and is withdrawing just months after Dell axed the Streak 5. In a statement, it said it would still be involved in the mobile space but conspicuously referred to the Streak 7 in the past tense, suggesting it was being phased out.
Dell is whittling back one of its staple practices at CES in a sign of a reduced focus on the home for 2012. New leaks Wednesday hinted to AllThingsD that the company would drop its near-traditional occupation of a whole floor at The Palms off of the Las Vegas strip in favor of the hotel suite invites and meeting rooms common to companies that don't have major products to unveil at the show. If would instead attach itself to a keynote from one of its partners, implying Intel or Microsoft.
Microsoft's hopes of reclaiming the tablet space with Windows 8 may be overly optimistic, Forrester Research uncovered in a study Tuesday. Out of 1,810 Americans asked this summer, only 10 percent would consider a Windows 8 tablet if it were available now. The rank put it at the same level of interest as the ailing BlackBerry PlayBook and below the then-selling HP TouchPad at 16 percent.
Drawing attention to something Apple is doing wrong certainly isn't new, and arguably something that's needed to keep the company honest. Some of this has always come from those who are predisposed to avoid anything Apple makes. But we've lately seen a strain of anti-Apple rhetoric that's not just opposed, but produces a kind of anti-exceptionalist myth where everything bad in tech is Apple's fault: we like to call them Only Apple Does Wrong advocates. It's a trend that needs to stop, and the sooner it does, the better for intelligent tech fans of all stripes.
Dell has apologized for providing misleading information to those trying to buy an Optiplex desktop. Potential customers who hit the "Help me choose" link during the video chipset option process were shown an image that misrepresented how the Windows desktop would look with different video choices, showing a blurred desktop for integrated graphics and sharp only with dedicated video. Dell has since removed the image, PCPro said.
Intel may have moved its Xeon E5 launch for the mainstream due to issues with SAS drives, tipsters claimed Friday. The Romley chipset when combined with current, Sandy Bridge-based processors was said by Digitimes to have problems when using the high speed serial disks. Two of the first wave of Xeon E5 chips, the E5-1600 and E5-2600, had been moved to the first week of March.
A Samsung message reportedly going out to business partners has the company quitting the netbook business. In line with a "new 2012 strategy," Blogeee read that Samsung would quit all its 10-inch netbooks, instead leaving just 11.6- and 12-inch ultrabooks and other notebooks. The strategy wouldn't preclude netbook-class processors, but it would see the company exit the traditional category and raise the baseline for its notebook prices.
Lenovo is trying its hand at the crossover phone and tablet category headed up by the Samsung Galaxy Note and Dell Streak, a new leak has uncovered. To be badged as an IdeaTab in most of the world and a LePad in China, the five-inch Android device seen by Engadget would be designed as a phone first and tablet second. Little is known about what's inside, although the presence of capacitive buttons at the bottom casts doubt on whether or not the IdeaTab will have Android 4.0 when it ships.
ASUS spokesman Gary Key responded Friday to interpretations of a rumor that his company might quit tablets. He told CNET that the Digitimes claims, where ASUS and others would bow out because they didn't have the ecosystems of Apple's iPad or Amazon's Kindle Fire, were "unfounded." Possibly prompted by the nature of the question, he limited the scope to Android tablets and not Windows.
Dell reported a tough summer quarter on Tuesday evening that showed the deeper impact of tablets and rivals. Its revenue was almost exactly flat over a year ago, dipping slightly to almost $15.37 billion. Although its net profit was up 17 percent to $893 million, its consumer group that covers its home PC business saw a six percent drop in revenue and was joined by problems in its public sector PCs and services as well as nearly flat growth in all but its international field, which covered developing countries.
Apple and ASUS are cutting deeply into the European computer market, Gartner found on Monday. Apple was now in the top five in Western Europe, having seen its shipments this past summer jump 19.6 percent over the past year to get it 7.6 percent. ASUS was the only other company in the top five to gain share and grew roughly as quickly, with a 20.3 percent jump putting it above Dell at 10.6 percent of the computer space.
Apple has risen a substantial five spots in the latest edition of Greenpeace's regular "Guide to Greener Electronics" rankings. The company has a score of 4.6 out of 10, nevertheless putting it in fourth place. Leading the charts are HP at 5.9, followed by Dell at 5.1, and Nokia at 4.9. Trailing behind Apple are Philips (4.5), Sony Ericsson (4.2), Samsung (4.1) and Lenovo (3.8).
Dell overnight put up a pre-order page for its delayed Latitude ST tablet. The 10-inch Windows 7 slate is now known to cost $859 and, in the first wave of orders, should arrive by November 29. Base trim gives it a 1.5GHz Atom Z670 chip, 2GB of RAM, and a 64GB solid-state drive along with rear five-megapixel and front 720p cameras.
Dell and HP will reportedly allow users to choose wether or not to use the secure boot option that will be available in Windows 8. Although Secure Boot is marketed as a way to help improve device security, the feature is viewed by some Linux advocates as a conspiracy to block alternative operating systems from being installed on computers designed for Windows 8.
Atmel gave an outlook on Tuesday for the fall that was one of the few cluews as to how well iPad rivals were faring in the market. It expected its touchscreen contoller chip sales to drop 12 to 16 percent, as low as $402.7 million, at a time when shipments were normally up. Some of the company's tablet customers, including Dell and Samsung, had higher than usual inventories that pointed to a lack of sales.
Dell's supermodel-thin XPS 14z notebook is now up for sale. It starts at $1,000 and includes a 2.4GHz Core i5 processor, a 64-bit copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, and a 14-inch, 1366x768 display. That 0.9-inch thick body also houses 6GB of RAM and a 500GB, 7,200RPM hard drive, along with a dual-layer DVD reader that can burn CDs or single-layer DVDs.
Dell's Streak 5 tablet has reportedly become the first Android device to receive official certification for the US Department of Defense. Although the device is no longer sold to the general public, Dell has reworked the tablet software to improve security. The adaptations have enabled the device to meet Defense Information Systems Agency criteria for use with secure but unclassified communications.
Hon Hai Precision Industry, the parent company of Foxconn and the largest contract maker of electronics, has just posted its fourth consecutive drop in profits. Foxconn manufactures multiple electronics devices for companies like Apple, Amazon, Dell, HP, Sony, and numerous others. Third-quarter net income dropped 8.6 percent to $641 million, the company revealed, which is a decrease from the $701 million in the same time period in the previous year.
Dell has finally made its Latitude ST enterprise-friendly tablet official. The long-delayed Windows 7 tablet surfaced in an official promotional clip late last week. It has now been formally announced on Dell’s European Community forum.
Coming quickly on the heels of new MacBook Pros, Dell has formally launched the XPS 14z. Its system is conspicuously targeted at Apple's 13-inch notebook and uses LG's Shuriken panel tech to get a 14-inch, 1366x768 screen into the size of a 13-inch design. Unlike the exaggeration of the XPS 15z, the 14z is genuinely thinner at exactly 0.9 inches and lighter at 4.36 pounds.
Dell Malaysia has posted a video (direct link, embedded below) that has inadvertently spoiled details of the company's long-delayed Windows 7 tablet. The clip confirms a hinted-at Latitude ST name and lines up with the Peju slate leaked back in July. The 10-inch design has a unique iMac-style dock to turn it into a makeshift desktop with Ethernet, HDMI, and USB ports.
Apple's iPod on Sunday marked its tenth anniversary in a very different landscape. The MP3 player was unveiled on October 23, 2001 at an event in Apple's Town Hall at its Cupertino headquarters in what's now considered one of the late Steve Jobs' crowning achievements. Its first iPod, available in just a 5GB capacity with only Mac and FireWire support, reached stores on November 10 that year for $399.
Dell's namesake CEO Michael Dell at the Web 2.0 Summit touched on his infamous quote from 1997 where he had said he in Steve Jobs' position would have closed Apple and given money back to shareholders. When asked about it, Dell claimed that the quote was "misstated" and that he would never have entertained the idea of running Apple himself. While he didn't outright deny the armchair advice, he noted that his company, like Apple was to Jobs, was the only thing that mattered.
PC builders involving Dell and HP are focusing their energies on Windows 8 tablets for next summer, early rumors claimed Monday. While shy on what those models would involve, Digitimes understood that at least Dell was trying to shift its attention to pro tablets and away from the home. They wanted to get out from under "fierce competition" in the Android space, where the Amazon Kindle Fire has triggered a race to the bottom in a crowded field, according to the tips.
Dell's founder Michael Dell used his own Dell World conference as an unusual platform for talking down Android while putting faith in Windows 8. While he pledged loyalty to Microsoft and said the company was "very aligned" with it, he said Google's OS had "not developed to the expectations" Dell had. Steve Felice, president of the consumer division, tried to minimize the company's lack of success, claiming that the Streak tablets, Aero, and Venue phones were shipped in small numbers to "see customer reaction and behavior."
IDC early estimates showed a major shakeup underway in the US PC market headed by Apple. While not as aggressive as Gartner, it saw Apple being the only top computer maker outside of HP to gain share, growing nearly a point to hit 11.3 percent this summer. Toshiba was also reversing its years of gains and was down to exactly eight percent, giving Apple a comfortable third place.
