Welcome everyone to?TechLife on?Tecca TV, where we give you the 5 best technology-meets-lifestyle news stories in only 5 minutes. We hope to bring a little Friday Fun to you each week! If you missed last week's edition, be sure to?check … Continue reading →
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
8/18/2011
Report: Amazon To Challenge iPad
Jun. 22 2011 - 12:29 pm | 4,316 views | 1 recommendation | Jeff Bezos: the only thing standing between Steve Jobs and tablet computer domination? Image via CrunchBase
Steve Jobs has run amok again. This happens every few years in the tech industry. First he did it with the Macintosh. Then with the iPhone. Now, with the iPad, Jobs is gobbling up business like bear let loose in a peanut butter factory. If someone doesn’t stop him, quick, he’s going to do to the tablet market what he did with digital media players: own it.
Well it looks like Amazon Chief Jeff Bezos is prepping some tranquilizer darts and a ketch-all pole. Jeff Bezos, who plans to drop four million tablets into the market in 2011 to fight it out with Apple, Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes reported Wednesday. The report, which cited unnamed Taiwainese components makers says Amazon will use processors from Texas Instruments and touch panels from WinTech. The tablets will be assembled by Quanta Computer.
In short, Amazon will be reaching its hands into the same bag of parts available to everyone else. Software and services will have to set this device apart. Sadly, the people responsible for those things aren’t talking to Digitimes. But a glance at Amazon’s efforts to build digital media and software stores for Android devices provides a few clues about where Bezos could be going.
8/09/2011
iPad challenge looms large at Asia IT show
TAIPEI (AFP) – Tablets that match the iPad but at a cheaper price. Slimmer, more powerful notebooks. At Computex, Asia's top IT fair, manufacturers are showing how they plan to face the challenge from Apple's iconic product.
Taiwan-based Compal Electronics made its name as a producer of notebooks for big-league brands like Dell and Toshiba, but it too has now joined the tablet frenzy and is just months away from launching a seven-inch device.
"Of course, iPad is the number one challenge," said Yeta Huang, a Compal senior engineer.
"But we believe there's room for us, with the market size for tablet predicted to exceed 50 million this year. Cheaper price is one area where we're trying hard."
Computex, a sprawling event held in Taipei this week, provides a snapshot of a technology sector scrambling to find the right approach to the iPad, a product embraced by gadget lovers worldwide.
Since Apple's groundbreaking product was released in April last year, a proliferation of brands have hit the market with limited success, and manufacturers have also been hurt by eroding demand for traditional PCs.
Intel Corp, the world's top chip maker, has used Computex to unveil its response to the iPad, a type of thin laptop that it has dubbed Ultrabook.
It is "a new class of mobile computers" that "marry the performance and capabilities of today's laptops with tablet-like features," according to the American chip maker, suggesting the future will not just be all tablet.
"There is healthy room for PC growth, but affordability is key to PC penetration," Intel vice president Sean Maloney said according to the Taipei Times newspaper. "Now is the time to reinvent the PC platform again."
Even so, companies know they cannot ignore the tablet and have moved quickly to enter the market.
Taiwanese PC maker AsusTek Computer set up its first tablet business unit in November 2010, just months after Apple unveiled the iPad.
"Our Chairman Jonney Shih feels the tablet industry has great potential. That's why he decided to establish the new business unit," said Kakuangelo Kuo, a product manager of AsusTek's Eee Pad Business Unit.
"Leading computer brands all have adjusted downward their PC shipments this year as they expect part of the PC market to be eaten away by tablets," he said.
Ray Chen, Compal's president, said that while his company remains confident about the notebook market, where it derives 90 percent of its revenue, it will diversify into tablets and other products.
That way it hopes to raise its non-notebook revenue to 20 percent by the end of this year, Chen said according to Dow Jones Newswires.
Despite all the attention that tablets receive, analysts with a cool view of broad trends in the industry also see continuity in the future.
The good old desktop is not going away, since for large portions of the world's population it remains the only affordable option, they say.
In addition, in many emerging markets the infrastructure is not yet developed enough to make mobile Internet browsing a seamless, troublefree experience.
"Regular notebooks or desktops will feel less pain as demand from emerging markets, such as Russia, China, India and Brasil remains strong," said Kuo Ming-chi, a Taipei-based analyst with Concord Securities.
This demand will help offset the decline of PC demand from North America and Western Europe following the lauch of the iPad and other tablets, he said.
Some dissenting voices are moving to hose down the tablet hype.
"I bought a tablet and after three weeks, I found it can't replace my phone, and it can't replace my PC," Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's PC client group, told the Asian Wall Street Journal at Computex.
6/02/2011
Sony unveils two tablet computers in iPad challenge
TOKYO (AFP) – Japanese electronics and entertainment giant Sony Corp. unveiled its first tablet computers, codenamed S1 and S2, in a direct but belated challenge to Apple's iPad.
The "Sony Tablet" S1 has a single screen and is for home use while the portable S2 has two screens, Sony told a news conference.
The tablet devices will have access to online content to buy and download videos, music and other entertainment and be compatible with existing PlayStation games, Sony official Kunimasa Suzuki said.
Digital books can also be downloaded and read on the multimedia computers which are Wi-Fi and 3G/4G compatible for email and Internet access.
The S1 has a 9.4 inch (24 centimetre) screen, and front and rear cameras while the folding clamshell S2 has dual 5.5 inch colour touchscreens and fits into a pocket.
"This design is particularly relevant for reading digital books whose content is displayed on screen as two pages side-by side," Suzuki said.
Both screens can be used together as a single large screen or for playing games on one and displaying control buttons on the other.
The S1 can also work as a universal remote to control audio-visual equipment or send content to television screens or music to wireless speakers, Sony said.
The two devices use the Google Android 3.0 operating system, known as Honeycomb, which is optimised for devices with larger screen sizes.
"I'm excited about 'Sony Tablet' as it will further spur the development of applications and network offerings which users are looking for," said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of Google's mobile division.
The announcement comes as Sony looks to focus more on pushing its content such as games and music through hardware platforms including game consoles, smartphones and tablet computers.
Sony said earlier this year it planned to be the number-two tablet maker by 2012 but until Tuesday had given little indication of how it intended to compete in a market already dominated by Apple's iPad.
The iPad, which was released in April of last year, accounted for 83.9 percent of the total 17.6 million tablets sold in 2010, according to technology research company Gartner.
New entrants have flooded into the tablet computer market, but Sony's devices are not due to go on sale around the world until the northern hemisphere autumn, well behind its rivals.
The company did not give any indication of pricing.
Sony also announced a new line of "hybrid" notebook computers which feature a slide screen covering a keyboard.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)