NVIDIA has sent out invitations to a special event at Mobile World Congress that's likely a strong clue of what at least one partner will show at the event. It plans to show more "quad-core firsts," hinting that a Tegra 3 phone will appear at the event. Most likely, the reference is to either the HTC Endeavor or the upcoming Fujitsu Arrows phone.
Three large Japanese electronics makers are involved in talks on merging assets to build computer chips. Renesas, Fujitsu and Panasonic will at first spin off their separate chip design and development divisions to create a joint company, according to Japan's Nikkei newspaper (login required). The three are doing so in order to better compete in the industry for devices and vehicles.
Fujitsu has introduced a new tablet, the M532, that has surfaced just days after most companies showed off their latest gadgets at CES. The tablet, which was detailed by the German site TechFokus, is powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 3 chipset and previewed with Android 3.2, however the device will be outfitted with Ice Cream Sandwich before launch.
Fujitsu in its turn at CES was focusing mostly on the mobile side, demoing the Arrows Tab and, in a surprise, a quad-core smartphone. The Arrows-badged phone, which was using a Tegra 3, was behind glass at the main Fujitsu booth running the Riptide GP game NVIDIA likes to use to show the Tegra 3's graphics power. We were told it was running Android 4.0 and, on-device, had a 4.6-inch "HD" screen.
(Update: official details) Samsung, Panasonic, NTT DoCoMo, Fujitsu, and NEC are working together on smartphone processors, according to apparent slips from the industry early Tuesday. A joint venture as cast by the Wall Street Journal would probably have Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo have majority control over the project, which would go live by late March. Little else is known other than that official news could come as soon as later on Tuesday.
Fujitsu Semiconductor and SuVolta have demonstrated a new process and technology that promises to greatly reduce the power consumption of SRAM. The new technology could be used to create SRAM capable of operating at ultra-low-voltages of 0.4V, less than one-half of today's power consumption levels. The new lower voltage SRAM could soon be seeing its way into mobile devices, tethered servers, and networking equipment.
Japan’s KDDI has announced the Fujitsu Arrows ES IS12F that measures in at just 6.7mm at its thinnest point, and 8.5mm at its thickest. The Arrow also only weighs 105 grams despite being fitted with a 4-inch (480x800) AMOLED display. This makes the device thinner than the Motorola RAZR and lighter than the Samsung Galaxy S II.
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.
ARM has introduced a new graphics core, known as the Mali-T658, that promise to bring a significant leap in performance over its predecessor. The GPU is designed for mobile applications, working in conjunction with the company's Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 processors. The system is also compatible with a range of APIs such as OpenGL ES, OpenCL, OpenVG and DirectX 11.
Fujitsu has introduced a new supercomputer, known as the PrimeHPC FX10, that is said to be capable of theoretical processing performance up to 23.2 petaflops. The system relies on the company's new VIIIfx processor, which serves as the successor to the existing IXfx chips. The 16-core water-cooled design supports standalone performance up to 236.5 gigaflops, with performance-per-watt reaching 2 gigaflops.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory will use the parallel processing capability of the NVIDIA Tesla M2090 GPU in a new supercomputer, a Cray XK6 nicknamed "Titan." The new supercomputer could deliver over 20 petaflops, making it more than twice as fast as the most powerful supercomputer today, the Fujitsu K supercomputer. Titan will also be three times more energy efficient.
Japanese carrier KDDI has announced its winter lineup for the last quarter of 2012. The second largest wireless provider in Japan will be offering six Android phones, two feature phones and a new tablet. In a unique touch, most of these phones offer waterproof protection.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer during the company's Financial Analyst Meeting acknowledged that Windows Phone 7 still wasn't performing well. Treating it as a first-year wrap up, he said Microsoft phone partners hadn't sold "quite as many as I would have liked" between its October release and today. He didn't quantify the numbers, but shipments have been flat and have led to steady losses in market share.
NTT DoCoMo has officially announced two new tablets for its Xi LTE service, which it launched in December. The Japanese service provider will be offering its customers the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 LTE and the Fujitsu Arrows Tab LTE F-01D. Both Android 3 tablets will come in white and feature 10.1-inch 1280x800 displays
A newly discovered FCC filing suggests Fujitsu is readying to bring its recently leaked and Japan-only F-01D 10-inch Android tablet to the US. The device meant for American shores won't have access to mobile or broadband networks however, only supporting Wi-Fi. This could also indicate Fujitsu is just trying to get an FCC certificate for the tablet for travelers who come to the US often.
Amateur coders have posted an unofficial ROM of the upcoming Windows Phone "Mango" update for European HTC Mozart users. The OS update has been finished since late July, and leaked in early August. The new ROM is the first version that contains hardware-specific firmware and manufacturer customizations.
Hulu on cue has launched Hulu Plus for Japan. The country is the first outside of the US to get Hulu and gives it a very different business model. Plus is the only option in the country and costs the equivalent of $19 per month, almost twice as much as the $8 it does in the US.
The seven-inch Android 3.1 tablet from Fujitsu that surfaced back in May is likely to turn out to be a 10-inch device, according to a new leak from China's Juggly. The tip puts the device to launch at Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo near the end of September. The device would also support the carrier's LTE-based Xi 4G service, with the carrier itself promising to launch two such 4G tablets this fall.
KDDI confirmed talk an early ship date and moved up the launch of the Toshiba-Fujitsu IS12T to a month earlier. The very first Windows Phone 7 Mango phone should be in Japan on August 25. It's expected to sit at about $253 on contract.
The first Windows Phone 7 Mango device, Toshiba-Fujitsu's IS12T, may arrive earlier even than what Microsoft has suggested. Both a KDDI Au listing and retail shop sightings (pictured) have the IS12T being ready on August 25, as much as a month ahead of schedule. In addition to spotting the phone's details, Nanapho in a follow-up has also shown that it might cost a steep 73,500 yen ($960) off-contract after tax, although it may dip down to $253 on regular terms.
Microsoft's Nordic mobile leader Peter Wissinger revealed that phone makers now had Windows Phone 7's Mango update was now contingent only on others. While the firm had already said it was finished early, Wissinger said that it was now only "up to our manufacturing partners" to actually ship their devices. He wouldn't say when that was.
Tablets are likely to overtake PCs within the next five years, Fujitsu CTO Dr. Joseph Reger claims. He expects devices like the iPad to eat into PC sales to where tablets become the dominant models by 2016. Most users consider consuming content more important than creating it, Dr. Reger says in Register-caught statements, and it's mostly just business that needs desktops and notebooks.
Toshiba-Fujitsu held a special event in Tokyo in the evening that gave it the distinction of being the first with a Windows Phone 7 Mango device. The IS12T is a close cousin of the Regza phone but has the unique touch of being waterproof and dust-resistant to IPX5 and IPX8 levels. It also packs one of the most powerful cameras of any phone with a 13.2-megapixel sensor.
After a possible quiet completion, Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed that Windows Phone 7's Mango update had been finished. The new mobile OS has reached its Release to Manufacturing (RTM) stage and is being sent off to phone makers for production-level hardware. Carriers also use the RTM build to make sure the OS doesn't create problems on their networks.
Microsoft has quietly finished Windows Phone 7's major Mango update, according to details in an episode of the Windows Phone Dev Podcast. Build 7710 has been released to manufacturing, which will make it the version the first shipping phones use. The company has already said it will take app submissions on August 22, likely a sign the OS will be on shipping devices soon afterwards.
Fujitsu's first Windows Phone device may be one of the first to ship if a claim by Japan's Nikkei newspaper is accurate. The device, briefly seen atWPC this week, is purportedly arriving in August. If so, it would come earlier than Microsoft's official fall window for Mango and could be the first to carry the new OS.
Fujitsu's TH40D tablet, originally shown off in May, will now arrive in Japan on July 22, NotebookItalia wrote. This is about a month's delay from the promised end of June launch, though reasons for the delay weren't given. The 10.1-inch device is just 17.4mm thick (less than 0.7 inches) and weighs 1.1kg (about 2.4lbs).
Microsoft's Imagine Cup account on Twitter inadvertently gave away timing for the first Windows Phone 7 Mango devices through a Twitter post (since deleted). The company promised that the finalists in the student competition would all get "Windows Phone 7.5 Mango." Every winning student would get a phone with the new OS "by September."
Fujistu has used the International Digital Publishing Expo to demonstrate its next-generation color digital paper module. The technology, which is made possible through the use of cholesteric liquid crystals, has made significant strides in its latest incarnation. Its writing speed has improved to 0.7 secs, while it can still display 4096 colors.
Fujitsu in a surprise step delayed its upcoming LifeBook TH40D tablet. Just days before its intended launch, it pushed the release back by an unmentioned amount of time. The company gave no reason other than a "development delay."
A computer developed by Fujitsu and the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science has claimed the title of the world's most powerful supercomputer on the Top500 list. The Fujitsu K Computer is a series of 672 computer racks with a total of 68,544 CPUs. The K Computer handles 8.162 petaflop/s (quadrillion floating point operations per second) as measured by the LINPACK benchmark. Researchers expect the final configuration of the K Computer to exceed 10 petaflop/s. The supercomputer it bumped from the top spot, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, performs 2.6 petaflop/s.
Fujitsu will soon be releasing the AVN-F011 GPS car navigation system. Fujitsu has developed a complementary iPhone app, "Doco Car" (Where Car). Using it, a driver can locate and be directed to a parked car.
SuVolta, a start-up created by a group of Silicon Valley veterans has developed a technology that they claim can reduce the power consumption of chips by 50%. Their technology has captured the eye of Fujitsu, who have licensed the SuVolta technology, which it will incorporate into chip designs from next year. Analysts watching the company believe that with Fujitsu onboard, that it is very possible that SuVolta’s technology could gain widespread acceptance and become commonplace.
Microsoft during its live Windows Phone 7 Mango event on Tuesday provided extra details of its hardware plans beyond those revealed at the last minute. Along with adding Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE as hardware partners for what's widely referred to as Windows Phone 7.1, it confirmed that some of its initial Windows Phone 7 partners, including HTC, LG, and Samsung, would be releasing their first 4G-capable phones along with the new software. Microsoft didn't explicitly mention a technology and left it open to include LTE, WiMAX, or another technology.
(Update: corrected to fall) Microsoft ahead of its live event on Tuesday gave word of the launch of its planned Mango update for Windows Phone 7. The update is still penned in to the fall. The upgrade will also come with some partners completely new to WP7, such as Acer, Fujitsu, and ZTE, as well as new models from existing phone makers.
Fujitsu’s tablet strategy for 2011 has been further crystalized with news that it plans to release a 7-inch Android 3.1 tablet this summer. It will sit alongside its LifeBook TH40/D Windows 7 hybrid, slider-tablet due to go on sale in Japan this June. While the 10.1-inch TH40/D is targeted at enterprise, the 7-inch Honeycomb tablet will be aimed at the consumer market.
Fujitsu is now selling its LifeBook T901 convertible tablet PC in the US. The computer gets NVIDIA's Optimus hybrid graphics technology and a 2.5GHz Core i5 processor. The 13.3-inch touchscreen LCD has a resolution of 1280x768 and can be had with an optional dual digitizer that allows five-finger capacitive multi-touch input.
Fujitsu has shown its new TH40D tablet, which packs a slim, slide-out keyboard. It centers on a 10.1-inch 1024x600 display that can quickly be converted from a tablet form factor to a netbook style device. Much like the similar Samsung Slider, the new hybrid tablet device runs Windows 7 and is powered by an Intel Atom Z760 1.5GHz processor.
Android successfully pushed past the iPhone for the top smartphone platform in Japan last fiscal year, according to MM Research Institute. Google shot up from just 250,000 phones and 11 percent of the market at the end of March 2010 to 4.91 million phones at the end of March this year, or 57.4 percent. Apple moved 3.23 million iPhones over the same period and was 37.8 percent; BlackBerry and Windows Mobile were virtually non-existent.
Pocketables has dug up evidence of a Fujitsu handset/UMPC that combines Windows 7 and Symbian operating systems. The spec sheet for the LOOX F-07C was also leaked online a little later and shows off the phone's specs. The device has a 4-inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1024x600 and is allegedly powered by a 1.2GHz Atom from Intel.
Fujitsu has unveiled a pair of notebooks with the ability to incorporate an integrated pico projector. The LifeBook S761/C and P771/C have been designed to swap out the optical drive to allow for the inclusion of a pico projector module. The design mitigates the need for users to carry around a separate, and often cumbersome data projector for presentations.
The Open Invention Network (OIN) that protects Linux-using members from potential lawsuits and requests for royalties, such as Microsoft's back in 2007, just gained a few high-profile members. The newcomers include Facebook, HP, Fujitsu and tens of other organizations. OIN has developed more than 2,000 licenses that aim to fend off the intellectual property complaints in courts.
A source claimed Sunday night that Samsung was looking to sell off its hard drive business. The Korean company had set a target price of $1.5 billion but was eager enough to sell it for under $1 billion if it couldn't fetch the intended target. Seagate was the only named candidate from the Wall Street Journal's tip, but it wasn't clear how likely the US company was to land the deal.
A slip detailing Computex show launch plans may have given away AMD's plans to get into Android in earnest. Industry contacts claimed AMD has been recruiting engineers to write Android drivers. The move is likely the first step before offering chipsets for notebooks and more likely tablets that work with Google's platform, Digitimes also heard.
Fujitsu will bring a wireless computer display to the CeBIT show in Germany. The 22-inch screen will use Smart Universal Power Access (SUPA) technology built into office desks for power. SUPA uses a magneto-induction transmitter to send power to the display without a need to plug it in.
Just before the CeBIT show in Germany that kicks off on Tuesday, Fujitsu announced pricing for its Stylistic Q550 tablet. The 10.1-inch, Windows 7-powered device will come to stores on Tuesday, March 1, and cost a tax-inclusive 699 euros ($967). Other markets will have different prices, with the North American tag likely to be less and possibly subsidized by carriers.
Fujitsu plans on bringing out a new tablet as one of the few to use both Windows 7 Professional and an Intel Atom Oak Trail processor. The device will be aimed at the enterprise market and as such, will get a fingerprint reader. It will also have an SD card slot and a trusted platform module (TPM) for corporate buyers worried about security.
MacNN is continuing to review Fujitsu document scanners with the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100. The hardware is specifically geared toward mobile professionals, who may need both portability and sharp images. It can scan up to 600dpi, create PDFs and JPGs, and export to Word, Excel or iPhoto.
Fujitsu has introduced the first ever MeeGo-based netbook. The first release of the MeeGo open-source Linux OS geared for netbooks was delivered in May 2010 as a developer-only platform. The release of the Fujistu LifeBook MH330 marks the first the time the OS has been made available to consumers pre-installed on a shipping netbook.
The European Commission has extended its contract for Microsoft software early, according to reports. The controversial $66.8 million deal was said by Computer Weekly to have been extended with reseller Fujitsu on December 8 rather than February. The EC Directorate for Informatics, also called Digit, renewed the contract the day after the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) started a campaign against deals for any closed-source software.
